Foundation Forum

"Implementing the Air Force's Strategic Vision"
General Thomas S. Moorman Jr.
Vice Chief of Staff, USAF
Air Warfare Symposium
January 31, 1997

I am very happy to be here. This is a great opportunity to see a lot of old friends and also discuss how to maintain the world's most respected air force.

I must begin with a comment and explain why the Chief isn't here, because I know he would want me to do that. This is a difficult week in the Pentagon, a very active week. I'll give you an idea what has been going on. On Wednesday and Thursday, there has been the CINCs conference. The day before yesterday, the President came over and the Service chiefs and CINCs briefed him. Today, the Chief is hosting the Canadians for Airman-to-Airman talks. Then tomorrow, as I'm sure you all know, we kick off CORONA South in Washington for two-days. I know he'd want me to send his best wishes and his regrets.

Before I begin speaking, I want to commend the AFA for lining up a great agenda of speakers. Yesterday, you heard from the warfighters and what they need. Today you will hear from the resource providers --- Generals Viccellio, Boles and Muellner. I think you've got a good feel for the requirements and by this afternoon when we finish, you'll have a good sense of where we are in the resource process.

I'd also like to give a special thanks to AFA members and the AFA staff. You all have done yeoman's work in promoting air and space programs, and you also have been steadfast in your support of our people. We greatly appreciate it.

The Secretary, the Chief and I are also especially grateful for your efforts in promoting and supporting the Air Force's 50th Anniversary. In many ways, the AFA is the embodiment of our first 50 years. I was struck by the fact that 56 percent of your members are retired or former military. So you clearly are a great part of our "Golden Legacy." With that steadfast support that I've mentioned, you will ensure our "Boundless Future."

As you all know, we have had a number of 50th anniversary activities to date. They have been all over the United States. I want to give you a report of an activity the Secretary and I supported. That was the Rose Bowl and the Rose Bowl parade. Let me tell you first hand that the B-2 stole the show. That was the headline in the Los Angeles Times. For those of us who were there, or watched it on TV, it made us tremendously proud. The Secretary and I then spent about three hours taking credit for the B-2 as people flocked to tell us how proud they were of our technology and our Air Force.

We are all looking forward to the events at Nellis [AFB, Nev.] in April. The AFA exhibition and the air power air show obviously promise to be a once in a lifetime experience. Clearly the marquee event is the first ever Global Air Chiefs Conference. It will be regionally oriented; that is, speakers from each region of the world. The conference will include discussions on the opportunities and challenges that confront coalition and bilateral operations. It will address areas such as planning for humanitarian operations, pooling of assets for cooperative missions, and mixing and matching capabilities in coalition operations. That is clearly the face of the future.

As the world's air force leaders share in building bridges of cooperation and understanding, this gathering is an absolutely unique opportunity to promote the U.S. strategy of engagement and enlargement. Think of it; 110 air chiefs have been invited. The Thunderbirds and eight other international aerobatic teams will also participate. There is no question that people will be talking about this 50th Anniversary celebration at Nellis for years to come.

Besides our Anniversary event, 1997 will also be the year we begin implementing and institutionalizing the Air Force's strategic vision. I know most of you have heard about our long-range planning initiatives which led to this vision. The Air Staff and the MAJCOM Vice Commanders have been working very hard to ensure that this vision doesn't stop with a glossy pamphlet, but rather, that it is followed up by an actionable plan. The focus of the remainder of my remarks will cover where we go from here in our planning effort. While planning may sound like a rather dry topic, it is absolutely critical to everybody in this room. As the watchword of our strategic vision and Joint Vision 2010 is innovation, I also want to spend some time on the battlelab concept, our most recent effort to promote innovation.

I don't need to tell this group that all successful enterprises engage in strategic planning. That is especially important in times of uncertainty and change. Frankly, an important and a distinctive part of our Air Force heritage has always been the ability to innovate. If you look back at our leaders as pioneers, from Billy Mitchell to Hap Arnold to Curtis LeMay to Bennie Schriever to Moody Suter, we've always been looking ahead and seeking new ways of employing air power.

Over the course of the past several years, however, we had kind of lost the handle on long-range planning. Though regrettable, it was understandable. It is hard to imagine a more turbulent time for the Armed Forces and especially the Air Force than the past six to seven years. Think about it: the Cold War is over; national and military strategies were changed; we had gone through four base closure cycles; a drastic drawdown in personnel ¾ 36 percent; and the Air Force was reorganized at every level.

As I say, it is not surprising we focused on the near-term. But not everything was programmatic or near-term. We did do some very important thinking during this period, and I am referring to the Global Reach, Global Power white paper. It outlined an evolving Air Force. That was an important step, and we ought to be proud that we were first on the street with a post Cold War strategy, but that was in the 1990-92 timeframe.

With all the geopolitical changes we see today and those that are projected, plus an explosion in technology, as well as the Quadrennial Defense Review that is upon us, we needed a long-range plan. The long-range plan, through the efforts of a lot of officers, civilians and enlisted at lots of different levels, is now in draft. That plan will be discussed tomorrow at CORONA.

The context of the long-range plan is built around sustaining our core competencies and reinforcing the central themes found in the strategic vision. I know you've probably read about our core competencies, but nevertheless, they bear repeating because they are the touchstones: air and space superiority, once separate competencies, they are now seamlessly linked as air and space; global attack; rapid global mobility; precision employment; information superiority; and agile combat support. In building this plan, we identify the current and projected capabilities that support each core competency.

Then the plan examines the challenges facing the Air Force as it seeks to sustain these competencies. From there, we begin to identify potential gaps between what our forces will be required to do in future years versus what they are currently planned and resourced to do. The resulting product is a series of objective actions. These actions are stated in directive statements designed to strengthen and sustain our core competencies. Each one of these directive statements have planned milestones. They are all leading to a desired endstate, which is clearly articulated. Directive statements can range from people-oriented objectives, such as career patterns and core values to capabilities like UAVs, cruise and ballistic missile defense or power-projection systems. They also can range to things such as infrastructure, test and evaluation facilities and basing. They cut across the entire Air Force as in our Total Force ¾ active, Guard, Reserve and our civilians.

Most importantly, there is a consensus process to define our path toward these endstates. This consensus building is an absolutely critical part. I am not sure we always paid enough attention to securing agreement and commitment in the past. Accordingly, all of our MAJCOM vice commanders plus the functional chiefs and the Air Staff and Secretariat have been deeply involved in developing this plan over the past several months. The Chief strongly believes that this process can only be sustained through corporate buy-in. We will go through a lot of that tomorrow, I think.

Besides sustaining and strengthening core competencies, another touchstone will be the four central themes in the strategic vision. First, the Air Force will fully integrate air and space into all its operations. That is a mouthful. We are not sure exactly how to do that yet, but that is a goal toward which we are all going to work. We will work hard on it because the strategic vision says we must transition from an Air Force to an Air and Space Force.

Secondly, we must create airmen who understand their profession, the doctrine, the core values and the core competencies. We must all be able to talk about our profession, and how air and space contribute to the joint fight and clearly understand the Air Force's role. Furthermore, we must develop a sense of institutional identity and teamwork. Many of us believe that in the past, our educational and training system made us too specialized too early in our careers. We stovepipe too early. We are going to try to get at that problem through establishing an Air and Space Basic Course. We are also going to stand up a Doctrine Center at Maxwell [AFB, Ala.]. We haven't decided on the ultimate location for the Air and Space Basic Course yet, but it is an extraordinarily important thing when you think about how we socialize our young people. The fact of the matter is, we must improve on our ability to talk about our profession. Everybody must identify with his or her role in this grand enterprise. These are exciting initiatives and I will be pleased to address them more in-depth in the question and answer period.

The third theme is that the Air Force will reduce infrastructure costs through aggressive outsourcing, privatization and acquisition reform. I believe the Air Force is way out in front on this area, but we are working to continue that leadership role. We must do it. You have read that we have significant shortages in our modernization money. We must get more efficient and that means dealing with infrastructure. It was interesting to note that Secretary Cohen has made a major statement on this issue during his confirmation hearings and his recent appearances on TV.

I've already touched on the fourth theme, which is our commitment to innovation. One of the major engines for innovation is the battlelab concept. This concept reflects our resolve to stimulate and develop new and better ways of employing air and space power. Since the last CORONA, Lt. Gen. John Jumper [AF/XO] has been working with the responsible commands to flesh out the battlelab concept. The pressure is on as our six battlelabs will all stand up by July of this year.

Let me talk a little about battlelabs. I want you to understand, and I know the Chief's message to you would be that he wants industry to participate by bringing your ideas to the battlelabs. These battlelabs will be small, focused and rely on field ingenuity to identify creative operational and logistics concepts for advancing the Air Force's core competencies in joint warfighting. These outfits will be highly agile and won't be long about developments. This is where we will send our out-of-the-box thinkers, the folks who know how to get things done and know how to leverage small dollars. Speaking of dollars, we have carved out some FY97 money to jump start these battlelabs.

To give you a feel for what this innovative concept offers, I'll walk you briefly through each one of the battlelabs. As this group knows, we have been working on a capability to project power to respond to crises anywhere in the world through the Air Expeditionary Force or AEF. So far, we've successfully deployed the AEF three times to Southwest Asia and I anticipate it will grow in popularity with regional CINCs. The AEF battlelab will be established at Mountain Home [AFB, Idaho]. Initially its primary focus will be to reduce the support structure and to improve response times. A major effort will be to explore ways to get lighter. Accordingly, the AEF battlelab cadre has already proposed an initiative that would reduce the support footprint by applying lean logistics and using common equipment. I can't over-emphasis the significance of the AEF as one of the Air Force's major contributions to power projection.

The second battlelab --- the Battle Management, Command and Control Battlelab, established at Hurlburt [Field, Fla.] --- will address a growing technological growth areas and will have a host of challenges. Let me focus on one of their first projects. These folks will define a core air operations center or AOC. This concept will be flexible enough to support the full spectrum of contingencies. It will measure the concept's effectiveness using modeling, simulation and wargaming as well as a close interaction with other battlelabs, Numbered Air Forces and places like the CAOC [Combined Air Operations Center] in Vicenza [Italy]. Moreover, it will most likely have close liaison with the other Services and our Special Operations Forces. The results will define an operations concept, and it will establish performance requirements for a baseline for a core AOC, which will be common to all air components and theater operations. This baseline also would include the associated communications requirements.

The third battlelab addresses a capability with a lot of potential. The unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV, battlelab will be at Eglin [AFB, Fla.]. It's a capability we really need. Initially, I would anticipate their role will be to help us figure out how to transition from what are now technology demonstration systems to viable operational systems. Today in Bosnia, we see the importance and dependence on UAVs with the Predator. The Predator operation is also serving as a laboratory to identify operational and sustainment issues, of which there are many. I can envision the UAV Battlelab spending a lot of time creating a flexible and responsive operations concept. For example, one of the important things we have to work on is to ensure reliable, dynamic and tasking/retasking capabilities to operate and support UAVs operating in support of ground forces below corps level. The Army is putting some tough requirements on us, and we have to satisfy their needs. I can also see this battlelab working on other areas, such as new sensors and new applications like communications relay.

The Space Battlelab will be co-located with the Space Warfare Center at Falcon Air Force Base in Colorado. In fact it will be part of the Space Warfare Center and leverage the resources of the Center. These folks are going to be very busy defining space applications for the warfighter. I would predict they would help us understand how to begin the process of integrating air and space operations. Notional areas to be explored may very well involve sensor-to-shooter or space-to-cockpit or possibly defining the role of the JFAC [Joint Force Air Component Commander] in the tasking and dissemination of products from space systems. They also might work how to do more accurate space surveillance, which of course is the front end of any space control system.

If battlelabs are driven by this innovation mandate, there is nothing newer than information warfare. This battlelab, located at Kelly [AFB, Texas], will address the increasing threat to computer and communications systems ¾in other words, the heart of everything we do. Although not an operational threat, this potential was recently driven home when our Air Force Link home page was attacked by a hacker. Information warfare is clearly a growth industry. It is an area that is crying for innovation. It is also an area where small dollars have high pay off. Moreover, this is where our young people, who grew up in the Nintendo or computer age, can really excel. For example, in my experience, the best and most clever briefings I've received in this area have been from NCOs and company grade officers.

The final battlelab will be devoted to a very important current topic, which is high on the priority list for the Secretary, Chief and all our commanders ¾ the protection of our resources. This has always been a vital interest, but with the growing terrorist threat, it is even more important today. The Force Protection Battlelab at Lackland [AFB, Texas] will identify new ways to protect Air Force personnel facilities and weapon systems. We clearly need to determine the best equipment and technology, the state of the art, for weapons, vehicles, access systems, surveillance and detection sensors. We will be very interested in commercial off the shelf (COTS) equipment. We will be testing concepts and equipment in JCS [Joint Chief of Staff], CINC [Theater Commander in Chief] and Air Force exercises. This battlelab will also look at using teaming arrangements to develop a synergism. The teaming arrangements I am talking about are with civil engineers, intelligence personnel, and OSI, as well as security forces to come together and help a commander to find ways to protect the force. That group is already in operation and today is making significant contributions to our force protection efforts in Southwest Asia.

I've hit a lot of topics in my talk this morning, but the bottom line is that we developed a vision for the first quarter of the millennium and tomorrow we are getting a senior review of the tenets of our initial long-range plan to achieve that vision. We clearly won't have it right the first time. It will be an iterative process and it will improve over time. But I want to leave you with the point that long-range planning is being institutionalized in the Air Force.

In a very practical sense, this plan will drive the MAJCOM's mission area plans [MAPs]. From that, the Air Staff will produce the annual planning guidance, which in turn will drive the POM [Program Objective Memorandum]. For the first time in my memory, we will have a traceable and auditable planning and programming system. We have yet to work out exactly how you in industry become exposed to the details of the plan. But we realize that must be done. I understand that NSIA is sponsoring a symposium on the 13th of February where Maj. Gen. Dave McIlvoy [AF/XPX] and some of the planners will talk to you about the basic tenets of long range planning and battlelabs. I urge you to participate in that forum. But I can assure you we will also have an outreach program. To that end we also have a CD being developed. The point is, we need your help and your good ideas to make the battlelab concept a success. We are really mapping the future, and lest you all become too focused in the near-term, this plan will include transitional steps of how we go from where we are now to that future for the first 25 years in the next century.

Ultimately, it is important for you to have a clear and understandable statement of our priorities so you can make your investments and plan your technology thrusts accordingly. Because of time, I've just barely touched the surface of this effort. It is a very exciting process and I hope my enthusiasm comes across to you. The Air Force is very much caught up in this process. One of the added benefits of our 18 month effort is that our leaders are much more knowledgeable and have a broader perspective as a result of this process. And, we have buy-in to where we are trying to go.

My time is up, I want to leave some time for questions. Thanks for your attention and the chance to get out of the building.

General Shaud: You brought up a lot of topics resulting in quite an array of questions from our audience. Many of our people are interested in what you had to say about the air and space basic course. The Air Force normally identifies individuals by their specialty rather than as "airmen." Would you please discuss this for us?

General Moorman: This is a topic near and dear to all the four stars, especially the Chief. In developing the strategic vision and developing our plan, we had a group called the board of directors, which included the MAJCOM vice commanders, the functional chiefs in the secretariat and the Air Staff. We started getting briefings on how the Air Force is perceived. One of the guys who came to talk with us was Carl Builder from RAND Corporation. He's written a couple of books about the culture of the services --- to what altars the services worship. What got us really talking was that Builder believes the Air Force develops the best specialists in the Defense Department ¾ the best supply officers, the best intelligence officers, the best specialists across the line. Although I may not be objective I agree with his premise. Our people are superb specialists because we stovepipe people early in their careers --- our offices, once commissioned go straight to tech school --- and they get a lot of experience within that stovepipe.

On the other hand, it is clear to the leadership that we don't have enough people who identify and can speak about their profession in a broad context. People who can talk about how their particular discipline fits into the broad picture --- the operational mission of the Air Force.

The new Air and Space Basic Course is conceptually designed to be a program right after commissioning for all our officers and also a subset of civilians. I might envision something like each class being 750 people or so and about six to eight weeks long. The details haven't been worked out. The preliminary thoughts on this course will be reviewed tomorrow at CORONA. But the concept is that we would talk about values and core competencies, and then exercise and emphasize the integrated role of all these skills in the Air Force and how they contribute to our capabilities. The goal is to build a sense of team and sense of profession. It is really exciting and I think it is really needed. I can't think of a subject that resonated more in the CORONA at Colorado Springs or the most recent meeting of the Board of Directors last month.

To give you a sense of the timing, we are now developing the conceptual outline for the course and it will also be talked about this CORONA, but, I don't see standing up the course in the next few months as we are going to be doing a lot of thinking to get it right. I would imagine it will be the fall CORONA of 98 when this would be finally blessed.

General Shaud: The next question has to do with battlelabs. On the surface, battlelabs appear to duplicate perhaps existing labs. Are these battlelabs unique, are they organized formally and will they become permanent structures in the Air Force?

General Moorman: That is a good question. We are sensitive to the potential misunderstanding that battlelabs duplicate research laboratories --- like the avionics lab or the space lab. Battlelabs are fundamentally different. They are places where we develop new ideas. It is not a technology place, but a place where we look at new ways of employing equipment and new ways of thinking about a particular discipline. It is also a very agile outfit to propose ideas on how to leverage relatively small dollars. Those ideas that come up through the MAJCOMs will be considered by the Air Staff in a very expedited process. Then we will move out. We are talking about relatively near-term ideas and are not talking about long-term technology development. I do not believe it is duplicative. Frankly our current development process can be is a bit tortuous.

We must have a better way of taking advantage of new ideas. We've got the kind of people who can do that. All of you have known folks, either within your companies or within our service, who have great ideas but no outlet for these great ideas. That is what this is about.

General Shaud: Will these battle labs include our coalition partners?

General Moorman: We haven't gotten that far. As I alluded to early when talking about the Global Air Chiefs Conference, there is no question that the vision of the future is coalition operations. I can see that as we evolve we will involve our allies and coalition partners.

General Shaud: I am interested in General Fogleman's recent comments about operators. Having run a satellite command station generation team 26 years ago, will such personnel now be considered operators and what does this mean?

General Moorman: I'd like to take credit idea of a new concept of operators, but the guy in the front row ¾ General Butch Viccellio ¾ is the one who galvanized our thinking over the past two years on this subject. He put together a very compelling talk about how we have to change our mind set. Most of you, if you are of my vintage, grew up in an era where the definition of an operator meant a rated crew member. General Viccellio, along with General Boles, brought us some interesting statistics that showed by the turn of the century about 22 percent of our force will be rated ¾ pilots and navigators. Given those demographics and given that we are an air and space force, we had to open the aperture about who are called operators.

One of the initial outgrowths of General Viccellio's concept was a mandate by the Chief for all major commands to identify 20 percent of their headquarters staff to transition from rated positions to this new concept of an operator. Right now there are hundreds of positions that can only be filled by pilots and navigators. Now non-rated or the new operator can compete to fill those positions.

The thought process behind this idea is that the distinction we traditionally had of someone who wears wings as an operator is no longer applicable to today's force and surely will not be applicable in the future. We have space operators, missile operators, information warfare operators and how about support folks. You can't launch the airplane without the maintenance guy who is very much an operator. Without him you aren't going to operate. We are going through a transition. I can only articulate it conceptually at this point, but the leadership truly understands it. I think it is a very salutary thing and reflects the current and future force demographics. Moreover, it will be a unifying element for our Air Force as a broader cross section of our people will feel more involved in the mission.

General Shaud: As a last question, there has been concern and discussion of the direction of the QDR and consequences for the Air Force. Explain your and General Fogleman's approach and expectations for the QDR?

General Moorman: I assume you all have been reading the trade press on the QDR. It is like the Bottom Up Review, but more comprehensive. It consists of seven panels. The first, or lead panel, is the strategy panel, and is probably the most mature in the process. But there are also other panels --- force structure, modernization, infrastructure, human resources, information operations and readiness. These panels are tasked to come up with better and more efficient ways of doing business.

There is always a lot of angst when you go through a process of introspection as broad as this is. Secretary Cohen has said that the QDR will be his guidepost. He is very anxious to keep the schedule ¾ by the way the suspense date to Congress is 15 May ¾ and he is going to be actively involved. Ultimately, we will be enunciating a military strategy. We will be also talking about force structure trades, and that is what really creates the angst. It is too early for me to speculate where that is going. I sit on the QDR Senior Steering Group with all the under secretaries, service vices and several of the assistant secretaries of the Defense Department chaired by the DepSecDef. We have met a couple of times, most recently on the results of Ted Warner's strategy panel and begun to look at the broad tenets of strategy. Of interest, the next milestone is for the Joint Chiefs of Staff to be briefed in mid-February to evaluate the strategy proposal. Frankly, the Air Force is well positioned to intellectualize and articulate our vision of our air and space capabilities that we bring to the fight -- because of this recent long-range planning effort. Maj. Gen. Chuck Link leads our effort and he is as articulate a guy as we have in being able to talk about Air Force competencies and the role and importance of air and space power. I guess my bottom line is that this is an extraordinary important exercise ¾ probably the most significant thing we do in 1997.

General Shaud: Thank you. It sounds like a work in progress.

NOTE: The speech references a 13 Feb 97, NSIA sponsored meeting. The meeting has been postponed and a new date with be advertised in the near future.

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