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An analysis of the various organizational structures used to support aircraft maintenance in the Air Force is presented. The author examines the evolution of the different concepts used in the three primary flying major commands, MAC, SAC and TAC, beginning in 1947, just prior to the Air Force becoming a separate service. The evolutionary analysis reveals that the Air Force alternated several times between a centralized and decentralized maintenance concept before arriving at the present situation. Currently, each major command has developed a maintenance organizational concept uniquely tailored to its particular mission. The author concludes that this is the most effective way to manage and organize USAF aircraft maintenance organizations and no attempt should be made to standardize concepts Air Force wide. The paper concludes with a discussion of how three future events may effect aircraft maintenance organizational concepts. Those three events are consolidation of maintenance AFSCs, budgetary constraints, and reliability and maintainability initiatives. (SDW)