Some Air Force bases may not have enough airmen to both send wings overseas and keep operating at home under the service’s new deployment plan, a Government Accountability Office report said Tuesday.
The Air Force is moving to a new deployment model called AFFORGEN, or Air Force Force Generation, which seeks to send airmen overseas in more cohesive groups that better resemble other services’ deployment structures. This involved first creating force packages known as expeditionary airbases and air task forces made up of airmen from multiple bases who train and deploy together.
Under the Air Force’s old deployment system, GAO said, joint staff officials picked small groups of airmen from an “a la carte menu” to prepare tailored force packages to go overseas. This meant that in many cases, airmen deployed overseas with other personnel they had never before met or worked with, which harmed unit cohesion and performance.
Eventually, the Air Force wants to move to a wing-based structure, in which personnel and equipment from a single wing would go overseas as part of a Deployable Combat Wing, GAO said in its report, “Air Force Readiness: Actions Needed to Improve New Process for Preparing Units to Deploy.” Other airmen would stay at their home base as part of an In-Place Combat Wing to keep performing combat missions there.
But officials from multiple Air Force wings and commands told GAO they didn’t have enough personnel to carry out all the missions needed at home bases if large groups of airmen go overseas to stand up expeditionary airbases or air task forces. Those jobs that may be short-staffed could include civil engineers, supply support, medical staff, air traffic controllers, gate security and nuclear weapons handling, wing and command officials told GAO.
GAO said the Air Force doesn’t know how many personnel its bases would need to keep operating while large groups of other airmen are deployed and overestimated how many personnel some bases had to provide to deploying units.
The service also didn’t consider how much daily support those airmen provide to their home bases when it planned for the first expeditionary air base deployments in 2023, GAO said. This limited some bases’ ability to conduct missions such as defensive cyber operations, GAO said, putting bases at greater risk.
GAO recommended the Air Force conduct a service-wide assessment of the minimum number of airmen needed to keep running its bases while others are deployed and identify potential gaps and risks bases might have to face during deployments. The Defense Department agreed and said those assessments would be finished by Jan. 1.
The Air Force is also working on consolidating its assortment of more than 3,000 units — some highly specialized and as small as one to three airmen each — that make up the building blocks of deploying force packages. The Air Force plans to finish consolidating those units, before deployable combat wings start to go overseas, by the end of September 2026, according to the Defense Department.
Stephen Losey is the air warfare reporter for Defense News. He previously covered leadership and personnel issues at Air Force Times, and the Pentagon, special operations and air warfare at Military.com. He has traveled to the Middle East to cover U.S. Air Force operations.
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