Air Combat Command is leading efforts to overhaul how the U.S. Air Force does aircraft maintenance and fleet management this spring.
"ACC's most important job is to fly and fix airplanes," said Gen. Ken Wilsbach, ACC Commander. "We must identify new ways and processes that will help ACC radically change the way we do business and maintain our aircraft fleet."
Managing combat air forces requires a comprehensive understanding of fleet health, identifying constraints and working with key stakeholders to alleviate them.
"It's not lost on me that our Air Force has taken risk in areas that impact our fleet readiness," Wilsbach said. "We know there are enterprise challenges that need to be addressed, and our teams are putting in the work to make that happen."
As part of that process, Brig. Gen. Jennifer Hammerstedt, ACC director of Logistics, Engineering and Force Protection, co-hosted the Air Force A4 Enterprise Council in February at ACC headquarters on Langley Air Force Base, Virginia.
"The A4 EC provides an opportunity for leaders across the A4 enterprise to address the most pressing challenges our logistics, engineering and force protection Airmen are facing today," said Lt. Gen. Tom Miller, AF/A4 deputy chief of staff. "The readiness and lethality of our force is our #1 priority."
During the engagement, leaders focused strategic discussions on readiness, agile combat employment and corporate processes to better inform requirement generation. Participants also visited the Navy Maintenance Operations Center, gaining a better understanding on how the Department of the Navy collaborates to resolve fleet-level maintenance issues.
The discussions informed ACC leadership's approach in designing a new process to improve the reliability of ACC's fleet.
"The intent with what we're doing within ACC is to ensure that our wing and numbered air force commanders, as well as the command, are identifying the risk and constraints impacting aircraft availability and our wings' ability to execute their mission," Hammerstedt said. "The ultimate end goal is to drive optimal performance at the tactical level and to identify and address the enterprise changes we need to improve readiness."
Leaders need a comprehensive and simplified picture of fleet health. ACC's solution?
Readiness Informed Metrics
"We've created and are utilizing a formula for capturing our operational requirement, which will measure our fleet," Hammerstedt said. "The result is a whole number operational requirement for each fleet and flying wing that we can measure to on a daily basis."
ACC has begun implementing tiered readiness and RIM reviews. These reviews include daily wing 'stand-up' meetings and tiered RIM reviews with NAF commanders and COMACC. These reviews are designed to quickly identify and work constraints at the appropriate level, ensuring combat wings are resourced effectively to accomplish their warfighting mission.
"Our approach is pretty simple," Wilsbach said. "It requires greater command involvement, leadership and accountability at all levels for fleet readiness outcomes."
Since 2024, ACC has begun implementing these changes at four of its Combat Wings, at Langley, Tyndall, Seymour Johnson and Davis-Monthan, with plans to implement the use of RIM across the entire command by the end of April 2025.
