A blueprint for the efficient and mission-focused modernization of academics at USAFA

USAFA can step forward, or it can step backward, it can not remain as it was.

[Pardon the length of this post. A shorter (<1000 word) version is available here.]

America’s Air Force academy is in crisis. In writing this post, I worked with dozens of current military and civilian faculty at USAFA (who, by virtue of their positions, are unable to cosign). [But, blame for what is written lies solely with me.] They remain highly concerned about the ongoing crippling cuts of knowledgeable long-term civilian/veteran faculty at USAFA, for the purported justification (by SecDef Hegseth) of making it “less woke” or somehow providing a more lethal “warrior ethos”.

I share their concerns. As thought leaders in relevant technical areas, we became USAFA instructors not because it was a chance to make lots of money or to advance our careers (it, decidedly, is not), nor to perversely twist young minds into becoming “more woke” (?), but rather because we are firmly committed to USAFA’s core mission: educating our next generation of Air and Space Force leaders to develop (together with industry partners), deploy, and operate remarkable new weapons and ISR systems to deter aggression by potential adversaries, and to decisively win any possible future wars while minimizing American, allied, and noncombatant casualties.

In this time of crisis comes an opportunity to renew. Academically, USAFA can step forward, or it can step backward, it can not remain as it was. Let us choose forward. For the stated goal of cost savings, and to maximize the warfighting relevance of all majors offered at USAFA, significant consolidation and refocusing is necessary. Guided by our mission, we must leverage our core strengths, as well as our remaining distinguished civilian/veteran faculty (as recommended by a recent USAF-sponsored RAND study). Hard choices must be made.

After consulting many stakeholders, below are several recommendations for adapting USAFA academics appropriately, to accommodate the level of (permanent) civilian/veteran faculty cuts that have already happened in spring 2025 (that is, the permanent loss of over 50 of our best long-term civilian/veteran faculty), while maintaining the level of academic excellence that we all expect of what remains. I present these speculative recommendations here precisely to generate public debate (please feel free to comment below!), before any further lasting decisions are made. It is rumored that between 50 and 100 additional cuts (!) of our remaining long-term faculty are imminent, in order to reach a stated arbitrary target of an 80/20 mil/civ faculty mix; if that happens, as discussed near the end of this article, I do not see a viable path forward for our Academy while maintaining its current broad academic excellence, and a previously unimaginable (and, largely, irreversible) slide towards mediocracy at USAFA (in terms of the education that it provides, and the academic excellence of the freshmen and faculty that it attracts) would likely ensue. [Note: related Air Force Specialty Codes (AFSCs) are indicated below in parentheses. Also, Undergraduate Pilot Training (UPT) candidates are drawn from all majors, especially engineering, and are thus not mentioned further below.]

1. Eliminate the English, Math, Meteorology, and Philosophy majors due to insufficient enrollment (on average, less than 20 cadets per year) and only weak military relevance; there is no AFSC for the USAF philosopher. Move the development of applied-math algorithms (e.g., the blending of learning-based decision making and rules-based feedback for the effective deployment and operation of groups of Autonomous Collaborative Platforms) to other domain-specific majors.

2. Mothball the Chemistry major, for now. To instead grow this major (to address the research and development of advanced batteries, explosives, etc), though militarily quite relevant, would require too expensive an infrastructure at USAFA (though, not elsewhere in the USAF) to support this academic major adequately in the present fiscal environment. Recommend revisiting this decision in the future, possibly to restart it with a (still unforeseen) targeted endowing gift from one or more generous donors, such as those in the USAFA Association of Graduates. Note, of course, that core classes in Chemistry, Math, and English (in addition to Physics and Engineering) are foundational to the USAFA freshman curriculum, and must continue unabated.

3. Bolster the Physics major, which is fundamental to warfare. The USAF must remain a leader in nuclear engineering, the development of directed energy weapons, etc, and USAFA must stay tightly connected to these activities. (61D)

4. Rename the Foreign Area Studies major to World Conflicts (as “foreign” denotes a perspective bias), and bolster it. This major appropriately focuses USAFA cadets on the development and prevention of wars, by analyzing the historical, religious, political, economic, and racial connections and distinctions, and the unique natural resources, related to the alliances and hostilities between nations and peoples around the world, and key hotspots that are related to them (Taiwan, Crimea, Gaza, Kashmir, Strait of Hormuz, etc). Eliminate the History, Political Science, Economics, and Geospatial Science majors, moving the relevant coursework into the more sharply focused World Conflicts major, which well prepares officers to work in both USAF/USSF leadership positions and Intelligence (14N).

5. Combine the Aero and Mech departments, which already have much overlap (computational modeling, design, & analysis; thermodynamics & heat transfer; structural materials; fatigue & failure, etc), and eliminate the Mech major. The engineering systems that our Air and Space forces are responsible for are, specifically, aircraft and spacecraft (not household widgets, nor knife fabrication, nor IndyCars); for the USAFA engineering programs to be both best in class and mission relevant, their organization must be similarly focused. (62E, 11E)

6. Keep the Astro department standalone, and bolster it to help provide leadership for the development of effective US Space Force (USSF) officers, even beyond USAFA. Topics covered by Astro include space domain awareness, 3D rotations and dynamics, orbital mechanics, classical and state-space control, etc. Note in particular that the Aero and Astro departments at USAFA are a very poor fit to be combined, as they have different customer bases (USAF vs. USSF) and very different courses of study; without exaggeration, the challenges of working in the air and working in space are as different as the challenges of working on the ocean and working in the air. At USAFA, as opposed to various other institutions of higher learning, these two distinct disciplines demand much more focused, individual attention. (62E)

7. Form a new joint EECS department (as at Berkeley and MIT), responsible not only for the traditional EE and CS majors, but also, working together closely with Aero and Astro, building up a significant new interdisciplinary Autonomous Systems major - over time, building up the latter and scaling down (eventually, phasing out) the former. Autonomous systems (drones, Collaborative Combat Aircraft, etc) are completely redefining how the USAF, its allies, and its potential adversaries fight, surveil, geolocate, and communicate; this field requires substantial focus, to fully understand their potential capabilities, liabilities, and limitations. (62E, 17X)

8. Form a new Cyberspace Operations department, responsible for the Data Science and Operations Research majors, and eliminate Cyber Science as a separate major (folding its coursework into the Data Science major). Parsing massive amounts of data, and discovering and acting upon opportunities and threats hidden within, is an essential part of operating today’s military; these majors confront such important challenges. (17X, 14N, 15A)

9. Maintain the Military Strategic Studies major. Emphasis areas include real-time battlespace management of American and Allied forces against determined adversaries (land, sea, air, and space). (12X, 13B, 13C, 13D)

10. Combine the Biology and Behavioral Science departments, to maintain separate majors in Biology, with an emphasis on Bioenvironmental Engineering (43E), and Behavioral Science, with an emphasis on Human Factors (61B).

11. Keep the Civil and Environmental engineering department standalone. Its graduates are responsible for planning, designing, and maintaining property (runways, hangars, streets, utilities, ...) on Air Force bases. (32E, 43E)

12. Form a new Acquisitions Management department, to take responsibility for both the Management and the Systems Engineering majors. Emphasis areas include the agile project management framework and the scrum “sprint” process, capable of responding to new threats and incorporating new technologies in weeks or months instead of decades, and government reference architectures, which help prevent vendor lock in the lifecycle of key weapons systems. (63A, ​​64P)

13. Bolster Legal Studies as a strong major at USAFA. Modern military leaders need to think critically, identifying when and how to respond up their chain of command regarding previously unseen opportunities and possible missteps and, in extreme cases, to dissent properly to orders that are illegal, unethical, or significantly harmful to the execution of their primary mission (in the latter case, being fully prepared to individually suffer the professional consequences). Further, deploying the next generation of autonomous weapons requires a clear understanding and codification of the Rules of Engagement in any given conflict, and the right levels of human oversight and coordination. Complex questions of precisely when killing (during warfare, and during other armed conflicts) is legal, ethical, and justified using such autonomous weapons require significantly increased levels of scrutiny. (51J)

14. Bolster the available minors (not majors) for learning the Languages of our potential adversaries, at a minimum to include Mandarin, Russian, Farsi, Arabic, and Spanish, noting that Hindi, Urdu, Korean, and Hebrew are also of military significance. Eliminate French, German, and Portuguese as available minors, to refocus efforts on languages of likely military concern. Actively recruit several high school candidates yearly to USAFA who are already fluent in one or more of these languages before arriving at the academy, much as private universities recruit athletes, and reward cadets academically and militarily for demonstrating written and verbal fluency in them. (14N)

15. Setting a bold example at the very top, and consistent with the SecDef’s stated (and, well-reasoned) goal of substantially reducing the number of general officers in the military, the current USAFA Supt, in consultation with the SecAF, voluntarily “takes his own DRP” from USAFA (moving to a different position in the USAF or government), the current USAFA Vice Supt is promoted to Supt, and the Vice Supt position is converted to that of a long-term civilian veteran of the Academy, appointed by the ARDI foundation (likely, a current or former ARDI chaired professor). [The Supt and Dean positions remain those of general officers.] This selfless act of leadership would bring an independent, education-oriented, mission-relevant perspective, with a focus on transparency and accessibility by cadets and faculty alike, to the Supt’s Office, and will effectively evaporate the concerns of others still at the Academy (faculty, staff, and cadets), as well as those still considering joining, demonstrating that leadership does not ask its people to do anything that it is not willing to do itself.

The recommendations openly stated above (including eliminating about a dozen majors, and adding one) provide an efficient, mission-relevant restarting point for USAFA appropriate for modern warfare. The primary majors that remain define our intellectual focus as a military-focused, forward-looking educational institution, one which grapples with the rapidly emerging and complex role of autonomous weapons and ISR systems in warfare. These recommendations appear to be decidedly different than the rumored plans currently being drafted by Supt’s office, which are still conspicuously concealed from its principal stakeholders under NDA. Many of the cuts recommended above are admittedly painful, and will likely spark lively public comment and debate, as well they should; when implementing major educational reforms, our shared perspective is that open debate is key to maximizing stakeholder buy-in (to the extent that that is possible when such cuts are being made) and, ultimately, institutional success. The fact that other leading universities, where vibrant AFROTC programs are available, well cover the general academic majors that are on the chopping block in this plan is perhaps some consolation.

The above recommended cuts, refocusing, and logical regroupings of majors provide a path forward, to continue to operate USAFA “far, far above” its academic and military competitors, as we have come to expect of our Academy, with the level of loss of civilian/veteran faculty that it suffered in Sprint 2025. We must “aim higher” than simply the accreditation of our remaining majors. Additional such major cuts, as are currently being planned by the USAFA superintendent, would require an even further reduction of majors and mothballing of facilities, and would call into question USAFA’s very viability as a modern institution of higher learning, capable of drawing America’s best and brightest students and faculty.

Even with the staggering losses that it endured last semester, the level of world-class civilian/veteran talent still on the USAFA faculty is remarkable. Together with other stakeholders, these long-term faculty need informed and inspirational leaders who involve them in the forthcoming major decisions facing USAFA, and less pejorative labelling as “leftist” or “woke” liabilities. We must halt the ongoing decimation of these distinguished faculty immediately, pivot, bolster where necessary, and build on our inherent strengths to re-establish USAFA’s position as America’s premier forward-looking military academy.