Foundation Forum

General Joseph W. Ralston
Vice Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff
AFA National Convention and Symposium

September 16, 1998

"Remarks"

Thank you, General Shaud. First of all, I would like to thank John Jumper for sponsoring our new NATO country air chiefs and I would like to personally welcome them to the symposium. To Major General Dziok from Poland and General Lieutenant Klima from the Czech Republic and to Lieutenant General Kositzky from Hungary, it is really great to have you with us today.

I was going to say that it gives me great pleasure to be here. But I remembered what Winston Churchill said once. He felt those words sounded insincere coming from someone about to give a speech. He said there are only a few activities from which I derive pleasure and public speaking is not one of them. I agree with what he had to say about that.

Without any further introductory comments, I would like to tell you I am happy to be here and I am happy to have the opportunity to discuss the role of air power in joint operations. That is a topic I know is of great interest to those in this audience and also to our nation. Air power has been with us for almost the entire 20^th century, yet we are still trying to understand the many ways that air power contributes to joint operations.

It was exactly 90 years ago this month, just across the river at Fort Myer, where the Wright Brothers flew the first demonstration of an aircraft for the United States Army. The specifications were pretty simple: The Army wanted a machine that could carry two people, fly at least 40 miles per hour and go at least 125 miles. The next year, Orville Wright was finally able to meet those requirements. The testing phase finished when he flew from Fort Myer to Alexandria and back, around trip of five miles. The plane averaged 43 miles per hour, and the Army had its first aircraft.

In 1910, Eugene Ely took the first step in moving air power into naval operations when he flew a Curtis biplane off the deck of the USS Birmingham. It took him a few more months before he was able to bring it back onboard. Not too long after those pioneering feats, air power made it first debut in joint operations. In 1916, General John Pershing used the 1st Aero Squadron to help control unrest along the U.S. and Mexican border. Since that time, air power has been a vital part of nearly every contingency in which we have engaged.

I’d like to look back at our recent operations during the last few months. When I talk air power, I am not talking solely U.S. Air Force air power, although I realize this is the Air Force Association, but I am talking United States air power. I think, sometimes, we need to take a little broader view of that because that is what, really, we are trying to champion.

This past summer, when our embassies in eastern Africa were bombed, the first call we had was for strategic airlift. How can we get all the medical facilities we need there? How can we get the medical supplies to workers? How can we get the FBI teams? How can we get security teams on scene? Air Mobility Command rose to the task, and we accomplished all that.

Last fall, when Saddam Hussein threatened to expel UN weapons inspectors from Iraq, we dispatched air power to convince him otherwise. Two carrier battle groups, including a great number of ships with cruise missiles, which is air power, along with an AEF were sent to the region. When the Albanian government was unable to control the unrest that was engulfing their nation last year, it was Marine helicopters that evacuated American citizens from the U.S. embassy.

When disaster strikes, whether it is a tidal wave in New Guinea or ice storms in the northeastern U.S. or Canada, the relief comes from air power. During last winter, it was again, strategic air power, we used to put in the cherry pickers and all the things needed to deal with that natural disaster.

We almost take for granted the fact of the no-fly zones over northern Iraq and southern Iraq that are done with air power. And it was just three years ago, that a joint and combined air campaign against the Bosnian Serbs, helped bring about the current peace accords we have in Bosnia today.

In short, we use air power in a multitude of ways to meet the challenges our nation faces.

With ethnic warfare erupting in Kosovo; tribal conflict consuming the Congo; an obstinate Saddam Hussein once again bent on overturning the orders of the United Nations; and well-organized and well-financed terrorist groups bent on killing innocent men, women and children, you can see the world remains a very dangerous place. Today, with fewer forces at our disposal and the majority of those forces based in the United States, we’ve got to be able to react to events around the globe and project force rapidly anywhere in the world.

But before we move one airplane or one soldier, sailor, airmen or Marine, for any crisis, we have to assess what is going on. How do we do that? Most of our assessment is done through our air and space assets — getting the high-quality images or the signals intelligence we need to make decisions. The silent warriors, as some call them, provide the joint force commander with the ability to dominate the information spectrum, whether this done using U-2s or P-3s, Joint STARS or Rivet Joint, or satellites and the associated architecture to get the information to the right place. That is what is important in getting the enemy’s intent to our decision makers.

Once we determine what is going on and the national command authorities decide our nation needs to be involved, then the joint force commander can take advantage of the speed, range and flexibility of air power to help resolve the crisis. Depending on the situation and our objectives, air power may arrive in the form of carrier-based strike aircraft. It can be an airlifter loaded with relief supplies. It can be an air-launched cruise missile. To shape the international environment, we’ve got to be there quickly. We’ve got to have the right tools and, I believe, it is well recognized that air power provides that capability.

We can use our airlift aircraft to deliver supplies and aid workers in the event of a natural disaster or, as we have demonstrated, to fly 20 hours non-stop and deliver 500 troops from the 82^nd Airborne to work with our allies or friendly nations. The air power in an amphibious ready group can be used to evacuate American citizens from an embassy or to demonstrate American resolve. We can move aircraft forward quickly as a show of force to coerce or deter an aggressor. The most consistent lesson in modern warfare is that successfully applying force in any medium requires air superiority. Air superiority remains the key to preventing enemies from interfering with our operations and giving our forces complete freedom of action throughout the battle space. It is nothing more than seizing the high ground in the vertical dimension.

A vivid example of the importance of air superiority in modern war can be clearly seen in the movie, "Saving Private Ryan." I know many of you have either seen or heard about it. It is a powerful film. It recalls the great sacrifices made during World War II and depicts vivid scenes of American soldiers fighting in Normandy in 1944. In short it unmasks the stark reality of war. The movie also displays the human face of courage, and the ability of people to do their duty under extreme conditions.

But the movie also carries a profound message about the value of air superiority. As you watch the opening scenes of the film, you see thousands of Allied vessels carrying troops and tons of supplies across the English Channel on June 6, 1944. On that day, some 175 thousand men went ashore in Normandy, a movement that was unhindered by the German Air Force. Two weeks later, John Eisenhower, who was a new second lieutenant in the U.S. Army, was riding through Normandy with his father. Struck by the vehicles and troops that were crowding the roads, Lieutenant Eisenhower turned to General Eisenhower and said, "You’d never get away with this if you didn’t have air supremacy". The General impatiently replied, "If I didn’t have air supremacy, I wouldn’t be here".

While control of the air is not an end in itself, it is important for everyone to remember that it is a precondition for conducting other military operations on land, sea or air at the lowest cost. The joint commander will also call upon air power assets to execute precision strikes. That includes everything from conducting mass aircraft raids to using a single weapon for a hard-target kill or to insert Special Forces. The effort to field highly accurate and lethal munitions has been a continuing search for airmen, but now, more than ever, the joint force commander is less encumbered by time of day, weather or even target area defenses in the planning and execution of his air strikes.

Improvements in the stand off range for weapons — like the Joint Stand Off Weapon, the Joint Air-to-Surface Stand Off Munition, and Tomahawk Cruise Missiles — provide the flexibility to minimize the impact of enemy air defenses during an attack against a single target or during the opening stages of a conflict. We need to continue to press forward with the progress that we’ve made in developing the technology for the 21^st century. The military cannot achieve its goals without the active involvement of our industry partners and I thank you for that. You are a vital part of where we are headed in the future. The joint force commander will only be able to achieve victory by using all the forces under his control in a complementary fashion. Air power’s unique capabilities are a natural fit to all joint force campaign plans and will continue to make our joint and coalition forces dominant on the 21^st century battlefield.

I began my talk by mentioning Winston Churchill. Let me end by quoting from him, as well. Churchill once wrote that air power is the most difficult of all forms of military force to measure or even to express in precise terms.

I am not sure that I have helped refute Churchill’s claim today. But I am certain that air power provides our nation with an asymmetrical advantage for the numerous conflicts we will face in the 21^st century and that air power will continue to play a vital role in shaping the international environment. It allows us to influence events, project power and keep peace around the world. I say this not as an airman, but because air power’s attributes are ideally suited to today’s crisis-response environment: where the timelines are short; the cost of failure is high; and accurate, timely information and action are critical.

I’d like to close there and open for any questions that any of you may have.

Question and Answer Session

General Shaud: Joe, we spent the morning talking about the expansion of NATO. The issue came up concerning NATO modernization, interoperability and all those famous things. Would you be good enough to give us the JCS view on NATO enlargement and the feeling from the Joint Staff’s point of view as to how this will play out for us?

General Ralston: First of all, I think you know, but let me reinforce, that the Joint Chiefs certainly have been supportive of NATO enlargement. We are very pleased with the three countries that are represented here today as they come into NATO. I have visited all three. I have visited the air force and the army in all three. The important point here is that they have to genuinely be a part of the alliance, to work with the alliance partners, to work with the U.S. Many times I was asked the question when I was there: "What does this mean? Does this mean we have to buy such-and-such an airplane or such-and-such piece of equipment?"

Secretary Perry laid that out very well when he talked about the various conditions that were necessary to become a member of NATO: a functioning democracy, an adherence to the free market, civilian control of the military, not having conflicts with your neighbors, and demonstrating the ability to be inter-operable. Interoperability is more than equipment. It is procedures. It is doctrine. It is tactics and techniques.

At some point, those nations will have to make their own decisions as to what kind of equipment to buy, whether it is air or whether it is ground. I think it is best for us to make the options available and provide the best information we can and recognize that the nations, ultimately, will make the decision on what is best for them considering their industrial base, and considering their economic situation. But always lurking there has to be the goal of interoperability to be an effective member of NATO.

General Shaud: You were involved with, and certainly with General Shalikashvili,, Joint Vision 2010. Give us your opinion on how the Services are coming along with the implementation of that joint vision.

General Ralston: When I worked with General Shali -- when I first came into the position of vice chairman -- we knew that as we put out Joint Vision 2010, it was not going to be perfect. Few documents are that come out of any large organization. But we thought it was more important to have the vision out there so the Services had something they could try to aim for and we could bring all the various aspects of warfighting together. I think Joint Vision 2010 has done that. It was originally published in about May of 1996, so it is roughly two and a half years that it has been out there in the environment.

I think we have seen a great deal of progress within the JROC [Joint Requirements Oversight Council], for example, as we use Joint Vision 2010 to try to aim where we were going during the QDR. Certainly as the Services put together their own Service visions, they are compatible with Joint Vision 2010. I think it is still a very, very useful document. At some point we’ll need to update it, revise it. But I think it is serving its purpose. It has served its purpose very well for the last two and a half years and I think the Services are supportive of it.

General Shaud: For the last several days, AFA has spent time on the Hill visiting with senators and representatives. During these meetings, the issue of readiness comes up frequently. Evidently there will be a series of hearings on this; have been already to a certain extent. I know there have been conversations with the Administration in this regard. As you look at readiness, how serious is the problem and what do you think about stepping up to it?

General Ralston: I think we have to look at what is lumped under the category of readiness. We’ve got today’s readiness and we’ve got tomorrow’s readiness. Modernization is what we normally talk about in tomorrow’s readiness. We have told the Congress and certainly told the Administration that we are trying very hard to get the proper balance between today’s readiness, modernization and quality of life for our people. Now, different folks will throw the word readiness against those different categories, but I think it is very important to look at all of them. I firmly believe that our forces today are ready.

It is a far better Air Force, Army, Navy and Marine Corps than when I was a squadron commander. That shouldn’t, by the way, be the benchmark of what it should be. We have stressed our people. We have stressed our equipment. We’ve got aging equipment. In each of these categories you can make a compelling case that we have stretched things pretty thin. If I go back to the QDR, we put together a pretty good program and tried our best to balance those readiness, modernization and quality of life aspects. OK, you might ask me, how are we doing today a year and a half after that, basically two years after we worked the problem? There are some things that have changed in the world that we were not aware of two years ago. For example, on the contingency side, when we did the QDR, we did not believe we would be in Bosnia in 2000. It now appears we will be in Bosnia in 2000. The price tag is $2 billion a year. When we did the QDR, one of the assumptions was that the Duma would ratify START II. The Duma hasn’t ratified START II and that price tag is about a billion dollars a year. Those dollars were taken out of our budgets based on the assumption that we would go to a START II force structure.

When we did the QDR, we made an assumption that we would close bases under a BRAC. While we would not get immediate savings from closing a base on BRAC, we would at least avoid some capital improvements to those bases that we were going to be closing. All of us in this room know that over the last 15 years, we have cut back on the replacement of sewer systems and water systems and those types of things at base level that we have to pay attention to. You can do that for one year. You can do it for two years. You can do it for three years. If you do it for 15 years, things get a little tight. Then, if you are not going to be able to close those bases and you have to keep them open for another several years, now you have to go back and put money into those sewer systems and water systems and all the other things you need to do. That is a change from what we had anticipated in the QDR.

Our personnel situation is good news and bad news. The good news is we have got a very strong economy right now. The bad news is that this makes it tough in terms of recruitment and retention. As you look at what those trends do, you can see that we’ve got some adverse trend lines in retention, both in our second term and career. We have adverse trends in our recruiting in terms of being able to get the quantity. We are noticing a down turn in the percentages of high school graduates, for example. We are noticing a down turn in the percentages of category one, two and three alpha mental categories. All of those are trends that you have to acknowledge and look at up front.

I believe you can make a case that because of things which have changed in the world that I have just mentioned; yes, it is making it increasingly more difficult to strike that balance between today’s readiness, modernization and quality of life. We will do what we can within the uniformed leadership to try to make that case to our Congress and to the Administration as we proceed forward. We will see what we can do.

General Shaud: One of the last times that General Ralston and I were on a platform together, he was the Air Force deputy chief of staff for operations and we were talking about wargaming and things like that. One of the problems we had in wargaming was the modeling effort itself. The TACWAR model gave us problems as far as being able to construct the value of air power. Has there been any advance in that as we continue wargaming? Certainly air power is invaluable to the Armed Forces and to the Air Force. Are we progressing?

General Ralston: You are exactly right. We all recognized the limitation of TACWAR. Although it is the best model we’ve got and the best we’ve been able to come across, it does have limitations and we acknowledge those. One of the outcomes of the QDR was the fact that we became very much aware of the shortcomings of our modeling and we devoted a tremendous amount of resources and effort to try to fix that. One of the things we were driving for because we knew there would be another QDR --hopefully well after my time, but there will be one coming along -- is that we need a better set of models -- J-WARS. We monitor that very carefully from the JROC. We just had an update within the past month.

We have laid out some timelines so that we will have a new model available before it is needed for the next QDR. It is hard work. But we are making progress and I am confident we will get there. Will it be perfect? No. It is always going to be an evolutionary process involved with it. But our immediate goal is to have a J-WARS model that is equal or better than TACWAR by the time you get to the next QDR. I know that is not as fast as people want it. But if anybody has any good ideas on how to do that more quickly, I’d be happy to listen to him.

General Shaud: As we move toward aerospace expeditionary forces, there is often a question of access - overseas access for U.S. forces. What would be your comment on that issue?

General Ralston: Let me once again fall back on the strategy we put together as part of the QDR. It is a three-part strategy, as you recall. Part number one is to shape the environment. Part number two is to respond where necessary. Part number three is to prepare for the future. If we do the first part right of shaping the environment, that is what access is all about. That is why we exercise as much as we do. That is why General Jumper’s people at USAFE and General Gamble’s people in PACAF and Air Combat Command spend as much time on the road as they do trying to shape the environment with our friends and allies around the world. That is a very fundamental part of our strategy to do that so that we will have the access when it is time to respond. I don’t know of anything that is more important than the shaping part of that strategy. We put a great deal of effort into it. I think it is going to be key and that is one of the reasons we need to continue it.

General Shaud: There is obvious tension between the funding for current operations, funding for quality of life, and funding for modernization. Let me put you on the spot. There is a bill to be paid here that seems to be taken particularly out of the modernization account. Do you have any idea on what it would take to fix that? What sort of bill is there that must be paid?

General Ralston: Again, I will go back and say that we try to look at that very hard. The number that is typically used is $60 billion per year for procurement. Some people will argue with that and I am not about to say it is exactly $60 billion. I don’t know if it is exactly $62B or $58B or $63B, but it is at least that. As best we can tell you right now, it is somewhere in that ballpark. As you know, a couple years ago we were spending $39 billion, this is what was in the President’s budget for procurement. At that time, we were $21 billion per year short of what we needed to recapitalize our force. Again, as we put together the QDR, we tried to address that and said obviously you can’t go from $39 billion one year to $60 billion the next year and spend the money in a wise manner.

We built a ramp. We said in the FY 99 budget we needed to be at about $49 billion per year. That is $10 billion over what it was two years before. We made that. We made $48.7 billion and, in this business, that is as close as you can get to $49 billion. In ‘00, we said we needed $54 billion in order to continue up that ramp and then, the next year, by ‘01, we would be up to the $60 billion level. I think it is critically important that we stay on that ramp.

As the Services put together their POMs, they’ve come back in to OSD. We have looked at this on the Joint Staff and the Chairman has looked at it from his viewpoint of providing advice to the Secretary on the Service POMs. We have made it very clear that we think we ought to adhere to that $54 billion ramp in 2000. Right now, we are short of that. That is one of the things we have to work through as we go through the BES process. But I can tell you for sure that there will be strong advocacy from the Joint Staff to make that ramp and I believe we will have a sympathetic ear within OSD. But it is a work in progress, again. We will have it put together by December. I think it is critically important because as we said at the very beginning, that is tomorrow’s readiness. And we’ve got to do it.

General Shaud: Last question. You are, in fact, our senior airman in the military. What counsel, guidance, advice would you give a young person about to graduate in Oxford, Ohio, from Miami University? What would you have to say to them as they are about to embark on a career that you and I have so thoroughly enjoyed.

General Ralston: I can only tell you that the 33 years since I left Oxford, Ohio, quite frankly, doesn’t seem like it has been 33 years. If I looked at what has transpired over those 33 years in terms of the technology, in terms of airplanes, in terms of the Air Force and what it does, it is a remarkable journey. For the young man or woman coming into the Air Force today, I think the future, if anything, is even more exciting than it was when I came in, in 1965. If we look at the enormous strides that we’ve made in the space business, if we look at the enormous strides that we look at today in the case of the F-22, if we look at C-17, if we look at the Joint Strike Fighter, if we look at all that is coming down stream, I find that to be terribly exciting. When we talk about the F-22, and, General Shaud, you know this as well as any of us, some of us have been talking about that airplane since it went on contract for the first time in 1986. That was 12 years ago and we are still eight years away from getting the first combat squadron.

So, somebody coming in today, they’ve got plenty of time to go to what is still a pretty good force out there of airplanes and be ready for the F-22 and the Joint Strike Fighter when they come along.

I can certainly tell you that the need is going to be there in the 21^st century. If we look at the instability of the world, that is one thing that I can guarantee you is going to be there. There will certainly be a great need for your talents.

I think it is a wonderful profession and I would certainly encourage any and all of you who are either here today, at that age, or the children or grand children of many of my contemporaries, to look forward to the same thing.