Skip to main content (Press Enter).
 News
    
        Photos

    Week in Photos

    Air Force TV

    Commentaries

    Features

    Art

    About Us
    
        Air Force Senior Leaders
    
        SECAF

    CSAF

    CMSAF

    Biographies

    Fact Sheets

    SECAF Reading List

    CSAF Leadership Library
    
        CSAF Leadership Library 2022

    CSAF Leadership Library 2021

    CSAF Reading List Pre-2020 Archive
    
        2018 CSAF Reading List

    2017 CSAF Reading List

    2016 CSAF Reading List

    CSAF Leadership Library 2023

    CMSAF Leadership Library

    50 Years of the CMSAF

    Adjunct Professors

    Air Force Strategic Documents

    Arctic Strategy

    Empowered Airmen

    State Licensure Portability

    Careers

    AF Federal Advisory Committees

    AF 75th Anniversary

    Policy Updates

    AF Content Management

    Contact Us

    AF Sites
    
        Site RegistrationU.S. Air Force LogoAir Force

        Policy UpdatesNewsroomReoptimizationBIOGRAPHIESAF Senior Leaders      Maj. Gen. Tom Wilcox, Air Force Installation and Mission Support Center commander (head of table), is joined by other AFIMSC and Air Force senior leaders during the Installation and Mission Support Weapons and Tactics Conference out-briefs April 21, 2021, at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, Texas. Four teams tasked with tackling the Air and Space Forces’ most significant Agile Combat Support challenges presented their recommendations to this group and a virtual audience of more than 500 Air and Space Force senior officials, mission support leaders and their peers. The Air Force will now analyze the teams’ ideas to determine their feasibility.Teams deliver innovative solutions at I-WEPTAC
                        
                        
                        Maj. Gen. Tom Wilcox, Air Force Installation and Mission Support Center commander (head of table), is joined by other AFIMSC and Air Force senior leaders during the Installation and Mission Support Weapons and Tactics Conference out-briefs April 21, 2021, at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, Texas. Four teams tasked with tackling the Air and Space Forces’ most significant Agile Combat Support challenges presented their recommendations to this group and a virtual audience of more than 500 Air and Space Force senior officials, mission support leaders and their peers. The Air Force will now analyze the teams’ ideas to determine their feasibility. (U.S. Air Force photo by Joe Bela)
                
                Photo Details /
                        Download Hi-Res

Teams deliver innovative solutions at I-WEPTACPublished April 23, 2021
                    
                    By Joe Bela
                    
                    
                    Headquarters Air Force Installation and Mission Support Center Public Affairs
            **JOINT BASE SAN ANTONIO-LACKLAND, Texas (AFNS)  --**Teams tasked with tackling the Air and Space Forces’ most challenging Agile Combat Support issues delivered their recommendations April 21 at the 2021 Installation and Mission Support Weapons and Tactics Conference at **Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland**.
At the conference, which is hosted annually by the **Air Force Installation and Mission Support Center**, the teams pitched their ideas to an audience of more than 500 Air and Space Force senior officials, mission support leaders and their peers during the virtual event.
I-WEPTAC is the Air Force’s only installation and mission support event that provides an innovation forum to help advance Air Force Chief of Staff **Gen. Charles Q. Brown, Jr.**’s strategic approach to “**Accelerate Change or Lose**.”
“We must face the fact the strategic environment is changing and we haven’t changed at the same pace,” Brown told attendees at an I-WEPTAC-related Mission Support Leadership Summit on April 19. “It’s time we accelerate change to tackle our problems and prepare our Air Force for the future so we can better compete, deter, and fight and win America’s wars.”
Conference planning in support of this year’s theme, “The Agile Combat Support We Need: Offsetting Risk,” began more than eight months ago with a call for topics.
“We started with 54 topics last summer, put it out to the enterprise, major commands and Air Staff, then narrowed it down to four problems the Air Force has to get after to accelerate change or lose,” said **Maj. Gen. Tom Wilcox**, AFIMSC commander, during his opening remarks. “We think these (teams) and their chairs absolutely did a phenomenal job. They did all the research, they did the analyses and they are ready to present.”
Cross-functional teams of subject matter experts from across the Air Force made up the four teams whose members faced the unique challenge of addressing their topics in today’s **COVID-19** work environment.
“2021 has been an absolute huge success,” said Maj. Michael Schumacher, overall coordinator for the event. “After I-WEPTAC was canceled in 2020 due to the pandemic, we were forced to go back to the drawing board and reimagine what I-WEPTAC could look like if we were forced to go a more virtual route.”
The online forum with many moving parts was an unequivocal success. The briefers delivered their presentations and confidently managed the subsequent question-and-answer sessions with senior leaders. This was a huge accomplishment, according to Capt. Jamela Satterfield, chairperson for topic 2, who admitted things were challenging at the start of the process.
“The experience was kind of rocky at first, not knowing what to do and where I was going (with) this huge Air Force problem,” she said. “Once I got the team built and realized there are a lot of smarter people in the Air Force than me, it got easy. Leveraging folks around the Air Force and their expertise, meeting different people and learning from them was a good experience.”
This year’s teams provided solutions to the following:
Topic 1: Right Size the Foundation: Optimize Installation & Mission Support for the Air Force We Need
Topic 2: Strategic Mission Dependency Index for Targeted National Defense Strategy Investment
Topic 3: Supply Chain Vulnerabilities in the Future “Way We Fight”
Topic 4: Institutionalize Readiness as a Foundational Competency to Develop Mission-Ready Airmen
The first topic addressed the issue of finding processes or programs no longer practical to fund.
“What are the things we need to stop funding because we just can’t afford them anymore? We need to find these resources and reinvest them elsewhere,” said Maj. Steve Emborski, the 2021 I-WEPTAC team coordinator.
The topic 1 and topic 2 teams worked closely together because of similarities in their topics with a focus on how to identify the process for determining how to best invest scarce funding against competing priorities.
Emborski said the third topic focused on getting capabilities to the warfighter during the fight by taking a proactive posture to have advanced, detailed plans in place.
The fourth team “sought to find ways of raising our level of readiness by refining and institutionalizing the way our Airmen shoot, move, communicate and adapt to a changing situation” in order to make them more ready to “fight the fight tomorrow,” he said.
A senior-leader I-WEPTAC Review Board took place immediately after the out-briefs to determine how the teams’ recommendations would get vetted for potential implementation. Designated teams will now convene to study the proposed solutions to make those determinations.
“I’m super proud of the team for knocking it out of the park and being able to bring I-WEPTAC to the Air and Space Force in 2021,” Wilcox said. “We’re ready to act, and we’re ready to accelerate and implement change.”FS 



USAF 



AF 



Air Force 



AFMC 



Air Force Materiel Command 



innovation 



solutions 



I-WEPTAC 



AFIMSC 



Air Force Installation and Mission Support Center 



weapons 



tactics 



Conference Featured News
        Senior Leader Priorities
                DAF leaders talk budget, reoptimizing the force
                    
                    DAF leaders speak at National Character and Leadership Symposium
                    
                    DAF members recognized during BEYA STEM awards
                    
                    DAF senior enlisted advisors discuss Airmen, Guardians in the fight
                    
                    SecAF Kendall AFA Warfare Symposium Q&A: Reoptimizing for Great Power CompetitionInnovation
                AFWERX director discusses role of tech startups, quick innovation in Great Power Competition
                    
                    DAF delivers lethality at the speed of data during Project Convergence Capstone 4
                    
                    DAF welcomes industry partners to HQ development program
                    
                    DAF announces Spark Tank 2024 finalists
                    
                    Chief Digital, Artificial Intelligence Office to host hackathon in HawaiiMAJCOM News
                Safety enterprise announces new mission, vision, goals in 2024 strategic plan
                    
                    Air Combat Command welcomes new commander
                    
                    USAFE-AFAFRICA commander discusses Integrated Air, Missile Defense during Munich Security Conference
                    
                    Flosi to AFMC family: Embrace change, make every day count
                    
                    AMC rises to increasing global tension
 Quick Links
AccessibilityContact UsEqual OpportunityFOIA | Privacy | Section 508Information QualityInspector GeneralJAG Court-Martial DocketLink DisclaimerNo FEAR ActOpen GovernmentOSI Tip LinePlain LanguageQuestionsResilienceRSSSite MapVeterans Crisis LineCareers
Join the Air ForceAir Force BenefitsAir Force CareersAir Force ReserveAir National GuardCivilian ServiceConnect
            Get Social with Us
            
            Official United States Air Force Website
    Hosted by Defense Media Activity - WEB.mil