 Welcome back to the LeMay Center's Doctrine Education Series. This video will look at some of the key points within Air Force Doctrine Note 1-21 Agile Combat Employment. ACE is a proactive and reactive operational scheme of maneuver executed within threat timelines to increase survivability while generating combat power. ACE complicates the enemy's targeting process, creates political and operational dilemmas for the enemy, and creates flexibility for friendly forces. But the character of warfare has changed and the change is that we've departed from doing these things over the last 20 years, I call it the wars of our generation. The last 20 years we've engaged in a land-centric campaign where we've had air supremacists, we've owned the air and we've just been relegated as air thought of as a support service and so the difference though is that now the national defense strategy and just the demands of the world around us force us to change the character of warfare and what we prepare for to warfare with a state actor with another with a peer competitor and when you fight a peer competitor you have to change how you command and control air power because just like we can threaten many many targets within an adversary nation they can threaten us. The U.S. may face adversaries capable of wielding a disruptive and dangerous operational reach with mass precision and speed in all domains adversaries can challenge our ability to project power from our enduring locations which are often large and centralized structures with unprotected infrastructure to address this threat ACE shifts operations from centralized physical infrastructures to a network of smaller dispersed locations that can complicate adversary planning and provide more options for joint force commanders. Let's say you're a wing that generates air power you're flying airplanes you're out there with the mission every day and you're cut off from a higher headquarters is there some aspect of the mission you could still pursue well you know well you can because if you have mission type orders if you have general guidelines of what you need to do you can get out there you can generate airplates you can load them with appropriate ordinance and you can send them out there on a mission at certain times with an understanding of that greater that purpose that you have and that can be done even in the absence of connection with that commander that may be sitting in that big headquarters somewhere. Freedom of action and decision advantage can be achieved by forcing complex target situations to create multiple adversary dilemmas. This deters aggression and enables the U.S. to defend and win in a conflict. ACE achieves this through the following enablers expeditionary and multi-capable airmen mission command and tailorable force packages but the one thing for certain that we have in the United States Air Force our most competitive advantage are our airmen so we've got to empower them and we've got to cut them loose so that they can be that creative and unique advantage that no other competitor has. The Air Force must refocus on the expeditionary skills necessary to operate outside our enduring locations. Many airmen must develop diverse foundational skills that enable them to operate in a contested degraded and operationally limited environment with minimal support. Leaders mitigate risk to the force by training airmen to execute distributed operations that increase survivability while generating combat power. ACE teams consist of unit assigned multi-capable airmen. These teams are tailored portions of force packages able to provide mission generation, command and control and base operating support as the mission dictates. Functional communities must identify how to minimize equipment and personnel footprints to increase dispersal capabilities and complicate adversary targeting. The use of multi-capable airmen can reduce the number of people who must be put in harm's way to generate air power relative to traditional manning models. We're here at Spandallum Air Base Germany in the middle of ACE Academy and what ACE Academy is is the Agile Combat Employment and that is taking airmen from five different groups med group ops group maintenance group mission support as well as the Wing Staff Agency and teaching them how to do other AFCs. In 2021, the U.S. Air Force identified mission command as a key tenet of air power. Mission command is an approach to command and control that empowers subordinate decision-making for flexibility, initiative and responsiveness in the accomplishment of the commander's intent. Be sure to check out our video on mission command for more information on this topic. And the key part is, you know, because of a commander, if he goes, hey, subordinates, you know, you have a lot of leeway, that's risk to the commander. Okay, so it's very important that the commander articulate the his mission orders, the mission intent very clearly, so that there are limits on what the subordinates actually are unable to do so that we don't stumble into something that we hadn't planned or exceed some political boundary or some strategic boundary that we don't want to. So it's almost think we think of it like this. There's risk in this mission command approach, in this empowerment approach. There's risk, but there's a lot more risk if we don't do it. If we don't do it. If an airman goes, hey, I'm not going to pick up that wrench because I don't know if they want me to fix this airplane or not. That's a problem. Yes, airman, we want you to fix that airplane. Even though I'm not telling you, I want you to fix every airplane out there. I want you to load. If there's no absence of any guidance, I want you to gas them all up. I want you to fix them. I want you to put this ordinance on them and I want you to keep them ready. Okay, and safe so we can use it. We don't know what's going to happen, but we want you to do this. You're empowered to do it. Okay, and that I think people want to operate in that kind of environment. And so the risk of not of not embracing mission command, the risk of not using centralized command, distributed control and decentralized execution far exceeds the risk of actually doing it. To meet theater requirements, ACE requires tailable force packages with the ability to execute across a range of operating locations. Force structure and designs must be designed to enhance agility while also balancing risk to mission and force. Functional communities work with commanders to find ACE force packages that will be reflected in existing new or updated organizational structures. ACE requires a revolutionary change in how the Air Force thinks about and conducts operations within the modern operational environment. As ACE continues to mature through operations and exercises, feedback and lessons learned will continue to feed the evolution of this emerging doctrine concept. Thanks for watching. We hope this video helped you to better understand the concepts of agile combat employment and what it requires for success when confronting a near pure adversary. Please be sure to check out our website for all our doctrine publications, doctor notes, additional videos, and our new podcast series.