Implementing Information Warfare in the United States Air Force: A Study on Organizational, Training, and Equipment Optimization

Key Chapter Title List

1. Introduction
2. Current State of U.S. Air Force Information Warfare
3. Opportunities and Challenges in Information Warfare Implementation
4. New Structure for U.S. Air Force Information Warfare Force Deployment
5. Recommendations and Concluding Observations
6. Survey Data Collection and Analysis Methods
7. Interview Analysis Details
8. Content and Vocabulary Analysis Details
9. Alternative Information Warfare Architectures

Document Introduction

Information Warfare (IW) is not a new concept in U.S. military and U.S. Air Force (USAF) terminology. Senior U.S. military leadership recognized its foundational role across all domains of air warfare decades ago, yet the Air Force's path to implementing information warfare remains in its early stages. The establishment of the Sixteenth Air Force (16 AF) in 2019 became the core of the Air Force's contemporary information warfare system. However, years later, the U.S. military still faces numerous challenges in operationalizing information warfare. It is against this backdrop that this report focuses on great power and near-peer competition scenarios under resource constraints to provide actionable recommendations for the organization, training, and equipping of U.S. Air Force information warfare.

The research team first characterized the current state of U.S. Air Force information warfare, comparing it with the implementation approaches of other services and joint forces to clarify differences, strengths, and weaknesses. Subsequently, it identified gaps between policy, expectations, and reality regarding the roles, tasks, and missions of information warfare. It then constructed and analyzed alternative architectures for Air Force information warfare force deployment. Finally, it outlined the corresponding organizational, training, and equipment requirements for these architectures. The entire study employed a mixed-methods research approach, including literature review, semi-structured interviews with over 100 relevant personnel, manual and computer-assisted content analysis of Air Force leadership discourse, and semi-structured architecture development workshops.

The report's core findings reveal that despite recent progress in high-level guidance and policy development within the Air Force's information warfare domain, the objectives and means articulated in strategic documents remain largely aspirational. Currently, Air Force information warfare professionals lack clear mission requirements, well-defined roles and responsibilities, a unified identity, standardized processes, and stable resource allocation. This leads to information warfare being conducted in an ad-hoc manner, making it difficult to scale. Organizationally, information warfare remains constrained by compartmentalized disciplinary boundaries. In terms of training, a tiered training system for general aircrew and specialized information warfare personnel has not yet been established. Regarding resource allocation, although Sixteenth Air Force personnel actively conduct innovative information warfare operations, existing resources cannot support their scaling and expansion.

Based on these findings, the report proposes a series of targeted recommendations. These include issuing actionable guidance documents, clarifying the roles and responsibilities of information warfare-related organizations, developing tiered and categorized training curricula, establishing dedicated funding mechanisms, systematically addressing information warfare authorities and permissions, and designating dedicated leads for information warfare matters. These recommendations span multiple dimensions including doctrine, organizational deployment, training development, personnel management, equipment and resources, authorities and permissions, leadership and institutional culture, processes, and joint integration. They provide a comprehensive roadmap for the maturation and operationalization of U.S. Air Force information warfare capabilities.