Command, Control, and Global Power

Air Force Global Strike Command is mulling how to command and control its bomber forces better, said Lt. Gen. Stephen Wilson, who leads the organization. “We are spending a lot of time on that,” he told Air Force Magazine in an interview at his headquarters at Barksdale AFB, La., in late May. There “is no global power without command and control,” he said. Wilson highlighted efforts at 8th Air Force, noting that about three years ago, a team of airmen was tasked with finding a way to tie together the disparate networks based at regional air and space operations centers for communicating with B-2 stealth bombers. The airmen’s effort resulted in a new tool called the High Performance Waveform, which tied together beyond-line-of-sight communications for the B-2 and enabled effective worldwide control of them from 8th AF’s AOC at Barksdale. The command tested HPW during a sortie in the Asia-Pacific region prior to last year’s Foal Eagle exercise in South Korea. During that training, a pair of B-2s conducted a 38-hour mission from the central United States to the Pacific. AFGSC officials maintained continuous contact with the bombers, said Wilson.