Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin told soldiers in a recent memo that officials are focused on updating family and mental health resources for soldiers and continue to emphasize the urgent need to prepare for a possible future conflict in the Pacific.

The memo, first provided to Military.com and made public Tuesday, was titled “Realigning Family Readiness.” Coming as part of the Air Force’s recent restructuring to prepare for great power competition — the Air Force’s term for increased spending and strategies against adversaries like Russia and, most importantly, China — it offered a glimpse into how the Air Force plans to support its soldiers and their families during sweeping changes.

“While our efforts to prepare the force for future challenges are essential, they will be incomplete without a parallel focus on preparing families,” Allvin wrote. “To rise to the occasion during this critical time, we must ensure that families and communities connected to the Air Force are as well prepared as our Soldiers are for the potential challenges that lie ahead.”

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Numerous programs have been introduced and revised in recent months, and Allvin indicated that more are currently in the works, including merging the Air Force’s True North programs with the Operational Support Team programs to best support Soldiers and their families.

Allvin pointed to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when he served as a squadron commander at Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota, as an example of “how collectively unprepared” soldiers and their families were for this change.

“We cannot afford to be in that situation again,” Allvin wrote. “The lessons I learned then have been validated in the years since and serve as motivation for what we must accomplish in the Air Force community when it comes to family preparedness.”

Earlier this year, sweeping changes to the force occurred. In February, Allvin and other Department of the Air Force leaders implemented numerous changes, including bringing back warrant officers, reorganizing training organizations and creating new offices. The changes all underscore the need to prepare for a looming conflict: possible control and invasion of Taiwan by the Chinese Communist Party.

The memo is one of the first indications of some family and mental health-related changes the police department is making as part of its restructuring efforts.

Katherine Kuzminski, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security think tank who studies military and family policy, told Military.com on Tuesday that the memo’s comparison to the way military members and their families were caught off guard by the 2001 terrorist attacks was striking.

“I think that’s an apt comparison, if only because the military was much more domestic in the lead-up to 9/11 and wasn’t deployed in as large numbers as we were. It was really important that maybe the support structures weren’t in place,” Kuzminski said. “The family readiness groups handle everything from training and counseling families on how to do all the paperwork that comes with deployment to developing a family care plan and a family action plan.”

One change was the renaming of the Key Spouse Program to the Commander’s Key Support Program. This program helps families, spouses and single Airmen access resources.

Volunteer opportunities have been expanded to include more than just wives and husbands and now include participation by pilots, guardians, federal employees and family members, regardless of marital status, the service announced earlier this year.

Kuzminski said this is necessary because many military spouses are currently working and do not have the time or resources to fully devote themselves to these programs.

“I think it’s significant that they’re changing the name Key Spouse Program,” Kuzminski said. “Because that’s another area where it’s become clear over the last 23 years since 9/11 that society has really changed, and the family preparation groups of all the armed services have for a long time depended on the married service member and their spouse not working.”

Allvin says the service has also redesigned the Relocation Assistance Program, which provides resources and information to families relocating permanently.

A related change is that Airmen and guardians with family members completing professional military education or training can now receive a per diem allowance equal to the basic housing allowance while continuing to receive a housing allowance for their families at their previous duty station.

The Air Force is also in the process of reorganizing how mental health resources are provided to units. Allvin explained that the Air Force is in the process of merging the existing True North mental health programs and the Operational Support Team programs to create a new resource called “True North +,” which will allow officials to quickly dispatch chaplains and counselors to affected units.

The service has also updated its Resilience website to connect soldiers and families with resources, “including crisis management tools (e.g., suicide hotline number, Military OneSource, Sexual Assault Prevention and Response, Civilian Employee Assistance Program, etc.) and how-to guides,” he wrote.

Allvin concluded his memo by urging everyone, not just family members, to be prepared for potential crises and know where to best find help.

“Our service needs all members of the Air Force community, including military members, civilian employees, family members and community partners, to work together to improve our resilience and prepare for crisis situations,” he wrote. “To accomplish this, I encourage everyone to contribute to family preparedness by engaging, innovating and preparing for critical moments.”

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