Air Force Eliminates All 10 Civilian Posts at China Aerospace Studies Institute; Director Says Mission Ends Oct. 1

The Air Force will eliminate all 10 civilian positions at the China Aerospace Studies Institute on October 1 as part of a service-wide civilian restructuring, though the service claims CASI's mission will continue with military staff. CASI Director Brendan Mulvaney disputes this, stating the cuts will effectively end the institute since all research has been conducted by civilian personnel.

The cut exposes a structural mismatch between how the Air Force budgets civilian expertise and how intelligence production actually works. CASI's two military master sergeants cannot replace a team of civilian subject-matter experts whose research has measurably shaped strategic understanding of the PLA. If the institute's public reporting goes dark, the analytical loss is not confined to DoD — Naval War College and think-tank researchers who depend on CASI's translations and open-source analysis will lose a critical input to their own work, widening the information asymmetry between classified and unclassified assessments of Chinese air power.

WHY IT MATTERS

CASI is the Defense Department's primary unclassified PLA aerospace research capability, and eliminating its entire civilian workforce removes the analytical capacity that has shaped how the U.S. government understands Chinese air and space capabilities.

The cut was driven by an Air Force manpower quota unrelated to CASI's mission — it doesn't produce professional military education, Air University's primary function — meaning the institute was sacrificed to meet a headcount reduction, not a strategic decision. No other organization has been designated to assume CASI's research portfolio, and the future of its published reports, translations, and course materials remains unknown.

WHAT THIS DOESN’T TELL US

Has the Air Force identified a successor organization to maintain unclassified PLA aerospace research, or will this capability simply disappear from the unclassified space?

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