14.1 What We Know: Priorities & Innovation

Knowledge Is Power

AFH 1 opens Chapter 16 with a framing paragraph that is quoted often enough to be worth reading closely: "For more than 70 years, Americans have asked Airmen to be the sentinels of air and cyberspace for the nation, delivering unmatched capabilities and support to the Joint Force in defending our homeland, owning the high ground, and projecting power with our allies."

The three-part mission phrasing — defending our homeland, owning the high ground, and projecting power with our allies — is the kind of parallel construction the PFE lifts verbatim.

The handbook then states the imperative that motivates the whole chapter: "To remain dominant, we must maintain our airpower advantages over potential adversaries. We must embrace change and facilitate a culture that embodies courage and innovation."

Note the pairing at the end — courage and innovation, not innovation alone. That pairing matters because everything else in Chapter 16 (critical thinking in groups, dissent, groupthink, the culture of yes) is about the courage required to actually contribute an idea.

Department of the Air Force Priorities

AFH 1 states: "It is our agile and innovative Airmen and Guardians who power the Department of the Air Force. Everything Airmen and Guardians do should advance or augment DAF priorities." The priorities exist "to help ensure our Air and Space Force remains lethal and ready when the nation calls."

Four priorities. Two things make this list testable. First, an item may offer five or three priorities, or substitute plausible-sounding alternatives such as "accelerate change" or "increase readiness." Second, the exact wording of priority 2 — "modernize the Air and Space Force we need" — reads awkwardly enough that candidates often mis-recall it as simply "modernize."

Notice how the four priorities distribute: one is about a new service (Space Force), one about materiel and capability (modernize), one about people (leaders and families), and one about relationships beyond the service (allies and partners). That structure is a reliable memory hook if the exact wording slips.

The Chief of Staff Professional Reading Program

In 1996, General Fogleman created the Chief of Staff, USAF Professional Reading Program. Two facts to hold: the year (1996) and the creator (General Fogleman) — the same officer quoted in Chapter 1 on the profession of arms, and the 15th Chief of Staff. Chapter 1 and Chapter 16 are the only two places Fogleman appears in the tested material, and the exam sometimes pairs them.

Purpose: to "develop a common frame of reference among USAF members — officers, enlisted, and civilians — to help each become better, more effective advocates of airpower." Note the audience is all three cohorts, not just officers.

What the program can do: it "can help launch a career-long reading habit or supplement previous reading materials."

Topic coverage: although the majority of the material details airpower from its genesis to recent times, topics also include:

• Insight into USAF history
• Analysis of ongoing conflicts and their relevancy to the future
• Organizational and leadership success stories
• Lessons learned from recent conflicts

AFH 1 adds that "each Chief of Staff of the Air Force has subsequently enhanced and continued the program with current and relevant material for the force," and that the program currently includes books, films, documentaries, briefings, presentations, publications, journals, and other online resources — no longer books alone.

Where to find it: the reading list and a brief summary of new selections are on the AF Portal and the CSAF Leadership Library.

The Guardian and Airmen Innovation Network

GAIN is "the Department of the Air Force innovation program that solicits suggestions and ideas from Airmen."

AFH 1 lists what those ideas are meant to contribute to:

"Enterprise replication" is the phrase most likely to be tested, because it is unusual and because it names something distinct from a local improvement — the point is to spread a good idea across the enterprise, which is the same principle as Step 8 of the practical problem-solving method in Chapter 13 ("standardize successful processes") and the continuous improvement concept that "efficiencies should be replicated to the extent practical."

Don't Confuse the Innovation Channels

AFH 1 names several related programs across the tested chapters, and the exam trades on the overlap:

If a stem asks specifically about the DAF program that solicits ideas from Airmen, the keyed answer is GAIN.

How Section 16A Sets Up the Rest of the Chapter

Section 16A is deliberately short because its job is to establish a premise: the Air Force has priorities, has a body of professional knowledge, and has a formal channel for ideas. The remaining three sections then deal with the harder question — how an individual Airman actually thinks well enough to contribute something useful.

• 16B, Cognitive Processes, addresses the mental frames, group dynamics, and decision traps that distort thinking
• 16C, Informed Decision-Making, supplies the tools — digital literacy, analytical thinking, and the Osborn-Parnes creative problem-solving model
• 16D, What We Don't Know, addresses uncertainty, empowerment, and the culture that lets ideas surface

Keep that arc in mind. Items drawn from Chapter 16 often test whether you can place a concept in the right section — for example, GAIN is a channel (16A), groupthink is a trap (16B), the CRAAP test is a tool (16C), and empowerment is a culture (16D).