<text id=00od0100><title>Organization and Deployment: Introduction</title>
<history>US Air Force: Briefing</history>
<article><hdr>Organization and Deployment—Introduction</hdr><body>
<p>The United States Air Force (USAF) is the world's most powerful air arm. Even after dramatic reductions in equipment and personnel, it maintains an impressive strategic bomber and missile force. More important in these changing times, the USAF is the only air force capable of rapidly deploying combat-ready assets to any location in the world, and is increasing its potential to fight in Third World trouble spots—in recognition that American interests in the 1990s will be threatened more by brushfire wars than from the independent nation-states of the dismantled Soviet Union. It remains the only air force with global airlift capability.
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<p>In the post-Desert Storm era, the USAF has undergone its most fundamental changes since it became an independent service in 1947. The changes were rapid, and have had a strong impact on every aspect of air operations—aircraft, missions, units and people. Some of the change reflects a fundamental decision to reduce the size of US armed forces to their lowest level since before World War II, not just because the Cold War ended but, in part, due to the budget deficit crisis which drives American policy. Continuing changes affect not the USAF's size but its shape: the strengthening of home-based expeditionary, composite task groups of fighters, fighter-bombers, attack aircraft and tankers which will substitute for the costly, traditional approach of garrisoning aircraft and people overseas. Only a few principal airbases and combat wings now remain on foreign soil in Europe and Korea. Most, now, are being revamped to go to war from American soil.
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<p>Not since General Curtis E. LeMay, and perhaps not ever, has a single person left such an imprint on the USAF as General Merrill (Tony) McPeak, its chief of staff during the 1991 war with Iraq and during post-war restructuring.
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<p>LeMay led the bomber offensive against Germany and Japan, shaped the Strategic Air Command (SAC) which was the showcase of USAF policy and purpose during the Cold War, and held the top job during Vietnam. Because of him, the USAF was led by 'bomber generals' from 1945 into the 1970s. McPeak made it clear that the USAF of the 1990s is to be run by fighter pilots. McPeak demanded imaginative thinking at all levels of the service, and made it clear that nothing would be allowed to stand in the way of a leaner, 'smarter' force.
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<p>Although not destined to see through all of the changes he began, McPeak was the driving force for reductions, innovations and changes. The chief of staff presided over the dismantling of tradition-honored Strategic Air Command, Tactical Air Command and Military Airlift Command. To replace SAC, TAC and MAC, McPeak laid the foundation for new Air Combat and Air Mobility Commands. McPeak even introduced a new uniform.
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<p>Never before has so much changed, so rapidly. But the United States Air Force has been through nine decades of development and change, and has evolved over time in cadence with changes in the world around it.
