Watch, Read: ‘Global Strike’

March 8, 2023

As the Air Force works to modernize its legs of the nuclear triad with the B-21 Raider and the Sentinel ICBM, industry experts including Willy Andersen, vice president of multi domain-special programs and capabilities at Boeing’s Phantom Works; Jon Norman, vice president of air power, requirements and capabilities at Raytheon; and Doug Young, vice president and general manager for strike programs for Northrop Grumman, talked about how they’re helping with the mammoth effort in a panel discussion on March 8, 2023. Retired Maj. Gen. Doug Raaberg, executive vice president of AFA moderated. Watch the video or read the transcript below.

Maj. Gen. Doug Raaberg, USAF (Ret.):

Well, good morning everyone. I’m Doug Raaberg, Executive Vice President of your Air and Space Forces’ Association. Definitely thank you for joining us this morning to discuss a very important operational imperative that is really near and dear to my heart, Global Strike. Please welcome to the stage and hold your applause till the end, my contestants. To my left, Mr. Willy Andersen, Vice President of Boeing’s Multi-Domain special programs and capabilities, Phantom Works, Major General Jon “Stormin” Norman, Vice President of Raytheon’s Air Power Requirements and Capabilities, and to my far left Mr. Doug Young, Vice President and General Manager of Northrop Grumman’s Strike Programs. Let’s give them a big round of applause, please

Let me help set the scene. Secretary Kendall described the Global Strike Initiative as being similar to the next generation air dominance, which identifies all of the components of the B-21 Raider family of systems, including the potential use of more affordable uncured autonomous combat aircraft. Of the technologies are there now to introduce uncured platforms in this systems of systems context, but the most cost-effective approach and the operational concepts for this compliment to crude Global Strike capabilities have to be analyzed and defined. If you go to the Air and Space Forces magazine, go right to the operational imperatives, that’s quoted right out of the magazine. Let’s remember that in the end, Global Strike is a human endeavor, yet the backbone of our nation’s success relies on the innovation and ingenuity of our industrial partners to deliver the transformational capabilities to the war fighters.

So on that note, Doug, let me fire away with a question. I know… And by the way, this is a spoiler alert, we will not be talking classified in this room. So Doug, set the scene for us. In his remarks at the B-21 rollout, and thank you for the invite. This last December, Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin commented that this is deterrence done right. He was in fact alluding to a model acquisition program that continues to adhere to cost, schedule and performance. Even last week, the House Armed Services Committee ranking member openly praised the B-21 program. Obviously you were at the rollout. So what has made Northrop Grumman’s B-21 program a success?

Doug Young:

Well, thanks for the question, Doug. And yeah, every day, it’s a big challenge, but so far, so good and a lot ahead of us and I’ll talk about that in a moment. First thing I wanted to do is kind of just step back for a moment, at the strike division at Northrop, we focus on systems and technologies that are dealing with the highly contested environment. So the two programs I can talk about today around that are for Global Strike and I’d like to just restate a quote from yesterday’s talk from General Bustier, which many of you I’m sure we’re at. But just to focus on these two programs, it’s about range, access, and payload to deliver disruptive effects in a contested environment with the mass and the lethality to win against a peer adversary. So with that, our focus on the B-2 first off, which is in this division and part of Northrop’s legacy around this kind of capability has been all around modernization and making that platform continue to be relevant and effective.

So we focus on comms and bombs if you will. So last year we were able to alter the architecture on that system in order to be able to segregate the mission systems from the flight systems to allow us to more rapidly upgrade and add mission capability, weapons and comms. We also have done a lot of work around low observables to continue to refine them, make them more maintainable and more effective for the mission. And on the weapons side, recently we qualified the [inaudible 00:04:42] last year for B2 and there are a number of other missiles or weapons in the pipeline. So that’s kind of the B2, which really until B-21 comes online in numbers is what we’ve got for this mission. So now switching over to B-21 and referencing back to the rollout, that was a great day for the company, for the country and for our war fighters, to really get out and have a visible symbol of what the country and what the industry is doing to support the mission for deterrence.

So team was very proud of that accomplishment, but we moved the airplane out of there that night and at five in the morning we were at it again starting to test the airplane. So no rest for the weary. So around B-21 we are testing that airplane, we’re doing ground test, we’re getting ready to go fly it sometime later this year and first flight’s going to be a big deal. But an even bigger deal really is to focus on the second flight because we want to make sure when we fly that airplane that it is not something we’re going to have to work on for another two months before we go fly it again. We want to get into a very productive flight test program. So part of that is all around making the trade-offs in the near term on schedule in order to implement things that we know we have to fix so that we can get through a good flight test program. So the second flight’s important too, and obviously the subsequent.

We’re also ramping up in production, getting ready for that. We rec recently received advanced procurement for the first lot. We’re focused on sustainment because when we get to the main operating base with that first aircraft, everything’s got to be in place, spares training, all the documentation, all the things required in order to allow the war fighter to support that aircraft and bring capability online quickly. So that’s another big focus of the program at the same time as production getting through AMD and into flight test. So with that, that’s kind of a summary of where we’re at. To finally answer your question, and I apologize for the segue, but I just thought a little background will be good. So what is working well? So it’s really starts with the partnership. The partnership we have on this program and it really is built on about 15 years of working closely with the RCO and developing that relationship, that relationship of trust, mutual accountability, transparency is really what provides the resilience for us to be able to get through the challenges that we see every day. I mean, these are hard programs.

We all know that we’ve all been there and this one is no different. So that elasticity has done us well and has allowed us to execute on a concept that we call active contract management. We don’t play by any different rules than anybody else. We work inside the DOD 5,000 system like everyone else. But the way in which we’ve applied resources to address risks early on the program through active contract mechanisms has allowed us to address those risks quickly and also address things that we see on the horizon that have newly presented themselves that if we address them early will help us have a better system, bring it online sooner and have it be more sustainable and operationally effective. So that’s a key element. We also have worked hard to make sure the first aircraft is very representative of the production aircraft. They’re essentially identical, so we have haven’t cut any corners on that first aircraft. I’ve read comments in the press about a prototype or whatever, it’s not what it is. We’re building the first aircraft, just like the first production aircraft, same processes, same people, same tools, same hardware.

So that’s been a challenge because oftentimes on a first article you like to be streamlined and do a lot of handwork and so on. We’ve avoided that in order to ensure that we’re really burning down the risk early. Again, it’s that moving risk left approach that we’ve used in order to be effective. Finally, on digital and open architectures, the program wasn’t born digital when it started eight years ago. It was not… I’ll call it digital in the way we talk about it today, but we moved quickly into that and that was with help with the RCO in many areas, but also just leveraging commercial tools that are now available. So the way I would describe digital is in three elements of physical, functional and operational. On the physical side, it’s all about the engineering models. An example there would be we just did a regional structural test of the airframe to ensure it was ready for flight and we were within 5 percent to the good of our models, of our predictions.

So the fidelity of that model was exceptional and it allowed us to really move quickly and address any risk that might have been there before we went to flight. As well in the physical area in the factory, the use of virtual reality, the VER use of hollow lenses to be able to see invisibly through the structure and be able to install elements for the mechanics and make it easier for them to perform their task as well as ultimately into sustainment, being able to use those same tools. Those are commercially available now we’ve adapted them into this SAP environment and now apply them in a production environment and ultimately sustainment. On the capability side, it’s about agile software and DevOps software. Many of you have heard about DevOps and it’s really about model-based systems engineering and implementing rapid cycles of software development in line with those models in order to bring capabilities online efficiently and quickly and make changes as required as you discover things.

Ultimately that will serve us well in the field because we’ll be able to make changes rapidly because we all know the threat is changing more rapidly every day and being able to alter software quickly is important. Finally, operationally, migrating to the cloud is a fundamental now part of the program in order to manage the amounts of data that are out there for not only sustainment but mission data that allows us to be more transportable around the globe as we deploy and go forward with B-21s in the operational context. So migration to a cloud, again another commercial thing that’s been around for a long time, but doing it a weapon system level, multi-level security is a challenge. Just like in DevOps, it’s again, it’s doing it a weapon system grade implementation has been the challenge we’ve overcome, which we’re very pleased with and software’s going very well on the program.

In the airplane world, sometimes you say, airplane’s waiting for the software. Well, in this case, the software’s going to be waiting for the airplane, so software’s going well. We’re really happy about that. Finally, OMS and all that in terms of what’s working is the requirements have been very stable. So from an acquisition perspective, we’ve been working to the same set of KPP since 2014, and in fact one of those KPPs was to have an open mission system architecture. So stable requirements has been a big reason why we’ve been successful. Thanks, Doug.

Maj. Gen. Doug Raaberg, USAF (Ret.):

That’s awesome. Especially as the B-2 commander, I wish the B-2 could have uploaded the software software like a Tesla in your garage and be the most capable going out to fight. And Willy, I’m going to turn to you because this is important. Yesterday, the Global Strike commander, General Bussiere really unveiled not only command perspectives, but he, he’s really bridging the full operational capability of current systems and about nine modernization programs to the future and getting them to FOC of the future. So let’s talk about that Systems. No doubt, modernizing the Global Strike enterprise is vital for our national security posture. So I’d like to take it from a vantage, your vantage point at the Boeing Phantom Works. What do you see as the most critical enablers to the long range strike mission?

Willy Andersen:

Thank you very much for the question and General thank you for hosting this. It’s an esteemed honored to be with you in these other two fine gentlemen. Well, first off, from a Phantom Work standpoint, the portfolio that I oversee is one of advanced materials, advanced mission systems, including self-protect, advanced command and control, and we’re applying those in very innovative ways for new platforms as well as upgrades to existing ones. In my past military career, I was a flight tester on a B-2. So B-2 is near and dear to my heart, congratulations to you and your team for B-21. I did a little work with them. It’s nice to see that platform out there. When we did the B-2, and the platforms of that generation, it was about this individual survivability of the platform, the employment of the platform. It was all about the singular mission aspects of that platform.

Now in the family of systems, we’re looking at essentially ecosystems, ecosystems of the gen-six fighter ecosystems of the B-21. And the ecosystem is it enhances your mission effectiveness, it enhances your survivability, and as the Secretary was saying in his opening remarks, it allows us to buy down our mission risk and provides a bunch of different levers. So in terms of critical enablers, it’s not trivial to build an airplane, but we know how to do that. Okay, we got a lot of success in history in doing that. The complexity now is okay, you’re not just building an airplane, you’re working with other partners, other industry partners and folks to create an ecosystem that works well together. It’s tightly coupled in a highly contested environment of maybe the employment for Global Strike. The coupling of capabilities of other platforms of support, if you will, has to be very, very tight. There can’t be a lot of margin for error.

The timing and so forth is very, very critical. So now you get into CCAs, you’re getting into common command and control. The work that General Cropsey is doing in JADC2 is going to be absolutely crucial if this is going to be successful, that element absolutely has to be successful. And now you’re coupling in capabilities from space in ways we haven’t done before. So that’s a key enabler. And then I think the last main key enabler is Global Strike, deep strike, long range, you need fuel. Okay, so in the secretary, it was real nice to hear in his opening remarks. We’ve been working closely with the Air Force on making sure we have a strong tanker backbone with the KC-46 and now we’re working with the Air Force in other to be able to add other functionality, mesh network backbone related to the KC-46 when the secretary announced the new initiative, the end gas.

You can envision if you will, a solid backbone of KC-46s that then are tied to maybe even refueling other tankers that have stronger survivability attributes to them conceptually maybe an MQ-25 lookalike kind of a thing that’s going back and forth in a yo-yo effect. I mean range is going to be a key element. I mean there’s no denying that to have range. The platforms are extending the range, but they still need fuel. So all of those elements are going to be key enablers related to that family of systems and Global Strike mission set.

Maj. Gen. Doug Raaberg, USAF (Ret.):

It’s interesting, during this conference I’ve come to the realization that managing signatures of multiple stealth, let’s say like platforms of the future, especially when you’re talking about refueling to a strike platform, that’s going to require a lot of partnership with our industry teammates along the way. So thank you for that, Willy. Jon, I’m going to shift on you and [inaudible 00:17:05], and you have a unique background. Obviously each service is fielding its long range strike capabilities. So let’s, let’s be honest with ourselves, Navy’s got its strategic systems program, the SSP, the Army, it’s hypersonic program, the AHPO, and of course you over oversaw the Air Force’s Global Power programs in SAF/AQ. So I believe you really actually have a unique perspective and now an industry perspective at Raytheon regarding long-range strike. So it’s really a double whammy question. So let me hit you with one, first of all, how can digital technologies and modeling and simulation be used to advance long-range strike capabilities? And then follow up real quickly with what do you believe are the unique attributes of the Air Force LRS mission compared to those other service programs? No pressure.

Jon Norman:

Not the easy one. I guess you start with what’s the mission. Our mission is deterrence that that’s why we have a military. We don’t want to fight, but if we do have to fight, then we want to dominate. And that cornerstone of being able to dominate as a nation is to have a safe, secure, reliable capability, whether that’s nuclear or conventional and most importantly survivable. And that applies across the platforms and the weapons that we’re going to put in there. To your question on the digital engineering, so I think probably the best use case, and I know we’re doing this on Sentinel, I know we’re doing it on Radar, we’re absolutely doing it on LRS. So we have a digital model of the weapon. We have a digital model of all the threats of various threats through far into the future.

And we run this model every single night with our LRS program, 6 million miles, and we’ll change the threat lay down, we’ll change the threat capabilities. We’ll change attributes on that weapon system to ensure that is survivable into the future. It’s an incredible capability, something that we can never do before. We always had to do live tests and you’re testing the points and the edges of that capability. Because of model-based system engineering, because of our DevSecOps, we can do that near real time and that greatly accelerates the development timeline. It builds a lot of confidence for the war fighter because ultimately that’s who we’re all working for to ensure that they can execute this mission if called upon. We apply that same lesson learned with HACM. So it started out as HAWC with DARPA and now it’s evolved to a program of record with the Air Force on HACM and it’s a hypersonic missile.

It’s fast. It’s not that different from every other cruise missile that we’ve developed, but it’s that attribute of speed. It gives you a decreased target engagement cycle time. So it lets you hold more targets at risk in a shorter period of time. It lets us penetrate this A two environment from depth and hold those targets at risk to knock the door down. And I would say that long-range strike component of the Air Force is part and parcel to us being able to do that as a nation. The Navy program, the Army program, they’re important for their service. They’re all part of the joint campaign. We’re never going to do this as a single service. But as that critical element, I contend as that leading element of the triad, Global Strike Command has a fundamental impact on our ability to deter as a nation. Our submarine forces, incredibly capable. They’re facing a recap that’s going to be incredibly costly.

Certainly with Sentinel, incredibly expensive and we’re doing not just the weapon system to replace the [inaudible 00:21:00], but also the launch facilities. So they’re more survivable and quite frankly, more conducive to the crew environment. It requires the communication. So NC3, it requires ABMS the work. It requires, I’d say more than ever this replacement of the AGM-86 with LRSO so that we have that weapon in survivable and can deter an adversary. The reason that I think this is so important for our nation as that first step in a recap of the triad is it gives our national command authority a very flexible way to escalate to deescalate any tensions with any potential adversary. It’s fascinating having worked in different commands in [inaudible 00:21:48], certainly in INDOPACOM and CACOM. If you move a bomber into a theater, everybody notices, I mean everybody notices.

And so without ever firing a shot, just simply that bomber presence can change behavior because of the risk. And for that risk to be credible, we have to provide both a platform that’s survivable and we have to provide that weapon that’s survivable. And I think that this team is doing an incredible job with that. We’re partnered with North Grumman on HACM for the propulsion for that scramjet engine. I’d say what’s most critical, and Doug you touched on it’s starting in that design with a war fighter in mind, all the way from the weapons load crew to maintainer to the mission planners, to the air crew that are, or it can be an unscrewed plane that are going to be flying that aircraft in the harm’s way so that when they hit the weapons release button, it works the first time every time.

We’ve spent a lot of time with STRATCOM with Global Strike Command at the start and the design of these weapons, whether it’s HACM or LRSO, we design those just like you’ve done with the B-21 program through RCO, to have that first unit off the production line to be designed for manufacturing so we can produce at scale and to be operationally representative. So the first one off the line is the same as the last one off the line. And that’s good for the start. It makes the acquisition community happy because you’re meeting cost schedule performance. But more important I think to all of us is that total cost of ownership. So throughout the life cycle of whether it’s a platform or the weapon, making sure that it’s sustainable, that it’s upgradable through that open mission system architecture and whether it’s a weapon or the platform that is composable. So if we have a better navigation system, a better self-protect system, a better propulsion unit fielded in the future, we can easily integrate that into the weapon system.

I think Jason Bartolomei is doing a great job with that on the conventional side and certainly at our nuclear, they are absolutely doing that by ensuring that all of the weapons that we’re producing that they have that open mission system so there was the most compliant and that it is easy to integrate that with any new platform in the future and it’s easy to integrate that upgrade.

Maj. Gen. Doug Raaberg, USAF (Ret.):

Storman, that’s awesome. Let’s kind of touch on six generation attributes each and every one of you’ve done… And Doug, you laid it out pretty well. And that’s really the open mission systems architecture. We’re talking about advanced networks and we’re also talking about evolved stealth. The problem is the enemy’s doing the same thing, so they want to get ahead of us. So my real question to each and every one of you, starting with you Doug, is internally to be able to maintain and sustain first mover advantages, I call it with technologies, what demonstrations or what early successes each of your companies can you talk about that really help us and definitely the war fighters, stay ahead of the enemy?

Doug Young:

Okay, just two things on that. First off, in terms of being able to adapt to the threat, when we started this program, the requirements laid out in the 2014, 2015 timeframe. The threat looked very different to what it looks like today and to what’s being projected for the 2030s. So with some forethought, the architects of the program built into the requirements, this flexibility. So I’ve mentioned the open mission system architecture, but another key was having the size, weight, and power to be able to add things quickly and not have to completely redesign the internals of a platform. So right up front we had to build all that in so that we’d be flexible. And what we like to say is we’re in the process of future proofing the platform. So in addition to completing EMD, doing production and sustainment, we’re also working through a roadmap for modernization so that we can start to drop in capabilities as we bring the aircraft online that are going to deal with where we see the threat today.

So to that end, we’ve been doing a lot of work in terms of demonstrations. General Bustier referenced our OMS demonstration yesterday where we’ve integrated a third party sensor onto the platform that’s also enabled by the way DevOps process, which gives you that flexibility to be able to integrate those things on quickly in a very short period of time compared to former timelines. The second thing is that at the onset of the program collectively we invested in a flying test bed. That flying test bed has been flying since the beginning of the program, in fact, before the program started by the company where we initiated to basically fly the software and mission systems of the platform. So we’ve been flying the mission systems for the B-21 for a number of years and evolving it over time to the current state of where we want to be when we go and deploy the platform.

So we’ve exercised the entire kill chain with production hardware, production software, including things like the radar and the mission management systems and the systems. All those things are on that flying test bed. So we can actually go out to the range and fly it as if it was a B-21 and demonstrate that that kill chain is effective and do it for score. So that’s a big element of this concept of risk left so that when we get out into flight test, we’re only dealing with the unique integration challenges associated with being on the actual platform.

Maj. Gen. Doug Raaberg, USAF (Ret.):

It’s tough calculus. Willy, let me throw the question at you too. First, mover advantages out of Phantom Works demos, successes.

Willy Andersen:

Let me parlay off of his response because I think there’s an area… And I’ll get into the first mover in the demo piece as I go through, but OMS absolutely a hundred percent needs to be at the tier three level where you’re driving competition at the box level. Now you’re driving costs down, you’re driving competition at that level. But an area that I want to actually play out a little bit is in the software side of it. So first mover advantage is going to be how quickly we can get capabilities into the jet integrated test and fielded. That’s going to be a lot about software. We’ve had years, decades about doing software… I won’t say wrong because we thought we were doing it the right way, but clearly there’s all sorts of scars and bad lessons learned across the industry.

So what we’re doing in Boeing is a couple of things. So first off, we have our own software factory. We’ve been investing in DevSecOps and all the things that all the companies are essentially doing. But in the ecosystem now you’re looking at software for CCAs as well as the platforms. And we don’t hold the market on autonomy, MUM-T algorithm development and so forth. There’s a lot of other companies that have invested a lot more and we want to harness that innovation to be able to bring the change in the capability to the war fighter. So what we’re actually doing is we’re defining essentially the interfaces we have to protect safety critical elements. We have to be able to do the integration and essentially provide, I’m going to loosely call autonomy dev kit to those houses. So as long as they comply with those, now we can harness that innovation, we can partner up with the industry, we can get new cool capabilities that are out there integrated in a lot quicker.

And then the other element of it is you can envision needing to do a software update in flight. Now I know that sounds like crazy talk because you got to do integration and test and all that ahead of time, but as a B-21 is inbound long, long way to go before it gets in, it may need new threat file, it may need some new software. So just last week at Emerald Flag, we actually took software from our Boeing factory all DevSecOps compliant, and that whole thing, took it from the factory and we actually transferred over a SATCOM CommLink to an airborne platform and it uploaded inflight, everything went smoothly and so forth. So from a demonstration standpoint, it’s looking at those kind of key enablers software, multi-domain capability, common command and control. And quite honestly, it’s not going to be about a single company. It’s going to be about partnering across the industry, working together to be able to accelerate that innovation to the work life.

Maj. Gen. Doug Raaberg, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah, my experience, especially as an air component commander deputy is that’s a tactical imperative. The future means we have to upload inflight even inbound to the target. Storman.

Jon Norman:

Yeah, I think it’s more foundational than diving into the technical side of it. So it’s setting the requirements right from the start. You hit on it. RCO hasn’t changed the fundamental requirements of B-21. Global Strike Command, now under General Newberry, this is the third new weapon center PO, we have not changed the requirements for LRSO since we started this. So that helps industry, whether we’re still in a competition, early down select helps accelerate a program, but having those threshold requirements the first time, so leaning on the war fighters, get that right in thinking towards the future so that as we set those requirements, we’re designing a system that is upgradable and this is where we need to not be so bold to think that we’re the only ones with a good idea.

Now look to our adversaries. So let’s look at the Chinese, what they’ve done with the PL series of air-to-air missiles. They’re not that fundamentally different. They’re composable missiles. That’s how they’re able to iterate and change rapidly and test, fail fast, and field fast. That comes back to the next major point. So for us to be able to work fast as industry talked about the requirements, but for us to be able to field fast, we have got to be in a partnership with the SPO and we’ve gotten to be in a partnership with the PEO and that partnership has to extend out to the operational war fighters so that as we’re doing the design, as we’re doing the iterations, we’re not missing the mark and we are keeping that end user in thought and we’re delivering that capability right at IOC that they need to execute the mission.

It has got to be a partnership. It cannot be an evaluation, from the SPO. And I think that’s why these programs are so incredibly successful because we’ve kind of turned that whole acquisition program upside down. And then it goes back to how do we do this execution in that design phase. And this is where I think it’s real easy to jump on the platitudes of model-based system engineering, DevSecOps. And if I put myself back in uniform days, my eyes just roll in the back of my heads and I go, ah, I don’t care. Do your acquisition stuff, give me what I need. Stop with the prototypes, slap the table. We’ve taken enough strategic risk. I need weapons in the MUNs storage area. I need capacity. And we can deliver that for you and we absolutely will deliver that for you. I would suggest to you though that there is a significant benefit for the war fighter with what we’re doing with the model based system engineering and these models that we’re developing.

It’s not just going through the iterations and design. This is something that you take as a war fighter afterwards so that you can run these mission rehearsals in a campaign with very, very accurate models of every platform and every weapon and of every threat. And you can do this until you find that best combination, that best pairing of weapons and platforms to achieve the best success. And then that leads to your comment about that C2. So the AMBS… Yeah. In the future, here’s the panacea. I can sit back in my easy chair back in the [inaudible 00:34:02] 2000 miles away with my coffee, and I can watch this air war occurring in front of me. I can see every threat. I’ve got total SA and I can just pair the right platform to the right target set and the right weapon to that right threat coming in.

So I win the first time every time. I look at it a little bit differently, I want that war fighter, whether it’s an accrued or uncured platform at the tip of the spear that’s actually exposed to have that type of global assay. And I want that war fighter that’s at the tip of the spear to be able to receive that change of here’s the new target priority. I want them to see to receive that digitally so that it’s not a 12-hour mission planning process on jumps. It’s coming across as an ASCII file and it’s downloaded to the weapon. They got the new pairing and that weapon goes. For my C2, I want that C2 back there to be able to see what platforms at what location with what weapon so that I can make that smart decision, and I’m not dumping the situational awareness of the war fighter out at the tip of the spear. I think that this revolution that we’re going through both an industry and with our acquisition community is going to give the war fighter to that capability in the future.

Maj. Gen. Doug Raaberg, USAF (Ret.):

I started my remarks with. This is a human endeavor. We’re going to end on the human endeavor loop. Willy, I’m going to start with you and then I’m going to, Doug, you complete the loop here please. We’ve got about five minutes remaining. So quick thoughts, what about the human in the loop? We’re talking about collaborative combat aircraft, we’re talking about autonomous systems, we’re talking about hypersonic, blistering speed weapon systems and you’re in the cockpit or you’re on the ground. What from the Phantom Works, from the Boeing side, and let’s go Raytheon into Northrop Grumman. How do you account for this entirely new dynamic environment that you have to deal with? Let’s try to keep it to the weapons system level.

Willy Andersen:

Well, there’s a number of different areas that I could go down with that one honestly enough. But when we’re looking at again that Global Strike ecosystem, from a weapon, from a CCCA aspect of it, that command and control element of it gives the human in the loop the ability now to be able to make adjustments, real time, mission-based, that’s there. So you can envision long-range weapons being shot off an F-15EX, expanded the load out and so forth, and now they’re just on the edge and they’re just firing the heck out of them and shooting them into the area. Those weapons then are netted. And so through ABMS and your commanded control system, you’ve got your ABMers. Now they could be on a E-7, they could be in the back of a KC-46, they could be on the ground, but all the weapons now are all netted together and they’re talking, they’re communicating amongst themselves.

And if they get to a target and that target’s already been struck, they can roll to the next target. And so that’s going to be the ability to be able to provide mass, the fog and friction of war. I mean that’s an element of that ecosystem that increases survivability, that increases mission effectiveness across. That’s what I think when I think of your question.

Maj. Gen. Doug Raaberg, USAF (Ret.):

Awesome. Thank you Willy. Storman, human in the loop.

Jon Norman:

I think you have to keep it simple. So from the weapons, they need to be easy to mission plan, they need to be easy to employ. For the sustainability, it’s starting at the very beginning. So as you’re designing a weapon or you’re designing a platform, go up to Minot, go there in the middle of the winter. Don’t go there in the summer when the Airmen are out there in cold weather gear and they get these horrendous mitts on, hopefully we’ve got them equipped with the right gear and let them work on the platform or on the weapon. Can they do it? Put that weapon into the [inaudible 00:38:10], can you move it in and out easily? And then for our AMC team, can we transport it easily? And more importantly, can we integrate these very quickly onto the new platforms, whether they’re crude or uncrude? It starts with the Airmen it and it ends with the Airmen. If we’re doing this right, we’ve made their job easier and we’ve given them incredible capability that they can employ.

Maj. Gen. Doug Raaberg, USAF (Ret.):

You bring up a key point before I touch you, Doug, and that is the human in the loop also goes from ground to command and control. Obviously everything’s going to be rapid machine to machine in some cases to be able to make decisions. So bring us home. Human in the loop.

Doug Young:

Yes, sir. From a human in the loop perspective, I’ll come at it from two angles. First of all, one of the reasons the program is successful is because of the embedded nature of Global Strike in our program from day one. General Bustier, thank you for the amazing support that we get from Global Strike every day. They’re embedded throughout the program, certainly in the program office, but we have 12 pilots from Global Strike that have been working with us over the last few years on the pilot vehicle interface. So we’ve gotten a lot of great feedback from other stakeholders of the ease and simplicity by which the information is displayed and which enables rapid decision making, informed decision making.

And to the point of the fact we’re really in an information age, it’s the people that are coming through schools and some of them that are still playing video games are going to be flying this airplane. And so they need to have a vehicle interface that really represents the state-of-the-art as far as that ability to manage the flight, but also manage that mission, which will be complex. So that Global Strike engagement at the pilot vehicle interface spreads all across everything we do. Our Global Strike is involved in our maintainability and sustainability studies. We have people in our labs in Melbourne, Florida where they work with us on the software and then out in Palmdale, we have folks that are working with us on the flight line as we get ready to go fly this airplane.

So Global Strike is a big part of that and I think that’s really a big aspect of the human piece that needs to be involved right from the beginning. And then finally, from a human perspective, I just really want to acknowledge the 8,000 people around the country that wake up every day to deliver this radar capability online. Those are 400 suppliers in 40 states and Northrop employees across the country working with our government counterparts to bring this online as quickly as we know how. And we’re committed to that and we work at it every day. So thank you for the opportunity to speak today.

Maj. Gen. Doug Raaberg, USAF (Ret.):

So let’s wrap it up by going back and looking at what this is all about as we talk about the human endeavor of Global Strike. I think you three gentlemen just hit the home run of the day. And that is, let’s not forget the war fighters are actually in industry and they’re creating new approaches at Boeing and Raytheon, at Northrop Grumman and others. And this is a tough problem, but not one insurmountable. I guarantee you the Chinese are going to be watching this video over and over and over. So Willy, thank you. Storman, I appreciate it. And Doug, thank you very much. One shameless plug, please go to the shop AFA store. I’ve already bought my bomber T-shirt, it’s got the B-21 in the front and every aircraft that I’ve ever flown them on the backbone. So please and thank you. Let’s give these gentlemen a round of applause, please.

Watch, Read: ‘Operationalizing ABMS-JADC2’

March 8, 2023

Chad Haferbier, vice president and division manager for multi-domain operations of Leidos; Lance Spencer, client executive vice president for AT&T Global Public Sector; and Joseph Sublousky, vice president for joint all domain command and control at SAIC, discussed ways the Department of the Air Force and industry can work together to deliver operational capabilities of Joint-All Domain Command and Control to Airmen and Guardians during a panel on ‘Operationalizing ABMS-JADC2’ on March 7, 2023, at the AFA Warfare Symposium. Watch the video or read the transcript below.

Col. Frederick “Trey” Coleman:

Good morning. Thanks for being here this morning. Thanks for choosing to attend this panel. We know there’s a lot of great topics out there, so we’re honored you chose to come and spend time with us. This topic today is on operationalizing ABMS and JADC2. It’s a great topic because, frankly, we’ve all been talking about this for quite a while. You probably didn’t attend a panel today. There’s probably not a panel out there that didn’t say the words ABMS or JADC2 or at least C2 at some point. It’s really exciting and it’s a great opportunity to talk about how we’re going to… Or how we are making it real, because I want to be clear that this isn’t a brief about tomorrow, or a panel about tomorrow, or the future necessarily. There will be a lot more to come.

But ABMS and JADC2 are being operationalized today. There’s a lot of great capabilities out there and a lot of great systems. That’s what we’re going to talk about. Before we get into that, what I’d like to do is lay some foundational groundwork a little bit and just talk some terminology, because I think that’s helpful before we get into a lot of the specifics. At the risk of sounding pejorative, I’ll just start with just defining JADC2 and ABMS. When we talk about JADC2, this is the Department of Defense’s Joint All-Domain Command and Control Program. The strategic document for it says, “The purpose of it’s to enable the joint force to use increasing volumes of data, employee automation, and AI, rely upon a secure and resilient infrastructure, and act inside an adversary’s decision cycle to sense, make sense, and act.”

In their report on JADC2, the Congressional Research Service described JADC2 as the DOD’s concepts to connect sensors from all the military services, Air Force, Army, Marine Corps, Navy, and Space Force into a single network. ABMS, the Advanced Battle Management System, is the Air Force’s contribution to JADC2. It’s part of the JADC2 solution. The name of the Air Force’s contribution is telling in itself, command and control. It can be a very broad thing. The President of the United States executes command and control, commanders execute command control. Just about anybody can execute command and control or touches command and control at some point. Battle management is a niche form of command and control. It’s the tactical level of command and control. It’s the employment, it’s the engagements, it’s the battle level of command and control. Just by naming the contribution Advanced Battle Management System, the Air Force has said that it’s focusing on the tactical level of C2. Not necessarily the operational level, not necessarily the strategic level, although there’s, of course, implications and tangential relationships, externalities, but battle management is tactical command and control.

Specifically, ABMS, is uniquely focused on the kill chain. The kill chain isn’t really a joint term. I’ll talk about that just for a second too. When we talk about the kill chain, we mean the F2T2EA process, finding, fixing, tracking, targeting, engaging and assessing. When we think about ABMS, we should think about it as ways the Air Force can advance its ability to execute F2T2EA faster, more resiliently, and at scale. That’s what this panel will focus on. Each of our panel members has been an important part of the ABMS community. Each of them and their companies have made and are making critical contributions towards our ability to operationalize ABMS to our ability to execute the kill chain faster, more resiliently, and at scale. Chad Haferbier serves as the vice president of Leidos’s multi-domain operations division.

In this role, he drives the corporate strategy that positions Leidos as a leader in the MDO paradigm with meticulous planning, technology disruption, and collaborative execution. Previously, Mr. Haferbier was a senior material leader at the Department of the Air Force Rapid Capabilities office. His team led the advanced panel management system to acquisition, delivering advanced all domain capabilities to Airmen and Guardians. The RCO’s done great work for us and continues to do great work. Lance Spencer is the client executive vice president of AT&T’s global public sector. He leads the AT&T business portfolios for the U.S. Department of Defense and Global Defense. In his capacity, he is responsible for identifying, aligning, and developing AT&T and partner capabilities to meet DOD joint and coalition global operating needs to improve operational availability, cybersecurity, resiliency, and cost. Mr. Spencer spent 26 years in the Air Force retiring as a colonel after serving in several key positions, including commander of an expeditionary group and two different squadron commands and serving as a joint task force J6 and on the half-staff.

Joseph Sublousky is the vice president of SAIC’s Joint All-Domain Command and Control campaign responsible for developing and implementing corporate JADC2 strategies. He works across all SAIC sectors and business units to ensure coherence and synergy around capabilities for Department of Defense imperatives. Digital engineering, artificial intelligence, machine learning, multi-level security networking, and cloud-based on-prem DevSecOps. He also has 28 years of active duty Air Force service, retiring as a colonel in 2014. As an airman, Mr. Sublousky commanded several C2 and communications organizations around the globe, including the 56th air communications squadron in Pacaf, the 1st combat communications squadron in USAFE, and the 609th air communications squadron, an AFCENT near and dear to my heart. He also served as the AFCENT A-6. Gentlemen, thanks for taking the time to be here on our panel. Over to you now for some opening comments and we look forward to having this discussion with you, Chad.

Chad Haferbier:

Thanks, Colonel Coleman. Super excited to be here with you all today to talk about two of my favorite topics, delivering operational capabilities to war fighters rapidly and then ABMS, and how we can mechanize the open architecture non-proprietary framework to drive best-of-breed solutions that will stay ahead of those threats. How do we expedite that kill chain? How do we make that kill chain more resilient? I think ABMS is laying the great framework to be able to do that under General Cropsey’s leadership. Very excited to help General Cropsey as a performer on the digital infrastructure consortium, as well as driving Leidos’ corporate strategy to help stay with that non-proprietary open architecture solution base that we can help work across the industry as well to bring the best-of-breed for war fighters around the globe.

Col. Frederick “Trey” Coleman:

Thanks, Chad. Lance.

Lance Spencer:

Yeah, thank you. Some of you may see my LinkedIn post yesterday. Yesterday was the 147th anniversary of Alexander Graham Bell receiving his patent for the telephone and birth of AT&T. Since then, AT&T lab scientists have gone on to invent some amazing things like the transistor, long distance phone calls, cellular phone system, invented the transistor, designed Unix, which was the basis for today’s modern internet. Even closer to the military, AT&T provided the first command and control network for General Pershing on the front lines of France during World War I. We invented AUTOVON and the precedent system. We’ve got a long history working with the military, over a century of working in the military, solving problems, and going right to the front lines with the military, when needed, to support our nation.

Connectivity is at the heart of everything we do and is at the heart of every communication network. What is an organization that cannot communicate, cannot access their data ubiquitously? How can they deliver on their mission without effective comms? That’s where AT&T comes in. There’ll be private-based, IP-based off of… Private access based off of use cases, but the underpinning is commercial networks. The fight won’t happen inside the gate. The fight will happen on commercial networks wherever you go. DOD simply can’t afford to build what we’ve already spent hundreds of billions of dollars on, and in most scenarios, they’ll need to operate on this commercial infrastructure, like I said, if not for all, some of the connection. Stove pipes just don’t work. 5G is a game changer in military operations. Low latency, seamless standards-based data access, and resilient edge operations provide connected platforms, interoperability, and the DOD decision superiority in JADC2.

By bringing the major network service providers like AT&T and for early planning and exercises, we can more effectively help the DOD during crisis and better align to the mission delivering standards-based solutions that meet the needs of the military. Working together is how we can deliver the right solutions. Thinking has matured and evolved with commercial 5G, private seller networking, securing those extensions of the enterprise, and how private networks interconnect for enterprise operations and scale. 5G use cases in hybrid of private and commercial 5G implementations will be critical and tailoring depending on what is needed for each use case. Delivering enterprise data access at scale will require partnering with network service providers to stitch this together, leveraging our significant investment solutions that already exists and can make this hybrid model work. 5G is the access, but it requires a massive fiber infrastructure, as well as a space layer, and service management and service assurance platforms to operate beyond niche solutions.

The DOD can’t recreate that. Like Space Systems Command says, “Exploit, buy, build.” DOD often gets that backwards. But to the success of a great power competition, it’s necessary to exploit and buy and leverage the innovation investment of the whole of nation. Just briefly, speaking of Space Systems Command, the next frontier space will be no different. The power of combining terrestrial and space-based mobile network solutions has the potential to provide end-to-end coverage never before available. Choosing the right trusted industry partners will be important in a national security imperative. That’s just the beginning. I can also talk about maritime and other domains. For example, AT&T and partnership with the Naval Postgraduate School is expanding 5G coverage into the Littorals with our commercial radio access network on ocean power buoys in Monterey Bay. The health communications industry is redefining networking, pushing the limits of mobile communication as we know them today. Our military needs to connect to an interoperable, seamless, unified data-driven network. Networks shouldn’t be different because they’re in space or at sea, and the same devices should be able to connect regardless of the network. That’s our plan.

AT&T is collaborating with AST SpaceMobile to deliver space-based mobility. The AST BlueWalker 3 satellite successfully launched in September 2022 and AST is completing initial vehicle and systems checkout. AT&T is working with AT&T SpaceMobile to test the integration of the AT&T mobile network with this AST solution. The satellite literally would operate as a cell tower in space and follow industry standards. We have conditional regulatory approval to use AT&T spectrum to test and this will bring the power of space-based mobile solutions, combined with terrestrial networks, to seamlessly provide interoperability in a single [inaudible 00:10:32] enterprise regardless of location. In our too distant future where DOD will be able to access space and terrestrial-based networks determined by best path with interconnects occurring as they do today in global peering and carrier-to-carrier handoffs, and with the same devices regardless of access to space systems or terrestrial mode. Just like our network and devices allow for roaming today, in the future, they’ll be roaming on space. This is another innovation in our long pedigree inventing the future and our century plus long relationship with the military providing cutting edge solutions. Over to you, Joe. Thanks.

Col. Frederick “Trey” Coleman:

Thanks, Lance. Joe.

Joseph Sublousky:

Fantastic. I can’t see you but you can see me. I’m going to tell you a lot of things, but I would love to have a follow-up with you after this. I want to talk to you, because the conversation’s how we’re going to get after JADC2 and ABMS. This is going to be a cooperative effort. What I’ll tell you about me is you heard my bio, a lot of acronyms. I’m an atypical communicator. I grew up under the likes of operators that taught me that it’s not about the links, it’s about the data, it’s about the mission. SAIC is a solutions provider. We are working in several areas across all of the services in order to provide each service’s contribution to JADC2 with capabilities, not products. JADC2 two won’t be a product. I tell everybody this, “You won’t buy a JADC2. What you’re going to buy is a capability and it’s going to be built upon an architecture that all are going to be able to share.”

A little bit about me, I’ve commanded, like you said, at the ACOMs, at the combat comm, and it as an A-6. I saw every non-interoperable system that you could probably see. We figured out a fix for it. But in tomorrow’s pacing threat, we’re not going to be able to figure it out. We’re not going to be able to get the data there fast enough once the person who needs it figures out what they need. We have to have a data repository that’s enabling us to allow algorithmic approaches to get the data at the places at the speed of need. We always say speed of need, but the reality of it needs to be there much like you’re getting your updates on your phone and you didn’t even ask it for anything. What I would tell you is I’m looking forward to this. Thanks for the opportunity to participate in this discussion as a one-way discussion, but more importantly, AFA, it’s been a fantastic symposium. Really have enjoyed time here.

Col. Frederick “Trey” Coleman:

Thanks, Joe. I appreciate it. Hey, I realized as you guys were introducing yourselves, I failed to introduce myself in the beginning, which was the first thing they told me to do when I walked in the door. I’m Trey Coleman from the 505th Command and Control Wing. We are the only command controlling in the Air Force. We work for the Air Warfare Force Center as part of ACC and directly for the CSAF to test, train, and develop TTPs for the war fighter. We’re really excited to be a part of this panel and work closely with the C3BM team and the CFT up at half to get ABMS across the finish line or continues to deliver it. I’m not sure there is a finish line. Okay. On to the questions. I’m going to ask each of you guys a question, a question or two, and what I’d like you to do is answer the question and then I’m going to ask the rest of the panel members if they’ve got something they’d like to add on.

This needs to be a conversation for it to be meaningful. I want this to be a meaningful conversation so that we all learn something so the audience walks away and we’re smarter and we’re a little bit more aligned. I’ll start with you, Chad. You’ve been working at ABMS for quite some time. As a matter of fact, I first met Chad when he was at the RCO and we were working CMCC together. I’d ask you, what do you think has been the greatest success of ABMS and what have we already accomplished or delivered or advanced as part of ABMS?

Chad Haferbier:

Yeah, It’s a great question. The pivot from the on-ramp exercises, which stimulated the imagination of what could be, to more of an acquisition-focused, delivering operational capability, I think, has been the best shift for ABMS. I think Congress agrees. They’ve actually appropriated a full budget, for the first time in ABMS, since Joint STARS was canceled. That’s good news for the Air Force as we’re on the right track. Under the leadership of Spaniard Valenzia and General Cropsey, that early prominent war fighter involvement in everything ABMS is doing is really where we need to go. That’s how you get operational capability fuel as rapidly as possible. You get that war fighter feedback, you apply DevSecOps principles to how we deliver capability, not just software. Those are great Ws for what ABMS is doing, which will manifest in great Ws for operational advantages for our war fighters.

Another great thing that ABMS has done a better job of, over the past few years, is getting Space Force more involved. General Olson’s far more dedicated in terms of bringing the Space Force along to have their story for how we, at the Department of the Air Force, delivers a joint across space and Air Force ABMS capability that is critical. We can’t stovepipe within our own department. How ironic would that be for JADC2 to be stovepiped within the Department of the Air Force? Those are some really big Ws. I’ll turn over these guys.

Col. Frederick “Trey” Coleman:

Lance, Joe, any pilots?

Lance Spencer:

Just a brief comment and I agree with what you said. Joe kind of touched on it in his opening comments, being in front of the pacing threat. I think it’s really important that, in the JADC2 and ABMS environment, that we start exercising together on what potential courses of action might have to be executed. If we wait till the balloon goes up, it’s too late. We got to do all that relationship building, getting to know each other, understanding the art of the possible together, pushing ourselves together. I think that’s really important in the construct.

Col. Frederick “Trey” Coleman:

Thanks.

Joseph Sublousky:

Recognizing we needed to do ABMS, I think, is a success. Absolutely. I would tell you that. When I took over at SAIC a year ago, I came from a cybersecurity company and I was doing a lot of the threat intelligence piece. It hearkened back to the days of tactical data links. How do you share threat intelligence across an environment so that you actually know the threat before it actually gets to you because you can see it in another domain? You can see it in another co comm. I navigated to the guiding principles of ABMS when I first started, because ABMS is a contribution to JADC2. I said, “What are the guiding principles?” Separable C2, that says a lot. How do you separate C2 in order to actually do it? That gets to a lot of the things that we need to work on within ABMS. I believe we’re starting to deliver those separable C2 constructs on how do you [inaudible 00:16:41] environment? How do you actually get the data to the locations that you need it? How do you operate within a cloud environment?that’s going to enable us to do that.

Distributed debt battle management, we’ve known that all along but how do you do it at speed and how do you do it where you’re actually doing a different kind of warfare? How do you reimagine the way we’re going to do battle management at the tactical level in the future? And then integration, we all know what integration means as a guiding principle. That’s the operational side. But you go to the technical side and it talks about DevSecOps in support of those operational guiding principles and open architecture. I think, most important, models-based systems engineering. We got to model what we want to do before we actually do it, because long gone are the days that we’re just going to buy it and see if it works and then we get into the integration challenges that we’ve faced in the past. I think those are some successes to date and what we’ve delivered. I’ll talk about in another question that you’re going to, I think, hopefully, open it up for us to say. What are we doing in cloud? I’ll stop there.

Col. Frederick “Trey” Coleman:

Okay. Thanks, Joe. I agree. One of the greatest benefits of JADC2 and ABMS has been this focus on C2 that I think we’ve led atrophy over the past few decades. That’s one of the greatest benefits. I said it before, no kidding, we, this room, we are delivering and there is capability out there, but that capability requires data. It requires connectivity. General Valenzia said it yesterday on a different panel, “Data is not C2. Data is not…” Or sorry, “Communications is not C2.” Command and control commands an authority and controls the communication of that authority, the expression of that authority. It’s a two-way conversation, but it requires some degree of connectivity and some degree of data in some way, shape, or form. We know our adversaries are working hard on their abilities to disrupt and degrade our ability to transfer data, to defeat our ability to communicate. Is the Air Force moving in the right direction? Lance, this question’s for you. Is the Air Force moving in the right direction and to ensure connectivity and access to our data, and are we thinking about connectivity the right way?

Lance Spencer:

The Air Force and Space Force is getting better at it. The conversation has changed and pivoted significantly in the last several years. I think the understanding of how to embrace commercial solutions and investment has been part of that. There’s a lot of opinions on enterprise IT as a service, but I’ll tell you, the network as a service, RRE that we’re doing at Buckley just down the street, we’re getting amazingly high marks. Buckley’s about to move to a secure internet gateway, which is a multi-generational leap from the current internet access points that the DOD is using today using commercial innovation. We did it in partnership with U.S. Cyber Command and National Security Agency. We’ve got all kinds of proof points off. It’s already migrated, it’s not going fast enough.

The pivot needs to happen faster. The DOD, and the Air Force, and Space Force are working on it, but they don’t quite know how to procure a commercial yet. I’ll give you a great example. Later today, we’re going over to Buckley to do a ribbon cutting on the 5G build that we just did there. It took five years just to get that done. Normally, it takes 18 months. There’s just all kinds of paperwork, all kinds of red tape, and 5G is going to be a major enabler for data ubiquity. You’re going to be using it inside and outside the gates, getting that infrastructure in place. Oh, by the way, the carriers pay for that. That’s not a bill, is going to be really important. Solving those problems are still really important and I think there needs to be more urgency and effort on that.

Col. Frederick “Trey” Coleman:

Any follow on thoughts, Chad, Joe?

Chad Haferbier:

Yeah. I’d pile on a little bit in terms of where I know the Air Force is going that is right. As you go to a detailed environment, you’re going to need to provision for that. You can’t expect to have comms all the time. How do we ensure that we have protocols and algorithms set up, whether it be at the far edge or at a operational C2 node, where we can understand the data, understand the latency of that data, and make sure we’re making the best decisions possible?

Col. Frederick “Trey” Coleman:

Yeah, thanks.

Joseph Sublousky:

I think the are we moving in the right direction? Yes, I think we are, but there’s a long way to go. The adversaries approaches to disrupt. Disrupting feeds and speeds is an easy thing to do. Isolate, locate, connect, disconnect. I think as we move towards a cloud, a cloud edge environment, and we start moving in that direction, that would be very important. We’re heavily dependent upon meshONE-T to come up with that answer to how are we going to actually connect and how are we going to be able to self-heal, self form those fancy words that we use that are very difficult to apply, but that’s going to be absolutely critical from a connectivity piece. But I would offer that connectivity is not the only way of operating within ABMS.

It’s about not just the networking side, but it’s a data-centric approach put into a cloud architecture. That is absolutely, because once you get to that point, no matter where I go with this phone, or that iPad, or anything else I’ve got, I can get to all of my data. The data is what we need to get to. When you talk about redundant communications in the past, I would offer that, more importantly, it would be resilient communications to that data is what I’d focus on.

Col. Frederick “Trey” Coleman:

Yeah. That’s a great point, Joe. Somebody asked me recently what happens to the Takl or the Ford Edge when they’re disconnected? I think we’re at the point where degradation isn’t necessarily a binary thing where it’s you either have it or you don’t. I think, my assumption, and the way when we talk about this, I think there’s always going to be some degree of data that can get through. If there is, no kidding, you’re entirely disconnected, I think it’s a very short period of time when we can get reconnected. We’ve got the systems to do that in the multiple pathways to do that, but I don’t accept that it’s a binary thing, either you have it or you don’t have it. Because we do have multiple layers and very resilient comms, and you guys are helping us build those out.

A key part of this construct is, today, the Air Operations Center, and Joe, you mentioned that you’ve got some pretty good experience in our AOCs. Clearly, how we think of the AOCs today in the big monolithic buildings needs to change. I’d argue that there’s still, and in fact, there’s probably an increasing need for those operational level C2 decisions at resource management that decides where the assets need to be, and at what time they need to be there, and what they’re doing. We still need that, especially with our limited force. You still need that operational C2 function. But the question is what does it look like? How does it change in the future? Joe, in your opinion, what does the future of the AOC look like?

Joseph Sublousky:

That’s a big question.

Col. Frederick “Trey” Coleman:

You got to solve though. You can figure it out.

Joseph Sublousky:

I think there’s a lot of people in there that would know what the AOC is supposed to look like in the future. I’ve been out for a little while, but I can give you my opinion on and what I think it is. I’ve seen an example of it in SAIC. It’s cloud-based command and control. SAIC was selected to deliver a cloud-based command and control for customer number one, NORAD NORTHCOM. Nominally got started in November, December timeframe. The focus was on cloud and the focus was on data. It was not on the edge, it was not on the network connectivity or any of those things. In a DevSecOps environment, we’ve been able to deliver in two months an unclassified CUI level capability that connects all the air defense sectors and all of the radars that they’re looking at, unclassified-wise, to a single pane of glass using an application.

Now you would think that that’s critically important to have, which it is, but I think the most important thing that I would say for the AOC in the future is something that the commercial industry does today, which is a continuous update. It’s a continuous update to that app based upon the threats that you are actually getting into. Because we’ve all known it, your plan is just about as good as the first contact with the adversary and then it changes. How do we get continuous updates? Well, the way that you do that is through a DevSecOps environment. You can update that CBC2 app today and it actually is automatically available to everybody that’s connecting to it. I think it’s the first time in the Air Force that we’ve seen those feeds be connected into a cloud architecture that’s displayable, not only on a laptop but on your phone, because once we get the data and the access to the data in a cloud environment, the edge device is, I don’t want to say it’s simple, but it can be realized pretty quickly.

Col. Frederick “Trey” Coleman:

Chad, any thoughts on the AOC?

Chad Haferbier:

I’ll take a different angle. Some things that many probably assume already is that AOCs are on a common baseline. I think that’ll be in the future is, as Kessel Run, cloud hosts their applications will have a better ability to cross train across AOCs. Folks can come in and be familiar with the AOC as they sit down in whether they be in Hawaii or in Germany. That’s one thing, I think, in the CICD pipeline that Kessel Run’s leading is very important to realize that vision and be able to rapidly update. How do we break down the data between test, and training, and operations to quickly evolve our TTPs to stay ahead of threats? I think the AOC will be very involved in that as we break down those stovepipes of data and start to throw them black through the shotgun and other applications to work on those things in a more iterative process.

Col. Frederick “Trey” Coleman:

Yeah. That’s a great point. Systems like Kreios and CBC2 cloud-based systems allow you to distribute your control. That’s how you do it. We’re excited about these systems. Lance, any thoughts?

Lance Spencer:

Yeah. Just a couple thoughts and an open secret. Joe and I worked together once upon a time. I was the F4 A-6 for Europe in Africa for a few years, and I’ve slept on the AOC floor a few nights myself. When we’d finish the operational planning as a staff, the boss would say, “Oh, you all get on planning the next thing. Lance, you come with me to the AOC,” because they understood what comm meant and what the Sixth World looked like. A lot of people talk about cloud. I think what Joe talked about especially is a great prototype and proof of concept to innovate. The ability to scale it is really important, and it sounds like you’ve maybe solved some of the problems from what you’re describing. My experience and my observation, as I engage across the Air force, is the biggest stovepipe is the network.

Everybody goes and gets themselves some over their own network and it’s not ubiquitous. It doesn’t connect. There’s a myth that the DOD doesn’t write on commercial networks. Almost all of the DOD writes on commercial networks. It’s just not done the right way. Figuring out how to procure that. As you go to the cloud, how you going to get there? You got to connect. It doesn’t just magically hop in the cloud. Thinking through, that’s important, I think, when we’re thinking through, especially distributed AOCs, and distributed operations, and C2 that the AOCs will bring forward.

Joseph Sublousky:

That’s a great point. I mean you brought up PTSD for me back in Third Air Force. Lance would always decide where we were going and then I would go there and figure it out. But the plans are important, they’re absolutely critical. I mean, coming up with what you’re going to do is important. I guess what I would offer from the AOC’s perspective is, as a combat comm unit, we needed 17 pallets to take connectivity to the field, and then we needed 48 to 72 hours to connect that connectivity to some kind of a source where then we could start bringing up our servers and bringing up… That cannot happen in the future for an AOC.

It has got to be something where you can actually deploy a very light capability and sometimes use existing connectivity that’s available to you in order to get back into a cloud environment that has the data that you need to get access to. The Air Force is working in those realms, but that is going to be critical for the AOC in the future. The logistics trail that has to happen in order to actually establish some kind of a presence, even at the smallest of presence. We have a answer for that. The challenge is we just need to get through a policy discussion around how we do it. I think that’s going to lead into my next, hopefully, discussion. But I’ll stop there because we can go forever on policy.

Col. Frederick “Trey” Coleman:

Thanks, Joe. Hey, a great example of distribution is AFCENT, just a couple weeks ago, you may heard me say this in a panel yesterday morning, but they pushed their ATO from an apartment complex using sipper tablets, and the map team stayed in their apartments in Sumter, South Carolina and pushed the ATO out to the field. That’s distribution. That’s what it looks like. They did that because they’re using Kreios, and it’s a cloud-based system, and they don’t have to have the servers in their apartment complex. It’s a great example. Okay, question four. This is for each of you, and I’ll start with Chad, and we’ll go down the row here. As a senior corporate executive, what is one of the biggest challenges you see when working on the ABMS portfolio from the industry perspective? What one thing would you change in the Air Force bureaucracy, if you could, to help us operationalize ABMS?

Chad Haferbier:

The value proposition for ABMS JADC2 is China. There’s no secret there. The secretary’s talking about it, chief of space office is talking about it. With that comes, we’re going to be leveraging our most exquisite capabilities across the joint force. To me, one of the challenges that I understood, but now I really understand it on the industry side, is our ability to communicate, at a classified level, with the war fighters and with the acquisition entities so that we can better position our IRAD spends to skate where the puck is going, and be ready for them, and have capability ready for when they want to get there. To me, that’s one of the biggest challenges. It’s something I’m not just going to throw over the fence and hope somebody fixes it. I’m willing to help fix it. I’ve had many conversations this week about it actually. To me, that’s one thing that I would hope that the bureaucracy within the Pentagon can get together and solve.

Lance Spencer:

Thanks. Lance. I think that something to consider with that is how to better embrace the whole of nation. Because if a fight happens, the whole nation’s going to be involved. How do we bring all that to the table? I will echo what Joe finished with a minute ago about policy. One of the examples I used was building cellular networks on bases. It should be just as easy building outside the fences, inside the fence. The signal doesn’t stop at the fence line, but we have to do an 18-month spectrum study. By the way, for spectrum that we already own and are licensed to operate on. There’s a lot of things that put sand in the gears to keep that kind of stuff from happening. I was talking with Lauren Knausenberger last night for a while and I mentioned the secure internet gateway.

It’s an amazing capability, but it took her personally working for three years to get a temporary exception to policy to do it. She’s the CIO and it took that much to get that work through the building. I think being able to address policy, be nimble, and be able to take risk. I had an opportunity to talk with Secretary Kendall not long ago. He says, “What question would you pose to me?” I said, “You’ve accepted the risk of operating off department complex and people operating from their sofa on the same systems with the same data, but you can’t bring that on the base. Why is it harder to bring it on the base to do the exact same job?” That’s what my thoughts are.

Col. Frederick “Trey” Coleman:

Thanks, Lance.

Joseph Sublousky:

I would say the one thing, get rid of the word bureaucracy. I mean, it is not just a bureaucracy on one side. The bureaucracy is a two-way street. “You need to do it this way. No, I can’t do it that way. You need to change your mind. I can’t change my mind.” I think partnerships are important. Experimentations in partnerships between industry and the Air Force are critical. Just during this conference, I was asking a general officer I worked for about starting back in your day kind of approach. I can say that now, “Back in my day…” because I remember it. JFX was a great opportunity for us to experiment in how we were going to do joint task force operations. We do that in some terms today. But the challenge is I think there’s not enough partnership discussions because we’re bringing capability and technologies that may not necessarily meet the needs that you, the Air Force, has or the DOD has.

That’d be the first one. The second one is it is around test and certifications. It is around how do we get to the person that can say, “Yes, which I’m going to take that home with me, sir, and find that person”? It is about not trying to convince the people that say no all the time, but getting the person that can say yes, because when the nation goes to conflict, bureaucracy falls away. Because those folks that can say yes, come forward and say, “We’re going to do this.” I’ve been in that road before and we’ve been able to accomplish a lot of capabilities that we didn’t think we could in a very quick fashion, but we needed a conflict, the forcing function. I think, at this stage, partnerships and identifying clearly who can say yes to those challenging tests and certifications.

Secret releasable is a classic example. That takes a long time, but it’s not really a long time once you get to the right person and explain what you’re doing. There are technologies out there to allow us to do things in a different way. Today, in a more agile environment, you can’t apply hardware to a cloud environment. It just doesn’t scale. I would leave it at that. I got to mention, we talked about cloud. I just want to make sure everybody understands. Air Force Cloud One, it’s DOD Cloud One. SAIC is well-versed to support every Department of Defense entity into Cloud One. It’s not one service provider. It’s not just I have to go to one service provider. It’s a decision that says, “I need to move my on-prem or my capability sets into a cloud environment.”

It’s walking into that and saying, “Can you help me do it?” Number one. There’s a bureaucracy, I got it. But if you form a partnership, it can go very quickly. But more importantly, I think that when you start making that road to the cloud and you recognize it’s not one service provider, the next thing you’ll recognize is that it’s taken three plus years to put a zero trust environment in that cloud. I mean, why would you not want to go there? When you looked at solar winds, and Log4j, and all that, Cloud One was not impacted by any of those. The cost of moving to cloud may be expensive, but the cost to not move to cloud, I would say, would be something to take a look at because it’s very expensive to address those impacts, vulnerabilities that exist on a network-centric approach today.

Col. Frederick “Trey” Coleman:

As former A-6s and ACOMs commanders, how can the Air Force incentivize today’s ACOMs commanders to move their data to the cloud? Or the A-6s. The right person, the right air component. This is a surprise question. They weren’t expecting this one, but it’s a challenge we face because nobody wants to let go of their data. You got your data center, you want to hold onto it like it’s a teddy bear. How do we incentivize them?

Joseph Sublousky:

Incentivize them. You could say, “Do it,” because we do that. We do that. I mean, when it comes down to it, we get to the incentivizing way of just do it, but there’s a better approach to it as well. Today, when you want to move into a… Again, I’m going to take one minute to talk. But when we want to tell people to move to a cloud architecture, we don’t understand that… We don’t tell them the other part of that, which is, “Keep doing what you’re doing. I funded you to do what you’re doing, so keep doing that. But by the way, go find additional funds, additional resources, additional expertise, additional talent, and move.” And then operate it a period of time where you’ve got to keep both up and running for some semblance of a time before you’re assured that cloud architecture’s going to support you. I think that there’s an opportunity where the services can look to earmark or do some investments to get that data to the cloud to reduce vulnerabilities that exist in existing legacy systems today.

But I don’t think it’s going to happen if you’re asking the match comm A-6s, the NAF A-6s, to take it… “Go ask for an unfunded budget in order to move your architecture.” I would venture to say that there’s… I don’t want to be so pejorative to think that it is this, but I would say that if I were to express the benefits of cloud over the benefits of architectures living in a 19-inch rack, that there would be very few people that would say, “No, I want to stay here.” Now. There are some occasions where you have to stay there, but the benefits once you get into a cloud architecture with the reach, the capabilities, and then the security pieces behind it, what we’ve seen an industry, from a Cloud One perspective, primarily, the industry is moving into a cloud architecture for security reasons, because I can control the access to it, but more importantly, I have a configured environment that I can actually keep people in.

Col. Frederick “Trey” Coleman:

Nice. Lance.

Lance Spencer:

I think building on that, a couple thoughts. One is empowerment and having a solution available that does meet their interoperational needs and to allow that to happen. We reflected back on Ramstein and we did a lot of stuff people said, “You can’t do that.” But when things are happening, you can do a lot, but we can’t wait for that. I think there’s a workforce issue as well, and maybe a revisiting of roles. Companies like us up here on stage bring great things to the fight. What do we want our Airmen and Guardians doing?

Do we want them building servers under desks or solutions like that because they’ve got a need, and they’re very creative and they know a lot of things, but it becomes a solution under the desk? Or do we want them doing more cyber kind of missions and things like that? I think that we need to think through how do we realign the workforce so that they’re doing meaningful things to themselves that they feel is bringing the right contribution to the mission, and then how do we migrate what they had been doing under their desktop to companies like us so that you can get scalable standards-based solutions that talk together?

Col. Frederick “Trey” Coleman:

Thanks. Gentlemen, we’ve reached a couple minutes left. I’d like to just give you the opportunity for some closing comments. Chad.

Chad Haferbier:

Yeah. We talked a lot. You started off with we’re talking about battle management at the tactical level, and then we immediately fell back into operational. One thing that I really want to make sure we understand is that there’s never going to be a homogeneous compute environment. Cloud One’s not going to be on B-21. Sorry. But there will be operative advantages to connect to those operational C2 nodes and to have that data extraction for an operational C2 application in a cloud. Heterogeneous ecosystems for compute and how we communicate are going to be forever, just like ABMS, as you mentioned, will be forever. We need to make sure that we understand how do we drive advantages to the edge, to bare metal, as well as seize those advantages at operational level from that data extraction and redistribution and that decision layer?

My comments are really focused on, we want to work with industry, we want to work with all of you. We know it’s going to be hard, we know it’s going to be heterogeneous environment, but I think there’s tons of advantages for our war fighters. That is the national opportunity space. We’ve fallen away from our soul platform technological advantage, especially with China, but there is advantage in our ability to collaborate and seize those synergies from all domain JADC2.

Col. Frederick “Trey” Coleman:

Yeah. I appreciate your point that we started talking about battle management and the kill chain and we’re talking about data centers. We just got to keep reminding ourselves, I’m guilty of it, is anybody else? Data is not C2, but you need some kind of data. You need some kind of communications. But C2 can take the form of… It’s taking the form of smoke, drums, flags, and today, it’s taking the form of algorithms. Lance.

Lance Spencer:

Yeah. I’ve got to think that it’s probably just the job jar of trying to breathe this to life is fairly overwhelming. I’m sure there’s all kinds of people knocking at all kinds of doors saying, “Hey, take a look at what I’ve got. Take a look at me,” and sorting through that. Separating the wheat from the chaff, I’m sure, is a challenge. I remember being in uniform, coming to events like this, you don’t get a moment of peace. Actually I’m finding now in the role I’m in, a lot of the companies that are talking to the Air Force and Space Force are our suppliers also. I’m actually doing more industry meetings at these things now than I am doing government facing meetings, which has been enlightening.

But I think that a few things like the myth I mentioned that the DOD can’t use commercial. You’re using a ton of commercial, you’re just not doing it the right way. How do we work through the understandings and awareness of how to exploit and take advantage of that, I think, is really important. Working through and how do we develop that trust and that collaborative environment. I think exercises are one of the ways to do that. Call us, we’ll come participate in the war game. Let’s figure out how to come together as a community and do that, because there’s a lot of roles to be played and I think there’s the right people to play. We just got to sort that out.

Col. Frederick “Trey” Coleman:

Thanks, Lance. Joe.

Joseph Sublousky:

Thanks again for coming, and talking, and allowing us to see the light, I guess I’d say, because I can’t see anything else. SAIC is working towards, I would tell you, again, it sounds cliche, but it’s enabling decision dominance at the contested edge because it covers those guiding principles for ABMS. We are working hard to make that happen. We’re doing it in a number of areas, whether it’s a digital infrastructure, consortium membership, whether it’s cloud-based command and control for customer number one, NORAD NORTHCOM, or whether it’s modernizing the Air Operations Center, all of which SAIC is intimately involved in. If not the prime, we concerted efforts in doing work there. But there’s synergies around that.

I’ll share with you, my intro was I’m an atypical communicator. I met an individual here that was a three Delta, which is a enlisted communicator who then became a 17 Delta cyber officer who is now an ABM, which I believe, I’ve listened in a couple of these symposiums and conferences, that it’s going to take a different person in the future in order to operate in the battle spaces and the tactical areas that we’re going to operate in the future. We got to start building those. Industry is trying to build them as fast as possible to provide the capabilities, and SAIC is working those capabilities to support the architecture. Data, cloud, edge, and transport.

Col. Frederick “Trey” Coleman:

Thanks, Joe. Thanks to each of you guys, and your companies, and everybody in this room for getting after this, for trying to solve these really hard problems, and deliver operationally relevant ABMS and command and control. Thanks for being here.

Air Combat Command Planner: Misconception that CCAs Will Be ‘Attritable’

March 8, 2023 | By John A. Tirpak

AURORA, Colo.—Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCAs) will be long-term, reusable force builders and shouldn’t be construed as expendable platforms, a top Air Force general said March 8 at the AFA Warfare Symposium.

Although Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall revealed that the service plans to build—notionally—1,000 “affordable” CCAs in the coming decade, that “doesn’t mean that this is an ‘attritable’ type of platform,” said Maj. Gen. Scott R. Jobe, director of plans, programs, and requirements, of Air Combat Command. “That’s been a common misconception.”

Jobe said field commanders will be the ones to decide whether the task at hand requires sending a CCA on a one-way mission, but that decision won’t be made at the programmatic level, where the aircraft will be designed and built for years of service.

“This is about affordable assets. So as we as we look through this, we’ve got to make sure that everyone keeps an eye on that. We’re going to re-use these air vehicles,” Jobe said in a panel discussion.

While the aircraft will be acquired with the assumption of a longer service life, “whether that’s 5, 10, 15 years … that’s something we are still working out,” Jobe later told Air & Space Forces Magazine. Moreover, “some of these may not be flown until we unpack them for a combat mission,” he said.

The idea harkens back to the Joint Unmanned Combat Air System (J-UCAS) program to develop autonomous combat air vehicles in the early 2000s, when they were expected to be “wooden rounds;” meaning stored until needed.

Some number of CCAs will operate regularly with the force, though, so that pilots and other operators can become accustomed to working with them, Jobe said.

He also noted that advanced materials and systems may make CCAs viable for longer than envisioned even a few years ago, when the Air Force planned on “attritable” autonomous aircraft that would be used until they wore out and then either used up on kamikaze missions or retired, without the need to create an extensive sustainment enterprise for them.

Jobe said the concept underlying CCAs is to achieve “affordable mass” and “overmatch” of adversaries.

The new aircraft will have to offer “affordability and capability,” Brig. Gen. Dale White, program executive officer for fighters and advanced aircraft, said in the panel discussion.

“No matter how cheap it is,” the CCA will not be worth doing unless it can offer “what we need … through the lens of lethality,” White said.

David Alexander, president of General Atomics aircraft systems, said a rate of 200 aircraft per year would mark “considerable production”, and a lot of thought needs to be applied to ensuring that the supply chain will be there to generate that many airframes.

When Kendall announced the 1,000 figure, “that went around the world twice in a minute” and raised the question of “what would be your peak rate,” Alexander said. To achieve 200 aircraft per year, the Air Force will have to “tap into the commercial market” which may not already be part of the defense industrial base, he said.

For example, “the light business jet propulsion base” needs to be heathy and play a role, he said. In materials—particularly areas like additive manufacturing and thermoplastics—“there’s a lot of capacity out there … for healthy production lines,” Alexander said.

Mike Benitez of Shield AI said the Air Force also needs to keep its manpower footprint front and center as it works out the operating concept for CCAs. For most uncrewed aircraft operating today, the manpower requirements “are four to five times” that for crewed airplanes, he said. “We can’t do that with CCAs.”

The manpower footprint should be manageable with new technology, Benitez added, and the Air Force can help itself on that front by ensuring that CCAs have an open architecture to incorporate rapidly-progressing AI technologies that will drive it.

As an example, Benitez noted that the popular ChatGPT artificial intelligence system debuted in 2018, and the second version, a year later, had ten times its power. The third iteration, in 2021, was ten times more powerful than the second, and GPT4, coming in about a year, will have one trillion parameters.

“That is how fast the state of artificial intelligence is advancing,” he said.

Quoting airpower theorist John Boyd, Benitez also suggested that a force must be able to endure at least one percent attrition “to maintain an air campaign without prohibitive interference.” In World War II, Eighth Air Force endured 10 percent attrition per month for 24 straight months, but it could do so because the production base back home was building “1,000 bombers a month,” Benitez said.

“That’s capable mass at scale,” he said, and CCAs will have to emulate the concept.

Wilsbach: No PACAF Airman Is Excused from Practicing ACE

March 8, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

AURORA, Colo.—F-22s flying from a bare-bones base on Tinian earlier this month is proof positive that no part of the Air Force is exempt from practicing Agile Combat Employment.

The F-22s deploying to remote Pacific island was a first for the Raptor, and represented a high-profile example of ACE training in the Pacific, said Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach in a press briefing at the AFA Warfare Symposium.

First introduced by PACAF several years ago, ACE is the operational concept of dispersing teams of multi-capable Airmen to operate from remote or austere locations in a “hub-and-spoke” manner to make air units more survivable and make targeting them harder for an adversary. Tinian, some 100 miles from Guam and thousands of miles from any major land mass, fits the bill of remote and austere.

“There’s not much [on Tinian],” Wilsbach noted. “There’s a runway, a taxiway, a very small ramp, and a very small terminal which acts as the commercial terminal and the other half is our ops center. We set up the rest of it with tents and other transportable facilities so that we can actually do our operations. The crews have to operate out of that bare base, they’ve got to stay connected with their parent wing, which was somewhere else, and they have to be able to meet the mission taskings … and all of that’s required to be in the right place at the right time with your airpower to be generated from that airbase.”

The F-22s deployed to Tinian came from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson (JBER)’s 525th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron, but Wilsbach made it clear he wants every Airman in PACAF to develop the skills necessary for ACE to work.

“All of our Airmen in PACAF have to be proficient in Agile Combat Employment—not one person is excused from being an ACE Airman, not one Airman is excused from at least being available for being a multi-capable Airmen,” Wilsbach said. “And I’ve told all the Wing Commanders and the Numbered Air Force commanders in PACAF that I expect them to take risks. … As a matter of fact, what all the Wings have done now is they are making ACE a part of their daily training.”

Not all that training is as far-reaching as sending F-22s to remote islands—Wilsbach cited examples of Airmen going outside their typical career field to launch aircraft at bases, or medical personnel setting up tents in parking lots to simulate deployments.

But rotating aircraft and Airmen through places like Tinian strikes at the heart of what ACE is all about, Wilsbach said.

“The whole big picture purpose of ACE is to disperse your forces, so that’s exactly what we’re going to do during a conflict, which is we’re going to have jets spread out over many, many islands like that, and it may only be a few of them,” said Wilsbach. “And it’s to make the targeting problem for the adversary more difficult. It makes them use more munitions. And it gives us the chance to keep airpower in the air to create effects.”

Spreading across multiple remote islands without all the comforts of home creates numerous logistical challenges that can’t simply be solved by taking more equipment for the mission, Wilsbach said.

“To sustain that force for periods of time does take additional logistics,” Wilsbach acknowledged. “And fortunately in the [2022] budget, the ’23 budget, and we’re hopeful in the ’24 budget, there’s a significant amount of dollars that are associated with prepositioning at our hubs and spokes, mainly our spokes so that you have sustainment materiel at those places. So what I’m talking about is fuel parts, support equipment, water and food mainly. And we’re starting to purchase those and put them out at the spokes.”

On Tinian in particular, which the Department of Defense plans to turn into a permanent alternative location for aircraft operating out of Guam, the Air Force is investing “a lot of money,” Wilsbach said, to do things like install fuel storage and extend and expand the number of runways and taxiways.

One thing PACAF will not be doing is trying to harden facilities against missile strikes—Wilsbach said he is “not a big fan” of that practice.

“The reason is because with the advent of precision guided weapons, even a hardened structure” can be destroyed. “They’re not so hard when you put a 2,000-pound bomb right through the roof. In order to make things hard enough for precision-guided weapons, you have to spend just inordinate amounts of resources to make it hard enough so they can withstand the kind of weapons,” Wilsbach said.

Instead, Wilsbach endorsed a strategy of defending bases using systems designed to shoot down incoming threats—and simply having increased numbers of widespread facilities to minimize the impact of any one strike.

“In lieu of hardening places, what we’re spending our infrastructure dollars on this year is sustainment of our main facilities,” Wilsbach said. “From the Agile Combat Employment [account], what we’re spending our dollars on this year is expanding the number of places that we can go to and of the places that we’re already at, expanding the capability of those places.”

Watch, Read: ‘The Enlisted Imperative’

March 8, 2023

Senior Enlisted Advisor to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Ramón “CZ” Colón-López; Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force JoAnne S. Bass; and Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force Roger Towberman came together for a session on “The Enlisted Imperative” at the AFA Warfare Symposium on March 8, 2023. The session was moderated by Amy Hudson, AFA’s Director of Communications. Watch the video or read the transcript below.

Voiceover:

Good morning, Airmen, Guardians, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome back to the AFA Warfare Symposium. We have another busy morning in store, but before we begin our first panel, please welcome AFA’s Board Chair Bernie Skoch.

Bernie Skoch:

Morning. I hope you all have enjoyed what we’ve done over the last couple of days, even half as much as I have. What a wonderful symposium this has been so far. I’ve been struck with three things. One, I’ve been reminded that our enlisted core is the strength of the United States Air Force and the United States Space Force.

I am the son of a KC-135 boom operator, and my father taught me more about leadership than anyone in my life. So thank you to our enlisted core. They’re more innovative, better led, better educated than any force on earth. The second thing that struck me about yesterday was these are perilous times. And I was reminded that in perilous times, it’s best to have brilliant gifted leaders and Secretary Kendall and General Brown and General Saltzman and Chief Bass and Chief Towberman. We could not ask for better leaders in these troubled times, thank you to them. And the third thing that struck me was we have a defense industry in this nation, unlike any on planet earth. The partnerships that we have formed that we’ve been reminded of at this symposium and others are profound. They provide capabilities and response to requirements unlike anyone on Earth. And it’s that capability that’s going to take us into the next century.

So if you haven’t visited our exhibit hall, I encourage you to do so before 11:45 when they’re obligated to close. Let them know that we appreciate them. They’re not only the fuel that fuels our Air Force and our Space Force, but they’re the fuel of AFA. Which leads me to my final comment this morning. Please join us. We advocate for dominant Air and Space Forces and we need you to join our voice in that advocacy. Stop by the AFA booth by the exhibit hall, and we’ll give you a special deal on membership. So best to you today. Hope you have a wonderful day. I’m looking forward to great spark tank competition. Thank you for being here.

Voiceover:

And now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome our AFA Director of Communications, Amy Hudson.

Amy Hudson:

Thank you so much. As a former staff sergeant in the Air Force Reserve, it’s my true honor to be your moderator today for the enlisted imperative panel. The enlisted force is not just the backbone of our United States military, it’s our secret advantage. No other force on earth is built on an NCO core that is so well educated, so well trained, and so truly professional as ours is. Empowering enlisted Airmen and Guardians regardless of rank or occupational specialty, to become the best leaders they can be, to accelerate change and embrace innovation, to help shape a brand new service and to lead in a truly joint operating environment is in itself a critical operational imperative.

All three leaders here with us today are embracing that challenge. Senior Enlisted Advisor to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Ramón “CZ” Colón-López, Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force, Roger Towberman and Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force, JoAnne Bass. Thank you all so much for being here today. SEAC, we’re staring down a strategic competition with two near peer competitors. How is the joint force posturing and developing to meet the challenge head on and ensure American dominance is maintained across all domains?

SEAC Ramón “CZ” Colón-López:

Well, thank you Amy. And before I answer that question, I just have to give props to my teammate over here for 30 years today in service. So Jo…

So near peer competition, strategic power competition is got many names, but our approach is got to be the same. One thing that we need to do is make sure that we learn from the lessons passed, especially after 20 years in combat and figure out what worked and what didn’t. Then we have to start looking at our strategic documents, the National Security Strategy, the National Defense Strategy, and the National Military Strategy, and see how our roles and responsibilities fit within those documents and what is our specific tasks to be able to do that. I always cringe when I hear people say, well, I’m Justin, fill in the blank. The fact is that every single one of you matter to the overall outcome of that mission, whatever it may be.

And the last thing that I will say is that we need to bridge the no-do gap. A lot of people talk about the say-do gap, but when it comes to the listed force specifically, we need to better educate you. We need to make sure that we make everyone a thinking entity to go ahead and look through these complex problems. Because one piece of feedback that I provided for the National Defense Strategy was the balance between three grays. The first gray is the area that you’re expected to operate in the future, which is highly uncertain. The second gray is the gray steel, the rivet, the steel, the ships, the planes, the subs, everything that we have that creates that integrated deterrence. And lastly, the most important and most often neglected is the gray matter, the people. What is it that we do to make sure that we have the most lethal force in the world to when the chips fall and the human factor is a deciding factor in the outcome of the battle, that your best [inaudible 00:06:31] to be victors in that fight? Thank you.

Amy Hudson:

Thank you. CMSAF, the Air Force just announced the future operating concept, and it’s completely changing the way that it’s presenting forces to the joint force. And Chief Towberman, General Saltzman spoke yesterday about the unique challenges that the Space Force has with employing in place. Can you each take a minute to talk about how this ties into the enlisted force and how it’s building the force of the future?

CMSAF Joanne S. Bass:

Absolutely. First of all, good morning AFA. I just want to say this is actually a pretty surreal experience to be between my two brothers, one who I had the privilege to know for over 26 years when we served together in the 24 special tactics squadron, and then the other one I’ve known well over 10 years and who I admire so dang much, so this is a privilege for me. So thanks brothers for being with us.

When it comes to our future operating concept, we have lots of discussions on it yesterday, general Brown spoke about that. What I would say as it relates to our enlisted force and more importantly kind of the future and challenges that we have is, we’re talking about doing things relatively the same, the same five functions that we’re doing. It’s how we’re going to do it, which gets after what SEAC said, how we’re going to do it, that is different?

And so we are going to have to capitalize on our people, our Airmen to really help define what that how is and how we get there and use our Airmen to help connect those dots. And each of you all are doing that right now. As we get after action order D, design implementation and reimagine what our air force might need to look like in 10 years from now, 15 years from now or 20 years from now. It’s our Airmen that are going to help drive how we are able to operate as an air force and fit right in and integrate with our joint force to be able to get after that mission set.

We’re doing a lot of work right now. I think the challenges that we’re probably going to have with that, being able to move as fast as we need to be able to move. You heard our secretary of the Air Force talk about speed and we’ve got to be able to act fast. And so I think speed and getting everybody to shift their mindset on how we’re going to be able to get after the challenges that are in the future will be the biggest challenges we have.

CMSSF Roger A. Towberman:

So everybody else talking about everybody else and it’s amazing. I mean, this is Air Force icons sitting next to me and probably SEAC, this is probably your last AFA. So I think just one more time from all of us because…

SEAC Ramón “CZ” Colón-López:

Thank you.

CMSSF Roger A. Towberman:

We love you man. And I know that there was a rumor that SEAC and I were going to have a pushup contest and you guys were really excited about that, but he’s injured so we can’t do it. I know there was a lot of suspense, but unfortunately for me…

CMSAF Joanne S. Bass:

Oh, here we go. Don’t do it.

CMSSF Roger A. Towberman:

I’m off the hook. Employed in place, it really is something that I’m not sure we even still understand all the challenges that come like that in both services. That as General Saltzman said the other day… I mean, fighting a war and going home to your child’s soccer game, that’s not how it’s supposed to work, right? It’s not how we’re wired to deal with these things. And so I think that’s the most significant challenge. But there’s other things that I think we don’t think about as much, and especially with our Air Force teammates because the HVAC systems, the electricity, the perimeter defense, all of that stuff for 24 hour in place missions has to be no fail.

And so how do we move forward team with FMC and with the Air Force to make sure that those missions never fail in any way and ensure that Guardians have sort of some semblance of normalcy in their training and employed in place cycle? So the force gen model I think is going to help that a lot. But really this is about wrapping our brains around what it’s like to be fighting a war and then go home and check out and check in, and what special stresses does that put on our minds and on our hearts because it’s not insignificant and many people in here know that. So we’ll keep working on it.

Amy Hudson:

Chief Bass, you’re leading the charge, developing the next generation of Airmen to build the Air Force our nation needs. How is the Air Force working to deliberately develop its people to create the force of the future that you just spoke about?

CMSAF Joanne S. Bass:

Thanks for that question. I’ll tell you, we’ve done a lot of work over the past few years in focusing on what does that future force need to look like and how do we develop them. There are some folks in this room, in fact, who’ve been pretty critical to helping us develop what that might look like. And I shared at last AFA that we released the enlisted force development action plan, really focused on how do we develop an Airman of 2030. It’s meant to be agile, we meant to do modifications to it, but that action plan really helped inform us to start to kind of guide us, if you will, on the things that we need to do. And it pushed us to release some foundational documents that hopefully some of you all have seen. Some things like the blueprint that I wish I had when I was a young senior Airman Bass to help kind of guide me throughout my career and understand what my role as a United States Airman.

We also release a blue book, the brown book, the purple book, which I couldn’t be more excited of. And by the way, if you don’t have your copy of one, I think my team has about 40 copies of each. So come here after this and we’ll make sure you get them. But we release those foundational documents to help inform today’s Airmen on what the expectations are on them as it relates to readiness and being the Airmen that we need them to be, but also help guide us into the future. And that’s super important. Again, understanding what is at stake, understanding that we’re serving at some of the most complex times and we need to understand the adversary. And again, we have to understand our role as United States Airman as it relates to our joint force and partnering with our allies and partners as well.

Amy Hudson:

Thank you. SEAC, force development’s been one of your priorities since you took the position. Do you want to talk a little bit from a joint perspective of where you’re at with that?

SEAC Ramón “CZ” Colón-López:

On?

Amy Hudson:

Force development.

SEAC Ramón “CZ” Colón-López:

Force development. Absolutely. One of the greatest lessons that we learned over the past 20 years is that no service is going to go at any mission alone. It’s going to take a combination of assets, of talents, of cultures to be able to get after the high end fight. Not only internal to the United States, but also with our allies and partners, which is nested in every single strategic document, the heavy reliance on people to be able to carry on their own fights. And if you were skeptic about us handing over a fight to somebody else, look no further than Ukraine today. There we’re just providing equipment, advice and training and they’re fighting their own fight, that may be the way of the future. Sometimes we get, I wouldn’t say upset, I wouldn’t say disappointed, but sometimes we think that because we have proven that we’re the best of the best in the world, that we have to take on every fight ourselves. And that is not going to be the case in the future.

Sometimes we just have to go ahead and step back and let people do things because global security is not hinging upon the actions of the United States of America. We are a key contributor to that, but eventually people are going to have to start owning up their own fights in order to be able to go ahead and have that span of control and lethality that we need in order to maintain world order.

So for our training, we’re capitalizing on every single one of those ideas. We’re crossing the services to make sure that we are more transparent on lessons learned. And the most important thing that we’re doing is learning from our partners globally, to make sure that we understand their capabilities, their shortcomings, and the way that we can interoperate here in the near future. So those are just a few things that we’re doing from the Department of Defense.

CMSAF Joanne S. Bass:

Hey Amy, can I add one thing?

Amy Hudson:

Absolutely.

CMSAF Joanne S. Bass:

SEAC jogged my memory when you talk about Ukraine. Do we have any international guards in here? Okay, few of y’all. Y’all can shout. Do we have any international guards in here? Okay, good. So I’m going to give a shout-out to our state partnership program. When you talk about Ukraine and you talk about what the California International Guard has done since 2014 as it relates to training and spending time with our Ukrainian Air Force, teaching them mission command, teaching them how to empower at the most junior level. When I talk to my counterpart in the Ukrainian Air Force, the chief master sergeant in the Ukrainian Air Force, Constantine, he shared with myself and a bunch of other senior leaders across the globe that the reason why they are continuing to fight so strong, the reason why they will win, the reason why they have the grit to do what they do is because the strength of their sergeants, their NCO core.

And that did not just happen. That happened because of our training, our partnership, the Army National Guard, the Air Force, the International Guard, and so big kudos to our state partnership. And then one last thing on big kudos too that I forgot to mention. As we developed the force that we need in 2030, I have to give a shout-out to AETC and all of our force generator, starting with our recruiters who are bringing in today’s talent, and then our MTIs, our MTLs, our PME instructors, and everybody who is focused on developing the force. It is really through AETC that we are going to be able to develop the Airmen that we need in the future.

SEAC Ramón “CZ” Colón-López:

So what is this place? Is this like Noah’s Ark? We just brought two of everything. I mean, typically people are just fired up.

CMSAF Joanne S. Bass:

It is 7:30 last day. It’s 7:30 in the morning, last day.

Amy Hudson:

Thank you so much. That’s actually a perfect transition. Chief Towberman, why does this Space Force depend on recruiting highly technical skilled Americans to accomplish this mission? And if that’s the case, what are you doing to retain those Guardians who might be attracted to private sector?

CMSSF Roger A. Towberman:

Yeah, so I mean, we absolutely need them. We can’t navigate this very complex, very complicated domain without a good noggin. This gray matter matters to us for sure. I think when it comes to retaining them, we talk about this a lot and everyone always wants to frame us against someone or something else, and that really isn’t how we’re approaching it. Our commitment to Guardians is to not give them a reason to quit this team, that’s where the focus has to be.

If you’re worried about other people, other opportunities, then you’re not spending the energy that you need to make your experience better. So we’re really focused on providing Guardians an experience that matters to them, that they’re empowered, that they feel cared about, that they’re connected to each other and to the mission. And we believe that in this ecosystem, in this value proposition, that they’re informing for us that if we can do what we can to make sure no one wants to leave the team, then the few that move towards other opportunities, that’s okay. Moving towards things is in general, a pretty good strategy, but moving away from things is what gets you in trouble. So it’s really our commitment to not give them reason to quit.

SEAC Ramón “CZ” Colón-López:

And if I can elaborate just a little bit on that too, because this is not just a Space Force issue, it’s the force at large. Retention and recruitment. We’re currently undergoing the 14th quadrennial review for military compensation. And in that review, what we have been tasked to do is just to see if the pay system is still relevant based on the competition with industry. Are people being properly compensated? And what is it that we need to do when it comes to allowances, bonuses, and other compensation to make sure that we retain the talent? And I will tell you that there’s a lot of thought that it’s going to be put into this. I have the first responsibility of voicing your concerns when it comes to it, which is basically in concert and collaboration with the servicing enlisted advisors. But SEAC number five, eventually it’s going to be the driver of that function as we continue to go through the process.

But the one thing that we know is that in very few cases, we’re going to be able to compete with industry, but the kind of entity that stays in service, myself included, wasn’t for the money. Now, money matters to our families and everything else. So we better them well compensate you good enough to make sure that you decide to stay with us. But we always have to remember that honor is a psychological salary of every warrior, and that we need to make sure that we create an institution and an environment, a culture and a climate that promotes that kind of mindset. So there’s a lot more coming and we’re wanting to take care of you. All we want you to do is just take care of the mission.

Amy Hudson:

So to follow up on that, this is a question for all three of you. Yesterday we heard a lot of talk about encouraging public service. So what do you say to the Airmen and Guardians in this audience and to service members everywhere, at all levels of how do they spread that message?

CMSSF Roger A. Towberman:

Yeah, I mean, we’ve been talking about this all week. You all have a story and many of your stories are amazing. You’ve got to be sharing them with each other, with the outside world, be involved in your community. Be proud. This is an ancient and noble profession, and we should all feel absolutely honored just to be led in the door, just to be given the opportunity to wear the cloth of our nation and be participants in this ancient and noble profession.

If you don’t feel that, then by all means go do something else. If you do feel that, do not feel that just at home. Get out there, be proud, puff up your chest. Tell people your stories and tell them your whole story. That’s what they want to hear, that’s what they need to hear from us. That this is an opportunity like no other, especially on the enlisted front. We’re on day one of service. You can literally hit the reset button on your entire life and do anything you want to do, and that just doesn’t come along every day. So I think we’ve got to embrace it. We’ve just got to share our stories.

CMSAF Joanne S. Bass:

So I learned on Monday, don’t pass up an opportunity to speak, and I’m going to let you go last SEAC. So I would say, we are all owners in the Department of the Air Force, every single one of us. And so as owners, we have to own that this is all of our challenge to really get after. And the best recruiters that we have, the best recruiters are every single one of our Airmen, every single one of our Guardians. And then it gets back after what SEAC said, when you talk about the culture, if we have a strong culture in our Department of the Air Force, then our Airmen will naturally recruit and share their stories well. If we don’t have that strong culture within your organization, within your flight, within your squadron, within your wing, you can guarantee that it’ll have the opposite effect. So I would ask every single one of you all, you are owners in our Department of the Air Force, we need you to help get after this and share the story that you know is true about our United States Air Force.

SEAC Ramón “CZ” Colón-López:

I’ll go ahead and put the cherry on top on that. We live in very negative times. We’re still looking at the narrative that is being regurgitated there, mostly on the negative side of the equation and not necessarily on the impact that you’re having on global security. And often we’ll let people drive that narrative because we stay silent. Or even worse, we jump in the bandwagon like, yeah, this sucks, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, I’m going to go ahead and violate some rules of AFA, but I personally think that that is bullshit.

I know General Minihan is probably smiling already. But let me tell you why. Because as I look across the force and I start looking at the data that is being put up there, three quarters of the nation cannot serve because they’re fat, dumb, lazy, criminal or stupid. Or the 20 some percent that are able to serve, they don’t want to do it because the institution is bad. That is not the case. Just yesterday, I came back from Coronado and I went to Butts, and I actually put a post on this because I’m actually sick of the negative narrative and the naysayers that actually said that we don’t have the talent in our youth to be able to fight tomorrow’s wars. And I got to see hundreds, hundreds of young people that are wanting to do nothing more, but to put their metal to the test to actually move forward. Now, how do they get that motivation from the 1% that actually serves or from the 99% of the people that actually benefit from the freedom that every single one of you gives them?

We need to remain united on the way that we speak about everything that is near and dear to us. Now, we realize from the second that we took the oath that there was going to be sacrifice with every single thing that we did from that moment on, from the moment that we done the uniform, to when we take it off. And then we have a lifelong commitment to speak on the opportunities, the actual challenges, the places where we were placed, to make a difference where 99% of your peers from school don’t have a clue what it’s all about. So we need to do a better job of actually every person here being a recruiter and telling your story, just like Joe and Toby said, because if we don’t do that, we’re going to let somebody else drive the narrative. So again, we need to help ourselves before somebody else decides to shoot us in the foot. Now I’m getting fired up.

Amy Hudson:

SEAC, we’ll stick with you. What can service members take from the National Defense Strategy with regard to prioritizing readiness and building that war fighter advantage in the joint force? And how does each member fit into the broader strategic picture?

SEAC Ramón “CZ” Colón-López:

So I guess I better not take another shot of coffee before I answer that one. All right, so here’s the deal. Every single one of you’s got an AFSC, right? And that AFSC comes with a certain list of things that you’re required to do. Every single one of you’s got a rank, right? And with those ranks, Jo mentioned the brown book as an example. There’s roles and responsibilities that you must do in order to go ahead and pay back the institution that made you who you are today.

The first thing that I will say is you have to take those things seriously. When I was a first time command chief, and it just so happens that I have my former commander over here, then Colonel [inaudible 00:26:48]. He said something, I think it might have been day one sir, but he said, people have to understand that they call orders for a reason, not suggestions. And when you think about that and you think about the…

Oh, let me just ask a question here across the room. How many of you can recite the oath if I were to put you on the spot and come up here and say it? How many of you can sing your favorite song if it came on the radio right now? The majority of you. There’s a matter of priorities in there. When you took that oath, regardless of what was it that you did or your reason for coming in, whether it was education, steady paycheck, just to get the hell out of town, just like me, all of that stuff went to the side because you made a promise to the American people and the Constitution of the United States. And we have to realize that with people’s rights comes responsibility, and that responsibility is for every single one of us to make sure that we do not violate that oath from day one to the end of our days.

Our enemies don’t have that. They do not have the force. And when people try to be like us and they take that mindset and that culture and that order spirit to the battlefield, great things happen. Again, point to Ukraine. Since 1993, we developed partnerships with them. In 1993, Milli Vanilli was still for real. So it’s been a long, long time. But if you look at that fighting force today, in that short amount of time, they became lethal, proud, and effective because they wanted to be just like you.

We need to continue to capitalize on that, and we can give you all the training and all the education and all these other things, but the one thing that matters the most is how you feel inside about the task that you are carrying on every day, and how you speak to your peers and actually have the discussion with people inside and outside of the institution on what service means to you. If we maintain the fighting spirit, it doesn’t matter who goes toe-to-toe with us because we’re going to kick their ass. It’s plain and simple.

Amy Hudson:

That was an excellent answer. Thank you.

SEAC Ramón “CZ” Colón-López:

Now I’ll have some coffee.

Amy Hudson:

All right, so we’re running out of time, but before we get to closing remarks, I want to try something a little bit different. This is going to be a lightning round. Each of you will get a question, and in five words or less, get an answer. Chief Towberman, we’ll start with you. What does…

CMSSF Roger A. Towberman:

I’ve never used five words in my life.

Amy Hudson:

Super easy questions. What does a 2030 enlisted member look like to you?

CMSSF Roger A. Towberman:

Smarter, better, more fulfilled Guardian.

Amy Hudson:

Nice job.

CMSAF Joanne S. Bass:

This is hard.

CMSSF Roger A. Towberman:

Yeah, it’s probably your idea.

Amy Hudson:

Chief Bass, what should every service member understand about the high-end fight?

CMSAF Joanne S. Bass:

Our adversaries won’t fight fair.

CMSSF Roger A. Towberman:

That’s good.

CMSAF Joanne S. Bass:

Can I do one more?

Amy Hudson:

Yes.

CMSAF Joanne S. Bass:

Airmen are our most competitive advantage.

CMSSF Roger A. Towberman:

Damn. You’re cheating somehow.

Amy Hudson:

SEAC, what will roles and responsibilities look like in the future?

SEAC Ramón “CZ” Colón-López:

Five words, huh?

CMSAF Joanne S. Bass:

That’s hard.

CMSSF Roger A. Towberman:

That’s three.

SEAC Ramón “CZ” Colón-López:

You see, this is what happens when you have the glee club on that side, and the jocks on this side, he’s about to get a wedgie. So the five words, roles and responsibilities the same as they’ve ever been. That doesn’t change. Only the actual character of war, the nature of war will actually flex.

CMSAF Joanne S. Bass:

What were the five words?

Amy Hudson:

That’s a little bit more than five words.

SEAC Ramón “CZ” Colón-López:

Exactly. All right, next question.

Amy Hudson:

Chief Towberman, what’s the biggest difference between service members when you first enlisted to the Guardians you’re bringing in the service today?

CMSSF Roger A. Towberman:

Better at everything except sports.

CMSAF Joanne S. Bass:

We’re not doing five anymore, are we?

CMSSF Roger A. Towberman:

I think we’re still in five. I don’t know.

CMSAF Joanne S. Bass:

Are we still doing five? This is hard.

CMSSF Roger A. Towberman:

Seems fair.

SEAC Ramón “CZ” Colón-López:

Yeah, five.

Amy Hudson:

Chief Bass, what does education and training look like in the future to meet joint requirements?

CMSAF Joanne S. Bass:

Are we still doing five?

Amy Hudson:

Yes, ma’am.

CMSAF Joanne S. Bass:

Say that again.

Amy Hudson:

What does education and training look like in the future to meet joint requirements?

CMSAF Joanne S. Bass:

Agile, technical… Can I phone a friend?

SEAC Ramón “CZ” Colón-López:

Intellectual.

CMSAF Joanne S. Bass:

Intellectual.

SEAC Ramón “CZ” Colón-López:

Discipline.

CMSAF Joanne S. Bass:

Discipline. You go.

CMSSF Roger A. Towberman:

Connected.

CMSAF Joanne S. Bass:

Connected. Ooh, that’s good. Yeah, connected.

Amy Hudson:

SEAC, got an easy one for you. How do we beat the PRC?

SEAC Ramón “CZ” Colón-López:

Shoot them in the face. That Space Force finger thing works.

CMSAF Joanne S. Bass:

Why do I think that’s going to be a headline?

SEAC Ramón “CZ” Colón-López:

But if I may, can I elaborate just a little bit on that one?

Amy Hudson:

Yes please. I’ll give you more than five words.

CMSAF Joanne S. Bass:

You just made the one headline.

SEAC Ramón “CZ” Colón-López:

Well, so go ahead and repeat the questions for the audience.

Amy Hudson:

How do we beat the PRC?

SEAC Ramón “CZ” Colón-López:

PRC. What does PRC stand for? Now, are we fighting China or are we fighting a military? Is it the PLA that we’re actually going to go toe-to-toe with? Are we going to go ahead and kill all Chinese because we’re at war with them? Or are we going to go ahead and affect the rules of war and fight military to military? We start treading very dangerous ground when we generalize how we’re going to carry on the lethal means of military power. Just a national power. But we have to be disciplined in the execution of. I recall many days in the global war on terror to where some of my peers would say, well, we got to go ahead and kill all Muslims. Now think about that for a second. That is a pretty hateful statement.

We were fighting extremist organizations. Now, if the war comes between us and China, we’re going to be fighting the PLA. And any terrorist organizations respond from that. And we hope at some point, just like the Germans, just like the Japanese, that we come up with a diplomatic agreement to be able to cohabitate the world. It has proven in the past, but we have to be very, very careful about generalizing. And the last thing that I will say on that, because I say shoot him in the face, which is necessary a lot of times in combat, but remember that a warrior fights not because he or she hates what’s in front of him, but because he or she loves what they left behind. And I love every single one of you.

Amy Hudson:

Thank you so much. So we’re running out of time, unfortunately. I want to give you each an opportunity to kind of offer your closing remarks. Chief Towberman, we’ll start with you.

CMSSF Roger A. Towberman:

Yeah, well, one more time. First, thanks. I mean, it is last day of the music festival, seven in the morning, and here you are filling up the chairs and we appreciate that. I know I speak for all of us. We are honored at this opportunity. And just to look out at, I guess a thousand people sitting here, it’s just really fantastic that you would want to come and hear from us in the first place. So thanks, from the bottom of our heart.

We’ve talked all week about war fighting. We’ve talked all week about the future, and it’s sitting in this room. We’re all on short final, and we’re doing everything we can till the day we hang it up to empty what’s in our brain bucket into yours, and to give you all of everything that we have to give. At the end of the day, the future belongs to you, and you’ll determine, you will write your own future. And I beg you to take full advantage of that opportunity, to grab it with both hands and invest yourself together with your teammates in that narrative, in that story that’s unfolding. You really are the greatest advantage in the history of war fighting. Embrace that, know that, and do not accept that it’s good enough. Because tomorrow you need to be even better in the day after that, even better still. So thanks in advance for being part of your own story, and thanks from the bottom of my heart for being part of mine. I love y’all. I appreciate you.

Amy Hudson:

Thank you. Chief Bass.

CMSAF Joanne S. Bass:

Awesome. Hey, thanks for being part of the 1% that we talk about. Who serves, wears this uniform, wears our nation’s cloth at some of the most complex times we’ve ever served in, period. Thanks for leading through these complex times. Leadership is easy when nothing’s going on, but the true test of leadership is now. And what I share with our Airmen, when I spent time with them at basic training, or even our tech training is… I actually don’t really care if you signed up for four years, six years, eight years, 28 years. I’ve shared with people broadly, I’ve signed up to do four quick years, get my GI bill and I was out. And so regardless of how long you serve, the expectation that we have is that you make your organization better, that you make your squadron better, that you make our Air Force better, you make your career feel better and that you move the ball.

So thank you for being part of the 1% who serves our great nation. Have fun while you’re at it. If you’re not having fun, something is wrong. Take care of one another. Your brothers and sisters on your right or left, take care of this great military family that we are all part of. And as I mentioned on Monday, also thank your family members and your loved ones for their support for you. It is truly because of them that you’re able to dawn this uniform every single day and continue serving that. And that’s for our civilian teammates as well. Thank you for serving.

Amy Hudson:

SEAC, close us out.

SEAC Ramón “CZ” Colón-López:

Well, going back to Toby’s comment. Our time on station is coming to an end. I myself, I’m a carton of milk. I’m about to expire in six months. But I do have full confidence that the Department of Defense is going to be in great hands, and a lot of it’s because of what you do. But I will caution you of the inherent danger of individualism in an institution that requires teamwork to accomplish every single mission.

Each of us brings value to the organization, but that doesn’t mean that it’s got to become about us as individuals, and my wants versus organizational needs. Look at discipline, which is a foundation of everything that we do, and then look at what’s going to happen here in the near future when the fight comes. We had those cadets here earlier on this morning, and I told them point blank. It’s like, hey, this is not going to be my fight. I’m going to be sitting on some lazy boy looking at you taking this fight to the enemy, but I’m going to be grinning ear to ear because we knew and had confidence on your abilities to be able to carry on that fight.

When it comes to our families, they sacrifice far more than what any one of us do. So please give them the time and given the love and the care that they need to be able to go ahead and continue to support us. Because recruitment and rotation has two parts to the equation, the uniform member and those that live under the same household.

And then the last thing that I will say for the leadership and specifically AFA, thank you for creating forums like this to where a lot of us can come together and just have some good, honest, and candid conversations about the way that we need to go ahead and move on to the future. And then to the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, colleague, teammate and friend. Sir, thank you so much for leading us to this challenging times. I know that we have been taking our lickings left and right, but at the end of the day, a fight is a fight, and that’s who we are. We’re fighters. So thank you so much and really proud to serve alongside you.

Amy Hudson:

Thank you all so much for joining us today. This has been a really fun and motivating discussion. If you could please remain on the stage, we’re going to do the Team of the Year award presentation.

SEAC Ramón “CZ” Colón-López:

All right.

Voiceover:

We now are honored to present the Etchberger Team of the Year award. Will Senior Master Sergeant Jacob Gerald, and members of the 9S100 Scientific Application Specialists career field please come forward.

40 years ago this year, the Air and Space Force’s Association and the Office of the Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force worked together to establish the Team of the Year program, now known as the Etchberger award. The purpose of this award is to recognize the superior performance of our enlisted force across the full spectrum of the Air Force’s operations and missions. Often that recognition has been bestowed on a lesser known, yet very critical career field. Today, we are pleased that the tradition continues with recognition of the 9S100 Scientific Application Specialists career field. These Airmen led the way in solving intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance problems by instituting, validating, and certifying the DODs first and listed data analytics training pipeline across the Air Force with their superior technical expertise. The 9S100 Airman innovated multiple data quality review processes, synchronizing three disparate sampling systems, and increasing confidence across the 300 global sensors.

In addition, they also spearheaded support to the Ukraine crisis, expediting development capability to 24/7 operations and delivering near real time warnings of 350 events to national leaders and combatant commanders. Members integrated machine learning into workflows, thus increasing reportable sites fourfold covering 225 areas of interest, pushing a leading edge capability that autotagged 400,000 targets and saved 32,000 analyst hours per year. This reporting identifier continues to find innovative methods that advance capabilities.

The 9S100 Airmen dominate innovation to solve ISR problems through applied science, demonstrating the pinnacle of superior technical performance. These Airmen reflect great credit upon themselves in the United States Air Force. The United States Air Force is pleased to present the 2023 Richard L. Etchberger Team of the Year award to the 9S100 Scientific Application Specialist career field.

Watch, Read: ‘Airmen & Guardians in Demand: Meeting the Need’

March 8, 2023

Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach, Commander, Pacific Air Forces; Gen. James B. Hecker, U.S. Air Forces in Europe Commander; and Lt. Gen. Nina M. Armagno, Director of Staff, USSF came together for a session on “Airmen & Guardians in Demand: Meeting the Need” at the AFA Warfare Symposium, March 8, 2023. The session was moderated by Gen. Lori J. Robinson (Ret.), former Commander, U.S. Northern Command. Watch the video or read the transcript below.

Voiceover:

Airmen, Guardians, ladies and gentlemen, please give a warm welcome to our moderator, the former commander of U.S. Northern Command, retired Air Force General Lori J. Robinson.

Gen. Lori J. Robinson (Ret.):

Okay. So retired is the most important part, and not just Northern Command, but NORAD. So first of all, I want to say thank you to AFA for everything that you do for our Airmen and our Guardians. It’s really important, the notions that you talk about, the things that you say is most amazing. So for team AFA, can we please give a rousing applause for them?

So today, we get to talk about Airmen and Guardians in need and the demand. And I have to tell you, the three most amazing people sitting here on this stage, friends that I’ve known forever, friends that I knew, and friends that I think care about our Air Force and our Space Force. So what I’d really like to do is allow them the opportunity to say a couple of words about what’s on their brain and then I have some probably interesting questions for them. So if I could ask them to start first, Cruiser.

Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach:

All right. Thanks, General Robinson. It’s such a pleasure to be on the stage with you, and also General Hecker and General Armagno, and we do have a good team here when we work together all the time. And I do miss the time that we worked together in the past, and so there’s some really fond memories. I’d also like to thank AFA. It’s been a tremendous, tremendous week, and I got to give a shout-out to the resort. It’s really, they’ve done a great job of hosting us too, so thanks for that, Orville.

For what’s on my mind, as a PACAF commander, our objectives have remained the same, a free and open Indo-Pacific. Clearly, there are some countries in the Indo-Pacific that don’t want that, like China, Russia, and North Korea. And principally, in this last year, the Indo-Pacific has been doing more operations and with more aircraft at one time, but what I’ll tell you is, in my time in the Pacific, which has been quite extensive, we’re more joint than we’ve ever been before.

And so, people ask me, “What does that mean?” Well, in the past, we used to plan missions that were Air Force, Navy, Marines, and we’d put them together after they were already planned. Now, every single day, there’s a joint planning team that’s deciding what’s going to happen from space all the way to subsurface and everything in between. And so, extensively, joint operations are happening.

And then the allies and partners are a key part. We’re doing almost weekly integration with other nations that fly fifth-gen all the time, very interoperable with Japan, Korea, and Australia, and others, exercises like Cope North that had just happened last week where we had Japan and Australia and the French in Guam and the surrounding islands executing things like ACE together, so the allies and partners are doing ACE too. So that’s fantastic. And then what has us concerned mostly is some of the activities that China is doing in the region, and they obviously are placing pressure on the region. Perhaps we can talk about that more in the Q&A, and I’ll stop there and pass it along.

Gen. James B. Hecker:

Thanks, General Robinson and General Wilsbach, General Armagno. Appreciate being with you. And thanks, Orville, for setting this up. Sticking with the Jeopardy theme, the answer is 1,723. What is the number of senior master sergeants that got selected yesterday? Congratulations. And I had one of them too, so it was great.

Okay. What’s going on in USAFE? Well, I’ll tell you what, we have some great Airmen and Guardians that have been doing the job for a long time now. And if you haven’t realized, we just went over a year of the Russia and Ukraine war. And we’re starting to get some lessons learned from how that war has gone, and one of the big lessons learned that we got is their integrated air and missile defense on both sides, Ukraine as well as Russia, is working really good, to the point where they’ve downed several aircraft on either side, and pretty much the Ukrainian aircraft do not fly over Russian airspace and the Russian don’t fly over Ukrainian airspace for the most part. So what that means is, the war that they’re fighting is throwing 155 rounds back and forth at one another.

If you’re talking about the Russians, they’re doing it indiscriminately. They’ll do it into schools, they’ll do it into malls, and they’ll kill a lot of civilians doing that. There’s HIMARS that are going back and forth. Russia is able to do a little bit more sophistication and they’re able to take one-way UAVs that they get from Iran and send them across. A lot of those are shot down, but some of them get through and hit infrastructure or schools, civilian populations. They also have bombers that will shoot or that will launch long-range cruise missiles. A lot of those get shot down, but some of those get through as well.

So that’s the kind of fight that’s going on there. And when you have that kind of fight, you have a lot of casualties. Now, there are several estimates on the number of casualties, but almost all of them say over 100,000 Russians dead, 30 to 40,000 Ukrainians dead. To put it in perspective, after 20 years in Afghanistan, we had slightly less than 2,400. Now, one is too many, but 140,000 is ridiculous. So we can’t afford that. So how do we fix that? We need to make sure that we’re able to get air superiority. And as was mentioned yesterday by Secretary Kendall, one of the operational imperatives with the NGAD is it meant exactly for that.

One of the six fights that General Brown talked about is the fight for air superiority. So we got to make it happen. And the way you make it happen is, you take those IADS that I talked about that are very effective and you have to find a way to take them down. And that’s what we’re really concentrating on in USAFE. And we can do it pretty good at EUCOM and the USAFE region, but that’s just at a small scale. We need to be able to do it at a large scale. In order to do it at a large scale, we need our allies and partners to have the capabilities and the policies and the information so that they can help us so we can do it at a large scale.

In addition to getting that counter IADS so we can get air superiority, we also need to make sure that we can stop all the cruise missiles in the one-way UAVs that are coming into Europe. So we have to increase our capability when it comes to integrated air and missile defense and to make sure that we can take down one-way UAVs to include ballistic missiles as well as cruise missiles coming off of their bomber aircraft. So that’s what we’re concentrated on at USAFE-AFAFRICA and AIRCOM.

Gen. Lori J. Robinson (Ret.):

Next.

Lt. Gen. Nina M. Armagno:

Good morning, everyone. Good morning. It’s the last panel of AFA. I am really proud to be on this esteemed panel as well. But before I say anything, I just want to remind everybody, this is March 8th. It is International Women’s Day. And I would like to personally thank you, General Lori Robinson, for breaking that glass ceiling. You have been an inspiration and a leader to so many people, but also women in the military and women across the United States of America. Thank you, Lori Robinson. You’re amazing.

All right. I am pleased to be here as well. Thank you, AFA. I do think this is a pretty fun venue. I think you nailed it, and it’ll be fantastic to come back year after year for Air & Space Forces Association, Denver, and the Warfare Symposium. I would like to talk a little bit about what we’re doing in the Space Force. And before I do that, it wasn’t that long ago when General Hecker was Scorch, you’re still Scorch, and I’m Ninja, and Scorch and Ninja were running around the halls and walls of Capitol Hill together in a Fellows program. We met that long ago as majors, and I think our entire class knew that Scorch was going places. We just didn’t know exactly where.

Gen. Lori J. Robinson (Ret.):

So this is the best part about our Air Force, is these relationships that we’ve had forever. So when you listen to Nina talk about this, we should just revel in that and say thank you for that, because it makes us look better and look more forward. So thanks, Nina, for saying that.

Lt. Gen. Nina M. Armagno:

Yes, ma’am. And for over the years, Scorch moved from different commands, different opportunities here and there. And I remember one time you were getting deployed and I was pretty nervous about it because things were, of course, always ugly over there in the Middle East. And I sent you a note, and I’m like, “Good luck, Scorch. I’m thinking about you.” And he’s like, “Ninja, don’t worry. I know you always have my back,” meaning Space always has your back. He told me that. He’s been telling me that for years. Of course, we’ve been doing space operations for decades.

The United States Space Force is in our fourth year, and our prime focus is to organize, train, and equip forces, space forces, and present those forces to combatant commanders, specifically the two combatant commanders we have here, but also across the world. We are putting component commands in each AOR. We have a component command in INDOPACOM. We have one in CENTCOM, USFK, and you’ll see one very soon, Scorch, in EUCOM.

It’s just a way to continue to provide forces for your needs as combatant commanders. You heard General Saltzman yesterday talk about his three lines of effort. And along those lines, effort number one is build combat-credible and ready forces. That is probably the most applicable LOE for this panel, and I look forward to talking about all of that. Semper Supra, always above.

Gen. Lori J. Robinson (Ret.):

Thank you. Thank you guys so much. So here’s one of the things that I really value that we have done across our force, and that is leading and working with our partners and our allies. And as we sit and think about our partners and our allies, not is it just working with them, but how do we worry about contested space? How do we think about where we are going to go in the forward of all of this? And personally, I understand your space and I’ve heard about your space and I think about your space, but how do you, one, relish what we do with our partners and our allies? Two, how do we worry about what they do in contested space? And three, how do we move forward in all of that? On with the mic.

Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach:

All right. Now, that’s a great question. And the one thing that I’ll say in the Indo-Pacific, especially if you focus in on China and you think about what’s their dilemma, they would love it to be China versus the United States, but in reality, it’s China versus the United States plus, and then I’ll have to spend about 30 minutes listing the rest of the countries that would probably line up with us, who also have the objective of free and open Indo-Pacific. And what we’re seeing in the Pacific in the last few years is, even the Europeans are coming over to the Pacific because they have interests in the Pacific and perhaps they’re seeing some of those interests at risk and they want to demonstrate that they intend to protect those interests.

And so, that’s a benefit that we have when you think about China, because who’s on their side? There’s not many people on their side, not many other countries on their side. And so, that’s an advantage. And when you get down into the operational and tactical level from military standpoint, frequency of operating together and doing exercises and having subject matter exchanges and dialogues and symposiums and all of those things that we have almost on a recurring basis in the Pacific makes us so interoperable, and that’s a deterrent value because, who does China operate with? Every now and again with Russia, very separately from North Korea. It’s not a habitual relationship, and we have habitual relationships with a number of countries, as does General Hecker in Europe.

Gen. Lori J. Robinson (Ret.):

So, Cruiser, the other question I want to ask you, especially in that theater, we’ve got a ton of allies, and what’s one of your big things that you’ve got going on?

Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach:

We’re really close with many. And oftentimes, people say, “Who’s your most important ally or partner?” And I say, “All of them.”

Gen. Lori J. Robinson (Ret.):

Yes.

Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach:

Right? That’s the real answer. But I think what you’re getting at is, just recently, we had the opportunity to bring in Air Vice-Marshal Billy Newman, who is an Australian Air Force GO who is the deputy commander of PACAF now. It’s the first time that’s ever happened, and it really demonstrates Indo-Pacific Command and also PACAF’s willingness to work with allies and partners.

Gen. Lori J. Robinson (Ret.):

Yeah. And I think that that’s a huge thing to talk about, because when we think about going forward in the Pacific, especially, and the distance and the tyranny of all of that, and the fact now you have a deputy that’s an Australian, I think, is really amazing. So thank you for that effort in doing that. Really appreciate that.

Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach:

I really like to thank the Australians because they were willing to let him come and work for us. And so, Air Marshal Hupfeld and I cooked that idea up last year, and of course, the Australians allowed him to come this year, so it was fantastic.

Gen. Lori J. Robinson (Ret.):

Okay. So for the rest of the audience, for Cruiser to say he cooked something up, we should not be surprised. Scorch.

Gen. James B. Hecker:

In USAFE-AFAFRICA, allies and partners are paramount, and one of the main reasons why is because we’re not the pacing threat. Cruiser is. That’s where a lot of the money goes. But we still have a job, and I 100% agree with that. I think the National Defense Strategy got it exactly right. But it’s more important that we have allies and partners to make sure that we have the capabilities that we need to handle the things that Russia might throw our way.

Since the Ukrainian war started, the Secretary of Defense has asked nations, primarily their secretary of defenses, to come together on nine different occasions someplace in Europe typically. The last one that he did was in Ramstein, and he had 45 nations that showed up. So you have 30 NATO nations, 15 other ones showed up, some from your AOR. Japan was there. And the way it kind of goes is, the press is there, Secretary Austin will say some words, then the press leaves, and then it’s basically the Ukrainians saying, “Here’s what we need. Here’s what we could use some help with.” And then all 45 nations go around and say what they’re going to be pledging or what they’re going to ask for and those kind of things, and it pays off.

Every time, what the Ukrainians have asked for and what they really need, because they’re about to run out of it or whatever the case might be, they always have gotten it after that. 45 nations coming together. How many times has Russia had one of those conferences? I think you know the answer, zero. And I think if he tried to hold one of those conferences, the number of folks that would show up would be dismal and it would be embarrassing. Similar to what you said if China were to do the same thing.

So, unfortunately, for President Putin, what he tried to do and divide NATO and the Western and democracies, the exact opposite has happened, and it’s united us. Matter of fact, since the invasion, four more countries in Europe have bought F-35s. Two countries in Europe want to be part of NATO, and they’re pretty close to becoming part of NATO. So it’s had the exact opposite effect that what he has wanted. So they’re very important, to answer your question.

Lt. Gen. Nina M. Armagno:

Just the power of relationships and the power of numbers is just incredible in war and in peacetime. In the space domain, it’s an incredible strategic advantage to have allies and partners. It is absolutely necessary. I remember several years ago during Schriever Wargame, where I got to attend, and the Five Eye were the main attendees, and we had invited that year, for the first time, France and Germany, and they were a couple of general officers. We had a tabletop scenario about a situation that affected the space domain.

And you might presume that it would only affect spacefaring nations, like the Five Eyes at the time, but the scenario was a ground-based laser lasing a certain piece of low-Earth orbit, where all of our satellites were traversing. And you can see the light bulbs go on as we walk through the scenario and the danger to all of us, not just spacefaring nations, but all nations who have any interest in the space domain. The light bulbs went on, and fast-forward to today, our partners are not simply Five Eyes, it’s Five Eyes plus Germany and France, who are… Now, we have exchange officers in the United States and are sending them over to those countries.

We share data. We work in the same op centers. We’re in the Combined Space Operations Center together. There is power in these relationships for deterrence and for many of the reasons you all stated. In the Space Force, we have so many projects going on right now. It is really exciting. In the next year or so, Norway is going to launch two commercial satellites. I’m sorry, two comm satellites for the Space Force, polar satellites that are absolutely important for our most special and NC3 type of communications. We’re trusting Norway to launch those payloads for us. Japan, we have partnerships with, and it’s just growing. So the future for the Space Force and allies and partners is growth.

We’re looking at South Korea as well and Japan, even Brazil, and I think General Dickinson mentioned some 160 so countries have actually signed space-sharing agreements with the United States. So it’s all about growth for us. And I just want to say one thing about Australia. Incredible opportunity with the Australians. I got to go there in November and made the conclusion that they’re basically a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow for space, because location, location, location. Look where they are in the world.

They have radars and ground-based optical telescopes. They can launch from that part of the world very efficiently into the equator, which is the most efficient way to launch. They have an incredible opportunity to partner with us and they’re very excited to do so as well. So it’s full steam ahead for the Space Force in partnering.

Gen. Lori J. Robinson (Ret.):

Well, and they’re incredible. So I’m trying to be good on time management here. And so, I’m going to do two things. I’m going to ask each of these warriors a couple of questions and then to do some closing comments. We’ll do it at the end. But the first is, one of the things that we do as warriors, which I’m proud to have been one, is we kind of think about where we’re going, but sometimes there are some policy things that get in our way and that we want to make sure our voice is heard.

So I’m going to ask each of these warriors about if there’s any of that that they think about every day, not that they’re trying to adjust, but the other thing I want to ask these great warriors about is, what is it you’re working on? What is it you’re thinking about? What is it that you are trying to take the force to? Of course.

Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach:

All right. Well, the things that we’re working on, agile combat employment. In fact, I said the other day that no Airmen in PACAF is excused from being a multi-capable Airman and working on ACE every single day. And so, the wing commanders are working on that. We’re expanding the envelope. Daily training includes agile combat employment, and that’s because of the challenge we have with China and North Korea and Russia. And so, that foundational capability is going to allow us to execute the way that we need to execute in the event that deterrence fails. So that’s probably the biggest thing that we’re working on.

Certainly, modernizing. And we heard from the secretary yesterday, and there’s a number of programs that he talked about yesterday that are going to be delivered in the coming years that will absolutely be put into good use straight away in the Pacific, which will help for deterrence and then, if that deterrents fails, for us to be able to win. The policy? I would say the one that I think about every single day, multiple times a day, is our ability to share with our allies and partners, and we all know the frustrations that are associated with being able to send a note to somebody or to just release information to one of our allies and partners.

And if we could take a look at that policy, and I know we’ve been talking about this for decades, we need to actually do something about it soon, as in this year, and start to open up the ability to share with our allies and partners so that they can be in that fight with us.

Gen. Lori J. Robinson (Ret.):

So, Cruiser, I’m going to bug you on this for a moment. Okay? So we’ve got F-35s in the theater. Right? And so, how do we, from a policy perspective, delve into that conversation? Because to me, as I think about F-35 employment, there’s this notion of, how do we share information so that we can employ together? What do you think about that as the PACAF commander?

Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach:

I think the specific example with F-35s is we share… because those countries are read into the F-35 program. And so, we do share the F-35 program information with those countries that have it. And as a matter of fact, like Singapore, who has committed to it, they’re in our group now as well. So we have our PACAF F-35 users’ group and they’re sitting in the room with us. And so, the F-35 sharing, because of the way that we’ve constructed the info sharing on that program, that’s in decent shape.

But those same countries, Japan and Korea and Singapore and Australia, we limit a lot of information from them because it doesn’t say REL Five Eyes or REL Singapore, et cetera. And some of that information, we want them to… The commander wants them to have that information because it’s going to help us to be more interoperable and it produces the ability for us to execute together.

And so, what I would say on the policy is, the commanders have been talking about this for years, and it’s our risk that we are incurring by not sharing, and we’re not the ones who get to decide on the sharing policy. And so, I would say, one way to look at this from the policy standpoint is push authorities to commanders who have to manage the risk.

Gen. Lori J. Robinson (Ret.):

Okay. Scorch.

Gen. James B. Hecker:

Pretty much ditto on General Wilsbach answers. Sharing information is huge, and we have had some success stories, but they’re very difficult to have, but one is with space. When the Ukraine war kicked off, there were certain things we were allowed to share from our space assets to NATO allies and certain things that we couldn’t. And due to a policy change, we increased what we could share almost 100 times of what we were sharing before. Pretty good success story. That’s really good.

And that enabled us to do a lot of things that we wouldn’t be able to do. And you know how much it cost? Zero. It costs whatever the ink in a pen cost to do a signature and then we are allowed to do that. When you talk F-35s in our theater at USAFE, by 2034, we’re supposed to have over 600 of them. Of those, only 54 are going to be U.S., so less than 10%. And if those 10% can’t operate at 100% because we can’t share different things with them, we’re losing combat power.

So even if by sharing our data files, U.S. data files with them, if that increases their lethality and their way to integrate with other folks by 20%, that’s equivalent of their 550 aircraft that they have. That’s equivalent to 110 extra F-35s, that cost zero money, stroke of a pen. So we have pushed a bunch of these up to OSD. Another thing we just did, SACEUR and I co-signed something for our web tech. We’re going to have our first-ever NATO web tech, and we asked for three different SAP programs to be briefed to our F-35 NATO allies.

And hopefully, they’ll allow us to do it, because it’s going to let us get air superiority so we can get after counter IAMD. And if we can’t talk about it, we can’t get after it, and it’s free chicken, and we’re going to read them out when they leave. So we’re really going after this because it is a freeway to get a lot of combat capability, especially at least for us in USAFE, and I’m sure it’s the same thing in PACAF.

Gen. Lori J. Robinson (Ret.):

Next.

Lt. Gen. Nina M. Armagno:

I’ll definitely pull the thread on sharing data and classification as well. In the Space Force, with space programs, so many times, especially if it’s high-tech, so many times, we start new programs all SAP’d up, and it’s really hard to declassify SAP programs. I know that our acquisition partners are really trying to acquire technology that’s ready today, commercial technology that’s ready today, and that will be helpful. But regarding data sharing and regarding policy changes, well, there’s a free memo probably written in 2018 just before I left USSTRATCOM as the J5. I was the POC on this memo, until I PCS’d and they made an edit and now my name’s not on it. It doesn’t matter because that memo is still sitting on someone’s desk.

It was a framework on what to classify for space programs and why, because the theory at the time, and we can argue deterrence theory, but the theory at the time was reveal what we’ll deter. And if we can’t show it or talk about it, it can’t serve as a deterrent, because adversaries don’t even know the program or system exists. So this framework was very well done, General Hyten, stroke of a pen, and I have not seen anything since.

So policy changes, they’re not impossible and they are not hard to do, and you can partner this framework with a reveal-conceal strategy, and there we have it. More data sharing, more reduced classification that’s so important to share with our allies, because allies and partners and industry, you’re all part of the way forward for space. When we talk about resilience and building hybrid architectures that are layered and diversified and include commercial and allies, we have to crack the nut on sharing data and reducing classification levels.

Gen. Lori J. Robinson (Ret.):

So ladies and gentlemen, Airmen and Guardian, we’ve only have a couple of minutes left. So what I’d really like to do is give these amazing warriors and my friends some last words to the audience and to the larger world, just because they have had incredible careers, and what they’ve done for our Air and Space Force is nothing short of amazing. And so, I just want to make sure that I give them some last words before Orville kicks me off the stage.

Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach:

Well, thanks, General Robinson. I would not be sitting on this stage if it wasn’t for you. General Robinson was a Weapons School instructor when I went through the Weapons School, and that was the beginning of my mentorship with you, and then my boss twice as the PACAF commander and the NORAD-NORTHCOM commander. And so, I would not be sitting here if it wasn’t for you. I have learned a lot over the years from you. But what I’d like to say on the closing comments is maybe expand a little bit more on what we’re concerned about in the Pacific, and that’s China, and if you look back over the last year, some of the bad behavior that you’ve seen.

Before I get to a few examples though, I’d encourage everybody in the audience to read two things. Last year, I talked about the Taiwan Question white paper that came out in August last year. It’s a fascinating read to see how the CCP looks at Taiwan. There’s another paper that just came out just a few weeks ago called the Strategic Initiatives Policy Concept Paper, long title, and it’s a very magnanimously written paper and it talks about all these wonderful things that the CCP would like to do around the world, and then you compare it with their behavior.

And so, in the last year, what have we seen? Well, of course, the balloon going all the way across North America. That wasn’t the first time they incurred on somebody else’s sovereign territory with those airships. We saw the very dangerous intercept with the Rivet Joint. You’ve seen the video, and the video doesn’t necessarily show how dangerous that was, but it was extremely dangerous, close, where the Rivet Joint had to maneuver to keep the fighter from running into ours.

We had the Chinese fighter chaff in front of the P-8, the Australian P-8, that caused damage to the engine and the leading edge. We saw just last month the lasing incident by the Chinese Coast Guard on the Philippine Coast Guard vessel, and you just keep having these kind of behaviors, and then you look at their writings. And so, I pose the question to the audience: One, who’s calling the shots in China? Because it’s certainly concerning, and hopefully they’ve thought about authorities and who’s deciding to have these unsafe interceptions, who’s deciding on incurring, with a intelligence-gathering airship incurring into other people’s sovereign territory.

Who’s calling those? Who’s calling those shots? I don’t know the answer, but certainly, that’s something they should look at and take care of that. It’s been fabulous being on the panel with my colleagues and with you, General Robinson. Thank you for everybody’s interest, and have a great day, everyone. Thank you.

Gen. James B. Hecker:

Well, I too wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for General Robinson. She was a squadron commander at the Weapons School when I was an instructor there, and I would take your bogey dope anytime. So one thing that kind of struck me, and this doesn’t really have to do with USAFE, during the conference here was that we might be 10% short of our recruiting goal, as we celebrate the 50th year of the all-voluntary force. And then I read an article this morning that talked about how the Russians just ran out of the prisoners, because all of them have now died and they’re having to bring in some of their more professional recruits that have a couple months of training.

And then I reflect talking to some of the Ukrainian-enlisted personnel who are learning to operate HIMARS and how professional they were. I asked them, “Hey, are you afraid to go back to combat because you’re going back here in a week?” And they said, “No. We know exactly what we’re fighting for. We’re fighting for our country.” And I go, “Well, how about the Russians? When you capture some of them, what do they say?” He goes, “They have no clue what they’re fighting for. They’re not professional.” We need folks that want to be in our Air force, and it’s going to take a recruiting effort from all of us.

So we all have the responsibility to share our stories, because we got great stories, to share our experiences. And by doing that, we’re going to be able to come get past this 10% problem that we have, but it’s going to take all of us to do it. So the last thing, as we end our careers, we’re at the tail end of ours, we don’t want to be the ones that went out and said, “Yeah, we couldn’t do an all-volunteer force and we had to start signing people up.” So help us go out on a good note and let’s do the recruiting and make sure that we get some people in here. Thank you.

Lt. Gen. Nina M. Armagno:

I think I can help you go out on a good note. I’d like to talk about the future. There is another Armagno in the audience, and it is Cadet Giacomo Armagno, junior and ROTC at Kent State University. He’s been wanting to fly, well, the A-10, but fighters since he was like this big. And that’s our future. We do have an amazing future, a future of empowered, bold, creative, and innovative Airmen and Guardians who are willing to stand up and raise their right hand and support and defend the Constitution of the United States and carry on the national security of this great nation.

I know we have. I see it in my nephew. And so, in these last few seconds, what I’d love to do is ask all ROTC students who might be in the audience, the United States Air Force Academy cadets, or any other military school students who are in the audience, please stand, along with my nephew, Giacomo Armagno, so that we can recognize the future of our United States Air and Space Forces.

Gen. Lori J. Robinson (Ret.):

So the last thing I’m going to say, if this isn’t what our nation is about, it’s about you, it’s about them, it’s about our future, and we are blessed. So thank you very much for being here.

Voiceover:

General Robinson and our panel, thank you so much for joining us today. Feel free to take a short break to stretch, but be back here in 15 minutes for the Spark Tank competition. You won’t want to miss these inspiring Airmen and Guardians pitch their ideas to our esteemed panel of military and celebrity judges.

Accelerate Change: Switch to the Reserve in Just 1 Month?

March 8, 2023 | By David Roza

The head of the Air Force Reserve wants to slice the amount of time it takes Airmen to transfer from Active-duty to the Reserve, from as much as six months now to just one. Lt. Gen. John Healy, Chief of Air Force Reserve, said speeding the transition is a top priority.

“Nothing makes a bigger first impression than when you’re in-processing into any type of new job,” Healy said March 6 at the AFA Warfare Symposium. “If it is nothing but a headache to get into that job, you’re starting on the wrong foot.”

To reach his goal, Healy is working with the Air Force Recruiting Service to identify the restrictions and barriers that slow down transfers. One ready example: A 33- or 34-year-old master sergeant who wants to switch is required to complete an accession physical examination and all the medical checks it entails, even if Active Duty records show the Airmen is physically and medically fit.

“We were shooting ourselves in the foot,” Healy said.

That policy is now fixed, but not all changes are so simple. Healy doesn’t have the power to change everything, and has to look to the other commands or even Congress in some cases for help. A new task force is now identifying “quick wins” that Healy’s Reserve Command can execute to accelerate Airmen’s move into the Reserve.

Air Force Reserve recruiting fell short in the last fiscal year by 1,500 recruits, or 2.1 percent short of its recruiting goal. With all the services and components struggling to hit recruiting targets, the Guard and Reserve face downstream impacts because if the active components increase retention incentives to make up for recruiting shortfalls, the reserve components see fewer transfer applicants.

The ripple effects from the COVID-19 pandemic has also hurt.

“In the past our recruiting models were based on 70 percent of recruits coming from the Active component and 30 percent representing non-prior-service individuals,” said Air Force Reserve Command Chief Master Sgt. Timothy White Jr. last year. “Right now we’re not achieving that 70-30 mix. In fact, we’re probably at 60-40 and in some cases 50-50, depending on the military occupational specialty. That means we have to adjust our budgets for schools and training to qualify non-prior-service individuals to serve. We’ve never had to do that in the past.”

Ideally, Airmen transfer to the Reserve from active-duty because they are already fully-trained, said Healy. That is why the general wants to make it as easy as possible for Active-duty Airmen to come over.

One possible change Healy is working on would allow Active-duty pilots who want to serve long-term to spend some of their Active-duty service commitment working full-time in the Reserve. The appeal is that reservists are not typically required to move.

New Air Force pilots have a 10-year Active-duty service requirement, at the end of which they can extend their service, leave, or transfer to the Guard or Reserve. Healy thinks if some pilots transfer to the Reserve earlier, they might be more inclined to continue, thereby giving the Air Force “a longer return on investment” for their training, he said.

“Those discussions are starting to bubble up, so now it’s ‘how can we get them fleshed out so we can see the intricacies of ensuring the individual continues their service,’” Healy said. Financial and other models must still be built to fully understand the impact of such a policy change.

Pilots and maintainers are the key skill sets that worry Healy. About 77% of the reserves fleet is older, legacy aircraft, and they require substantial maintenance.

“We’re always looking for maintainers,” he said. “We always need qualified, technically-minded folks who can work on those aircraft.”

‘Mobilize the Nation’: Leaders Issue Passionate Call to Military Service

March 8, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

AURORA, Colo.—In the face of polls showing fewer and fewer young Americans interested in serving in the military and headlines highlighting issues within the services, senior Air Force and Space Force leaders gave impassioned pleas for Airmen and Guardians to challenge existing narratives about military service at the AFA Warfare Symposium on March 6.

Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman, Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. David W. Allvin, Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force Roger A. Towberman, and Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force JoAnne S. Bass each addressed the issue in a panel discussion, all recalling their own reasons for joining the military.

Continuum of Service

Noting that he was addressing an audience full of Airmen, Guardians, and others who have already chosen to serve, Saltzman stressed the importance of service members and veterans “telling stories” to highlight the positive impacts military service has had on their lives and opportunities over time.

“I think it’s important to recognize that the things that maybe get you into service aren’t the reasons you stay,” Saltzman said. “And we have to think about this as a continuum of service and continue to tell the stories.”

Describing his entry into the Air Forceas “pretty transactional,” Saltzman said time and experience changed his plans.

“They paid for college, there’s a job waiting on the other end, and so I’m in,” Saltzman recalled. “But that’s not why you stay for the second tour, because all of a sudden there’s relationships and people you like and respect, and it’s a fun group to hang out with. And so you take the next job, and you take the next job. And before you realize it, you have this sense of purpose, because you go home on leave and you watch your friends from high school and the jobs they have, they’re making good money, but they don’t have this calling, this sense of duty and they respect so much of what I was doing. I just started to feel a sense of purpose.

“And then before you know it, in the blink of an eye, you’re the old guy on base, and now you have this desire to give back to the institution that has given you so much.”

‘Participate in History’

Allvin followed, reiterating the importance of stories, pointing to entrenched narratives about service that portray the military as dangerous and damaging.

“We all have served alongside heroes for the last three decades plus, who’ve done America’s work, and some of whom have paid the ultimate sacrifice, some of whom are still suffering from the wounds of it,” Allvin said. “Sometimes that’s all that America sees, though, and so it becomes this picture of a place where people need to be fixed because they were broken. . . .

“There’s another narrative out there, and it just needs to be told, and it needs to reach those who are going to follow on.”

Generation Z—young people born between 1997 and 2012—are the ones to follow, and Allvin echoed other leaders arguing that, with the right messages, those young people can be reached.

“It’s a human thing to want to be part of the team,” he said. “It’s a human thing to want to live with purpose. It’s a human thing to want to matter. And so a value proposition? Here’s a value proposition for you. You get to participate in history rather than just watching.”

Allvin then recounted his own career path:

“A kid grows up in the backdrop of the Cold War. He decides he wants to fly. He finds out his first assignment is in Germany, gets to be there when the Wall comes down. He gets to stand over Wenceslas Square when Václav Havel is talking to over 300,000 people in a peaceful revolution and changing the face of Europe.

“Then that kid gets to come back to the States and participate in one of the biggest operations in a long time, that they call Desert Shield and Desert Storm. He gets to see the most beautiful and terrible sunrises and sunsets and all those things that are happening in that desert war. And then he gets to go through the rest of that next decade challenging himself in the most technical way … and an intellectual way. And then he gets to be a part of the team that when the world changes after 9/11, he gets to lead that team into trying to transform that back into a place where the nation can feel safe again.

“And then he is allowed to keep moving on and participate in three strategic reviews about how we might want to alter the strategy of the Defense Department. He gets to come back and work on Air Force strategy. He gets to go over to Europe and build a war plan for a command, that was a relationship commander until Putin started screwing around the first time. And then he gets to come back and speak in front of audience about three-plus decades worth of that story.”

That journey, Allvin emphasized, is one that many Airmen can follow—they don’t have to become a four-star general to have had that experience.

‘We Have to Play Offense’

Towberman, known for his affable, engaging style, became emotional discussing his own path to service and exhorted the audience to share their stories beyond their usual military circles.

“When I was 17 years old, I packed up everything I owned in my 1976 Pontiac Catalina and I pulled away from my mom’s double-wide to be a rock star. And see how that worked out. I messed up my life in every way imaginable between 17 and 22. I’ve stolen food to feed myself. It doesn’t matter what I do—I don’t think my debt with the United States Air Force, and now Space Force, will ever be paid,” Towberman said.

“We’ve got to tell our stories, and we’ve got to play offense. We can’t just sit in our echo chambers and we can’t just come into the friendly confines and tell them. There was a time where maybe our brand was so significantly impenetrable that playing defense was good enough, that as long as no ugly articles made the paper, we were OK. That time isn’t now. We’ve got to challenge the people who would twist the reality that because we choose to tackle the greatest ills of our society that somehow that means we have more of those ills than anyone else.”

In order to challenge that narrative, Towberman said, the service should highlight “real stories of teamwork, love, second chances, of late bloomers.”

“We’ve got to take this narrative to the streets,” he added. “We’ve got to mobilize the nation that seems at times to be ripping itself apart. If you wear this uniform, you are what makes this country great. You are what unites us. Every single one of you can tell that story. We’ve got to play offense. It matters so much. ‘Thank you for your service’ can’t be just some polite thing people are supposed to say. It’s got to be something that more people inherently understand.”

Towberman has done his part to try to engage with media outlets that don’t typically cover the military, participating in an interview with The Late Show With Stephen Colbert this past December.

Wear Our Nation’s Cloth

Like Saltzman, Bass also pointed to the varying reasons why people serve, recalling her own changing motivations.

“I joined to get my GI Bill, figure out life. My dad told me that four years in the military never hurt anybody—I’m still trying to figure out what four years he’s talking about,” Bass joked. “I tell people all the time, I only reenlisted at the four-year mark to pay off my Honda Civic…. And then it was probably about the eight-year mark, where I really joined our Air Force and I understood what it means to wear our nation’s cloth.

“We have to appreciate that everybody joins for a different reason and that’s OK. I tell our Airmen all the time, ‘I actually don’t care for you sign up for the four years, six years, eight years, 28 years.’ Most of us just sign up for four quick years, right? What I do expect you to do is to make our Department of the Air Force better. That is what we need you to do, especially at a time like this, where we’re serving in the most complex time ever.”

And like Allvin, Bass argued that younger generations will serve if given the right opportunities and presented with the right message.

“What we’ve learned about Gen Z is Gen Z, by the way, actually wants to serve,” she said. “They just want to serve in their own way. And so we’ve got to figure out those different pathways to allow them to be able to serve their nation and really be able to serve this noble cause.”

Watch, Read: ‘United Forces and Families’

March 8, 2023

Lt. Col. Elizabeth Blakeman, co-lead of Air Combat Command’s Sword Athena program; Kristen Christy, resilience trainer with Fortify the Force; and Maj. Bridget Pantaleon, Family Life Action Group discussed the quality of life issues facing Airmen and Guardians and their families during a panel discussion on “United Forces and Families” at the AFA Warfare Symposium on March 8, 2023. The session was moderated by Melissa Shaw, vice chair of the forces and families committee (F2) at AFA. Watch the video or read the transcript below.

Kari Voliva:

Friends, welcome. It’s my honor to welcome you to the United Forces and Family Session today. Supporting our Air Force family has been an important piece of AFA’s mission since its inception in 1946. More than 75 years later, we remain committed to supporting all department of the Air Force families. We believe that consistent focus on improving the quality of life for all Airmen, Guardians, and family members is directly linked to stronger families, United forces and the mission effectiveness of our air and space forces. That’s why AFA launched the United Forces and Families Initiative or F2 in September. For the first time at the Airspace and Cyber Conference, we incorporated multiple quality of life sessions and welcome more than 1000 military spouses. AFA also created the F2 task force to unite forces and families to strengthen quality of life for air space communities. This is a forward-looking impact focused group of advocates dedicated to bringing awareness, resources and solutions to some of the toughest issues impacting our military families. Our F2 vision is a culture where strong families continually build stronger forces. This session is one of the first products of our task force and we are thrilled that you’re here. As we celebrate International Women’s Day today, thank you for supporting the only all female panel at this event. It’s my honor to introduce your moderator for today’s session, Melissa Shaw. Melissa currently serves as the vice chair of the F2 Task Force and is the Vice President of Digital Solutions at Pioneer Utility Resources. She is married to Lieutenant Colonel Nicholas Shaw and has been a military spouse for 11 years. The Shaws are an inner service transfer family from the US Army to the Space Force and the proud parents of three wonderful children. Please join me in welcoming Melissa Shaw.

Melissa Shaw:

Carrie, thank you for that wonderful introduction and thank you for all that you and the AFA team do behind the scenes to make events like this one happen. Thank you, Kristen, Major Pantaleon and Lieutenant Colonel Blakeman for sitting up here with me this morning. It’s my honor to moderate this panel today, United Forces and Families. The four of us on stage represent active air and space force leaders, reserve families, single parents, dual military families, dual working families, and even an interservice transfer family. In addition to moderating today’s panel, as Carrie mentioned, I’m also here to represent the AFAs brand new F2 task force designed to unite forces and families strengthening quality of life for our air and space communities. It’s not lost on me that the F2 task force was established at the 50th anniversary of our all volunteer force.

Melissa Shaw:

With an all volunteer force comes career minded service members who can only continue to serve if both they and their families have adequate housing, food on the table, healthcare education, and in today’s inflationary environment, military spouse employment is more important than ever. Thankfully, it’s not just independent organizations like the AFA who are addressing and recognizing the need to speak on the role that quality of life plays for those of us who are married to someone wearing uniform or wearing the uniform ourselves. Our senior enlisted leaders spoke with a unified voice on the importance of addressing quality of life challenges last week. I sat on our couch in our house, and I personally watched Chief Bass and Towberman testify to the US House Appropriations Committee alongside other senior enlisted leaders from the Navy, the Marine Corps, and the Army on the oversight hearing on quality of life in the military.

Melissa Shaw:

During that session, Chief Towberman said that without a quality of life that they value and know will always be there and all volunteer force may no longer be something that we can safely assume. Chief Bass told the Appropriations Committee that in order to be the Air Force our nation needs, we must prioritize both quality of life and the quality of service of our Airmen and their families. And this week we’ve heard a number of our most senior leaders in the air and space forces talk openly about the spectrum of resilience, the fact that mental health is health, addressing other quality of life challenges, and even talking about how those of us who are family members are a critical part of the team, that those of you who wear the uniform are on. Our forces and our families are inextricably intertwined. What’s good for one is good for both, and the opposite also holds true. With me here today, our three leaders in our community each representing grassroots efforts across the DAF. Ladies, can you please briefly introduce yourselves this morning and tell us a bit about each of the organizations that you represent?

Maj. Bridget Pantaleon:

Of course. Thank you, Melissa. Good morning everyone. I am Major Bridget Pantaleon. I’m one of four co-founders of the DAF Family Life Action Group. The DAF Family Life Action Group is an all volunteer team that aims to bridge the gap between the Airmen, Guardians and their loved ones and the DAF senior leaders and our team is comprised of total force Airmen, Guardians, and their loved ones.

Kristen Christy:

Good morning, I’m Kristen Christy. My husband is Tech Sergeant Sean Lang, a traditional reservist. We’re stationed in Colorado Springs and I am here, besides being on F2 with Melissa, I am representing FFIT, Fortifying the Forces Initiative Team championed by Chief Bass and Chief Towberman and I’m going to read this, I apologize. Usually I don’t have notes, but FFIT is, the mission is to accelerate actionable, actionable initiatives to create meaningful impact by building a stronger, more resilient force… Sorry. By improving mental health and suicide prevention, efforts to protect Airmen, Guardians, and their families and we include civilians in that as well in our initiatives. I’ll talk more about that later.

Lt. Col. Elizabeth Blakeman:

Great. Good morning. It’s great to see everyone. I’m Lieutenant Colonel Elizabeth Blakeman and I’m representing ACC’s Sword Athena program. The program sources volunteers from across our MAJCOM to come together and to identify tackle and then hopefully remove any barriers to female and family readiness, and so look forward to the panel. Thanks.

Melissa Shaw:

Thank you. My first question today, we all define family a little bit differently. Each one of us brings a different family dynamic to this stage and also to the room in front of us in the entire air and space forces. Since we’re here today to talk about family and the force, let’s talk about what family means to some of us. Major Pantaleon, would you mind going first in talking a little about what family means to you?

Maj. Bridget Pantaleon:

I’d love to. Thanks Melissa. So I want to start really quick with a question for the crowd here. Who has heard, and dare I say, uttered the words that if the military wanted you to have a family, they’d issue you one. Right. We’ve all heard it, right? I know if you’re in this room today, you probably haven’t uttered that phrase, but if you have, let me be the first to inform you that that’s not the perspective that the military has some families today. The way that we look at and the way that we define families in 2023 is different from the way that we looked at and defined families in 1947 when we stood up the Air Force. It’s different, like chief Bass mentioned on Monday, than when they wrote the policies that we operate under today. The definition of family, I believe, belongs to our Airmen and our Guardians.

Maj. Bridget Pantaleon:

So whether you know are married and you have children or you don’t have children, if you’re a single parent, maybe you’re the caregiver of an aging parent. Maybe you are an older sibling that came from a rough upbringing and you had to step up and you had to take care of your younger siblings. Or maybe you’re a single Airman sitting here in the audience today and you have the family that you came from and you also have the family that you built along the way in your military service or you may have the family that you adopted in the version of a pet. Family means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, but that definition that belongs to our Airmen and our Guardians. My humble perspective is that family can be defined as those that journey along with us in our service and support us along the way.

Maj. Bridget Pantaleon:

And one of the things that Melissa asked me to share a little bit of is my personal story and how my personal story has shaped the way that I view leadership and it has shaped the way that I view my definition of family. So some of the folks in the room here know me, some of y’all don’t, but if you don’t know me, I’m an intelligence officer. Love my job, love the mission, and I just so happen to also be the single parent with sole custody of two amazing little boys, Jack and Luke five and seven, wish they were here so you guys could see them. But they’re also members of the Exceptional Family Member program. And I’ve had lots of challenges with my quality of life. I didn’t join the service thinking I would become a single parent at all, let alone when I was six months pregnant with my second child.

Maj. Bridget Pantaleon:

Lots of challenges, and I don’t say that to elicit sympathy. I say that to provide the framework that it radically changed the way that I lead. And so when I look at the challenges that I had to overcome, I recognize that I sit in a position of privilege. I am an FGO, I’m a female officer, I make a decent amount of money. I can overcome childcare challenges financially. I have a fantastic family. There my brother’s watching my kids right now so I could be here with you guys enabling my operations.

Maj. Bridget Pantaleon:

I have a great family support structure. I have an incredible military family that stood up for me. What keeps me up at night as a leader is that there is a reflection of me at the Airman level. There is a single parent at the Airman level who doesn’t have the financial flexibility to overcome childcare problems, who does not have a good family to reach back to for support. Maybe they’re thousands of miles away from them and they haven’t yet had the opportunity to build our military community and family. So now when I view leadership, I think every single one of these Airmen’s family matter. How do I bring them in, how do I fortify our families? And so at the end of the day, our families, however we define them, they are force multipliers and they have operational consequence.

Maj. Bridget Pantaleon:

Thanks, Melissa.

Melissa Shaw:

That was fantastic. Thank you. I don’t think any of us have anything to add to that. Lieutenant Colonel Blakeman, I’m going to jump to you next if that’s okay. Can you speak to a little bit to the Sword Athena program, can you talk with us about family in the context of that program? How does Athena help to create the operational readiness and resilience of Airmen and by extension their families? And before, I want to clarify this is an initiative of the ACC so I specifically did not mention Guardians in this context because this program primarily serves Airmen.

Lt. Col. Elizabeth Blakeman:

Awesome. Thanks, Melissa.

Lt. Col. Elizabeth Blakeman:

So Sword Athena stood up as a program. It’s sponsored by the commander of ACC, so General Kelly, but it stood up in 2020 under General Holmes and has been going strong ever since. As I mentioned earlier, it’s a MAJCOM level program that’s designed to go out and find where there are barriers for our female Airmen and by extension their families to them being able to serve to their full potential and do the mission. And so Sword Athena takes a grassroots approach for those of you who aren’t familiar with the weapons and tactics community and the model that they use, Sword Athena leans heavily on that and is informed by it. So we go out to the field, we talked to the Airmen who are doing the mission, or we source ideas through their chains of command and bring those forward.

Lt. Col. Elizabeth Blakeman:

As a team across our MAJCOM, we collaborate on those ideas, work with our staff champions at ACC or in other organizations across the Air Force and we come up with solutions. And then what Sword Athena does is it provides that conduit to bring those ideas solutions directly from the field to COMAC for action, so some examples of things Sword Athena has tackled over the last few years. So Sword Athena was one of the key drivers in building the requirements and the development of new bladder relief solutions and flight suit modifications for female aviators. We drove support for north nursing mothers in our command by making lactation rooms and inspectable item for the IG. We’ve updated policies to ensure that Bluetooth pumping devices can be used in many of our skiffs across the command and my personal favorite, we made our childcare development center parking lots, no hat, no salute zones. You want to talk about high risk with a two-year-old, that is it.

Lt. Col. Elizabeth Blakeman:

Our process runs throughout the year, but next year week we have our milestone event where we bring representatives from each of our wings and our NAFs to Langley and we work together and what COMAC’s asked us to look at this year is look through the Sword Athena lens at models such as agile combat employment and the rollout of Afro Gen and try and anticipate where they’re going to be challenges or issues for our families or female Airmen and bring them forward now so we can tackle them ahead of the curve and be ready.

Lt. Col. Elizabeth Blakeman:

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that Sword Athena is obviously part of a very powerful network of sister organizations, all the ones represented on this stage. There’s seven other MAJCOM Athenas that have now stood up across the Air Force and we are partnered very closely with the women’s initiative team, who takes many of the things that we bring forward from the MAJCOMs and drives big policy changes at the DAF and DOD level. So I’ll stop there, but if you think Sword Athena, just remember organization and really any Athena right at the MAJCOM level that’s out there trying to remove barriers and ensure all Airmen can serve to their full potential.

Lt. Col. Elizabeth Blakeman:

Thanks.

Melissa Shaw:

Lieutenant Colonel Blakeman, if folks are interested in learning more about the Athena programs, is there a website or somewhere else that they could go to, they could jot down to look up when they get home?

Lt. Col. Elizabeth Blakeman:

So one of the best ways to get connected is on Facebook. I know it’s not cool anymore to use Facebook, but we do have a Sword Athena page there and if you have a CAC enable or a CAT card, you can access our Mill Connect website, which we’ve just launched. And if you have questions about how to get in contact with any of the other Athenas, you’re welcome to email me and I’ll connect you to those POCs as well.

Melissa Shaw:

Great, thank you. Connection to resources is one of the most critical things that we can help as key spouses, as leaders, as family members, connecting folks to the resources they need is one of the most important things that we can do, so thank you.

Melissa Shaw:

My next question is for you Kristen. In an all volunteer force, we have Airmen and Guardians who we hope to retain and develop to become the world’s leading airspace and cyber war fighters. Career military service members are likely to experience personal and professional and family challenges throughout their careers at different stages of life that could pull their attention in small or large ways away from the mission itself. Kristen, you are a nationally recognized expert in resilience. You speak all over the world, you’ve championed the DAFs Fortify the Force initiative team, you’ve spearheaded the National 988 hotline and you helped to found, well, you didn’t help to found, you did found National Resilience Day. Can you please talk a little bit about the connection between resilience, our families and war fighting.

Kristen Christy:

A Absolutely. We talk about air space and cyber superiority, but without human superiority, we don’t have any of that in any domain and that includes our families in that human superiority. I think as human beings, we want to feel protected, respected and connected. I know the department of the Air Force is working on that, to help our families be resilient. You all have to go through suicide prevention and a lot of other resilience training. We have master resilience trainers and the department of the Air Force saw how important it was for our spouses to be on the same page and so we have a spouse toolkit and it’s taking our master resilience modules and just withering them a little bit for our spouses because it’s a unit. Many of you know my story, lost my first husband to suicide after deployment. When Don was deployed, we agreed that there were sacred spaces, things that he couldn’t talk about, things I couldn’t talk about.

Kristen Christy:

It wasn’t clearance related for him, it was just things he couldn’t formulate. I want to say communication in the family unit leads to resilience. If I could go back 15 years, I would change the way I communicated with my husband at that time. I think communication is a foundation to resilience in the family and when the family is resilient as a unit, then the war fighting mission has a good chance because they’ve got that human superiority and then we can have the airspace and cyberspace superiority for our Airmen and their families. I recommend as Airmen, bring your families into what you’re doing, tell them what you’re doing as much as possible, as much as you can. Their eyes may glaze over, but they need to hear it. Our Guardian families, I really recommend our Guardian spouses and families read The Guardian, yes, the Guardian Ideal.

Kristen Christy:

I think it’s very important that you have, as family members, we have an understanding of what our military members are dealing with to an extent, but to be on the same page and really to communicate with one another because as a family unit, we need to be resilient to be on… I call life is an emotional battlefield. Wherever you live, wherever the mission, the military mission is, life is an emotional battlefield and we need to arm ourselves with resilience and help each other out but especially as a family unit.

Melissa Shaw:

For our family, one of the things that we’ve identified about the time that my husband decided whether or not he was going to make this a career or if he wouldn’t when he was a little bit earlier in his career and we’re deciding, are we going to make it career, are we going to try to hit 20 or are we going to just get out and go take civilian jobs? We realized that it was critical for me to be part of those conversations, me to understand what the opportunities were in front of us and what some of the risks were with those opportunities as well and to ensure that I never have a victim mentality in that relationship because he does have those conversations with me at every step of the way. I have at least a reasonable set of expectations about what’s ahead and that communication is critical to me being able to then support him in his service.

Melissa Shaw:

So his communication with me has been critical and I encourage those of you who are wearing the uniform in the room right now to talk to your spouses and loved ones. Like Kristen said, as much as you can, there’s some things you can’t talk with us about, but if you can encourage communication with your spouse, with your loved ones as you’re making those career decisions, you’ll find that we’re able to support you a lot better along the way.

Melissa Shaw:

I’m going to direct my next question back to Major Pantaleon. Let’s talk about the FLAG program in a little bit more detail. You described earlier that the FLAG is an organization that bridges the gap between Airmen, Guardians and their families and DAF senior leaders. How does FLAG bring information about those challenges from the field up to senior leaders? What does that communication look like?

Maj. Bridget Pantaleon:

Thank you, Melissa, and I’m really excited to talk to you guys about FLAG. If you can’t tell yet, I’m really excited about Total Force Quality of Life. So the Family Life Action Group, we stood this up because we really cared about quality of life and we really love our Airmen. We just went live in February and we love our Guardians too. We just went live in February and stood up our first three initiatives so right now we are tackling spousal employment, housing, and special needs children, access to childcare. That’s our first three ones, so we went live last month, but we’ve been building it for over a year. And so the way that we seek to improve we’re laser focused on total force quality of life. Our process in order to improve that quality of life looks like three things. And I’m going to make it sound real easy, but it’s not.

Maj. Bridget Pantaleon:

The first thing that we do is we listen to the concerns from the field, then we leverage our partnerships when appropriate, we action change. And then the third thing that we do is we increase the communication between DAF senior leaders and the people that are most impacted by their policies. That sounds really cool, but it’s not easy. And let me tell you why it’s not easy and the way that we attack this three step process.

Maj. Bridget Pantaleon:

When we talk about total force quality of life here, we follow the beautiful guidance from Mrs. Brown and her Thrive team and so what we focus on is childcare, education, healthcare, housing, employment, and policies that impact quality of life. And so when we say we listen, the way that we listen today is going to be different than the way that we listen in the future. Today we utilize this grassroots network to understand what’s going on out there in the field.

Maj. Bridget Pantaleon:

Mrs. Brown’s thrive team has unprecedented access to the spouses and their stories and what’s going on today. We have a great working relationship with them to bring in those stories. We also partner heavily with the Fortify the Force initiatives team. They’ve got a family focus group that ideates and that comes up with ideas and they pitch them over our way. And then we also push out data calls to get that heartbeat of the force and from that, we take those issues and we identify what trends are occurring and what might need DAF level intervention. But in the future, and I promise my team, I would not talk about data and artificial intelligence too much because I’m a huge nerd, but what the future will look like is we aim to create a sustainable data solution, harnessing advanced technology that will enable that communication and trend analysis up and down the chain.

Maj. Bridget Pantaleon:

And then once we figure out what’s going on, we take action. What we do is root cause analysis and then we partner with our other organizations, our network within the DAF to try to enable the execution of the solutions that we propose or to get more information to bring that back to our Airmen, Guardians and their families. But we all know that these problems are not easy to solve. With complex problems, we elicit the help of our senior leader champions. We’re super blessed to have Major General Downs and Brigadier General Lovette as our senior leader champions and we seek their advice to help us get in the right doors and into the right offices to advocate for change and if necessary, help push outside of the DAF up to the DOD to make programmatic changes. At the end of the day, we close the loop, we provide the feedback on the solutions we attempted to make or successfully made or the additional resourcing and information that our Airmen, Guardians and their families need, and we push it out through our many mechanisms of communication, which you’ll hear about a little bit later so that they understand what that process looks like.

Maj. Bridget Pantaleon:

I want you to think back really quick about the story I told you about how I’m a single parent, hard knock life. One of the challenges that I had to overcome was the PCS overseas. I was boarded, selected to be a DO for a really awesome operational unit. Long story short, my kids are EFMP, my orders got canceled. That’s fine. My career survived. We’re all good here but what was the real tragedy of that situation is that operational unit of hundreds Airmen were left without a director of operations for an assignment cycle.

Maj. Bridget Pantaleon:

If FLAG was around when I went through that situation or FLAG was around before I went through that situation, Airmen would’ve been able to give that feedback. I would’ve been able to say, I’m having challenges with EFMP, maybe months before those challenges happened and we would’ve been able to enable PROACTION to look at our EFMP PCS processes before they had operational consequence. So the value proposition for FLAG is that we enable decision advantage. We enable senior leaders to be proactive instead of reactive to problems across quality of life.

Maj. Bridget Pantaleon:

I always talk too much, Melissa. I’m sorry. That’s it.

Melissa Shaw:

One of the things that we heard, I think it was General Saltzman earlier this week who talked about how important it is to stay in front of the challenges, to be forward-thinking about how we solve whatever the challenge is in the military, whether it’s operational or whether it’s quality of life affecting operations. Would either of you like to add on to anything that Bridget has shared with us this afternoon, this morning? It’s still morning. This morning.

Lt. Col. Elizabeth Blakeman:

I would just add that and Chief Towberman talked about it too, not putting families in a position where they’re having to make choices about serving or taking care of their family members to the max extent possible. I think your ideas on being proactive across all of these organizations to best posture families as they handle those challenges is the right way to try and keep Airmen in the force and Guardians

Kristen Christy:

And I have been a family member in the military for, well, usually I say 39 plus years plus shipping and handling, but for 55 years. This has been my way of life and to see the changes that are going on now and the policy changes. I mean, just a few years ago you all wouldn’t have been able to wear your hair down. I’m seeing all these policy changes coming out and I think that’s just a testament to the Department of the Air Force, DOD as a whole that they understand they have got to change. I mean, General Brown says it, “Accelerates change or lose.” I like to say, “Accelerate change and win.” It’s saying the same thing, but it’s just… I wish my mom were alive as a military spouse back when to see all these changes because we’re taking steps not just one step but steps forward to really be the ultimate military force as a family total force.

Melissa Shaw:

The total force, I think too, it includes our service members and our senior leaders making internal policy changes, decisions, leadership styles, all of that. It involves organizations in the private sector. It involves industry partners, it involves local communities, it involves organizations like the AFA and other service groups out there who are trying to support us peripherally and I think that it takes all of us looking at these challenges from a 360 degree perspective because there are things that may move slower for change within the military that a private nonprofit can make happen really quickly.

Melissa Shaw:

If more of our private sector partners were engaged around military spouse employment, imagine the impact that that could have. Some are knocking out of the park and doing a great job, but imagine the impact you could have for that younger Airman’s family if that Airman’s husband or a wife was able to find gainful employment outside the home to help with things like PCS costs. I read from BlueStar Families that in their last annual research that they had done, the average family, the active duty family who had gone through a PCS in the last couple of years had incurred nearly $8,000, I think in out-of-pocket PCS costs. As an FGO family, we can make that work. We have some reserves put away from years of working, that for a younger family that could be debilitating. Imagine what we could do if we all continue to work together to solve these problems.

Melissa Shaw:

Kristen, I know that you are the last one to contribute here, but I’m going to jump right back to you. General and Mrs. Brown gathered feedback from that grassroots level by talking to Airmen, Guardians and their families, all across stations around the world that informed what became the Five and Thrive guide that you referenced earlier, Lieutenant, sorry, major Pantaleon. The five that we talk about when we talk about Five and Thrive are childcare, education, healthcare, housing, and military spouse employment. The Five and Thrive according to their website are directly tied to military family readiness, resilience and retention of the force, which in turn impacts mission execution. Kristen, better than anyone that the resilience to overcome challenges like these five is readiness. Can you tell us more about some of the resources that exist out there? Lieutenant Colonel Blakeman, you referenced some of them. I just talked about that 360 perspective, but Kristen, can you talk about some of the resources that are out there for Airmen, Guardians, and their families, please?

Kristen Christy:

Yeah, and you all have a lot more. We could spend three hours on all the resources that are available on an installation and off base. We all represent relatively new resources available to you all in uniform, in your family’s civilians and your extended family. We are taking care of my father-in-law who has dementia, and my brother-in-law who’s schizophrenic so our family dynamic is a little bit different. Our kids are adults and out of the house, but there are so many resources. I really foot stomp the chaplain’s office, 100% confidential. I mean, seriously, 100% confidential. I think one of the stigmas that we need to overcome and the panel, I think it was Chief Bass and Chief Towberman had talked about overcoming the stigmas of barriers to get help. It’s just we need to set expectations, especially for those of you in uniform. As I travel and I talk with organizations and resources on base like the chaplain’s office, the Military and Family Readiness Center, the Influx, outdoor rack is a resource for you.

Kristen Christy:

It doesn’t have to be mental health. We’ve got financial resources for you. We’ve got military peer to peer, each of these organizations up here. Military One Source. I was surprised to find Military One Source can, if you have a family member, English is not their first language, they can translate their resume into English. They have 150 different languages that they can translate to just so many resources but I think setting the expectations, especially on the mental health side because that’s really where FFIT comes in. FFIT is looking at the resilience and the mental health side and if we get initiatives or questions, then we take it to FLAG and Sword Athena and F2. It’s like a Venn diagram and we intersect, all of our organizations intersect, but setting those expectations. You may have two people in the same squadron that have, that you know of, the same issue and one is still on the job and one is not.

Kristen Christy:

Just understand you don’t know what is in that file, what’s in their background, and please have faith that the leadership wants what’s best for each Airman and Guardian and their families and what’s best for the unit. But there are resources out there. It’s not just up to you when you’re in crisis, financial crisis, relationship crisis, whatever that crisis may be, deployment, crisis, childcare crisis, whatever that crisis may be to seek help. But I want to challenge you all that when you’re in a good place, use your intuition when your head and your heart and your stomach is telling you something’s not right with someone in your family, friends and family. Reach out to them because when we’re in crisis, a lot of times we are not capable of asking for help. We don’t even know what to ask for so I want to challenge you all to be that battle buddy that comes in armored with resilience to help use those resources. There are just so many to try and get into this small time but really when you’re in a good place, when you move to an installation, find out what your resources are on-base and off-base. There’s Cohen Veteran network and there’s so many off-base, just even localized resources available to you and share those resources with your unit, with your families and all.

Melissa Shaw:

Kristen, can you share with us how folks can find out more about the Fortify the Force initiative if they’re interested in doing so?

Kristen Christy:

Yes. Thank you. It’s fortifytheforces.org online. We take initiatives and one of the initiatives that we’re working on now to bring up to DAF to get funding, we have an SBIR for it is Project Enigma and it’s a 40-hour course training and it’s teaching our military members skillful communication within their unit and also with the families. So if you have an initiative that you want the senior leaders in the military or in the department of the Air Force to know about, please go to our website, take a look at the initiatives. We work with LGBTQ families, we work on policy and law, single Airmen, we’ve got single parents. We take it all. And then again, if we can’t do anything with it, we find another organization to level that up.

Melissa Shaw:

Thank you Kristen.

Kristen Christy:

Thanks.

Melissa Shaw:

Major Pantaleon, you’re here today representing the FLAG program and we have not yet shared with the audience and those watching remotely this week how they can learn more about that program. Would you like to share contact information for it, please?

Maj. Bridget Pantaleon:

Yes. Man, it’s super simple. It’s www.dafflag.com, D-A-F-F-L-A-G dot com and from there you can get to all our social media, see what we’re doing nowadays and if you’re interested, I’ll be down here at the front of the stage if you guys want more information. My pockets are filled with business cards, so got lots of QR codes for you.

Melissa Shaw:

The Air Force Association, as we mentioned earlier, has recently launched the F2 taskforce designed to help unify, sorry, unite forces and families. You can learn more about it by going to www.afa.org/F2. There are also a few of us here in the room today who represent that taskforce.

Melissa Shaw:

One thing that we haven’t talked about on our Quality Life panel today is caregiving. Kristen, you referenced it briefly, but I’d like to share with this group and for anyone watching that that is represented on the F2 task force. We have representation from both Guard and Reserve families, active duty Air Force, active duty, Space Force, and caregiver families. And many of those overlap as is pretty common in our world. Not all of us fit into a nice neat box and that’s the case with our task force members. If you have any questions about what AFA is doing, I’m here.

Melissa Shaw:

Kari Voliva from AFA is sitting in the front row and I’m sure she’d also be happy to answer some questions after our panel is done today. I think that it is pretty incredible that AFA is taking a leading stance and bringing quality of life issues to the front, not just of the conversations that are happening off camera, but the conversations that are happening here on these stages at these national conferences that are being recorded and that are being shared after the fact. With that in mind, before I pose our last opportunity to answer a question here, I do want to give a shoutout to Vance. The Vance Spouse Space Crew who are going to be watching together from the brand new Vance Spouse Space, a co-working space that’s welcome to children and spouses and other loved ones on their base in their installation.

Melissa Shaw:

Those folks will be watching live on Friday and a viewing party and so thank you all for your support and AFA, thank you for your support of the Vance spouse space.

Melissa Shaw:

So we’re down to just our last maybe two to three minutes here. Would you like to go down the line and just very briefly, if there’s anything that you would hope that the folks who are watching from afar, the folks who are sitting in the room today from our Airmen and our Guardians up to our most senior leaders, is there anything that you would like to make sure that you say today that you want them to take home and remember as they move forward considering quality of life?

Maj. Bridget Pantaleon:

Of course, ma’am. I’ve always got something to say. So I have three groups of people that I really quickly want to talk to in the room today. I hope we have industry partners in this room today and to reiterate some of what Melissa said, all of your time here at AFA has been focused on your services and on your products and how you can link that in to the DOD. I challenge you to look internal. I challenge you to look at the way that you hire, look at the way that you do your business practices and ask yourself, are you set up in a way that promotes military family employment for the senior leaders that we have here in the room? We know how much you love our Airmen and Guardians. We know the value you put into quality of life. What I would, from my very humble perspective, I would like to share, to take a look at the way that we take care of our families and view it like a weapon system. Our families are the bedrock for our operations so do we approach the way that we take care of our families and our quality of life with the same vigor that we do in terms of looking at weapon systems.

Maj. Bridget Pantaleon:

And then for our Airmen, our Guardians and our loved ones in the room, oh my gosh, I love you all so much. Our heart is with you. I know that every day it is a challenge to go to work and to be lethal and I’m so proud of everything that you are doing and if at some point you are called to volunteer, there are so many options here on the stage for you guys to volunteer with but I am biased and if you want to join the FLAG, you come and you talk to me and I will give you a business card.

Maj. Bridget Pantaleon:

That’s all I got, ma’am.

Kristen Christy:

She should have gone last. Where do I sign up?

Maj. Bridget Pantaleon:

You can do both.

Lt. Col. Elizabeth Blakeman:

We have stickers.

Kristen Christy:

Oh, I love your energy. It’s amazing. Action creates traction so I hope that you all leave this room today and find a resource, find a new resource to have in your back pocket, not just for you but for someone in your family, whether that’s born into or created yourself. We’re all family is what I consider it. Find a new resource, have that in your back pocket because you never know when you’re going to come across someone, just like Chief Towberman said, “Tell your story and people are going to gravitate to you and they’re going to come to you and ask questions and they are going to realize they are not alone.” We are not alone. We’ve got to verbalize those stories and get those resources in our back pockets to have at the ready to be that battle buddy on life’s emotional battlefield.

Lt. Col. Elizabeth Blakeman:

Awesome. Thanks again to ladies up here and for the opportunity. Chief Bass said it earlier, our Airmen and Guardians are a competitive advantage. I can’t prove it, I don’t think our adversaries have organizations like the ones on this stage or senior leaders that allow the newest Airmen or Guardian in the force to provide input directly to them on how to make quality of life or readiness better for members and their families. And so I would just ask wherever you sit in your organization, you’re a leader and I would just ask you to ask your teams to answer the question, what would make us more ready? What would make our families more ready or ask people to complete the sentence, I could be more ready if. I don’t have to tell everyone in this room that the ideas that Airmen across our force have are brilliance and if you cannot action those ideas at your levels and your organizations, please bring them to us to see if we can help.

Lt. Col. Elizabeth Blakeman:

Thank you.

Melissa Shaw:

Thank you each of you for being up here today.

Melissa Shaw:

My final message for all of you in the room and for anyone who’s watching from home is you are empowered. You have leaders who care, whether they’re senior enlisted leaders, your first sure, your commander, folks above you leading you. They want to help, they want to make change. Family members want to help as well, but we won’t know how we can help if you don’t take advantage of your empowerment and share with us what those challenges are. As a former army spouse, I certainly never thought that a year into being a Space Force spouse, I’d be sitting on my second AFA stage in less than a year. I certainly feel empowered, and I hope that you do too.

Melissa Shaw:

When our Airmen and our Guardians embrace families as united together in our fight for airspace and cyber dominance, our entire air and space community does grow stronger.

Melissa Shaw:

My hope this afternoon, this morning, depending on where you are in the world watching, my hope is that each of you walk out of the room today or turn off your computer today, and you’re asking yourself how you can contribute as a leader, as a loved one, as a member of our industry partners and that larger space and air community. How can you contribute to a culture where stronger families build stronger forces?

Melissa Shaw:

Thank you sincerely for being here today. Thank you ladies for joining me on the panel today. AFA, thank you for making this happen for us.