2024 Air, Space & Cyber: Standing Up the New Commands

Lt. Gen. David Harris, Lt. Gen. Dale White, Air Marshal Paul Godfrey, and Lt. Gen. Brian Robinson took part in a panel discussion titled “Standing Up the New Commands,” moderated by Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.), President & CEO of AFA, at the Air, Space & Cyber Conference on Sept. 17, 2024. Watch the video below:

Panel Moderator: Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.) President and CEO, AFA:

At our AFA Warfare Symposium in February, senior leaders from the Department of the Air Force announced sweeping changes to our Air Force and our Space Force aimed at reoptimizing the services for great power competition China and Russia have spent decades studying us while also building and modernizing their military capabilities designed to specifically defeat the US in conflict. Meanwhile, budget constraints and decades of continuous counterinsurgency operations in the Middle East and in Afghanistan forced the United States to repeatedly defer similar modernization efforts. Now, as Secretary Frank Kendall starkly warned, we’re out of time.

Key to the department’s comprehensive realignment is stand up with three new commands: Airman Development Command, Integrated Capabilities Command, and Space Futures Command. Our four guests here today are instrumental in standing up and shaping those commands, all of which will better prepare, prepare us and posture us to outpace China.

Lieutenant General Brian Robinson is the commander of Air Education Training Command, which will be redesignated as Airman Development Command, or ADC. Air Marshal Paul Godfrey, Assistant Chief of Space Operations for Future Concepts and Partnerships, who is deeply involved in the stand up of Space Futures Command. Lieutenant General David Harris is the Deputy Chief of Staff for Air Force Futures. And Lieutenant General Dale White is the military deputy in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for acquisition Technology and Logistics; Integrated Capabilities Command. ICC aims to unify the services future requirements and our acquisition processes so we can keep pace with technology and changes to the threat environment. So, I gave them a chance to take a deep breath. They’re not really very nervous, I got to tell you. And here we go.

The first question we start with, we’ll go to General Robinson. So General Robinson, our people are the backbone for our success. That’s been repeatedly said on this stage, and it is absolutely true. Airmen development command will take a different look a mission over function, approach to training airmen. What does that mean to us organizationally? How does that differ from our current process within air Education and Training Command, and how does that necessitate a name change in a different way of organizing to train our new airmen?

Lt. Gen. Brian Robinson, Commander, Air Education and Training Command:

So General Field. Thank you for that question. Thank you for the honor, and frankly, the privilege to be here on this panel amongst this august group of panelists as well. So, thank you for being here. And for those that didn’t get a whoop for Goddard. You know, I’m just going to go whoop for Goddard. Thank you. He was, he was wondering, was going.

Air Marshal Paul Godfrey, Assistant Chief of Space Operation for Future Concepts and Partnerships, USSF:

I do have to say I was late off the bench to this panel as well.

Lt. Gen. Brian Robinson:

That’s fair. That’s fair.

Air Marshal Paul Godfrey:

So be gentle.

Lt. Gen. Brian Robinson:

Okay, we will to your question, right? It really comes down to the point you made with that is exactly that we are the world’s best military, frankly, the world’s best Air and Space Force, really, right now, because of our airmen and guardians and our people, the way we train today has been superb. The way we empower them and trust them and train them and develop their leadership skills is what makes us the, I would say, the comparative advantage vis a vis the PRC and even Russia, right in the battle space, alongside of our Western allies and partners, much represented here by the UK as well, sitting here to my right. So what really is the reason for the change is much like we talked about we’re out of time, we talked a lot about earlier in the week or yesterday, about the force design has to adapt to the future operating concept and the battle space concept that we see, and for now, we have to also then give our airmen and our guardians the right set of competencies and skills to prosecute that fight, that fight with their new capabilities, but also the agility, the skills, the confidence and capability to operate in an uncertain, ambiguous, sometimes disconnected environment, in the environment that we see, the battle space we see developing that we might have to be prepared to fight in. So, what that does is, right now, we train, we’re powerful by the functions that we have right now, the functional authorities we have now, but we train set requirements and deliver educational experiences and development really along just.

Those functional stovepipes, without anybody looking across the aggregation of what is the mission

environment, require us to operationally employ a force right to be successful in the battle space that we see so achieving making this change, to achieve mission over function, someone or in a command that’s organized in the way to see across those functional boundaries, informed by the functional authorities about what they think is needed and what they needed and what they know is needed from a policy perspective, a strategy perspective, a resourcing perspective and strength, but in the end, what skills are needed to be successful at the tactical level and at the operational level, the changes that we’ll make here and that we’re that are already underway with AETC in this process will help deliver that with mission over function. So, we can see that pivot the requirements and training approaches much more quickly, be fast, flat and relevant, and be send our airmen and guardians out the door to the operational force ready to go. And I should have started this. So, I’m going to take a moment to sort of end this part. Of course, my remarks on this, it’s important to understand what we’re talking about when we say force development for through this lens, we’re looking at it from an institutional perspective, which is why AETC, along with AFMC, is going to be is considered an institutional command. But what do we mean by that right now today, from recruiting a session, initial skills training, leadership development, also often known as professional military education. AETC, through its different organizations, Air University, second Air Force, 19th Air Force, is charged with producing airmen that have the foundational competencies in hand and skills in hand as required by those functional authorities to go out and enter the operational force. Frankly, the training never stops. We are constantly training as an Air Force. That’s why at Mountain Home Air Force Base we do exercises. That’s why we do training at our ROTC summer to summer training sessions, things of that nature. But our charge is to get those skills and competencies and green and our folks in an integrated fashion, with the entire mission set in mind as early as possible, using the best technologies, techniques and human centered learning that we possibly can.

Panel Moderator: Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.):

Thank you. How are we doing on the timeline for designating and standing up the command or different parts of the command? How’s that going?

Lt. Gen. Brian Robinson:

So, we are on time according to what General Allvin needs us to be when he gives the cue about when we’ll designate the organizations and name change. That’s up. That’s his call as a chief of staff. But I will say it’s Day 218 since the decisions were made about what we’re going to do for great power competition, I’ve got a clock in my outer office that’s counting up, and we’re about to have at a clock that’s counting down from a yet to be determined day in the year 2027 and so we’re going to work with the team here, with General Harris and his team trio, what that day ought to be. So, we can show the convergence in time going forward versus how much time we actually truly have left.

Panel Moderator: Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.):

Great. Air Marshall Godfrey. Space Futures Command will be the Space Force’s fourth field command. How are the existing field? Commands, Space Systems. Command, Space Operations, command, space training and readiness. Command, contributing to the formation of SFC, and especially, I understand that we’re bringing in the existing space warfighting Analysis Center and standing up two new centers, a new concepts and Technology Center along with a new war gaming center. So how do the lessons you’ve learned from standing up the other commands combining with these centers, and what you may have brought over from the UK enable this Space Forces Command to come to fruition?

Air Marshal Paul Godfrey:

Yeah, firstly, I’ll repeat the caveat of the panel yesterday, and we were just saying, I think someone doesn’t like me, putting me on two panels in two days, and I’m moderating one after this as well. But if I say something that might get me fired from U.S. Space Force, I’m talking as a Brit, and if I say something profound, then I’m doing it for the Space Force. Obviously, just from the British side. I think it’s worth just a quick perspective when we stood up UK Space Command. It’s really interesting. When you look across the space enterprise in the U.S., it is incredibly complex. You know, when you just sit there and think about it, and you hear about all of the changes that are going on. Bear in mind that Space Force only stood up almost five years ago. So, four years ago, when we were looking, who do we speak to? Do we speak to Space Force? Which element Space Force? Is it? SSC, is it an RCO? Is it AFRL? Is it Space com? Is it something else? And actually, the first people that came to talk to us were the NRO, who weren’t even in that particular area that we were looking at. So, for futures command, I think, certainly from an allied perspective, and that’s what I’m trying to bring to the in terms of shaping where future command, futures command goes. And I am definitely not the commander or any of that sort of stuff of futures command.

But I can be there and talk about how to allies and partners fit into this, and it does become the front door, I think, for allies and partners to go and understand where they can contribute, where they can add value to the United States, and where we can ultimately build what’s termed an objective force, what might be 2030 might be 2040 that actually has allied capabilities integrated into it. And so, you mentioned the three particular different field commands in terms of standing up futures command itself, there’s a task force that has been stood up has been running for a few months now. They’ve table topped a bunch of this. And actually, there isn’t that many new people required because CTC, the concepts Technology Center, there will be a people burden, but the SWAC, the space warfighting Analysis Center, is already there. And when you talk about the warfighting at the war gaming center, that’s currently there with Delta 10 as well. So actually, the personnel budget is reasonably small. There’s a headquarters element as well. So, all in all, with all of those elements, it’ll be about 600 or so personnel, probably a split of about 100, 200, 200, and 100 in the in the war fighting area. But I think it is really exciting. You can go from that concept. Just take space refueling as an example. What does it actually mean? Is it going to be a thing? You put it into the concepts and Technology Center. They decide, is the technology there? Are we able to do this? Are we able to fit out stuff? Is it prohibitively expensive? Is the concept going to work? You know, can we actually do this if we think it’s a yes, that then goes into the space war, fighting and Analysis Center, okay, if this is a thing, how are we going to use it? How many of them do we need? You know, how much is this going to cost for the future? And if it is still a thing, you then move it into the Wargaming area. And how are you going to operate this? What does it actually mean as you run through the dot mill, PFP side of things, and then you can bring and at that point, you bring allies and partners in. And it’s worth mentioning the Sriva war game coming up next year. It’s got 10 nations in it, and those 10 nations are the same nations that are in the combined Space Operations forum. So, for what is ultimately a relatively small personnel bill from all of those other field commands, I think it’s going to add significant value to not only Space Force itself, but actually all the allies and partners as well.

Panel Moderator: Lt. Gen. Burt Field:

That’s fantastic. So, after it stands up and it starts moving down the road, how do you see, are there any things that need to be prioritized first? Are there any kind of milestones that the Space Force is looking for 3060, 96, months out, things that you might need in the future, based on some of the analysis that you’re doing right now, but you’re going to wait till later to bring into space futures command.

Air Marshal Paul Godfrey:

Well, it’s an interesting point, because we’re kind of building the plane as we’re flying out already, because the SWAC is already out there, the war gaming center is already out there. So actually, from my own experience of standing up in command in the United Kingdom, which brought together a couple of extant areas, filing Dells, Space Operations Center and so on, I think the priority will be trying to get the mechanism up and running, because everyone’s going to be on the hamster wheel pulling this thing together, whereas you still want an output at the other end. I think that is going to be the difficulty. So, in that sort of 30, 60, 90, it is about getting the objective force, I think, for probably about 2030, aligned, so that we can then go and request a budget for that force that, as I say, involves allies and partners. I think one of the other key areas is for the command to actually understand its constraints and where its key relationships are going to be. I’ve already mentioned the complexity of what we’re doing. They’ve got to be talking with us. Space Command, the operators the COCOM, is going to have requirements that need to be fed into this as well the intelligence community, you know, with the NRO, NRO doing what they do, all of that has got to be fed into this as well, and cross government, even Department of State, you know, to understand where our priorities might be in terms of who we’re liaising with in international partners, And what the issues might be over there as well. So, I think early on, it is about developing the process, the system that is going to enable this to work whilst on demand, because we’re gradually starting to bring people into this. And it is difficult. I’ve been there myself, you know, starting from six and then getting to 600 after three and a half years, and getting those key relationships squared away so there is no friction with any of the other field commands within the service or external to the service as well across the space enterprise.

Panel Moderator: Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.):

Thank you. General Harris and General White. I’m going to ask you both these next questions. So how are you two working together to stand up both integrated capabilities, command and the related Integrated Development Office at AFMC, and what progress have you made so far? When do you expect the stand up of both of those? I know the chief announced that there’s a provisional on ICC, but how do you see them? And then how do you see those processes working together in the future? So, I’ll start and then pass it over to Dale.

Lt. Gen. David Harris, Deputy Chief of Staff, Air Force Futures:

Thanks for the question. I appreciate it. I think there’s a couple questions in there, so I’ll just start with, so we went through two to three ttxs to start this out, and then I know there’s been several other tabletop exercises just to make sure that we had the right linkages. Because I think unlike ADC and some of the other exercises, we’ve done to make sure that we have the right functions and the processes down, this is linking two organizations together. And I think that’s really the strength of what ICC and IDEO bring together. So, they how do we bring the warfighter? How do we bring all the people that do experimentation and acquisition together? I would say that it first starts with having a detailed understanding of the threat and knowing that that drives a sense of urgency. We’ve heard our chief, and our secretary say that we’re out of time, so I think that’s a galvanizing point to kind of rally around to make sure that we’re actually getting this right, and we have the right processes in place. The second part I would offer is that we need to have a clear understanding of the problems, what problems we’re solving, and that’s also bringing everybody together up underneath one rubric. So, the clear understanding of the problem, at least for me, starts with the national defense strategy. I mean, it’s a five, seven, I would probably start there anyway. But the national defense strategy actually offers the key operational problems, and then knowing the unique value proposition the Air Force has and where we actually feather into the joint fight, and what we need to provide to the joint fight in the future is going to be a key piece that we all have to center on. So knowing what capabilities then have to be developed is going to be a key part that we need to pass down to ICC, and then between the partnership of ICC to IDEO and making sure that that’s there, the way that we started to architect this out is that there is a strategy piece, but I think more importantly, there’s a force design piece to this, which I think is separate and distinct from our force structure. But it’s, how do we set the conditions and what do we want our force to do? And that’s a pretty important piece. And I think if there’s one thing that we brought out of the force design, it was really bringing that threat picture into it under a certain time epic, and it’s making sure that under that time epic, that everybody knew what the threat was like and what we’re actually facing, and what obstacles that poses for us. And then the next part is, how do you map that out? And I think, over the past four to five years, we’ve taken a couple swings and misses. Candidly, we tried with the Air Force you need and the Air Force you don’t need. We’ve tried some, you know, a table of forces construct to this. I would really say the way that we’ve landed right now follows a little bit of Luke crops. He’s work, and that was coming up through the mission threads and the mission engineering threads. And if we can speak in that same common language, and we can pass that information down to ICC, they know what problems we need to tackle. And then from that point, I would tell you that there’s been a lot of work done with the operational imperatives. So being a member of, proud member of season one, on that one, there we, we did bring operators and engineers and acquires together. But there’s a separate piece of this that I think is also important in its industry. I think that trinity of industry, operator and acquisition is really the part that we understood what we can do now, where we needed to actually apply some RDT and e to be able to develop some other capabilities further into the future, and then having the right analysis and studies behind it, and then over time, we would find that through Wargaming, what worked, what didn’t work, how we had to modify a concept, all that stuff happened iteratively within that group. So, I think that’s going to be, I think, a key piece of bringing ICC and IDEO together. Would you agree?

Lt. Gen. Dale White, Military Deputy, Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology, and Logisitics:

Yeah, no, I think absolutely. I think you nailed it. I think, you know, I’ll go back to where you started. I think we cannot forget the guiding light behind this is urgency, right? We understand the threat, and we need to be able to task organize, to urgently address that threat. You know, one of the things I would offer is that since we’ve been on this journey together, Dave and I have been inseparable, and so has the construct of ICC and IDEO, specifically, even the paperwork from an organizational change perspective that went through the system. It went through together. When it got up behind the glass doors, it went to the glass doors together. And so, we did that purposefully to make sure everyone understands the value of these two organizations working together. You know, whether one of the other things I’ll add, I think there’s this, this concept that, you know, we realize the threat, and we realized we had to task organize. So, we all sat back, and we constructed a way to be able to build an organization that could do this. I would submit that’s not the case. I would submit that Secretary Kendall and our leaders saw programs. They saw best efforts in things like B 21 and things like CCA and ngat family systems, and they saw the value of warfighter integration, and said, how do we scale that? And they gave us the freedom of manure to go after that and then between warfighter integration. At the Pentagon level, you’re starting to see some results already, just amongst the staff. And then as we are just the provisional standing up, and we have the CDO letter, therefore driving the IDEO standing up at the same time. So, we’re linked. We have to stay linked. I think those that believe this is just a paperwork exercise or an org chart exercise, I think you’re going to see something very different. Warfighter integration means something, and it’s going to drive outcomes at a speed that we’re probably not used to seeing.

Lt. Gen. David Harris:

So, I would tag on to that one, one little bit, and that is so if we have ICC and IDEO connected together, there’s other key relationships that have to be built into this as well. There’s inputs and outputs, right? One of them has to do with space futures. And how are we connected to space futures and making sure that all of these things we’re not we’re doing it fully informed. And then the output of this is it’s not good enough for ICC just to send a requirement back up to the Air Staff or send inputs back up to the A8. I think what we owe is some of the institutional and service commands. Where do they see capabilities being developed and making sure that we have ICC debts at the other the other service component commands and the other institutional commands to make sure that we’re capturing their requirements in there. And that partnership is really the warfighter integration piece that I’m speaking about.

Yeah, and I think warfighter integration, I think we often go to the edge of our own service and say, that’s where it stops. I would argue that’s probably really only where it begins, because then you have your partner services, you have your partners and allies. And how do we do that integration, whether it be about training, whether it be about capability development, we all understand we’re addressing the same threat. So what does I mean? We’re really trying to have a reinvention of what warfighter integration means and how we employ it.

Lt. Gen. Brian Robinson:

Yeah, I think what I would add to that Dale is, you know, how ADC will integrate with ICC in the ways that we talked about, right to your point about training, and not just the war fighters we see through the tabletop exercises that we did that we need to have lnos from our centers of excellence that will exist for institutional skill skills training at second Air Force and even at 19th Air Force, for the aviation, technical Aviation Center of Excellence, we need to sit down with you, as with your teams that you described, and talk about and listen to how that capability that’s being envisioned to be brought on, and listen to how it’s going to be employed. And start to think through two things that ADC will have in its portfolio. One, start to draft the doctrine for all that doctrine is in our Air Force. And then secondly, how will we train to that? You know, start to develop the curriculum, and how you’re going to teach and train airmen to that in their initial skills, so that we can do that much more in a parallel fashion, further left in the process, as opposed to today, it’s really, really done in a much more serial fashion. The one thing I’ll never forget, in November of 2022 when Secretary Kendall came to visit AETC headquarters. He sat down and were there for a couple days. And I think I shared this with you, Dale, he looked over at me in the conversation, he goes, so smokey, how are we going to train to CCAs? And my answer back was, Mr. Secretary, what is a CCA, no kidding, right? And there’s reasons for the where that was, but we’ve got to be holistically integrated in that way, thinking about the entire mission set. And the CCA program has done much, much better than previous programs in achieving that level of integration, and we’re still seeking to optimize that, even still in that way, from that perspective.

Lt. Gen. Dale White:

So, I think that’s key. Real quick. Gardner, I’m going to jump in here, because I think we can see a space I know. I think I speak for you as well. DH, when we say there is a space when we task organize and we can get capability development cycles, reps and sets at a pace we’re not used to seeing. It does put pressure on that training enterprise, and if we don’t have that integration, because you can clearly see capability outpacing training, and that’s a place we don’t want to be, right, and having that linkage throughout this process is absolutely going to be key.

Air Marshal Paul Godfrey:

Yeah, all I was going to say on the, you know, the IDEO at the DAF level, I think brings space futures and ICC together, which is a really good thing for a single department when it comes to budget prioritization, all of those sorts of things as well. You know, certainly from a space perspective, I think the harder thing is then getting out. And actually, I sat down the other day with someone who was intimately involved withstanding up army futures command, just to talk of through the lessons identified that they had had when they rebroadcasted and put the command together. And I think how the various futures commands work together in order to enable the joint force; I think is the primary thing here. So, it comes back to that point I made about connective tissue. At the end of the day, it won’t be there initially. You know, I saw this in three and a half years of standing up an organization. You have all these hope streams and aspirations, but then you’re in that hamster wheel putting the thing together. But that’s why I say we’ve got to prioritize the relationships, not only the DAF. I think is, is there it is across the whole of the DOD and external stakeholders as well?

Panel Moderator: Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah, I think that that brings up a really good point, because we’re talking about integrating across the services. We’re talking about integrating across the services, because of me. Requirements, and we’re talking about how we’re going to bring in match comms and field comms to this process. But like you just said, Admiral Godfrey or this, or Air Marshall Godfrey.

Air Marshal Paul Godfrey:

Promotes it.

Panel Moderator: Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.):

It’s a promotion. You can use my name so, but we all know to your point, this is all DC kind of oriented. We get sucked into the black hole of DC. We promise we’re going to bring in people from, you know, out on the frontier of Pac AF and USAFE. But we then, kind of they drop off. So how, what kind of procedures are we going to make to ensure that those match comms and field comms get that voice into this process.

Air Marshal Paul Godfrey:

So certainly, the other day, think was last week, could have been the week before I went along to the space component commanders conference to talk about what I was doing in futures and partnerships, but also to tell them, so you’ve got a space component. They’re expanding, as you heard CSO said this morning, but the big three into PACOM in European Command, AFRICOM, and who am I missing? CENTCOM as well? My point to them is that they are the people on the front line with allies and partners. They’re the ones face to facing on a daily basis. And they kind of look to two people. They look to Doug chess, Space Forces, space up into space com, but they’re also looking back into the service as well. And I’ve asked that exact question, so how do we bring those interactions with allies and partners into the room so that we can feed it into the system, feed it into the process? And I think certainly at the moment. That’s the way we’re thinking there. Obviously, with General Whiting and SpaceCom as well, there is an alignment between what is essentially the S5 and the K5 for operational requirements and to ensure that they are fed in. It’s a little bit easier with Space com being there, but the actual co comms, that’s where we’re going to rely on the on the space components.

Lt. Gen. David Harris:

So, I mentioned once before that we’re actually ICC debts at the different components to get that voice of the warfighter in. You know, the other part of this I would offer is that industry is another voice that we need to have in and when we started down the path of the OIS early on, we made a very deliberate effort to go out there and reach out to industry to see how they would solve some of these problems for us. So, it’s, it’s more than just the warfighter piece of it, it’s industry, its acquisition, the engineering and, quite frankly, what tech is available at what time to make sure that we are getting that latest and greatest tech push into ICC and through the IDEO for that full spectrum capability development.

Air Marshal Paul Godfrey:

Yeah, just sorry, Smokey, the again, back in the UK, the principle that we worked to was own, collaborate, access. When we were putting these things together, what sovereign things do we need to own? Where do we collaborate with partners, allies and partners? Where do we just access through commercial capabilities? And I think that is just one of those elements that needs to be built again, back into the process as we put these commands together. And it is an incredibly complex it’s not a simple equation of one of one of those three. It’s probably a blend of everything. But that’s where, certainly in the concepts Technology Center, and then into the space warfighting and architecture center, that’s where they can be tested out, so that we can actually give a solution that we can budget against.

Thanks. And what I was going to say, industry applies to Airmen development command too, in developing airman.

Lt. Gen. Brian Robinson:

So by virtue of our enterprise, learning Engineering Center of Excellence, which is going to be a team of about 25 people, their job is to look broad across industry, to look at technologies, learning, engineering and learning methodologies and scholarship to figure out how we can best train our airmen and develop our Airmen, but also, more importantly, train and develop our faculty to be faculty and staff members, to be upskilled and ready to deliver that kind of advice or execution of training and development that they need to develop. From that perspective, a lot of that will be human engineering, in the sense that, how, not human engineering, but human performance, if you will, what types of cognition, tools, cognition methods, allow us to accelerate learning and cognition so that people grasp the skills and tasks much more readily, much more quickly, in an agile fashion, and ready to go. So, we’re excited about that. And so, we can also take a look at the human performance, which gives the folks they have the resilience that they need while they’re on mission. So that’s how we’re going to bridge into industry as well, from the learning industry that actually exists and is out there can inform us greatly with what we do.

Panel Moderator: Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.):

Thanks. Well, I this is a great discussion, and it already answered most of the other questions I have. So why don’t we go ahead, and follow come up with some closing comments and discussion that on things that we haven’t thrown out in the table and things that you want to message the audience today.

Air Marshal Paul Godfrey:

We’re just I. Or I jumped in again there. I’m facing this way.

Lt. Gen. Dale White:

He’s extremely profound that you haven’t heard.

Air Marshal Paul Godfrey:

Yeah, I don’t know whether that was profound, or whether I’m going to…

Lt. Gen. Brian Robinson:

Get another shine coming off my head.

Air Marshal Paul Godfrey:

I did want to make, you know, having, we were just talking about this backstage, of having been there and done this, you know, on a smaller scale, you know, as I say, they’ve ended up being about 600 people in UK Space Command. But probably one of the biggest things, and I’ve kind of alluded to it already, is this is probably going to be harder than you think it is. You can already see the complexity of the conversation that we’ve had. You can stand up an organization and there’ll be an output, but it might not be the output you want for maybe three, five years, you know. And I know we’re on a clock, I wrote down 218 days in terms of the operational imperatives. And you know, you talked about 2027, as well. So, you just have to work on its good enough principle, you know, rather than trying to build this absolutely, you know, like a Swiss watch and people are going to be innovative. CSO talked about that this morning. You know, with the way things are changing in just five years of Space Force and look at all of the organizational changes. So, it is just that there’s probably a plea for everyone in the audience as well. You know, just to bear with us as these organizations stand up. Day one, you’re not going to get the answer through a machine. And at the end of it, we’re going to have, you know, the world’s perfect budget, and all the allies and partners integrated. It is a journey that we’re all going on here. You know, through IOCs and focs, whatever dates they may be, but definitely it is much harder than you think it’s going to be.

Lt. Gen. Brian Robinson:

Thanks, you know, and I completely agree. And to that end, I’m really, really particularly proud of the staff and the AETC team and the number of air forces that have learned in really, really hard on this, and I’ll come back to that here in a minute, and figuring out what we need to do, how to achieve that integration is so key, and we’ve realized that we have to come up with, although it won’t be perfect, what is the guidance of governance and how these new entities are supposed to interact with each other and achieve that integration and the mission over functional results for the, essentially for the rest of the United States Air Force, as An institutional command, whom we serve in developing airmen and guardians in that way, and those touch points we have, I think one of the main differences that comes with the command standing up is ADC will get, be given and granted the responsibility and the authorities that today reside with career field managers in a multitude of places. To give you a scope of the I’ll say the bifurcation of the challenge. There are about today, when we did the tabletop exercise, about 1600 functional managers at the match, common below level across the Air Force, all trying to make their best estimate and best guidance input on policy and training and requirements. Again, largely by the each is there’s 160 career field managers, managers at the match, com to Air Staff level. There are 16 or 15 career field authorities that have to reside and have to be there by statute. And we recognize and acknowledge that, and we’re not trying to take that mission, those responsibilities and authorities from them, but to bring all of that into one, one command and entity that’s supposed to kind of bring all that together to your together. To your point, it’s a challenge, but that is the major significant difference. That’s the equivalent of back in 1991 when we brought air university into ATC at the time and made it AETC. This is that evolution again, 30 some years later, from that perspective. And we’re proud to be able to have the trust of the Air Force for that. And my charge to our team is we’re going to we’re going to earn that trust, and then it’s our job to keep that trust. And that is not an easy task, but that’s our goal. And to answer your question that you asked me the first time, I wanted to save the best for last I mentioned. I’ll respond. We’ll be ready for when the chief says he’s ready, but our intention is to be ready for FOC by one October of 2025 so that’s the pace that we’re on, and that’s what we’re working against in the current staff here. So, thanks for the opportunity.

Lt. Gen. Dale White:

I said, just, just kind of wrap it up. I think the key thing for us is, from my perspective, is, you know, threat to urgency, right? We understand the threat. We have to drive the urgency sector. Kendall has made it very, very clear, you know, a war with a peer rival is not inevitable, but we still, we have a responsibility to our nation to be ready. And so, I think through this journey with DH and the entire team, I mean, we’ve strengthened the relationship between the acquisition enterprise and AFMC, who is a key part of that enterprise, I tell people, if safaq is the arm, that AFMC is the fist, right? And so, we’ve strengthened that. We’ve given that role greater flexibility and authority. And I think that one of the things that I’m really, really proud of the team for as we drive this warfighter integration, I think the key thing everyone is walking away with is simply this, if. We do have to fight. It’s going to be a technologically based war. And capability development is clearly a war fighting function. We have to embrace that. We have to operate that way, and we have to task organize that way.

Lt. Gen. David Harris:

Thanks. I would just offer that one. When we start looking at this, we went through the journey of all the different changes to 15 for the Air Force, and then working five of them, the Airman Development Command, Integrated Capability Command, AFCENT, AFSOUTH, AFNORTH, AF Cyber, all of these. You know, we always started with the why, and then we went to the what, and now we’re actually coming back to the how. But the big thing that I looked at are these changes making us more effective, and are we more lethal as an Air Force? The other part is, when you step back and you see some of the changes in aggregate, and you have the opportunity to work with all the different teams and the Manage comms together, you really do see that this is pulling all of us together into one Air Force. And I firmly believe that after seeing the changes that we’re making and how this is all connecting now and then, the last part is, I never want to forget that. What does it mean to our airmen that are out there, how did they see these changes, and how did they view the changes? What’s going to change in their life that’s going to be substantial enough to know that we are more effective, and we are more lethal. And I can tell you, from my point of view, and working with everybody up here on stage, that the changes are being put in place are more than just greater reoptimization. It is really making us one Air Force. It is much more lethal with a sense of urgency to get after the threat.

Air Marshal Paul Godfrey:

Yeah, exactly the same from the Space Force department at the Air Force perspective, whilst to talk about it’s going to take longer actually, just going through the change I think, makes us more efficient. And you know, if I finish with a partner and ally perspective as well, back to what I mentioned at the beginning. It provides that simple front door to bring your capability to add value that can then get put into the system, so that we have a truly integrated war fighting coalition at the end of this as well. So, you know, I think when I came into this particular job, you know, just sitting down and understanding what futures command brings, certainly, in the Space Force, and talking to these guys with the same in the in the Air Force as well. You know, I think this fundamentally changes how we do things for the better.

Lt. Gen. Brian Robinson:

Right? If I could throw one last data point out there for those who may not know, just to give you a sense of scale and proportionality here, as we went through the journey of how fast we can change curriculum, we’ve had the really, really positive example that we can get specifically defender next and how we train defenders in initial skills qualification. Make that complete change, or significant change, in nine months. We’ve got many, many more artifacts in other functional areas where it’s taken two to four, or in some cases, five years, to make a change that’s unacceptable. And do you know why? To quote my Command Chief, Chief Master Sergeant Bickley, the PRC builds an island in the South China Sea in less time than that. And we’re squat, you know, we’re debating about, how do we make a change in curriculum to train better Airmen and better Guardians so they’re more ready to go to the fight and survive and thrive and be successful with victory. That’s why this is important. Thanks, Burt.

Lt. Gen. Dale White:

Yeah, and I think also, to that point, I think one of the things we’re going to have to do, and DH and I talk a lot about this, is, is, how do we make sure, as we go through this process, to listen to our airmen right? Because I’m 100% certain we’re not going to get 100% right, and so we have to keep that, that those lines of communication open, make adjustments in real time and exercise the agility that we are building into the system. Because I do think that, because we know how to do this, you know, when we started the CCA program with Secretary kendall’s vision of what do you want to do with the operational imperatives, we saw what happens if we can, if we can adjust in real time, and we were able to iterate and move, and we quickly got to a place where we could generate capability with the warfighter completely integrated with the team. And so I think that we we know how to do this, but as we go along, we’re gonna have to continue to keep those lines of communication, have that feedback loop, and then have the willingness and the wherewithal to be able to make changes as we go through the process.

Air Marshal Paul Godfrey:

Great, just I can see 1:30 left on the clock. I was just going to say, the empowerment of our people on this one, I think, is absolutely key. You know, you empower the people to go and make those changes, to do their best on the front line, even if it differs slightly from what the original intent was and provide that feedback. That’s where we’re going to win. You know, that’s how we’re going to organize. This is how it’s going to evolve in order to, you know, to get to exactly what we want to, but it starts with all of you guys out there understanding what we are trying to achieve and for us to trust you guys that you’re doing your very best in order to be able to do that. Thank you. Let’s give our panel big round of applause. Thank you, guys. Bye.

---

This transcript was auto-generated and may not be 100 percent accurate. The source audio and video can be accessed above.