Officials face tough decisions about stressed specialties

8/23/2002 - WASHINGTON -- Operations Noble Eagle and Enduring Freedom have increased operations and personnel tempo, placing tremendous strain on the Air Force's air expeditionary force construct.

At the height of operations, more than 30,000 additional Air Guard and Reserve members were activated to help fulfill mission requirements in the global war on terror.

As the campaign changed and the operations tempo decreased, the number of Guard and Reserve members deployed has also decreased. But still remaining are a steady-state requirement to continue supporting ongoing operations and, along with it, tough decisions on how to establish and maintain that level.

The Air Force's Human Capital Task Force is charged with developing a plan to assist senior leaders in making the tough decisions required to establish that steady-state force. The importance of their job cannot be understated, said Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Robert H. Foglesong in an Aug. 7 memorandum.

"It is imperative that we quickly come to closure with a comprehensive human capital plan that accounts for our current and future manpower ceilings and the realities of recruiting, training and retaining a sustainable workforce," Foglesong said. "Failure to gain control of this situation will...result in both short- and long-term recruiting and training failures that are not recoverable."

This will require the Air Force to make some "tough implementation decisions," he said.

The task force's job entails more than just balancing the manpower books. It will also monitor the many initiatives and personnel actions that will help relieve the career field stresses caused by the increased operations tempo and revalidate the service's long-term manpower projections.

"The purpose of the task force is to try to put our arms around the new steady-state situation facing our AEFs and normalize it," said Mike Aimone, director of the Air Force's Human Capital Task Force at the Pentagon. "Our goal is to reduce the extended tour lengths facing many of our AEFs and bring them back down to the 90 days that our force is familiar with."

Getting back to that standardized AEF "rhythm," said Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. John P. Jumper, is critical to the day-to-day operations of the service.

"Everyone in the Air Force must understand that the day-to-day operations of the service are absolutely set to the rhythm of the deploying AEF packages," Jumper said. "The natural state of our Air Force when we are 'doing business' is not home-station operations but deployed operations. That process needs to be the focus of our daily operational business, and we must work to change the processes within our own service that drive requirements not tuned to the deployment rhythm of the AEF."

There is no "silver bullet" solution to the manpower challenges facing the Air Force's AEFs, Aimone said. It will take a combination of short-, mid- and long-term fixes.

One short-term solution came out of the Air Force Core Competency Review conducted earlier this year.

The CCR examined all Air Force positions to determine the missions that had to be done by airmen and looked for opportunities to free up airmen from tasks that do not require a "bluesuiter."

"We found almost 6,300 military positions that could be converted to free up manpower positions for our most stressed career fields and to fix short falls that exist in our squadrons," Aimone said.

The Air Force's fiscal 2004 budget submission will ask the Defense Department to fund military to civilian conversions and some contract actions that would allow the Air Force to move these positions to stressed career fields where they are needed most, said William H. Booth Sr., the task force's deputy director.

Other possible short-term fixes include redirecting basic military training graduates and officer accessions to the most critically stressed career fields and examining the positions airmen fill at defense agencies to see if it is better to bring them back to do Air Force jobs. Another fix involves reviewing various Air Force functions to identify more opportunities to convert non-military essential tasks to civilian or contract positions, Aimone said.

"The task force is in business because some hard choices have to be made," he said.

A primary concern, Booth added, is ensuring Air Force senior leaders have a complete understanding of the full effect of these decisions.

"That's why this effort is vital in transforming our skills mix so that we can live within the current recruiting and retention realities," Booth said. "We need every good person that we have, and our leaders are well aware of that."