Bending but not Broken: The USAF s Expeditionary Air Force Experience in the 21 st Century 1

Transcription

1 Bending but not Broken: The USAF s Expeditionary Air Force Experience in the 21 st Century 1 Major-General Timothy A. Peppe, USAF and Rachel Lea Heide The international scene faced by the United States Air Force (USAF) in the 21 st century is vastly different from that of the Cold War period. Unprecedented and unconventional crises are being made all the more challenging by new conditions of operations: the USAF is working with fewer people and fewer forward bases, but it faces six times as many missions. During the Cold War, containment was the role of the USAF. It had a large force structure, extensive forward basing, and a robust infrastructure, and its personnel stayed at home more often than not. The situation today has changed radically. Containment has given way to actual engagement, and the USAF must carry out its missions with a third fewer people and two-thirds fewer bases overseas than in the Cold War period. Furthermore, deployments for personnel have increased four-fold, and the USAF must bring or create its own infrastructure each time it deploys. The result of these changes in the international environment, in the USAF s role, and in the resources available has been a movement towards an Expeditionary Air Force (EAF). As noted in Thierry Gongora s essay in these proceedings, according to General James L. Jones, United States Marine Corps, an expeditionary force is an agile and flexible force organized to accomplish a broad range of military objectives in a foreign country or region. Such a force must be able to deploy rapidly, enter the objective area through forcible means, sustain itself for an extended period of time, withdraw quickly, and reconstitute rapidly to execute follow-up missions. 2 Although the expeditionary air force framework is providing predictability for personnel and their families, is spreading the burdens of operations across the entire service, and

2 is increasing readiness and decreasing operational tempo, the demands of the post-11 September 2001 world are putting strains on this new framework built to take the USAF into the 21 st century. Facing a greater variety of operations and a higher operational tempo with a smaller air force is difficult to do in an ad hoc fashion, as the USAF discovered from experience. The difficulties faced in 1994 when countering Iraqi military attacks on Kuwait in Operation VIGILANT WARRIOR led to the creation of four aerospace expeditionary forces (AEF) 3 for use in the Gulf region between 1995 and Based on this experience, the entire USAF was later reorganized into AEFs; this new framework took effect in October 1999 (the start of Fiscal Year 2000). 4 The AEFs were created as an organizational and scheduling mechanism designed to spread air force capabilities across the service, and to produce scheduling predictability for USAF personnel. This predictability is achieved by reducing operational tempo and enhancing force readiness. Wings and Units benefit from this predictability because the scheduling of each AEF s activities, including deployment, occurs 15 months in advance. 5 This new expeditionary air force framework has divided the USAF into 10 aerospace expeditionary forces. Each AEF has approximately aircraft and a cross-section of air force weapon systems drawn from geographically separated units. 6 Each AEF goes through a 15 month cycle, which schedules time for normal training and exercises, spin-up and deployment preparations, deployment or on-call status, and recovery. Three months are spent on basic training, which includes keeping current and mission qualification training. The next 6.5 months focus on advanced training (joint inter-operability) and service exercises (such as AEF Flag).

3 The spin-up stage of the cycle lasts for two months where the AEF prepares for deployment and trains for its specific area of responsibility. The deployability period is 90 days, where the AEF is deployed on operations or goes through sustainment training as the AEF remains on-call for possible deployment. After the three-month deployability period, the AEF has two weeks for recovery. 7 The goal is to rotate personnel through these commitments on a 90-day cycle once every 15 months. Knowing when they are in a training mode or when they are on-call well in advance allows men and women to plan their professional and personal lives around these obligations. An AEF s primary raison d être is to fulfill a combat role; therefore, each AEF represents the core of deployable combat power and forward presence capability. Nonetheless, an AEF has a mobility role as well. Strategic airlift provides the capability to deploy and sustain operations, as well as joint and national responsibilities. Although support capabilities, such as acquisition, logistics, health care, education, and training just to name a few, are not organically assigned to AEF, they are the foundation that underpins expeditionary operations. There are also operational capabilities that are not organically assigned to AEF, e.g., space, nuclear, and national C2ISR assets. Therefore, these assets and others, such as airborne command and control, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance platforms, strategic airlift, and combat search and rescue, are assigned to an AEF as they are required. When a Joint Task Force has been given a specific mission, a mission-oriented, task-organized, scalable Aerospace Expeditionary Task Force (AETF) is created. The goal is to design the rightsized AETF for each specific mission. From the AEF s pool of readily deployable and

4 employable forces, aerospace expeditionary squadrons are organized into aerospace expeditionary wings and aerospace expeditionary groups. These squadrons, wings, and groups form the AETF which will take part in the Joint Task Force. 8 The Air Force structure for training and equipping forces has not changed under the AEF construct. The AEF schedule serves as a guide in determining which forces are most ready to respond to crisis taskings. Forces are scheduled and presented for operations based on the AEF rotational schedule. If necessary, the Air Force will provide the Unified Combatant Commander with forces from on-call AEF based on the required capabilities. Expeditionary forces are presented as an AETF consisting of aerospace expeditionary wings and groups; units below the group level are attached to the nearest wing or group. The ten AEFs have been divided into five pairs: 1 and 2, 3 and 4, 5 and 6, 7 and 8, and 9 and 10. Each pair traverses the 15 month cycle together, and these pairs will be deployed or will remain on-call for deployment at the same time. The rotational AEF construct was designed to support limited-scale requirements, and three month rotations of one AEF pair became the accepted battle rhythm. A situation demanding more than one AEF pair places the AEF into a surge mode, whereby the AEF flexes, as necessary, to meet increased requirements. One of the measures available to meet surge demand is to reach forward to the next most available AEF

5 plans will have to include the supply, protection, and explosive ordnance disposal mechanisms for the base as well. Planners will also have to determine the minimum number of people and the necessary equipment needed to build an adequate base, and they will have to decide fine details such as when the chaplain and finance people should be brought in. Planners must be realistic when showing what the USAF is capable of doing in the assigned situation and in warning what the service is unable to do if objectives in the military zone are exceeded. Physically setting-up a base in the operational theatre occurs in four stages. First, the base must be secured either by the Air Force in a low threat environment, or by the Army and/or the Marines if the base is in hostile territory. Once secured, the next step is for the Air Force to begin establishing the base by building up the fundamental areas with the minimum number of people. The third stage is to generate the mission, and this is done by bringing in the aircraft and the munitions. Finally, the air base is ready to operate. At time C+0, the opening of the base commences, as does the establishment of the base. Generating the mission overlaps with base establishment and base operation, and base operation should be underway by time C+14. After C+29 days, sustainment of operations needs to have been considered and successfully secured. A typical base requires approximately 1000 people. It would be staffed as follows: 600 in aircraft maintenance, 120 for security forces, 110 in civil engineering, 50 in airfield C2/Operations, 50 in transportation, 40 in communications, 30 in intelligence, and 20 in the medical branch.

6 An AEF must be able to carry out a myriad of capabilities. Combat functions include counter-air (OCA-Offensive Counter Air, DCA-Defensive Counter Air), counter-land (precision guided munitions, close air support, interdiction), counter-space, counter-sea, counter-information, strategic attack, combat search and rescue, and special operations. The AEF also has combat support roles: robust expeditionary combat support, intra-theatre airlift, refueling, and reach back to global support infrastructure. Organic assets of an AEF are multi-role fighter and bomber aircraft, mobility aircraft, low density/high demand critical enablers, and expeditionary combat support assets as shown in Figure Multi-role Fighter and Bomber Aircraft F-15C/F-16A (Air-to-Air) F-15E (Precision Guided Munitions) F-16CJ (Suppression of Enemy Air Defences) A-10 (Close Air Support/Combat Search and Rescue) B-1/B-52 (Precision Guided Munitions, Air Launched Cruise Missiles) 31 Mobility Aircraft C-130 (Intra-Theatre Airlift) KC-135R (Aerial Refueling) Figure 1: A Typical AEF s Organic Assets

7 The Office of the Secretary of Defense determines the extent of the United States international commitments and capabilities, which in turn serve as the Defense Planning Guidance Requirements. Based on this guidance, the military departments train and equip the services, the Joint Chiefs of Staff plan and coordinate missions, and the Unified Commands conduct the actual operations. A role of primary importance for the USAF is to defend the homeland. Simultaneously, the service must also be capable of deterring forward in four theatres. It is expected that swift victory should come in two overlapping theatres of war; a decisive victory in one theatre is an acceptable alternative option to two swift victories. In addition, it is expected that the USAF could also undertake a limited number of lesser contingencies. The Air Force supports the Defense Planning Guidance using a combination of forward based and rotational expeditionary forces, as shown in Figure 2. DPG Region Homeland Defense Europe SWA / Middle East NE Asia East Asia Littorals Others STRATCOM TRANSCOM SOUTHCOM OCONUS Based Forces N/A 3AF UK, Germany 16AF Italy None 5 AF Japan 7 AETF Korea 11AF Alaska N/A N/A N/A None Rotational Forces 1AETF Noble Eagle 85 AEG Iceland 16 AEW Balkans 16 AETF Enduring Freedom/ ONW 9 AETF Enduring Freedom/ OSW None 13 AETF Enduring Freedom Strategic Strike (Bomber, Missile, I/O) Global Mobility Task Force TF Counter Drug

8 Figure 2: Current (Spring 2003) Deployment of USAF forces. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has directed a Joint Force Presence Policy which is based on the current Global Naval Force Presence Policy. The Air Force Presence Policy has been written to outline USAF policy for providing presence to support the Defense Planning Guidance and Unified Combatant Commander requirements. This global presence policy governs AEF participation worldwide; is a mechanism to task, organize, and present AETFs in accordance with doctrine; and is the Air Force s annex to the Joint Force Presence Policy. As the number of crises and commitments increase, so to do the strains placed on the AEF. In peacetime, two AEFs can be sustained on deployments indefinitely. As the number of crises in which the USAF is involved increases, the surge where four AETFs are committed worldwide can be sustained for one AEF cycle. A maximum surge, where six to ten AEFs are committed, is not sustainable beyond 180 days. Stresses are presently being felt in current operations, as current requirements exceed normal AEF rotational capabilities in some areas. Some Expeditionary Combat Support (ECS) fields are over-tasked and cannot rotate every three months. Low density/high demand assets are in surge, and this poses a long-term problem. In fact, NATO AWACS filled-in for American AWACS over the continental United States for a period of time after 11 September The AEF construct is still working, but it has been stressed by Operation NOBLE EAGLE and Operation ENDURING FREEDOM. Several weapon systems have been operating at wartime surge levels. The E3 AWACS have been operating above Global Military Force Policy surge levels for more

9 than six months (as of March 2003). Other critical enablers such as RC-135s, U-2s, and HC- 130s have similarly been operating over Global Military Force Policy levels. A large number of mobility assets are committed, and ECS requirements exceed the capability of the on-call AEF. Because of the very nature of low density/high demand assets (few are available but many are needed in operations), these assets have limited training capacity. To meet mission requirements, RC-135s were lost as training assets. Prior to 11 September 2001, limited Combat Search and Rescue (CSAR) assets were available for training, and CSAR training unit production is no longer adequate to meet requirements. The USAF currently operates at a much higher tempo than when the AEF concept was first devised. Consequently, many people are serving tours in excess of 135 days. Stressed career fields include security force personnel, mobility, special operations, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. Current demands are also pulling forces from more than one AEF pair. The procedures for meeting this challenge require forces to be drawn from the pairs closest to their vulnerability zone, typically done by exhausting forces from the previous AEF pair and/or dipping into the next AEF pair. One of the main impetuses for creating the AEF framework was to distribute evenly the burdens of operations across the USAF and to provide predictable schedules and pre-determined deployment lengths for air force personnel. The battle rhythm of 90 days for deployment and the 15 month cycle were created in the peacetime months of the early 21 st century. The crises of the post-11 September 2001 world have disrupted the cycle s predictability and have necessitated longer and sometimes more frequent deployments. Increased operations, and the potential for

10 more, are placing demands on the United States armed forces as never before. The AEF system is being forced to bend, but this does not mean that it is broken. In fact, this ability to bend is inherent in the AEF system, for it was created to be flexible and to be able to sustain higher operational tempos above the three month battle rhythm. It is the AEF rotational sequence that gives the USAF the ability to sustain operations over the long term. When the world situation changes and requirements for air force capabilities lessen, the USAF will return to a more normalized three-month AEF battle rhythm. Until then, USAF members and planners must be ready to face a more demanding tempo and new definitions of what is considered normal. Endnotes 1 This article was written by Rachel Lea Heide based on Major-General Peppe s address to the Air Symposium, his power point presentation, and his article AEF: Bending, but not Broken (dated 28 February 2003). Additional background, definitions, and information for this article have come from consulting articles by Lieutenant-Colonel John M. Fawcett, Jr (USAF retired), Dr Thierry Gongora, and the FAS Military Analysis Network web-site. All graphics in this article were taken from Major-General Peppe s power point presentation used in his address. 2. Dr Thierry Gongora, The Meaning of Expeditionary Operations from an Air Force Perspective presented at the Seapower Conference 2002 (Halifax, Nova Scotia), 7-9 June 2002, 3. Editor s note: in the months after this presentation was made, the USAF stopped using the term "Aerospace" and now use "Air and Space" instead. The acronym AEF is still used, but now refers to Air and Space Expeditionary Forces. 4. Gongora, The Meaning of Expeditionary Operations from an Air Force Perspective.

11 11 5. Federation of American Scientists Military Analysis Network, Air Expeditionary Force Air and Space Expeditionary Task Force (ASETF), last updated 28 November /usaf/unit/aef.htm 6. Federation of American Scientists Military Analysis Network, Air Expeditionary Force Air and Space Expeditionary Task Force (ASETF). 7. John M. Fawcett, Leadership and Reorganization: A New Model for the Air Force, Aerospace Power Journal 15, no. 2 (Summer 2001), Fawcett, Leadership and Reorganization: A New Model for the Air Force, 69; and Federation of American Scientists Military Analysis Network, Air Expeditionary Force Air and Space Expeditionary Task Force (ASETF).