I can only hope that Gen Schwartz understands that a transformational force does not mean an unqualified force. His move to reducing the entry qualifications for these positions does not give me a warm fuzzy. It seems to me that, if the CSAF and the combatant commanders deemed it so, we could grow any MWS force with qualified personnel. Anyway, considering the UAS in particular, the bottleneck is with training slots, not with filling those slots.

If anything, a transformational force (especially in the infancy phases of the transformation) needs the MOST qualified people it can muster. Only the people who have the experience, the judgment, and the operational maturity should be ones making the decisions out there regarding how we move into fighting our new style of war. The bulk of our transformational decisions need to be made in the field, not at AU or in the Pentagon. The Army finally came around to that concept, and so should we. By the way, the Army did not put it's most unqualified personnel out there in those Civil Affairs units, the sniper teams, or those small-unit special ops teams (or any of those other forces that were part of the transformational Army) - the new guys went to the traditional roles to gain experience so they could later move to those evolving positions. I whole-heartedly agree that the USAF needs to transform to fight the battles we are given (not the ones we want), but we need to ensure that we have the best people in the field making it happen and creating the tactics of the future.

Don't mistake "a new way of doing business" with "new people doing the business." UAS is a new tool in an existing war and we need to figure out how best to use the new tool. When the AIM-7 came along, we didn't take new pilots and have them create these new tactics required by the new weapons - we took pilots experienced in Air-Air and had them create the new tactics as an evolution of the lessons we already had learned. When the C-17 came around, we didn't take new pilots and have them create the procedures to fully exploit the capabilities of the aircraft - we took experienced, qualified personnel from other MWS's and had them do the job. Once the MWS had matured, then the new blood started to flow in. Right now, the UAS is still maturing, the capabilities are still developing, the tactics are still evolving - and most importantly, this is all happening while actual troops are on the ground in actual combat getting actual support where their actual lives depend on it.