The Air Force is moving out on proposals contained in the National Commission on the Structure of the Air Force report, and the Air Staff plans to submit three more assessments to Congress over the next three years on exactly how it will better integrate the Air National Guard and Reserve into the Total Force, said Assistant Vice Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Stephen Hoog Wednesday. Speaking during a Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies event in Arlington, Va., Hoog said USAF must continue its efforts to better integrate the reserve component into the Total Force, especially as the Active Duty end strength shrinks. “We can’t succeed without all three components,” Hoog said. The Air Force has built a “methodology” to compare the proper capability mix between components, and preliminary analysis shows only one “capabilities bin” has excess capacity—the tactical intra theater airlift mission, said Hoog. “Every place else, we have more need than we have capacity,” he added, and as time goes on tradeoffs will have to be made between components to get back capabilities in other places.
A recent seven-day exercise sent Air Force F-22s—along with other USAF aircraft—to austere, challenging environments across Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands. Agile Reaper, taking place for the second time after its inaugural edition last year, featured 800 Airmen and 29 aircraft across five different locations from April 10-16, training…