2024 Air, Space & Cyber: The Wars We’re Fighting

The “The Wars We’re Fighting” panel at AFA’s 2024 Air, Space & Cyber Conference featured Lt. Gen. Michael Conley, commander of Air Force Special Operations Command; Lt. Gen. Adrian Spain, deputy chief of staff for operations; and Lt. Gen. Douglas A. Schiess, commander of U.S. Space Forces and Combined Joint Force Space Component at U.S. Space Command. The panel, held on September 16, was moderated by Tobias Naegele, editor in chief of Air & Space Forces Magazine. Watch the video below:

Panel Moderator: Air & Space Forces Magazine Editor in Chief Tobias Naegele:

So, Secretary Kendall started out this morning with those familiar words, China, China, China. Again, we’ve been hearing so much about great power competition now for several years, but especially in the last eight months. And this session is really to focus on the fact that you can’t get ready for great power competition separately from doing what you have to do every day. And I think each of you has, each of our guests here has been and is involved with ongoing operations day after day after day. We are actually seeing a confluence, I think, of the operations in every domain, that are not just in isolation in a given region or given place. They are in fact connected by some of this tissue. And that’s where we’re going to dig into. So, I’d like to start with Lieutenant General Spain, Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations. I’d like to start with you, sir. Decades of continuous operations in CENTCOM playing pickup basketball in a sense, crowdsourcing. Now you’re talking about shifting all that, but you also have an intensifying set of demands in Europe and in the Pacific. How are you managing that?

Lt. Gen. Adrian L. Spain, Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations, USAF:

Well thanks Tobias. Good to be with you here again today. Thanks to AFA for the opportunity to speak with everyone. And thank you to the folks in the crowd for being a part of this conversation. It’s really important. And the question of how you balance this, you start with the very obvious, very carefully, right? It’s not an easy problem and thankfully I personally don’t have to balance it, right? The services provide a very particular role for the Secretary of Defense who owns a lot of these authorities. We generate, organize train and equip to generate and present forces for the Secretary of Defense’s use. And one of the keys of how you balance is really about articulating the capacity and risk that you have in a service.

And so, the things that General Allvin talked about this morning in terms of disaggregating the force over the last 30 years to meet the attributes of the strategic environment that changed after the seminal events of the Cold War ending and 9/11 really contributes to this state that we’re in, where we had a really hard time articulating capacity and risk in a simple and understandable way. And so, the first way you get at balance is by really being able to help the Secretary of Defense understand what risks he’s deciding on. And if we’re struggling to define that risk ourselves internally, then we’re really going to have a hard time convincing the secretary of the risk balance that he’s trying to maintain. And so, a lot of what we’re doing is about recapturing the narrative to ourselves as much as to the joint force so that the Secretary of Defense can make a holistic decision and really work the confines of the balance between future force and current force risk.

Panel Moderator: Tobias Naegele:

So next up, Lieutenant General Doug Schiess, Space Forces space. Let’s talk about the ongoing and sort of continuous operations that you have in space. In one sense, you never stopped being at war and it’s intensifying now. In another sense, its great power competition spread around lots of different places and different things. So, give us your take on that.

Lt. Gen. Douglas A. Schiess, Commander, U.S. Space Forces – Space and Combined Joint Force Space Component Commander, U.S. Space Command:

Yeah, Tobias, thanks again. Thanks to the Air and Space Force Association for having us. Thanks to my colleagues here. It’s great. Known all of you for many years and so great to be on the stage. I think it shows what the secretary says of one team, one fight. So, thanks for allowing me to be up here as the commander of U.S Space Force Space. And we were joking in the back, we have space in our name twice, so we have so much space going on. We have to say it twice. All right, that was a little bit of a joke.

Panel Moderator: Tobias Naegele:

You landed it.

Lt. Gen. Douglas A. Schiess:

Yeah, and that is because we are the Space Force component to US Space Command. And in that the commander of US Space Command General Whiting has designated me as the combined Joint force space component Commander to work across all of US Space Command’s service components, and then work with my fellow Space Force service components that are at the other combatant commands to be able to execute what I think General Whiting says. But I agree our moral obligation to do three different responsibilities. That is to protect the joint warfighter from space-enabled attacks. So, in other words, we have to make sure that our potential adversaries, and as you heard the secretary this morning say it’s not a future threat. It is our threat now from the PLA. We have to be able to protect the airmen that I have on the stage here, from space-enabled attack.

We also need to defend our assets and our allies’ assets from being attacked so that we can do our third mission, which is deliver those space capabilities and then we have to connect. And what does that mean? We connect with our allies and our commercial partners to be able to provide those effects because the joint force has been sized appropriately for space because of the critical capabilities that we bring to that. And if space isn’t there, then we are not size appropriate. So, when you asked about us continuing to do that, we are. We provide missile warning, we provide global position navigation, provide ISR and all those capabilities as we see in the Indo-Pacific as we work with US Space Forces, Indo-Pacific, and in central with US Space Forces Central. And then in Europe, Africa as well, we see multiple missiles, ballistic missiles, cruise missiles. And so, the ability to be able to get after to be able to provide that information to the warfighter so that they can take actions is one of our top priorities.

We’re seeing jamming, GPS jamming. We have to be able to provide the best signal to our users so that we can still have our precision capabilities that we need. And then obviously satellite communications. Provide the ability to, at the tactical level, get the information down to the lowest so mission command can continue but also ensure that the President of the United States has the ability to command and control his nuclear forces. So yes, we are doing that day in day right now. There are guardians around the world that are in operation centers providing and that is our critical force. That is our best asset right there, those guardians. So, thanks.

Panel Moderator: Tobias Naegele:

Okay, so next up Air Force Special Operations Command General Conley. So probably no command has been more visibly busy over the past couple of decades than the special operators and maybe not always the eyes on the Air Force guys, but the other guys aren’t doing a whole lot without you. I’d like to hear about how you are shifting and how great power competition has shifted the special operations fight, which is again like space kind of maybe unseen, but also spread out in a lot of different places.

Lt. Gen. Michael Conley, Commander, Air Force Special Operations Command:

Yeah, thank you Tobias. Again, I echo my two colleagues. I appreciate the invite and the opportunity to talk. So, I think it’s important to start with going to just the title of this forum, the Wars We’re Fighting. It’s an exciting time to be in AFSOC. We are leaning very hard into future capabilities and figuring out what our role is in a future fight, which some would say that we might not have a role, but I would beg to differ on that. But importantly, we still have men and women in harm’s way right now. So, we don’t have the luxury of looking just the future. We also have to make sure the men and women we send downrange into harm’s way are ready to go and they get the same attention, the same level of training, and we’re doing the same things for their families that we’ve done for the last 20 years.

So, if you read the news, what’s going on in the CENTCOM, AOR, we are still incredibly busy there. Now that being said, like I mentioned, we are investing heavily in the future trying to figure out what our role is in contested environments and in different places. And we’ve operated, let’s say the last 20 years. But one thing we’ve benefited from right now is that we’re about two years ahead of the rest of the Air Force or large parts of it in our force generation cycle. So, we are just coming to the end of a full two-year cycle where we’ve gone through deliberate train-up. And to General Spain’s point, what has really helped us is our ability to clearly explain the forces we have available. So, we are able to clearly articulate what we have in the bucket to go out the door and support and what we have in reserve and what the risks are of reaching into that reserve force. And I won’t say surprisingly, but it’s been nice to see that the combatant commands, the joint staff, SOCOM, are honoring that. It doesn’t mean that we don’t reach into that reserve bucket at times, but what it does mean is that they are acknowledging and documenting the risks that we are buying six months, 12 months, 18 months down the road.

Force generation has proved to be a win for AFSOC and I’m excited to see where the Air Force goes with that in the coming years.

Panel Moderator: Tobias Naegele:

So, I’m glad that you kind of finished there because that’s where I’d like to go next, both the Air Force and the Space Force unveiled New Force Generation concepts eight months ago and units of action. Wings for the Air Force squadrons for the Space Force. I’d like each of you to kind of tackle that and talk about how that force generation model is shifting, where we are now and what happens as we cycle to that first two-year anniversary?

Lt. Gen. Adrian L. Spain:

Yeah, it’s a great point and a great segue. So, thanks Mike. The unit of action work that we’re doing, again, first going back to the first question, it really does help us to articulate capacity and risk. When we get to the number of combat wings that are resource to be independently deployable, we’re going to have a fixed number of those. We’ll be resourced to have a fixed number of those, and we’ll be able to say, “Hey, this is how many deployable combat wings that we have,” and I don’t have the number that we’re working towards is 24. If I have 24, I don’t have 25. If I have 24, you can use those 24 in a lot of different ways. We will have an opinion on how best to use those 24 and put them into an AFFORGEN model and cycle that routinely allows us to get access to a predictable and sustainable amount of forces for both rotational and crisis response.

Right now, if we’re outside of a crisis and we have rotational requirements, those units of action will likely go to service the rotational requirement. But if that’s in conflict with a different crisis that’s happening at that time, I actually have a lot more that’s available to go somewhere else. And if I want to take on additional risk, as Mike mentioned, I can pull forward from a different phase because the risk is worth it in that case where we might be getting ready to go into high-end conflict. And so, the model allows us to articulate all those things. It also allows us to say, “Hey, if you use this particular unit of action tomorrow for this purpose, that is probably very legitimate for the requesting combatant command. They are not available for your requirements in a different theater six months from now. They’ll used,” and then they will have to reconstitute and come back.

And to Mike’s point, that conversation has gone really well. Not it shouldn’t be a secret, but the combatant commands and the Secretary of Defense are also very concerned about the readiness of our forces. They’re not blind to it and they aren’t ignorant of it. What they want is to be able to have all the facts to make relevant decisions to balance that risk of using them today versus using them tomorrow. And if we’re unable to do that today, we’ll normally win. And so, our journey on this has been to get better at forecasting what that risk is. And when we’ve been able to do that, we’ve actually had very little pushback from our joint and secretariat leadership on the utilization of the force that we’re talking to them about.

Panel Moderator: Tobias Naegele:

Okay, so let’s go to space and I’m going to come back to you in a minute.

Lt. Gen. Douglas A. Schiess:

Yeah, Tobias. Thanks. Having spent 29 years in the Air Force before I moved over to the Space Force, we have struggled with force presentation in the Space Force for a long time because a majority of our forces are employed in place. We do have deployed forces and a shout-out to them that are out there right now doing that. Those are mostly in our electromagnetic warfare areas, our counter communications and our defensive counter space and our ISR. But a majority of our forces actually are in the United States performing their missions 24/7. And when we sized ourselves, we sized ourselves for a benign environment. And I know we’re going to, I think later on talk a little bit about the threats from China and Russia, but we no longer have a benign environment. We now have direct descent, anti-satellites that could take our satellites out. All of you probably use GPS to get here.

We have a possible threat from Russia on maybe a nuclear capability in space. And so, we can no longer just do the day-to-day and deliver mission. We have to do that, protect and defend. Well, what does that mean? We have to train our forces. We have to give them advanced training. We have to have the ability to package them together. And so, what our SPA-IV gen model that we are now in the first iteration of this, we started one July. One of the things we did when we stood up U.S., space Forces Space S-IV-S on last December is we allowed space operations command from my good friend Lieutenant General Rock Miller to focus only on organized training equipped and generating presenting forces to combatant commanders. A majority of those forces go to US Space Command and then we take them in S-IV-S. But some go to the other combatant commands.

What that allowed us to do under our unit of action, the Combat Squadron, was to provide enough forces of combat crews mission planning elements and mission support elements to put together to be able to do that in a three-phase model. So, the first phase is the ready phase. That’s where individuals, maybe they’ve gone to a new weapon system or they’re brand new to that, they go through their initial qualification training, maybe they’re taking leave, professional military education, this kind of things. But then they go into the prepare phase where now they’re getting together as that combat squadron. They’re preparing what they would do with our mission planning elements and their mission planning or our mission support elements. But not only that, they are then forced packaging with others. So maybe forces that are doing the Defend mission while forces that are doing deliver to be able to work together, that then gets aggregated up to S-IV-S, and our two command and control centers to be able to do that.

But that allows them to then do some of that advanced training. And then under General Miller’s leadership, they’re doing packaging training together for a capstone event that then he provides to the CSO and to myself that we provide to General Whiting, the readiness of that force as we present, as they go into the commit phase. And so now those combat squadrons are doing the mission day to day. Then when they’re done, it’s up to us to provide feedback back to the force generating commands, space operations command to be able to take the next level of, okay, what can we change? Maybe the environment’s changed. And so, then they change their advanced training to be able to make them better, and then they also can then have some time for their families, do that leave, professional military education and then get back into the fight.

We’re in the first phase now, it’s working really well. We’ll then make some iterations, general Miller and I as we go forward. And then obviously as we prevent forces to other combatant commands, but it’s given us that predictability. It’s given us that advanced training, which is enhancing readiness and enhancing mission effectiveness.

Panel Moderator: Tobias Naegele:

So, let’s take this to the two airmen here and talk about risk and capacity. Ultimately, part of what you are presenting is here’s what I have, and the risk is here’s all I have left and how is that going to play out? As an example, just this summer, Iran said they were going to attack Israel. We mobilized forces. Forces went downrange. I would imagine in other parts of the world, forces are downrange doing various things, and that apparently seems to have been an effective deterrent strategy. But how long does it have to be a deterrent strategy? They’re still there and you could have some other requirements come up. Now how are you managing that and balancing that in real time?

Lt. Gen. Adrian L. Spain:

Yeah. If I could go back one just to the previous question briefly on the unit of action. A key element of this is that of why we’re doing this now is that we are going to ask the wing commanders and the wings to do different things than we’ve asked them to do in the past. As a downrange, one-star wing commander, what I was responsible for was really the power projection platform and the health and welfare of the people on that base. Certainly, I was responsible for protection. I had some amount of command and control I was responsible for sustainment, et cetera, but we were getting taskings from the AOC and executing the daily flying schedule for the most part. What we’re going to ask our wing commanders and that command echelon to do in the future conflict against a peer adversary is significantly different from that.

You’ll be under attack constantly. Kinetically and non-kinetically. You’ll be disconnected from your higher headquarters probably at a more routine basis than we have currently seen. And you’ll have to deal with that circumstance. We should have things in place that allow the CFAC, the Air Component Commander to still deliver orders routinely and provide commander’s intent and mission command and command type orders to subordinate commands. But that subordinate command has to be able to receive those orders, make sense of them disseminate to subordinate forces and execute on behalf of that Air Component Commander, whether they are disconnected or not, it must provide the joint war fighting function of protection. It must provide the joint war fighting function of sustainment. It has to be able to do all of those things while there are explosions happening on their airfield and while they’re taking on losses and dealing with those losses.

And so, while we have had elements of those circumstances for all of our commands over time, the next fight is going to be dramatically different. And so, part of this unit of action is not only forming them in a certain way but training them to be prepared for that environment and giving them the resources they need to thrive in that environment. To your point about balancing resources, and we talked risk and capacity. General Slife had a good discussion this morning about risk requirements and resources. So, there are three parts of that, right? There’s the resources and the requirement, and typically what we say is, “Hey, if I have more requirement, I need more resources.”

Well, really the third element of risk is pretty germane here. So, if I must accept more risk because I’m not getting more resources and I have an increased requirement, I can still execute the job that I’m tasked to do with the same amount of capacity. But it does come with added risk, and we need to be able to articulate that to our service leadership through the Secretariat and to our joint leadership up through the Secretary of Defense.

Panel Moderator: Tobias Naegele:

And that’s actually a key component of this. I mean, ultimately that’s one of the pillars on which this is being done.

Lt. Gen. Adrian L. Spain:

That is probably the key component. Being able to say how much capacity I have is not reliant on the 13th or 14th aircraft that I’m able to send into theater, right? It’s not solely reliant upon that. If we have multiple requirements around the world, which we do, and I don’t have enough resources to put the same footprint in every location to deter in exactly the same way around the world, which we do not, we have to take risk in certain places. And the Secretary of Defense has told us largely how to take risk. And the president has told us largely how to take risk around the world. Now we have to be disciplined about how we implement that.

Panel Moderator: Tobias Naegele:

Okay, so two years in at AFSOC, how’s that going?

Lt. Gen. Michael Conley:

As I said, my first statement, what we were learning for fourth generation in our cycle is almost entirely positive. The four six-month cycles we have starting with individual phase, moving into unit phase where the team’s starting to form. That’s the phase where we identify the leadership teams that are going down range at the O5 Echelon, which would be a squadron level or the O5 Echelon, which is our squadron commanders that are going down to command what we traditionally know as a group, multiple task units underneath them. They form together, they train up together over the course of the next year, and then they go in their commit phase, and they go down range. So, through that process, we are excited. The feedback we get from the combatant command teams, the theater special operations components is incredibly good. So, we’re good there. But to your question, the tension we do have that we are still working through is through the crisis response piece.

AFSOC has a crisis response mission, and when we get tasked to go out the door by the sec, we go, that’s our job. And that’s why many people join AFSOC is because they want to go to the sound of the drums. But there is a tension there, and it’s when we push forces down range out of cycle in crisis response, it’s that clear communication in our case through US special Operations Command, to articulate how long they can be gone before we start buying risk into future phases. So, we send… The window, we typically target is hey, anything more than 30 days, we start to have impacts because you get into deploy to dwell math and it gets harder and harder. Over the last two years, we’ve had, I’d say success in most of that, but in some of our units, the crisis response piece is extended longer than we would like, and that’s just a fact of life.

Panel Moderator: Tobias Naegele:

And does it hit specific units more than others or specific communities more than others?

Lt. Gen. Michael Conley:

Yes. In this case, because I have one or two units, so it is a specific capability, but I understand why a combat commander wants to keep them there. It’s just articulating the risk and understanding that a year from now we may not be able to give you the same capability or you might have to gap it for two to six months. And if you accept that risk now, then we got you. But two years from now, 18 months from now, we’re going to have to have the discussion again. And thankfully, the SOCOM, J-III, the team at SOCOM has been consistent in their messaging and has us from pushing those red lines more than we need to.

Panel Moderator: Tobias Naegele:

So, all three of you are in the business of providing when called on, whatever it is that’s needed and articulating that risk, but you’re not equipped in the way that say if Apple computer needs to make more iPhones, they can order more parts and they can have more iPhones on the street in six months or whatever it is. And for you, if you need more of whatever particular unit that is, that’s going to take two, five, 10 years. So, when you articulate risk, you’re really talking about the risk of the readiness of the force. It’s not like you can’t articulate the risk of what happens if you don’t have something available later. Who’s calculating that into the picture and how does that come back to you? Because at some point, somebody’s going to say, I know we took that risk, but we have to do it anyway.

Lt. Gen. Adrian L. Spain:

Well, I think what you’re getting at is this is a continual dialogue, and one of the things that I will admit that the Navy does pretty well is forecast where the carrier availability is going to be. And so part of the move for the Air Force, and one of the reasons we’ve been, I’m going to say nickel and dime, that’s not really the right phrase, but it feels that way to those of us on the receiving end of it if you’re being deployed routinely, is because we have been unable to say, “Hey, in two years if you use this force now, it is going to be in this phase of its readiness buildup and it will not be available to deploy for X reasons that we can spell out.” And we really haven’t been able to do that in the past, not sufficiently. The other thing that we’ve been able to articulate is this idea of certification of the forces that are getting ready to be available.

And that’s a word that resonates in the joint force. And when we have a certify phase, it means, hey, they’re working their way up to being ready to go do the thing that we’re going to ask them to do, and they need to get certified. And when they’re certified, that’s when they become available. And so part of this model that I think has shifted in our favor a bit is our commitment to certifying the forces through the Match Coms today and getting them a training workup that gets them to certification and then an actual blessing by the Match Com commanders to say, “Hey, I believe they’re certified at this time,” and now they’re available to be used by the joint force. And that is something that resonates very clearly with the other services and they do it very similarly to us.

Panel Moderator: Tobias Naegele:

So General Schiess, I want to go talk a little bit about Ukraine. You talked about the jamming there, you brought up earlier, but we’ve seen cyber effects, we’ve seen jamming, we’ve seen new kinds of weapons and new means of deploying those weapons. So obviously when you talk about the wars we’re fighting and the big picture, how is that war that we’re fighting changing the way you think about that high-end fight that, maybe looming ahead the next war as general Spain referred to it?

Lt. Gen. Douglas A. Schiess:

Yeah, thanks. We are learning lots of lessons from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the capabilities there. We mentioned earlier about the electromagnetic spectrum and how they are operating. They are jamming our communication, they’re jamming communications, they are jamming GPS, and both them and the PLA are working towards being able to jam our ISR satellites as well. And so that is a constant concern. I do think, and to Elmo’s point about risk, the risk of the Space Force is really that we were built on a deliver mission. We were built on a benign as the Secretary of the Air Force and the Chief of Space Operations say we were built as a merchant marine, and now the nation is asking us to be a United States Navy that can make sure those commons, which in this case is the US space, Command’s AOR of the space common, that we can defend that and that we can have space superiority in that.

So, our risk is how fast can we get to the capabilities that we need? Going back to the electromagnetic spectrum fight that’s happening there, one of the things that we’ve learned, and it’s one of the things that we’re trying to do in the capabilities that we’re bringing on, is that a proliferated low earth orbit of communications is effective. In this case, it’s a commercial company that’s providing that, and the Ukrainians have been able to capitalize on that. That makes it much more difficult for the adversary to jam because there are thousands of satellites that can provide that. That doesn’t mean that they’re not trying. And so that we have to continue to do that. They could also start to get into GPS jamming. So how do we make the GPS system more resilient? How do we make it more capable? Are there other ways besides how we’ve been doing it for the last 50 years?

And so, we have to get after those to be able to provide to the combatant commander, in this case, both the commander of US Space Command, but SACEUR and European Commander and then likely the Indo-Pacom Commander, how do we provide capabilities? One way for us to do that is to get really good at geolocating where those jamming sources are coming and then putting them on a joint target list to be able to action by maybe some of my other service components and be able to get after so that we can get to attribution as quickly as possible, put them on a target list and then take them out so that we can continue to be able to do our mission.

Panel Moderator: Tobias Naegele:

I’d like to kind of go down the line, how else are we seeing lessons from that particular conflict apply to how you might think about high-end fight or really any fight? Because each new conflict presents new opportunities for somebody to experiment. The longer it goes, the more experimentation there is, the more lessons learned and the more you have to take from those so that you anticipate that in the future. General Conley, you want to kick off?

Lt. Gen. Michael Conley:

Yeah, I think the Ukraine crisis right now has given us an opportunity to watch and learn and see how both sides are innovating quickly and its scale. And it makes me think back to about five years ago when I was commanding in Afghanistan. I had a special tactics unit that was there, and in their spare time, these guys were having quadcopters. They were buying on Amazon and had them shipped over there and they were kitting them out in their spare time with cameras and frag grenades and other things at the time. How can we breach better? Can we send a quadcopter a couple hundred meters ahead of us to look and scan? And that’s become kind of standard with them. The Ukraine crisis has highlighted the ability to scale it with more advanced UASs with more capability. And I think it’s got industry engaged more.

And I think at the end of the day, if we’re able to take what we’re seeing there, figure out where it fits into the Air Force model of the capabilities we want to bring, and more importantly how to rapidly move to the next thing. What we can’t get bogged down in is buying some new low-end capabilities, cheaper capability and that being the only thing. I think what Ukraine has showed us is that next month there’s a new technology and we got to be able to jump to that just as quickly. And so, I think there’s opportunity to learn from others in this case. And the same way that some of our adversaries have learned from us over the last twenty-plus years, we’re now learning from them.

Lt. Gen. Adrian L. Spain:

Yeah, I think one of the things we also have to understand is that a war between, a high-end fight between two peers is going to look very different from what we’re seeing in Ukraine. Russia wouldn’t fight NATO the way that they’re fighting Ukraine. China wouldn’t fight the United States or the West the way that Russia is fighting Ukraine inside of Ukraine, the elements of that will be very different. They’re talking to nuclear-armed peers that we are concerned with in the world, one of whom can outspend us, and the contours of that will just be very different. Not to say that we can’t learn from what’s going on there and we should. I think the first lesson is the importance of air superiority and what war looks like when you don’t have it on either side. And that’s what we’re seeing, and we don’t want to be there.

Let’s just be clear about that. We don’t want to be in that fight with anybody where air superiority isn’t achievable because it’s been denied to us. And so, we need to have capabilities that allow us to achieve that. But what we’re also seeing is in the innovation space and in the asymmetry space, that there’s a balance between high-end capability and asymmetric capability that needs to innovate quickly and iterate quickly. But that balance of being close in and achieving an effect in an asymmetrical way as a part of a system of systems, can enable air superiority in ways that conventional high-end capability on its own when you go force on force or strength against strength may not be able to do so. We need to look at the ways that we integrate with the joint force for sure, which we always do, but also in those technologies that are providing alternate paths to achieving the same effect.

And when General Allvin talks about air superiority from a system or a system of systems, that’s really what he’s talking about. I may be able to provide a function or a part of that system from a platform or a place or an asset that is completely different than we’ve done it in the past because technologies allowed us to do it. We may be able to achieve an effect inside of a two-ad environment not associated with runways. And because we have asymmetric capabilities in place that achieve a similar effect, but not without putting all of our high-end exquisite capability at risk. Those are the things that we need to do. And the things that we are continuing to work on and why the changes that we’re talking about as a part of re-optimization are so important. All the elements of developing that force, concepts, acquisition, munitions, and depth of capacity, if we have to surge and sustain over time are all elements of the 24 tasks that the Chief and the Secretary rolled out in February.

Panel Moderator: Tobias Naegele:

I want to come back right to that point. That was next on my list. And I know this is an issue of significant concern to you. When we talk about capacity, we’ve been talking mostly about forces, but armaments is a really significant issue and we’ll get to a space sort of component of that in a moment. But I want to hear about how we’re managing that level of risk. One thing we have seen with Ukraine is that that war has gone on much longer and it’s expended an enormous amount of munitions resources. We don’t necessarily have the ready capacity to replace that.

Lt. Gen. Adrian L. Spain:

Yeah. The volume of fires is another lesson that we’re getting out of the Ukraine war. When you talk about really two pretty sizable armies that are firing against each other. The way that they’re employing it certainly doesn’t help them with the volume of fires required in order to achieve an effect, but it is going to be a challenge to sustain if you didn’t already have the depth of your munition’s storage at the start of the conflict. We’re not talking about low-end projectiles that we are going to have to develop. These are all pretty high-end technologies and building up the capacity and the industrial base is just as important as building up our capacity to fire in that same volume. And so, we have to continue to strengthen both the industrial base, our relationship with the industrial base here, the articulation of the requirement for resourcing to get to that level of depth and the knowledge that if this thing starts, that the quiver is going to go down very quickly, and we have to be able to replenish it.

And that goes for all of the things that can be attributed over time. It’s people, its infrastructure, its fuel, its parts, it’s lubricant of barrels. As an example, inside of Ukraine that was pretty acute to us pretty early on. All of the things that you kind of take for granted as being there, if you don’t have some surge capacity, some margin to accelerate when you’re actually in conflict, it won’t be there when you need it.

Panel Moderator: Tobias Naegele:

So general Schiess, a lot of times when people talk about the space war, when we have a space war, they say, “Oh, it’s going to be over in 24 hours.” Now there’s probably some various ways-

Lt. Gen. Adrian L. Spain:

Not if we can do anything about it.

Panel Moderator: Tobias Naegele:

There are probably various ways to look at that, but I think that what I’d like to hear from you is the fact that in some way your obligation is to make sure that that never happens. I don’t expect you to tell us how you’re going to shoot down somebody’s offensive space weapons or whatever. But I’d like to hear how we address that and how we sort of ensure that ongoing operational effectiveness.

Lt. Gen. Douglas A. Schiess:

And going back to what Elmo said too about the not learning the lessons from some of these, when we go to a peer-to-peer, a nuclear peer, things are going to be different in that kind of environment. So, we need the ability to quickly change communications, not hours, but seconds or maybe even autonomously change our communications. We saw through some of the first volleys of missiles in the Ukraine invasion, and then again, even more fold in the Israeli, is the ability for our missile warning, missile tracking ability to provide that information to shooters to get after that as quickly as possible. When the CSO talks about what he needs to be able to bring the force for the combatant commanders, he talks about space superiority and space domain awareness. So, the ability for us to have the ability to get after somebody else’s capability so that they can target our use space to target our joint war fighters.

And so how do we do that? We need kit to be able to do that, to be able to keep those forces at bay. Right now, China has the ability, so does Russia to do a direct-descent, anti-satellite to go after our assets and take them out, which then provide our forces with what they need to be able to do their mission. Both of them are working on as well to include those jammies. So, we have to have the Combatant Commander, General Wyden, US Space Command, in his integrated priority list he needs space fires and battle space characterization and the ability to see to those forces all the way from his strategic center down to operational and down mission command all the way down to our combat. So, we need the kit to be able to do that. But I’ll tell you right now, every day guardians go to our operation centers, and they work with the kit that they have to be able to say to the Russian Federation and to the PLA, “Today’s not the day your guardians are going to make sure that you are not going to win. “

Panel Moderator: Tobias Naegele:

All right. General Conley, what kit do you need?

Lt. Gen. Michael Conley:

I could always take more. I mean, I think our combatant commanders would always like more soft, but we have, the kit that we have fortunately for in a pretty good place with our aircraft. Our oldest aircraft is a 2005 U-28. And I think some of my counterparts would wish they had that problem. When you’re talking about aircraft that are been flying since the fifties and sixties, I think people is probably the thing I need more of. And not just more people, but the right people. We need problem solvers, we need thinkers, and it takes a while to build up a special operator ready to go down range. So, you can’t just take someone off the street and have them down range quickly. So, I need time more than I need more people, but we’re going to bring on the OA1K in the next year, which will give us more capability.

Our armed over Overwatch platform, we continue to modernize our MC130’s, our AC130’s. And we’re still, despite them being a relatively simple aircraft, we’re doing a lot of novel things with MQ9’s. So, I think long as we continue to have problem solvers that can think about different ways to employ what we already have in novel ways, I think I can live with a kid. I have. And the last thing I’d say is, and this is something I’ve been stressing within the command, we have become really good, and I’d say AFSOC is great at being SOCOM’s air component. What I’m challenging my team to be is better at being the air Force’s solve component. So, I want to be able to reach out to General Hecker, to General Snyder and say, “How can AFSOC help you with some of your tough problems?” Because I think in the great power competition, we’re going to need to be better integrated with the CFAC and the AOC over there. And so now is the time to start moving out in that direction.

Panel Moderator: Tobias Naegele:

Well, you just said that you wish, what you really need is more time, and we could have used a little more time to get into a few more things. I thank you very much for your time. Everybody please give these gentlemen a hand.

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