2024 Air, Space & Cyber: Live, Virtual and Constructive: Preparing for the High-End Fight

The “Live, Virtual, and Constructive: Preparing for the High-End Fight” panel at AFA’s 2024 Air, Space & Cyber Conference featured Mike Manazir, vice president of business development and strategy for mobility, surveillance, and bombers at Boeing; Dan Ourada, vice president of captures and business development at Amentum; and Doug Gill, senior staff scientist at FSI Defense. The panel, held on September 18, was moderated by Maj. Gen. Gregory Kreuder, commander of the 19th Air Force. Watch the video below:

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Greg Kreuder, Commander, 19th Air Force:

Starting off with the intros, I’m major general Greg Kreuder. I’m the 19th Air Force Commander based at San Antonio, Texas. It’s an honor to be here with everybody today, and I’ll do my best to stay up here as the moderator and not join the team down there because it’s really an exciting topic and compelling to all of us.

Career fighter pilot for the most part. And the operational side, F-16s, F-35s. Still get to fly-35s every now and then so I’m grateful for the opportunity. But I’ve seen an evolution of air power a little bit in about my near 30 years.

And so what we can do with live virtual and constructive has changed over those 30 years significantly. So it’s a really exciting topic and I look forward to everybody’s inputs on what we can do. So we’ve got a diverse array of folks with us today.

First, I got Mike Manazir. He’s the Vice President of business development and strategy for Mobility, Surveillance and Bombers at Boeing Defense Space and Security. He joined Boeing in 2017 after retiring as a rear admiral upper half from the US Navy following 36 years of service.

Mike is a graduate of Top Gun and has thousands of hours in the F-13 Tomcat, as well as the F-18 Super Hornet. He has over a thousand carrier assisted landings and Mike served five tours in the Pentagon. The last is OPNAV N98. Director of Air Warfare. And finally, is OPNAV N9. Deputy CNO for Warfighting capabilities. Welcome, Mike.

Next we have Douglas Gill. He is Flight Safety International senior staff scientist, driving advanced simulation training and learning technologies and their integration and synthesis. Recent focus areas include live, virtual and constructive system architectures and engineering, interoperability and cyber sickness, which I had to look up last night and maybe you can talk to the folks about what that actually is.

26 years of experience in simulation all at Flight Safety International. He served as director of engineering for Flight Safety’s visual simulation systems. Business unit for a decade, providing comprehensive expertise with synthetic environments and their delivery and simulation training.

Has a B.S. in computer science from the University of Missouri, Columbia, and an M.S in computer science from Washington University in St. Louis. And I just have to say, if there’s a competition here in the building today of who’s got the best shoes, Doug, show everyone your shoes. Pretty dang awesome, man, with the individual toes. I think you won that one. Hands down.

And finally, we have Dan Norata. Dan serves as Vice President, Ranges and Aerial operations and Logistics and supply chain capture teams for Amentum and is the Air Force client account manager. Dan has been the Amentum director for joint unmanned systems and training solution campaign, expanding Amentum’s unmanned systems and training services portfolio across both the Department of Defense and commercial service sectors.

Prior to joining industry in 2010, Dan had a distinguished 26-year Air Force career. Combat veteran with over 3000 hours in the F1-11 Aardvark F1-17 German tornadoes and multiple staff tours spanning Europe, the Middle East, and the Pacific.

All right, welcome gentlemen. Thanks for joining us today. So here’s how we’re this. We’re going to treat it like a fighter pilot debrief. So we got kind of a force ship here. I’ll be number four, try to stay in formation and see how everything’s going.

But what I mean by that is I want honest, frank input on how we’re doing. I think the audience deserves that. We’ve got a lot of airmen in the room and industry’s listening, so just we got to say how it is. So we’re going to move forward root cause analysis. Why are we where we are? We’re lagging the fight in the LVC world.

I want your inputs on why, what the barriers are, cultural, bureaucratic, whatever. We’re looking forward to your input. From my standpoint, 19th Air Force, we do a lot of flying training for the United States Air Force. So we’d like to work things target backwards.

So everyone’s heard the secretary, China, China, China, our chief of staff won Air Force. What does that mean to us? Draw a thread from what winning looks like in the high end fight all the way down through our nation, our Air Force, air education, training command to 19th Air Force and how we train airmen to win in the high-end fight. And that is what is compelling to us.

So everything we’re doing out here at AFA, every conversation we’re in, when we engage with industry, we want to understand what problem they’re trying to solve and it has to be in the lens of how we win in the high-end fight. Otherwise, it’s just not relevant. We don’t have the time or money to get after it. So everything has to be in context of winning and that’s what we’re here to talk about today.

So without further ado, I’m going to jump right in and Mike, I’m going to tee this one up to you and then we’re going to send it down the line. But explain to us for those that may not have been in part one, what is LVC? What is live, virtual and constructive, just briefly from your standpoint and why is it compelling?

Mike Manazir, Vice President, Business Development & Strategy for Mobility, Survilance & Bombers, Boeing:

Yeah. Thanks, general. And so of course, the first guy in select blower, pull straight up, get out of the fight, look back down and say what’s going on? It’s awesome to be here. Thanks for being here on the third day of AFA, this kind of discussion has to happen.

Live versus constructive has a cultural a label to it. So F-16, F-35, F-15, F-14, F-18, I want air under my butt. I want to get into the jet, I want to go out and practice and I want to be able to have ranges and bogeys in front of me that I can train to while I’m pulling G and be in stress, all that kind of stuff. Well, guess what? We can’t do that in real clear air anymore.

So I trained a Fallon a whole bunch of times. I’ve been over to Nellis. I see what we’re doing. We get into a simulator and then we get back out and get into a jet and we get into the jet. We can’t replicate the high-end missions that we’re going to have to go do. So we have to have LVC.

1985 Book Enders Game, young Andrew Wiggins Enders is selected to join a school to go and train for the third invasion or deterring the invasion of the buggers coming to get the world. He’s training and training and training and he’s hammered and he’s tired and he’s stressed, figures out at the end of the game when he walks out, actually it was real. And wait a minute, we defeated the buggers and I thought it was a game. That’s what we want.

Live, you’re in a jet, you’re in the air, you’re in the range, you’re in real life. So think about even getting some scenarios back from the South China Sea connected via maybe beyond line of sight into some tubs and Nellis and Fallon learning while the real guys are out there looking at the threat.

Virtual is in the tubs, in JSE, in our simulated environment at consoles, replicating Aegis ships and E2Ds and AWACs, F-15s, F-22s, Navy assets, carriers, think big. And then the constructive entity is all of the threats presented all the live and the virtual at the same time. You have to move that information around in order to be presented with the same scenario, not just me in my airplane.

We need to do that on a force level. Indo-pacom along Aquilino wanted a range that stretched from Hawaii, to Alaska, to Guam, to San Diego. I think the entire West coast rangeless been able to do live assets at sea, over the sea, over Alaska, virtual assets, all with a constructive environment that replicates the fight. We have to go here.

Doug’s going to talk to us about how to connect all this. This is going to be an information challenge, but we’ve got to be able to train to this space and not just say, hey, I don’t want to get in the simulator anymore. And we got to be able to connect our airplanes together. And I just go, I’m going to fly my F-22, I’m going to fly my F-35 with the MADL and just do what I’m going to do in my force ship.

It’s a joint fight. We’ve got to create the LVC environment to have that training for the fight and get to where Andrews Wiggins got to at the end going, wait a minute, you mean that was real? We won? That’s what we want to get to.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Greg Kreuder:

Awesome, Mike. Great input. Doug, Dan, you want to add to that?

Dan Ourada, Vice President, Captures & Business Development, Amentum:

So if I might, general, let me tell you where you’re at right now so that you get a little bit of an idea. So the company that I get to work for Mentum, we run your Nellis test and training ranges. We run the Alaska range complex that you’ve outlined there. We also run Polygon, the electronic combat range in Europe there just long of Ramstein.

In these environments, we do live, virtual, constructive and live blended synthetic for your Air Forces. I want to give you an example that if an opponent uses a tactic tonight in Europe, our live blended synthetic engineers and our Polygon electronic combat folks will have recreated that scenario and projected it through the multi-air combat environment for German, British, American, French, Italian and Danish Air Forces to fly against 48 hours later.

As our flying hour programs decrease, as we can’t necessarily put all of the systems of our advanced fighters, the F-35, the F-22 on, we have to increase the value of every hour we spend in the air. Having threat replicators with live blended synthetic and live virtual constructive recreates the experience of that high-end fight.

That’s not a mistake. Why we go to red flag exercises, it’s to get that young lieutenant his first 10 combat sorties. If we can get them their first 10 combat sorties in a live blended synthetic environment where they’re at, we’ll make red flag that much more effective. We have to accelerate the ability to get experienced airmen in their systems using all of their systems.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Greg Kreuder:

Outstanding, Dan. Thanks. Before we get to how we make this happen, which I’m going to have Doug talk about, I’m going to use just a little bit of my experience to build on what we just heard Mike and Dan said.

So when I joined the Air Force about 30 years ago in the mid-90s, late 90s, the sims were crap, essentially. They were emergency procedures training, you can do instrument approaches on them. They were isolated, they didn’t connect to anything.

And so that was what we grew up with and that’s what we had. And nobody would spend any more time in the simulator than they had to check a square to get back into the jet because that’s where the real training was. Over 30 years, I’ve seen that evolve and it has actually inverted itself. And oh by the way, we have to be honest with ourselves. Every fighter pilot’s skeptical of sims.

And why is that? Because we see it as a potential cost-saving measure. Hey, I’m going to take with some of your flying hours, I’ll give you some Sim time. It’s going to be just as good. Well, they weren’t and it isn’t. And you need to have air under your behind in order to get experienced flying fighters. And so that’s what we grew up to. It’s environment I grew up with.

What has changed since then is the fact that we can shoot further, look further and we don’t have the ranges that can support what we think that high-end fight looks like. And nor do we necessarily want to do that in open air.

We can replicate that now in simulators using the live part of a pilot flying and then being able to see what’s going on in the virtual world and then constructive think about the non-player characters that are in there that replicate the adversary based on their doctrine.

We couldn’t even think this up when I was a kid learning to fly F-16s back in the day. So it’s inverted, but don’t listen to me, talk to the young fighter pilots in the squadrons right now because actually they’re the ones that are demanding that we spend more time in the sim to train to the high-end fight.

And so I’ve seen that slowly invert from five stages of grief where we’re initially trying to save money. We didn’t really actually end up doing that a whole lot trading it because the sims weren’t that good, but that was the initial where we were culturally as an Air Force and there’s a certain amount of cultural momentum that you have to overcome. I’ll tell you, I’m seeing it flip.

And so for those in the game now in the F-35, the young weapons officers are like, we need to get in the sim. In fact, we need to be in the sim more than the air. You have to combine them in the air because you can rock it in the sim, but if you can’t put it together in the air, the air domain is completely different.

So we need that separately, but it’s more of a building block approach and with LVC we can actually do high-end fight in the air from a integrated standpoint. So it’s incredible where the technology’s at and there’s a lot of things that help supplement it. So Awesome. Thank you so much gentlemen.

All right, for the next question, we’re going to get to the how and Doug, this one’s going to be for you. How do we do this, essentially? How do we attack the problem? The larger problem of LVC, a lot of the technologies are emerging, competing. There’s a lot of options out there from your standpoint, this is right near Bailiwick. How do we make this a reality for our pilots and who’s already doing it?

Douglas Gill, Senior Staff Scientist, FSI Defense:

So the way we make this a reality is actually by breaking it down into its components, very engineering thing to do and let’s go there. So what we’re doing is we’re putting a mix of hopefully large number of elements, doing a great range of things into a common environment. And that common environment decomposes into a number of elements.

So first off, there’s earth, we have to have a high fidelity earth model. We have to have the representation of the relevant activities that are going on in the earth. And then we have the atmosphere. And I think it’s worth thinking about the nature of technology development at this point. So we are actually sitting on a very deep stack of established technology first and foremost from the commercial industry in terms of compute and communications, technology was just awesome. It has been exponentially improving for decades.

Then we bring in the geospatial technologies, which back in the day, were military and intelligence driven, but it’s flipped and it’s very heavily driven by civil and it’s a very open and extremely dynamic world centered on the open Geospatial Consortium. So we get our earth model from there.

The activity model that we are interested in here, it’s a military specialty and there’s actually over 30 years of work in developing those effects in an open arena. So the simulation, interoperability, standards organization, preeminently, certainly there are other things out there.

So there’s a real legacy of development that we need to build on and evolve from. And so the synthetic representation of earth is always going to fall short of the physical reality. So there’s always new problems and always increments at the edge. Nobody can build it all preemptively. There’s no entity on the planet that can do that.

So we have to advance with the mission and where we are today in terms of the advancement is more on the high-end elements of combat cell electronic warfare, communications networks. One thing that we’ve never done at a physical fidelity model and simulation is weather and it’s always been artistic and the computational demands of doing weather have just been overwhelming.

Well, we’re at a point now where we can actually do these things and the open standards bodies are working on these problems. In terms of weather, Microsoft Flight Sim in 2020 showed us that we were in the ballpark of being able to do physical 4D weather. So the thing that’s getting everybody’s attention these days is JSE.

So JSE actually is bringing forth this legacy. The backbone of JSE is actually NGTS, which is DIS, but it is doing really just a couple of things. So one is it decided it’s going to run on a very high-capacity compute complex and that enabled it to create a service model. So a publish-subscribe programming model to the services that it’s developing.

And that high-capacity compute complex enables it to centralize the computation and distribution of the environmental effects. So we’re talking about physics that are available. The physics that we’re talking about becoming available, by the way, of JSE is actually only about a dozen services and it has to do with EW and IR and laser and line of sight and things like this that propagate through the atmosphere.

So it provides high-end physics, it provides common fight, a fair fight, a common result to everybody. And in terms of the high-end fight, that’s a game changer, but it’s actually an incremental ad at the edge of LVC technology. So that’s the how.

And I think in terms of making LVC all it can be in terms of integrating all the systems and systems from mission, to environment generation, to simulation, to training, to inject to live. The thing we have to do is focus on the data and not the systems that are generating the data.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Greg Kreuder:

Awesome, Doug. Thanks. Dan, pile in please.

Dan Ourada:

So just one add as one of your leading providers of let’s call it the third generation, where we’re at at LVC live blended synthetic, live virtual constructive. One of the big limb facts to making all of this happen, and I get to play with the joint synthetic environment. We’re one of the builders of it, the employers of it out there at Nellis and around the globe is the risk management framework.

We have to adjust our aperture to what we can take in terms of that and let’s get down to it. This is very, very good. The VTTC at Nellis, the F-35, the advanced environments that we’re able to put these things in, we’re constantly concerned that adversaries are watching and they are. I think everybody just read in the news what happened with pagers in the Middle East here.

But let’s elevate our thinking as we look at the joint synthetic environment, the live blended synthetic, live virtual constructive, and understand that this also gives us an opportunity to reintroduce deception into our deterrent posture, into our competition. They may not know everything and we may be able to select and choose those things that we perhaps let out.

And that’s part of a deterrent effect of having high-end training for the high-end fight. I also want to caution a little bit, and this comes from a four-war, four-fighter veteran pilot, right? I don’t fly the F-35. I really wanted to. Too old. None of our kids learned to ride a bike in the sim, okay?

And I think one of the things the general opened up with is the importance of having air under your wings and getting up there. We have to find that balance of technology and increase the quality of the hours that we fly using this technology and it’s absolutely vital that we take the fourth, the fifth and the sixth iteration of this approach and that’s going to take funding.

And we have the technology, but what’s holding us back? What’s holding back a company that I work with? What’s holding us back from achieving this is the risk management framework and we have to wrap our arms around that problem.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Greg Kreuder:

Thanks, Dan. What kind of risk are you talking about?

Dan Ourada:

So when you get into, let’s talk RaptorNet, LightningNet, the joint synthetic environment, these things, while they are secure, they’re perhaps not as secure as the Air Force is comfortable with in the risk management framework, the old DICAP certification for data, all right? And the security of these enterprises.

I have to go back, we also run the Air Force’s drone program. When we were doing that for the Global War on terror, we pulled out the metadata, this is the crosshairs in the data and we put that on IP six network through DISA to come back to the ground control illustrations around the globe and in command posts around the globe, but kept the raw data on the IP three through the DIS trunk line and then brought it back together and melded it.

This allowed fantastic expansion of UAVs, all right? And real live data, ELINT, SIGINT, MASINT around the globe for that. Here was the problem. You could buy a commercial off-the-shelf software for your cell phone and get the video. That really shook the Air Force. So we started encrypting both and we would encrypt and then commercial technology would keep up.

You were experiencing the same thing in the joint synthetic environment. The risk management framework is designed to protect us, our forces and our training from that. And we need to apply a little bit of thought to how we apply the RMF to these advanced technologies so that we can achieve that next level.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Greg Kreuder:

Thanks, Dan. I just didn’t want to blow through that because we talk a lot. You hear about the three R’s, the requirements, the resources and the risk. The requirements is frankly, the win and the high-end fight. So walk that backward to 19th Air Force 1500 pilots a year, which by the way, we’re not quite making that as you know and heard any other forums.

This is one of the ways that can help us get there by the way, I can get to that in a second. Resources obviously, we talk about that a lot. It’s the money, it’s the airplanes. That’s where a lot of our focus is on. But we don’t talk enough about that third variable which is risk. We can create 1500 pilots a day right now at a higher level of risk than we’re willing to accept in peacetime. We did 65,000 pilots a year in 1943 when we were at war, World War II.

It’s all about what risk we’re willing to accept, not today, but we could do it. How do we get a better pilot in the same amount of time or possibly less? It’s using these things and risk. You’re talking about cyber risk, connectivity need to be thoughtful to protect the information and not downgrade the systems we have. But risk is a key element, I appreciate you bringing that up, Dan, because that’s hugely important. Mike, I feel like you want to save something here.

Mike Manazir:

I think we’re ready to talk about our system.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Greg Kreuder:

All right, let’s fire away. Over to you Mike.

Mike Manazir:

So Knuckle Dragon Fighter pilot into Tomcat A, this guy in the back telling me what to do. I’m looking around trying to get situational awareness out front. All I want to do is hit the computer, enter button and all that stuff that Dan and Doug talked about just works.

Based on Air Force requirements, we built the T7 in Boeing, really cool airplane that went from a computer screen to flying in 36 months. It’s out testing in Edwards right now. So we talk about the how. And a piece of this is to hand the US Air Force and other customers a mechanical system they can apply in training, the T7 stick and throttle. Software can be reconfigured for all of the displays to replicate an F-15, an F-35 or whatever airplane gray jet the student is going to.

The flight envelope is a representative flight envelope for the training we want to do. The F404 engine with afterburner, gives them a much of training with a left hand. But that’s just a piece of it as we’re talking about, it comes with a ground-based training system. It gets delivered with the beeps and squeaks that we’ve talked about.

So you can not only fly in the live environment but then come back and replicate or enhance the training in the ground-based training system. It’s collectively developed at the same time. So you don’t get in there and go, ah, this simulator sucks. Eight K screens speeds that keep the information coming, physical models replicates the training environment and then the operational environment as it leans forward.

We can change the way we train so that we take the digital native and put them in this system where they learn how to fly from the beginning in this digital environment and get exposed to the things that Dan and Doug talked about.

And you can debrief and you can download training so that we can, just using different systems and different ways to train, reduce the risk of our current training programs and then up the output of a better trained pilot who comes out the door already having played with live and virtual and constructive with realistic models, replicating a great jet.

So you can download training from the RTUs, the fleet replacement squadrons in the US Navy, move it into the training aircraft, the training systems, and start to get people at a higher end. We’re also figuring out that people who grew up working computers also learned faster and put habit patterns, embed habit patterns in their bodies faster than we did before where you had to go out and try it and then have somebody talk to you about how to move the stick, how to move the throttle.

So what the Air Force is buying right now in systems like the T7 with ground-based training systems is the ability to initiate training in this environment.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Greg Kreuder:

Awesome, Mike. Thanks for that. Doug, do you want to add in?

Douglas Gill:

So in terms of the how, I want to talk a little bit more about data because the T7, as just described, is ingesting lots of data to do all the specific things and integrate with all those specific scenarios. That data can and should be common, the same as what is used in simulation and in constructive and in the systems that do command and control.

I think that we have an issue in the LVC system at large because it’s actually fragmented and we talk about it in terms of the systems that are generating the data. So we talk about JSE or NGTS or MACE or CAFDMO, MAFDMO and on and on. What these things have in common. And the interface to all of the systems that have been named is the data that is passed over the interface.

And by far, most of the work in any of those systems is handling the data and not the particular protocol. So I think that we are at a point where I think we actually need to consolidate the various systems in order to achieve enterprise result. You said you wanted a frank discussion.

I am concerned that JSE is going to fork the whole thing and not participate in that common enterprise and we’re talking about a joint mission that also has Army and also has Navy and has coalition. And I think JSE actually should be an open part of that system and it’s bringing a few great new ideas in.

It should bring its service model into the open environment and it should bring its weather model into the open environment. I think these are better ideas, but the entire joint enterprise that encompasses everything would benefit if JSE didn’t fork if it joined.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Greg Kreuder:

So Doug on that, can you tell me what you mean by the open environment? What would your advice… What would you change?

Douglas Gill:

So what I think is the heritage of the LVC systems is there’s been a great deal, as I described earlier, a great deal of open data definition on the scenario stuff specifically in the simulation operability standards organization and DIS and HLA and other things.

And so these are open data, open interfaces that anybody can participate in. There’s a competitive commercial marketplace. There’s lots of effects. JSE, in fact most of the data in it is that data in that format. It does have some new ideas and they’re actually very good ideas that could advance the whole system.

And I think that not being… In the data formats we’re talking about, there’s nothing classified about this stuff. This is just physics and basic modeling. I think that if JSE would get involved in contributing that data to those organizations, we could sort of coalesce and bring the entire joint LVC to a place that supports the joint fight.

I think that the way we think about these systems is tied to programs and it’s tied to funding streams and various bureaucratic things. And I think that there’s a technical essence sitting underneath this thing that can be exposed and actually hasn’t been expressed.

But I think the moment is at hand where we’re ready to coalesce. And I think that in terms of how we do it, I think we actually lack a clear technical architectural model for what we’re doing in LVC. I would analogize the power of a stable but open model to what’s happened on the commercial internet.

So there’s a design pattern laid down in year of 1978, called ISO communication model. It’s a layered thing that design pattern stands to this day, the internet, the whole global communication infrastructure we have fits within that design pattern that was laid down then and it’s a multi-level thing and everybody at each level is operating with a stable discipline structure and is able to innovate.

And so this is how we’ve got all this communication and networking and innovation at the app level because we had a design model that everybody agreed to and worked within. I think we need something like that in LVC and I actually think I’ve just about grasped it. So I’m going to actually try to work to propose that, write a paper and so forth and we’re going to get to the industry.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Greg Kreuder:

Cool. Look forward to that paper, Doug. We’re seeing open architecture, GRA, government reference architecture, it’s also compliant, open source, many minds better than one, open it up. Not quite crowdsourcing, but the same mindset of that.

Douglas Gill:

It’s very much an open systems approach.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Greg Kreuder:

Exactly. And we’re seeing that very much in our other platforms, right? In our fifth-gen platforms and we’re advancing across the Air Force. So copy, look forward to your paper, Doug. Awesome. Dan, I think you want to pile on.

Dan Ourada:

So to give you an idea, and this is for the airmen in the audience and for you general. USAFE next month we’ll be holding a Ramstein flag and we’ll be supporting that with the Polygon, the EWODEM program. And it’ll be one of the first times that we transport a live blended synthetic, live virtual constructive architecture for joint coalition forces down to Greece to hold a red flag-like entity without all of the resources you have at the Nellis test and training range without the joint synthetic environment.

And it’s going to be one of the first learning opportunities for the Air Force to look at how well did we do with LVC, how well did we do with LBS right now on our third generation of technology. And general Hecker is going to use that to inform where Air Forces, and I’m sure you’ll see that output report as well, what are the next steps that we need to take?

And obviously again, the company I work for, we run the Nellis test and training Ranges, we’ll be bringing that data back to the NTTR to inform that next generation of evolution of the joint synthetic environment. But the one caution I put out there, when I hear the word open architecture and I hear these, I fall back on that risk, that cyber risk, that exposure because believe me, as someone at the forefront of these programs for you, I’m stopped.

I and my engineers and my company, we are stopped with that risk management framework. It halts funding, it halts progress, it halts moving forward. So as we look at the fifth, the sixth, the seventh generation, we have to find a better way to secure what we call open architecture, to secure data, it’s transmission.

Lasers, Wi-Fi, six. I don’t have the answer on that. I’m a stick puller. But what I will tell you is that as we approach this next layer of work, we have to rethink how we apply risk and what we will tolerate as terms of exposure. Otherwise, we’re just really not going to make progress.

Douglas Gill:

All right, Doug’s about to come out of a chair. So we have a lot of classic infrastructure-oriented security practices. A part of what we need, the LVC model we need is data security, multi-level security built in at the data level as a fundamental part of the architecture.

And that’s certainly something the paper I already mentioned, I envision that as a fundamental core tenet of the paper that we have to have that and make some suggestions about how we would go about doing that. So yes, it’s got to be fundamentally secure in the data.

Mike Manazir:

The other thing I’ll add, the general mention that my last two jobs, Navy director of air Warfare and then Navy director of Warfighting capabilities to the CNO we’ve got to fix the paradigms over in our requirement space. Right now we’re trying to put pieces of metal on the ramp first, then think about training and sustainment after that. We have to fund this stuff. We have to fight this way.

If we don’t change the paradigm of acquisition and requirements so that our pieces of metal show up on the ramp with these systems embedded in them already and not we’ll do that once we figure out how to train with the jet, we’re going to be so woefully behind and the money’s going to continue to go to the pieces of metal and rubber and jet fuel and it’s not going to get us these systems that we need because the money is often put below the cut line to build the training systems when actually what the two gentlemen to my left are talking about are the things that are going to be critical in the war fight. We’ve got to go acquire them, put requirements in place and get them at the same time as the jets.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Greg Kreuder:

Awesome.

Dan Ourada:

Agree.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Greg Kreuder:

Yep. Thank you. We’re talking a lot. It’s cool to talk about missiles and shooting stuff and flying, but cyber risk is a thing and it’s important. We articulate it, we understand it, we have to take some risk.

The safest way to operate is to not turn a wheel and not do anything right? So we’ve got to win. That’s going to take some risks, but it has to be measured risk. And whether it’s zero trust or high walls, we got to figure that out as a community. Awesome. Four minutes left. So what we’re going to do is jump right to the speed round and I’ll just say talk about whatever you want. You got a third to that time.

I’ll start with Mike. We didn’t have time to get to a lot of stuff like test as you train, the realism, the trust, how do we integrate CCA? There’s a whole bunch of slew of topics or maybe just the one thing you would change today if you could just put your finger on it. I’ll give you about a minute and a half each. Mike, start with you.

Mike Manazir:

Well, I’m going to give most of the time to the gentleman to my left. We’ve got to invest in this. I almost had my mic drop here before I asked for the final thought. We’ve got to invest in live virtual constructive. We’ve got to realize the advantages of training in the emulated environment. We’ve got to understand the physical models.

The other thing as I sit here and we’re all industry representatives, is bring industry in and let’s get those ideas moving. The models were built in an open environment. They were improved upon. They were brought out, they were the best brains worked at we’ve got partnerships with industry that need to happen along with the requirements folks, the acquisition folks, what works?

And if it doesn’t work, throw it away. Try again. Fail fast, all that kind of stuff. Don’t wait for the balloon to go up before we figure out we’ve got to move fast. We’ve got to do that right now. We’re staring right at the wolf. The wolf is in the living room. It’s not at the door anymore. And so I think we need to move with speed to be able to train at this level. And I just so much appreciate being here, general. Thanks.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Greg Kreuder:

Well said, Mike. Doug?

Douglas Gill:

Yeah, so I think that LVC can actually be the point of attack unifying a lot of threads that have been talked about this week. So the general mentioned operational test, LVC is fundamental to creating a digital twin of the total environment and driving that to very high fidelity, maximizing tests in every dimension and maximizing the ability to experiment in terms of missions and novel threats and so forth.

So I think that this is actually extraordinarily practical with respect to the total set of challenges that have been talked about across all the sessions here this week. So it may be a little bit of an under-the-radar topic, but I think it’s actually where the action can be.

Panel Moderator: Maj. Gen. Greg Kreuder:

Awesome. Thanks, Doug. Dan?

Dan Ourada:

So I’m going to tell you that what we’ve talked about here is where technology is the current state, the technology that exists and some of the barriers that are coming between them. But I’m going to tell you who’s going to make the most difference in bringing LVC and LBS to the forefront. And that’s you.

What’s missing is you, airmen, maintainers, pilots, weapons, systems officers, system controllers from everything, RFC, EA, EC doesn’t really bother me, you’re all going to participate in this. And the most important thing that I think the Air Force can do is make sure you are making your inputs to what you need to train for this fight.

We’re a bunch of dinosaurs. Let’s face it, we are. I freely admit that. All right? But one of the most important things that we can do is your input to your training through the 19th Air Force, through your PME, through the Mitchell Institute, get out there and put your positions forward about how we can do this so that the Air Force machine and its acquisition and its generals who make decisions on funding can come back with better things that you need. Don’t sit there listening to me, it’s your life. Do it.

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