Beauchamp began working for the department in 2015, and most recently served as the director of security, special program oversight and information protection within the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force. In that role, he oversaw the Air and Space Forces’ highly-classified special access programs (SAP) and worked on insider threat mitigation.

But Beauchamp’s 29-year career spans across multiple positions at the Department of the Air Force, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). By and large, he either led or was involved in several critical events within the national security space — so much so that someone once described him as “the Forrest Gump of the national security world.”

“He goes, ‘You were kind of there in all the big happenings of your time of your career. You were right in the middle of all these things that were the big developments. Sometimes you were there in the background of the scene, and sometimes you were there front and center doing the thing,’” Beauchamp told DefenseScoop in an interview on July 3, his last day at the Pentagon, recalling how a colleague described his tenure.

After graduating from Lehigh University in 1992, Beauchamp was hired as a systems engineer for General Electric Aerospace’s programs with the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). He would eventually move to the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) — the precursor to the NGA — after it was founded in 1996 as an operations analyst supporting work to collect imagery and targeting data in the Balkans during the Yugoslav Wars.

In 2000, Beauchamp became NIMA’s senior technical advisor for studies and analysis when he was 29 years old, making him the youngest person to be hired for a senior executive position within the agency since it was founded. Almost immediately, he was tasked with developing a congressionally mandated strategy that would convince the government to purchase imagery from commercial vendors.

At the time, the IC held a monopoly over space-based imagery and data, and the industry market was only just beginning to take hold. Beauchamp described the assignment as “trying to sell milk to people with their own cows.”

“Why would the NRO want to encourage the government to buy commercial imagery? They’re the judge to build and operate imagery satellites,” he said. “So I figured out what it would take in terms of investment to get industry to buy and build satellites sufficient to meet the government’s demands, because the national satellites were not meeting all of the government’s demand for mapping data.”

But after developing a business case for the strategy, Beauchamp said the government was largely opposed to implementing it. He decided to shelve the strategy after one final unsuccessful meeting held on Sept. 10th, 2001, he said.

“On the 11th of September, [Congress] called me up,” he said. “I’m in my office, we’re watching pictures of the [Twin Towers] smoking, and my phone rings and it’s the congressional staff saying, ‘You’ve got your money. Could you spend more?’”

Beauchamp’s $830 million plan was funded by one of Congress’ post-9/11 supplemental packages and created ClearView — the first program that allowed commercial companies to provide satellite imagery to the IC. Once U.S. forces had entered Afghanistan, Beauchamp also moved to purchase all of the overhead imagery of the country, he said.

“What we really wanted to do was make sure that this imagery that was being collected wasn’t being used by the Taliban to target our forces,” he said. “So I basically stitched a camouflage net made out of $100 bills over the country of Afghanistan in order to keep our forces safe.”

Today, commercially derived imagery is one of the fastest growing markets in the world. Companies like Maxar, BlackSky and Planet Labs all have several lucrative contracts with the federal government to provide space-based data for national security, weather and other needs. 

“So this industry, would it exist? Maybe. But would it have blown up the way it did? Probably not, if we hadn’t done this,” Beauchamp said.

The next several years of Beauchamp’s career would be spent at the NGA in various roles focused on strategy and acquisition. In 2012, he began a joint duty assignment as the ODNI’s director of mission integration under then-Director of National Intelligence Gen. James Clapper — a job he noted was one of the highlights of his career. During his second day on the job, U.S. government facilities in Benghazi, Libya, were targeted by militant groups, leading to the death of four American citizens.

Once Beauchamp’s team finished the assessment of the attack, he was immediately thrust into the fallout of the classified document leaks by Edward Snowden in 2013. His oversight led to a massive reform of the IC’s compartmented access programs and yet another overhaul of the government’s policy on commercial imagery.

“All of a sudden, now I’m convening people on the analytics side [and the] collection side, trying to figure out how to make up for the losses and capability that Snowden revealed,” he said. “And part of that is doing a reform of the IC’s compartmented programs, because they had way too many of them in overlap.”

Toward the end of his three-year assignment, Beauchamp started working with former Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work on a “side project” focused on standing up a new organization to pivot the Defense Department away from counterterrorism operations in the Middle East and towards great power competition, he said.

Beauchamp’s time in the intelligence community came to an end in 2015, when he was picked to be the Department of the Air Force’s deputy undersecretary for space and director of the principal DOD space advisor. There, he had two critical tasks, he noted.

“One, I’m working with all the international relationships with other countries who want to cooperate with us in space,” Beauchamp said. “At the same, I’m trying to convince the Americans to shift from space as a sanctuary from which you provide services, to space as a domain for warfighting.”

At the time, the Pentagon was reluctant to expand operations in space out of fear of being the first to weaponize the domain. But Beauchamp argued that the idea wasn’t about weaponization, and instead protection of critical space-based capabilities.

“It’s almost like before then, we were deliberately not protecting them so as you didn’t look like you wanted to start something,” he said. “And I was like, ‘This is not an option anymore.’ The Chinese had already demonstrated they could shoot down their own satellites, what’s to stop them from doing the same thing to us?”

Part of Beauchamp’s work was to develop a plan for how the Pentagon could make its space systems more resilient — many of which have become central to the Space Force’s operations, he noted. And when the first Trump administration decided to stand up the Space Force, Beauchamp was at the forefront of the effort to convince officials to approve the new military service.

Beauchamp would then transition to the Department of the Air Force’s office of the CIO, first as its director of enterprise IT in 2018 and later as the deputy CIO in 2020. His main focus was preparing the DAF for transitioning to telework operations as the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the globe, as well as consolidating the department’s enterprise licenses and creating a plan for modernizing base-level infrastructure, he noted.

“The overall trend line was eliminating the county option of uniqueness that was taking place at every base, and replacing it with a core set of enterprise services that were provided centrally,” Beauchamp said. “Big things like moving to zero trust — you can’t do those things if every base and every two-letter has their own architecture independent of everybody else’s.”

Today, the DAF has a strong path forward on modernizing its IT infrastructure, but Beauchamp said the true challenge will be convincing the department’s major programs to rely on enterprise services instead of building their own networks.

“It’s going to allow them to consolidate and collapse multiple redundant networks and really reduce the amount of money we’re spending on sustaining all this infrastructure,” he said. “When you modernize those networks, you also improve your cybersecurity, because the more deviation you have, the more gaps are created between the different baselines and different versions of software.”

Moving forward, Beauchamp said he will be taking time off but is open to other opportunities in the future.

“I’m excited for whatever the next challenge might be,” he said. “I’m interested in talking to folks who do exciting things, and to see who needs somebody like me to solve big problems.”

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Orozco has been the deputy CIO since September 2024 following an organizational reshuffle under the department’s broader plan to reorganize for future large-scale conflicts. As acting CIO, she will oversee the Air and Space Forces’ IT, cybersecurity, data and artificial intelligence modernization efforts. Orozco is taking over for Venice Goodwine, who is retiring as DAF CIO. 

Prior to becoming deputy CIO, Orozco was the director of security, special program oversight and information protection within the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force, where she was responsible for highly classified efforts known as special access programs (SAP).

She previously served as an active and reserve duty Air Force officer for two decades, entering civil service in 2008 with the Office of the Secretary of Defense’s intelligence directorate and then transferring to the Department of the Air Force in 2013.

According to her official bio, Orozco was key to standing up the Air Force Counter Insider Threat program — designed to mitigate potential risks from Air Force personnel who may try to harm national security — and has led other Pentagon efforts in security reform.

Orozco will take charge as acting CIO following Goodwine’s departure Friday. In March, Goodwine announced on LinkedIn that she planned to leave federal service and explore other opportunities outside of government.

“After years of tackling complex challenges, I’m looking forward to this period of rest and reflection. But make no mistake—this is just a break, not an ending. I remain excited about future opportunities and new ways to contribute,” Goodwine wrote.

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Troy Meink — who worked at the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) prior to his nomination — also told lawmakers that the department must move faster on innovating new technologies, while also improving acquisition processes for onboarding new capabilities.

“One of the first things I plan to do is take a holistic look at all the modernization and all the readiness bills that we have coming. And then I will put together and advocate for what resources I think are necessary to execute all of those missions,” Meink said Thursday during his confirmation hearing with the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Both during his testimony and in responses to advance policy questions prior to the hearing, Meink emphasized that the Air Force is at an inflection point as it works to upgrade key systems and capabilities across all of its core mission areas.

The service is responsible for modernizing two legs of the nuclear triad with its new B-21 Raider stealth bomber and its replacement for the aging Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile system known as the LGM-35A Sentinel. Other high-cost efforts include the Air Force’s next-generation fighter platforms — such as the F-47 and Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) drones — new command-and-control capabilities and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) systems.

Managing those efforts with ongoing readiness and maintenance requirements would be his top priority — and a significant challenge — if confirmed, Meink told lawmakers.

“We also need to balance today’s requirements with the need to modernize and maintain future readiness, deterrence and lethality,” Meink wrote in his written responses to lawmakers’ questions. “Manage short-term risk to readiness to modernize and prepare our forces for mid-to-long term and enduring strategic missions as well as acute and persistent threats.”

Meink also pledged to improve the Air Force’s ability to innovate on new technologies for warfighters, adding that his previous experience at the NRO and in other leadership positions at the Pentagon would help him do so.

“I spent the last decade increasing competition and expanding the industry base, which has significantly accelerated delivery capability and at a lower cost. I intend to bring that same drive for innovation to the department,” he said.

Prior to being tapped by Trump in January to serve as the next secretary of the Air Force, Meink spent four years as principal deputy director of the NRO — the spy agency responsible for intelligence space systems. He was also previously the organization’s director of geospatial intelligence systems and held numerous other positions focused on the space domain.

Meink said growing the Space Force would be among his top priorities if he’s confirmed.

“Space is critical. This is actually one of the areas that we’re most challenged, I believe,” Meink said in response to questions from Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb. “From the rapidly evolving threat from China and others — both the direct threat to our systems, as well as the threat those systems pose to operations across the department in general.”

However, Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., probed Meink on rumors that the Space Development Agency (SDA) is planning to cancel contracts for Tranche 2 and Tranche 3 of the transport layer in the Proliferated Space Warfighter Architecture (PWSA) and instead award a sole-source contract to SpaceX for its Starshield capability. Cramer added that, if true, such plans would mean at least eight mid-sized space vendors would not be allowed to bid on the contracts.

Meink’s alleged ties to Elon Musk’s SpaceX have come under scrutiny in recent weeks, but the nominee claimed that he was unaware of any considerations to replacing current contracts with Starshield but would investigate them if he’s confirmed.

Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin and York Space Systems are on contract to build some of the satellites under the Tranche 2 transport layer, while a separate contract previously awarded to York and Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems is being re-competed following a protest bid. The agency is currently gearing up to formally begin bidding for Tranche 3 of the transport layer this year.

“One of the things that I’ve pushed for — particularly over the last 10 years — is to expand competition and expand the industry base,” Meink said. “That ends up almost always with the best result, both from capability and cost to the government.”

In a statement to DefenseScoop, a Department of the Air Force spokesperson said the department and the Space Force are working with the Office of the Secretary of Defense to review all acquisition programs under the fiscal 2026 budget process, and that no decision has been made regarding Tranche 2 and Tranche 3 of the transport layer.

“The DAF and [Space Force] are committed to the efficient use of taxpayer dollars and maximizing the delivery of capability to the joint warfighter,” the spokesperson said. “We look forward to sharing the status of our acquisition programs with our stakeholders in Congress and elsewhere when the FY26 budget is delivered in the coming months.”

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“This concludes a rewarding journey through military service, private industry, and government leadership. It’s been an honor to support our mission, lead technology initiatives, and work alongside the exceptional personnel of our Air and Space Forces,” she said in a post on LinkedIn announcing her exit. 

Goodwine was tapped to serve as DAF CIO in August 2023, and oversaw modernization efforts for information technology, cybersecurity, data and artificial intelligence for both the Air and Space Forces. She led several initiatives throughout her tenure that aimed to streamline the DAF’s experimentation and adoption of emerging AI capabilities, while also pushing for increased transparency on the department’s development and spending on the technology.

In 2024, she helped stand up the DAF’s NIPRGPT 1.0 platform, where airmen, guardians, civilian employees and contractors can interact with a generative AI chatbot on the Non-classified Internet Protocol Router Network (NIPRNet). The tool served as a way for the department to experiment with large language models to help determine best use cases in the future.

Goodwine was also involved in the department’s work to adopt zero-trust cybersecurity frameworks, as mandated by the Pentagon. Her Zero Trust Strategy, released last year, emphasized leveraging cloud-based capabilities and integrating identity, credential, and access management (ICAM) solutions.

Prior to serving as DAF CIO, Goodwine was the director of enterprise information technology for the department. She previously spent more than two years as chief information security officer at the Department of Agriculture.

Goodwine is an Air Force veteran, having joined active duty in 1986 and serving as a signals intelligence analyst. She then served in the Air Force Reserve from 2002 until her retirement from uniformed military service in 2022.

Although she is leaving federal service, Goodwine noted in her LinkedIn post that she is open to other opportunities outside of government.

“After years of tackling complex challenges, I’m looking forward to this period of rest and reflection. But make no mistake—this is just a break, not an ending. I remain excited about future opportunities and new ways to contribute,” she wrote.

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Since the Pentagon released its zero trust strategy in 2022, organizations across the DOD have worked to upgrade their IT infrastructure so that it operates under zero trust — a cybersecurity concept that assumes networks are already compromised by adversaries and requires continuous monitoring and authentication of users and devices. The department’s goal is for all components to achieve “target levels” of zero trust by the end of fiscal 2027.

While efforts have focused on transitioning the Pentagon’s networks and IT infrastructure, some of the services have already begun assessing how they can integrate zero trust and enabling technologies into physical systems.

“It’s not just networks. Our operational technology is critical as well. So our weapons systems, our platforms, our facilities have to fall within this zero-trust umbrella as well,” Anne Marie Schumann, principal cyber advisor at the Department of Navy, said Wednesday during a panel at the Zero Trust Summit hosted by Scoop News Group.

Schumann noted that the Pentagon has been tracking cyber threats to operational technology and is currently developing a zero-trust implementation plan for those systems. But advancements in adversary cyber threats — such as from the Chinese-linked group known as Volt Typhoon — have put pressure on the department to move faster.

“I think one of the changes is that urgency is now being met with more mature capabilities from industry and a more mature approach from the DOD, because we can draw on what we’ve done with zero trust for it, and we know what that roadmap looks like to get there. We just need to start implementing that,” she said.

The Department of the Navy has largely led the way for other components in executing the Pentagon’s zero-trust goals. Its cloud-based Microsoft Office 365 platform known as Flank Speed has already met all 152 zero-trust requirements set by DOD and is continuing to improve cybersecurity on other networks, Schumann noted.

To get after cybersecurity for physical systems, the DON is preparing a set of standards for its implementation of zero trust for operational technology, slated to publish “in the next month or so,” Schumann said. The standards are part of a larger Navy effort known as More Situational Awareness for Industrial Control Systems (MOSAICS) that broadly aims to develop and demonstrate cyber defense capabilities for its facilities.

The upcoming standards will outline how to achieve zero trust at a “basic level” that covers minimum cybersecurity requirements, as well as a “block 2 advanced level” that denotes achievement of all requirements, according to Schumann. The strategy mirrors the Defense Department’s own delineation between what it considers “target levels” and “advanced levels” of zero trust, detailed in the 2022 strategy.

“I think that would be a really useful level-set for both us and our industry partners to know how we’re measuring capabilities,” Schumann said.

Wanda Jones-Heath, principal cyber advisor for the Department of the Air Force, also said during the panel that her office is looking at how it should invest to implement zero-trust frameworks for operational technology. For its zero-trust efforts, the DAF has released its own strategy and implementation plan, which has been updated to include capabilities beyond networks and IT infrastructure and is pending signature from the new presidential administration, she noted.

“The Navy is certainly leading the way, and we are following very closely,” Jones-Heath said.

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The directive — first reported by Air and Space Forces Magazine — was issued Thursday and effectively puts several plans under the so-called Reoptimizing for Great Power Competition already in motion on hold, including work on standing up an Integrated Capabilities Command and Space Futures Command. The order will not require actions already taken under the effort to be reversed, the spokesperson said.

“The planning pause remains in effect until a Senate-confirmed Secretary and Under Secretary of the Air Force are in place and have the opportunity to review the initiatives,” the DAF spokesperson told DefenseScoop in a statement. “The Department of the Air Force welcomes the opportunity for our new leaders to assess all ongoing actions and ensure compliance with DoD directives. We will issue clarifying guidance, as necessary.”

Spearheaded by then-Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall and unveiled in February 2024, the Reoptimizing for Great Power Competition is a broad plan to reorganize the department to prepare the Air and Space Force’s readiness and warfighting capabilities for potential conflict with U.S. adversaries. The initiative included a list of 24 near- and long-term efforts, such as department reorganizations and new commands.

Among those action items included the creation of an Integrated Capabilities Command (ICC), which would create a single organization for generating requirements for new warfighting capabilities. The service announced in September that it had created a “provisional” ICC as it worked to stand up a complete office.

The Space Force is also set to get a new field command — dubbed Space Futures Command — that would focus on evaluating future threat environments, validating warfighting concepts and conducting data-driven analytics on mission area designs. The Department of the Air Force had previously stated that they would stand up the new command sometime in 2025.

Other efforts that were underway include the elevation of Air Forces Cyber, reorganization of Air Force Material Command and more. Meanwhile, preparation for the service’s major exercise known as Resolute Force Pacific will not be affected by the pause order, according to an Air Force spokesperson.

“Exercise Resolute Force Pacific (REFORPAC), which will assess the Air Force’s readiness to operate in a contested, dynamic environment against high-end threats, is not impacted by the Secretary of Defense’s recent order to temporarily pause planning. This exercise, a first of its kind since the Cold War, is intended to test the Air Force’s ability to move large amounts of people, equipment, and resources into the Pacific theater at speed and scale. REFORPAC is well-aligned with the Department of Defense’s priorities of enhancing warrior ethos and credible deterrence,” the spokesperson said.

The fate of the Department of the Air Force’s reorganization efforts must wait until new leadership is confirmed by Congress. Those confirmation hearings have not yet been scheduled. President Donald Trump nominated Troy Meink, current deputy of the National Reconnaissance Office, to serve as the DAF’s next secretary. Matthew Lohmeier, who previously served as a Space Force lieutenant colonel but was relieved from his post in 2021, has been tapped to serve as the DAF’s undersecretary.

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Davenport will take over responsibilities from Chandra Donelson, who has been the DAF’s acting CDAO since April while also maintaining her role as the Space Force’s data and AI officer. Prior to that, Eileen Vidrine served as the DAF CDAO from January 2023 until her retirement earlier this year in March.

In a LinkedIn post announcing her appointment, the Department of the Air Force’s Chief Information Office said Davenport’s “expertise driving innovation and managing complex programs will be instrumental in shaping the future of Data and AI for the Air Force and the Space Force.”

Davenport has over three decades of experience working in government, including several roles at the National Reconnaissance Office and the Air Force. Most recently, she was the senior advisor for defense innovation at the Secretary of the Air Force’s office for concepts development and management.

As CDAO for both the Air and Space Forces, Davenport is responsible for ensuring the department is “AI-ready” by 2025 and “AI-competitive” by 2027, as well as promoting the ethical use of artificial intelligence and related technologies. She will also be tasked with developing and implementing enterprise data management, analytics and digital transformation strategies that will improve the DAF’s performance initiatives.

Across the Pentagon, the military services and department offices are looking to harness AI for a range of activities — from day-to-day tasks to tactical operations. Specifically, the Department of the Air Force CIO has recently made a number of new AI-enabled tools available to personnel for experimentation through its DAF AI Launch Point and AI Exchange App Store. 

Among those tools is NIPRGPT — a generative AI chatbot hosted on the Non-classified Internet Protocol Router Network (NIPRNet). Released in June in collaboration with the Air Force Research Laboratory, the experimental platform allows officials to test different large language models and learn how they can be used in real-world scenarios.

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Beauchamp has been tapped as the new director of security, special program oversight and information protection within the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force. In this role, he will be responsible for the Air and Space Forces’ special access programs (SAP) — a security protocol given to highly classified programs within the Defense Department — personnel security and declassification issues, Beauchamp told DefenseScoop in an email.

Notably, the Security, Special Program Oversight and Information Protection office is set to become part of the new Office of Competitive Activities by October. That organization is one of several new ones being stood up as part of the Department of the Air Force’s broad plan to reorganize for large-scale conflicts in the future, and will combine multiple disparate efforts to oversee and coordinate sensitive activities under one roof.

Beauchamp has served as the DAF’s deputy CIO since December 2020, where he assisted in leading the department’s directorates responsible for enterprise IT, data, artificial intelligence and cybersecurity. He provided insights that informed the Air Force’s IT investment strategy and modernization efforts related to cloud computing, data management and more.

“Winston has been the steady hand and seen the Office of the CIO through significant change, always keeping the organization on track,” DAF CIO Venice Goodwine said in a message to the workforce announcing Beauchamp’s departure. “He has been instrumental in the DAF’s digital transformation efforts, in right sizing the POM (5-year budget), in the standup of the US Space Force, integration of the office of the Chief Data and AI Office into the DAF CIO family, and more recently on reoptimizing for Great Power Competition.”

Jennifer Orozco — current director of the Security, Special Program Oversight and Information Protection office — will serve as the new deputy CIO for the Department of the Air Force beginning Monday, Beauchamp said.

As the DAF continues to work on modernizing its IT enterprise, Beauchamp told DefenseScoop the most pressing challenges moving forward will be the adoption of a zero-trust cybersecurity framework, as well as delivery of the Base Infrastructure Modernization program. The $12.5 billion effort looks to overhaul and modernize existing base area network infrastructure across the department.

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The online tool, dubbed CLARA, is designed to increase visibility and overall understanding of the department’s AI-related initiatives by serving as a centralized repository that provides information, progress and potential collaboration opportunities on projects, the DAF CIO noted Monday in a post on LinkedIn. The goal is to ensure stakeholders across the department stay informed and aligned in regards to these types of technologies.

“Every warfighter deserves clarity on the tools and capabilities at their disposal,” Acting DAF Chief Data and AI Officer Chandra Donelson said in a statement. “Transparent access to our resources ensures everyone is more equipped and ready to excel in any mission.”

Much like the rest of the Pentagon, the Department of the Air Force has been exploring how to leverage advancements in artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities for the Air and Space Forces. The DAF has been experimenting with new technologies and launched pilot efforts focusing on how AI can assist both services — ranging from day-to-day tasks to tactical operations.

With a number of programs underway, CLARA will be used to monitor progress, spending and potential duplicative initiatives, DAF CIO Venice Goodwine said Monday during a keynote speech at the annual Department of the Air Force Information Technology and Cyberpower conference.

“One of the things Congress has levied upon us is we must be able to have an AI inventory so we can report how much money we’re spending on AI,” Goodwine said. “But importantly, how are we tracking the time back on mission for our airmen and guardians? CLARA is a way in which we’re going to do that.”

In April, officials set up a DAF AI Launch Point to act as a “one-stop shop” for all of the department’s emerging artificial intelligence capabilities, Goodwine said. The website includes information on policies, strategy, training and education, as well as the AI Exchange App Store where airmen and guardians can begin experimenting with AI-enabled technologies.

Among those new tools is NIPRGPT 1.0 — a generative AI chatbot hosted on the Non-classified Internet Protocol Router Network (NIPRNet). Released in June in collaboration with the Air Force Research Laboratory, the experimental platform allows the DAF to test different large language models and learn how they can be used in real-world scenarios.

NIPRGPT 1.0 has enabled experimentation with some open-source large language models, such as Meta’s Llama family of LLMs and Mistral AI, Goodwine noted.

Under what is being called NIPRGPT 1.0+, the department is looking to incorporate a retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) model to combine large language models with the department’s internal data.

“What we want to show you which model is best for which use case,” Goodwine said.

Along with NIPRGPT, the department’s AI Exchange platform also includes redForce AI — a DevOps platform that supports rapid artificial intelligence capability development for warfighters — and the Mission-Driven Autonomous Collaborative Heterogeneous Intelligent Network Architecture (MACHINA), which is part of the Space Force’s space domain awareness network architecture. 

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On Feb. 12, the Department of the Air Force announced it would be partially reorganizing — an effort dubbed “reoptimizing for great power competition.” The plans included a total of 24 near- and long-term action items across the department that will boost overall readiness and ensure the Air and Space Forces have the right capabilities for tomorrow’s battles.

When the plans were unveiled by Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall, he emphasized that officials intended to implement the changes without using excessive financial resources. But some of the action items will require extra funds, and those efforts are at jeopardy if lawmakers do not pass a federal budget in the near future, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin said Wednesday.

“To the extent that it’s going to require resources, it’ll definitely impact this because this is going to have to compete with all the other things that would have been above a cutline that will now be below a cutline,” Allvin said during an event hosted by the Brookings Institution.

At press time, Congress has not approved a budget for fiscal 2024 and federal agencies like the Department of Defense have been operating under a continuing resolution, which generally freezes spending levels at the previous fiscal year’s amounts. Leaders at the Pentagon have repeatedly stressed that continuing resolutions negatively impact the department’s plans to maintain readiness and introduce new warfighting technologies.

The current CR for the DOD is set to expire March 8 (for some agencies the CR will expire March 1, and for others March 8), and it’s likely that lawmakers will pass another to avoid a government shutdown.

However if a full-year FY ’24 budget is not approved by May 1, the government will face automatic cuts of 1% to both defense and non-defense programs — per a deal created in 2023 between President Joe Biden and then-Speaker of the House Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.

“We have a more existential issue if that happens because the one thing is, if we do not get a budget appropriation — even if it’s a year-long CR, or if we go into that sequestered piece — the one thing that we really lose is time and our ability to be able to spend the precious resources on the things that we planned on in order to keep pace,” Allvin said.

The reoptimization plan includes a range of initiatives for the department that could be affected, including how it trains airmen and guardians; the way the Air and Space Forces hold exercises; the structure of Air Force operational wings and Space Force combat squadrons; and improvements to developing and fielding new capabilities.

While he did not specifically name which of the 24 changes would be impacted by a long-term budget impasse, Allvin added that the initiatives that can be done in a “revenue neutral manner” will still be implemented. 

“It’s not a matter to me of, this is an optional thing that we think is a good idea to do,” he said. “I just think the strategic environment compels us to do this, otherwise we find ourselves in a situation next year where … we fall further behind.”

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