“The two Scipios were led by their successes in Spain, with the recovery of many former allies and the acquisition of new ones, to extend their hopes to Africa as well. There was, for instance, the Numidian prince Syphax, who had suddenly turned against Carthage: to him they sent three centurions, charged with the mission of forming a pact of friendship, and promising that, if he continued to press hostilities against Carthage, he would earn the gratitude of the Senate and people of Rome...(The prince’s) only trouble was...how to arm, equip, and train (his forces).”
Introduction
In this brief excerpt from Livy, who was writing around the first century of the common era, we can see the timeless and deeply intertwined relationship between international competition, national power, and the enduring value of cultivating alliances and capable regional partners. Although the intents and methods have since changed, Prince Syphax was aided by what today would be termed as a case of Security Sector Assistance (SSA) via a train, educate, and equip mission executed by combat advisors. Fast tracking to the modern era, the United States’ 2018 National Defense Strategy (NDS-18) purports that alliances and partnerships are intrinsic to the nation’s national security and present a comparably advantageous arena to contest against emerging revisionist powers. Given the global scale of an emerging multi-polar competition against regional competitors, which at times may possess global ambitions and capabilities, SSA represents one of the most economical and strong aspects of American military power. The goal of this brief study is to elucidate how U.S. Air Force SSA has evolved, how its strategic potential is inhibited by its arbitrary division among multiple organizations, and how that situation might be remedied by the creation of a unified Security Cooperation Wing (SCW). This last concept would bring together various SSA activities. Those include building a sustainable ecosystem within which an SSA practitioner’s community can be cultivated and grown. Another might synergize mutually dependent aspects of SSA, and how these together can operationalize SSA into a core service-level function.
Security Sector Assistance (SSA): A Very Brief Standardization
This article defines SSA as encompassing all the activities and authorities shared by the Department of Defense (DOD) and the Department of State (DOS) that seek to enhance the external and internal security sector of a given partner nation (PN) as it relates to US interests. Currently the literature tends to focus on delineating those activities and authorities that exclusively reside within each executive department. I suggest that the approach to SSA is one of a joint, interagency, and international practice that is composed of three interdependent mission areas. These are (1) International Education, Training, and Advising (IETA), (2) International Material and Resource Assistance (IMRA), and (3) Alliance Building and Sustainment (ABS). These areas are not explicitly described in standard SSA doctrine or publications but can be surmised from the various authorities that enable SSA efforts. These include Foreign Military Sales and Financing (FMS/F), International Military Education and Training (IMET), Excess Defense Articles (EDA), and alliance grants among others. The three core mission areas form the underlying and unifying logic behind the plethora of SSA programs, activities, and authorities that are preponderantly shared between the DOD and DOS.
These three core mission areas are mutually interdependent and tied to the desired outcomes of American SSA. For example, the identification of a PN’s need for an early-warning radar system that is within the national security interests of the U.S. necessitates the sourcing, maintenance, and sustainment of said radar. As a result, U.S. forces via an alliance or partnership agreement can integrate the PN and its radar system into the broader American security posture in the region. Although these mission areas can be pursued unilaterally without obligatory expansions into each other, they work best when pursued holistically. They can create an ecosystem in which the U.S. and its allies can operate as a combined force.
In short, these are the brief policy underpinnings for the USAF’s current SSA enterprise and foreseeing how it can be further improved in order for it to become a powerful instrument of national power. When examining the diverse sets of program and authorities that enable the wider DOD SSA enterprise, the intent and means of the collective whole can be distilled into the three main mission areas . One can also trace the development of SSA missions, organizations, and programs to these common policy approaches.
USAF Security Cooperation: An Overview
Among the first instances of formal USAF SSA was in Latin America. In 1943 the Peruvian Minister of Aeronautics requested aircraft maintenance training for several Peruvian airmen from U.S. forces stationed in the Panama Canal Zone. This request evolved into a multi-decade IETA mission that led to today’s Inter-American Air Forces Academy (IAAFA) at Joint Base San Antonio, Texas. At IAAFA, U.S. and foreign airmen train and educate service personnel from around the world, although the main effort is directed towards the Americas. The training focus includes aircraft maintenance and operations, combat support, and professional military education. Following the establishment of the Latin American training mission, the USAF also created the Foreign Military Training Affairs Group (FMTAG) in 1976 and the International Logistics Center in 1978 to handle an ever-increasing number of Foreign Military Finance (FMF) and Foreign Military Sales (FMS) cases. Together, these organizations laid the foundation of modern-day units that undertake the intertwined missions of IETA and IMRA. However, and aside for their interdependent nature, these mission sets are often separated within the wider USAF SSA enterprise, in direct contrast to USAF management of technological developments and related logistics.
Today these two missions are divided between Air Education and Training Command (AETC), Air Mobility Command (AMC), Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC), U.S. Air Forces in Europe (USAFE), and Air Force Material Command (AFMC). In short, USAF’s SSA enterprise is scattered among functional and geographic commands that often only coordinate amongst themselves at the senior-executive-service or headquarter staff level and higher. Beginning with AETC, it is home to the FMTAG’s successor unit, the Air Force Security Assistance Training Squadron (AFSAT) as well as IAAFA, where the former coordinates the IETA needs of all PNs and connects them to the appropriate resources and units across the USAF. In AMC, the USAF Expeditionary Center is the locus for air advisor training, which prepares airmen for embedding with foreign forces, as well for the Mobility Support Advisory Squadrons (MSASs) that deploy Combat Air Advisors (CAAs) predominantly to Africa and Latin America. Similar capabilities exist in AFSOC. As for USAFE, like AETC’s IAAFA, it runs the Inter-European Air Forces Academy (IEAFA), which educates and trains NATO European partners in areas similar to its Latin American counterpart, albeit at a smaller scale. Finally, AFMC is home to the preponderance of programs and units that sustain and execute the USAF’s IMRA missions via the Air Force Security Assistance and Cooperation Directorate (AFSAC), which leads and executes the service’s FMS/F portfolio. Altogether, this massive and disjointed enterprise is tentatively tied together via the Deputy Under Secretary of the Air Force for International Affairs (SAF/IA) office, which provides broad civilian oversight and executive leadership.
A similar architecture or enterprise for alliance building, sustainment, and exercising, as far as the research indicates, does not comparably exist. The activities related to exercise organizing and design, personnel exchanges, and material and procedural interoperability can be found across a wide range of USAF functions. In this arena, leadership and execution often falls to the service and combatant command J5 staff functions, which liaise with the PN nations in their respective theaters of operations as well as within Pentagon-based functions such as SAF/IA, the Joints Chiefs of Staff, and the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
A Proposal
The nature of the USAF’s SSA enterprise hinders the maximization of SSA’s potential to support the service’s global operations and its role within the U.S. national security establishment. The core areas of SSA are functionally and operationally deeply intertwined, and each one creates the conditions for the whole’s success and requirements. Together they shape U.S. access to disparate global regions as well as its ability to form alliances and partnerships. The development of alliances presupposes those allies’ ability to operate comparably in some fashion with U.S. forces, which requires operational and material interoperability that rests upon material and financial resources, a common warfare approach, and agreed operational understandings. Therefore, given both the multi-functional and multi-agency nature of SSA management and execution as well as its national-level impact and centrality a loosely coordinated, disjointed, and far-flung SSA sector within the USAF becomes a national liability.
For example, within the international engine management program of AFSAC is the J85 General Electric engine, which is used on diverse platforms, including the F-5 Tiger II, OV-10 Bronco, and A-37 Dragonfly, all of which are aircraft within many allied and PN air forces. However, the training for maintaining this piece of equipment is not provided for by any of the current IETA units within the USAF. This hinders the effectiveness of wider USAF SSA, since PNs must look to commercial companies and other outlets, which in turn takes away relationship building, interoperability, and technical exchange opportunities from the USAF, lessening its image as the partner of choice. In this scenario, the operational opportunity lies in synergizing PN needs with the SSA acquisitions processes that should drive the nature and content of USAF IETA curricula. This can be accomplished through a synergistic organizational re-design that creates an SSA ecosystem that networks and institutionalizes mission interdependence across the different SSA mission areas.
This could be accomplished by consolidating existing SSA functions and moving them away from the "siloed" USAF Major Commands (MAJCOMs), of which the inherent orientation is internal to the service. In short, bring them under one SSA structure. that would synergize the enterprise. Create an ecosystem in which SSA capabilities and practitioners can grow, and mitigate the inefficiencies from poorly coordinated SSA activities. The proposal is a Security Cooperation Wing (SCW), a unit that would fuse several functions already existing across the USAF. The SCW would create a single-point force and capabilities provider to the wider DOD SSA enterprise, and eliminate the intricacies of leveraging different bureaucracies. The SCW would codify the need for effective, responsive, and efficient IMRA, IETA, and ABS via functionally aligned groups that are closely connected by one command and control structure -- similar to the standard USAF wing and Air Operations Center (AOC) construct.
Figure 1 illustrates how this organization would exist outside and above the MAJCOMs, making it a direct reporting unit or field operating agency subordinate to SAF/IA and Headquarters Air Force. As the premier force and capabilities provider to the Combatant Commands (CCMDs), the SCW would be free to coordinate with the respective J3s and J5s at the CMMDs, or their equivalents. Its command team is best organized with a qualified O-7 Foreign Area Officer, a GS-15 civilian deputy, an E-9 Command Chief Master Sergeant who is a qualified international affairs specialist or air advisor, and finally a career Foreign Service Officer political and policy advisor to serve as the organization’s main link to the DOS. Directly subordinate to the command team would be a Security Cooperation Operations Group (SCOG). The SCOG would serve as the conduit for mission development, sustainment, prioritization, and command and control (C2) of SSA forces moving in and out of and interacting with the CCMDs. In addition, this organization would serve as the gateway and integration space among all the security cooperation offices (SCOs), CCMD staffs, inter-agency partners, and the USAF SSA enterprise. The SCOG would basically fulfill similar staff functions to J3 and J5 divisions, while employing an architecture based on the Air Operations Center construct.
Like the Air Operations Center, the SCOG would be a tasking agency developing USAF-wide SSA strategy based on the national security, defense, military strategies and policies, plus the respective theater campaign plans and interagency country policies and plans. The SCOG would be guided by the priorities set out in those documents as approved by SSA enterprise leadership, and then implement and monitor USAF-level efforts to achieve US international security goals and objectives.
Figure 1: Proposed Security Cooperation Wing (SCW)
This organization would also host liaison officers (LNOs) from allies or PNs in order to coordinate USAF personnel exchanges, participation in international exercises, as well as serve as the main management point for foreign personnel training under USAF auspices. In conjunction with the PN LNOs, the SCOC could coordinate the tasking, deployment, and relationship between the USAF’s SSA forces as they transit in and out of the PNs. Altogether, the SCOG replaces the international affairs functions found in numbered air forces supporting the different CCMDs and international functions found in the Air Combat Command, AMC, and AFSOC headquarter staffs.
Once individual mission taskings are generated, these are in turn promulgated to both regionally aligned and multi-regional functional groups for operational execution and tailoring in accordance with their respective mission areas. Among these, five regionally aligned International Education, Advising, and Training Groups (IETAGs) would fulfill functions currently found in entities such as IAAFA, IEAFA, the MSASs, and the USAF Expeditionary Center. These groups would be composed of FAOs and international affairs airmen who are trained as international instructors, educators, and advisors in the areas of aircraft maintenance, aircrew operations, mission support, and professional military education. These groups would directly support eligible allied and PN programs in support of CCMD objectives at the operational and tactical levels across the Americas, Europe, Africa, the Indo-Pacific, and Middle East.
These groups would possess expeditionary advisor squadrons that would instruct and advise on mobile versions of all in-residence courses, enabling the groups to operate within the CCMD’s theater tailoring the training and advising to observed conditions on the ground in real time. This expeditionary presence will also communicate the USAF’s enduring commitment to the alliance with the PN and its willingness to operate alongside them.
The other functional unit within this construct would be the multi-regional International Material Assistance Group (IMAG). Its mission would be to engage in activities related to the FMS/F, excess defense articles, and other logistical and technical programs that are materially and financially oriented. This organization is meant to take over the functions currently found in AFMC’s AFSAC and SAF/IA. The group would have squadrons that specialize in international acquisitions and logistics, ensuring sourcing, sustainment, technical assistance, safety, and updates to all defense articles rendered to eligible PNs. The International Technical Assistance Squadron (ITAS) would provide similar services to those found in the current technical coordination groups (TCGs) that delivered access to engineering advice, technical orders, sustainment lines, follow-on maintenance support, logistical support, and other depot-maintenance level services. The International Material Assistance Squadrons (IMASs) would be designed to process FMS/F cases by delivering acquisitions expertise as well as knowledge support to those allies or PNs and respective SCOs in navigating the USAF’s logistical and acquisitions systems. Altogether, the IMAG is meant to provide the SCO and PN with an end-to-end support structure from letter of request to defense article delivery.
This proposed construct would also provide prospective SSA practitioners, officers, and enlisted personnel with an ecosystem within which they can hone their SSA skills and follow an established career path that gives them operational, command, programmatic, and strategic leadership experiences and opportunities. Much like a junior aircraft maintenance officer is presented with an increasingly narrowing pyramid of offices, programs, and tours that together mold and mature the career maintainer, this SSA enterprise model would seek to achieve the same. This further helps cement the centrality of SSA to USAF-level operations and creates a diverse SSA cadre that can skillfully contribute to current and future combat operations that will frequently necessitate the participation of joint, interagency, and international partners.
Conclusion
The result of this proposed reorganization and realignment would bring greater effectiveness, efficiency, and responsiveness to the USAF’s SSA capabilities under a common leadership and mission framework that seeks to overthrow the haphazardly-coordinated nature of the current construct. By bringing the core SSA mission areas of IETA, IMRA, and ABS under a common structure with a focused mission-oriented outlook, the USAF can leverage the long-term benefits of SSA to enhance its lethality. In summary, the creation of the SCW would catapult SSA to be thought of in the same vital sense as air dominance, global reach, and global intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance while also developing well-rounded and experience future officer and enlisted leaders versed in the intricacies of international military and interagency relations.
About the Author
Major Rodríguez is a student, FAO Fellowship Program, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California. He is undertaking intermediate-developmental education in the Western Hemisphere Curriculum within the National Security Affairs Department. His studies focus on indigenous politics, international relations, and their links to U.S. security cooperation in the Western Hemisphere. After enlisted service Major Rodriguez was commissioned through ROTC at the University of South Florida. He has held a variety of aircraft maintenance leadership positions at the flight, squadron, and group levels. Additionally, he has led combat search and rescue maintenance deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Kuwait. He has also served as an international affairs airman, embedding with a Royal Saudi Air Force maintenance squadron and leading security cooperation efforts across the United States Southern Command’s area of responsibility. Prior to his current position, Major Rodríguez served as the Group Executive Officer, Inter-American Air Forces Academy (IAAFA), Joint-Base San Antonio-Lackland, Texas.