General Lester L. Lyles
Commander, Air Force Materiel Command
AFA National Symposium--Los Angeles
November 16, 2001
I am happy to see so many faces back in the audience here after that
break. Roger was not kidding when he said I nudged him after the chief’s
presentation and said, "I’m glad you are next." I did say that. I guess
I could have done the same thing just now because that was another tough
act to follow. Roger, thanks very much.
I can’t tell you how compelling it was. It was very fascinating going
to the men’s room during the break and hearing the comments. Nobody knew
I was back there in the line and hearing the comments, and it was
universal. What a compelling speech, what a compelling message, what a
dynamic leader. Chief, the message is getting across and it really is
very well deserved. It is getting across everywhere.
One characteristic of a compelling message is when you think to
yourself, "why didn’t I think of that?" It is so logical in many
respects for all of us. Those of us in the acquisition community and the
science and technology community, I know those in the Air Force in a
broad variety of different mission areas, are getting that message. We
need help in getting the message to industry and I’ll talk a little bit
about that later. Not just getting the message, but figuring out how to
work it. We will continue carrying the message, chief. I can tell you
that, and more importantly, we will be operationalizing that message in
everything we do in the Air Force. We are going to need help, though, to
make that happen throughout the military industrial complex. This is
going to be something we all need to be involved in.
As Roger said and as the chief said, it really is great to be back
here in LA, great to be at an AFA event. We all know and understand and
salute the leadership of the Air Force Association for its courage in
making the right decision to cancel the AFA convention. It definitely
was the right decision, but we all are very happy to have another
opportunity to get back with this great leadership – Tom, John, Jack,
Dan, all of you – I can’t even begin to express what you mean to all us
in the U.S. Air Force. We really are one team and we really appreciate
your strong leadership and everything that you do. It is fantastic being
here.
For me, it is also great being back in LA, great being back at
another space activity, but I have to tell you, after the 1st
of October, 2001, I wasn’t quite sure if I’d get that opportunity to
come. As you all know and Roger DeKok mentioned, it was on the 1st
that we completed one major step of the space commission recommendations
and implementation and that is the transfer of SMC, the Space and
Missile Systems Center from Air Force Materiel Command to Air Force
Space Command. My command no longer had a direct role in terms of having
an organization that is involved in space activities, so I wasn’t quite
sure if I was going to get invited back.
My wife, Mena, who also came out here with me for the activities
today and this evening asked me that question. She wondered also if we
were going to get invited back and her comment was, "why are you going
back to a space symposium, since you no longer have a space
organization?" The only way I could think to answer was a story I heard
about a man who entered his mule in the Kentucky Derby amongst all the
thoroughbreds there and he was asked by all of his friends and
associates and some enemies if he was crazy. He was asked if he thought
there was even a ghost of a chance that mule would do well. He didn’t
think very long in answering the question, he said, "no, but I thought
the association would do me good."
That is the way it is for me as far as space is concerned. You keep
inviting me, the association is going to continue to do me good, in part
because my roots are here in many respects. And in part because of the
things that we do in Air Force Materiel Command.
First of October 2001, and contrary to some beliefs, I know there are
a lot of people who expressed some angst about that event of moving and
transferring SMC to Air Force Space Command, of moving an acquisition
and development organization into an operational command. And there is
no surprise, there was some angst about that. But contrary to some
beliefs, the world did not come to an end on the 1st of
October, Hell did not freeze over, the engineering and acquisition
community at SMC did not desert or cease to exist and AFMC itself did
not break up. If anything, this transition, this move, was not only the
right thing to do, it was the right time to do it and it was as smooth
as it possibly could be, thanks to people like Roger DeKok and certainly
Ed Eberhart and everybody at Air Force Space Command, Brian Arnold and
the people out here and the guys in my headquarters.
We all saluted smartly, not because that is the right thing to do. We
are men in uniform because we also realize that this was a golden
opportunity in time and history.
For those of us within AFMC, we had to remember that our mission is
to train, organize and equip to support the acquisition and science and
technology and logistics community. Our motto is one that we’ve carried
now for several months and will resonate with everything the chief is
talking about. He mentioned it himself— we are warriors supporting
warriors. That is our responsibility within Air Force Materiel Command.
We now have another comprehensive cradle-to-grave set of warriors
involved in a space mission and we will support them as part of our
responsibilities.
As most of you know, the Secretary of Defense signed a memo, just
literally a month ago, about the 18th of October, giving his
specific approval to what took place in the national security space
management and organization implementations and giving his additional
guidance on how all of that should come to fruition. But prior to that
memo, Ed Eberhart and I had signed a memorandum of agreement defining
the supported and supporting relationships between Air Force Space
Command and Air Force Materiel Command. We had already decided the kinds
of actions that needed to take place to make this a very strong success.
The MOA encompasses our relationships and support in a wide variety of
different areas--science and technology, acquisition and management,
test and evaluation, test investments, modeling and simulation, depot
support, personnel management, etc.
I would love to have the opportunity to go through each one of those
areas to explain exactly that supporting and supported relationship and
what we are going to do to make sure that this is truly a successful
activity. We have to and we are all committed to that. But in the
interests of time, let me just focus on two key areas--acquisition and
science and technology. I’ll save science and technology for later, but
let me first talk about acquisition.
It is the area (acquisition) that best resonates with what the chief
was talking about earlier today. It best resonates with the message he
was giving to us about horizontal integration, about getting rid of the
stove pipes, about working together to achieve effects or capabilities
for the warfighter and for our national security objectives. Some of you
are aware that at the beginning of this calendar year, our then
assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, Dr. Larry Delaney
and I, co-signed a letter that went out to the acquisition community. In
that letter, we designated enterprise commanders. We designated Brian
Arnold as the space enterprise commander, Dick Reynolds as the
aeronautical enterprise commander, Leslie Kenne as the
command-and-control enterprise commander, MikeKostelnik as the air
armament enterprise commander. What we were defining there was an
opportunity to get rid of stove pipes.
I’ll be honest with you--when we started with this, we were just
trying to get rid of the stove pipes in different specific sectors or
mission area. We looked and saw the folly of managing programs at stove
pipes, of managing the F-15, the F-16, the F-22 as individual programs
and not integrating them and making sure they are interoperable and
making sure somebody was worried about the common aspects about those
systems, somebody was worried about the gaps in those systems and
somebody was making sure that they were properly glued together.
We needed to have a single belly button responsible for that, an
enterprise manager for those various sectors. But it didn’t take very
long, literally almost a nanosecond, for those enterprise commanders to
realize they needed to have another construct. We call it an enterprise
integrating counsel for them to get together and look at effects or
capabilities for the warfighter, not just in the aeronautical enterprise
or the command-and-control enterprise or the space-enterprise, but how
you bring them all together to solve problems.
The enterprise integration counsel has been working now for literally
six months or a little bit more than that and results are beginning to
happen. I can give no better example than the one that is associated
with the capability that the chief talked about--time-critical
targeting. I tell you literally, for somebody involved in acquisition
most of his career, it brought tears to my eyes to see this community,
the acquisition community, come together to present a solution or
solution-set to the warfighter that was fully integrated.
Several months ago, we presented to ACC with then, our chief, as its
commander, an integrated road map on how we should do time-critical
targeting. It wasn’t just the F-15E piece of it, it wasn’t just the
command and control piece, it was all of those pieces horizontally
integrated. It offered trades for the warfighter. It offered gap fillers
for the warfighter. It offered the opportunity if one systems fails in
its acquisition development, there are other capabilities that can fill
in that gap, ultimately to give you a capability, to give you an effect
on the battlefield. That enterprise integration counsel and that
approach is now being used in everything we take on for the warfighter.
We still have a long ways to go. There are a lot of cultures that
need to be changed. A lot of training that we have to do. A lot of
things that we have to make happen to ensure that culture is really
inculcated throughout the entire process. But that one example to me was
very heartening. It shows that we can do it. It shows that we can work
as an integrated community and we can provide solutions to the chief,
the secretary, the warfighter and all of the national security apparatus
that is fully integrated horizontally to focus on effects.
The chief mentioned space-based radar. With his challenge, we are now
doing that with that particular area and focusing on GMTI, not just on
space-based radar. To complete part of the story that the chief started,
when we came to the Pentagon a couple of months ago, we had Space
Command, we had SMC presenting a space-based radar story on what we
needed to do to develop that capability, we had others in the audience
looking at the command and control, but it took a very simple statement
from the chief and the secretary – primarily the chief– to say, "what is
the effect we want to achieve?"
At least an initial effect is GMTI, and if you look at GMTI as what
the objective is, not having a space-based radar or a radar in space and
then looking at how you would achieve that capability with manned,
unmanned platforms and space, and how you evolve from that to eventually
something that we can do from space, it gives a whole new dimension on
how you manage things, how you look at things and how you develop
things. We are now working that same enterprise integration counsel to
address that particular subject.
It is working everywhere. Just last week we had an enterprise
integration counsel meeting up at Hanscom Air Force Base. Bill Mikas is
representing the SMC community. We have General Leslie Kenne from the
command and control, Dick Reynolds from the aeronautical sector. We had
the armament guys there. And they started looking at a wide variety of
different effects, Link 16 as an example and predictive battlefield
awareness (PBA). All of those constructs can be addressed in a
horizontally integrated way with this enterprise integration approach.
It is going to completely change the mind-set on how we do things.
There are some challenges as we begin to make this happen. Not the
least of which is that it is still in its infancy. And we still have a
long ways to go to really make it perfect. There is a challenge in how
we help support from a developmental planning standpoint these
enterprise approaches. So, we have reinvigorated within Air Force
Materiel Command something that many of you are familiar with from the
past--developmental engineering or develop planning.
How do we do that planning early, early developmental planning in
looking at the art of the possible from the technology standpoint and
the requirements of the user and begin thinking continuously in terms of
capabilities that we could offer to the user to solve an effect or a
capability? We are again reinvigorating our development planning
approach. We now have a construct to do that. We are beginning to get
some funds identified to do that and I think that will also go a long
way to help us to be even better at this horizontal integration approach
that the chief has challenged us to achieve.
But there is another big role--it is the industry role. To be honest
with you, I am not sure how we are going to do that. We need your help
and advice in being able to address that because it gets down eventually
to contracts. It gets down, in some cases, to how do you deal with
proprietary rights of a particular company. We are going to have to
figure out how we work with you, work with industry, to be able to
support this horizontal enterprise, integrated approach. We want to be
able to bring everything to the table to address and to look at creating
an effect or creating a capability. Right now, you also, just as we have
been, are organized in terms of platforms. Or you manage and build and
provide things to us in terms of platforms. We need your help to figure
out how we bring industry into this picture and also give us the ability
to look at things horizontally. That might be even the most daunting
challenge. But we need your help and thoughts on that particular
subject.
That is one of the areas that we will continue working in terms of
acquisition process, organizational process, training of our people,
equipping them with tools to be able to do this. That will be a role
AFMC will provide to Air Force Space Command and all the other
operational MajComs within the Air Force.
Let me switch next to science and technology. The guidance signed by
Secretary Rumsfeld states, if you don’t mind me quoting, "assign the Air
Force Space Command the responsibility for prioritizing, overseeing and
directing Air Force space research, executed by AFMC’s Air Force
Research Laboratories." It goes on to say that we need to provide a
process for the commander of Air Force Space to program funds and direct
research and development programs within the AFRL systems.
We are in the process of doing that. Our MOA allows us and supports
that guidance. And we think we are going to not only meet the mandate
from the SecDef but we are going to be able to do that and do it in a
very, very smart manner. We will still plan to keep science and
technology budget and programming within Air Force Materiel Command, but
the reason we are doing that is not because we are challenging the Space
Commission, it is because our technologies are now so pervasive.
At one point, when somebody asked us to carve out space technologies,
and look at how we might assign space technologies to Air Force Space
Command, we had a very difficult time. Because there are aeronautical
technologies, there are command-and-control technologies. There are even
munitions technologies. There are sensor technologies that are embodied
in all of our laboratory directorates that support the space mission. It
was very difficult to try to carve out any one.
So we agreed and I think the space commission will agree with us that
the process we’ve established to allow us to continue developing those
technologies, but have Roger DeKok and Ed Eberhart and the leadership of
Air Force Space Command to ensure we are doing the right things and we
have the right priorities, is the way that we need to address that
particular mandate.
I am reminded of a statement by Sir Arthur C. Clarke once said in
talking about technology--"Any sufficiently advanced technology is
indistinguishable from magic." For our Air Force science and technology
programs, particularly those that relate to the space mission, there are
magical things out there on the horizons. There are magical things going
on in our laboratories. I wish I had the opportunity to share all of
them with you. A lot of them we can’t, because they are classified and
others are still in infancy stages. But there are very exciting things
going on. Suffice it to say, technology is still going on for today and
tomorrow and we will continue revolutionizing air and space operations
with those technologies.
Let me give you just one example. The chief has talked about
communications between manned, unmanned platforms. He talked about the
need to get space capabilities and awareness down into the cockpit. One
very strong limiting factor that we all are aware of is bandwidth.
Imagine the ability to have unlimited bandwidth. That may sound
impossible. It may sound magical. But thanks to the pioneering work of
people like Dr. Bob Fugate at our Air Force Research Lab’s Starfire
Optical Range, the pioneering work he’s done in adaptive optics and
directed energy, in collaboration with organizations like the NRO and
others, we are not far from solving that problem. I can’t go into the
details right now, but stay tuned and stay tuned not too far from now.
It will be magical, but it will solve a major, major problem, not just
for the Air Force, but for commercial industry and everybody else who
needs the bandwidth to be able to accomplish their goals.
Imagine also a space-based contribution to the Global Strike Task
Force some time in the future to help solve the anti-access problem.
Programs or capabilities like one that Air Force Space Command has given
the label "GLASS", global laser strike and surveillance system, is a
concept that is not very far-fetched. It uses a constellation of space,
airborne, ground, mobile and sea-based lasers combined with space-based
relay mirrors to create full spectrum dominance on a global scale almost
instantly on a specific spot on the earth. Impossible? Magical? Not at
all. We are not very far from that and it is what our technologies will
be able to bring to us.
In all these cases, as I hinted earlier, the participating Air Force
Research Lab directorates cross the spectrum within the U.S. Air Force
and Air Force Materiel Command. Our space vehicles directorate, our
directed energy directorate, our munitions directorate, materiels
directorate, propulsion, information sensors, geophysics, all of them
are involved in giving us those kinds of capabilities and potential that
science and technology can bring. It is a collaborative effort across
the enterprise of the laboratories for Air Force Materiel Command and
for the U.S. Air Force.
In some of these cases we are talking about technology push, but in
most cases, there will be technology pull, the pull that we will get
from the operator, from Air Force Space Command, as an example. It will
again allow us to revolutionize the way we operate in air and operate in
space and operate in air and space combined to give that horizontal
capability that we need for the warfighter.
Finally, when addressing space technologies, I recall a statement
made by Dr. Werner von Braun, who once said that our two greatest
problems are technology and bureaucracy. We can solve the technology.
But sometimes the bureaucracy is overwhelming and I think we all
recognize that.
To help address the bureaucracy and the administrative challenges we
have in getting capabilities from the laboratory to the warfighter’s
hands, one of the things that we think is going to help is to
continuously mature a process we started almost two years ago. We call
it "applied technology counsel." It is an enterprise approach, if you
will, started before we started using that terminology, but it has the
same effect of bringing the warfighter together with our laboratory
directors, with the program offices to look at what can we do to
streamline the transition process of technology in the laboratory to get
it into the hands of the warfighter.
We’ve been doing this for two years, working with the major commands.
We are now starting to work with those major operational commands
combined together so that we are not looking at individual stove pipes
and I think again the results are going to be very startling.
We’ve already been able to quickly transition some programs from the
laboratory to the hands of the warfighter by particularly making sure
the warfighter understands the art of the possible and can begin to put
money against that transition and doesn’t wait and we don’t wait until a
technology is completely mature before we start the budgeting process,
which you all know, can be bureaucratic and long-term. That is going to
help us in one respect.
Another aspect we still need to address in this area, however, is how
to make sure we can mature technology a lot more than we currently do in
our laboratories so we don’t hand over a program to the program office
that then takes five, six, sometimes ten years before we can get it into
the hands of the warfighter. We are working processes now to allow us to
do that.
So, there are a lot of things that are happening. It is very
exciting, to be honest with you, and I can tell you with great
enthusiasm, notwithstanding my background at the organization out here
at Los Angeles, notwithstanding my acquisition experience, I am
extremely pleased and extremely excited to be part of the activity that
will support Air Force Space Command in their cradle-to-grave approach
for space. We will be working with them and from an acquisition
standpoint, working with Brian Arnold along with our other center
commanders, these enterprise commanders, to make sure we completely
horizontally integrate all the great capabilities that we have in the
U.S. Air Force.
We in AFMC really believe that we are warriors supporting warriors
and we are very excited about the prospects. With that, let me close and
say thank you for inviting me. Thank you for letting me be associated
with this great community again and God bless you. Keep up all the great
work.
Q: How are we doing with the human resource, both civilian and
military, in terms of the recruiting and retention of engineers?
General Lyles: It is a very fortuitous point in terms of our
recognition of the problems we have out there. As most of you know, just
looking at the civilian dimension of our engineers and people in the
workforce within Air Force Materiel Command and the U.S. Air Force in
total for that matter, we are at a position where thanks to hiring
freezes and things of that nature, ten, twelve years ago, roughly 70
percent of our civilian workforce is eligible to retire over the next
five to eight years. That realization, coupled with the realization of
the challenges of attracting engineers, recruiting engineers and
retaining engineers, have forced us all to rethink how we handle this
particular situation.
I thought it is ironic that last December 8th, the Air
Force held the first scientist and engineering summit, a review where
the chief, the secretary and all the four-stars review major problems
and initiatives for the U.S. Air Force. We were focused specifically on
what initiatives should we address to be able to handle this problem?
What kind of things should we be doing in terms of recruiting bonuses,
retention bonuses, things to stimulate the education opportunities for
science and engineers. We addressed a wide variety of things that the
U.S. Air Force should do. We are now starting to embrace all of those in
one form or another.
What is sort of serendipity to me, and I think our chief probably
would say the same thing, when we had this summit review on the 8th
of December last year, we decided we needed to have an industry
representative telling us about the problem from industry’s perspective.
We chose someone we thought was very well recognized in industry. We
chose a guy who was the president of Northrop Grumman’s activity out at
Baltimore. We chose Dr. Jim Roche to come speak to this group. Neither
he nor we knew at that time that he was going to end up being our
Secretary of the Air Force. Now he has not just helped us in that vein,
he has completely embraced all the things we are trying to do and is
working with us to make sure that we can solve that particular problem.
We are going to be putting money on the table to help address the
situation.
Q: As you look to replace current satellite systems, what are
the top three to four priorities? What improved capabilities will newer
systems provide to the warriors?
General Lyles: If I think just with a space hat on and I’ll
caveat that in a second here, probably the top capabilities would be
those that could be provided to us by what SBIRS High and SBIRS Low can
bring to the picture. In addition to the continuous refreshing and
updating of capabilities like GBS obviously and what they provide for
the picture. The chief has us all really enthusiastic and I am not just
saying this, to be honest with you. In answering that question, just
like the chief said earlier, we almost have to stop thinking like that
and start thinking in terms of the horizontal integration of
capabilities. When you put your hat on in a different manner, cock it a
little differently and think about that, you then have to start thinking
about manned platforms, unmanned platforms and space and how you evolve
to potentially something that might be all in space and that gives you a
different dimension on how you handle the particular problem. I think
SBIRS High and SBIRS Low are still very important but as we think of how
we use them, we can’t forget the manned and unmanned platform portion of
any particular mission.
Q: What advice did you/would you give from one MAJCOM commander
to another as Space and Missile Center transitions from AFMC to Space
Command?
General Lyles: It is the opportunity to blend the operational
and the acquisition community. This is a specific way of doing it, the
way we are doing the cradle-to-grave approach for our space activity,
but it has caused us to think differently on how we operate with Air
Combat Command, how we operate at Air Mobility Command.
While I don’t think that we are going to be looking at creating a
cradle-to-grave organization for lift or airlift or a cradle-to-grave
organization for just combat vehicles, it has put a premium on making
sure that we in Air Force Materiel Command and the MAJCOM commanders for
the other operational dimensions think in terms of how we integrate our
people a lot more than we’ve done in the past. The chief mentioned one
that we are going to be working literally from today on and that is
exchanging hostages, if I can use that terminology.
I want to make sure we have our people working in the requirements
shop and the operational shops of the operational commands and vice
versa. I would like to have them be part of our headquarters and part of
all our program offices. We really need to blend people together a lot
more than we’ve done in the past.
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