Enhancing air force materiel command support to the warfighter/ by Kristin F Lynch, John G.Drew, Patrick Mills

The U.S. Air Force recognized long ago its need to improve its global enterprise management of combat support capabilities and better integrate them with operations. Over the past 20 years, RAND Project AIR FORCE PAF has analyzed how to enhance combat support planning, execution, monitoring, and control to better support the warfighter. That body of work led to the development of a vision for the combat support enterprise, which has been accepted, at least in part, by senior Air Force operations and logistics leaders. The Air Force combat support community has moved forward with some of the recommendations suggested by PAF, including changing policy and doctrine, standing up analysis cells, and pilot testing new processes, but the most prominent changes have been organizational. Since 2012, the Air Force Materiel Command AFMC Center structure was reorganized twiceonce to consolidate operations support, such as depot maintenance and supply chain management, into the Air Force Sustainment Center AFSC, and a second time to consolidate installation and mission support I and MS functions into the Air Force Installation and Mission Support Center AFIMSC. These two new organizations serve as global managers for the functions for which they have responsibility and authority. AFMC centers now perform most planning, preparation, and execution of combat support functions for contingency operations. This consolidated authority has the potential to provide more potent warfighter support if processes, tools, and policies can be better aligned and used.The possibilities include enhancing warfighter support by rebalancing combat support resources to increase capability and programming for requirements to support the next operational environment, which may not mirror the environment of the past.