Lead Forward: Mobility Air Force Command Nodes for Complex Operations

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lostumbo, Michael J.

Contributor:

Brown, Jeffrey S.

Oliver, Stephen W., Jr.

Language:

English

Other Title:

Lead Forward

Place of Publication:

RAND Corporation 2023

Summary:

The future command and control (C2) structure of the United States Air Force (USAF) forces must be designed to withstand and cope with attacks on U.S. capabilities and to effectively adapt to a rapidly changing battle space. A future conflict with Russia or China is likely to involve precision missile attacks on airfields, attacks on command nodes, cyberattacks, and degradations to communications systems. The implications are far reaching. They threaten the long-standing USAF principle and practice of highly centralized C2. Determining how to adapt effectively to major disruptions in communications and chains of command is, thus, a crucial consideration for the USAF going forward. To help the USAF envision how forces should be organized to prepare for such conditions, the authors identify the demands that the USAF's emerging agility concepts will place on expeditionary wings; develop alternative wing C2 constructs for expeditionary Mobility Air Force (MAF) forces — some potentially disaggregated — in forward areas under threat of missile attack; and provide a qualitative assessment of the alternative constructs.