AFA Policy Forum

General John P. Jumper
Chief of Staff, USAF
AFA National Symposium
Washington, D.C.
September 16, 2003

General Jumper: What a pleasure to be here and be here with my boss, Dr. Jim Roche. I just want to take a moment to acknowledge to this crowd how fortunate the Air Force is to have someone who is as dedicated day-to-day to the betterment of our Air Force and to the quality of life of our airmen and to their families. We could have no better champion than we have with our Secretary of the Air Force, Dr. Jim Roche. Boss, thank you for everything you do for us.

General Buzz Moseley’s debut last night as the keynote speaker of that superb ceremony, I think he did a great job as our new Vice Chief of Staff. Buzz—well done. And also I want to acknowledge the contributions of the Air Force Band and the Air Force Honor Guard, the 11th Wing, Bill Chambers – again, absolutely superb. Thank you very much for that, too.

I also want to let you know how difficult it was for me to arrange for those of you who come from far-off places who never get to see a hurricane, how hard it was for me to arrange to have a hurricane come at the time that you are here [Laughter]. But we don’t want you to miss any experience that you might have here in the United States, so we’ll try to hold the hurricane off, but we want you to see just a little bit of it anyway.

Also, in our Air Force, over the past few weeks, we’ve had some changes in our leadership. We said goodbye to General Les Lyles as he departed Air Force Materiel Command for the next phase of his life. Les has done a superb job for us and we welcome General Greg Martin who you’ll hear speak here after me. We sent General Fogelsong to be the commander of US Air Forces in Europe, and we welcomed Buzz Moseley, whom you saw last night, to the vice chief’s position. Congratulations to all those and to those changes that we made, we just continue to make our Air Force better.

It really boggles the mind to stand up here and to contemplate the past 100 years. It has been air and space power advancing at a dizzying pace. You think of the challenge before the Wright Brothers. These are two guys who made bicycles for a living. In making bicycles, they pursued a dream of flight by observing how the birds flew.

You all know that the first Wright Flier really didn’t even have ailerons. It had this very flimsy sling device that the person laid down in and you moved your body back and forth, and you warped the wings of the airplane because as the Wright Brothers observed from birds in flight, that is the way the birds did it. It wasn’t until later on, in 1909, that they actually put the ailerons on the airplane—that helped the airplane turn a little bit more predictably.

Not long ago, I got to fly one of these airplanes. It struck me, as I took off for the very short flight—because that is all you can have in one of these machines is a very short flight. It struck me how very fragile, how very feather-like this machine was, made of cloth and wood. On that day, what a change was made to our whole world. As we advanced on through the early part of the last century, the early pioneers saw immediately the benefits of exploiting the vertical dimension. And from just a few feet off the ground on that December day in 1903, it was barely 60 years later that we broke the barrier of space and, by 1969, we had a man walking on the moon. Unbelievable, when you think about it.

Today, the remotely piloted vehicle can be separated by thousands of miles from its pilot, as we saw in Operation Iraqi Freedom, when Predators were actually controlled from Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. Today, we can exploit global awareness from the high reaches of space and we can control the flow of information through networks in the micro world of cyber space.

We all do this with a very short, but a very rich, history in the US Air Force. We started off as an expeditionary air force, dating back to World War One and the American expeditionary force of General Pershing. In those days, we were slow to recognize the virtues of air power. As you may know, we started right here on the hill in Arlington, Virginia, right by the cemetery, in the early days where Orville and Wilbur Wright demonstrated the first military machine. They were challenged to fly their machine from Arlington over to Alexandria and back, and they had to achieve an average speed of 42 and a half miles per hour in order to earn the $5,000 bonus that the Army gave them—and they did.

But after that, there wasn’t much interest in the military and it wasn’t until Orville and Wilbur took their invention over to Europe, and actually got the French and the British excited by their invention, that the US decided it had better take notice. We were behind. When we showed up to help the allies in World War One, we were flying borrowed aircraft―borrowed from the French and the British―and we were much more eager than we were capable in those days with that borrowed equipment.

Then we made advances between World War One and World War Two. But in World War Two, at the beginning of it, we were actually over in England and again, in volunteer status, joining squadrons of volunteers before the United States officially entered the war. That is when we learned about the importance of alliances, an importance that follows us yet today.

We watched the innovation of airmen. We watched Jimmy Doolittle take bombers off the deck of a carrier. We watched bold airmen deploy down into North Africa in a bold expeditionary operation. And then following the days of World War Two, we broke out into the Cold War and we lost our expeditionary habits as we faced one giant adversary, and we tended to stay planted in one place and our expeditionary roots eroded for awhile, only to be revived by the contingency world that evolved again in the early 1990s with Operation Desert Storm. That revised the need for an expeditionary Air Force and sent us to reclaim our heritage, which we have done.

Today, we observe the success of our airmen in conflicts throughout that volatile decade of the 1990s―in Bosnia and Kosovo, and recently in Afghanistan and Iraq. And we return to that age of coalition warfare and of cooperation. We see ourselves, especially with the US Navy―in the early days of World War Two, Doolittle borrowed their aircraft carrier. And in the days of Afghanistan, the US Navy flying off of aircraft carriers made great use of our tankers of the US Air Force. We learned the true meaning of cooperation and jointness, global cooperation and what it means to us to say that we cannot fight alone.

We match the determination of noble and famous heroes like Dootlittle today with this generation. We called that generation of World War Two heroes “The Greatest Generation,” but we generate our own greatest generation today. We had heroes that we saw in this recent conflict. One comes to mind with Captain Kim Campbell, a young female A-10 pilot who had her A-10 badly shot up, working below the weather with the 3rd Infantry Division and with a complete hydraulic failure was able to take her airplane back up into Turkey and put it on the ground. That was an act of heroism and bravery that is characteristic of the outstanding airmen we deal with day in and day out.

Another great story―a good friend of mine, Lt. Col. Muck Brown. He is a famous A-10 pilot in the US Air Force and has a proud and rich history at Nellis Air Force Base. He has a son, Nick, who serves in the 10th Mountain Division of the US Army. During the war in Afghanistan, Muck’s son wrote to him and told him how important the A-10s were to the operation of the 10th Mountain Division. He told his dad that seeing the A-10s in action made him understand why his dad was so passionate about his work for all these years. I know Muck very well and I know exactly how he would react and he reacted exactly that way. He had retired from the Air Force and was working for UPS. He dropped it all, came back on active duty, got back into the A-10 business immediately and brought his expertise back to train many of our forces at Nellis that were able to deploy, and especially some of the rehearsals we did for the hunting of Scud missiles that we did at Nellis Air Force Base.

Another great story about the airdrop of the 173rd Brigade into Northern Iraq, into Bashur. With that group was a group of about 20 airmen who jumped in with the Army that day. It was a flawless C-17 mission that took off out of Aviano Air Base, and I recall the photograph of C-17s lined up on the ramp there at Aviano. Those airmen that jumped in with the Army that day were airmen who were capable of quickly being able to turn that airfield and that runway into a usable airfield, which they did. And we very quickly began to bring airplanes in that landed on the runway there. But the guy who planned that C-17 mission, the first airdrop of its size from a C-17 formation, is Lt. Col. Shane Hirschman, who did a superb job. He is another hero and a great story.

One terrible day during the Iraqi war, we lost an F-15E. We learned later that the crew had been tragically killed, but there was an extensive search and rescue operation that was launched. In order to make that search and rescue operation be able to stay in the area around Tikrit, one of our brave KC-135 crews flew up, over that very dangerous area, and orbited in order to make sure that these rescue forces there had plenty of fuel. The pilot of that KC-135 is a captain named Tricia Paulson Howe. Her father is Henry, who was a navigator on an EC-47 in Vietnam. This is an air power family. This is extraordinary bravery across generations.

The innovation of airmen goes on and on. We have the story of the B-52, at 39,000 feet in the sky, with the airman on the ground riding the horse and taking his satellite laptop computer and communicating directly with the B-52 with GPS coordinates. This marriage of 19th century warfare with a horse with the modern day warfare of the global positioning system, and computer technology and the airman on the ground being much younger than the B-52 at 39,000 feet.

This audience has heard me say it many times before, but General Curtis E. LeMay, the father of the B-52 and of our strategic nuclear forces, would not be pleased to see his B-52 doing close air support, but that is exactly what it does. It does it extremely well and it teaches us new ways to think about things.

It is not only the equipment, but it is how the leadership puts the equipment into use. In the Kosovo War, we were able to take B-1 bombers and we put them into orbit and they orbited for long periods of time waiting for emerging targets to develop. In the Iraqi War, General Buzz Moseley took that concept to a new level as he stacked B-1s, one on top of another, just waiting for targets to emerge and he could send the B-1s out very, very quickly to deal with those targets, sometimes in just a matter of minutes from the time they were spotted. We introduced ourselves into a whole new era of time-sensitive targeting. So we, as the US Air Force, can claim that we are firmly back to our expeditionary roots as we can rapidly deploy and employ anywhere around the world.

We still have much to learn and there are lessons to be learned from Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. General Hal Hornburg has it just right. There are two kinds of things—we have observations where we see what happened, and then we have lessons learned where we actually do something about it. There is a list of lessons that we plan to do something about.

The first lesson is the importance of not losing sight of the fact that joint warfare is the imperative. We worked very closely with the Army and the Marine Corps as they pushed their way up from Basra, working north toward Baghdad and we were virtually in contact every mile of the way between those two places. What we found is that we hadn’t done that kind of close air support in many years. In fact, we hadn’t done it since the days of Vietnam. But we also learned that close air support comes in many forms, as we’ve already said. It is not just the A-10s close to the ground dropping bombs and making noise. It is also sometimes from the B-52 that is 39,000 feet in the sky. Sometimes that B-52 can be more accurate than the A-10. New ways to think about old missions.

We also were able to mature the relationship between the Joint Force land component commander and the Joint Force air component commander. This is really―although we’ve had a joint force air component commander for many years―the first conflict where we’ve had a joint force land component commander. This relationship helped us iron out issues in close air support and in all other kinds of support between the air and the land.

We also saw the evolution of conventional operations with special operations, especially in the western war, where we were heavily and intensively employed with special operations. We married up traditional intelligence and reconnaissance assets, traditional intelligence and surveillance from space with the special operators on the ground and the conventional fighter pilot and the conventional bomber pilot. We did this not only with active forces, but with National Guard and Reserve forces, not only with conventional forces that dropped bombs, but with space forces that make sure that the bombs can guide properly. One of the main features of this was that, as a part of the joint special operations task force that operated out west, we had a space warrior that was assigned to them full-time to make sure that the GPS guidance was as accurate as it could be and that other effects from space could be brought to bear in a timely fashion. That hero is with us today, Lt. Col. Todd Friese, our space master who was with them.

We found new ways to think about Global Hawk, about the CAOC and Rivet Joint, and we had occasion to put the Global Hawk up over the Medina Division, south of Baghdad and the Global Hawk was seeing down through the dust storm. You may remember that dust storm where you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face, but the Global Hawk could and the Joint STARS could and the B-1, with its ground-moving target radar could. We had this wonderful link up between the Global Hawk, between some of our other intelligence assets, between the bombers and between the air operations center so that the Global Hawk could identify exactly where the armored vehicles were in the dust storm and then pass those very accurate coordinates off to bombers which then destroyed them. Think about it: the Global Hawk, at 65,000 feet, a platform we bought to do strategic reconnaissance, essentially doing what? Close air support. Revolutionary ways to think about doing old missions.

The enemy made the mistake of believing that we couldn’t see him any better than he could see us. That was a tragic mistake for the Medina Division.

I had to smile during those days as I watched news commentators talk about a pause. I was wishing at that moment that I could ask the Medina Division commander if he thought there was a pause, as thousands of sorties a day came his way.

Another lesson is that combat power depends on a persistent air and space intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capability that blend in naturally with your command and control so that with politically sensitive targets you can get the rapid approval you need to prosecute those targets. Part of this is to have systems that can rapidly cross reference one another, so that as we saw with the Global Hawk and with our other intelligence platforms, you can confirm what the other platform thought it saw there. In the future, as we try to continue to try to transform, we will see the traditional way we think about intelligence―where you collect it, then you analyze it and then you report―is also going to be used inside the kill cycle to find and fix and kill targets in real-time. We have to find ways to shift those assets back and forth across the traditional lines so that those assets can be used both ways and can make that transition seamlessly.

We also learned again from Air Chief Marshall Christian Swami this morning when he reminded us that we can never forget the human dimension. Even warriors have to demonstrate their humanitarian traits. We in the US Air Force think that we do that very well. As we watched in the Kosovo war―it wasn’t publicized much, but while that war was going on―we accommodated tens of thousands of refugees with programs that reach out to the local villages and have ongoing programs to embrace the local villagers and to help with rebuilding and giving confidence to the people that Americans are not all demons who wish their destruction. We can never forget that we are human beings first and that we are here to serve mankind. And so, Air Chief Marshall Christian Swami, thank you for reminding this morning.

We have more lessons. We depend greatly on the global positioning system and its importance is growing. But it is a fragile system and we have to pay attention to that. This is a system, as you recall, that did not even exist in Operation Desert Storm.

During Operation Desert Storm, our great breakthrough was to be able to operate at night. It wasn’t until 1999 that we dropped our first GPS-guided bomb from the B-2, and that was a prototype weapon. We’ve also learned lessons of integration. As we look forward to the future, we are going to see a multi-sensor command and control aircraft whose entire job is to integrate sensors from various platforms in manned, unmanned and space so that the sum of the wisdom of all of those sensors will end up with a cursor over the target for the operator. That cursor over the target can be to destroy the target, to save the target by providing humanitarian relief or to learn more about the target depending on what the commander wants.

We have more to learn about remotely piloted vehicles. We have a great story of the Predator that was searching out a radar dish in Baghdad and I think this will appear on your screen. This was, we called him Baghdad Bob, the Information Minister who was putting out these fantastic stories every day. The TV antenna radar dish was located very close to the Grand Mosque and we couldn’t use a large warhead to destroy it so we sent the Predator in with a Hellfire missile that has a 40-pound warhead on it. Our pilot that day was a young, female F-15 pilot. She was able to locate this dish. It was located very close to the Fox News Network dish, by the way, and we were able to take this dish out without causing any other damage. It was humorous to listen to the F-15 pilot on the radio talking about dashing out of the target area―as you all know, the Predator can go about 70 miles per hour, so dashing is not an option.

We have to work very hard on things that we continue to do badly―bomb damage assessment. We have to find a way to get accurate and timely bomb damage assessment. We have to work with definitions so that definition of bomb damage assessment doesn’t require us to do detailed analysis and we can get a bomb damage assessment that is more useful to the commander more quickly. We continue to work on that. We do not make the progress that we should. We are going to take that on and we are going to wrestle that to the ground. We continue to have issues with friendly fire. In this day and age of information technology, we should be able to identify where the good people are and where the bad people area and be able to make that discrimination and do it better than we do it today. We are going to continue to work that problem and we are going to work it with the help of space assets and space technology that has been developed that does that very well.

Another thing we have not done very well over the years is to equip our airmen on the ground, like the young sergeant riding the horse, with the right kind of equipment that can connect with the satellites, that can put data directly into the weapon systems of the airplanes that he or she is in contact and to be able to communicate with the command and control. Our leader, Dr. Jim Roche, has taken this issue on personally and he has worked with our special operators to be able to develop a unique kit of equipment to do just that. Some of this is in the process of being fielded. It will continue to be fielded on into the future. To this, we owe the personal interest and passion of our boss who has taken this on and done such a great job for our special operators and others who find themselves on the ground in harm’s way with our ground forces.

In the future, we will continue this journey of transformation. We have revamped the way we do our business in the Air Staff so that we don’t get sucked into talking always about programs. We start first to talk about concepts of operations. We talk first about how we are going to fight before we begin to talk about what we are going to buy to fight with. This conops work is very important for us and it leads the intellectual debate on what we should buy and it puts some discipline into our system. We can talk very well with the other services this way and we can also work with the other services on joint concepts of operation so that we emphasize the strong points we each bring to the battle. We stop fighting with each other about who can win the war all by themselves. That has been a great help to us all.

We will continue to evolve the Air Expeditionary Force idea. Key to that is the concept of operations that is being built for our global mobility forces. And to build the kind of expertise that we need to understand all the steps that are required to be taken between the time you load an airplane to deploy, to the time you arrive at a deployed location, and how to set up the tent city in the deployed operations. We opened 36 bases in the US Air Force between Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. There was not one tent left in the US Air Force. We did a great job and it has become a basic core competency now of our Air Force to be able to do this. We need to be better at it than we are, to be able to do it more quickly.

In our personal development, we have taken on a program called “force development.” In force development we look at each of the individuals and we help them take specific steps to attain the limit of their personal competency and we do that through a series of analyses that look at their assignment process, their professional military education and their civilian education. Right now, we have many of our officers who pursue masters degrees at nighttime in their spare time and in today’s environment, there is no spare time. We are going to change that so that if we send someone to get a masters degree, it is going to be as a full-time educational process where they don’t have to be apart from their families to do that.

In our Air Force, we are introducing a new generation of physical training as well. When we deploy to places around the world at very high altitudes as we did in Afghanistan and then in very hot locations, as we do in the deserts of the Arabian Gulf area, these are not environments that Americans are used to. It takes a physical stamina of the type that we have not trained well for before. We are inaugurating a new physical training program that will put emphasis on our ability to be able to deploy.

We are also looking at a new uniform, a new utility uniform, a uniform that will be able to show that we are airmen. It will be distinctive. It will be a wash and wear. It will truly be a utility uniform that we don’t have to pay $20 or $30 a month to keep starched. It will hopefully be showing up here in the next few weeks in tests around Air Force for people to take a look at. I’ve gotten a lot of feedback on this, mostly from people who haven’t seen it yet. I’ve asked all of our commanders to make sure that we take a good look at it. And once people do have a chance to take a look at it, I’ll take feedback. We should not be afraid of change. We should not be afraid to look at something different. That is what I ask the members of our Air Force and our commanders to help me with over these next few weeks.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention our premier program, the F/A-22. It has had its problems with software stability and a few other things. But let me tell you, the airplane is performing superbly. What I enjoy doing is reading the first-hand testimony of the pilots who are flying it. I’d like to read you some of this testimony.

From one pilot: “When Raptors are in the air, there is no known defense against them. Even with the most modern equipment that we find in the other jets, when we are up against an aggressor with our data links, the mission is just simply boring. Our F-15C adversaries were experienced flight leaders with the latest upgrades on their radars and their data links, but they could do nothing against this aircraft. When we were visual, the turn performance of the jet made quick work of any aggressor and in the beyond-visual range environment, our advantages only increased. The entire system worked as designed and the adversaries never had a clue or never had a chance. It was an incredible demonstration of what the F/A-22 will be capable of. Good luck flying against this jet in combat. We found, identified and rolled in behind the adversaries on every set-up. We actually knew exactly what they were doing when they were back on the caps, before the engagement ever started and before the fight’s on call. The hardest thing we did was the G-straining maneuver prior to the engagement. We took the aircraft to its altitude and air speed limits during this run. The performance was phenomenal and that is a tremendous understatement. We were above the contrails. The aircraft didn’t want to stop climbing or accelerating. It took little time to achieve those parameters. We had nearly perfect situational awareness from the very start. There is no match for the situational awareness that we saw when the sensors were working properly. When you combine this with a low observability of the airplane, it is going to be hard for any airplane to be able to see us in any scenario that we can imagine. The adversaries had no situational awareness on the Raptors and at any point of the day, no matter what they did; we knew what they were doing. This was a grossly one-sided fight…”

So, while we’ve had our problems with software stability, I commend the team who has worked that and has wrestled that to the ground. It is getting better every day. The performance of the airplane is absolutely superb. We are still in development so there is no doubt we will find some more problems from time to time, but I am absolutely convinced, as is Dr. Roche, that this is going to be the most amazing air machine that has ever been developed. We can hardly wait to see it come to fruition. We offer the testimony of the people flying it as evidence. I am very proud of them.

We also will continue our transformational journey into space. There is absolutely no doubt that that transformational journey will continue to increase our capabilities in intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. We will also continue our journey into cyber space. We have to be able to defend our assets in space and all that will require developments that are underway to be successful.

In all of this, our people will remain our heroes. It has been amazing to me to watch the mobilization of tens of thousands of our citizen soldiers in our Air National Guard and our Air Force Reserve. It is not only they who perform, but as we saw in some of the ceremonies earlier, it is their employers as well, who are patient, as they give up some of their treasured employees to go serve the nation. I tell my World War Two audiences all the time that they were indeed The Greatest Generation, but we are today producing more of the greatest generations for our future. They are out there today. Names like Sergeant Chapman, Airman Cunningham, Sergeant Disney, and one of our Twelve Outstanding Airmen of the year—Sergeant Vance. They are out there today. They are our heroes today. They have replaced those who have fallen in this last year. Names that have meant a great deal to our Air Force—General Bob Dixon, General Robert M. Lee, General Bill Creech, and General Charlie Gabriel. All passed away over this past year. Make no mistake, they are with us here today, all of them, and they applaud the accomplishments of today’s airmen around the world as we are proud of them.

To end this on a positive note, I want to show you a little clip of film that is only a couple of days old that shows 80 JDAMs bombs―500-pound JDAM bombs―being dropped from a B-2 with the new bomb rack that we have. You see it pictured there and then you watch the B-2 take off. Each of these bombs is being guided to individual targets. No one bomb was more than ten feet away from its target. This is the kind of firepower we are able to generate with this new bomb rack that we have.

So, ladies and gentlemen, that is your US Air Force today. I couldn’t be more proud to serve in this Air Force. I couldn’t be more proud to be in the company of these great airmen here today. We do indeed all speak a common language. We are all after the same things as we strive to make our countries proud of our accomplishments. I am accompanied by great airmen in my Air Force as I know you are in yours. Let me echo the words that have been said from this podium many times: God Bless us all in our attempts to do better and to make this world a better place.

Q: Our Air Force has worked hard in Kosovo, Enduring Freedom, Iraqi Freedom... How long do you think it will take us to return to our AEF schedule?

General Jumper: As you all know, we are on 90-day rotational schedules in our Air Expeditionary Force. We have ten Air Expeditionary Force packages that we have set up and we used eight of them for the war in Iraq. We have taken the residuals, those things that were left over that we did not use in the eight and we put together two interim expeditionary forces that will be on duty for 120 days each. In March 2004 we should be able to start back into our rotation again. It will take us that long to reconstitute. Even then, we’ll be deficient in certain things. Base operating support, like tents and some of the equipment that used so much of during the Iraqi conflict will take a little bit longer to be reconstituted. But we’ll have a basic capability by March of 2004. We are working hard to do that now.

Q: With the success of our space programs, as we employ our different systems in Iraqi Freedom, do you see a change in funding or a requirement for that in our future budgets?

General Jumper: There has been a great upsurge in funding for space programs that we saw in the 2004 POM, and I think we’ll continue to see that emphasis as much of the transformational effort in the Air Force budget has to do with space. When we look at transformational communications, when we look at the SBIRS High program, when we look at the space-based radar, we see a great infusion of money into those programs to accelerate them and get them into the field as quickly as we can. I think we’ll stay along those lines and as that is only a part of it, we are also introducing the expendable launch vehicle and we will get that program underway, plus a variety of other things that are coming along in space. We have really not done a bad job of keeping our space capabilities modernized. You have no choice. Once they stop, you’ve got to put something up there to replace it. We’ve done a better job at that, actually, than we have at modernization in our airborne force. I think we’ll continue to see that and the acceleration of transformation in space will continue on a very steep curve.

Q: With our emphasis on joint warfare, do you see us much more actively doing operational training with our sister services?

General Jumper: I think we’ll see quite a bit of that. In fact, part of the agreement we have with the United States Army is to make sure that we train and exercise our joint force land component commander headquarters with our joint force air component commander headquarters as we have just begun to develop these capabilities during the war. We really never had much of a chance to practice it. We also want to get to the part of Army training that reinforces what air power can do. Many of us have been involved with the land force training at Fort Irwin in California, where they have an aggressor ground force of tanks that go against our maneuver forces in the regular Army and this aggressor force is not a very big force at all, but they are very good and they engage on the ground.

We also fly close air support in support of those Army forces virtually every day of the year. Unfortunately, the close air support is not allowed to actually destroy any of the aggressor force so that the ratio of aggressors to regular Army can remain at the right ratio to actually get the regular Army forces engaged on the ground. There are generations of Army soldiers who look up and see close air support aircraft overhead but think that the close air support aircraft have no affect on the enemy. We have got to cure this problem and that is one of the steps that we’ll take to improve that, along with many others that we’ve agreed with the Army needs to take place.

Q: Our C-17s did a superb job in executing air drops in Northern Iraq. What do you see as a realistic number of C-17s as we recapitalize our airlift fleet?

General Jumper: The number is 180, and that is where we are right now. I think we will see in the near future exactly how much we are going to be able to do with our C-5 aircraft as we look at the ability to refurbish our C-5. It is really an unknown right now because we really haven’t dug into the C-5s yet to know exactly how many of those we will be able to refurbish and the final number of C-17s actually depends on how well we are able to deal with the C-5 problem.

If the tanker lease deal does come through, in the short term, we will have some airlift capacity that is attendant to the tanker as well. How we fold that into our total mobility requirement is still yet to be determined. So 180 is the number we are sticking with now. But I think it is going to be the subject of further analysis as we see what we can do with the rest of the airlift fleet.

Q: Given the high reliability of today’s precision weapons, can our Air Force begin to expect missions to have a higher probability of being successful and therefore assign more of our ISR assets to follow-on targets as opposed to Bomb Damage Assessment?

General Jumper: I think there is something to be said for the fact that when we dropped the bomb a large percentage of the time―80 to 90 percent of the time for a GPS bomb, actually more than 90 percent of the time―we can expect it to hit the target. Having said that, you still don’t know if you did the job or not until you have a chance to look to see if the effect was achieved. There are other ways to do BDA. We have hundreds of airplanes, usually out over target areas that have sensors on them. You have some kind of a laser designation pod or some other piece of equipment on there that is capable of taking a picture. We plan very carefully the missions into a target area. If we took the same care to plan missions exiting the targeting area, we can send those same airplanes over certain places and turn the videotape on, film the BDA, and put that into a centralized place to check the damage. Something as simple as that, using equipment that we have today, could profoundly help our BDA problem.

Q: After our recent combat experience, do you see any needed changes in the balance between our active duty, Guard and Reserve forces?

General Jumper: This is something that Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld has actually asked us to take a look at and actually we have done some balancing of our combat search-and-rescue forces from the Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve back into the active duty. I think that is certainly a possibility, but the possibility that excites me more is one that Dr. Roche started with what we call the “blended wing.” We are doing this now with our Joint STARS wing in Georgia and it is actually putting members of the Guard or Reserve into a unit with the active, side by side, and making that a single unit and being able, then, to use the experience of our Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve with the ready availability of our active forces in the same unit. I think there is great progress to be made there. It is not without its issues and problems, but we do need to pursue this as an alternative to just the black and white option of saying, “well, it should be in the Guard or Reserve or it should be in the active.” We have to take a close look at that.

Q: Historically, technology has been one of our key drivers in our capabilities in the Air Force, but with the budget pressures we are experiencing, do you see science & technology budgets being a problem for us in the future?

General Jumper: I think the stress on the S&T budget will continue. We have to pay attention to the S&T budget and we have to make sure that we are getting enough research and development to sustain this transformation that we need. Still, when pressure comes on quality of life issues or on the issues of being able to deploy and carry on the global war on terrorism, when those pressures come, one of the pressure points tends to be on our S&T budget. I know Dr. Roche is one who insists that we pay a lot of attention to this. Secretary Rumsfeld has also expressed great interest in this. We’ve kept the pressure on and we’ve been able to sustain the minimum level that we need. Certainly, I wouldn’t call the minimum level entirely satisfactory, but it is meeting the minimum standard. We have got to try to do better than that because a lot of our transformation does depend on the spiral technology that comes along with research and development.

Q: Finally Chief, did the projection of air power in Operation Iraqi Freedom reach its full potential? Or did we use just what we needed to get the job done?

General Jumper: Well, we used quite a bit of our forces. I said eight out of ten of Air Expeditionary Force packages were used. I think John Handy would tell you that our global mobility was stretched to the limit. We couldn’t have opened, I don’t think, one more base anywhere else to do the job because we didn’t have any of the assets left. Our parts and logistics distribution were certainly stretched because we had air assets at many, many different places around the world. Our tanker bridge was located both east and west as we put tankers―I think 208 tankers―out there in 18 locations, if I remember correctly. Our space assets were constantly in demand and we had space-trained warriors in our air operation center to make sure that came across well, supported by our 14th Air Force space command center at Vandenberg. I think we had every aspect of our Air Force employed and then we had to go out and ask for some help. You may know that we had to ask for 8,000 members of the US Army to come and help guard our bases because after the events of 9/11, we had to step up to an advanced threat condition here in the United States as well as overseas. We never manned ourselves to do both at the same time. Today we have 8,000 members of our US Army proudly supporting us in guarding our bases throughout the world. There is a lot of stress out there on the force and this was not easy and it will take awhile to reconstitute again. But, I couldn’t be more proud of all of our airmen around the world and the job that they did to make this happen.