Secretary of the Air Force Troy E. Meink and Air Force Chief of Staff General Kenneth S. Wilsbach have engaged in a massive bureaucratic reorganization of the Air Force, as per Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s wish to reformat and reinvigorate the Pentagon’s bureaucratic structure.

These goals are laudable. As part of these designs, however, Air Force leadership has either cancelled or reversed a bevy of Biden-era organizational changes that were put in place to ensure the Air Force would be better positioned for great power competition with the People’s Republic of China.

Implemented under the imprimatur of a larger 24-point plan entitled “Reoptimizing for Great Power Competition,” the Biden changes sought to bust apart stovepipes and create greater dynamism across the Air Force. Given that any conflict with China would occur nearer to China’s shores than to America’s, the Biden-era reorganization program was an attempt to address the fact that the Air Force would be at the forefront of any conflict, along with the US Navy and Marine Corps under current Pentagon war plans. 

The People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) as well as the rest of China’s military has fundamentally transformed itself into an increasingly advanced, modern, and innovative military. The Biden-era programs were in response to those rapid changes within China. 

Some of the plans from the Biden era involved merging training........

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