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

March 8, 2023 | By John A. Tirpak

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wilsbach: No PACAF Airman Is Excused from Practicing ACE

March 8, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Watch, Read: ‘The Enlisted Imperative’

March 8, 2023

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

Voiceover:

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

Bernie Skoch:

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

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

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

Voiceover:

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

Amy Hudson:

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

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

SEAC Ramón “CZ” Colón-López:

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

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

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

Amy Hudson:

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

CMSAF Joanne S. Bass:

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

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

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

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

CMSSF Roger A. Towberman:

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

SEAC Ramón “CZ” Colón-López:

Thank you.

CMSSF Roger A. Towberman:

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

CMSAF Joanne S. Bass:

Oh, here we go. Don’t do it.

CMSSF Roger A. Towberman:

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

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

Amy Hudson:

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

CMSAF Joanne S. Bass:

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

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

Amy Hudson:

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

SEAC Ramón “CZ” Colón-López:

On?

Amy Hudson:

Force development.

SEAC Ramón “CZ” Colón-López:

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

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

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

CMSAF Joanne S. Bass:

Hey Amy, can I add one thing?

Amy Hudson:

Absolutely.

CMSAF Joanne S. Bass:

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

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

SEAC Ramón “CZ” Colón-López:

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

CMSAF Joanne S. Bass:

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

Amy Hudson:

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

CMSSF Roger A. Towberman:

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

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

SEAC Ramón “CZ” Colón-López:

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

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

Amy Hudson:

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

CMSSF Roger A. Towberman:

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

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

CMSAF Joanne S. Bass:

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

SEAC Ramón “CZ” Colón-López:

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

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

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

Amy Hudson:

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

SEAC Ramón “CZ” Colón-López:

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

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

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

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

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

Amy Hudson:

That was an excellent answer. Thank you.

SEAC Ramón “CZ” Colón-López:

Now I’ll have some coffee.

Amy Hudson:

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

CMSSF Roger A. Towberman:

I’ve never used five words in my life.

Amy Hudson:

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

CMSSF Roger A. Towberman:

Smarter, better, more fulfilled Guardian.

Amy Hudson:

Nice job.

CMSAF Joanne S. Bass:

This is hard.

CMSSF Roger A. Towberman:

Yeah, it’s probably your idea.

Amy Hudson:

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

CMSAF Joanne S. Bass:

Our adversaries won’t fight fair.

CMSSF Roger A. Towberman:

That’s good.

CMSAF Joanne S. Bass:

Can I do one more?

Amy Hudson:

Yes.

CMSAF Joanne S. Bass:

Airmen are our most competitive advantage.

CMSSF Roger A. Towberman:

Damn. You’re cheating somehow.

Amy Hudson:

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

SEAC Ramón “CZ” Colón-López:

Five words, huh?

CMSAF Joanne S. Bass:

That’s hard.

CMSSF Roger A. Towberman:

That’s three.

SEAC Ramón “CZ” Colón-López:

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

CMSAF Joanne S. Bass:

What were the five words?

Amy Hudson:

That’s a little bit more than five words.

SEAC Ramón “CZ” Colón-López:

Exactly. All right, next question.

Amy Hudson:

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

CMSSF Roger A. Towberman:

Better at everything except sports.

CMSAF Joanne S. Bass:

We’re not doing five anymore, are we?

CMSSF Roger A. Towberman:

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

CMSAF Joanne S. Bass:

Are we still doing five? This is hard.

CMSSF Roger A. Towberman:

Seems fair.

SEAC Ramón “CZ” Colón-López:

Yeah, five.

Amy Hudson:

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

CMSAF Joanne S. Bass:

Are we still doing five?

Amy Hudson:

Yes, ma’am.

CMSAF Joanne S. Bass:

Say that again.

Amy Hudson:

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

CMSAF Joanne S. Bass:

Agile, technical… Can I phone a friend?

SEAC Ramón “CZ” Colón-López:

Intellectual.

CMSAF Joanne S. Bass:

Intellectual.

SEAC Ramón “CZ” Colón-López:

Discipline.

CMSAF Joanne S. Bass:

Discipline. You go.

CMSSF Roger A. Towberman:

Connected.

CMSAF Joanne S. Bass:

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

Amy Hudson:

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

SEAC Ramón “CZ” Colón-López:

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

CMSAF Joanne S. Bass:

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

SEAC Ramón “CZ” Colón-López:

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

Amy Hudson:

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

CMSAF Joanne S. Bass:

You just made the one headline.

SEAC Ramón “CZ” Colón-López:

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

Amy Hudson:

How do we beat the PRC?

SEAC Ramón “CZ” Colón-López:

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

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

Amy Hudson:

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

CMSSF Roger A. Towberman:

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

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

Amy Hudson:

Thank you. Chief Bass.

CMSAF Joanne S. Bass:

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

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

Amy Hudson:

SEAC, close us out.

SEAC Ramón “CZ” Colón-López:

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

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

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

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

Amy Hudson:

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

SEAC Ramón “CZ” Colón-López:

All right.

Voiceover:

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

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

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

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

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

March 8, 2023

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

Voiceover:

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

Gen. Lori J. Robinson (Ret.):

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

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

Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach:

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

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

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

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

Gen. James B. Hecker:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gen. Lori J. Robinson (Ret.):

Next.

Lt. Gen. Nina M. Armagno:

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

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

Gen. Lori J. Robinson (Ret.):

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

Lt. Gen. Nina M. Armagno:

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

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

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

Gen. Lori J. Robinson (Ret.):

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

Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach:

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

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

Gen. Lori J. Robinson (Ret.):

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

Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach:

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

Gen. Lori J. Robinson (Ret.):

Yes.

Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach:

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

Gen. Lori J. Robinson (Ret.):

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

Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach:

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

Gen. Lori J. Robinson (Ret.):

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

Gen. James B. Hecker:

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

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

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

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

Lt. Gen. Nina M. Armagno:

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

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

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

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

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

Gen. Lori J. Robinson (Ret.):

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

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

Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach:

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

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

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

Gen. Lori J. Robinson (Ret.):

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

Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach:

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

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

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

Gen. Lori J. Robinson (Ret.):

Okay. Scorch.

Gen. James B. Hecker:

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

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

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

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

Gen. Lori J. Robinson (Ret.):

Next.

Lt. Gen. Nina M. Armagno:

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

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

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

Gen. Lori J. Robinson (Ret.):

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

Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach:

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

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

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

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

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

Gen. James B. Hecker:

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

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

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

Lt. Gen. Nina M. Armagno:

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

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

Gen. Lori J. Robinson (Ret.):

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

Voiceover:

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

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

March 8, 2023 | By David Roza

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

March 8, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

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

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

Continuum of Service

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

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

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

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

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

‘Participate in History’

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

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

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

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

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

Allvin then recounted his own career path:

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

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

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

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

‘We Have to Play Offense’

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wear Our Nation’s Cloth

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

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

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

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

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

Watch, Read: ‘United Forces and Families’

March 8, 2023

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

Kari Voliva:

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

Melissa Shaw:

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

Melissa Shaw:

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

Melissa Shaw:

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

Maj. Bridget Pantaleon:

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

Kristen Christy:

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

Lt. Col. Elizabeth Blakeman:

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

Melissa Shaw:

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

Maj. Bridget Pantaleon:

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

Maj. Bridget Pantaleon:

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

Maj. Bridget Pantaleon:

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

Maj. Bridget Pantaleon:

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

Maj. Bridget Pantaleon:

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

Maj. Bridget Pantaleon:

Thanks, Melissa.

Melissa Shaw:

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

Lt. Col. Elizabeth Blakeman:

Awesome. Thanks, Melissa.

Lt. Col. Elizabeth Blakeman:

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

Lt. Col. Elizabeth Blakeman:

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

Lt. Col. Elizabeth Blakeman:

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

Lt. Col. Elizabeth Blakeman:

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

Lt. Col. Elizabeth Blakeman:

Thanks.

Melissa Shaw:

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

Lt. Col. Elizabeth Blakeman:

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

Melissa Shaw:

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

Melissa Shaw:

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

Kristen Christy:

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

Kristen Christy:

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

Kristen Christy:

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

Melissa Shaw:

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

Melissa Shaw:

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

Melissa Shaw:

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

Maj. Bridget Pantaleon:

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

Maj. Bridget Pantaleon:

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

Maj. Bridget Pantaleon:

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

Maj. Bridget Pantaleon:

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

Maj. Bridget Pantaleon:

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

Maj. Bridget Pantaleon:

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

Maj. Bridget Pantaleon:

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

Maj. Bridget Pantaleon:

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

Melissa Shaw:

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

Lt. Col. Elizabeth Blakeman:

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

Kristen Christy:

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

Melissa Shaw:

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

Melissa Shaw:

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

Melissa Shaw:

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

Kristen Christy:

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

Kristen Christy:

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

Kristen Christy:

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

Melissa Shaw:

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

Kristen Christy:

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

Melissa Shaw:

Thank you Kristen.

Kristen Christy:

Thanks.

Melissa Shaw:

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

Maj. Bridget Pantaleon:

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

Melissa Shaw:

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

Melissa Shaw:

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

Melissa Shaw:

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

Melissa Shaw:

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

Melissa Shaw:

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

Maj. Bridget Pantaleon:

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

Maj. Bridget Pantaleon:

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

Maj. Bridget Pantaleon:

That’s all I got, ma’am.

Kristen Christy:

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

Maj. Bridget Pantaleon:

You can do both.

Lt. Col. Elizabeth Blakeman:

We have stickers.

Kristen Christy:

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

Lt. Col. Elizabeth Blakeman:

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

Lt. Col. Elizabeth Blakeman:

Thank you.

Melissa Shaw:

Thank you each of you for being up here today.

Melissa Shaw:

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

Melissa Shaw:

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

Melissa Shaw:

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

Melissa Shaw:

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

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

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.”