General Bruce Carlson
Commander, Air Force Materiel Command
AFA Air Warfare Symposium
Orlando, FL
February 8, 2007
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Thank you very much. It’s an honor to be here with you this morning. I am always enthused and impressed with the opportunity to visit any Air Force Association event. When they combine with industry to put on and sponsor an event it’s always a first class affair. So, it’s a thrill to be here this morning.
I’ve now been in Air Force Materiel Command for almost a year and a half, and for those of you who know me, and I think many of you do, this was a little peculiar assignment for me. I often think back to a song that was sung when I was a youngster in the mid ‘60s by a group called the Buffalo Springfield. I think the name of it was, “For What It’s Worth.” The opening line was, “Something’s happening here, what it is ain’t exactly clear.” [Laughter]. There’s a lot going on in Air Force Materiel Command and I’m beginning to see through the haze and it’s a marvelous organization to be part of. I’d like to spend just a few minutes with you today telling you about that organization.
Before I do, if you’d go to the next slide.
Just so we all recall what this is all about, this is Tech Sergeant Tim Weir and two Senior Airmen, Liz Lankey and Dan Miller, who were killed just a month ago in the Baghdad area trying to disassemble and disarm a vehicle-borne IED (Improvised Explosive Device) when it detonated on them. There are about 1,000 Air Force Materiel Command Airmen engaged every day in the AOR (Area of Responsibility) in direct support of the warfight. What I’d like to tell you about this morning is the other things that we’re doing in support of that fight and our future fight.
Next chart.
First, just a brief overview of our mission and what we do because I think it’s important to remind each of us of that North Star that guides us and talk a little bit about the science and technology that is part of the theme of this conference and put that into two buckets. First, what we do today to support the direct warfight, and then what we do to support the warfight of tomorrow. So first, a brief look at our mission.
The mission is what we do and why we’re here. Of course our vision is how we want to do what it is that we do and our philosophy is that philosophy that guides us to get it done. These are not just words on a page. What I want to assure you is that we’re working this every day. I’ll give you just three brief examples.
Down at Aeronautical Systems Center, the LAIRCM program, the Large Aircraft InfraRed Countermeasure program, was initiated in 2001. Today there are 49 C-17s operating across the theater with that system installed. At our Air Logistics Center we’re delivering AC-130 gunships not just below the targeted date of 185 days, but below the date demanded by our user, Gen. Mike Wooley, of 150 days. Our last one was delivered in 146 (days), and the next two are scheduled to be even better than that.
At the Flight Test Center, right now we’re just beginning and we’ll finish up here within the next few days, the test of synthetic fuel blend, a 50/50 blend. We’ll use that data to put into the modeling to go forward with the next step which will be other large airplanes, and then finally on into high performance engines, and we hope that this will lead to our no longer depending on foreign oil for the operation of Air Force jets.
With that as background in our mission, what’s the scope of that mission? You know we’re involved in technology, acquisition, testing and sustainment, but the point I want to make is that these four mission areas encompass cradle to grave life cycle management of warfighting systems and they impact the entire spectrum of Air Force warfighting systems.
The bottom line is that we’re working to shape tomorrow’s battlefield while at the same time delivering and maintaining the systems and capabilities that the Air Force needs today to contribute to the global war on terrorism.
What I’d like to focus on first is this technology piece, talk about that today, and how we first meet the needs of today’s warfighters, and then I’ll lay the foundation for our future capabilities.
If you go to the next chart.
You’re all familiar with the Air Force vision. You’ve seen it. It was put in place by Gen. (John P.) Jumper (Retired). What we have added to it, if you go to the next mouse click, are the four A’s. Our job in Air Force Materiel Command and specifically in the labs is to be able to Anticipate our needs in finding, fixing and so on. Not only to anticipate those needs but to be able to do it Around the clock, Anywhere, and to do it to and for Anything.
The point is that our research and development efforts are explicitly focused on the elimination of capabilities gaps across the air, space and cyberspace environment. This construct, I cannot claim authorship for, it was left to me by Gen. (Gregory S.) Speedy Martin. That was one of the last things he did at Corona Top 2005 before he left, and it really has served to focus our labs on the needs of the Air Force.
If you’ll go to the next chart, we’ll look specifically at what those distinct roles are as directed by this mission.
First, in support of the warfighter, and I’ll talk more about that, delivering rapid reaction support to the warfighter to address current and near term capability challenges.
Second, to take advanced technology and to put it into the development programs that are ongoing. Systems like the F-22, the Joint Strike Fighter, and our space systems that are going into orbit soon.
Finally, to lay the future foundation, that basic and applied research that’s necessary to make sure that we have the next tiebreaker or the next game breaker, if you will. So the next fuselage are focused on that first bullet, our direct support to the warfighter.
If you’d go to the next one, please.
The evolution of how we employ our air power is in large part driven by who our enemy is, who it is that we’re fighting. Similarly, the capabilities of our warfighters are unique to the enemy with whom they’re engaged. Today we focus on an interdependent warfighting environment where we’re battling insurgents who operate without borders, without a command and control network as we know them, but with very adaptive and low tech methods. So today’s fight brings us some unique challenges.
If you’d go to the next chart, please.
Our enemy’s objective in this global war is to achieve strategic results without having to go to strategic ends. In other words, through limited tactical successes, dramatic displays of ruthlessness, control of the media, and exploitation of the internet.
We have to understand these tactical challenges in order to win this war and to continue to be successful. We have to rely on the ability to anticipate and be proactive in our operations rather than the deterrence and reactive air power that has been provided in the past. We have to be able to maximize our situational awareness. Our forces must have better information on what’s happening in their operations area and have it very quickly.
You can read the rest of those things. I won’t go through that list. They provide us some challenges that serve to focus our efforts.
We need to be able to assess our results. I’ll just briefly talk about the last one. Assess those results, or have such high confidence in the result that we make the next move based on some predictive analysis or our thought of what would happen next.
So we have tried to distill those things and focus our efforts based on the requests of those who are fighting the war. I think they’ve provided us with some very persistent challenges, if you’d go to the next one.
This isn’t an all inclusive list, but it serves to focus and highlight the things I’d like to talk about today.
First, persistent and tactical ISR. It’s got to be day, night, any weather, real time. It has to be retrievable. It has to have the ability to constantly stare over a large area, and we’ll pick a large city for an example.
Second, we have to be able to integrate data from a multitude of platforms and to integrate it rapidly, to provide a common operating picture to the warfighter that he can use real time. He can use it not only to gather information but to strike targets with precision.
Third, carry out those strikes in just minutes or seconds, and then tailor those strikes for a specific result in a highly cluttered environment or a very restricted environment.
Four, keeping our Airmen and our weapon systems in the fight for an extended period of time. We have to be able to sustain these systems for a long long period of time at a period in our history when we’re simply not building very many new systems. Unlike our last long war where we were shooting, we were building F-4s and F-105s to replace those that we lost. Today we’re not getting a warm reception when we talk about this idea of attrition and attrition replacement, but it’s a very real requirement.
I’d like to just give you a few examples of the kinds of things we’re doing to support the warfighter. If you’d go to the next one.
This first one addresses the first two challenges I talked about on the previous slide. It gives us persistent ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance) data and fusion that are needed by today’s warfighters. The idea is to take a series of off the shelf cameras, integrate them into a constant staring area view, and then integrate all those together with sensors that allow you to integrate data from other sources and provide it in a format that can be used real time, then to store that data for retrieval or playback as needed by a series of operators.
The current spiral that we’re in uses a Twin Otter (airframe) and it only has cameras in the visible spectrum, but you can see where this will lead. UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) with 24/7 type capability, both in the visible and infrared spectrums. You can imagine the kinds of things you’ll be able to do with something like that. You could watch a suspected bad guy, track him anywhere, see who he meets with, when he meets with them, where he goes, and help you unravel an insurgent net.
You could watch for unusual activity on roads or other locations and scan for possible traps or booby traps. Before a convoy is planned you could play back the previous day’s activity and assure that there had been no one suspicious along the route.
You could set parameters to warn you of unusual activity. I don’t want to tell you that we’re just talking about that, we’ve actually performed an operational assessment of this capability this past summer out at 29 Palms (Calif.), and of course the feedback was unanimous that it was worthwhile doing. And although I can’t tell you the specific operational dates because they’re classified, I will tell you that deployment operations are underway for this capability.
Another example, if you’d go to the next chart, is in space situational awareness.
We know because of recent events with our friends the Chinese, that things can happen very rapidly in the space environment. There are over 14,000 manmade objects that we know of that we track in space, and Gen. (Kevin P.) Chilton has asked for help to make sure that we’ve go the entire catalogue up to date. So, the research lab has initiated a quick look study to evaluate how it would respond to this need. We’ve developed a capability that we could field within about nine months that would provide fusion of existing sensor data, telemetry data, space weather, and something advanced what they call intuitive visualization which means a display that’s really got a lot of colors on it and is really neat to look at, that will provide increased situational awareness for our friends at Space Command.
Another example which Gen.(Ronald E.) Keys talked about this morning, if you’d go to the next chart, is the small diameter bomb.
You know the success story of the GBU-39, the small 250-pound bomb with over a 60-mile range, about one meter accuracy. It was produced from concept to IOC (Initial Operational Capability)in less than five years, ahead of schedule, under cost, and has flown successfully now in combat. In fact I was just over at Bagram (Afghanistan) and visited the F-15s from Mountain Home (Idaho) who, the night I was there the Bull Tigers employed their first one, and of course it was in keeping with the previous ones that had been employed, was a direct hit.
Not only that, as we brought this weapon system into combat and used it full time in a combat environment, we have gained experience enough to know that we can double the amount of time that we had originally predicted we could carry the weapon on the wing without doing any kind of maintenance or depot level repair to the weapon. We’ve gone from 300 hours to 600 hours and we gained that data not through test, but through its use in combat.
Another example which I think will show our contribution to the current fight would be on the next chart. We have lost helicopters, lost people, because as they go down into the dust and dirt they lose sight of the ground in a condition called “brownout.” So the lab went to work on that and created a system that would image the landing zone prior to entering the brownout condition, using an infrared sensor and even flash infrared photography at night, then geo-reference that image, and then zoom and warp the image so that the pilot or the flight engineer could refer to it and then put landing cues, overlay landing cues on top of it. We’ve gone through two spiral developments of this system with heavy involvement from our friends down at AFSOC (Air Force Special Operations Command). The software has been developed to geo-reference that stuff and we’re in the final configuration, preparation for a six weeks test down at Hurlburt (Fla.) which will start this month.
So that summarizes some of the contributions we’re making to today’s fight and there are many more that I could list, but let me just go on and talk briefly about some of the things that we’re, if you’d go to the next chart please, about how we’re going to support the fight of the future.
If you'd go to the next one, please.
We’re using the same model that we used to support today’s fight but what we’ve done is further break out this model into eight what we call focused long term challenges or FLTCs.
You can see those. What it has served to do is focus our research in those areas that the warfighter has put his highest value on. They’re such things as anticipatory command and control and intelligence; assured operations in high threat environments; on demand theater force protection; and affordable mission generation and sustainment. We have eight of those areas and there isn’t anything that we do inside the Air Force Research Lab other than some basic science things, that isn’t focused in an area that’s important to our warfighter. Let me just give you a couple of examples of those, things you may have heard about.
If you’d go to the next chart, please.
This one was recently highlighted in fact on a report on CNN the other night. It’s an interesting one. I think there it was touted as crowd control. You can see the advantages of a system like this. It keeps crowds away from a downed pilot, it protects bases and ships by discouraging encroachment towards those ships. It could keep non-combatants from getting near an area that you’re about to strike and thus minimize civilian casualties. It could also give you an option to shoot first when an unknown threat appears or you don’t care to use a kinetic weapon because you’re not quite sure who or what is down there.
Of course this faces some technical challenges as well as the political stigma of the use of directed energy weapons, but I assure you it works, and it works very very well, if you watched the piece on CNN the other night.
Another program that we’re working on, if you’d go to the next chart please, is the advanced tactical laser, advanced concept technology demonstrator. This particular one is a chemical oxygen iodine laser. Probably not the one we would use in a deployed system, but it does give us the ability to demonstrate the technology necessary to hit a specific aim point and produce a precise effect. Its lethality demonstrations are scheduled for this summer, the summer of ’08, to accomplish our future technology goals which will be to transition to an electrically powered solid state laser which will give us increased magazine depth and some reduced logistics support. We’ll also work on a higher power laser with advanced beam control. Then much more light weight and efficient system so that we can get more destructive power in the target area.
A couple more quick examples and one that I promised someone in the press event this morning, if you’d go to this next chart. This idea of hypersonics. This program, the ScramJet engine demo, was initiated about three or four years ago and it will be completed in 2010. It uses a hydrocarbon fuel-cooled ScramJet with some technology that we borrowed from DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) that relates to the shape of the airframe and the inlet duct. Here in the next year or two we will put this test platform aboard a B-52 and use an old ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile System) booster to accelerate it from 40,000 feet up to about Mach 4, then kick in the ScramJet and take it up to about Mach 6.5 or 7. That engine will transition from a mixed subsonic and supersonic combustion and then pure supersonic or ScramJet combustion and we’ll do between four and eight flights, depending on the success. The first of those is scheduled as early as 2009.
If I could just complete this brief discussion of future technology with one other and go back to our friends in space, if you would go to the next chart, please. Under the title of responsive space technology, a rather wide envelope of candidate technologies. It refers to our ability to meet space based needs in a very timely manner through the use of some innovative technologies. You can see some of those here on the chart. Small satellites that we would normally use for research that would be launched, today, would be launched on small inexpensive rockets and then in the future on platforms something like the one you would see in the lower right hand corner.
I don’t think I can stress enough that it’s not our intent to replace the current national space architecture. These would have limited utility and limited expectations, have small or short life cycles, but they would be able to provide the field commander with a system that he could task and work on while we would retain the capability to fly the satellite and do the housekeeping chores in Air Force channels.
Those are just some of the things that we’re involved in at Air Force Materiel Command and in the labs to support the warfighter today and the warfighter of tomorrow.
I’d like to summarize with a quote taken from our Chief that contributes to the philosophy that we’ve developed. You know, as Gen. Keys highlighted again this morning, that we won’t and we don’t fail if we anticipate those emerging threats and the character of them. It’s those who fail to adapt and look to the future for the capabilities that they need to shape their air forces.
Our hope is, in fact our strategy is, that Air Force Materiel Command will develop the technology and the capabilities needed by our future warfighters to make sure that this country remains successful as we prosecute the wars of the future as well as those that we’re involved in today.
With that, thank you very much for your time. Again, it’s an honor to be with you.
[Applause.]
Moderator: Thank you, sir, for a great overview of a lot of very positive activity in the command. Could you, considering our aging fleets, we’ve talked about this all through the symposium and associated systems failures, seen more at a higher rate than we would expect in many cases? How are our depots doing in performing and keeping those weapon systems operating?
Gen. Carlson: That’s a question that I get asked a lot, and quite frankly I hesitate to give the answer because the answer is they’re doing marvelously. They’re putting more airplanes back on the ramp faster than at any time in the past. We delivered 1,351 airplanes last year, 97% of them on time. Four of the eight we delivered 100% on time. But that’s not the real issue here.
The issue is that each one of those airplanes, when it comes in, demands more what we call over and above work than we had anticipated. So we’re having to cram more work into less time. We’re replacing more parts and the cost of those parts is going up at a rate of about 9% a year. So, as we repair and upkeep older and older airplanes, the cost is going up; the time to repair them is going up; and then their reliability once we get them back in the field is not what we want it to be.
So the secret is not just how good we can do in the depots, but what kind of equipment we’re going to put into those depots and then take out of them. The answer to that is we need new equipment.
Moderator: A question on DMO, Distributed Mission Operations, I guess. Acquisition philosophy. How do we look at that?
Gen. Carlson: I see Ms. (Sue) Payton is down here. She’s probably better equipped to answer that than I am, but we took a hiccup there because we had some congressional direction to go away from the service-based industry and now begin a procurement program. We just returned from a day and a half with Gen. (William T.) Hobbins in Europe, and I know that’s a big issue over there because we went through the process and got ourselves a two-ship capability with F-15s, but what we really need is four-ship. So it’s now going to take another 18 months or so to get that capability on line just because we’ve had to shift our philosophy for procuring that service. But we’ll get there.
This is not a technology matter, it’s just a matter of getting the right funds in the right bucket and moving forward.
Moderator: Our labs are doing some remarkable work as well. Are we working anything to provide alternate sources of energy for ground forces?
Gen. Carlson: Oh boy, are we ever. In fact we’ve just developed a new hydrogen powered, I want to call it a battery but it’s not, it’s a power cell, that is much more light weight, noiseless, no fumes, and we believe, we’re working on the interface box now, that allows it to be used as a power source for several different radios and other pieces of gear. We’re not only building that interface now, but we’re also working to make it smaller, more reliable, and more light weight.
Our hope is that we’ll be able to significantly, within the next year to 18 months, significantly reduce the weight required by those who have to go hike these things up mountains and across deserts. But we’re doing a lot of work in that area.
Moderator: Thank you very much, sir. Thanks for a great presentation and thanks for your leadership of AFMC.
Gen. Carlson: Thank you.
[Applause.]
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