Foundation Forum

Major General Donald G. Cook
Director of Expeditionary Aerospace Force Implementation
AFA Air Warfare Symposium (Orlando, FL)

February 4, 1999

I do not need to tell anybody that the world has changed. It used to be more predictable, with two superpowers, where the rules of engagement were known and somewhat understandable. There was some degree of stability.

Today America has become the indispensable nation for much of the world. And for this reason, I want to discuss with you Global Engagement with an Expeditionary Aerospace Force (EAF). In doing so, I will describe for you an operational strategy and an operational construct, which will allow our Air Force to more efficiently meet today's global challenges. Specifically, I am talking about the Global Engagement operational strategy, and our Expeditionary Aerospace Force concept. Together, these two capture the strength of aerospace power.

I would like this presentation to leave you with an understanding of how the United States Air Force, as an EAF, will support national guidance and rise to the challenge of future operations.

The national security strategy of engagement is supported and complemented by our national military strategy, defense planning, and the quadrennial review. We are, with those documents, directed to shape, respond, and prepare now for an uncertain future.

Our Air Force shapes the international environment through forward presence, military to military exchanges, coalition exercises, and foreign military sales, to name a few. We have demonstrated, time and again, our ability to respond to crises across the spectrum of conflict, and our EAF concept will capitalize on the inherent strengths that our Air Force can bring to bear in any uncertain environment.

Bearing in mind the strengths of our people, organization, materiel, doctrine, and training, the joint and Service visions responded to this new post-Cold War guidance. Joint Vision 2010, with its four operational concepts and two key enablers, was complemented by the Air Force vision, Global Engagement, and a vision for the 21^st century, and its six core competencies.

The global engagement operations strategy enabled by the expeditionary aerospace force concept articulates how airmen contribute to full spectrum dominance. Our national guidance and the global engagement operations strategy is a recognition that we are in a paradigm shift and must change.

Accordingly, we have moved from a Cold War Air Force focused on containing the threat with a large forward presence to a smaller, capabilities-based Air Force focused on shaping and responding around the world. We are operating from less prepared bases and infrastructure while always remaining very concerned about protecting our forces.

To make the transformation required by this change in thinking, the United States Air Force must take an expeditionary approach. I think you will agree, as you look at the tempo for 1998, that it illustrates my point. There were over 60 deployments and 23,000 sorties in Operation Southern Watch. There were 30 deployments and over 2200 sorties in Bosnia. And there were nearly 300 military to military contacts in Europe, the Pacific, and South America.

All of this points to an Air Force that is globally engaged. And while this level of engagement stresses our people, we must also recognize the benefits to our nation. This spectrum of activity builds trust, contributes to the strength of our alliances, sustains regional stability through forward presence, and demonstrates the global commitment of the United States.

Under the global engagement operations, the "shape," "respond," and "prepare now" construct is expanded. In this way, we capture the full spectrum of military capabilities as the Air Force builds towards the visions of JV 2010 and Global Engagement.

This expanded construct for Global Engagement Operations (GEO) has five phases. Shape, deter, halt, win, and reshape. Each phase has a corresponding operational objective of joint tasks, and therefor specific elements. Having already discussed our globally engaged forces helping to shape the international environment, let me start with deter.

Deter is the overt deployment of U.S. military forces responding to abnormal actions by an adversary. The task here is to enhance the deterrent posture of the friendly forces, and prepare to conduct high tempo operations, if necessary, for the theater CINC to manage risk.

Early intervention would begin by focusing intelligence capabilities consisting of ground, air, and space C-2 and Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) assets to support the national command authorities and theater commander-in-chiefs. This phase would also include diplomatic initiatives to secure over-flight and access rights.

More robust responses require us to concurrently strengthen the strategic air bridge, to ensure the smooth flow of combat and logistic forces to the crisis region as we prepare for decisive action. The National Command Authority and the joint force commander could deploy Aerospace Expeditionary Forces to the crisis region. These expeditionary military capabilities are enabled by the ability to rapidly mobilize tailored logistics and/or combat forces.

And finally, the commander-in-chief, the CINC, would establish or augment command and control measures, and employ logistic measures to allow deployed forces to reach back and tap key capabilities in rear operational areas.

Should deterrence fail, the task then during the halt phase is to rapidly apply military force or military power to seize the initiative and gain strategic control.

First, we must exploit our information operations without prohibitive interference from an adversary in order to enhance our military operations.

Simultaneously, commanders will employ the full range of capabilities to deny the belligerent of the use of the aerospace medium while exploiting the same for us. This must be done precisely and decisively to minimize the loss of territory and/or lives. Air and space superiority is a key prerequisite in any operation.

While capitalizing on air power's asymmetric strengths, we must also be wary of the adversary's ability to use asymmetric capabilities against us. The coalition must also find fixed targets and engage adversary forces in order to halt or neutralize them as rapidly as possible.

And finally, these activities can also be applicable for non-force scenarios, quickly halting human suffering and/or stopping other forms of aggression.

During the win phase, the joint force commander now can examine all options to bring about an end to the crisis. In hostile scenarios, the joint force commander uses coercive military force, the ability to raise the cost and lower the benefits to the enemy, to change the enemy's risk calculus. In smaller scale contingencies, this phase might be abbreviated. In any case, the task is to create and exploit options to force compliance by the adversary.

The joint force commander may choose some or all of the following actions. He can continue to target remaining adversaries' capability with lethal and non-lethal, physical, and informational measures, which coercively threaten targets at all levels of significance. Sanctions of various forms could also be used where appropriate. And finally, the joint force commander can employ all forces in a combined counter offensive.

The reshaping phase, as an extension of win, attempts to create a better state of peace. Here diplomatic and economic gains can be appreciated by the belligerent under the watchful eye of the coalition partners.

In sum, each of the five phases of the Global Engagement Operations framework addresses achieving national objectives rapidly and seamlessly. Every crisis scenario may not include all five phases. But the GEO framework embodies a continuous aim of achieving national objectives.

Overall, GEO provides four major strengths.

First, GEO delivers aerospace power across the full spectrum of military operations as required by policy and guidance, and espoused by joint and Service visions.

Second, GEO enhances the ability to redress crises quickly by its emphasis on information superiority coupled with and tailored with rapid military expeditionary force. With rapid increases in deterrent posture, a potential adversary may not attempt to exploit a crisis either from the perception of coalition weakness or from the necessity to strike before coalition strengths can develop.

And third, although accomplishing the mission remains paramount to any commander, minimizing the risks to fielded forces is an ever present goal of the joint force commander. Placing an unnecessarily large coalition force in harm's way is an inherent and tangible risk. Additionally, minimizing damage to non-combatants and infrastructure is also a desired outcome.

Finally, global engagement operation emphasizes the consideration of all options available to the joint force commander to achieve full spectrum dominance.

If I have piqued your interest in GEO, I suggest that you read John Crawell's article in last month's Air Force Magazine. It is an excellent piece on this strategy.

We have focused so far on the national military strategy, and how GEO can be used as an air centric strategy to explain our contribution to full spectrum dominance. The next step for our Air Force is to evolve in a way that meets these national needs, ensures joint effectiveness, leverages our strengths, and integrates the total force, while recognizing that our forces must be relevant and operate in a constrained environment.

The Expeditionary Aerospace Force is the next step.

Our concept of operations will focus on shaping and responding. We will have ten Expeditionary Aerospace Forces, EAFs, each with the capacity to project force or humanitarian aid. Each EAF will contain or draw on all of the elements of aerospace power. Because some weapons are in high demand but are relatively few in number, they will remain ready to swing in either direction as needed. These high demand low density assets include our special operations and C-2 ISR forces.

However, the result is a more ready force tailored and trained to meet the continuous and diverse challenges of the engagement and the spectrum. With a 90-day on-call period every 15 months, the tailored forces within each EAF can be forward deployed to ongoing operations or can respond to contingencies as needed by a theater CINC to manage risk.

This managed capability allows the expeditionary Air Force to shape and respond across the full spectrum of conflict while preserving the right force structure necessary to meet the two major theater war tasks.

Together, Global Engagement Operations and the Expeditionary Air Force support the national military strategy across the full spectrum of military operations. These forces will be continuously involved in shaping the international environment.

The two-on call EAFs will meet the commitment for global response to the international environment. EAFs in a ten month "prepare" window will train, equip, and rest for future operations -- activities necessary to keep the force ready and strong. However, this phase must not be misconstrued as tiered readiness. It is not.

All of our combat forces remain committed to the theater operational plans within 30 days. Tiering would dilute our ability to meet these commitments. Said another way, with Global Engagement Operations to deter, halt, and win, on call EAFs handle smaller contingency responses while the total force is available to respond to two major theater crises.

This synthesis of AEF and GEO to support the post-Cold War national strategy draws on the earlier expeditionary roots with 21^st century capabilities to branch into tomorrow's diverse operations.

Let me share with you two examples of how EAF meets the GEO strategy. On the low end of peace operations, the first example is Operation Support Hope, the 1994 humanitarian assistance effort to Rwanda. Because of the political turmoil and tribal in fighting, refugees were forced to camps where poor health conditions developed. A cholera epidemic erupted, and deaths soon rose to 6500 per day.

The National Command Authority said we have no choice. We must use airlift to bring in military experts with water production and distribution capabilities and deter the spread of this deadly epidemic. After just eight days, the epidemic was halted, and the death rate fell to less than 50 per day.

Unfortunately, dysentery soon tripled the death rate. Again United States military personnel were called upon. Medical teams, engineers, and security forces responded. And by the 18^th of August, the situation was normalized. In this example, the United States Air Force capabilities, halted two epidemics and brought human suffering relief.

In Bosnia, our operations span the entire diverse range from humanitarian assistance to peacekeeping in Operational Deliberate Force. We began with operation Deny Flight by deterring Serbian aggression and provided humanitarian assistance to give peace a chance.

On the 28^th of August, 38 civilians were killed in a Sarajavo marketplace. This senseless attack, seen on world television, steeled the international resolve to employ military forces. On August 30^th, NATO began peacekeeping efforts with air strikes. Two weeks later, the Serbs agreed to halt their aggression and comply with U.N. and NATO demands.

In the peace enforcement role, the threat of further air strikes soon led to a negotiated agreement to end the hostilities. In the Bosnia case, joint air power was instrumental in halting the violence and key to ending the hostilities. As you know, peacekeeping efforts continue today.

Today I outlined the intellectual underpinnings of our global engagement operation strategy and how we are moving to an organizational construct, which best suits our 21^st century aerospace power. But through all the many and diverse global engagements, our people will remain steadfastly the foundation of our strength.

We must strengthen our commitment to our core values of integrity first, service before self, and excellence in all we do. We must refine our skills and train in our core competencies. And we must nurture and mentor our future because it is our skilled airmen that shape the international environment for America, that respond to crises around the world with aerospace forces and capabilities, and will continue to prepare now for the future in this very dynamic post-Cold War era. They will meet these Global Engagement challenges with an Expeditionary Aerospace Force using Global Engagement Operations, integrated across the total force with managed levels of tempo, while operating smartly for the nation. Thank you.

Gen. Shaud: Don, what a super articulation on how our Air Force hooks into our national security strategy from Global Engagement Operations to Expeditionary Aerospace Forces to Aerospace Expeditionary Forces. As we go on toward the year 2000, could you identify some of the key lessons learned as we have gained and exercised AEF in operations?

Maj. Gen. Cook: I think that the Global Engagement operational strategy allows us to articulate, from an airman's point of view, those things that we can provide during any given phase of a crisis. And I think, in the past, that the average airman has not done well in articulating those points.

We have a long way to go, and are continuing in our efforts with experimentation. We certainly learned that the reach back capability is essential, if you are going to be expeditionary. We cannot show up on some country's doorstep with eight C-5s and 2000 people to set up the Air Operations Center.

We need to capitalize on technology and the capability to reach back. And I think that those are probably some of the lessons that we are learning as we go through experimentation and global engagement. During the next series of experimentations, we will capitalize on these as well.

Gen. Shaud: This has to do with those units that are highly tasked anyway. Were the air refueling wings of the combat communications groups considered under the AEF concept, and what kind of predictability relief can be expected for these folks?

Maj. Gen. Cook: We have categorized these folks as low density and high demand, which means there is not a lot of them, and everybody wants them. It not only applies to aircraft and crews, but we have some career fields like you suggested in combat communications that are stressed.

While not trying to increase our force structure, we clearly need to look to the future for ways to ease the tempo. Future efforts in Distributed Mission Training (DMT) can be very helpful in this area where you ease perhaps the training tempo. We can also capitalize on simulators that exist in industry today, where you do not have to deploy all of those forces.

So I think through DMT efforts, and through incorporating more people into the AEFs, we might be able to relieve some of that tempo. But I think also if you are talking about the air crews with the global reach lay down and establishing the air bridge, if we can become more predictable in our scheduling, and if we can develop the right size of Unit Type Code packages that go forward, I think that the mobility community can capitalize on that predictability, and also put the right plane at the right place at the right time in order to bring the equipment and the supplies that are needed.

Gen. Shaud: Don, an Air Force initiative that was discussed from this platform here several years ago was called a composite wing. How does a composite wing like Mountain Home fit into this AEF concept?

Maj. Gen. Cook: During the initial spin up of our ten AEFs, we will have two on call wings. There will be the 366th at Mountain Home, and there will be the 4th Wing at Seymour Johnson. They will be our on call wings, if you will, to address some of the capability shortfalls that we have.

But I think that we ought to look broader than that. We are a composite Air Force. We go to fight as composite units. And we have air packages when we fight, which are composite. So we will deploy with predictive squadrons and provide that capability for the theater CINC in very rapid fashion.

Gen. Shaud: With special operational forces already forward deployed, how do you envision their integration into the AEF?

Maj. Gen. Cook: That is a good question. Like strategic mobility, our SOF forces are assigned, essentially, to a CINC, a commander-in-chief. We will get to use those when we have a requirement to use them. However, in the day to day scheduling of SOF forces, they will not be included in the AEF construct. But they would be available to swing. After all, they are in that low density and high demand category.

Gen. Shaud: Does the Air Force currently have the right force structure in types and numbers of platforms to support the ten AEF strategy?

Maj. Gen. Cook:. We need to move toward capability, and not really talk about platform structures. Each AEF ought to have near equal capability. Otherwise, it would not be appropriate for us to go out and send an Aerospace Expeditionary Wing or an Aerospace Expeditionary Group that had less capability than the ones that were coming up next.

So we need to move towards capability and not necessarily counting aircraft within a specific AEF, whether it is one, three, five, or nine.

Gen. Shaud: Thank you very much, Don.

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