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Senior leaders provide update on strategic priorities

  • Published

Lt. Gen. Richard Scobee, commander of Air Force Reserve Command, and Chief Master Sgt. Timothy White, AFRC’s command chief master sergeant, issued a memorandum for all Reserve Citizen Airmen November 30 titled AFR Strategic Priorities – Our Current Progress and Future Path. Here is the text of the memorandum:

You are our greatest resource. Directing efforts toward making your lives better has been our top priority. To that end, when I assumed command two years ago, the Command Chief and I established our strategic priorities:

Prioritize strategic depth and accelerate readiness: Ensure we have the manpower, capabilities and surge capacity required to support the joint force in the high-end fight by focusing on efforts aligned with preparedness for future fights.

Develop resilient leaders: Provide our Airmen the tools to operate independently, develop their emotional intelligence, build trust in their units and take smart risks to generate combat power in tomorrow’s battlespace.

Reform the organization: Optimize our internal processes to cost effectively maximize mission capabilities and ensure that we provide the highest levels of support to our Airmen.

The Chief of Staff of the Air Force’s recent paper Accelerate Change or Lose presents an indisputable case for change and our strategic priorities are in lock step with those of our Total Force partners.

Continually improving the lives of Reserve Citizen Airmen has been our guiding principle. We focused on readiness by clearing our medical review backlog and updated the no pay/no points policy. We used Direct Hiring Authority for key career fields to fill ART positions faster. We converted more than 2,500 ART positions to AGRs to increase fill rates by giving Airmen options on pay statuses that meet their needs.

We updated our Professional Development Courses and improved distance learning capabilities to enhance the quality of training and reduce wait times for professional education. We added group superintendents, and revitalized our Key Spouse program to provide better professional and personal support to you and your families.

We laid in 10 full-time Command Chief, 46 full-time First Sergeant and 16 full-time Chaplain positions to enhance our resiliency program. Each of these efforts was targeted at ensuring that your leadership teams had more resources to make your lives better. Additionally, we are in the process of adding 268 Finance and CSS billets to increase administrative support at the squadron level.

The competitive strategic environment demands that we adapt how we recruit, train and retain Reserve Citizen Airmen. To address those challenges, we created the Air Force Reserve Future Force Framework (AF3) to serve as a compass for our evolutionary reform.

AF3’s three strategic concepts of mission optimization, tailored training and participation, and Reserve Citizen Airman branding will guide us as we adapt to the dynamic security environment.

Our strategic priorities answer the question of what we are doing; AF3 explains how we are doing it.

For example, COVID-19 forced us to accelerate our plan to change how we train via virtual Unit Training Assemblies. This was a proof of concept for future tailored participation constructs, as each unit found the right balance for its mission and Airmen. AF3 will help us remain focused on doing what we do best as an organization: providing cost-effective combat power for the nation.

As we move forward, we will provide you updates and seek your feedback. Continue to look out for your wingmen while helping us build and maintain a resilient force to sharpen our competitive edge. We are extremely proud to serve alongside each of you.