I used to work for what was then the 1st Space Wing. My job (Space Surveillance Program Manager) required me to work with my Wing, HQ Air Force Space Command, and HQ US Space Command. It was frequently a bureaucratic nightmare.

As a Captain in 1SWG, I had to get Space Surveillance issues cleared through my own chain of command. That would take from hours to days. Ever staff officer in the chain had to justify his/her existance by micromanaging the process. It then had to go through the chain of command at AFSPACECOM before going to USSPACECOM. It frequently took from weeks to months to get even a trivial issue cleared all the way through USSPACECOM. I once sat in on a meeting where several Bird Colonels argued for over an hour about whether to allow one of our most important sensor sites to spend $500 to ship a surplus computer to their site for backup use. If you figured the hourly rate for everyone in that meeting, we spent far more than $500 arguing over such a trivial issue.

Central Command is, to the best of my knowledge, a joint service command. It sounds like the staff weeniedom is ruling the roost there. As a result, the field commanders aren't getting the authorizations to do their jobs. Of course, that doesn't shield them from blame for not getting things done.