Air Force officials “need to make hard decisions” in order to shape the service in the way “they believe it should be in the future,” said Maj. Gen. Robert Kane, global reach programs director in the Air Force Secretariat’s acquisition office, on Wednesday. During a briefing sponsored by AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Airpower Studies in Arlington, Va., Kane outlined a paper and an analytical model he helped create to assess the Air Force’s value proposition to determine better pathways for the service’s processes, such as budgeting, requirements, and acquisitions. Each of these Air Force processes has its own values and belief systems and “the key” is to bring them all together “and that’s hard to do,” he said during his March 27 presentation. The model analyzes the projected promise of value that the Air Force is expected to deliver, the trade space, and the core functions and enduring missions of Air Force communities.
As Air Force leaders consider concepts of operations for Collaborative Combat Aircraft, sustainment in the field—and easing that support by using standard parts and limiting variants—should be a key consideration, according to a new study from AFA's Mitchell Institute of Aerospace Studies.