AMC commander announces her command priorities

  • Published
  • By Air Mobility Command Public Affairs

Amid a changing global strategic environment, Gen. Jacqueline Van Ovost, commander of Air Mobility Command, announced Oct. 27 her four command priorities to accelerate change and maximize readiness within AMC.

“Our new priorities are to develop the force and advance warfighting capabilities to maximize full-spectrum readiness and generate the credible capacity required to project the Joint Force and ensure strategic deterrence,” Van Ovost said.

Great power competition has fundamentally changed the global strategic environment. Rapid advancements in technology and the increasingly low cost and ease of its diffusion have increased the range, speed, and lethality of adversary capabilities. The character of war has also changed as contested environments—from cyber to space—continue to grow and threats within those environments continue to increase in credibility. These changes, combined with anticipated budget constraints, threaten AMC and the Air Force’s role as the world’s most respected and dominant Air Force. 

The command’s revised priorities focus and accelerate AMC’s efforts to rise to challenges in the global strategic environment and to leverage short-term opportunities to ensure the United States retains a competitive edge in Rapid Global Mobility against competitors like China and Russia.

“While we focused on combat operations in the Middle East for 30 years, our adversaries developed the warfighting concepts and weapon systems specifically designed to defeat our capabilities,” Van Ovost said. “Now, rapid advancements in technology and the increasingly low cost and ease of diffusion have increased our adversaries’ lethality and accelerated the timelines for when they can threaten our global presence and operational capabilities. AMC must accelerate change now to compete, deter and win.”

She added, “If we don’t change quickly, Air Force wargaming suggests the country could experience significant losses in future high-end conflicts involving attacks on military and commercial logistics networks preventing the United States from projecting quick and decisive power.”


To ensure continued projection of the Joint Force and strategic deterrence, AMC’s priorities rest upon developing Total Force Mobility Airmen and advancing warfighting capabilities to operate more quickly and with greater agility.

To increase the lethality and agility of Rapid Global Mobility, AMC is developing teams of Multi-Capable Airmen to accomplish air mobility support tasks outside their core Air Force specialty code, capable of providing force-multiplying effects in austere, nontraditional locations for the Joint Force.

Along with Multi Capable Airmen, Van Ovost spoke of the need to develop Digitally-Adept Airmen who can fuse data, analytics, artificial intelligence and emerging technology with innovative thinking and processes to enable the warfighter and the command to operate faster, smarter, and to make better-informed decisions.

“You, our Total Force Mobility Airmen, are the foundation to success, and you provide the ultimate comparative advantage over our adversaries,” Van Ovost said.

“Advancing warfighting capabilities is as much about developing the right mindset as it is managing an aircraft acquisition program, developing Advanced Battle Management System technologies or Joint All-Domain Command and Control concepts,” she said.

“By operationalizing our innovate, execute and learn methodology, we will aggressively expand upon current capabilities to generate and project the force, defend installations and networks and keep the Joint Force informed and synchronized across the competition continuum,” Van Ovost said. “Key to that methodology and mission success is innovation; seeing things as they can be, not how they are.”

Prioritizing force development and capability advancement enables AMC to deliver credible capacity to accomplish its primary missions of projecting the Joint Force through airlift, air refueling, aeromedical evacuation and global mobility support while ensuring strategic deterrence to underwrite America’s military and diplomatic instruments of power.

“We will prioritize our ability to project the Joint Force by ensuring our ability to conduct operations in and through contested environments and deliver mobility effects at the speed and scale required for the nation to compete, deter, and win,” Van Ovost said.

AMC’s responsibility for ensuring strategic deterrence goes beyond enabling the nuclear triad and reassuring our Allies and partners, and includes enabling diplomacy through AMC support to presidential and senior leader executive airlift missions.