Lt. Gen. Leah G. Lauderback, deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and cyber effects operations; Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse, director’s advisor for military affairs at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence; and Maj. Gen. Gregory J. Gagnon, deputy chief of space operations for intelligence, talked about cooperation across the intelligence community and the intelligence threats posed by China during a panel on ‘Threats, Targets, and Intelligence Advantage’ at the AFA Warfare Symposium on March 7, 2023. Retired Maj. Gen. Jim Marrs, director of intelligence analyses division for IDA, moderated the discussion. Watch the video or read the transcript below.
Maj. Gen. Jim Marrs, USAF (Ret.):
Everybody who made the trek get some extra fitness points here to Colorado C. So thanks for everyone doing that and chief, especially you. So Airmen, Guardians, and guests, good morning and welcome to this AFA Warfare Symposium Panel on Threats, Targets and Intelligence Advantage. I’m Jim Marrs and it’s my honor to serve as moderator for this esteemed group of panel members who are extraordinarily well qualified to speak to the wide ranging and mission critical topics that are the focus of today’s panel. Many of you in this symposium have heard speakers already underscore the crucial role of intelligence as integral to the future of our space and air forces. We’re going to dig deep in that area today. But first I’d like to start with some brief introductions. To my far right, I’m pleased to introduce Lieutenant General Jeffrey A. Kruse. Lieutenant General Kruse is the director’s advisor for military affairs at the office of the director of National Intelligence.
Maj. Gen. Jim Marrs, USAF (Ret.):
In this role, Lieutenant General Kruse serves as a DNI’s advisor on Department of Defense Activities and Issues, synchronizes DNI efforts supporting DOD, and drives intelligence community DOD enterprise integration in partnership with executive leaders across the IC and DOD. Prior to his current assignment, Lieutenant General Kruse served as the director for Defense Intelligence war fighters support in the office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security. To General Kruse’s left, I’m pleased to introduce Lieutenant General Leah G. Lauderback. Lieutenant General Lauderback is the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance and Cyber Effects Operations, headquarters, US Air Force. Lieutenant General Lauderback is responsible to the secretary and chief of staff of the Air Force for policy formulation, planning, evaluation, oversight and leadership of the Air Force’s ISR operations, cyber effects and war fighter communications operations and electromagnetic spectrum superiority operations.
Maj. Gen. Jim Marrs, USAF (Ret.):
As the Air Force’s Senior Intelligence Officer, she’s directly responsible to the director of National Intelligence and the Under Secretary of defense for intelligence and security. Prior to her current assignment, Lieutenant General Lauderback took a lead role in standing up the US Space Command as well as the US Space Force. In both organizations she served as the first senior intelligence officer. To General Lauderback’s left, I’m pleased to introduce our third distinguished panel member, Major General Gregory J. Gagnon. Major General Gagnon is the Deputy Chief of Space Operations for Intelligence, US Space Force. In this capacity, Major General Gagnon serves as a senior intelligence officer to the chief of Space Operations and is responsible to the Secretary of the Air Force and the Chief of Space Operations for Intelligence policy oversight and guidance. He exercises overall responsibility for the Space Force Intelligence community element, which is the 18th and newest member of the intelligence community. Additionally, he serves as the chief service cryptologic component with delegated authorities from the director of the National Security Agency. Prior to this assignment, Major General Gagnon served as the director of Intelligence, United States Space Command.
Maj. Gen. Jim Marrs, USAF (Ret.):
The AFA Warfighting Symposium colleagues and guests, please join me in a warm welcome for our panel members. Now I think as all of you are well aware, we have limited time to cover a great deal of territory. So we’re going to jump right into questions. I’d like to start with the first word in our panel’s title, threats and ask Lieutenant General Kruse to lead off, followed by Lieutenant General Lauderback and Major General Gagnon with your thoughts on threats as they apply broadly to this symposium’s focus on dominant air and space forces.
Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse:
All right, Jim. I’m assuming this is working. Good. All right. First let me start by saying thanks to you and to Air Space Forces Association. I’m working now?
Lt. Gen. Leah G. Lauderback:
I don’t think you’re on. I think I’m on. Can you make him on?
Maj. Gen. Jim Marrs, USAF (Ret.):
And some things are possible.
Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse:
I’ll just borrow Leah’s. Better now? Still not yet? All right.
Maj. Gen. Jim Marrs, USAF (Ret.):
Leah, why don’t you take his spot.
Lt. Gen. Leah G. Lauderback:
Okay, I will. All right. We’re good friends. It’s fine. Hey, that is actually one thing that I wanted to tell everybody in the room here. The three of us know each other and have known each other and worked with each other a number of times in our careers. General Kruse might be representing from the Director of National Intelligence Office, and I think that this is fantastic, this panel that we’ve put together because it shows the partnership that we have with the intelligence community and then the services. And I just want to make sure that everybody knows that and sees that within the room here and online, we are dedicated to one another. This guy over here has followed me a couple of times. This gentleman over here actually promoted me to the rank that I am now. As well I took a job from him previously too. So it’s a great family, whether that’s in the intelligence community or within our ISR enterprises within the services. So thanks and Jim, thanks so much for moderating today and getting us all together.
Lt. Gen. Leah G. Lauderback:
All right, so characterizing the threat. I want to say that the reason, well, not the reason, but in one of my jobs I was the J2 at JTFOYR. This was the defeat ISIS mission a few years ago. I got there, I was in Kuwait, I think, middle of 2017. I opened up my drawer and there’s a coin there that says, for excellence presented by General Jeff Kruse. And it’s about providing decision advantage to the commander. All right. Intelligence is one of the seven war fighting functions. And it is because the commander cannot have decision advantage. He or she can not make good decisions without actually understanding the battlefield, understanding what is happening in the battle space, being able to characterize the threats, being able to understand their capabilities as well as their intentions.
Lt. Gen. Leah G. Lauderback:
That is what we do as intelligence professionals. That is our number one job. And so as the senior intelligence officer for the Air Force, I take great pride in be able to provide intelligence. If that’s to Chief Brown here in the front row, if it’s to the ACC commander, I see General Kelly as well, or to the secretary of the Air Force, we have to be able to provide that. And what we need to do now is to be able to provide that in a speed and with precision and at scale for the high-end fight that we need to be prepared for. I think that we need to understand what foreign leaders are telling us in the open press and then you can read some of the intelligence if you want to, but they’re telling you what it is that they want to tell their populations and what they’re messaging to us.
Lt. Gen. Leah G. Lauderback:
And so China, I will take as an example in 2049 has told us the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation and a world-class military. They want to be second to none. I heard General Brown actually speak about, if you’re not first, you’re last, this morning. Right? And I think that’s china’s feeling as well in a 2049 timeframe. We need to be able to be prepared for that. It goes without repeating, I mean, I do have to repeat it though, right? Is that they will double their nuclear stockpile in the next 10 years. Their A2/AD investment is very much narrowing our advantage. You truly don’t want to be within about 300 nautical miles of the Chinese coast, and that is continuing to increase and will continue over the coming years. Their IADs is just continuing to grow and become more significant and lethal.
Lt. Gen. Leah G. Lauderback:
Therefore, from an intelligence perspective, we are going to write in our writing right now, I should say, the Air Force strategic vision for 2033, the intelligence strategic vision. All right. I need to ensure that we as intelligent professionals are ready for that high-end fight to be able to provide the decision makers with decision advantage. And so I’ll speak a little bit more on our strategic vision, but that’s where we’re going in the future because again, as Intel is a war fighting function, we have to take that function very seriously and I think that we all do.
Maj. Gen. Jim Marrs, USAF (Ret.):
General Gagnon.
Maj. Gen. Gregory J. Gagnon:
So I was excited to hear both the SEC half, the CSO and the chief of staff discuss China, China, China. And what they did is they highlighted sort of the pace of change and the rate of change. But to give you all just a little perspective on what they’ve done in four budget cycles, 20 years, because they’ve run five year plans as well, they’ve decreased about 300,000 troops out of their army element and they’ve used that savings to fortify the Air Force, fortify the Navy and established a Strategic Support Force. The Strategic Support Force was established 31 December, 2015. They are seven years old. When we cut cake to say that our space force is three years old, they’re seven years old. In fact, they were the first major restructuring of a military to start the new domain of warfare. Many countries have followed suit.
Maj. Gen. Gregory J. Gagnon:
But since 2015 their on orbit assets have expanded dramatically. I was trying to do some math before the lights blinded me, but I think we might have about 700 folks in this room. So if you would, turn around and just look at how full this room is, because in January the Chinese and the PLA went above 700 satellites in outer space. And if it was 2011 and you might remember where you were in 2011, their number of satellites would only equate to the first five rows. So I ask that you look around and wonder about that change. Of the over 700 satellites in outer space, about half of them are used for remote sensing and ISR. All of us in uniform have been afforded the luxury of us having space superiority over our adversaries for the last 25 years. Space superiority will have to be gained in a conflict in the Pacific against the PLA.
Maj. Gen. Gregory J. Gagnon:
Their on orbit armada of satellites can track us, can sense us, can see us, can connect that data to their PNT and their fires network and can now hold US Forces at risk in a way we have never understood or had to face to date. And that is what has been the fundamental change in force design for great power militaries in the last 10 years. You’re seeing the adaptations and the changes we’re trying to achieve to deal with that fact. You’re seeing agile combat employment. You’re seeing concepts like logistics under fire. But I ask you, the biggest changes that have taken place in the last 10 years have happened because space superiority must now be earned.
Maj. Gen. Jim Marrs, USAF (Ret.):
And General Kruse, I know you talk with your hands, so this is a real test.
Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse:
Am I up and running?
Maj. Gen. Jim Marrs, USAF (Ret.):
You are.
Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse:
Okay, fair enough. I think this is intentional, because you know I talk with my hands and so this is to at least keep one of them out of the game. And this might be fratricide, they may have had to cut your mic off for us to share. All right. First of all, Jim, to you and the Air Space Force Association, thank you very much for letting me be part of the panel. As you mentioned, I am currently not only outside of the Air Force a little bit into a joint world, I’m outside of DOD into the inter-agency world. And quite frankly, we are working tactically, operationally, strategically, air and space issues every day. But it is fantastic to be invited to come home and to sync with just the incredibly innovative Airmen and Guardians and I would say private industry partners that we have. So thanks very much for letting me be a part of this.
Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse:
Since they have already covered the air and space threats, I think I’m going to skip to the thing that I actually think from a threat perspective is perhaps a thing that has changed the most over my career, that it has accelerated dramatically over the last couple of years. And third, if we don’t address it may be more detrimental to everything else that we are doing if it goes unmitigated. And we on the back end want to prevail in either strategic competition or if it comes to that future warfare, and that is counterintelligence. Call it whatever you’d like to call it. Call it a foreign espionage threat, call it cybersecurity, call it an insider threat program. Whatever it happens to be, we are at a place now where everything that you see on the exhibition hall, everything that the chief talked about earlier today, everything that’s going to go into the budgets mission when it goes over to The Hill, that is at risk if we all don’t do our job, think back to what it used to look like.
Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse:
So the guys that are my age and older, we used to think of sort of that counterintelligence perspective as a classic Soviet spy versus spy. The Soviets at the time would work out of embassies, under diplomatic cover, trying to recruit people, steel secrets and steal research. Quite frankly, that game didn’t change much even through 20 years of CT. The counterintelligence business changed at the tactical level and shout out to all the OSI agencies do that for the Air Force in world class way. What changed in the 2010s in the rise of the current leadership of the CCP and the goals that have already been talked about and that you guys are absolutely familiar with. If you’re familiar with the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, they put out a counterintelligence assessment every three years, goes to the president, it’s top secret, and I’m going to tell you what it says. Some of what it says, right?
Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse:
It says that compared to where we were before, there are more actors, more vectors going after, more threats. And let me break that down for you. More actors. We still have to be concerned about the human recruiting and the human element of this game. However, they’re no longer just working out of embassies under diplomatic cover. They are under the cover as students, business leaders, academics, research. And what are they out there doing? They’re out there recruiting US and western students, business leaders, academics and researchers to get after the data that they can’t get after any other particular way. The number of threat actors that are out there have doubled down and we have not necessarily put in place all the programs we need to do to be able to disrupt that in the way we used to do.
Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse:
Some more vectors. What I would tell you is that in addition to the human recruiting piece that I get to see from the national level, cyber intrusions, using technology, acquisitions and mergers, joint ventures, talent management, hiring the experts that have trained and come from US military and industry going to our adversaries. It is remarkable the flow of data that I will say China, but China and others expect to come their way.
Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse:
And then the last one is the sort of going after more things. And what that means is targets. So let me just cut to the chase and be very clear. The target is you. It is we. It is the joint force, it is industry. Everything that we are doing together is at risk if we don’t have a world class insider threat program, world class cybersecurity wrapped around all the things that you’ve done. The innovation that people are doing today is absolutely remarkable. We need to make sure that it will take our potential future adversaries by surprise or it can be revealed by leadership at a time and place of our choosing, not because by the time we feel that it’s already been compromised. So I think from my seat having been, as you talked about in a couple of positions together, been out at OYR, been the only non Navy J2 out at Indopacom, I’m actually more concerned about our ability to secure what we’re doing than almost anything else.
Maj. Gen. Jim Marrs, USAF (Ret.):
Thanks for that great first round of answers and I’d like to shift the focus now to our intelligence ecosystem and ask our panel to share your views on critical architectures, standards and systems needed for information advantage to support targeting and operations. And General Lauderback, if you don’t mind leading off and we’ll go with General Gagnon and General Kruse again. Thanks.
Lt. Gen. Leah G. Lauderback:
Hello, hello, hello. All right, thank you. Thanks, Jim. I think, yeah, so I briefed just a little bit about it a few minutes ago as our ISR strategic vision. So what I wanted to say about this. This, actually, General Brown, introduced the Air Force future operating concept and apparently just sent that yesterday. So we are in lockstep with the future operating concept. We understand that we have to have, there are going to be tons of sensors out there, whether they’re intelligence community sensors or Department of Defense sensors. Everything needs to be a sensor. We need to make sense of all of that data, that information, that intelligence or turn that into intelligence to be able to make sense of that and to be able to provide that to the decision makers or to the inflight target updates directly to the weapons, wherever it might be.
Lt. Gen. Leah G. Lauderback:
I consider this to be called the sensing grid. And a few years ago, I want to say it was 2018, is actually when we signed out the Air Force Next Generation ISR Flight Plan by actually the chief of staff and the secretary of the Air Force at that time. So the sensing grid is not new. We introduced the sensing grid at that time and I would say that we’re operating with a sensing grid today, but I want to say that the sensing grid is one of those real old timey bicycles, like the big wheel and the small wheel, and so we’re talking whatever, 18th century or something. We need a triathlon bike. You know anything about triathlon bikes, Jeff?
Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse:
Do I look like I know?
Lt. Gen. Leah G. Lauderback:
Sorry, that was unfair. Greg and I have done a few, and so I wanted to use the analogy of a triathlon bike. We need something that is… A triathlon bike today is lightweight. That means that the human that is driving that bicycle doesn’t have to work as hard. So we don’t want to work as hard. We need some machines. We need automation to go sift through all of that data that we are going to be collecting, that we do collect today. We need that to happen in a much faster way. A triathlon bike today also is extremely precise. Oh, there we go. You got a new one.
Lt. Gen. Leah G. Lauderback:
So the handlebars, right, the brake system, the shifting, I mean it is shifting the gears with ease. There is no problem doing this. It’s very precise. It’s engineered by, I don’t know, electro, some kind of an engineer in Germany elsewhere. Italy, I should say. They do a fabulous job. We need our sensing grid to be precise. We need our sensing grid then also to be at scale. So if you haven’t been to a triathlon these days, I mean, there’s like thousands of people that are in them because it’s one of the fastest growing sports besides pickleball, I think. That’s a true statement. Anyhow, the triathlon bike, at speed, at scale and with precision, that’s what we need our sensing grid to be. And so there are four components that we’ll come out with in the ISR strategic vision, but those four components of the sensing grid, so that you can kind of put your mind to it.
Lt. Gen. Leah G. Lauderback:
One, it’s about making sense, right? Sense making is the very first step of it. Number two, is integration. So integrating these sensors together. Three is about orchestration. And I like say collection management, but orchestration is increasing or enhancing our collection management processes of the past, orchestration between if it’s the IC or if it’s the DOD and it’s in any domain, that’s what we need to get to in order to ensure that all of those sensors are coming together. And then the fourth is the sensors themselves, to be able to ensure that we’ve got the right sensors with the right persistence if you will, around the world. Because we’ve got, we’re, not just looking at China, that’s not the only threat or concern that we have. We’re very concerned with the acute threat of Russia. And then of course within our NDS, we’re still concerned with Iran, North Korea, and a violent extremist organization. So this is a sensing grid that’s not just built for one type of conflict.
Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse:
Try that one.
Lt. Gen. Leah G. Lauderback:
One, no, hello, yes. It’s not a sensing grid that’s built for just one type of conflict, but it should be a sensing grid that lasts us and is a global capability. And again, I’ll just shout out to General Brown this morning and he talked about our five functions and ISR being one of those functions, it’s a global ISR capability that we need to be able to provide from the Air Force. And so I think I’ll end it there because I feel like I’ve been talking for a few minutes. So over to you.
Maj. Gen. Jim Marrs, USAF (Ret.):
General Gagnon.
Maj. Gen. Gregory J. Gagnon:
So I’ll pivot a little bit and just talk about two ways to approach the problem. There’s obviously data standards and interoperability, but a great way to think about it, if you’re an investment banker and on the staff, I kind of consider myself an investment banker like when I was at ACC, you want to get a high rate of return on what you’re spending. The services spent last year in the military intelligence program, which is sort of DOD, Intel money if you will, about 26 billion last year. And that’s a public figure from OSD public affairs. $26 billion. Also a public figure from the DNI is how much the national intel budget was last year, which was about $56 billion.
Maj. Gen. Gregory J. Gagnon:
So if you think about it as an investment banker, you want to spend your $1, if you’re in a uniform on an area they’re not covering down or if you have deliberate overlap, you want to make sure that that overlap is highly interoperable and mutually supportive, so that you’re $1 that you’re spending on something, let’s just say it’s a collection from outer space. If it works with the other agencies, you’re going to gain two free dollars from Department of Defense. So that’s generally an investment strategy you can think about. We’re a Department of Defense that’s like an 800 billion machine and the national Intel budget is another 56 billion you want to bring to bear to work with you. So from an investment banker standpoint, I always look how to make the other two compliment.
Maj. Gen. Gregory J. Gagnon:
The second part of this is about people. We always talk about interoperable systems and interoperable data standards. You got to have folks that can flow back and forth. You want to flow people into the National Security Agency for a tour or two, and then you want them to come back and do Service Cryptologic operations. Whether they’re exploiting collection from a U2 or a UAV or from a ship, because that’s what makes them more proficient and more well-rounded as they grow up as a cryptologist. You would want the same thing for imagery interpreters. The United States Air Force has a large group of imagery interpreters that work in DCGS, but we also let them go to the Jayoxs to learn to do all the skillsets that they would need because at nighttime, radar imagery’s delicious, it tells you what’s going on, you can see through the clouds and you can count tanks, you can count ships. And over the last 20 years, maybe those skills got a little rusty on our side, but current events and current crisises we’re spinning right back up.
Maj. Gen. Jim Marrs, USAF (Ret.):
General Kruse.
Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse:
Okay, assuming that the mic works, I’m burning through mics quicker than burning through water here. Let me actually pick up a little bit where Greg left off, but actually talk about the reverse of that, which is also true. So for me, almost anything we do, any of the core functions that chief talked about earlier, anything across all the services, but pick any of the functions or pick a targeting cycle, which I know a lot of folks here are focused on. Any good targeting strategy is actually a data strategy. If you can’t take data from either a collection or sensing grid or whatever it happens to be or a repository where you’ve kept it and move it through a couple of things, data fabrics, APIs and C2 nodes and an exploitation piece that is either human or tech and AI enabled, there’s going to be a human touchpoint either designed into it or not.
Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse:
If you can’t do that and map out in advance where your data’s going to come from, what it has to do and where it’s going to go, so you can close the kill chain at the end, we’re all going to fail, all the things that we’ve been trusted to build over time. And so the data strategy, to me, when you ask about architectures, it really comes down to do we have a common interoperable data strategy? We are certainly working on that, but to really say that the flip side of what Greg was talking about in leveraging some of the intel dollars, I would tell you the ICS data strategy has actually included the Air Force for a very, very long time. When you look at the original launch in the 1950s of the Corona satellites, what was our data strategy? It was ejecting a canister of film, it re-entered the atmosphere, deployed a shoot, it started floating down and the United States Air Force airplane came and snatched that out of mid-air, delivered it someplace and it was developed. And in weeks to a month, we had fantastic data someplace.
Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse:
Fast forward into SR-71 U-2 kind of program, same kind of thing, but we were collecting, we could directly land, we would send it and maybe we were down to days as we were moving some of this developed film. Fast forward then into maybe the Gulf War, the initial Gulf War. By that point we had figured out direct down links and we were doing all of that. But anybody my age or greater will understand that we were still at that point delivering ATOs, maps and compartmented intelligence via aircraft to all the distributed places all throughout the Middle East. The data strategy, I use that as exemplar because it actually is the hardware, the software, the interoperability, the standards. What do we want to agree on going forward?
Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse:
So I think history is a guide. I’m a student of history and like the chief, I don’t like to lose. I don’t like to come in second. So for me, that future data strategy is really about a couple of things. But the primary one is we need to figure out how do we have an interoperable architecture that we can all trust and know that it is there. The only thing I would add to that is the IC is committed to supporting DOD in doing this. So when I first got to DNI in the fall of 2020, we convened a JVC2 conference. It was at that timeframe when if you ask 10 people what JVC2 meant, you got 20 answers because nobody still knew themselves. They would give you two different answers. We have now done a couple of things, while there’s a strategy, there’s also a new NSS, a new NDS, there’s a new set of joint war fighting concepts. There’s new offices out there, CDOs, CDAs, all of them make data strategy much more complicated.
Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse:
So we held another conference this last fall. We pulled all the stakeholders in across OSD, the joint staff, all the IC members and the services, and we developed what was signed in February, which is the first IC DOD implementation plan. Now, it is nothing. It’s not designed to be new stuff. It is designed to be how do we leverage and learn across the board from each other. There’s four LOEs. The first one is exactly this. What are interoperability and standards that we’ve all agreed to and how do we enforce that? Middle two LOEs for that are along the lines of harvesting mission sprints and the mission threads that are coming out of the joint staff to take all the work that you’re doing and cross-cut it and make sure the IC is ready to support.
Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse:
And then the last one actually may be the most important, which is how do we measure our success? Are we actually making progress in any of this? How do you measure the demos? How do you grade a tool before you insert it into an architecture? Is it ready to be part of that architecture? So both joint staff and OSD have developed tools to assess those things. The IC decided we’re not going to develop yet a third test. We’re just going to adopt those. And I really do look forward to seeing how that comes together. I am optimistic for the first time we might have an interoperable data strategy ahead of us that can underpin all of the war fighting functions that we’re going to have to do going forward that are just getting harder and harder to do.
Maj. Gen. Jim Marrs, USAF (Ret.):
Thanks General Kruse and thank you all for a great demonstration of microphone resilience and we are going to build on your last answers.
Lt. Gen. Leah G. Lauderback:
Can I just say one thing?
Maj. Gen. Jim Marrs, USAF (Ret.):
You may.
Lt. Gen. Leah G. Lauderback:
Yeah. I mean, I’m also optimistic about our way forward here, and this is what I was just alluding to in the very beginning, is that there were great partners. I think though, and not that you have to answer General Kruse or General Gagnon, but we’ve got to break down some policies in order to get to the things that we all want to get to. And those often are the stickiest and more difficult things to do. But I think a way that we can work through that is one, teaming, determining what our message is and then just being persistent at that. So yeah, thanks for all of that. I also am optimistic and glad you are too.
Maj. Gen. Jim Marrs, USAF (Ret.):
So I’d like to build off the last round of answers and ask you all to comment on how do we enable strategic advantage in competition. And General Gagnon, if you can take first shot at that. General Kruse and General Lauderback. Thanks.
Maj. Gen. Gregory J. Gagnon:
We’re talking about playing poker earlier. I think it was Chief Brown talking about playing poker. We need to realize we have more chips than anybody else on the table. We don’t pay attention to that enough. We have the largest economy in the world. We have one of the best innovative bases in the world and we need to recognize that because, and I’m the intel guy, so I’m supposed to do a lot of fear and stuff like that, but sometimes you have to recognize you’re holding a dominant position and that position, yes, is being challenged and eroded. But our position at chips get even bigger, because we have friends who think us, want the same outcomes we want. They might be The Five Eyes, they might be NATO, they might be the Japanese, they might be the South Koreans.
Maj. Gen. Gregory J. Gagnon:
And when you think about all those people who are playing at the table, that becomes a much more powerful position for competing on a strategic environment. I will tell you though, because I am the intel guy, we should be very concerned about how fast one player at the table keeps adding money and adding chips to his chip count. Because today, and this is a huge change from 10 to 15 years ago, the PLA have more surface combatants than we do. The PLA have more SAMs than we do. The PLA show us how they behave when they have positional advantage. When they have positional advantage, they surround a free and independent place. They do it in the maritime domain, they do it in the air domain. They did that in August. They may use their positional advantage thinking about the long game, on how to move their position strongly over time without becoming too insightful.
Maj. Gen. Gregory J. Gagnon:
Think about ships bringing in sand and bringing in rocks and building an island and then putting an airfield on an island, then putting defensive weaponry on the island. That would sound like some crazy movie we were watching. No, that’s happened. That’s the South China Sea. So we have to recognize that as we sit at the table with some fantastic chips, not everyone’s playing the same fair game and we have to watch that. And that goes back to general Kruse’s comment. They want to steal your intellectual property if you’re in that exhibition room. And in fact they’ve been successful at doing that on a number of you, right? Because they don’t play by the same set of rules. They’ll steal it as a government and then they’ll give it to CASS and KASIK, which is their Lockheed Martin and their Northrop Grumman, and then they’ll put out weapon systems that look a lot like ours and their development cycle will shrink, their cost will shrink and they’ll continue to grow strong. So not where you are looking ahead, I don’t think.
Maj. Gen. Jim Marrs, USAF (Ret.):
That’s good.
Maj. Gen. Gregory J. Gagnon:
But just realize their chip count’s getting added. Our strength is our partners at the table, but we need to be concerned about the chip count. And I think last week they announced that their defense budget for next year will be 7.2% higher. So they’re putting the investment in.
Maj. Gen. Jim Marrs, USAF (Ret.):
General Kruse.
Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse:
Okay. You ask about sort of strategic advantage, decision advantage. I think that comes down to one thing and then one thing that enables it. So that one thing is partnerships, partnerships, partnerships. Those come in all flavors. It is our foreign partners. We’ve seen several of them here today and it’s great to see you all. It could be industry partners, it could be academics, it could be advanced researchers. We have got to figure out how do we use those partnerships to our greatest advantage. The chief announced the future operation concepts. I don’t want to get ahead of him, but if you read through even the front piece of that, he talks a little bit about hard power deterring.
Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse:
I think when it comes down to it, partnerships do one thing for hard power and that is they increase our capacity, our capability, our geography, and our sustainability over time, which is exactly what we’re looking for. So what do you need to have good partners and to enable good partners? And then I think the piece is probably most appropriate for me to talk about, which is the awkward conversation, which is intel sharing. I think that is the underpinning of really what we’re seeing as a seed change in an approach. I would offer that when you think about intel sharing, fundamentally that is the process by which you need to downgrade, declassify or publicly release certain data so you can share it with some partners who aren’t originally aligned to receive that data.
Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse:
There are a lot of things culturally that we’ve got to work through, some of those awkward conversations, but actually the precedent sent in Russia, Ukraine conflict I think is a precedent. And now we may not do it exactly the same way. We’ve got to think through what that looks like. We actually started this some time ago. You probably saw election security. There were some releases. We’ve gone through this in COVID origins. We’ve gone through it in anomalous health incidents, but really the Russia, Ukraine crisis leading up to it in particular, and then now all the activity that is ongoing. So what does that look like? I know from a DNI perspective and the guidance that is out there, that is changing dramatically. If you want to look for proof, you can look at the odni.gov website and you can start to see National Intelligence Council assessments at the unclassified levels is now being published there.
Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse:
My boss, the director of National Intelligence has her posture hearing. It’s actually the annual threat assessment coming up this week. The classified version of her report is already over at The Hill, but the 35 to 40 pages, the unclassified version will be her statement for the record. We are now designing how do we publish at an unclassified level in order to do some of the things that we want to do on intel diplomacy and enable the partnerships. Long way to go. The only caveat that I would say that we’re still working through that then drives some of the designs for how do I use automation and other things to help that out, is when you look at the original processes and the original philosophy behind how do you downgrade and declassify. As you recall, there’s original classification authorities. Those are the people that say, this data is at this classification level and that either comes out of senior leaders or it comes out of security classification guys that we’ve written.
Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse:
The original design for the authorities to do downgrading and declassification was actually at a higher authorization level than the senior levels because the philosophy was we were substituting our judgment for the senior leaders who already said it’s classified at this level. We’ve got to flip the script. I think we’ve brought that conversation now down to the data owners and they’re much more likely to work through this at speed and scale to do intel sharing. And we’ve got to work through what is an entirely new concept look like so you can leverage technology in order to do intel sharing. The last piece that I would probably say with that is in addition to that, we’ve got a new approach to what we call one time reading. So it’s not just data going out. It is where industry partners are coming in and we’re doing one time reading so they can get access to classified information and understand the threat to their particular industry.
Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse:
Again, if you go back to some of the NCSC, the National Counterintelligence Security Center, activities in ’21, they’ve launched a campaign with industry. In ’22, they did a Safeguarding Science Campaign to provide tools for industry. If you want to go out and develop your own counterintelligence or insider threat program. And then this year they’re doing a top 30, where if you’re one of the top 30 companies in your industry, they will partner with you in a stronger way. I would encourage for everybody who’s in industry to not only become a part of that, but to become a part of what NSA and Cybercom are doing, which again is really getting after some of this data. We need to have partnerships in a way that enables classified conversations. So we all know the fight that we’re potentially preparing for and we protect that data going forward.
Maj. Gen. Jim Marrs, USAF (Ret.):
Thanks, sir. And General Lauderback, any brief comments?
Lt. Gen. Leah G. Lauderback:
Yeah. Okay. So let me just say briefly. I wanted to take it down from that strategic advantage in competition to conflict. So before this crowd goes, and I think we only have a minute or so, there are a number of efforts that we are working on across the globe and in a number of different nafs and wings. To make our ISRT Airmen better at what it is that we need to do, about that as a intel as a war fighting function. But also many of you in this room know that we also own part of the…
Lt. Gen. Leah G. Lauderback:
Hello? Okay, there we go. All right. One of those efforts, I just visited our Korea team about three weeks ago, they have an incredible effort that they’re working right now. This is about live fly training of ISR Airmen to actually find, fix and then F2T2EA, or at least the F2T port of that. We also have a tri wing effort. This is between our three 63rd targeting wing, the 70th ISR wing and the four 80th ISR wing. This is about [inaudible 00:41:05] Oh man, I don’t know if that’s just me or the mic. Okay. Anyhow, the bottom line is that the effort is about trying to get better at kill chain automation, right? Finding the targets faster, getting that information to the commanders or to those shooters, whomever it might be in order to prosecute the targets. That’s what we’re about at a strategic conflict or a tactical conflict I should say. But I think those folks on the Korean peninsula show us that they’re deterring every single day while they’re also preparing for a conflict if necessary.
Maj. Gen. Jim Marrs, USAF (Ret.):
General Lauderback, thanks. And being mindful of time, I think we have enough time left just for some brief wrap up comments. So we’ll go ahead and start, General Kruse with you and just work our way down the line. I’d say about a minute each.
Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse:
Okay. Since I’ve overachieved, I’ll go under that. If you look at the program that you have about two pages in, there’s something at the bottom that says something to the effective every Airman and Guardian in the fight. I would offer that could say every Airman, Guardian and industry partner in the fight. We need everybody sort of synchronized. The second thing is, because this is the Warfare Symposium, I am with Leah, that it is extraordinarily impressive what folks are doing in the innovation realm. It is extraordinarily impressive what we’re going to task people to do in a future conflict. I think you should be demanding in what you expect, demanding in what you need, funnel those up and let us work those issues. We need to fundamentally rethink a few things and what are the policies associated with that in order to have the capabilities we need going forward. And we trust you to be awesome. We trust you to be demanding of all of us as well.
Lt. Gen. Leah G. Lauderback:
Thanks, Jeff. Okay, so I was at the KAC in 2003, and I tell this quite frequently. How many people, can I see hands? Who was in the KAC in 2003? Who was in OIF in 2003? I mean, there’s barely anybody in the room here that I can see, that I can see, right? All the old people up on stage were here. The KAC in the very beginning of Iraqi freedom was chaos, and it took us probably about five or six days to actually get into a regular battle rhythm where we could prosecute targets. We didn’t have to drop weapons on a target three times because we didn’t have the battle damage to be able to tell the folks that you don’t need to do a restrike.
Lt. Gen. Leah G. Lauderback:
I mean, there was a lot of personnel that we put at risk in those first number of days of OIF because we didn’t have our reps and sets in, if you will. We’re not going to have that opportunity. If there’s a future conflict with China, the timing is too dramatic. It is too fast. We don’t have five days to get our stuff together in the KAC or however we’re going to see to it. So just be thinking about that. Think about the sense of urgency, where we need to get to in order to prosecute a fight if it comes to that.
Maj. Gen. Gregory J. Gagnon:
So following up on the sense of urgency from General Lauderback, it’s clear to me that the PLA has reorganized, which has started in 2015. It has retooled, which it has done over four fide eps. Executing a deliberate budget plan with consistent funding, which grew every year. And they’ve also been practicing and rehearsing new operational concepts, which they call systems destruction warfare. And for all the geeks in the room who did their PME, that’s called a revolution in military affairs. They’ve done those three things. The PLA today is a joint integrated team that can power project, whereas at 2003, they were an inward looking territorial force. The world is different. We need to be combat ready and we need to be combat ready today.
Maj. Gen. Jim Marrs, USAF (Ret.):
All right. Well, I regret that while we’re not out of questions, we are out of time and so thanks to our wonderful panel members and one more round of applause for them for a great show.