During a recent speech the Air Force's top enlisted leader, Chief Master Sgt. David Flosi, singled out Special Operations Senior Airman Marlene Guerrero.
Flosi praised her for "kicking a**" by juggling being a fuels technician who was also trained on hydraulics and, on top of that, serving as a dedicated assistant crew chief. The top noncommissioned officer recounted how she had fixed a forward-deployed aircraft with a hydraulic issue.
The shoutout, at the Air and Space Forces Association's conference near Washington, D.C., last month, underscores what is quickly becoming one of Flosi's main initiatives as the face of the service's enlisted force: He wants airmen to be able to take on more tasks and is pushing an initiative to reduce the number of job types called Air Force specialty codes, or AFSCs, and reducing where there might be overlap.
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"It's a dangerous environment, and we can't afford to put any more people in harm's way than necessary," Flosi told Military.com during a media roundtable at the conference. "Frankly, logistically, it's nearly impossible to deploy the way we used to. So it's important. It's critical."
While specific details are still in the works, Flosi -- himself a former nuclear missile maintenance technician -- has given some examples publicly. During the Senior Enlisted Leader International Summit in Washington, D.C., in late August, he highlighted maintenance careers as an example.
"Fifty-four of them are types of aircraft, 54 different specific career paths," Flosi mentioned during a speech at the event. "What we realized is, that's just not going to work in this environment, so we're working on a project now to reduce that to less than 10."
During the media roundtable, Flosi described that among those maintenance career fields, "essentially 80% of the work that's done by our aircraft maintainers is 20% of the total tasks that they're qualified on" and said by reducing the job specialties, it could "provide us more agility on the flight line."
It's an ambitious project, and one that many enlisted airmen have likely heard of before, leading to some skepticism.
In recent years, the Air Force has been pushing its "multi-capable" airmen concept, essentially pushing for troops to not just have one specialty, but to take on more training "to handle additional tasks beyond their primary AFSC," the service said in training materials last year.
But airmen have often read that as doing more with less or pushing the enlisted force to take on even more responsibilities than they already have, concerns that have resurfaced in response to Flosi's push.
In a post asking about the proposed idea on the popular Air Force Amn/Nco/Snco Facebook page, a place where enlisted airmen share insider news and complaints, commenters were quick to poke holes at the idea.
"This is a dumb move," one commenter wrote. "That's too much for one individual to know, plus as soon as they're trained, you're going to lose them."
Others said it would lead to workload increases, though some described a willingness to give the new approach "a chance."
Flosi told Military.com during the media roundtable at the Air and Space Forces Association's conference that leaders need to understand they can't overburden airmen and that they need to analyze what additional training and responsibility are possible for an airman to take on.
"We definitely acknowledge that this is not an effort to do more with less. We're not trying to, like, squeeze 10 people's worth of work into five people," Flosi added. "We want to have the capability for an airman to do as much as they have capacity for."
Retired Col. J.F. Joseph, a Marine Corps aviator who is now an aviation consultant and expert witness on airplane safety and aircraft mishaps, told Military.com in an interview that he had doubts about the Air Force's plan, saying that the broad specialization may be appealing for convenience, but can raise red flags.
"In aviation, anytime you make a decision based on convenience to save time or save money, you're probably going to make the wrong choice," Joseph told Military.com. "I think you can simply overload our maintenance techs with too broad of bases for which they're supposed to exercise their expertise."
In recent years, recruiting for maintenance jobs has been a struggle. In 2023, the former head of the Air Force Recruiting Service estimated "1,800 empty maintainer jobs" if the recruiting environment didn't get better. In fiscal year 2023, the Air Force missed its recruiting goals by 10% -- the first time since 1999. It scraped by its goals this past fiscal year.
Additionally, costly mishap incidents are also continuing to accrue. Earlier this year, the Air Force announced that "aircraft maintenance-related mishaps cost Air Education and Training Command more than $50 million" and that there were assessments underway to determine how to best prevent them.
Flosi said Air Force officials are taking a deeper dive into what risks are acceptable as the Department of the Air Force tries to compete with China.
"While we certainly are going to continue to advocate for more resources, we can expect, at least in the very short term, that resources will remain relatively steady," Flosi added. "So that means we have to accept more risk in the way that we operate, the way that we train, the way we qualify, and the way we execute, and so that's what we're really focused on."
