Bringing Back the Past

Service culture affects how military branches organize, train, equip, and survive as separate institutions of the US military. The culture of a service includes the persistent, patterned way of thinking about operations and relationships. The population of a particular service will identify with a common mission, capability, and or ethos, thus forming a cohesive culture. Air Force culture is centered upon the idea that advanced technology enables the service to be a decisive contributor to warfare from the air domain. In order to stay relevant to current military requirements, services are faced with the challenge of either re-organizing or directing a major change in practices, or both. Once the service initiates the change, the service culture's response is a direct contributor to whether or not the change will be successful. This is a major change in practices, and goes against the current service culture that has, since before its inception as an independent institution, fostered a technology biased ethos. This book asks how the Air Force can successfully enable the necessary cultural change that will have to accompany a successful transition to low-tech propeller driven strike aircraft. The hypothesis is that senior service leaders must influence cultural change so that it evolves in the desired direction.