President Donald Trump is nominating Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach to be the Air Force’s 24th Chief of Staff, according to a congressional notice.
Wilsbach will succeed Gen. David W. Allvin, who unexpectedly announced Aug. 18 he was retiring two years into what is typically a four-year term. Allvin’s retirement ceremony is currently planned for Oct. 10. Wilsbach must still be confirmed by the Senate, but the tentative plan is for a changeover around Nov. 1.
A fighter pilot by trade, Wilsbach most recently served as head of Air Combat Command, the service’s biggest major command responsible for the bulk of its combat fleet. He passed off command to Gen. Adrian L. Spain in an Aug. 11 ceremony and retired shortly thereafter.
Now, he’s being called back into service, an unusual but not unheard of move. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Air Force Gen. Dan Caine came out of retirement to take his job just a few months ago.
As commander of ACC, Wilsbach stressed a need to improve readiness and standards. Soon after taking over in February 2024, he penned a memo calling out a “discernible decline” in commitment to and enforcement of Air Force standards and directed sweeping inspections to address it. He also developed a new metric to measure aircraft readiness including monthly briefings to him on the health of the fleet.
That focus on readiness dovetailed with a push by Allvin to “reorient” ACC to focus on “generating and presenting ready forces.”
Prior to his time at ACC, Wilsbach was head of Pacific Air Forces, and he has a long history in the Indo-Pacific, including time as commander of the 7th Air Force in Korea, the 11th Air Force in Alaska, and the 18th Wing at Kadena Air Base, Japan. He also had stints at U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and PACAF headquarters.
That experience will prove valuable as Pentagon leaders continue to stress the importance of Indo-Pacific defense to counter China and its military rise, considered the main threat to U.S. national security.
On top of that, the Air Force faces a pivot point in its modernization push. The service’s fleet is older and smaller than ever, current acquisition programs like the F-35, KC-46, and T-7 have hit speed bumps, and future systems like the B-21, Collaborative Combat Aircraft, and F-47 are still progressing. Meanwhile, the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile program remains a massive effort consuming tens of billions of dollars in the budget.
Facing all this and dealing with limited resources, Allvin and his predecessors have had to choose whether to prioritize readiness for the fight tonight or a potential future conflict. It’s a choice Wilsbach will likely face as well, unless he and other Air Force leaders can make the case for more funding.
Allvin and previous Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall also championed a series of moves meant to “re-optimize” the Air Force for great power competition with the likes of China or Russia. That included the creation of an Integrated Capabilities Command to centralize the requirements process, expanding Air Education and Training Command to become Airman Development Command, and creating “Deployable Combat Wings” to train and deploy larger teams of Airmen together.
That re-optimization was paused under the new administration pending a review by new Air Force Secretary Troy E. Meink and Undersecretary Matthew Lohmeier. Wilsbach is not in support of some of the re-optimization moves like ICC and Deployable Combat Wings, as Air & Space Forces has previously reported. With him as chief, it appears likely they could be scrapped.
Wilsbach restores a long tradition of fighter pilots holding the Air Force’s top job. While Allvin was an airlifter, 11 of the last 13 CSAFs have been fighter pilots.
