How the Air Force is preparing for the new administration

SIMI VALLEY, California—Whatever changes the Trump administration makes to the Pentagon, Air Force Chief Gen. David Allvin says he’s ready to adapt. 

“I am not going to have the hubris to say I know which of these things are right or wrong or different. Things look like they're on pace to change. My job is to ensure that I provide the advice within that change, whether the changes are asked for my advice, or say, go, build your Air Force around this,” Allvin told Defense One on the sidelines of the Reagan National Defense Forum. 

It’s not known who President-elect Donald Trump will appoint as Air Force secretary, or what the new administration’s priorities and funding proposals will be. But military officials are bracing for potential cuts and other changes in light of Trump advisers’ promises to make the Pentagon more “efficient.”

When asked about prospective changes, Allvin said he couldn’t comment until the decisions are in front of him. But, he said, at the end of the day, his job remains the same: give advice and then execute the policy.

“The first principles are to provide advice on, within whatever context, what gets slashed, what gets added, what gets cut out…I can say, ‘This is what I believe [is] the risk to this force that we're building that is both agile enough to meet the rapid pace of change, and also lethal and survivable enough to meet what the national defense strategy asked us to do,’” he said. 

“I don't have angst. Quite frankly, I am ready to understand and adapt the force,” Allvin said.  

The Air Force recently delivered its new force design concept to Congress, which aims to be a framework for the service to adapt to varying funding levels and changing threats. While few details have been released about the proposed force design, an unclassified summary said the new framework identifies three “mission areas” the service needs to focus on, including long- and short-range fires and “flexible” systems to allow the service to respond to a range of threats. 

But the actual makeup of the future force will depend on how much funding the service receives, Allvin said. 

“We are designing the force in a way that it's the right shape, and so, depending on funding, it can be expanded or contracted. But it's understanding that what we're dealing with, fundamentally, is an Air Force that needs to deal with different threat environments,” he said. 

The service is still analyzing a number of future programs, including its 6th-generation stealth fighter jet, called Next Generation Air Dominance. Service secretary Frank Kendall recently announced he will defer a decision on NGAD to the next administration. 

That decision will give the companies in the running the opportunity to update their proposals so the new administration will see the “latest and greatest,” Allvin said. 

Since the Air Force paused the 6th-gen fighter program, analysis has uncovered many “interdependencies,” or other programs and operating concepts that will impact and be impacted by NGAD, Allvin said, including how the service plans to protect the aircraft on base, how it will do “survivable” air refueling, and what new capabilities collaborative combat aircraft will bring to the fight.  

“I think that analysis provides a more holistic set of facts and evidence and insights that the new administration can say, OK, given all that, here's where we think we're going,” Allvin said. 

While the new administration’s views on NGAD remain to be seen, Elon Musk, a key adviser of the president-elect, has been vocal about his dislike for expensive manned fighter jets, and has scrutinized the Pentagon for buying the F-35 instead of prioritizing drones.

Mastering human-machine teaming will be crucial for future operations, Allvin said, but even with significant technological advances, humans need to remain in the loop. 

“War is a human endeavor. So within that context, are there areas where there might be a change in the ratio of how many humans versus how many machines, how that human-machine relationship is?” Allvin said. 

“To me, whoever masters that the best and can operate within the environment, that really privileges speed and tempo and agility, that human-machine teaming, that's going to be the key. So I think there certainly is room for changing from where we are now, which is why we're not only doing CCA, we're actually looking at some of those more proliferated, less expensive, more asymmetric [platforms], to augment that as well,” he said.