The readiness of the Air Force to achieve the country's tactical and strategic goals is at risk and requires sustainable solutions, Gen. Dave Goldfein, the Air Force chief of staff, said Jan. 18 at an event hosted by American Enterprise Institute.
The Air Force has had to contend with a growing slate of missions while providing support to combat operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, and to a growing list of low-level conflicts that have enveloped large areas of the Middle East and North Africa.
Meanwhile, the service shoulders the majority of the nuclear command responsibility, controlling two legs of the nuclear triad: intercontinental ballistic missiles and strategic bombers. It is heavily reliant on and invested in the space enterprise, and currently has roughly 35,000 airmen in cyber and intelligence fields, supporting combat operations and anti-terror missions Goldfein said.
The challenge is that missions are expanding and "America thinks it still has the Air Force from the 90s," Goldfein explained.
During the first Gulf War the total size of the Air Force, including civilian personnel, was nearly a million. Today it is 660,000. In the 90s there were 134 fighter squadrons, today there are only 55.
"Fifty-thousand airmen have left [the service], while missions grow," Goldfein said. "Far too small for what the nation demands."
Sequestration, the series of automatic spending cuts enacted in 2013, and the continually evolving wars to combat violent extremist movements have sapped resources and impacted Air Force readiness, Goldfein said.
"Am I ready to continue to fight violent extremism for the next decade? Yes," Goldfein said, while describing the current state of Air Force readiness. However, as airmen maintain America’s nuclear deterrence and respond to threats from high-level competitors such as Russia and China, "we are at a high level of risk," he warned.
Tiered readiness is not the answer, Goldfein said. The Air Force must maintain total readiness to conduct America’s wars in low-level conflicts while maintaining the ability to respond to aggression from near-peer adversaries, and that requires sustainable solutions, he said.
The Air Force is experiencing a fighter pilot shortage that is expected to grow to 1,000 pilots by 2022, and the head of Air Mobility Command says he is expecting the mobility pilot shortage to begin growing toward the end of the year.
Calling it a national security issue, Goldfein said the Air Force will need to find a way to adjust the supply and demand of pilots between commercial and military needs. That could translate into finding new incentives for pilots to stay in the service or adjusting the 1,500 flight hours required of commercial airliners, he said.
Shawn Snow is the senior reporter for Marine Corps Times and a Marine Corps veteran.
