Watch, Read: Lessons from the Afghanistan Withdrawal

March 13, 2022

Lt. Col. Joshua “Doc” Holaday, moderates a discussion on last year’s withdrawal from Afghanistan with Brig. Gen. Daniel A. DeVoe, commander of the 618th Air Operations Center; Col. Colin McClaskey, deputy commander of the 821st Contingency Response Group; and Col. Gregory Cyrus, commander of the 621st Contingency Response Group during the AFA Warfare Symposium on March 4, 2022. Watch the video or read the transcript below. This transcript is made possible through the sponsorship of JobsOhio.

Lt. Col. Joshua “Doc” Holaday: Good morning, everyone. I’m Lt. Col. Josh Holaday, I go by Doc. A couple years ago, I was a PACOM planner and I learned there that you learn who your true friends are, whoever shows up at the last day. So my good friends, welcome to the final symposium here today. I know your books say that you’re here for mobility, global reach for the warfighter. We’re absolutely going to talk about that. But we’re going to spend the first third to a half of it, though, deep-diving on Afghanistan. And when you hear who we’ve got on the panel with us today, you’ll understand why I am honored to have three mobility leaders here with us to discuss the withdrawal from Afghanistan, and lessons we can apply to future operations. It’s important to highlight the importance of today’s topic and set the scene for you in the audience in at home. The capability that undergirds America’s international diplomatic and military power is the mobility forces, from tankers to cargo aircraft to contingency response forces—and to the thousands of Airmen required to keep the mobility machine running every day. The US military simply cannot operate without global mobility. As you all know, the Air Force’s mobility forces sustain everything the US forces do from exercises and training events across the globe, to presidential support missions, to homeland defense every day. Most recently, Air Mobility Command earned international accolades for its efforts throughout the Afghanistan evacuation. If you need another reminder of the importance of logistics, take a look on the open-source imagery coming from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Stunning. Looking to the future, Air Mobility will continue to play an essential role across the board. The Joint All Domain Command and Control, Agile Combat Employment CONOPS, global contingency operations in an ever-changing world, we do it all. Even after major US operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have ended, we should expect no reduction in demand for rapid global mobility for the warfighter. That’s why I’m pleased to be joined today by three leaders who not only witnessed the Afghanistan withdrawal from various strategic vantage points, but are looking to the future of rapid global mobility. I’m pleased to be here today with Brig. Gen. Dan DeVoe, the commander of the 618th Air Operations Center; Col. Gregory Cyrus, the commander of the 621st Contingency Response Group; and Col. Colin McClaskey, deputy commander of the 821st Contingency Response Group. Gentlemen, thanks so much for joining me today. The evacuation operation we saw in Afghanistan would later become the largest NEO operation in US history, successfully transporting over 124,000 qualified evacuees out of the region, and onto intermediate staging locations. To kick off this conversation, I’d like to give each of you a chance to make some opening remarks on Operation Allies Refuge and what you saw from each of your vantage points during these crucial days. And we’re going to start at the strategic level and get down towards the tactical level. So Gen. DeVoe, sir, you’re up first, Where were you during this operation? And what did you experience?

Brig. Gen. Daniel A. DeVoe, commander of the 618th Air Operations Center: All right, Thanks, Doc. And first, I just like to say thank you to AFA, our corporate sponsors and partners for hosting this panel today and the larger symposium, and to all of you both online and here in the room that of that have taken time to join us. So I get the privilege to be the commander of the 618th Air Operations Center Tanker Airlift Control Center at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois. And we provide the command and control for rapid global mobility. So airlift, air refueling, aeromedical evacuation and the global air mobility support system to include the CR forces, the AMOW, the JI teams, the EAGLE teams, etc, they’re out there making mobility happen for the department events in our nation every single day. Typically, on a given day, we C2 about 1100 total force aircraft. And so that’s about 180 higher headquarters requirements out of that pool on a given day. Right now, there’s probably about 40 of those in the air somewhere around the world. And you’ve heard that a mobility aircraft takes off every, or lands every two and a half minutes around the globe. That provides us a tremendous amount of flexibility, and that’s steady state operational requirements in day to day competition. However, when a crisis occurs, we get to leverage that flexibility and bring to bear the rest of that Air Mobility power. And that was the case in August for OAR. So at that time, on that day, you know, mentioned 124,000 PAX moved in 17 days. Air Mobility Command moved about 75,000 of those, the CR forces on the ground that we were C2-ing, and that was led by Col. McClaskey here, to my far left, they handled and processed just about all of those. So Air Mobility touched the lives of each and every one of those individuals, as we prosecuted that fight. It was 329 C-17s in the course of that 17 days, that went into Hamid Karzai International Airport and subsequently back out with full loads of packs, but it was 2700 total mobility sorties in those same 17 days around the globe that affected this operation and enabled that to happen. So this was a mobility-centric operation. But it was a whole of government effort. It was a coalition effort. It was a joint effort. And it was by no means all TRANSCOM or Air Mobility. So nearly every aspect of the Air Force’s core capabilities touched OAR in some way. Same for the Space Force. You know, whether you’re talking about the overwatch overhead with strike assets, the ISR, the space capabilities that were enabled, the BOS-I Airmen, not just the folks operating at HKIA. But throughout nodes across the system, nearly every AFSC was involved in some way. And it wasn’t just the uniformed members. We had civilians on the ground, civilian family members on the ground in USAFE building tents, setting up infrastructure, preparing field food and meals, not only for our Airmen, but also for the evacuees coming through. So truly a total force effort and a tremendous accomplishment by the entire team. The one thing I will say though, it is also offered a tremendous opportunity to assess and to learn some lessons, not just for the next NEO, but for high-end competition, kinetic fight against a peer competitor. And if we don’t leverage those lessons and opportunities that we had from this great successful operation, then that will be a true tragedy. So my vantage point was from the Air Operation Center at Scott. And they were long days and my team was working hard to C2 all of those missions. But the two gentlemen to my left here were on the ground, dealing with those challenges in their raw form, day in and day out. So, Doc.

Holaday: Perfect. Thank you very much. As you said, Col. Cyrus, you’re on the ground from before the evacuation began. So can you tell us about your experiences out there?

Col. Gregory Cyrus, commander of the 621st Contingency Response Group: Yeah, first of all, thanks, Gen. DeVoe. Thanks, Doc. Thanks, AFA for having us today. So I was actually deployed as the DIRMOBFOR I was in place in AFCENT at the CAOC on one July. And because of my CR background and assets tasked from CENTCOM to employ an 0-6 JACE, and ensure the airfield services remained intact at HKIA, the CFACC in his role decided that I was the right person to go forward. And so they put me into HKIA on 6 August. I spent my first week over at the embassy doing JACE duties for USFOR-A. In that capacity. I had the opportunity to brief the JTF-CR Commander Gen. Sullivan at the time. His concern obviously was essential airfield services to make sure that the airfield stayed operational and viable. On 13 August, he decided that he needed to pull me back over to the airfield and perform my JACE duties from that location. We all know what happened obviously on 13 and 13-15th of August. The State Department declared NEO, the operation began. And then we started obviously, pushing the sorties into HKIA. I just want to make one point clear, HKIA was the only airfield and only runway in Afghanistan at the time, right. So very important that we maintain that hub, that spoke, whatever you want to call it, in order to ensure that the airlock remained open to get those evacuees out of Afghanistan. And so over the course of the next 55 to 60 hours, we know what happened, we had a couple invasions. Obviously, when the Taliban pushed into the city of Kabul, it forced a lot of the Afghans to flee into the airfield. Immediately, they saw US aircraft and coalition aircraft, and they said that’s my best opportunity to get out of here. So they fled across the runway at that point. At that point, obviously, I was lucky enough to have seven aerial porters from AFCENT on the ground with me and former Marine air traffic controllers. They’re at HKIA. So when we talk about multi capable Airmen, I can really get into what I saw those aerial porters do and what those Marines did for us to keep that airfield open over the next 55 hours. Obviously, we spent our time, I assumed senior forward authority from the Turkish forces there, and worked our best to get 82nd Airborne and so that they could secure the airfield and then get the CRG on the ground where we bought Col. McClaskey in.

Holaday:

Perfect segue, sir, you came in with the 82nd, or right before, or just after?

Col. Colin McClaskey, deputy commander of the 821st Contingency Response Group: Doc, thanks. And I want to echo everybody’s comments here. Thank you to everybody being here at the end of the day into the conference, it’s been a great conference and thank you to the AFA for putting all this together. So I’m at a very tactical point on this and most people that I’ve talked to said I participated in some way. And that’s awesome. Because to Genral DeVoe’s point, almost every AFSC did, and that included, you know, at the time I was in the Horn of Africa, on an assessment mission. I thought that was the most stressful mission that I was going to do in several years. And then I received a phone call, and a phone call said, You need to get out to Kabul—Afghanistan is collapsing. And this was the middle of, earlier on in August. But something else that matter, something that we do in a very smaller force is we have really good relationships. And Col. Cyrus listed a whole bunch of acronyms because he had so many different hats that he was wearing. And he mentioned that he was out there because he was the right person. He had a diverse background. He could speak air mobility, he could speak the connected system that we call GAMS, he understood the C2 system. And so the first call that I made was to Col. Cyrus, and he was still in embassy at the time and he let me know how dire the situation was from their assessment. And my hope was that the team that I had with me in the Horn of Africa could go forward. But that ended up not being the case. There were many plans. And I know Gen. DeVoe’s team had very well thought out deliberate plans for how this would happen. But everyone gets a vote, the enemy gets a vote. You know, you name it. Things are very dynamic. So I ended up going forward as fast as I could to fly on an Air Force Africa, AFAF-owned C-130 to Ramstein. And then that day, I jumped on the next C-17 coming through to fly out there. But it’s important to note that while we were overhead, it was a Guard crew out of California that that flew me out there with the team that happened to be passing through. We couldn’t land. I could see the ground. I’m on NVGs in the cockpit, sitting [inaudible] for any of the C-17 folks that know that. I can talk to Col. Cyrus on the ground on the handheld radio, but we couldn’t land. And we couldn’t land because we had an expert already on the ground, who was able to assess the airfield. And think about this when you’re thinking about ACE and future concepts. But having that expert on the ground, who’s able to look and say, This is not safe for MAFF aircraft land right now. We need you here, we need the people, not me, they need the rest of the people and the equipment that were that was on that aircraft with me. So something that’s unique that our country can do is, the system already had tankers out there, over Afghanistan, because there wasn’t anywhere else to land or launch aircraft, our CAFSC that was going on there needed fuel. So we were able to go to a tanker, but we still weren’t able to land. So we ended up diverting to the ‘Deid, landing, getting a new crew, and then going back as soon as the airfield open. From then on, I’d love to talk at length about what all those incredible multi capable airmen do day in and day out, and what they did at Kabul because it was absolutely incredible. But they did it alongside partners, allies, friends, locals that were desperate to get out to save their families, that kind of stuff. And it was it was really inspirational to see everybody come together in a situation like that, and, and take care of those people that needed to be taken care of, and make sure we could get as many folks out of there even if they weren’t going to go on beyond the Middle East. We could at least get them out of that dangerous situation.

Holaday: Oh, appreciate it. I know the Mitchell Institute and certainly AFA would love to publish your stories if you’re willing to write them down or get your execs to write them for you. But we as officers are paid not just to look back fondly on our experiences and praise our teams but to keep a wary eye on the future. So Gen DeVoe, this OAR clearly required a tremendous amount of logistics planning and real time movement oversight and effort that was led by your men and women in the 618th AOC. However, in a future fight against a pure adversary, and again, I’m a PACOM guy, so China, the battlespace will likely be even more chaotic, untested, unpredictable, and lethal than what we saw on Afghanistan. So what lessons is AOC learning from Afghanistan, and how will we use those to shape the future of command and control in a much more contested environment?

DeVoe: Oh, great, great question, Doc. And so there are many, and to my earlier point, as far as if we if we pass up the opportunity to assess what transpired here, that will be the true tragedy. And I’m proud to say that I don’t think we are. At the Air Force level, at the joint level, down-echelon, units at every level are looking at this. And so that’s great. So we have we a trove of lessons earned. And I’m not going to touch on all of them A point that Colin had made, right, we had a plan going in and there was there was an initial, the initial was we’re going to flow these folks straight out of HKIA all the way back to the States. And so on those initial deployments, we had air bridges stood up, we had a plan laid out time, and we had all the C-17 capacity, we needed to go all the way back. But this is a State Department led effort, right. And eventually that transitioned over to Department of Homeland Security. But DOD was supporting and providing a bulk of that lift of that effort. And so you know, that no longer became an option, we had to stop somewhere, we couldn’t take everybody back direct to the states. So all I’ll say about that is the flexibility that’s needed, right? Best laid plans, and to Colin’s point, everybody gets a vote, those votes start coming in, and you’ve got to adjust on the fly from the C2 standpoint. And that’s what happened here. Without going into too much detail, I will say there were three major adjustments from how we conduct and flow aircraft and operations during the course of this. But some of the significant, at a higher, more strategic level, lessons that we learned—and we’ve, we’ve held Lessons Learned conferences through the LeMay Center for the AF on this very topic that lasted days. So I’m going to cover this very quickly. Data management, and C2 systems integration into common automated systems. Not just to drive decisions at my level, but to inform as well, up and down echelon. And we need that for a number of reasons, right, sometimes just to satisfy interest, sometimes to drive higher level decisions, sometimes to inform lower level subordinates. So they have the situational awareness. And if we end up in an in a situation where mission command needs to kick in, they’ve got the latest context prior to that point from which to base their decisions and take charge and move out. And so that one was significant. The joint mobility enterprise has a robust set of procedures that aren’t perfect and could use some improvement, but that do work pretty well. But, not so much an Air Force equity, but holding our joint partners accountable to following not what are Air Mobility processes and procedures, and that’s how it’s commonly represented, but joint processes and procedures to deploy. And those 17 days, we deployed combat air power from intra theater from within the CENTCOM AOR, from the CONUS. And then we started flowing evacuees out. And then we started sustaining personnel, flowing supplies in. And then we did aeromedical, evacuation, all along, flowing evacuees out. And then we did redeployment and retrograde of those combat forces and CR forces in less than three weeks. And so that was significant. And there were times that we needed to be agile, we took off with forces from the CONUS. And while they were en route airborne, the user said, Nope, we want to go to this location instead of that. And what do I have on that plane. And so systems with the information, the ability to manage that data and make those adjustments on the fly, are absolutely essential. And in the spectrum of competition through conflict. Remember, this was a relatively benign environment. Clear command relationships. So this was a CENTCOM led effort for the DOD. But in practicality, not directed, not officially, this was really a US TRANSCOM effort, really, as a supporting commander, as I said, spread across five combatant commands three geographic, two functional. And so understanding that is important. Because when we talk about things like mission command, if commander’s at each of the nodes and steps along the way, would have been left to make—and I’m not talking about the aircrew level, I’m talking about higher echelons—to make decisions based on their individual circumstances. The mission would have failed because they were in some very difficult positions. And they had very legitimate reasons to try to drive in other directions. But that wasn’t in concert with our highest guidance and with what the mission objectives and goals were. And so that drives to the need for centralized C2. But our crews on the ground, the CR forces, the aircrew folks on the ground at Al-Udeid, were making decisions that went against the books, were making decisions that they normally wouldn’t make in routine days. They were executing mission command, and they absolutely needed to, and had the full support of the structure, and authorities over them to do so. And so we needed mission command. At the same time. If you were in the keynote address yesterday with Eric Schmidt, you heard him say, when the internet was developed, it was initially developed, you know, from a disaggregated point, a decentralized point, and then has become centralized. But we’re actually, what we need today is both. I will tell you, from my perspective, C2 is the same way you need both, and we need to be able to move back and forth. There are many other lessons, again, at echelon, at many different levels. In the interest of time, and I know we’re gonna touch on some more as we talk here. I’m gonna, I’m gonna pass it over.

Holaday: Thanks, sir. So you talked about mission command and decentralized execution. A key part of that is commander’s intent. So Col. Cyrus, you’re on the ground early. Did you have commander’s intent? How did you get it? And how effective were you and your airmen at executing that commander’s intent?

Cyrus: Yeah, I would say I absolutely had commander’s intent, obviously, be in the DIRMOBFOR working directly for the CFACC. I had daily touch points with him leading up to the operations at HKIA. So I clearly understood what needed to be done from a strategic and operational level. What I came to realize really quickly when I got on the ground at HKIA and went into those JACE roles, slash CRG roles, was that unity of command became a challenge at that point, because we had multiple general officer-led joint task force USFOR-A forward, 82nd Airborne Division. And we even had the Resolute Command, general officer, still on the ground there. So each and every one of them had their commander’s intent, but it ultimately came from the President of the United States. So we needed to keep that airfield open and viable and operational, so that we could evacuate the people that needed to be evacuated. We needed to ensure the essential airfield services, those that was charged directly from CENTCOM to AFCENT. Make sure those airfield services stay open. And unfortunately, when that first crowd of Afghans came across the runway and breached the runway perimeter that caused the NATO contracts to cease operation, right. So the air traffic controllers that are part of the NATO contract, the port operations, the ramp services, all those were civilian contracts managed by NATO. Unfortunately, because of that incident, they couldn’t stay on the airfield and continue doing those things. So commander’s intent at that point, then became, you need to get out there and keep that airfield open. You need to assume senior forward authority and we need to take those [inaudible] and those Marines and make sure that they can do multi capable ops. We had we had aerial porters, expediting aircraft, marshalling aircraft, we had the Marine air traffic controllers, obviously providing security of the ramp, at the same time landing aircraft and taking off aircraft, it was a pretty amazing thing to watch on the ground, being a leader there for the CR forces and for the operation that happened. Commander’s intent, obviously, you know, strategic, making sure the strategic mission of getting those folks out of HKIA happened, but then taking that down all the way to the tactical level and making sure that we got the 82nd Airborne on the ground, provided the aircraft the opportunity to land eventually and eventually get the the enablers on the ground too so they continue working airfield services.

Holaday: I appreciate that very much. Col. McClaskey, you raised a great point in a previous discussion you and I had, and I’d love for you to expound upon it for us. As a weapon school graduate, I’ve seen my share of Red Flag [inaudible] where the fighters go out and do their thing. A peer fight in the Pacific is going to be different. Can you detail for our warfighter audience how Red Flag is really hard and important, but the things that need to happen before a typical fighter ‘vol goes down, maybe should not be assumed to have happened in a fight in the Pacific against a pure adversary. What kind of hard work does an ability side of the house have to do before the guys and then pointy nose aircraft get to work?

McClaskey: Thanks. I think all that starts—the how do you prepare, I talked earlier about having the right expert on the ground who could assess the airfield. All that starts well in advance. And for the Pacific that started many, many years ago, looking at all the potential airfields and this kind of thing. You talk about Red Flag, how many times have we gone out to the same locations, the same chunks of airspace on the West Coast, right, or over the Nellis ranges, that kind of thing. Things to think about. That’s the easy stuff. It may seem hard, but that’s the easy stuff. The challenge becomes when you go into a complex and very dynamic environment. And that’s what we had in the Horn of Africa and then in HKIA. And so if we go back to our roots and what we’ve studied in doctrine on this, it talks about mission command and the principles there. You know, being that you have to have commander’s intent, mission type orders and adaptable mindset. But there’s something else that’s more important. And that’s trust. And we saw that with trust up and down the chain, that trust doesn’t happen because an event’s going on. That happens in the exercise in the workups, working with their coalition partners ahead of time, working out at Red Flag and maybe failing a couple times until you can figure out how to get through that. But there’s a whole lot more that was relevant to the scenario. How do you get to Nellis? Fly in early, you build up everything. How are we going to get to that island that was Hamid Karzai? We weren’t floating stuff in and we weren’t driving stuff in, it had to fly. So it came down to logistics, air logistics, the air bridges, and we weren’t going to do any of that without having the risk bogged down by the persistent ISR, by the satellite communications, the BLOS, beyond line of sight stuff that we had provided there, by the multiple stacks of combat aircraft, and ISR aircraft, and all of the folks on the ground, from the soldiers and the Marines to the coalition partners to those mobility experts that were able to assess it. But I would challenge you, when you’re thinking about any major exercise, whether that’s one of the flag exercises or even a smaller exercise, start thinking about, how do we get to the scenario? How do we get our medical teams here? What medical teams are going to be here? Are they trained to be here? Are they prepared for global reporting instructions or local reporting instructions? I know that’s something Col. Cyrus is big on, right. What about the air refueling? Where am I going to put my tankers? Am I gonna have enough fuel? Are they compatible with all the aircraft that are gonna be operating in this arena? What about the threat ring? Gen. DeVoe highlighted that as complex and uncertain as Hamid Karzai was when it came to airspace, we were not facing a peer threat. When you think about that, how are we going to get that the enablers in there for the assessment, to get our fuel in, to get our medical teams in, to get the global C2 nodes in there. So we work through a lot of those challenges, but those are things that I think we as a service need to if we’re not already doing that, I’m just not aware of it, start working towards integrating MAFF more into those exercises.

Cyrus: Can I just add one thing on, Doc? So when it comes to Red Flag obviously we launch, we prepare, we move out of Nellis as the main operating base. Why don’t we try opening Nellis as the main operating base and practice that with our ACE concepts, right, and then when they’re returning from the vol, hey, maybe Nellis isn’t available for the aircraft to land and rearm and refuel at that point, and we send them somewhere else and that just happens to be a spoke that our that our forces went out and opened.

Holaday: Concur. I agree completely with all those statements, which is why I asked you the question. I’m gonna ask both of these questions to this question to Cols. Cyrus and McClaskey, but mainly Col. Cyrus here. So a key part of ACE is the idea of the multi-capable airman, right? And it’s designed, originally at least, to reduce the number of people we have to push out the door and then sustain at those operating locations forward. When I first thought of this concept, I thought to myself, so the CRG, that’s what you’re describing, right? But there’s a catch. The reason the CRGs are so good at what they do is because they train and exercise all the time. That’s a pretty big bill for an average wing to pay. It’s probably too big of a bill for an average wing to pay. And so during the Afghan withdrawal what parts of multi capable airman did you see working successfully, and what lessons have you brought back to be tailored from average wings’ MCA training plans?

Cyrus: Yeah, thanks. Um, so in my mind, what makes a good multi-capable airman involves three pillars. One of those, obviously, is the multi capable aspect of it, right. We’re training somebody to be good in one AFSC and maybe have some basic skills and another AFSC. We call that cross functional skills in the CR. Pretty much any one of my CRG airmen can go out and operate a forklift or man a defensive fighting position and do other things to help manage the airfield in the safety, in the operations. Another thing we saw is expeditionary skills. We’ve got to get away from this mentality that we’re going to a main operating base, let’s say Yokota or Ramstein, for example, and we’re going to start working out of operations or locations that we haven’t been to. It could be a dirt landing zone in the middle of nowhere. Or it could be an austere international airport where we’re just at the request of the host nation. And we’re not going to have all those accoutrements that we’re used to when it comes to working at a main operating base. Right. So expeditionary skills come in, they’re critical at that point, right, we need to start building that mentality from the ground up. During our assumptions, we need to change the culture, we need to make sure all our airmen understand that from the from the get go. And then finally, one of the things that’s going to be an issue, I think, in my mind, for the mission generation wings, is going to be proficiency. You mentioned it right, we train and do this and in practice, and operate this mentality on a day to day basis in the CRGs, we are allowed to do that because that is our job in garrison, is to prepare and prepare for that mission. What we’re going to need to see when it comes to lessons learned coming out of HKIA is that those skills that we practice are eventually going to atrophy over time. And we’re gonna need to make sure that we provide the time and space for airmen that are that are working toward that multi capable concept to be able to go out and do that at a more frequent basis.

McClaskey: Can I speak up here real quick, because everything Col. Cyrus said is 100 percent spot-on. And I’m very thankful that we have big brains like that, that are thinking about the forward, how do we develop and get better at this. But I want to just pass on some of the amazing stories that I observed personally, with some of our airmen doing multi cable things out there at HKIA. And what I’m trying to avoid doing is saying that, if you’re multi cable or cross functional, that you can do that other AFCS’s job as well as they can, you cannot, every single one of us are M4, M9-qual’d, we practice with defensive fighting positions, all that kind of stuff. There’s a big difference between securing the airfield, which the Army and the Marines did a very, very good job of, and controlling that movement area that we’re so used to, right. You call tower for clearance to cross and all the stuff—they’re not used to dealing with that. They have checkpoints. I did not have enough cops. Full stop. I did not, to the point where the defenders that I had were doing an incredible job of trying to control the movement on the airfield. But I had other career fields who had basic weapons qual, defensive fighting positions, stuff like this. And so they had the training, that they could augment, that they could help reduce that risk to safety, reduce that risk of bending aircraft, or having someone get hurt on the ground during taxi or flight operations. So that’s what I think is necessary when we talk about MCA or multi cable airman, is being adaptable in your mindset, and being willing to support whoever that lead is. So whether that was the vehicle maintainer, that I said, we have a lot of commercial aircraft here, but I’ve got old Russian air stairs, and they don’t work, can you help. And they’re thinking about ways that they can get this to work. And they found that there was a local person there who had worked on these air stairs for a previous contract, and they got them connected in or whether it was aerial porters, who found themselves augmenting security details with the Marines on the gate. So those are just some examples where you don’t know what is going to be needed at the time. But the huge advantage we have are really smart Airmen. We train in a variety of things. And they remained very adaptable.

Holaday: One of the things you guys haven’t mentioned in your training is the basics. And that’s something I saw. We went and put F-22s in Palau in 2016. And the number one issue is a lack of shade and potable water, like stuff we don’t necessarily think about, but in the South Pacific is a basic. So the importance to get out there and train, we’re going to fight super, super important. General, I’ve got one more question for you. And we’re going to be out of time, I think, here. Obviously, we’ve talked a ton about allied and partner support internationally, either at HKIA on the ground or moving throughout the network moving across those countries. In the Pacific, one thing I’ve seen firsthand is that smaller countries are hungry for sustained US presence to help them offset Chinese pressure locally, usually economically. Because AMC conducts missions around the globe each day, and very few of our aircraft come with the security requirements of say putting an F-35 in a random country, what role do you think AMC’s AOC can play both in coordinate geographic AOCs and in working with allies and partners to strengthen relationships and increase US presence across the world? So if something with an adversary like China were to kick off, the US would be in better shape with regards to its allies and partners?

DeVoe: OK, great, great question. So one thing that’s foreign to me is this notion that allies and partners are something separate from who we are and what we do day to day. And so right now, in the AOC today, I’ve got a Canadian officer on the floor, who’s running airlift missions, helping run airlift missions since I’ve been there. I’ve had Aussies in my AOC assigned, working. Last couple of years had delegations from Japan, Korea come visit, tour through, interact among others, even in a COVID environment, because there’s an operational imperative for them to understand and to integrate and be able to do business with us. This week, not really supposed to be talking about current ops. This week, I’ll just say we’ve had three coronets, we’ve planned and executed. [Inaudible] foreign fighters. And none of that’s in support of the EUCOM effort. I won’t mention that for what’s going on there. We had an airlift mission being flown this week, earlier this week, by a coalition partner and I won’t name any names. They broke, it happens, I probably got a dozen just broken in the system right now. But the cargo needed to keep moving. And as soon as they realized that they weren’t going to get their fixed jet fixed in a day, we were able to bring a C-17 in, transload, this isn’t at a military base, this is at a relatively austere location, transload, get it up and keep that mission happening. That’s integrated, interoperable partnerships between allies, and our peer competitors, and adversaries, they don’t have anybody they can do that with. And we have a whole list of folks that we can do that with. We’ve got MSAS teams today in Africa, regularly down in South America. We do this day in and day out—not to say that we can’t do more, and that we don’t need to do more to integrate with our allies and partners. Because we do, we can’t rest on our laurels. But what all those examples are that I described there, that’s winning in the competition space. And that is an advantage again, that our adversaries do not have. And it was no different in OAR. And it actually got pretty complex too. So we had we had allies and partners flying with us who were fully into CFACC’s ATO. Right. And 609’s ATO. They’re running and you couldn’t, you didn’t, you couldn’t tell, just as smooth as could be. We had allies and partners who are running their own missions, if you will, but still able to integrate and Colin’s team interacted with and operate with. We had allies and partners who gave us capacity, whether military jets or commercial aircraft. And I didn’t mention our commercial partners were heavily involved in this and we activated the craft as well. But we had, they gave us capacity that we could schedule and use. They crewed and flew, but we could dictate. And then we had very loosely I’ll use the word partners or other countries, let’s use it that way, that showed up. And we’re involved in this operation as well that weren’t necessarily allies and partners. But our ability to see to and bring all of that together, or to just at least operate in the same space, was absolutely crucial.

Holaday: Gentlemen, appreciate that very much. Dear friends, we’ve come to the end of our time. If you’ve liked what you’ve seen today, and like the questions you’re getting out of guys like me, I urge you to go over to Mitchellaerospacepower.org. The Mitchell Institute is where I am currently working, but they do a great job of putting out papers and podcasts that talk to you, the Airman and Guardian out there in the force. You can subscribe to their mailing list and receive updates analyst reports events and podcasts etc. Reminder next up in Gatlin D where we’ve been doing the big events, they’re going to do the award ceremony and the Spark Tank next. But special thank you to Gen. Devoe, Col. Cyrus, McCloskey for joining us today as a great panel. Thank you gentlemen. Appreciate it.

Watch, Read: Keeping Humans in the Loop of JADC2 and ABMS

March 13, 2022

Brig. Gen. Jeffery Valenzia, Department of the Air Force Advance Battle Management System Cross Functional Team Lead, moderates a discussion on joint all-domain command and control with Ron Fehlen, vice president and general manager of Air Force Programs, Broadband Communications Systems, L3Harris Technologies; James Dorrell, vice president of ABMS of Lockheed Martin; Lanny Merkel, director of JADC2 Capabilities Mission Systems at Collins Aerospace during the AFA Warfare Symposium on March 3, 2022. Watch the video or read the transcript below. This transcript is made possible through the sponsorship of JobsOhio.

Brig. Gen. Jeffery Valenzia, Department of the Air Force Advance Battle Management System Cross Functional Team Lead: Good afternoon, I’m Jeff Valenzia. I, in partnership with Brig. Gen. John Olson, who was the lead from Space Force and the rapid capabilities office in the lead of Mr. Walden, are responsible for the modernization of Advanced Battle Management Systems. And so we’re going to talk to you a bit today just about where we are in that conversation of modernizing what we call command, and what we call battle management. And we have a really esteemed panel here of experts from industry, they’re going to talk about the incredibly close partnership that we have as the warfighters with industry. If we’re going to bring this reality of changing the way we sense, make sense and act and put it into your hands as a warfighter—out of curiosity, how many in this room here are battle managers? OK, a couple—I will tell you that the system of which we are designing, what is absolutely essential in this system, and our success, is the role of the battle manager.

Let me just put down this: we are not computerizing battle management, we are not taking the sophisticated functions that sit in the hands of the profession of our battle managers, and writing them into an algorithm. In fact, battle management is essential that we have the man in the loop and part of that process, to take the data, the information, turn it into knowledge and direct the actions if we’re going to win. The imperatives of how we do that, however, have changed. If you take a look at our battle management processes today, and I’m not going to surprise any of you when I tell you, that’s way too slow. I’m not going to surprise any of you when I tell you it’s way too vulnerable. And I’m not going to surprise any of you, when I tell you, not only just within the Air and Space Force, but across the entirety of the joint force, it’s way too stovepipe. And if we’re going to modernize, the way in which we make decisions, and the way in which we direct actions is going to have to get at the core of these foundational challenges that we have. And to do that, we have to put a stake in the ground in what we call our theory of victory. And our theory of victory is this. We believe that if you’re going to succeed against an advanced adversary, as essential as the bombs, bullets and platforms of which we know and have come to rely on in war is going to be how you sense, make sense and act in your environment.

And to do that, we’re going to have to make the functions of command and the functions of control separable. I did not say separated, separable. That does not mean that I need a commander inside the loop of every decision once they’ve allocated the resources and authorities and provided the intent. I don’t need them calling every shot in execution, I need them to hand it over to a control node that has the tools and the ability to direct that action to meet that intent. It has to happen in a matter of microseconds in some cases. But that’s not going to be the case in all of our missions. For instance, I’m not going to separate control from command when it comes to nuclear operations. Instead, we have to design a system that has the ability to accommodate based upon the tactical scenario, and the risk — how we can separate those two—and it’s a lot harder than we initially thought. Second, we’ve got to go from our model of coupled battle management into a decoupled and distributed model of battle management. That means I can’t expect if I’m going to affect an outcome on the tactical edge, that I have to put the battle manager, their information systems, their sensors, and their direct communication into one platform and fly it where it becomes a missile magnet. We’ve got to be able to decouple those and decouple those in a very smart, methodical way. And it begins with the notion that they shouldn’t have to sit under or on top of their sensor to be effective. Rather, we’ve got to be able to deliver the information they need to be effective from distributed sensors, through sophisticated but very effective fusion models. I also can’t put them in reliance that they’re sitting in direct comms with every single platform which they control. The tyranny of distance, or the tyranny of speed, depending upon what you want to drive and what AOR you’re talking about, has put us into a position that conventional communication networks are no longer survivable or effective.

Finally, I have to integrate them. I have to integrate their processes, I have to drive commonality amongst the way in which we plan, allocate resources, measure and account for risk. But we also have to create commonality in their systems. And this drives a horizontal-vertical integration in our designs that we have both within the Air and the Space Force, but also across the joint force in a new and novel way. But I’m gonna go back to what I started with. Absolutely essential is there will be battle managers involved in this system. And we’re going to design it into the system in a way in which we’re to give them the applications to interface with the information, they have to transition that into knowledge. And then they can direct the action. But we’re also going to write some algorithms. So let’s not kid ourselves, there are some processes of which we relied on people, manpower, to do that we don’t anymore. And that we have a sophisticated enough understanding of those functions and those tasks and those processes to be successful, that we’re able to start to parse out some mundane, or error-prone tasks. And we’re able to allocate those to some machine activities. And what I’m painting for you is a picture where battle management achieves the same outcome of which it always has sought to achieve, but the manner in which we achieve that outcome, how we pull together, the technologies, how we mature, our tactics, techniques and procedures is changed. And it’s changing now. And so with that, just to set the course here, I want to give this panel an opportunity introduce themselves. And I’d love to have a conversation with how industry is going to be a part of what is ostensibly a really difficult task in front of us. So Ron, I’ll start with you.

Ron Fehlen, vice president and general manager of Broadband Communications Systems at L3Harris Technologies: So hey, thanks for the intro. Ron Fehlen, I’m the vice president and general manager for broadband communication system at L3Harris Technologies out in Salt Lake City, I tell you, when I listened to you talk about the networks, I immediately go back to what our core capabilities are, to ensure that we have a secure, assured resilient network to be able to push that data around to get to where it needs to be to feed all those algorithms, first of all. But I will tell you, as well, as I listen, I think back to my military career after 20 years, and the first part of it, as I mentioned previously, was spent on AWACS, and got to ride in the back end on the mission crew for about seven years. And I couldn’t agree with you more that the human part of the battle manager and that is so critical to the decisions, life and death decisions that are made every day. And I got to witness that firsthand.

And I’ll share as well, we never at that time, this was the ’90s timeframe, watching no fly zones and things of that nature. Never at that time did we talk about space, never talked about yet. You just talked about the fact that you’re not the only one that’s advocating here. It’s the Air Force and the Space Force working together. And then the third part is the joint force. While we always had the joint force, the level of integration, I think going forward, as you mentioned, is going to be actually absolutely critical going forward. So as a matter of intro, at least, and I’ll pass it on, Lanny.

Lanny Merkel, director of JADC2 Capabilities Mission Systems at Collins Aerospace: All right, thanks. So Lanny Merkel, I’m the director of JADC2 capabilities for Collins Aerospace, based in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Unlike the other two members of the panel here, I never did serve. My background is in engineering, actually. Right. So I resonate a lot with some of the comments that the General made, right.

And sometimes, as engineers, right, we think of capabilities and delivering capabilities. And we also need to consider the operational constraints and context of, you know, engineers want to give you all the data and put it on all every inch of every display. And one of the challenges that we really need to get through is what data do we need to move around for operational benefit for the warfighter, right? And how do we reduce the amount of information that you need to go through so that you can really accurately make the decisions that you need to make as battle managers. And like Ron said, we know that that’s underpinned by having these resilient networks that allow us to move data and information around, secure processing so it’s always available. But ultimately, it does come down to the battle manager to make those effective decisions.

James Dorrell, vice president of ABMS of Lockheed Martin: Thanks, guys. Good afternoon, James Dorrell, Lockheed Martin. I’m the Vice President of ABMS and we’re trying to put a finer point on that within our corporation. Along with my esteemed industry panelists here, I just want to thank AFA, first of all, for giving us this platform to talk about a real critical, critical topic. I’m so excited to be face to face and not on a Zoom call. That by itself is, has been worth its weight this week. But just a couple of quick thoughts and when we can get back to Spaniard and maybe have some more robust discussion. I think we do have, as an Air Force, some foundational building blocks to that are important to ABMS. We have survivable platforms; we have many today and more coming in the near future. Those platforms have very capable sensors, which are going to provide that that plethora of data that we have. We have, you know, open system architecture technologies, that the RCO has played a vital part of the last decade in maturing, I think that’s an important building block. And then we have ground stations like the Shadow Ops Center at Nellis and common mission control center.

But even all those foundational building blocks, the drawback is they’re not tightly integrated. They’re not integrated horizontally, vertically. Many times, they’re in a single domain construct. And they’re very capable within that single domain construct. But that’s not what we need going forward. So just to kind of echo Ron and Lanny, what we need, resilient networks, absolutely. Multipath, self-healing that the network has got to be able to sense when it is under threat, under fire and be able to direct multiple paths. The data, I think Lanny talked about the data in many ways. ABMS is all about the data. And that data on those platforms is coming in at multiple security levels. And the network and the data managers have got to be able to condense that down to a common security framework to pass it ubiquitously. And then the third part I would say is, we’ve got to have a common set of standards and architectures and ones that are non-proprietary. That has proved extremely beneficial in the past. The UCI consortium that the RCO did, I think it’s a model we can use, but we got to be able to have, easily, third party applications move the data on resilient networks in some common standards. So let me stop there and pass it back to Spaniard.

Valenzia: Now, thanks. So recency has its primacy. So James, I’m going to pick on what you just said there. I’m an operator. And so a lot of the language that you use there doesn’t translate well into the operational construct. And I’d be interested to go a little bit deeper, because the imperative that you’re driving towards is interoperability. The approach that you’re driving towards interoperability is this idea of open mission system architecture. I don’t really know exactly what that means. And I bet you there are probably others. Could you maybe talk a little bit about from an industry perspective, what does that really mean? And how does that translate into the systems that you deliver? And so you guys are off the hook because I’m going to springboard to each of you to see how you think about that, because I’m gonna add another hook into it. There’s what we build, and what we have, and some of what we have, we inherited.

Dorrell: So let me give you an analogy here that hopefully resonates with some people. What is a closed architecture, maybe if we start there, then it’s easier to define open architecture. A closed architecture is one in which an industry member has vendor lock. And every time there is an upgrade, or an update that the Air Force needs or wants, they have to come back to that industry partner, and pay us over and over to update that closed architecture. That is absolutely what we don’t want. If all of industry is designing these resilient networks, and designing these algorithms that Spaniard talked about to a common set of standards and architectures, then every industry partner is bringing the best of breed to the table. And we can easily affordably integrate those apps or kinetic capabilities, non-kinetic capabilities in that open architecture rapidly, affordably and get capability in the warfighters’ hands more quickly. I don’t know if Ron or Lanny want to add on to any of that.

Merkel: Yeah, I mean, I agree. I think I view open architectures as kind of table stakes, if you’re going to participate in this type of industry going forward. And like James mentioned there, it’s really important to be able to bring capabilities together across, you know, the companies that we have and the rest of industry together relatively quickly. And when we have those common set of standards, then we can bring them together, integrate them and more importantly, update them over time, right? Because one of the biggest problems you get into with a closed system, right, is you always got to go back to the same vendor. Right? And it’s usually slower, you know, takes a lot longer and it costs more. Right. So I do believe that that is the way that we adapt things more quickly. I guess the the only other thing I would bring up is, it’s also not a panacea either. We see some proliferation of standards across the different services, right. So one thing that you know, I think industry, we can also help out on is how do we drive commonality between the standards, between the different services. Between Air Force, Army and Navy so that, you know, we’re doing one implementation that helps the joint fight.

Fehlen: So I’m gonna pick on something you said just a moment ago, sir, you talked about what we have today versus what we need in the future and, and relate that to the open architecture piece in particular. So using a standard open communication subsystem standard, sometimes known as OCS, is an example of where it’s a, it’s pretty much a standard set of hardware, if you will, but you’re able, because of the architecture, to roll in, not just new capability, but capability that’s on the shelf today. So now I have a capability that I can hand somebody and say, with respect to vendor lock, or otherwise, hey, you’ve not only got what you have today, but when the threat changes its mind because it does get a vote that you’re able to, we’re able to make modifications, and it’s a it’s a much quicker process than what we’ve seen in the past. So those are, when we talk about open architectures in particular, and the need to buy into it, the closed system to be able to break down those some of those silos is a key piece of that, but it’s also being able to deal from an acquisition approach, how do I get what I have to still be able to use what I have today, while adding capability incrementally over time. And from, you know, just exposure, the data, if you will.

You know, James, you mentioned just a moment ago, self-healing networks, that they’ve got to be able to sense the environment and understand what’s going on and then make decisions in the box as to how to maintain that connectivity across the network. So that data keeps coming off the platform. Well, I tell you, if the if the system is sensing the environment, wouldn’t a battle manager want to know that? Wouldn’t they want to know, oh, hey, by the way, I’m making decisions on this. And I’m reframing my network, if you will, reconnecting to maintain to maintain an assured link. But by the way, here’s some data for you that says, This is what I’m seeing in the environment. And this is why my machine, my box is making these decisions. So it can be pushed into a battle manager’s picture to say, hey, there’s something going on over here, we may not fully understand it, but then you can allocate resources to understand. So there’s sort of that two pieces of it, there’s some, the data movement and consistent standards to make sure that we’re able to push that wherever it needs to go. And then making sure there’s the connections underneath that not only encompass what we have out in the field today, but enable us to rapidly integrate new capabilities as the threat advances.

Valenzia: That’s helpful. So if I put it into terms that maybe some of us with dirt under our fingernails would say is, it gives us the ability to change your mind. And that means that we don’t have to imagine the solution and have it fixed today, to have something that’s delivered to us, maybe when we no longer remember the problem that we were trying to solve. And so that kind of introduces, there’s some new lexicon that we’re starting to have to cope with within the military that maybe in industry is a little bit more common type of lexicon. So open system architecture is one of those things. But there’s also this discussion about DevSecOps, this introduction of this idea of an MVP, a min viable product. And so maybe Lanny if I start with you, those are maybe some commercial practices that we’re trying to learn. And we have to adapt them a bit into our way of doing business. I’d be kind of interested in your thoughts on on how we go about adopting some of these principles.

Merkel: Yeah, and that’s something as industry, right, you know, MVP was really a concept that came out of Silicon Valley, right? If, if you’re going to do a startup, and you want to make money quickly, you got to get your minimum viable product out there. So you get a user base, and then keep iterating, iterating, iterating, and making your product and services incrementally better, right. And I think that concept is going to be what it takes to build up JADC2 system like ABMS, right, because if we did the traditional waterfall approach of trying to capture all the requirements, looking at every corner case, before we actually try and build something and deploy, right, it’ll never meet the pace of the threat, right.

And so what we’ve seen over the last few years is we’ve really focused on how not only it helps us operationally, but also in our development environments, right, we want to get a product out there, get it into the field, have a DevSecOps pipeline, which just really means, hey, if you go take out a product, or radio, for example, I see a threat that I haven’t seen before, you know, maybe I can get that data back now. And I can turn an update and push it back out in the field in a matter of, you know, hours and maybe days as opposed to weeks and months that we would have seen previously. And so key to enabling all of that is not only the technology pipeline that supports that, but also the policy that supports rapid updates out in the field. But I think that, you know, that mindset integrated with not only the technology but the policy is going to be key factor moving forward.

Fehlen: I’ll jump in. So let’s take it a slightly different way for a second. DevSecOps, development, security operations. So how long, how long have we seen that chain unfold sequentially? It’s been this process of, hey, we’re going to develop something, security is going to bless it off again, get the ATO uploaded to the system. And you as an operator sit at the screen you say, well, that’s not really what I was thinking. And now we have a loop that’s measured in years and millions of dollars rather than a, how did I get here, and how do I decrease that loop timing? So the purest view of DevSecOps out of Silicon Valley, the ops was actually not operators, it was the network operations piece. But I’m really glad to see that, at least in the service, we’re thinking about ops as the operator. So we have places like Shadow OC, where the developer is sitting next to the security folks so that we can know we can ship to the floor quickly. And then the operator sitting right there as a part of the scrums to be able to say, You know what I got, let’s put that one on the backlog. This one is the one that’s important to me, let’s prove that out in the MVP, and then we’ll iterate it.

So we’ve basically taken that long sequential cycle, and being able to shrink it down. So from that perspective, I’ll tell you, from an industry perspective, it’s one thing to have the experience of being in the military at one point. But for those that don’t, it’s amazing what can happen when you sit the operator next to the developer, and of course, the security side to make sure that it can actually get uploaded, and see what they do. We’ve watched this proven out over the last five years, no different than the commercial industry. It’s what gives us these amazing, you know, whether it’s Waze or Google Maps, take your pick, we’re seeing updates all the time, we need to get to that loop. And this is the process by that we can do it. But frankly, for us on the industry side of me in particular, it’s how do I make sure the person that at the end of the day is going to rely on the tool that I’m giving them, has had input direct input before delivery, so that we’re building up that MVP over time, rather than shipping something to yours and finding out it’s the wrong tool for the wrong operational environment.

Dorrell: One more quick thought. And I’m in violent agreement with both Ron and Lanny. But one more quick thought is, engineers think they know how the operator is going to use a certain product, whatever that happens to be, and they think they’re smart. And then when it actually gets in the operator’s hands, they find ways to utilize that product, that platform, that software that that engineers never imagined, and that DevSecOps tightens that loop. You know, the best analogy I have of that is, when we were first introduced the fifth-gen fighter F-22. We had designed it for 10 years, we knew exactly how the pilots going to use it, they take it out to red flag, start using it and all of a sudden, they’re spreading apart. They have operations, conops that we never even dreamed of. That’s just one macro example.

But in a software, we want that operator input early so that we can adjust that design. And then as the guys said, you know, continue to iterate it very, very rapidly.

Valenzia: So if I play the word police on commercial industry, and a lot of words that you guys deliver to us, I would say there’s probably this some phraseology we use within the military, I’m not so sure is defined in the same way we used to use it. And so one of those is the tactical edge. We’d like to talk about the tactical edge. If you’re a cyber operator, where’s your tactical edge? If you’re a space operator, where’s your tactical edge? And in fact, what we’re finding is that’s not maybe as descriptive of a term as it could be. We look at it through the lens of industry, who’s looking back at us? Are there ways in which we need to improve how we communicate to you so that you guys can be effective as a partner and helping us to modernize how we do advanced data management?

Fehlen: So I’ll jump on that one. So your point on tactical edge, and I think from an industry perspective, I understand the nomenclature, I understand the lexicon, right. It’s pushing, pushing data forward, letting operators forward in the field at the operational level or at the tactical level. But I do find it interesting that it focuses us on, no kidding, getting the data forward, not pulling the data back. That’s been one thing we’ve seen over and over again. And a lot of the systems as was mentioned previously, that are still piped in nature, they can talk to a few things and ship the data back somewhere. But then they have to ship it all the way back forward into quite a loop in order to do that. And sometimes there’s process and policy involved. So the mentality of an edge actually forces us to think forward how to connect those things. But to your point on what where is the edge for a space operator as an example? I’d say that’s where the lexicon shifts to where are the effects at? Where are we driving the effects? So it’s not just the strategy.

It’s not just the implementation, the resourcing, etc., but where do we—It helps us look at the effects that are going to go and actually to complete the mission. So that way we’re thinking about not just what do I need on the big screen maybe in the back that, that people have time to deliberate on and figure out strategies and so forth and risks and COAs, but actually are thinking forward and more of a fast pace. I’ve got to make decisions now because it’s tactical in nature. And how do I speed up that loop at the very front. And so again, it goes back, we keep harping on it, right, it’s about data, it’s about getting the data out there to make sure that it doesn’t have to travel, even if it’s milliseconds back to somebody’s inbox that they didn’t have to review, take a look at and say, Yeah, this is good. Now send it all the way back forward. And then a dynamic battle environment, that’s the other piece is your tactical effects. There’s a temporal nature to them, not just spatial. And so from that perspective, you you really have to close that loop down from a communications and networking and make sure the data gets there. So that’s that from both the tactical side is where the effects are, at least that’s the way we think about it, or I think about it, and on the edge, it’s really about forcing us to think about the people that are actually going to use it in a campaign at a tactical level to accomplish objectives.

Dorrell: I’ll add on. And I think it’s a great point, Spaniard, because different terms mean different things, right. And when I think tactical edge, what I think is the most stressing environment that we’re going to have, which is a very highly contested environment, right, with a lot of threats in multiple domains.

And so I think, as we go forward, you said, how can government, you know, help industry. I think it’s to define what those environments are that the resilient network is got to operate in, and the environments that the data has to be passed. And, again, the more stressing that is, it’s going to exercise the network to be able to self-heal, to be able to replicate and get the data where it needs to be. But those have got to be defined, what are the threats in all space, air, maritime ground that this network is going to have to operate in define that, and I think industry can, working with the government, help define the characteristics and the performance of that network.

Merkel: Yeah, I would just add that I don’t think there is one definition of that, you know, there’s, there’s gradients of everything, right. I think of the, you know, the very edge as the most disadvantaged platforms and users, right. But there are edge platforms that have more capabilities, but still don’t have all the situational awareness you might have in an op center or areas like that. So, you know, when we’ve been thinking about it internally, we’ve had the same discussion actually, in the last week. When we’re working through some of our strategies of, you know, there’s stratification of how far you are in the edge. And when you get from high bandwidth, you know, I’ve got SATCOM and all these other high bandwidth pipes that I’m used to having in like a telecom environment, it’s fairly straightforward. As long as that current activity’s there, it’s when we get to the platforms that are much more disadvantaged, that have links that come and go but still have to fight through. You know, that’s, that’s really where I see the challenge in terms of how do we maintain connectivity, and situational awareness for those platforms when they’re disconnected. And they have to fight through and provide better capabilities when they’re connected back up to the, to the networks that they have

Dorrell: Spaniard, mind if we ask you a question?

Valenzia: Why not?

Dorrell: He told us we could, right? So I think we all recognize in this community how important the technology is and what the technology can bring. But I think equally important is the TTPs. And have have you or the ABMS team within the Air Force looked at, you know, combining the technologies and the TTPs. And what that yields.

Valenzia: Yeah, actually, I really appreciate the question. And I appreciate the fact that you guys don’t look at this just as a technological challenge. When we went out into the modeling simulation, we started working with the warfighters. And we watched them operate and realistic and stressing training scenarios, we came to that conclusion that when we put some pretty nominal technologies into their hands, the warfighters very intuitively knew what to do with it. But the technology alone was not sufficient. What we watched the warfighters do through iterations in the exercise, as they started to very quickly adapt their TTPs, a lot of learning was going on. So some muscle movements, and this is where we ended up seeing an exponential improvement in the outcome. And in this particular case, just so I’m honest, I measured the outcome by the time it took them to identify a viable target to when they tasked it to a resource to go in, generate an effect on the tactical edge. And this measurement of time in one performance measure, it was the coupling of them.

I think this is when the DevSecOps becomes really interesting to us. Because as operators are imagining, better and better TTPs, the opportunity to directly talk to the developers, to adapt the tools to their problem set are fantastic. However, caution, but we’re also finding is a lot of operators who want to take these technologies, and they want to use them in very novel, but tailored ways. The consequence of that is actually a repeat of the mistake that we made that drove stovepipe C2, which is we allowed every seat, you know, to be this wooden shoe.

And so we have to drive this in an enterprise approach. We have to learn from and then institutionalize both the technologies and the tactics if we’re going to see the real performance or return on investment. So I’m going to go back to, and I don’t have somebody to hit the question over to next. So I’m just gonna go back with my next one. Because there’s something that, you know, many you said, that resonated, because, first of all, in the spirit of being in Orlando, we all like to be Imagineers. And we oftentimes hear people who talk about command and control and they say, Well, we’re just gonna, I want it all in my pocket. You know, why can’t it work like Uber? Why can’t it work like my Google Maps? Why can’t it work like TikTok, and how we distribute ISR data out? You mentioned, hey, we got a lot of data, we got to figure out where we got to put that data, you started talking about the big P word, policy. And so I’d be interested in your guys’s thoughts, and Lanny, I’ll put you on the spot first, 10% of our expectations, because it’s not that simple, and as somebody who leads an organization that tries to deliver these technologies to our hands, us as warfighters expecting it to work the way our smart devices work. Tomorrow, maybe it’s time for us to set some expectations. I’m interested your thoughts?

Merkel: Yeah, I mean, when you start to talk about edge capabilities, and what people want, like the cell phone is the number one example that everybody always uses when they’re talking about this. And there’s just additional complexity that you have trying to replicate that in a battle space, right of that’s built on top of billions and billions of dollars of telecom infrastructure. And it’s built on lots of large data centers. And, you know, to have that experience where I’m sure you’ve all had it, with your cell phone of scrolling through social media. And then I see it makes a product suggestion that I don’t think I’ve searched before and only thought about it, but somehow it knows that I need it or want it. And I think that’s the kind of experience we want to have for the warfighter. But, you know, there’s some unique challenges that make it a problem, right? We’ve talked a lot about the connectivity challenges associated with that. Because, you know, I mean, we’ve all also experienced, like losing connectivity, and not having a cell phone signal, and then it all falls apart, and we can’t have it just all fall apart. So I think we need to think through what’s a, you know, a graceful degradation of capabilities, as we, you know, drop some of the connectivity and some of the capabilities, and also recognize that we have some unique challenges and security classification, that, you know, just because we can connect pipes from different networks doesn’t mean that we can always transfer all the data. So I think we’ve got to, you know, keep that as sort of the North, the GuideStar, of ease of usability, right, but try and start with that minimum viable product concept, and try and incrementally add in this, you know, I’m going to add this connectivity that I didn’t have before I discovered that I need some cross-domain solutions, you know, in order to get that data across, put this together, and sort of incrementally build that up over time, and try and get to more of where we want to go.

Fehlen: So I think there’s parallels, but you’re right, it can be taken to an extreme from that prospective. And Lanny, you mentioned a couple of them just because of the investment and the global coverage, and so forth. By comparison, our data set is sparse in nature, to what, you know, is collected off of our phones and so forth, as well as what’s just purely available. But then look for the similarities. What is it and unfortunately, it’s not the convenience things, but it’s the important aspect of it that goes back to the standards. We have all that information. And we can get that because there’s a standard interface into the dataset that’s provided. So whether or not we have that massive amounts, we’ve got to have those standards that say, Hey, this is how I can go retrieve that data from anywhere. As Lanny mentioned, the security aspects of it are critical as well and being able to solve, some of that’s policy. Some of it’s technology. Some of its just pure ownership, but being able to actually produce and be a producer of data and get it out into the right hands. So I think there’s parallels there. But it’s fair that it can be taken to an extreme. But the real key is if you have the interfaces, that’s the thing that enables.

So there is a point at which today, we may not be able to do it as effectively as we can call an Uber ride as an example. But there is a point in history, I believe, if we establish the standards, we look at it through an architecture view and a reference architecture view, and go after that, we will actually be able to get to that point, we’re actually getting more data. Because we’re collecting it, we’re making it more pervasive within the community for analytics and otherwise, so battle managers aren’t in the middle of the fight trying to figure it out, but they’re actually using the data from last year that they watched in an exercise and I get to play it over and over and over again, and even modify it. So we, it gets that. So we would all like that luxury at some point day. But man, it starts with the standards. And underneath that, then the data has to get there, as we keep talking about. It’s got to be over a network that’s assured, it’s got to be resilient. And it’s got to be secured, if you don’t have those, unlike me not being able to find my way to the restaurant downtown, because Google just can’t connect, it’s not going to work in an operational environment. And oh, by the way, in that operational environment, somebody’s actually trying to prevent me from getting to that restaurant, so to speak. So it’s a good analogy, but it’s really boils down to the standards, and being able to get the data out of very siloed systems. James?

Dorrell: Just one more thought there. I think we have to all acknowledge that there are a lot of legacy systems in the Air Force and the Navy and the Army, that were not developed with open architectures, you know, for the past decade or so. And going forward, that’s table stakes, as we said, and they will have, but think about all of the platforms that the Air Force is operating today that were designed 15, 20, 25, sometimes 30, 35 years ago, they have a closed architecture. And taking them to a fully open architecture is very expensive. And so we’re doing it gradually over time. But we cannot flush the entire architecture on a B-52, or a C-130 or an F-22 and go to a completely open architecture. That’s just another challenge on top of what Ron and Lanny said.

Valenzia: I appreciate that. So in the last couple minutes that we have here in this panel, I’d like to give each of you just an opportunity with a few closing remarks. To start with you.

Dorrell: I just want to thank again, you know, Spaniard, for your leadership. I think, you know, we saw Secretary Kendall and heard him this morning, talk about his operational imperatives. I think we all recognize how critical those are. Industry just responded to all seven of those over the last month or so. And believe me that was that was fun and challenging to get those responses back in just a couple of weeks. We look forward to some feedback on some of those are sitting down maybe in an industry, government industry, environment and discussing how those go forward. We’re also, I’m also excited about Capability Release One which is now being released out of the RCO. And we responded to that. So I think we see this ABMS momentum now really starting to build, and we just look forward to partnering with you and our other industry partners to start to realize that vision.

Merkel: Thank you. Yeah, I just want to thank you and other panelists here for taking the time. You know, I, I think it’s really interesting that, you know, we all, we all see the same challenges, right. And, you know, a lot of these discussions go in similar directions, right. But as James just said, I think it’s really encouraging to see progress being made, you know, capabilities starting to be put in place, and we can look forward to really working together on it.

Fehlen: So again, also, I’ll third, I guess, my thanks both to AFA, as well as yourself for coming out and just having this opportunity to talk through this because it is absolutely critical. And I’ll second both James and Lanny. And that it’s great to see the progress now moving forward some real focus on getting stuff out the door, getting the industry on contract, etc., just start working these issues, and coupling that with as the Secretary Kendall talks about the operational focus, so that we’re really driving those two together. It almost goes back to what we talked about a few moments ago on the DevSecOps really driving together the development aspects and getting that going, but also an operational effectiveness focus, so that we can solve these problems quickly.

Valenzia: Well, thank you all. Thank you, not just for today, but thank you for every day. Thank you for being in the trenches with us as we work through this. You know, AFA this year in lieu of speaker gifts has made a donation to enable some Airmen and Guardians to enjoy the barbecue tonight. You’re welcome. The next session is going to start here in this room here at 1:15. It’s gonna be a panel on unmanned and autonomous systems. Thanks for being here.

Watch, Read: Future ISR Will Include AI for Faster Decision-Making

March 13, 2022

Maj. Gen. Leah G. Lauderback hosts Brad Reeves, director, C4ISR, Elbit Systems of America; JR Reid, vice president of strategic development, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems; and Luke Savoie, president, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance, L3Harris Technologies, to discuss “ISR / Remote Sensing” at the AFA Warfare Symposium on March 4, 2022. This transcript is made possible through the sponsorship of JobsOhio.

Maj. Gen. Leah G. Lauderback: All right. Well, good morning, everyone. I hope you had a little bit of coffee in between the break there and are ready to get started talking about a topic of course that is near and dear to my heart. I’m the senior intelligence officer for the Space Force, Major General Leah Lauderback, if I have not met you yet, and we have a really great panel today to talk about ISR and remote sensing, both from an air and a space domain. I am hopeful that we’ll be able to talk a little bit about that as well. So the lineup of specialists that we’ve got today, I think they’re going to be able to talk to really maximizing and enhancing the capabilities that we look for in in those two domains. And then of course, how that helps to help the joint warfighter in all domains. So let me just do some introductions real quick. So Brad Reeves here, director of C4ISR at Elbit Systems of America. Brad is a retired Air Force colonel and fighter pilot who served as a director of the NATO Deployable Air Operations Center while in uniform. Mike Shortsleeve, who you do not see on the stage, who is the sector vice president of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems. He was unable to join us here at the very last minute. So JR Reid, thank you very much for being here. Vice President of Strategic Development, doing the pinch hitting for Mike today. Thank you, JR. And then finally, we have Luke Savoie in the middle here, president of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance at L3Harris technologies. In his role, he oversees a leading aerospace mission and modernization prime integrator to U.S. and international militaries for ISR, strike, and strategic command and control platforms. So first, what I’d like to ask you all to do is just take a minute or so to introduce yourselves, and kind of what you want to, if there are any thoughts immediate off the top of the head, off the top as to this topic for ISR and remote sensing. So Brad, I’ll start with you.

Brad Reeves: Thank you so much, General Lauderback. Well, first, if I can, I just want to admit how envious I am of our Airmen and Guardians in the room. And here’s why. Because you are going to make history. You get to do what only happens about once every quarter of a century. And that is rewrite completely the doctrine, TTPs of how our Air and Space Forces are going to fight a peer threat going forward. And so to me, that’s very exciting. Naturally, ISR is going to be a huge part of that, even more so important in that type of environment. And so here’s what I want for your future. In simple words, to be able to think faster, and break things faster. I think we all want that. But what that looks like is, it’s ISR that can leverage the capabilities of autonomy in AI to be able to increase the speed of decision making, and also to be able to decrease the kill web timeline. Right. And so what does that look like? Well, quickly, we go from how it was, to how it is, to how it can be, right? And so how it was, that’s kind of my generation. That’s the old guys in the room. And oh, by the way, you know who you are. If you flew airplanes, and everyday you took off, it was a GPS denied environment, then I’m talking to you. But in that time, just to share a quick story, what that was like for the ISR and getting information. I was sitting on the ramp, engines running, about to taxi, it was a combat mission. I get a call from ops and they say hold taxi, intel update en route. And so, sure enough, a young intel superstar Airman comes running down the ramp towards the jet, pop the canopy, he hands me physical, you know target paper pieces of paper with targets on it. We didn’t have the Link 16 and FMV, and all these great cool things right? And we take off, of course, there’s no more updates after that because he there’s no way to do that. And so that that’s not the future I want for you. Right, that’s certainly not enough. We have … especially thanks to General Atomics and L3Harris, you know we’ve got some really cool stuff going today on aircraft, there’s a lot of sensors integrated, you can correlate and fuse that stuff in a helmet that’s displayed to the pilot, gives a whole new meaning to the term death stare, right? So that’s pretty cool. But it’s still not enough for the future. So that’s not what I want for your future. But what it looks like, is very similar to your everyday life. When you walk out and you now have, you have activity and proliferated sensors everywhere and access to that, you can almost know everything. It’ll tell you what movie to watch, where you should shop. If you get lonely, Alexa and Siri are always there for you and they’re always listening. They’re always listening. So this is kind of you know, so now if you take that image, transplant that into on the military side and you imagine proliferated remote sensors, right? You have autonomous capability that can operate those at the edge, you have AI built in that can make sense of what they’re seeing and can then push recommended actions to the warfighters. And the warfighter could be a pilot, a console operator, could be someone in the SPOC, could be someone in a DCGS, could be ISR-D, CRCs, ASOCs, all that information is now available. So that’s what I want for your future. It’s ISR capability that leverages autonomy and AI capability to increase decision-making speed, decrease kill web timeline, think faster, break things faster. That’s what I hope for your future and I look forward to the conversation today.

Lauderback: Thank you, Brad. I like that future very much. How about you, Luke?

Luke Savoie: Yeah, sure. I’ll sum it up in one word, when we look at it. The one word is trust, right. We’ve done over the last, it’s hard to say 20 years, over 20 years in the War on Terror. The unconventional fight, we brought an enormous amount of tools to bear to build up information. And that has created an enormous amount of trust in every action that we do. Whether a decision-maker has confidence in what they’re doing. A person who is watching a target, which I spent an enormous amount of time doing in U-28s and gunships, understanding the atmospherics of what’s going on before they strike, or put boots on the ground to do direct action. And as we transition now, and geopolitical events are a pacing item that do that, right, we don’t have the luxury of 2035 roadmaps. You know, roadmaps are great on PowerPoint, but the adversary does what they do, and we have to, you know, outpace that as a pacing item on how we transition. But how do you model trust so that when you look at disaggregated systems, or you look how you work in contested environments, between, whether that is, how you bring the space layer into it, and people talk about, hey, how do I get, you know, dots out of a space layer onto an ATAC on a guy’s arm, and in when you talk to that guy about his ATAC on his arm, he’s like, I don’t want dots on it. I just want to trust the information. I’d rather have someone tell me something in the air. And just I have confidence that they know what they’re saying. And so how do we do that. And every tool that we bring to bear, whether it is you know, AI/ML, or the next buzzword that’s out there, it has to drive trust. And that’s what our future will be. So that when we are working in these very highly maneuvered elements, with very contested comms and our sensors completely disaggregated around the battlefield, the sensor, the shooter, and the decision maker all have high confidence in what they’re doing.

Lauderback: Thank you, Luke. That’s great. Thank you. How about yourself, JR?

JR Reid: Good morning. Thank you, Ma’am. Thanks for letting me sit on the panel, replace Mike. I was not the better looking guy in the middle there. So I’m retired Air Force as well, was a Herc driver, C-17 driver, and then have been in the unmanned business for about nine years, kind of looking at all of the DOD. I like the, kind of the one-word summation that you provided. My one word is going to be risk. And so I’m taking my perspective, both as a former uniformed officer in our service, and now as a businessman. And I think our unmanned … your perspective is from where you come, right, and nine years in this business. I’m going to give you an unmanned perspective. And we’re not bold enough. There is there we are tepid when it comes to taking risk. It’s unmanned. Yeah, an MQ-9. It’s not like it’s free. Yes, it costs something. But where are we really pushing boundaries when it comes to risk? And to quote, our chief of staff, right, accelerating change, we’re crawling through change, we’ve got to be more bold. I mean, if the current environment tells us anything, we’ve got to be bold, we’ve got to take risks, we’ve got to explore all the opportunities. So that, because trust is there. In industry, trust is, you can have it now with data, you really can implement that trust, take a little more risk. And you’ll be amazed at what we have the capabilities to provide all the warfighters out there. So I’ll be kind of centering on some of those discussions today.

Lauderback: Okay, excellent. Thank you very much for those one word, and more than multiple word, opening pitches. Let me ask, I mean, this is a topic we could talk about, I’m sure, for the entire rest of the time that we have. But the next conflict, what does that look like? We know that that’s going to be contested, denied areas where we might not be able to get manned into. It’s going to require much more, I think from a space capability looking down. We also need to be looking up, as I like to say, in the Space Force to be able to characterize what’s on orbit as well. But across all of those domains, what do you think our ISR architecture needs to look like in order to be successful in a contested and denied near peer contest? In the future? Brad, I’ll start with you and then just open it up.

Reeves: Yeah, sure. So I love the question, because it helps us think through what the problem sets are. Right? And so I’ll start by saying, I don’t have all the answers clearly. So hopefully, I don’t portray that I do. But I’ll just will offer some thoughts that I have on this. And those are that we will, it will require some resiliency, right. So the kind of the future I was painting, one of the challenges of that, or the risk there, is that things have to be networked. So it’s pretty easy to do in the US with all this all the data and bandwidth we have. But in a contested graded environment, certainly anti-access area denial environment, it’s going to be a lot more difficult, because we’re now not as far forward. And so part of that is, we won’t have the luxury we’ve had over the last two decades where we have boots on the ground right in the middle of the conflict. We will have limited systems. So there’ll be exquisite systems that can get forward. And we’ll have to rely on those. There’ll be many unmanned systems, as you know, we’ll have to rely on those a bit. It will take resiliency and networks to make sure that we can actually connect that stuff and get the data back to the warfighter. It’s going to be critical, as General Lauderback mentioned, that we have all available assets, this is almost redundancy, or it’s an all-in type of fight where the space layer is, is connected to the terrestrial layer, which is connected to the platforms. And so we will have to leverage everything. And we’ll have to be able to leverage the goodness of space. And for the times where maybe a satellite is, let’s just say blinded, for example, in one spot, and maybe there’s a terrestrial layer that picks that up, and maybe it’s degraded, but you can still fill in that gap. Maybe on the ground, you can’t get as close. So you’re not able to actually put eyes on from the ground, from a ground sensor or an airborne sensor. But possibly you can do that from a space sensor. And so, you know, we have some, we call them stovepipes of excellence. Right. You know, we have some of those in our military today, and we’re making great progress to break those down. And that’s, you know, this is the whole this is what JADC2 is all about, you know, just to throw another buzzword in. While that buzz word is, is kind of the latest and greatest, I’m sure there’ll be another label for it in the future. But the meaning behind it is still relevant. And the meaning is that we do have to leverage the resources that all the services bring, whether it’s space, air, land, sea, subsurface, you know, depending on whether we’re talking Pacific fight, there’s a, you know, we at least think of subsurface as another domain. That’s the way we think of that, because we have to have awareness below the surface of the sea. So naturally, we haven’t talked cyber, and I know we’re not going to go there today. But clearly, that’s a domain that we’ll have to battle in. So for me, so connecting all those together, and having a network that’s resilient to be able to do that. So you can leverage all of those capabilities, I think, to a point of convergence, is going to be where we need to go in the future to overwhelm the enemy. Which is really ultimately what we want to do to create that asymmetric advantage that we all enjoy.

Savoie: When it comes down to space and we have to look at it, One, it’s a domain and it’s a maneuver domain now, right? So it’s an operable maneuver domain, along the entirety of the scheme of maneuver of any conflict. When we look at it, we really need to be thinking about three things. One’s agility, one is affordability, and then one is multimodality. We’re not going to be afforded for like one trick ponies, though, size and scale do drive that, but the micronization of things in terms of how we’ve gotten things down the capabilities of cubesats are enormously powerful, where we are capable of doing you know, Midway EO or GMTI types of things, even in small packages, that addresses multi-modality and it also addresses affordability and the micronization in the size. The agility piece is one we don’t talk a lot, right? We have fixed infrastructure for how to inject things into that domain. And then Newtonian physics takes over and it becomes a very predictable, you know, maneuver, right. I mean, it’s up there. It does what it does, and the laws of physics kind of take over and fuel and stuff like that, you know, prevents you from making significant maneuver. So we know talk a lot about, hey, how do we, on demand in an agile environment, create constellations. We don’t talk about a lot, hey, what happens if our fixed infrastructure, Vandenberg, the Cape, right? I mean, we’re literally to hypersonics and now we have no way of doing combat loss replacement, or adding capability to that, and denied, right. So, you know, I personally, I do a lot of work with Virgin Orbit, we’ve actually helped build that current aircraft, but you look at that type of capability, how does that play into the agility side of it, both the ability to create very interesting orbit geometries in LEO, the ability to combat loss replacement, the ability to on demand, you know, I’m a SOF guy by trade. So I started now looking at what is SOF’s role, you know, in space, right? And is that, hey, how do you deploy four satellites for a four-hour window when we talk about n minus one to create an effect or capability. And space plays, and will it will play a role, you know, in that n minus one to the left of bang type of opportunity.

Reid: So, I’m going to take a little different tack to the question. The question focused on, you know, how does, how does space act in the next fight, a contested fight? I’ll contend that the contested fight is started, right? The competition environment is well underway. And it’s been well underway. It’s geopolitics. And I think when it comes to space, we’ve shown a dependency. And it has provided great agility for our force in order to maneuver, in order to pass data. And I think the redundancy that is being put in place in the space layer, so that it’s, it’s not Ku you it’s not Ka, it’s not just GEO, it’s not just MEO. It’s not just LEO, it’s all of it. And the tight pairing of it, though, with your air layer, and then your ground layer to offer the redundancy. So that as you are operating over the spectrum of conflict, that will be for decades, and I contend in a competition environment, may be for days, weeks, or, or months in a contested environment, and back to a competition environment, you got to be able to jump from the layers, you got to be able to use space, when it’s there. When I can’t get to exactly what I want, I go to my alternate, when I can’t get to that, I maybe move to my space, moved to my air layer, and be able to move seamlessly through all of those places in order to deliver the effects that airpower brings throughout the spectrum of conflict.

Lauderback: Okay, thank you. How about with the amount of or the proliferation of ISR capabilities that are, you know, coming online or in the future? I mean, with the commercialization of space as an example, that we can, I mean, there’s only going to be more sensors to gather more data. So the question is really, how do you specifically see getting that data to the right folks. You talked a bit about sensing, of course. And so now that it’s a capability of, like, sifting through all of that data, turning that into intelligence or turning that into something actionable for, for somebody that’s going to put lead on target, if you will, thoughts.

Savoie: And I think, you know, we use big data’s, these buzzwords that are kind of out there, right. So I mean, the good thing is, and space has kind of led this, I think in the video world, we’ve adopted extra standards that the national technical means and what has been done in the past on stills, and when we go back to it, I mean, they really were actually, space was the leader in creating open standards for things like metadata tagging, how you do rectification of things, etc. So it brings that commonality to it, right. It doesn’t matter if it’s a, you know, a Maxar open satellite, or if I’m, you know, sitting on the high side, you know, looking at something [inaudible] type of thing, which is great. So applying, you know, the big data analytics that we have out there, which is honestly our space problem, is an easy problem, right? I mean, how does Facebook listen to every microphone and every camera on every phone on the planet Earth, and sift through that and figure out that, you know, I like venti chai lattes, right? I mean, how does it figure that out? When I said it three minutes ago, and, you know, gives me an advertisement queued up for that. It really does come down, though, to a lot of metadata tagging, and it comes down to how do you get things down to that piece? Cloud is, you know, how we scale processing is—We are very tactile people in terms of the government likes to buy things they’d like to see what they buy. It’s very good to see now what we’re doing in the Gov cloud and the secure side, because that’s really where we have to scale processing. Because that’s exactly what the commercial side does. They don’t have, you know, server farms where it’s a one to one ratio, they really scale from, you know, burying in the in the ocean floor server farms everywhere that were with the distributed processing, etc. So, and we need to follow suit on that to manage the data.

Reid: I just have a just a quick comment. Just to kind of tag on to that. It’s when I said, my opening comments are taking risk. Moving quick, you know, you just talked about best in breed applications that are here today. You can use them right now. You know, I don’t care if it’s Google or Microsoft, if it’s Facebook, they’re there. They’re sifting through, I can’t even describe the amounts of data that they’re sifting through and applying it as needed. Let’s move quickly in that arena. I compliment what JAIC is doing right now. Because they’re trying to run fast with scissors. They are really taking some bold steps and some bold moves. But the amount of information, and I think we also got to be careful when I say this, I don’t want to be to questioning you. You can look at all the data and just be drowned in it. Right, you got to look at the right data. That’s got to be looking in the right spaces. We can use some best in breed practices that are available in the commercial space to help us sift through it quicker, you know, get the information out of the data to the warfighter. But that’s those are the kind of applications that you can do right now.

Savoie: And I will say that just add on to this. Those best of breed systems we talk about are not a pull, you do not ask Facebook for ads, it gives it to you, it’s a push. And so when we talk about how it feeds data to the consumer, the consumer does very little asking, it gets told a lot of things. And so and that’s, that’s a difference of paradigm for how a lot of our systems are, query and ask for X, Y, and Z over this area. No, the system should be predictive in nature, right. We should have saw early last week, Wow, why is the system giving me a bunch of metadata or is bringing a lot of focus to Eastern Europe? I mean, that’s kind of weird, right? I mean, that’s what, but honestly, had we been oriented the same way, it would have naturally have done that those tools exist today. That’s not science fiction. I mean, if we would have applied the same principles, the same really … the same AI’s that they had in a slightly different way? I mean, honestly, that’s what the system would have told us is, I think you really want to talk about this. This is what this is what you want to really pay attention to.

Reeves: No, I think I think those are really good thoughts. And that, you know, the question is, how do you get all that data that’s available out there, all the sensors we have? And how do you get that to the people that need it? And, it’s the, you know, part of that future state is the, you can just sum it up as AI enabled decision making, right? So that’s how the commercial world is doing all this and how exactly what Luke was referring to. When you just you have a conversation with your spouse, you’re talking about that you like the Corvette that just drove by. And next thing you know that you’re flooded with Corvette advertisements, right from Chevrolet. That technology exists. Now militarizing it is a whole other step, right? Again, there’s, there are privileges that the commercial world has. And the biggest one is they operate in a completely permissive environment where no one is trying to attack them and stop them. We have the exact opposite problem. So how do you now handle that? How do you bring something to bear to solve that problem? Well, it’s really good, I believe, at least the way we see it, as we see that you’re going to have to have AI processing at the edge. So the sensors are going to have to do a lot of that work for you. The if you have the modern model, the commercial model, which is, you know, huge centralized data lakes. I mean, these buildings, you know, that are using nuclear power plants just to keep on going because there’s all this compute power in there. You know, for the military, that’s just an easy target, right? So you take that out and now you’ve just taken our advantage away. So we will have to leverage the technology, to have edge processing, to have that AI and the algorithms there that can help us make those decisions. So again, they see something, they make sense of it, they push a recommendation, recommended action to us. And oh by the way, we have to have that technology to help us connect all these sensors because we have a space ops center that’s going to be monitored, you know, that may be monitoring space. You may have a DCGS, it’s maybe it’s monitoring, you know, RQ-4s and U-2s, etc., you know, you have, you have an Army intel section, you know, and they’re there with their, their systems and what they’re monitoring. And all that stuff again, today is almost swivel chair tactics, right? So you’re in Jchat and you see that satellite found something, maybe that makes it a Jchat window, you swivel over this computer and now you transcribe from one to the next to let someone know that and it’s almost this telephone game, right? Very manual, very human in the loop driven, you know, to get that overwhelming advantage to it to think faster and break things faster. It will require that AI processing at the edge to do that work for us.

Lauderback: So let me get back to some of your opening comments about risk and then trust. And I’ll ask, do we have, do you think there’s trust built up between industry and then the Department of Defense to be able to capitalize or to be successful in this next JADC2, or whatever it is that we you know, in the contested environment that we want to be successful in passing all of the data in, you know, all of the sensors that are sucking up information? I mean, do you think that, One, we’re taking enough risk? I think I know the answer to that. Second question is do we have the trust between our industries, if you will, to be successful? What do you think, JR?

Reid: Sure, I’ll take a take a stab since I use the word first. I think they’re stressed. I know they’re stressed. I mean, so many of us that do our job right now, as I said in my opening comments, we wore the uniform and we do our job, because all we see is, you know, we want to make our nation stronger, more secure. And so I think there’s trust, almost kind of bringing in this last conversation, talking to Amazon or Facebook, you got data. The thing that I see not happening, is doing something in and trying not to speak from a position of ignorance on the many activities that we have going out with JADC2 and ABMS. And the demos we did before and the and the ways we’re moving out, we’re trying to connect stuff. But I’ll tell you, from my industry’s perspective, I would like to see us talking to Amazon. Let’s put an Alexa on the table. Let’s mention Corvette as it drives by. I want to run that through a cubesat over to a rivet joint, pat on existing data links that he makes, that can pass through an MQ-9, then link it through Link 16. And then have a F-35 target a Corvette. We can do it. I don’t see it happening. I don’t see the scale. I’m a crawl, walk run kind of guy, you know, let’s take bites at this elephant. Because the the amount of data that we talked about is it’s a mess. But let’s take some bites of this elephant, deliberate bites, let’s take some risk and go and let’s fail 1,000 times in order to get one right. But let’s do it again and again and again. So that we can we can get to the point where I really didn’t want a Corvette, I wanted a Porsche. And I can figure it out. Because of the interactions that can occur right now, with ensuring that we get the right data passing over existing data links with existing platforms to have decision advantage.

Savoie: It’s ironic, because I actually, we’ve actually talked about taking Alexas and just putting them at every one of the operating stations in the RJ and putting the headset on it and going. If we wanted tech, the methods are there for how to like get the stuff in there. If you really want to do an interesting demonstration of what does the system kind of come up with? That’s this is something you can do for about $1,500. But I would say that to continue kind of the conversation to trust as their expectations and understanding the business models is tough, right? We use these best of breed examples. And then but the expectation is, well, hey, I mean, Android is free. Well, sort of, right? I mean, it is but they get to listen to everything you do, and they monetize you, right? So we look at these environments, the commercial business model does not translate over to the defense side. So when you’re building an infrastructure from scratch, without billions of dollars of venture capital behind you, and by the way, business models where your margins are, you know, 70%, they’re not 10%. Right? Those things and how they translate over is always kind of where we always get our wires crossed. Right. No pun intended. And that’s not a trust problem. That’s just an expectations and understanding thing, business acumen, understanding the models behind all of that. Overcomable things. But we all we all run into software things and people are like, why software so expensive? You’re like, because those other things are free, but they make it up on the back end, and you just don’t understand how the how they monetize it.

Reeves: Oh, it’s good. You know, one, I see a very positive trend. And so Joe [Inaudible], I think he started this. I’m not I’ll give him credit, at least. He’s at ACC, and, and he started a classified briefing that he’s sharing with industry. And that is gold for us. Because we understand what’s, you know, for a lot of folks in industry, there’s folks issues have been in the Air Force or, Space Force is a little harder to sell to. But understand, right. But where you’re going, a lot of the information, especially when we’re now starting to get into A2AD, peer threat we’re getting in, you’re starting to get behind some doors, there’s barriers. And industry has to be pulled along in that conversation. And so I just want to say that was a huge step, because it’s sharing information, because there’s a partnership in the military industrial complex that has to occur. And that partnership goes like this. The Airmen and Guardians know the requirements that you are the experts in how to fight a future battle, right? Like that is your expertise. What you may not know is what the realm of the possible is from a technological standpoint. And so that’s where industry’s expertise is, now we know what the realm of the possible is. And so if you can marry those two together, which is what the US has done so marvelously through history, that’s where you get, the great power happens. Unfortunately, sometimes it’s a little late, because it may take a big conflict to really get all those dialogues going and get those the things moving. And as you know, technology takes time to develop and to get fielded and to get it to the point—And oh, by the way, which is extremely important to us is that it has to work, right? You know, there’s a different, you know, if you’re driving down the car, and you ask Siri for something, and she doesn’t know the answer, OK, it’s not the end of the world, you know. But if you’re in an aircraft, you know, it has to work, whatever industry’s providing for you, it has to work, we don’t have the option of failing. And so that is a whole other layer that, again, the commercial world, generally speaking, doesn’t have to worry about. So, so that dialogue, I just want to encourage, I mean, I think there’s absolutely trust, I think the relationships are great, but I would just encourage more and more of that type of dialogue. And also understand, you know, when I was, you know, when you’re an Active duty, you got SIPRnet are JWICS, or whatever, it’s like at your fingertips 24 hours a day, you know, seven days a week. That’s not the case in industry. It doesn’t matter who you are, it’s very compartmentalized. And so we don’t have that same level of SA that you have, and it takes effort, obviously, for on your part to, you know, to try to share that with us. But that dialogue is absolutely critical.

Lauderback Yeah, thank you. I asked that question because I wanted to, you know, I think there’s about 50, or maybe 70% of the audience in here are our Airmen and Guardians who are probably asking, like, you know, yes, I want to get better at this. How do I, and then how do I partner with, with industry to make it happen?

Reid: Can I just add one, one, comment back to your point, just there. If you’re in a position, and when you’re trying to make an acquisition decision, or a test decision or something, just make a decision, you’re not going to hurt our feelings. You like his stuff better, it’s better, you think it’s better go with it, go with it. Test it, fail, and then come to me. Or, or it works and you keep moving, right? Because industry needs that feedback. So I can look and go, you know, his stuff is better. How come? All right, back to the drawing board. Industry has internal research and defense dollars, right, that we’d love to sink into making something better, but we don’t know unless we’re it we’re allowed to partner. And even if it’s not a contract, right, it’s look for ways to just go, hey, I want to do a cooperative research agreement with you. Let’s just let’s do let’s again, run fast with scissors and take the risk and fail and go do it. But don’t be afraid to pick a vendor. Don’t be afraid to pick just, pick one. Pick one, go succeed. If you hit a brick wall, right, in pilot training, they said, hey, I’m coming to the edge of the my operating area. Alright, student, you got to turn left? Right, up, down? What are you gonna do? I don’t know, I don’t know, I’m coming to the edge of the operating area. What should I do? What should I do? Pick one. Because it’s going to put you in a new direction, it’s gonna lead to new opportunities, and you’re going to, there’s new pathways to find success.

Savoie: I would say also just don’t be, we’re all adults, right? I mean, there seems to be this mentality. And when I was in a service, I just, I got embedded with the contractor, right? We were building airplanes really, really quick. When we were doing the U-28. We had two weeks to deploy with it the moment we got it. So I mean, there was no time, right? So we embedded ourselves with the contractor. You know, I lived in the plants and then trained people then and then took the plane downrange myself, but had to be part of that process. And that set a tone and our end user’s right there. We, people talk about the customer. And we talk about like the contracts folks and the PMOs as the customer just because they’re the ones write the checks. But you know, someone gave them money, and someone uses the stuff. And it’s a customer mindset across the board. But it’s really a team, right? And so people, we’re not scared to have people in the buildings and collaborating and part of the process constantly. Specs are specs, right? They were written by someone and headquarters, they’ve been staffed and looked at. But there’s a lot of white space between each one of those lines in terms of the context of the whys. And we’re always looking for the whys, right? And making sure that everything meets its intent, along with the letter of the spec. And so be involved. And you’ll find very industry very, very receptive to having people involved and we know what’s in scope, we know how to take contractual direction and all those things. We know how to do that. And that does not that does not preclude people from being involved, so be involved.

Lauderback: Thank you. Thanks, really, for those techniques, and some tactics there. Brad, you had talked about classified briefings that are happening. I know that in the Space Force specifically, we’ve started to do that as we’re trying to develop the force design for what is it that we need on orbit for a resilient architecture and for getting, right, making, making everyone successful from a warfighting perspective? So thank you for that. Okay, I think we’ve only got a couple of more minutes. So the only last thing, and you may or may not have expertise in this area, but I do. And so I’m asking a question about, as the senior intelligence officer for the Space Force, there are capabilities on orbit today that we can and cannot characterize, just like we need to be able to characterize on the ground or in any other domain. I guess the question is, are you thinking, or your company’s thinking at all about that about looking up and helping us to gain that persistence that we might need as well as the high fidelity of a sensor to be able to truly characterize out to 47,000 kilometers what it is that an adversary might be doing? Any thoughts?

Reeves: Well, so certainly, we are. Now another way, we’re approaching largely as obvious as you know, AMTI, GMTI is a big is a big, important, right, and we need to be able to leverage those assets for that. So there’s two parts because I think we don’t have much time. One is, is making sure we can connect and correlate and fuse the AMTI GMTI of space terrestrial layer, point one. Two, we also need to make sure that we can get that data. That’s all the cool stuff from satellites, it’s generally reserved for the privileged few. We need to democratize that and get it to everyone.

Lauderback: Thanks, Brad.

Savoie: But, you know, most certainly, I mean, I would say especially, you know, at my company, we’re, significant investment on the sensor side, you know, larger and larger apertures, lighter weight, less power. A lot of the connectivity pieces. You know, I’ve been directly involved a lot the space avionics piece, the entirety of that business was the connectivity. How do you get data from GEO or LEO contested etc., but we’re only, I mean, we’re primarily looking up from a business perspective. Even in you know, the air breather side that I manage, where we’re trying to get as high up in the air as we can, but I will say a predominance of the focus is in that arena, both on the sensing side, like you said, GMTI, etc. How do you have collaborative radar you know, in that layer with also air breathers etc. But there’s a lot of looking up and I know we look to partner both in the classified side in the unclass side and you know, whole vehicle architectures etc. for that.

Reid: Just come back to my comments previously, obviously, you know, we have beyond line of sight operations, you know, globally with unmanned airplanes. So our dependency on the capabilities that space brings is, is an absolute, but we need redundancy. Right. And that comes back to this, you know, I got to use it. But I’ve also got to have, you know, kind of, I’ve got to degrade gracefully, you know, in those environments, until I can go in and get back up into that, you know, the the gold standard, which is what space provides me. And so I think we got to make sure that, you know, we’re investing appropriately in space. Ensuring that we can, we can degrade gracefully, when, when the situation and the conditions require it, and then move back up into it.

Lauderback: Excellent. Thank you. Thanks very much. I love the idea of looking up and being able to characterize things on orbit as we will absolutely need to. So can I get a round of applause for our panelists? Thank you. And it’s, just so you know, in lieu of the speaker gifts this year, AFA made a donation to enable our airmen and guardians to participate in the poolside barbecue last night. So thank you very much. So right before I leave, and I know we’re already over, but I really thank you for the risk, the trust, right, those one-words that you used in the beginning, and then the ability to be able to write our own doctrine. Right, to be able to be successful in a in a peer conflict that probably is coming. And we can, we’ve got a lot of work to do in order to get there. So thanks very much to you all. Alright, hey, next up, we’ve got a 30 minute coffee break in the Exposition Hall. So please take some time to check out the exhibits, build the trust, communicate with the industry, and if you haven’t had a if you haven’t been able to do that yet. Next session starts back up at 9:45. So thank you so much.

Watch, Read: From Warfighter Requirements to Operational Capability

March 13, 2022

Retired Air Force Gen. Lester L. Lyles moderates the panel discussion “From Warfighter Requirements to Operational Capability” with commander of Air Force Materiel Command Gen. Arnold W. Bunch Jr.; commander of Space Systems Command Space Force Lt. Gen. Michael A. Guetlein; and Randall G. Walden, director and program executive officer for the Department of the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office during the AFA Warfare Symposium on March 4, 2022. Watch the video or read the transcript below. This transcript is made possible through the sponsorship of JobsOhio.

Overhead Voice

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome General Lester Lyles.

Retired Gen. Lester L. Lyles

Well, there is a cheering section out there. That’s very good. For an old guy who retired 20 years ago, I didn’t think anybody would be out there, remember my name at all. Well, it is an honor to be here to moderate this excellent panel talking about a subject that many of us are very, very familiar with. And all of us, in some form or another, get a chance to live parts of this, whether it’s in the birthing, developing, operating, sustaining capabilities for our warfighters. And so the chance to have an opportunity to talk to three—just literally, the word outstanding is not strong enough—three excellent, outstanding, superior leaders in our Air Force; and particularly, that deals with providing capabilities to the warfighter. I couldn’t be more proud to have the opportunity to do this. General Arnie Bunch, of course, Air Force Materiel Command commander; General Mike Guetlein, now the Space Systems Command commander—had to think about that, Mike, just a little bit—and Mr. Waldo, Randy Walden, who we all call Waldo. And Mike, I’ll call you, Mike; and Arnie, I’ll call you Arnie If you don’t mind.

This is a very unique time for me. In so many respects, time goes by so quickly as I look out into the audience. And definitely, as I saw some of the Airmen and Guardians who are here participating in this event, I didn’t realize how many babies we have in our Air Force and Space Force today. Everybody looks so very young. Even the general officers look very young. So it’s a sort of a weird, weird time. And for this panel, one of the unique things about it for me is that, at least for two of our participants, I’ve sat in their seat in the past. Now, it was some 20 years ago when I was in the seat of Air Force Materiel Command. And I wasn’t quite in Mike’s seat, because his name and title—the organization’s changed. But I was the SMC Commander from ’94 to ’96. I know you want to look—I’m sure there’s some people who weren’t even born in ‘94—that are part of our Space Force or Air Force today. So it’s, again, an honor to have a chance to participate in this event. We don’t have a lot of time. And I want to make sure we get an opportunity for these three gentlemen to talk about what it is they’re doing in this particular area. And we hope there’ll be sort of a dialogue amongst us, if you will. I’ll have a few questions to ask and encourage the others to either add in if they want or give them a chance to make comments relative to their particular spectrum of the business that we’re in, and acquisition and requirements, etc. But first, let me just go one by one. And give us about two or three minutes just to make some comments. So and what do you think are some of your challenges and opportunities or accomplishments. So, Arnie?

Gen. Arnold W. Bunch Jr.

So General Lyles, thank you for the opportunity for—if the Airmen and the Guardians that are out there do not know who this fine gentleman is, regardless of how many years ago that he retired, you are missing a great opportunity. He has mentored and led many of us. Lieutenant Colonel Bunch learned great numbers of details from this fine gentleman, and he is a great American, has served this nation in various capacities. And no one’s going to forget the mark, the indelible mark, sir, that you’ve left on our Air and Space Force, so thank you. Thank you. Thank you. The second one that I would say initially before I go into remarks, the characterization of me as an outstanding individual, my wife would sincerely disagree with. And that’s why I spend so much of my time on the wife appeasement plan, based on the activities that I’ve done over time. So for AFA, thank you very much. Great venue, great symposium. We’ve had a lot of great dialogue. It’s an honor to be up here with these two great gentlemen who are executing the day to day J-O-B right now trying to make things happen. It’s fantastic to be up here to represent the 89,000-plus uniformed and non-uniformed Airmen that are part of Air Force Materiel Command. It’s an honor to get to work for them each and every day as they execute their wartime mission each and every day. And I often say that we’re the most important major command in the Air Force. I do not say that out of arrogance. I say that out of the fact that what we do, we do for everybody else in this room—to include a lot of things that we do for the Space Force today—but what we do for all the other major commands and for overall the Department of Defense. Since this has got to warfighter focus, I’m going to use a little bit of analogy to get a little better idea what we kind of do within Air Force Materiel Command. One of the things that my command chief Dave Flosi, my wingman, had recently happen: He had a chief master sergeant within the Air Force asked him, Why do you at Air Force Materiel Command warrant having an F-15 on a pole out in front of your headquarters? What do you have to do with any of that? And the answer was, well, we partner with industry to do the research on the materials and the engines, and the radar, and all those things that we took to try to make the airplane. We partnered with industry by procuring the assets and trying to put them in the field. We partnered with field and operational testers to do the testing. We every day sustain those still today within what we do within our depot. We were using Supply Chain Management wings to keep them flying. We did the research and the development for the weapons that they carried to be able to go execute their missions. We continue to do the modernization. We did the experimentation and the development of the uniforms and the helmets and everything else that they were. And if you take it to the extreme, we actually do the MILCON to build a runway and provide all the support structure for everybody at the base. That’s why we have an F-15 on the front of our [inaudible]. So a lot of the other things that we’re doing, I’ll wait and I’ll hit on. There is one thing, though, that I do want to talk about that as my Number One priority. And that’s diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility. And I had someone at Air Command and Staff College go, Secretary Kendall’s Number One priority is China, China, China. How can your Number One priority, General Bunch, be diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility? And the answer was actually pretty simple. I see them as very completely aligned and integrated together because our most valuable resource is our Airmen. And if I cannot create within the Air Force Materiel Command an environment where every Airman has the opportunity to perform to his or her full potential and feel valued, then we’re not going to be able to move at the speed and execute the operational imperatives to do all the other things that are critical to what we do within the command. So that’s enough for me, for the short bit, and I’ll talk more on other things. Thank you.

Gen. Michael A. Guetlein

Thank you sir. I really appreciate you hosting us today, and for AFA hosting this important dialogue. This is a little intimidating for me; all three of these gentlemen have been my mentor and are my mentors along my career all the way going back to asa captain, sir, with General Lyles. So I’m up here as the brand-new field command for Space Force. We’re about six months old, stood up last August. It is a field command in the aspect of we are equivalent to a MAJCOM but much, much smaller. So the best way to think of Space Systems Command is the AFMC of space. And whereas warfighting starts with AFMC, space starts with SSC. Why do I say that? Because every system that we buy, every system that we purchase, every capability we deliver to the nation and to the warfighter for space starts in some way, shape, or form with Space Systems Command. Space Systems Command was stood up to do basically two things. First and foremost is, to get a warfighter focus on space acquisitions. And then the second was to actually get after some of the criticisms that we’ve been receiving in space acquisitions over the past 20 years. We did that by doing a couple things. First, we stood up five new PEOs. Where SMC used to be one PEO, we are now five PEOs. Those five PEOs report directly to the service acquisition executive like you would expect all other PEOs to do.

I am not, as the commander, one of those PEOs. My job is a little bit different. My job is to organize, train, and equip. But I also have one more job under the acquisition hat, assisting the assistant secretary of the Air Force [inaudible] for system of systems integration. What do I mean by that? Over time, and one of the criticisms that we’ve had over time is that we focused a whole lot on our system-by-system capability, that we weren’t doing a really good job integrating across. Nor were we focusing on the capability that we needed to actually deliver to the warfighter. We have completely changed all that by standing up the SSC commander, the system of systems integrator, and I am now an adviser to the SAE for all milestone decisions so that we, as a department, can better integrate horizontally across the system. In addition to that, we stood up to get unity of effort. One of the criticisms that we got, and the GAO talked about a lot, was that there were 60-plus organizations that had a say in space acquisitions, and all 60 of them could say no. Standing up the Space Force was to try to get after that. And one of the ways to get after that is unity of effort. And the reason we talked about unity of effort is because we have to go across organizational boundaries, both title 10 and title 50. And we have multiple organization authorities above us that have to be somehow integrated. And they don’t all come together in one location until they come to the president of the United States. That causes [inaudible] integration challenges. So we’ve been, SSC has been, charged with trying to gain unity of effort. And we have done that through a collaborative process called the Program Integration Council, which I will talk about here in a little bit. The other reason we are a field command is because we are no longer geographically centered on Los Angeles. The Cape and Vandenberg both fall under Space Systems Command, as well as 13 other geographically separated locations to include a lieutenant colonel in Australia. We’re gonna put a lieutenant colonel in U.K. and a liaison out in PACOM to get that warfighting focus. So that in the gist is what Space Systems Command is and what we’re all about, and I’ll wait for the rest of the questions to talk a bit more about it.

Retired Gen. Lester L. Lyles

All right. Thank you, Mike. Right. Thank you. Waldo.

Randall G. Walden

Well, let me start by saying it’s great to be on this incredible panel. And also great to be on this panel with friends, very close friends. And it’s great to see so many familiar faces in the audience, all the Airmen and Guardians that I hang out with, I’ve been hanging out with for a very long time. So I’m going to start off by saying a little bit about the organization. I’d like to touch on three programs I can talk about publicly. Number one, little bit about the RCO. There was our founding fathers, a guy by the name of Dr. [Pete] Aldridge, he was the USD AT&L; Dr. Jim Roche, who was the Secretary of the Air Force at the time; and General John Jumper, who’s the chief at the time, that said, we’re frustrated. And here’s a mythbusting, not just with acquisition, but requirements process. And they wanted an organization that was some somewhat similar to the Lockheed Skunkworks. And the reason for that is they felt as though what they wanted to get done, and a high priority for them, was not getting done. And they created the Rapid Capabilities Office. And that’s been almost 20 years ago. And I’m happy to say I’ve been part of that organization, not the entire time, but for the most time. And I love it, got some of the best folks on the planet, there. A little bit of mythbusting. So all of a sudden, you get a sense of, well, how you get your stuff done is you have waivers to laws, and you have waivers to policy. That’s not true. We follow all laws and statutes. We follow all policies. Now, here’s the part that’s important and was talked about yesterday by the former CEO of Google. So what we did is we read 5000, I would not recommend that to anybody. If you’re familiar with the Defense Acquisition System, I would recommend reading the part that talks about tailoring and streamlining. We took that section, put it in a charter, and I’ve got a board of directors that are very senior leaders. And that’s how we do our business. We try to minimize bureaucracy and maximize producing capability. That’s our goal. Now three programs, briefly. So I’ll start with B-21. You may have seen the press release, talked to John Tirpak the other day on Air Force magazine. It is true, we had six bombers on the production line. We actually took one out, and we pulled it over to do the loads calibration, which is where you go over and start to bend and flex the airplane and make sure that the design that you intended to build to actually matches the predictions. And, Two, and this is the part that’s different, we actually are using the same production line that we’re going to build a minimum of 100 bombers. So we’re also verifying that the production and the manufacturing matches the predictions as well. And we’re going to learn that very shortly.

Now let’s talk a little bit about the X-37. So the X-37 we’ve been doing since April of 2010. It’s been a heavy lifter, no pun intended, of doing experimentation in space for a lot of modernization activities for space. And some might even say we were actually ahead of Space Force and helping them out as they were maturing. And it’s been really, really good. And I’ll talk about the one that’s on orbit right now. So Mission Six is currently on orbit. It’s been doing a lot of experimentation, which has been publicly released. It has 655 days on orbit. And as you know, we probably fly about two years. But once we’re done with the experimentation, and we’re ready to come back and land, we will do that. And almost two years ago, as part of a public release, we talked about the service module attached to the back end. The reason for that is, it allows us to put more experiments onboard. And so before we deorbit the X-37B we need to release that service module. And the plan right now is to do it safe and professionally in a manner that burns up in the atmosphere. That’s the plan. And that’s what we’ll do. And then we’ll recover the X-37B and refurbish it and get it ready for the next launch. Mission Seven’s coming up right after we land that one. And it will also go up with a service module. We’ll go into the details of when we’re going to launch. But suffice to say it’s not far behind when we land.

And then finally, a little bit on Advanced Battle Management System. And so there’s been a lot of conversations both in the public and on the stage this week. Just some insight, and I’m just going to offer this up right now: I could really use defense industries’ thoughts, through their lens of how we get after joint all-domain command and control. And the reason I say that is, industry works with all the services. And having that insight gives you the best lens by which you can help inform how we do ABMS and being able to meet all the service needs when it comes to sharing data. And I’m looking for everybody. And I walk the floor, every time I meet with someone, I tell them the same story: I’m looking for your thoughts and your expertise to make that real. So if I was to describe ABMS, it’s essentially really two components. The first one is you have to have an infrastructure, a digital infrastructure that allows you to, One, contain data, apply applications to that data, and share it globally. That’s the premise. And if you don’t have that infrastructure, it’s not going to work really well in sharing data. And by the way, the best part is we can leverage what commercial industry has invested in for many decades and continues to invest in, you may be familiar with it, it’s called the internet. And you probably don’t think about how those standards work, and how it all works when you log in. But you know what, that’s where we are, to leverage that expertise. And it works really well. The second part of ABMS is, OK, the capabilities. Now, we’re working on Capability Release One, which is really trying to turn the KC-46, or any other platform that can carry the pods that we’re going to go invest in. And that is being able to share data in a manner that allows not only the aircraft, whether it’s a fighter or bomber, to get replenished from fuel, whether they’re going into a fight or coming out of the fight, but also share and replenish data that they’re going to need before they go into the fight or coming out of the fight. And the thought is, if I can share that data not only with a tanker, but it goes beyond line of sight back to an air operations center, or back to strategic users, it’s incredible. It’s all the same data. It’s how you want to apply applications in a manner that allows those users, whether it’s strategic, operational or tactical, the information they need to make decisions. That’s what ABMS is about.

Retired Gen. Lester L. Lyles

Thanks, Waldo. There’s very informative. Thank you very much. Arnie, let me just ask, you know, in your previous capacity as the deputy acquisitions czar in the headquarters, you are a staunch supporter for doing things quicker and doing better. And I particularly remember a briefing you put together about faster, smarter acquisition, and the various tenets that are part of that, like supercharging the acquisition engine, creating a big ideas pipeline, and expanding industrial partnerships. So I’m just saying things that Waldo just touched upon and I know Mike is using very much in Space Systems Command. In your capacity at AFMC, have you been able to really bring those things to your trained, organized, and equipped function, or do you think you’ve actually, were able to carry through some of the things you talked about a few years ago?

Gen. Arnold W. Bunch Jr.

So, great question. And I believe we’ve got a couple of examples of things that we’re doing that definitely bring that home. If you look at what happened when we got into COVID, I got an email on a Friday night from the Vice Chief General Wilson. It said, ‘Hey, we need a means to be able—we need the transportable isolation system certified on a C-17 as quick as you can.’ All I got was an email. Three weeks later, we flew our first COVID-positive individual that went through all the certification, went through the right things that we need to do to get it out in the air. At the same time, Air Mobility Command said, ‘Hey, we need something better than that.’ We needed a negative pressure CONEX so that we can carry this. We needed to be able to go, and we need one for a C-17. We need one for a C-130 that was called light, and we need to get going. We did that, delivered it. It flew the first patient 88 days later. So when people tell you you can’t go fast, you can’t make these things happen, the reality is you can make them happen. Why was that a success? To me it was a success because there was a clear priority from all parties involved that we needed to go do this. We did not have to worry about trying to fight to get money to try to make everything align. We had the acquirers, the requirers, the medical field, the research lab, everybody, right? They’re working together with a clear sense of purpose. And when we align all of those things together, what we really do is we take the shackles off of the acquisition community, and they’re allowed to move at the speed that they need to be able to deliver those capabilities. We can’t do that in every case. But when people tell me you can’t go fast with acquisition, I point to this and go, yes, we can. What most people don’t realize is, we actually went through testing and redesigned the interior of that negative pressure CONEX in the middle of that, because it would not have survived the landings we wanted to do, the way the seats were designed. And we redesigned them within the last couple of weeks so that we would have that capability. That’s an example of going through and doing that. The other one that I believe is really successful right now is we’re moving out on our digital campaign. If you look at that and the way that we’ve got the team and AFMC focused on the assets from research all the way to retirement, we want it for test, the acquisition, the sustainment—we want all of it blended in together. GBSD has done great in that area. Working with General Cotton’s team at Global Strike Command and working with other industry partners, we went through millions of examples to find the knee and the curve for what we needed to put on contract.

Next Generation Air Dominance, it’s taking it to a whole ‘nother level in the way that we’re working with industry, the way industry is utilizing our labs and partnering with what’s going on there, all to another level for that we’re using on all platforms. The A-10 wings, we’re getting ready to get the first one done probably seven months earlier than we planned. And it’s done because we’ve done digital modeling of it. And we’re able to design it in a way that we probably wouldn’t have been able to do before. Critical for the B-52 commercial engine replacement program. We’re doing all that in a digital environment and making it happen. The other one that we started pushing on that you talked about, sir, was being innovative. We have extremely innovative Airmen. They are doing great things at the installation level. We do not have an innovation problem at the installation level where I believe we still have to do work. And we may have an innovation problem, is trying to go to scale from what we’re finding at the local levels to take it out and put it all the way across. We’ve got to find a way to move faster there so that our Airmen who are being innovative don’t lose faith that we as senior leaders are going to move out and make those things happen. And we’re going to work with people to get some money.

The last one that I will touch on is what we need with authorities. Last NDAA I was a big proponent of what I call BA-08. That is an authority that Congress gave us that gives a single program element to do coding of software. Mike is the beneficiary of that at Kobayashi Maru. Right now he’s the only program in the Department of the Air Force that gets to do that. We have three more Air Force programs that, if we can ever get the NDAA passed, will be out there. And we should be able to do them, three more of those. That is something that gets at what Dr. Schmidt talked about yesterday, about being able to move at speed, not go through the bureaucracy, put money where it needed to be put so that we can drive change and get it out into the field. We need to continue to work those things. Nothing says innovation like saying, that’s a great idea, come back in two years, and I’ll have some money and we can go. That’s what we’ve got to get extra authorities and flexibilities so that we don’t put ourselves in that position, and so that we can move at speed.

Retired Gen. Lester L. Lyles

That’s great. Thank you very much. Along those same lines there, Mike, you know, when I think back, in some respects, Space Force was created to address acquisition and for the space activities, and to do it quicker and do it better. Whether you look at SPD Space Policy Directive Number Four, which created the Space Force, or you look at your organization, you look at Frank Calvelli, who was just, I think, confirmed as the acquisitions czar for Space Force. And I look at you as a commander in your background, your unique background, your MC-130 program office, a big [inaudible] program, you’re in a B-2 program office, you’re at Missile Defense Agency, NRO, all those organizations noted for doing things fast. Are you going to be able to bring that same kind of culture to the Space Systems Command? Are there some things that perhaps scare you a little bit about trying to do that?

Gen. Michael A. Guetlein

Yes, sir. It’s a great question. When we stood up Space Systems Command to get exactly what we did, we went to Missile Defense Agency and said, how do you do business—National Reconnaissance Office, RCO Space, RCO, and even our own SMC 2.0 when we established it. I’ll tell you SSC is established on the best of the best of all those organizations. And how do I say that SSC really embraced the ACC. The SMC 2.0 really embraced the adaptive acquisition framework, which gets into what Waldo talked about tailoring. DOD 5000 allows an enormous amount of flexibility. And Secretary Lord, before she walked out, added even more flexibility. SMC 2.0 was built upon that flexibility. And we capitalized on that when we stood up SSC. You look to the Missile Defense Agency, probably the best systems integrators and the best digital engineering environment in the DOD. We capitalized on those lessons learned. You get to the National Reconnaissance Office, very flat, very empowered PEOs. We capitalized on that. Then you look at the way the Rapid Capabilities Office does business. We capitalized on all that. So that when we stood up Space Systems Command, we really did harvest what we thought was the best of the best of all the organizations to give us the agility, not only in acquisitions, to begin that system-of-systems integration approach, unity of effort, and focus on the warfighter. That’s why we are extremely flat. We just pulled another layer of leadership out with the objective of getting to the Space Force a model of no 0-6 works for an 0-6 or NH-4 equivalent. That, by doing that, pushes the authorities down and gets to what we talked a little bit about yesterday—about empowering our junior Airmen and Guardians. They are capable of an enormous amount. And they are the most innovative and the most driven individuals that I’ve ever seen. We’ve got to take the handcuffs off. And we’ve done that by trying to flatten out the organization. In addition to that, we now took what was the span of one PEO and spread that to five PEOs. That allows us to get more of a focus on the acquisitions and delivering a capability faster to the warfighter. And then integrating across them to figure out what’s the best of the breed. So in the best of the breed, we’re actually looking at our partnerships with our allies and partnerships with commercial, if I can buy it out of commercial—but buy before build, that’s what I want to do, if I can integrate with allies or take advantage of what they’ve already built. And that’s what I want to do, is integrate it. But also when I build it, I want to integrate back into their stuff. So that we are not chasing the new, next-generation thing that’s going to take us 20 more years. Instead, we’re actually integrating what we already have to get more and more capability out of the systems that have already been delivered.

Retired Gen. Lester L. Lyles

Great. Thank you. Thanks, Mike. Why don’t you—you mentioned earlier about, you don’t break any rules in terms of the authorities and all the legal requirements, etc. Yet, when I think about all the things that people are able to do, whether it’s with OTAs—other transaction authorities—the flexibility DOD 5000 does give you, and other things like a couple of ones that that Arnie mentioned, you sort of described your secret sauce of getting things done. But I keep thinking you’ve left one ingredient out that you’re not telling us about, because other people have those same authorities, but they’re not achieving the rapid capabilities that your office does. So can you tell us what that secret sauce is?

Randall G. Walden

Yes, sir. I get to brag about my organization even more. I love that. So let’s touch briefly on how we were created. I’ve already given you that insight of why we were created. Now what are we doing today. And so we are managed, governed, and overseen by a board of directors. So similar, not identical, to the way corporations work today. Why? Because the leadership wants their personal touch on what we’re doing. And so today, the board of directors we have includes undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment; the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering; the Secretary of the Air Force; the Chief of Staff of the Air Force. And we added the Chief of Space Operations, because we have some space in some of the things we’re working on. And on top of that, now, the acquisition authority’s associated, so SAF/AQ is a part of that. And when the space acquisition executive is confirmed, they will become a part of our board. That’s what governs and oversees what we do. And so that’s a part of the secret sauce. Now, here’s the real secret sauce. And everybody knows this. And Arnie, you mentioned this, this is all about trying to do the right thing as fast as you can, but legally, and under the right bureaucracy that makes sense to execute the program. And I’ll tell you that that’s a culture. And that culture has got to extend from the lowest level, program managers, contracting officers, financial managers, etc. that worked for me, and we call them melting pots. We form teams—some call them program offices—we form teams, and their primary goal is to assemble this team in a manner that executes the programs. That’s how we do it. And the culture of getting things done with the least bureaucracy has to extend all the way up through to that board of directors I just introduced. Everybody’s got to have that culture. They don’t have it, then you won’t succeed. And today, I can assure you that culture exists, and it still exists. Now, don’t get me wrong, I do have to spend most of my days fighting off bureaucracy, because they want to help us. And I don’t mind doing that, for that melting pot of teams that I want to actually get those handcuffs off and let them execute. And when you empower teams with that level of expertise, it’s incredible. And I’ll just share this thought with you, I can’t remember the last time a program manager or a contracting officer has come in to me and said, ‘Hey, boss, I’ve got a great idea. You know what, we should slow the program down and increase the cost.’ They’ve never said that. And here’s the amazing part. It’s only when bureaucracy gets in the way that the schedule slips to the right and the costs start to click and creep up. And I will tell you, the more I can do to fight that bureaucracy off and let those empowered teams execute, it’s incredible. That is our secret sauce. And I’ll tell you what, I am proud to be a part of that organization and love hanging out with those individuals. They’re incredible. Thanks very much for the question.

Retired Gen. Lester L. Lyles

Waldo, that’s outstanding. And you pointed out the key, I think, component: individuals and people. The culture really translates to people in all the organizations. Let me just wax nostalgic just a little bit. When I went out to Los Angeles, as a colonel coming from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base to, uh, to run the space loss recovery program after Challenger. So we birthed Atlas, to Delta, to all those things that have now grown up to little bigger launch vehicles, if you will. But what surprised me, even though I’d been in Los Angeles as a second lieutenant, as a young rocket engineer, what surprised me was going out and finding out that the acquisition communities, space and air, they had not talked to each other. They really didn’t share best practices. I found things at Los Angeles, out at the space realm, that the aeronautics people were not doing, and vice versa, found things that they are not as committed at, that they never even heard about in the space community. So let me ask Arnie particularly, and Mike, what are you guys doing to make sure that, I know we have Guardians. Obviously, we have Airmen. What are you doing to make sure that there’s the oppos… opportunity to translate information, to share best practices, even to potentially move people so that a Guardian can become an Airman and an Airman become a Guardian? If I can, can use a term, I’d like your thoughts on how we’ve got to make sure that we don’t have stovepipes.

Gen. Arnold W. Bunch Jr.

Yes, sir. So one thing I want everybody to clearly get out of this, that I’ve got to go back to what Waldo said: We do not have anybody in mine or Mike’s organization that comes to work and says I want to go slow. OK, just so we’re really crystal clear here. We all want to get things done as quickly as we can. Some of us are just not as at the lower levels as effective at being able to get to get people to stop helping me. Which is a line that, ‘please stop helping me,’ a line that I quite frequently use. So this is a great partner right here. And we know that we’ve got things that we need to be doing together, or we’re not going to be doing the ‘One Team, One Fight’ that our secretary keep continues talking about. You know, so right now we are partners on what we’re doing in our digital campaign. When we started our digital campaign within the command roughly eight months before the bend-the-spoon presentation that happened at AFA, SMC was sitting in the room, at that time SSC. Today, we’re partnered together for how we’re going to implement this, how are we going to do it? I made a commitment roughly two years ago to Chief Raymond, that there was nothing that we were going to do in what we were doing for our digital campaign, that would preclude the Space Force from being able to tap into whatever tools we had, architectures. We had things that we were going to do together. Mike and I have continued that. We’re right now working together on how we put in packages and how we do spectrum management. That’s an area that both of us have struggled with from a process perspective. We’re working together to make sure that as I have people sitting in his monthly meetings, he has people sitting with my team and doing those very things. We are working together. We’re going to brief them on what we’re trying to do to change the way that we look at software. The software factories have grown all over the place. We need to put a little attention while they stay innovative, but we don’t have everybody competing against each other. I actually found out recently that I had three of my own organizations bid against each other to try to do some work. Industry would never do that. We’ve got to put some rules and guidelines in place so that I don’t have that happen and within my command, trying to pick up work that we would love to do, and we’re going to share those kind of lessons learned. S&T, one lab, two services, Heather Pringle’s done a great job trying to work together to make sure we’re linked. The words that I use are, Technology does not know its application until you tell it. In other words, there’s stuff that’s going on at Rome, New York, that’s predominantly funded by the Department by the Air Force side of the house, that Mike’s folks may want to use in command and control or whatever else they’re trying to do. There are things that are going on in Space Vehicles Directorate or in Sensors that would apply over, and we need to keep working that, and I think we’ve got a great relationship and how we’re doing that test. The Air Force Test Pilot School stood up a space test fundamentals class. We did that in short order. We’ve graduated quite a few Guardians, sharing those lessons learned to make sure we don’t have to go re-plow ground; and share what we’re doing from a test infrastructure place to try to keep from duplicating efforts that we don’t necessarily need to duplicate. And the last one that you hit on is extremely important. People. We have got—I know that he has Airmen that are running programs right now. I know that I have Guardians that are running part of our AFRL directorates and working in various parts of us. What he and I need to do is continue to communicate, so that we put the right Airman or the right Guardian on the right program at the right time, and not let the bureaucracy that wants to look at the eaches of what slot is it and who owns it. We’ve got to continue to work together to make sure we’re doing that collaboration and making that happen.

Retired Gen. Lester L. Lyles

Mike, your thoughts.

Gen. Michael A. Guetlein

Yes, sir. I do want to I want to start with what General Raymond said yesterday: Without a shadow of doubt, we have the best, the greatest Space Force in the entire world, built on the foundations and by the greatest Air Force in the world. And it is absolutely critical that we maintain that integration and that connectivity going forward. And General Bunch and I try to stay as connected as we can. I also integrate a lot with Waldo here to make sure that our systems and our people are aligned. I send folks—I send my best to him; he sends his best to me; and vice versa with General Bunch. All right now the way the Space Force is set up, General Bunch is our servicing MAJCOM. He makes everything go around. He provides the gate guards. He provides public affairs, contracting officers, financial officers, and a whole host of more capability that allows the Space Force to operate. So we’ve absolutely got to stay integrated.

On the lab front, the director of our [unintelligible] is co-chosen by myself and General Pringle with a dotted line to me to make sure that under the one lab-two service construct, that we stay connected. The TEO, technical executive officer works, it works on my staff and works on her staff. So we get the integration back and forth. At the lower levels, at things like RATPAC, things like GHOST, all those, we’re transferring our junior Guardians and junior Airmen back and forth. So we are working very hard to keep that technical expertise going back and forth. At the SML and ML level, we have worked very hard with the personnel folks to allow us to choose off both lists. It won’t be 100 percent one way or the other. But when I’m filling out my space SMLs and MLs, I can actually reach into the Air Force list if I need that Air Force talent, working with General Bunch and actually move that talent across. So it is absolutely critical that we stay connected and we’re working every way we can to remain connected, sir.

Retired Gen. Lester L. Lyles

Great. That’s fantastic. Thank you. We’re running a little bit short on time, so let me just ask a couple of quick questions, slightly different, if you will. We’re talking about the generation, today’s Guardians, today’s Airmen, looking at the future generation, particularly smart STEM-focused, STEM-literate people that we are going to need for Space Force, for the Air Force, for RCO, etc., etc. Are any one of you, your organizations, doing things to reach out to the school systems to begin to really make sure that people understand the value of STEM and encourage them in some way to be part of that? Not necessarily to be part of the Space Force or the Air Force or, if you will, but we’re going to need that kind of talent, and so I’m just interested if any of you are doing things to reach into the communities to really spark that.

Randall G. Walden

So the answer is yes. And so from my office it’s a little hard just to go out to the school system and start to train or try to recruit that talent, but we know it’s there. So you’ll see me every so often get in a public forum similar to this and talk about what we can do from an acquisition point of view and the engineering that we need to make sure that we can actually accomplish our job. And so we’re also creating a PhD program within the organization to allow some of those really good engineers to go get a doctorate in whatever they want to go do to include but not limited to engineering. And so we’re trying to increase a capability of the talent pool we have in the organization in a manner that helps not only us—because I want to try to hire them back after they’re done—but helps others and the greater portion of the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Space Force. That’s our goal.

And by the way, I’ll just share this with you, last question, just briefly. So I was asked by General Raymond, when the space RCO was standing up, ‘Waldo, you got any talent out there, you know?’ And I said, ‘Yes, I do.’ And I gave him two names, the contracting officer, and the financial manager that I knew had already left, and they were out there in the talent pool. And I gave them those names. And guess what, they wanted to move to Albuquerque. So it was easy. He hired them. And oh, by the way, we populate that organization as well as other organizations to get that talent pool. And the lessons learned that they have in our, my organization spread across the map, not only to help organizations in the Department of the Air Force, but also to spread the word to that STEM. And it’s important, I’ll tell you, most of those folks go out into the world, and they spread, I think a good news. Yeah, go work in an organization that, One, empowers you. And, Two, has challenging tasks, engineering tasks. And trust me, they are hungry for that. I hope that helps.

Retired Gen. Lester L. Lyles

It does. Mike?

Gen. Michael A. Guetlein

The Space Force actually embraced it from the top with our talent market, talent management office, that’s doing a whole lot of reach out. I just signed a university partnership agreement with the University of Southern California on Thursday of last week, to partner on not only technical stuff, but also on Space Policy. We’re also doing some things with California Polytechnic, with Congressman Carbajal. So we have an enormous amount of reach out that that starts all the way at grade school level all the way into our PhD programs.

Retired Gen. Lester L. Lyles

Great, thank you. And by the way, your university partnership program, I think General Raymond was going out to my alma mater, Howard University, in April to formally make them part of the UPP program. I’m very, very happy to hear that. Arnie.

Gen. Arnold W. Bunch Jr.

Sir, we do have STEM programming—I know we’re running out of time. We do have an active STEM program trying to reach out, getting into schools. I’m doing, I did the video for the LEGO competition in Ohio, that they’re going to show for the junior and the more senior LEGOs, so that we’ve got a face out there letting them know and trying to encourage them to do this. The other thing I think is really important, we’ve done under General Pringle, and Dr. Welsh, we’ve really expanded out the partnerships that we’re doing with a lot of universities, and you see the benefits of that when you bring them in as interns. That’s a little later than what you asked, but you also need to get some of these PhDs and others who are ginormous brains—you’re worried about whether they’re going to tip over because their brains are so big—and you need to bring them in. So I was just recently at one of the directorates. And it was a Dr. [inaudible], and she was there. And she was explaining to me how on the end of the nose, she was designing the materials so the nose could turn, and we could more actively respond and be able to take out weapons along the way. She had never heard of the Air Force. She had no idea what we did. She came and did an internship. She is now in her second or third year. Talking to her was so motivating and inspiring for me that it was beyond belief. We just have to expose them to the great things that they’re doing in any one of these organizations. And we can move out.

Retired Gen. Lester L. Lyles

Great, fantastic. Well, we’ve run out of time for this panel discussion. I tell you, I could talk about this all day. And I’m sure you guys could too. So I wish we had more time to delve into some of the topics and subjects. It really is broad and I can’t think of three better leaders to talk about and to not just talk about it, but to actually enact and make sure we’re doing the right things for our United States Air Force and United States Space Force. So please join me in a round of applause for our three panel members.

Watch, Read: The Future of Unmanned Military Aircraft Starts Now

March 13, 2022

Retired Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem, director of research for the Air Force Association’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies hosts Steve Fendley, president, Kratos Unmanned Systems Division; David R. Alexander, president, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems; and Lt. Gen. Joseph T. “Gus” Guastella Jr., Air Force deputy chief of staff for operations in a discussion on “The Future of Unmanned Military Airpower” at the AFA Warfare Symposium on March 4, 2022. This transcript is made possible through the sponsorship of JobsOhio.

Speaker: Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the director of research at AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem.

Retired Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem: Thank you. Thank you. It’s not often a director of research gets an applause. Thank you. I’m particularly pleased to host this panel, where we talk about the future of airpower, with a focus on unmanned in part, and we’re exploring a key intersection between operational requirements and technology. And it’s no secret that demand for airpower is off the charts. As many Air Force leaders have explained, it’s a common denominator across the theaters. You know, we fight with our Soldiers and Sailors, of course, but the same can’t be said for surface forces. And to that point, a carrier battle group has a difficult time navigating through Central Europe, and an infantry division faces challenges bringing forces to bear in the Pacific. Their domain, however, covers all these regions. And the same holds true for space, and the demand reflects this. As part of that airpower future, unmanned aircraft are going to be crucial parts of it. And we’ve seen this over the past 20 years with aircraft types like Global Hawk and Predator and Reaper, they fundamentally reshaped how airpower can deliver key effects throughout the battlespace. Mission activities once thought to be impossible are commonplace. I’m a witness to that, having seen the first Predators back 22 years ago and having seen them just recently, the Airmen have just taken it through the roof, what they can do. We owe a lot to those Airmen, and we owe a lot to our industry partners who made this happen.

So today we find ourselves at a crossroads. Operation realities are demanding a new generation of technologies and capabilities. Remotely piloted systems are going to increasingly transition to from being automated to the autonomous realm. But those are difficult technology hurdles to overcome. And we also know money’s going to be tight. So we’re going to have to bridge with capabilities on the flight line today.

So that’s what we’re here to discuss: to understand the future operational requirements and then discuss how unmanned aircraft are going to meet these new demands as part of the overall airpower inventory. What parts of this equation will be wholly revolutionary, and what pieces will be built off proven success—we’ll get into that.

With that background, I’d like to welcome our panel of distinguished gentlemen. First, we have Lt. Gen. Gus Guastella, deputy chief of staff for operations for the U.S. Air Force. We have Steve, excuse me, we have Dave Alexander, president of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems. And then we have President of Kratos Unmanned Systems Division Steve Fendley. Welcome, gentlemen. Gen. Guastella, I’d like to—Gen. Guastella, I’d like to start by giving you the floor and talk a little bit about the bigger vision of the future operating environment and where airpower fits in. And then I’ll let the two other gentlemen comment after you.”

Lt. Gen. Joseph T. “Gus” Guastella Jr.: Well, thank you very much, Larry, and thank you to the Mitchell Institute and the AFA and our industry partners that are up here with me. And thanks to all of you out there—in and out of uniform, past or present—that support the generation and employment of airpower for our nation and our coalition, because you’ve done so much. And we all owe the Air Force a tremendous debt of gratitude for what you’ve done.

“And so, hey, I tell you what, as someone with my perspective, as the A3 or the COOs, if you will, of operations in the Air Force, we are an Air Force in demand, just like you said, Larry. We’re in demand, I would say disproportionately to other services. And how can I back that up? Well, we’re in demand geographically across every combatant command. There is not a single combatant command that isn’t asking for airpower.

“We’re also in demand in another way: in the vertical spectrum of warfare, from counterterrorism, counterviolent extremists, regional actors deterring them, dealing with peer competitors, as we see happening right now. The full spectrum of conflict demands airpower. With that horizontal demand, combined with the vertical demand, has levied a heavy toll upon the Air Force—a toll in terms of readiness and modernization. We can’t move forward in both of those areas without some support. We need to be resourced to the levels commensurate with our demand or take something off the plate. All right? And that’s just a fact.

But today, the focus is on our RPA community and the manned-unmanned aspect of it. And, I tell you what, just a shout out right up front to our RPA community that’s out there—community that has seen incredible growth over the last two decades and also a community that’s done incredible work for this nation and our coalition. You know, just as I speak, we have, they’re flying over 1,000 hours a day, well over 1,000 hours a day, seven days a week, 365, out there, providing that unblinking eye, providing ability to find, fix, track and sometimes finish targets all over the globe. They also provide—it’s an important aspect to think about—is the unblinking eye in the deterrent value that it provides, the ability to watch someone and attribute bad actors and then make that attribution known to the world. And we’ve seen that with the condemnation of Russia’s invasion in Ukraine. That happened in large part to seeing what they’re doing, predicting it, demonstrating it well beforehand and then watching it unfold. That’s what our RPA community does. And, and so, the contribution has been in invaluable.

There’s over 3,000 RPA operators—pilots, if you will—1,500 sensors, 1,200 maintainers and 600-plus on the intelligence side that support the enterprise. They’re doing amazing work. You know, just later this month, I’m going to Ellsworth, South Dakota, to visit the 89th Attack Squadron—the Marauders—because they’ve earned the Global Atomics Trophy for this year, for their incredible work in supporting Al Asad Airbase and the defense of that base during the Iranian missile attacks on and in Iraq a year and a half ago. And so—two years ago—and so the bottom line, though, is we’re in high demand in that RPA community. But interestingly, unlike other force elements, there is no dwell for them. In other words, most force elements that we’re used to deploy, and then they come home, and dwell and reset and train. There’s no relief for that community, because they’re in such high demand. They’re all in, all the time. But we’re really fighting hard—this is my message to the community, and this is from Gen. Brown, as well—we’re fighting hard to the community to take some segment of the force, keep it back at home, so you can stay home and train. Train against, not the uncontested environment that we see today, but train in a contested environment, where you’re tested kinetically and you’re also tested in terms of your electronic warfare aspect and ability to maintain links.

So I think that’s an important aspect that we’re fighting for. But regardless, as I finish up here, there’s an imperative for change. Our modeling and our simulation, the analysis that we’ve done—and we need to partner with industry on this—shows that, without a doubt, artificial intelligence, human machine learning and taking it all the way to manned-unmanned teaming, is going to provide a degree of lethality, survivability and effectiveness that we have not seen. We have to do this. We see tremendous value in here. But I’ll say that we don’t have all the answers right now. We’re going to need to experiment. We’re going to need to see team with our industry partners, see what’s possible, look at the price points, where is the best value. And, out of that experimentation and iteration, we will see improvements to this force that we’ve that we’ve never seen.

But I just want to say one last thing, and that is, throughout all of this, as we increase automation, it is our policy—and it’s ethically correct—to always have human in the loop before anything is employed kinetically or nonkinetically. If before effects are employed, that consent needs to come from a human. OK? And that’s something we’re gonna bake in as we move forward. But the sky’s the limit on terms of what the future is for the community. So again, thank you, Larry. Appreciate it.

Stutzriem: You betcha.

Guastella: I look forward to questions.

Stutzriem: Great words. Great words. Dave? Please.

David R. Alexander: Well, again, I’d like to say thanks to the AFA and Gen. Stutzriem and Guastella. We’re really proud to be on your team. And we’re especially proud to have 1,000 people forward-deployed and be actually part of the real fight. So, we’re just glad to be here and be part of what you do.

You know, the strengths for unmanned aircraft are, you know, are pretty obvious. Persistence is really a key one there, and you’re not limited by having crew on board your aircraft, so I think that frees up the airplane to do, you know, super long endurance and persistence, which, you know, we really see as key to this unblinking eye that the general was talking about. You don’t have a pilot in harm’s way. You know, that’s a big plus. Something happens, a pop up comes up and shoots one of your airplanes down, you know, you don’t have a bad story to go home, you know, to his family.

The weaknesses, you know, come with that, and you know, through the years, the first one that comes to mind on a weakness is you need a data link to talk to these things. And I remember we thought we’d died and gone to heaven when we got 6.4 megabits of, you know, bandwidth and we could actually go to high def. You know, we thought that was revolutionary at that point. And so the data links, you know, are a limitation, although that’s getting better with time. But I would say in maybe, by 2025, when you have thousands of LEO satellites up there that can do up to, you know, 100 megabits, and more each, I think the connectivity that’s coming in the next couple years—and it’s not that far away—will be very game changing, and maybe some of that weakness will go away.

And then, of course, autonomy and automation, you know, and artificial intelligence. You know, we’re missing that real intelligence, which is, you know, the pilot in command that’s inside the airplane, we’re missing that. So we got to re-create it. And so there’s the kind of the strengths and weaknesses that I see. So how do we on-ramp, you know, these new capabilities with unmanned aircraft that are meshed together and taking advantage of all these new data link solutions? You know, I think what we’ve really got to focus on is early operational experience and get out there and get out there quick. If we take 10, 12 years to go to this next stage of, you know, autonomous collaborative platforms, it’s too late. And we need to take what we’ve got, we need to get out there. And I’ll just throw a date out. It’s my opinion that we need to be out there by 2025. And we can do that today. We can do it today with long-range sensors and just get a handle on AMTI and GMTI right now. We don’t need to wait. And if you study it forever, you’re going to miss the boat. And so my last say on on-ramping any kind of capability is, let’s move out and get operational experience on the way. Thank you.

Stutzriem: Very good. Steve? Please.

Steve Fendley: Yes, sir. Thank you, General. And thank you, AFA, for the opportunity here. This is obviously, this is my passion. I’m thrilled to be a part of this, thrilled to be able to speak with you today, and with Gus and Dave Alexander. I think it’s interesting, over the past 20 years, what we’ve gotten to witness is the effectiveness and the capability that exists in employing uncrewed systems, particularly unmanned aerial systems. So if we think about that, and we think about what the threat environment has been over those 20 years, we’ve been very fortunate. Because it’s been not entirely a contested environment, and we typically have owned the airspace. And both gentlemen talked a little bit about that in their openings.

I think if we look forward, that’s going to be the key, right? The key is going to be we’ve seen what these systems can do. What we need to do now is recognize the emerging threats, take technologies that are evolving on a daily basis, integrate those technologies and achieve the things that we’re going to need to be able to be successful and be effective, in now the contested environment in the near-peer threat that exists. So mass is going to be critical. I think all the analyses, the operational analyses, the wargames have all shown that mass is critical. Uncrewed aircraft systems provide the opportunity for us to achieve mass.

We have to do a couple of things to be able to realize that. One thing is it needs to be affordable. If every unmanned or uncrewed aircraft cost the same as the exquisite systems today—the exquisite manned systems today, for example, the F-35—we won’t get there. What we want to be able to do is augment those systems with very affordable uncrewed systems, consider distributing the capabilities that you need that increases the capability of the crewed aircraft systems that are out there. And I’m going to take a bold step here, and I’m going to say, I think you can achieve something equivalent to a generational advancement in your capability set, if you couple, for example, with manned-unmanned teaming, if you couple that capability with the crewed aircraft systems that exist today—and with the uncrewed aircraft systems that exist today. It’s a whole new dimension that hasn’t been fully evaluated at this point.

Finally, what I would say—and I would agree with both gentlemen—we have to start today. The time is here. The aircraft exists that can start to enter into this space. They’re flying today. What we need to do is start the experimentation, evolve and determine the tactics, techniques and procedures to take advantage of them, incorporate the technology advances over time, and what we’ll find is we will stay ahead of all of the threats, and we’ll be effective in this new threat environment.

Stutzriem: Very good, Steve. Great comments. Great opening comments. Let me begin with you, General. Kind of step back. We’re curious, you know, we basically got an Air Force, the entire enterprise is high demand, low density, you might say. And I’m curious if you could talk about a few of the more stretched-thin areas, mission areas, today that might need a little more resource focus.

Guastella: I had an opportunity to look at the questions beforehand, and I was like, ‘I don’t know, of a weapons system in the Air Force that it isn’t in demand and stretched thin.’ And you know, when you think about it, our airlift community, which did incredible work in the evacuation of Afghanistan: always in demand. Our tanker fleet: always in demand. Our rescue, our PR capability: in constant demand. One of the most stressed elements is our command and control—our E3s—in need globally. Certainly we’ve already discussed what the RPA community, what’s facing them. But the same thing exists for our fighter and bomber community as a deterrent, both in the Pacific theater, against the China threat, and certainly what we see with Russia. And, you know, but what underpins all of that—all of those force elements—is all the Airmen. You out there that are also involved in the generation of airpower, to man those airfields, to provide the agile combat support—that force element is also in stress. And so I don’t really have ones in particular, because they all are. And it’s good to be in demand.

Stutzriem: Very good. Very good, General. Well, let’s get back to the man-and-machine discussion. And I’m curious how, General, you see the strengths and weaknesses of what you might see in the future, with manned teaming and unmanned teaming. But, in particular, maybe talk about how you see us—our Airmen—getting comfortable with this. And I just harken back, you know, when I started my career, we started to have the combining glasses within the aircraft and the fighters with all the green stuff that gave us all this information and you could have your head out of the cockpit. And I remember my wing commander telling me, ‘Don’t trust the green stuff.’ You know, it’s a ridiculous thing today, but we may face that same thing with manned-unmanned teaming. I’m curious what you think about that.

Guastella: That’s a great question, you know. And I think Secretary Kendall addressed yesterday a potential right bookend of the future with you have a fifth-gen aircraft team with multiple unmanned wing men out there operating together. What struck me is like the debrief’s gonna be really lonely. It’s just you and the software, you know. And the bar afterwards is going to be really bad. But, no, the potential is there. When you think about the cultural shift, if you do have those kinds of teaming events, there’s going to be human machine learning that’s going to have to happen. And there’s going to be learning and what kind of what kind of different coding we’re going to need to to fully enable the to get the most out of the the unmanned elements of the flight. And then how can how can we better have orchestrated—how can the human better have orchestrated—that kind of capability? So the iteration experimentation, I think, is going to be key there.

But the one key advantage to the teaming as we see which is—even if we don’t team—is the accepted the potential for the acceptance of risk with an unmanned aircraft that doesn’t exist with the manned aircraft. We had multiple platforms shut down in the Middle East, by the way, but it shows … we accept some additional risks with the platforms, but it also shows an adversary’s willingness to engage an unmanned platform where they may not have engaged a manned platform. So that is a dialogue and that is a discussion we’re gonna have to have, especially when you consider the cost of the platforms and … what are we willing to risk?

Stutzriem: Yeah, really good point. Dave? Steve? I wonder if you have any thoughts on that?

Alexander: Well, I just, you know, I’m thinking back 20, 25 years, you know, when we started this whole mad rush on the war on terrorism that we had some lessons that we learned along the way. And, you know, we rushed a lot of product out to the field. We, and basically, just multiplied it and produced it quick. And, you know, it was very successful. And it was combat-air-patrol driven. And we got the caps out there, and we hit the 60 caps and then had to chase ourselves to maintain it. And, you know, I think what suffered along the way was things like automation, things like autonomy and things like open-mission systems. And, you know, for me, that’s a big lesson learned, you know, going forward that when we do rush out to the field—and that’s what I believe is the right way to go do it—but we also need—if it does get big—we also need to be able a way to insert technology as we go, so we don’t end up with a big, you know, pilot crisis, like we had, you know, just a few years back.

You know, an example of that, if you just embrace automatic takeoff and landing over SATCOM, you eliminate the forward-deployed launch and recovery unit, which is a whole other set of crew and a whole other, you know, ground control station and data links, that whole thing. And so you can eliminate all that. If you eliminate manual takeoff and landing, you will also reduce your training substantially. And then if, you know, things like single-seat ops and multi-aircraft control for your long transits. But if you combine all that together, you can reduce your crew by 60%. OK? And, you know, I think we were so busy putting those caps out in the field that we kind of left that piece behind. Yeah, and I think it’s a lesson learned going forward. And, you know, as we get into this new, you know, autonomous, collaborative-type platform, we need to keep that in mind, so we don’t, you know, don’t get the focus on just having the, you know, the mass out there, but maybe have a few combat air patrols set aside, you know, for keeping the technology up as we go. So anyway, that’s a key thing, I think, going forward that we need to keep in mind.

Stutzriem: Thank you. Steve?

Fendley: Yes, sir. For, to me, for manned and unmanned teaming to be successful, there’s really one fundamental element that has to be resolved and has to become true. And it is, the pilot needs to trust the unmanned or uncrewed system. Absolutely fundamental. If we don’t achieve that, this will never be successful, it’ll never be effective, no matter how much technology and capability is there. So think about that fundamental. You’ve got to be able to trust the system.

How do we get to be able to trust the system? I think there are a couple of couple of ways to approach that. One is very, very important to start, and I’m going to say, ‘start simple.’ Don’t start with a highly complex, highly integrated, uncrewed system that represents—and I’m going to make up a number—that represents 11 different sensors and weapons that you want to control remotely while you’re trying to fly an aircraft. Think about one sensor on an uncrewed aircraft. Think about one uncrewed aircraft to start with. Maybe over time, we’ve all that and it’s a number, but think about one pilot controlling one uncrewed aircraft, with one sensor, maybe one weapon system. Think about the interface to that. Don’t load that pilot up; don’t put him at risk, right? The uncrewed system is supposed to make him more survivable and more effective. Don’t do something that takes those capabilities away.

So think about the most simple interface that you can offer. I would suggest if you use interfaces that exist in the airplane already, for example, one an interface maybe to a wing station pylon. Think about having that same interface be able now to control your uncrewed aircraft, which effectively becomes an off-board sensor or an off-board weapon. So trust the system, start with a simple model, gain the trust of the pilot, implement something that will be successful early, and what we’ll find is it’ll start the momentum to allow us to increase the complexity without increasing the risk and without reducing the effectiveness of the overall battlespace.

Stutzriem: Yeah, and when you say one sensor, sensor technology’s moving so quickly, and integration of different sensors can do some amazing things. So it can still be a very powerful platform, even limited in its capable hardware. I would think. Dave, Dave’s kind of a historical figure in this, and we were actually, General, Dave and I were up at Ellsworth a couple years ago when the squadron won the award the first time—the Marauders. And, Dave, you go way back, you know, at the start of this year, and I’m curious if you’ve gleaned some key lessons that can inform the future when we talk about manned and unmanned capabilities.

Alexander: Yeah, I think it’s like I was mentioning before is just to make sure that, you know, you don’t leave big aspects of the system behind, while you’re, you know, fighting a war. You know, I just, you know, when I looked back, there are some things that we could have done, you know, a whole lot better, that would have prevented having, you know, a pilot crisis or, you know, would made software releases more efficient with open-mission systems. And so, if we could get that blend of getting in the, you know, getting into the war fight early with not totally the, you know, the 100% solution, but don’t forget about, you know, updating as we go. That’s really key.

Stutzriem: Very good. Steve, a question for you, please. Kratos has really come to the table with several new technologies. And I think everybody’s familiar in the UAV realm about the Valkyrie. And that’s just one of your efforts, of course. How do you size up the macro requirements for UAVs? You just talked about those fundamentals just now. But how’s it shaped your thinking in terms of what we’re innovating out there on the horizon?

Fendley: Sure. At Kratos, we’re incredibly proud of the Valkyrie. And I think that’s probably what we’re most known for at this time. We obviously have several unmanned aircraft systems that we’ve developed over time. And maybe not everybody’s familiar. Our background, our original background, really was in unmanned aerial target systems. And the concept that was applied to the Valkyrie—and now our other tactical systems—was to take the approach that we take on the target systems. Of course, target systems are used for crew training and for weapons development. Necessarily, they have fighter-like performance; they can replicate fighters; they can replicate cruise missiles, for example; they carry different threat systems. So consider that mission systems. Fundamentally, they have to be very inexpensive. Because ultimately, they’re designed to be shot down—sometimes in their first mission, sometimes after a number of flights. But this by our own forces, right? Our own forces use these target systems.

Fendley: So we looked at that and said, ‘OK. How does that apply to the tactical arena?’ Interfacing mission systems: It’s already something we do. Having a very, very inexpensive to develop and operate aircraft system and produce is something that already exists in the targets realm. So apply those to the tactical mission. Now, if we think about where we need to go, and how we need to consider evolution of those tactical systems, we imagine that—back to the simplicity—there needs to be a very simple interface.

Oh, and I know something, something very key to point out, our first contract related to the Valkyrie was with AFRL. And very interestingly, it was sort of focused on the technology. But really what it was focused on was validating the cost model. The cost prediction said, even though there was almost 100 years of data on military aircraft that said you can estimate the cost of a military aircraft based on a dollars-per-pound parametric. The fundamental element of that program was to validate the fact that we could get off of that cost curve and develop and produce an uncrewed aircraft system that was effective against the mission types that were being considered but nowhere near the cost per pound of those of the legacy aircraft. We were able to do that. That program was successful. That data was turned over. That, to me, really opened the floodgates on what’s possible. We talked earlier about the need for mass. We keep talking about affordability and the budget environment that we’re in today. And I think that really has paved the way for what the possibilities could be.

Stutzriem: Hey, General, I’d like to follow that up with maybe some thoughts about how these are going to be used—these unmanned systems in the near future.

Guastella: Oh, thank you. I say what, I think, it’s the how they can be used is wide open. If you look at every mission set that the that we have in the air domain, air command, air domain awareness, C2, air lift. Obviously, Secretary Kendall talked about the, you know, the combat air forces and how they could team. Rescue. Which mission area out there wouldn’t possibly benefit from manned-unmanned teaming? I don’t think there is one. You know, as the general mentioned before, the need to do, how can the RPA or unmanned systems integrate in with the agile combat employment, which we’re already doing now, with traditional aircraft? How can unmanned systems leverage that concept for maximum effect? You know, we know our main operating bases are going to be threatened. And by using agile combat employment in a myriad of different landing surfaces and capabilities, both manned and unmanned, we’re going to have a very resilient Air Force. And it’s very difficult to catch us or target us on the ground, which provides a tremendous deterrent.

So that technology and capability, I think, that we get we need to think about upfront as we development system, unmanned systems. When you think about it, you know, if you have a air moving-target—an AMTI—airborne moving-target indicator, need basically air command and control, air domain awareness, air battle management. Think about how an E3 or maybe an E7 platform could be augmented with unmanned systems that are farther in, that provide that more distant sensing, that all allows it to integrate and provide better air battle management. Think about could you use unmanned aircraft to protect high-value assets that need to be up and in potential threat environment? So those are all areas I think that are worthy of exploration.

Stutzriem: Yeah. Let me follow that up, General, with, you know, pilots, the number of pilots we have. You continue to have around a 2,000-plus pilot shortage. And we’ve cut back the training complex, you know, the capacity to surge. And we’re in a place where we’re pivoting to pure conflict. So I’m curious how you see the unmanned aircraft, actually helping alleviate that shortage, but also being able to surge into combat.

Guastella: Well, I think, if I can first address the pilot shortage, we absolutely have a pilot shortfall in the United States Air Force. We underproduced pilots for over a decade, and as a result, it’s going to take a decade to get out of this situation. And we have a shortfall in two different areas. No. 1, we have a shortfall in, you know, new pilots that have just been produced. And we also have a potential shortfall in more experienced pilots that have a chance to later in their career to get out. And the only way to fix all of that is to increase production. And so that’s something that we’re definitely looking at and going to pursue in the upcoming budgets.

But yes, there will be a growth in the unmanned community, but it will not be a growth that allows us to offset the pilot shortfall. That is today a problem that we’re going to have to get after. Sometime in the future, a decade plus more, I could definitely see that shifting a little bit. But for now, we need to address this problem, because it’s very acute for the United States Air Force.

Stutzriem: “ou know, we see this in a lot of the research we do at Mitchell that it’s so important to have ops capability, war fighter capability in a lot of places, not just in the squadrons or in this, but in the staff’s program offices working with AFRL. So the human piece of it certainly needs to be be adequately sized for all. Thank you for that.

I’ll pivot here a little bit to Dave and Steve. You know, we recently released a paper at Mitchell looking at future UAV capabilities and a major portion centered on this notion of automation, which is, you know, basically the machines are following a script and autonomy, which sees, you know, this independent machine-driven decision-making response to dynamic real, you know, real-world, real-time events. Where are we on that development path? How do you see that in your industry endeavors? Our research shows that we’re more in the automated place than we are in the autonomous place. Where are we at? And Dave, I’ll start with you.

Alexander: Sure. Thank you. So, you know, I think automation, you know, is here and we’re using it, and I think the future is, of course, autonomy, and we’ve got a long way to go there in my opinion. And then we also need to separate automation and autonomy. You know, when you’re taxiing and … taking off of the runway in a real crowded airspace and then on the return mission coming back, and you’re under air traffic control, and there’s a lot of jabberjawing going on the radio, you know, that kind of automation—where a midair collision or runway incursion could occur—that kind of automation, I think, is really, really hard and really, really risky. And I really, you know, I think that piece we oughta stick with automation for a while.

So what I’m going to talk about is mission autonomy, and meaning there, you know, the platform’s in place and now you’ve handed it over, you know, into the mission. And I think that, you know, that’s the future’s bright there. And, you know, it’s really more driven around AI on the sensors, and then let the sensors tell the aircraft where to go. And I think if we take that approach, and a lot of these new AMTI, GMTI and some strategics, these kinds of sensors lend themselves to big data, they lend themselves to AI, and in the automation that can or autonomy that can drive the aircraft to be in the right position.

So I think the future’s bright there, and I think the one key piece of that is bright, and it’s, you know, there’s excellent programs going on right now with Skyborg to develop that and nurture that and, you know, a common code base that everybody, you know, deposits their code into. And so, I think, you know, you’re gonna have everybody working together instead of everybody working apart with this new approach, using code, and I’m talking code now—C O D E—not software. But anyway. So that, I think is right. Let’s separate it, though, and not get too carried away. We still need a pilot talking on the radio, when it’s in heavy traffic. So let’s keep that part safe please.

Stutzriem: Steve, please.

Fendley: So this is a fascinating topic, fascinating element of the technology trade space, and I’m going to call it kind of the ‘geopolitical trade space,’ which enters in as well.

Going back to something we talked about earlier with trust, autonomy—let’s say automation. Automation and sequencing is coupled pretty tightly to trust, because they’re all predictable, pre-established responses that you can expect. I can tell you from our test and demonstration flights, pilots don’t like to be surprised. We never surprise them, of course, with our systems, but I’ve heard that it can happen. I’m joking. We do, obviously, have some surprises. And they’re not appreciate, and I can’t imagine, in a conflict environment how detrimental that could be. So back to the trust, it’s so important.

So deterministic solutions for, I think, manned-unmanned teaming in close proximity is is paramount. Now let’s talk about a scenario where you have a UAV off operating by itself performing a mission. In that scenario, and in the, and—truly, in the overall mission scenario, David, that you talked about—the artificial intelligence … the technology is here, to start to use it, and the opportunity that presents is boundless. Because if you can have real-time decision-making that occurred, that occurs based on responses and factors that you couldn’t predict all of before you were in Scenario X, then your capability, your potential effectiveness goes up exponentially.

So I would think about close-in operations, manned-unmanned teaming, be careful with the introduction of AI. You want to do it very slowly—back to the trust—that’s so critical. As you’re in a more remote scenario with a one-off—maybe even with a swarm—then AI can apply. In a swarm, what I would say is you want the higher-level hierarchy using the artificial intelligence, and then you want the followers, if you will, to be following an automation script. And I think in both those cases, you get the trust you need to make it successful.

Can’t stress enough: We need to be pushing the edge of the envelope on these technologies today. We need to be practicing with them. We need to be getting them out there in the field and letting the user evaluate it and determine exactly how we want to incorporate these. Because the technology exists to go very fast once we’re ready.

Stutzriem: Well, we’ve got about one minute left. So I just offer any closing comments you might have, briefly. General, I’ll start with you.

Guastella: Well, I’m just glad I flew fighters when I did, because if I look into the future, I think the unmanned systems out there are gonna make up for all the shortfalls that I brought to the cockpit. But seriously, though, it’s definitely a growth industry. I think it’s critical that we partner with industry moving forward. And I think this type of work is going to give us the edge that we’ve had before—that we need to regain—against the peer competitors that we’re going to face. So we’ll seize the opportunity.

Stutzriem: Well said. Thank you, General. Dave?

Alexander: Well, I for unmanned aircraft, I’m just going to say that, you know, the future is super bright. I mean, just like you know, in the late ‘90s, 1990s, when we exploded into counterterrorism, what I see going forward is an even more big change. And it’s going to be coming with satellite connectivity that is just unbelievable with, you know, if you think about all the LEO satellites are going to be floating around the world by 2025. And the data rate that you can get through these in megabits is mind boggling. It’s orders of magnitude more than what we’ve been experiencing in the past. And you connect that up with persistent aircraft, but multiple battle management nodes, and, you know, this is the beginning of ABMS.

And so I really think the future’s bright there. And then when you bring in automation and autonomy with automatic, you know, agile basing, I really think the future is gonna change for unmanned aircraft going forward. But you know, the markers will be, are we going to talk about it for 12 years? Or we going to go get something done by 2025? And I really think we all oughta take that to heart. How do we get something going now? There’s airplanes right now that can go do a lot of these missions, that are basically standoff missions with AMTI, GMTIs, strategics. Again, they can all be done today. We don’t need new starts. Let’s go get it done. We need new starts in some of these, you know, combat-patrol-type aircraft. But you know, in the meantime, let’s go get this done.

Stutzriem: Yeah, true.

Alexander: Let’s not, let’s not—12 years from now, there’ll be a different problem. And we’ll have solved the wrong problem by that time. So my last word is, ‘let’s move.’ Let’s make it, let’s make it awake.

Stutzriem: Thank you. Steve?

Fendley: I’ll double down on the ‘let’s move.’ All the building blocks are there. We’ve talked about them today. We’ve proven the cost curve. We’ve proven that you can produce an affordable system. An affordable system is required to be able to get to the mass that we know we have to get to solve the peer-to-peer threat. We know what’s happening in the technology associated with artificial intelligence. We know we can apply those things in a progressive manner. We have airplanes flying today that can solve some of these problems. We know that—based on what we’ve learned with unmanned aircraft to date, based on what we’ve demonstrated with the technology building blocks, we can start to integrate these systems—we need to get them out in the field. We’re all unanimously saying that up here. It’s time to move.

We can be ready for the next conflict. Most importantly, we can probably prevent it. If we evolve these technologies, get our military trained and the best in the world with the application of these technologies, and have the rest of the world recognizing that we show the dominance in this area. And particularly, we started off, I think, by talking about how critical the ‘owning the airspace’ is, basically. And I think this is the next generation that gets us there.

Stutzriem: Very good. Very good. Thank you. Well, gentlemen, thank you so much for participating. I’m sure folks are gonna mob you after this. It was a great discussion about the future of airpower and especially the unmanned piece of that. I’d like to ask everybody to do something. Go to mitchellaerospacepower.org and sign up, and you’ll get announcements and notices of our activities and publications first before anybody else. And we’re not going to give our panelists any gifts. As we’ve been doing in the rest of the activities, we donated a sizable amount of money so that the Airmen and Guardians could have a great time at the pool last night. In fact, I think the president of AFA underestimated how much they’re going to eat and drink. It was a great time. Really good time. Thank you very much. Next activity’s at 10:35.

Watch, Read: Brown and Raymond Talk Fundamental Changes, Near-term Goals, and More

March 13, 2022

Former Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. John P. Jumper hosts a discussion with Chief of Space Operations Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond and Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. Charles Q. “CQ” Brown Jr. titled “Airmen and Guardians in the Fight” during the AFA Warfare Symposium on March 3, 2022. Watch the video or read the transcript below. This transcript is made possible through the sponsorship of JobsOhio.

Overhead voice: Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the 17th Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force, Gen. John Jumper

Retired Gen. John P. Jumper, 17th Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force: Well, thank you. Thank you, everyone. Thanks to Air Force Association for this unique opportunity to have our two service chiefs on the stage at the same time. Gen. Brown, chief of staff of the Air Force, Gen. Raymond, chief of Space Operations, thank you so much for joining us in these turbulent times. I can only imagine what your days are like. Of course, this is the 75th anniversary of the Air Force. Some of us of a certain age were there when the Air Force were born. I was 2 at the time. And then I celebrated my 75th personal anniversary when the Space Force was born. So I’ve watched it all and been with some legends. And I know that you all have been through quite a bit, but, CQ, talk a little bit about the 75th anniversary of the Air Force.

Gen. Charles Q. “CQ” Brown Jr., Air Force Chief of Staff: Well, it’s a big deal, as you might imagine, and it’s not just the Air Force, but the department and what we’re able to do together. And it’s exciting as, I would say, the older sibling to work with someone I’ve known for a number of years, as we work together to, as the secretary talks about “one team one fight,” but also two separate services that over time, you know, our culture will be embedded in them. But there’s some things we’re gonna learn from the Space Force as well. So we’re pretty excited to have them as a partner.

Jumper: Well, little brother, how do you, uh?

Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond, chief of space operations: First of all, I’ve been an Airman for 35 and a half years, and I’ve been a Guardian for two, and I celebrate the Air Force’s birthday as well. We’re one team, as the secretary said. The secretary said that from day one, and we are one team. But I think we are better than one team with having two independent services.

Jumper: No doubt.

Raymond: And I think the strength that we all bring now, where Gen. Brown and the Air Force are gonna focus on their domain and my team can focus on the spaceman, will make us an even stronger department.

Brown: It takes two of us to do what you used to do.

Jumper: Absolutely right. Absolutely right. And do it a lot better, I might add. Well, I remember growing up, my dad was in the Air Force. So, I grew up; he was a test pilot, and I grew up with Chuck Yeager, bouncing on his knee, and some of the legends of the Air Force. I remember when Curt LeMay came to visit Tactical Air Command and I was the executive officer for Gen. Creech—Bill Creech—one of the most ominous figures, but not as ominous as Curt LeMay. And it was the only time I ever saw Gen. Creech nervous about anything is on the day of Curt LeMay’s visit. And, Jay, I was, I think, the last chief to be able to host Gen. Bernie Schriever at the Air House. He died in 2005. And I was the A3 when Tom Moorman was vice chief. So you know, I got to see the ushering of the space era and with these heroes of the Space Force, so I take it as a great privilege. So let’s get right into it. This is a unique opportunity to have our chiefs on the stage. Our theme for this is air and space power to deter, fight and win. Secretary Kendall has talked a great deal about the investments that China and Russia have made to deny our ability to project power. Both of you have talked about the race for technological superiority, and you’ve talked about delivering space power at relevance to the speed of relevance. How do we think about this global environment and what we’re doing to sort of stay ahead?

Raymond: Well, I’ll start, and I think you’ll find when we have these discussions that my good friend—and I mean that; we went to ACSC together years ago; we’ve known each other most of our entire career, and it’s a privilege to serve with you. I think you’ll find that we see a strategic environment very similar. I think the secretary laid it out really well in his speech. It’s a global, dynamic—probably the most dynamic and complex security environment in three generations. And I will tell you, on the space side of the house, the Air Force built the world’s best Space Force. We’ve had the best capabilities, the best people. We’ve integrated them most effectively into the fight, starting with Desert Storm. But I will tell you, it’s a service that was built for a different domain than we’re operating in today.

If I were here three years ago, I would have told you we were tracking about 22,000 objects. Today, we’re tracking close to 50,000 objects in space. Three years ago, I would have told you we were tracking 1,500 satellites. Today, we’re tracking almost 5,000 satellites. In fact, about two hours ago, we just launched another 47 out of Cape Canaveral supporting a SpaceX launch. In fact, that one company, SpaceX, in the last two years has launched more satellites than we were tracking. … And then if you look at those capabilities, and you look at what China and Russia have done, but I’ll focus on China, and have integrated those capabilities, into a warfighting architecture, that if deterrence were to fail, we are now going to be up against an adversary that has the same advantages that we’ve enjoyed. And they’ve built it over the last 30 years. And they’ve built it for a purpose. That coupled with the spectrum of threats that we’re seeing from low end, reversible jamming to high-end kinetic destruction, it’s a different domain … and it required a different approach.

And so our country, before it was too late, while we’re still the best in the world, decided to make this service an independent service and to allow us to focus on, as the secretary said, delivering war-relevant, military-relevant, capability and to do so at speed. And I think there’s great advantage with commercial industry that’s out there. That’s really, again, I’ve used this word, a terrible word to say in the space business, but it’s been an explosion of business that’s going on. We want to be able to leverage that. And we want to be able to leverage them. So great to see our international partners here. And we have opportunities to do things together with international partners that are pretty special.

Brown: I really think about the complexity, how things have changed. I was reflecting as we came down here to Orlando: It was two years ago, we’d just finished up AFA, and, I was at, we were in Tampa visiting our son. I was sitting on his couch, doing his taxes. And my phone started to explode with texts. And it was the day I got announced as the next chief of staff, and it was, COVID hadn’t really started yet. And so I’m really thinking about how the environment has changed, really not just in the past two years, but throughout our careers. And the aspect of, you know, in the Cold War, Middle East and now back into great power competition. I was just listening to a podcast last week that said, ‘Did the Cold War really end, or did we just have an intermission?’ I mean, think about what’s occurred really over the course of the past month, and not to mention what’s going on with the U.S., Russia, and Ukraine, but what’s going on … in the South China Sea and all the incursions by the PRC into Taiwan’s airspace. The fact that a leader from ISIS was killed, which means they’re going to create another leader, and it’s not going to go away. And North Korea has been launching missiles on a regular basis. And so it’s an aspect of challenge that we all face.

But at the same time, the access to information that we have. And so the world moves at a different pace. And so that’s the thing I, you know, as I think about where we are as an Air Force, as a department, as a joint force, and with our allies and partners, it’s all the things that we have to do together to make our success successful. So when I think about the Air Force, even, I would say back at the beginning of my career to where we are today, is we still got to defend the homeland. We got to protect airpower globally. And then we got to work as part of a joint ally and partner team to deliver a capability. And I think one of the key partners is Space Force. And the aspect of what we’re able to do together and having, you know, Jay and Mollie, that Sharene and I have known since Air Command and Staff College. I mean, you couldn’t ask for a better partnership. And I think it actually, the fact that we are two separate services, actually, you know, I almost dreaded the aspect of having to do what you did, which is fully understand, and I probably would have not done space capability as well as we’re able to do today by being two separate services.

Jumper: It’s absolutely right, CQ. I couldn’t agree more. You know, I like to talk about the integration of the vertical dimension. It’s more than that, I know, because now we got cyber in that equation as well. But the fact that we’ve talked about domain integration, both of you have, and the fact that we have the means now to get relevant information to the people who need it more quickly, and it’s this sort of a, you know, in Kosovo, I recall everybody celebrating these chat nets that we had among our platforms, and they were celebrating doing things at the speed of typing. And I said, ‘No, no, we got to do this to the speed of light.’ And here we are now. We have this opportunity. And you guys have been talking about it and made it and making it come true. Huge. We’ve come such a huge way. Considering the short term, first of all, we can’t seem to break away from the world of continuing resolutions. Let’s set that aside for a second. But can you comment on sort of your short-term goals? And, you know, the most urgent priorities each of you are dealing with, sort of right now?

Brown: Well, sure, I think one of the things that the secretary kind of highlighted was bureaucracy, the ability for us to make decisions faster, and it’s the aspect of, you know, my goals are really laid out in the action orders. And, you know, just this last month, I actually updated the action orders because the Accelerate Change or Lose is really the enduring part of what I’m focused on. And I think that’s something we got to pay attention to, but it’s also the aspect of the action orders. And the reason why I did the modifications, because as you get into this, you figure out that, you know, the facts and assumptions always change based off the original plan. And so it’s really, you know, how do we take care of our Airmen, you know, things like a static closeout date on our OPRs. It’s the aspect of how we work resilience for our Airmen and our families. It’s working through the bureaucracy; it’s introducing the staff to the staff. What I mean by that is, how we collaborate better. It’s how we deepen our understanding of the PRC with Action Order C on competition and Action Order D on design implementation. It is doing exactly what we did last year, being on the same page with our senior leaders and communicating off of one page. And that’s an aspect that not only will happen as that ‘23 budget comes out. But as we start to build ‘24, we’re already in the process of starting to build ‘24, it’s really, as I’ve told the staff, that campaign plan for ‘24 starts now. Because we’re on a path to transition to the future. And that’s something I think we got to continue to work on. So those are my goals. You know, those are short term, but they’re also long term as well.

Raymond: I applaud CQ’s Accelerate Change or Lose vision. We see that the same way. It’s a little different for us, though. CQ asked, and the leadership of the Air Force said, Airmen need to make a shift, you have to take a service and make a shift. We’ve been given an opportunity to start with a clean sheet of paper. And so we’re trying to build it differently from the ground up. I was looking outside of this room, and I don’t know there’s probably 1,000, a couple thousand people in this room. If you added another one of these rooms, that’s the entire Space Force. We’re really small. I’m not worried as much about bureaucracy, in that we have a really small bureaucracy … in the Space Force. My challenge, our challenge, is do we have enough mass to be able to operate broader Department of Defense bureaucracy and to be effective.

And so the big thing for us, you know, the first year was largely about inventing the service. And the second year was all about integrating it into the broader department. We’ve got all the major pieces in place now. Now it’s really continuing to deliver and capitalizing on what we built. The big focus area for us this year, and for the next decade, is shifting our space architecture to a new, more resilient architecture by the design of the force. The capabilities that we have in space are exquisite. They’re small in numbers, and they’re not easily defendable. Our joint and coalition forces that require the space capabilities that we provide, they can’t be treated as a given anymore. And so we’re gonna continue to provide those capabilities and do so in a way that’s more resilient, so we can assure that, and we can’t take them for granted.

Jumper: That’s great. That’s great. So, you know, we created the Space Force out of the Air Force using largely Air Force, beginning with our Air Force missions and Air Force Airmen but also the other services and, you know, addressing space capabilities in the other agencies as well. I think we’d like to hear from both of you about how that transition has gone, as far as, you know, the separating the missions and how we’ve addressed the people issues going into this transition.

Raymond: I think it’s gone extremely well. I would have flunked the test if you’d have told me we were as far along as we are in just two years. We couldn’t have done that without the support of the Air Force. And so the relationship we have is hugely powerful. And it’s, again … there’s no way we could have done what we’ve done without the support. So I thank you, and I thank all the Airmen that are helping us. It’s been a very powerful partnership. If you look at you know, today, we’ve got just shy of 7,000 folks in Active-duty Guardians. We’ll grow by the end of this year to about 8,400 … maybe 8,436, I think, is the exact number, but about 8,400. It’s interesting, by the end of this year, we’ll have 8,400 people; about a third of those will have never served an Active-duty day in the Air Force. And so we’re building the service with a culture that that brings in folks from multiple services to be able to do this. And again, we think that’s going to be really, really powerful.

I think the biggest one of the biggest things that we’ve done, as we’ve built this service, and you touched on it as the personnel side, when you have a service that only has the numbers that we have, you can do things differently. I remember one of my former bosses used to talk about the art and science of professional development and that when you have a service that’s really, really large, the science kind of takes over or the machine takes over … because you have to. When you have a service our size, you can do things differently. And so we’ve built a strategy that allows us to have a little bit more art, apply a little bit more art to the professional development of our folks because we can, and we want to take advantage of that luxury, and really, really make a difference in our Guardians’ and their families’ lives.

Brown: I couldn’t agree more with Jay. I think the transition’s gone very, very well. And it’s the aspect of the mutual support that we provide, you know, for those that operate in the Air Force, we talk about mutual support, it’s really having each other’s back. And the aspect that, you know, there are so many Airmen that help the Space Force do what it does based on the way the law was written, how we wrote the various specialties. But it’s also the dialogue we have. And I’ll tell you that each one of us Airmen are probably a little bit smarter about space because of our close relationship with Guardians and the things that they’re able to do. I think the one thing that Jay and I talked about, as he came in this position, was the balance of how much do we, you know, hug each other close and how much do we let them, you know, kind of spread out and grow.

And I think the other thing that’s very helpful to us, because they’re actually able to go do some things at a smaller scale. It’s a forcing function for us as an Air Force, because there’s some things we can learn. There’s some things, you know, you got a toddler, if it’s running around at 2 years old, you got to chase them. Sometimes you’re chasing the Space Force a little bit to kind of go, ‘Hey,’ you know, so we can be on the same page on some of these things, because there is a balance. Because, you know, I’m going to look at the Space [Force], the Guardians, and go, ‘Well, we want to do that too.’ And I go, ‘Well, you know … we’re not gonna be able to do all that. We can do some of it.’ But I think there’s real opportunities for the dialogue. And then I think that the last thing I should share on this is, I mean, we are so intertwined, we are so dependable on each other, not just from a, you know, base operating support construct, but operationally. We cannot do what we do as a joint force without the Air Force and the Space Force. Not to disparage the other services, but the relationship we have makes a lot of things happen around the world with our allies and partners. And so that to me is, if we don’t have a good relationship, then it’s going to be a bad day for somebody. But it’s going to be a bad day for our adversaries because of this close relationship between the Air Force and the Space Force.

Raymond: I couldn’t agree more in. And what we’re committed to doing, we enjoy a great relationship because we’ve known each other for almost our whole careers. We want to build this in a way that it isn’t just strength of personality, that it’s built that way to stay connected and to continue to deliver that great advantage. That’s another area that we work really closely on.

Jumper: I think that’s an advantage of being in the Department of the Air Force. It gives you this natural closeness. How about the other services, Jay? How’s that gone trying to integrate with the missions and the people of the other services?

Raymond: I think it’s gone very well. … That’s been one of the benefits of having an independent service. We can, I can, now go directly to those other services. We’ve got done a lot of analytical work with the Navy. We just signed an MOU with the Army on tactical-level ISR. I think it’s, one of the things that Congress highlighted when they were debating whether to pass the law on an independent service. There was a few things that they highlighted. One was professional development, types of shortcomings that they saw. One was the ability to integrate. There was 60-something people in the Department of Defense that could say ‘no’ and nobody could say ‘yes.’

So today, now working with the JROC, the JROC has designated the Space Force as the lead integrator for joint space requirements. That’s a huge deal. Though the National Defense Authorization Act that was just passed said … the secretary defense will delegate to the Space Force the force design work, so no longer do you have 60 different people trying to come up with things. Our goal is to drive that unity of effort across the department and then get everybody rowing in the same direction and then tee that up for the secretary of the Air Force and the DOD’s governance structure to make the decision. And then we can move out at speed and reduce duplication, reduce costs.

Jumper: Great, great. We mentioned earlier the continuing resolution. I think probably every service chief for the past couple of decades have had to deal with a continuing resolution or sequestration or government shutdown or some other bump in the road in the budgetary process. And it is really an impediment to progress. Could you all just comment on the risks of not having an approved budget?

Brown: Sure, I almost want the whole audience to repeat after me, you know, ‘CRs are bad.’ They’re frustrating. It just, the aspect of what we’re not able to do because of CRs. And so as we, you know, we had to testify before the [House Appropriations defense subcommittee] back in January to really look at CR and the potential for a yearlong CR. And we talked about buying power and the like, and so I asked my staff to actually pull something together for me, and the fact is that over the past decade, we’ve only passed one budget on time. If you add up all the time we’ve been in CRs, it’s been over three years. So basically 30, you know, 30 percent, of the last two FYDPs. And I equate that to the aspect of, if we were, you know, in a race with somebody, we just spotted them three years. We can’t keep doing this. We’ve got to get past this because this slows us down from being able to have trust and confidence with our Airmen, trust and confidence with industry, trust and confidence with allies and partners to be able to provide the capability that we’re going to require as we move forward.

And so it drives a, you know, the risk of being able to move forward. And it’s in warfighting and impacts our ability to war fight, impacts our ability to do foundational-type things, to do our foundational pieces … to take care of our Airmen, families, infrastructure, how we work with the combatant commands, the Guard and Reserve; it drives a risk in execution, because we’ll build a good plan, but then we can’t execute it partly because of the CR. And then it impacts our industrial base and our ability to commit to moving things forward. So it drives risk in some key areas. And I just, we got to quit doing this to ourselves. It’s become a habit.

Raymond: CRs are bad, and a yearlong CR is unprecedented. With the three years that Gen. Brown just identified under a CR, we have gotten good at bad behavior. We’ve gotten good at pushing contracts to the end of the year. We’ve gotten good at doing things that we had to do because we didn’t have the resources to do it or a law that allowed us to do it. Can’t do that with a yearlong CR. A yearlong CR for the Space Force is a $2 billion hit to the top line. A yearlong CR to the Space Force, which is a startup—if you’re a startup company and you can’t do new starts, it’s really hard.

And so it impacts our modernization. It impacts our pivot to a resilient architecture. It impacts our readiness. It impacts our being able to develop training capabilities and testing capabilities, and it impacts our Guardians and their families because we rely very heavily on the Air Force for those types of programs, with PCS moves and all those things that would be impacted: accessions and retention. And it impacts our ability to continue to establish the service. We’ve identified missions that are going to transfer from the Army and the Navy into the Space Force, where they’re identified. All the people have volunteered. I’ve been on the road here recently visiting them overseas and in CONUS. They’re eager to come. We can’t bring them in until the law is passed. So it’s something that we’ve got to get done. And a yearlong CR would be absolutely devastating to us.

Jumper: Well, it’s hard to Accelerate Change or achieve the speed of relevance if you don’t have the means to do the acceleration. And I just hope that, you know, the current events of the world can help us realize that this acceleration and these developments in space … we need to move on with it and hopefully get around the bureaucracy. Secretary Kendall and both of you actually have spoken out about the industrial base. How would you describe the current state of the industrial base and particularly how we leverage partnerships with the private sector?

Raymond: I think in the space domain, we’ve learned a lot about the industrial base, especially under the pandemic. It forced us to understand it better. I think in a report, there’s been a couple reports on the industrial base that have just come out—one the deputy secretary of defense chartered, and then there’s one that focused on space. And the one that focused on space talked about how it is tactically strong but strategically fragile. We’ve got a lot of folks, a lot of, I mean, there’s a lot of opportunities to expand this industrial base to get a lot more … innovative players into it, which is what we want to do and support that. And we think there’s some opportunities here. … And this report identifies opportunities for like a national-level vision on an industrial base. How do you advantage democracies to be able to do that? I think there’s great advantages of the partnership between DOD and industry. And that intersection of those two will provide value. We’ve seen similar upturns in the space industry back in the mid-’90s. There was a satellite constellation called Iridium that survived—66 satellites. There’s something called Global Star. There’s something called Teledesic. None of those survived; none of them materialized. We need this to materialize. And in that partnership between government and industry is something that we think will help both of us.

Brown: Like Jay, I would say it’s fragile. I think we’ve gotten, in some cases, so efficient in certain areas, whether it’s the industrial base in the commercial sector—I would also say, bits of our depot as well—that we want may not be effective in the future. If we had to surge, we’d be challenged. I get worried about the the age of our fleet, and you look at diminishing manufacturing sources, where the company that actually built this particular whatever, whatever it is, doesn’t exist anymore. You have to start from scratch and start over. It’s the aspect of our workforce and our relationship there that they actually have the talent to continue to innovate and move things forward. Because we haven’t put as much into R&D or the aspect of STEM education, those kinds of things, because you want that workforce to be here when we need them. And then it’s the ability to diversify. And it’s not only working with the five but also working with smaller companies.

And I’ve had a chance to meet with a number of smaller companies—venture capitalists—and they’re all patriotic, and they want to work with us. But we can’t make it so hard to be able to, as the secretary talked about it, and the secretary and I’ve talked about it, you know, the valley of death and the aspect that there’s a lot of innovation on one side of the valley, a lot of interest on the other side; we just can’t get the two of those to meet. And what we’ve got to do a bit better is how do we work with, as we work with industry, it’s the aspects of being able to use the operational imperatives—put operators with the technical experts with acquisition professionals with industry, to be working more closely together. It’s all about collaboration to buoy these things forward. And I think it benefits all of us because it’s really about our national security, whether it’s those of us that wear the uniform or work in government, but it’s also with industry and how it impacts our economy. So it’s something we got to really pay attention to. We do not want this to atrophy and then wish we had it at a later date.

Jumper: Well, the good news is that our Secretary of the Air Force, Frank Kendall, is … probably no one on Earth is more knowledgeable about how to connect these dots and work these things together than he is. And I think we’re blessed to have his wisdom helping us out with these things. There are many initiatives underway that make our force more agile, more survivable, both in air and space and sort of a more of an expeditionary mindset. I think these are fundamental changes. And as we’ve already talked about, a lot of these things need to happen rapidly. Would you talk about how the Air and Space Force are thinking about these fundamental shifts in the way we go to war, and I’m thinking about dispersed operations and the, you know, the changes and more tactical uses of space, etc. These fundamental shifts that are taking place? How do you all think about these things?

Brown: Well, you know, you mentioned expeditionary. So, we have been expeditionary for the past 20 years to static locations. We’ve gone to the same places for the past 20, well, actually 30 years, for the Air Force in the Middle East. And so we’ve gotten used to going someplace where everything’s all set and ready to go. You don’t have to worry about … you don’t have to set anything up; it’s already there. In the future, we’re gonna go places we haven’t gone to before, particularly if you think about the Indo Pacific and the ability then to, it’s the aspect of not only the capability to be able to do this, and this is where the operational imperatives come in. This is where, you know, Secretary Kendall and his vision to be able to, his expertise as well, you know. I joke about it that he wrote the book on acquisition, and I have a signed copy. So he understands this better than the two of us put together probably. And that’s helpful to help us drive ourselves in the direction, to think not so much differently but to really bring the team together to drive us and bring these aspects together.

I think the other thing that I think about as we move forward from a wartime perspective is the aspect—and Cruiser [Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach] talked about it earlier—agile combat employment. There’s a capability, but it’s also the mindset of our multi-capable Airmen, the ability to not only go into a base that you haven’t gone to before, set things up, tear it down and move around, but it’s the ability to stretch our Airmen and allow them to use all their skills and talent, which is, you know, when we changed our doctrine to mission command and talked about centralized command, distributed control, decentralized execution, it’s the aspect of being able to work small teams and trusting our Airmen to be able to do things. And they trust their leadership, and we provide them the intent and the resources to be able to do that. And that’s why the operational imperatives are so important, to provide the resources and that we provide the mindset and training to get them there to be able to execute. Because conflict in the future is gonna be much different than it is than, you know, what we’ve been doing in the Middle East. And that’s something we got to really change ourselves. And, you know, you tie that to a CR. If we’re not changing that, not changing the CR piece, we are going to regret it later.

Jumper: Absolutely.

Raymond: I don’t know how many times CQ and I have, after we come out of meetings with the secretary—who is masterful, masterful at his knowledge of how the building works and how to do all the programmatics—and we were like sitting there; man, we’re like little kindergarteners watching the professor really drive great advantage for our service and for our nation. It’s a privilege, sir, to work with you. I mean, if you think about what Gen. Brown just talked about and how warfighting is going to evolve, you also have to understand that that evolution is going to take place with an adversary that has—if deterrence were to fail—with an adversary that has incredible space capabilities for their own use, that’s integrated into everything that they do.

So as the Air Force needs to be agile and move, people are going to be watching. And so it’s going to require a different mindset for us as well. We’ve got to be able to—in space, as a warfighting domain—you have to be able to make sure that all the other services can do what they need to do to get their mission done. That requires strong space capabilities as well. The other thing is, as countries are developing capabilities to deny us our access to space, we can’t take it for granted. And you got to be able to protect and defend it. As you become more agile and more dispersed, you also have to be able to bring data from space down and get that into the hands of the folks that need that information. And so the work that we’re doing to develop tactical-level ISR requirements for the department and then figure out how best with our intelligence community and partners to satisfy those requirements and then task and distribute data to the joint force is going to be critical.

Jumper: That’s great. It’s a new level of, sort of, tactical capability in space that we really have never gotten to before. CQ, I, you know, this idea of being truly expeditionary, I think, is fascinating for some of us old guys, who at the front end of the AEF, we got trapped into this static situation. But what we also learned in that period of time was that part of our core competencies need to include security outside the fence—engineering, maintenance and sortie generation, some of these things that go into fundamentally fighting in any situation but certainly in the more dispersed world. So how do you look at this development of these competencies? I know you got a lot of things underway here.

Brown: Well, you know, when we talk about multi-capable Airmen, it’s one part of the doctrine. But it’s also the mindset and to allow them to trust themselves that they can do these things. And it’s really thinking differently about how we operate. And so really, in some cases, I think about how we do this with a clean sheet … because we will try to follow an AFI. And I will tell you just, you know, I tell Airmen when I travel is, you know, we have a lot of AFIs, but then COVID—we probably didn’t pay attention to them as closely as we did before COVID, which provides us an opportunity. And oh, by the way, the setup of a separate service gives us another opportunity to take a look at this. So it’s a bit of the mindset.

And, you know, I was talking to one of our wing commanders recently, and they were building their training program for multi-capable Airmen, and I go, ‘Stop. I don’t need a letter of Xs to track multi-capable. I want a mindset of Airmen that actually think differently and challenge the status quo of how we might operate.’ Because particularly our young Airmen who actually are getting the job done are probably or really more innovative than I am in certain areas. I just need to be able to understand what it is they’re trying to get done so that I can support them. And so it’s really, you know, being able to really think differently.

And then, technology is much different. You know, I was talking to some Airmen this past week, so, you know. I didn’t have an email address when I came into the Air Force. I think that my first email address was when I was a captain, which tells you things have changed. So we’ve got to change too. We’ve got to be able to drive ourselves to look at things differently as you do expeditionary operations and really redefine. You really made me think about it: We need to redefine ‘expeditionary’ from what we did during the AEF construct to where we’re going to go today.

Jumper: That’s right. Agility, we never really achieved the agility we were striving for because the conditions were different. We got to get there now.

Brown: Exactly.

Jumper: I think all of us appreciate what you, Gen. Kelly and others are doing for the expeditionary mindset. This generation of Guardians and Airmen wear the uniform, and time’s much different than many of us grew up in. One thing I’ve always found true is that any generation has always sought the ability to be a part of something bigger than themselves. This pride in the mission, pride in themselves. Talk about this current generation of Guardians and Airmen and what we have today.

Raymond: They’re incredible. I mean, they’re way smarter than I am. And my college roommate’s here somewhere, and he’ll vouch for that. They’re collaborative; they’re connected. They want to serve. They are bold. They’ve got ideas. And it requires a different leadership style. It requires less AFIs and ‘here’s how we’re going to do business’ and more open to choices in their ideas. And I think if you engage with them early, you’re going to have, it’s going to be very helpful. Chief Towberman, our Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force, has really been working this hard. We’ve developed a human capital plan that we call the ‘Guardian Ideal’ that gets after this.

I was thinking about this a couple of days ago. I was in Japan back in 2011. And it was shortly after the big earthquake, and there was a tsunami that was coming in—not a tsunami, I’m sorry, a typhoon that was coming in. And we all got sent home, and schools got released. We were all in our home. And we have three children that were home at the time—two that were freshmen in high school and one was in middle school. And the power goes out in our house. And my daughter comes up to me, and at the time, I was the Fifth Air Force vice commander; my boss was TDY. So I was kind of the senior guy on base, and my daughter comes up to me and said, ‘Hey, did you know that there’s, how come we’re the only house without power?’ I said, ‘Christina, the whole base is without power, you know, a big, big storm.’ She said, ‘No, there’s a tree across the road down by the hospital. And it’s hit something.’ I said, ‘How do you know that?’ She goes, ‘Well, none of my friends have posted that they’ve lost power. And here’s a picture of the tree that’s down.’ And no kidding, 15 minutes later, the wing commander calls me and said, ‘Hey, Gen. Raymond, I just want to let you know, we’re sorry that your house is without power. We’re gonna get it on. There’s a tree down.’ Well, if you look at the space domain, we experience the space domain through data. We don’t live there unless you’re an astronaut. And so having young Guardians that are connected, that are digitally fluent, and we’re spending a lot of time and effort building that digital fluency across the force, to be able to take that data, harness that information and get that information in decision-makers’ hands and push those decisions down to their level.

If you look at conflict, if it were to extend into the space domain, I mean it’s going 17,500 miles an hour just stay in space, across vast distances. You can’t do that the way we normally do business. So this service that we’re building is really being built by our young Guardians for our young Guardians, and we’re gonna be better off.

Jumper: I have a 6-year-old granddaughter that’s ready to come work for you. I say, ‘Honey,’ she wants to play on my iPhone, ‘Honey, can I set that game up for you?’ She said, ‘No, Papa. I’m very, very smart on computers.’

Brown: Well, you know, I can’t top Jay’s story or yours for that matter, but I really do think about this generation as they come in and the aspect of how connected they are, how much they want their leadership to know them and care, and that’s the thing that I’ve found. And they really want to contribute. And we got to make sure we get out of their way to allow them to contribute. And so that to me is the exciting part. And if we don’t get it right, they’re not going to stick with us. And we got to really think about that. And … this is another reason why, you know, you think about the tools we provide them. We want to make sure that they don’t have to step back into the ‘80s when they come to work each day.

Jumper: Our Airmen and our Guardians keep us grounded. They do. As the senior leadership, they always have, and I’ve always appreciated that about being able to visit the force. Gen. Brown, last year, you and the commandant of the Marine Corps authored a discussion about readiness and risk. And we talked about a lot of that stuff already. But in the situation we’re in today, how do you look at the risks and the challenges for sustaining Air Force readiness at the level that we need it to be confident in our missions?

Brown: Well, it’s a challenge, because the United States Air Force is very popular. And I joke about this, but I feel like a chew toy between combatant commanders, where they’re pulling and asking for more and more Air Force capability to go to different places. Because the United States Air Force is the one service that can get there faster than anybody else, except for the Space Force; 17,500 miles an hour, we can’t go quite that fast. But we can get there and do things in hours and days that may take others weeks and months to do. And so with that, we make it look too easy.

And this is a good reason why I went working with our leadership on our Air Force Force Gen model, which is kind of based off the AEF. But we really want to be disciplined about it and be able to use it to show what the risk is to the readiness. And that has been the challenge. And so the other part for the Air Force is we got to be a little more bold. We’ve got to speak up for ourselves and show what the impact is. And that’s something I don’t know that we’ve done very well. It’s something I’m focused on. And this is why, you know, myself and the Commandant have the same perspective. We talk on this topic very often. And we got to do a better job of talking about the, you know, what happens to our readiness if we continue to use our capabilities at the rate we do and we don’t modernize. You got to look at it from a broader perspective. And I think if you look at current events today, with Russia and Ukraine, and our pacing challenge, we got to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. And we’ve got to really think about how we preserve some of that readiness, but at the same time, assure and deter.

Raymond: For the Airmen out here, you should be really proud of your Chief. He’s the leading voice in this across the department. He’s really pushing it hard with the Commandant. And I think those conversations are beginning to pay dividends. I had the opportunity to be a combatant commander and a service chief at the same time. And what you see different between a combatant commander and a service chief is a combatant commander has a very near-term focus, one to three years, and service chiefs look to the future. And so I had the opportunity to disagree with myself in my two hats. And the cool thing is I won. I really can’t tell you which hat I won in, but I always won. Gen. Brown has highlighted that in a way that I think has helped inform the joint force and will help us build the readiness that we need for for future issues we have to face.

Jumper: In the last few minutes we have here, we have a lot of representatives from our NATO nations and our partner nations here today. And I think we’re watching sort of a recasting of how we view alliances in the current situation. Can each of you just say a word about our alliances and the importance of our alliance partners going into the future?

Brown: Well, it’s hugely important. And as we work on the next national defense strategy, the comment I’ve been making is it can’t just be a line in the strategy without execution. And I really think we got to think differently about how we do our foreign military sales, how do we total development of capability, how we share information. Those are the things that are going to break down some of the barriers. The things that we have to do with our allies, we got to make some things more actionable. You can look at today’s current events of how NATO has really come together for a crisis. But we can’t wait for a crisis. We’ve got to be doing these things on a day-to-day basis. And so that to me is important. The other part for, I think, for both of us, the relationships we’ve built over the years is so important, and the relationships really do matter.

Jumper: Absolutely. I agree with that.

Raymond: On the space side, typically the partnerships over history have been in the civil space side with NASA. And we haven’t had the international partnerships on the national security space side to the level that we need. We need them in a big way with what the domain becoming a warfighting domain. And I think one of the other big areas that we’ve made significant strides is in our partnerships with our allies. I appreciate very much the partnership. What used to be largely one-way data-sharing partnerships are now two-way partnerships. We operate together; we train together; we wargame together; we operate capabilities together. And if we get this force design right, where we build this new design for our space capabilities, we think there’s greater opportunity for allied partnerships and those capabilities as well. So it’s extremely, extremely important, and we’re very grateful to our partners for being there with us.

Jumper: Well, in the last couple of minutes here, let me just give you both a chance to say anything that’s on your mind that hasn’t been said so far.

Brown: Well, first of all, thanks to all of you for being here. Thanks to all the support you provide myself and Jay to do what we do. Shout out to our Airmen and families. I also want to shout out to the team that pulls together AFA year in and year out. And it’s interesting that, so when the first time I had a chance to speak before AFA, I quoted Ricky Bobby. And so the team backstage, before I came on stage, handed me this T-shirt for Ricky Bobby. It’s all about Accelerate Change or Lose. If you’re not first, you’re last.

Raymond: I feel like I’m in the Oscars, the music’s playing so it’s time to go. But let me thank AFA as well for pulling all this together in really difficult times. And sir, I’d like to thank you as well for your continued leadership and mentorship and helping us get this right.

Jumper: I’d like to close out with just a quick statement. Whenever I stood in front of our Airmen when I was a Chief, I always took the last minute to challenge them to step back and reflect on the unbelievable work they do day in and day out. And for the leadership of the services and the leadership that’s represented here in the audience: Those of us, especially those who are stars on their shoulders, we spend our days dealing with problems—problems usually that nobody else can solve. So let me just say to you two: Step back and pat yourselves on the back for the incredible job you’re doing leading our Air and Space Forces today. There has never been a more challenging time. And I think the audience will join me in a round of applause and appreciation for what you do.

Watch, Read: Kelly and Whiting on Combat Air and Space Forces in the Fight

March 13, 2022

Retired Maj. Gen. Doug Raaberg, executive vice president of the Air Force Association, hosts Lt. Gen. Steven N. Whiting, commander of Space Operations Command, and Gen. Mark D. Kelly, commander of Air Combat Command, in the discussion “Combat Air and Space Forces in the Fight.” This transcript is made possible through the sponsorship of JobsOhio.

Speaker: “Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the stage, the executive vice president of the Air Force Association, Maj. Gen. Doug Raaberg.”

Retired Maj. Gen. Doug Raaberg: “Thank you and good morning. Air Combat Command and Space Operations Command are the primary force providers of combat power to America’s war-fighting commands. ACC’s mission is to organize, train and equip combat-ready Airmen to control and exploit the air on behalf of the joint force. Likewise, SpOC’s mission is to protect America and our allies in, from, and to space now and into the future. In short, both commands must be prepared to close the kill chain while preparing for new capabilities to fight future conflict. I am delighted to be joined by Gen. Mark Kelly, commander, Air Combat Command. And with him is Lt. Gen. Steven Whiting, commander, Space Operations Command. Please give them a warm welcome.”

[Raaberg walks from podium to chair]

“Sir, delighted to be here. So let’s go ahead and set the stage. I think this is a very important discussion. So Russia’s president has launched an unprovoked assault on his neighbor. NATO has declared Article 4. SACEUR is now mustering even more of the NATO Response Force. So to begin with, I’d ask each of you to kind of discuss your role, your responsibility, your command as supporting commanders to coalition, air, and space war-fighting efforts. Gen. Kelly, let’s start with you.”

Gen. Mark D. Kelly: “OK. Well, thanks. I appreciate it. Always good to be here. Well, whether it’s Russia and Gen. Wolters and Gen. Harrigian’s challenges or whether it be Gen. Wilsbach, you know, and mock playing those challenges or CENTCOM or whatever, our Airmen wake up every day that we force provide in a more contested, congested, you know, geographic space, airspace, cyberspace, info space, and I’d argue, you know, outer space. And so they do so—and we have to make sure we train them to operate—they do so amidst the backdrop of already established crisis, whether that crisis be pandemic supply chain crisis, refugee crisis, climate change crisis, whatever.

“So the point is that we have to provide Airmen as a force provider to our force employers that understand that crisis competition and great power conflict is not the contingency plan. Crisis competition and great power conflict is the norm that we start with every single day. And so, to more to your question of what are we doing focused on, you know, EUCOM and USAFE right now: Every combatant commander wants more Air Force, Airmen, force elements forward because of the great work they do. I’m going to start with our great cyber Airmen. I’d love to sit up here and wax and wane about the great stuff they’re doing. It’s just the venue won’t allow me to do that. But if you were in the DOD, and you woke up and your computer didn’t just lock up, hug a cyber Airman. What they’re doing for our allies and partners is nothing less than miraculous. And they do so better than anybody on planet Earth.

“We’ve sent some command-and-control professionals over to help bolster Gen. Harrigian’s Air Operations Center. We’ve got the bulk of, I would say the bulk, but we’ve got every force element you might think of—of our ISR, enterprise big wing, less than big wing, manned, unmanned—given those commanders insight into a really daunting challenge that they need real time across every event you might think of. And then connected to that is the overarching intel enterprise that has to now assess and disseminate what they’re seeing to give those commanders that insight.

“And a little bit divorced from this conversation, but it goes to the ongoing catastrophe in Ukraine. I think when the books are written, this will be our intel enterprise’s finest moment—what they’ve done for the nation. The other piece is our battlefield Airmen. No one lashes up with our joint partners like our battlefield Airmen, and they’re doing that with our great Army and Marine and allies and partners. And then we need more base operating support because we’ve got more combat power over there. And all that is well prior to the shooters that we send over, whether they be F-15Es or the F-35s we just pushed for that lashed into Gen. Harrigian’s formation.

“So, like Gen. Wilsbach says, I could go on and on about how great our Airmen are doing. But there’s a lot of challenges in ACC every day with global force management, the demand signal for our Airmen and our capabilities. One of the challenges I don’t have is finding young Airmen that are willing to go to the sound of the guns when freedom of democracy is under threat. And so you have to be really proud of formations we push forward. So thanks.”

Raaberg: “Sir, that’s awesome. Gen. Whiting, your perspectives?”

Whiting: “Gen. Raaberg, thank you to you and the Air Force Association for having us. And it’s a privilege to be here with Gen. Kelly. You know, in 2019, just two and a half years ago, the nation had been watching the threats that we now face in our space domain and how China and Russia were trying to undercut and hold at risk the capabilities that are foundational to the joint force, and the nation said we have to have fundamental change. And so we created in August of 2019, we brought back U.S. Space Command to focus on the operational war fighting in the space domain. And then in December of 2019, the nation created the sixth armed force, the U.S. Space Force. There’s one organization that sits at the nexus of those two new organizations, and that’s Space Operations Command, or SpOC, the command that I have the privilege to lead. On the service side, we are one of the three field commands of U.S. Space Force, and we are the operational field command. So all presented space capabilities that support combatant commanders are resident within SpOC.

“So think of missions like space domain awareness, electromagnetic warfare, missile warning, missile defense, command and control, defensive cyber, ISR, SATCOM, GPS, as well as the installation and combat support capabilities that we have. And so we are the fight-tonight force of U.S. Space Force. But at the same time, we’re the largest service component to U.S. Space Command as the Space Force service component. And we bring the lion’s share of capability that Gen. Dickinson and the U.S. Space Command team execute in support of other combatant commands, like EUCOM, each and every day.

“As part of that SpOC presentation of forces, we have a two-star headquarters at Vandenberg, the old 14th Air Force headquarters, but it’s a service headquarters that executes joint missions each and every day. And that organization in the service is called SpOC West, commanded by Maj. Gen. DeAnna Burt, somebody that many of you know. But day to day, she serves as one of the two joint component commanders for U.S. Space Command, the Combined Force Space Component Command, and she’s back at home station doing great work on behalf of combatant commanders around the world right now. But that’s the role we play between these two organizations supporting the joint force.”

Raaberg: “Sir, that’s terrific. And especially for both of you as commanders looking 20, 30 years out, especially for force presentation. That’s a big job to look ahead. So, sir, I want to get back to you, Gen. Kelly. You know, you did mention crisis and competition as the norm. But let’s face it, we’re now getting into great power competition. It’s unfolding on the arena as we heard from the secretary just this morning. So what do you think should now be the key efforts going forward?”

Kelly: “As far as key efforts, you hate to give a ‘it depends’ answer, but you know, you can chop that into what I believe should be our national priority efforts: DOD, service, etc. We need to stay in our swim lane of, you know, ACC or SpOC or whatever the case may be, but you know, the secretary spoke earlier, the secretary and Gen. Brown, a member of the Joint Chiefs, you know, they participate in the national decision-making apparatus. The rest of us participate in the best military advice, you know, around everyone from a MAJCOM commander to a young Airman, we owe, by law, best military advice. And I think we owe best military advice in the context of crisis competition and great power conflict, you know, the appropriate advice for the appropriate level of sense of urgency, you know, that our nation will manifest in light of ongoing events.

“At the end of the day, our nation usually generates a national sense of urgency, usually, to strategic challenges, strategic setback, you know, whether it be a 9/11, Pearl Harbor or, you know, something, a strategic challenge, whether it be a space race or currently what’s going on strategic challenge. There’s a couple of ways we do that as a nation: Bottom up, when there’s a 9/11 or Pearl Harbor, there’s pretty much a bottom-up national sense of urgency. Going into, prior to World War II, the Manhattan Project was a top-down, driven sense of urgency. Dictatorships like China, Russia have adopted the top-down we shall have a national sense of urgency, but we need to make sure we convey unemotional, unambiguous, you know, advice to our senior leaders about what we believe.

“You know, if you talk to our partners and our allies that are in this room and elsewhere in NATO, I guarantee you there’s a sense of urgency amongst those folks furthest to the east of NATO, and you’ve seen that reflected already in just days, and the German government’s announcement of what they will do with respect to organize training and equipping and this new abnormal that we kind of find ourselves. And so we owe that; we owe that to our decision-makers. And we do so, the MAJCOM commanders do so, through Gen. Brown and the secretary. The other one, I’d say is a priority is to make sure we give good advice on great power capabilities.

“Earlier Gen. Saltzman made a comment about China’s FOBS, a fractional orbital bombing system, where they can put a hypersonic weapon in orbit over our country and deorbit it essentially at a time and place of their choosing. That is, without question, a great power capability. Also in Steve’s wheelhouse, you know, is, you know, Russia, you know conducting an ASAT. That’s unquestionably a great power capability. But our allies are also tracking this way. For example, Australia just committed a whole lot of treasure and effort to nuclear attack-boat capability. That’s a great power capability. We need to make sure every single penny, dollar, time, effort we commit for our nation, we can look ourselves in the eye and say, ‘That is for a great power capability.’ Because we’ll go to war, or we’ll go to conflict, or we’ll go to crisis with the capabilities we have.

“You can look today, what’s going on, the catastrophe of Ukraine, whatever the side you’re on whether you’re in the combatants in Ukraine or combatants in Russia, or our allies we’re bolstering in NATO, you execute this crisis with what you have, not what the program that’s going to show up in six weeks, six months, six years later, and our conventional capability, our Air Force and our Space Force and our other services, defined your conventional deterrence. So we need to make sure that our efforts are great power capability efforts.”

Raaberg: “So let me do a bridge here to you, Gen. Whiting, because this is really important. You’ve established three core competencies for the Space Operations Command: intel, space operations, cyber. So how does your command now integrate these three elements to achieve space superiority based on what Gen. Kelly was talking about?”

Whiting: “Yeah, thanks for that question. In SpOC, our No. 1 priority codified in our strategic plan is to prepare combat-ready ISR-led cyber-secure space and combat support forces. Let me unpack that because we chose those words very carefully, because they do truly guide the actions that we are taking on a day-to-day basis. No. 1, combat readiness. As I mentioned, we’re a fight-tonight force, and so combat readiness is the coin of the realm, and SpOC, everything we do has to promote the combat readiness of our assigned deltas and squadrons.

“And then we talked about being intel-led. I think one of the most exciting developments in the Space Force was when we were stood up, we went and found all the units across the Air Force that were doing space intel, or intel for space. And we brought them home now to Space Operations Command, and we put them resident into Delta 7, which is our ISR delta. And they now are working to leverage all of the intel community’s capabilities, including Title 50 authorities. And what we’ve done is we’ve put all those intel Guardians and Airmen in that delta, but then they have created detachments that are aligned against all of our other mission deltas. So if you’re in Delta 4 doing missile warning, missile defense, you have a detachment from Delta 7 that’s bringing you the relevant intel to enable your operations about those threats to your system. So everything we do has to be relative to the threat, and over the next few years, we’ll be growing three additional intel squadrons as part of Delta 7 to continue to robust that capability.

“So again, combat-ready intel-led, cybersecure space and combat support forces. Gen. Kelly talked about the great work of cyber Airmen. We are seeing that as well with our cyber Guardians and Airmen. Space networks, space weapons systems, by their very definition are global. They wrap around the planet to enable our expeditionary forces to go anywhere and operate. But they also extend 22,000 miles above the Earth’s surface out to geosynchronous orbit and beyond as we think about cislunar. And that creates a novel cyberattack surface. Now certainly countries like Russia and China are developing capabilities to take us on in space, go after our physical satellites. But other countries, like Iran and North Korea, they’re not quite that sophisticated yet, but they want to take us on in cyber, as do of course, Russia and China.

“So we’ve got to protect that soft underbelly of our space weapons systems with our defensive cyber capabilities. And that’s something we are rapidly working to expand. We’ve had some real exciting advancements recently. And then we talked about how being ICLR-led cyber secure pulls together space and combat support forces. We can’t do our space missions without those intel and cyber Guardians and Airmen. And then our bases and stations, those are not just the places that we live and recreate. Those are our power-projection platforms. The vast majority of our space capability executes from home station, and just like jet fuel literally fuels the U.S. Air Force; electrical power and HVAC fuel the United States Space Force. So those operating locations are absolutely vital to our combat readiness. So that’s how we think about pulling all those capabilities together to execute our space missions.”

Raaberg: “Sir, that’s, that’s amazing because you take the three core competencies, you’re integrating them into each of the deltas, so it’s almost like a combined arms within the command to be able to fly and fight and win out of space and through. So that’s incredible. I can imagine you both are lighting up a lot of telephones right now with other commanders, specifically component commanders and their COCOMs. You’re right now trying to look at today’s events and trying to shift from your MAJCOM level. So really, how are you preparing to provide those requested force capabilities? So Gen. Kelly?”

Kelly: “As far as the methods we use, mine is almost exclusively through the components. I’m in communication with the combatant commanders. They’re pretty busy folks. And so and their components are supposed to be the air and space and cyber experts for their for their combatant command. And so I’m in pretty close contacts with Gen. Wilsbach, Gen. Harrigian and Gen. Guillot. Sometimes I’ll reference Gen. Guillot. He’s here. So say hi to him. But sometimes people confuse superior subordinate commander with supporting, you know. I’m essentially an overpaid support team commander to Lt. Gen. Guillot, and he unambiguously lets me know when he’s not getting everything that his command commander needs to close their risk and execute the commander’s objectives in the theater. And so my efforts are essentially through the component commanders. And we’ve got great, great relationships. Sometimes there’s an adjudication in GFM, if you would, in the joint staff, and that’s just the normal process that we go through. And so I’d say, if I’m answering your question correctly, just through the component commanders almost exclusively.”

Raaberg: “So, Gen. Whiting, same question, but a little different, because there’s a transition going on in terms of the director of Space Force, the DIR Space Force construct, now kind of shifting to that we talked about this morning the SFSC, so DeAnna Burt in this case. So who are you talking to and trying to get a good assessment for your command’s ability to provide that capability?”

Whiting: “Yeah, as we think about space support for our forward-deployed terrestrial forces and combatant commands, it happens at all levels. Of course, U.S. Space Command’s engaging in a combatant command level with those other combatant commands. I have a relationship with other component commands that are in those combatant commands. And then as you highlighted, Gen. Burt with her Combined Force Space Component Command, we have very routine now and habitual relationships from her Combined Space Operations Center, the CSpOC, out to those other theaters through the directors of space forces. Each and every day, they’re submitting space support requests. We’re fulfilling those requests, working on their planning together, they’re working in support of our planning. A very robust relationship.

“Now that will start to evolve here in the coming months as we stand up Space Force service components in those other combatant commands. Those director of space forces positions will shift to that service component role for U.S. Space Force. But we think that those habitual relationships and those processes that we’ve developed will continue to be very robust. I’ll also highlight that those relationships extend beyond just U.S. combatant commands. We have very rich relationships with key allies and partners like the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia. So each and every day out at Vandenberg at the CSpOC, they’re also executing space support requests from those countries through their national space operations centers, and then they’re bringing their space capability to bear for this enterprise as well. So multiple layers that we’re supporting downrange commanders.”

Raaberg: “Sir, can I tap on a little bit more? How about Space Command itself? How do they help shape your thinking, especially today? And then looking downrange?”

Whiting: “Yeah, absolutely. So service component, of course, I’m, you know, under the command of and responsive to Gen. Dickinson, our combatant commander. He has created teams that from his headquarters at U.S. Space Command that live in other combatant command headquarters. So if you go out to INDOPACOM, there’s a team of planners there that come from U.S. Space Command. So that’s an important relationship as we’re doing campaign planning with those other combatant commands to make sure that we have those relationships right. So everything that we do is in support of his operational scheme maneuver.”

Raaberg: “Sure, thanks. Gen. Kelly, a little shift here in terms of more downrange thinking, and I’m pretty sure there’s somebody out there and on the other side of the pond, especially in INDOPAC, who are going to be listening to what you say. And that is, for combat air forces, what are some of the conventional capabilities that Air Combat Command must field now so our nation can really compete and win against a peer adversary.”

Kelly: “So as far as a conventional capabilities, we need to provide that conventional deterrence needed in each theater. Gen. Wilsbach mentioned earlier there was a question to him about Agile Combat Employment. And we’re really doing well in CENTCOM with Agile Combat Employment in Europe and the Pacific with Agile Combat Employment. We do that for several reasons. One is to complicate the targeting picture for any adversary to make it unpredictable for them but predictable for us. But the fact is, the other reason we do it is just the lethality of airbase threats that we face all over the globe. And so, although it’s a capability that ACC doesn’t necessarily provide, our airbase defense is a capability that we need to have a discussion on, you know, as a nation as we go forward.

“Russia is having an unending number of challenges right now executing their campaign, and I’m not going to grade their homework and how they’re executing. But one challenge they’re not having is airbase defense on their main fighter operational bases, because they have layer upon layer upon layer of SA-21s, SA-23s, SA-20s, SA-10s, etc., that they come and go freely from. Our partners that are here in the crowd that I’ve talked to last night and today, our Israeli partners, wake up every day under the curtain of an Iron Dome. I was talking to our Finnish partners. They do some agile combat employment on highways and byways in their nation. They taxi into Granite Mountain. The great sailors of our Navy operate, obviously, with maneuver on the high seas, but they do so under the protection of a whole lot of Aegis cruisers and destroyers of SM-3s and SM-6s. There’s a reason why those nations and those service partners operate with that. And that is a threat to risk to force that we push forward. And if we can mitigate that risk to force, we will continue operating a little bit further outside than we’d like to. So airbase defense would be the first thing I would say.

“The second one is what Gen. Wilsbach references: air superiority. Again, what’s going on in Ukraine with the combatants there, whether it be Ukraine or Russia, it speaks volumes to your superiority when you don’t have it. Our joint force is organized, trained and equipped. And I would go so far as to say the Russian joint forces are organized, trained and equipped to operate with their superiority and not remotely without it. And you’re getting an optic of what it looks like to operate without it with holes being punched in your formations, because you can’t establish air superiority and then provide, you know, close air support. Same thing with our Air Force and our joint force. We owe the joint force air superiority, and they’re expecting it to be there when game day shows up.

“The other one, and the secretary mentioned of AMTI, we have to be able to sense the air domain to provide that picture overall, whether it be at the airbase or whether it be in the air superiority fight. Gen. Wilsbach also mentioned essentially what I refer to as fifth-gen weapons for fifth-gen platforms. We as a nation have put a lot of time and treasure and effort into a low observable force, whether that be Tony Cotton’s B-2s and then will become B-21s or whether it be F-35s or F-22s, you name it. We will not get a phenomenal return on investment if we push a low observable force in due to weapons to a range where everyone is observable. And so that’s the other piece that I think we’re in violent agreement on.

“The other that the secretary talked about as well is JADC2. You can see through, again, that some of the challenges that Russia is having is executing is, if you don’t have joint all domain command control, it gets really chaotic, really, really fast. And you it’s not just a distraction, it’s a loss of life. So the JADC2 piece will be contested and congested again in any theater.

“And then the last one, I would say is every platform we have or will have, we needed to go further, sense further, shoot further. And so some of that incorporates not just fifth-gen weapons for fifth-gen platforms but fifth-gen sensors and fifth-gen weapons into fourth-gen platforms. It provides a disruptive impact to a peer fight. And so we owe that advice to our leaders.”

Raaberg: “Sir, we may come back to that—talk about how you really integrate and exercise that future capability that you’re looking for, as an OT in need. Gen. Whiting, kind of on a similar vein, but let’s face it, Guardians and Airmen are orchestrating the vertical integration of space. So let me throw the reversal back at you. So what is the role of Airmen in executing SpOC’s mission?”

Whiting: “Yeah, I really appreciate that question. There was a very smart decision I believe made by the secretary of the Air Force when the Space Force stood up, and she at the time directed that, for the purposes of military justice, the Air Force and the Space Force are one service. What does that mean? That’s how the Marines and the Navy operate. And it’s why, if you remember the movie ‘A Few Good Men,’ when Col. Jessup was being court martialed, there were both sailors and Marines on that court martial, because otherwise you couldn’t do that. But what it really means is that the Airmen assigned to SpOC and the Space Force, they are fully inside of our chain of command. Similarly, when Guardians are assigned to an Air Force unit, they are a part of that chain of command. So it allows us to truly operate as one team executing our one fight.

“So that’s why you’ll never hear me or the leadership of SpOC, talking about our personnel and just saying ‘Guardians,’ its Guardians and Airmen. Because when the Space Force was created, we only had five career fields that were allowed to transfer in. The first three are officer and enlisted career fields, Space Operations, intel and cyber, and all the various shreds of those. And then two officer exclusive career fields: acquisition and development engineer. Everything else that it takes a uniform body to execute a service’s mission comes to us from the U.S. Air Force. So when you drive through the gate at Peterson Space Force base or any of our other locations, it is a professional Airman defender there at the gate defending that installation. CE, medics, chaplains, logisticians, personnelists, all of that comes to comes to us from the U.S. Air Force. And those are foundational members of all that we do because they run those installations, which are those power projection platforms that allow us to execute our missions.

And so we cannot do our mission without those Airmen. And even in our space-focused units and our space deltas and space squadrons, the individual personnelists and administrators and in our deployable capabilities, the age maintainers, all of that is from the U.S. Air Force. So we just can’t say thanks enough to our Air Force teammates, in particular Air Force Materiel Command, who’s the servicing MAJCOM, who supports us and their subordinate centers like IMSC. Just an incredible relationship, and we can’t do our mission without those Airmen.”

Raaberg: “Sir, sounds like one team, one fight. Thank you. Gen. Kelly, last September, many of us heard about and saw that you unveiled the fighter roadmap. Given current events, how does it stand now?

Kelly: “If anything, current events, just enforce, you know, where we need to be ready for crisis competition and great power conflict. And as I mentioned just a minute ago, you see every day, unfortunately, the catastrophe taking place there. But from a military standpoint, you see the disasters that unfold in the military lane, when you don’t establish their superiority over a contested environment. You also see, you know, every every really huge problem is a logistics problem. And if you think logistics is hard, from the border of Belarus, down in Kyiv, you should try it in Gen. Wilsbach’s AOR when there’s a whole lot of water, and there’s a whole lot of air, and there’s a whole lot of threat to what you’re doing.

“But to your point of the fighter roadmap, what we’re seeing play out, you know, in Ukraine, and what we’re seeing every day in crisis competition and great power conflict in Asia-Pacific, just really reinforces that we have got to first and foremost, bring in electromagnetic spectrum and everything we do, because the force that can thrive and survive in that environment will be the one that ends up succeeding in the end. And as I mentioned a minute ago, everything we field forward has to go further, see further, sense further, jam further, shoot further, just because the range is involved in this high-end tech combat.

Raaberg: “Gen. Whiting, on a similar note: strategy. You probably have an unclassified and classified strategy tools, obviously stick on the open-source side. Give us some insights on which strategy you’re developing or have developed and how is it going.

Whiting: “Yeah, let me talk about a couple initiatives that we’re working, one being in a field-comm level integration CONOPS and the other being a unitized training effort. You know, one of the most formative assignments in my career was the one time in my career, Gen. Kelly, I was assigned to Air Combat Command. As a new one star, I was the vice commander of the Air Force Warfare Center at Nellis. What an incredible job. Had two awesome bosses, then-Maj. Gen. Jeff Lofgren and then-Maj. Gen. Jay Silvaria. And yet, I showed up as an officer with a space background and never having served in a unit whose primary mission was flying, and they said, they did not say sit in the corner and wait for the space issues to come. They said lean in, lead here.

“In fact, for two and a half months, I was on G Series orders as the commander of the warfare center because Gen. Lofgren got deployed and, Sir, your predecessor Gen. Haase called me and said, ‘Steven, we don’t know who’s coming in behind him. So you got it. OK, so let’s keep leading.’ I did try to direct the Thunderbirds to paint the jets black in honor of space. They absolutely ignored that order. So I’m sorry they were so insubordinate, but what an incredible unit to actually get to be around is the Thunderbirds, incredible Airmen.

“But I learned that yes, Nellis is the, you know, the home of the fighter pilot, but it is the home of tactical integration, not only for the U.S. Air Force but really for the Department of the Air Force in many ways and, I would say, our Joint Force. Because I learned there that the Air Force has not built one exquisite aircraft to go against like a double digit SAM or, you know, advanced SAM threat. They have the force package capability. So they have to bring together high-value assets that are vulnerable, like JWACs and JSTARS with offense, with defense, with ISR, cyber, command and control joint fires, to take down those threats and execute a mission.

“Well, that is exactly what we are having to do now in space with the threats that we have to, you know, defeat in the space domain. So we’re writing an integration CONOPS that that looks at how do we bring together the capabilities of all of our deltas, and what are those TTPs, as we think about bringing together space domain awareness capability, high-value assets like SATCOM and missile warning that we have to protect? Offense, defense, space control capabilities, ISR, cyber, command and control to make sure that we can survive in the face of these threats. And so later this year, we will complete that initial work and have a CONOPS that walks through how we do that.

“And then I’ll also highlight one additional initiative, which is what we’ve called our unitized training effort. When we were in the Air Force, of course, our wings all had an operation support squadron that did a whole disparate set of functions that supported operations. Some of that was supporting the training of our space missions in those wings. Some of it was doing important functions like running the airfields, executing weather and intel operations. And those of you who have served in OSS, as you know, you kind of serve as the the group staff or the OPS group commander.

“Well, as we broke apart our deltas and garrisons, the airfield and the weather, those went to the garrisons run by Airmen doing fantastic work. So those kind of left the OSSs. Intel went to Del. 7 and then was presented back as a detachment to those supported deltas. We didn’t really want a a squadron being the group staff anymore, so that kind of left us with training. So now we’ve stood up combat training squadrons or detachments in each of our deltas to execute our portion of the training pipeline, which is IQT and advanced training. So now we have a commander and a senior enlisted leader and their team who show up every day focused on our core training tasks. It also serves as a belly button to work with space training and readiness command, one of the other field commands, who has other training responsibilities that are critical for the service. So those are two initiatives that we’re working to really get after the space missions that we’re responsible for.”

Raaberg: “Sir, thank you. Let me shift stressors that you see, especially in organizing, training and equipping. So, Gen. Kelly, any particular unclassified capabilities you see as stressed, and really needing your attention, whether that’s ISR, unmanned combat, search and rescue?

Kelly: “In terms of force element stressors, at the end of the day, it’s really across our entire combat air force that combatant commanders want more of our Airmen, more of our equipment, more of our aircraft, the force elements I mentioned earlier, because they perform so well. But, you know, for our nation and for our Air Force and DOD, on September 12, 2001, we appropriately as a nation, as an Air Force, went into crisis action, global force management and sourcing to answer the nation’s call and respond to 9/11 attacks. It made perfect sense.

“The challenge we have is that we followed that week of crisis action, global force management and sourcing with another 1,000 weeks of crisis action, global force management and sourcing for the counterinsurgency crisis of the week. And when you do that, and you consume an air force at a rate that exceeds your ability to generate an air force, no different than you, doesn’t matter if it’s muscle tissue or money or combat power, you consume at a rate that exceeds your ability to generate it, you’re going to bet there’s going to be some after effect.

“And the after effect for us was we literally ate the muscle tissue of the Air Force. And so that’s one of the reasons why our four-bin model is a sustainable force presentation model so that we don’t work in this age of crisis competition and great power conflict, and we throw another crisis on top of it of a readiness crisis. Because we have to have enough combat power during this time to go forward should crisis boil over into a kinetic conflict. But there is no one specific force element. It’s all in demand. All the ones I talked about: our cyber Airmen, our command and control, our ISR and other intel Airmen, our base operating support, our battlefield Airmen, and of course, our shooters across the globe. And so, no, it’s all under pressure, and we just owe them the right organizations, the right training, the right equipping, so they can go forward and succeed.”

Raaberg: “We have probably a little over five minutes remaining. But what I want to do is, it’d be remiss if we didn’t touch on Agile Combat Employment, especially from your perspective. And really Agile Combat Employment, as we’ve already heard from Gen. Wilsbach, is already executed. You’ve been the leading edge of the testing development and putting it out into the field itself. How’s it coming along?”

Kelly: “It’s really, as Gen. Wilsbach mentioned, and if Gen. Harrigian was here, he would also echo that it’s going really well. You know, it’s no longer a niche thing that we do, because it comes around the calendar, like, hey, let’s sprinkle in some Agile Combat Employment. It really is mainstream. And I mentioned Gen. Guillot earlier, and I’ll mention him again, I sometimes when I talk to him, I’ll let him know that I’m having trouble keeping up with where he’s pushing the forces to, because they take off out of one base, and they’ll refuel at another, and then they rearm at another, and they’ll spend a night at a fourth. And then they’ll end up, you know, doing some other operations.

“And so I have trouble keeping track of where he’s pushing all these forces, which is actually a compliment. Because if I have trouble keeping track, the Iranians and the Syrians have trouble keeping track of what we’re doing. And the Airmen, and I mean Airmen from people that are fueling and fixing and loading and maintaining, as Gen. Wilsbach mentioned, are multicapable Airmen. They don’t just survive in this environment; they thrive in the environment. And same thing with our operators and our commanders. And those command channels, the C2 of it, get stressed, and we learn every day, we get better. But I would say AFCENT is essentially the operational test grounds of Agile Combat Employment because they do it literally habitually now.”

Raaberg: “So, Gen. Whiting, so what is the difference for the SpOC when it comes to Space Force deployment? Really give us some insight on that.”

Whiting: “You know, the vast majority of our capability employs from our bases and stations, which is why those power projection platforms are so important to us, as I highlighted. So gotta really watch the readiness of those capabilities. And in fact, we have a whole effort ongoing to look at the infrastructure readiness and how it supports those missions and excited about where that will take us here in the months and years ahead. We do have some traditional deployable capabilities that look a lot like I’m sure Gen. Kelly’s fighter units, for example, when they rotate downrange, and we run them very similar model to what he described with that, that force generation model.

“I would like to highlight a change we made in our headquarters because as we moved away at Building One at Peterson, which used to be headquarters, Air Force Space Command, we’re no longer that organization. And for about a year, we were headquarters, U.S. Space Force, as the staff at the Pentagon was getting stood up. And we’re no longer that organization. We have created inside of our headquarters, mission area teams that align to our deltas. So if you were at Delta 8 doing the satellite communications and GPS mission that is vital to combatant commanders around the world, you have a team led by an O-6 or a GS-15 at our headquarters, and that team has 20 to 30 people. Their job is to support your current operations, whether that’s deploying downrange or executing from home station. But also looking at all of the upgrades and new weapon systems coming in the POM and making sure that we’re ready from DOTMLPF perspective to feel that capability when it lands. That we have the people, we have the facilities, we have the doctrine that we need. And so that’s a vital effort that we’re pivoting to in our headquarters to support those deltas.”

Raaberg: “A couple minutes remaining, so about a minute apiece, but I want to prime the pump real quickly, and that is and this may be a leading-edge question, and that is, you know, are your priorities changing or is your lens changing based on Putin’s escalation dominance and Xi’s grand strategy to upstage the global order?”

Kelly: “Short answer, I would say is no. It just really, you know, 99.99% of this catastrophe in Ukraine is horrible. The offshoots of that are, you know, a couple years ago, maybe less than a couple years ago, you know, there’s discussions about the relevance of NATO. I don’t think we’re gonna hear that conversation anytime soon. More into Tony Cotton’s swim lane, and Adm. Richardson’s, you know, there’s discussion and debate and it’s healthy, over does this nation need a nuclear triad? I haven’t heard that debate lately. Sometimes we get discussion over the requirements to fully fund nuclear command and control. Now, I think there’s real big debate on the relevance and importance in the no-fail mission of that.

“But in terms of more in my swim lane of ACC, being a good force provider to all the components and the combatant commanders, short answer is no. Those actions of a dictator essentially taking over a smaller democracy just really reinforces what we do to train our Airmen. Like I said, there’s a lot of challenges in ACC. Finding Airmen to go forward to the sound of the guns and defend democracy and freedom is not one of my challenges of the day. And I just need to make sure we give them the training and the equipment and the guidance and the courageous leadership they deserve. Because these are the professional sons and daughters that their parents loaned to us, so we owe them back in good or better shape than we got them. And the best way we can is to make sure they are organized, trained and equipped to exceed and represent our Air Force and nation.”

Raaberg: “Gen. Whiting, thank you. Gen. Whiting, we’re down to about 15 seconds. So bonus round. Final thoughts.”

Whiting: “I agree with Gen. Kelly. You know what China and Russia are doing just validates what we’ve always thought. I got to watch in 2007 in real time as China conducted that very irresponsible ASAT test, and we knew, those of us sitting in the room, it included Lt. Col. Chance Saltzman and Maj. DeAnna Burt, that the world had changed. Sometimes our body politic takes a while to move. But we have shifted now as I highlighted in 2019, a new combatant command, a new service, dedicated to the space domain for one purpose: to ensure that the space effects we provide—that increased joint lethality and effectiveness—are available in the face of the threats we now face and across all phases of conflict. That is our moral responsibility to the joint force.”

Raaberg: “Generals, this has been a wonderful conversation with you. Thank you. And for our audience, in lieu of speaker gifts, AFA is funding more Airmen and Guardians to attend tonight’s poolside barbecue. So come join them. And thank you for supporting our Airmen and Guardians.

“Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time for the coffee break, and I know everybody needs the doors open to get out of here. So join us in the expo hall and check out the exhibits and displays. Meet our industry partners and come back here at 10:45, probably a little later than that, because I don’t have a good shot clock anymore. Thank you very much.”

Watch, Read: China ‘Executing Some Nefarious Activities’ in Indo-Pacific

March 13, 2022

Retired Lt. Gen. Bruce ”Orville” Wright, president of the Air Force Association, hosts a discussion with Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach, commander of Pacific Air Forces and Lt. Gen. B. Chance Saltzman, deputy Chief of Space Operations for operations, cyber, and nuclear titled “China: The Pacing Challenge” during the AFA Warfare Symposium on March 3, 2022. Watch the video or read the transcript below. This transcript is made possible through the sponsorship of JobsOhio.

Overhead voice: Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the president of the Air Force Association, Lt. Gen. Orville Wright.

Retired Lt. Gen. Bruce “Orville” Wright, president of the Air Force Association: Well, good morning, and let’s just keep it rolling here. It’s an honor for me this morning, first of all, to thank all of you for being with us, to being in the fight. As we all know, there’s a ton of concern right now about the Ukraine. And that’s understandable. But it’s certainly also important to remember that Russia stretches from Europe to the Pacific, and its border with China is the sixth-largest in the entire world. In the Pacific, of course, China is the pacing challenge to U.S. and allied interests, and also a complex economic partner, and now a major peer military threat. China really is the giant panda in the room. It has advanced its nuclear, air, space, sea and land-based capabilities. In fact, China has built its modern force to directly disrupt our American way of war. And as we all know, its ambitions are immense. China is on a path to surpass the United States in stealth, hypersonic weapons, artificial intelligence and information dominance and more. So who better to talk about the warfighting challenges in the Pacific today than our panelists. Gen. Ken “Cruiser” Wilsbach, U.S. Air Force, Commander, Pacific Air Forces, and Lt. Gen. Chance Saltzman, U.S. Space Force. He’s our deputy chief of operations; that includes also cyber and nuclear. So gentlemen, if you’ll please join me on the stage we’ll get this rolling.

Well, let’s start with Gen. Wilsbach. And we’ll stay at the unclassified level, which may be a challenge. I think the world should know, and there’s certainly plenty of open source information, how do you currently view the state of the strategic competition in the Indo-Pacific between the U.S. and China?

Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach, commander of Pacific Air Force: You bet. Thanks. Thanks, Orville. And really thanks to the AFA, for having us. And it’s really such an honor to be up here with Gen. Saltzman to talk about China. I know a lot of people that are here that serve in the Pacific. You know, I just recently put out an order for all of the Pacific that you know, where two or three airmen are gathered, you talk about China. We do that at every, you know, even like a flight brief for a maintenance team in the morning, they talk about China so that our folks can be up to up to speed on what’s happening in the AOR. And before I get to your question, I would like to just address, you know, why is it that we’re, we’re having this competition? Well, it’s because China, the pacing threat, is executing some nefarious activities. And they’ve been doing this for years, you know, from predatory lending practices, to promising democratic principles to be allowed in Hong Kong, and then taking it back and making it illegal to have those activities, to take over territory illegally in the South China Sea and in building new territory outside of their territorial waters. And then saying, that’s China, it’s always been China, a revisionist history, to incurring on other people’s property. And then most recently, supporting, you know, an unprovoked invasion, or at least, at least the beginning of that, and supporting Russia, in manufacturing, the rationale for that unprovoked. And so they seem to be on the wrong, the wrong side of just about every issue with respect to a free and open Indo-Pacific, which is our objective. And so as you look at, you know, the nature of your question of, you know, how, how’s it going? And what are we doing? That’s the reason why we’re there.

And, incidentally, this year, we’ve seen the Europeans even come out and help with competition with the Queen Elizabeth II doing a cruise through the region. The French were out, they obviously have interest in French Polynesia, and even the Germans.

And so in this year, you’re going to see even more of that. And in my interactions, even with the Europeans, they’re going to continue that, because they’re also concerned about a free and open Indo-Pacific and they have interests to protect. And so that brings up, you know, how are things going? And the first principle for us is, the allies and partners. And so as, as China views this thing, they do not want an open and free Indo-Pacific. They want it to be the Chinese way, which is why we have a problem with this. And so the allies and partners and like-minded nations who, you know, support the rule of law and international rules-based order, the strength of us together, demanding that China also operate inside that international rules-based order is incredibly important. And so when China views it, they may view it as the China versus the U.S., but what they should view it as China versus Team Blue, you know, which is, you know, almost every other country in the Indo-Pacific and, you know, throw in the allies and partners from Europe and other parts of the world, who also value a free and open environment, as well as the rules-based international order, that that presents some dilemmas for China that perhaps they need to consider before they would move out on, you know, further nefarious activities.

So allies and partners is the first aspect of that in competition. And then the next piece of this is joint operations. And, you know, the Air Force and the Space Force, you know, we, we can scarcely go time hack, hack without the Space Force for the U.S. Air Force. But everything that we do relies on the Space Force. And so that joint aspect is built in, as it should be. But with our Navy, Marines, and Army brothers and sisters, that joint aspect and integrating joint fires and integrating operations, even in the competition phase, is tough to do, as we all know, but we can do it, and we’re actually getting much better at it. And as the Secretary talked about, ABMS, as well as some JADC2, we’re going to continue to get better and better. It’s synchronizing and integrating those joint effects, which is something that, you know, our adversaries, principally China, but certainly North Korea, and Russia, as other Indo-Pacific competitors, that they don’t do as well as us. And so we do have somewhat of an advantage there with joint and then certainly modernization, which we can get into later if you’d like. And I’ll stop there just not to take up all the time, I can keep going all day.

Wright: Terrific. Great, great kickoff. Salty, let’s talk about in the space perspective. And certainly China’s threats in space, which have become more and more visible and are obviously growing, a worldwide issue. Particularly significant, as you well know, in a region that is so large, and includes so much of the vast Pacific, and given China’s expenditures on space and counter-space capabilities. Is there one thread that goes through your mind every day, that is most worrisome?

Lt. Gen. B. Chance Saltzman, deputy Chief of Space Operations for operations, cyber, and nuclear: Well, thanks, sir. And to Orville and the whole AFA team, once again, terrific event, it’s really great that we get to come together and have these very important discussions. So thanks for all you do to help enable that. And it’s a real honor to be on the stage to share with you, sir. A great leader, great Airman, great warrior, great partner, and really appreciate the opportunity today to talk about.

There’s not really one threat that keeps me awake or is most worrisome. What’s most worrisome is the pace with which they’ve developed all of their space capabilities, how fast they’ve been able to not just increase what you would expect in terms of their satellite communications and ISR capabilities, but the pace with which they’ve developed counter-space weapons, they clearly see that we gain tremendous advantages in joint warfare by leveraging space capabilities. And they have invested heavily to develop a mix of counter-space capabilities from fractional orbit hypersonics, GPS and SATCOM jammers, the anti-satellite missile capability they have, it’s a formidable force that they are building, fielding, operationalizing to deny us the capabilities that we use in space. And that pace, that accelerated pace with which they’ve been able to put them in place, is really what’s most worrisome. And I say that because it’s almost a challenge to us. And it’s a challenge that I want to take on and I want certainly the Space Force to step up to, is we have to match that pace, we have to match the ability to bring technology and put it in the hands of our operator, just like Secretary Kendall mentioned a few moments ago, how fast can we put capability in the hands of our operator to mitigate the effects the Chinese are trying to create?

And so that’s really what I’m trying to focus on, is not just the products, not just what are the things that we need to buy that we can put in place to make our architectures, our space capabilities more resilient, but the processes by which we do it. We have to be agile, we have to be adaptable, because the security condition is going to be highly dynamic. So how fast can we innovate? How are we incentivizing innovation, incentivizing rapid operational capabilities and building processes that are repeatable, so we can get ahead of this decision cycle and actually get in front of the Chinese. I think that’s going to be one of the cornerstones of deterrence, is if we can pose a formidable force that that can deny them the benefits that they might see by an attack, and impose costs if we need to, that there’s going to be consequences to aggressive behavior in space, and in the other domains. And we need to have the capabilities to demonstrate that. And so that pace of change. [Inaudible] And now we want to make sure we’re matching that. So I think that’s, that’s what keeps me awake, is trying to sort that process out.

Wright: Thanks, sir. Gen. Wilsbach, back to your perspective, and you already talked about this a bit. You cover, you defend multiple allies in combination with your alliances with Japan, close work with the Japan Self-Defense Forces, Advanced Defense Force, certainly South Korea, our partners in Australia, and you’re sitting on Russia’s eastern flank. So as the Putin regime has demonstrated an unexpected level of aggressiveness. How are you and certainly Admiral Aquilino—I would offer you are his most lethal force, by the way—how are you and Admiral Aquilino looking at keeping the peace? You maintain an international stability in a big part of the world, a very important part of the world, economically important part of the world?

Wilsbach: Absolutely. Absolutely. So, first of all, you’re exactly right. You know, a lot of people look at the globe and look at it from this sense of the equator. And when you do that, you don’t necessarily get a sense for the Arctic. We are an Arctic nation because of Alaska. Russia is an Arctic nation. [Mic change] So Russia is an Arctic nation; so are we because of Alaska, and when you look at the map from the equator, you don’t get a sense for how close Russia is on, you know, on the east side of Russia, our west side. And so we are very close. And so as we’ve seen the events unfold in Europe, we’ve certainly been keeping a very close eye on what’s happening in Russia, and so far it seems to be relatively routine on their east side.

With North Korea, though, similar of you know, watching them very closely and seeing how they might take advantage of the attention that everyone’s placing in Europe. And so last Saturday, we saw them launch what they claimed to be, you know, space launch, I’m not so sure that’s exactly what it was. But, you know, I expect that we’ll see more of that out of North Korea. And some of those are pretty provocative events. And so we want to keep a very close eye on that and be ready to respond if, if that’s what our nation’s leaders decide we need to do. And PACAF will absolutely be ready to respond with that.

And then let’s focus in on China. But one of the things that I want to point out is, when you translate the word crisis, from Chinese into English, it doesn’t necessarily translate the way we think about it. But the way the Chinese think about it, is there’s a connotation of danger, which we can sort of relate to, but there’s also an opportunistic connotation as well. And so as they look at a crisis, they will look at, it’s dangerous, but there may be an opportunity here, what can we do, and so I’ve got, I’ve got very close eyes watching on what China might do, to take advantage of this crisis, knowing that that’s their propensity. So far, again, it’s been relatively routine, even though the, the friction is there in the routine, you know, as we see that friction with them constantly in that competition, but we’ll be looking to see if they want to take advantage further. But one of the things that I’m very hopeful, and we touched on that earlier in the morning, is that when you have an unprovoked attack, you know, in Europe, like we’ve seen with Russia and Ukraine, and the world has come together in great solidarity. I hope China paid attention because, you know, they’ve communicated in public, you know, what their stance is, you know, toward Taiwan, and what their plans are toward Taiwan. And I hope they’ve been paying attention in Europe because, as the Secretary said, you know, Putin made a mistake, probably a miscalculation. And there’ll be consequences for the nation of Russia. And I believe that a similar event would occur in the Pacific if China were to have a similar unprovoked attack. And so I’m hopeful that they’re paying attention to that.

Wright: That’s a great, great point and how you come together with all your nations and you work with your country teams from Japan to South Korea. There’s certainly a combined diplomatic and military message in all that you’re doing, it seems to me. Salty, you know, I think Secretary Kendall set us up when he talked about AMTI and GMTI from space, holding targets at risk. Obviously, there’s a bunch of targets that we’d like to watch and hold at risk across the INDOPACOM AOR. So could you talk a little bit about the team, the one team one fight, and again AMTI and GMTI from space, but really, how you all are working together on making Joint All-Domain Command and Control real.

Saltzman: Appreciate it, I think the best way to describe it is, orbits in space give us access and persistence to denied areas. The problem is, is they may not be as accessible as they once were because of the counter-space capabilities that the Chinese have presented. So we have to explore how do we maximize the opportunities that are there to take advantage of these orbits, take advantage of the persistence in the denied areas, take advantage of the access with an eye to that resiliency that Secretary Kendall mentioned. How do we make sure that that’s there. On our worst day, we can still provide the capabilities that the joint force needs in the air, land, sea, etc. Once we establish that, and as we think through what makes sense now, I think it’s right that we examine what missions might migrate to space. Where does it make sense to take advantage of the Day One access, the Day One persistence, that we can enhance the joint force’s eyes and ears, targeting capability, etc., so that we’re as as effective as possible on that first day of operations without having to fight our way in to put those sensors there.

That’s the way I’m thinking about it from an MTI standpoint. There’s a lot of work to be done to figure out how to close the technology gaps, how to put the things in place. But we would not be doing our job if we didn’t consider, what are the right missions that can migrate, should migrate—and if they do migrate, now, how do we assure those capabilities so the joint force can come to depend on them when they need it? So work to be done. But I think we’re moving in the right kind of direction.

Wright: Outstanding, I think not only does the Space Force support the fight, I think in so many ways you lead the fight. So thanks. Gen. Wilsbach, you’ve done remarkable work over the years and certainly recently on the whole ACE concept, multiple bases from which the fight, you move to those bases, support those bases logistically. We are going to talk I think, this afternoon about using artificial intelligence to strengthen your logistics chain and your support for the ACE concept. So can you talk about ACE a bit and update us?

Wilsbach: You bet. So a lot of people think that ACE is this strategy for the future, but I’m here to tell you it is a thing. And we have the capability in PACAF to do ACE in almost every single exercise that we do and all the deployments incorporate some measure of ACE. And I’ll give you a recent example, we just concluded Cope North 22 with the Australians and Japanese in the Guam cluster, and I say the Guam cluster because they weren’t just at Andersen Air Force Base. We had forces at all three major airfields on Guam, we had forces at Rota, Saipan and Tinian. And we were executing all aspects of ACE, which, you know, certainly means flying missions from those islands and those airfields, but multi-capable Airmen. So we’ve been training Airmen to do multiple skills where in the old days, if you were a hydraulic troop, that’s all you did. Well, now we’ve got hydraulic troops doing electrics and changing tires, and being crew chiefs, and etc, etc. So that that’s a part of it, the multi-capable Airmen.

The other part of this is the command and control that you need to be able to keep the force in the air. So you can imagine how if we’re very used to being in this one location with all of your assets and very consolidated, it’s pretty efficient. And if you have a maintenance problem, you just land and you fix it from right there. Well, what if you don’t have the maintenance capability, say at Tinian, so you’ve got to get either the maintenance equipment over to Tinian to fix the aircraft or you’ve got to get the broken aircraft back to where you have some heavier maintenance. That command and control is pretty hard to do, but our folks are doing it. And it’s a part of every local exercise. And again, every exercise that we do in the Pacific with deployments, there’s a portion of it that’s going to be ACE.

Interestingly, many of the allies and partners are also really interested in ACE. Certainly the Australians are. And the Japanese are incredibly interested in, they have actually started to do some ACE events themselves inside of Japan. And so they’re learning from us, we recently concluded that the ACE concept of employment really was the second iteration of that document, which lays out you know, how a wing would go about doing ACE and coming into the Pacific. What are our expectations, what’s the manning where you might go, there’s, there’s a lot to it to, to be able to execute ACE. And we’ve been in collaboration with USAFE on that. And so USAFE and PACAF, along with ACC, have been pretty tight on developing this concept of employment. So for those who haven’t had a chance to read through it, it’s a pretty thick read, but you can skim through it if you’d like. It’s out there online. It’s obviously classified at the secret level. So you can get it on SIPR. But it’s a useful document, especially if you were to employ or deploy into the Pacific or into USAFE, you can get a sense for you know, what will be expected when you get there.

Wright: Thanks, sir. It’s all about multi-capable Airmen, no doubt, and Guardians. Salty, you know, Guardians are starting to be deployed around the world. Talking to the Seventh Air Force Commander recently, there are Guardians on the peninsula. It occurs to me, and you and Gen. Wilsbach have a lot of experience from your weapons school time to multiple exercises, Red Flags, and that not only are Guardians in the fight. Guardians are now the link to the traditional, if you will, intelligence community capabilities, NRO. Recently, we had NRO presence at Red Flags and weapon school graduation exercise. So could you talk about how your Guardians are bringing together the entire, if you will, ISR enterprise, NRO and the capabilities that are out there, and roll in commercial too. I know, you’re all over it. So, please.

Saltzman: So I think the best word that describes that is just space integration. It’s all the mission sets from ISR to SATCOM, whether it’s commercial or military, and how do we effectively integrate that or what are the key elements that we need to make sure we’re paying attention to, as we continue to integrate those capabilities to all the combatant commands.

Obviously, we’re heavily invested in, heavily integrated into U.S. Space Command. You know, the vast majority of the missions that we provide are enterprise global level missions, they support all the combatant commanders through United States Space Command, but there are activities and Gen. Wilsbach has priorities that are going to require integration of space capabilities. Adm. Aquilino has priorities that are going to require detailed integration of space expertise, space integration, partnerships with other nations, as Gen. Wilsbach mentioned. And I think that’s the kind of thing that we have to make sure we’re structured, and that we’re training to provide. And so in my head as the chief operations officer, I sum that up in terms of readiness, are we ready to do the missions that we’re being asked to do today, primarily through U.S. Space Command? And are we ready to do the other contingencies that are in the foreseeable future? Whether it’s an Indo-Pacific scenario, whether it’s a European scenario, the Middle East, Africa, you know, what are those challenges that we’re going to face. And the biggest shift, of course, is that we’re not operating in a benign space environment anymore, we are going to operate against a thinking adversary that is committed to denying us those space capabilities. So that fundamentally changes the way you train. It has to change the way you train, so that our operators are ready. So we’re investing in Operational Test and training infrastructure. We’re investing in an OPFOR, red forces, aggressors, to help our operators train effectively against a thinking adversary, we need to create those virtual environments. So the operators can validate tactics, practice their tradecraft. I’m convinced that, you know, in a one-to-one fight where we have maybe parity in terms of equipment, it’s going to be our Airmen, our Guardians that come through because they’re going to have the experience, they’re going to have the skills. We’re going to have the training the tactics to come out on top in one of those kinds of engagements.

One of the challenges that I’ve tried to describe is, I don’t like the idea of space status quo if we go into a high-end fight. In other words, if all sides of a fight, are using space the way they currently do now, think about the Chinese. I don’t like our advantages there. The complexity of synchronizing in the Indo-Pacific, the distances we have to cover, we are going to rely so much on our capabilities, but they’re gonna have targeting capability, they’ve got advanced weapons, I don’t like status quo, I don’t like to win 51 to 50. That’s not the way I want to go to war with these guys. And so we have to invest to make sure that our operators, whether they’re providing ISR, SATCOM, missile warning, electronic warfare, any of those capabilities, they have to be the best trained in the world. And I’m committed to making sure they have the tools, the time and the training environments to do that.

Wright: Outstanding. Gen. Wilsbach, like you, I grew up, trained very much in the importance of the joint fight. One team, one fight, Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and now Guardians all in any contingency together, and certainly, the joint capability is important in the INDOPACOM theater. At the same time, my job as your Air Force Association president is to talk more and create the opportunities to talk about our Airmen and our Guardians in the joint fight. My view, is, our Airmen and Guardians are the most lethal arm of the joint fight by far. We invited Adm. Aquilino to be here, and please pass on our regards to him. So given the opportunity, you’re here with Orville Wright, talk a bit, if you would, about your forces, your PACAF forces in the fight, and not just those forces that are deployed in there today that continue to come over the horizon. And those obviously, are Air and Space Forces. So just, I’d like you to just take the opportunity to brag about and talk about your PACAF forces, your Airmen and certainly Guardians in the PACAF area.

Wilsbach: One of the things I’ll start off with, you know, kind of bridging on Salty’s last answer is, we’re in the process of transitioning from, you know, having a DirSpaceFor in the AOC, which, if you’ve worked in AOC, you understand that, to having a space Component Command for INDOPACOM. And so we’ve recently just exercised that in the last exercise we did in INDOPACOM. And it works really great. One of the reasons why it works really great is because there’s not a whole lot of organizational change and new buildings and new infrastructure that’s required, because the space component works right from the AOC. And leverage, it leverages the historical relationship that we’ve had in AOC. And so it’s, it’s really working out really well, from the standpoint of how to incorporate … Yeah, yeah, no, it worked out great. I was really happy with the transition was, you know, people say seamless transitions, it was seamless. So that’s fantastic. And one, it keeps the strength of the Air Force and the Space Force together, and everything we do is together. But at the same time, it met the requirements for the COCOM, and which was the main purpose for having a space component stand up in the Pacific. And so that’s, that’s been really something that is really brand new, and something that we really like. As far as the, the men and women of the Pacific, you know, I’ve got to brag on them a little bit. And one of the things that is somewhat different than a lot of places where Airmen serve is, unless you’re from Alaska, Hawaii, Guam, Korea, or Japan, you are a long way from home. Right? And so everybody that serving in the Pacific is there, you know, basically deployed in place. And in the age of COVID, it’s been particularly hard on especially the folks that are in Japan and Korea based on host nation travel restrictions and some of their COVID requirements. And so they’ve been really isolated. But as I travel around the Pacific, I find that despite all of those things, being away from home a long way from home COVID restrictions, haven’t taken leave in a while, etc. The morale is pretty dang high. And I attribute that to awesome leadership, especially at the NCO level. The NCOs are leading through, you know, the age of COVID and competing with China remarkably well. And so I can just report that to everybody that the morale is high despite it being a tough environment. The other thing that I’ll report to you is the Airmen continue to be incredibly innovative with getting after this competition, principally with China.

But, you know, we never forget about North Korea and Russia and in our day-to-day operations, but obviously, China is the pacing threat, but the innovation from Airmen, especially in the area of ACE, every time we do an ACE iteration, even if it’s just a squadron event on a daily training, there’s an Airman out there innovating, and they’ve got supervisors that are encouraging that innovation and adopting new tactics, techniques and procedures, you know, nearly every day, so that we can continue to expand that ACE envelope as we go forward. And, you know, certainly the Secretary talked about, you know, having the ability to do ACE and you know, one of the biggest areas that we’ve got to work on and he addressed it is logistically, getting in a posture to do ACE, which means you have to pre-position or otherwise, the logistics on the fly in a contested environment become incredibly difficult. So Airmen are thinking through and you know, our A-4 community is thinking through OK, what stuff do we need to put and where does it need to go to pre-position so that ACE is not as difficult as it might otherwise be if you had to do logistics as we go forward. And then the, the ABMS piece of this, and having a network so that you can communicate with your forces, because if you’ve got this dynamic force moving across the battlespace, if you don’t have comm, it gets, you know, a lot harder really quick. So having comm, having that self-healing comm web, so that when they try to take out one note of it, you just keep talking, right? That’s important. And so we’ve got folks working on that, and we’ve got had some progress lately on that. But what if you don’t, here’s more of the innovation, if you don’t have that comm, you’re completely cut off? Well, Airmen at lower levels lead, and what’s incredibly encouraging to watch is young captains and tech sergeants being the boss of everything that they’re in charge of maybe at Tinian. And seeing them lead in a way that, you know, heretofore was done by a colonel and achieve now you’ve got a tech sergeant and a captain, sometimes even a lieutenant, leading the force, everybody that’s attending, as an example, being led by, you know, a brand new captain, that innovation and that leadership is something that gives us great confidence in and I believe something that China should worry about every day.

Wright: Thanks, sir. Well, as you all know, your Air Force Association spends a good deal of time with Congress persistently engaged. So our job as we do that is to give you voice, and not just you, but every one of your Airmen and Guardians and their family members, a voice on the Hill that they may or may not have. And we do that across every chapter in every state, in fact, overseas, across our Air Force Association. So as we close up here, do we have, are there messages for Congress that we might reinforce on our behalf and support? Again, all your Airmen and Guardians and their family members. Please, Salty.

Saltzman: Well, that’s a dangerous question. So let me let me tap dance around a little bit. I’ve found tremendous partnership, working with mostly staffers, quite frankly, on the key subcommittees and committees. What I would want to continue to message to them is, sometimes the first thing we have to talk about when we sit down together is understanding what the assumptions are they have going into this, right, because the Space Force is this big, new thing. And I think they all come to those sessions with kind of a set of assumptions about where we are, how many people we have working various issues, what are the priorities, etc. And so we start a lot with education. Here’s where we are, here’s what we’re trying to do. Does this fit with your perception or how this should work?

And so if we if we can continue to message them to start with a discussion, rather than, hey, we understand how this works, and here’s what we want it, you know, here’s how we want it to go. It’s always been a productive session after we get through those initial educational moments. They’ve been great partners. They have very clear ideas about what they want and what they think the Space Force should do, which is appropriate from their oversight responsibilities. We obviously have our priorities that we’re working for Secretary Kendall and, and Chief Raymond, that as soon as we sit down and start talking about where we are, what the challenges are, we’re almost always on the same page, we fight in the margins. But we’re almost always on the same page. And so I would just say, continue the education continue to ask us questions, rather than making presumptions about how we’re moving on on things. And once we get past that, it usually goes pretty, pretty smoothly.

Wright: Gen. Wilsbach.

Wilsbach: I agree with Salty on all counts. And, you know, one of the things one, I’ll thank the Air Force Association, of course, the Air Staff’s been responsible for some of this, but, you know, a year and a half ago, two years ago, if you had a meeting with a member of Congress, you know, they may or may not be as up to speed on China as we would have liked them to be. But lately, you know, in the last few months, they get it, you know, so all the meetings that I’ve had, they are much more aware of why there’s a threat there. They’re much more aware of what China is doing in the region, you know, on a day-to-day basis. And so they’ve been briefed up and certainly by the Air Force Association or the Air Staff has done that, the joint staff has done that. So it makes the partnership, you know that you talk about, Salty, a little bit easier if you’re starting from, you know, a common reference point. And so I think we’re at that point where we do have a common reference point.

I mentioned earlier, and I think it was the first opening remark that I had about modernization. And we, we’ve got some older fleets in the Pacific that we need to modernize. And in order to do that, just based on the limited budget that we have, the older legacy platforms, we need to be able to retire so we can afford those newer platforms. And so air superiority is one of the areas that we absolutely have to modernize the Secretary talked about, and get absolutely. Weapons that go with sixth-generation aircraft also need to be modernized. And we should include our allies and partners in in helping them to also modernize with fifth, fifth-generation weapons that go with the fifth-generation platforms that they’re acquiring as well. And then command and control, the Secretary mentioned, E-3, the E-3 is unbelievably challenging from a maintenance standpoint, just to get airborne. But then once it gets airborne, it can’t see the threats that we need it to see so that we can close a fifth- and sixth-generation kill chain, and then platforms that can break the kill chain that the adversary has, which they have improved immensely. And so modernizing and being able to retire legacy fleets. And then one aspect that I would have mentioned to him that we don’t often talk about when we talk about modernization is, hey, look at the modernization that China has been doing. Man, it’s pretty unprecedented what we’ve seen them do in the last 30 years, as the Secretary mentioned. They’ve done some of that on their own, but they’ve done a lot of it by stealing technology from around the world. And so securing our own technology and helping our allies and partners to do that, you know, that’s something that Congress needs to pay attention to ensure that industry, and that governments that we deal with protect the technology, so that we can continue to have innovation that will help us versus just help the Chinese because they steal it.

Wright: Amen. Well, as we as we close here, sort of a 30-second shout out offer to both of you. There are many Airmen and Guardians out there that would like to grow up to be both of you, will follow you. Do you have a couple leadership principles and words of encouragement for Airmen and Guardians that we’re talking to today?

Saltzman: I always tell the young Guardians that I meet that the skills that never go away, or never age out, are critical thinking communication skills. And sometimes you have to schedule time to think, you know, we get so caught up in our day to day task list, and there’s so many things that need to be done. We’re so busy doing stuff we sometimes forget to think through what’s the right way to accomplish these tasks. And so the tip I always give is don’t forget, you have to schedule time to think and figure out exactly which way you want to go. Because once you decide to go, it’s going to be fast, and you’re going to move fast, rightfully so. And so the critical thinking skills, and then be able to advocate your position. And you know, it’s not as easy as, as you say, the ability to write those thoughts down and actually convey those thoughts so that you can build teammates, great partnerships. It’s shared vision, and that requires communication. And so those kinds of skills never age out. And so that’s what I focused on.

Wright: Excellent. Gen. Wilsbach.

Wilsbach: I only get 30 seconds, it’ll be hard. So as an individual, be humble, approachable and credible, there’s a lot in those three words. And for those of you that have been to weapons school, you know, that’s kind of the mantra of, of weapons school, but it works in a leadership aspect as well for any size organization. And then for the organization, also kind of a theme that I stole from weapons school, which is plan, brief, execute, and debrief. And it’s the process that we all use to execute a flying mission, but it also works in an organization too. And the key to why we keep getting better and better is the debrief. And so analysis of how you executed, looking at lessons learned and looking at ways that you can improve what you’ve already done in an open environment where, you know, everybody’s focused on getting better, you know, and the debrief is not supposed to be just tearing somebody down. And you know, you just were terrible today, and you’re never going to be good. It’s like, here’s what you did. Here’s how you know how I assess that. And here’s what you can do better next time. That works for an entire organization too. And so that would be my one minute version of that.

Wright: Well, thank you, as you represent, again, in Orville Wright’s opinion, the most lethal arm of the joint force, our Air and Space Forces. In lieu of speaker gifts, this year, the Air Force Association has made a donation to enable additional Airmen and guardians to attend the poolside barbecue this evening. Please stay with us now, for our program as we continue a discussion of combat Air and Space Forces in the fight. Please join me in a round of applause.

Watch, Read: Long-Range Precision Strike—Imperatives for a Contested Environment

March 13, 2022

Maj. Gen. John J. Nichols hosts retired Brig. Gen. Bob Edmonds, senior vice president of marketing, Elbit Systems of America; Peter J. Rubcic, director, systems analysis and simulation, Northrop Grumman Aeronautics Systems; and retired Lt. Gen. Michael R. Moeller, vice president, integrated customer solutions, Pratt & Whitney Military Engines for a discussion about “Long-Range Precision Strike” at the AFA Warfare Symposium on March 3, 2022. Watch the video or read the transcript below. This transcript is made possible through the sponsorship of JobsOhio.

Maj. Gen. John J. “Boris” Nichols: OK, well, good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to the Long Range Precision Strike afternoon session. You know, it doesn’t go missed on me that we are currently opposite General Cotton and General Bussiere in the other room. But thank you for showing up. I think this is going to be a really important discussion today. By way of a quick introduction, my name is John Nichols. I’m the Director of Global Power Programs, working for Miss Costello and General Richardson and SAF AQ up here in in the Pentagon. And it’s really an honor to serve as a panel moderator today, for I think what is a very important discussion. I’m just going to start with a couple points before we go into intros and opening comments by our great group of panelists today. You know, I do believe and I would offer that we are at an important inflection point, in terms of the United States Air Force, with respect to not only our operating concepts, but also our force design. And I would offer that long range strike is at the heart of both of those particular items. You know, there’s tremendous investments that we are looking at and currently happening right now, that are going to take our long range strike capabilities.

And they’re going to continue to move those and they’re focused around what I would offer is some important attributes that long range strike brings to the battlespace. And I think for this audience, we’re probably pretty familiar with those. It’s mass, it’s precision, it’s range. And finally, it’s survivability in a highly contested environment. In my acquisition seat currently, I will tell you that I’ll add one more attribute to this discussion. And hopefully the panelists can touch on this today. And that’s the affordability. How do we do this within existing budgets and existing top lines? So the theme for this afternoon’s panel is how is the United States Air Force capitalizing on its operational imperatives to set the conditions for dominant long range strike employment. This is creating persistent and decisive effects in highly contested environments.

To help us do that today, we’ve got an all-star group of panelists. So by way of a quick introduction, starting to my left, your right, I’d like to introduce Lieutenant General Mike Moeller, US Air Force Retired. He’s the vice president of Integrated Customer Solutions for Pratt and Whitney Military Engines. To his left is Brigadier General Bob Edmonds, U.S. Air Force Retired, senior vice president of Marketing, Elbit Systems of America. And finally, Mr. Peter Rubcic, director, Systems Analysis and Simulation with Northrop Grumman Aeronautics Systems. So with that, we have got a great group. Let me just offer before we get into opening comments and some Q&A—And what I think I’d like to do is, we’re going to bounce back a few questions here. But I would really encourage that we do some audience participation. So I think we have at least one mic stand up. So kind of be thinking about these questions as we proceed through the panel. Let’s work backwards from the threat briefly. When you look at what our peer and near peer adversaries are doing, they’re chipping away at our air to air and our air to ground sanctuary that we’ve enjoyed for really, you know, multiple decades. They’re far in front of us when it comes, in terms of hypersonics, and arguably, cruise missiles, and kind of shortening that gap, bridging that gap. We’ve seen the scary China briefs that are out there from the various intel organizations. And it is very clear to this group, that they are building distinct capabilities to close gaps, and they’re doing it in very large quantities. So long range strike is going to be the principal means by which we compete with those adversaries to project, that are attempting to project power outside their borders. There is no better deterrent than to demonstrate that we can hold any target on the face of the planet at risk and offer the President of the United States exquisite options to get after those targets sets. Secretary Kendall kind of talked about this this morning. And to quote our secretary, let me just offer this before we get into this discussion with the panel. The heart of our mission is to deter aggression. We don’t want to fight wars. We want to prevent them and the way that we prevent conflicts is to convince the other side that you have the will to fight, the will to resist and the capability to deter and defeat aggression. So that’s really, I think the essence of the long range strike: the ability to not only deter, but when called upon, to defeat that aggression. So with that, some opening comments. General Moeller, I’ll give you first dibs. Thank you again for participating this afternoon. And over to you all, thanks.

Retired Lt. Gen. Michael R. Moeller: Thanks, Boris. I really appreciate the opportunity to be on the panel with my distinguished panelists. And we’re covering a very important topic and I’m—before I talk specifically about the importance of long range strike capabilities for the US Air Force, I just want to reiterate the importance. I believe we’re at a nexus when it comes to strategy and how we think about the future. And in some cases, we are wedded to the past as we come out of Afghanistan and Iraq. So with that, just a bit of historical context before we start. So, from an air power perspective, since Desert Storm, the US is simply—US Air Force has overwhelmed adversaries across the full spectrum of combat operations. We’ve owned the skies, and essentially operated with impunity from large bases in uncontested airspace. Recent combat operations have been regional affairs, where for the most part, the US Air Force was tasked to protect and support ground forces. Boots on the ground was the measure of merit for success during most of the campaigns. This will be, as you alluded to, Boris, this will not be the case if we face a near-peer competitor with the ability to go beak to beak with our Air Force, while simultaneously holding our main operating bases at risk. The cornerstone for future operational success requires a family of systems that can operate from long range from CONUS if required, and with heavy payloads carrying a wide array of both kinetic weapons and non kinetic capabilities in order to deter and defeat. As you talked about, it also has to have this multi mission flexibility to stand off and penetrate to survive while operating in and through that the most advanced air defense systems. Since the Cold War, US Air Force bombers have played the critical role, I would argue, and of course, I’m biased as a B-52, and B-1 aviator, but I would argue that bombers played the critical role in deterring the Soviet Union. The last great power competition. I’m convinced that in the future to win the high-end fight against a near peer competitor, that bombers overhead rather than boots on the ground will be the measure of, and play a crucial role in, victory against a near peer competitor. Only the US Air Force maintains a viable strategic bomber fleet and the enablers to ensure that any potential adversary has no sanctuary. I’m going to emphasize this again, Boris. Geography, even for countries that have strategic depth, like Russia, China, and Iran, it provides no safe haven from a bomber force or a family of systems. Long range airpower can hold targets at risk that are heavily defended, or protected, whether that be hardened, deeply buried, or mobile. Additionally, because US Air Force long range airpower can launch from anywhere on the globe, it makes it extremely difficult and expensive for an adversary to employ an effective defense in depth. We’re at a crucial point with modernizing our bomber fleet, and the associated a family of systems. It remains an asymmetric advantage for America. But in when we talk about the right balance of standoff and penetrating platforms and capabilities, one thing that we don’t talk about enough is capacity, the importance of having the numbers—the numbers to ensure that we have the force structure in place to generate sorties required to conduct sustained high tempo operations from long distance over a longer campaign, while at the same time ensuring that we’ve got a credible air breathing nuclear deterrent. It’s a tough task, but it’s something that we have to take on right now. We are at a nexus. Thanks again, Boris, appreciate it.

Nichols: You know, a lot of time was spent this morning in the Secretary’s keynote about the operational imperatives. And when you look at those operational imperatives, seven of them, there’s a lot of cross-cutting interdependencies between each of them. Frankly, you know, you look at B-21 family of systems, kind of that global strike capability. How does that tie into ABMS? And I think the panel will hopefully explore that today. How does that tie into space updates for things that have to fly long-duration missions, and employ long time of flight weapons. So there’s a ton of dependencies with the imperatives. And I think that’s an important part, even as we look at next generation air dominance, because what feeds one will likely have important effects with what feeds the other in terms of long range strike. So thanks, General Moeller for that. General Edmonds, opening comments, please.

Retired Brig. Gen. Bob Edmonds: Yeah, thank you, Boris. And thank you AFA for the opportunity for me to be a part of this important panel. We’ve made the strategic implication of why it is. I’m excited for two reasons. I was fortunate to be part of the US Air Force that enjoyed air supremacy. Part of that as an F-15 pilot as I contributed. But the first reason I’m excited about now is that it’s a different world. I won’t belabor it, we’ve said a few things already. It’s highly contested. It’s complex, it’s complicated, is connected. So it’s different now, to create that air supremacy, which has to do with this new operational environment that we’re in, that we’ve already alluded to. This is the nature of, really, warfare is, it moves out, and we’ve got to figure it out. We’ve got to find the tools and the capabilities that are in the hands of the Airmen and the Guardians and others that can actually exploit it and keep air supremacy so that we can go about our mission and what we provide to the joint force. And the second part of it is really looking at, well, those seekers and systems and sensors, the key enablers, and I’m excited about it, because at Elbit America, that’s what we specialize in. We specialize in these types of sensors and seekers that can be a game changer and investing in the future to meet that threat. Because when we think about it, I’ll give a little teaser. Maybe later, we’ll get into it. But I really think those, got to be adaptable. And they have to be flexible. And as you said, affordable. And I think that’s a real key word. And it’s not third in the list on my priority. But it is part of a three-way look at how we need to be looking at enablers, those sensors and secret. So I look forward to a little bit more of that as we move on.

Nichols: As a as a former Eagle driver, thank you for your role in the air superiority mission. There is no doubt that air superiority is important. It’s what we do for the joint force. But let us never forget that air superiority is an enabler. Because at the end of the day, I would argue that you have to hold value targets, targets that the adversary values in their territory, at risk. Air superiority is important and will always be foundational to what we do, but this long range strike piece in terms of lanes that open up, temporal spaces, and time periods where we can get strikers in and back out, weapons in to hit targets, is critically important. So with that, thank you. Thank you very much. And finally, Mr. Rubcic. Pete, if you’d go ahead and offer opening comments, please.

Peter J. Rubcic: Thank you, Boris. And gentlemen, thank you for your service. I pale in comparison to what you’ve done for the country here. You probably wonder why is an analyst up here talking about this, but I’ve spent my whole career really focused on penetrating family of systems capabilities, the strike, [inaudible] attack, ISR, how you bring that all together. I really think we are at an inflection point where we’ve got to realize we’re not building silver bullet forces anymore. We’re not going to go in and do this alone. It’s going to be part of a joint force. In a right world it’s a coalition force that’s part of that joint force. And I think we as contractors are really looking hard at how do we integrate capabilities and make the most of what we have. Affordability is about making the most of what you have, and leveraging innovation and technology to give you those game changing capabilities. So I really think it’s an opportunity for us going forward to think about how do we bring all the tools in the toolbox together enable that joint force. I think that gives us that affordable presence of mass and effective weapons that are both lethal, and with survivable capabilities to deliver those lethal effects. Back to you.

Nichols: Okay, awesome, gentlemen. Thanks for opening comments. And so what we’ll do is I’ll pitch a few questions out, we’ll kind of go down the line again. And then the intent is really to open it up for audience participation. I don’t know how other venues have done this, but I would encourage that, so please think of your questions. And we’ve got about 25 minutes to the end. So I think we can certainly get to that piece. But first, General Moeller, if I might offer the first one, so, you know, services bring different things to bear here, in terms of long range strike. Normally some pretty good, you know, competitive spirit here as a former Air Force A8, and again as you alluded to, B-1 and B-52 operator, if you could offer from your perspective, what you think the Department of the Air Force and the United States Air Force brings in terms of kind of its long range strike, maybe mindset, themes and that type of thing. Again, not to harp on good joint force rivalry, because we will fight as a joint force, and inter service rivalry, but what makes the Air Force Special in this particular topic?

Moeller: And it’s, it’s another great question, Boris. And it’s really, it’s related to what I talked about in my opening comments. The most important piece from a long range perspective standpoint is the air breathing bomber component, with all of the capabilities that you talked about, and the attributes that you talked about, as well as the ability to—it provides flexibility to the joint force commander, because it’s recallable. And so you can commit the bomber force from long range. And you can recall it if events change on the ground or in the air. The other piece that I wanted to talk about is that for a long range strike, we, the name actually really is restrictive. Because of it, whether we talk about the platforms, B-52, or B-21. B-1, or a family of systems. LRS could stand for long range sensor, long range strategic network hub, Bob, as you talked about, and I know we’ll spend more time on it. The difference for the US Air Force is, it brings a mindset of how to employ long range strike over the course of, across the full range of mission requirements for the joint force commander. And again, only the US Air Force has viable bomber force with the weapons, the training, the tactics, and the roadmap towards the future, when we talk about how it contributes to the joint force overall.

Nichols: So if we could riff off that point a little bit, Bob. So again, it’s not just the platforms itself, it’s not just the weapons itself. It’s about payloads, right? And the payloads could be a host of different things. From your perspective, Bob, could you, if you would, just kind of go into a little bit—in your mind, what are some of these enabling things that we will need to do in terms of closing the long range kill chain? Because really, at the end of the day, that’s what this is about, is closing that kill chain. So if you could offer your perspective on that, please.

Edmonds: Sure. Thanks for the question. It allows me to kind of get to what I peeked at you on three different things I think are important. And to your point of it’s a broader system, and it is about longer ranges, this contested environment is complex, but it’s big, it’s larger. You’ve got strike, you’ve got to get into territory, and you have to have some longer standoff weapons. You got to have some enablers that not only will protect and help get the platform in, but once you get there, you know, how do you advantage that? How do you keep that tyranny of range and distance? When I kind of think about those enablers, adaptable, flexible, affordable, adaptable, meaning, you know, they’ve got to really be available for a variety of different types of contested environment. Not everything’s the same. We see it now. We talked about China very much a pacing threat, probably a different environment in Indo-Pacific than it is in a European theater that we may be looking at here. So it’s got to be adaptable to the scenario, flexible, you know, kind of flexibility based on target threat. What are you trying to go after? Is it single? Is it multi mode, kind of flexibility that you need in a front end type of a seeker or a payload? And then, you know, affordability. Part of the overarching theme not mentioned of course is here we are with, still in a CR. We’re normally here at this conference, and there’s a budget out and we’re talking about the budget and where we’re going. So doesn’t matter what it’s going to be. We talked a lot about this before we came on: the budget will require of us that these are going to be affordable. And not just for the budget reasons, but we’re going to need many, many, many of them. These enablers, as you look out in there, because we talk about family of systems, what we want to be able to do is take this when you penetrate and you can have multiple weapons go out, multiple sensors, enablers. You think about Skyborg program, Loyal Wingman, all those attritable types of assets that are out there. So it’s got to be affordable so that we can have those. And we think about the different types of capabilities within that. So what we’re doing in the company, which has given me some perspective, as we invest here in the US, whether it’s New Hampshire, Texas, Florida, even here, we have some capability, we’re looking at different types of sensors and seekers. It’s got to be fast, it’s got to be connected, we’ve got to have automatic target recognition. So you can target back and forth rapidly, it’s got to have a data link. So you can share it amongst manned-unmanned teaming, it’s got to have some AI involved in it. So if we think about that, across the line of these kinds of investments, that’s the kind of front-end sixth-generation enabler and seeker that’s got to be part of the system. And I’ll finally end with just thinking about the continuum for a minute, because while I mentioned affordability, it’s not either/or, you know, there’s a continuum, a continuum of affordability on one end, there’s very higher cost types, exquisite. And then on the other end, there’s the lower, you got to have a lot of them, but maybe it’s ready now. And on the continuum of technology, ready now versus out in the future that we’ll definitely need and we continue to invest in it—So we have to balance on that continuum of it. And then the continuum of the mission, you know, is that mission going to be, you know, part of that larger, very hotly contested JADC2/ABMS environment mission where you really need to be connected with all of these and have the kind of secure data link. So there’s a lot of different factors involved there. And for the DOD to think about, I believe, with the types of enablers that are needed to be successful. I think you bring up some really important points. And when you look at that mix between the exquisite which tends to equal a little bit pricier, and kind of some of the non-exquisite things, I think there’s that balance, and what does that balance look like? Not every target out there needs a hypersonic, nor can we afford to make that happen. So where’s that mix? And maybe there’ll be additional audience questions on that.

Nichols: So thanks for that perspective, Bob. So to Pete, kind of riffing off the, the idea of cost. So when we look at, as we kind of figure out what this you know, from your perspective there at NG. You know, B-21, and whatever is flying next to it, right, you know, family of systems, quarterback backward pass, you know, some of those concepts. From your perspective, because the company’s got a lot of expertise in this realm. Where do you see this going in terms of the family? And then also the affordability piece, the Secretary I would say, you know, put up a marker today for industry and talked about at approximately half the cost of the crewed, the manned platform. So if we go unmanned with some of this at half the cost, do you think that’s achievable? I know, there’s like four parts to that question. But if you could just kind of hit on some of those things.

Rubcic: I, you know, you think about the tradespace of range, payload, stealth, and the ability to deliver affordable effects at range at strategic depth. I think knowing where air vehicles close, there’s a challenge to get to designs that close that maximize everything. What you’re looking for is how can I maximize my forward presence of weapons, and that comes from being able to penetrate and persist in the battlespace, so you can unload that entire magazine. You want to make sure you have sufficient sensing distributed that feeds that front end of the kill chain so that you make the max of every sortie. Clearly, Northrop Grumman specializes in the most advanced stealth capabilities, and we can’t get into the details here. But I’ve spent my whole career working on that. And so we understand the advanced threat; we understand what it takes to mitigate it. There’s a lot that can be done with enablers and joint force capabilities. Certainly, blending stealth and electronic warfare is something we’ve seen as great synergy unmanned adds to that affordability by reducing the crew that you have to train and sustain. And so I think we can get there on the air vehicle side, being somebody who works for an air vehicle company. Northrop Grumman is working really hard at delivering affordable, effective—and what I mean by effective, survivable—aircraft that can deliver munitions. That’s where I think he achieved that affordability, cheap munitions that are survivable, lethal, delivered from a platform that can endure in the environment. I think that’s our perspective of how we look at it. And certainly the systems we deliver are focused to include those attributes.

Nichols: And I think when you talk in terms of going fast in this deal, if you’ve got a production line that’s building a platform, and you can stay within the constraints of the same outer mold line, if you will, and strip it down, because it’s now going to be unmanned. And we can get, hopefully, to that price point, I think that allows us to perhaps go fast. You start up a new line new design, you know, that’s going to add years as we acquire another weapon system. So, thanks for that. Well, hopefully, that kind of got the juices flowing here in the room. If I could ask, if you would step up to the microphone, or better yet, if you could stand up, remove your mask and talk loudly, so that the audience can hear it, we’ll just kind of go to that effect. I’d like to get some audience participation. OK. Sir, over on the side.

Question 1 [Inaudible question]

Nichols: If I could just offer, then I’ll pitch it to the panelists. You know, let us not forget that the United States of America was the lead of hypersonics for a while, right. Call it early 2000s. I mean, we were leading the technology, and then our focus shifted to something else. And it’s not worth probably too much debate on, you know, why it shifted, but our focus was somewhere else in the Middle East to another important mission for the nation at the time. But we led the world in hypersonics, China took note of it, and both China and Russia have continued to progress along that realm. When you look at what, if you want to look get a true sense of how serious a nation is about what they’re doing with their development, look at their live missile fire tests. And I think General Hyten has said, to keep it at the level of this room, China has done hundreds and hundreds of hypersonic missile firings, missile tests, we can probably count ours on about, you know, two hands or less. They’re outpacing us. But let us not forget that we led the world in that technology. And we need to close that gap and gain that back. So I will offer that just one niche example of where this is right now. I would kick it to the panelists, please. No particular order, whoever’d like to respond.

Pete Rubcic 28:05

I’ll take a shot at this, I think, you know, you can have two football teams come to the line of scrimmage. And one team might be bigger than the other. The other might even be faster. But the coordination and execution of the team together is what really is the difference between teams that win and teams that lose. I think of the United States. And our ability to defeat countries like China, Russia, will be our ability to operate as a team and execute on tempo, on cadence. What does that mean? We take it back to our systems. They’ve got to be reliable, they’ve got to work the first time, they’ve got to be able to be interoperable, and not just interoperable on PowerPoint, but truly share data at tactical timelines. And I think there’s an opportunity for industry to take the lead, because we tend to wait for requirements as developing company organizations. So we design and build to requirements. So from the warfighter side, we need requirements. But we as an industry can innovate and think where JADC2 is going, getting the family to work together to share information on tactical timelines, whether it’s from space, from unmanned systems, or the manned systems, I see things like B-21 being the quarterback and calling the plays that our team can execute way better than our adversaries. And I think that’s going to be our strategic advantage. We’ve got to make it connect. We got to make it work on tactical timelines, but the coordination is where we’re going to beat them.

Edmonds: Let me piggyback for a second because it’s [inaudible]—I take a slightly different tack on how we’re going to succeed. The team approach, look, this is a huge country. And we have great capability and industry and partnerships. So an example with Northrop right now, Elbit America is partnering with them on a US Army program that is talking about precision strike. And we’ve got a very advanced higher technology seeker front end on a smaller missile they can put inside a larger payload, that when we launch out, for the US Army is going to then put instead of one, multiple ones on target, that are all collected and collaborative and inside of an environment. So we’re using a collective, not just US Air Force money, but US Army money, collective money, where we can drive it down, and we transfer that over, capability. So you don’t have to redo it again and duplicate it, because we don’t have that kind of money to do it. So you’ve got a collaboration within industry, a collaboration within the joint force. And I think that’s when the key point, because now you’ve got a much better capability total, and the US has great innovation that can do that. And I’m just going to tag on, working for Pratt & Whitney, I think probably just taking a look through a propulsion lens. You know, when you look at it, ultimately I think if there’s also a cultural institutional shift inside inside each of our companies to think differently, especially when we talk about CCA, collaborative combat aircraft, right, these uncrewed wingman aircraft. So a good example, we know that the future requires—Well, Pratt and Whitney prides itself on building reliable, safe, high performance, long lasting engines in this CCA environment. Why can’t you take a commercial, a bizjet engine, detune it or tune it up and apply a new APU so that in fact, auxiliary power units, so you’ve got a high power output. And you can do that at half the cost, because you’re not building this exquisite high performance engine. Instead you’ve got an engine that will perform for, I don’t know, three years, five years, depending on what the service needs. And it can fly point at .95, .98 Mach. So that that is something that fundamentally we had to change internal to the company in order to think differently about the future in this environment.

Nichols: Okay, awesome. Thank you for that first question. I appreciate it. Sir, with the microphone.

Question 2 Hi, Glen. Glen [Kohler?], retired Air Force, retired Lockheed, now a consultant. And my question is, we talked about systems. And yet, I think we’ve got a pilot mindset, in that we talk about manned bombers, and then we’ll talk about NGAD, manned or unmanned, however it ends up. Then we’ll talk about Skyborg. But we’re missing a component, because the first thing we do in any kind of IADS, we send in hundreds of cruise missiles to beat down the IADS. I don’t know why the system isn’t talking to all these cruise missiles, as a window opens and a B-21 slips in. And rather than get into specifics of any one program, I’ll just call it a next generation cruise missile to avoid any confusion with what weapons we are not talking about. But I think we miss an opportunity to network those missiles that are inbound, that have a good picture of the environment, who can go fall on a grenade in case they see a [inaudible] that B-21 didn’t pick up or wasn’t planned for. And so I just want to throw it out there, that instead of doing things for half the price of a $500 million airplane, I think we ought to be doing it for a hundredth of the price. Thank you.

Nichols: Okay, good, good points. I think it gets to the concept of a sensing grid. The distinction between you know, what’s a weapon, what’s a collector. Who’s passing data from whom, to what, to where, is all part of the architecture that we’re building out. So I think it’s a great point. Panelists, any comments, please?

Edmonds: Yeah. You know, one of the things that we’re thinking about right now. We use the word kill chain, but it’s really a kill web. So I’d like us to change our terminology in the future because it’s really about the web that’s there and a connectivity that’s there. So what we’re finding out really in the front end seeker and sensors part is, we have to—multi-end or multimode is not just GPS denied or EO or IR. It’s really about a multimode that can take advantage of a secure networked environment of a kill web so that you can pass that information on. But then you have to add it to the AI and ML we talked about so that once you get that information, then you’re gonna have a really rapid technology type of targeting associated with retargeting and otherwise within it.

Nichols: So we’ve got about five minutes left. What I’d like to do if the audience will participate is let’s do some speed Q&A. And with that, I’d ask you to ask a specific question to one of the panelists. So go direct, and we’ll try to get through a few questions quickly. And then we’ll wrap it up here in about in about four minutes or so. So any anyone else with questions? Okay, in the back, OCPs. Talk up, please.

Question 3: So we talked about the Air Force being the only service that can do long range strike. And bombers will reign supreme. And we’re not wedded to history, although that that discussion seems that we are wedded to history. That’s only for context. But the Army is actually doing a lot in long range strikes with a lot of capability that they’re fielding and programs. So how are we managing that roles and responsibilities at the higher level and making sure that we’re not creating duplicative, wasted effort?

Moeller: I’m happy to start. So one of the things that that I’ve seen is that the services all have their different, obviously, their different mission sets. When the Army talks about long range strike, let’s use hypersonics for example. They assume that the sensors are overhead. So, and where will the sensors come from? Well, it can come from a satellite, certainly, but the most, the most critical updates, in a very, very high, highly turbulent evolving environment, in an advanced air defense landscape, is when you have a system overhead that can provide you with forward sensors that can provide you with near real time updates that can in fact actually strike if required, and is at the leading edge of the rest of the force structure. So yes, I see in some ways Army hypersonics development as complementary to the Air Force’s unique role with long range strike, especially when it comes to a viable, penetrating bomber.

Nichols: Okay, I think there was another question back from the same section. Okay, go ahead, please.

Question 4: Master Sergeant Travis [Irvin] (sp?), Headquarters AFSOC, with the JASSM being launched via airdrop off the back of a C-130, and it was being successful, how do you see that shaping the long range strike environment? So your question is, instead of your traditional delivery platforms, kind of other things, right, that can push munitions out the back, that effectively close kill chains. Is that kind of the essence of your question? Yes, I’ve heard a lot about bombers. But now with this new capability opened up, do you see this as a one off thing or this now like any airdropped platform’s capable of long range strike?

Nichols: Bob, Pete, you guys want to want to jump in on that?

Rubcic: Yeah. So I think those systems are create an interesting dilemma for the adversary, because every C-130 now becomes a bomber. And I think there’s some advantages to that. The thing I’d like people to think about is, is the range at which you will have to deploy those weapons from a conventional platform. You know, clearly we think of the threat that was talked about earlier today, and how that pushes conventional platforms out at greater distances. That puts a burden on the weapons to be able to travel that distance in a short timeline drives us to hypersonics high speed weapons. I like the mass, believe me, I think that’s a great way to think about how we deliver mass. But if we have platforms that are capable of penetrating with large weapon bays, I think we ought to maximize that too. So I think it’s about the right mix. I think earlier Deptula talked about, you know, our capacity, we really have a capacity problem. And to the other gentleman’s comment, we want to make sure that we’re solving that capacity problem in a smart way. We don’t want to be over investing in in, you know, exquisite long range weapons and then not invest in other areas. Likewise, Northrop Grumman, those penetrating bombers, we like the idea of the bomber carrying inexpensive weapons, lots of them. But we realize there’s a mix, there’s a force mix that has to be established. And we really haven’t talked about the new concepts that are going to be required when we start integrating manned and unmanned capabilities. That’s going to require battle management. The autonomy will get there. You know, Northrop Grumman does a lot with autonomy. So I think it’s an opportunity for us to leverage all the tools in the toolbox. And I like the idea of the mass. The question is, how do you build that mass and its effectiveness into the future battle management systems. Thanks.

Nichols: I really appreciate the audience participation. Thanks for all the really good questions. The shot clock that we’ve got our eyes on has just expired. So I just want to thank this this group of panelists not only for your time, but for your insights today. And, you know, instead of a gift to offer to you, I just want you to know that there was a gift generated on your behalf to Airmen and Guardians to get them to the barbecue. So thank you for your participation. How about a round of applause to this group? Okay, everybody, a paid political announcement here: the final session keynote, entrepreneur and philanthropist Eric Schmidt is going to be 4:40pm. So here in about eight minutes in the Gatlin ballroom. Thanks, everybody. Appreciate you being here.