New USAF Force Design Bets on Technology, Remains Under Wraps

The Air Force announced Nov. 10 it has finished an updated force design plan, intended to spell out how it will use combat power in a future war against capable adversaries.

“Our Force Design is about the capabilities we will field that are necessary to fight and win in the future,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach said. 

Details of that force design, however, are being kept under wraps. An Air Force spokesperson told Air & Space Forces Magazine that the plan is classified and there is no publicly releasable unclassified version.

The new plan builds on and replaces the One Force Design 2024 released under Wilsbach’s predecessor, Gen. David W. Allvin. That plan was also classified, though the service released an unclassified overview, which focused on the “changed character of war” and laid out a framework of three “mission areas capabilities” ranging from highly survivable in contested airspace to long-range systems that can launch standoff weapons.

Force Design 2026 is focused on laying out how the Air Force needs to change to meet future operational challenges in a high-end, technology-driven conflict, the service spokesperson said, with a special focus on “technology, autonomy and integration.”

The Air Force said in a release that a slew of rapid technological advances—including in sensing, networking, artificial intelligence, autonomy, unmanned systems, long-range weapons, and electronic warfare—“are changing the speed, scale and complexity of warfare,” and also changing how the service must generate and use its own airpower.

The mention of autonomy is new compared to the 2024 force design’s unclassified summary, likely reflecting the service’s expanding plans to field hundreds of autonomous drones in the coming years.

In a statement, Wilsbach called the new Force Design plan “a fundamental shift” in how the service approaches future challenges.

“It will help Airmen understand how we plan to deliver combat power in the years to come,” he said.

The Air Force’s release calls for Airmen to think beyond individual platforms or capabilities—such as aircraft, sensors, weapons, and command and control—and more about the systems connecting them.

“We must evolve if we eat to remain the world’s best Air Force,” Lt. Gen. Chris Niemi, the Air Force’s chief modernization officer, said in the statement. “New technologies are enabling fantastic capabilities that were unimaginable just a few years ago, but those same technologies threaten some of the ways we have historically generated airpower.”