Compass Points - Wild Blue Yonder
USAF makes changes
Compass Points - Wild Blue Yonder
USAF makes changes
October 17, 2024
.
In the years the Marine Corps has been struggling with its version of force design, the US Air Force has completed their own version of force design and has reorganized to accomplish their worldwide missions. The Air Force’s new force design focuses on organizing itself into "task forces” flexible, worldwide task forces.
.
================
.
The Air Force activated the last of its first six Air Task Forces last week, breaking new ground it its plan for how the Air Force deploys forces overseas.
. . . After years of “crowdsourcing” deployments and assembling deployed units piecemeal overseas, Air Force leaders are shifting to a system where Airmen deploy as units, having already trained and worked together.
. . . Instead of drawing Airmen from 60 or more commands into a single deployed unit, the ATFs and DCWs will train and deploy as a unit, developing relationships and trust ahead of time.
. . . Each Air Task Force will have four elements:
-- A command team with expeditionary air staff and special staff that work directly for the commander
-- A combat air base squadron to handle base support
-- One or more mission-generation force elements, such as a fighter, bomber squadron, or special warfare squadron, to provide combat power
-- Mission-sustainment teams to support each mission-generation force element, including all sustainment and protection forces.
. . . The model cycles units through six-month phases of increasingly complex training until they are in zone for a six-month “commit” phase. Then the cycle repeats, beginning with a reset phase.
-- Air and Space Forces Magazine
.
================
.
So, the Air Force's new organization is built around six task forces. Each task force has a headquarters element, as well as air, ground, and logistics elements. Each task force will go through a cycle of six-months pre-deployment, then, six months deployment, and finally six-months post-deployment.
Way to go Air Force! Your complex force design effort has re-invented the Marine MAGTF!
Before Marines have too much fun at the expense of the Air Force, however, it is worth considering that in their force design effort, the Air Force reviewed the options and moved toward a MAGTF model. After reviewing all the experts, options, models, and conferences, the Air Force concluded there was no better way to serve the Nation, to accomplish a variety of missions, and to deter and defeat worldwide foes than by using flexible, expandable air, ground, task forces.
The Marine Corps, on the contrary, using a small private group, went through a much more abrupt and truncated process and somehow came to the exact opposite conclusion. The few Marines conducting Marine Corps force design were inexplicably blind to the strengths of the MAGTF and decided what was needed was not a stronger MAGTF but a weaker MAGTF. They decided that what the Marine Corps needed was not to move toward the proven MAGTF model but to move away from it. Instead of a flexible, expandable worldwide force for worldwide missions, the force design inner circle decided the Marine Corps needed more of a defensive, regional, narrow, neo-Maginot Line force on Pacific islands.
Despite the occasional good-hearted jabs by Marines, the Air Force remains a very professional organization. Without a doubt, long before the Air Force decided to organize into their six new worldwide task forces, the Air Force made sure the task forces would be logistically supported. Even the greenest Air Force lieutenant in his new blue suit would never dream of re-organizing even a single Air Force unit without a thorough logistics plan.
Sadly, the laugh would be on the Marine Corps if the Air Force ever discovered the truth. The Marine Corps reorganized itself, turned away from the worldwide MAGTF model, and instead began to focus on small Marine missile units on Pacific islands and did it all without a logistics plan! Even today, years after the Marine Corps began turning its focus away from the MAGTF, the Marine Corps still has no method in-place for logistically supporting the Marine island missile units.
Compass Points salutes the US Air Force and their achievement of activating all six of their worldwide task forces. When the Air Force decided the best way to deploy air power was using flexible, expandable air, ground, logistics task forces, they took a great leap forward in serving the Nation.
It will be impossible for the Marine Corps to be "first to fight" or to be the Nation's global, crisis response, 9-1-1 force, unless the Marine Corps rediscovers, restores, and multiplies the Marine Air Ground Task Force.
.
- - - - -
.
Air and Space Forces - 10/16/2024
All 6 Air Task Forces Now Activated; Combat Wings Will Follow
By Greg Hadley
The USAF understands the global bases network it must be able to deploy to with viable combat packages supported by the required logistics. I wish they had more that would overlap and be mutually supportable. The post Cold War draw down was too rapid and too steep.
The Navy has a similar need for ports and Naval Air Stations and was also too quick to divest and down size based on the mirage of a promise of greater efficiency and cost savings.
The Army also needs bases in close proximity to flash points. DS/DS was fought primarily with trained and ready forces from Germany with the addition of east coast forces.
The USMC, being primarily sea transported, was relevant with trained and ready forces deployed on amphibious shipping and supported by MPS squadrons. The Air Force, Navy and Army are all readjusting and reorganizing in light of the Quad Threat of China, Russia, N Korea and Iran and a host of far lesser but none the less venomous threats.
Russia and China are a significant threat to U.S. vital interests in Europe and Asia. N Korea is an unpredictable, unstable wild card, rabid adversary. Iran remains problematic if only for their religious zealotry that might cause them to self ignite.
The USMC also attempted to adjust and in so doing applied such poor judgement and basic dishonesty that it made itself irrelevant to each and every threat while it deluded itself that it was going to reorganize to become a vital piece in deterring China.
I am unable to find an example in history where a highly successful, storied military force so misunderstood its own potency and self castrated itself.
The Marine Corps has about 160,000 Marines. That is bigger than most Armies in the world and even bigger than the entire defense establishment of some significant allies. In return the nation gets a coastal artillery force with short range, subsonic missiles with war heads too small to sink enemy warships. The Corps at one time produced the most juice for the squeeze. The exact opposite might now be true. We are now on the cusp of being irrelevant. It is high time for an about face and reconstitution and modernization.
I’ve been unable to ascertain precisely what the Marine Corps is capable of today.