General Gregory S. Martin
Commander, U.S. Air Forces in Europe
AFA National Symposium--Orlando
February 14, 2002
General Martin: I want to thank all of you for being here today. What
I'd like to do is talk to you a little bit about how we in the United
States Air Force in Europe are looking at this global war on terrorism.
As I do so, let me say again what a pleasure it is for me to be here, to
have the opportunity to share a perspective with you from someone who is
- although through CNN connected to the states - really in a different
location where people are looking at this situation just a little bit
differently.It is truly exciting for me to be here with the Air Force
Association and the great work Tom McKee and John Shaud have done in
bringing together this terrific group of people who love our Air Force,
whether they be the men and women who are in uniform here - and many of
them sponsored by the AFA for the opportunity to attend here - or our
great, great industry partners, who are making the kinds of things
happen that General Jumper and General Hornburg just showed you a few
moments ago. Let me also say thanks to those men and women in our Air
Force who are here helping escort and are, of course, our great ROTC
future. It is a pleasure for me to be among you, back here in the United
States, where I have an opportunity to re-blue and re-red-white-and-blue
my body.
What I'll do very quickly is just take you through how I am looking
at this enemy that we are dealing with today. Be careful when we talk
about that, that we haven't changed the imperatives here of warfare or
the kinds of things that we need to do as military personnel/military
forces supporting our overall national and, in some cases our
international, objectives. I'll talk about the humanitarian picture and
then lastly we'll just give you a quick snippet of some things I saw and
I am not going t talk about necessarily what happened in the AOR, but
what I saw from the outside the AOR that might give you some insight on
things that we need to work on in the future. Slide.
First of all, when we think of the enemy, we kind of think of it in
the traditional Cold War and actual historical perspective of war. It is
nations versus nations. We think of the strategic, the operational and
the tactical level and the centers of gravity in each of those areas.
Strategic are the things that allow a nation to exist; its leadership,
its people, its industry, its productivity, its financial structure.
Those are strategic things. By the way, when I say people, you'll see
some slides downstream that, in the past, how you treated the people
made a difference. Sometimes you just tried to eliminate them and that
didn't necessarily solve the problem. In other cases, you try and feed
them and they actually become a force enabler for you. But nonetheless,
those are strategic things. Operational, the things that allow an enemy
to maneuver, control, sustain its forces. And the tactical level, of
course, the forces themselves. And we sort of thought of that in terms
of a country boundary. And that series of pictures there will kind of
show you some of the more recent enemies we've faced in the past several
years.
While that was our mindset and the Cold War moved on we really went into
a period that I think of as a simmering peace. You can see that there
are over 67 different events that men and women in the United States Air
Forces Europe and in EUCOM in general participated in just in the last
decade. Some were humanitarian. Some were hot conflicts. In fact, it is
kind of interesting that while we were participating in those events -
and that is about a seven-fold increase in terms of the things that we
responded to in the previous 40 years - it masked what was really going
on with this new enemy. But let's take a look at some of the things that
did occur that weren't humanitarian, but were in fact the beginnings of
this conflict that we are into today.
We all [remember] 1993 in Somalia and in the United States with the
World Trade Center. We understood there was a terrorist connection, but
that wasn't foremost on our plate at the time. Slide.
And [then] we transitioned from Desert Storm into providing a no-fly
zone in Operation Northern Watch and prior to that, Operation Provide
Comfort. Slide.
And then Deliberate Force in the Balkans in 1995 that brought Milosevic
to the Dayton Accords. Slide.
The Kenya and Tanzania bombings, over 200 people killed there. Again,
a terrorist connection. We were beginning to put the dots together, but
we hadn't quite figured this out. Slide.
In Operation Allied Force in 1999, against terrorist connections
there, although there were bigger powers at play. Slide.
The USS Cole in Yemen. Again, although not our area of
responsibility, Europeans forces responded in humanitarian relief or, in
this case, rescue operations and medivac. Slide.
As you know, Israel blew up a little over a year ago during the
[current] Intifada. Slide.
Every time we catch our breath, something else catches us as
Operation Enduring Freedom has hit us. If you take a look at the history
just over the last ten years, just about the time you sort of think the
world is safe for democracy, another events occurs and we hadn't quite
connected the dots. But they knew what they were doing. Slide.
Who is this new enemy that we are facing? I would say this is a
pretty good description. It is an extremist group. They don't really
agree with the institutions as we know them. They are pursing their own
beliefs and they don't care about the norms of normal social, legal and
moral behavior. Slide.
They are organized terrorists. Slide.
And I would submit they are not new. Slide.
In fact, if you look at the events that occurred, just in the
environment I am concerned about, over the last 20 years, they've been
at this in a focused way. They declared war on our way of life. And the
toll is rather significant. Over 5,000. They've been at it for more than
20 years and we've sort of thought of it as an irritant, as maybe a
criminal activity. But, in fact, the organized terrorists have got us
marked. An interesting fact, if you take a look at the first 158
detainees at GITMO, less than ten percent were Afghans. The rest came
from other countries. More than 20 other countries have people on the Al
Qaeda or on the Taliban payroll. All in [Afghanistan] fighting for those
organizations.
A question you have to ask yourself is, how many were being trained and
getting ready to spin out? How many have already gone through and are
already out there in the world? They've been at it. They are serious and
we are awake. And just as General Jumper said, we are going to track
them down and we are going to take them out. But it is not going to
happen overnight. Slide.
That is who we are facing - it is a supranational entity. They are
outside the borders. They are all over. There are nodes. They are
getting financial support. They are getting host nation support. They
are getting administrative support. Training, recruiting, just as I
mentioned. They are sort of all over and right now we don't know how
many there are. It is an enemy without borders. It has got global reach
and, as I said in an earlier slide, it can take that simmering peace and
turn it into a hot war in just minutes and it comes from 360 degrees.
And it is not just Osama that you had earlier. It is a whole group of
them and right now the question is: where are all of them and who
trained them and how can we get at their strategic centers? Their
operational centers? And ultimately their tactical execution units? How
can we do that? Slide.
As we look at Operation Enduring Freedom, it is pretty clear that we
find ourselves in Europe with two arcs that you see there - a situation
that we sort of describe as the lens effect. It makes the location or
geographic location really important for about anything we want to
pursue on that part of the hemisphere. It is about 3,500 miles from the
United States. It is about 3,500 miles from Southwest Asia. So,
somewhere in that ballpark, we need some lily pads.
If we are going to do the mobility that General Hornburg talked about
earlier, that we need support from General Handy on, they either need
tankers there to extend the reach of the aircraft or we need bases where
we can do a pony express operation with staged crews and send them on.
it doesn't matter whether we are talking about Allied Force or whether
we are talking about going into new areas of Southwest Asia or Central
Asia, that becomes a key and important part to us. Slide.
That is what you saw happen. Both East and West and then the majority
of the sustainment action continued to come East. What we find is
partnership with other people in the world [is] very important, in fact.
Slide.
I would say that as we go about this war, these are kind of the
imperatives we ought to pay attention to. We need access. Access at
least en route to many of the places as much as possible so that we can
bring as much force to bear and help that Global Strike Task Force once
it kicks the door down with a sustainment of follow-on forces that will
win the war. We need coordination, cooperation, from global partners.
And we need to be able to conduct rapid, decisive operations and they
are of all kinds. Everyone thinks about kinetics. Jump right in and get
them right now. But we need to be able to make some very quick circle
turns on political, financial, psychological, diplomatic, judicial,
because in the global war on terrorism, when you take a look at those
nets, the information I have matched together with the French
information and the Italian information and the German information can
geo-locate a spot where we can make a difference now in one of those
ways, but we have to be able to turn quickly and it requires that
cooperation. And all the time we have to be sensitive to humanitarian
needs if we want to win the peace. Slide.
When you take a look at the normal spectrum of cooperation, this chart
shows that across the bottom are the kinds of things that other nations
can do to support our efforts - everything from political statements to
sharing intel to over-flight rights to conducting military operations.
That is normally what you would see in a conventional war. The level of
risk to the participants goes up as you move down the scale. The number
of countries is a function of how well you've done your cooperative
security or engagement activities. Slide.
In the war on terrorism, I am happy to say, we've seen a great, great
amount of support from many nations. Just a couple of interesting
statistics here. 142 nations have ordered some sort of asset freeze on
terrorist outfits. 136 have offered assistance to the United States. 89
have granted over-flight rights. 76 have offered landing rights. 23 have
offered to host U.S. forces. That is the kind of access that we need in
order to take on a global threat and be able to have persistence around
the world so that when the time is right to make a move, whether it be
in the political or in the kinetic, we have the forces or the right
people mustered to take that action. Slide.
When we take a look at what we are doing in Europe, this is a typical
year. About 40 percent of our people are engaged in some sort of
training, exercise or partnership activities and about ten percent of
our flying hour program is working in those nations that you see in the
light-colored green. That pays off. When we started Operation Enduring
Freedom, not many people realized that every 'Stan, except for Pakistan,
and Afghanistan, is a Partnership for Peace member. That means that
although they are in General Tommy Franks' AOR, they work with NATO and
last May, most of them were at Ramstein at the Warrior Prep Center with
General Franks, conducting a peace support operation with the senior
leadership of their nations there. Now, isn't that something?
And then when we needed over-flight rights from Turkmenistan or basing
rights in Uzbekistan or Kazakhstan, those people allowed that to happen.
That kind of contact is very, very important to us and that is something
that our forward-deployed forces do, whether they are in the Pacific or
in the Southern Hemisphere or in Europe. It is very important that we
understand that makes a difference when we are in this global war.
Slide.
Then, when we take a look at the sensitivity - humanitarian needs -
this is kind of the way we treated the general population in the past.
As you can see, it didn't matter what side you were on. Not as much
concern for collateral damage as you see today. On the other hand,
Slide.
In the last 50 years, I think most of you know that we paid a lot of
attention to it, from Berlin to the Balkans to Afghanistan. It becomes a
very important mission for us. If we want to win the peace. If we want
to enable that part of the force or that part of the strategic center of
gravity that can ultimately bring down an enemy that is in their midst.
Slide.
It is not surprise that we are proud of what we have done, as an Air
Force, as men and women in Europe. Over 250,000 sorties flown in the
Berlin Airlift for a period of 16 months. Slide.
And as we went through the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s, go ahead and
click those slides. You can see, these are the kinds of humanitarian
relief. Slide.
Over the decades, those are the places that we responded to. Earthquake
relief, floor relief, humanitarian relief for people who were famine
victims. Slide.
Through the 90s and over all, over 160 HUMROEs since we did Berlin.
Slide.
Berlin was the daddy rabbit of them all. But Operation Provide Comfort,
nearly 4,000 sorties. Slide.
Operation Provide Promise, 43 months of operations, 13,000 sorties.
It has been something that we in America and in the United States Air
Force have paid attention to for many years. And it turns out to be a
part of our war-winning tools. Slide.
Now, when you take a look at Enduring Freedom, it is pretty
interesting to see the base structure that we used. The first couple of
nights, we were using C-17s. John Handy's C-17s. I must tell you, that I
didn't fly fighters, drop bombs, shoot the gun, fire missiles all my
life to deliver food. But I've understood how important that mission is.
John Handy wouldn't even let me deliver food. It is his guys that
delivered the food; I was just packing it. But when you haven't got
another mission that is more important, then that one is pretty
important and the people over there did a magnificent job in concert
with our Army, with the Germans, with TRANSCOM, with our Navy making
that happen - and our special ops forces. The first couple of nights, a
22-23 hour mission to make sure that they came in with the package that
was supporting the combat operations. Slide.
Then after the first two nights, we deployed F-16s, F-15s, tankers,
RJs and AWACS forward to Incirlik and other bases and provided fighter
support for the Northern route, which was about a 15 hour mission as you
can see. In terms of the United States, about 3,000 miles each way. That
is more like going well past the States and back each night and
somewhere between 13 and 15 hours, depending on where the locations
were. A really interesting operation. Slide.
And during this period, we were sustaining and supporting much of the
flow of information that came - of personnel, cargo and equipment that
came through the theater, up to as many as 135 wide-bodies a day. So the
people in Europe really feel proud about their contribution to this
effort that went forward in support of both the Special Operations
Command and the Central Command as they conducted the kinetic part of
the war. And through that period, the humanitarian relief was something
that they made their mission and they were proud of, I think just as we
found ourselves proud in other humanitarian relief operations. Slide.
It was a joint and combined operation and it wasn't just out of
C-17s. We had C-160s that the Germans used to fly down to Incirlik where
our special operations forces delivered Vaseline, oats and saddles to
Sergeant Linehart. You can't go on the German market and get Vaseline
using that term. They have another name for it. I don't know what it is,
but they got it. Point is, this was a magnificent group of people on the
continent, from the different services in different countries that
helped and made a difference to those troops that were forward.
And by the way, during that period of time, we were up to nearly 500
people who have been evacuated for medical reasons out of the AOR,
including some of those who have been killed in action. An unsung group
of heroes really are our aero-medical evacuation folks who do their job
with great compassion and great sensitivity and care for the people who
are serving our nation so well. That is a great crowd. And we are very
proud of them wherever they may be, but certainly those at Ramstein.
Slide.
As we go forward on the next part of this war, we are going to have to
have access and that requires a continuation of our partnership and our
exercises and our presence. We have to have a global cooperation, info
sharing, intelligence gathering, interoperability. We have to be able to
move quickly, whether it be kinetic, political, diplomatic, financial,
we have to know where to go and to move quickly. That gets at the
predictive battle space awareness we are talking about, but from a
different perspective, a different lay-out of the nodes that we are
talking about. And then all this time I think we have to maintain a
sensitivity to the humanitarian relief operations. That helps us in
stabilizing an area, building a sense of trust and hopefully being able
to move forward with post-conflict progress.
Now, as I mentioned at the beginning, I talked just a couple seconds
about some of the things I've seen over the past several months that we
need to do better or that we need to work as a military-industry team so
that we will be better the next time a war occurs. And, even better, for
the war we are already in. Slide.
First of all, force protection. Some of you were at Eglin last year
when I made this pitch about force protection. Let me just say that our
view of force protection is throw more people at the problem, hunker
down, try to keep anybody from getting in. It is a foxhole-bunker
mentality. We have got to knock that off. It is really
manpower-intensive and the most sophisticated sensor we have is a dog
and the stand-off distance is a leash. We must do better. We must HPM
it. Bring effluent out. Laser it. Find out, is that is some sort of
explosive at 500 meters or more. Disable the person or the vehicle and
then do what we want to with them before they can detonate and kill
either the gate or anybody inside the gate they blow through. We have to
do better. It can't just be more people thrown at the problem.
IPB. D-minus 365 that the Chief talked about. We need to know lots more
about lots more places in the world because, guess what, those nodes I
am talking about are everywhere. We have got to know a lot more about
them and particularly those areas of focus when we are ready to go do
something. So the kinds of things that the Chief and General Hornburg
already talked about are those areas that we really have to focus on
because if you want to conduct a rapid, decisive operation, you've got
to know what you are doing and you've got to have a pretty good idea
what it is going to be like when you get there. We found, on the first
night, a great strap-on system for our C-17s called ABI - airspace
battlefield awareness. It had great feeds in there and it gave the
people in the cockpit a pretty good indication of what was happening all
around them. Strap-on. It ought to be integrated. The machines out to
talk to each other. We ought to know where everyone is and it ought not
be something that is kluged together and it ought to be something that
we have focused on and made happen as a conscious effort, rather than as
a last minute thought.
Execution of air and space activities from reach-back locations,
clearly when you look at the Predator, clearly when you look at the
Global Hawk, we are doing those kinds of operations a long way away. Now
the bandwidth requirements. Now the deconfliction requirements. All of
the things that we need to start thinking about when it comes to
actually executing from outside the AOR. Or a long way away from the
target area. Lots to learn there. Lots of technology effort that is
going to have to help us here.
How about Sergeant Linehart, on the ground for six weeks? He didn't
carry six weeks of food with him. And he moved a lot. So being able to
supply small teams that have high-tech triggers is very important and it
became absolutely critical in this effort. We had a good system, we
thought, but then when you talk to the customer, you find out that it
was a little like mail order instead of LL Bean off the shelf right
then.
And then, lastly, humanitarian assistance is something we have been
paying a lot of attention to for the last 50 years, but there are a lot
more things we can do. We can't afford to have our CDS container through
a house and kill two people. We know that we have laser wind detectors.
We know that there are things that can be done to give us a much better
and much more accurate delivery of the things that are important and
necessary from all weather and all altitudes.
Those are some early take-aways that I would give to you to think
about and to talk about during this great symposium. And ultimately to
come back because you saw a phone number up there for the guy that has
got the big bucks. That is my good friend Hal Hornburg and between us
and him we are going to help make some of this happen. But it is going
to take some help from you. I look forward to sharing the phone calls
with General Hornburg. Slide.
Last, let me just say in parting thoughts that clearly the nature of
this enemy has changed. The principles of war have not. It is a global
war. It is going to require a global perspective and last, as airmen, we
must think offensively. We have to get out of the foxhole. We have to go
get them because they are out there and they are right now 360 degrees
around and they pick the time and place of attack. We have to go get
them first. Slide.
In closing, let me just say what a pleasure it is again for me to be
here. I thank the AFA. I thank all of you for being here and I look
forward to your questions. Thank you.
Q. Do you see Europe enabling common or joint military forces? Will they
buy comm and weapon systems and work as one unified force?
General Martin: I think General Jumper said it pretty well when he
was asked a similar question here. Although it is clear that we believe
the European nations in general are not spending enough on defense and
that there is concern about this growing capability gap - they talk
about a technology gap, but I reject that, I call it a capability gap -
but the fact is, if they spend their money on the right things, they can
take quantum leaps in capability to then join the fray. Just as we
talked about with secure comm and data link and precision weapon
systems. You don't necessarily need the most sophisticated platform.
That is kind of the way people think about modernization - it has all
got to be new, it has all got to be gee-whiz. But the fact is, that is
very expensive.
What we really need to do, I think, is ask them to look hard at where
our industry can cooperate. We are going to have to share a little, they
are going to have to perhaps buy a little of ours while we work some
cooperative stuff. And in the meantime, pick the right thing with the
right money and then give you that capability enhancement. And right
now, it does not look like it is going that way. I think we need to help
that process come back to a capability-based presentation as opposed to
an industrially-based development process.
Q. Do you see European allied support for a long war against terrorist
and possible operations beyond Afghanistan diminishing? How do we keep
their full support?
General Martin: I think that their ability to help us and our ability to
help them in this global war is going to be a function of a continuing
drum beat, if you will, of the need for sharing of information, a
continuation of the kinds of things I showed on the board there when it
came to access - the partnership, the training exercises, and those
sorts of things. The interest can ebb significantly until an event
occurs unless we, not only the United States, but leadership in the
partner countries, remain vigilant and concerned about this threat and
the number of intelligence inputs that come in daily keep people pretty
interested. Although you may see some waning of interest in the
population, right now, I haven't seen that with respect to the
government.
As many of you know, NATO declared or invoked Article V within 24
hours. They sent AWACS within a week of the time we asked, five of them.
They sent two more since then. They have not started to ask, "when are
we bringing them home?" They know we need them. And at this point, now
as the next phase [begins], I think you'll find much of that will be
very important - military to military, nation to nation contacts for the
purpose of attacking some of those nodes in ways more than just kinetic.
Q. With the European Union's formation, are they diverging from NATO and
U.S. influence?
General Martin: Only, I think, if we all let it happen. The EU is really
a much more complicated organization than many people understand. As an
example, they have now developed common environmental codes and
restrictions. They may even go into a non-public smoking mode some day.
Clearly, they have the euro. To be a member of the EU, you can't have
capital punishment. There are a whole series of legal agreements that
have been made, not just those that we hear a lot about - the trade
barriers, the unguarded borders, the euro.
There is a whole group of things that are happening. Now, in my view,
they could drift apart and begin to split the transatlantic alliance,
but I think we need to work hard to not let that happen. I think this
global war on terrorism gives us an excellent opportunity to continue
strong relationships, continue sharing of information - in some cases
technology - and, in the end, an opportunity for some important
cooperative developments that will maybe give that capability gap a
little less steam in the reporting that we see.
Q. Final question, giving that Enduring Freedom has increased optempo in
USAFE, how are your troops holding up in your command?
General Martin: I worry a lot about the optempo. Just to give you a
rough example of the concern. Before 9/11, the average person in our
command was working between 50 and 54 hours a week. We plan for them to
work about 43 hours. So we already have people who were busy.
The good news that we were seeing an increase in our readiness. We
were seeing a significant increase in the funding for our facilities.
Housing - 100 million a year from 20 or 30 million dollars, just a few
years ago. Military construction - $113 million this year as opposed to
$30 million three or four years ago. So, they know that we care. They
know that. But the load is heavy and then, after 9/11, we have asked a
lot of them. We know we've gone through the stop-loss business. And we
are now beginning to see that there are some of those specialties we can
release. I think, deep down inside, that General Hornburg said it as
well as anyone. We, the leadership -helped by the way, by organizations
such as the Air Force Association and our other great institutions that
provide support to our military - need to continue to convince our
people 1) that what they are doing is very important; 2) that they are
respected; and I will also mention that people in uniform, our policemen
and our fire departments, are [receiving that] kind of respect, which is
just a wonderful thing to see happen in our country. People in uniform
that serve for others, by putting themselves in harm's way, are elevated
in this nation.
It is a great time for us to serve. But in the end, we have to turn
those resources into the people, the equipment, the facilities and,
lastly, into the right manpower numbers so that we can take that load
off of the few and put it across a larger number of many.
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