Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. recently signed perhaps the most sweeping change of Air Force basic doctrine in the service’s history, marking a major milestone in the service’s strategic approach to “Accelerate Change or Lose.”
Core themes to the revised Air Force Doctrine Publication-1: The Air Force are the foundation and evolution of airpower and the concept of mission command.
The document defines the concept of mission command as a return to the philosophy of mission accomplishment guided by the commander’s intent, while operating in environments characterized by “increasing uncertainty, complexity and rapid change.”
AFDP-1 also updates the legacy airpower tenet of “centralized control, decentralized execution” to “centralized command, distributed control and decentralized execution.” This evolution allows for a framework from which to develop new operating concepts, strategies and capabilities to address rapidly changing and increasingly challenging operating environments.