September 13, 1999, Washington, DC — Citing aerospace power as the “key to the future” of warfare, a senior military planner today said that precision-guided weapons -- used with great success over Iraq and Yugoslavia -- “triggered a revolution” in warfare that will require new skills among Air Force personnel.

Maj. Gen. Charles F. Wald, USAF, the vice director for strategic plans and policy for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, forecast a future where sensors will provide an even more comprehensive awareness of the battlefield, where decisions will have to be made at lightning speed, and where commanders will have the ability to retarget weapons almost instantaneously when facing flexible adversaries.

Speaking at the opening of the Air Force Association’s 1999 National Convention and Aerospace Technology Exposition in Washington, D.C., Wald warned that the traditional Air Force culture has not prepared Air Force personnel for this new kind of “brain warfare,” which will demand broader thinking about how these new technologies fit into air campaigns rather than the current focus on single targets.

Precision weapons, Wald added, will soon offer the possibility of arming three B-2 stealth bombers with 200 smaller, smart bombs apiece and destroying a total of 600 heavily defended targets. “Until the PGM came along,” Wald continued, “we were fighting with the same weapons, the same tactics, and the same relative accuracy as we had in World War I, World War II, and Korea.” Modern communications, he noted, also mean that these weapons can now be retargeted up to 2 minutes before they are launched.

Unless officers and enlisted men are trained to think “beyond a two-ship formation” or “a single line in the Air Tasking Order,” Wald said, they will not be able to meet the demands of this “high-velocity” environment. Air Force personnel will have to be schooled in joint warfare and specialize in continuous planning for future military campaigns.

Wald noted that “technical and doctrinal” shortcomings highlighted by Operation Desert Storm still require correction. “Most disconcerting” of these was the restricted distribution of communications and intelligence information, which he said has been kept in the highly classified “black world” for too long.

“The system of systems must be instituted” to tie together the future Air Force, Wald said. He praised the “vigorous” research through the 1970s and 1980s that prepared the Air Force to use precision munitions successfully in Operation Desert Storm and beyond. He also declared that the Combined Air Operations Center, used for the first time in air operations over Bosnia, is the model for future “fusion” to place knowledge “where it was needed most.”

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FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT:
Stephen P. Aubin, Director of Policy and Communications
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E-mail: saubin@afa.org