Outsourcing the Air Force Mission A Strategy for Success

Colonel Palmby’s study not only serves as a primer for readers not intimately familiar with either outsourcing or the acquisition/manpower career fields, but also provides Air Force leadership and decision makers recommendations designed to help them resolve or prevent the numerous pitfalls that accompany the outsourcing process. Toward those ends, it provides background on the terminology, processes, and regulatory guidance used in outsourcing. It also reviews various forces that drive the Air Force toward outsourcing as a resource option and analyzes the advantages and disadvantages that may reside in any outsourcing situation. The paper also examines numerous issues facing the Air Force and Department of Defense in general as the outsourcing of missions continues to increase. Additionally, the paper offers some critical recommendations designed to help begin the considerable effort of evolving the Air Force’s culture and structure to allow full integration of outsourcing as a key and equal component of its Total Force team.