Anatomy of a Reform: The Expeditionary Aerospace Force

摘要

Since 1991, the service has lost two-thirds of its foreign bases and one-third of its force structure and personnel. Yet the nation's strategy of selective engagement dictated that the service be ready to fight and win two nearly simultaneous major theater wars, while maintaining its commitments to a growing string of small-scale contingencies. The mismatch between resources and requirements was forcing the men and women of the U.S. Air Force (USAF) into a lifestyle characterized by high personnel tempo at the expense of family life. Drops in retention rates and recruitment indicated that the situation, if allowed to go unchecked, would soon reach serious proportions. The answer was to create the Expeditionary Aerospace Force (EAF) -- a new way of doing business that improved predictability and stability in personnel assignments and furnished the service with a powerful management tool to more efficiently align its assets with the needs of the warfighting Commanders in Chief. EAF was an idea whose time had come, and on August 4, 1998, Acting Air Force Secretary, F. Whitten Peters, and Chief of Staff, General Michael E. Ryan, announced that the time for development had passed and that the USAF would now move as rapidly as possible toward full implementation. This work offers a preliminary history of the development and initial implementation of EAF from its beginnings to the roll-out of the 10 Aerospace Expeditionary Forces on October 1, 1999.