Skyborg, Golden Horde Closing Out Vanguard Phase, Moving Into Program of Record

Skyborg, Golden Horde Closing Out Vanguard Phase, Moving Into Program of Record

Nov. 10, 2022 | By John A. Tirpak

Two of the Air Force’s most prominent “Vanguard” technology incubator programs—Skyborg and Golden Horde—are graduating to become part of a program of record in 2023 and will form the nucleus of new combat systems, a senior USAF official said.

Kirsten J. Baldwin, deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force for science, technology, and engineering, said Skyborg and Golden Horde will be “closing down” and transitioning into a new Collaborative Combat Aircraft program in 2023, under Brig Gen. Dale R. White, program executive officer for fighters and advanced aircraft. Data acquired from both programs will feed other efforts, as well.

The CCA effort aims to create uncrewed aircraft that will fly in loose formations with crewed fighters, directed by the live pilots but carrying out their tasks autonomously.

Speaking on a Defense News streaming program on future air dominance, Baldwin noted that both Skyborg and Golden Horde generated successful experiments in the past year, and that after a “final demonstration” of their software, will move into a CCA program of record.

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall has said the CCA concept is mature enough to form such a program, and that its structure will be revealed in the fiscal 2024 budget submission. It hasn’t been clear, however, what would happen to Skyborg and Golden Horde after that happened, and whether they would continue in some other form.

Baldwin said Skyborg will demonstrate “autonomy and different applications … in ‘23” in one more demonstration that again shows that the technology is “portable” across a range of aircraft. The program developed and demonstrated a generic package of autonomous piloting capability that was used to operate such aircraft as the Kratos XQ-58 Valkyrie and UTAP-22 Mako uncrewed aircraft. 

“This program demonstrated autonomous collaborative software” that can be applied to CCAs doing “different types of missions, whether it be sensing, or weapons, or electronic attack, or training.” The lessons learned will be applied across a number of other programs as well, Baldwin said.

As a Vanguard program, Skyborg demonstrated and evaluated that technology—“how would it work and … what are the concepts … of operation and [tactics, techniques and procedures] really informing” the CCA program, she said.

Golden Horde is also “coming to closure,” Baldwin said. It demonstrated how a group of unmanned aircraft or weapons could “communicate with each other and … operate collectively rather than singularly.” In one experiment, the system coordinated the actions of a number of Small Diameter Bombs. Those lessons are being applied “into what we call Golden Horde Colosseum,” in which the autonomous software will allow a group of munitions in a strike package to adjust to changing conditions or instructions and retarget themselves to achieve desired effects.

“Colosseum is an engineering environment and a modeling environment, just like our digital transformation activities,” Baldwin said, and it will help “our engineers design the future weapons so that maybe they can … have this capability designed-in from the start.”

A new Vanguard, named Resolute Sentry, will begin demonstrations in 2023, Baldwin said, “which is going to provide us real-time, multi-domain battlespace awareness to address contested environments.” It will assist in “how we do mission rehearsal and planning and how we apply technology to rapidly iterate different types of missions and war fighting options, and … facilitate complex air attack plans in rapid succession.”

Baldwin said the Vanguard program called Rocket Cargo will continue, as it serves one of Kendall’s “Operational Imperatives” of being able to provide logistics in contested areas. The concept calls for rockets to fly at intercontinental distances to take ammunition and supplies to forward-located forces without the need for established ground, sea, or air lines of communication.

Rocket Cargo allows the Air Force to leverage commercial investment and advancement in tail-landing rockets, possibly doing so with only “minor modifications” to technology that already exists, she said.

SDA Director: Next Batch of Data-Transport Satellites Will Amount to ‘250-ish’

SDA Director: Next Batch of Data-Transport Satellites Will Amount to ‘250-ish’

Nov. 10, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

The Space Development Agency’s warfighter council will set requirements in March for the second large batch of satellites to join the Transport Layer of the agency’s National Defense Space Architecture, a planned constellation in low Earth orbit. A solicitation will then go out in the “late spring of 2023,” SDA director Derek M. Tournear said Nov. 10.

While the agency is still waiting to hear from the council before it finalizes the minimum viable product and exact force design structure for the Tranche 2 Transport Layer, Tournear indicated that the tranche will include “250-ish” satellites for data transport.

That’s about twice the number of satellites included in the Tranche 1 Transport Layer. SDA awarded contracts for that tranche’s 126 satellites in February. The number would also well exceed how many satellites the Space Force currently has in orbit. 

SDA’s warfighter council meets twice yearly and guides the agency’s process for determining what capabilities are most important. The council’s next meeting is in March, Tournear said during a webcast hosted by the National Security Space Association, and the goal is to release a request for proposals for the Trance 2 Transport Layer “shortly thereafter.”

After that, a contract award will likely follow in the summer of 2023, Tournear said, which would keep the program in line “so that we can hit that September 2026 launch date” planned for Tranche 2.

Meanwhile, Tranche 2 of the architecture’s Tracking Layer won’t be far behind, as SDA will once again rely on the March meeting of the warfighter council to fully set requirements.

“We’re looking at on the order of 50 Tracking satellites,” Tournear said. “And the mixture between wide-field-of-view and medium-field-of-view will be determined during the warfighter council … and that will come out later in summer or early fall of 2023, is when the Tranche 2 Tracking solicitation will go.”

Like the Transport Layer, the second tranche of the Tracking Layer, responsible for missile tracking and missile warning, will be roughly double the size of Tranche 1. SDA awarded contracts for 28 satellites for the Tranche 1 Tracking Layer in July.

For both the Transport and Tracking Layers, Tournear said, the main difference between Tranche 1 and Tranche 2 will be the expansion of coverage provided. SDA has referred to Tranche 1 as providing “initial warfighting capability.”

“It will allow us persistence over given regions of the globe,” Tournear said. “Tranche 2 will give us complete global persistence. So we don’t have to do any kind of prioritization over different areas of the globe. It’ll also give us enough satellites to where we have built-in resilience just because of the numbers of satellites.”

In the meantime, Tranche 1 is scheduled to begin launching in September 2024 and should be finished by mid-2025, Tournear indicated. And that timing could be key as Pentagon officials continue to warn that China is building up its capabilities, with the goal of having the ability to invade Taiwan by 2027.

“It’s no mystery that [Chinese president] Xi Jinping has given his military until 2027 to develop the military capability to forcefully reunify with Taiwan, if he makes the decision to do that,” undersecretary of defense for policy Colin Kahl said in September.

Should such a timeline come to pass, Tranche 1 will be “ready for the fight in that timeframe” and capable of providing coverage for the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command area of responsibility, Tournear said.

“That will give you the persistence over INDOPACOM for those real-time tactical data links,” Tournear said. “So that means we will be able to tie in their existing fielded radios … so those tactical radios that our war fighters use on the ground, on ships, and in the air, they’ll be able to talk to the satellites. They’ll be able to communicate targeting data back and forth within each other. Eeven though they’re outside of what would traditionally be supported by a tactical data link, the space layer will be able to make that global, will be able to tie that back to targeting cells located anywhere in the globe, to be able to move that data in real time in a theater.”

More immediately, though, SDA is focused on its next industry solicitation, for the “app factory” for battle management/command and control communication—BMC3.

“Basically, it’s the software that will be used by performers on the ground to build the apps and test out the apps in a secure environment to basically do uploads onto the satellite, so that we can upgrade the BMC3 processors on orbit,” Tournear said.

The battle management function of the National Defense Space Architecture is still being fleshed out, and contractors that don’t win the deal for the app factory will still be able to build and offer applications developed for BMC3 in the coming years, Tournear said. 

A draft of the solicitation for the app factory was released Nov. 9. SDA plans to listen to industry feedback and re-issue a final solicitation in February, Tournear added.

Safety Board: NASA Needs a Better Plan to De-Orbit the International Space Station

Safety Board: NASA Needs a Better Plan to De-Orbit the International Space Station

Nov. 10, 2022 | By Amanda Miller

The U.S. and Russia need to work together on a plan to de-orbit the International Space Station, a plan that a NASA advisory board said is needed both in case of an emergency—a growing likelihood—and to prepare for the station’s retirement.

Meanwhile NASA, together with SpaceX, should address a backup launch pad for crew and cargo missions to the ISS in case the company damages its existing launch pad when it begins launching its new Starship rockets from there.

Risk to the ISS itself—not to mention the risk it poses to other objects in space and to people there and on the ground—only grows as more satellites enter low Earth orbit, said Sandra H. “Sandy” Magnus, a member of NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, or ASAP, at the group’s October meeting.

A former stealth engineer for McDonnell Douglas Aircraft before becoming an astronaut, Magnus also worked as the Defense Department’s chief engineer for advanced capabilities as well as deputy director of engineering in the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering.

The panel first recommended in 2012 that NASA estimate the risk to people on the ground if the ISS re-entered Earth’s atmosphere uncontrolled; and said the agency should hammer out a timeline for safe de-orbiting.

“Our rationale was, of course, that an unexpected emergency event could precipitate the need to de-orbit the ISS at any time, and timely development of the plan on how to respond to such a situation before it occurs will allow an optimum response and maximize the safety of the public in that situation,” Magnus said. 

After “conceptual agreement” later emerged on an approach, the board was satisfied, but it’s now circling back: “Subsequent detailed discussion amongst the ISS partners have identified technical and operational issues, which needs further addressing,” Magnus said.

Already, NASA and the Russian Space Agency are discussing how to make the plan for a controlled re-entry “more robust,” Magnus said. “And the panel would like to reiterate its concern first stated … in 2012 about the lack of a well defined, fully funded, controlled re-entry and de-orbit plan for the ISS that is available on a timeline that supports the planned ISS retirement,” anywhere from 2024 to 2030.

NASA’s existing plan, outlined in January 2022, assumes that controlled de-orbiting maneuvers will take place in the second half of 2030 with the assistance of three of Russia’s Progress cargo vehicles—the space station’s own propulsion together with that if its normal rotation of visiting vehicles wouldn’t be enough.

But in case of an emergency, NASA needs to prepare, the board said.

“The risk to public safety and space sustainability is increasing every year as the orbital altitude in and around the ISS continues to become more densely populated by satellites, increasing the likelihood that an unplanned emergency ISS de-orbit would also impact other resident space objects,” Magnus said.

The panel’s new recommendation: “NASA should define an executable and appropriately budgeted de-orbit plan that includes implementation on a timeline to deliver a controlled reentry capability to the ISS as soon as practicable, to be put in place for the need of a controlled de-orbit in the event of an emergency, as well as in place before the retirement of the ISS, to ensure that the station is able to be de-orbited safely,” Magnus said.

In part because Boeing’s crew capsule, the Crew Space Transportation-100 Starliner, hasn’t yet entered service, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program doesn’t have the intended redundancy available to fly astronauts to the ISS, according to the panel’s report made Oct. 27. Contracting for five more future SpaceX Crew Dragon missions brought the coming roster to eight crew flights, which should last into 2027. Meanwhile, NASA and Boeing postponed the first crewed test flight of a Starliner capsule two months, to no earlier than April 2023, to address anomalies from an uncrewed test flight.

Therefore, according to the panel, as the only provider able to transport crew, SpaceX should rapidly complete tasks surrounding the certification of a backup launch pad—Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Fla.—before commencing launches of its super-heavy-lift Starship rocket at Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39. The Starship launches could start as soon as this year, so NASA and SpaceX need a backup in case of problems “related to a launch failure,” according to the panel. 

Air Force Orders 2 More New E-11A BACN Aircraft Systems, Making 5

Air Force Orders 2 More New E-11A BACN Aircraft Systems, Making 5

Nov. 9, 2022 | By John A. Tirpak

The Air Force has awarded Northrop Grumman a contract to outfit two more E-11A Bombardier business jets with the Battlefield Airborne Communications Node (BACN) system. The service already operates three such aircraft, which are used to improve tactical communications for joint and coalition forces.

The work will be performed under a $3.6 billion indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract awarded by the Air Force to Northrop Grumman in January 2021. The company will provide the BACN payload as well as integrate it with the aircraft. Bombardier Defense is providing aircraft under a separate $464.8 million contract awarded in June 2021.

The Air Force wants to transition all its BACN payloads onto Bombardier Global Express 6000/BD-700 aircraft. Some of the extant BACN fleet are EQ-4B Global Hawk autonomous uncrewed aircraft, also built by Northrop Grumman, which the Air Force wants to retire.  Fiscal year 2021 budget plans called for one new E-11 BACN to be added to the fleet every year for six years; nine aircraft in total are budgeted.   

The existing BACN aircraft have amassed some 200,000 operational hours as a “key command and control facilitator supporting airdrops, personnel recovery, convoy, humanitarian assistance and close air support operations,” Northrop Grumman said in a press release.

In Afghanistan, the aircraft were tapped to provide better communications between air and ground units in mountainous terrain, where signal quality was poor or frequently interrupted. The BACN aircraft have also been used as a “gateway” allowing F-35 and F-22 fighters—the data systems of which are not compatible—to share information; and as a beyond-line-of-sight communications relay. The BACN fleet is sometimes referred to by the sobriquet “wifi in the sky.”

“Our battle-tested family of gateway systems improves mission effectiveness and provides the secure and connective tissue between systems and sensors for joint warfighters across space, air, land and sea domains,” said Kevin Berkowitz, Northrop Grumman’s director of network solutions.

The January 2021 contract also provides for Northrop Grumman to develop new BACN capabilities and integrate them on the fleet. That contract also covers ground stations or controls; support gear; and operation of system integration labs.

The BACN payload is being modified for fourth- to fifth-generation fighters to share data via the gateway. It will have an upgraded GPS system to function in a higher-threat environment; Link 16; advanced navigation and performance improvements; and reliability enhancements. Other upgrades will be made to the aircraft’s self-protection and survivability suite.

Meet the New Air Force Veterans Elected to Congress, and Other Midterm Takeaways

Meet the New Air Force Veterans Elected to Congress, and Other Midterm Takeaways

Nov. 9, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

The 2022 midterm elections produced several major surprises as races began to be called late Nov. 8 and early Nov. 9, and the biggest effects were yet to be decided, as neither Republicans nor Democrats had secured control of the House or Senate.

But for national security and defense watchers, some of the most important races on Election Day produced definitive results. Here’s what it means for the Pentagon and Air Force.

Air Force Veterans

In the current Congress, 15 Air Force veterans are in office—13 in the House, two in the Senate.

Neither of the USAF vets in the Senate—Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.)—were up for re-election. Three in the House were not on the ballot either, but nearly two dozen other former Airmen sought office for the first time

All told, every Air Force veteran currently in the House who was running again has been projected as winning. In addition, three newcomers are projected to win: Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), Zach Nunn (R-Iowa), and Donald Davis (D-N.C.).

Luna is a former enlisted Airman who joined at the age of 19 and served as an airfield manager, according to media reports. She earned the Air Force Achievement Medal, was honorably discharged, and subsequently joined the Oregon Air National Guard for a time.

Davis is a U.S. Air Force Academy graduate and, according to media reports, served for eight years, working as a mortuary officer; coordinating operations for VC-25A “Air Force One” at Joint Base Andrews, Md.; and serving at an ROTC detachment in North Carolina.

Nunn is a retired lieutenant colonel who served on both Active duty and in the Guard and deployed multiple times to Iraq and Afghanistan, amassing nearly 1,000 combat flight hours, mostly in reconnaissance aircraft, according to an Air Force release and his LinkedIn page.

Most of the other former Airmen seeking office for the first time lost, but one race still remained uncalled. Sam Peters, a retired major who won the Bronze Star medal and was running in Nevada, narrowly trailed Rep. Steven Horsford.

Incumbents 

Of the 26 members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, only two were up for re-election: Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) and Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.). Duckworth rolled to an easy win, with the Associated Press calling her race at 8 p.m. Eastern time, just as polls in Illinois closed. 

Kelly, meanwhile, faced a tight battle with Republican Blake Masters and had not secured victory, but with a projected 72 percent of the vote in, he was winning by a 51-46 margin, according to ABC News. 

Of the 59 members of the House Armed Services Committee, 50 were on the ballot Nov. 8. And of those 50, the vast majority were successful—45 were projected as winners by the Associated Press as of 3:45 p.m. Nov. 9. That included the top Republican and Democrat on the committee, Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) and Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.).

Only one lawmaker on the panel had been projected to lose, but she was a major figure. Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.) was the vice chair of the committee and a powerful advocate for the Navy. Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) sought re-election but was defeated in her primary.

That left four races involving HASC members still uncalled, all involving Democrats. Reps. Marilyn Strickland (Wash.), Pat Ryan (N.Y.), Jared Golden (Maine), and Steven Horsford (Nev.) were all leading in their races, but by narrow margins (as of 3:45 p.m. Nov. 9).

Some of the other most vulnerable incumbents on the ballot, however, survived. Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) and Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) were projected as winners. The relatively junior lawmakers could be poised to rise up the ranks now, as Luria and Cheney join eight HASC members who did not seek re-election in leaving the panel, creating fairly substantial turnover.

Majority/Minority Ratios

Of course, the compositions of both the Senate and House Armed Services Committees is still to be determined, depending on who ends up in the majority and by how much.

On that front, political observers have noted that Republicans are still likely to take control in the House, but by a far smaller margin than predicted entering Election Day. As of 3:45 p.m., ABC News had called 211 races for Republicans and 194 for Democrats, with 30 still up in the air.

With a 222-213 advantage in the current Congress, Democrats held a 31-28 advantage in seats on the HASC. Generally speaking, the majority party gets a slightly higher ratio of seats on every committee than it has in the overall House, according to data from the Congressional Research Service.

For the Senate, a perfectly divided 50-50 chamber in this past Congress led to an even 13-13 split on the SASC. As of 3:45 p.m., ABC News is projecting a 48-48 tie, with four seats still up for grabs. The final composition of the chamber won’t be determined for weeks though—most major media outlets are projecting the race in Georgia to go to a runoff in December.

If it all ends in another 50-50 tie, Democrats will retain the majority thanks to the tie-breaking vote of Vice President Kamala Harris. But should either party gain at least 51 seats, they’ll likely get an extra seat on committees to fill.

The breakdown of seats on both committees could have implications for the Department of Defense and the Air Force, as the majority party is able to call hearings on issues that matter most to them.

A number of Republican lawmakers have expressed alarm about the Air Force’s plans to retire older aircraft at a faster rate than it buys new ones to pay for other modernization efforts, while others have decried Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall’s indications that there may be no competition for a future KC-Y tanker. Many have also raised objections to diversity and inclusion efforts within the Pentagon, arguing that they are political and take focus off lethality.

Some top Democrats, meanwhile, have sharply criticized the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, from its sustainment problems to its high costs. There is also a minority within the party who have voiced objections to nuclear modernization efforts.

More broadly speaking, control of the House and Senate will likely go a long way in shaping debates in the next few years about the budgets the DOD and the Air Force get. Republicans have argued that President Joe Biden’s proposed funding doesn’t keep pace with inflation and needs to be increased, while some Democrats have expressed reluctance to do so.

Chiefs, Part 10: ‘The Invisible Chief’

Chiefs, Part 10: ‘The Invisible Chief’

Nov. 9, 2022 | By Tobias Naegele

In its 75-year history, 22 Airmen have led the Air Force as Chief of Staff. Each came to the post shaped by the experiences—and sometimes scar tissue—developed over three decades of service. Each inherited an Air Force formed by the decisions of those who came before, who bequeathed to posterity the results of decisions and compromises made over the course of their time in office. Each left his own unique stamp on the institution. As part of Air & Space Forces Magazine’s commemoration of the Air Force’s 75th anniversary, Sept. 18, 2022, we interviewed all of the living former Chiefs of Staff.

Gen. Michael  J. Dugan, CSAF No. 13  (July -September 1990) 

Gen. Michael J. Dugan liked the Air Force he inherited from Gen. Larry D. Welch in July 1990. He had no intention of reinventing it; rather, he wanted to polish it like a treasure, to make it even better. The U.S. Air Force in 1990 had the world’s greatest fighters and bombers, the most lethal nuclear arms, the most flexible and capable airlift. Its Airmen, both enlisted and officers, were the best trained, most ready, most effective in the trade.  They were the victors of the Cold War, a national treasure. 

By the summer of 1990, however, the Cold War was over. Poland was the first of the Eastern Bloc nations to shake off the bonds of communism in June 1989. When East Germany opened up the Brandenburg Gate and the Berlin Wall collapsed that November, the remaining communist states fell like dominos: Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria. The Warsaw Pact was no more; only the Soviet Union remained, impotent to stop the democratic surge.  

In Washington, leaders of the world’s lone superpower contemplated funding cuts and peace dividends. But peace was not yet on the horizon. Iraq, in the wake of a protracted eight-year war with Iran, was saddled with debt and addled by falling oil prices. Its leader, Saddam Hussein, sought debt relief from neighbors and, once rebuffed, found solace in long-dormant border disputes with Kuwait. If it couldn’t get terms from its bankers, it could exact revenge. On Aug. 2, 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait.  

No one knew if Saddam would stop there. Iraq had 63 battle-tested ground divisions, and 27 of them already in Kuwait. If they pivoted to the south, into Saudi Arabia, the Saudis would be ill-equipped to stop them. And if that happened, Saddam Hussein would control more than half of the world’s oil supply.

The invasion of Kuwait “will not stand,” President George H.W. Bush declared. On Aug. 8, less than a week after the invasion, U.S. forces, including an airlift control element, F-15s from Langley Air Force Base, Va., and elements of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division were in Saudi Arabia, preparing for what came to be known as Operation Desert Shield. The United States was suddenly headed for war. 

Gen. Mike Dugan was just 32 days on the job as Air Force Chief of Staff when Saddam launched his invasion, and he would remain in office less than seven weeks more. Dugan’s tenure as Chief would go down as the shortest in Air Force history, rivaled only by three “Acting Chiefs,” none of whom filled the post for more than 41 days. Yet Dugan, an affable ambassador for air power would have an important and lasting effect on the conduct of a war that would make heroes of those who chose to cut his tenure short.  

Dugan’s first contribution to the war effort came on his first day in office after Air Force Secretary Don Rice swore Dugan in privately.  

Soon after, Dugan took a phone call from Gen. Robert D. Russ, commander of Tactical Air Command. The two knew each other well, their tours having overlapped at TAC not long before. Russ wanted to put something on the new Chief’s radar. “Chuck Horner had been the star commander at 9th Air Force and the Air Component Commander for [Gen. Norman] Schwarzkopf in the desert for three years,” Dugan said. “He was ripe for movement. Russ wanted me to know that he thought Horner ought to stay in place for a while longer.”  

Did Russ know trouble was coming to the CentCom AOR? Perhaps. But what he wanted to do was pre-empt any plans Dugan might have to move Horner quickly, as a new Chief might want to do. Dugan understood. 

“I reckoned that I was not yet ready to do a big shuffle of new faces in old spaces,” Dugan said. Leaving Horner in place for what might be an unprecedented fourth year might be unusual, but he agreed with Russ that it “would probably be a good thing.”  

Horner went on to lead the most successful air war in history just a few months later, a 37-day bombing campaign that effectively beat the fight out of the Iraqi army long before the 100-hour ground war finished Operation Desert Storm. “That worked out well,” Dugan says now. 

Dugan’s other contribution came soon after the invasion. As Air Force units began arriving in theater, Schwarzkopf put in a call to Dugan, but the Chief was traveling. In those days before cell phones, the call was routed to the Vice Chief in his absence, Gen. John Michael Loh. Schwarzkopf said he needed help. Horner was absorbed with receiving and bedding down Air Force units all across the desert. Meanwhile, Schwarzkopf needed to build an air operation to blunt further Iraqi incursions. He wanted “somebody to come up with an operational scheme that is big enough for the President to look at and complete enough for us to think about how large the forces ought to be on the air side.”  

Dugan didn’t want this assignment to get lost in the staff. He wanted it in the hands of Col. John Warden III, a controversial but visionary officer who was running the Checkmate planning division. Checkmate had been established by then-Chief of Staff David Jones some years before as “an analytical thinking organization that was not constrained by our current guidelines and would come up with novel ways to think about how to deal with whatever operational problems came up,” Dugan said. 

When Dugan told Loh not just to find someone to handle the task, but to give the job to Warden and Checkmate, it was a breach of organizational etiquette. Tasking a subordinate to deal with an operational requirement should have left that decision with that subordinate. “So that was a rude intervention on my part,” Dugan admits, “to pick out one particular office … and say, ‘Give this unique planning problem from Schwarzkopf to John Warden.’”  

But Dugan said it was important to get new and different thinking out there. The Air Force had released Global Reach, Global Power, a new vision for air power, in June 1990, just weeks before Dugan took office. That was more the approach the U.S. would need, Dugan reasoned, and Schwarzkopf seemed to agree.

Dugan
Gen. Michael Dugan, Chief of Staff, U.S. Air Force, speaks with military personnel while having breakfast at the 56th Tactical Air Command dining facility during Operation Desert Shield. Air Force photo via the National Archives.

 

The CENTCOM commander came under heavy criticism from retired Army officers, some of whom publicly questioned why he had given such an assignment to Air Force Headquarters, which would assuredly see things in air-centric terms, rather than a joint command that might be less parochial in its vision. But Schwarzkopf washed his hands of the matter, Dugan recalled. “He said, in effect, ‘I have written what I have written,’ just like Pontius Pilate. A CINC can give a problem to whoever the hell he wants. He could give it to RAND. He could find a consultant someplace. But he decided that somebody in the Air Force ought to be smart enough to help him with this.”  

That someone, Dugan believed, would be Warden. “I thought he was a thinker, and I thought that we needed some fresh, fresh thinking.”  

Ironically, Warden and Horner were not quite in tune with one another. “Chuck Horner was madder than hell,” Dugan recalled. Warden had a mixed reputation. He had written a treatise on air power called The Air Campaign, which asserted that air power could be either the primary or the supporting element of a strategy; Dugan was a fan, and as the deputy chief of staff for plans and operations a few years earlier, he had made sure that every member of the Air Staff got a copy.  

But Warden had also managed to lose the confidence of his boss during a stint as a wing commander, and he’d needed to be reassigned and rehabilitated at Headquarters, where he was assigned to Checkmate. Dugan and Schwarzkopf told Warden to keep Tactical Air Command informed about his work, but not to cede approval authority to anyone.  

What Warden delivered was not an implementable plan, Dugan said, but a concept that was “big enough that you could brief it to the President and the President could grasp it immediately and say, ‘This is big enough to solve my problem.’ And he did. And it did.”  

Warden briefed his concept to Horner on Aug. 20 in the Desert. Horner sent Warden back to Washington, but kept other members of the Checkmate team—including then-Lt. Col. David Deptula, now Dean of AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies—in Riyadh. Deptula had written “Global Reach, Global Power,” and contributed to Warden’s presentation.  

Dugan was riding high. He had no way of knowing his days were numbered, or that his frank views would somehow lead to his ouster. That all came to pass in mid-September, after Dugan flew to the Middle East with three news reporters: John Broder of the Los Angeles Times, Rick Atkinson of the Washington Post, and John North of Aviation Week.   

On Sunday, Sept. 16, 1990, the daily reporters’ stories led their papers. Atkinson’s story in the Washington Post declared: “U.S. TO RELY ON AIR STRIKES IF WAR ERUPTS.” Broder’s Los Angeles Times story was even more provocative: “U.S. War Plan in Iraq: ‘Decapitate’ Leadership.” 

According to Broder, Dugan declared that “air power is the only answer available to our country in this circumstance.”  

In the Post, Atkinson’s lead proved explosive:  

DHAHRAN, SAUDI ARABIA—The Joint Chiefs of Staff have concluded that U.S. military air power—including a massive bombing campaign against Baghdad that specifically targets Iraqi President Saddam Hussein—is the only effective option to force Iraqi forces from Kuwait if war erupts, according to the Air Force Chief of Staff, Gen. Michael J. Dugan. 

“The cutting edge would be in downtown Baghdad. This [bombing] would not be nibbling at the edges,” Dugan said in an interview. “If I want to hurt you, it would be at home, not out in the woods someplace.” 

Although U.S. ground and naval forces would play a substantive role in any military campaign, Iraq’s huge army and tank force means “air power is the only answer that’s available to our country” to avoid a bloody land war that would probably destroy Kuwait, Dugan said. That view, he added, is shared by the other Chiefs and the Commander of U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf region, Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf. 

“It was really pithy on the front page of the Washington Post,” Dugan said. And it instantly stirred the ire of senior officials. 

The article also said Dugan floated the notion of targeting Saddam Hussein and his family and told Airmen in theater that American public support would hold only until “the body bags come home. The Joint Chiefs of Staff don’t decide anything,” he explains now. “The Chairman meets with them every day and he uses them as a sounding board and if there’s a decision to be made, the Chairman makes it.”  

Gen. Colin Powell, the Chairman, was furious. Perhaps perceiving the lead as a challenge to his authority, “The Chairman took great umbrage.”  

Powell himself was just back from a Middle East trip, he wrote in his memoir, “An American Journey.” He reached Dugan at 6 a.m. that Sunday, finding him at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., where he was preparing to speak to a graduating class of new F-16 pilots. “He had read the Washington Post,” Dugan said. “And he was not in a listening mode.”  

Powell was worried that air power was being oversold, he wrote, and he added that he had already “warned” Dugan about press comments twice before. Dugan, for his part, has no recollection of such warnings. In Powell’s telling, “In a single interview, Dugan had made the Iraqis look pushover, suggested American commanders were taking their cue from Israel, suggested political assassination … and said … the American people would not support any other administration strategy.” National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft would go on TV that day to make clear Dugan didn’t speak for the administration and wasn’t in the chain of command.

Defense Secretary Dick Cheney’s executive assistant called Dugan later that day. The Chief should be in Cheney’s office at 8 a.m. the next morning. “I said, ‘OK.’ I knew what that was about.”  

When Dugan reported, Cheney was prepared; “he had been tuned by Colin Powell’s response and reaction,” Dugan said. “He went through a list of nine … accusations of poor performance on my behalf, all related to the trip and the news articles,” Dugan said. 

He might have argued some of the points, but that wasn’t going to get anywhere. “He came in with a with an agenda, he was going to achieve what he had chosen,” Dugan said. “And the question was whether it was going to be graceful on both of our parts or not.” 

The face-off boiled down to this: Cheney “reckoned that I should resign.”  

Dugan had to think quickly. Refusing might be possible, but it would almost assuredly go badly. “I was a presidential appointee. The President is the only one who can fire you,” he said. But fighting the request would make it all much bigger than Dugan as an individual, it would cost the service, though how was impossible to say. “I thought about the C-17, and what would become the F-22,” he said. He imagined the service being punished for his comments. 

Still, “I reckoned I wasn’t going to resign,” Dugan said. “But if it was going to make [Cheney’s] life easier,” he added, “I would ask for early retirement.”  

Dugan requested to retire effective Jan. 1, a move that the Baltimore Sun would report at the time that would be worth some $17,650 annually because of a large pending pay raise. Despite objections from some members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, President Bush approved the request.  

At a news conference on Tuesday, Sept. 18, 1990, following a public announcement about Dugan’s removal, Cheney visited the Pentagon briefing room to take questions from reporters. “The statements attributed to General Dugan in two newspapers this weekend, and as confirmed by him to me, did not in my mind, reveal an adequate understanding of the situation and what is expected of him as Chief of Staff of the Air Force and as a member of the Joint Chiefs,” Cheney said. He said he discussed the matter with the President and others and that the decision was his. 

Reporters questioned Cheney on what it was that Dugan had apparently done wrong. Had anything attributed to Dugan been untrue? Hadn’t others made similar statements about potential strategies? The Secretary merely repeated that some topics are off-limits. “We never talk about future operations, such as the selection of specific targets for potential airstrikes. We never talk about the targeting of specific individuals who are officials of other governments. Taking such action might be a violation of the standing presidential executive order. … In a situation involving potential conflict, I think it’s contrary to sound practice to reveal classified information about the size and disposition of U.S. forces. And as a general matter of policy, I don’t think we want to be demeaning the contributions of other services. General Dugan’s statements in my opinion were not consistent with this policy.”  

Dugan now learned what it was like to become an invisible man. In an instant, he had gone from being a superhero to a pariah, from someone people would rush to in the Pentagon hallways to persona non grata.  

The real twist was that he didn’t disappear; Dugan kept returning to work, day after day. When Army Gen. Douglas MacArthur was fired by President Harry S. Truman, the popular general packed his bags and went home. Dugan, however, remained, commuting to the Pentagon daily for the next three months. “I stayed on duty until January,” he said. “I didn’t do anything useful, but I stayed on duty.”  

Checking in at 0900 and remaining until 1700, Dugan took on an unwanted cast.  

 “I was a leper,” Dugan said. “I was forgotten, but not gone.”  

For six weeks his former Vice Chief, Mike Loh, was Acting Chief and after that his one-time squadron mate, Gen. Merrill A. “Tony” McPeak arrived in Washington to be the 14th Chief of Staff, after closing out his work at Pacific Air Forces. Neither spent much, if any, time with Dugan. 

Dugan did not let the humiliation ruin his life, however. He had other things to live for: Six children, four of whom went on to serve in the military, three in the Air Force and one in the Marine Corps. Eight grandchildren. And he had more to contribute in the workplace, as well. He joined the Board of Directors of the Air Force Association and later the Aerospace Education Foundation. In 1993, he became the president of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, a large non-profit, and he remained in that role until 2005, and continues his involvement as its president emeritus to this day.  

“There was more to my life,” Dugan said, “than being Chief.”

Chiefs, Part 9: ‘Last of the Cold War Chiefs’

Chiefs, Part 9: ‘Last of the Cold War Chiefs’

Nov. 9, 2022 | By Tobias Naegele

In its 75-year history, 22 Airmen have led the Air Force as Chief of Staff. Each came to the post shaped by the experiences—and sometimes scar tissue—developed over three decades of service. Each inherited an Air Force formed by the decisions of those who came before, who bequeathed to posterity the results of decisions and compromises made over the course of their time in office. Each left his own unique stamp on the institution. As part of Air & Space Forces Magazine’s commemoration of the Air Force’s 75th anniversary, Sept. 18, 2022, we interviewed all of the living former Chiefs of Staff.

Gen. Larry D. Welch, CSAF No. 12 (1986-1990)

Larry D. Welch never planned to stay in the Air Force, let alone become Chief of Staff. Having enlisted in 1951, Welch was a one-striper, temporarily marching new recruits around Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, when he led a group to a briefing about the aviation cadet program. When it was over, interested recruits were asked to put a card in the basket.  

Welch, who was standing in the back of the room waiting to escort the recruits to their next stop, put his name on a card and dropped it in the basket. Soon after, he was summoned to a captain’s office; the captain praised his scores and sent him for further testing. “At the end of that, I had two choices,” Welch said. “I could go into a program that would make me a second lieutenant and a pilot, or a program that would make me an Airman First Class electronics technician.”  

It wasn’t a hard decision. 

Time after time over the course of the next three-plus decades, Welch came to a fork in the road and found another opportunity waiting for him. He served in fighter units in Europe, the continental United States and Alaska, deployed to Vietnam, and held a series of leadership posts at Tactical Air  Command. He shepherded President Ronald Reagan’s strategic programs through the budget and approval process—the B-1 and B-2 bomber programs, the M-X intercontinental ballistic missile, and two cruise missile programs—as deputy chief of staff for programs and resources, and in July 1984 he was promoted to Vice Chief of Staff, replacing Gen. Jerome O’Malley. 

Welch hoped to finish his career leading Strategic Air Command, and Air Force Chief Gen. Charles Gabriel already envisioned his succession plan. “I don’t think I’m breaking any confidence here,” Welch said. “The plan was that Jerry O’Malley was supposed to be Charlie Gabriel’s replacement, but Jerry didn’t have any real fighter time. So Jerry would go to command [Tactical Air Command] for a couple of years, I would take SAC for a couple of years, and then when Jerry became Chief, I would go to TAC.”  

Tragically, however, O’Malley died on April 20, 1985. The CT-39 Sabreliner executive jet he had taken to a Boy Scout event landed flawlessly that day in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., but when the pilot applied his breaks, nothing happened. A hydraulic valve in the landing gear had broken, and the airplane overshot the end of the runway, and then down a 110-foot embankment, where it burst into flames—killing everyone on board.  

“That threw everything up in the air,” Welch said. “Jerry O’Malley would have been a great Chief. I’m sorry that he didn’t get to do that.”  

Welch was an obvious candidate to replace O’Malley at TAC, but the nuclear enterprise was a primary focus for President Reagan and Secretary of Defense Caspar “Cap” Weinberger. The Air Force put forward one three-star after another for promotion to four-stars and command of SAC. “The SecDef turned down all three nominees,” Welch recalled. “Secretary Weinberger was having no part of that. He wanted someone he knew, and that someone was me.”  

So Welch got to command SAC, the job he’d envisioned as his last in uniform, what he calls now “the pinnacle of my career.” And not many months later, Secretary of the Air Force Donald Rice came out to visit him, asking questions that in retrospect were about the Chief’s job. “It was certainly clear to everyone that I was sure as hell not campaigning to be Chief,” Welch said. But not long after, Rice let him know he was putting Welch’s name forward to succeed Gabriel.  

GOLDWATER-NICHOLS 

Welch became Chief July 1, 1986. Almost exactly three months later, Congress passed the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act on Oct. 4, a revolutionary and sweeping measure that reformed the leadership structure of the armed forces and changed the future of career and assignment policy. The new law elevated the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and redefined the operational chain of command, which now flowed from the President, through the Secretary, and down to the unified Combatant Commands—bypassing the service chiefs. Air Force and Army Chiefs of Staff, the Chief of Naval Operations, and the Marine Corps Commandant now became responsible solely for manning, training, and equipping the force. They were no longer in the business of executing war plans.

But change came slowly. 

Welch
Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Larry Welch checks right side clearance while taxiing a C-141B Starlifter aircraft for takeoff. Staff Sgt. Guido Locati via National Archives.

“Goldwater-Nichols didn’t change much of anything for a significant period of time,” Welch recalled. “So during the four years, … the principal effect was that they added authority to the combatant commanders. It didn’t relieve the service chiefs of any responsibility for that period of time. Well, just for example: In order to respond to Goldwater-Nichols, the combatant commanders were invited to the big high-level reviews. There used to be only the secretaries and some of the assistant secretaries and service chiefs. [Now the combatant commanders] attended those meetings—they were invited—[but] they didn’t say anything. They just observed. Because they were supposed to have a new role, but they were totally unprepared to fulfill it.” 

Welch said that three of the four service chiefs were very supportive of the new law, and that in his view there was only one major flaw in the legislation: its requirements for joint tours. “It was unreasonable and unexecutable,” he says now. “But we worked around that.”

Changing the culture across the services, however, was not automatic. When the commander of the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Fleet, Adm. James A. “Ace” Lyons Jr. declined to follow the orders of his regional combatant commander, U.S. Pacific Command’s Adm. Ronald J. Hays, Lyons was forced to resign. “The issue was over sending PACFLEET ships into CENTCOM’s area of operations,” Welch said. It was the summer of 1987, and “PACFLEET absolutely defied it. And in order to correct that, the Joint Chiefs went to the Secretary of Defense, who went to the President.” Lyons’ career ended with his retirement that Oct. 1.  

“I don’t think that ever would have happened without Goldwater-Nichols,” Welch said. “That was an interesting lesson to people, that—Hey! The authority of a combatant commander is a serious thing, and you had better pay attention to it.” 

The impact on the service chiefs and how they operated as the Joint Chiefs of Staff was greater. “The first real effect of Goldwater-Nichols was a sort of a too-rapid move to the Joint Staff,” Welch said. “The relationship to the Joint Staff changed faster and more dramatically. In the first place, the Joint Staff began to exercise a lot more authority on service programs. And that caused a lot of angst, and it didn’t work very well.”  

Suddenly more officers from other services, with less experience, were asking questions and getting involved in programs that they didn’t necessarily understand. The balance of power was now shifting, moving away from the service chiefs and their domain expertise to a joint staff whose priorities were not necessarily the same. This involvement only grew over time.  

“When I was a service chief … maybe 5 percent of our program had issues with … the highest-level meeting, with the SECDEF and the undersecretaries,” Welch said. Today, however, “a service chief would probably tell you 50 percent of his program is seriously affected by the Joint Staff and OSD [Office of the Secretary of Defense]. I don’t know if that’s good or bad,” Welch said, “I just know that the service chief is the leading expert in that domain, and the service chief’s staffs are the real experts in that domain. … And I think that remains a problem.”  

Welch says the net effect of these extra layers of review has not been effectiveness, but inefficiency. He notes that in his day, “our criteria was five to seven years to field an increment of new capability.” There was logic to that, because “Five to seven years was about as far as we could see geopolitically, it was certainly as far as we could see technologically, and it was probably as far as we could see in terms of tactics and strategy. Well, now the average time has doubled, while the horizons have shortened.”  

The longer timeline for programs is not the fault of the services, Welch said: “The reason for that is all the other people who have a say in those decisions.” 

The world was more predictable during the Cold War.  

The Chiefs also began to lose clout with the White House. Another change that made a big difference, “which surprised us,” Welch said, was the elevation of the Chairman to be the principal military adviser to the Secretary and President. Prior to that time, the Chiefs had acted together, an organizational design that required the Chairman to be first among equals, rather than plainly first among all. “I didn’t think that was a big deal while I was there,” Welch said. But it became a big deal later.  

In Welch’s time, the Chiefs and then-Chairman Adm. William J. Crowe had an understanding, which came about this way: “Bill Crowe came into the tank one day and reported on a meeting he had just been to in the White House,” he recalled. Immediately after that meeting, the Army Chief of Staff went into Bill Crowe’s office and said, ‘OK, Mr. Chairman, if you don’t need to consult us before you go to the White House—if you don’t need our best advice before you go to the White House—then we’ll just send our vice chiefs to tank, and we’ll do what we really like: that is, run the Air Force and the Army.’ Bill said, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I apologize.’ And that never happened again with Bill Crowe.” 

As members of the JCS rotated, however, that understanding faded. “Fast forward to the next Chairman and new members of the Joint Chiefs,” Welch said. “It became a reality then that the Chairman kept the service chiefs informed. … Let me tell you, we never would have accepted that.” 

Indeed, the supremacy of the Chairman over the Joint Chiefs would play a decisive role in the fate of Welch’s successor. 

When Welch took office in July 1986, at the very the height of the Cold War, he brought with him expertise accumulated over a career that had included a tour as vice chief of staff and as commander in chief of Strategic Air Command—CINC SAC. The security dynamic was largely bipolar in those days: East-vs.-West, USA-vs.-USSR. But now that was changing.  

“By the time I became Chief, it was fairly obvious to the Joint Chiefs that the Cold War was winding down,” Welch said. Soviet Premier Mikhail “Gorbachev was making speeches about the Soviet economy. Now, I can’t say any of us thought that the Soviet Union would disappear in 1991. But it was very clear the Cold War was winding down.”  

The Chiefs were convinced the services would have to pay a “peace dividend”—a budget cut as the reward to taxpayers for footing the bill for Cold War defense. But they were also convinced that the future would be unpredictable.  

“We faced up to the fact that we were going to be in a new world, and we were not going to be in a world where we would have 50 years to learn to deal with things,” Welch said. “We didn’t oppose a modest decrease in the defense budget, because our logic was, there’s going to be a demand for a peace dividend, so let’s do three years of modest sacrifice to give us time to figure out this brave new world.” 

It would take far longer than that, of course. “Here we are, 35 years later, and we still haven’t figured out this brave new world,” he says today. Indeed, the point illustrates something that Welch has very much on his mind today: “The fact is the service chief’s job is really far more complex today than it was when we had a single adversary that were really understood.” 

The job was simpler in those days too because Americans were more united. “We had strong support on the Hill,” Welch said. “It wasn’t Republican versus Democrat. There was hardly a person on the Hill that I couldn’t get help from on some issue. They might not be any help on other issues, but Congress, OSD, the Joint Staff—everybody came together in ways that helped service chiefs do their jobs.” And where there was opposition, he said, there was nevertheless respect, especially for the system.  

“The Joint Chiefs were totally at odds with Cap Weinberger on Arms Control,” Welch said. “We were totally in charge of it. Cap Weinberger hated it.  … [But] he accepted the fact that we had a different view, that we were going to present our view to Congress. He disagreed with us, but he honored our view. That kind of attitude really helped the service chiefs do their job.”  

As the three-star on the Air Staff responsible for programs and resources, Welch had worked with his colleagues in operations and requirements to develop a system for getting things done in the Pentagon. First they laid out their concepts of operations and the means by which the Air Force would accomplish its missions. “Then we laid out roadmaps for how we developed the set of capabilities required to do [those missions]: We had the fighter roadmap, the airlift roadmap, the bomber roadmap, the munitions roadmap. And the Air Staff tied into those roadmaps.”  

Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gabriel rallied behind their effort, setting it in motion, and when Welch became Chief, he supported it, as well. The second process component Welch saw as valuable was the decision structure. 

“This decision structure let the right people make the inputs at the right time,” Welch said. “The one-star level dug into great detail and they sent them to the Air Staff Board, and the Air Staff Board was the two-star level. And the two-star level examined this topic and brought their expertise, and then it went to the Air Council, and the Air Council was chaired by the Vice Chief. Then we put all that together and then it went to the secretariat. And so we had this process that was very well developed. It was very effective. And it was fast.”  

Welch estimated that the Air Force could move a program from the Air Force Secretary level to the Secretary of Defense in a matter of days. “The result was we always went forward with a very solid Air Force position.” Over the years, however, some of those decision points migrated out of the service and into the Joint Staff or OSD, removing service control and slowing down decisions.  

While Welch is loath to criticize successors—“I never second-guess the Chief because the only way you can do that is if you know everything the Chief is dealing with at the time, and there’s no way to know that”—he sees flaws in some choices since he was in charge. Among the larger mistakes, he said: The elimination of Air Force Systems Command in 1990, soon after his departure.  

“I was very much opposed to doing away with Systems Command,” Welch said. “The Secretary [of the Air Force Don Rice] wanted for two years to do that, and I absolutely refused to go along with it. And of course, that happened one month after I retired.” 

Welch saw a fundamental flaw in combining the Air Force’s sustainment operations with its weapons development experts. “Systems Command’s mission was about the future,” Welch explained. “Logistics Command’s mission was about today. So if you look at the inbox of the commander of Materiel Command, it’s full of today problems: I’ve got to get all this stuff delivered, I’ve got to get all this stuff where it needs to be. … That’s part of the reason why things started taking longer.”  

Systems Command was also tightly linked to its customers: the four-star Tactical Air Command, Strategic Air Command, and Military Airlift Command. Welch recalled how he was the plans chief at TAC, and how the commands worked so well together. “Four times a year, the commander of Systems Command and commander of TAC would meet at Langley [Air Force Base, Va.,] and go over all of the primary Air Force programs to ensure that Systems Command and TAC and the Air Staff—the Air Staff was there too—were in lockstep. That’s pretty powerful.” 

But the real tragedy of giving up Systems Command was that it blurred the Air Force’s vision. “Doing away with Systems Command did away with the central focus on building a future force,” Welch said. “Not sustaining the force. Not supporting the force. But building the force. That went away.”  

LEARNING FROM AIRMEN 

Because he began his career as an enlisted Airman—the only Air Force Chief to do so—Welch is often asked if that made a difference in his leadership. He is quick to say it did not. “I never served enough time as enlisted to gain much from that,” he said. “I can claim having close contact with senior NCOs that really made my career possible, and that had an enormous influence on me as Chief. But I really can’t claim having been a real enlisted man.”  

Two NCOs in particular changed his career. The first was in France, where Welch was sent as a new captain to help convert four National Guard squadrons into an Air Force wing. Welch wanted to get checked out in the F-34, but his commander wanted him to build a combat operations center. “Within six months in this whole new mission, we have to pass the NATO TAC eval,” his commander told him. “You build that combat operations center, we pass that TAC eval, and you can pick any squadron you want.”  

Welch went through a door and found a field desk, a telephone, and a senior master sergeant—little else. “I’ll tell you: I got credit for building the COC and a lot of credit for us passing the TAC Eval. All the credit really goes to that senior master sergeant, who taught me that I was responsible. He would not make a decision. He would give me advice. I had to make the decision. And I always took his advice.”  

Later, Welch was pressed into duty as a squadron operations officer as a major, just as his unit was deploying to Alaska with the then-brand-new F-4 Phantom. “We had to arrange everything,” Welch recalls. “What made that possible was the senior master sergeant who worked for me. He just knew how to do everything. … So as a captain, I had this great reputation because of a senior master sergeant, and as a major I acquired this reputation largely because of a senior master sergeant. And I never forgot that.”

Chiefs, Part 8: The ‘Joint’ Chief

Chiefs, Part 8: The ‘Joint’ Chief

Nov. 9, 2022 | By Tobias Naegele

In its 75-year history, 22 Airmen have led the Air Force as Chief of Staff. Each came to the post shaped by the experiences—and sometimes scar tissue—developed over three decades of service. Each inherited an Air Force formed by the decisions of those who came before, who bequeathed to posterity the results of decisions and compromises made over the course of their time in office. Each left his own unique stamp on the institution. As part of Air & Space Forces Magazine’s commemoration of the Air Force’s 75th anniversary, Sept. 18, 2022, we interviewed all of the living former Chiefs of Staff.

Gen. David L. Goldfein, CSAF No. 21 (2016-2020) 

By September 2015, everyone knew that year’s “AFA”—the Air Force Association’s annual Air, Space & Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Md.—would be Gen. Mark A. Welsh III’s last as Air Force Chief of Staff. He’d been in the job since 2012, and his four-year tour would be up the following summer. 

On the eve of the conference, news outlets speculated about two ground-breaking options for his relief: Gen. Lori J. Robinson, then commander of Pacific Air Forces, and Gen. Darren W. McDew, who had only recently taken charge of U.S. Transportation Command. Absent from that conjecture: Vice Chief of Staff Gen. David L. Goldfein. 

Junior to both Robinson and McDew, Goldfein had survived a missile strike that downed his F-16 over Serbia, leaving him stranded in hostile territory until he could be rescued. “Intercepting an enemy missile with my airplane was not my best mission,” he said. Surviving and then thriving as his career advanced belied the notion that the Air Force suffered from a zero-defect mentality. In the wake of losing his airplane, Goldfein had not only survived, but thrived. 

“Beginning as a young captain in Desert Storm, I had not missed a single fight in my career,” Goldfein said. That included two years as the Air and Space Component Commander for Central Command from 2011 to 2013. Even so, Goldfein didn’t see himself as a serious candidate for Chief until Welsh let him know he was a serious contender, a wake-up call that forced him to start thinking seriously about how he would approach the role if he was indeed the choice. 

“That was really when I started thinking seriously about, OK, what are my gifts?” he said. “I think every leader brings certain gifts and strengths to the table and certainly an equal number of weaknesses. So what are my strengths? And as I thought about it, it became clear to me that what I knew, perhaps as well as anybody else in the Air Force, was the business of joint warfighting.” 

Goldfein had flown in every Air Force combat operation since Desert Storm and in the prior seven years had stepped through a series of preparatory jobs: Deputy Director of Programs on the Air Staff, Director of Operations at Air Combat Command, Commander of U.S. Air Forces Central Command, and Director of the Joint Staff at the Pentagon. Now he awoke to a possibility he hadn’t really seen coming. 

Once selected, Goldfein went to Welsh with a plea: “I need some time with a small transition team to really put some serious thought into where I want to focus so I can hit the ground running on Day One,” Goldfein said. “You know, that’s tough conversation. What I was really asking him was, ‘Hey, Chief, I want you to work like a dog until the end without a Vice.’”

Welsh agreed, cutting Goldfein loose with a small team to develop his plan. That team included then-Brig. Gen. Alexus G. “Grinch” Grynkewich (now the three-star commander of 9th Air Force and the Combined Forces Air Component Commander at U.S. Central Command). He wanted focus—“big, audacious, and achievable” ideas to shape the coming four years. 

“Where I focused was joint warfighting excellence: How do I take the service from where it is to a point where I can hand it off as a more capable joint teammate?” he said. For the next four years, everything he could control—and there were, of course, plenty of issues he could not control—had to “make us better joint warfighters.” 

Three areas would get his particular focus: First, reinvigorating the fighting formation of the Air Force, in particular empowering squadron leaders; second, joint development; and third, digitizing and connecting joint warfighters, a concept that became multi-domain command and control, and then, as he was reaching the end of his tour, joint all-domain command and control (JADC2). 

Of the three, it is the third one—helping to convince the other services that his concept joint command and control concepts not only made sense but were critical—that will likely be his long-term legacy. “When we started the conversation, it was a question of whether we really needed to do this,” Goldfein said. “What took four years was building trust amongst the services that this wasn’t the money grab.” 

The challenge was that all the services were already operating in multiple domains. “Think about it: If you’re the Chief of Naval Operations, you’ve invested billions in command and control to connect what you believe is an all-domain force that operates from subsurface submarines to the surface and to the air. So you’re already a multi-domain force, and you build C2 to connect your forces at sea. If you’re the Chief of Staff of the Army, you’ve invested billions of dollars to connect your Soldiers, and you’re transitioning your Army into the digital world. And along comes this Air Force guy that says, ‘Hey, I’ve got an idea: Scrap all those investments you’ve made and let me come in and solve this for the world.’ That is a nonstarter.” 

Goldfein knew the Air Force had expertise the other services could leverage. Going back to 1947, Congress had identified command and control as an initial Air Force mission. “But if we were to approach it so that it could be interpreted as a money grab, it would be dead on arrival,” Goldfein said. He spent the next four years “squinting with his ears,” he said, listening and learning about the challenges each service chief saw in his particular domain. The Army chiefs saw the issue as one of scale and speed. While the Air Force sought to connect a few thousand airplanes, the Army needed to connect a million Soldiers; and as USAF tried to operate at the speed of sound, the Army needed to keep up only with the speed of traffic. 

“We had to educate ourselves,” Goldfein said. “If we’re going to offer solutions to the Army, we better understand ground maneuver. If we’re going to offer solutions to the world’s greatest Navy, we better understand submarine operations.” 

Slowly the multi-domain phrase caught on. The Army and Navy began to adopt the language. The question had changed. Instead of ‘Why do we do this?’ Goldfein said, it was, “How do we get after this as a team?” 

386

Not everything went so well. Goldfein inherited a force in decline, one too small to meet its many requirements. The nuclear force was decrepit, he had a new tanker that wasn’t performing, his fighter force was aging out faster than he could acquire replacements. When Congress asked for an objective assessment to define the Air Force the nation needed, Goldfein and then-Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson responded with a clear flight plan: 386 operational squadrons, a 20 percent increase over the existing force. 

The plan was laid out at AFA’s Air, Space, & Cyber Conference in 2018, halfway through Goldfein’s tenure, and the Air Force celebrated by giving the press and others coffee mugs emblazoned with the number 386. “There was classified assessment and intelligence analysis that went into this,” Goldfein said. “This was 386 squadrons that directly aligned with the national security and national defense strategy and combatant commander demand, given classified operational war plans.” 

Some greeted the disclosure of this plan as the beginning of a new campaign to grow the Air Force. Goldfein did not. “We did all the analysis, and you could back it up with data to say you could meet the need at moderate risk with 386. Anything below that, you just increased risk. So now, do we keep banging the drum and say 386, when we’re actually at 320? That didn’t make much sense.” 

Goldfein saw the analysis as a worthwhile, but academic exercise, because he couldn’t imagine that Congress would fund 66 more squadrons and all the people, weapons, and support that would require. 

A generation before, at the end of the Cold War, then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Colin Powell presented his Base Force, the blueprint for a scaled down, peacetime U.S. military in a unipolar world. All of the services would be cut deeply, and all of the services accepted their fate. Whatever pushback occurred, only the Marine Corps managed to take their fight public, resisting the call to shrink the Corps to just 159,000 Marines. Then-Commandant Gen. Carl Mundy, a buzz-cut, square-jawed Marine straight from central casting, launched a sort of insurgency, telling every audience possible that yes, he could cut the Corps to 159,000—but then pivoting to say that to meet the nation’s security requirements, 174,000 Marines was the number needed. Mundy repeated his case at every opportunity for a year and ultimately won the argument. 

Could Goldfein not have followed that model to achieve his needed 386 squadrons? 

“The big difference between us and the Marine Corps [in 1992] was that the Commandant already had 174,000 Marines,” Goldfein said. The two services were approaching a similar value statement, but from opposing directions. 

The Marines were drawing down from a force greater than 200,000 and hoped to be spared the deep cut to 159,000; by contrast, Goldfein’s force was already undersized. Rather than seeking to foreshorten a drawdown, he would have been asking for a budget increase measured in the tens of billions. That was beyond imagination. 

Still, “386 was a helpful metric for me because I could then articulate where I thought we were risk-wise, in various scenarios, whether in the tank or at the White House,” Goldfein said.  With that, he said, he could “now articulate what I thought was the amount of risk was, and I could do it with a lot greater granularity, based on where we were versus where the moderate risk level was. It was a very helpful benchmark in some of those discussions.”

Goldfein saw risk every place he turned. But he also saw opportunities, seizing them—at some cost. 

When the Air Force took a cut to help fund fourth-generation Navy F/A-18 purchases, he later got a chance to claw some of that back. But Defense Department leadership were offering a choice. He could have the money to fund new-build F-15s, built in the same Boeing Co. plant in St. Louis where the F/A-18s were made, but not for additional Lockheed F-35s. 

“My first response was, ‘I’m not going to spend a penny of fifth-generation money against a fourth-generation asset. That’s a red line,’” Goldfein recalled. “And then I said, second, that ‘there can be no trading of aircraft, because where we are headed is fifth- and sixth-generation. But I do have a capacity challenge, and I can’t allow the Air Force to lose $7 billion in assets.’” 

Goldfein took the deal, accepting a future that would include dozens—and possibly up to 200—new-build F-15EX fighters. If it was the will of the Department of Defense and the Congress that the Air Force purchase F-15s, Goldfein said, “then we’re going to look at these airplanes and we’re going go take a look at the fleet, and then determine the best option.” 

What the Air Force found, he said, was that the Pacific’s long ranges made the new-build F-15EXs attractive because—as good as the F-35 is—it can’t match the F-15 for range and payload. “In a Pacific scenario, when we played various force elements together, the combination” proved attractive, he said. 

New advances promised by the F-15EX also helped change his perception. “Stealth is not the only spectrum,” he said. “Radar is not the only spectrum where you have to hide. And so the more we looked at the options, the better the F-15EX looked from a joint warfighting perspective.” 

Now Goldfein’s focus on jointness came into play. “I was confident I was making the Air Force a better joint warfighter and joint warfighting service by entering the F-15EX,” he said. 

He also had a problem. The first was that he was breaking a line held by every Chief before him for nearly two decades, that the Air Force should not “buy new old airplanes.” Second, the real skinny on why this made sense couldn’t be shared in the open. The real advantages could only be shared in classified settings, Goldfein said, meaning Goldfein struggled to tell that story publicly, while generally holding his own in private.  

Goldfein’s tenure included four wildcards. The first, was his nomination to be Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. As Marine Gen. Joseph F. Dunford’s term as Chairman neared its end, Goldfein seemed the hands-on favorite to succeed him. Having positioned himself as a joint warfighting advocate, focused on projects and programs that made the joint team stronger, he was a natural. No Airman had been Chairman since Gen. Richard B. Myers from 2001 to 2005, and in the 15 years since, the position had been held by two Soldiers, two Marines, and one Navy Admiral. 

Goldfein had the endorsement of Defense Secretary James Mattis, himself a retired Marine general. But by then, [President Donald J. ]Trump was feuding openly with Mattis, questioning his loyalty and challenging his independence. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley, a burly New Englander, was less joint in focus but held some special appeal to the President. Whether it was his Princeton pedigree, his New England roots, his substantial presence, or merely the fact that he wasn’t Mattis’ choice is unclear. But Trump nixed Goldfein for Milley, regardless. Goldfein has no regrets. 

“I’ve never looked back for a second on the decision to make Mark Milley the Chairman,” he said. “Hey, he’s a friend. He’s a great officer, we served together as Chiefs, we served together in Afghanistan when he was there, and I was the CFACC.” The President interviewed both—chose one. “He chose the individual he had really good chemistry with. … It’s not personal. It’s professional.”

Space Wars 

This was 2019, debate about forming a stand-alone military branch focused on space was underway. Goldfein was opposed at the start. He saw a seamlessness in the integration of air and space within his force, and “I was worried that in the business of separating the services, we would separate that jointness,” he said. “I was worried about us, you know, losing some of our edge and the integration of air and space.” 

He imagined turf wars ahead, because he’d been around the Pentagon to know well enough that when something is new, “First thing you build is a castle, then you dig a moat, and then you fill it with dragons. Because you’ve got to protect your resources,” he acknowledged. But then Goldfein went to Maxwell Air Force Base and Air University. He met with a group of Schriever Fellows, “our smartest space officers.” 

Goldfein was trying to sell them on his operational integration concept. “I was watching their body language, and could see: They ain’t buying it,” he admitted. “So I finally just stopped, and did what Chiefs really ought to do, which is to listen.”

By the time the conversation was over, Goldfein said, “I was convinced. I said, ‘Show of hands: How many of you think we need a separate service for space?’ Every hand went up. You know, when you’re the Chief and your Airmen are telling you something, you better listen.” Goldfein set out to learn more. I visited every space base, I went and I read, I listened, I watched, I spoke to industry leaders, I went to NASA. 

“I had two fundamental questions I was asking myself: Can we as a service culturally embrace space superiority with the same passion that we historically have embraced air superiority? And, who can move space for the nation faster in the business of joint warfighting?—Me, as a service Chief that does leaflets to nukes and everything in between, and operates in all the domains? Or a service Chief that is singularly focused on advancing space for the nation?”—In the end, he said, “I came to my own personal conclusion that the President got this one right.”

There were still risk, he thought. If the Air Force and Space Force got this right, the two would co-exist as close and effective partners, independent masters of their individual domains, yet at the same time interdependent on each other and tightly integrated to maximize their joint effect. 

He took to sharing a photograph of himself holding his two granddaughters, each two years old at the time. “I said, ‘Hey, meet my granddaughters, Eva and Rae. They don’t know this, but they are members of the Class of 2040 at the Air Force Academy. And one of them—I’ll let them choose—will join the Air Force and one will join the Space Force. And when they walk across that stage in 2040, the class of 2020 will be graded.”

The test, would be what the two services had forged over the prior 20 years. “Did we build two services that were focused and built on a foundation of trust and confidence in each other, able to work as a joint team for air and space operations, as both supported and supporting commanders?” he asked “Or did we build castles, moats, and dragons?” 

Goldfein bet his tenure on tearing down castles, slaying dragons, and breaching moats. He sees just one good option for the future. Slay the dragons—or fail.                                        

Chiefs, Part 7: ‘Surviving the Budget Control Act Debacle’

Chiefs, Part 7: ‘Surviving the Budget Control Act Debacle’

Nov. 9, 2022 | By Tobias Naegele

In its 75-year history, 22 Airmen have led the Air Force as Chief of Staff. Each came to the post shaped by the experiences—and sometimes scar tissue—developed over three decades of service. Each inherited an Air Force formed by the decisions of those who came before, who bequeathed to posterity the results of decisions and compromises made over the course of their time in office. Each left his own unique stamp on the institution. As part of Air & Space Forces Magazine’s commemoration of the Air Force’s 75th anniversary, Sept. 18, 2022, we interviewed all of the living former Chiefs of Staff.

Gen. Mark A. Welsh, CSAF No. 20 (2012-2016) 

Gen. Mark A. Welsh never dreamed of becoming Chief of Staff, never saw himself as a visionary. “I’m not really good at looking deep into the future with a clearer understanding of what we should be and how to get from A to B,” he says, underselling his intellect. “I can figure out what is important for us to be. And I’m pretty good at moving people toward that.” But a visionary? That’s someone else. “I would characterize myself more as a realist, more of a rubber meets the road guy than a deep thinker.”  

The rubber hit the road in August 2012. The Budget Control Act of 2011 was now in full force, and its unintended consequences were becoming clear. The measure was the result of a compromise: Republicans agreed to raise the debt ceiling so long as Democrats agreed to cut spending. But the measure was intended to drive further compromise. The BCA imposed annual statutory limits on both defense and nondefense discretionary spending; it established a committee to work on a future deficit reduction agreement; and it imposed annual, automatic spending cuts if no deficit reduction agreement was reached.  

The threat of automatic cuts had been seen in 2011 as so onerous that no one would ever let things get that far. But by 2012, it was becoming clear that a deal was not in the offing. Automatic cuts were about to wreak havoc on Air Force spending.  

Welsh became Chief with seven weeks to go in fiscal 2012, a year in which the Air Force budget had declined by $4 billion to $162.8 billion. For the next fiscal year, spending would plunge more than 11 percent to $144.3 billion, its lowest total since 2007. Actually, it was even worse. More than 20 percent of that total passed directly through the Air Force to fund other agencies.  

“We were cutting $20 billion a year out of our budget—or trying to figure out how to do that and get it through Congress—and the Air National Guard had just very publicly started a public argument with the United States Air Force about lack of support for the Guard,” Welsh said.  

The Air Force kept running into walls in Congress. Finding cuts was hard enough internally. Finding cuts that could be sold to Congress was harder still. Welsh didn’t want to sacrifice modernization. That had to be a priority. He needed big chunks of money.  

In 2013, Air Combat Command proposed paying a chunk of the bill by retiring National Guard A-10 Warthogs. Getting rid of all those A-10s could save $4 billion in a hurry. But the Warthog was beloved by Soldiers and Marines, who found joy and triumph in the BRRRRTBRRRRT of its nose-mounted cannon, and it was a favorite of the lawmakers whose districts were home to the Guard’s A-10s, including Arizona’s influential Sen. John McCain.  

Welsh understood the reasoning. Only about 20 percent of the Air Force’s close air support (CAS) missions in Iraq and Afghanistan were being flown by A-10s, and as useful as its 30 mm gun can be,  “its only got about 15 seconds of trigger pull with the gun,” Welsh said. “After that, they’re dropping the same precision guided bombs in the same place everybody else is dropping them.”  

The A-10s could carry more weapons than the F-16, but there were fewer of them, and they couldn’t get places quite as fast. “So really, if you’re in a firefight at night somewhere, do you want a B-1 with 36 precision guided munitions or do you want an A-10 with a GAU? They’re all great at what they do, but the A-10 does only one thing.” The other planes were more versatile.  

“All the modeling and simulation that we’d done showed that this would be the least impact of any airplane fleet that you could divest, and it was the only way to divest an entire fleet—back shops, the engines, the whole supply chain—which is where you get the big savings,” Welsh said. “There was logic to it. It’s just that it wasn’t going to happen.”  

Welsh found himself getting beaten up for a plan that he’d never supported, but it didn’t matter. Once a decision was made it was his job to make the case. And the alternative that resulted was hardly his idea either.  

“Senator McCain really got irate about this,” Welsh added. What ended up happening instead is we got told to keep the A-10 and keep bedding down the F 35, but we were still cutting people.” That created a crush. “We needed the people in the A-10 squadrons to transition to F-35 squadrons, but when that didn’t happen, we had to cut manning in every squadron in the Air Force to 80 percent, just to have enough manpower to stand up the new F-35 units.”  

It didn’t matter. Congress wasn’t buying it. The Air Force appeared tone-deaf to a nation focused on the plight of Soldiers and Marines slugging it out in a ground fight.  

In the Spring of 2013, as Welsh was visiting Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, ahead of a budget hearing the next day, one of the senator’s aides interrupted to share a news alert on his phone. Levin tried to wave him off, but the aide persisted, handing him the phone. Levin looked down at the device through his reading glasses, then peered over the rims at the general before him.  

“You should read this,” he said. Welsh learned that a lieutenant colonel, the chief of the Air Force’s  sexual assault prevention and response branch, had been arrested the night before in Arlington, Va. The charge was sexual assault.   

“So Senator Levin looks up over those glasses, and says, ‘Enjoy your hearing tomorrow.’ Ha—not a good day for us,” Welsh noted.  

He can laugh about it now. At the time, it was just another painful smack, one in a series of embarrassments that kept the Air Force institutionally on the defensive.  The officer was later acquitted, but the incident and others made it seem the Air Force had a bigger problem with sexual assault than the rest of the military or society in general. That wasn’t a true representation of the facts, Welsh explained. But what that kind of publicity did was deflating.  

“The impact those things were having on Airmen in general was significant.” Welsh said. “All they heard was bad news about the Air Force. They were frustrated by budget cuts and sequestration from the Budget Control Act, training dollars were going down, they were deploying constantly. They were frustrated. And my biggest concern as Chief was that we can lose everything else, but if we lose Airmen, there’s no Air Force.” 

Welsh saw his job then as rallying the force, reminding Airmen “of who they are, and what they do, and how well they do it, and why they do it—why it matters,” Welsh went on. “I spent a lot of time on the road talking to Airmen, all over the world, just trying to let them know that we did care, that people were paying attention, that we wanted to make them better at their mission, and that we weren’t going to let everything disintegrate and leave them hanging.” 

Every Chief’s career path is different. In Welsh’s case, he’d had very little time on the Air Staff where he would have had more exposure to the politics and knife fighting of the budget process. “I’d never been close to that interaction and activity, and that was a shortfall of mine,” he said. “You know, if I’d been the Vice Chief of Staff before, it would have been a much easier transition.”  

(It is not surprising then to recall that Welsh’s successor, Gen. David L. Goldfein, suffered no such challenge; he fleeted up from the Vice Chief’s job in 2016, with the benefit of a month of prep-time in which he was cut loose to focus on his new role, rather than the duties of the Vice.) 

It dawned on Welsh too late that the real fight needed to be about his Airmen. It wasn’t just that they needed to be reassured. It was that he needed more of them. And while he and Secretary Deborah Lee James were ultimately able to draw that red line, it was late in his tenure. If there’s one thing he would do differently, he said, it would be to fight for people sooner.  

“There is this assumption that there’s all kinds of efficiencies” to be had in any budget, that there is always fat to be cut, Welsh said. “Well, not really. There isn’t nearly as much as you think. When you go to look at where you can take big chunks of money out of the Air Force budget, its infrastructure, it’s modernization, or its people. The biggest chunk of money is people. So it’s the easiest way to save. But every time you give up an Airman you give up mission capability in some way, shape, or form.” 

To try to identify what could be sacrificed from the budget and what could not, Welsh knew he needed the buy-in from his four-star major command generals, the Air Staff, and the combatant commanders. “You’ve got to have those conversations across the senior leadership of the Air Force,” he said. “It can’t just be the Air Staff having this debate.”  

One of the things Welsh is most proud of is how he attacked this problem by building a visual model of the budget, “a wall of money,” he said. Then he “brought all the four-stars in to do our first programming meetings off of that visual.”  

On the wall were color-coded magnetic strips. “Just one-inch-wide magnetic strips, every inch was a million dollars,” Welsh said. They spent two days staring at that wall, “one of the things I learned the most from as the Chief of Staff.”  

The color-coded magnets created a visual understanding of the challenges—the colors of money, the programs, the available resources.“It goes floor to ceiling and across the whole wall,” Welsh said. Everything included in the budget was above a line in the middle. Everything desired but not yet in the budget was below. In order to move something from below the line to the top, something else had to be subtracted.  

This made clear the choices the Air Force faced, choices that were not about what programs were needed or desirable, but about which ones the Air Force needed most. The trade-offs could thus be made across major commands, not just in the usual stovepipes.  

“We all sat there for two days and talked about it,” Welsh recalled. “And John Hyten who was Air Force Space Command at the time, said, ‘Just go to my column and take those two off.’ And it was like a hush in the room. I mean, he actually gave something up. And that broke the dam.”  

Once Hyten got things started, others followed. Hyten, Welsh noted, was nobody’s fool, because that bought him good will from others as the horse trading continued. But his initiative, his willingness to take a chance by offering something up in the open was crucial to progressing through the job at hand.  

“The big point was, this is our budget, all of us,” Welsh said. “And to optimize it, if we want to put something on the board, something’s got to come off. And if it’s not going to be one of your own things, you’ve got to justify why they are all more important than everybody else’s stuff. That was the discussion we had and it was a really honest discussion. We did it for every year I was there.” 

Like other Chiefs, Welsh found it took too long to learn the job well, that progress came too slowly, and that time went too fast. Four years sounds like a long time, but it isn’t long enough to institutionalize change in an organization so large.

“I do think four years as Chief of Staff is not enough,” Welsh said. Should it be five? Eight? Welsh thought for a moment, then answered decisively: “Six.” The extra time could be subject to re-confirmation by Congress, perhaps, or a renomination by the administration. But more time makes more sense, he said, even if the job itself is exhausting. “Physically, four years is enough,” Welsh said. “I was, I was pretty much dying after four years. But the reason I think it is enough is you don’t really get a chance to implement things that stay implemented. … You work so hard to put some things in place that you think are really meaningful for the Air Force” and they whither when the next Chief focuses someplace else. “They don’t intentionally get rid of the other stuff, maybe they just quit focusing on it—and then there is a certain stasis on the Air Staff, which everybody will go back to.” 

Some call it the frozen middle. Welsh cites “the iron majors and lieutenant colonels and civilians—GS 13s and 14s—who are so incredibly capable and dedicated” to the rules and regulations, the systems and processes. “They understand it, they know how to make it work. And so they’re almost too loyal to it.”  

When the change agents depart, the system reverts to its prior function. “It’s very easy just to go back to the process you know and love,” Welsh said. Two more years as Chief might help prevent that.  

In the Tank, where the Joint Chiefs of Staff hash out matters of policy and strategy, Welsh said his interservice partners were honest and direct with each other and generally cooperative and reasonable. He always felt he was heard, even if he didn’t get his way, including during visits to the White House, where he recalls President Barack Obama giving each of the Chiefs or participants around the table a chance to express their views.  

Yet in the wider national discussion, the value of Air and Space Power seems little understood, either taken for granted or not recognized for its true and full value.  

“The reality is that air power is the most valuable integrating and attacking force on the battlefield. It just is, there’s no argument against that,” Welsh said. “You don’t get to the fight without air power. You don’t get the ISR you need to prepare for the fight without air power and space power. They work together, even if they’re different forces now, they still work together. And when required, air power can be the decisive force on the battlefield.”  

Of course, he adds, there are things air power cannot do, like occupy some piece of territory, or set up and support a mayor in a small village. But these capabilities are not mutually exclusive.  

“The idea that nobody’s been attacked from the air since the Korean War …. that’s an astonishing fact,” Welsh said. “It’s because air power and air supremacy provides freedom to attack and freedom to maneuver. It gives you the ability to be the greatest Army, the greatest Marine Corps on the planet.” Without it, those other advantages erode quickly. Investing in air power is therefore an investment in the Total Force. “If you are fighting against the U.S. Air Force, supported by Naval aviation and Marine Corps aviation, you’d have a problem,” Welsh said, because “it is and can be a dominant force.”  

The question the nation must answer is whether that is something it still values. “Can we provide air superiority everywhere these days with the amount of force structure we have? Of course not,” Welsh considered. “But where we choose to have it, we can have it.”