Watch, Read: ‘United Forces and Families’

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.

Watch, Read: ‘Defining the Next-Generation Air Dominance Family of Systems’

Watch, Read: ‘Defining the Next-Generation Air Dominance Family of Systems’

March 8, 2023

Willy Anderson, vice president of Boeing’s Phantom Works; Renee Pasman, vice president of integrated systems for advanced development programs at Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works; and Gregory Simer, vice president at Northrop Grumman talked about the Air Force’s planned sixth-generation fighter, the Next-Generation Air Dominance program, and the threats and technologies that will help define it in a March 8, 2023, panel discussion at the AFA Warfare Symposium. Heather Penney, senior resident fellow at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, moderated. Watch the video or read the transcript below.

Heather Penney:

Good morning everyone, thank you for joining us so early in the morning. O Dark Thirty and I know the coffee lines have been long. I’m Heather Penney, Senior Resident Fellow at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, and welcome to our forum discussion on defining the next generation air dominance family of systems. It’s somewhat ironic that we’re hosting a panel on next generation air dominance or NGAD because as we all know, it’s been shrouded in secrecy. But what is no secret is that air dominance is a foundation of how the United States military projects an employs air power and frankly conducts all joint force operations. And despite how successful the Air Force has been at ensuring this freedom to attack and freedom from attack for our sister services and allies and partners, air dominance is not a birthright. We have to continue to earn it in the battle space.

I’m going to take a moment to contextualize where air dominance and the NGAD family of systems approach matters. All you have to do is look at Ukraine. Some folks have learned the wrong lessons from Ukraine and are arguing for a concept that they call air denial, a notion that advocates for ground-based air defense systems instead of what they consider costly air superiority fighter aircraft. First, let’s be clear, both Ukraine and Russia are continuing to fly sorties, theirs not denied, it is contested. If you were able to truly deny the adversary use of the air domain, that’s called air dominance. And why would you not then exploit the air in your combat operations?

Second, our western way of war of combined arms is predicated on air superiority. Our ground forces are not sized or equipped to fight without it. If you want that, that’s a million man plus army and thousands and thousands of tanks, artillery, surface air missiles, et cetera.

Finally, abdicating air superiority and the ability to operate from the air domain reduces a force to a protracted and costly two-dimensional war of attrition and atrocity. And that is what we’re seeing in Ukraine, where both sides have no choice but to feed their sons and daughters into the meat grinder because they do not have air dominance. There is a reason why it echoes World War I. Ground-based air defenses might be cheaper than air dominance fighters of old, but I would argue that an air denial strategy is far more expensive in the cost of actual war in blood and treasure. So when you factor in the family of systems component of next generation air dominance, we have the potential to truly change the game. But I know that you’re not here to listen to me, you’re here to learn from the people who are actually leading the programs that will deliver and get capabilities to the war fighter.

So with that, I would like to introduce our panel. To the left of me is Greg Simer, the Chief technology and Strategy officer for Northrop Grumman where he aligns Northrop Grumman’s technology roadmaps and developmental programs with war fighter needs. Next, we have Renee Pasman with Lockheed Martin Skunk Works. She’s the Vice President of Integrated Systems where she leads strategy development and execution, portfolio management and the transformation for a variety of programs. And finally, we do have a new addition joining us, Willy Anderson from Boeing where he’s a Vice President of Phantom Works with a long history of leading black programs and doing super-secret stuff. So we’ve got the right people in the right places. With that, thank you for joining us today. I’d like to kick things off by giving each one of you a few minutes to introduce yourselves and share some thoughts on this issue. So Greg, let’s start with you.

Gregory Simer:

Thank you Heather, I appreciate the opportunity to represent Northrop Grumman and share with you guys my thoughts on this topic. You succinctly summarized the threat and what we’re up against as a nation. Our peer adversaries are moving fast, they have the ability to be playing a home game as we have to cover the entire world and the entire planet, but we’re up for the challenge in my mind. Northrop Grumman, as many of ou know, recently rolled out the world’s first 6th Gen Platform a few months ago that shows we as a nation are prepared and ready to develop and build the advanced weapon systems that we need.

I’m going to talk a little bit here to start off the other aspects of what air dominance means and in my mind it’s the key technologies like sensors and weapons that are going to enable us to have success in this arena. As we move into these advanced capabilities. we need to be able to keep pace with this adversary as that’s their biggest advantage is they move very, very fast. So our ability to move fast and have weapon systems that last multiple, multiple decades with continuous upgrades is the key to success.

Multi-function sensors that are very open architecture that enable software definition on the sensor so that you can upgrade through software rapidly are a key enabler for this. It will allow us to upgrade these sensors that we get out there on a continual basis. Same thing can be applied to the weapons systems and the weapons missiles and other enablers that and effectors that we can put onto these platforms both from an RFVW perspective but from the weapons themselves as we able to get these electronics and upgrades into the weapons, increased propulsion systems over time and be able to reach out farther to act against our adversaries. Our advantage is our ability to move fast and we need to have systems capabilities and acquisition that allows us to do that and upgrade rapidly over time. I believe we’re ready to solve this challenge and keep up with our adversaries and I look forward to talking more about it today.

Renee Pasman:

Yeah, thank you and also happy to talk to everyone today about this important topic. Greg, I think talked a lot about how a lot of this is really in response to the threat and you summarized very well kind of what happens if we don’t do those type of things. In addition to all of the exciting cool and important technologies that are being worked, have been worked, continue to work and really are being powered by a lot of technological change that just always is going faster and faster and that ability to respond quickly. I think one of the key things that also separates next generation or dominance is our ability to be agile and flexible. Because as quick as the threat is moving, the idea that we will be able to predict with perfect certainty what is going to happen 10 years from now, 15 years from now, or even five years from now is a little bit suspect.

And so it really comes down to how can we make sure that regardless of what the capabilities are that we will need, that we are in a good position to deliver those incredibly quickly and maybe with not a lot of lead time. So whether that is through software defined capabilities where we can compile software a lot faster than we can compile an entire platform. And we’ve seen, from a Lockheed Martin perspective, the benefits of that with 5th Gen already with some of the F-35 and other 5th Gen platforms and how they’re able to fuse that information. But then also how do we bring that to building the actual platform, especially for something like a collaborative combat aircraft. And so whether it’s some of the investments in flexible factories and making sure that we can put together what is needed rather than figure out what’s needed first and then build a factory or things like the investment Lockheed Martin has made in factories for hypersonic weapons to bring that capability online.

Those are some of the key things that as we look at what is needed in addition to the technology, and when a lot of people start to talk about digital and what does that mean for next generation or dominance, it’s not just what we deliver, which is hugely important, but also how we deliver to make sure that we’re delivering on the timeline and not just responding or reacting to the adversary but actually outperforming them. Putting, giving the war fighter the maximum flexibility to put together what they need that day to respond and also get inside what the adversary can do so that they can actually, they need to respond to us.

Heather Penney:

Thank you Renee. Just before we move on to you Willy, I want to comment. I truly believe that speed is the next offset. As you as a nation, we no longer hold a monopoly on advanced technology or development. So it’s really about how quickly we can get that capability to the war fighter. So thank you for bringing speed up, it truly, I believe, is going to be the next offset. Willy, we’d love to hear from you.

Willy Anderson:

Thank you Heather, and thank you for sharing this important discussion. We were joking, the panelists here that we’ve seen each other before, the community is small, even though I was a stand in, we’ve worked together in the past. And my entire goal here is just to make sure that I don’t walk away and lose my clearance. So as we talk about what we’re doing on the Boeing side for the Gen 6 family of systems, it really amounts to two main areas. The first one is alignment within Boeing Defense to support our customers. So if some of those are paying attention to what Boeing’s been doing, in November, we realigned six business units into four and it was very, very intentional, it was very, very specific. And if you look at the individual business units, they’re aligned along the lines of family of systems within these major mission areas.

So Steve Norland, if he was here, he would talk about the new division called Air Dominance. In that division it has all of our man fighters, F-15s, 18, the manned aircraft. It’s also got our unmanned aircraft, it’s got MQ 25, it’s got our CCA areas. It also has our trainer, our newest trainer, T7A Red Hawk. And throughout that, the reason why we’ve clustered them together is because it gives us some synergy, some lift and speed if you will. And underneath that also is Phantom Works. Phantom Works doesn’t just support this business unit sports, all of BDS. But we’re housed under air dominance and the reason is the technologies and the innovation that’s come out of Phantom Works directly feeds these platforms allows us to speed that Heather was talking about. The next area is we’ve been investing for years, maybe even decades for this moment in the investments come along three different areas.

The digital engineering is not just a buzzword with us, MBSC digital thread, digital twin, we’re actually making that come true and it’s a reality. We’re also investing heavily and by that I mean significantly more than a billion dollars has gone into our advanced factories. We built a new factory for the MQ25 new digital factory, new digital factory for our composite facilities down at Mesa and we have three new advanced manufacturing facilities going in St. Louis. So we’ve been investing in the future for Boeing manufacturing and now if you connect digital engineering and factories, which we’re really talking about is that speed again that Heather mentioned and it’s speed in the life cycle, it’s speed in engineering, it’s speed in manufacturing, it’s speed in sustainment and test all of that. That is a digital link and allows us to be able to react very, very quickly to support the war fighter as well as any kind of anomalies and things like that they may see out in the field for this advancing threat.

Heather Penney:

Thank you Willy. So I’ve got a question, you couldn’t have been a straighter man in terms of setting me up for my next question regarding family of systems, right? We know that next generation air dominance is going to be a family of systems, it’s not going to be the traditional single awesome fighter aircraft that we’ve had in the past, right, that we all know and love dearly. How would you describe family of systems and why is that so important as we begin to move into the future and how’s that going to provide us that combat edge over our peer adversaries? Who wants to jump in?

Gregory Simer:

I can start. In my mind, it’s more cowbell, it’s affordable mass and it also adds to the flexibility and agility that we all talked about up here. If you think about being able to bring new capability, whether it’s carrying a new weapon, it’s whether it’s carrying a new sensor or whether it’s a different envelope from a platform perspective that you need it. You don’t have to dev design an entirely new platform. You can send something as a wingman that goes with the primary vehicle, whether it’s an F35 and F22 and get whatever it is we’re talking about it. It gives you agility and also from a sensors perspective, we all talked about digital engineering, we all talked about open architectures. As long as you’re designing the sensors, the systems, the weapons that go onto these platforms so that they can be interchangeable, you can now change your outer mold line and get another capability forward. And not everything has to be manned. So by having unmanned platforms take off the load of some of the capabilities and needs that we have down range, you can bring more to the fight and it’s all about being affordable and controlling costs.

Renee Pasman:

The other interesting thing to me from a family systems capability is the so yes agility, flexibility for the war fighter in terms of putting packages together but also a sense of resiliency. The difference between a point-to-point network and a mesh network, if one element of your next generation capabilities is not available that day or something breaks, now you have that ability to just with a network heal, come up with a different approach, come up with something else and you don’t have to go and re-plan and not get the mission done that particular day. And so not just resiliency in the sense of okay, we’ve got multiple IT infrastructures or something like that, but really resiliency in how the war fighter can respond to the threat and there’s an element of unpredictability in there and that element of strategic flexibility that I think it’s really important as we prepare for this threat that is out there.

Heather Penney:

Renee, you bring up some really good points regarding capacity provides capability in and of itself, it isn’t simply about mass. Although, when we look at the scale and the scope of what will be required, that’s definitely that required. But China plans to dismantle our systems and disrupting the relationships, targeting our networks, our key elements of their strategy. And also they have been studying us for years and we’ve become very predictable. So that unpredictability, that ability to reform those relationships through the family of systems and the resiliency of networks I think is very key to really sidestepping the way that China plans to target us. Willy, I’d like to go back to comments that you made regarding speed. So you guys are making major investments so that you can go fast, so you can be responsive to the war fighter, you can be responsive to the strategic environment. Every single one of your companies upstage are doing this. What does the government need to do to be able to go fast with you?

Willy Anderson:

Well, there’s a couple of things that they have done and a couple of things that might be in work that they really need to finish. Number one, they have been tackling at least one barrier to speed which is kind of the traditional wave contracting, through IDIQs, BPAers, task orders, they’ve been changing how they do contracting to be able to speed to contract, which is a key area that slows us all down.

I’m going to echo something that Greg said, the whole drive to open mission systems has been a huge enabler for the government and for us. And I’m not talking tier one [inaudible 00:16:36] mess with a wrap around it. No, no, no, you got to get down to tier three, you need to be at the box level and that’s where you’re competing at that level to be able to get new things in that might be compliant but that’s how you get speed and development.

But an area that they still need a lot of work in, a lot of work in is in security. Those of you that deal in our world here, we have security constraints for the obvious reasons and so forth, but we’re not allowed to be able to easily connect programs together and a huge opportunity from a government side is continue to go down this new initiative that the dev has pushed on to be able to eliminate a large number of security programs and combine things, not able to easily combine programs and technologies together is slowing us down. we’ve done a lot of investment in a lot of different technologies but I can’t take IRAD investment and move it over unless it’s on a DD 2 54 and in a program that allows me to be able to do that, all that stuff has to be cleaned up. He’s kicked it off but he’s got a long ways to go. Call it security reform.

Heather Penney:

Thank you and especially since you come from a long career of having been in the acquisition world from the black side. So I’d like to also then pivot to the role of collaborative combat aircraft because all three of you mentioned that. And I know that I’m competing with the CCA panel next door with Dr. Caitlin Lee since you’re here sitting with me, make sure you catch her panel on the videos that we’ll post up later. So on the role of collaborative combat aircraft, we understand that NGAD family systems will employ other systems. So what role will these CCAs play and what do you envision the relationship between NGAD and CCAs?

Renee Pasman:

To me, when you look at CCA, part of the interesting bit is taking a lot of the technologies we’ve talked about like digital engineering, like open system architecture which are really just entry points at this point to these opportunities, one thing that enables is to say, “Well we don’t know what role CCA is going to play yet and we don’t need to because we should be able to take these technologies, put together something very quickly, ensure that it gets delivered, all of those types of elements.” When you think “Okay, but what could they do right?” There is a lot of support functionality that can be delivered through an unmanned platform. I think we have to resist the urge to say, “Well, they could do weapons, they could do sensors, they could do this, they could do that,” let’s put all of that together on a platform because then you just have more expensive platforms and you can’t use CCA to deliver to grow the mass like Greg mentioned that I think is a capability as well.

But I think tailoring it to what is most useful in the fight and there may be different versions of a CCA platform, one that is more optimized for activities that are more a little bit further away from the leading edge, others that are more a little bit further. There’s a really interesting discussion that’s been happening for years on how important weapons development is for next generation capabilities. And so whether it is making sure that we’re getting the most out of the weapons that we have or maybe linking… If there’s something interesting and new and different that we can use to tie weapons development and aircraft development from a CCA perspective together, that might create a very unexpected capability. But again to me the interesting part for CCA is, regardless of the specific widget, right, how do we use it and how does it interface back with the man platforms, by focusing on that we give the use case some time to develop and then be able to deliver that quickly.

Gregory Simer:

To pile on to that, I agree on the weapons completely, it’s been four-

Heather Penney:

Let’s just go there, let’s just talk about weapons, cause we know we need weapons, we need masks, we need next generation, we need to have the right ranges. So let’s just go, let’s talk about weapons.

Gregory Simer:

So it’s been four to five decades since a weapon and the platform have been designed concurrently so that we’re actually pairing the weapons with the weapon system that can carry it to the fight. So we’ve mentioned all the characteristics that we need to think about. It’s range, it’s speed, it’s the ability to sense and be able to find the right targets and it’s also the ability to communicate with the weapons, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be from the platform that’s firing the weapon or even if the weapon’s coming from further back and maybe even our navy friends. If we can communicate and do the forward pass engage on remotes, it unlocks a lot more capability.

And to further pile onto what Renee was talking about it’s all about controlling the ultimate cost of this network of capabilities. You can make trades on the weapon propulsion and range if you have a CCA that can carry it farther, you can make the weapon more expensive and not have to send something forward that you now have to recover in land. So there’s a lot of interesting cost trades then it can now be considered as we look at the complete family of systems of man fighters, unmanned platforms and then the weapons that all of them will carry forward.

Willy Anderson:

I think from a weapon side there’s really three areas that we could do to improve the weapons element of it. First off, if we drive OMS down into the weapon, and I know I’m making this very simplistic, but you should be able to look at this like Lego blocks. You know can take a motor, you can attach to a guidance system, they ought to be Lego blocks and now you increase your effectiveness by throwing on different sensors on the front end of it. And I know it’s simplistic but we can do an awful lot more if we drove OMS down into the weapon. The next is the element that Greg talked about is that weapons are going to be networked, you’re going to have F-15 EXs launching, I mean the loadout has been increased, they’re going to be launching weapons from a distance and then they’re going to leave. They’re not going to be the ones guiding them, other people are going to be guiding cause it’s going to be on a network.

And then the last piece of it is the autonomy really is a thought but it’s coming quickly. Those weapons are going to be able to go in, they’re going to be able to take a look at the target they were assigned to and say that target’s already hit, I’m going to go hit my second or third order target and in now you’re bringing a whole lot more mass and in a smart way.

Heather Penney:

Thank you. So let’s talk again about speed. What components of the NGAD family of systems do you see as the largest stumbling block to NGAD development? I mean after all, it has taken us decades to really develop new aircraft capability. B21 has been the fastest development that we’ve seen in more than one generation. So we will need to replicate that kind of speed of design and delivery of not just NGAD itself but also the family of systems because we know that its efficacy is going to be predicated on fielding those relationships in the battle space. So what do you all see as the biggest stumbling block to accelerating speed with NGAD and then also the family of systems so we make sure that we get them all fielded near simultaneously?

Renee Pasman:

Not to get to practical and down in the weeds, but I’ll echo what Willy said from a security perspective, right? In the past we might have said, “Well, the acquisition approaches or funding stability or stability of vision,” I think particularly on the latter one, the Air Force has been very clear on what their vision is even as it continues to evolve and that I think stability of vision has been very helpful, there’s been significant shifts in that acquisition approach that allows for a lot more of that agility and flexibility.

But when that all comes back down to great, we’ve got capabilities getting developed in multiple different places, but your TTR takes at least six months and maybe a little bit longer and so now you are under the, “Do I do it again?” Or on the cybersecurity side, right, there’s been so much change when you look at even some of the things that were on the exhibition floor today with AI software capabilities, things like that, if we can’t bring those things in easily with the appropriate policies and whatnot to really not have to reinvent those things to be able to push them, to be able to put those different innovations together, that will end up being the limiting factor on how quickly we can move. Because I think a lot of the things, whether it’s the digital engineering, the software development that is coming off of a lot of the current programs, we can develop the capability quickly but making sure we’re actually putting it together and not getting held up by our own policies I think is one of the stumbling blocks from a speed perspective.

Willy Anderson:

I’m going to go back to something that Secretary Kendall said in his opening remarks, they’re planning for two CCAs to a Gen 6 or an F35 platform, but one of those stumbling blocks to making this reality is data, right? And so it’s not just going to be this mission set of platforms, they need to get data, they’re going to be tied to space assets, they’re going to be tied to airborne command and control assets, the whole Jet-E2 ABMS area. General Cropsey is making some great strides in that area but he’s got a long way to go and part of that is synchronizing the work that the space architecture is doing related to that’s still a journey ahead of us. They’ve got a lot of challenges to be able to go through and for essentially the family as systems to be successful, they need to be successful.

Gregory Simer:

I’ll touch on one thing that’s not even related to technology, it’s people. B21 as you pointed out proved we can do it and we can do it quickly, but having the cleared workforce and maintaining that cleared workforce is going to be one of the biggest challenges to moving quickly with this wide array of new developments going on simultaneously. This is the coolest stuff you could possibly work on. It should make it easy to recruit but it’s a challenging workforce out there right now to make sure that we have the smart people in these jobs cleared to the right access is to go solve the problems.

Heather Penney:

Yeah, that’s a really good point and I think one that worries every single one of us in industry is that next generation and being able to ensure that we have the skilled workforce because there’s so much competition out there for those engineers. So let’s get back to affordable mass and we’ve talked about weapons being a means to achieve affordable mass, CCA as a means to be able to achieve affordable mass, but it all comes down to cost, right?

And we were all familiar with the term no bucks, no Buck Rogers. So public statements indicate that the manned component of NGAD is expected to cost in the hundreds of millions, right, with unmanned components being in tens of millions. And so I think we’re all concerned as we look at budget pressures, how cost could impact production rate and quantity. I mean for example, the aircraft that we have right now, we need to be able to accelerate the production rate because the demand for them is today, it’s not 10 years from now. So from an industry perspective, how do we control costs such that we can buy the number we need at the rate that we need?

Gregory Simer:

We all mentioned it in some arena but open architectures are going to help a lot. Quantity drives cost and affordability, the ability to design and spit out thousands of iPhones makes them affordable enough that we can all carry one in our pocket. As we could move to open architectures and we can take the same technology electronics, processors even aeroframe designs and move them from a man fighter to an unmanned fighter and even aspects into weapons, it allows us to get scale up which is going to drive affordability. As long as we keep with the open architectures, maintain these architectures so things are portable across industry so that I’m using the same capabilities and technology that Renee and Willy are using in each of their designs. It’s going to drive cost down at the supplier levels and allow us to get the scale up.

Renee Pasman:

The other thing we’ve all talked about, various digital manufacturing, things like that and I think that is also a key element because just open architecture kind of forces us all to think differently about how we move capabilities across platforms, I think some of the advanced manufacturing capabilities and techniques allow us to change how we build things and bring the cost down that way because we have to do business differently in order to support these kind of affordability goals which are important because that is also a way that the Air Force can have the flexibility that they need to purchase the systems that they need for this particular situation. And if we were still doing compute the way we were doing in the eighties and the nineties and had projected that forward, none of us would be able to afford the iPhones that we now all have in our pocket. But to Greg’s point, technology changed the way those were put together, changed the way business was done, changed and I think that’s a key part from a transformation perspective to make sure that we can hit those affordability targets

Willy Anderson:

To control costs, one element the way to look at it is to essentially shrink, reduce the life cycle, make it quicker to be able to get capability in the hands of the war fighter. Lots of elements of that that we could spend all day talking about to OMS is certainly one of them. So in the area of advanced manufacturing to prove that point, we’re doing full scale determinate assembly, FSDA, and that what that is taking a digital model, handing it to a supplier, he pre-drilled the holes and then it comes to us and that part and we have first time quality and we just mate the part up the T7A Red Hawk is a success story along those lines.

Essentially if you look at the production line, you were to walk that as I did you know have a couple of ladders and a few tool carts that are along that you don’t have the big stanchion arrays around the platform as it’s going. It came together very, very quickly and that’s an example, a testament of how you can shrink that life cycle down and it applies to sustainment, it applies all across the life cycle of a program.

Renee Pasman:

Just to add to that, cause we’ve all talked about manufacturing and design, which is most of what our companies do, but one area that is also I think very important from a affordability perspective and also a speed to the war fighter perspective that we haven’t talked about is test, test and evaluation. When we look at fifth gen and what it took to get that advanced of the capability in the hands of the war fighter, there’s significant time spent in testing. I think one of the really interesting areas for continued collaboration and discussion is how do we take the power that is inherent from a digital thread, digital twin that we’re using very successfully in design and in build and now start to apply that to test and how do we take some of the advanced capabilities like data analytics, AIML, those types of things and bring that test timeline down to both speed delivery and help from an affordability perspective.

Heather Penney:

Thank you for bringing up that important point because there’s so many key components of actually delivering capability that we don’t necessarily think about and I think test is one of those that drives a significant amount of time and cost into delivering a program. It’s not to say that it’s not important, but I think there are different ways that we can think about doing that. So Greg, I’d like to toss in this next question to you. Actually before we do that, the other thing I think is really important is as much as we talk about cost, what you all are doing is looking at how can we build inherent affordability into the design, into the manufacturing. And it’s not going to make these platforms cheap, but I think we need to ask ourselves what’s the cost if we do not procure these systems? There are certain elements of cost that if you’re in the industry there’s a rule of thumb that there’s a cost per pound and that roughly approximates the raw materials and so forth that are demanded based off of the mission set for the aircraft.

So if the vehicle has to go far, if it has to go fast, if it has to carry a lot of payload, those are going to just drive certain sort of non-negotiables for the raw materials there. But you all are looking very interestingly about how do we look at where we can create advancements to build inherent affordability as opposed to economic tricks of procurement. Because I would say that we could use a little bit more help of stability within our government partners if that was actually the way we had to build affordability into systems. So very quickly I’d like to is Greg talk about 6th generation, what does next generation or 6th generation mean? Because we understand that 5th generation was a step magnitude of capability above 4th generation aircraft. So what does 6th generation mean? What is that step magnitude increase of capability or effectiveness? How would you define that and then to open that up to the rest of the team.

Gregory Simer:

I think we hit on many of the aspects of what 6th Gen means to me and you even mentioned as speed as the next offset it. I really believe that’s where we’re getting all of our performance characteristics across the board are just getting better and better. But those are an evolutionary step as we develop technology and get it into capabilities. Really what we mean as in 6th Gen or what I see in 6th Gen is our agility and speed, being able to upgrade hardware as frequencies and power and all of the aspects of performance improve for an array or for a propulsion system, having those open architectures and the digital engineering and all the design aspects that we’ve talked about that we can get that capability on board fast and have a continuously evolving and maturing capability over the lifespan so that we don’t have these fixed 30, 40 year programs is my view of where we’re going.

Renee Pasman:

I think so certainly agility, speed, to your point, that flexibility to me, one of the things that defines next generation is that power of the network, the family of systems approach. A single platform is not necessarily next gen in and of itself, that idea of going in alone and unafraid, those types of things, we’ve seen I think the absolute maximum of that capability with the 5th Gen Platforms and now when we see that capability in the hands of our war fighter, they are already starting to come up with how to use those platforms in different, more advanced ways that would not have been envisioned when those initially were put together. I think it’s taking those ideas and making that the point that to me really defines the next generation. It’s that family systems component, bringing it all together and really taking the capabilities that we’ve had in 5th Gen on a platform level but now to the entire system of systems

Willy Anderson:

And there’s an area of speed and agility that we really haven’t talked too much about which is in the software area. So a key element of this is going to be how quickly can we do software upgrades, get it through the pipeline, check it out, test it, and get it onto a platform. Excuse me. So in the area of autonomy that’s going to be a rich area, the three companies here don’t own all this brain trust related to autonomy. There’s a lot of it going on out there.

But integrating it onto a platform so that the platform can perform and can test safety of flight, all those things and so it’s not a wild west. What we’re doing is we’re taking a look at a framework and essentially partitioning off the safety critical elements of it and then divi defining the interfaces so that third parties can now connect with us and be able to quickly be able to add capability onto say CCA platforms of the future.

And then we’ll work through the whole integration test element that Renee mentioned and be able to get that capability out as quickly as possible. And in some cases, in fact we just tested it last week at Emerald Flag is being able to take software from our software factory and we piped it over a SATCOM communication link into an aircraft that in the air we’re going to be doing that in some cases for an update to a threat file or whatever as aircraft are inbound. All points to agility and speed for the war fighter, being able to be flexibility and I think that’s a core element of Gen 6.

Heather Penney:

Thank you. So we’re coming close towards the end of our time. So what I’d like to do is have a lightning round. From each of you, what is one thing that or actually on my last lightning round we had two or three things, but what would you like our audience to learn or think about next generation air dominance before they leave this room that we haven’t already touched upon or that you’d like to foot stomp?

Willy Anderson:

Well, I’ll jump out in front so that I’ve got one thing in my head and if they take it I’m in trouble. So I think from a lightning round and this does apply at all three companies as well as probably everybody in this room and it’s innovation. So we are at a time now with an adversary that’s moving fast, it’s highly intelligent, it’s throwing a lot at us. We need to be able to as an industry, be able to come together, work together, partner together so that we can get speed to innovation. And now it’s the open architecture, the software, everything that we’ve been talking up here are key elements to being able to do that, but we need to be able to, hey, you’ve got something over there that really helps, that’s cool. Hey, let’s partner up. Let’s get it on to an aircraft, let’s get it on test and get it out to the war fighter. I think that’s critical.

Renee Pasman:

Yeah, partnership I think is my one word answer, whether it is in the innovation space and bringing capabilities, whether it is partnership between the government and industry to understand as the threat is moving or capabilities change, what is it that is needed? And also partnership with an industry, whether it’s things like the consortium activities with open mission systems and how do we drive that forward. We’re all on this journey together. We’re all working to figure it out. Even partnership on people, which is one of the most precious resources that we have to make sure that we’re truly bringing the best of the nation to bear on this problem and not individual stove fights.

Gregory Simer:

I’ll revisit a term I’ve used a couple times and that’s agility. If you look at where technology was even a decade ago, it’s just moved so fast. To foot stomp Willy’s comment on innovation, we need to be agile, we can’t be fixed in requirements and stick to those requirements for decades. We have to look at where technology moves and we need to be agile to be able to get that capability out there to the war fighter quickly.

Heather Penney:

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve come to the end of this discussion and I’d once again like to thank all of our guests for their time and their insights. And from all of us at the Air Force Association and the Mitchell Institute, have a great aerospace power kind of day.

What Air Force Leaders Are Considering to Better Defend Forward Bases

What Air Force Leaders Are Considering to Better Defend Forward Bases

March 8, 2023 | By James C. Kitfield

Air Force and Space Force leaders are thinking long and hard about the need to better defend U.S. forward-deployed forces and allies in a world awash in cruise and ballistic missiles, armed drones, and potential adversaries increasingly emboldened to use them, they said March 7 at the AFA Warfare Symposium in Aurora, Colo.

Those threats are not confined to one region either. In the Indo-Pacific region, top Chinese officials this week launched blistering rhetorical broadsides against the U.S. In Europe, Russia continues its assault against Ukraine—the largest since World War II—while periodically threatening the NATO alliance with nuclear weapons. And on the Korean Peninsula and in the Middle East, U.S. forces operate under the shadow of a missile threat from rogue nations North Korea and Iran. 

Indeed, many of the threats faced in different parts of the world are quite similar, said Lt. Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, commander of Air Forces Central.

“When you think about the tactical problem the United States faces in the Pacific, which is [a potential adversary with] thousands of ballistic missiles that can rain down hate on any of our forces in the ‘first island chain’ [in the South China Sea], forcing our forces to move back to the ‘second island chain’ because either we can’t attack those missile launchers for policy reasons, or because they are so well defended, we have the exact same tactical challenge in U.S. Central Command, although on a somewhat smaller scale,” said Grynkewich.

In that comparison, CENTCOM’s “first island chain” would be U.S. main operating bases situated along the Arabian Gulf, he said, with the “second island chain” represented by those bases along the Red and Mediterranean Seas.

“The point is, if you flip east to west and change water to sand, we have very similar tactical problems,” Grynkewich said. “So as we think about how to execute the [Air Force doctrine] of Agile Combat Employment, implement the tenets of Mission Command, and further develop our theater missile defenses, the lessons we’re learning in Central Command will be useful to the fight we all have to prepare for should it come to conflict with China.”

Indeed, as regional U.S. Air Force commanders from around the world discussed the complex job of defending forward operating bases, they all cited some common objectives—chief among them the task of developing relatively seamless command-and-control systems to coordinate layered defenses among a disparate group of actors that included the various U.S. armed services, joint coalition allies, and host-nation partners.

“Our biggest challenge is C2, because that’s how we know when a fighter aircraft is going to intercept a threat, when a Patriot (surface-to-air missile) is going to engage, and how to make the seamless transitions involved,” said Grynkewich. “Because every seam in that process represents a chance for us to make a mistake.”

Maj. Gen. Derek France, commander of the Third Air Force at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, said similar gaps are a concern in Europe.

“In U.S. Air Forces Europe, we’ve discovered the need to constantly train and exercise and practice [tactics, techniques and procedures], because as we moved more air defense assets to NATO’s eastern flank, we found that on some forward operating bases we had U.S. air assets, NATO partner assets, and host-nation assets, and we were all trying to figure out what an effective layered defense looked like,” he said. “Who would be the ‘shooter’ under different scenarios, and under what authorities would they operate? When we exercised that with ‘Red Air’ simulating an attack, believe me, it was an eye-opening experience.”

Air Force Lt. Gen. Scott Pleus, deputy commander of U.S. Forces Korea, agreed that an effective command-and-control architecture that clearly delineates lines of authority is foundational.

“The number one priority needs to be sharing information, because you almost always run into some problems on that front,” he said. “And that architecture for sharing information needs to inform the command-and-control system, so you don’t end up with a seam in the process where your host-nation partner calls you up and says, ‘Hey, what are you going to do about this?’ And you don’t have the authority to act.”

That was exactly what happened on Dec. 26, 2022, he noted, when North Korea launched five drones into South Korean airspace, forcing Seoul to scramble fighter jets in response. Pleus’ early-warning systems detected the incursion, but under host nation rules, he had no authority to act unless the threat passed over the “fence line” of a U.S. base.

“All I had the authority to do was ask my Korean counterpart, ‘Hey, do you see that?‘” he said.

A related challenge is coming to agreement with allies and host-nation partners on which potential targets have priority in terms of being defended. In Korea, for instance, there is general agreement that U.S. and Korean main operating bases are on a “critical asset list,” but disagreements can arise when paring down a lower priority “defended asset” list.  

“Friction can come from the fact that if I am defending everywhere, I’m really defending nowhere,” said Pleus. “Luckily with our partners in Korea, those talks have never ended up as anything other than a frank discussion.”

Another area ripe for adversaries to exploit and for the U.S. and its allies to work on is sensor fusion. The earlier a missile threat is detected and tracked using multiple sensors, the more time defenders will have to respond with the most effective intercept.

“We need a network of sensors fused together to give us more accurate air domain awareness, because right now we have limited sensors and fusing,” said France. Currently, a missile warning is likely to prompt a ‘hack the clock’ exercise that resembles an 8th grade math program, he added.

“We determine that the missile was launched from a particular territory, it is traveling at a certain speed, and it will be here at a certain time. And then we make decisions based on that calculation. What we need to achieve is a network of sensors that are fused so that every sensor—airborne, ground-based, command-and-control—are all fused into a common picture that gives us a little more fidelity on what is coming our way,” France said.

With the establishment of U.S. Space Force and the ongoing integration of Guardians at virtually every level of command, many observers believe that fusing and integrating space-based sensors into operations to defend U.S. forward bases is likely to increase dramatically.

“Space Force has tracked more than 500 missile events in just the last year, in places like Korea, the UAE (United Arab Emirates) and in Ukraine,” said Brig. Gen. Tony Mastalir, commander of U.S. Space Forces—Indo-Pacific. “When you look at what Space Force Guardians have done just in terms of providing early missile launch warning, getting the word out immediately and allowing people to take proper precautions, that continues to save lives.”

Watch, Read: ‘Building High-End Readiness: Deploying Under the Air Force Generation Model Full Session’

Watch, Read: ‘Building High-End Readiness: Deploying Under the Air Force Generation Model Full Session’

March 8, 2023

The AFA Warfare Symposium hosted a session called “Building High-End Readiness: Deploying Under the Air Force Generation Model” on March 8, 2023. The panel featured Lt. Gen. John P. Healy, Chief of Air Force Reserve; Lt. Gen. Michael A. Loh, Director, Air National Guard; Brig. Gen. Neil Richardson, Deputy Director of Operations, Strategic Deterrence and Nuclear Integration, Headquarters Air Mobility Command; and Maj. Gen. Clark J. Quinn, Deputy Commander Air Forces Central Command, as the session moderator. Watch the video or read the transcript below.

Voiceover:

Ladies and gentlemen, your attention please. Our next panel is about to begin. Please welcome our moderator, the Deputy Commander of Air Force’s Central Command, Major General Clark J. Quinn.

Maj. Gen. Clark J. Quinn:

All right, good morning. Thank you. And on behalf of General Grynkewich, the ninth Air Force commander, very happy to be here today moderating this panel. As most are aware, AFCENT, over the last 30 years, has been the primary recipient of deployed forces. And in the foreseeable future, we will probably be the first recipient of some of the AFFORGEN forces, as they reach IOC.

Today, just like we have been for decades, we’re executing 24/7 combat ops in support of Operation Inherent Resolve over both Iraq and Syria. And if it’s been a few years since you’ve been to the AFCENT and CENTCOM AOR, and if you heard General Grynkewich talk yesterday, it’s a little different. Russian flankers, Fullbacks, Fulcrums, are flying in and around our airspace. There’s a dense, integrated air defense system that we are operating in and near. And it really goes back to what our national defense strategy says. We have to be ready for the high end fight. And that high end fight could be anywhere. It could be in the UCOM AOR, the INDOPACOM AOR. And even if you’re coming to the CENTCOM AOR, you need to be ready for it.

We heard both Secretary Kendall and General Brown talk yesterday. Operational imperatives, the future operating concept. One of the most observable changes that’s going to happen is the AFFORGEN, because it’s going to apply to each and every airman that’s deploying into our AOR. So we’re happy to be here today to talk about that. The AFFORGEN model is going to move away from the decades-long crowdsourcing, asking hundreds of Airmen to come from dozens of locations to arrive at an air expeditionary wing. And then execute ops, immediately, as a high performing team. It will allow the Air Force to clearly articulate our finite capacity. And will focus on a capabilities-based force offering. So our service can better manage the balance between generating those forces, and then consuming them in support of global operations.

I think many of us inherently understand how this applies to a mission generation element. In other words, a flying squadron that’s going down range. But it’s also going to greatly affect the base operating support functions. What we refer to now as Air Expeditionary Wings, and what will soon be called XABs. One item that will remain constant, is it’s a total force endeavor. If you go into our AOR right now… I checked last week, it was 24 and a half percent were Guard and Reserve. But that really depends on whether we have guard reserve flying units around. Or if it’s just the base operating support… So it’ll go anywhere from 25% up to about 35% of the Airmen in CENTCOM AOR are the Guard and Reserve members. And with that we have a very total force panel with us today. I’ll briefly introduce each and then we’ll go down the line with some opening comments.

So, General Loh, the director of Air National Guard. Responsible for developing and coordinating policies, plans, and programs for our 108,000 Guard Airmen and civilians. 90 Wings, 180 installations.

Lieutenant General John Healy is the Chief of the Air Force Reserve, and Commander of the Air Force Reserve Command. As the Chief of the Reserves, he’s the principal advisor on all reserve matters to the Secretary of the Air Force and the Chief of Staff. And as the commander of the Reserve command, he has full responsibility for the supervision of all Air Force Reserve units around the world.

And then, General Neil Richardson, the deputy Director of Operations, Strategic Deterrents, and Nuclear Integrations, at Headquarters Air Mobility Command. Responsible for the policy and procedures for the worldwide air operations and transportation functions assigned to Air Mobility Command.

So with that… I’m not going to start with questions, because we have such a unique panel of the total force. I’m going to ask for opening comments from each… And then we’ll begin the questions. So General Loh, over to you.

Lt. Gen. Michael A. Loh:

Ah, good morning. Good morning, everyone. Hey, this is an exciting period in our United States Air Force, as we look at the innovations going on. And one of those is AFFORGEN. For the Air National Guard, it’s AFFORGEN, it’s the A-staff construct at home station, and of course deployed. And then multi-capable Airmen and agile combat employment. You’ve heard us talk about how we’re going to source teams in the future, in order to get after delivering air power anytime, anywhere. For the Air National Guard, we took a hard look at how we would source an XAB, starting 1 October. We are just a little over six months from doing that. And in doing that, across the headquarters Air Force staff and out to the 90 wings, we said, “The best thing we can do is we can pair two of our wings together.” And so for the first one, it’s going to be the 169th out of South Carolina, and the 151st out of Utah. A CAF and MAF partnership.

And now over the next six months, train up that high performing team, and deliver that XAB to AFCENT. And as we look at all of this rotation in the AFFORGEN model, it really places the active component in a one to three for sourcing, and the Guard and Reserve in about a one to seven. So, as we pair these two together, you have to remember that, in the Guard, we still have home station missions that are going to continue. So, sourcing things for TRANSCOM, NORTHCOM, CYBERCOM, the employee and place missions don’t stop. So Utah has to do employee and place missions, as does South Carolina, with the 169th. So it was easy for us to pair two units together to get after the XAB and go deliver that.

In this next six months period, we’ll train them up as that high performing team. Across an air staff, something that we haven’t done in the past. And then deploy them down range for the first 24:1 in one of the locations in CENTCOM. That’s the overall game plan going in. As we did the rest of the analysis, it looks like we can source about five of these XABs throughout the period… Not ever breaking that one to seven… And getting within what I would call a sustainable force presentation model for our United States Air Force. So that’s where the Guard’s going on this. Thanks.

Maj. Gen. Clark J. Quinn:

Excellent sir, thank you very much. General Healy?

Lt. Gen. John P. Healy:

Yeah, thanks for the opportunity this morning. Thanks to the AFA, I was given the opportunity to get a total force spin on what the subject du jour is. So I appreciate that. Worth noting, a lot of milestones discussed yesterday. But one worth noting on my behalf is April 14th next month. 75th the anniversary of the Air Force Reserve Command. So what that means to me, essentially, is less than a year after the Air Force split off from the Army Air Corps, they realized immediately they couldn’t do it without the Air Force Reserve Command. So we’ve been providing shoulder to shoulder support, search capability and capacity since then. And when we look towards how we’re going to transform into this new AFFORGEN model, I think we fall right in line with that, as always. What AFFORGEN provides us is not too different from what we’ve done for recent memory with regard to Reserve component periods.

We’ve essentially tried to stabilize our force, and provide them a degree of predictability. So that they’re not only providing that stability predictability to their family, but to their civilian employers as well. And I think that’s critical. We know when we’re about to go out the door, we know when it’s going to complete, we’re able to ensure that our civilian employers are on board with that. And then we’re able to give them a good amount of time because of the embedded dwells, before we have to do it again. I think what we’re seeing right now with the AFFORGEN, is trying to instill that same discipline, enterprise-wide. Try to instill that same predictability and stability, enterprise-wide. So I think from our perspective going in, it looks as if from an XAB perspective, we’re really going to be getting after, looking at 25:2 to 26:1, is being able to provide from then forward a continuous line of XAB that the Reserve Command could support.

In the meantime, what we’re going to be able to do is try to re sync some of our wings to better meet that XAB requirement. With 24:1, and how we’re going to roll out with that, essentially what we’re going to do is, we are plugging holes. And when we talk about crowdsourcing, I think that’s a fantastic term. Even though we have a very fairly stable and predictable RCP construct, when we move towards this AFFORGEN, we need to be able to predict when we’re going to plug holes. We are disparate, all over the country, to fill one AF deployment right now. From a two person UTC to a 20 person UTC. What we’re going to be able to do by moving forward, first by plugging holes in the 24:1, 24:2? We’re also going to be able to work with an A-staff, and provide backfill for in-garrison support.

And I think that’s one of the most significant impacts that the Reserve are going to be have going forward. As I mentioned, we’ve been total force for 75 years. And this is going to take a total force effort, as well, to get through the next part. And we’re all in on this.

Maj. Gen. Clark J. Quinn:

Excellent sir. Thank you. And from a mobility perspective, General Richardson.

Brig. Gen. Neil Richardson:

Okay. Good morning, AFA. It really is a pleasure to be here. Especially with two of the great math partners that we’ve got here in the Guard and the Reserve. And so I appreciate all that you do to enable what we do in AMC.

So I’ll just jump right into a piece here. But over the last two years, AMC has been really focused on the fourth generation piece of the AFFORGEN. As you’re probably aware, AMC answers to a specific combatant commander on a daily basis. And that’s US TRANSCOM. But much like everybody else, we also work through the GFM process to service all the other combatant commanders with ready forces. AFFORGEN, over the last six months as we have entered IOC, has given us the opportunity to address how we present those forces to TRANSCOM on a daily basis. Through a process called the readiness driven allocation process.

And so that’s a day-to-day conversation to make sure that we give them what they need. But we also require them then to prioritize, and to validate the right requirements for us. All of that to say, that gives us the opportunity to start to get after that high-end training that the Chief has asked us to get after. And that General Minihan has been working on as well. So shameless plugin here as well: part of that high-end training is Mobility Guardian that’s coming up in July of this year. So, I look forward to that as well. But again, it’s about presenting the right forces to the combatant commanders, both ready and willing. And we’re doing that all in the midst of a very high ops tempo from the day-to-day piece from TRANSCOM. So, sir, I’m looking forward to the conversation today. And thank you for having me on this panel.

Maj. Gen. Clark J. Quinn:

All right, excellent. Thank you. So flexibility is a key to the air power, and that is something that has not changed over my 30-plus years in the service. So we’re going to go a little bit non-standard. I’m going to make room in this chair right now. And there is one gentleman in the audience that I mentioned… AFCENT is going to be one of the primary, and the first recipients, of the AFFORGEN forces and the XABs. So we have a vested interest in making sure that they are successful, and work correctly on day one.

And we are only one combatant command that they could, and will be, offered to. But there is one person in the audience that has vested interest in making sure they are correct as well. And if I ask them how many days until day one of AFFORGEN, he will know it to the exact day. Perhaps even the hour. And he and his team have been a tremendous teammate with AFCENT. Lots and lots of VTCs. Every OPT that the air staff is running, we’ve been a part of. Not because we’re contributing to AFFORGEN, but because we will be the recipient of it. So with that, I would like to ask Lieutenant General Slife, our Air Force A3, to come up and make a few comments. He did know that I was going to do this, by the way.

Lt. Gen. James C. Slife:

Yeah. Thank you. Thanks. Hey. Nothing like being a no-notice panelist without preparation, on a stage full of a thousand Airmen. So that’s fantastic. Thanks, Clark.

Maj. Gen. Clark J. Quinn:

Yes, sir.

Lt. Gen. James C. Slife:

What question can I answer for you?

Maj. Gen. Clark J. Quinn:

Sir, let me ask this. So, if I was an airman, and I’m thinking we’re going to deploy a whole bunch of Airmen from one base. How is that base that we’re deploying all those Airmen from going to keep running?

Lt. Gen. James C. Slife:

So the one of our challenges as an Air force is, for reasons that made perfect sense in the context of the time over the last 30 years, we have in many ways, particularly for our agile combat support career fields, we have optimized for garrison efficiency. And not necessarily for war fighting effectiveness. And we’ve been able to get away with that in an operating environment where, frankly, we have not been heavily pressured by our adversaries. Our main operating bases throughout the CENTCOM AOR, throughout AFRICOM, have been relatively secure. And so we have been able to get away with taking three Airmen from this base, and five Airmen from this base, and two Airmen from that base, deploying them, and expecting them to come together on day one and be a team. But we don’t actually think that that’s the way the future operating environment is going to permit us to operate.

We’re going to have to build, and generate, teams of Airmen at home station that train together, deploy together, and then come home and reset together. And go through that cycle. And so, to do that, it’s going to put pressure on base operating support across our garrison installations. Across the Air Force. Because it’s going to be hard to pull a team of Airmen out of any squadron, at any base, and expect that base to continue to operate without any interruption to services. Because, for all of the people on the stage that wear a flight suit, and grew up flying airplanes, or being in the operations career fields, when we weren’t deployed, we were training. We were at home training, right? When the defender, in the audience, is not deployed, they are generally doing garrison function. They’re not training for their deployed mission. They’re doing some garrison function, required to keep whatever Air Force base safe and secure on a day-to-day basis.

And so how do you pull that manpower out of squadrons, to build teams that can train together and deploy together as teams, without an excessive impact to the installation? Frankly, that is the central question of how we’d build force generation teams going forward.

Lt. Gen. John P. Healy:

And if I can add, I think this is a real opportunity. For instance, when you started giving the countdown to some of the MAJCOM commanders…

Lt. Gen. James C. Slife:

207 days.

Lt. Gen. John P. Healy:

So there was a, “What?” response. So, the harsh reality of we’ve got responsibilities. I received calls from more than one MAJCOM commander saying, “Hey, can you help a brother out?” And, absolutely we can. I think this is a great opportunity for some of our wings out there, where we’re classic associates… And this is a hard part to codify within AFFORGEN as well… But how we can provide that backfill to maintain that daily operations, at those units where we have classic associates. I think we’re perfectly poised to do that.

We’re going through the struggles and iterations just like anybody else is, in terms of transferring to that A-staff construct. But I think it’ll be clunky going out of the box. But I think we’ll be able to get something aligned in A-plans, with our classic associate units, that allow us to get after not only plug and play into XABs, and actually go out the door. But that home station backfill of that active component. Or likewise, when we start pulling XABs, can we get an active duty backfill in terms of maintaining the day-to-day operations of a reserve unit? Well, I see a lot of opportunity there.

Maj. Gen. Clark J. Quinn:

Thank you, gentlemen. Although it is not part of ninth Air Force AFCENT, at Shaw Air Force Base there’s an attack group. Flies MQ9s, and was over there a couple of weeks ago. And because of the unique nature of the MQ1, MQ9 mission, they’ve essentially been in combat ops since the day they were first conceived. It’s just been nonstop combat operations. The group commander over there mentioned that just a few weeks ago, one of his squadrons for the first time ever, was not flying a combat line. They had actually gone into the reset phase. So of the four phases in the AFFORGEN, we have reset, prepare, ready, and then available to commit. It’s not going to quite work out into six month bins for that MQ9 community just yet. But nevertheless, he has one squadron that is actually in that reset phase, for the first time ever, for both the Guard and the Reserve. Can you run through a little bit of what those four different phases, if I’m an airman… I’m a National Guardsman, I could be part-time… How will those bins look different for me?

Lt. Gen. John P. Healy:

I think, yeah. This is one of the things where I’m really excited about AFFORGEN. As I said before, we’ve been crowdsourced on steroids. We’ve been filling UTCs all over the deployment cycles, for years now. And what this is going to give us the opportunity to do… Essentially we’ve got a unit out there, and pick any unit equipped wing, or a classic associate… And at no time are they ever synchronized, right now, in terms of a reset or prepare. And what it provides is a constant state of training and readiness requirements. Which is a burden, sometimes, on the unit. Makes it much more challenging.

What this’ll change for us? In the next two years as we prep for instance, is… And to go out the door with an XAB line… What this allows us to do is get that reset period. Where we’re trying to synchronize, within each one of the wings. So that when we start really getting into this, and we finish that sink period, we can look at a unit-equipped wing. I keep using Pittsburgh… And if you’re to the 911th, I don’t have anything planned for you… But it gives them the opportunity where they can go out and deploy as multiple units from one wing, get back, reset together, work on their internals, work on their PCSs, work on their PME. Train together, just as the model shows. It allows us a great opportunity, I think, to reduce the overall requirements, so to speak, on the wing, by providing that synchronization.

Lt. Gen. Michael A. Loh:

Yep. I think same thing, you have two pieces of that. You have the force element piece and the XAB piece. So on the force element piece we’re going to come back. And those force elements may or may not be able to reset. Just to the nature of the 24/7 365 mission, that we’re doing for Homeland Defense, that we’re doing for TRANSCOM, that we’re doing for CYBERCOM, and others. So, that base will not necessarily go into reset. That’s why we’re pairing two together. And that organized training piece will continue to function.

For the actual XAB, however, it will allow us to get that into a predictable model. Predictable model with employers, predictable model with families. And that actually helps. So you know exactly where you are, what I’ll call on the patch chart. You know which wing is going to be sourced, at this time, in this XAB. And then that wing commander can set a training program and a training period up, so that as they go through this cycle, we fulfill those training requirements. So that they’re ready to go out the door at that XAB period. And whether we source or not, to the joint force or backfill, they know which what they’re supposed to do, how they’re supposed to be trained, and then they’re ready to go.

Lt. Gen. James C. Slife:

General Quinn, can I go off script here for just a minute?

Lt. Gen. Michael A. Loh:

Yes sir.

Lt. Gen. James C. Slife:

We’re up here having a conversation about XABs, as if everybody in the audience says a clue what we’re talking about. And I think it might be worthwhile to actually back up a step and let everybody know what it is. What an XAB is, what we’re talking about. And so forth. And so, for those that might not have been immersed in this, as we talk about AFFORGEN, the idea is that the whole Air Force is turning on a four phase cycle. Roughly six months per phase, to go through a preparation phase, all the way to a deployment phase. And then reset, and go through the cycle again.

The XAB itself, if you think of an air expeditionary wing, one way that you might think of an air expeditionary wing is in three horizontal slices. At the top of this thing is what you might call the command and control slice. This is a wing commander, a command chief, a wing A-staff. This is the slice of the AEW that provides the purpose and direction to everything that AEW is doing.

Underneath that C2 slice, there are a number of, what we talk about is mission generation force elements. And so it might be a C130 Expeditionary Airlift Squadron. Or an F22 Expeditionary Fighter Squadron. These are mission generation force elements. It consists of aviators, aircraft maintainers, all the career fields that go to actually generate air power on a day-to-day basis.

And then the third slice underneath all of it, underpinning all of it, is a series of packages of Airmen that really do the things that we have historically called base operating support. Or agile combat support. But really I think it’s more than that. But those are the terms that we have today. And in that slice, there are things that we call an establish the airbase force element, an operate the airbase force element. There are a number of these. And those three slices are what makes up the AEW.

When we talk about an XAB, the expeditionary airbase, it is the top and bottom slices. And the big idea is that those will generally come from a location. And not be crowdsourced. So the mission generation pieces might come from wherever they need to come to for the mission. But those top and bottom slices will generally come from the same base, to the extent we can. And so for example, the 4th fighter wing at Seymour Johnson. If the 4th fighter wing was the lead wing for an XAB, that would mean that they would provide the C2 and wing A-staff C2 functions. And they would provide the bulk of those agile combat support functions, that are really the basis upon which this whole thing resides.

So we’re mixing some terms together here. But the big thing to think about is that when you hear the term “XAB,” you ought to be thinking, “That’s a team largely generated from a base, that trains together and deploys together for a six month rotation.”

Maj. Gen. Clark J. Quinn:

Excellent, sir. Thank you. That’s why I went off-script in bringing you up here. So that you could keep us all baselined in what we are actually talking about. And, sir, I know I’ve heard you speak a couple of times about this. Once the AFFORGEN and the XAB process gets rolling, it will be, I believe, a fairly smooth turnover every six months. But the initial transition from Air Expeditionary Wings to XABs… To quote you sir, is “The phone books don’t match.” We’ve got 700 or a thousand Airmen out at Al Udeid, or Al Dhafra that are doing a job. And they’re going to hand it over to, not their one for one replacement. But to an inbound XAB. And that’s something that General Slife’s team has been working on, that initial transition, quite a bit to make it go seamless. Because if you think about stateside wings… I’ll use an example of asset management… There’s probably a GS12 or a GS14 that’s been doing it at fill-in-the-blank Air Force base for five or 10 years. It’s just seamless. They do it every day.

Every six months, we’re handing that to either a new lieutenant or a new NCO that’s deploying down range. And they are not necessarily organized, trained, and equipped to do that function. But we’re going to ask them to do it. As we certify the XABs, before they’re going down range, we are identifying all those functions that they’ll have to do. So that we can hand that phone book to the correct person, of, “Here’s your new job.” And then once it is established, it’ll become somewhat more seamless.

I’d like to go back down to General Richardson just for a second. You alluded to it in your opening comments. But while you are part of the AFFORGEN, you’re going to have both force elements, you’re going to have XAB contributions… Air Mobility Command is also executing a worldwide global 24/7 mission with a lot of your assets. How do those fit together?

Brig. Gen. Neil Richardson:

So for the XAB piece, I’ll just address that pretty quickly. Those skill sets are one squadron deep across the Air Force, as well. So, from the AMC perspective, I think we’re going to look a lot like the Guard and the Reserve does. As far as, we’re going to put the team together, they’ll deploy together, they’ll come back, they’ll reset together. And go through the four bins together.

When it comes to the force generation to include our CR forces, it’s a little bit different. We are bifurcated between the GFM process, and the process of hoarding US TRANSCOM’s global demand on a daily basis. I alluded to it a little bit earlier, but the readiness-driven allocation process goes back to what General Lowe mentioned. And that’s that risk-to-force, that deploy-to-dwell, or tasked-to-dwell, as we call it in AMC. We are looking for somewhere in that one to three deployed-to-dwell, task-to-dwell range.

Everything that TRANSCOM does, is on a daily basis. So that drives the conversation between the A3 and AMC. And the gawk at TRANSCOM. To be able to figure out what the right answer is, based on the priorities, and the validated requirements they have out there. When we exceed what we’ve given to them… And we do bend that by a risk-to-force model. Typically we try to stay in the moderate risk-to-force for our forces across the board… When we exceed that, it’s based on surge capacity, surge requirements. And then at that point, we do it for as long as we can before we start to hurt. Then the readiness model that goes forward into the future. So think of that two years into the future.

A great example was the Afghanistan evacuation. 17 days of just really intense execution. When we looked at it, the planes were hurting. The people were hurting. But overall they were still able to meet their commitments into the future. So we’ve got to make that balance between what is right for right now, and what is right for the future for deployments.

Maj. Gen. Clark J. Quinn:

All right, excellent. So that was a TRANSCOM perspective. General Loh, you mentioned it a little bit as well there. There’s still requirements. There’s going to be presidential support, there’s going to be Homeland Defense Alert missions. How will the wings that you are looking to task, to either be XABs… The mission generation elements are largely already accounted for in our rotational posture… But those XABs, and the wings that you’re going to send out there, how will those be matched with who has an alert mission, or a presidential support?

Lt. Gen. James C. Slife:

Sure. So it’s a little bit of expectation management across the force right now. And I’ve been very open and transparent. I go, “Okay. 24:1, 207 days from now, we know things aren’t going to be perfect.” I mean, this is getting into a new force generation model for our United States Air Force. So, what I need is that communication back and forth to say, “What do you see as the gaps, as you go through this analysis, the six months of preparation order, make this happen? And then where can we help you, both initially on the front end? And figure out how to do it on the back end so it’s long term sustainable? Okay.

Because you’re right, we’re not ever going to do, like Neil said, give up that 24/7 mission. Those mission elements that are required. And now we have a GFM on top of that, in order to make this happen. So we’re just going to balance the two. And right now it’s just expectation management. And we’ll buy down as much risk as we can, so that we can get into a sustainable period. And then that’ll drive some organizational change within our United States Air Force, for long-term sustain.

Maj. Gen. Clark J. Quinn:

Thank you, sir.

General Healy, one of the things that I’ve noticed over my past 18 or 20 months in AFCENT, is very often if the active duty has a difficult time filling a very specific position, we don’t have the right skill level, the airman’s back to back deployed, we just don’t have the right fill… When we reach out to the ARC, the Reserve world, or Guards, we very often find a volunteer to fill those requirements. As we move into the AFFORGEN, and we’re actually going to start bending out in ’25 and ’26. Will reserve Airmen still have the opportunity to deploy additionally, if they want to?

Lt. Gen. John P. Healy:

The short answer is absolutely. We’ve been a volunteer force, and we’re going to continue to be a volunteer force. I think that’s one of the things that makes us as strong as we are. Is the ability for our Airmen to step up… And use 12 301 Delta, for instance… To ensure that they’re meeting the requirements. There comes challenges with that too, though. As we’ve mentioned for the last 30 years, we’ve been working as a volunteer force to meet some of these requirements. With predictability and stability in mind. Sometimes that volunteerism, while the member wants to be there, and wants to do it? The volunteer doesn’t necessarily provide that stability, predictability, to the employer as well. In which case we use the term “Voluntold.” It’s sometimes a little bit easier now, as civilian employers get this mobilization fatigue. If we are able to use, for instance 12 tier port bravo, for everything from exercises to unnamed organizations, it provides us the ability where that member wants to volunteer, but has maybe some issues with their civilian employer where they’re like, “Hey, I’m being voluntold to go do these things.”

So that’s just on a day-to-day non-AFFORGEN type cycle. The allowance to be more accessible, I think, predictable, from both MAJCOM, combat and command requirements. But I think also, when we start plugging into that 25:2, 26:1, and we are carrying out one of those XAB lines, ideally we’re going to be utilized… As General Slife said… As a unit going out the door. But we are still going to be available to fit those parent tailored portions of other XABs. As I mentioned, there’s always capability that resides within every one of our units, that is specifically tailored to that unit too… I mean, keep in mind we’re a MAJCOM that supports and provides forces to every other MAJCOM as well. So we have a niche. We have roles in there that we can certainly take advantage of and offer volunteerism. In and above XABs, and our fourth generations, as well.

Maj. Gen. Clark J. Quinn:

Excellent. Thank you, sir. I will say that predictability was a term you used a couple of times in there. And that’s true for whether it’s a ARC component or active duty. When I go down range, if I’m in a room with more than about 20 Airmen, one of the questions I typically will ask is, “How much advanced notice did you have at this deployment?” The Guard and Reserve will typically be a year-ish when raising their hands. And if it’s 20 people, I will eventually get to the point where there’s two or three people that had 30 days or less notice. And those are almost always active duty. So going into the predictability, knowing well in advance, when you PCS into a new wing, what bin you’re in, what phase you’re in and when you can expect to deploy will be very helpful.

I think for any airman that has deployed, you’ve probably been, at different times, either gone as a unit. Or perhaps gone as either a very small element. Or as an individual. Getting on an airplane, getting on a rotator all by yourself, and meeting a new crew when you get to your location to work. I will say that I have heard many times, “We need to change the way we deploy. We need to change the way we deploy.” And we’re doing it now.

So, General Slife. You led a VTC with literally almost a thousand teams out stations dialed in, just a couple of weeks ago. And you very clearly laid out why now is the time that we are making this change. Can I ask you to share that with the crowd here? Why are we doing this now?

Lt. Gen. James C. Slife:

Well… Not to pander to the audience in the front row… But General Brown has told us that if we’re not uncomfortable, we’re not changing fast enough. And so, good news, Chief, we’re changing fast enough now. Because I’m extraordinarily uncomfortable about this. And the reason we’re changing our force generation and force presentation models in the Air Force, is because the strategic environment has changed. And I won’t go through a long soliloquy on this. But really, in the last 50 years of our history as a United States Air Force, there have been four of these moments where the strategic environment has shifted. And when it did, we had to adapt to that to be ready to meet the challenges of the emerging environment.

The first one of those was in 1973 at the end of the Vietnam War. There were major changes across the whole military. But certainly for the Air Force in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. We recapitalized platforms. We made significant investments in realistic training. We invested in stealth and precision guided munitions. And we built the air force that we needed to adapt to that environment.

The second one of those strategic inflection points came at the end of the Cold War. And when the end of the Cold War happened, we moved into a different operating environment. And the operating environment of the 90s, air power became a tool of coercive diplomacy. And so we were sent abroad to enforce no-fly zones in northern and southern Iraq, to do operations in Bosnia and Kosovo. Procurement essentially stopped through the 90s, as we went into a procurement holiday in the aftermath of the Cold War. And our Air Force shrunk by half. And so, major changes after that strategic inflection point at the end of the Cold War.

The third one was 9/11. And in the aftermath of 9/11, we had to reshape the Air Force to account for long-term contingency operations in the Middle East, south Asia, north and east Africa. And that’s the air force that we still have today. And so why did we get into crowdsourcing? We got into crowdsourcing because we had to. Because the environment demanded it of us. Why did we get heavily into RPAs? Because the strategic environment demanded it of us. And so, we adapt as an Air Force when the environment shifts.

And we are at a moment where the environment has shifted. Our adversaries are challenging us, in ways that we haven’t been challenged in any of our careers. China is militarizing submerged sea features in the South China Sea. Russia has broken a nearly three-quarter of a century peace in Europe with their territorial ambitions. We have proxy actors, non-state actors that continue to challenge us. This is a different strategic environment that we’ve been in. And so we have to get ourselves, as an air force, up on the balls of our feet to meet that strategic environment.

And so, that’s the why behind it. At the end of the day, as the last panelists talked to us about, the airman is our competitive advantage. And we will adapt to what this new environment needs. It’s just going to be a little turbulent getting from here to there.

Maj. Gen. Clark J. Quinn:

All right. Sorry. Thank you. I think we’re approaching the end of our time, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to start with that or end with it. But I think that the “why” is a good way to end this discussion. Because there is a strategic imperative to it. Although I am not in a joint billet right now, I work for the United States Air Force. I am a component of CENTCOM. And on any given day, somewhere between 70 or 80 percent of my efforts are joint in nature. And not really Air Force in nature. And I will tell you, it is sometimes difficult to convey a finite capacity. Especially within base operating support. It’s very easy to go, “We have this many fighter squadrons. This many are deployed already. This is how many we need in a reset phase.” That is easy to explain to a joint air staff.

But when it gets to individual Airmen… When we’re fighting for un-air men to be deployed to do civil engineering, or HVAC maintenance… And the joint staff goes, comes back and says, “Explain how this is high risk, if we don’t send you this one airman,” it becomes an almost unwinnable argument. But when we can bend things into an AFFORGEN, an XAB… “The Air Force has this many of them that we can deploy. And they’re in these different phases.” It’ll become much easier to explain to the joint staff. And to other combatant commanders that are the ultimate consumers of it. So, General Slife, thank you for allowing me to… I won’t say no notice… But very short notice… Ask you to come up on the stage. I think because your team is really leading this, it was key to have you up here. And then for the rest of our Total Force panel. Thank you very much for your time today. I appreciate it. Thanks.

Voiceover:

And now, ladies and gentlemen, we invite you into the exhibit hall for our short coffee break. While in the exhibit hall, please take the opportunity to visit with over 100 of our industry partners. They’re looking forward to your visit, and are most interested in what you have to say. Please be back here in your seats at 09:40 for the morning’s last panel, before the Spark Tank competition.

‘Vendor Pools:’ One Strategy to Accelerate Acquisition and Increase Competiton

‘Vendor Pools:’ One Strategy to Accelerate Acquisition and Increase Competiton

March 7, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

AURORA, Colo.—What if the Air and Space Forces could create their own dream teams of contractors for major programs instead of leaving it to prime contractors to assemble teams on their own? The Air Force is looking at ways to achieve that effect and generate more competition, said Air Force acquisition executive Andrew Hunter. 

Speaking March 7 at the AFA Warfare Symposium, Hunter said the department has used “vendor pools” with classified programs sees it as a valuable tool for stimulating competition in the defense industrial base throughout the life of a program. 

“So you don’t get into this sort of high stakes [decade-long] competition, where all the mission systems are defined early on, they’re aligned with a prime and then they’re sort of locked to that team, and everyone else is locked on another team,” Hunter said. Once teams are formed, he added, ““And then those locks, “We can’t unlock them as we go on, and we can’t come back later and say, ‘Well, OK, it turns out that the key mission system is something that I was doing a little work on, but I didn’t necessarily have it prioritized exactly right when we did the first chalk line.’” 

Creating “relatively broad vendor pools” gives the Air Force flexibility to seek alternative solutions from industry with relative ease. As an unclassified example of the approach, Hunter cited the Next Generation Air refueling System (NGAS), the service’s new tanker program. 

“Having a vendor pool, a wide variety of providers, working with them as we go through an analysis of alternatives for NGAS, so that we understand what’s really out there,” Hunter said. “How do these things—mission systems, airframes—in a family of systems approach, actually come together and work together to create an integrated capability that’s going to meet the needs of the joint force?”  

By separating those pieces, the Air Force could, in effect, assemble its own dream team. Hunter took the sporting analogy further: “And it’s continuous, right? No one is ever out of the game,” he said. :They always have an opportunity of that next shot, to be in the game.”  

Air Force acquisition programs applied similar approaches in broad awards for JADC2 and the Next Generation Adaptive Propulsion program. But Hunter said there are limits to its appeal.  

“Obviously, we’re still talking about contracts here,” he said. “So there is a process of when it comes to formulating a vendor pool: You have to go out ,and people have to provide offerings and explain why they have something they bring to the table that’s worth having, that’s relevant to the game. And then you source select,” Hunter said.

“But it’s not one and done, right? You can select additional providers from the vendor pool over time, so you’re never closing the opportunity to findsomeone who has something you need that wasn’t on the team before.” 

The Space Force’s approach to satellite acquisition has similarly spread risk by awarding tranches of satellites to different vendors for the Space Development Agency’s proliferated constellation of low-Earth orbit satellites, said Maj. Gen. Steve Whitney, the military deputy to the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Space Acquisition and Integration. 

“We’re seeing awards for satellites being given to multiple contractors in each tranche and each epoch,” Whitney said. “We want to be very clear with industry that … we don’t want to take anybody out…. We want to make sure that we’re really clear here where we’re going.” 

Kendall Warns Congressional Gridlock Over Budget Would Be a ‘Gift to China’

Kendall Warns Congressional Gridlock Over Budget Would Be a ‘Gift to China’

March 7, 2023 | By Chris Gordon

AURORA, Colo.—Department of the Air Force leaders have sweeping plans for the year ahead, promising initial work on several futuristic headline programs. And details on the Air Force’s priorities are soon to be revealed in detail in the fiscal 2024 budget request.

But whether Congress will come up with the money is an open question.

“It will soon fall to the new Congress to enact both an authorization and appropriations bill on time,” Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said in a keynote address at the AFA Warfare Symposium on March 7. “The DAF leadership team is ready and eager to work with Congress.”

But lawmakers are currently locked in a bitter fight over raising the debt limit, which caps how much money the government can borrow. The debate is likely to become more heated when the Biden administration releases its 2024 budget request in the coming days. After the 2022 midterm elections, Congress is split with Republicans controlling the House and Democrats in charge of the Senate. Brinkmanship could lead to a government shutdown if the debt limit is not raised.

It is still several months until the new fiscal year starts on Oct. 1. But uncertainty regarding the budget has become an ongoing concern. In 13 of the last 14 years, Congress has started fiscal year under a continuing resolution, which keeps funding at current levels as a stopgap measure. Congress only approved a fiscal 2023 budget in late December after burning through multiple CRs.

Even the National Defense Authorization Act, generally considered must-pass legislation, has been delayed past the new fiscal year multiple times recently.

Kendall hopes he can explain why that would be harmful to the Department of the Air Force.

In his speech, Kendall talked about rapidly fielding the B-21 Raider stealth strategic bomber, 1,000 Collaborative Combat Aircraft, and 200 Next Generation Air Dominance platforms to replace current platforms—just some highlights of where the Air Force wants to go.

“The many new efforts I have described and that we have spent over a year analyzing and planning cannot begin without Congressional approval. My greatest fear today is a delay or even worse a failure to provide the Department of the Air Force and Department of Defense with timely authorization and appropriations. That would be a gift to China. It’s a gift that we cannot afford,” Kendall warned.

In the House, members have set up a select committee on threats from the Chinese Communist Party. But whether Congress will heed Kendall’s warning is unclear.

Speaking to reporters later in the day, Kendall expanded on his concerns. He said he believes he has a good dialogue with leading members of relevant committees who are familiar with defense issues. While those members may fight over specific programs and the topline figure, they understand that the DOD needs a budget and NDAA to function properly.

“It’s never always 100 percent or perfect, but by and large we get very good support,” Kendall explained. “People take national security seriously.”

Kendall is particularly hopeful Congress will be receptive to the Air Force’s messaging. He said during the previous Congress, his office spent time briefing members on threats. Now, as the Air Force looks for money to disperse and expand its airbases under Agile Combat Employment and the Space Force aims to launch more proliferated satellite constellations, Congress is aware of the growing threat from China that has prompted those moves—something Kendall has relentlessly hammered home.

“We’re going to have a good story to tell,” Kendall told reporters. “I think we’re going to have a receptive audience in our committees of jurisdiction. I feel pretty good about that part of Congress. What I’m worried about is political gridlock.”

As has become common practice in Washington, if the budget can’t be passed, a CR can be passed to avert a government shutdown. But CRs halt “new starts”—projects or activities that were not previously funded or authorized in the prior year’s budget.

“The CCA is one of them, for example,” Kendall said. “That’s a major new start.”

Funding questions go beyond advanced, new programs. Speaking to reporters, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. said increasing the Air Force’s precision munitions supply, which wargames have shown would quickly be exhausted if the U.S. were to get into a war with China, requires a “predictable budget.”

Ultimately, the Air Force and Space Force may be subject to the whims of some lawmakers, no matter how important their missions.

“I can foresee some difficulties as we move forward,” Kendall said. “Because you can’t go faster until you can start and we can’t start until we have the authorizations and appropriations.”

ACC Boss: Fighters Should Start with One CCA, Then ‘See Where It Takes Us’

ACC Boss: Fighters Should Start with One CCA, Then ‘See Where It Takes Us’

March 7, 2023 | By John A. Tirpak

AURORA, Colo.—Before adding multiple autonomous wingmen to Air Combat Command’s fighter force, the Air Force will first add just one per fighter and “see where it takes us,” said ACC commander Gen. Mark D. Kelly said at the AFA Warfare Symposium.

Hours after Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall announced notional plans for 1,000 Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCAs) to accompany some 200 Next Generation Air Dominance jets and 300 F-35s, Kelly said “a lot of discovery” still needs to bring true manned/unmanned collaboration to fruition.

“As far as numbers [for] testing and development, I think we’re obviously going to start with one [CCA per crewed fighter] and see how that goes,” Kelly told reporters at a press conference during the AFA event.

“I can easily see one platform controlling one CCA doing one mission, whether it be sensing or jamming or something like that,” he said. Then, after proving that can be done, he continued, adding a second aircraft “with a different mission.”

Making CCAs work will depend on the “processing power and bandwidth of the platform—and the processing power and bandwidth of the aviator,” he said. It’s important that pilots must not be overburdened with managing other aircraft.

Kelly said he can see two CCAs per fighter as the right number at some point, or even eventually three, but testing should start with one.

Asked what enabling mission is most urgent for CCAs to perform, Kelly suggested electronic warfare.

Sensing, jamming, and signals intelligence would be Kelly’s top mission for a CCA, he said. Size, weight, power and cooling requirments would impact those decisions, “I think we’ll iterate from there,” Kelly said.

Enabling CCAs to employ weapons could be five to 20 years away, Kelly said. “Well before you get to weapons employment, you’ve got to get to the ability for it to do auto-target recognition.” And before that, Kelly said, CCAs need to work within the broader airspace, and today’s uncrewed aircraft don’t yet have unlimited permission to operate in civil airspace.

“My biggest focus, for our team, is just to make sure they don’t outstrip” the authorities they have to operate, he said. “If we let automation and CCAs … skip on authorities to execute … it will be a bit of a lopsided capability.”

Kelly also said it would be foolish to just involve fighter pilots in developing the concepts of operation for CCAs, because the cadre would not include operators with useful knowledge, such a MQ-9 Reaper pilots “who know how to handle lost links,” Kelly said, adding “we better have their expertise in the room.”

Similarly, he thinks RC-135 Rivet Joint surveillance operators should be included “because they know how to do really high-end jamming and SIGINT.”

Minihan: Mobility Guardian 23 Will Test Airmen in New Ways

Minihan: Mobility Guardian 23 Will Test Airmen in New Ways

March 7, 2023 | By David Roza

AURORA, Colo.—The head of Air Mobility Command is eager to find out how his Airmen handle the combined challenges of long distances, open ocean, and integration with other services at a major exercise scheduled this summer over the Pacific Ocean.

“Operation Mobility Guardian … normally just happens over the [continental United States] and we moved that into the theater that matters,” Gen. Mike Minihan said March 7 at the AFA Warfare Symposium. “We are going to understand intimately what the tyranny of distance is and what the tyranny of water is.”

Mobility Guardian is the largest full-spectrum readiness exercise Air Mobility Command conducts. Past iterations of the exercise have seen a wide range of refueling and transport aircraft work with thousands of service members and international partners to practice airlift, air refueling, aeromedical evacuation, and other mobility exercises under “degraded and operationally-limited environments,” according to a press release about the 2019 edition.

Mobility Guardian 2023 will likely be even bigger. A five-day planning conference for the event that took place in February involved about 180 representatives from seven countries, the Air Force, the Army, the Navy, the Marine Corps, and the U.S. Department of State. The exercise, which will span an area of more than 3,000 miles, is part of a series of training programs scheduled to take place under U.S. Indo-Pacific Command’s authority this summer.

“Mobility Guardian is the cohesive glue that enables Indo-Pacific Command’s Large Scale Global Exercise this summer,” Lt. Col. Jacob Parker, the director of Mobility Guardian 23, said in an Air Force press release. “We’re providing the meaningful maneuver for the combined Joint and Coalition forces exercising together in theater.”

For Minihan, the exercise is a chance to find out whether the changes he has pushed since he took the command in October 2021 have borne fruit. At the AFA Air Space & Cyber conference last September, the general laid out four gaps that his troops need to address to be ready to fight China—command and control, navigation, tempo, and “maneuver under fire,” Minihan’s term for the maintenance, logistics, fueling and other ground-based work that makes flying military aircraft possible.

These gaps need to be closed quickly, Minihan said, or Air Mobility Command might not be ready to move troops and supplies across the vast reaches of the Pacific fast enough to defeat China in a potential conflict.

“Can we operate at the tempo required to win? Can we operate at the tempo greater than our potential adversaries?” Minihan asked March 7. “These gaps require integration. … You cannot have integrated operations if you do not have integrated planning in advance.”

The general said his troops have been working with the other services to make that integration happen, which helps give him “an enormous amount of confidence” that they can deliver when called upon. But Mobility Guardian 2023 will show how well that integration works in reality.

“We are going to understand that, as the joint force maneuver, we have to service everybody,” Minihan said. “We are going to have a chance to do that in the theater: We are going to have a chance to work with all these entities and we’re going to test the planning integration to see if that really turns into operational integration in the theater.”

Minihan does not expect it to go perfectly.

“We’ll learn something,” he said. “Some things won’t go perfect and we’ll go back and we’ll work harder to get it and we’ll close gaps as quick as we can.”

Lessons from Vietnam: ‘Stay Connected, Don’t Be Alone’

Lessons from Vietnam: ‘Stay Connected, Don’t Be Alone’

March 7, 2023 | By Patrick Reardon

The AFA Warfare Symposium kicked off March 6 with three storied heroes of the Vietnam War. This is the second in a three-part series on their talks. Read the first talk by Lt. Col. Gene Smith.

AURORA, Colo.—1st Lt. Lee Ellis’ F-4C Phantom was shot down on his 53rd bombing mission over North Vietnam. Captured immediately on Nov. 7, 1967, he was taken to the notorious Hoa Lo prison in Hanoi, where he stayed for the next five and a half years.

“That cell in the Hanoi Hilton … was six and a half by seven feet,” Ellis told a packed room of Airmen and Guardians at the AFA Warfare Symposium. “That’s like a bathroom in a gas station. I was in there with three other guys for the first eight months.”

Despite the cramped conditions, Ellis and his fellow American POWs endured, helping each other maintain their collective spirit by offering encouragement and moral support. And when they were isolated from one another in attempts to break their wills, they did what they could to remain connected.

1st Lt. Lee Ellis and his F-4C in November 1967, shortly before his capture in North Vietnam. Courtesy photo.

“We tapped on the walls,” Ellis said. “These walls were about 16 inches thick. We tried to communicate … because you’ve got to stay connected. The key to resilience is ‘Don’t be alone.’ We had to collaborate. We had to come up with ways to defeat the enemy and offset them. We had to support each other. You can’t let somebody who’s alone be alone.”

Connecting was every prisoner’s job.

“We would risk our lives to get to somebody in solitary confinement and say, ‘Man, we’re proud of you. We’re not going home without hanging in there. One more day.’”

Among the 590 prisoners who eventually made it home in 1973, leaders emerged, setting an example of positivity for the rest of them. He cited three in particular: Air Force Lt. Col. James Risner, Navy Cmdr. Jeremiah Denton, and Navy Cmdr. James Stockdale.

“They got there two years before … I got there and they had been through hell,” Ellis said. “They spent more than four years in solitary confinement, and they bounced back and bounced back.”

To help all endure, Ellis said, Risner reshaped the Code of Conduct to fit the conditions:

  • Be a good American.
  • Resist up to the point of permanent physical or mental damage, and then no more. Give as little as possible, and then…
  • …bounce back to resist again.
  • Stay united through communications.
  • Pray every day.
  • Go home proud. Return with honor.

Risner’s direction gave the men a codified culture to live by, and by reinforcing that every day, the POWs could believe it when they told each other, “One more day.” 

Wives and families at home ultimately were as decisive to their survival, Ellis said, as their own resilience. They wouldn’t give up, and they took their quest public.  

“The military didn’t know what to do with [the wives of MIAs],” Ellis said. “They were told to keep quiet, and they did for a couple of years. And then they said, ‘No more. You’ve got to do something for our men, because [North Vietnam is] not following the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of POWs.’”

1st Lt. Lee Ellis returning home in 1973 after five and a half years as a POW in North Vietnam. Courtesy photo.

Sybil Stockdale, Phyllis Galanti, and the National League of POW/MIA Families campaigned to bring attention to North Vietnam’s treatment of POWs, Lee said. Their relentless campaigning—and refusal to remain silent—built international pressure on North Vietnam to change their policy.

In 1969, their efforts succeeded and the torture at Hanoi mostly ceased.

“That’s why we were able to come home so healthy,” Ellis said. “The women changed our lives. It’s amazing what they did.”

Inspired by the impact the wives had on foreign policy and a hopeless situation, Ellis ultimately felt compelled to tell these stories of love in a new book. Collaborating with relationship expert and author Greg Godek, his newest book “Captured by Love” tells the love stories of 20 Vietnam War POWs. It is scheduled for release in May.