If we should have to fight, we should do so from the neck up, instead of from the neck down. The overall mission of education and training in the Air Force is to leverage the most powerful factor in the warfighting equation-human potential. As we move into the twenty-first century and the information age, it will continue to be people who must fight and win our nation's wars, and the military must continue to prepare its warriors to accomplish this awesome task. The growing possibility of engagement in nontraditional military missions emphasizes the need for a competently trained and thoroughly educated force prepared to meet a variety of future challenges. It is for this purpose that the ASF of 2025 will continue to value, support, and invest in the education and training of its members.
Training is the process of teaching others specific skills to be performed under defined conditions.
It focuses on the psychomotor domain of learning and on performing specified tasks in specified ways to a predetermined level or standard. Education, on the other hand, focuses on the intellectual or cognitive domain of learning. It is the process of preparing others to solve problems and deal with situations not yet known or defined. It is about learning how to learn and discovering what we do not know so that we may survive in the future. Although the mission of education and training will remain essentially the same in 2025, new goals will likely evolve as a result of our growing dependence on information.