2024 Air, Space & Cyber: Exercising for Great Power Competition
September 18, 2024
Gen. Kevin B. Schneider, commander of Pacific Air Forces; Gen. John D. Lamontagne, commander of Air Mobility Command; Lt. Gen. John P. Healy, chief of the Air Force Reserve and commander of Air Force Reserve Command; and Lt. Gen. David N. Miller, commander of Space Operations Command participated in the “Exercising for Great Power Competition” panel at the 2024 Air, Space & Cyber Conference on September 18. The panel was moderated by Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.), dean of AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. Watch the video below:
Panel Moderator: Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.), Dean of AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies:
Today, I’m joined by General Kevin Schneider, commander of Pacific Air Forces, General John Lamontagne, commander of Air Mobility Command, Lieutenant General John Healy, Chief Air Force Reserve and Commander Air Force Reserve Command. And Lieutenant General Dave rock Miller, commander of Space Operations Command to discuss just how our airmen and guardians are exercising for great power competition. So gentlemen, thanks very much for being here today. What we’d like to do is give you the opportunity to give us a couple of minutes on your perspectives on this topic, and then we’ll jump into some questions.
Gen. Kevin B. Schneider, Commander, Pacific Air Forces:
So, Gen. Schneider, why don’t you kick us off? General, really appreciate the opportunity to be up here and to do this. I’ll keep my comments brief and for the for the sake of the discussion, but I’m going to look around at the challenges of the problems that we collectively face. And I think it’s really important to recognize that the challenges, the solutions to the challenges in the Indo Pacific don’t necessarily all fall on my shoulders. It is a team effort in terms of the problem solving. And grateful to have the other commanders that are up here, and I’m looking at two more that are sitting in the in the audience here. So we each have authorities, we each have things that we contribute to the fight in terms of training readiness and our ability to deter or to fight and win if called upon. So continuing to work together and develop our our ability to share information, share capabilities and work together, to to focus our efforts is absolutely key. So again, grateful for the opportunity to be up here with with these gentlemen and to work with a couple of the others in the audience. Thank you.
Gen. John D. Lamontagne, Commander, Air Mobility Command:
Thanks, General Deptula for facilitating the conversation. Big thanks to the AFA for another amazing conference and conventions, and it’s great to be up here on stage with some esteemed panelists. So for us, it’s really about an opportunity to rehearse right. General Schneider yesterday talked about when he on his first assignment in an F 16 in Korea, he knew what his mission was coming right out of the gate. So it’s an opportunity for us to practice our first several moves, and that is easier said than done, right? So for us, we got to be able to project a healthy amount of forces across a vast distance and then immediately flip to supporting your ability to employ those forces on arrival. And then we, of course, have to sustain the same forces. And so the other challenge for our team is we need to do that at the timing and tempo of general Schneider’s concept of operations. And so that means our 618 AOC has got to be closely integrated with his 6/13 AOC so that we can deliver those effects at the right time with those pulsed operations.
And then I’d say it’s not enough for us to do it as a service, right? The more we can do at a joint level in support of for us, United States, transportation command for you indo, PAYCOM, that makes has us basically delivering Air Force effects, but we also have to project, sustain and employ the entirety of the joint force. So getting a good idea what that looks like early is really what we’re looking at to do with mobility guardian and 25 and transcom turbo distribution, also in 25 getting sets and reps, just like you talked about. Out of the way.
Lt. Gen. John P. Healy, Chief of Air Force Reserve, and Commander, Air Force Reserve Command:
Thanks very much for the opportunity to be here as well. Great being up on a panel, coming at it from a different perspective. I’m a recovering J-7 from U com in my past, so actually ran exercises for the European continent, both supervision of NATO and our Yukon forces there, and this was during 17 to 19. So when I look at exercising right off the bat, I say, we don’t have enough first and foremost, we don’t have enough exercises in order to be effective. And I use this case in point, 17 to 19 in that job was two to three years on the heels of the Crimean annexation by Russia. So we went from 2014 to exercising with the Russians to later in 2014 now trying to figure out how to deter the Russians from doing any further aggressions. I’ll let history be the judge as to whether or not we were effective in that with Ukraine being in the second year of their war right now, so not enough exercising, and that was a well resourced Combat Command ensuring that we were had the back, so to speak, of our European partners and allies. So there’s challenges associated with that. When I look to the Pacific, I look at a non seminal event occurring, such as, you know, whether or not you want to count the annexation of Crimea as a seminal event, it was certainly a warning. So we’ve got warnings out there right now, but no resourcing associated with the warnings that those provide to the US military in order to bump up our ability to exercise, plan and rehearse these things. In addition to that, you know.
Look at this from the perspective of understanding authorities. Authorities are critical to the Reserve component, because without the proper authorities and the execution of those authorities, you really can’t access us the way you certainly want to access us timely, 72 hours out the door. So in addition to the exercises that we need for certification for getting those major muscle moves, I put a huge emphasis on we need senior level understanding planners from match comms and COCOMs, understanding of all of these authorities and our civilian leadership so we can normalize the use of asking and executing these authorities in any conflict if we don’t take care, take advantage of of this now, with no pressure put upon us, we’re certainly if we don’t take advantage, we’re going to learn the hard way what, what authorities we did need to execute when we need to execute them. Thanks.
Lt. Gen. David N. Miller, Commander, Space Operations Command:
Well, I just, I just echo a few things then you’ve heard. First off, this is a great opportunity.
I think one of the ways to address my comments and say appreciation to the Aerospace Forces association is to echo, really what the service secretary and the service chief said, and that is that the Space Force is really a force in transition. And my predecessor, General Whiting, who was here earlier in the conference, was both dual attitude about the Component Commander, but also had the requirement to present and sustain the combat forces that we have. We split those hats in January, and since then, Space Operations Command has been exclusively focused on force generation as the lead for the service but also, just a few weeks ago, the service chief or the service secretary doesn’t meet as the force provider. And the reason those two things are important is we needed to normalize how we integrate tactical combat ready space power into these gentlemen’s operations, but really into the joint and combined force, and we have a purposeful look on doing that now that we just did not have before, and a lot of firsts have occurred. So while I agree, we have a lot of work to do on authorities generating the right training opportunities, and certainly, I would say, recalibrating our exercises, because many of the combat, combat and command exercises do very little to actually improve tactical readiness. They are command post exercises at the planning level and not necessarily live fly opportunities that we need. So in partnership with our Starcom teammates, as well as with the other services, I will say, just last week had the SOCOM leadership with two people from my office working for opportunities. I think the Space Force has learned a lot from our I guess our dads within the Air Force, to a certain extent, about where we need to be. But this partnership is going to continue to grow, because the simple fact is, as the service chief said, the demand for space power is only increasing, and we have a lot more to do to integrate that tactical capability across echelons and not just within our services, but also interagency and commercial. And I think that’s really the focus that we’ve delivered over the last six to eight months, and I look forward to talking more about that.
Panel Moderator: Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.):
Thank you. Well, very good. Thanks for those perspectives, and let’s do just that and dig into some of these issues a bit deeper on some of the topics. So for each of you, training and exercising aren’t just about fine tuning our war fighting skills. There’s also an element of deterrence involved. So could each of you kind of address that subject from the perspective of your commands, starting with you. General Schneider?
Gen. Kevin B. Schneider:
Yeah, great question. A former boss used to describe deterrence this way. Admittedly, it’s an oversimplification, but it made sense to me, and I’ll try to give it to you. You know, deterrence, you know, is capability times willingness, times messaging. And the emphasis was, it’s a multiplication problem, not an addition problem, because if any of those things is zero, deterrence is zero. So the our ability to exercise, to train, to do things together, factors into each one of those. You know, capability, willingness and messaging and as mentioned yesterday, but I’ll repeat it again, the fact that not only that we do this, you know, to improve our capabilities, to make ourselves more agile, lethal, survivable, but we have great opportunity in the Indo Pacific and in other parts of the world to bring in allies and partners. And the greater that we can build that team, the greater that we can build up, again, the capabilities, the willingness and certainly the strategic messaging that goes along with presenting a united a team, a network of allies and partners that have shared values, again, has an incredibly strong deterrent message.
Gen. John D. Lamontagne:
So completely agree, just piggybacking on that theme, the more capability and willingness we can demonstrate that the stronger the message, right, that multiplier kind of effect. And the same thing with the communication, we know an exercise in the Pacific, China is going to be watching, right? So the communication, the message, is going to be sent. And when we can aggregate forces at scale with our allies and partners, that capability.
Gets compounded, and the willingness, right? We’re going to do that exercise during our free time, right? The will is absolutely there. And then the other thing we’re looking at, you know, you demonstrate strength to deter and then you conceal some capabilities in order to win. And so we’ve got a healthy view on what we’re going to show, what we’re going to reveal, and what we’re going to conceal to make sure that we can win when the time comes.
Lt. Gen. John P. Healy:
And I just from looking at it from the reserve perspective, and I was using some of the same language as I was thinking about this reveal and conceal in terms of what we’re trying to do. From our objectives, we organize and we execute our exercises a bit differently, unless we’re involved in some sort of COCOM or other Match com coordinate exercise, and we do it with the basic objective of trying to provide a show of force, but also to provide sort of a test bed of a mini Air Force, so to speak. Some of the examples that we’ve tried to do with regards to reveal was last year we went down to SOUTHCOM. And how is that relevant to the indopacom Theater? Well, the influence the PRC has there is immense. So it was an absolute show of force. And what we tried to do is we tried to put a mini Air Force there, everything from C 17, a 10s, c1 30s, tankers, and we did everything from AE to farbs to try to show that we have the capability, with many eyes watching, of doing things like this. Likewise, you know, we’re all about trying to be included in some of these exercises. RIMPAC, just recently, I think, was an excellent example of a reveal with the b2 hitting some of those ship kills. I love the fact it was a little under the radar as well, though, we have four a 10s out there working with STRATCOM and AFRL, and we got three ship kills as well during Quick Sync. So another great opportunity to absolutely reveal a deterrent effect. And I think that’s one of the values of exercises. And the biggest one of recent past is Moab guardian. And from the beginning of Moab Guardian planning, there wasn’t necessarily that much reserve component involved in it. And to give every credit to the AMC planners there, they shifted on a dime, and within a day, they had the Reserve component plugged in, into every aspect of mobile guardian, to include some of our super experienced planners. We’re taking those lessons exploding into theater. We’re utilizing some of our organic exercise ability rallying the Pacific, where we’re not only meeting the requirements of getting ace up to speed in terms of how we’re doing that, but multi weapon systems, but we’re also meeting some of the set the theater needs in the command we diverted a red horse troop movement from Tinian to post Marwan Guam and help clean up during that as well. So, lots of opportunities to show, to reveal from a deterrent effect with the Reserve Command.
Lt. Gen. David N. Miller:
Yeah, I guess I’ll emphasize it on two points. I think General Schneider’s characterization is 100% correct. I say that to do what, though is really two things that really deter, particularly despots and autocrats, and that is the capability to punish and the resilience in the face of attack, and particularly to deny the benefit. And where we have focused, from a space perspective, is through our service components. In particular, Lieutenant General chess is our Component Commander to us. Space Command, obviously, the preponderance of the forces I provide go through him, but it’s not just him. Today. We had the service component commanders from CENTCOM earlier this week, from uraf as well. I think the key here for us is the benefit we derive from our allies and partners. To your earlier point, sir, this is a force multiplier in a way that I haven’t seen in many ways in the past. Two weeks ago, I was in Europe. I won’t go into the specifics, but the UK brings quite a bit of capability, some of it we may not reveal in total, but trust me, the partnership is outstanding, and I would say that those relationships are growing. I spent the day at Cyber Command yesterday working through how we would integrate capabilities as well. So I think that we have now the reach and access through the service components that we didn’t have in the past to demonstrate both the ability to be part of the joint or combined team for punishment as well as for the denial of benefit. And I think that the reps and sets you spoke of will be more nuanced in the future. It will be a challenge to the high level of intensity that we anticipate with the pace and the level of technology that we know we need to bring to bear as a joint force to exercise live on everything. That’s why we prioritize things like virtual connections to our other components and services, as well as the ttxs and rehearsals with the other allies and partners. So I think, though all of that is fundamental, I think doing it with a purpose is where I’ve seen the shift in the joint force over the last few years. In particular is my last job as a recovering j7 but also as a recovering j3 and I have seen improvement in that rod.
Panel Moderator: Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.):
That’s a great segway into this next question. Again, for each of you, it’s a fact that.
Our combat air force is getting smaller, and the Space Force is also too small. However, back to partners and allies, we have some benefits from a robust web of alliances and partnerships around the globe. Matter of fact, I think that’s one of the key themes that has come out of the past several days. Could you explain how you’re integrating training and exercises with our regional allies and partners within your respective commands. And General Schneider, you got a bunch of them out there. So what can you tell us?
Gen. Kevin B. Schneider:
Yeah, and Gen. Deptula, I could probably suck up the remainder of the time and the remainder of the day, but I’ll keep my points brief on this one. You know, a couple of things in bold statements of the obvious. The United States Air Force does not have to lead every exercise. General Healy talked about RIMPAC and the integration with a navy led exercise. The United States military does not have to lead these exercise. I’m looking at Gus in the third row. You know what the Royal Australian Air Force did with exercise pitch black, 20 nations coming together. You know, 145 or so aircraft a fantastic, fantastic training event. And the last piece is, you don’t have to look like the United States Air Force to participate. You know, the Philippines brought FA 50s to an event, not the same as an F-16. But these are complementary capabilities and allies and partners don’t necessarily have to look like us and don’t have to have the same airplanes and the same capabilities. The door is open to find those complementary opportunities to work together and to build so there are things that we will do at the high end, and there are things that we do with a specific, specific focus. I look at the red flag Alaska events, and some of those are dedicated to some of the higher end capabilities and training the next coke north that we do in 2025 in Guam so between the United States Air Force, the koku J Thai and the Royal Australian Air Force, is going to have a very specific F-35 focus to build up that interoperability and capability. The bottom line is, you know, the door is open and continues to be open. More and more allies and partners are willing to work with us and do things with us, and at the same time, we have to, again, take a look at everything that they bring, and continue to bring them into the fold, which we’re doing.
Gen. John D. Lamontagne:
So we’re working on both the tactical and the operational level. We’re lucky to have a couple of allies embedded in our squadrons at the tactical level, and then we invite the allies to work bilateral training with the army at Pope fort, liberty, Fort Johnson and a couple other places too. We also have an Air Mobility Operations Wing in the Pacific and one in Europe, and they’ve got a lot more persistent touch points with allies and partners, which is really helpful from a c2 perspective, aerial port and maintenance, doing maintenance on each other’s airplanes, and then coming up to the operational level, big exercises like mobility guardian, you know, we started this journey back in 2017 invited about seven allies to fly with us, and that at the time was A service level exercise. We had another 12 that we’re observing last year in mobility guardian, 23 six allies flying into interdependent with us, right complete interoperability. We’re doing maintenance on their airplanes. They’re doing maintenance on ours. We’re putting our air medical evacuation teams on the back of their airplanes, and they’re responding in kind. And so that’s where we’re tackling it, at the operational level, and we’ll do that again here mobility, Guardian 25 out in the Pacific with general Schneider’s team.
Lt. Gen. John P. Healy:
So for the Air Force Reserve Command, it’s largely been a target of opportunity when we’ve been working with our allies and partners. And turns out, I was in prep doing some office calls over in Congress. Representative case from Hawaii asked me what my relationship, formalized relationship was with the Philippines, and I said I didn’t have one, and I got about five minutes of finger wagon in terms of, why don’t you have a formalized relationship, at least with their reserve component. So that kind of crystallize some of the thoughts that we’ve been poking around in the Pentagon with for a while about how can we embark on something which formalizes relationships with allies and partners? What we ended up coming up with, it actually, I wrote it down, was the security cooperation policy direction actually puts the responsibility on the chief of the Air Force Reserve to search and seek these partnerships out. What we did was put together a plan reserve allies and partners program, rap. We went to Riyadh, we went to global Air and Space Chiefs Conference. I met with every single one of the air chiefs that were there and talked about, hey, what can we do? How could we How could we formalize some sort of relationship between our reserves to get after a common goal. And the challenge is, as you can imagine, whether it’s Australia, Philippines, Japan, Canada, UK, Spain, Netherlands, Norway, each one has a different flavor of reserves. So what we were trying to do is, you know, our Air Force Reserve. Is, is big. We can, we can mix different parts. For instance, Australia’s largely concentrated reserves with medical. Patriot medic is a perfect example, and how we can team up with them in the future during Patriot medic and get desired objectives for both. Canada has a large civil engineer contingent in their reserve. We’ve got red horse, we’ve got the 6/22 R, E, G, or RCG, where we can, again, join up with these, go out to the Pacific and do some sort of set the theater type of events the UK. We do common aravac With all the time. How can we do that with an actual synchronized plan, a synchronized goal and objective of going forward? So we’re rolling out with that. I’m actually going next week, back over to England to meet at an International Air Reserve symposium, to talk with all the representative that representatives that these air chiefs have sent to that so we’re going to formalize agreements with regard to how we can move forward in four lines of effort, key leader engagements, exercising to ensure that we have long term goals and objectives associated with that mill to mill, because that’s where it happens at the unit level to be able to further those relationships between squadrons, units and wings and whatever the country’s reserve force is, and development of our personnel, IRS is largely a developmental type of symposium, and we’re going to pour a little gasoline on that fire by throwing a Little bit more from the Air Force Reserve into this theater. Ideally, at the back end of this we’re going to have the ability to not only forward and move further down the road the Air Force Reserve and other reserves objectives, but also tie those into how we can help other match comms and COCOMs moving forward with objectives as well.
Lt. Gen. David N. Miller:
Yeah, I’ll take it at two levels. I think one thing that people maybe don’t know is within almost every mission area that we have, whether it’s domain awareness to missile warning and tracking, even as we’re going into ew in the future, we have allied partners embedded in our tactical units. So there’s a there’s just under 70 right now, and I anticipate that number will grow, and the reason I anticipate that is over the past month and a half, as we deep dived on this issue with allies and partners and where we could improve, it became clear there was no mechanism to access the tactical force elements within the service. And in many cases, it was as we were running up to an exercise, there was an ask for some capability that we didn’t have a mechanism. Hence, the service secretary designating Space Operations Command as the service force provider. So we now, and all of the allies and partners will come to a semi annual sourcing and prioritization conference where we forecast out for the next three years, which means we can resource to the requirement for the exercise. But more importantly, we’re looking at different levels of staffing associated with each of those force elements, and where’s the right mix and fit for those allies. Historically, it has been five eye but as you look at other initiatives in us, Space Command and in the other combatant commands, I think the future is bright for other partners in certain mission areas. I think this is something that is really going to be a good news story for the service in particular, but really is going to be for the entirety of the joint force. This is our asymmetric advantage. The United States does not fight alone. We don’t plan to do that. If we don’t have embedded integration from the tactical level all the way through the strategic level, you’re not going to surge. Awesome at the end. We’ve got to have baseline that capability from day one.
Panel Moderator: Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.):
Great points. All of you. Thank you. General law, maintain here’s one for you as Air Force re optimizes for great power competition, obviously it’s got to transition from a mindset of operating from large bases to many more smaller locations. Could you share with the audience your perspectives on how Air Mobility commands doing that?
Gen. John D. Lamontagne:
So it does create a number of challenges, especially for one set of our forces. And there’s another challenge with the vast distances that we need to cover down in the Pacific. And so in last year, we did some experimentation, the leadership team basically worked through Max endurance operations. So we put two crews on an airplane so we could project that power further and faster than we otherwise would be able to, and then we could turn it to employ and support his team very, very quickly. As far as the small bases go, less of a problem for the airlift fleet, C, seventeens can go into a dirt strip. 3500 feet. C1, 30s, even smaller. But for the tanker force, we need a little more runway, a little more capability with the fuel distribution, you know, handled as well, in coordination with Defense Logistics Agency. And then what we’re working through, and need to work continue to work through is at those smaller bases, they’re probably going to become more disconnected and more isolated because of the lack of a full PACE plan when it comes to communication. So the importance of having that mission command and mission type orders, so when that team is disconnected at that small base, they know exactly. What’s expected of them to fly fight and win and support General Schneider team.
Panel Moderator: Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.):
Speaking General Schneider, here’s one for you. Our airmen station in the Indo Pacific, obviously going to have to generate combat sorties under attack. So how are you training to prepare our airmen in your theater to do that?
Gen. Kevin B. Schneider:
A lot of that falls under agile combat employment, how we disaggregate our force for survivability, and then our ability to re aggregate to bring lethal effects. And it is a team effort, and there’s a piece of it, you know, we can’t move around without support from Air Mobility Command and others. So there’s as unpredictable as we do, we try to be for the adversary. There’s a predictability that we owe to the rest of the four so that they can support us. And it’s not just here about those of us that wear similar uniforms. I also have that communication and that dialog with the army. Again, we’re probably going to similar locations in the western Pacific, there are capabilities that they bring their capabilities that we can provide back and forth and integration for integrated air and missile defense. So our ability to work together as a team and not just do planning and stovepipes makes us all more effective. So again, going back to Agile combat employment, we have a concept of operations for the entirety of the United States Air Force, but within our commands, I’m looking at general Hecker. The way he executes in Europe is a little bit different than the way we will have to execute in the Indo Pacific. So as we develop task orgs and execution orgs in the specifics of how we’re going to get at the business of doing what we need to do for agile combat employment that is not just specific to Pacific Air Forces. It involves everyone here on the stage as well as others, to make sure that we are all combining resources going in the right direction, and again, being able to complement what we’re doing.
Panel Moderator: Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.):
Gen. Miller, one of the challenges that we face while exercising is how to effectively integrate highly classified, non kinetic effects like space, cyber, electronic warfare across the spectrum of Joint Force operations. So could you discuss a bit what progress has been made in integrating these diverse and complex capabilities into exercises.
Lt. Gen. David N. Miller:
Thanks for the easy question.
Yeah, I think there has been good progress a couple areas. I’ll give you a specific example, and then I’ll come back to sort of where I think it’s getting to an institutionalized improvement. Back when I was working for you in PAC AF, we needed the Secretary of the Air Force to approve the employment of electromagnetic warfare capability. Think how responsive and agile our training was when we had to staff packages back up to the Secretary of the Air Force. That’s something now that’s down to the unit level, and we have much more flexibility. We can now identify based off what general Schneider’s needs are. General heckers needs are, as the component commanders, in partnership with our service component commanders, discrete requirements prior to the generation phase for any committed enforcement commitment of forces to either Europe or the Pacific, we know the readiness standards that they have for us, and we can tailor that employment specifically. So I think there has been improvement, and we have a way to go specifically associated with integration. But this is not just a space problem. When you look at the very advanced technological both improvements that we have made, but also our allies and partners have made. There are many things we’re not going to do in the traditional live, fly environment for one reason, mainly, and that’s because I know how much PLA capability has been deployed on orbit, and what they can see and detect. And there are things we’re just not going to do the way we’ve done them maybe 2025, years ago. This goes back to what are the alternative venues that we have, and where our space training and readiness command needs to focus on building out virtual and constructive capability at each formation location in order to allow them to train at this tactical level with the combat forces that will support that’s something that we are starting to identify as I think as clear requirements building out to that over the next couple of years is going to be important. What I’ll also say, though, is some of the progress we’ve seen has also been in areas where I think the integration at the tactical level has started already, organically. And what I mean when I say that is, like I said, just a week and a half ago, the deputy commander, JC and I were talking, and we were looking at opportunities to schedule in, particularly just tactical tabletop exercises, to start the planning for a long range employment. And what we began to see is there’s actually places where this is already happening, where the tactical units themselves have had the initiative. They’ve built time into their. Calendar, and they’re beginning to build out their specific training and force generation plan tied to outcomes that they need across these platforms, whether that’s space, cybersoft, air, sea or land. We just sent about three weeks ago, a handful of people down to submarine forces Atlantic to partner with them, and there’s almost nothing you can talk about with submarines in front of anybody right? Anybody, right? So I would say that there’s things that have already begun, but by virtue of having it now a methodology as a force provider, for us to deliberately build a schedule up to three years in advance where we can source specific technical force elements in order to surge their requirement for training where needed or institutionally provided, I think we’ve got a good process to go that said it’s going to be extremely difficult because we’re just not in a position to demonstrate to everybody in every forum the high intensity training that we want to show and that’s going to require virtual and constructive opportunities that we’re all trying to build into every one of our tactical force elements, but I’ve seen goodness right now as we go to our commit phase, prior to sending everybody in, almost every member of that service is cleared to a common Special Access Program baseline. That is something that was never happened before. But prior to one July where we committed everybody together, we got that done, and that is bringing both Air Force elements into training with us, as well as other partners. So I do see progress. I just think we got a little bit ways to go to build the infrastructure, test and training infrastructure in order to do that.
Panel Moderator: Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.):
No, that’s great news. Also, your comments remind me what we discussed yesterday in terms of the applicability of the joint simulation environment and that how that can be used too, to overcome some of the challenges that we used to face in the past. So great stuff, General Healy, successful ops will require a total force effort. We’re all very familiar with that concept. You’ve previously acknowledged that the Air Force Reserve needs to be ready now in order to provide strategic depth and surge capacity. So what kind of efforts are you pursuing to ensure that the Air Force Reserve is ready to meet the demands that we’re facing?
Lt. Gen. John P. Healy:
A couple quick appreciate, a couple quick vignettes about how we’re ready for us right now. The levant response is one of them try to do it in 30 seconds or less. It’s hard to do, but a perfect coordination ballet between Air Mobility Command and the Reserve Command. When we had indications and warnings, we do what we always do. We have volunteers coming forward. Volunteerism is a great means it’s what we’ve done forever, but it’s typically not predictable. It’s assumed access. And we’ve been talking, how do we assure access in the future? We sent people out the door, C, 5c, 17, under volunteerism. The next tranche we were looking at, we recommended mobilizing. And the command, the leadership at AMC, said, Are you sure mobilize them? And they did 72 hour out the door. First time it actually has been used that 72 hour hook since the late 80s. We got them out the door, partially mobile, partial mobilization using 12 three, oh, I’m sorry, 12 302, because it was a declared national emergency. And then the icing on the cake was, well, first of all, that allowed the reserves to go forward. It allowed the active duty to get in a fighting stance and prepare it just in case any other country in CENTCOM started acting up. But the icing on the cake, and what made this so such a perfect example, was then AMC came in and said, What can we do to provide the same entitlements benefits, so to speak, for those volunteers that we provided for those mobilized, and that was as simple as an exceptional policy for usara exemptions that was signed at the SAF Mr. Level. That’s why I’ve taught this example to my children. I’m going to have them teach them to their children as well. This is a textbook example of how we mobilize forces effectively, efficiently and fast. Now looking at what we’re doing from another perspective of a ready force, 24.1 was behind us. We’re currently finishing up 24 two, just like any other Match com, the Reserve Command is responsible for gift map requirements for CENTCOM rotational forces. We executed our requirements at 354% and 24 one. So I would argue that we are the crowd in crowdsource. As we look forward to what we’re doing the iterations of afrijang going forward, the chief pointed out that it was taking 90 bases to make one right now, XA, Bs, 70 to make one. ATFs next year, and it’s going to get down to about 30 to make one. I look forward to the day when we have deployable combat wings where it’s one or two or three to make one, and we can actually focus within a unit, prepping to get out the door as a unit, protective base as a unit as well. What’s going forward? 27.1 and this is truly to answer your question. 27 one is our first. Deployable combat wing that we’re responsible for while that’s two years and two weeks away for the average human being in the audience, this is something that’s lost in a lot. That’s 23 drill weekends away for our first deployable combat wing, 27 weekends to get the training needed that the active component will get in the next two years and two weeks. So we are all about taking risk, leaning forward. It’s a culture change within the reserves. Take that risk, fail forward. I’ll assume the risk where there’s no training standard for how to put out an mgfe. Make it up. We’ll correct it to 100% before you leave. Where there’s no patch chart. Make it up. We’ll correct it to 100% before we go out the door. So from the from my position to the staff to the NAF commanders and the Wing Commanders taking risk and making sure that we’re prepared to get out the door for 27 one.
Panel Moderator: Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.):
Okay, good. This is going to be the last question and a bit of a lightning round, given the time to 45 seconds each, the Air and Space Forces ops tempo obviously has dramatically increased, and both Air and Space Force were actively engaged in OPS around the world, so around the globe. So how do each of you prioritize exercising and training amongst all the other tasks that you’re charged to accomplish? I’m not sure.
Gen. Kevin B. Schneider:
I can answer that in 45 seconds. It is a fine balance. And I talked to the Wing Commanders, you know, exercises are great. We build skill sets, we build interoperability, and there’s a lot to be gained. There’s also a burn that is associated with exercises, and it does take time to recon, you know, reconstitute, to accomplish the training events that you couldn’t accomplish during exercises, to get the fleet healthy again. So for us, as we continue to do more, we have to take a hard look at the prioritization and then understand the impacts of readiness, because we do not know when the next crisis is going to happen, and we have got to be on our toes for all of that. Other than to say, you know, it is an ongoing focus item, just to make sure that we lean forward as hard as we can to make sure that, but at the same time, we don’t consume too much of our force to give us the opportunities to respond.
Gen. John D. Lamontagne:
Very briefly on any given day, the requirements for our team are about right here and our capability capacity is about right here, and we get a lot of help from the guard and reserve to make up the difference. So sometimes say, McCord wants some white space to do some training, we may have to surge Charleston, Dover, McGuire in order to carve out that white space for them. To get those touches, we might have to surge the rest of the team.
Lt. Gen. John P. Healy:
For us, we’ve got to make sure that if we’re prioritizing an exercise, we’ve got to get more out of just exercise. To exercise, it’s got to be certification event. It’s got to be allies and partners. I get complaints from my NAF commanders, all we’re doing is exercising again, recovering j7 we’re going to continue to do that, and we’re going to continue to press to make sure that these are worthwhile exercises that move the ball forward.
Lt. Gen. David N. Miller:
Pretty simple.
Panel Moderator: Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.):
You got a minute and 14 seconds.
Lt. Gen. David N. Miller:
Let me just relax for a moment and think about this. No, I guess I would say it’s pretty simple for us, sir, all the commanders are empowered to defer exercises that they don’t view as readiness generating. They have a battle rhythm associated with their force model that they briefed to me every month. I get a detailed readiness review every six months, and we do a commit assessment prior to every combat crew across every mission area going in. So we have started to get to the standards I think we’re going to continue to refine, but we started to get there if, in the course of their force generation cycle, we come up with events, and we’ve had a few where a Delta commander feels like this is not a readiness generating event. There are no learning objectives that satisfy any of my requirements to meet a U com or PAYCOM requirement, we don’t send a force element to go, and that has generated some hurt feelings reports, which are my job to receive. But I think that has also disciplined our structure. And now I keep coming back to our sourcing and prioritization conference, but that’s where they got to come to and we we built the schedule. We trained that schedule. We built some capacity because the CSO doesn’t want us to exhaust it all, and I’m sure the service secretary would strangle me if I did the same. We built some capacity to react if we have short notice requirements or if there’s a security cooperation event that must be supported. But this is something that I think we have gotten a better handle on over the last six to eight months, and with the partnerships we’re starting to build, it’s only going to be better because we’ll have service components in each one of the combatant commands who really understand those requirements to a level that I won’t be able to get in Colorado Springs.
This transcript was auto-generated, and may not be 100 percent accurate. The source audio and video can be accessed above.