Reenabling Air Force Command and Control for Twenty-First-Century Partnerships.

"Reenabling Air Force Command and Control for Twenty-First-Century Partnerships" by Lt Gen Philip Breedlove and Maj Brian Tyler (Fall 2010) is a great article that highlights the requirement for building personal relationships and flexibility in our command and control (C2) structures. My one concern is the authors' statement "With regard to the former [joint trust], relationships between commanders are often more important than command relationships" (p. 13). I fear that some people might misconstrue that statement as minimizing the importance of command relationships or else justifying not taking the time required to think through command relationships and get them correct. I believe it is more correct to say that both command relationships and personal relationships are important because one without the other would make our C2 structures less effective.

Col Edward J. Groeninger, USAF, Retired

Hurlburt Field, Florida

Kudos to Lt Gen Philip Breedlove and Maj Brian Tyler for their well-written article. It is a good discussion of how joint force air component commanders (JFACC) exercise C2, but it didn't fully bring to light the issue of US Air Force C2 at the operational level because it concentrates on how joint air operations centers support JFACCs. That is only half of the story. I wish the authors had also discussed the importance of Air Force forces support to both plan development and the sustainment of mission operations, as well as the importance of reachback to headquarters units to support the mission.

Col Patricia Battles, USAF

Pentagon, Washington, DC