Anatomy of a Reform: The Expeditionary Aerospace Force (EAF) of the U.S. Air Force (USAF) - Developing and Implementing the Solution, Basing During the Cold War, Active Force Tempo

Professionally converted for accurate flowing-text e-book format reproduction, this important work provides a history of the USAF's Aerospace Expeditionary Force restructuring plan. On August 4, 1998, the Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force (CSAF), General Michael E. Ryan, and the Acting Secretary of the Air Force (SECAF), F. Whitten Peters, announced their plans to implement a major change in the structure of the U.S. Air Force (USAF). They proposed to divide the USAF's combat strength and the elements directly supporting it into ten Aerospace Expeditionary Forces (AEFs). This proposal also envisioned a cultural change that would institutionalize an expeditionary focus into every facet of the service. Together the initiatives would make the Air Force of the twenty-first century an Expeditionary Aerospace Force (EAF). These moves came in response to a decade that witnessed a dramatic change in the national security environment stemming from the end of the Cold War. The Air Force leaders undertook these actions in order to make the USAF more responsive to the requirements of national strategy and more effective in joint operations, and to leverage its unique strengths as a service. This work will examine the nature of military reform and the expeditionary heritage of the USAF, analyze the development of the EAF and AEF concepts before the announcement, and study the implementation of the concepts to October 1, 1999. All organisms and organizations must respond to changing conditions or fail. The term fossil, an organism dead so long that its remnants have turned to stone, denotes a man who cannot or will not change; likewise an unchanging institution is fossilized — it merely marks time, waiting for its replacement. Reform, by definition, is a response intended to improve conditions either by changing the form of the institution or by removing faults and abuses within it. Although the EAF concept was a major step in recasting the operations, outlook, and culture of the USAF, it sprang from the performance of missions traditionally performed by the Air Force — the timely response of land-based air power to the needs of the nation. The following discussion examines this expeditionary heritage.