Bauernfeind wants warriors from the Air Force Academy, so he’s cutting “education” (Opinion)

Watching latest events unfold at the U S Air Force Academy is like having front row seats to a slow-motion train wreck The Air Force Academy s new superintendent Lt Gen Tony D Bauernfeind arrived in August of and at once embarked on his own personal shock and awe campaign According to reports from The Colorado Springs Gazette and other news outlets Bauernfeind is planning on reinventing the Air Force Academy in the spitting image of the Special Operations Command in Florida which he just left This small specialized unit represents only about of the regular Air Force The first phase of this campaign is a massive reduction in the number of civilian faculty Behind the scenes a plan is being implemented to replace these civilians with active-duty officers who have little or no teaching experience The general predicts that this would somehow increase the number of cadets wanting to attend pilot training It would be amazing if senior Air Force leaders are genuinely on board with the idea of reassigning mission-ready pilots to teach entry-level academic classes at the Academy Winning wars on the battlefields of the future is increasingly dependent on evolving entirely new weapons and technologies The current focus is on dominating space via the newly created Space Command computer cyberwarfare and the use of less expensive force multipliers such as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles that don t need pilots at all to name just a inadequate It s not just about traditional air power anymore Despite all this the general seems to have unveiled a receptive ear in the cut twice and measure later bazaar of ideas that is alive and well in the nation s capital Selling a plan to reinvent the Academy as a resolution to the ongoing pilot shortage is exactly the kind of quick fix that plays well in D C when politically expedient Unfortunately for him this kind of high-level top cover can be remarkably fickle and rapidly shift allegiances when risky programs like this don t bear fruit straightaway or they become an unexpected political liability Excellence of Air Force Academy s educational programs at vulnerability if civilian faculty cuts continue Opinion This file is auto-generated function d l use strict l querySelector d addEventListener undefined typeof URL d wp d wp d wp receiveEmbedMessage d wp receiveEmbedMessage function e var t e facts if t t secret t message t value a-zA-Z - test t secret for var s r n a l querySelectorAll 'iframe data-secret ' t secret ' ' o l querySelectorAll 'blockquote data-secret ' t secret ' ' c new RegExp https i i i