If the United States goes to war tomorrow, its Air Force will fly and fight as the world’s best. But the service will operate in a world where the assumptions that shaped it for more than 30 years no longer hold.
No longer can the Air Force rely on Bagram-style air bases as sanctuaries, thanks to anti-access and area-denial capabilities developed by China and others. To deter and defeat adversaries, the service must focus on agility, adaptability, and operating with a smaller footprint in austere environments. Leaders must refine options for getting into theater to generate tempo and seize initiative. In short, the Air Force must return to its expeditionary roots—a critical change that is already underway.
During World War II, Gen. Pete Quesada and the 9th Air Force brought expeditionary practices to the European theater. As the Third Infantry Division advanced across the continent, Quesada’s teams leap-frogged forward, establishing temporary airfields every few days to keep pace with Patton’s armored columns. Forward basing of fighter-bombers and mobile base defense, paired with air liaison officers embedded in ground units, enabled constant high-tempo combined arms to counter German Panzers. That is one example among many. But what Quesada understood—and what is essential to remember now—is that tempo and initiative are decisive advantages, especially when operating against peer adversaries in contested environments.
Today’s expeditionary approach mixes old concepts with new ones. The Air Force’s One Force Design is a transformational framework that includes future operating concepts tailored to the complex threats of great power competition.
Combined, these concepts create the ability to generate combat power within dense threat areas while under constant attack, employing fires in mass against enemy forces while simultaneously operating from defendable areas to project fires into highly contested environments. At the same time, One Force Design provides the flexibility and mass to span a range of potential future crises and operate globally. These capabilities are complementary—One Force Design enables sequenced operations and the ability to field a single lethal Air Force.
Operational concepts like Agile Combat Employment bring this framework to life, enabling the footprint to be light and lean and sustain operations from austere locations.
Critically, One Force Design also embraces interoperability, not just within formations, but with allies and partners. In today’s threat environment, everything from weapons to training to support and sustainment functions must be interchangeable, allowing rapid adjustments in dynamic operating environments. In the next fight, the Air Force will have to operate with what’s available. Interoperability is not just a convenience; it’s a necessity.
The ability to return to an expeditionary footing depends not only on doctrine or platforms, but on leadership. The Air Force must deliberately develop expeditionary leaders, ones who can execute commander’s intent with imperfect information and use that intent to establish tempo and gain and re-gain initiative.
The Air Force must develop Airmen with vision, judgment, competence, and courage. These leaders must be bold, adaptable, and willing to take calculated risks. They must be leaders who can cut through bureaucracy, empower subordinates, work across multinational and interagency lines, and inspire innovation in uncertain environments.
In today’s contested operating environment, agility, adaptability, judgment, and innovation are as critical as aircraft and munitions. Without boldness at the operational edge and the ability to execute mission command, the Air Force will remain tethered to outdated methods. That risks ceding strategic ground to adversaries who are more agile and less constrained.
Training to win
Department-level exercises like the one recently completed in the Pacific show what it looks like to return Airmen to expeditionary roots. In July, the Department of the Air Force executed a rapid mass deployment of personnel, equipment, and aircraft to over 50 locations across 3,000 miles of the Indo-Pacific. More than 12,000 personnel and 400 aircraft participated, alongside joint and coalition forces.
This was not business as usual. Incorporating multiple command exercises into one overall threat-deterrence scenario tested the ability to move and operate in austere conditions, with small groups of expert Airmen to repair equipment and operate in challenging environments.
Many of these sites weren’t traditional U.S. bases. Instead, they used allied infrastructure and dual airfields—exactly the kind of operating environment the Air Force must be ready for.
Interoperability was central. The exercise, like previous ones, affirmed that in the next fight, the Air Force will have to use what’s already there. That means maintainers and logisticians from across the joint force and partner nations integrating seamlessly.
Just as important, the large exercises helped train Airmen to establish tempo and gain initiative, using mission command to adapt and act even without perfect information. It’s a first step toward restoring the expeditionary mindset we’ll need to prevail.
One Force Design is a significant step forward; it gives direction, a shared framework, and revives our expeditionary roots. But returning to that mindset will take more than new operating concepts. It will take culture change.
No time can be wasted. Our adversaries are learning fast and rapidly developing capabilities that challenge our air superiority. The Air Force must move faster.
Combined exercises conducted on a global scale give a glimpse of what’s possible. These affirm that the Air Force is on the right path — but they are only the beginning.
Above all, the Air Force must cultivate leaders prepared for the demands of 21st-century war. Much like Project Warrior in the 1980s, the Air Force must build, select, and promote leaders who can seamlessly move from peacetime to war. Today’s Airmen must understand the risks involved in near-peer conflict and be willing to own those risks in support of our national security objectives. A secure, stable future depends on it.
Lt. Gen. David A. Harris is deputy chief of staff for Air Force Futures of the U.S. Air Force. He is the senior Air Force leader responsible for developing strategy and concepts, delivering an integrated force design, and conducting strategic assessments of the operating environment through wargames and workshops.
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