Yup, one could argue this is what the USMC is supposed to do (small wars as historically these things were called) but as they are pivoting to a different force structure and as most operations are joint this is where the USAF could take the lead and build a light AF to integrate with the other components light forces As the unnamed official in the quote expressed, we can’t afford to fly exquisite iron on routine missions It’s the requirements using history and a sober assessment of likely missions as a guide to build out this collection of platforms & systems X amount of pallets per day between FOBs, X amount of CAPs when supporting a stabilization force of X size, etc… these missions would overlap with other NG and ANG missions Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk