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The Institutional Requirements Process Compounds Undermanning Throughout the Air Force

• Undermanning and insufficient funding affect career fields and institutional requirements throughout the Air Force. There is not enough funding or personnel to fill all the jobs that the service has identified.
• Institutional requirements are generally not taken into account in restructuring and force management decisions or manpower analyses, but doing so would address and help alleviate chronic undermanning.
• There is little formal documentation or justification for filling institutional requirements with active-duty officers. Detailed information on these requirements could indicate whether some positions could be filled by other types of personnel, such as reservists or civilians.

Institutional Requirements Pose a Challenge to Career Fields and Individual Officers' Career Paths

• Career fields must share personnel to fill institutional requirements, and this can lead to undermanning in these fields and a reluctance among career field managers to make personnel available to fill these positions.
• Unlike core career fields, institutional requirements have no centralized management structure. Without a career field manager, the organizations that depend on these requirements to meet their staffing needs may be saddled with personnel who are not qualified to fill the positions.
• Some institutional requirements are more difficult to fill than others. For example, academic positions have strict qualifications and may represent a significant diversion from an officer's chosen career path.
• The Air Force's current system for filling institutional requirements may prevent officers who wish to extend their time in these positions from doing so.