A Call to the Future

In A Call to the Future, General Mark Welsh, United States Air Force Chief of Staff, outlines strategic trends over the next three decades and describes the United States Air Force’s (USAF) role in responding to these challenges. In addition to the USAF’s role in addressing future challenges, Gen. Welsh also provides strategic vectors designed to guide us in preparing for the future. This document is a blueprint of sorts. However, we must look to the past before charting a course for the future. This paper will seek to analyze how well the USAF has responded to strategic challenges in the past. Following that, there will be a critical analysis on whether or not A Call to the Future provides realistic benchmarks and vectors for combating and surviving future challenges.

At its inception, in 1947, the USAF core missions have stayed the same: 1) air superiority, now air and space superiority, 2) air reconnaissance, now intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), 3) airlift, now rapid global mobility, 4) strategic air force, now global strike, and 5) coordination of air defense, now command and control (C2). From its grass roots in the Army Air Corps (AAC) to its birth in 1947, strategic bombing has been one of the greatest challenges the USAF has had to deal with. In his airpower treatise, Winged Defense, Gen. William “Billy” Mitchell provides insight as to how airpower should be used in the immediate aftermath of World War I (WWI). Gen. Mitchell, while he may not call it as much, is arguing directly for the need for strategic bombing. “For attacking cities that are producing great quantities of war munitions that are necessary for the maintenance of an enemy army and country in case of war, the air force offers an entirely new method of subduing them.” Maurer Maurer took a more direct approach by saying “the object of strategical [sic] bombing is to drop aerial bombs upon the commercial centers and the lines of communications…and cut off necessary supplies.” Since the days of WWI, strategic bombing has been used in every conflict from World War II (WWII) to our current operations against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Today, we use strategic bombing as a way to help attain a political goal, but we do so generally in more disruptive, and less destructive, ways. The strategic bombing of today is about smartly employing effects based operations (EBO). Just as we have done so in the past, we must continue to identify new strategic challenges and implement effective changes early.

Looking to the future, 30 years to be exact, Gen. Welsh’s strategic master plan aims to provide us with a “beyond line of sight” or “over the horizon” sight picture and strategic vectors for the USAF to consider as it moves towards a more dynamic future. He calls upon the force to challenge the status quo, if necessary, rather than simply staying the course. The document aims to set a new trajectory for