The U.S. Air Force celebrated the 75th anniversary of its founding last week. There is much to celebrate about the accomplishments of our Air Force over the past three quarters of a century, but today, as China is increasingly bellicose and Russia is waging a brutal war against Ukraine, American air power is no longer the dominant force we need it to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our Air Force is smaller, older and less ready than at any point in its 75-year history. America did not protect its strategic edge with continued investment and technological advancement in recent years, and it is not getting its pilots the flight hours they need to maximize proficiency; meanwhile, China and others invested with a vengeance to catch up to our enviable capabilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gen. CQ Brown has called on airmen to \u201caccelerate change\u201d ever since becoming the 22nd Air Force chief of staff in two years ago. His blunt warning, delivered again at last week\u2019s Air & Space Forces Association\u2019s biggest ever Air, Space & Cyber conference, has been that the service must embrace new ways to accomplish the mission or risk losing in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe have done this before,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd we will do it again.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The stakes in this context go to the root of protecting freedom and democracy and political self-determination for all the nations of the world. As Brown noted in his keynote address at the conference, Gen. Henry H. Arnold, the World War II leader of the Army Air Forces, which would become our U.S. Air Force in 1947, wrote in his final war report that without \u201ca modern, autonomous, and thoroughly trained Air Force \u2026 there can be no national security.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Today, our Air Force\u2019s tactical skills are sharp, and its equipment is still as good or better than any. But our edge is shrinking, and the aggression of our adversaries is growing. America can no longer afford to put off the modernization of this force, to argue that less is more. Without strategic overmatch, less is really less.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Brown outlined an overarching strategy essential to ensure American air superiority. It requires the U.S. armed forces be \u201cintegrated by design.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our nation\u2019s military alone may not be big enough to overwhelm the likes of China. But in a world where we have more friends and allies, we can have a decisive advantage. Integrating with our partners, as we have with the development of the F-35 Lightning II fighter jet, is a case in point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the same time, Brown says, we must also accelerate the development of new operational concepts and make those concepts \u201cpart of our DNA \u2014 part of our culture.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The rest of our nation has its own to-do list to ensure the United States has the dominant Air and Space forces we need to avoid war in the future, and to win one if we must fight:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The best defense is a good offense. The credible capacity to fight is the No. 1 deterrent to war. Our job is to ensure those odds are always in our favor. We do that by developing the best technology in the world; by investing in the fighting capacity to sustain operations when necessary; and by ensuring our forces have the training and practice they need to be prepared for any eventuality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As Brown said, we have done this before. We must do it again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Bruce Wright is president of the Air & Space Forces Association. He spent more than three decades in the Air Force, including serving as commander of 5th Air Force and U.S. Forces Japan.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Today, our Air Force\u2019s tactical skills are sharp, and its equipment is still as good or better than any. But our edge is shrinking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":71066,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":66,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[66,160,36,17],"tags":[],"coauthors":[4767],"class_list":["post-62394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary","category-daily-news-roundup","category-newsletters","category-opinion"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"R5YX4CTJ4BHZBPYELKB6KZNPMQ","arc_canonical_url":"\/opinion\/commentary\/2022\/09\/26\/accelerating-change-today-to-ensure-air-dominance-tomorrow\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n