NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.—Air Force officials are exploring the idea of creating a new acquisition office to oversee the point defense mission, in the service’s latest move to intensify its focus on defending airbases from drone and missile attacks, Air Force Secretary Troy E. Meink said Sept. 14, during AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber conference.
Since late 2023, the Air Force has been racing to get ahead of rapidly growing drone threat after unidentified drones hovered unchecked over Langley Air Force Base, Va., catching base commanders off guard. Since then, the service has been on a steady march to bolster airbase defense against drones and other new missile threats with everything from new doctrine on the “Point Defense of Air Bases” to plans for creating a point defense career field to ensure personnel are trained and equipped to defend bases from aerial attack.
Meink and Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach both devoted significant portions of their keynote addresses at the conference to point defense—reflecting the growing focus and urgency from senior leadership to tackle the issue.
“We can no longer treat point defense as a side hustle,” Wilsbach declared. “We must make it a core function of air and space power.”
On the personnel side, the new point defense career field will be operational in two years, Wilsbach said. Already, the Air Force has selected its first two career field managers—Wilsbach recognized one of them during his keynote.
Photo by Craig Hudson, for Air & Space Forces Association
On the acquisition side, the Air Force is now considering standing up a new portfolio acquisition executive, or PAE, to focus on “the kit side” of point defense “to further increase security for our Airmen and Guardians,” Meink said.
“How do you make sure that they have the kit they need to do the job?” Meink said, adding that the explosion of counter-drone innovations from industry “is a rapidly changing environment.”
PAEs are a new construct, introduced during recent Pentagon acquisition reforms to replace program executive offices. The idea is to combine several programs within a single mission area and give PAEs authority to move funds between programs and adjust requirements based on evolving needs. The Department of the Air Force currently has 26 PAEs—17 in the Air Force, nine in the Space Force.
“We are delegating almost every authority we legally have to our PAEs for most programs,” Meink said. “That now includes milestone decision authority, a big first on our acquisition community.”
Meink cautioned that the creation of a point defense PAE is “not going to be tomorrow.” But he sounded confident that it is a matter of when, not if, the new organization is created: “We’re already walking down the road, and eventually we’ll evolve into PAE for it.”
The need, he added, is clear.
“There definitely has to be continually increasing focus on making sure we can defend our Airmen and Guardians wherever they are in the world,” Meink said.
Wilsbach teased one acquisition program that may one day fall under the future point defense PAE, saying the Air Force will create a “point defense weapon system,” an umbrella effort that will bring together kinetic and nonkinetic counter-drone capabilities. He offered no further details about the new program.
