Publisher's Synopsis
The purpose of this paper is to clearly demonstrate the urgent need for dedicated airborne communications expertise throughout the Air Force Special Operations Forces (AFSOF) enterprise and to propose a comprehensive solution to that need. This need is driven by an enduring Irregular Warfare-focused (IW) strategic environment and an increasingly net-centric operational environment that sustain pressing airborne communications standardization, integration, and interoperability requirements. This paper's primary argument is that the Airborne Mission Systems Specialist (AMSS, aka "Radio Operator") skillset is a critical component for sustained AFSOF success in these strategic and operational environments, and thus AFSOC must reorganize its AMSS cadre into centrally controlled pools to provide standardized net-centric communications integration and interoperability capability to all of its maneuver elements and staff agencies worldwide. The wide-ranging strategic impact of re-defining the AMSS' role in AFSOC is universally decreased risk of mission failure, particularly on short-notice, "no-fail" national-level IW taskings.
