Air Force abandons sweeping reoptimization as Army, Marines push forward with transformation efforts

The year 2025 has been transformational for the Defense Department. The Air Force scrapped most of its sweeping reoptimization initiative announced under previous leadership, while the Army undertook one of its most significant acquisition and organizational reform efforts in decades. 

Air force drops Biden-era reoptimization efforts 

Months after pausing its sweeping reoptimization initiative launched under former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, the service announced earlier this month that it would abandon more than half of its sweeping efforts. The proposed changes under the previous leadership were enormous in scope, spanning acquisition, recruiting, training and the management processes that deliver support services.

When Kendall announced the changes in 2023, he said it had “become clear to the entire senior leadership team” that the service was not well positioned for great power competition after spending more than two decades supporting post-9/11 conflicts and demands.

Meanwhile, Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said some of the most sweeping reorganization efforts would be too disruptive.

For example, the Air Force announced it would create a new Air Base Wing organizational model under the sweeping reoptimization effort. The idea was to establish separate Air Base Wings with their own command structures to allow Combat Wings to focus solely on training and warfighting. 

Meink said the decision to abandon these plans was made to “minimize change-fatigue to Airmen and enable commanders to concentrate on readiness, lethality, and mission accomplishment.”

Perhaps most notably, the Air Force scrapped plans to stand up a new Integrated Capabilities Command that would have overseen the service’s requirements process. A provisional version of the command was stood up a year ago, and functioned as the primary organization overseeing requirements for purchasing weapons. Instead, the leadership will fold its functions into the Air Force Futures, known as A5/7 by April 1, 2026.

One of the most popular changes, to bring back warrant officers within the cyber and information technology professions, will remain. For decades, the Air Force was the only service without warrant officers. 

Meanwhile, the Space Force will continue implementing key elements of  re-optimization efforts that were specific to the service.

Marine Corps Force Design update 

The service kicked off its major “Force Design 2030” initiative in 2020 to better align itself with the National Defense Strategy and redesign its force for naval expeditionary warfare. The 10-year initiative is now simply known as “Force Design,” and while the service is still on track with the effort, budget uncertainty could affect the service’s ability to meet the initiative’s critical milestones, Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Eric Smith said earlier this year. 

In its 2025 Force Design update, released in October after the service skipped a public update in 2024, the Marine Corps said it continues to stand up Marine Littoral Regiments — specialized units within the Marine Corps that are designed to operate in contested coastal areas.

The Corps is extending many of the advanced capabilities fielded in those regiments — including the air defense system, resilient command-and-control systems, unmanned platforms and advanced sensors — across Marine Expeditionary Units.

“This modernization strengthens the MEU’s role as a versatile, multi-domain naval expeditionary force from the sea, able to project power, seize and hold key maritime terrain, sense and make sense of the operating environment, integrate with the fleet, and directly contribute to joint kill webs,” the Force Design update reads.

In addition, the service is undertaking what it calls the most significant modernization of its Marine Air Command and Control System in a generation, merging legacy air support and air defense functions and reorganizing Marine Air Control Groups so Marines can be trained and employed in multiple roles within Marine Air Operations Centers.

The Corps is also embracing the idea of managing the acquisition system as portfolios of capabilities rather than individual programs. One example is the new capability portfolio approach in Program Executive Officer Land Systems, which will give a program responsibility for a suite of programs under a common capability area. Marine leaders say the shift will allow multiple systems to be developed and fielded together, with continuous input from the Fleet Marine Force, instead of advancing programs in isolation with a primary focus on cost.

The service’s Force Design sparked a great deal of debate, with critics arguing that the changes would weaken the Marine Corps as a combined arms force due to its divestments in armor, artillery, and aviation capabilities, limit its ground mobility and that the Marines would be less capable fighting in urban environments.

Army Transformation Initiative 

Shifting away from managing individual programs to a portfolio-based structure is a big part of the Army’s transformation initiative announced in May. Stan Soloway, president and CEO of Celero Strategies and federal acquisition expert, said the move is a continuation of what the service has already been doing and “maybe somewhat of an acceleration.”

“There’s nothing radical about it,” Soloway told Federal News Network.

But Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s move to require the Army to include right-to-repair provisions in all new and existing contracts to cut costs and reduce delays caused by relying on original manufacturers for maintenance and support “might be one of the most important lines on the whole memo,” he said.

“In many ways, it is one of the huge issues they have to deal with,” Soloway said. 

Modifying existing contracts to fix intellectual property issues is not ideal, but the government also has no choice — there are too many existing contracts, some of which may have been created years ago, with flawed IP clauses. It remains to be seen whether the Army’s acquisition workforce is equipped to negotiate these kinds of provisions effectively.

Meanwhile, right-to-repair provisions that had broad bipartisan support in the fiscal 2026 defense policy bill, were stripped from the final version of the legislation after industry pushback. 

Greg Williams, director of the Center for Defense Information at the Project on Government Oversight, said while this is the opportunity for the Pentagon to exercise its existing authorities, without legislation that enforces consistency, it’s very unlikely that contracting officers will be able to effectively implement right to repair across thousands of contracts. 

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