AFA Policy Forum

General Richard B. Myers
Vice Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff
AFA Convention
Washington, DC
September 11, 2000

You worry when you go off to joint duty that the Air Force will forget about you but I guess in this case it hasn’t. It is really good to be here and good morning to all our distinguished guests.

Obviously, this has become a reoccurring opportunity for me. And the common thread that has run through each of my presentations at the Air Force Association is the same man, that great American hero, General John Shaud. So, I thank you for the chance to speak today.

When General Shaud was on active duty, he was really a mover and a shaker, well known for getting things done. If you combine that with his stance as the Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel, you had one really powerful, influential man.

It is no surprise that after surviving the first time he asked me to speak, I ended up in a plumb command in Japan. Happenstance some would say. I’d say maybe not. After the next speech I gave, I found myself in Hawaii wearing shorts and an aloha shirt and the PACAF commander’s hat. The one after that led to an ideal job in Colorado as commander-in-chief, Space Command, where I continued to accept his speech requests at the Air Force Association in L.A. in the Fall of 1998 and Orlando the next spring and then L.A. again in 1999. But by then, I had settled in. I was in the foothills of the beautiful Rocky Mountains, with a spectacular view of Pike’s Peak. I was just a short drive away from my home in Kansas. I could crank up my Harley and be on the road in a moment’s notice. Best of all, I was in command.

So by the time I got General Shaud’s next invitation for AFA Orlando, this past February, I was comfortable enough to finally tell him no. Next thing I knew, I was out of command and back here in the Pentagon. So, now you know why I am here this morning. I am looking for another good deal out there in the field.

Actually, I am here to show my appreciation for what the young men and women in Air Force blue do for our country and most importantly, to highlight those efforts and how those efforts contribute to our joint warfighting. After all, if our efforts, be they Air Force or Navy blue, or Marine and Army green, don’t contribute to contribute to joint war fighting, they aren’t worth very much to our joint commanders. In fact, that is exactly why I think you are right on the mark with your excellent theme for this year’s convention, Global Vigilance, Reach and Power.

It describes at once Air Force competencies and joint imperatives. It fits perfectly with the message I want to leave with you today that all of our efforts are a means to a larger end. For America’s armed forces, that larger end reflects our purpose --to fight and win our nation’s wars, to carry out its national security strategy.

For the Joint Staff and Unified Commands, that means putting the right team together for the joint fight. For the services, it means organizing, training and equipping the forces that contribute to the joint order of battle. Each must recognize the importance of their input to that larger end. Hopefully, the days of service-centric stove pipe capabilities are gone. Ahead must be the days of fully integrated interoperable joint warfighting systems, systems that build the symbiotic relationships among our armed forces and that increase our combat power and lead straight to victory. That ladies and gentleman is why I am so delighted to be in front of such a savvy, sky-blue audience today. Because you understand fundamentally what Air Force contributions do for the purple effort. And it is that effort, after all, that joint effort that will help the armed forces achieve our larger purpose.

What’s more, you are an audience that understands the need for flexibility and adaptability in today’s rapidly changing world. Some of you have worked on the plans and concepts that have allowed the Air Force to respond smoothly to that need. Of course, many of you took those plans and concepts and turned them into operational reality on flight lines, in maintenance hangers and at launch pads throughout the Air Force. That is why it feels so right to be here today speaking from my new perspective, expressing the gratitude of a purple-suiter who sees daily the benefits of Air Force ingenuity applied around the world. With that pride born of a blue-suiter who knows that his services contribution to the joint fight is invaluable, irrefutable and irreplaceable.

But as you know, the job is never done. While the Joint Staff is working hard to ensure our young troops can fight and win our nation’s wars, the Air Staff is organizing, training and equipping a critical part of that team, the world’s best Air Force. While the unified commanders in chief are brainstorming the integration essential for the joint fight, the numbered air forces are readying plans to integrate their forces into those teams. Each entity is working toward that larger end of preparing for fighting and winning our nation’s wars. Each understands that in the decidedly uncertain current environment, doing so requires a vision, an evolving structure and adaptable functions. Let’s look briefly at what is going on in each area.

Where the Chairman has published Joint Vision 2020, the Air Force has followed with Air Force Vision 2020. The new Joint Vision retains the armed forces imperative of a full-spectrum dominance while significantly acknowledging how important information operations are to achieving that goal. However, in keeping with today’s theme, you’ll notice that the information superiority we gain from those operations is not the end, it is a means to battlespace knowledge superiority-- itself a contributor to the larger end of fighting and winning our nation’s wars.

Similarly, the new Air Force vision is right on the mark. It expands the scope beyond global reach and power by incorporating global vigilance. With that, it confirms a broader Air Force commitment across all spectrums and more importantly a broader Air Force contribution to the joint battlespace. It demonstrates effectively that it is no longer about individual platforms, but about larger effects. And I would add, it is not about stove piping, either, but about interoperability--a system of systems throughout the Air Force and within the joint community.

I have always maintained that without a common vision, it is impossible to achieve a common future, short of chaos. That is why I am pleased to see these positive additions to the Joint and Air Force visions. But I would add a corollary. That even the most visionary plans are just dreams without organizational structures capable of evolving to fulfill that vision. That leads us to the second area of progress to consider.

Again, the good news is that structurally, we are evolving. Two examples. A small joint one inside the Beltway and a huge Air Force one outside it, to illustrate how we are doing that. Each better positions its respective agency to fight and win. Within the Beltway, we are adjusting slightly our Joint Warfighting Capability Assessment Team structure within the overall evolution of the Joint Requirements Oversight Council or JROC. While outside the Beltway, the Air Force has built a fine new war fighting structure around their Aerospace Expeditionary Force. The former is necessary for advancing joint warfighting; the latter for actually doing the fighting. And we’ll look at each in turn.

The JROC seeks to more efficiently use service resources by putting the right capabilities together for the war fighting commanders-in-chief. In a nutshell, it means positioning the JROC to offer its credibility, its experience and its authority early on in the service operation requirements and acquisition timelines. The idea is to ensure integration and interoperability of new systems within a common joint architecture and in support of a common Joint vision before we then meddle or pour steal on another piece of stove pipe hardware.

To aid in that effort, the Joint Warfighting Capability Assessment Team structure will change slightly to better respond to the up-front nature of what they will be asked to do. They will concentrate on the capabilities necessary to a commander-in-chief’s warfighting missions and accordingly, the JWCA will look at the most pressing overarching strategic level issues necessary for joint war fighting.

This evolution is really a back-to-the-future effort, where we restore the JROC and the JWCAs to what we originally intended them to do--preparing our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines for fighting and winning future wars. Similarly, the Aerospace Expeditionary Force concept, now maturing after a significant shakedown run in Kosovo, provides its own great benefits. It answers the pressing quality of life need to put stability and predictability back in the lives of airmen caught in a round robin of current deployments. Better still, it provides tailored forces to our CINCs and theater commanders who count on those forces as key parts of their joint war fighting teams. That, after all, is why we create and evolve any structure within the armed forces.

Evolving structures, of course, go hand in hand with changing functions, the third area I’ll address today. The need to adapt certain functions to the new reality of a constantly changing defense environment remains pressing for all of us. Fortunately, I think we are up to the task. Two examples, again, one in the joint arena and one Air Force, contribute to a larger joint imperative to best position our young warriors for fighting and winning our nation’s wars. The latest unified command plan changed and adapted the function of Joint Forces Command to fit the new realities of joint warfare. And those same realities have driven the Air Force to refocus with new emphasis on its function as an aerospace force. The work of Joint Forces Command is critical to our new concept of Joint warfare, a plug-and-play system of joint, interoperable, and integrated capabilities. The command will experiment with those capabilities and help determine what joint systems, what joint concepts, concepts of operation and joint architectures will work best to meet the war fighting commanders-in-chief requirements.

No doubt, at first they’ll concentrate on the seams, the command and control communication computers and intelligence, for example, that enable our systems to work together in the joint fight. That is why this expansion of function including the new name and new focus was the right thing to do.

In the same vein, the Air Force is adapting to its new larger function as an aerospace force, but no matter what the current iteration is called, air and space force, space and air force or the currently favor--aerospace force, the advantage is the same. It results in U.S. forces domination of a battle space that, as Air Force Vision 2020 states, stretches from the earth’s surface to the outer reaches of space. It helps lay the foundation for fully joint operations, exactly what our war fighter commanders-in-chief need to accomplish their missions.

The future can reflect where we are already heading--a fully integrated aerospace force--or it might even reflect some entirely innovative ideas like perhaps the development of a civil reserve aerospace fleet, extending a battle proven concept and program to more than just the air-breathing commercial fleet. The bottom line in any case is that the Air Force’s efforts at full aerospace integration will help give our joint war fighters the battle space dominance they need to prevail in future conflicts.

That is the value of being out front in adapting new functions to fit current defense realties. Frankly, that is the advantage of the initiatives in all three areas that we discussed today in vision and structure and in function.

I applaud the Air Force for setting the right course with a solid vision and evolving structure and adapting functions, all designed to meet the ultimate challenge, all means to the larger end of helping our joint forces fight and win the nation’s wars. Thanks again to the AFA and to General Shaud and Tom McKee for another compelling invitation to speak and to all of you for the chance to share my thoughts on Air Force and joint contributions to the armed forces imperative.