Air Mobility Command is moving to preposition equipment, expand interoperability with allies and push new connectivity standards after lessons from this year’s Department-Level Exercise series, senior U.S. Air Force leaders said at the Air and Space Forces Association’s Air, Space and Cyber Conference on Sept. 24 in National Harbor.
Gen. Johnny Lamontagne, AMC commander, joined Gen. Kevin Schneider of Pacific Air Forces, Gen. Adrian Spain of Air Combat Command, and Lt. Gen. David Miller Jr. of Space Operations Command on a panel titled “Exercising at Scale: What We’re Learning,” reflecting on takeaways from the recent 2025 Department-Level Exercise series.
Lamontagne said the exercises underscored the urgency of staging materiel in the Indo-Pacific to support rapid operations in contested logistics environments. “From a lesson learned perspective, it really affirmed that the path we’re on is the right path, and the importance of prepositioning equipment in the Pacific,” Lamontagne explained. “We’re moving out right now, prepositioning 25K loaders, 10K forklifts, tow vehicles and a whole bunch of aircraft ground equipment to support the forces in the Pacific.”
Schneider echoed the point, noting that forward-positioned gear is critical if conflict compresses timelines. “For everything that we did across the Pacific this summer, which was incredibly enabled by Air Mobility Command, there is still a huge demand for stuff to be in position from day one,” Schneider said. “With a contested environment, the enemy may not give us the luxury of time, space or distance to flow stuff at the speed that we want. So, we have to be very deliberate and smart about where we put kit so the units that are falling into their fighting positions are ready to go immediately.”
Lamontagne also pointed to the Total Force, commercial partners and allies as central to operating under threat, highlighting joint flying and shared tactics, techniques and procedures. “It is our responsibility to help our allies and partners and share tactics, techniques and procedures, but we are also on the receiving end of some of their capabilities,” Lamontagne said. “Our Canadian allies have some really robust aeromedical evacuation capabilities that actually surpass ours in some areas, and they were flying in the back of our C-130s and C-17s which was a great opportunity to cross talk and all of us get better together.”
On modernization, Lamontagne said integrating mobility assets into command, control and communications networks demands open, adaptable systems. “We’ve been working hard on a connectivity journey that is not going to just help our Air Force, it’s going to help the joint force,” Lamontagne said. “Open architectures and government-owned architecture, so that we can continue to move out and change and update at the time and tempo of our choosing, is really important going forward.”
He added that large-scale, realistic exercises that stress logistics against credible threats are essential to refining joint and allied mobility tactics and processes. “Our United States Air Force is the only air force on the planet that can project forces at that speed, at that scale, and at that range,” Lamontagne stated. “This exercise gave us the opportunity to practice week after week, over the course of about a 6-week period, to make our Air Force a lot stronger.”
