The Air Force revealed six initial locations on May 15 as part of its strategy to revamp force deployment. These bases, including Davis-Monthan in Arizona, Scott in Illinois, Joint Base San Antonio in Texas, Dyess in Texas, Fairchild in Washington, and Seymour-Johnson in North Carolina, will serve as testing grounds for the new model.

Command teams will commence assembling this summer to establish new “Air Task Forces,” which will work alongside existing forces at these locations.

According to a senior Air Force official, the chosen locations were selected based on their ability to accommodate the new forces without requiring additional military construction, thus minimizing costs, their existing personnel, and their proximity to training areas.

“These preferred locations meet the criteria for both space, certain skill sets, and distance to training ranges,” the senior official explained. “The ATF locations will have a certain amount of sustainment forces, either there or close by, and the mission forces may come from somewhere else, or they may be co-located.”

Each Air Task Force will comprise a command element with an attached expeditionary air staff and special staff directly reporting to the commander, a Combat Air Base Squadron providing base support, and Mission Generation Force Elements responsible for projecting airpower.

The six locations are divided into two rotations—two for the Middle East and one for the Pacific. The first three task forces are scheduled to deploy in October 2025, with the remaining three task forces rotating in to replace the initial batch in April 2026.

Each location will host a command element consisting of approximately 50 Airmen, responsible for executing various Air Force missions. The Air Task Forces will be led by colonels handpicked by Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin, as stated by an Air Force spokesperson.

The size of the Air Task Forces will vary, accommodating hundreds to thousands of Airmen. Air Force officials describe the design of these task forces as “modular,” with their size determined by the scale of their mission generation element. For instance, an ATF might comprise one fighter squadron or multiple squadrons.

“What we want is the command layer and the sustainment layer to be capable of accepting forces really of any type,” emphasized the senior official.

Air Force officials describe Air Task Forces (ATFs) as both “experimental” and “a pilot program” aimed at shaping the future. These task forces are envisioned as the precursor to Combat Wings, a deployment model where units could deploy overseas from a single base, representing the future of Air Force deployment strategy.

The overarching goal of this overhaul is to streamline the presentation of forces to the Department of Defense’s 11 combatant commands, moving away from assembling Airmen into fragmented units to meet operational requirements.

This shift is supported by the Air Force’s new AFFORGEN deployment model, characterized by six-month cycles during which Airmen prepare, train, deploy, and reset, providing a more structured approach to readiness and operations.

“This is kind of walking us back towards this model that we had during the Cold War, where we know each other, we trained together, we’re building the team in peacetime and in preparation for deployment,” remarked the senior official. “These teams are able to train together for much longer.”

However, Air Task Forces represent just one aspect of this evolution. The Air Force has already introduced Expeditionary Air Bases (XABs), comprising units drawn from a smaller pool. The first XABs were deployed to CENTCOM in October, followed by a rotation six months later in April.

Despite some positives, Expeditionary Air Bases “isn’t exactly where we want to be either,” noted the senior official. The Air Force still had to draw from approximately 60 units for those deployments.

Relevant articles:
– Deployments of the Future: Here Are the First 6 Air Task Force Locations, Air & Space Forces Magazine
– Air Force picks homes for expeditionary ‘Air Task Forces’, Defense One
– USAF Units of Action: Air Task Forces defined, first locations announced, Hill Air Force Base (.mil)
– Air Force taps 6 bases to test new approach to deployments, Yahoo