Can four major commands prepare the Air Force to win wars?

The U.S. Air Force is currently considering a bureaucratic restructuring that would refocus the force on four key areas it believes will improve how soldiers are organized, trained and equipped for war.

These core tasks – combat readiness, in-service training, personnel acquisition and future force planning – will ultimately fall under the purview of four major organizations, called “institutional commands,” responsible for force-wide planning and policymaking, Air Force officials said in public statements earlier this month.

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The plan aims to streamline the Air Force’s fragmented internal structure, where missions are currently divided between nine major commands responsible for different aircraft types and geographic regions, making the Air Force more efficient and more aligned with other branches of the armed forces.

The four commands would include:

• Air Combat Command would expand its focus on fighter, reconnaissance and other units to instead manage unit-wide readiness;
• the Airman Development Command, which would provide education and training throughout a soldier’s career;
• the Air Force Materiel Command, which would carry out procurement programs for the entire force; and
• Integrated Capabilities Command, which would take over long-term planning.

These core commands would take on some assets from the Air Force’s current major commands, such as Air Mobility Command and Air Force Global Strike Command, to give them the resources they need to manage troops and weapons systems across the force, the chief of staff said. General David Allvin said this in a speech to the Air and Space Forces Association on June 13 and during a roundtable discussion with reporters at the Pentagon the following day.

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In practice, it could look similar to the Army, which has distributed these missions among the Army Training and Doctrine Command, Army Forces Command, Army Materiel Command and Army Futures Command since 2018.

It is unclear how the other current major commands will interact with the four parent organizations or whether the service will seek to add additional subordinate commands as well.

The Air Force would also transform each of its service components into stand-alone organizations that provide troops to higher combatant commands around the world. Currently, some service components, such as Air Forces Cyber, fall under the purview of Air Combat Command, while others, such as Pacific Air Forces and U.S. Air Forces in Europe, do not report to a higher Air Force command and have more control over their own planning.

“We adapted to the times we lived in. … But given what the environment demanded of us, we were forced to act in a more diffuse and distributed way,” Allvin said. “We didn’t have a clear existential threat like we did in the Cold War.”

The reorganization is the latest step in a broader effort launched in February to realign the Air Force and bring it closer to China and other sophisticated forces after decades of fighting in the Middle East, when the Air Force responded only piecemeal via isolated commands focused on a single type of air mission, such as bombers or tankers. Now the Air Force wants a more holistic approach when it comes to transferring those air packages to the joint force.

Some parts of the plan, including the creation of the new Integrated Capabilities Command and the transformation of the Air Education and Training Command into the new Airman Development Command, were unveiled by Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall in February.

Now more pieces of the puzzle are emerging.

Air Forces Northern, Air Forces Southern and Air Forces Central – which provide troops to commanders in North and South America and the Middle East – would no longer be under Air Combat Command and would instead be on a par with the other branches of the military, such as U.S. Air Forces in Europe-Air Forces Africa and Pacific Air Forces.

With less oversight to be done, the ACC would work with “other institutional commands to establish readiness, to conduct the exercises, to conduct the inspections to ensure that we are operational and not just task ready,” Allvin said.

“ACC is evolving into a different type of command,” he said.

This includes keeping the Air Force’s fighter squadrons combat-ready, including the attack assets that make up what are known as “deployable fighter squadrons,” or the squadrons that supplement them with airlift and other assets, known as “combat generation squadrons.” This leaves separate units that keep the air bases running during deployments at home, as well as squadrons that carry out their mission from home station, such as intercontinental ballistic missile units.

Lt. Gen. Adrian Spain, deputy chief of staff for operations, said the Air Force expects to ultimately field 24 combat-ready fighter squadrons, 16 of which would be active duty and the rest in reserve. Those squadrons would deploy teams of pilots from the same bases who have already trained together, rather than filling overseas vacancies from different squadrons as needed.

Their predecessor units, known as Air Task Forces, will be built up this summer at six bases across the country in preparation for their deployments to the Middle East and Pacific in October 2025. Three more are scheduled to replace them overseas in 2026.

The ACC must work with other commands to ensure that Soldiers across the force receive the training they need, even beyond the combat aviation units it traditionally manages.

“There will be that relationship in building the exercises, building the training mechanism for the entire force that doesn’t just use the traditional combat force,” Allvin said. “This is where ACC will really be responsible and accountable for the readiness of the entire force. That’s a big mission.”

If done well, the restructuring could benefit the service, said Clint Hinote, who worked on the reorganization before retiring from the Air Force in 2023 as a three-star strategy chief. He warned that it could face resistance if the service opts to move the three- and four-star leadership positions that currently dominate those commands, but he argues it would be a mistake not to move forward.

“I think they are doing it wrong by not changing,” Hinote said.