With a challenging future of decreasing budgets, potential peer competitors, and continued global terrorism, the Air Force needs strategic leadership, like the original airpower enthusiasts, to generate new strategies and maximize airpower contributions to national security. The Air Force needs to encourage and develop these future strategic leaders. How should the Air Force encourage and develop future strategic leaders? The Air Force should remove the current impediments to early strategic leader development and pursue career long engagement with a focus on tools like social media to help rebuild the mentoring and self-education program. The thinking skills associated with strategic leadership are unique. Strategic thinking skills take time to develop and mature. Past literature provides narrow recommendations for encouraging and developing future strategic leaders without looking at the problem systemically. It takes career long engagement to encourage and develop future strategic leaders. While changes to the assignment system and education system provide opportunities to develop breadth and strategic thinking skills, less emphasis on below primary zone promotions is vital to enable future strategic leaders the time to pursue these opportunities. One area for increased study is the use of social media. Social media have the ability to encourage young officers, provides a framework for career long mentoring and can influence strategic leader development in both mentee and mentors.

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