Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown, Jr. released the CSAF Action Orders to Accelerate Change Across the Air Force Dec. 4.
In August, Brown released his strategic approach entitled Accelerate Change or Lose, in which he described his view of the strategic landscape as Air Force chief of staff and, from that, his emphasis on why change is necessary. The newly-released action orders now represent his call to Airmen to move forward aggressively in the push toward change; the “what” to the first document’s “why.”
The document outlines four Action Orders:
- Action Order A: Airmen describes a people-first approach. This means identifying attributes of Airmen the Air Force needs and reviewing personnel and talent management systems to meet the identified needs.
- Action Order B: Bureaucracy says the Air Force needs to speed up its decision-making process. Changing design processes will improve effectiveness and efficiency, allowing more space for innovation.
- Action Order C: Competition explains that Airmen need to understand their role in the long-term strategic power competitions between the U.S., Russia and China. The Air Force must improve its understanding of competitors’ ambitions and ways of war to inform how it organizes, trains and equips Airmen.
- Action Order D: Design Implementation says the Air Force needs to know how to adapt to changes. The service must be ready for future budget constraints by developing an affordable, analytically defensible and Congressionally-supported force structure.
While the Action Orders provide the “what,” the “how” represents the answers to these problems, according to the document. Airmen will provide these answers, cutting through bureaucracy with global competition in mind, to reshape the design of the future.
View the full document at https://www.af.mil/Portals/1/documents/csaf/CSAF_Action_Orders_Letter_to_the_Force.pdf