JOINT BASE LANGLEY-EUSTIS, Va -- As the Department of the Air Force optimizes for Great Power Competition, the case for change needs to happen and it needs to happen now. The Air Combat Command Directorate of Logistics, Engineering and Force Protection (A4) is doing just that as it hosted the first-ever Rapid Mobility Planning Conference 24-1, April 16-19, at Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Virginia.
The week-long conference focused on installation-level planners adapting and enhancing current deployment movements to achieve fundamental logistics capabilities that will expedite combat power into combatant commanders’ hands.
Airmen from across 10 different wings participated in the readiness event, as well as personnel from Air Mobility Command staff, which helped maximize their overall understanding of how the Air Force uses the mobility factor to facilitate combat airpower.
“Our goal was to begin rebuilding the institutional knowledge and skills inherent to the base-level planning community,” said Chief Master Sgt. Joshua Rolando, ACC A4 readiness branch superintendent. “We discussed and developed plans for installation movement that can be exercised and refined to enable the shortest timelines from notification to execution.”
Participants consisted of logistics personnel, aircrew, operators and maintainers who developed templates and practiced tabletop scenarios framed around the current, permissive environment, crisis, action and response, and theater warfare against peer and near-peer adversaries.
“Right now, there are operating plans out there that say, ‘If this scenario happens, you do this,’ but they don't necessarily say how you get there from a planning standpoint,” said Capt. David Wallace, ACC A4 logistics program chief. “Being able to bring these various entities in and interrelate to achieve this level of effort is phenomenal. As the first conference of its kind, we are helping create that baseline for our installation planners, so there is a more effective and standardized plan moving forward.”
According to Rolando, by focusing on the challenges under GPC conditions, planners at all levels can engage and develop a ready, responsive force regardless of the scenario or adversary the Air Force faces.
This event was based on home station challenges, and it sets the stage for the next conference in the fall of 2024 where the discussion will be on how to operate from a mobility standpoint in theater.
“America only has away games on its schedule, so we need to be able to engage at the point and time of our choosing,” said Rolando.