Department of the Air Force CIO Lauren Barrett Knausenberger moderated a discussion on “The Digital Domain, Intelligence Operations, and Targeting” with Lt. Gen. Leah Lauderback, deputy chief of staff for ISR and cyber effects operations; Maj. Gen. Kevin Kennedy, director of operations for U.S. Cyber Command; Brig. Gen. Gregory Gagnon, director of intelligence, Space Force, Sept. 20, 2022, at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference. Watch the video or read the transcript below. This transcript is made possible by the sponsorship of JobsOhio.
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Lauren Knausenberger:
All right. Good morning. How’s everybody doing out there? All right. Okay. We have people very excited about intelligence operations targeting and the digital domain and we are well aware we are the last thing between you and lunch. So we’re going to have a good panel here today.
I’m Lauren Knausenberger. I’m your DAF Chief Information Officer and more importantly, I have with me here today, Lt. Gen. Leah Lauderback from the A26… All right. We got a fan favorite. Lt. Gen. Kevin Trap Kennedy from the 16th Air Force. All right. Last but not least, Brig. Gen. Greg Gagnon from the S2. All right. We got some Space Force in the house. That’s always good. It’s always good. All right. So let’s jump right into it. Starting with Leah, would love to have you guys just introduce yourselves a little bit more. You’re all pretty new in your new jobs. What’s hot as you’re coming into your role and tell this audience something that they don’t know about you.
Lt. Gen. Leah Lauderback:
No. You told us you weren’t going to ask that question. All right. Thanks for having us to the AFA crowd and everyone, thanks for being here today. We weren’t too sure it was going to be full but appreciate that it is because intelligence, cyber, electronic warfare, those are all things that are in now in my portfolio as the A26 and I know those things are all important to you. I could probably actually wrap all of those things up into information warfare and then add on a little bit of that but I’m not going to talk too much about information warfare today.
What I really want to talk about is about intelligence and targeting, the intelligence that is required in every domain, not just the cyber domain to actually get to prosecute targets or get to the commander’s intent. And so, that’ll be a big part of, I think, my conversation and piece to this today.
I have been in the job for about seven weeks now. Back at the Pentagon… Well, I mean I’ve been at the Pentagon a number of times now so that’s not so great but it is nice to be home back in the Air Force. So Greg is doing the job that I was doing just a few weeks ago and it was absolute privilege and an honor to help the Space Force stand up. So if you’re a Guardian out there, good luck to you. I’m really excited for the Space Force and where it goes.
However, I know we’ve got a lot of challenges in the Air Force and specific to my portfolio, we got a lot of things to get to. I will tell you one thing that you might not know about myself is that, or about me, is that I completed a full Iron Man about 10 years ago. So I can’t even say that I have a triathlon card anymore. It’s been so long but it’s not something that I tell folks too much anymore but I think it’s 112 miles on the bike, 2.4 miles in the swim, and a marathon. I tell you that, it takes a lot to be able to do that. Greg knows it as well, the commitment, the lonesome training that you do, but part of a team if you get to be part of a team. And so, I wrap that into the commitment that I have to what we’re doing in National Defense as part of that team and the commitment to intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, as well as cyber and communication so that’s me. Thanks.
Lauren Knausenberger:
All right. That’s awesome and I didn’t know that about you either. We have a good crowd. All right. Trap, over to you.
Lt. Gen. Kevin Trap Kennedy:
All right. Thanks, Lauren. Again to echo, I really appreciate everyone coming here to hear our discussions about the importance of targeting, understanding the cyber domain, and really how we’re supporting our CNAF, CFAX, and really bringing effects upon the adversaries as they threaten our national interest across the globe.
Been in the job about 60 days now with the 16th Air Force folks. There we go. All right. We got a few here. And so, for those that aren’t completely familiar with our NAF, we have nine wings, one center, and OC and two really close partners across ACC and the air staff being NASIC and the Spectrum Warfare Wing. So that’s really the capability that comes together in 16th Air Force as the Information Warfare Numbered Air Force.
To echo Gen. Lauderback’s points, not focused necessarily directly on IW today but if we don’t have good targeting, we don’t understand what the adversary is doing and we’re not aligning it with the commander’s intelligence requirements, then we’re not going to be able to produce outcomes for information warfare either. So I think that’s tremendously important as we think through on this.
For my remarks today, I’m going to focus mainly on three of our wings, the 70th, the 363rd, and the 480th and the distributed common ground system and how that is really our engine that helps with that process as we support the various CFAX across the globe. As far as something to know about me, I can’t compete with the triathlon because I swam a mile once and it took me an hour and 20 minutes. We can talk about that later but I did it. So there’s resilience there but I could barely walk. But anyway, something about me is I used to be the backup quarterback from New England Patriots. Just kidding.
Lauren Knausenberger:
All right. Should I let him off the hook? I’m hearing no. We need a real thing.
Lt. Gen. Kevin Trap Kennedy:
A real thing.
Lauren Knausenberger:
All right.
Lt. Gen. Kevin Trap Kennedy:
So I grew up in a small town in Putnam, Connecticut, about 8,000, used to be a mill town. Not very big. Two stoplights but the most famous citizen for those with kids there is Gertrude Warner who wrote the Boxcar series books from Northeastern Connecticut. So if you have little kids, they’re still fantastic books and I highly recommend them. If you’re ever in Putnam, Connecticut, they got a nice little museum.
Lt. Gen. Leah Lauderback:
Awesome.
Lauren Knausenberger:
All right. Well done.
Brig. Gen. Greg Gagnon:
Hey, good morning. I’m Greg Gagnon. I’m the S2 of the United States Space Force. Many of you know this but I’ve been the backfill for Gen. Lauderback three times in my career so I feel like that’s a little bit of a train that continues. But I will tell you, last October, after 27 years in the Air Force, I raised my right hand like you saw five soldiers do this morning and I raised my right hand to join the Space Force. So crossed over to the Space Force in October. It’s been an absolute honor. I finished my joint assignment and then had the opportunity to follow Gen. Lauderback one more time. There will not be another following back into the Air Force but it’s been really great and what drove me to want to make that shift was the opportunity to help stand up something new, to help shape a brand new element of the world’s greatest intelligence community, ours, and to be the 18th member of that.
So that has taken my initial time with a lot of up and out activities from the Pentagon and it’s been a real blessing to be here and to be here this week with all of my brothers and sisters of the last three decades. So a little bit about myself that you may not know but Toupe knows and many of you who are close know, I’m the baby of eight kids. So I grew up outside of Boston but the baby of eight kids, explains why I eat so fast. So when you sit down, I get it all there and I eat too fast and my wife tells me it’s incredibly impolite but I’m working on it and I continue to be a work in progress.
Lt. Gen. Kevin Trap Kennedy:
Also, for those that don’t know, Gen. Gagnon’s, a major general select for these offers. Congratulations there. Well done, Greg.
Lauren Knausenberger:
All right. We have quite the panel for you here today but it’s always good to start with why. I’m sure you guys have read that book as well and our why, a big part of that is starting with the threat. So we’re going to start with the threat today and I want to send it over to Gen. Lauderback. So you are focused on threats in US national security, let’s talk about China and Russia for a moment. You know what, I’ll just leave it open to you. What are the principal threats? How do you see us deterring our adversaries in the digital domain? You can take that where you want to.
Lt. Gen. Leah Lauderback:
Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you, Lauren. And so, I know Greg will riff off of this for sure and you’re welcome too, Trap, too. Actually yesterday, you probably heard the secretaries talk about the threat brief that he takes over to the hill. And so, Greg and I actually did that last week and previous in our positions Gen. O’Brien and I did that about 10 or 12 times over the last year and it is all about China. It’s the scary China brief. It is, I think, instrumental in educating. It’s not just about educating members within Congress or the staff members there but it’s also educating just the American public as to the modernization that China has done over the last really 20, 25 years. It’s pretty stark. Of course, I won’t be able to talk about any of those details in this session today but I do think that I take to heart exactly what the secretary mentions when he talks about China China China and the One Team, One Fight.
I do think that we have to understand what it is that the Chinese or the PRC are… How it is that they might fight, what their capabilities are, and guess what? How do you know all of that? It’s through your intelligence professionals, whether that’s the intelligence community or those of us within the Department of Defense. I mean, there’s a whole host of folks that will add information to what we know about the Chinese and how they might fight. But I want to, I’ll let Greg continue because he can talk all day about China’s posture in space or Russia’s posture in space, but what I would tell you is that intelligence is a war fighting function. It is one of the seven war fighting functions within joint doctrine.
And so, we use the term ISR a lot in the Air Force and we started to use that in the Space Force. Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance is in operation. I mean, if you read that within doctrine or within writing, it’s an operational term because there’s action. You have to go out and survey or you have to go survey or you have to go out and do reconnaissance in order to get intelligence, right? And so, I use it more as a messaging campaign so that folks understand that the threat picture just does not show up on your door. You don’t just get the 3-1 Vault 2, somebody has to do that. That’s probably about 75% of the people that are in here is collecting that data, making sense of that data, turning it into intelligence. And then providing that to our decision makers.
I see Gen. Kelly in the front row here as the commander of ACC. He needs or Trap needs intelligence every day about capabilities and intent. Now, we have tagged on, not necessarily in doctrine, but we are starting to tag on the T for targeting. So ISRT which I think is a good thing and the reason why is because it’s not just about intelligence providing predictive intelligence or I&W, indications and warning, but there is an end to this, right? The end is that we want to have an effect. If Gen. Kelly wants to have an effect either kinetic or non-kinetic, he’s got to have that intelligence that is helping to do target development years before that conflict even starts. And so, there’s a lot that’s packed into ISRT. I’m glad that we’re starting to use that. But aside from that, Greg, you want to talk anything about the threat?
Brig. Gen. Greg Gagnon:
Just a few points to bring forward. We have all been tremendously busy doing our nation’s work for the last two, almost two and a half decades, often away from home. But while we’ve been away projecting power for our nation, someone’s been studying us and those students and those scholars live in Beijing. They’ve watched how we operated. They’ve looked at doctrine and concepts like we had when some of us were younger called Joint Vision 2020. They took Joint Vision 2020 as their blueprint and call it System Destruction Warfare. It’s how they bring together power projection capabilities for their joint force. They also looked at Joint Vision 2020 and they said, “How do I defeat it?” I attack information, I attack nodes, and I attack decision makers and that is the unifying concept of a power projecting PLA. The PLA is the armed wing of the Chinese Communist Party.
They’re not the army of the people of China and people forget that. The PLA is now formidable, more surface combatants, more submarines, more SAMS than the United States. They are rapidly expanding in space and what can space do for a power projecting military? I don’t need to tell this audience. You know that allows you to see further, sense at greater distance, and with the correct position navigation and timing, strike before they can touch you. That is what they are building in outer space.
They reorganized their military six years ago and in that reorganization they created the strategic support force. In that strategic support force is this room, it is their cyberspace operators and their space operators. In that strategic support force, which stole resources, if you will, from the army, from the PLA Navy and the PLA Air Force, they gained people in kit. That kit in outer space since they stood up the Space Force is now 320% greater. There are over 600 satellites in outer space. Many of those satellites over 260 are designed to look at us and our brothers and sisters as they move across the Pacific. Why? To provide warning and to provide strike capability if directed by leadership. They have a formidable space layer. One that before they did this was really us who could do global reach, who could do global power. This room could do that. There’s another room now and it’s in Beijing.
Lt. Gen. Kevin Trap Kennedy:
From the operational perspective as we look in 16th Air force, and I couldn’t agree more with the comments of the two generals to my right, is that it’s a operational activity. And so, when folks ask me what does that mean as an operational activity, it’s adversary focused. That’s what it is. It’s a thinking about how do we bring effects to bear upon the adversary. When we’re talking about the PRC and Russia and thinking about the spectrum of conflict, we clearly are in competition with both. We clearly are in crisis right now with Russia given the Russia Ukraine invasion. And so, they think that, “What’s the dominant activity that governs these two conditions?” The dominant activity is informational warfare and specifically ISR operations and cyber operations. This is where they really come together in our force in 16th Air force and our operators are looking and focused on that.
In the cyber domain, the aspect of it, we are being targeted, you, personally, are being targeted right now by our adversaries in the cyber domain. Whether it’s via social networks or your personal devices or the information that you’re using to accomplish your mission. PRC and Russia are very interested in that. If we’ve seen the escalation of capabilities by the PRC that Gen. Gagnon mentioned meant much of that was enabled by their ability to take our intellectual property and scale it into real strategic capabilities for their nation. We need to stop that and that’s where the cybersecurity aspects of our NAF come into play.
And then, with this respect to the information operations and the ISR professionals in our NAF is really understanding the adversary to the point of that we can bring effects to bear as also to the point of understanding where they’re trying to go and we can thwart their activities as we go forward. As Gen. Lauderback mentioned, every single day across 16th Air Force, we focus on the threat first thing every day.
Lauren Knausenberger:
All right. Thanks, Trap. We’re going to stay with you for a minute because we’ve just heard about the scary China brief. We’ve heard how the threat is changing. You spoke recently about DCGS’s transformation in light of our shift to a near-peer competitor. Can you expand on what that looks like?
Lt. Gen. Kevin Trap Kennedy:
Absolutely. Thanks, Lauren. I’ll ask Gen. Lauderback and Gen. Gagnon, the two of ISR professionals that have actually served in DCGS, so if you have comments as we’re going forward, I understand and appreciate that if you’d be gentle with me. But as we’re going forward on this enterprise, what we tell you so the DCGS enterprise was optimized for the wars where you’re fighting in the Middle East. And then, about two years ago, Air Combat Command and 16th Air Force made an affirmative decision that it was time to evolve the enterprise to make sure that we could bring capabilities to better… Rather than a sensor or aircraft focused type of alignment of our Airmen to one that is a problem-centric focused alignment. And so, that was the big idea and the why is like, “How do we bring more capability insight to generate outcomes for our senior leaders?”
And so, from the national defense strategy all the way down to our combat commanders to our CFAX and into our AOCs, to our squadron level folks that are performing this function across. So that was the idea is like, “How do we make our information that we’re providing, our insights that we’re providing more relevant to what the senior leadership is doing versus just the tactical execution that we got highly skilled at as we were fighting the war on terror and focused on EO threat?”
And so, there are two key organizational elements that were designed to help this. The first one is the linkages to the CFAX which is our mission management teams. These are the linkages that make sure that the air operation centers across our various CNAFs have that linkage into our DCGS enterprise and so they can make sure their private intel requirements are being pushed into the enterprise that we have across our NAF.
The second key and really the tactical edge is the analysis and exploitation teams so this is where the rubber meets the road. The design is roughly 15 Airmen, 2 officers, 3 senior NCOs, 10 other Airmen that are looking across all source intelligence products, intelligence sensors, and to really focus on the problem versus, “What can you find from Sensor X that staring at this part of the world?” to versus, “What do you know about Russian intent and activity in southern Ukraine?” And then, that would be a requirement we would then push to use safely as we look through in China, really bring to bear the entire capability of the enterprise.
Also, with having that kind of focus in the enterprise, the 480 is able to pivot across the enterprise and have backups. If a DCGS is over resourced, over taxed, our total force partners can bring that to bear as well as that alignment and they can use their expertise and ability to fuse all those types of all source intelligence to bring those insights to bear. It’s been bearing fruit and as you heard Gen. Hecker talking yesterday from the main stage, I think USAIF is more than happy with the results that we’re seeing with that evolution. As I visited there just a couple weeks ago, it’s really some motivated Airmen that are on mission having a real impact in directing our vital national insurance and holding the NATO coalition together.
Lt. Gen. Leah Lauderback:
I would just say I took a briefing from Gen. Kennedy’s teams, a couple of the wing commanders, just last week I think it was, and trying to get educated, re-informed on what we’re doing from an ISR perspective, especially within the DCGS. I was, I won’t say blown away, but encouraged very much so of these AETs and where it is that we want to go. We can’t just do PED. There is a certain amount of PED that still has to happen, there’s no doubt about that because of the capabilities that we fly. But it’s got to be more than just a small numbers of folks doing PED alone, that stove pipe. It’s all about fusion. I would say, we see this across all of our services in the defense intelligence enterprise, okay? So that’s all of the military intelligence folks as well as NGA, NSA are considered part of that DIE.
I mean, we all need to be talking about fusion. We recognized this during 9/11 as a failure of being able to do that fusion and speak across lines. And so, that’s what I think folks need to be thinking about. This is an evolution of over 20 years of getting to a point of being problem centric and fusing as much intelligence as we can together.
There was one other point I wanted to make about that. Ah. Yes, it is. Those AOCs that they’re supporting, okay? So it’s not DGS supporting DGS, right? Again, this goes back to ISRT, back to an effect that you want to have or the information that you want to give to the CFAC or maybe it even goes up to the combatant commander or the JTF. Those AOCs that we have built today do not have a large enough intelligence manpower to do the things that we need to do in every single one of those divisions that’s within the AOC. So I see really great things that are happening and I look forward to us getting faster and much more mature as we build out those AETs so well done to you and your team.
Lauren Knausenberger:
Greg, I have a follow up question for you. So in your recent remarks you talked about the unblinking eye the US Space Force has trained on our top pacing adversary and would love to hear a little bit more about that and how we’re going to maintain space dominance.
Brig. Gen. Greg Gagnon:
So that was a wonderful misquote so I’m glad I made the press but I did talk about the unblinking eye and the unblinking eye was talking about what we’ve just seen in Ukraine. We have seen the power of the commercial space industry brought to bear for Ukrainian forces and brought to bear for foreign policy. In the past, the United States intel community and our national leadership have told our allies what we thought was going to happen. Our allies didn’t always believe us and they had reason to doubt us based off of past performance. But based on this year when we told them there was proof that we could drop on the table and what we dropped on the table were wonderful images of, not wonderful images, horrible images of Russian BTGs just basically lined up against Ukraine. So the story became way more powerful when you had the proof of commercial assets that are at unclassified levels.
The commercial space industry is expanding immensely and this impacts DCGS. When I was a young lieutenant, the core value proposition was collection. You wanted to get your image on the target deck so that you could do something and figure something out whether it was warning or targeting. Today, the core value proposition is no longer collection. We have plenty of collection whether it’s airborne, space-based, or cyber-based. What we need is sense making or fusion or analysis, that is the core value proposition moving forward for an intelligent service. That’s what your AETs are inside DCGS. They’re the first vanguard of going after that as the value proposition. The challenge inside the department is explaining that to people when people want to minimize manpower, right? Because manpower still matters and I am a believer, and I’m pivoting a little bit, but I’m a believer in AI and ML but I’m also a realist.
In my realism, I tell you that today we have this much data. Has anyone seen a projection where this stays where it’s at? Where do we go here? Do we go here? Do we go here? So our value proposition moving forward as a workforce is how do we use those new tools to help get through that new data, right? Maybe not continue to put a resource manpower constrain on our services but how do we use that to keep pace? In warfare, there’s fast but what really matters is relative speed, right? We always talk about going fast. What matters is that you’re outpacing, out-thinking, out-deciding your adversary so your pace setter can be your adversary.
As we pivot to China, what gives me concern is how fast they’re moving. We have to tell that story because that’s the story that I think people who make resource decisions need to hear and they need to understand that warfare in the future is not less intel, it’s more sense making and probably more intel.
Lt. Gen. Leah Lauderback:
Yeah. I’m just going to pivot off of that or riff off of that for a second. That ROIs that the secretary has developed for us and we’ve done all of this fantastic analysis, these operational imperatives, I want you to know that intel is foundational to every single one of them. We are not going to be successful in any of those OIs if we don’t actually understand the threat.
The B21 as an example, you think, “Well, how is intel foundational to our B21 operational imperative?” Well, there’s this thing called acquisition intelligence where you’re trying to predict what does the threat look like if that’s 10 or 15 years from now and how is it that the B21 might be able to mitigate that threat, right? So just as an example, that’s one to all of those operational imperatives.
So I want the intel folks in here to understand that you are in every single one of those operational imperatives. Even though it might not say it, but truly you are. I think one of my charges that I’m going to take on, I haven’t cleared this all with my team yet, but is we have spent a lot and we talk a lot about the platforms, the S and the R of ISR. And so, I really want to start talking and I want to get some resources. I want to show, exactly to Gen. Gagnon’s point, that we’re going to need more intelligence in the future and so, how do we make that happen?
Lauren Knausenberger:
All right. So you all are teeing me up pretty well for the question that we need to answer, which is are we well postured to pivot to a wartime posture with a peer adversary? If we’re not, then what has to happen for us to get there?
Lt. Gen. Leah Lauderback:
Okay, I’m going to go first. The answer is no, we’re not ready. Though I was really encouraged by Gen. Brown’s comments yesterday of we can do this, right? We just need to pivot us all to where it is that we think that we need to go which I think these operational imperatives… I mean, the SecAF’s vision, he’s got it right as well as the resources when those turn to those capabilities.
One of the things that I do want to say here though is that, and it’s not necessarily on the intel side, I think I’ve made my points, but on the cyber side and then on electronic warfare. So the other two huge items that are in my portfolio within the A26. On the cyber side of the house, if you are unfamiliar, I want you to understand where we’re moving with the cyber mission analysis task order. We are doing a lot of great work to understand what it is that we need to do from a cyber effects standpoint but also a communication standpoint.
I was on the air staff when we merged the 2 and the 6 and I realize now that we probably did not name it correctly. We called it the A26 and it’s ISR and Cyber Effects Operations. When somebody hears about cyber effects operations, I think that they immediately go to offensive or defensive and hackers, right? That does not speak to the 90% of the other communicators that we actually have. Running comm squadrons, delivering your iPhone to you as a general officer or wing commander, those types of things. All of those functions that happen at the comm squadron, we aren’t… Well, I want to make sure that we’re messaging to those folks as well that this cyber mission analysis task, the 47 tasks that are in that, are going to get after that entire portfolio so that we can have a resilient communication structure or we determine how do the comm folks out at the bases actually operate within agile combat employment or the ACE concept.
So we’ve got a lot of work but I want you to know there’s a lot of brain power that is going towards this right now and we’ve had a couple of winds. Just recently, the SRBs that are going out to the 1B4s, so these are our, I call them the ethical hackers who are playing in somebody else’s pool. So one 1B4s are getting their bonuses put back in. 1D7s, we got a little bit of an increase in some of the SRB as well. There’s a number of things and a few other quick wins that I could talk about but I don’t want to take up all the time.
And then, the last thing that, I’m sorry I do have to talk about electronic warfare or electromagnetic spectrum operations, EMSO, we are nowhere near where we need to be with that. And so, we are just starting the sprint. It’s with the acquisition community, it’s with the operational community so ACC is taking a lead in this and then those of us on the staff to determine what are the gaps, what do we think that we need, what are the requirements, what are the gaps, how do we go about funding this. And so, you might see this turn into another operational imperative a year from now or something of that nature but it is something that we do not have a deep bench on at all and we’ve got to develop that so that’s one way of getting after the threat.
Lauren Knausenberger:
I want to piggyback on one thing that you just mentioned. The greater focus on the cyber, the communications, Airmen, and we’ll talk about people in a moment too, but Gen. Lauderback shared that ISR was foundational to all of the seven topics and I don’t think we’ve said that in enough rooms yet. We’ve said it in different rooms but I’ll repeat for this room that cyber and IT are foundational across all seven of those initiatives. The secretary just came down to share with our cyber and IT force down in Montgomery, Alabama. But for the communicators, the cyber and IT folks out there, I want to know that you are foundational across all of those things. Secretary knows it as well so thanks for that.
Lt. Gen. Leah Lauderback:
Yeah. 100%.
Brig. Gen. Greg Gagnon:
So if I could, I’d just talk a little bit about one of the great advantages we have over our pacing threat and those great advantages are in this room. There is a 2 million person PLA armed forces on active duty and that outnumbers us but no one in this room is a conscript, right? Everyone raised their right hand to choose to join and in that willingness comes motivation. We see this when we watch foreign adversaries and how they perform in battle. As I look across this room, I have many friends in this room. There are many very well decorated combat veterans in this room. Another great advantage of the US military over some foreign militaries to include our pacing threat.
Those things, those intangibles matter at the point of contact. Many of us know that and that is a great strength for us. Whether we are targeting a $2 billion precision-guided munition or a $2 million precision-guided munition, we are generally doing that as a force based off of mensurated coordinates from a 26 year old staff sergeant because we trust them that much because our force is that proficient. That’s a huge advantage and if I’m playing cards against somebody in the PLA strategic Space Force, that is my pocket aces.
Lt. Gen. Kevin Trap Kennedy:
All right. Lauren, with respect to the readiness question, first, are we ready for conflict? I completely agree with Gen. Lauderback. We’re on a good path but we have to stick to the strategy as Gen. Lord said in the other room and make sure that we fund resource and continue to move out.
With respect to competition, we are in a level of conflict today, every day as we mentioned. The PRC and Russia have a different worldview and our Airmen and 16th Air Force are out there every day either hunting, exposing, contesting their activities every day, specifically in the cyber domain, ISR, EW, and IO across our Numbered Air Force as we’re looking forward to do that. But then, as we think to the next, we’re ready to defeat them. One of the key things that the recent crisis in Europe has shown us is that from a cyber perspective, we need to expand our ability to leverage the whole defense intelligence enterprise.
What I mean by that is that traditional targeting and mensurated coordinates are great, difficult to target off that from a cyber perspective but what we need to understand is what are the networks, what is the space that they occupy from an IP perspective, what are the alternative access means that I have to either get in their C2 system or their weapon systems. As working close partnership with DIA, NASIC, and others, we’re starting to get more fidelity in that with respect to our AF cyber role and with US cyber command to understand, “Okay, how do we gain access to these capabilities?”
So first, we can gain more insight, we can expose malicious and malign activity, we can contest disinformation but also, how do we make that leap into the weapon system? So if we go into a hot crisis or conflict that we’re able to bring those effects to bear, on timing a tempo that matters for the commander of the conflict at that time. And so, as we look and expand upon those things, that’s one of the areas we’re looking. From us, from a perspective, from ISR, the people in this room like Gen. Gagnon are our key asymmetric advantage and also, the people on the other side is their vulnerability. And so, the people that are accessible either for them or for access or to get into their capabilities. And so, that’s where we focus in 16th Air Force.
Lauren Knausenberger:
All right. We’re already headed toward people and I know this audience wants to hear what’s going on with people. Trap, let’s start with you. What are the skills and capabilities that you need from this force to be able to meet that pacing threat?
Lt. Gen. Kevin Trap Kennedy:
So I think there’s three that go in addition to our core values, characteristics that if I were to mentor a young officer, enlisted or civilian, that’s coming into our force and whatnot. The first one is, I need problem solvers, right? Folks that can see complex challenging problems, not looking to simplify them, looking to solve them and take them into pieces and how do we do that.
One of the other key is critical thinking. This is the key for the disinformation fight that we’re in, is really thinking critically both as a citizen also as an Airman or a Guardian to understand, “What is the adversary intent here? Where’s that information getting in the environment? How can I contest this on behalf of our nation?”
Finally, as we think about multi-capable Airmen, there’s going to be a level of self discipline and rigor that you’re going to have to hold ourselves accountable to. What I mean by that is the process we had before of we developed you very finely with a well defined enterprise to give you one skill and a very specific AFSC to accomplish that task 100% all the time. First time, every time, right way, right reasons. Now, we’re asking you to do other tasks because we need you to, as we go across the force. One of those would be digital fluency, not just for the cyber folks, not just for the ISR folks, but for every Airman. We’re going to have to be rigorous with our time and hold ourselves accountable to making sure that we’re using our really critical and finite amount of training time that we have to make sure that we’re getting as skilled as possible so we are ready to compete and defeat our adversaries.
Lauren Knausenberger:
All right. Lightning round with three minutes left. Leah, how are we going to make sure that we have the cyber and our ISR forces ready to support that mission?
Lt. Gen. Leah Lauderback:
Yeah. Thanks, Lauren. I’d say there’s quite a bit of that within our CMA task board. Certainly on the cyber side of the house, I think there are already things that we’re doing. We know that we’ve got an FGO shortfall as an example of about 300 folks that we have empty billets and we don’t have anybody to put into those. And so, right now we’ve just started with A1, a grade review to understand if those truly do need to be 04, 05s or can they be senior 03s? Can they be a master sergeant? So we got to do that work.
Next part is the educational part then is… So we moved to this multi-capable Airmen concept and yeah, the digital fluency, we all need to have that. And so, we just briefed the SecAF just last week on how it is we’re actually, I think maybe stealing a play out of the Space Force playbook, as to how do we get these folks to understand more of digital fluency and not just the stovepipe what it is that they’re working on, on a daily basis.
And then, lastly is the retention, I would say, is how do we retain those folks? And so, we had some wins from a perspective of the SRBs lately but we need to look holistically at how is it that we keep Airmen and Guardians doing the things that they do for our nation. That this is an important business and we absolutely need every single one of you to stay, to get better at what you’re doing, to become expertise, and then move into doing other things, right? That multi-capable Airmen that we’re looking for in the future.
Brig. Gen. Greg Gagnon:
I would tell you, at birth, the Space Force framed the discussion a little bit differently. The Space Force is a digital service and digital fluency is expected of every Guardian. It’s not just Guardians who are the cyber Guardians, it’s every Guardian because everything we do is a remote op and every remote op is either connected through RF or ones and zeroes. It’s that simple.
So we have taken out a course ware with Udacity with the Department of the Army and we’re expecting people to take those courses as they articulate through jobs to gain the right skills for particular jobs that we’re coding each individual job. I took my first course about two weeks ago. One of seven is done. So next year, ask me what I’m on and I should be seven of seven but that’s how we are tackling this. To pretend we don’t live in the cyber age is ridiculous. It’s all of our job and it’s all of our job to protect our information at home, protect our information at work, and continue to do those proper things that make sure we don’t give advantages to the adversary. We called it OpSec in the old days. It extends to the digital world today.
Lauren Knausenberger:
All right. We could have talked another 30 minutes easily on these and the many other topics that we had teed up but we are out of time. Thank you all so much for coming. Let’s give it up for our panel.
