Mobility Maturation

摘要

Having sent Congress a budget plan to reduce the airlift fleet some 20 percent, the Air Force and the Pentagon are now gearing up for a study to ensure mobility force levels are adequate to meet new national strategy requirements while leaving enough to deal with pop-up contingencies. To fulfill the strategy, Air Mobility Command is focusing on standardizing the aircraft types it will keep and launching its own studies of how eventually to replace them. Its commander, Gen. Raymond E. Johns Jr., sees the makeup of the fleet remaining stable nearly to midcentury. However, he worries about the ability to retain overworked personnel and commercial carrier partners whose contracts will diminish rapidly in the coming years. Gen. Norton A. Schwartz, USAF Chief of Staff, acknowledged that mobility studies typically take years, and the airlift cuts in the Fiscal 2013 budget were determined after only a few months of analysis.