RR-389-AF Assessment of the Air Force Materiel Command Reorganization

In 2011, Congress mandated budget reductions requiring that the Department of Defense reduce its future spending by approximately $487 billion over the coming decade. To realize part of these reductions, the Office of the Secretary of Defense called for all services to return to their fiscal year (FY) 2010 civilian manpower levels. That action required that the Air Force eliminate approximately 16,500 civilian manpower positions. Rather than distributing these cuts proportionally throughout the service, the Air Force sought specific initiatives that could achieve the necessary savings with minimal impact to missions. One initiative, a reorganization of the Air Force Materiel Command (AFMC), was undertaken to eliminate 1,051 of the approximately 16,500 positions and achieve an annual savings of about $109 million in FY 2011 dollars. This report assesses the FY 2012 reorganization of AFMC to determine if it was able to absorb these cuts with minimal, if any, impact on its assigned missions.