A View on Leadership in the Air Force

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The USAF has a retention problem.  Too many trained and qualified officers and airman are choosing to leave the service at the peak of their proficiency rather than serve to retirement.  A good friend posted a couple of opposing views on leadership in the USAF to discuss the current climate and how people we know are making a difference.  The articles got me to thinking about this subject, because it is one near to my heart and when I was a serving officer it was one I used to think about often.  I would return to it from time to time as a civil servant when we had a change in the senior leadership and new priorities were brought into the organization.  This seems a good time to put my thoughts together and see if I can be somewhat coherent with them.

I’ve written about this subject a number of times.  For example, here, here, here and here.  In the thousand or so posts I’ve written I am sure there are more, but these are enough. I doubt that anyone really cares deeply about my views on this subject, but for the record, I do have a degree in Organizational Behavior so the psychology of an organization and its leadership is something I have given a great deal of thought about.

First things first, a military organization is unique.  As much as civilians would like to compare it to industry – it just never translates smoothly.  For example, during the 1960’s Robert McNamara was the Secretary of Defense.  He had come into the administration from Ford and in his role he  attempted to bring all the management tools and policies he had developed at Ford.  He thought he could increase efficiency and reduce costs if we just practiced the sound commercial practices of a mighty U.S. industry.  During his tenure he was a supporter of FTX program (a one size fits all fighter for both the USAF and USN).  In trying to make one airplane do everything they came up with a good short-range bomber that was too heavy to land on any existing USN carrier and since it takes an act of God to cancel a DOD development program it went into production as the F-111 for the USAF.  In managing the growing war in Vietnam, they (President Johnson and SECDEF McNamara) attempted to guide our involvement in ways that ultimately condemned the effort to failure.  In the course of that war, they about destroyed the US Army.  On the bright side, the administration's failures helped shape officers who would understand the conflict and rise to create a military that was shaped to fight the conventional war in Europe but easily adapted to a desert theater that was perfectly suited for the tactics and doctrine they had written in FM 100-5.

What makes the military service unique is the workforce.  The workforce is young and usually trained to levels other industries could only hope for their employees, but there is also an expectation of those who are in the combat arms that at some point they may be confronted with life or death decisions that require their complete commitment to mission.  I can think of no other industry that asks so much of its young men and women, or places so much responsibility in an 18 to 30-year old as does the US Military.  In private industry, the 18 to 30-year olds are there to learn from the senior managers.  Certainly, they rarely lead. That is not the case for the military where a 22-year old Lieutenant may have 40 individuals and a few million dollars of equipment under his charge. 

That said, the USAF is different from the other military branches, both in its short heritage and its focus.  We are a service that grows directly from a technology.  The idea of the machine being paramount is fundamental to the DNA of the service.  When given a choice between a new machine and a person – the Air Force has inevitably deferred to the technology.  People are a necessary component to the operation of the technology, but in our quest for the better technology, we struggle to understand how to deal with the human component. 

What compounds this problem is the fact we are now engaged in a war we must fight but can’t possibly win.  The best we can hope for is the opposition will grow weary and decide to focus their outrage in another direction.  Finally, we have an evolutionary change in our society that leads the youngest members to enter the service with different social expectations than those of its senior leaders and commanders. In the past, there was an expectation the young would learn the social ways of the leadership, but today it appears to be a bit of the young teaching the old as the services change to meet the demands of the political leadership imposed by our Constitution.

It seems to me there are a number of issues coming to a head that has caused a cultural rift that drives our service culture to fragment and leads to dissatisfaction among the mid-level grades (both officer and non-commissioned officer).  The challenge for the most senior officers is to understand the flaws, but this is difficult.  They have succeeded in their careers and I suspect they candidly see little that should be changed. 

What are the flaws?

The first is an institutional belief that change is always positive and critical to career success.  No one gets a good performance report for maintaining the status quo.  Our future leaders are taught they must come in and make the unit better with their leadership.  Even if they do nothing, the performance reports must reflect a positive unit improvement in moral, mission, and capability.

The second is the rigged system.  When we, as an institution, choose the individuals who will be placed on the path to the stars we do so at a point they barely know the Air Force, let alone how to lead.  When we were a much younger AF we had to take our leaders from the other services or those who were around when the AF was born.  As we’ve matured the Academy has, just like the other Services, become the training ground from which the majority will be chosen.  In practice – we choose 26 to 28-year olds who show promise and put them on a sheltered path where the best assignments and right jobs are set at their feet.  If they don’t screw up they will be promoted ahead of their peers and be eligible for promotion to flag rank.  The unfortunate consequence of this is they have little or no perspective on the problems of an average career officer or NCO.

The third goes back to the second.  For those who are supposed to be the crème de la crème of the Air Force we really don’t allow them to be responsible for actual welfare of humans until just before they are eligible for promotion to Colonel (about the 18-year point), and then for fighter pilots they will command 24(ish) Type-A personalities who want to be the next Chuck Yeager.  For other rated officers they may command squadrons up to a couple of hundred people but for the first time in their lives, they will have to make life and career choices that affect real live people.  Remarkably, we have something over a 90% success rate in this.  Which begs the question, is the rigged system really right or do we adjust our expectations to reinforce its rightness? 

There is one exception to this.  In this war, battlefield airman have risen in stature to levels never anticipated.  Their officers and NCO’s follow a leadership model more closely aligned with the Army.  To succeed they must deal with the human element from the time they are Lieutenants, but I hazard a guess that a CCT officer or CRO will not be a CSAF in my lifetime.

To be continued.