Reoptimization for Great Power Competition

GPC Key Decisions

USAF Case for Change

SecAF Memo

Air Force FAQ for Reoptimizing Great Power Competition

“We need these changes now; we are out of time to reoptimize our forces to meet the strategic challenges in a time of great power competition.”

~ Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall

The United States faces a time of consequence marked by significant shifts in the strategic environment. To remain ready, the U.S. Air Force must change.

In early 2024, the Department of the Air Force unveiled sweeping plans for reshaping, refocusing, and reoptimizing the Air Force and Space Force to ensure continued supremacy in their respective domains while better posturing the services to deter and, if necessary, prevail in an era of Great Power Competition. Through a series of 24 DAF-wide key decisions, four core areas which demand the Department’s attention will be addressed: Develop People, Generate Readiness, Project Power and Develop Capabilities.

Today, the Air Force once again finds itself at a critical juncture—an era of Great Power Competition marked by a new security environment, a rapidly evolving character of war, and a formidable competitor. This new era requires understanding its challenges and the attributes needed to succeed.

Embracing change is not a choice; it is a necessity. The Air Force must “reoptimize” into an enterprise prepared for high-end conflicts and long-term strategic competition.

Educational Wargaming - Analyzing War At Sea's Impact on Learning

Air University Public Affairs

Video by Michael Tate

Dec. 7, 2023 | 59:14

Dr. Amanda Rosen & Dr. Lisa Kerr

To what extent do wargaming and case-based teaching add value to more traditional instructional models in learning core concepts of national security and warfighting? This paper presents the results from a quasi-experimental, cross-sectional, and longitudinal study of students taking two standardized courses in the Joint Military Operations department at the U.S. Naval War College. Split into wargaming and non-wargaming sections by instructor preference, subject learning is measured through self-reported and objective measures at three points: prior to the start of the content block on ‘Operational Art’; after the case study of the WW2 battle of Leyte Gulf but prior to any wargaming; and for subjects in wargaming course sections, after participating in the Leyte Gulf scenario of the ‘War at Sea’ wargame. The results support the hypotheses that wargaming increases learning and alter student preferences in favor of learning through gaming but fail to find evidence that students recognize the value of the debriefing phase of educational gaming. This article adds to existing studies by focusing on an understudied practitioner population (graduate-level career military officers at a professional military education (PME) institution) and mitigating the methodological challenges facing many scholarly projects in the study of educational gaming in political science. More