Air Force, civilian staff dispute status of China Aerospace Studies Institute

On Oct. 1, the Air Force will eliminate all 10 civilian positions at the China Aerospace Studies Institute, the Air University center that publishes unclassified research on the People’s Liberation Army’s air, space and missile forces. Its director said the move will effectively end the institute, even as the service says CASI’s mission will continue.

“As a part of the ongoing civilian restructure within Air Education and Training Command, civilian positions will no longer be assigned to China Aerospace Studies Institute (CASI),” an Air Force spokesperson said in a statement to Defense News on Tuesday. “The CASI mission continues, with the organization leveraging assigned military service members to accomplish its objectives.”

Civilians affected by the restructuring will stay in their current positions until further notice and will be evaluated for reassignment, the spokesperson said.

CASI Director Brendan Mulvaney described the fallout differently. All of the institute’s civilian billets are being eliminated, “effectively ending CASI,” he said Tuesday. No military positions are affected, he said, noting the institute has two master sergeant billets and a deputy position that has remained unfilled for over a year.

Asked how the cut would impact the institute’s research, Mulvaney said, “All of the research has always been done by the civilian personnel.”

According to Mulvaney, the decision was made by the previous Air University commander and forwarded by AETC under a requirement to cut civilian jobs across the Department of the Air Force. The quota originated with the Air Force’s manpower and reserve affairs office, he said.

The cut “had nothing to do with CASI’s mission,” Mulvaney said, but due to the fact that the institute does not produce professional military education students, which is Air University’s primary mission.

Asked whether another organization would take on CASI’s China aerospace research, Mulvaney said, “Nothing has been identified.” It is also unknown whether CASI’s reports, translations and course materials will remain publicly available, or whether its website will remain online, he said.

The cuts became public Monday, when a note from a CASI civilian circulated on social media. The employee wrote that every CASI civilian position would be unfunded as of Oct. 1 and that the staff would become “surplus federal employees,” a federal personnel term for workers whose positions are being eliminated.

The note described CASI’s future as “uncertain,” adding that “CASI punched above its weight given our small team and budget.”

Will Yale, a Navy surface warfare officer who posted the note on X, wrote that it was “extremely unfortunate and regrettable” that the Department of the Air Force “has decided to shutter” CASI. He described the institute as one of the most prominent in its field and wrote that it had “measurably increased knowledge about the PLA” inside the U.S. government and outside it.

Andrew Erickson, a Naval War College professor and CASI associate, noted that the news is “specific to CASI only.” Mulvaney said the action does not affect the Navy’s China Maritime Studies Institute, the Army War College’s China Landpower Studies Center or the Marine Corps War College’s China Warfighting Initiative.

CASI was established in 2017 and formally chartered on June 15, 2021, by then-Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. The charter tasked the institute with studying “everything that flies” in China, calling CASI the Air Force’s leading center for the study of China and its aerospace capabilities. It has offices at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, and Fort McNair in Washington.

The institute’s research was unclassified by design, according to its charter, which directed CASI to use publicly available native-language sources and publish its findings. CASI translated PLA textbooks and doctrine, published reference primers and ran a free three-day PLA Fundamentals course that required no security clearance.

Its biennial CASI Conference, held in May at National Defense University, drew more than 250 attendees and featured the release of the fifth edition of its “PLA Aerospace Power” primer, CASI said.

In 2025, nearly 80,000 people visited CASI’s website and downloaded more than 50,000 reports, according to the institute. The site remains live and posted a new paper on Sept. 21, “From Vision to Vigilance: How Beijing’s Space-Science Roadmap Builds a Real-Time Kill Web.”

CASI had already lost staff a year ago. In an October 2025 quarterly update, the institute said a Defense Department efficiency drive had eliminated its director of education and education program manager positions as the Department of the Air Force was “reorganizing, inactivating, and realigning organizations.” CASI said things were “in flux” and it would provide a status update once it knew more.

Ryan Fedasiuk, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, called the move “a devastating loss for the analytic community” and an “incomprehensible decision.”

The Air Force said CASI’s mission will continue, with military members carrying on the work Mulvaney said civilians have always done.