John A. Ausink

Through its Task Force True North (TFTN) program, the Air Force seeks to provide effective prevention and treatment programs to airmen in need by embedding health care providers directly into units. This report identified approaches to expanding the TFTN program, including estimating each approach's associated manpower requirements, recruiting requirements, total costs, and implementation timelines.

In recent years the U.S. Air Force has faced persistent resource constraints while trying to deliver necessary training to its officer and enlisted forces. The Air Force therefore asked RAND Project AIR FORCE (PAF) to identify opportunities for optimizing processes at all levels of the nonrated technical training pipeline. This report presents PAF's assessment and recommends process and policy changes that could improve efficiency.

A congressionally mandated review of the proposed restructuring of Air Force Materiel Command examined the proposal and its effect on life-cycle management, weapon system sustainment, and overall support to the warfighter. It also presents process improvement options to improve warfighter support and product development/support system design and operations support efficiencies, and it suggests organizational changes to facilitate their implementation.

The number of fighter aircraft in the Air Force inventory is decreasing, but the demand for experienced fighter pilots is increasing. The authors use a dynamic mathematical model to show that, to keep from damaging fighter unit readiness, fighter pilot production in the active Air Force must be reduced and new approaches to developing and managing personnel with fighter pilot-like skills must be adopted.

What qualifications determine whether a fighter pilot is experienced? Surveys of expert pilots revealed that, while flying time is an element of the experience needed for both combat and staff jobs, other things are also important. The Air Force needs to measure and credit different types of experience-including time spent in advanced simulator systems-when revising its definitions of pilot experience.

One-liner: Addresses the impact of changing skills required of fighter, mobility, bomber, and Special Operations Forces pilots on decisions about replacing or extending service lives of trainer aircraft. 450-character abstract: This monograph examines how the skills needed to perform future military missions might affect the capabilities required of new pilot training systems. In the next few years, the Air Force must decide to replace or extend the lives of two of its trainer aircraft. This monograph addresses which skills should be taught in undergraduate flying training, which are so different that they cannot be taught in current training aircraft, and what impact these issues have on decisions to replace or extend the lives of the aircraft.

The authors set out to identify ways to enable the airfield operations (AO) career fields to respond to the needs created by the Dynamic Force Employment concept and the USAF implementation of Agile Combat Employment by reviewing USAF and joint documents for background, interviewing experts to learn current challenges and the potential impact of new demands, and developing tools to analyze the ability of AO personnel to meet those demands.

A top priority for Gen David Goldfein, chief of staff of the Air Force, is to revitalize the squadron as the warfighting core of the Air Force. The present study used a variety of data sources and interviews with 75 squadron, group, and wing commanders to develop recommendations for how the Air Force can do this by addressing squadron commander responsibilities, improving commander preparation, and refining resource monitoring.

Since the establishment of the Defense Acquisition Workforce Development Fund (DAWDF), the U.S. Air Force s Director of Acquisition Career Management (DACM) has received funds sufficient to pay for all initiatives that satisfy DAWDF criteria. Recognizing that this will not always be the case, the DACM asked the RAND Corporation to develop a decision framework to help prioritize DAWDF initiatives and ensure that the funds are used effectively."

This research seeks to help the U.S. Air Force (USAF) understand the implications for future operations in the Nevada Test and Training Range (NTTR) of Desert National Wildlife Refuge (DNWR) land that overlaps the NTTR. The USAF and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) co-manage this land, and some of it is proposed wilderness. The proposed wilderness designation can restrict some desired Air Force activities.

This report proposes new metrics to measure expeditionary agile combat support (ACS) capacity and uses these metrics to assess the capacity of the current ACS manpower mix to support expeditionary operations, finding that there are imbalances among its career fields relative to expeditionary demands. This report develops and assesses several rebalanced manpower mixes to address these imbalances.

This report assesses the FY 2012 reorganization of the Air Force Material Command (AFMC), which was undertaken as one of the initiatives to achieve mandated budget reductions by eliminating civilian manpower positions, thus achieving cost savings. One AFMC challenge was to absorb these cuts with minimal, if any, impact on its assigned missions in part by targeting staff positions.

Since 2004, the U.S. Air Force has provided personnel for joint sourcing solution assignments in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a result, certain Air Force career fields are experiencing greater-than-expected deployment strains. Air Force personnel and deployment data were used to populate a RAND-developed model to assess the supply of and demand for Air Force personnel and various types of capabilities to fill joint assignments.

This study examines contingency purchases made in theater to support U.S. Air Force activities during Operation Iraqi Freedom in fiscal years 2003 and 2004. It develops a custom database to determine the types of goods and services purchased and illustrates how such data can be used to facilitate planning and policy decisions associated with future CCO staffing and training, combat support, and sharing of lessons within the theater.

This book analyzes the interpretation, transformation, and future of the U.S. Air Force's ongoing surge requirements. "Sustainment surge" describes the increase in weapon systems repair activity brought on by the operational demands of wartime or contingency operations. In light of the U.S. military's transformations in force planning over the past 25 years, the authors of this report look at how the nature of surge has changed, whether legislation has hindered management in developing effective and efficient ways to manage surge, and whether the effectiveness and efficiency of surge planning can be improved.

To assist the Air Force in the process of changing the way it purchases services, this report reviews related commercial sector practices and suggests metrics to track progress and refine services procurement efforts over time. To assist the Air Force in the process of changing the way it purchases services, this report reviews related commercial sector practices and suggests metrics to track progress and refine services procurement efforts over time.