NAVAL AIR STATION JOINT RESERVE BASE FORT WORTH, Texas -- Tenth Air Force held its annual Combat Planning Council in the Fort Worth, Texas area to plan and prioritize modernization efforts for units across the numbered AF, April 5-7, 2022.
CPCs bring all 17 of the NAF’s unit leaders together to prioritize unit equipment upgrades via National Guard and Reserve Equipment Appropriations, Congressional funding that is separate from active duty and covers modernization efforts. Unit leaders and functional area experts worked together to come up with critical requirements that improve and enhance lethality, reduce costs, and make their equipment more effective.
“That’s why we bring everybody together to have these discussions, go “soup to nuts” on how are we going to fight this war and then start pushing forward the requirements, provided it meets the funding threshold and limitations that we have for NGREA,” said Maj. Gen. Bryan Radliff, Tenth AF commander. “Our job is to maintain our adaptability and work on our ability to evolve past challenges.”
For Tenth units, the CPC is an opportunity to bring their critical requirements to the NAF for awareness and funding solutions.
“The CPC is a huge benefit,” said Lt. Col. George Cole, 920th Maintenance Group commander. “It allows us to take future operating concepts and turn them into capabilities immediately with NGREA funds. The CPC is a big part of us being able to accelerate our shift to Indo-Pacific Command and become more agile and lethal.”
Cole came to the CPC with critical requirements that reflected agility and lethality.
“In the 920th MXG, a top priority is equipment to support Agile Combat Employment initiatives that will help us decrease our logistics footprint and operate in the most austere locations to include jungle and triple canopy environments,” he said. “We’re also prioritizing equipment that will increase aircraft availability such as dehumidification to minimize corrosion and electronic failure.”
The annual challenge is prioritizing the funding from aircraft to maintenance to support equipment to readiness and training that covers the full spectrum of Tenth’s missions. Those missions sets cross multiple domains such as fighter, bomber, special operations, rescue, airborne warning and control, fighter and bomber flying-training missions, combat air operations battle staff, remotely-piloted aircraft, space and cyber.
“We are more diverse and dynamic than anybody else out there,” said Radliff.
Radliff and his staff will finalize Tenth’s funding priorities and send those to AF Reserve Command to continue the funding request process.
Future CPCs will expand to include more logistics modernization.
“If you’ve read anything about ACE, it doesn’t work without logistics, said Radliff. “Turns out nothing works without logistics. Logistics in-theater is what everybody wants right now. We’ll dig into that next year.”