12th Air Force embraces 'A staff' structure

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  • By Master Sgt. Orville F. Desjarlais Jr.
  • Air Force Print News

The Air Staff at Headquarters Air Force in Washington is switching to the “A staff” structure today. However, the staff functions at 12th Air Force are already organized under the “A staff” structure.

Twelfth Air Force, located at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz., restructured in June 2004. Since then, officials say they are more aligned with other staff agencies and have improved communications with sister services.

“Our first step of the process, and one of the most important objectives, was to ‘standardize’ headquarter staffs within our Air Force,” said Col. Timothy Vigil, 12th Air Force special assistant for warfighting headquarters transformation.

“As reflected by the recent Air Staff realignment, we hopefully benefit by aligning closer with the respective joint staffs that we work with,” he said. “Within and outside the Air Force, we are now more closely aligned from top to bottom. This will streamline our processes to provide better and more efficient support to our combatant command.”

The Air Staff at Headquarters Air Force is adopting an organizational structure that closely mirrors the Army’s “G-staff,” the Navy’s “N-staff” and the joint “J-staff.” Like 12th AF, the Air Staff hopes to optimize internal communications and, as a result, communicate more efficiently with other services.

“As we operate in deployed and joint environments, our communication will also be more effective and efficient,” said Brig. Gen. Marshall K. Sabol, the Air Force director for manpower, organization and resources.

As with most major changes, change itself is the most difficult part.

Of course, with any reorganization uncertainty generates anxiety,” Colonel Vigil said. To ease some of that anxiousness, the 12th AF staff painstakingly mapped out a detailed analysis of all its future roles and responsibilities with what they had before the reorganization.

“The result was, we realized many things done ad-hoc were actually more formalized, some things needed to be added or deleted for efficiency, and the overall education process made everyone more confident we would continue to produce a first-class organization as envisioned by the (chief of staff of the Air Force’s) enabling concept,” Colonel Vigil said.

“One of the changes is the eventual demise of a traditional number air force group/squadron structure within the warfighting headquarters,” he said. “In spite of the eventual disappearance of this traditional structure, the (warfighting headquarters) will not forget its roots.”

“Our boss, Lt. Gen. Randall M. Schmidt (commander of 12th Air Force and U.S. Southern Command Air Forces) has made it clear there will be no lag in leading, nurturing and mentoring our Airmen, even if the traditional group or squadron organizations underlying a NAF no longer remain,” Colonel Vigil said. “We are still a military organization guided by time-honored traditions of our core values -- that doesn’t change.”

U.S. Southern Command Air Forces serves as the air and space component to U.S. Southern Command. The command is responsible for conducting U.S. military operations and promoting security cooperation to achieve U.S. strategic objectives in the area of responsibility, which includes the Caribbean and Central and South America.

(Staff Sgt. C. Todd Lopez contributed to this story)