Cropsey confirmed as Air Force acquisition military deputy
The Senate has confirmed Maj. Gen. Luke Cropsey as the Air Force’s top military official overseeing the service’s research, development and procurement efforts.
Cropsey was nominated by President Donald Trump to serve as the military deputy of the Air Force’s acquisition, technology and logistics directorate at the Pentagon in December. His confirmation and promotion to three-star general was approved by voice vote Friday evening.
Since 2022, Cropsey has led the Air Force’s integrated program executive office for command, control, communications and battle management (C3BM) — a sprawling enterprise that includes dozens of individual programs of record. The office’s primary goal is development of the DAF Battle Network, which is the service’s contribution to the Defense Department’s Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2) warfighting construct.
Cropsey was brought into his previous role during a time when the Air Force was struggling to deliver on a number of its command-and-control modernization efforts. Following a reorganization of the entire enterprise, he spent subsequent years shifting the PEO’s acquisition strategy to focus on rapid and continuous capability delivery.
During his tenure at the helm of the C3BM enterprise, Cropsey helped bring a number of new capabilities to warfighters — including the prototype Tactical Operations Center – Light (TOC-L) kits and Cloud-Based Command and Control (CBC2).
Cropsey’s acquisition experience will be crucial in his new role in the Air Force’s AT&L directorate. He enters the job as the entire DOD shifts to a more agile and iterative approach to its procurement efforts.
“This appointment is a direct reflection of the energy, talent, and ingenuity that are the wellspring of C3BM’s incredible people,” Cropsey said in an Air Force news release. “It has been the privilege of my career leading this incredible team over the past three years. We’ve literally reshaped the way the Department thinks about and executes system-of-systems integration in the pursuit of a more lethal and more agile joint and coalition force.”
For now, Cropsey will report directly to William Bailey, who is currently performing the duties of assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology and logistics. The Trump administration has yet to nominate a civilian to serve in the role permanently.
Brig. Gen. Jason Voorheis is now serving as portfolio acquisition executive for C3BM.
