Subscribe
The Air Force’s shift to Agile Combat Employment (ACE) in support of Joint All Domain Operations reflects a fundamental shift in the operating environment defined by a transparent battlefield, denied sanctuary, extended adversarial range, advanced Anti-Access/Area-Denial, and contested logistics. In this environment, Civil Engineers must be more than technical experts; they must make rapid, autonomous decisions under pressure to survive. To effectively accomplish this, Civil Engineers need a simple, flexible decision-making framework, and adapting the Army’s sustainment principles provides a practical, mission-focused solution.
The Need for a Decision-Making Framework Despite the shift in the operational environment, the Air Force Pamphlet (AFPAM) 10-219 series and the Air Force Handbook (AFH) 10-222 series outlining Civil Engineer operations in contingency and expeditionary environments have largely remained unchanged for two decades. While the technical content of these documents remains relevant, these documents were primarily intended as instruction for the employment of Basic Expeditionary Airfield Resource assets in U.S. Central Command under the assumption of air superiority and relatively secure basing. However, the vast array of operational situations and the development of ACE negate these assumptions, requiring a shift in the decision-making formulated from these documents. Today’s operating environment requires Civil Engineers to balance competing priorities, resulting in beddown decisions shifting from “right or wrong” to the “most right” for the current operation.
A Proven Model: Army Sustainment Principles To navigate these tradeoffs, Air Force Civil Engineers should adopt and adapt a proven decision-making framework from the joint force: the Army’s sustainment principles. The Army’s nine principles of sustainment enable freedom of action, extended operational reach, and prolonged endurance in support of operations. Although these are not Air Force Civil Engineer tasks, the nine principles can be applied to Civil Engineer decision-making to optimize actions and resource allocation to establish, operate, or robust an air base. These nine principles as defined by Army Field Manual 4-0, Sustainment Operations, are as follows:
Anticipation. Sustainment leaders must visualize and prepare resources for future operations.
Continuity. Sustainment leaders must strive to seek integrated and focused networks linking sustainment to operations.
Responsiveness. Sustainment leaders must be able to deliver capabilities and resources to meet a rapidly changing situation.
Integration. Sustainment leaders must integrate sustainment with joint and multinational partners to maximize effects and resources.
Synchronization. Sustainment leaders must be able to synchronize sustainment actions in time, space, and purpose in support of plans and operations.
Improvisation. Sustainment leaders must be able to improvise operational and tactical actions to meet a changing operational environment.
Simplicity. Sustainment leaders must remove unnecessary complexity of processes and procedures to deliver effective support.
Economy. Sustainment leaders must practice efficient management, discipline, prioritization, and allocation of resources.
Survivability. Sustainment leaders must incorporate protective measures to increase survivability in all training and operations.
Understanding the Tradeoffs While these principles are valuable individually, in practice, the Army does not apply them in isolation but rather applies them simultaneously as tradeoffs to be optimized. For example, consolidating maintenance resources in a single location improves Economy and Simplicity because it reduces redundancy and logistics complexities. However, dispersing these same maintenance resources across multiple sites enhances Survivability because the dispersal reduces the likelihood of a total loss from a single strike. Therefore, a sustainment leader must weigh the tradeoffs for a consolidated or distributed site. For this tradeoff, there is no “right answer,” but rather an opportunity to make decisions that optimize the principles for combat effectiveness and adapt to the operational environment.
This dynamic can be directly applied to Civil Engineer operations. In the example above, “maintenance resources” could easily be replaced with Rapid Airfield Damage Recovery equipment, power generation, or emergency services and the same principles and tradeoffs would still apply. Civil Engineers must balance tradeoffs against competing priorities, and having a decision model will aid in this effort.
Adapting the Principles for Civil Engineer Operations The Army’s Sustainment Principles should be adapted to shift from a logistics focus to an engineer focus by reframing the principles to emphasize mission support, infrastructure resilience, emergency services, and operational integration. The updates below reflect these changes to be more applicable to engineer operations.
Anticipation. Engineers must balance current and future mission requirements in support of operations.
Continuity. Engineers must maintain resilient and/or redundant systems and processes to ensure uninterrupted emergency services and infrastructure services for mission operations.
Responsiveness. Engineers must deliver capabilities and resources to meet dynamic mission needs by continuously evaluating and prioritizing the most critical requirement.
Integration. Engineers must integrate all Civil Engineer specialties with direct and indirect combat support operations to maximize effects and resources.
Synchronization. Engineers must synchronize actions across time, space, and purpose to enable operations and mission generation.
Improvisation. Engineers must adapt operational and tactical actions to overcome limited resources, infrastructure challenges, and changing operational and emergency requirements.
Simplicity. Engineers must streamline processes to create and communicate clear priorities for mission execution.
Economy. Engineers must efficiently manage personnel, equipment, and materiel while minimizing waste and maximizing impact.
Survivability. Engineers must design and execute processes and plans that enhance force protection, resilience, and the ability to survive and operate in a contested environment. These principles provide a decision-making framework for Civil Engineers to weigh tradeoffs to optimize personnel, equipment, and materiel during conflict.
A Practical Mnemonic: “A CRISIS ExistS” To move these principles from academic to operational, they need to be easily recalled and applied in high-stress environments. Civil Engineers need a simple, cognitive anchor, and the Army’s combat-proven informal mnemonic for these principles, A CRISIS ExistS, provides that anchor.
Created by COL (retired) Dr. Brent Coryell, the mnemonic compresses the nine principles into a single mental trigger that enables Civil Engineers to rapidly apply the framework during time-sensitive decisions. Shifting the principles from a static list to an active tool allows Civil Engineers to systematically evaluate and balance operational tradeoffs to optimize mission impact. By adopting A CRISIS ExistS, Civil Engineers gain a practical decision-making tool that improves both the speed and quality of decisions in contested environments.
Conclusion: Flexibility over Rigidity As the operating environment evolves beyond the original assumptions of AFPAM 10-219 and AFH 10-222, Civil Engineers must navigate increasingly complex operational decisions. As speed and adaptability become even more critical to survival and mission success, Civil Engineers need flexible, yet steadfast, principles to guide decisions. Adapting the Army’s sustainment principles to the AF Civil Engineer mission effectively fills this critical gap. Although being driven by new operating challenges like ACE, the principles apply across the conflict continuum and complement existing technical data in Civil Engineer publications. Incorporating them into education, training, and operations will better prepare Civil Engineers to think critically, balance tradeoffs, and deliver mission-focused engineering solutions in any environment.
When A CRISIS ExistS, Engineers Lead the Way!
U.S. Air Force article by Maj. Randi M. Brown
Bibliography Solseth, Mark, and Brent Coryell. “A CRISIS Exists: An Easy Mnemonic to Remember the Sustainment Principles.” Army Sustainment. May-June 2018: 66-69.
Headquarters, Department of the Air Force. Agile Combat Employment. Air Force Doctrine Note 1- 21. U.S. Air Force, 2022.
Headquarters, Department of the Army. Sustainment Operations. Field Manual (FM) 4-0. Army Doctrine Publication Directorate, 2026.
U.S. Army Transformation and Training Command. “The Operational Environment 2024-2034: Large- Scale Combat Operations.” TRADOC Pamphlet 525-92, 2024.
| Date Taken: | 05.06.2026 |
| Date Posted: | 05.06.2026 11:33 |
| Story ID: | 564521 |
| Location: | FORT LEAVENWORTH, KANSAS, US |
| Web Views: | 27 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, A CRISIS ExistS: Adapting Army Sustainment Principles for Air Force Civil Engineers, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
