Despite clear strategic guidance identifying China as the primary pacing threat, the U.S. Air Force (USAF) lacks a coordinated, scalable, and sustained approach for developing and utilizing China-relevant expertise—such as language skills, cultural understanding, and regional knowledge—across its workforce. This gap raises concerns about the USAF’s ability to effectively anticipate and compete with China in a complex, evolving strategic environment.
In this report, the authors assess how the USAF develops, recognizes, and applies China-relevant expertise, drawing on interviews with airmen and educators, policy and document analysis, and historical case studies. The findings reveal that China-focused expertise remains limited in scale, unevenly recognized, and inconsistently applied, despite sustained strategic emphasis on competition with China.
To help close this gap, the authors outline considerations for strengthening how China-relevant knowledge and skills are developed, tracked, and leveraged across the USAF workforce in support of long-term strategic competition.
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