Bare Base Equipment and Support of the Expeditionary Air Force

The Air Force has a long history of developing expeditionary airpower that can rapidly deploy to provide support to the combatant commander. To provide this support, the Air Force Chief of Staff is developing force modules to provide improved capabilities for "rapidly opening an airfield, sizing . . . mobility throughput, or generating a certain sortie level with fighters and bombers. These force modules could include initial airbase establishment, command and control, mission generation, and airbase operations concepts." This next step in the Air Force expeditionary journey will require a strong bare base program as the foundation for these force module packages. However, the current program is not capable of providing the support required by the Chief of Staff to support the combatant commanders.