In an effort to codify the success and significant gains made in line with the Operational Imperatives, Department of the Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall stood up the Integrated Capabilities Office July 19.
Driven by the need to rapidly modernize the DAF to meet emerging challenges in an era of Great Power Competition, the ICO seeks to institutionalize the speed, agility and rapid innovation that the Operational Imperatives have brought to the force.
"The Integrated Capabilities Office will directly support the Department of the Air Force senior leadership team as we develop our integrated modernization plans for the Air Force and Space Force," Kendall said. "China, our pacing challenge, is modernizing its military with the intent to defeat U.S. power projection capabilities. We will not let that happen."
The Operational Imperatives were born out of necessity. Upon his arrival in 2021, Kendall ordered a series of studies and analyses that identified key capability gaps within the force. Seven areas of need were determined imperative to meet the pacing challenge: Resilient Space Order of Battle and Architectures, Joint All-Domain Command and Control, Moving Target Engagement at Scale, Next Generation Air Dominance, Resilient Forward Basing, B-21 Long-Range Strike Family of Systems, and Readiness for Wartime Posture.
Initiated under the DAF's optimization for Great Power Competition, the ICO is a Secretariat-level office that will continue the work of the Operational Imperatives. Prior to initiation of GPC, the Operational Imperative teams operated mostly ad hoc, which allowed for innovation, speed and agility.
The ICO will facilitate agile Integrated Development Campaign Teams led and staffed by operational experts from the newly formed U.S. Space Force Space Futures Command and U.S. Air Force Integrated Capabilities Command, and acquisition professionals from Air Force Materiel Command's Integrated Development Office and Space Force acquisition organizations.
The campaign teams will work imperative problem sets and provide data-driven solutions and recommendations. The ICO will incorporate these results into prioritized recommendations for modernization and will collaborate with other organizations to integrate these priorities, along with other portfolios, into the budgeting process.
The ICO will remain in a primarily advisory role but will have direct access to the Secretary and senior leadership, with the ability to make highly collaborative and unfiltered, recommendations to ensure emerging capability opportunities get a voice in the enterprise.
Many of the current Operational Imperatives will graduate to existing programs of record and stakeholder teams.
The ICO, in conjunction with the Integrated Capabilities Command and Space Futures Command, will optimize capability development through assessment, development, integration, and fielding of future capabilities that will rapidly modernize the DAF and preserve the advantages U.S. forces have benefited from for decades. The ICO is on schedule to be fully staffed and resourced by the end of 2024.
