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

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

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

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.

Watch, Read: Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt on How the Pentagon Can Accelerate AI

Watch, Read: Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt on How the Pentagon Can Accelerate AI

March 13, 2022

Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google and former chairman of the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Board, delivered a keynote address at the AFA Warfare Symposium on March 3, 2022, followed by a conversation with retired Lt. Gen. Bruce ”Orville” Wright, president of the Air Force Association. Watch the video or read the transcript below. This transcript is made possible through the sponsorship of JobsOhio.

Overhead speaker: Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome AFA’s president, Lt. Gen. Orville Wright.

Lt. Gen. Bruce “Orville” Wright, president of the Air Force Association: Well, good afternoon. And thank you so much for hanging in there with us today. And what an honor to finish with such a strong closing presentation. I’m going to introduce Dr. Eric Schmidt for a few remarks, and then we’re going to shift to a bit of a fireside chat. And I’m going to do my best to keep up with such a bright, accomplished leader and former CEO of Google, among other things. But let me just go over a few more things about Eric. As I said, he was the CEO of Google and in various capacities served until 2020. He has also been a major bipartisan influencer in national defense and as chairman of the Defense Department’s Innovation Board from 2016 to 2020 and as a member of NASA’s National Space Council Users’ Advisory Group and as co-chairman of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence. Today, he continues to focus on emerging technology as the founder of a think tank that’s growing in importance, the Special Competitive Studies Project. Please welcome for the first time to our Air Force Association stage, Dr. Eric Schmidt.

Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google and former chairman of the Department of Defense’s Defense Innovation Board: Thank you, General. Thank you, thank you. Here we go. I am so proud to have been invited here and to spend some time with you. I will tell you that with the events this week, Americans understand why you’re important. And I want to thank you all for what you do to keep our nation safe. And I mean it. 

So I had the privilege of working in the Defense Department under the secretary of defense for some years, as well as working for the Congress on the AI Commission. And we recently set up this Competitive Studies Project, which is my attempt philanthropically to bring the strategic nature of our challenges forward. It seems to me that we have a couple of things we have to talk about. One is we need a thesis of change. And in the tradition of the military, I will be direct, and I hope that’s OK.

If I look at the totality of what you’re doing, you’re doing a very good job of making things that you currently have better, over and over and over again. But I’m an innovator. And I would criticize, if I could say right up front, that the current structure, which is an interlock between the White House, the Congress, the secretary of defense’s OSD, the various military contractors, the various services and so forth, is a bureaucracy in and of its own. And it’s doing a good job at what has been asked to do. But it hasn’t been asked to do some new things.  

The Air Force is a real innovator here. In the years that I spent with the Air Force and now with the Space Force with Gen. Raymond, because the Air Force has this sort of technical capability, you’re much more likely to be the innovators across the broader defense community, which is why it’s so important to work on this. And if you look at, for example, the B-21, with the RCO structure, you ended up building a very significant support system, weapon system for the military, and you did it in a new and innovative way. My first point is, and we did this very thoroughly when I was running the Defense Innovation Board, is we need to do that systematically across all of the processes.  

And for those of you who live in the bureaucracy, which is every single one of you, you can explain in extraordinary detail how the bureaucracy works and how long something takes. And it’s taken as God given, you know, God determined that this is the structure. And if I’ve learned anything in my now 45 years of innovative tech companies is that those rules can be changed, with focus, with cleverness, and with some real buy-in. And I would suggest that if we look at the things that are missing in terms of technological innovation, they’re precisely the things that we need to actually change the system to account for.  

I walked through the trade show; it’s amazing stuff. Air Force has made a lot of progress. The contractors have made a lot of progress. There’s like two AI companies. And all I want to do is talk about AI. And by the way, they’re the little ones in the corner. And by the way, they’re the most interesting ones. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. But that’s true. To me, the question, as I look at you, is how do we get this extraordinary innovation to you in such a way that you can actually use it as part of your mission requirements? In the previous administration, people worked very hard on things like JADC2, which looks to me to be incredibly important, and all the various battle management systems. Again, the question is, how do we actually get it in your hands, get it working, get it now. I’m a person in a hurry, and you are too.  

So I think that my suggestion would be that the Air Force think about the B-21 example but apply it to things other than bombers. Like, let’s try to do the same thing for software. Well, every time you try to do something in software, one of these strange scavenging groups within the administration takes your money away. 

It’s insane. And by the way, we did something called a swap study, which I’m very proud of, and one of our rules was software is never done. So if you’re a person who accounts for something that has to be done, you’re always unhappy. Because software is never done. It’s a process of continuous improvement. And I will tell you that, and I’ll talk about AI in a minute, the core issue here in the military is you don’t have enough software people. And by software people, I mean, people who think the way I do. You come out of a different background, and you just don’t have enough of these. These are hard people to manage. They’re often very obnoxious, sorry, welcome to my field. They’re difficult. They’re sort of full of things, but they can change the world and a small team can increase your productivity of whatever you’re doing.

And it’s stuff like logistics. I was trying to figure out one day how many people move around the DoD every year, and my estimate was about 500,000 people physically move. That’s my number; it’s probably not correct. But think about the logistics and the software. Well, that’s a very interesting problem. Think about all the parts; think about all the logistics, right? We understand how important that is in war. Anyway, I can go on about that.

Now, why is software so important? It’s because the next battles will be fought based on software supremacy. And they really will be. And you understand this. You’ve heard it, but you don’t have it yet. I worked very, very hard to support a project called Maven, which I thought was a very important breakthrough project with basically, with the Joint AI Center. And that’s now in very success, and from what I can tell, in very successful classified use in the right ways. And that’s an example of something where you pick it, and you fund it, and you weight it, and you build it, and you build the constituencies, and then you have it.  

And I feel very sorry about our men and women in uniform, who are excessively trained, who spend all day looking at screens doing something that a computer should do, how incredibly mind-numbing, and these are people who serving our nation. And then they’re not going to reenlist because they don’t want to keep looking at the screen. I mean, why can we not fix that?

Now why is AI so important? It’s because AI is a force multiplier like you’ve never seen before. It sees patterns that no human can see. And all interesting future military decisions will have as part of that an AI assistant. I wrote a book with Dr. Kissinger on this called ‘The Age of AI.’ And I’ll obviously recommend you read it. Because we talk a lot about what happens when you have these very, very powerful AI systems that people can depend on. And so the simple answer in AI is that it will improve weapons targeting; it will improve all sorts of accuracy and things that you care about a lot. You need AI supremacy with respect to autonomy.  

When I first visited AFWERX in Tampa somewhere, a lot of the focus was around building these autonomous systems. Now it’s real. Now you have this notion of a joint model in the air with assistance. How is that autonomy going to work? And by the way, the real problem you have is that you don’t have enough bandwidth between them, which no one ever tells you this. You actually, your networks, excuse the term, suck. You got to get the networks upgraded. And you just have to because all of these things depend on that kind of connectivity, right?  

As a story, we went to Afghanistan, and when we were, during the war, and one of the generals got up, and he put up a classified diagram of how all the different systems talk to each other. I’m sure you all have seen this diagram. And I go like, ‘Oh my God, right? Can we not do this better?’ I mean, come on, these are tactics. But the real leadership is this ability to do both precision targeting but also precision analysis. And the power of that is enormous. Now, let’s imagine what’s going on with our friends in China. So they basically take all of our, we open source everything, and they build it, and they’re building better surveillance technology against their citizens, something we wouldn’t do. What do you think their battlefield surveillance situation is? 

I don’t know. I haven’t been briefed on that. They didn’t show me their classified documents the last time I was in China. My guess is, and I’m guessing, they got some pretty good stuff. So that’s going to be a competitive issue. So my point about AI here is that you’re, to be very blunt, you don’t have enough people, you don’t have the right contractors, and you don’t have the right strategy to fill in this. And these battles over things like Maven and ‘JAIC’ were hard fought, and they’re really important. We need 20, 30, 40 such groups. More, more, more. And as that transformation happens … the people who work for you, the incredibly courageous people, will have so much more powerful tools. 

I want to take two more points. And then I think it’s probably more interesting to hear questions from you all. I’m very concerned that the concept of an OODA loop, which is something you all understand, is not understood by anyone else. And maybe because it’s the acronym sucks or something, but you get the idea. And it makes perfect sense if you’re a human that everything is designed around the OODA loop. So one of the things that I did is I got one of these virtual demonstrations of a nuclear attack, and how long does it take for the missile to get from the offender to us? And how do we react and so forth? And it’s all very relaxed, I mean, it’s obviously tense, because it’s being done in human time. We have to wake the president up. Well, how long does that take? Well, 20 seconds, or 30 seconds, we have enough time. But in this new world of battle, you’re not going to have that 20 seconds. And in fact, one of the major issues that we talk about our AI report is this question of automatic weapons systems. 

I’ll give you the simple example. There was a war in the future. And the war consisted of North Korea attacked America. America attacked back. China decided they did not want to have this war at this time, and it shut the North Korean side. Therefore, America stopped. The entire war happened in three milliseconds. How are we going to operate that? How are you going to do human in the loop? How are we going to think about that? But that’s the future. I’ll give you another example. You have a captain or admiral on one of the ships with an Aegis system and all that. And the AI system, which doesn’t exist yet, but let’s say it gets built by all these smart people, is sitting there and it says, ‘Captain or Commander or Admiral, you have 23 seconds to press this button or you’re dead.’ Now is that human control? We have to think about this. What human, which one of you would fail to press that button? I think you would, because that’s how these wars will be fought, especially with the presence of hypersonics, which as you understand, are both very fast, but they can also azimuth from different directions. So we’ve got to get our military doctrine and our thinking about that right. 

And then the final comment I wanted to make is about centralization and decentralization. I grew up as a computer scientist in a completely decentralized world. And one of my contributions was to promote the internet in the way that you all hear about it. Today, the internet is highly concentrated. It’s highly centralized around these large companies of which I’m proud to be a graduate from. That’s not what we thought it was going to be. We thought the internet was going to be all interconnected. 

And so this has been bothering me, and you’ll see the relevance in a sec. We all think that the systems are either centralized or decentralized. They’re in fact both. So the ideal system looks something like this: We put up 1,000 drones. We ship them to do whatever they’re going to do. We accept 20 percent of them will be shot down or fail or what have you. The other 800 are seeking their own outcome, whatever it is, but they’re being monitored by a centralized system. It’s interesting that in my little understanding of military doctrine, I think that is the U.S. doctrine around our commanders in the field. These are young men and women who are like lieutenants, and so forth, who basically have a great deal of autonomy, which is why our military is so incredibly powerful. And yet, we haven’t replicated that in our management culture. It seems to me that you want to change the attitude of the structure, and therefore the attitude of the infrastructure, to reflect this dichotomy, centralized and decentralized.

So we have extraordinarily powerful assets in the sky, but we don’t have very many. If I were doing this, what I would do is I would make 1,000 of them, allow 200 of them to be shot down, and I would take these much less expensive, much less accurate ones, take software, merge the images, and I’d probably get an image that’s pretty good. So again, you see how the thinking is different. And the same is true if you look at your notion of hybrid, instead of having—I’ll make this up; I don’t know what your actual plans are, for obvious reasons—an F-35 and five drones, why don’t you have an F-35 and 100 drones or 500 drones or 1,000 drones. Think scale with control and decentralized behavior. Thank you very much. 

Wright: Well, thanks, Dr. Schmidt. You know, when you talk about your, really your passion for innovation, your passion for changing things, really your passion for more effectively smacking bad guys. You got a lot of people in the room.

Schmidt: There seems to be an increasing number at the moment.

Wright: “You got a lot of people in the room that would share that with you. So I’d like to start a bit on your, obviously you’ve got a great understanding of the OODA loop, but I would share with you in my own experience, and I’ll give you a bit of background. We lack, we lag in our acquisition OODA loop. How do you get from constantly updated warfighter requirements, threat informed, to those systems that we must have with the advanced technologies that our war fighters need and get those systems fielded. And I’ll give you one example. And then you can go from there. 

I only read part of your book so far. But the part that focused on national security, what resonated with me is holding targets at risk. Left of launch, immediately after launch, lots of targets to hold at risk, and my experience is mostly North Korea and China. In fact, at one time when I was living in northern Japan, and I saw when the wing commander, North Korean shot a Taepodong right across the top of our house. So it’s near to my heart. And that’s the experience that’s out there forward-deployed today. But I have to tell you, and then and you can take off from this, as I read your book, for those forward-deployed forces, like numbered Air Force commanders, Joint Task Force commanders, Air Expeditionary Wing commanders, for them to pick up the phone and say, “Here’s what I see as a requirement.” I know, not just about the missile itself that’s about to launch. Pretty good idea who’s going to do it by unit. But to get that phone call built into the acquisition system as you work with Bob Work. I’m not sure how you fix that. So how do you fix the acquisition loop? Because there’s a lot of folks that would like to put AI on the target acquisition and target tracking and hold targets at risk tomorrow, but some thoughts in your experience. 

Schmidt: So a number of people are in the room who have worked on acquisition even longer than I have. And the acquisition problem is a well-known and understood problem for at least 50 years. And there have been many attempts of addressing it. And I think when you have such a large bureaucratic problem with so many different stakeholders, you’re not fundamentally going to fix it as an architecture. You’re going to have to adjust it. You’re going to have to make corners. And one of the principles of decentralized leadership is to allow corners of innovation. And the Air Force should properly be proud of the Skunk Works model. And the Skunk Works model in the ‘60s was interesting because it was run by a set of colonels, right? And I don’t exactly understand how politically they managed to get the freedom; maybe you were part of that. But somehow they managed to do it on a cycle that was a yearly cycle rather than a 10-year cycle. 

We looked at the weapon systems, and Frank looked at this with me at the time, and all of the weapon systems are taking longer every generation. That’s an indication of a governance problem. Though, as we know, the way the major primes work is basically there’s a contest. We’re not allowed to collaboratively joint design with them, which is the first thing that I would do, but you’re not allowed to do that. And then there’s a couple of years of trials. And then there’s an award and then there’s a dispute. Well, you’ve added five years to the whole development cycle.

So what I think, and the people that I’ve worked with in the Congress believe, is that we need to pick some projects … where we can try some of these new management techniques around the management OODA loop. I’m interested in missile defense. I think missile defense is a good example where you could build some businesses that are new and that uses autonomy, uses various clever ways of targeting, and I’m worried about what the Chinese are doing. And again, you would know more than than I. 

But I would pick a couple of areas. And try to get a consensus that we’re going to try this here. Because in a bureaucracy, you don’t want to bureaucracy to block all progress. But you have to allow them to have their concerns. So give us this corner for experimentation. And then you guys can keep doing what you’re doing. That’s how I would do it.

Wright: It’s a great point.

Schmidt: And that corner should be determined by the Air Force and OSD. You know, what, what are the highest priorities?

Wright: I think you also share our passion, passion many of us have for constantly connecting the warfighters, especially the most current warfighters, to their generational cohort in industry. They speak a different language to each other. So as you can imagine, program managers, engineers, we have MIT, Cal Poly engineers, and Northrop Grumman, Boeing and Lockheed, just as smart generational cohort counterparts, flying combat aircraft in the cyber fight, certainly among our Guardians. That seems to be a real opportunity for them to connect more frequently, more persistently. Some thoughts?

Schmidt: I think there is a, with the tragedy in Ukraine, you’re now seeing the tech companies actually doing the right thing. What a shock! I think there is good news out of this terrible tragedy, that I think that people have kind of understood what we collectively have all understood is how important what you do is, and I think there will be a change from that. As people see the consequences of inaction. You know, the sort of ‘la, la, life is good.’ Life has conflict.

Wright: Staying on that theme. It sounds exciting, your Digital Service Academy, is that right? And it starts to get at many of your points in your presentation. I think we’re on the same sheet of music, the secret sauce, the asymmetric advantage we have in this country in deterring, facing threats are that next generation of 20- and 30-somethings, empowering them.

Schmidt: Yeah, and what’s interesting is I spent some time meeting with people who left the military and worked. I did this both at Stanford and also at Google. And these are extraordinary people that you all have produced. The problem is they don’t work for you anymore. Right? Aside from that, thank you very much. But they’re like the best employees I’ve ever seen. So thank you. So we have to come up with a retention strategy, because these are people who care a lot about public service. And what they really want is they want to work on interesting stuff. And the military, and in particular, the Air Force and the Space Force, you’ve got interesting stuff. If you can’t get these guys motivated, guys and girls, there’s something wrong. I mean, these are among the most technically challenging problems. I mean, who doesn’t want to work on rockets, space, missiles and jets? I mean, come on?

Wright: Well, that’s a great point. You know, it would be novel. But, for example, if we have a classified exercise, and I know in your travels around the world, you got insight to exercises like Terminal Fury, certainly our exercises across Europe and NATO exercises. Did you see a place based on your experience at Google, that you just said, ‘I wish I had a young engineer from Google with me to meet the young captain or staff sergeant, so that they could talk to each other?’

Schmidt: That was my experience every hour. And we went to 100 different bases. And what I would do is I would basically say to people, ‘Show me the actual engineers.’ And what would happen is because I was perceived as high ranking, which I always thought was entertaining, they would have the top person and then they would have the top number twos, and then they would have the top number threes, and then they would have the two engineers. And so I, of course, would ignore everyone and talk to the engineers, being polite while I did that. And one of the engineers was working on something that they’ve been told to do, and the other one would be leaving. 

 So that’s how serious this problem is. If you care about things like auditing and accounting and so forth, you need these people. And you don’t have a way of—now I talked to the president, I talked to the secretaries of the armed services and so forth. And I complained to them about the HR system, and they said, it can’t be changed. OK? So if the top people in our government can’t change the HR system, we got a problem. So another, if I can just be incredibly blunt, you’ve got to figure out that the people that do stuff that I do are like doctors in the sense that they’re specialists, and they want to be doctors, right? You don’t, the military doesn’t take these, again, beautifully trained medical people, you don’t just transfer them out to other activities. They have a career path. And they’ll stay, because your doctors stay because they believe in your mission. They believe in you. They believe in your culture. It’s not about compensation. Everyone’s obsessed about compensation, which is always an issue. People want to serve. 

And I will tell you that the military has gotten used to this notion—I’ll make a broad criticism—that people are fungible. You have all millions of people who come through every few years, and they, you know, go through the system. They’re educated. It serves our nation, blah, blah, blah. I want us to have a specialized group, a technical group. The Navy has a little bit of this, the Air Force, I met with the Air Force Academy technical people. I’ve never seen people as good as that. I know you have them. Right? I used to wonder, do they not have them? OK, I mean, did they like forget? Right? You do have them, but you don’t grow them. And you don’t keep them. If this were a business, what you would do is you would do a ranking of the people that you need against the secretary’s priorities, against the SecDef’s priorities. And you’d say we’re going to make sure we have more of these people and the other people, well, we’ll deal with that later.

Wright: Sure. Sounds like we need the Dr. Eric Schmidt exercise series where we constantly bring in that group of people. It seems like when we get them into a realistic exercise, then they find common cause and common calling. They bond.

Schmidt: And everything you said is correct. And what’s interesting, I did this AI Commission, which was a blast, and bipartisan, lots of different viewpoints; we visited everybody. The No. 1 problem in the government as a whole: talent. You know, we love to talk about strategy. And we need more money over here, and by the way, we do. And we need more partnerships over here, and yes, we do. And we need more of this over here. And every state has to have its money, and all of that’s fine. But what we don’t have and we need a lot more is the kind of talent to drive this world. 

One-fourth of our recommendations were talent related. Right? We made a proposal for what you all would think of as a reserve corps of technical people that would work directly with you in various ways that will look an awful lot like the reserves, even though these are civilians. We made a proposal for a civilian technical university, very similar to the military academies with four years of training and then, you know, four or five years of service to anyone in the federal government in these technical areas. 

Once again, we presented these things. We talked to all the senators. We talked to the president. We talked to the White House. Everyone said yes. Like, where is it? About a third of our recommendations got into the NDAA, which I’m told is a record. But what about the other two-thirds? Where is the action? Where is the sense of urgency? I spend all day thinking, we’ve got to make sure our crypto stuff is correct. We got to make sure that our national security is correct. We’ve got to advance AI. We’ve got to get our surveillance stuff faster. We’ve got to work on our satellites and get them faster. Where’s the urgency in our government? I know it’s here. I’m not criticizing you. I’m criticizing other folks. So we’re clear.

Wright: I have to ask you this question. I have actually been able to talk to Dr. Bob Work a bit about this. So one of the outcomes unintended, maybe outcomes of Goldwater-Nichols was to essentially expand the OSD staff. So that happened post-’86. In the three or four years prior to ‘86 is when we built the 117. And you reminded me when you talked about Kelly Johnson’s Skunk Works. We built the 117 in about three years in the classified way. And to know that the action officer in the Pentagon was a major, and only he briefed the secretary of defense. Well, that couldn’t happen today. So did you run into that, as you talked through some of your Defense Innovation Board stuff.

Schmidt: We did, and Bob is a fantastic servant of our nation and my colleague for many years now. You got to decide who gets to decide. And I want to be careful not to criticize the mistakes of other services. But you can imagine there are other services that have built systems that were designed for 20 years ago, where the systems don’t work, they’re getting canceled, and all the people who made those decisions are retired or have unfortunately passed away. That’s not accountability. So the problem you have as a manufacturer is your design cycles are getting longer. That notion of responsibility is getting longer. The who decided is longer. 

One of the SecDefs, and I served for four, it’s a separate issue, gave me an assignment to go look at a particular weapons system. And I went and visited the weapons system. I won’t go into the details, obviously. And I listened to all the arguments, what the issue was, and I reported back to him. And he said, ‘That’s not what we asked for.’ And I said, ‘No, the contractor has in writing that this is what you asked for.’ And he goes, ‘OK.’ So he then comes back, and he says, ‘Yes, we asked for that. But we didn’t mean it, because the person who asked for it didn’t understand the trade-off.’ 

And the particular issue had to do with a security rule that drove the cost up by a factor of 100. And it was not, in my view, applicable to this case. I’m trying to speak in general terms here. So what did I learn from this little, this one little Eric assignment, right? If you want systems, have all the people in a room and make all the trade-offs right in front of you. Right? And one of the trade-offs is time. And the fastest way to get something cheaper is to do it faster. Which doesn’t make any sense. And again, there are experts here in the room who can speak about why this is. But I would much rather have you all be on an innovation cycle every year, where we do something interesting every year. And I think people are aware of this general strategy. 

But on this OSD question, you’re not going to solve this problem with having larger organizations and move them around. You’re going to solve this problem by authority. So in the Skunk Works case, you had a colonel, major, what have you. Have an admiral; have a general; I don’t care. The important point is have one and then give them broad objectives, and then let them oversee the trade-offs. And hold them to what those trade-offs are. And instead, when I was talking to the acquisition people, there are 30,000 acquisition specialists, each of them optimizing various components. That’s not the way you would run it.

Wright: Great points. Did you have a chance to get out to the Air Force Weapons School at Nellis and be involved in a Red Flag and watch how, when we decentralize execution authorities, and we really cultivate very smart young men and women across all specialty codes—fighter, bomber, airlift, missile—that when they come together to take on a pacing threat like China, they’re in the room talking about tactics and talking about best employment techniques, given the weapons systems they have. But did you kind of look at that and go, I need a few more my Google folks in that discussion?

Schmidt: Again, my message is the same. We need more of this specialized talent, and we need to organize it to deploy it. At Nellis, we visited the RPA pilots and all of this. And I was sitting there talking to one of them, and I said, ‘Well, how often?’ And he showed me how he flew and explained it all to me. It’s all very interesting. And I said, ‘Well, how often does this system get upgraded?’ And he said, ‘I don’t know. Maybe every couple of years.’ He didn’t know. And I thought, that’s terrible. You have essentially a software system that you’re going to upgrade on every couple of years.

So again, I think if you take my mindset and you apply it in the following way, I want rapid innovation. I want fast product cycles. I want a couple of groups over here that are doing really crazy stuff. Right? And you limit them in budget, and you limit them in impact, and then you’ve got a chance. I do think that there is a cultural and structural problem in the military that goes like this: I want autonomy for you all, I want you all to be able to make every decision on your own. In practice, because there’s consequences to the decisions that an individual makes that can have national repercussions. Somebody’s got to be watching. Right? 

So this is, we were in Qatar, and the Air Force general, who was an amazing guy, was showing us the battle management plan. And we went to the CAOC and all of this. And he authorized a strike on a particular thing. And what’s interesting to me, and this, again, had an impact. One of the assistants, he has a lawyer next to him, one of the assistants shows him a picture of the site. And the general correctly says, ‘When is this picture from?’ He says, ‘It’s about six months old.’ And so he, in a nice way, said, ‘How is this possible?’ And, ‘I want somebody in a jet with eyes on it now. And I want them to confirm that the target is still there.’ And then he looks at his lawyer, and he says, ‘Is this a legal transaction?’ And the lawyer says, ‘Yes, sir, it is.’ And he authorized it. And it was for a modestly important target in his war campaign. 

What I learned from that was, you’re going to have to have top-down control when kinetic force is used. But you’re also going to have to find a way to give autonomy to the person to do it. And that is at the root of your cultural problem. You want the centralization for protection of the institution for good reasons. But I also want the autonomy for our men and women to do what they need to do and do it quickly and well.

Wright: Thanks sir. As we wrap up, thanks to Gen. Brown’s leadership and support, the collaboration between AFA and certainly Gen. Raymond and as we follow Secretary Kendall’s One Team, One Fight mantra, the Air Force Association put together the General James Doolittle Leadership Center, and pretty good history of innovation: 16 B-25s off a carrier for the first time, go west, drop bombs and do your best. Never done before. When you think about that mission order, it’s pretty amazing. And I think sort of defines innovation.

Schmidt: But it also defines courage.

Wright: Yes, sir.

Schmidt: And I think I’d like to say once again that I don’t have your courage. But I do have admiration for you for what you do. And again, this week is a great reminder of why what you do is so important, why the issues that we’re discussing need to get addressed, because this is not the last challenge to American leadership. It’s only the next one.

Wright: Thanks, sir. Well, please join me in a round of applause to Dr. Eric Schmidt. And as a small token of our appreciation to celebrate our 75th anniversary…

Schmidt: And thank you to the Air Force Association. Let me know how I can be helpful. Thank you. Thank you all.

Watch, Read: Special Operations in the Peer Fight—What’s Changing and What’s Staying the Same

Watch, Read: Special Operations in the Peer Fight—What’s Changing and What’s Staying the Same

March 13, 2022

Stuart Pettis, the Air Force Association’s director of aerospace education programs, hosts Lt. Gen. Tony D. Bauernfeind, vice commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, and Lt. Gen. James C. “Jim” Slife, commander of Air Force Special Operations Command, in a discussion about “Special Operations in the Peer Fight 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.

Stuart Pettis: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I’m Stuart Pettis on behalf of the Air Force Association. It is my very distinct pleasure to host today’s panel on Special Operations in the Peer Fight. We are very privileged to have two outstanding Airmen with us here for our discussion. Lt. Gen. Jim Slife is a 1989 graduate of Auburn University. He has over 3,100 flight hours in multiple aircraft. Lt. Gen. Tony Bauernfeind is the vice commander, Air Force Special Operations Command. The general is a 1991 distinguished graduate of the United States Air Force Academy and has 3,500 hours in multiple aircraft. Gentlemen, to get started, are there going to be any significant changes in SOCOM and AFSOC now that the nation has shifted its focus from counter-VEO to great power competition?

Lt. Gen. James C. “Jim” Slife: Thanks. So let me start by saying two things. First of all, you people need to get a life. I brought a major with me, so I would have an audience of one, and I can’t believe all of you think that this is the most exciting thing going on here right now. So I would just tell you, you probably need to get life. No. 2, joint all-domain multicapable AI. Just want to get that out of the way right up front, so we can move on with talking about all the other things.

So your question, Stuart, was, do we see any changes as we you know, move to the next operating environment? I would tell you, the answer is absolutely yes in some ways. What’s not going to change is that at the center of our value proposition—and I think Gen. Bauernfeind would say the same on behalf of all of U.S. SOCOM, but certainly for AFSOC—the center of our value proposition is the Airmen in AFSOC. That is not going to change. That has been the thing that has been our competitive advantage since the very first Air Force special operations were conducted back in the 1940s. And none of that is going to change going forward. Now, are the ways that we do it going to change? Absolutely, yes. You know, AFSOC is blessed, from a hardware perspective, to operate the newest fleet of airplanes of any MAJCOM in the Air Force. I mean, essentially, every platform in AFSOC is a post-9/11 acquisition for AFSOC. And so we’ve got some great tools.

The analogy that I would sometimes use is, you know, sometimes when you are going to dinner, you go to the grocery store, and you get the buggy, and you walk down the aisles, and you say, you know, ‘ribeye, potato, asparagus, key lime pie, bottle of wine,’ and you go ring it up, and then you go make the dinner you want. Sometimes, what you do is you go home, and you open the refrigerator, and you stand there and stare at it. And then you open the cabinet, and you stand there and stare, and you try and figure out, ‘What am I going to make with the ingredients that I have?’ And I would tell you that this is a place and time where AFSOC is looking at what is in the kitchen and figuring out new recipes to make with the ingredients we have because we’ve got great ingredients. We’ve got capable platforms. We have the best Airmen that I could ever ask for. We just need to think about the recipes we make a little bit differently. So yeah, there’s going to be a lot that changes as we think about our value proposition going forward. But what’s not going to change is at the heart of it; it’s all about the Airmen.

Lt. Gen. Tony D. Bauernfeind: “Thank you, Gen. Slife. From SOCOM’s perspective, I want to double down. On behalf of Gen. Clarke, absolutely. The No. 1 priority is always our teammates—Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines—that are out there making the mission happen every single day. And there’s a little bit of this concept that great power competition or strategic competition is new to SOCOM. But we have to remember that SOF was born in great power competition. That was really when we saw our growth come about. And yes, the last two decades have been laser focused on counter-VEO operations. But I would offer that since 2018, when Secretary Mattis put the NDS out to start focusing again on great power competition, strategic competition, now integrated deterrence, that that is when we started pivoting.

And in SOCOM alone in an operational perspective, in FY ’22, over 30% of our operations will be against great power competitors to assure allies, to make sure we’re out preparing the environment, to make sure we are forward where we need to be to have the effects to provide the options that the nation needs. And I will tell you as we go into ’23 and ’24, that needle is going to continue to swing for all of our legislative missions. As an example, of one of our missions that has been a big point lately in great power competition is information operations. Last year alone, over 40% of our information operations were end missions against great power competitors. So from an operational perspective, not only is change going to happen, but change has been happening since 2018.

Now, let me talk to you about where we’re going with modernization. On a modernization front, that change has also been happening. Since 2018 to ’21, SOCOM has spent about $13.2 billion modernizing our force across the enterprise for great power competition, which equates to about 20%, excuse me, 26% of our annual budget. And I will tell you, without getting into the details, but ’22 is going to get us well north of 26, and ’23 is going to be even more. Because we realize that there are capabilities that we have to invest in now to make sure that the great Airmen that we have—Sailors, Soldiers, Marines—when they’re conducting missions in the future, they’re going to have the modernized capabilities they need in the future, whether that be 25, 26, 27, but the needle’s moving.

Slife: Can I, let me just follow up, you know, one thing that is definitely going to change, I think, across probably all the components again—I’ll speak specifically for AFSOC—because you know, historically SOF has played a role as a supporting element to the joint force. SOF opens windows of opportunity for the broader joint force. SOF brings unique capabilities, sometimes exquisite capabilities that don’t exist elsewhere in the department in support of the broader joint force. Over the last 20 years, in many ways, SOCOM SOF has become the supported force in the counter-VEO campaigns that we’ve been fighting. And so part of what is changing inside of AFSOC is this mentality that we need to be thinking about not how do we as AFSOC, not how do we be the Air Force component of SOCOM—we’ve done that for 20 years, and we’ve been fantastic at it—but how do we be the SOF component of the Air Force? You know, how do we go from being the Air Force component of SOCOM to being the SOF component of the Air Force, opening windows of advantage for the joint force? And, for us, that’s our Department of the Air Force teammates in the Air and Space Forces.

Pettis: So, gentlemen, when we look to the future, the security challenges posed by violent extremists will remain constant. How does SOF intend to sustainably address that security challenge as well?”

Bauernfeind: Well, from SOCOM’s perspective, as the coordinating authority for counter-VEO for the Department of Defense—countering violent extremist organizations—that is still one of our top priority areas. And even though we’re going to have 30, 40% of our operations focused on great power competition, that means 60, 70%, it’s going to sustain counter-VEO. What it does mean, though, is we’re going to stay focused on counter-VEO. But we’re also going to make sure that we’re using our existing resources against those prioritized threats. Those threats that have the capability and the intent to attack our homeland—our national interest. And so we have been laser focused and making sure that we have the right capabilities, the right force structure and the right partnerships forward. Because this is not only a United States mission, but it’s also making sure—or a DOD mission—but it’s also making sure that we have all the right partners with us moving forward as we target and disable and disrupt those VEO organizations. And two key partners in that I would highlight are our interagency partners, and SOCOM is blessed to have an outstanding liaison network through the entire governmental—excuse me, the entire governmental agencies—to make sure that we are tightly lashed with our key teammates that are also focused on VEO.

And then the second set of teammates that we’re tightly lashed with are our allies and partners. Because many of these VEOs are not just attacking U.S. interests and the U.S. homeland, but they’re also going after other nations’ interests as well. And again, SOCOM is blessed with wonderful allies and partners in our J3I—our international division of our SOCOM headquarters—we have 28 international partners that live with us, work with us, is on our staff, working closely to make sure that all of our VEO operations are closely coordinated and aligned with their national interest as it moves forward.

“And we also have a wonderful organization forward-based called Operation Gallant Phoenix, where we forward have international partners and interagency partners forward, enabling that key intel sharing for primarily legal finishes. Because at the end of the day, SOCOM’s perspective is ‘we’re agnostic on the finish.’ It could be a kinetic finish, but it can be just as effective being a legal finish by another nation holding their personnel accountable for the actions that they’re moving forward.

Slife: I would tell you from an AFSOC perspective—really an Air Force perspective—in the aftermath of 9/11, you know, we did not have, we the Department of Defense, did not have a network targeting methodology. This was something we built in the, you know, early 2000s. You know, it really was hitting full stride by 2006, 2007, where we built this very effective—what some have called ‘surveillance strike complex’—where, you know, we’re able to action intelligence on tactically relevant timelines. And that entire surveillance strike methodology that we built after 9/11 was heavily, heavily dependent on airpower. And so we would have a, you know, a target that we would surveil with airpower. And when we brought the assault force to bear on those targets, there would be an entire stack of airplanes over the top of that target, you know, close air support, reconnaissance, ISR, jamming. I mean, you name it, there would be a stack of airplanes 10,000 feet high over the top of these targets.

“And in the future operating environment—which frankly, I would tell you is the current operating environment—that stack of airpower is not going to be there. We’re not going to be able to rely on having a stack of airpower over every single target that needs to be actioned. And so, for us, as we think about how are we going to prosecute counter-VEO targeting methodologies in the future, from Airmen’s perspective, it’s all about collapsing that stack. You know, fewer airplanes that are multirole, that have the ability to execute those missions in multiples. That’s really a centerpiece of how we envision ourselves prosecuting counter-VEO campaigns from an Airman’s perspective in the future operating environment.”

Bauernfeind: I’d like to riff off of that, if I could. And that takes us to some of the efforts in SOCOM that we’re focusing on our modernization aspect. And I’d bring up three major programs that we’re focusing on that have direct ties to counter-VEO but have collateral effects to the great power competition. The first is, as Gen. Slife said, you know, how we are approaching the ISR perspective. We have realized, after two decades that we became very air-focused—that the sensor had to be in the air. And we’re realizing with the explosion of other means to collect information, that it’s less about the platform and more about the information. So one of Gen. Clarke’s top acquisition priorities is what we’re calling next-generation ISR. And there will be airborne platforms to support this. But it’ll also be how do we weave in the information we’re getting from the space environment? How are we getting information from the human environment? How are we getting information from the publicly available information environment? And that, that’s great, but that’s a flood of information that our great intel professionals have to work with.

And that takes us to our second focus area. And this, we’re investing heavily in making sure that we’re moving forward in the world of data—our data advantage, data networks—to make sure that we are postured, whether it be in the cloud or whether it be the right algorithms of how do we bring automation—AI, ML—with the flood of data that’s coming forward to give that information in a timely perspective for the operators to make timely decisions as it goes forward?

And then the third one, I want to highlight to Gen. Slife’s great point about, you know, combining platforms is Gen. Clarke’s top acquisition priority is Armed Overwatch. As we move forward with Armed Overwatch, it’s realizing that we will still have forces on the field that need that ISR to support that ground-scheme maneuver, that need that cast when they need that ability as it moves forward. And so we realized that as the services are girding up to focus more heavily for great power competition, that we have an imperative to make sure that we still have aviation platforms that support that need for those isolated teams that may be in West Africa, East Africa, somewhere in the Middle East where we won’t have large arrays of aircraft overhead.”

Pettis: Gentlemen, the term “special operations” encompasses a large group of professionals with a variety of backgrounds. What is special operations airpower to you, and what options will provide the joint force in the peer fight?

Slife: Well, so this is something we’re actually putting a fair amount of thought into at AFSOC, and I would, you know, if—I don’t have a dry erase board up here, otherwise, I’d put my Professor Slife hat on—but I would draw a two-circle Venn diagram, you know, in two overlapping circles. In one of those circles would be airpower supporting special operations. So if you think of all the things that could fall into a circle that you might describe as airpower supporting special operations, you could think of 1,000 things, right? It might be a C-17 carrying a rapid response force around the globe. It could be a KC-135 refueling a gunship trying to get across the ocean. It could be an A-10 providing close air support to a team on the ground. There’s a whole host of things that could fall into this category of airpower supporting special operations.

But that other circle is what I would describe as ‘special operations airpower’ and that’s different. Special operations airpower is what AFSOC is all about. And so there is a piece in the middle where these two circles overlap. And that piece in the middle is special operations airpower supporting special operations. Right? That’s the overlap. And that’s what we have been exclusively focused on for the last 20 years. And so we have a force that nobody beneath the rank of colonel or chief master sergeant has lived in an AFSOC that has done anything other than that piece in the middle: special operations airpower supporting special operations.

But I would suggest there’s more to special operations airpower than supporting somebody on the ground that has a mission they need to do. That’s critically important. And we can’t ever walk away from that. Gen. Bauernfeind talked about this Armed Overwatch platform. It is tied directly to our need to support our teammates on the ground. But there are special operations that don’t have anything to do with somebody on the ground that are entirely airpower-centric. That is the rest of that circle that exists outside that piece in the middle. And so this is something that we’re spending a lot of time focused on.

You know, I have a number of examples of things that might look like. I would take you back: Here’s an early example of what a special operations mission from the air would be. In early 1942, Jimmy Doolittle had the mission of flying 16 B-25 bombers off the deck of the USS Hornet. Right? And so you think about how this mission developed and how this was briefed. ‘OK, here’s the plan, Jimmy. We have 16 bombers that we’re going to put on an aircraft carrier. Now we are pretty sure they’ll be able to take off — not completely sure, but we’re pretty sure that they’ll be able to take off. And we’re going to drive this aircraft carrier west. And when we get as close as we can get to Japan, you are going to lead these 16 bombers off the end of the USS Hornet. And assuming that we were right, and you can actually take off, you will fly west. Now you can’t come back because we have no ability to land on the aircraft carrier. And so you’re going to fly west until you get to Tokyo. When you get to Tokyo, you’re going to drop your bombs. But now we don’t have enough gas to get you anywhere. So you just keep flying west until you get into Japanese-occupied China. When you get into Japanese-occupied China, Jimmy, your airplanes are going to run out of gas. When your airplane runs out of gas, you all are to bail out of your airplanes and land in occupied China. And then you’re to link up with the Chinese resistance movement and ENE your way across China until you get back to United States hands. Do you have any questions about this mission, Jimmy?’

Right? I mean, you think about that, that is a special operations mission. It doesn’t, you know, it doesn’t have to have an AFSOC patch on. That is a mission that you know is completely nonstandard. You know, the first missions of Desert Storm were led by AFSOC helicopters. Those AFSOC helicopters led a package of Army Apaches into Iraq to destroy the early warning radar sites that allowed the air armada to flow north. This is what I’m talking about when I say we play a supporting role to the broader joint force. That was in support of the air component commander. We didn’t buy those helicopters to go destroy early warning radar sites; we just used them for that. Right? That’s an application of special operations from the air, independent of somebody moving around on the ground needing examples, needing support.

In December, AFSOC launched a JASSM-ER, a long-range stealthy cruise missile, out of the back of a C-130, flew a long navigation route over the Gulf of Mexico, killed a barge in the Gulf of Mexico. Why in the world would AFSOC be launching cruise missiles out of the back of C-130s? Because if our adversaries have to look at every C-130 and every C-17 and wonder what’s in the back and whether that C-17 is in fact a long-range fires platform, changes their calculus —that’s deterrence. That’s deterrent. That is an application of special operations airpower. And so I guess, you know, that’s a long way of saying that we are thinking about airpower in AFSOC more broadly than purely in what we have done for the last 20 years, which is the necessary but insufficient role of in support of a mission on the ground.”

Bauernfeind: From SOCOM’s perspective, I would offer, I’m going to take the conversation up a little bit. As we look at our operations, as we look at our programming, we bend our operations into four major areas. First is crisis response—[unintelligible] crisis response—as we have the capability to respond when the president needs to a wide variety of missions, of which air commandos and many other Airmen are involved in and respond perfectly every time because it is so well exercised and so well sequenced. And that is a key part of where our SOF Airmen are involved.

The second aspect that we’ve already talked about is counter-VEO. We’re not walking away from counter-VEO. We are the coordinating authority. We know that we will be still conducting a major part of counter-VEO operations along with the joint force in support of those geographic combatant commanders who owned the mission, whether it be in AFRICOM, CENTCOM, INDOPACOM as we move forward. But the other two I want to delve into a little bit.

The third one is competition. And that is that irregular warfare—that unconventional warfare—where special operations provides very unique capabilities for the nation. And as to Gen. Slife’s great point on the JASSMs, we provide low-cost, low-escalatory options for national leaders because we have the ability with our special operations forces to hold adversary systems at risk. We get after their strategic decision-making. And through that capability, there is a wide scope of opportunity for SOF Airmen to be involved.

And then the final case, which is pure to the entire joint force, is conflict. And to that supporting role, we realize at SOCOM that we are in support of the joint force when we go to conflict as it goes forward. But we also know that for us to be prepared, we have to be on the battlefield early, we have to be preparing the environment, and we have to make sure that we are providing those options—whether it be on the ground, in the sea, in the air, in other domains, to hold those adversary systems at risk. Because we’re seeing it right now in real time in Europe, where this dance amongst nuclear powers is a very careful dance. And so from the Department of Defense, we owe our national leaders very nuanced options so they can start to have those strategic decisions. And from Gen. Clarke’s perspective, my perspective at SOCOM, SOF Airmen absolutely are a part of all of those options moving forward.

Pettis: Gen. Slife, picking up something that Gen. Bauernfeind mentioned, last year AFSOC personnel deployed to more than 60 countries. We also held a building partner aviation capacity seminar at Hurlburt. How do these frequent appointments and partnership seminars build value, and how do … these actions align with a larger effort to build our reach in informal networks that we can leverage later?

Slife: So I’m going to answer the question kind of broadly about building partner aviation capacity. So there is, you know, first of all, Gen. Bauernfeind highlighted the point that one of SOCOM’s competitive advantages—as what I would describe it—is a vast set of international relationships. And, you know, SOF is deployed around the globe, AFSOC’s certainly no different, deployed around the globe, engaged with various partners. And a portion of that is built around the idea of building partner capacity. We’re helping them develop the capabilities that they need to be most effective in their security environment—whatever, you know, whatever part of the world they’re in. But the other part of that is the access and the influence that those engagements provide. Right? If we are in 60 places around the globe, that’s 60 places where the United States has some level of access and some level of influence, has the ability to understand the environment, you know. Those are really, really valuable opportunities. And what we, in AFSOC, have been limited by over time is our limited density of aviation advisers. We haven’t had enough capacity to engage meaningfully in as many places as we want to engage around the globe. And so one of the things that we’re working through pretty diligently is how do we expand that capacity across AFSOC and provide more access vectors to all of our operating forces all around the globe? So I think the access and influence around the globe is the critical part of that, and we’re expanding our investment in that.

You know, that’s one of the value propositions of SOF, certainly, but AFSOC inside the Air Force, is the ability to operate across the spectrum of visibility and attribution. The ability to operate across a spectrum of visibility and attribution. So there are some things that we do that are very visible and highly attributable. Right? When a C-130 with 105 mm cannon sticking out of the side shows up, it’s pretty attributable. Right? There are other things that we do that are much less visible and much less attributable. And the ability to operate across that whole spectrum, to gain and leverage access and influence around the globe, is a central part of our value proposition for the future. And so those, you know, those forces inside of AFSOC that provide access and influence around the globe—at whatever level of attribution—are important investment areas for us.

Bauernfeind: If I may, I’d like to join in on that one. And I want to tie this to the SecDef ‘s No. 3 priority: Succeed through teamwork. And you know, what Secretary Austin has meant by that is, you know, teamwork amongst services, teamwork amongst the interagency but most importantly, teamwork with our allies and partners. And we have learned that at SOCOM, as I already mentioned, our great J3I teammates are great. The folks that we have forward, at many, many locations. But it comes to a kind of a bumper sticker statement that you can’t search trust. And that is what we talk about is how you have to be on the field to compete. You have to be forward. You have to be preparing the environment. It doesn’t mean you have to be for 24/7, 365, but you have to be developing those relationships globally with those allies and partners that are like-minded in the international world order. And SOCOM has been highly successful of that, mostly, not mostly—across all of our services, but especially in AFSOC.

I will tell you just right now, you know, when the Ukrainian operation there, the phones are lighting up with many of our Ukrainian teammates, who served with many of our Army teammates. Some are in PME now, and the connections are going very strongly as we maintain those relationships as we go forward. But it’s just in our history at AFSOC, I would point out that it was relationships that was maintained with nations to the north of Afghanistan that were critical to opening up that northern airbridge when we needed those mobility forces to flow from the north early in the war on Afghanistan. And there are literally dozens of examples—whether it be from small teams being forward conducting training with partner air forces, or whether it be teammates back in PME or at foreign PME, that those relationships last a lifetime. And you just never know when you’re going to need those relationships. So it’s important that we continue on those, and the efforts of AFSOC in building those is critical to SOCOM’s success.

Pettis: Gen. Bauernfeind, what areas of SOCOM need support from Congress and industry as it shifts to this focus on the near-peer fight and while obviously sustaining pressure on VEOs as well?

Bauernfeind: Well, from SOCOM’s perspective, we just want to thank Congress. I will tell you that we have been receiving amazing support from Congress across the board. And primarily, we work, just like everyone else, with the six committees—the HASC, the SASC, the HAC, the SAC, HPSCI, SISC—those members and those professional staff members have been exceptionally supportive of all of SOCOM’s efforts. So we just want to say thank you for that. Yes, they hold their oversight role tight. And they ask us the hard questions, which is their responsibility to do, and we welcome those questions. And we appreciate that going forward. But at the end of the day, we know it’s because they’re taking such good support for us.

As an example, we have benefited greatly from specialized authorities in SOCOM, whether it be our 1202 or our 127 Echo authorities—just numbers and a Title 10 U.S. Code—but really what that gives us the authority on SecDef approval is to develop partner irregular forces around the world, so it’s not just U.S. forces as we’re going forward. We also have been given through our specialized acquisition capabilities special authorities for small businesses. And I just want to pull up a quick stat there is I had in my head, that, you know, during that specialized business, excuse me, that specialized acquisition authority, we were able to quadruple the amount of money we were spending with small businesses. So we went from $5 million to $20 million. And we increased the capabilities for many of those small businesses by over 240%. Much faster deliveries because what we’re finding is in the data world, in the software world and where a lot of innovation lives are in these small businesses. And we’re seeing great results of specialized authorities like that that we’re getting from Congress. So as long as we continue getting that support, we’re, you know, no additional ask, at least for my position. I’m sure Gen. Clarke will have more when he testifies here in about six weeks.

And then for industry, I just wanted to also say thanks for everything that industry’s doing because industry’s pushing us forward. Industry’s continuing to come to the table with great ideas. They’re continuing to challenge us—whether it be our great acquisition executive, Mr. Jim Smith and his amazing PEOs—but we have a whole host of wonderful industry partners that when we’re putting requests for proposals out there, great concepts are coming forward, and we’re tying them with the warfighters, and we’re getting great capabilities as we move forward. So that’s all we’d ask is that for industry to keep pushing on that.”

Pettis: Gen. Slife, do you have a thought on this as well?

Slife: Not specifically on the what Congress can do. I mean, we obviously, we rely on Congress for, you know, support of all these programs we’re talking about. I look forward to continuing that conversation. But as Gen. Bauernfeind said, you know, while, you know, Congress asks us more questions than we would like sometimes, they’re never the wrong questions. And so I, you know, I wouldn’t ask for anything other than what they’re doing, which is exercising their oversight role and, where warranted, supporting our programs.

On the industry side, you know, I would say AFSOC benefits from living at the intersection of the U.S. Air Force as a MAJCOM and U.S. SOCOM as a service component. We are able to leverage our, you know, kind of vast service acquisition architecture while also leveraging the rapid pace at which SOCOM acquisition can turn. And we can blend those things together. And most of the programs that we execute inside of AFSOC are a combination of SOCOM and Air Force acquisition authorities coming forward to help us go pretty quickly. You know, the cruise missile out of the back of the C-130, that example, that happened because of the partnership of AFRL and the SOCOM acquisition team that were able to make that happen in a remarkably short period of time. So that’s, I think, that’s where I would stand on that.

Pettis: Gentlemen, on behalf of AFA and our standing-room-only audience participants, I want to thank you so much for the time you’ve given us and the insights. Thank you very much.

Slife: Thank you all.

Watch, Read: Key Technologies the Space Force Needs Now

Watch, Read: Key Technologies the Space Force Needs Now

March 13, 2022

Retired Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, dean of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, hosts Lisa Costa, Space Force chief technology and innovation officer; Nicholas Bucci, vice president, Defense Systems and Technologies, General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems; and Frank DeMauro, vice president and general manager, Strategic Deterrent Systems, Northrop Grumman Space Systems, for a discussion on “Space Innovations: Key Technologies” 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.

Retired Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula: Good morning ladies and gentlemen, I’m Dave Deptula, Dean of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace studies, and welcome to this session of the 2022 AFA Aerospace Warfare Symposium. Today we’ve got a fantastic panel to discuss an area of immense growth. That being the key technologies that are driving space innovation. I don’t think I have to tell this crowd too often that space is a warfighting domain. 

Obviously Russia and China have made that very clear. And well, the United States has worked for decades to keep space peaceful. Given adversary actions, we’ve got to respond. But the capabilities that exist on orbit are simply too important to risk. 

We need to present senior leaders with a range of effective options and that means pursuing both defensive and offensive capabilities, just like we have in every other domain. Achieving this is going to demand aggressive innovation. Much of our capabilities on orbit today speak to an earlier time and space when the domain was not contested. The technologies operational concepts and strategies will need to operate successfully need to be manifested in the operational realm and that needs to happen as soon as possible. 

That’s why I’m especially pleased to have some key figures with us today. Are going to help us generate these new capabilities. So with that bit of background, I’d like to welcome Dr. Lisa Costa, Chief Technology and Innovation Officer the U.S. Space Force, Frank DeMauro, Vice President of Strategic Deterrence Systems in the space system sector at Northrop Grumman, and Nick Bucci, Vice President of Program Management with General Atomics. So I’d like to do is start off with Dr. Costa, and asked her if she could give us a quick rundown on what key technologies your office is pursuing, to equip our space force given the challenges in space and then after that, we’ll be followed by Nick and Frank.

Lisa Costa: Thank you very much. And I’d like to thank AFA in particular for putting this this symposium together. It’s been fantastic and I know it takes a lot of work. The CTIO office is unique across the services. There is no other service that has a chief technology officer and why that is, is most services have CIOs. We have a CIO and the Department of the Air Force. 

But what we wanted within Space Force was someone whose full time job it was to focus on asymmetric threats and opportunities. So we have critical areas that were focused on more than specific single technologies because there are a lot of technologies that go into space, right? We could, we could actually talk about whole sectors right? Energy, IT [information technology], space, et cetera. So what I would say is we’re really more focused on six primary activities: 

The first is improving the freedom of action and space and you can think about AI and ML, advanced analytics, providing space awareness to everyone—not just within space force, but across the services, our international partners and industry as well. 

The second is improving survivability and resilient architectures. 

The third is digital engineering, not just in the acquisition arena, but all the way through the thread of acquisition, to training to force design, to operations in other words, train the way we fight and fight the way we train. 

Responsible AI/ML and autonomy—Wow. That’s just huge in and of itself. A great deal of energy going into how we trust algorithms, and to what degree the human is in on an off the loop. 

The fifth area is improving space access, mobility and logistics. And this is really a critical area in that if something goes wrong in space, we were not there physically right to fix it. So we’re really looking at things like you know, in situ resource, seeing materiel located within space to be able to use additive manufacturing in orbit. 

So there are a lot of activities going on in the research of how you will even generate additional space assets in space. Not even starting off on the ground and needing lift. 

And then the fifth, or the sixth area, I’m sorry, is enhancement and integration of the current services that we already provide and that encompasses you know, anything from search and rescue, space commerce, defense, ISR, etc. So many technologies, and I would highlight that we do have a long-term S and T plan to get after that, and that was published in September of last year, and I would recommend folks go out and get a copy of that online.

Deptula: Thank you. Nick?

Nicholas Bucci: Thanks, General. Everyone can hear me I hope. So I want to kind of center my comments. So because this is about innovation, about what is driving that innovation and from a perspective of where I’m sitting in standing at General Atomics, it’s all about size, weight and power improvements in terms of capabilities. And so when you think about, you know, oh, if I can reduce the size of a focal plane array, then be able to see a certain type of object at a certain range. I now have shrunk down the optics, I’ve shrunk down the size of the spacecraft on which that sensor needs to sit and now all of a sudden it opens a tremendous amount of space – excuse the pun there – for being able to do things differently. 

And that’s kind of really the driver is being able to, I like to say, do bigger missions with smaller spacecraft. And what that means is I may be able to do things with a half a kilogram satellite in a certain regime, all the way up to being able to take on some of the toughest missions with, say, only a 500 kilogram satellite instead of a 5,000 kilogram satellite. And so that’s really the thought processes: Take advantage of the evolution of technology and the innovation and figure out how to make it come into this mission, especially as we move into this standing up of the Space Force – and the … admission of space being a warfighting domain. 

The second point is access to space. Access to the space has become much more reasonably priced as a result. Now I can do some of that innovation, and I can get it on orbit faster and cheaper. And then, kind of adjunct to both of those is the fact that I can get inside the technology development loop of those innovations. Think of a fire control loop. I know Dr. Schmidt said the OODA [observe, orient, decide, act] loop was confusing and people hate the word, but think of it as a decision loop. If I can get inside the acquisition timelines fast enough to take advantage of the evolution of innovation. Now I can deliver that new capability again, shrinking down the size of sensors shrinking down the size of communication packages, etc., and deliver that capability much faster rather than having to wait 15 years. I can wait three years, five years and get it on orbit much faster. 

And then I guess the last point is in terms of getting people who want to do innovation, to be part of this community. I think for space, it’s a lot easier. There is a lot of movement of personnel amongst different companies and things like that, and it’s because it’s a really cool mission. 

Again, stealing from Dr. Schmidt’s comments last night: We’re lucky in the space community that people want to do this work. You know, when I was a kid, my brother’s a little bit older than me. He was, uh, he wanted to be an astronaut. Well, he’s a plumber, so that didn’t come true for him. But, you know, everybody had that dream of doing something like the Apollo missions we’re driving toward. And so I think that’s a big deal for us. But getting people interested you know, getting you know, soldiers, sailors and airmen and women as they come out of the service interested in doing this mission is important. And then the important piece is retaining them by keeping them interested in the mission areas, and frankly, developing new mission areas. I think it was [Lt.] General [Michael A.] Guetlein about a year ago said one of the things that he thinks we should be doing is looking at how can I take advantage of other missions that we have done that have been I’ll say, adjunct space missions like missile defense, how do I take some of those technologies in and take advantage of them, whether it’s actual pieces of hardware, whether it’s approaches to software, where it’s just how I do my command and control processes? So I think those are kind of the coalescing principles around how we need to take advantage of innovation for space.

Deptula: Good, I would suggest to the Space Force quickest way to adapt Missile Defense Agency innovation and ideas by putting the Missile Defense Agency inside the Space Force, but that’s another subject. Frank, over to you. Thank you, gentlemen. 

Frank DeMauro: Good morning, everybody. Great to be here. Great to be on this panel. I guess I’ll focus on a couple of different technologies that are in various stages that we’ve done. The first one I’ll talk about is our investment space logistics and space mobility technologies. Northrop Grumman invested several years ago began investing in what we call the mystic mission extension vehicle, a pure commercial investment developing a technology to rendezvous and dock with existing commercial GEO satellites that are performing a perfectly fine mission just happened to be running out of fuel, where we would piggyback on the back of that spacecraft and take over its attitude-control systems and propulsion systems and extend the life of that revenue generating spacecraft. And we delivered two of those space craft. 

They successfully docked with two different commercial spacecraft. In fact, the last one we did last year [unintelligible] to dock with an Intelsat satellite, which was actually in the geo arc, transferring traffic for its customers and there was no interruption of traffic—and it was the first time that was done. And really, it was a commercial venture that we knew would have other applications beyond the commercial arena. 

And now since then, we are investing in the next generation or to have that capability to where we can put robotics in space where we can do repairs of spacecraft in space. 

We can do assembly of spacecraft in space, like Dr. Costa was talking about. We can go up in space and interchange payloads as technologies improve or requirements change. 

And so that investment’s, I think, a really strong example where we saw a need for a technology, we invested in it, and then we fielded it, and so far it’s quite successful. So we’re looking forward to being eventually fielding the next version of that technology in the 2024 timeframe. 

Another version, which is a technology—we invested in radar technologies, so that the government could look out use ground-based radars to look out to the geostationary arc and see what else is out there and do surveillance of the arc, and combining use that capability to combine with space based assets to give a fuller picture of what’s out there. 

And that investment that technology will eventually be fielded on something called dark deep-space advanced radar capability. 

And so that’s some of some of the work we did in our Baltimore facility. Really strong investment, a lot of great technology and now soon, a few years from now, we’ll be fielding that technology. 

And then the last piece I’ll talk about is, is something it’s consistent with another item that Dr. Costa talked about, which is the digital transformation in digital engineering. You know, there’s on the one of the programs that my portfolio GPSd—huge program. We’ve made tremendous strides in digital engineering model based system engineering, but we’re really trying to push it further from the corporation on down throughout the organization, [so that it’s] more of a digital ecosystem, so that we are not just doing digital engineering, but digital manufacturing—physics based simulation, modeling and simulation—and applying that across the spectrum of what we do from the acquisition phase to the fielding phase to the learning and training phase of programs. 

So we’re excited about those snippets of technology that we’ve been interested in. 

Deptula: Well, thanks very much, Frank, and all of you now let’s kind of dig down into some of these details. With some specific questions. Dr. Costa, budgets are obviously tight, especially given the demand for new capabilities and additive capacity that’s on Space Force’s plate. Could you speak a bit to how you’re setting up your tech development and investment priorities? What determines whether something falls above or below the cut line? I should say the funding line. 

Costa: Well, it’s all about prioritization, as you know, and it’s also about partnership. And this is really where industry is absolutely critical. Space Force will not be the organization that puts for example, IT infrastructure into space. That’s really going to be the job of industry because they see the value of being able to provide cloud based services globally. We want to take advantage of that. 

And so that is an area that we don’t necessarily then have to invest significant funding, but we do have to invest significant kind of blood, sweat and tears to make sure that the partnerships are there, and that we have a voice in terms of how we want information to move in and across space.

So the here’s a great example of that. As we rely more on artificial intelligence, machine learning, autonomy, a lot of assets and space don’t have that computational power To actually perform the analysis. We don’t want to have to move a lot of data to ground stations. Instead, we’d love instead to be able to process information on orbit, and then move that around space without ever touching ground. And so I think that’s really a key area that, you know, again, partnering with industry is critical. 

I love the topic of the digital ecosystem, absolutely ensuring that it gets driven down to every single Guardian. And we are focused very much on that. A lot of our funding is focused on digital university, digital headquarters and digital operations, and making sure that we are providing an environment for Guardians to be able to interact with their environment. 

I have this scenario where I … identify that if you are a Sailor, you have kind of the feel of the waves beneath you; have the feel of the sun on your face. If you’re … a Soldier, you feel the mud … as you’re crawling through … a field. But a Guardian only experiences their environment, their operational domain, through digital data. So, I would encourage industry to think about how we provide an environment where those Guardians can interact with their environment and an augmented reality perspective so that they can use their five senses with their operational domain.

Deptula: Oh, that’s great. I just reiterate some of the comments that were made by leadership yesterday in terms of the importance, although as simple as it seems, IT infrastructure needs a whole lot of attention. In all of our services. And you very clearly pointed out why it’s particularly important to folks in the Space Force. There is a bit of a follow up. Other than IT and networks and getting our act together in that regard, are there other areas that you would like to … how would you …what is another priority that you would like to see attention paid to by the Space Force?

Costa: So I would say that in that entire ecosystem of ensuring that we have resources in space that are able to be quickly used, right, it is not always an option to have liftoff and do that in a timeframe. That makes sense. And so being able to focus on additive manufacturing in space, being able to have material depots in space, in situ power, development in space, is really critical. And again, this is something that will not be unique to Space Force with the growth of … commercial space assets. Everyone will need this, right? Everyone will need the ability to … have on demand services in space. And so I think that is a key area that I’d love to see focus on without requiring … the cost of lift and then the … challenge of lift, if there’s weather and all kinds of other things that that might perturb you from getting capability on orbit as quickly as possible.

Deptula: To your previous point in terms of the capacity and capability to conduct onboard processing. Also, it’s applicable many, many other things. Our whole ISR infrastructure is based on, you know, an archaic model where you download everything and then you figure out what it is you need after you download it. Well, that’s kind of ridiculous, given the amount of, of data that one collects and 99 percent of it is garbage anyway. So figure that out before you translate and move what you want to do. Now, thanks very much for that. 

Nick and Frank, as we listen to Dr. Costa, it’s clear that the demand for space capability surging, that it’s going to demand more industrial capacity. So how do you look at this from your respective vantage points? And just some of these variables represent greater challenges than others? 

Bucci: Of course, there’s a lot of differences. … Some [unintelligible] things are much more challenging than others. But when it comes to it, you have to look at it from I’ll say, from an industry perspective, at least three different dimensions: financial, technology, and people. 

Do I have the right resources in those three dimensions to be able to support what I need, whether it’s … new capital equipment, whether it’s new training for people, or whether it’s a new piece of technology to be able to accomplish a new goal? Things like, can we bring new sources of energy to do on orbit? 

You know, what you were just talking about Dr. Costa … whether it’s on-orbit refueling, whether it’s providing a new source of power and energy on orbit, and essentially getting rid of things like solar power, solar panels on orbit. New ways to do battery work, all of those things. So each of those I think will help us make the decisions as to what are the right things to go off and pursue. And frankly, constant communications between the Space Force and industry is the only way to get that right. What are the right priorities, and where is the right thing for us to invest and essentially ensure that we’re meeting that demand that the Space Force wants.

DeMauro: I think from an … industry-capacity point of view, I … agree with what Nick said. But I think just to add to that, there’s obviously the physical capacity of getting hardware through factories, whether it’s Northrop Grumman or one of our partners on our programs. There’s a lot of stuff moving through factories these days [that] need to be sized to be able to handle all that. But at the same time you want to right-size them for lots of reasons. 

One, you want to optimize your investments, but two, you want to have the right size footprint not only physically but also from a carbon standpoint, as we think about sustainability. I think the people piece is huge. I think right now the competition for talent out there is increasing, as all of us in the industry are very busy. And so making sure we’re getting the right people in the positions in the company to be able to do all the great work that needs to get done to support these great programs, these great initiatives, and then to feel the investment that we’re doing. 

And I think the other another piece of this is, as we’re thinking about these factories and what we’re going to be delivering from a hardware and software point of view, I think we also need to think about how do we design them? What’s the smartest way we could do in these smart factories and factories of the future? We’ve all heard those terms. I think those are real things because I think is where figuring out the flexibility we need to have in our systems, we also need to have the flexibility in our facilities and in our systems to be able to pivot quickly, to be able to be agile in what we’re delivering to the customers. Because at the end of the day, as we field things more and more quickly, we’re going to have to figure out how to make sure that it’s meeting the needs of the warfighter. And as those requirements change, and they’re changing very quickly these days, our systems have to be able to support them.

Bucci: As Frank was talking, I was thinking another important dimension is teaming amongst industry – essentially to what you’re saying Frank in terms of maximizing the efficiency of footprints and sustainability, etc. I don’t know that there are many programs where a single company top to bottom can essentially bid and produce everything in an efficient manner. And so I think teaming amongst industry, and frankly teaming with the government, as we go through acquisitions and development and fielding and operations, is really important, too.

Deptula: Sounds very good, which is a great segue into this next question that I’ve got for Dr. Costa. For too long, we’ve heard about this critical barrier, if you will, which stands in the way between fielding new innovative operational capability. And that’s the “Valley of Death.” As most of you all know, this involves innovating new technology, but then failing to find a sponsor who can bring it on board. So how’s the Space Force addressing this challenge?

Costa: That is a great question. And, you know, I think that the Space Force is small for a reason, right? The Space Force is focused on being able to iterate very quickly. And while there are some challenges with that, the value of being small is that we can shepherd particular initiatives and activities and ensure that they are not even encountering that “Valley of Death.”

So, you know, a great initiative that we’re looking at is how to create this metaverse for the Space Force. How do we create this immersive environment that includes digital engineering, modeling and simulation, AI, And then all of the kind of the haptic sensory feedback to the to the Guardian, so that they can make better decisions. 

We are working with industry and academia to help make that happen. And those investments, in turn, are really fueling industries. You know, approach and desire to enter the metaverse, right? So I think where we can find opportunities that meet both industry’s needs and Space Force’s needs, that’s critical. 

I do want to highlight the something that Frank said and it really is all about the people. The greatest pleasure that I have is, you know, the other day I visited University of Central Florida and I had the opportunity to sit down for an hour and a half with our ROTC cadets and let me tell you, you know, absolutely, these are individuals who are dedicated to the mission. Incredibly brilliant. I have nothing but high hopes for the future when I talk to them. But the key will be to put into their hands the tools that they need to bring us in to the next century of space and not give them 30-year-old technology. And that’s absolutely critical because you know, they go out to their cars and have better technology than that we’re providing them on their desktop. 

So I think that’s the challenge and I also like to highlight what Nick said, which is I see much more teaming between government and industry. I see that relationship becoming much stronger and us working on common areas of interest. You know, perhaps in different ways than we have in the past where we just want a contract and, you know, and maybe it’s more though, than a CRADA [cooperative research and development agreement], right? So there’s this there’s the spectrum of CRADA, and then there’s this … contracting. But there’s a lot between there and I think there’s opportunity space for Space Force and industry to explore that together.

Deptula: That’s a great segue to [go] back to Frank and Nick. You know, this phenomenon is not just restricted to the government. Industry has challenges in the context of how you’re going to spend your IRAD [independent research and development] monies. And then you’ve got the same complications with continuing resolutions. And Dr. Costa already kind of led into the answer this question, but I mean, I’ll give you an opportunity to in the context of being able to work together better in the future than perhaps we have in the past. Your thoughts on these issues. 

DeMauro: I’ll start. Yeah, on that last point, I agree with Nick and Dr. Costa. If you look at our biggest program in my portfolio, GPSd, enormous enterprise that we’ve undertaken here. This is a national team. Northrop Grumman may be the lead but Lockheed Martin is on the team and Boeing’s on the team and General Dynamics and Aerojet Rocketdyne and I’m not going to name all of them. 

But if you look at the map that we’ve we created to show are the people who come and visit us and see what we’re doing on GPSd, the map is covered with participation from Northrop Grumman across the country, but all of our partners across the country. And so that amount of teaming to bring … capabilities to bear on such a critical program, the ability to do that extremely well, I think is critical to the success of the program. 

And I think to add to something Dr. Costa also said, the interaction between my team and the government team on the development of that program—they are intertwined really strongly to where as we as we move the development of that system into the cloud environment that the folks at Hill Air Force Base [Utah] right outside my office door, will have access to the same data and the same models and the same analysis that my team does, without having to transfer it via email. 

Those types of things, I think, are going to be integral into pushing us faster, while not losing any other any other capabilities that we need to provide the system. I think in terms of the investment conversation, it is critical we look at the priorities that we think our customers have, but clarity from our customers is really helpful in figuring out where we want to put those investment dollars. 

Sometimes we’re going to invest because we know there’s a direction that the customer wants to go and sometimes we’re going to put money and invest in things that we think will differentiate ourselves in the marketplace and sometimes they’re very much combined. 

And so as we decide where to place those bets, as we call it, it’s a very iterative process, not only in talking to the customers and figuring out what direction we want to go, but also looking at okay, we invested X dollars and last quarter. How is that looking? Let’s continuously reevaluate it, efficiently though, because you don’t want to keep throwing money and then having to pull back. You have to make the right decisions. But you have to give yourself the ability to change course, at a very quick pace to make sure you’re keeping up with what the customers are looking for.

Bucci: I guess I’ll just repeat the three C’s, but a little bit differently. We heard it twice yesterday. But the three C’s that I’ll use are communications, communications, communications. And that happens I’ll add one more thing between CRADA and contract, Dr. Costa, and that’s the OTA [other transaction authority] process. Now that Space Force has been pursuing some of those, that is huge. Because what that enables us to do is have communications through the parts of the development process continuously, so that we’re going down the right path. 

So many times the “Valley of Death” is encountered because someone feels threatened by an innovation, right? It’s threatening someone’s franchise, you know, in an industry or in government. And so they will battle to essentially say how that innovation can’t possibly make it through the “Valley of Death.” 

To ensure that they, they can continue to do things like pre-planned product improvements and things like that to their programs. So I think that’s really the big thing. And I really liked the thing you talked about because Space Forces small—small now, it’s going to get bigger—but I would say it will still be a classic tweener kind of organization, right? Not too big, not too small. 

And there was a Harvard Business Review a long time ago that talked about as a tweener, the small folks look up to you and say you’re big you got all the processes and all of those kinds of things. And the big guys look down at you and say, “You’re nimble, you’re fast, you’re innovative.”

The point of the study was, it requires focus—laser focus—again, excuse this pun, on exactly what those investments need to be and when you talked about how you want to keep the space for small and essentially do a very good job of focusing on exactly where to go to avoid the “Valley of Death.” That’s a perfect spot.

Deptula: Very good. Dr. Costa, we’re getting ready to see the acquisition, if you will, inside the Space Force of one of its first major external organizations, and that’s the Space Development Agency. How do you view your role changing as SDA comes on board our Space Force?

Costa: I don’t view the role [unintelligible] as changing, but I do view it as an additional partner that we especially can ensure that we’re taking advantage of the capabilities that they have built up. Right? And we’re already working with them. I mean, that’s it. This is not something where we’re waiting and you know, and then we’ll start working with SDA. So we’re working very hard to take advantage of what they’ve already been doing. I want to just identify that we don’t view – I started this conversation off with we don’t view any single technology right as being kind of the key to space. And it’s really the convergence of technology and the novel convergence of technology that will have the most tremendous impact on space and it’s really not even government that will have the greatest impact. It is industry and how it changes the socio-cultural fabric of our citizens that will have the greatest impact on space. So, as we talk about science and technology, and I said this to our team who focuses on futures, always think about the impact of the socio-cultural fabric of what industry is developing for citizenry because that will have direct impact on what we do. And it will have direct impact on how we work with SSC, SDA, and others as well.

Deptula: Well, very good. Either you care to comment on the SDA issue? You don’t have to. I mean, I just offer. 

I the only thing I’ll say is that I think it’s

DeMauro: I think it’s a positive progression of driving, Where it’s I think it’ll be a more nimble application and communication of what’s really required by the Space Force, that will enable the industry to respond in a more effective way. I think we’re seeing that already in some of the [unintelligible] work we’re doing. So I think that as that takes more and more hold, but really, not to be dramatic, but unleashes what industry can bring. I think that’s going to be the real benefit of SDA to the Space Force.

Bucci: And all I’d add is [unintelligible] is taking almost the same approach – stay small, stay nimble, stay innovative, and that will fit in well.

Deptula: Very good, unfortunately, ladies and gentlemen, we’ve come to the end of our session today. Dr. Costa, Nick, Frank, thank you very much for taking the time to share with us your perspectives. I think the audience and certainly I found them very illuminating. 

So with that, ladies and gentlemen, thanks. Please join me in thanking our guests and have a great aerospace power today.

Watch, Read: Top Guard & Reserve Leaders on Meeting the Needs of the Nation and What’s Ahead

Watch, Read: Top Guard & Reserve Leaders on Meeting the Needs of the Nation and What’s Ahead

March 13, 2022

Heather Penney, senior resident fellow at the Air Force Association’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies hosts Maj. Gen. John P. Healy, deputy to the chief of the Air Force Reserve; Lt. Gen. Michael Loh, director of the Air National Guard; and Maj. Gen. Daryl Bohac, adjutant general of the Nebraska National Guard, for a discussion on “Guard & Reserve: Ready and Willing” at 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.

Heather Penney: Good morning. I’m Heather Penney, senior resident fellow at AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. Welcome to the session of Guard and Reserve: Ready and Willing. I myself served as a proud Guardsman and Reservist. As a matter of fact, Lt. Gen. Loh was my commander during my first combat deployment to Iraq in 2003. And we have logged missions and hours together. We were then, and the Guard and Reserve remain, ready and willing.

Our nation and our Air Force rely on these citizen Airmen. At the end of the Cold War, the nation cut the Air Force in half, but it didn’t slow operations down, so the Guard and Reserves stepped in to fill that gap. Since then, they have transformed into an operational reserve, not a strategic reserve, and they have captured so much of the experienced talent from the active duty. They’ve modernized their fleet with advanced capabilities and ensure that their Airmen are trained and ready. For the last 30 years, the Guard and Reserve have shown just how much the nation depends on its forces. These Airmen stand ready to fill a wide spectrum of roles, from defense support to civil authorities, like COVID response disaster relief and protecting the U.S. Capitol, to operational deployments around the globe. Building partnerships in the INDOPACOM theater or the standing and sacred mission of homeland defense, the Guard and Reserve are there.

Today we’ll have a chance to discuss how the Guard and Reserve are working to meet the needs of our nation in an ever more complex and dangerous global environment, how they partner with the active-duty Air Force, as well as discuss some of the challenges that they face. Please welcome our panelists, Lt. Gen. Michael Loh, director of the Air National Guard; Maj. Gen. John Healy, deputy to the chief of the Air Force Reserve; and Maj. Gen. Daryl Bohac, the adjutant general of the Nebraska National Guard and president of the Adjutants General Association of the United States. Today, we’ll ask them to provide some opening remarks, and then we’ll have a conversation, and at the end, open up to questions. Gen. Loh, let’s start with you.

Lt. Gen. Michael Loh: Hey, Heather. Thanks very much. And yes, it is true, we have logged combat time together. Hey, thanks for putting on this wonderful event. AFA, absolutely wonderful, in a great location, and I really appreciate all the stuff that AFA does on behalf of the Air Force and the Air National Guard. And it is truly a great day to be in the Air National Guard.

The title of this event: Air National Guard and Reserves: Ready and Willing—I love that. I love to talk about our readiness, and I love to talk about our willingness. And so when you look at where we’ve been: Over three decades of continuous mobilizations, but then especially the last two years, the longest mobilizations and the largest in our history since World War II. It’s pretty impressive. On average, over 14,000 Guard Airmen were on duty over these last two years, supporting combatant commanders overseas, defending the homeland and providing support to a broad range of missions, including COVID-19, natural disasters and civil unrest operations. Your National Guard is on mission every day. But this also means that almost 90% of the force is in that reserve capacity. And they’re trained, ready and willing whenever the nation calls.

Just some highlights from this year: 2021 started out lightning fast as your Guard air crews flew nearly 800 sorties, transporting 14,000 Guard Airmen and soldiers and their support equipment for the protection of the Capitol and the inauguration. Throughout 2021, the National Guard mobilized over 12,000 Airmen in support of FEMA, our lead federal agency as we continue to bring the fight to the COVID-19 pandemic. National Guard Airmen and soldiers have put over 14 million shots in the arms of civilians and over 2 million shots in the arms of military members. That’s pretty impressive. The fire season, something that both the Guard and Reserve combined react to, 2021 was the largest fire season in over a half-century. And during that fire season, we activated all eight MAFFS aircraft, six Air National Guard, 2 AFRC. We put 2.5 million gallons, fly 945 sorties on 26 complex fires. Also our mobilization planners processed over 120 mobilization packages last year, providing nearly 9,000 Guard Airman to various combatant commanders around the world. And we were in 85 countries.

Last fall as we withdrew out of Afghanistan, Air National Guard Airmen were among the first U.S. troops into Afghanistan way back in 2001. And, Heather, it was your old unit, the 113th Fighter Wing from the D.C. National Guard, they were the last fighters out of Bagram. Obviously, during that same timeframe, 260 Guard air crew members in the C-17 enterprise from nine different wings and nine different states flew 275 sorties, transporting more than 11,000 passengers and nearly 800 short tons of cargo out of Afghanistan. And this was a true total force effort. We had active-duty Air Force and Reserve air crews, flying Guard aircraft and vice versa. It was a seamless operation. You talk about the mobility side of this operation. We are a total force in that, and it is wonderful. Then, we went to Operation Allies Welcome, and over 1,000 Guard Airmen along with the addition of our reserves and our Active-duty counterparts, setup Operation Allies Welcome. And we just got our last passengers out of Holloman here recently.

Despite working another year of pandemics, and another year of historic levels of mobilizations, your Guard Airmen continued to demonstrate their willingness to serve, and it truly is our Airmen that make this happen. Our retention rates have been over 90% the last three years, and we’ve exceeded our end strength. That’s willingness. And we continue to provide our recruiters and their commanders with the best tools and training to reach today’s young people who want to serve their country. Airmen are exactly ready and willing.

And, Heather, you brought up what keeps me up at night. What are the challenges that we face? So let me address a few of those. How ready and willing are 60-year-old aircraft. So modernization, recapitalization keep me up at night. We’ve been in this two-decadeslong war in Afghanistan and the Middle East. Our focus now shifts to responding to adversaries that are pacing threats. We heard Secretary Kendall talk yesterday and last year at this AFA of his top three priorities: China, China, China. So it’s how we’re going to modernize the force to get after China. And then of course this year, Russia is here also. So we are ready and willing.

Some of the steps we’re taking is the F-35s are fully operational capable in Burlington, Vermont, the first Air National Guard wing to do that. We have conversions going on at Madison, Wisconsin, in Montgomery, Alabama, and Jacksonville, Florida, over the next couple of years. We’re bringing the F-15EX online, both in the FTU, the formal training unit at Klamath Falls and the first operational unit in Portland, Oregon, and then we’re going to stand up more after that. And then, of course, C-130J aircraft arrived this year, brand new ones, into Fort Worth, Texas; Charleston, West Virginia; and Louisville, Kentucky. And then we’re also excited about the 179th in Mansfield, Ohio, converting to a cyber warfare wing. All of this is going on.

However, we do have gaps in readiness. And here’s where I need your help and advocacy. And I’ll just put it to you that way. Um, our weapon system sustainment accounts continually come under pressure. Last year in ’21, we were funded at 87%. In ’22 right now, it’s down to 79%, but we’re still sitting on a CR. So I’m interested to see what happens in Congress as the budget goes through this year. A recent study by the Heritage Foundation talked about how much fighter pilots need to train, and they need 200 hours a year. We did not make that last year. Our fighter pilots across the Air Force, across the total force, are at their lowest levels. And in ’21, we flew all our flying hours; 100% of our flying hours, and we still stopped flying in September, early before the end of the year. That causes readiness gaps. This year, we took another 3.5% reduction in flying hours. Again, I’m waiting on to see what Congress does as we go there. And of course, we have the conversions going on, which take resources. And we also have another 18 states in preconversion status as we go through this. All of those, that bow wave is hitting right now. And all of those are challenges that require resources. And we’re going to get after those gaps.

Modernization, recapitalization, weapon system sustainment and flying hours, all of them require appropriate resourcing. That being said, hey, it’s great to give the Guard the leading edge in innovative missions, OK, and keeping them there. It makes all the sense in the world. When you consider the value that the reserve components, both our National Guard and our Reserve, have and what we bring to the fight. For the Guard, it’s 108,000 Guard Airmen; we provide 30% of the total Air Force’s combat power. With 20% of the aircraft, we conduct 94% of the homeland defense day-to-day mission. And your Air National Guard is across all Air Force mission sets. And we do it all with only 7% of the budget. Hey, we are the foundation for national defense. And so we need your help and advocacy to continue to make us a strong partner in this total force. Thank you, Heather.

Maj. Gen. John Healy: Thanks. Thanks, also. Thanks, Heather. Thanks to the AFA for allowing us to do this total force discussion. Pleasure being on stage with you, sir, pleasure meeting you as well.

Ready, as you said, ready and willing is an easy conversation to have and something that we continue to talk about within the reserves as it pertains to how we tie into the active-duty force. You know, our mission in the reserves is to be combat ready to fly, fight and win. And we prove our readiness and our willingness on a day-to-day basis. Just in the recent, as we go back in time a little bit, just about the time we commenced for the last AFA, Operation Allies Welcome or Refuge had just started. Twenty-four hours after the balloon went up, we had 13 crews volunteer, ready to go. Seventy-two hours, which is what the benchmark is for making sure that we get out the door, we had 80 crews and 36 tails out the door in 72 hours, which is, I mean, quite honestly even Air Mobility Command as we did the hogwash on the mobilization said we could not do without the total force. At the end of the month of August, we ended up executing 37 missions, where we brought Afghans in need out of the country and started to forward-deploying them. Follow on with, Afghan Welcome, 500-plus, not as strong but in partnership with the Guard at Holloman, which just shut down in January, and McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, we had 500-plus folks setting up that tent city ensuring that all those Afghans in need had the proper supplies, had the proper infrastructure there to settle and be welcome in the country. We do that through volunteerism. We do that through voluntary mobilizations as well.

We’ve got folks still supporting COVID, 40-plus MRT folks split between hospitals in California and New York, some on their second deployment right now, ensuring respiratory therapists and vital career fields are out there at the point of need. We’re a ready and willing force. And we do that because we have excellent volunteerism and because we were constantly looking at our capacity, our access and our value, and we’re trying to tell that story.

As Gen. Loh said, the capacity, what we make up, this is a capacity and value story that you heard Gen. Scobee mention before, and you’ll hear me as well, almost 25% of the Air Force for 3% of the budget. So it’s a value proposition to be utilizing the reserves and just about every mission that’s out there for active-duty. Capacity, Air Mobility Command talking about Allied Refuge and Welcome, almost 25% of the RGM force is made up of Air Force Reserve; 62% of the air evac forces are reservists; 46% of the aerial porters … are in the reserves. And in emerging mission sets, the Space Force, we’ve got 1,500 folks working in space missions at 11 units around the world, and it makes up almost 25% of the Space Force mission right now too. And we’re able to do it because of the value that we provide.

But the capacity is there as well. I’m sorry, the access is there as well, constantly reminding pundants at times that we are an accessible force. You just need to understand the levers to pull, and you’ll get 24-, 72-hour response times. Most specifically within the last two weeks with the Russian incursion into Ukraine, the Russian invasion. I mean, we had 419th Fighter Wing’s F-35s out of Hill Air Force Base flying side by side with their TF brethren over to Eastern Europe; the 315th out of Charleston taking the the bulk of the 82nd Airborne over to make sure that we have that credible deterrent force for our NATO partners; 934th out of Minneapolis, beautiful tail flash on CNN on Thursday morning after the invasion started. I think they’re a two-ship follow with a Savannah 130 unit making sure that we’ve got maintenance and infrastructure there for intra-theater airlift, supporting EUCOM and our NATO partners as well.

The value, as I said, 3% of the cost for the life-cycle cost, so from the first time we get a reservist all the way through when they retire, 28 cents on the dollar for what it costs to put that same life-cycle on an Active-duty service member, so the value’s there. We’re looking long when we look at our value proposition. We got to find a way to break the code in active duty to make sure that short-term value is seen as well when we’re talking about force structure and so forth.

It doesn’t necessarily keep me up at night, but what is constantly on my mind is maintaining the relevance of our fleet. As I believe, as the secretary said yesterday, they have an aging fleet of 30 years old. Ours is a touch more mature: 33 years is our average age; 44% of our aircraft are over what their lifetime expectancy was. So we need to ensure that we’re maintaining relevance, so we’re relevant to the COCOMs in all the fights. So that we’re relevant in the near-peer and the potential-peer competition. You know, we’re doing that through NGREA. We’ve had some hiccups in the last couple of years with NGREA being pulled and put back. CRs certainly damage our ability to get that NGREA and get after making sure that we have the proper updates to our legacy systems. But in addition to that, we’re making sure that we recap where we need to.

So KC-46s out of Seymour Johnson, started in 2019, replacing some of the aging 135s. They’re a little bit old. We’ve got nine out of the 12 delivered right now. Mod 5 was just announced about a month ago, so March Air Reserve Base is going to be getting the next tranche of 12 KC-46 is in lieu of their 135s. MH-139s as we see our oldest C-130H2s go out the door at Maxwell are coming in to take over the Global Strike transportation role as well as D.C. So we’re looking at standing up a schoolhouse, the MH-139 as well. And then we’re extremely excited about, in 2024 when we get the first delivery of F-35s down at Carswell, excited to have a unit equipped, F-35 unit, within the reserves. Currently pouring money into a $15 million on the apron to ensure that we have the proper infrastructure to support when those aircraft do arrive.

Our focus has always been on maintaining a ready force. And that ties in perfectly with a willing force as well. It’s all about making sure that we’re at the leading edge, that we can fight side by side with our active-duty and our Guard brethren in any kind of strategic competition that might be on the road ahead, while maintaining mission modernization and realistic training to meet our COCOM needs. And we’re looking forward to the future as well.

Maj. Gen. Daryl Bohac: Yeah, good morning, everybody. It’s really good to be here with Gen. Loh and Gen. Healey. And, Heather, thanks to you and the AFA for the invitation. It’s a good morning to be here. It’s a good day, like you say, sir, it’s a good day to be in Air National Guard.

You know, I would go back to some of Gen. Loh’s comments and so, I want to amplify on those. So when you think about the National Guard’s response, and not just the Air National Guard, but the Army National Guard’s as well, their response to protect democracy following the events following sixth January, it was pretty amazing. And there were doubters that we could do this, which was to put 25,000 boots on the ground in our nation’s capital within a week, and it was done. It was done because the Air National Guard rallied to that on a moment’s notice literally many of the things that Gen. Healy talked about in terms of response timeframes and not just 72 hours, but 24 hours or less. And 14,000 of those bodies were delivered by Air National Guard aircraft into the nation’s capital. And so, to put that into context, to think about that a little bit, is to think about one of the largest Air Combat Command wings, which is the 55th Wing at Offutt Air Force Base, taking that wing and moving it five times in a week. OK, so I don’t know how many other military forces across the world could do that. And that was a true partnership. So that was a pretty amazing thing, and then get them all back home safely too. So that always counts. I think that we did that.

We did COVID. We did some missions that we were never expecting to be in, in the National Guard in the Air National Guard, like being in schools, driving buses, things that really quite frankly, this doesn’t keep me up at night, but I think we have to have a candid conversation about, ‘Are those the right things for us to be doing? Do they enhance readiness? Do they? Do they create willingness and do they create retention?’ And I think that’s something that we are looking at in the National Guard is that national enterprise about saying, ‘Hey, you want us to do X? Does that help us with our mission essential tasks? Does that help us with our readiness?’ And if it does, then that probably makes sense. We have to be cautious about becoming the easy button across the nation to turn to the National Guard time and time again. And yet, our Airmen and our soldiers, you know, they raise their hands and go forward. So it’s a pretty amazing thing to watch.

The other part of that, though, is the relationships, and it’s the relationships with our employers and our communities and our families. Those relationships enable us to do what we do for our nation and for our states, whether it’s the Air Force Reserve, the Air National Guard. Without those relationships, without care and nurturing of those, we do put the mission at risk if we’re not thinking, being thoughtful about that. And so those kinds of things matter day in and day out in, particularly in the reserve components to be able to be effective.

I share the concern about the aging fleet. So, you know, we fly the KC-135 in Nebraska at the 155th. The planes on the ramp there were built in 1957 through 1963. They’re projected to fly sometime into the 2040s, and there’s been some chatter at times about going to the 2050s. Now, that is a testament to the engineering of that aircraft, I suppose. But I’d asked you if you’re driving a 1957 model car to work every day. And I’m guessing probably not. So fleet modernization, and how does the Air National Guard be a part of that, and how is the total Air Force thinking about that, I think is something that the adjutants general do think about and are concerned about. It has to be, you know, the issue of relevance and being a part of the total force means that you’re part of the total forces that go forward.

And as Gen. Brown talks about, you know, accelerate, change or lose. Well, the National Guard and across the states need to be in that mix. And part of that is retaining talent, retaining capacity and talent when there are other budgetary pressures and money shifts to other things, where can you put the talent? Where can you put the capacity? Well, it’s in the reserve components for the same reasons that Gen. Healy talked about. So in terms of cost, so 28 cents, you know, 28% of the cost for the life-cycle of an Airman. That’s a pretty amazing value to Americans, the United States Air Force.”

Bohac: The other thing that I think that we bring to the fight, and it’s really being amplified right now given the events over in Russia and Ukraine, is the State Partnership Program. So the Air National Guard, Army National Guard, this is a program that started in 1993 that doesn’t really get a lot of visibility except to the combatant commanders who would take more if we could afford to give if we had the money, the funding to do it. In 1993, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Lt. Gen. John Conway said, ‘Let’s partner state National Guards with former Warsaw Pact nations that want to turn away from communism and turn toward democracy and become NATO partners.’ And that’s where it’s expanded—far beyond that. But here’s some of the original partnerships: Ukraine with California, Poland with Illinois, Estonia with Maryland, Latvia with Michigan, Lithuania with Pennsylvania, and Nebraska and Texas with the Czech Republic. Those are some of the original nations that partnered with National Guard states. All of those became, with the exception Ukraine, became NATO partners. And they are in the fight with our support today. And so those relationships matter a great deal in terms of our nation’s security interest and our partnerships and with our allies and partners. So I lift that up today where there’s 85 partners, 93 nations that the Air National Guard’s involved in through the State Partnership Program. So when you talk about global reach, global engagement, we’re definitely there day in and day out in that program.

And then I’ll just come back to the issue of relationships. The relationship with the active component with the Air Force Reserve with our joint force partners across the world is what’s going to make a difference. And it’s what, in my view, is going to enable us to move beyond this point where we’re at in the world today and move through this budgetary situation that we’re facing, not just in the Air Force, but in DOD, writ large and be successful, be successful together. If we go together, and we can leverage the power of the reserve components, and in particular, I would say the adjutants general and their leverage with Congress, and, you know, go together on that issue, I have no doubt that we can join in. No doubt that we’ll be successful as we move into the future. Thanks.

Penney: Thank you, gentlemen. So a consistent drumbeat that we’ve had over the last year and a half has been accelerate, change or lose. We know that Gen. Brown has sort of updated those action orders. How has it shaped your strategic direction within the Guard and Reserve? Gen. Loh, let’s start with you.

Loh: Sure. On this particular topic, I would say it goes back to both Airmen and readiness. Those are the two priorities that I focus on. And I’ll just go through them. On the Airmen side, it’s bringing things to the unit like times where I can take decisions made at the STOB when the secretary of defense says, ‘Hey, I need this capability out there, and I can put orders in hand in three days,’ which makes sure that both Guard and Reservists get their orders in a timely manner to get everything going on there. It’s things like implementing the MOMS Act and making sure that we can go out there and do that. It was passed a couple of years ago; we keep pushing that. It is going to be duty status reform and how we get down from the multitude of authorities and pay statuses down to a core four.

And so it’s things like that that we continue to push. On the bureaucracy side, it’s flattening the organization, over-communicating, developing those things and institutionalizing some of the things that we learned during COVID, which is you don’t have to be in a place to actually make an impact. Permanent telework, things like those things.

On the competition side, out of the counter-VEO fight in CENTCOM, we have a group of Airmen that have known nothing other than going to CENTCOM. And that’s all they showed up to work to prepare to do, because that’s what it was. Now, how do I get them out of that and think about China, China, China. And then finally, on the design side, we were, we being the United States Air Force, were placed in a wicked problem set. We have to recapitalize nuclear capability and modernization, as well as recapitalize conventional capable modernization across all three components: active, Guard and Reserve. That is a wicked problem set in today’s budgetary environment, but we need to do it. So now, how can I do that design? How can I leverage everything that we do in things like our combined AETC test center to get after some of the modernization, some of the things that we can do to get into a South China Sea scenario with our legacy platforms, like the 135, that’s gonna be sticking around. So stood up a test bed in Salt Lake City, OK, yeah, cutting the ribbon on that bringing that in, because that 135 is going to be there. So how do I keep that relevant? That’s just one on our old platforms, obviously, on the other one, that’s there.

Healy: Now, from the Reserve perspective, the modification, one that just came out with the chief’s action orders, they still, we still nest nicely in terms of our lines of effort within the reserves. But the way we’re getting after, I mean, Airmen as we maintain for Airmen, you know, we put 45, full-time first sergeants into our units in the last year, 10 full-time chaplains, and we converted 13 of our command chiefs into full-time command chiefs, which really provide that, you know, that face on the ground in order to make sure that our Airmen are being taken care of.

With bureaucracy, it’s a challenging one, there’s a lot of, at the Pentagon, there’s a lot of very prescriptive ideas right now in terms of collaboration tools in order to decrease the timelines for staffing. But what we’re looking at from the Reserve perspective is within and our own reform the organization in terms of how we can break down these silos of data that we’ve collected in our arcane systems into a shared data environment, which allows us to use modern tools, Power BI, etc., to come up with quick data-fed, accurate ideas and actually, in some cases, predictive analytics. So we can not only make a decision, but we can probably see what the second third order effects that we might not have seen before as a result of that decision.

With competition, I think I see A.J. in the audience right there, so a shout out. So he’s one of the guys leading up what we have called a Reserve hypersonics team, which are IMA, so these are pinch hitters. It’s a bullpen of half a dozen to 15 hypersonic experts. I mean, wicked smart people who are essentially on loan where needed, whether it’s thermodynamics of a glide vehicle needs a couple extra people to come work on it. I’m not qualified to do that. So that’s how we’re contributing to the competition. When it gets into the design phase as well, there’s, you know, as you heard, the secretary mention, where my mind focuses is on the SECAF7 and the operational imperatives. And how do we tie into that? So when we’re talking about space, I think it’s obvious. You know, we’re going to be moving forward in space as a growth industry and mission set for the reserves. ABMS, likewise, we’re a little bit underrepresented in command and control but certainly something that I think is a growth industry where the reserves can have a very good institutional role.

And when we talk about the NGAD, or the B21, you know, I fully expect and hope that we’re going to be tied in at the end the onset in terms of associations as those systems of systems come online, and we help develop those tactics and procedures associated with it. A war footing, you know, I think the last week shows that we’re already prepared to be standing on a war footing. Basing’s a little bit more challenging since we don’t have any bases overseas. Moving targets at scale is more of a, not a tactical issue, because it’s from an operational perspective, but we certainly see ourselves working toward the correct force balance within the reserves as part of that design. Specific in support of the seven operational imperatives.

Penney: “Gen. Loh, I’m glad that you had mentioned the test center, because that’s one key way that the Guard goes fast and accelerates change. And I appreciate those examples. But how has the instability of an NGREA funding impacted the ability of the Guard and Reserve to innovate rapidly and then integrate those onto their elderly fleet.

Loh: CR and also the NGREA funding that got pulled in 2020 means quite frankly, we’re out of money at the end of this year, which puts a lot of programs at risk, a lot of that innovation. We get the programs, as the secretary says, across that valley of death, OK? And we do; we partner with the active duty because we have to. It’s through the acquisition community. The PEOs out there are wonderful to us in this enterprise. The lead MAJCOMS, Air Combat Command, AFSOC, Air Mobility Command, all OK, sign off on these things. So they’re all looking at doing that. And now we’re able to bring this to fruition. And so, right now, we need a budget. I’m just gonna say it that way. And then we need a pretty high number on NGREA. Because two years ago, we lost out on that. And so we are running out of money pretty quickly.

Healy: I mean, likewise, purchasing power and purchasing time, we were impacted the same way with the 2020 NGREA pullback. And likewise, the longer we go without a budget, with the uncertainty of what we’re going to be able to spend it on, the less time that we’re going to have to be able to execute, and it’s critical that we do this because of the fleet, the age of the fleet.

Penney: Absolutely. And I believe from Mitchell Institute’s perspective, that it’s unnecessary that we take passthrough out of the Air Force budget. Passthrough is funding that does not go to the Air Force, does not go to the Guard and Reserve. Nearly 40% of the Air Force’s procurement dollars go to entities that are not Air Force. If we don’t take passthrough funding out of the Air Force budget, we’ll never have true insight and oversight into these really challenging procurement problems and the necessary monetization and recapitalization that the entire total force faces. Gen. Bohac, let’s turn to you because you really are the man in the field. And what I’d like to know from you is as an adjutant general, how is your state acting to implement, accelerate, change or lose? And how are these funding issues affecting you?

Bohac: Yeah, I think, for us in Nebraska, and I see this across the states, it’s about leadership creating time and space for innovation to occur so that we can do things to accelerate change. That’s a challenge in the Reserve component sometimes, because you have a limited amount of time with about 70% of your force, which is often two days a week and the so called 15 days a year. Now, I haven’t met an Airman that’s been doing only two days a month and 15 days a year in a long time. In fact, probably can’t remember the last one I met. And so it’s creating time and space against all other requirements to make room that, I think, you know, if we can get out of the way of our Airmen sometimes, we can see amazing results. And it’s giving them permission to innovate, permission to go try things and to fail, and to fail. But to fail forward. So I think that’s, you know, at the local level, that’s … how we pursue it. And then taking advantage of community resources.

So, for example, at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln has an innovation center that’s five minutes from our wing, so we can partner with them, go to their center, leverage their technologies, whether it be 3D printers, and their expertise to help our Airmen. That helps the Air Force, that helps Air National Guard, in my opinion. The funding challenges for us is the stop and go all the time, right? And it’s what Gen. Loh talked about and what Gen. Healey talked about. Whether it’s NGREA or any other funding line in the United States Air Force and the flow into the budgets into the state, when you can’t predict what you’re going to be able to train your Airmen with, because you don’t have the resource, that degrades readiness, and that degrades willingness at the same time.

Healy: I piggyback on that. You know, one of the challenges of COVID as when we started the COVID back in ‘21 and executing under a CR as well, was you know, it’s typically just a math problem to figure out what the 721 account. For us, that’s what, you know, how many drill weekends is … each reservist going to do, and how many annual tours is each reservist going to do? It seems relatively straightforward. It’s math. We’ve got 10 reservists, and they get 47. So it’s 47, or 407. It’s not that simple because there’s a factor that goes into it that says OK, 12% are going to be deployed and constructively credit and so forth.

So when we went into the ’21 execution year with a CR, we were thinking, OK, same same. COVID through a wicked knuckle curve at us and said, ‘Hey, by the way, if you have the opportunity to do that drill weekend at home and actually not come in and do your IDTs at home, and by the way, we’re not deploying you, would you be willing to do it?’ And everybody’s, ‘yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.’ So the obligations went through the roof. And it created uncertainty and created a lot of consternation within the command to be able to manage that. So we’ve ended up having to turn around, and the first thing we did this year going into the CR was to ensure that there was predictability for the basic blocking and tackling of our forces. AFSC training, we made sure that there was no risk whatsoever in terms of that account to make sure that all the drill weekends and all the annual tour was funded upfront. And then we started looking at risk elsewhere, just to make sure that our Airmen could get that training that they needed.

Bohac: Yeah, here’s a real pragmatic impact of that whole CR issue is don’t ever schedule your drill on the first weekend in October, because you’re likely going to cancel.

Healy: I learned that as a major.

Penney: Gen. Bohac, as the president of the Adjutants General Association of the U.S., you represent the interests of 52 adjutants general: What’s their top three priorities as we go into this year?

Bohac: Yeah, there’s 54 of us, actually. So they’re 50 states, three territories and the commanding general of the D.C. Guard. But yeah, the top three things for us are duty status reform. We need to get that done. It needs to go to Congress. It needs to happen to simplify everybody’s life. It reduces the pundants’ discussion about access, I think, when we get this passed, and it provides an equity of benefits for Airmen, regardless of the component they’re coming from performing the same mission. So for example, tankers to Guam to support Pacific Tanker Task Force, an Air Guard Airman sitting next to an active-component Airman may be getting the same base pay, but they’re not getting the same benefits and entitlements. That’s wrong. And so that’s why, that’s an example of why duty status reform matters. And it matters to all of us.

The second one is Space National Guard. That issue has gotten really convoluted by analytics that weren’t fully informed. Quite frankly, where cost estimates to convert 1,000 Airmen from the Air National Guard to the Space Force to become Guardians was just simply not accurate. It’s probably about $300,000 to actually do that, to lift and shift and move. And it’s a zero-sum game in terms of end strength. In other words, those authorizations go from the Guard to the Space Force, they become Airmen to Guardians. And most importantly, though, I think, is the capability that if that doesn’t happen, the Space National Guard, the capability, the U.S. Space Force and Gen. Raymond is going to lose. Currently, today, the Space Control Squadron of the Colorado Air National Guard is on Title 10 activation supporting the nation’s work, supporting our NATO allies. That goes away if there’s not a Space National Guard because those 1,000 Airmen will stay with the Air National Guard. That’s the risk to the nation, not just to that Airman. Risk to nation, risk to capability. And it probably takes, I don’t know, five to seven years to grow that talent and expertise back, particularly in the noncommissioned corps.

Penney: Well, thank you. In terms of ready and willing, one thing that we haven’t touched upon, but I’ll briefly suggest, is that Guard and the Reserve have the most multicapable Airmen out of the entire total force. Gen. Loh, you’ll recall, we had a crew chief that as a civilian worked for the Bama Power and Light, and when we were building up our base, he actually stepped in and helped us build our electrical infrastructure.

Healy: So it’s worth noting, too, that it’s not part of the curriculum, but multicapable loadmasters delivered babies as well, so.

Penney: True. Well, thank you to all of our panelists for being here today. In lieu of speaker gifts, this year, AFA made a donation to enable additional Airmen and Guardians to attend the poolside barbecue last night. Our final set of panel sessions begins at 10:35, so please check your programs for the schedule. And don’t miss the final award ceremony and Spark Tank event starting at 11:20. Finally, for more insights on issues surrounding air power, stay in touch with the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Power at mitchellaerospacepower.org. And make sure you subscribe to our mailing list to receive updates on our latest reports, events and podcasts. Thank you for joining us for today’s panel. And from all of us at the Air Force Association and the Mitchell Institute, ave a great aerospace power kind of day. Enjoy the rest of the show.

Watch, Read: Electromagnetic Spectrum Warfare

Watch, Read: Electromagnetic Spectrum Warfare

March 13, 2022

Col. William E. Young Jr., commander of the 350th Spectrum Warfare Wing, moderates a discussion with Paul Turner, the principal product development engineer with AT&T Public Sector; Lisa Aucoin, the vice president of F-35 solutions for BAE Systems; and Andy Lowery, chief product officer for Epirus on electromagnetic spectrum, or EMS, warfare 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.

Col. William E. Young Jr., commander of the 350th Spectrum Warfare Wing: Good morning. I hope that everyone enjoyed that coffee break. And welcome to our session on electromagnetic spectrum warfare. I’m Col. William “Dollar” Young, the commander of the 350th Spectrum Warfare Wing. And I will be your moderator for this morning’s panel. Things are moving fast in the EMS space. In the last year, the Air Force has stood up the 350th Electromagnetic Spectrum Warfare Wing to truly get after these challenges from an organizational perspective, but it’s a whole-of-nation challenge, which is why I’m honored to be joined by our distinguished panelists on the stage this morning.

Members of Congress have called for a military head of EMS warfare and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin recently approved an EMS superiority strategy for the Defense Department. It’s becoming clear that the U.S. military faces an all too familiar choice: accelerate change or lose. On our panel today, we have Paul Turner, principal product development engineer for AT&T Mobility and Access Architecture; Lisa Aucoin, Vice President of F-35 solutions, BAE Systems; Andy Lowery, Chief Product Officer at Epirus. I’ll have each of you introduce yourself and give us a few opening remarks. 

Andy Lowery, chief product officer for Epirus: Thank you, Colonel, and thank you to the AFA for hosting us here in this wonderful event. And great time, it’s my first event, but I’m having a really fantastic time at it. So first, just a little bit about me, I’ve been in spectrum warfare and electromagnetics for the majority of my career at MACOM for a long while, then followed by Raytheon, as the chief engineer. There, I met a man named Dr. Bo Marr, who had an idea about a better way of building a defense company that could pace technology with or could sell technology at the pace that the DOD needed in order to kind of keep up with the rapid growth of what we’re seeing. So about a year ago, I joined Bo on this quest at Epirus. And I look forward to the panel today. Thank you, Colonel. 

Lisa Aucoin, vice president of F-35 solutions for BAE Systems: Thank you, Colonel. And thank you to all the audience and to the AFA for hosting this as well. A little bit about me, I’m the vice president of F-35 Solutions. I have about 35 years of experience, ranging in engineering, operations and micro electronics. I can talk really loud … 

Event coordinator: Because of the stream, we have to make sure that it’s amplified out over the stream. My apologies. 

Aucoin: Yeah, OK. Yeah, we’ll continue with this one. OK. All right. And so, engineering operations, and program management, actually really started my career doing device design, which is kind of foundational to all of the high speed electronics that are really important in the electromagnetic warfare spectrum. So we’ll talk a little bit about that later. Recently, I was the vice president of engineering at our electronics system sector, leading a group of about 5,000 engineers and I’m really excited today to tell you about what we’re doing to advance electronic warfare at BAE Systems. 

Paul Turner, the principal product development engineer with AT&T Public Sector: Thank you. I’m Paul Turner, I go by Kip. I’ve been with AT&T, Southwestern Bell and AT&T, a little over 48 years in roles ranging from field maintenance to supervisory roles now with the wireless access and architecture team of AT&T Labs. Recently within the past year have been assigned to help our DOD public sector teams, make sure that we’re using the latest technology, RF technology. 

Young: All right, so as you can see, we are really in for a treat with such a distinguished panel this morning. So let’s go ahead and kick it off. Paul, let’s start with you. How was the DOD shift to electromagnetic spectrum operations, or EMSO, changing our approach to electromagnetic warfare, and how should telecommunications providers plan and prepare? 

Turner: Great question. As we were discussing these questions, it should be no surprise that most telecommunications providers really don’t think much about electronic warfare. We have started. But we do things to ourselves. For instance, an AT&T site may have up to eight different spectrum bands, ranging from 700 megahertz, all the way up to 39 gigahertz, operating at fairly high powers. We create passive intermodulation when things in front of the antenna passively generate frequencies that come back to us and actually jam our signals. So we developed mitigation solutions for those working with our suppliers. And we’re anxious to test those solutions against real EW. 

Young: That’s actually very interesting, especially given the challenge of putting together various capabilities that have to operate and share the electromagnetic spectrum. So if I could pull on that thread just a little bit, how could the DOD’s approach to electromagnetic protection, or EP, change to ensure that this important aspect of EW is appropriately resourced and coordinated across programs? 

Turner: Well, I feel like the DOD could help to ensure that research continues, encourages the telecom industry, participation from both providers and suppliers to harden their systems against potential EW. Consider things like multifunction research, such as equipment that can perform both communication and detection development. 

Young: OK, and then if I could just one more, because one of the constant challenges we face is ensuring that the various disciplines that are required to execute this set of highly complex operations doesn’t fratricide, kill each other and getting each other’s way. So if I can just get your thoughts on how should the DOD change its approach to the relationship between EW, cybersecurity, and network requirements to achieve better results. 

Turner: It appears the DOD is already changing its approach via the U.S. Cyber Command. However, as previously mentioned, I believe they should encourage ongoing research, development and foster coordination with wireless service providers, suppliers in the telecom industry to mitigate and prevent EW. I also think, and this is not something that’s talked about a lot, should encourage alternative hardened solutions to our synchronization systems. We use, all wireless providers use GPS, and it’s vulnerable at some, some stages. With 5G systems, especially depend on synchronization when you’re talking TDD, time division domain modulation to avoid interference. If we lost that synchronization, you could lose entire networks. 

Young: OK. So let’s shift gears a little bit. Lisa, I’d like build upon your perspective and your experience building fighter EW over a distinguished career. And my first question is, what’s the role of a modern EW system on a fighter aircraft? 

Aucoin: Thank you Col. Young for asking that question. So, you know, I look at this as the modern electronic warfare has three really principal duties. First and foremost is to provide 360-degree situational awareness in real time to the battlespace for the pilot. In addition to that, we also have to provision for threat warning and countermeasures. By passively geo-identifying, or actually by passively, by detecting, geo-locating, and identifying threat emitters in a highly dense signal environment, which gets even better with all these 5G networks, right? We allow the pilot to be able to figure out whether or not he or she should engage or evade from the target, right.

I will further say that today’s modern EW systems are actually an integral part of the overall weapon system on the fighter aircraft. And so we allow the pilot to focus on that mission to either identify and evade, identify threats without interference to the radar, or the radar warning receiver. And that’s a really important capability in these complex systems. And then survivability, we really need to continue to employ RF and IR countermeasures to ensure the survivability of the pilot and his or her team.  

Young: Let’s draw a little bit more on the contested nature of the conflict in the electromagnetic spectrum. Can you can you tell us how are the potential adversaries’ efforts to challenge EMS superiority impacting EW modernization? 

Aucoin: Also, again, a great question, I think it’s of no surprise to the audience here that our adversaries have gained on us. Right, they haven’t been standing still when it comes to exploiting the electromagnetic spectrum as well. So relying on stealth, as we have in the past, is no longer a sole option. Right? And we complicate this picture, because the density of signals out there is getting greater and greater. And the commercial space is contributing to that. This makes the job of electronic warfare a lot more difficult. And so we really have to apply new techniques to help us identify those threats.

And, you know, I think one of the key pieces here is employing the entire spectrum, not only RF, but IR, to kind of branch that range of frequencies, to enable us to detect more threats in real time. Innovations in hardware and software that provide greater instantaneous bandwidth, improved emitter identification, greater sensitivity to the radar and high-speed scanning are key technologies that are imperative for us to keep ahead of the threat. These new techniques will evolve as the threat evolves, and we have to go faster than our adversaries. 

Young: All right. And just one more if I might, the F-35, I believe is an exemplar of a complex system. What are a few emerging key system attributes that are required to stay ahead of the threat? 

Aucoin: So thank you for that question. So I have a few of those that I think are really important, right? At BAE, we actually have a saying in our EW world, which is, speed is life. When it’s time to survive, you have to be faster than our adversary. So you need to adapt quickly. And how are we doing that at BAE Systems? One of that is to develop a common hardware platform that supports third-party software so that whoever has the best idea for countering a threat emitter in, in battlespace can do that. It reduces our cycle time so that we don’t have to re-invent and build new boxes every single time we need to upgrade our electronic warfare capability.

It also improves our sustainability. So the maintainers out there are able to switch LRUs very quickly if a downed aircraft is in a state of battle with another LRU out of another aircraft, or even potentially, in the future, another fighter jet. The other thing we need to do is to be very agile. So there are ways that we can non-kinetically confuse the enemy using advanced cyber techniques and spectrum denial that confuse our enemies that we can evade safely. I think one of the key things is that the future of electronic warfare is really about a low latency optimized to process a lot of data at a very high volume with … imperceptible delay. So, on target. 

Young: All right, thank you very much. Andy, let’s shift gears and move on to you. You’ve been in the EW space for two decades now. Can you tell us a little bit, tell us more about Epirus, your journey to the company and what do you see as the most pressing capability gaps in DOD’s approach to EMS capabilities? 

Lowery: OK, thank you, Colonel. Yeah, first of all, I kind of gave my background in the opening. So I’m still that same guy. So you can rewind if you didn’t see that. Anyways, I think the more pressing question we spoke about when we met not too long ago, around gaps in the DOD. And Lisa, you were just kind of referring to, you said a very special word. You said agile. And I think everyone in electromagnetic warfare spectrum warfare knows that it’s a cat and mouse game. So one of my jobs along the way was the next-generation jammer chief engineer. I’m the one that bid that to NAVAIR a number of years ago. But what I learned while doing chief engineering of that system is that the adversary is always getting better. And by trying to procure new systems all the time, new hardware all the time, and single functionality, isn’t working.

So what we’re looking for at Epirus and what we’re working towards at Epirus is multi-function, software-defined systems. Right? So what’s key about that is that I can take a system like our flagship product, Leonidas, which is a directed energy weapons system, that’s designed primarily to go after, counter drones, all groups, all types, commercial off the shelf, and even militarized, hardened ones. It’s designed to go against those types of drones. But we made the system completely software-defined, so that as the threats evolve, we can evolve. Let’s say a new threat emerges that’s not a drone, it’s another piece of electronics; our system can be updated with apps or missionware, as we like to call it, I’m learning Colonel, you teach me, and we can do that on the fly. So that means a warfighter has a threat they haven’t seen before we identify it, we study it, we send out to the field real time over the air updates. And now that threat can be taken care of.

I think you know, in general, that type of approach to upgrading systems and such will help with keeping pace with—there’ll always be bureaucracy in DOD. And I think by going to software defined systems, primarily software0defined systems will help keep pace with the pace of technology with DOD. 

Young: All right, so I want to pick it that just a little bit because what you’re describing sounds amazing. But many people might say, “Well, Andy, that’s just science fiction. What makes you think that you can in very near term, be able to deliver that capability for the warfighter?’

Lowery: Whoa, that’s a great question, too. So yeah, my last company actually, I founded, I called it Realware, and I use the word Realware because I had gotten sick and tired as the chief engineer of looking at vaporware. Have you all seen some of that? I haven’t, I’ve never seen vaporware. I’ve seen some PowerPoint charts that describe it. But I haven’t seen the systems. So at Realware I always decided to advertise behind where I’ve advanced to in my systems, in my readiness. And that’s the same culture we have at Epirus. We don’t talk about things that are not ready to feel. And a lot of these things sound like science fiction, but they are science fact. And in the consumer world, they’re moving at a pace to create that science fiction into science fact every day. And that’s, you know, going back to the word agile, I mean, that’s the definition of Silicon Valley, is agile.

So at Epirus, what we’ve done is blended Silicon Valley Tech, Silicon Valley folks that come from that field, the consumer commercial field, with solid aerospace and defense executives with the aerospace approach. And by blending those two models, we think that we can continue to define, build, I’m sorry, software-defined systems that are answering the needs of the warfighter today, and then being able to evolve into the warfighters needs tomorrow. 

Young: All right, well, I think everyone in the room would recognize and acknowledge the fact that within DOD, we have a bit of a challenge in terms of procurement and acquisition. So Andy I’m going to come back to you for one more, and I’d like to get your thoughts on how can DOD procurement processes and timelines better match the rapid pace of innovation we are seeing from companies like Epirus to ensure our warfighters are equipped with technologies to counter emerging threats.

Lowery: Well, that question’s like almost as hard as the meaning of life, I think, so. So, right. So on our side efforts, that’s what our mission is, is to be there, be that partner with DOD in rapid advancement and rapid fielding of new capabilities. However, just truth be told, it’s not totally easy to do. And it’s not totally easy. But working in conjunction with different groups like DIU, defense, defense innovation unit, or RCCTO, there are methods being done nowadays to help with the advancement of, the maturation of the product, and the competition of the product. So I think doubling down and building awareness on what’s available to the various military commanders and what types of pots of money that they may have access to that they don’t know that they have access to, I think that might be a good way to wedge sort of the ability for DOD to keep up with the pace of technology. And that’s really the ultimate threat is, we have the engineers to keep pace in America. Do we have the right systems and processes to allow us to keep pace? I guess that’s what we’re hoping for. 

Young: So you’re saying there’s a chance?

Lowery: There’s a chance.

Young: All right. Well, ladies and gentlemen, at this time, what we’re going to do is we’re going to open this up to your questions. And so we have a mic prepared at the center of the room. And what I would ask if you’ll please come to the mic, and identify yourself and state your question, please, and we’re looking for the really, really hard questions for this panel.

Yes, please, if you’ll come to the mic. And for those of you that are thinking of your questions, if you’d like to make your way and then we’ll just form a line, and then we’ll just go question after question. 

Question: I guess is directed at Mr. Lowery or the whole panel. You talked about doing electromagnetic pulses as a defense weapon? What about offensive laser technology? Have you looked into that? Or anybody working on that at this time? 

Lowery: Oh, thank you. Great question. So just to repeat, the question is, what about laser technology? OK, laser technology is spectrum, it’s just way high up in the frequencies. And as you get high in frequencies, you have other side effects. Everything’s a pro and a con, a laser can provide very destructive energy with missiles, to missiles, to drones, to that sort of thing. But it continues to go on and on and on beyond the actual target that it’s implemented on. So the actual, you know, sort of the science behind that is a little tricky, and you need to be extremely safe with your keepout and all that.

The other thing about lasers is they’re not very efficient. So how I won, how we won at Raytheon, next-generation jammer, was focusing on end-to-end system efficiency. Because if you make an inefficient system, you’ll need a lot of cooling and a lot of power, which equates to a lot of weight in order to power the system and make this system feasible. What we’ve done is we’ve exercised, not a new concept, but maybe a new concept in this particular area, where we’ve created a microwave-phased array out of gallium nitride. And Lisa used to run the Andover fab and knows how great gallium nitride is when it comes to solid state. And versus some approach with high powered microwave will do a single channel, maybe a TWT or klystron or something like that. And it will all flow through there, very high power, but due to the single channel, there’s limitations, and there’s drawbacks and side effects. Whereas in a phased array, you have a distributed amplifier front, so each amplifier is less power. But as you phase it up in front of the array, it allows you to get greater and greater powers, but also have the flexibility of electronic steering, the flexibility of complete wave control polarization, wavelength, frequency, all sorts of things. So when we talk cat and mouse, high-powered microwave system, that single channel is sort of a one-trick pony. A laser is a one-trick pony, a software defined phased array system that has an intelligent front end with embedded ML and AI, which is what Epirus’s real claim to fame is, is our smart power, that does the work of that phased array to get those powers and energies to where we need it. That’s sort of where I think the warfighter needs. That’s the type of system the warfighter needs. So thank you. 

Aucoin: Yeah, I’ll just I want to add to that. Just a quick, quick thing. What you said about high power microwaves, advances in that as a use in the electromagnetic spectrum is really important. But I will say that at BAE Systems, we’ve been doing laser warning on rotary aircraft for a long time. And so the challenges around swap and efficiency are real, but they’re known. And so it’s really an engineering problem to understand how you put the right and appropriate laser, and what the function you want that laser to do, whether it’s, you know, directed energy, or whether it’s laser warning, to protect the pilot in the aircraft. 

Question: I’d actually kind of like to piggyback on your answer to the last question. And that that’s when you start talking about these advanced systems that both have really intricate micro electronic hardware, you mentioned, again, I’ll do all our front end, as well as the software defined on top of it. How do you in a company, or in a customer, manage both the software community and the hardware community, which tend to work in different buildings and different career paths and define themselves as one or the other? And how do you integrate that? And can a company do one and not the other? Are there advantages to having both? 

Lowery: That’s a great question. And you know, depending on the company size and scale, and how they’re organized, I think there are different answers. So you know, I would turn over to AT&T and BAE for the larger company answer. Epirus is a startup, it has about 200 employees, and we view ourselves as Skunkworks. I mean, the modern 21st century Skunkworks. And so, we know, we don’t cohabitate like they did up and out there in the desert, but we do kind of live drink, breathe together, we’re kind of a community. And I think that integration, in what I’d call an appliance model, is key. At some point, the software gets down to an embedded level, and it’s talking to chips and hardware. And so at some point, there’s an interface between software and hardware. Our systems largely rely on embedded software in order to do the smart power, the arbitrary waveform generation and all of that. So it’s a coupling that actually makes a lot of sense. When you get into the more abstracted layers, the higher over the operating system layers, we have a separate group that we, you know, basically have good interface meetings with, with the embedded system group. And that’s how we arrange it. At Raytheon, it wasn’t too different, but just a much larger scale. 

Turner: Well, within our group in AT&T, one way that we approach it, we have both software roadmap engineers, and we have hardware roadmap engineers. They work with the same supplier, for example, a Nokia or an Ericsson. And they work in concert. So by organizing to put those functions in the same groups, and we do the same thing on our core side as well. It’s generated some efficiencies over the years. 

Aucoin: So I’ll add to that from BAE’s standpoint, right? We are very, we’re a very large company. And so a lot of our engineering is matrix. But the important part of the matrix piece of this is that when we identify a program or a capability, right, we pull all of those different functions together. So in the case of F-35, for instance, right, we actually organized by something called Drop, right? So we have a given capability. So all of the engineers, systems software, I like to put my firmware engineers in the category by themselves because they have very multifunction, the multi-discipline, and our hardware engineers together. So they understand what the end item goal is for that capability. So we that’s how we organize.  

Question: OK, this question is aimed at Andy from Epirus. So software-defined radio, my understanding is definitely gives you the ability to change systems much quicker. But I guess a quick thing that I’m wondering typically when I think of hardware versus software, I think of software as, in terms of real time, as significantly slower than hardware based solutions. I was wondering if you could talk to, is that myth now? Or have things changed with technology? 

Lowery: Yeah, that it’s, I guess we could get a little complex. But every sort of piece along the chain of the engineering system is being advanced. And one of the big advancements that are enabling a lot of this digitally defined system is the ability to do rapid digital to analog conversion. So rapid D to A so they can do direct synthesis of anything, I can just program into the computer, and I can synthesize it and create an RF waveform. The issue has been a lot, is in the antenna, because after it gets generated and turned to RF and converted, the antenna is usually single purpose, it just does pulse or it’s compressed or it’s that—at Epirus, what we’ve done is we’ve evolved that thinking and we’ve embedded what we call RF smart power within the antenna, and modulate the amplifier in a way using a typical fixed voltages. We modulate those voltages in order to create a definable antenna. So you can think about our phased array as being able to dictate it. OK now, it’s a radar antenna. Dot dot dot … now it’s a high powered microwave antenna, just by programming at a system level. So again, getting back to that previous question about embedded or firmware engineers at Epirus, they’re key to the embedded machine learning that we do and the antenna that can adapt with the missions, whether it’s comms, whether it’s software defined radios, whether it’s software defined radars, which are now becoming more prevalent, we can attend to all of those things. Thank you for the question.  

Question: Hey, Dollar. A question from a Wild Weasel. Let me continue to pick on Andy here. Andy, we’d heard about HPM and high powered microwaves for the last 20 plus years. And they were going to be a panacea that solved a lot of things. And it never panned out. What’s different now? 

Lowery: Thank you, sir. Yeah, that’s a great question, too. And I think—I mean, Lisa is almost like, has a similar career path as me, she could probably even talk to this. The big thing is, that solid state, wide bandgap materials like gallium nitride and other more advanced systems have now become rugged enough, with enough power handling capability, enough thermal dissipation capability, to become as powerful as the traditional methods, which are TWT-based, single channel. If we can meet the same power requirements as the older systems that can kick in the back door and produce these effects, a phased array system allows you infinitely more opportunity to put more energy in the system, to have harmonic type effects in the system. And all of those software defined things that allow me to do that on a older sort of legacy system, they didn’t think about those things, you know, back in the 1960s, when they were doing TWTs. They said, what’s that? They don’t even know what software defined is. So those are the same technologies that some of the other systems are being fielded with. And they come with a lot of human factor, bad byproducts. And so I think that was probably another reason why HPM didn’t take off, is that there’s a lot of different human factor issues associated with those types of amplifiers. So anyways, Lisa, maybe you have something to say as well, from your experience? 

Aucoin: Well, not too much. But I will say that the big challenge still remains, which is how do you get all that heat out? And until we can solve that heat problem, you’re, you know, we will continue to be, in my opinion, probably the TRL 4 level. And that’s really, we need some real key innovations in microelectronics that allow us to have some unique materials that dissipate heat very rapidly for that. 

Lowery: And with more power, driving efficiencies up to the 90s. So that, you know, if you have a high conversion of DC energy to RF energy, then obviously you don’t create as much heat and so Leonidas is just air cooled. It’s it’s conduction, cooled, phased array, because of the incredibly high efficiencies RF smart power is able to produce. 

Question: Good morning. I’m Deb Driver. I’m with Huntington Ingalls Industries. And as Dollar knows, we worked with him and the others on the EMS ECCT. We have a couple people here this for this conference and we have heard EMS and EW only a couple of times. We were excited to see this panel on here. But that tells us that there’s probably some additional advocacy to be done for the issues here, there are a lot of very difficult technical challenges. And if we do not own the spectrum, we won’t be able to fly, fight and win. If we don’t accelerate the change here, we will lose. I’d like to hear from the panelists about what the government can do, what the Air Force can do to help you proceed in these regards. And then I’d very much like to hear from Dollar what he would like to see happen as he’s departing. Thank you. 

Turner: Well, we have a little bit different spectrum position at AT&T. And any wireless provider, we have to use licensed spectrum, we typically, we do use unlicensed spectrum, but we don’t advocate that as much. We do the best we can to protect our spectrum. But I really don’t know how to how to follow that.  

Aucoin: So, I think one of the ways that I think we need to be continuing to think about this is, you know, looking at spectrum allocation and all of that, that won’t get us so far. What we really need to understand and to do is to understand how to actually use the spectrum we have. And when I say spectrum, I’m talking not only about the RF micro-electronics spectrum, but the IR, the RF and IR, as well as the laser spectrum. And one of the keys there is continuing to do research and put money in the, in the areas that, you know, for R&D technology, that allow us to do the exquisite signal processing, and things to actually pull information out of the spectrum we have. So that’s I think one of the key areas, is that research and development, that that helps us with the digital engineering, software engineering, and the systems engineering that allow us to, you know, pull signals out a pure noise. 

Turner: And I did think of something. Free space optics, additional research in long range, high bandwidth, free space optics, for communication purposes, those things are just now coming to fruition. And it’s very exciting.  

Lowery: I just think, you know, recognition that, you know, sailors and soldiers need to be involved in the design process. And so there needs to be money allocated for folks to travel, to come out and see our systems, to work with us out in the field to advance the maturation of our systems, as close as we can be coupled to our customer. That’s a high desire in kind of my book. So something along those lines would be helpful for us as we continue to advance. 

Young: Alright, so it looks like we’ve got just a little over a minute left. And I think that it would be a great opportunity, if I could in 10 seconds, if each of you could tell us what’s the one thing that we have to get right collectively, in order to continue to advance our ability to fight in the electromagnetic spectrum. 

Lowery: I’m going to brown nose the teacher, so to speak, and say missionware. I’m gonna drop that out there. But in all seriousness, software defined capabilities that doesn’t take five years to field, that we can field new capabilities. I think overarching, that’s going to be the most important thing for spectrum warfare dominance.  

Aucoin: I’ll go back to what my theme here has been, making use of the entire spectrum in a cooperative manner, right. We tend to think of RF by itself, we tend to think of IR by itself, laser by itself. We need to make all of those things work together to do what we need them to do. 

Turner:  All that and, from a telecommunications standpoint, speed and cost, speed to market, lowering the cost and speed in development of 5G features.  

Young: All right. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to offer our panelists a huge round of applause and thank you to AFA. 

Watch, Read: Leadership and Our Enlisted Force Preparing for War

Watch, Read: Leadership and Our Enlisted Force Preparing for War

March 13, 2022

Fourteenth Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force Gerald R. Murray hosts Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force JoAnne S. Bass and Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force Roger A. Towberman in a discussion of “Leadership and Our Enlisted Force Preparing for War” at 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.

Speaker: Airmen, Guardians, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the 14th Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force, and the chairman of the board of the Air Force Association, Gerald R. Murray.

Fourteenth Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force Gerald R. Murray: Good morning. Good morning. Well, good morning, all. It’s great to see you again this morning. I hope all of you I would say are well rested. I know some of you are not. I got to see you a little late last night. But at least I hope you’re ready for an intense half day ahead today and that you enjoyed your time and found yesterday’s sessions very meaningful. Yesterday morning in my opening comments, I mentioned the AFA team. I would like to take this time on behalf of our board of directors, many are here, to be able to thank our AFA team that organized and executed this, including our staff members, volunteers, led by our executive vice president, Doug Raaberg, Major General retired Doug Raaberg, but an incredible team. So as you have the opportunity today and you look and see someone with the AFA, you know badge on, or these young cadets of ROTC, excuse me, or are CAP, say thank you to them because they have worked extremely hard in being able to bring this. Chief Bass asked me yesterday, she says, “You know, when you see a duck going across the water, it just looks so graceful and glides across, but we know that, you know, there’s a lot of work underneath and how are the legs?” I can tell you the legs are good, they’re solid, but they’re tired as well, so, so give ’em a thanks there for me. Thank you. 

Well, we’re starting today with a topic that’s closest to my heart. Our enlisted leadership, our senior enlisted leadership in both our Air and Space Forces. Our panelists are the ones who are the eyes and ears of the service, especially when it comes to our enlisted corps, those who invest their time in listening to the concerns of our servicemen and women, and understanding what motivates them and what their needs are. And these particular enlisted leaders bring a lot of experience and perspective to the table. It is my great pleasure to be able to introduce and bring to you the Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force, Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force JoAnne Bass and the Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force, Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force, Roger “Toby” Towberman. Well, chiefs, again, such a great pleasure to have you. It’s been my great honor to be able to follow your leadership, the things and initiatives that you’re doing. I can just tell you, so proud of both of you. It’s just absolutely incredible for me to have the opportunity to spend a little time here with this audience, with you. So chiefs, you know, we know that the theme of our panel here and focusing on this conference being a warfighter conference, our theme is leadership and our enlisted force preparing for war, or for combat, which is all of what we do. Yesterday morning, Secretary of the Air Force Kendall detailed his imperatives for our Air and Space Forces. Most of those affect parts and different parts of the service. But the seventh imperative that he noted is squarely in your lane, the readiness of the Department of the Air Force to transition to wartime posture against a peer competitor. Particularly speaking, then, I’d like to ask both of you, how are you addressing that with our enlisted leaders in our enlisted force today?

Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force JoAnne S. Bass: All right, well, you want me to start? Yeah. All right. So first of all, good morning, let me pull up my notes. By the way, you know, Number 14 told us this is a gathering of the minds. So I wrote some notes last night on a bar napkin. Anyway, no, you know, first of all, I just want to say good morning and the big thanks to AFA for doing this and big thanks to our industry partners, as well as our community partners who are here with us. When it comes to operational imperatives, especially the readiness piece, what I might offer on the Air Force side is, we’ve never taken our eye off of readiness when it comes to our airmen. We are, though, very focused on what readiness needs to look like in the future as we move toward a high-end fight. And to that end, we’ve got a force-gen model that we’ve pushed out, which is more predictable for our airmen. When it comes to deployments, we heard a whole lot about the Agile Combat Employment and multi-capable airman mindset last yesterday. That’s how we’re continuing to get after, you know, ensuring that our airmen are prepared and ready for the wartime posture. But in addition to that, our focus on readiness is really, if we take care of our airmen and their families are going to be ready. And so to that end, we’re taking a holistic look at readiness, in particular, to the things that matter, again, to our Airmen, I will also put a foot stomp to Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Raymond on their efforts with “Five and Thrive” book, that’s a guide that they pushed out that every supervisor should have. But it’s really a guide to spouses and families on how they can be their very best to be able to support their Airman, and Guardian. So again, we’re taking a holistic look at readiness.

Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force Roger A. Towberman: Great, well, you know, we’re doing the same thing, like the weapon system that matters most is the one that lives and breathes. And so for the vast majority of the Space Force, Chief, we’re employed in place so that readiness has to be constant, it needs to be all the time, they’ve got to understand how they connect to each other, how they connect to our to our partners. And so there’s this, I think, this increased level of understanding that’s expected, certainly, now that maybe wasn’t expected in the past. And so it’s really a kind of all the time on a fight, not even fight tonight, it’s fighting continuously kind of mentality. And also to understand the environment in a different way, in a way that we really know what’s happening and why things are happening and not just what’s out there.

Murray: Right, Super. Well, Chief Bass, yesterday, and not only yesterday, but throughout, there’s been a great emphasis on Agile Combat Employment, ACE, you know, and so everyone, they know that acronym, because ACE has been put out there exercising, you know, focus on that. So how are you, you know, institutionalizing the concept of agility and flexibility from a shared, you know, the responsibility embodied in ACE?

Bass: Yeah, so what I would offer, you know, we spoke a lot about Agile Combat Employment yesterday, and then, you know, you speak about kind of the understanding that we have to have, how we’re going to institutionalize. That is really about mindset and understanding what the future high-end fight looks like, and how we have to be agile enough to get after it. And it really just can’t just be mindset, it has to be our default, it has to be our DNA to be that multi-capable airman that is needed of us.

Murray: Super. Chief Towberman, also yesterday, General Raymond, you know, spoke on your focus, and specifically the work that you’re doing on the new human capital plan. You know, we all grew up under, you know, the enlisted force structure AFI 3920 630-9 … 3629-03. I’ll get it, you know, dates back. I’m dated a little bit that been a little bit wild. But you know, with that, what is really going to be different from, in Guardian development from the Airman development. And can you speak to the Guardian ideal?

Towberman: Yeah, I’d love to and, you know, the CSO gave me a shot yesterday, sir, I appreciate it. But, you know, the really, maybe the best thing about the ideal is that it really is a grassroots effort. And while I might have been there, you know, encouraging folks and taking notes, this is really what all of our Guardians are asking for, it’s how they see the world, it’s how they see themselves fitting in the world. And, and it’s really easy to kind of write that down when you’re just listening and paying attention. And so, so here we are, and how does that look different? And, how are we building that that [inaudible] that I talked about in September? You know, there’s a few things that to me, stick out. One, we’re not looking at paths, development is not a path thing. You don’t just check boxes and magically become a butterfly. It’s far more organic than that. And so we’re trying to ensure that the investment in 100% of the force can happen 100% of the time, this is not about if you do this, then you can do this and you can do this. It’s about wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, we think you’re important. We think you need to grow and develop. And we want to honor your commitment to that by investing in you. If we can allow every human being to be the best version of themselves possible, then all of that other stuff, promotions, etc., that all kind of happens as a natural kind of product of that. So there’s a lot of things in the ideal that we’re proud of. But for me, it’s this concept of, hey, everybody is going to get an investment. Everybody has the opportunity to make a difference. Everybody is connected in this ecosystem, we’ll care for and nurture and find the best version of everyone, you know, inside of them. I think that you know, everything else kind of layers on top of that, but that if I was just gonna try to say it in 30 seconds that turned into three minutes, that would be it.

Murray: No, that’s a great approach. Really appreciate that. And Chief Bass, I know that you’ve also been in the Air Force working on a new action plan for enlisted force development. How about can you share how your blueprint is, I’ve read about, ties into developing today and tomorrow’s combat-ready airmen?

Bass: Well, first of all, you know, I appreciate the secretary constantly focusing on One Team, One Fight. And you know, when you all released the ideal last AFA, I was excited about it, I was like, we can all see ourselves in that. And I think there was a ton that we can learn from the joint force together. But specific to the Air Force, you know, we just pushed out in late December, the enlisted force development action plan. And I hope that all of our NCOs have that on their desk. But I’ll just give you a little bit of background. When we first got in the seat, our team for the past year and a half has been very focused on if we’re gonna grow the force that we’ve made for 2030 and beyond. How are we deliberately doing that? And what are we doing? And so to that end, we’ve had a whole lot of people with big brains focused on how are we going to develop the force meaningfully. And to that end, we you know, the team was working really hard, we had a product, and we gave the outbrief to General Brown. And what I loved about this in the fall is it was actually called our enlisted force development strategy. And as we released that, and shared it with them, he said, Hey, Chief, I love everything about this. But we are not going to call it a strategy. Because the strategy doesn’t mean anything unless we’re going to put action to it. And immediately, we change it from enlisted force development strategy of 2030 to the enlisted force development action plan. And it has 28 objectives, which really puts us on task on, mostly as an air staff, on how we’re going to get after developing the force that we need in the future. But what I love about it is, there are actionable things that all of us can really get after. And the first objective is making sure that every airman understands the threat at large. And if they understand that threat, and if they understand the greater purpose of why they wear our nation’s cloth, then they’ll have that sense of purpose as they move forward.

Murray: All right. You mentioned joint as well, and of course, we know that we were hoping that the SEAC wouldn’t be able to join us today. But I also understand that you have worked together, you know, with him and the Joint Staff and being able to update and bring a new focus on joint PME. Can you either one of you, or both of you speak to that for a minute?

Towberman: Yeah, so I mean, we’ve known SEAC for a while, right? So he’s no stranger to this room and everything that he did. When he was in ACC, everything that he did, certainly in AFRICOM, to bring kind of a very deliberate plan of attack to developing people is what he’s doing with the Joint Staff. So what we’re seeing what we have seen for several years, with Keystone for our nominative chief positions, now we’re seeing all the way down to the NCO level. So real formal, competitively selected opportunities for NCOs to get sort of, not sort of, to get joint training. Really well done. He’s got a great team. And if there’s one thing I know about Ray Colon-Lopez is, he can make a list and he can check things off. So you know, we’re really fortunate to have him and he’s working through it. And I think we just picked the class so they’re getting ready to start that NCO class and looking forward to it. And it’s really, he also is, you know, I would say, around the table, really leading us well, and we appreciate you CZ. But other things, compensation, he was a big driver in the mask conversation, the COVID, what’s the impact and all these kinds of things and so he’s just been a real steadfast advocate and a great team leader, I think, for all of us.

Bass; Yes. So I go back with CZ, way back in the day when I was a young Senior Airman and he was a very young E-5 in a joint environment in a joint unit. And I will say, you know, I’m actually really proud of where we’re going from a joint PME perspective with that NCO course that started, but also proud of our Air Force, because we are actually kind of, you know, as a Department of the Air Force pushing the Joint Staff to help, get after enlisted PME. And I think that’s a good thing. And they’re listening.

Murray: All right. Well, you shared with me last night, Chief, that you just came back from Lithuania, you had great discussions there with our allied partners, and how meaningful and how important that is, would you care to share maybe some of what we talked last night? And of course, we’ve got allied partners that are with us here, and probably tuned in as well.

Bass: I will, you know, we just got back two days ago, myself and the team from a NATO air CSEL conference out in Lithuania, we weren’t sure if it was still going to go on because of the timing. But what, you know, ended up happening was the timing was exactly what it needed to be. So I was with 14 of my counterparts from 14 allied nations really being there, and an opportunity show our commitment to each other, and the strength that we have in our security cooperation, we also had a pretty amazing opportunity for myself to have a bilat with our Ukrainian Air CSEL. And so I had about a seven to 10 minute discussion on the phone with him to be able to just share some thoughts on what is going on, boots on the ground for for them and be able to give him you know, hopefully some encouragement, but really, you know, what I shared with him is that not only are they you know, inspiring us as an Air Force, but they’re inspiring the world and we look forward to seeing them soon. And until then keep kicking ass.

Murray: Right, Chief Towberman. We spoke just a few minutes ago about agility among our Airmen and in the Air Force. But what does it mean to be an agile Space Force warfighter today? How is it different from say, two to three years ago?

Towberman: Well, I think three years ago, I mean, certainly, it wasn’t long ago, we wouldn’t even say warfighter, right. I mean, that’s the big difference. That as you know, everything has changed. And so I think we’re, we’re leaning into that, we’ve got great human beings. I think agility for us in a warfighter kind of way, means that we have to sort of really navigate this, we’ve got to specialize. We need incredible, specialized expertise to be successful. But we cannot give in to stovepipes. And kind of restricted thinking, this is now I’m this and this is all I am. So how do we build a culture where I allow for the force to specialize as they need to, but also have the sort of permeability between space power disciplines, or between even specialties larger than that? How do I say, Oh, you’ve been a cyber guy for this long, but now we’re going to make an operator. Or, you’ve been an operator, now we’re gonna make you a targeteer. So we really have to have this mindset that says, I’m specializing in this, but it doesn’t define me, this isn’t who I am. And I can do all of these other things in the in the reality of our, the size of our force says that everything that we do impacts everything else, that that ecosystem is small and it’s delicate, so we cannot get too fixed on any one piece. We’ve got to always be paying attention to the whole thing. So I think agility is certainly, as it is everywhere, it’s a mindset. But I sometimes I think it wasn’t long ago where I would maybe get kind of misunderstood on that. I’m not saying we can’t, we shouldn’t specialize. We’ve got to specialize. Like, this stuff takes a long time to learn and to do well. So we’ve got to do that. We just can’t then get stuck. Right. So maybe that’s, there you go, Chief.  I feel like Andrew Ridgeley at Glastonbury. Like I’m the act on the last day of the big music festival. It’s 9 a.m. and everybody’s muddy and they’re like wow, what? What’s happening? Just kind of quiet in here. Google Andrew Ridgeley in Glastonbury later, guys. Let’s shift the discussion about resources a little bit. Again, kind of you know, looking then listening to your bosses yesterday, and certainly the things that we in the association have been, you know, focused on Capitol Hill, you know, continuing resolutions. I think General Raymond mentioned that you total all that together, and across the time, three years of CRs, $2 billion to the effect with just the space for so much less and, you know, $15 billion, I think, you know, since October that, you know, it takes away from, you know, our taxpayers, the ability for the service to execute. So, to that point, you know, but we do know, resources regardless continue to be hard to come by, and it seems everything is a priority. And yet we know, it can’t be. How can Airmen and Guardians best posture themselves for success in a resource-constrained environment? And perhaps, what can we the Air Force Association do for you?

Bass: I think one way to depress us on a Friday morning is to start talking about the budget, to be honest, but you know, what I might offer is right, like, we have to go into this assuming that we’re not going to get more resources or manpower. And so to that end, you know, what are we going to do? And that gets back after what a lot of your leaders here on the stage yesterday talked about, which is empowering our airmen at the lowest level, trusting them, getting out of their way, supporting those innovative ideas that they have. And let’s get after it. I would also say that it’s an opportunity for us to be able to leverage the partnerships that we have, and leveraging some of those partnerships or leveraging the partnerships with our community leaders who actually want to be able to help us get after things that we can’t get out for ourselves. And also leveraging our partnerships with the industry partners that are in here today. Like we need you to, you know, want to be a good American and a good citizen and help us to be able to move the ball, knowing that we have this resource-constrained environment would be extremely helpful. And how can AFA help? I would say, you know, you all do that all the time. And you continuing to be a champion to our Airmen, Guardians and families, you continuing to champion Airman programs, to the folks who matter and the folks who will listen to us and help us ultimately with that budget. Specifically on the Hill with our industry partners, you continuing to champion the warfighter is really what matters, I say it all the time. It’s not an F-35, or a new ISR platform, or B-21. It’s going to be our people who see us through, and so that matters.

Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force Roger Towberman  22:34

So yeah, you know, we’ve all been taught the little quad chart, right, urgent and important. And when you’re standing up the first service in 70 years, that doesn’t work, like everything’s urgent, and everything’s important. And we are running so fast and working so hard. And so, you know, to me, our, in particular, our core values of connection and courage come to mind when dealing with this constrained resources. Because the environment is not such that, that any echelon above you necessarily is going to realize that they’ve given you more work to do, then you can do, and you’ve got to be connected, you’ve got to have the courage to raise your hand, OK, “Hey, I need some help here, because I can’t do all of this, it can’t all be a priority. And I need your help.” I think sometimes this you know, don’t bring me problems, you know, bring me solutions or, you know, solve everything at the lowest level, there’s really well intentioned cliches that we all know that I think do a lot of damage if we understand them incorrectly. There is no shame in saying, “Hey, I actually don’t know how you expect me to get this done with the resources I have. Can you help me out?” We’ve got to have the courage to have those conversations that at every single level. And then we have to just continue to empower the incredibly talented, incredibly capable human beings in our charge. If you’re running things through a choke point. If you’re using, you know, this tyrannical structure where everything has to come up here, and it needs to go through seven levels of discussion before it gets to the one person that can decide, like, of course, you don’t have the resources to get something done. Right. So really, I think, it’s a combination of all those things, right? That you’ve got to be willing to have the hard conversations and you really just have to trust people you have to do the things that only you can do and then let everybody else just run, just go. Pretty fond these days of just having a big capital G O exclamation point. Well, the team will tell you at the end of a very long email where I tell them how to do it, but then I do say go, right, and I think you really just have to get out of the way and let them go. But really make sure you’re listening. Because it’s hard when you don’t got enough people you don’t have enough resources.

CMSAF Gerald R. Murray  25:09

I think that’s an important comment. I, 5,000 I think today grown to 8,500. But to think about what the mission is, the comments and even I was kind of stunned, you know, yesterday listening to General Raymond, General Saltzman and others, you know, just the number of satellites that are being launched that are there for your control, the desire of, you know, all the combatant commanders to have space embedded in those and across the services. I mean, it does amaze me. I, you know, and it’s no different than the, you know, the size of the smallest Air Force that we have, you know, almost in history today as well, and yet the demand across the services and so …

Towberman: And, you know, as to the second part of your question, that’s something that AFA can continue to do for us as well, just keep telling that story. Right. It is, it’s less than 7,000 uniformed personnel today, about another 7,000 civilians, which we always, right, they’re Guardians as well. Everywhere you go, right. If you used Waze today, or listen to Sirius XM, or check the weather, you’re welcome, right? You’re welcome. We got it, we got to make sure that every American understands how space is baked into their very existence. And how modernity depends on that domain being safe. And that unfettered access to and freedom of maneuver is critical to our modern way of life in every single way. So the more people telling that story, especially outside of the echo chambers in which we normally exist, it’s all goodness. So appreciate you just telling story.

Murray: Absolutely. Absolutely. That’s what we’re here for. All right, I know something that we’ve also discussed, and a lot of people have as well. For both of you, dealing with social media. Now in times of social media, trolls, fake news, cyber attacks, how does leadership have a chance to have to change or adapt to what we see? And what do we deal with in media today?

Bass: Oh, social media. You know, so, so General Brown spoke yesterday and said he didn’t even have an email account, right? Like, I didn’t have an email account when I first came in. And you know, what’s interesting is, I didn’t even know what a troll was until I got in this position. I know. Now, my PA told me he’s like, Chief, swarms of trolls. I’m like, swarms? You know, but anyway. OK, what are we talking about? You know, here’s what I’ve learned when it comes to the information era that we’re in, in the information domain that we’re in. It, you know, information, warfare is a thing. And we all have to understand that as leaders, and we have to educate ourselves, we have to educate the force. What I’ve learned in the in the past several years also, is typically, online behavior reflects your offline character. Just think about that for a minute. So to that end, we have to understand this information domain we’re in, we have to hold ourselves accountable. Our Airmen are pretty good at understanding right and left boundaries and understanding respect when it comes to in uniform, out of uniform; on duty, off duty. We haven’t necessarily codified it online and offline. Actually, we did, you know, myself, and General Brown pushed out a memo to the force on the expected behavior when it comes to online. And so just understanding the information environment for ourselves, I think it is extremely important to understand the information environment and how it’s being used strategically, is also very important. You know, and we’ve seen that play out through many things, including current events, and so I would offer, we’ve all got to do our part in educating ourselves and educating our families in it.

Towberman: It’s changed so much. I mean, I remember as a new command chief, Air Force command chief in 2013, being told, stay off, like just don’t go there. And I can’t even imagine that today. I can’t imagine ignoring this incredibly powerful tool, but also, this reality. We grew up being taught to, to go to the DFAC, to go to the dormitories because that’s where young people live, right? That’s where they lived, and you need to go there and you need to see it. Need to be with them. Well, they live in social media now. And we’ve got to go there. We’ve got to see it, we’ve got to, we’ve got to be there with them. I think that, you know, to be successful, you need to, like anywhere else, you need to do more listening, you know, more receiving than sending. You need to be genuine to who you are. And all of us should just kind of live by the motto, to question everything. Like everything you should question, like, do the research yourself. Information is no longer powerful unless you allow it to be powerful. What’s powerful is our ability to think, our ability to connect information, our ability to use information. So if you’re letting a bot trick you into thinking something’s happening, I’d probably rather have the bot on my team than you. Am I allowed to say that? I’m sorry. You’re probably not quick enough to pick up on it anyway. So I’m good.

Bass: But if I can say, I still think as leaders, it’s important that you go out to the DFAC. And it’s important that you get to the dorms, it’s important that we still have that eyeball to eyeball leadership, like, right, virtual, and the social media era, and this information space can’t ever replace face to face leadership. So we have to do those things. We just have to now also navigate the online piece.

Murray: I’ll say an amen to that. And I’m so thankful to have both of you as friends on Facebook. I’m also so thankful, you know, I’m also thankful that I didn’t have to deal with Facebook in my time. It’s just incredible. I mean, I read comments that are made regarding, you know, things maybe that you say or how people pick up on things. And if Sherry was, you know, here this morning with me, she would you know, echo, oftentimes, and to your point, because my question, she’ll tell me, she’ll pick up something, because she spends more time with it. She’s the one that posts. I don’t post things there. But then she’ll tell me something and my constant, what’s the source? You know, and really getting to the facts. So thank you all for that.

Bass: If I can add one more thing, I think as leaders, right, we have to have thick skin, right? And you can’t just go with the waves like, I learned sitting in this position, You know, don’t read all the comments. By the way, you know, so I have a PA—by the way, the chief master in the Air Force is not online on social media all time—I have a PA who manages that. And typically, he does a whole lot of it for me. It is me talking though. And if you ever see a strong clap back, it’s typically me then and then I tell Jared, he’s got to clean it up. So that’s me.

Towberman: I love the comments. I love the memes.

Bass: I love the memes, too. The memes are funny. There’s a couple of funny meme people out there. As long as you’re not mean about it, right? Like I think the it memes are hilarious. I actually sent, I sent some of the memes to General Brown, by the way. And I’m like, sir, we’ve become a meme. So, yeah.

Towberman: So I haven’t told that the CSO yet. But, you know, they’ve been bouncing around the “Semper Soon” meme. I mean, because they’re very, they’re impatient, folks are impatient. But yesterday, sir, with your announcements this week, there’s a new meme, “Semper Satisfied,” which I’m super excited about. Yeah. It’s bouncing around Reddit last night. Winning, you’re winning this week.

Bass: Digress, we digress.

Murray: All right. Well, yesterday, General Jumper asked your bosses a couple of questions. And I’d appreciate your perspective in what you can tell us as well, and it’s about the younger generation that makes up the bulk of today’s Air and Space Forces. How are today’s Airmen and Guardians and their concerns and priorities different or alike from their predecessors?

Bass: You know, you spoke a little bit about it, right? Our Airmen and Guardians are more talented, smarter, innovative, ready to get after it. They have information at their fingertips. In this information age we’re in, many have an attention span of eight seconds. And many just want to have beards. Like you know, so that’s … (applause) I don’t know. But what I will say is right, like we have to appreciate that, you know, we have four generations that are serving in today’s workforce, whether you’re in the military or not for generations, and to understand the differences of those generations is powerful. It’s a powerful tool as leaders and we have to understand that we have to respect it and appreciate it. And the things that might have, you know, my dad served in the military for 24, 26, 27 years, and for you know, the things that led him to continue serving, it’s very different than what’s going to lead my 21 year old. And so we have to value and appreciate that. And we have a whole lot of things we’ve got to get after on the people side of things on the people, programs and processes and the policies to be able to get after what Dr. Schmidt talked about, which is to be able to retain the talent that we need in 2030, we’ve got to understand the differences in generation.

Towberman: Yeah, I, you know, I think there’s a couple really fascinating things that when I look at young people, that if you don’t look closely, and maybe you don’t see. And one is how service oriented they are. They’re very willing to help and to contribute. And so how do we, you know, tap into that. They’re also, they’re so connected. And we really have to make sure that we’re capitalizing on that. Because there’s great power in that. And then the last week, I said, they just, they outnumber us, by the way. I mean, you guys know that right? And you boomers aren’t eating well, you’re, you’re not exercising well, you’re dying out there, they really are outnumbering us. And they have to be dealt with, they won’t be ignored. They’re in charge. The Millennials are in charge. And they want to know why they won’t do things because you told them to. They want to understand. We know we talked about information, where all the information in all the history of the world is in the palm of their hands. They’re not interested in you quoting a rule to them, they want to understand, they want to know why. And so they have to be led through that lens, through our lenses. Let me give you all the information all the reason, all the why. I tell our chiefs all the time, I’m like, I do not want chiefs in the business of sharing information, because they can get the information. Chiefs have to be in the business of sharing the why, the reason. And all leaders have to do is that we’ve got to share the deeper, nuanced meanings of what we’re asking them to do. Because they because they need it. They can Google the rule.

Murray: They can and they work with speeds of clicks. And you’re right and how information comes at them and they gain it. So maybe Chief Bass to you, how do you then help many of the airmen that are working on older antiquated equipment doesn’t have the latest technology, I think even in the Space Force that you’ve got that, that they’re so adapted to in, you know, with their iPhone and things, you know, from, that are outside the military, how do you help them adapt to that and understand that. Some of it’s resources, but it goes back to again, making sure that that our younger generation, you know, understands that and can help us get there faster.

Towberman: I think you, you know, first you just you’re open and honest. You can’t pretend something’s high tech, that’s clearly not, right. And so you I think you have to kind of own that and have an honest discussion. And explain that why, right, and then involve them in the solution. We’ve got 50, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but in a population of 7,000. We’ve got 51 what we’re calling super coders now, coders, we’ve got two data analysts that we’ve brought through the program, we’ve got 27 others in training at the moment. So you know, very quickly 70 out of 7,000 is no small percentage. They have some pretty high end, digital capabilities. And so we’re really, I think that’s the answer is to not pretend that something’s awesome, that isn’t, and then involve them in the fix.

Bass: I think if I can add one more thing, right. Like, it’s always interesting, because our Airmen always say, like, I wonder if our leaders know, you know, I wonder if our leaders understand the challenges we have? And I’m like, Yes, we do. And we share those challenges, right? Like, we’re frustrated with the IT systems that we have. I mean, beyond belief, like, as many times as you have to add in your PIN, I have to do that too. Like it’s, I mean, I send stuff home to my phone or my whatever so that I can actually watch you know, whatever I need to watch because can’t do it on my own. So we share in those frustrations. But, you know, the privilege that we have is our opportunity to be able to sit in the room with our senior leaders who are having those very tough budget discussions. to watch it play out, and to know that our senior leaders are fighting for those discussions and where I’m encouraged is, you know, we’ve made a stance on here, here is the foundational things that we have got to make sure that we are funding, and cyber and IT is one of those things, Airmen programs is one of those things, we have to start to fund the foundation of what makes our Air Force move out. Because we can’t modernize if the foundation is not where it needs to be.

Murray: Well chiefs, we’ve got just a few minutes left. I you know, a lot of Airmen and Guardians out here and I, also listening to you, we’re told that there’s about 5,000 registered for the conference, both here and out, out in the audience, but maybe a little bit of insight to you know, each of you. Because as you spoke, you have to have your view on so much, so wide across the force and involved in and all. How do you, and perhaps can you speak to your priorities? What’s in that inbox? What’s on the scope? What is then you know, as you look longer range? And how do you organize and compartmentalize and work that?

Towberman: You’re far more organized than me, you should start.

Bass: You know, what’s interesting to me is my team tries to always keep me in check. Right? So yeah, y’all need to give it up to Team 19. Because they, because I come back from, yes, give it up to Team 19. They remind me that everything can’t be a priority, right? Like because I’m pretty fiery. And I come back and I’m in the Pentagon. And I’m like, we need to get after this. And we got to get after the end. And I have a whole lot of priorities. But I also have to be realistic, like what are we going to be able to get after. I will tell you that I don’t think there’s a thing that matters to our airmen or their families that we’re not looking at, like nothing. What matters to our Airmen and families matters to us. And so we’re taking a deep hard look at promotions, evaluations, how we do assignments, how we actually manage the talent. Again, I keep talking about Dr. Schmidt, because I very much appreciated you know, his perspective on talent, because I’m focused on how do we retain the talent that we need in 2030? Well, it’s not going to be because of policies and processes from 1990s. In the early 2000s, we’ve got to change and get after all of those things. So lots of focus items there for this year, particularly, we’ll make some changes on the enlisted evaluation system. I am hopeful that we are actually going to digitalize WAPs testing, like it is 2022. If we can’t get out of taking a number two pencil into promotion tests, something is wrong. We have got to modernize some things. And then oh, by the way, there’s some assignment — You know, when it comes to assignment policies, we’ve had an assignment work group focused on that we haven’t taken a holistic look at how we manage assignments since the ’90s. Today’s military family looks very different. And so we have a whole lot of things that we can actually do for free. By changing some of our policies. We’re gonna, we’ll roll some of those things out this year as well. It’s a lot of stuff. I don’t know if we’ll get to it.

Towberman: I know we’re out of time. So you know, I’ll say last week, General Thompson and I talking to some cadets that were coming into the Space Force, and one of them asked me, you know, what, where I thought we’d be in 30 years, and, and I said, you know, wherever that is, the only thing I really want, I think like a parent wants a good life for their children. But what I really want is just that we’ve created something that they’re proud to be a part of. And so, you know, my priority every day, is to remember that there’s 7,000 folks in uniform, another 7,000,who aren’t, and then the their professional progeny for 15 generations that I’m just trying to make sure that we don’t make a mistake, that we build a service that they’re proud of. Because if we can do that, and if we can deliver an experience that they want to be a part of, they’ll win the war. That’s the easy part. Ops is easy. People are hard.

Murray: Look, I want to thank you both. Chief Bass, thank you for noting, you know, “Five and Thrive.” And because, and I want to thank to both Rachel and Ron, for you know what they’ve done and being able to join Mollie and Sharene in being able to take and focus on our families because we know that that is even a greater force multiplier in our readiness and our ability to be combat-ready and what our families provide. And I will tell you that it’s exciting to be able to see you know, the focus that’s given today. And we in AFA look, to be able to take and help in every way we can in that aspect as well. But ladies and gentlemen, please thank again our two great chiefs. We are so well served.