Supporting Combatant Commanders
March 4, 2025
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This transcript was generated with the assistance of AI. Please report inconsistencies to comms@afa.org.
Lt. Gen. Gus Guastella, USAF (Ret.):
All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome. Appreciate you guys being here. It’s great to be back at an AFA out here in Colorado. It’s also great to be moderating or chairing this panel. This panel’s cool to me. Why? It’s ’cause those of you that aspire to be leaders in the Air Force, whether it’s squadron command, group command, wing command, what we have here, representatives, our number of Air Force commanders, the air component commanders, cyber component commanders, that can talk about how they provide advice to combatant commands on the best application of air power. How do you use air power? How do you use cyber power, Air Force cyber power? How do you best use it? How do you create the effects you need for our nation in each of their geographic areas or their domains? So we’re really excited to have this lineup here. And so let’s step through some introductions. So first off, on my immediate left here, we have the commander of First Air Force, or Air Force’s Northern, responsible for the number one mission, which is defense of our homeland. Please welcome Lieutenant General Luke Torch Ahmann. All right, next to him, and also an old friend, the commander of Air Force’s Central Command, responsible for the employing air power in probably the most kinetic region in the world, and probably setting a lot of new records there as well. But really glad to have you here, escape all the way from the Middle East. Please welcome Lieutenant General Derek “Trapper” France. All right, we also have the deputy commander of 16th Air Force’s Air Force Cyber, the biggest NAF that we have in the Air Force, responsible not only for cyber, but for our big wing ISR, doing a tremendous job globally, and a lot of responsibility. Welcome, please, Major General Larry “Shanks” Broadwell. And say, the most important for last, the deputy commander of Air Force South Com, where all the resources go, I mean, you suck up everything down there, but we’re really glad to have you and your perspective, Brigadier General John “Shrimp” Creel. Welcome, both. Okay, so the game plan for today is we’re gonna step through, let each of the guys talk, give us a few minutes on what’s going on in your AOR. Just tell us what’s happening. Over to you.
Lt. Gen. Luke Ahmann:
All right, thanks, Gus, and good afternoon, everyone. Again, I’m Torch. C-1-double-A is what we call it, ’cause actually I wear four hats, not just the two Gus mentioned, so thought I’d walk through those real quick, just to give you an understanding of what’s going on in each of the parts of our organization. So first is CONAR, that’s the Continental Region of the NORAD Agreement, where we’re charged with aerospace control, aerospace warning, and maritime warning, and that’s where we do the 24/7 Homeland Defense Mission with fighters across the CONUS, as well as tankers and an AEW on alert at any given time. But in addition to that, we also do presidential TFRs for the presidential travel to protect him in any national security events, and then also have a role in the NCR for the protection of the NCR. Under my 1st Air Force hat, I don’t know if they turned the lights up purposely, so I couldn’t see anyone, except for one of my bosses in the front row. So General Wilsbach, 1st Air Force is under ACC, that’s for our organized train and equip, and the one-numbered Air Force that has both the AFNORTH, AFSPACE, and CONAR hats as a component as part of that role. In AFSPACE, also charged with Homeland Defense as the JFAC for the AOR, but also in addition to Homeland Defense and things like support to the southern border that we’re doing right now on an increased basis with ISR mostly, we also have defense support to civil authorities, so think all of your wildfire support that we did in California over the summer, and then hurricane support and any other natural disaster that happens. And then also under AFNORTH, we do theater security cooperation, predominantly with Canada, Mexico, and the Bahamas on a regular basis, and obviously that’s in addition to our regular standing NORAD agreement for the binational command we have under the NORAD hat. And then the newest part of the organization is under AFSPACE, that’s the Air Force component to Space Command. When that was stood up, it was initially focused on human spaceflight support, so think of the ability of the Air Force to go help NASA and our partnership with NASA to rescue on a bad day astronauts that don’t land where they’re supposed to, so we’re poised to do that. But we’re starting to think bigger about that as well. In my discussions with General Whiting, again, if you were in the panel this morning, it talked about air and space superiority and that linkage of those two things together. We’re starting to think about what the Air Force component can do for Space Comm in order to enable the joint force and vice versa, what can Space Comm do for the Air Force component in order to create that air and space superiority to create a pulse or whatever joint effect we’re looking for. So those are the hats we wear. I will end with just recognizing the great work of a bunch of great Americans and Airmen doing the 24/7 Homeland Defense Mission, flying ISR on the southern border, still supporting on a regular basis all the supports of civil authorities that we do on a regular basis, and I think on the space front, we’re getting ready for a launch next week. So kudos to the great work by some great Airmen out there.
Lt. Gen. Gus Guastella, USAF (Ret.):
Awesome, thanks a lot. Okay, Trapper.
Lt. Gen. Derek France:
Okay, so the task is to, in two or three minutes, explain everything that’s going on in the theater.
Lt. Gen. Gus Guastella, USAF (Ret.):
Yeah. We’ll give you one extra minute.
Lt. Gen. Derek France:
I don’t wanna take more than my two or three minutes, but I will say that, as you follow news in the CENTCOM theater, there are sometimes people will say that nothing ever changes in CENTCOM, and yet there are days or weeks where decades happen in the snap of a finger. And certainly it’s been dominated over the last 18 months by the Israel-Hamas conflict that started on October 7th of 2023, and a lot of the crisis that have spun off from that, to include a war with Lebanon, now in a ceasefire phase, to include historic kinetic exchanges between Israel and Iran, to include record-setting UAS attacks and theater ballistic missile attacks that have dominated that landscape, a rising network of proxy powers, including the Houthis down in southern Yemen, which have basically started to control a major waterway, the Bab el-Mandeb, and make it a gunfight to go through there. And recently, we’ve seen some of those proxy forces lose some of their ground with the fall of the Assad regime in Syria. So some of the Iranian influence with their proxies has waned a little bit over the past couple months, and so there’s some opportunities there that we see moving ahead. And so that’s a really quick snapshot of what is going on. I will also just reference the focus areas that we have in theater from an absent perspective, is a regional approach to integrated air missile defense, with the acknowledgement that not one nation can do it alone, but together, we can face a multi-axis threat, which we see in that theater every day. The second thing is to constantly be ready to transition to major combat operations, because as I said earlier, things change quickly in the absent theater, and so having a posture that is able to quickly turn to that, and the processes that are able to do that. Campaigning, so not always looking at the five meter target, which is a challenge sometimes in our theater, but thinking about the long-term implications and campaigning against some of our major global competitors, both Chinese and Russian influence that we do see in that theater. And then finally, thinking about how we do command and control, and making sure that it is robust and can survive the six month rotations that happen through the theater, with about 12,000 Airmen that are forward deployed at any one time, 10 to 12, depending on the day, at any one time, and make sure that our command and control processes can survive that lack of continuity. So that’s it from Madison, I’ll turn it over to the rest here.
Lt. Gen. Gus Guastella, USAF (Ret.):
Thanks a lot, Trapper.
Maj. Gen. Larry Broadwell:
Thanks, sir. The 16th Air Force, I have the honor to represent, be one of 49,000 active duty reserve and civilian Airmen who are part of our formation there at 16th Air Force AF Cyber. As the obvious, the name would imply, we have the responsibility to lead the Air Force’s entire enterprise of our cyber force. In addition to that, however, we also have the responsibility to lead the Air Force’s entire enterprise of your intelligence force and your reconnaissance force. And so, thus the size of the organization and the robustness of the responsibilities of 16th Air Force. There’s frankly nothing that the war fighters inside of the United States Air Force, and for most of the joint force, nothing that they do without support of our enterprise, which is a great source of pride for our Airmen inside of 16th Air Force. And when you look across the Air Force core missions of air and space superiority, Global Strike, Rapid Global Mobility, ISR and C2, all of those core functions, if you were to put them up on an OV-1, visualization of what they do, what you’ll see are lots of lightning bolts. And all those lightning bolts are either the connectiveness between those missions or the information that flows to enhance the lethality of those missions. And those lightning bolts are provided by 16th Air Force. And it’s again, a great source of pride, of the 49,000 active reserve and civilian Airmen that are supporting that mission. And what I’ve heard so far on the stage, and I expect that I’ll hear it out of South Com as well as our role in supporting all of their missions. And it’s one that we take great pride in. Thanks so much.
Lt. Gen. Gus Guastella, USAF (Ret.):
Thanks, Shanks. Shrimp, over to you.
Brig. Gen. John B. Creel:
All right, thanks, sir. Thanks, everybody. Just thanks for inviting Air Force Southern to the panel, AFSouth. Although for some reason, I feel a little bit outranked and outclassed here on the stage, but I’ll give it a go. So Air Force of Southern has been the air component to US Southern Command since 1987. Just last September though, we were designated a service component command with major command authorities directly reporting to the chief of staff of the Air Force. Our area of responsibility, like all the rest here, is very dynamic. We have emerging threats from China, Russia, Iran. They obviously create problems within the area of responsibility. We continue to be vigilant with what they do to protect US interest. On the other hand, not just that, our partners, which are very good partners, by the way, they have problems within their own countries, transnational criminal organizations. Think of drug cartels, smugglers. They definitely erode the rule of law and they also work their way into vulnerabilities in each of those countries. As we work close with our partners, what we do is we allow them to counter those malign state actors like China, Russia, and Iran. And we also build capability with them to also deter those transnational criminal organizations. And we do all that because we enforce what we have right now as us being their preferred choice when it comes to military integration. Chair, back over to you.
Lt. Gen. Gus Guastella, USAF (Ret.):
Awesome, thank you, Shrimp. Okay, so I’m gonna start some questions here. We’re gonna start with General Ahmann first about all of us have seen in the news recently the direction from the president on establishing an Iron Dome originally, but now I think they’ve changed the name to Golden Dome for America. And so we’d love to hear your perspectives on where we’re going with this.
Lt. Gen. Luke Ahmann:
Yeah, thanks, Gus. So I’ll start with the concept of the Golden Dome as a layered defense is not necessarily new to NORTHCOM. For sure, they’ve done a lot of thinking on it. So in my AFNORTH role and a supporting role to NORTHCOM, the way we’re thinking about it is really a couple of domes within a dome. So if you think of the Golden Dome as the overarching dome, it’s nothing new in the sense that we have to have a sensing layer, we have to have a making sense layer, and then we have to have an effectors layer. So if you think of the first dome there as the domain awareness, you have to have domain awareness to have any kind of effect or understanding of what you’re dealing with. And that applies to everyone that’s underneath it. And that domain awareness, unlike maybe in the past where we’ve taken an airplane, like an E3, and we’ve created some domain awareness, we’re talking from seabed to space. So when we talk a system of systems, being able to connect all of the sensors that are available, manage that data, and then create that domain awareness across the system is the first part of that Golden Dome. The second part is a little outside of my AOR, but that’s your ballistic missile defense and your hypersonic defense, and a dome that would cover that portion of it. And then the third in my wheelhouse would be everything else below that. So think cruise missiles, UAS, particularly category three through five, and the ability to have effectors in there. And we’ve learned a lot from Trapper and his team in how they approach that integrated layered area defense so that you don’t necessarily have one system. Again, you’re gonna have a system of systems that are working together. Some of those could be airborne, some of those are terrestrial-based, some kinetic, some non-kinetic, that are creating that layered effect. And in the homeland, the way we’re looking at how you protect such a large piece of geography is based on the things that we care about, and particularly continuity of government and then the ability to pick the force up and deploy the force forward should we need to. So being able to protect those critical nodes and focusing on those areas first before we start to spread out.
Lt. Gen. Gus Guastella, USAF (Ret.):
Okay, great, thank you. All right, so next up is over to Trapper again. So you guys operate in one of the most dynamic regions of the world. We were just talking about it on the way up to the room here, especially over the last 18 months. Since October 6th, it’s gotten wild. So tell me how, or share with us, how is the command realigning to ensure readiness while you also deal with these emerging threats that are going on?
Lt. Gen. Derek France:
Well, in a couple ways. I think from a realignment standpoint, if you’ve served in AFCENT before, and it hadn’t been real recent, you would be maybe surprised to see that we are very much a split headquarters now. So the AFCENT main is back at Shaw Air Force Base. And about 2/3 of the staff, and in fact 2/3 of the AOC, resides at Shaw. So a lot of the reachback support, a lot of the planning, a lot of the logistics and things that happen that there, where the forward headquarters in Qatar is about 1/3 of the AOC, more the current ops, current intel type of focus. We have staff members that go back and forth. I spend about half my time forward and half my time back at Shaw working each of that. So the connectivity is important, the battle rhythm is important, but I think there’s a readiness lesson in how we will have to fight future fights as a distributed ops. When wings go out to AFCENT, they will continue to get ace training. And so moving forward, we did a exercise last month called Agile Spartan, which involved all of the wings deploying small ace footprints to other locations within AFCENT with the CAOC command and controlling that. And that did a couple of things. It increased the readiness of the force on the ground to be able to do that in a combat scenario. It increased the readiness of the force for some learning opportunities that they will take back to apply in other theaters. And in our theater specifically, it reinforces the relationship building that naturally occurs when you do that, that we develop relationships with other nations when we put small presence forward to look at other locations and build relationships that happen on the ground in that dynamic scenario. And those are relationships that we’ll use in a combat operation. And it’s not just me and my counterpart shaking hands and taking a picture, but it’s down at the NCO and CTO level where relationships are built in the last. So that’s some of the realignment and some of the readiness aspects that we’ve done at AFCENT.
Lt. Gen. Gus Guastella, USAF (Ret.):
Just one quick follow-up, Trapper. So is it safe to say that even though you could execute that function of the CAOC, distributed it back at Shaw, that they’ll always, you’ll always have some forward presence for that facility or a facility like that?
Lt. Gen. Derek France:
I think for the foreseeable future, given where we are right now, that there is a tangible touchpoint forward that is value and that is extremely valuable. And so they’re extremely value-added across a lot of different functions when we have that. So for those couple of reasons, the relationship building and the forward presence that is a tangible, both optics and reality of what that is, that I would say we’re at a point where I think we have it about right. Some minor tweaks here and there as we move forward. But yeah, I think we’ll have a forward presence there certainly for the foreseeable future.
Lt. Gen. Gus Guastella, USAF (Ret.):
Great, thanks, Trapper. Okay, Shanks, over to you. And you talked before about the lightning bolts that connect everything. So if you don’t mind, describe for us here the role of information in today’s battle space, as well as how you would see it in the future battle space.
Maj. Gen. Larry Broadwell:
Thanks for the question. So it’s really a hard topic to discuss. And it’s because if you haven’t grown up, and for me, I’ve grown up in the combat Air Force, I understand how information makes me a better pilot. I understand how information makes us a better, a more lethal force. But when you then display, if you were to splash a big graph behind me and look at all the blue and the red assets that are out there, and you talk about how we’re gonna build this, fill in the blank, the term of the day, the mesh or whatever, it’s hard to really understand the importance of it. And I was, like most of my really difficult conversations, I was trying to explain this to my dad at a breakfast table one time, and it’s like, “Hey, dad,” and he just wasn’t getting it. And what just dawned on me, I need to create an analogy. And I created an analogy, it’s a football analogy for him. And I’m gonna try it out on this crowd. Any football fans in the room? I got one, I got two. So this is probably gonna flop. So it’s like information in the battle space today is like the contemporary football game where the offensive coordinators in the booth, he’s got a script, he calls a play, it goes to the head coach, it makes its way into, for this crowd, it would be Bo Nix out with the Denver Broncos. He gets the call into his helmet, he goes to the huddle, he calls a play, and he knows when he gets to the line, he’s gonna be able to call an audible. So he gets to the line, looks across at the linebackers, he says, “Hey, looks like the linebackers “are kind of soft on their heels, “they’re probably gonna drop back into coverage. “I’m gonna call an audible, “I’m gonna hand it off to the running back.” Hands it to the running back, he gets two yards. A success, maybe. And so that’s kind of where we are today, but where I see information has taken us in the future is as a much more enhanced position. That is, begins the same, right? So same script, same play comes in through the offensive coordinator, through the head coach, Bo Nix gets it in his helmet, he goes into the huddle, he calls a play, to the line he goes, but now when he gets to the line, instead of having to look to survey the defense, he gets an interception of what the defensive coordinator actually provided to the defensive linebacker. So he knows not what it looks like, but what they’re actually going to do. So he calls the audible, but he knows he’s not gonna run the ball because he knows it’s a running blitz. So he turns his back, he hikes the ball, he puts the football on the running back’s belly to draw the linebackers in, they’re blitzing to draw the safety in, he pulls it, he knows he’s gonna pull it because he knows what the defense was doing. He also looks in his visor, and he sees that the blind side defensive end behind him is not gonna crash in on him, so he’s able to turn and run a bootleg and get ready to throw the ball. Okay, so here’s where it gets good. So now he looks across the field, he doesn’t have to decide who’s open, information tells him who’s open. So the 1.34 seconds that NFL quarterback has to make a decision, he makes that decision immediately. So he throws the ball, no wasted time, he throws the ball. And the system was able to decide, hey, these are where the cornerbacks are, the defensive backs relative to your receivers, this is the receiver that’s probably the most open, oh, by the way, it’s your star receiver, throwing the ball. So he throws him the ball. The next thing that happens is as the ball is in flight, the system is still monitoring what’s going on in the defensive back, and he sees that the safety is really gonna double cover your star receiver, and he didn’t show that until the ball came out. And so as the safety crashes down, now there’s an in-flight update provided to the football, and it no longer goes to your star receiver who was running a 10-yard out, it goes, you see where this is going, it goes to the now the open receiver, you score a touchdown. So it’s the difference between a two-yard gain and a touchdown. And the trick for us is to figure this out, because information is gonna be readily available to us. It’s figuring out what information, in this analogy, gets to the quarterback, what information makes it to the football, so that we can score the touchdown.
Lt. Gen. Gus Guastella, USAF (Ret.):
I like it. I finally understand now. Thank you. You do have a fallback job now with the Broncos, ’cause if you can do any of this for them, they need it, so. All right.
Maj. Gen. Larry Broadwell:
Is Troy Calhoun in here? Troy Calhoun, I hope you’re taking notes.
Lt. Gen. Gus Guastella, USAF (Ret.):
Yeah.
Lt. Gen. Luke Ahmann:
Well, as a Patriots fan, if Deflategate was a big deal, I think the in-flight updates to the footballs is gonna be a bigger deal.
Lt. Gen. Gus Guastella, USAF (Ret.):
All right. Shrimp, for you, tell us a little bit, tell us about the, so, you know, you’re the South, I’m here in the Western Hem, but there are threats. So tell us a little about the threats that you see down there, and some of the things you’re doing to counter those threats.
Brig. Gen. John B. Creel:
Yes, sir. Yeah, that’s the big question. So China, obviously, ahead of Russia and Iran on influence. That influence goes, you know, kind of starts economic, and then as they use that economic power, then to force their way into other military-type integration and deals, offering certain countries different jets. We just had a big win last year with Argentina, buying third-party aircraft from Denmark for $400 million. So that was a big win. Okay, that’s just one example. But that took a lot of time, and that was not on my watch, not on Major General Minow’s watch, or even Lieutenant General Pettis, when he was the commander. It was like years of work through different staffs. That’s just one example. For what we can do, though, I’d like to say that we need to be present. If we’re not in the room, they will be. If we’re in the room, we find that they’re not invited to the room. Not every time, but most of the time, especially when you talk about trying to integrate. So if they have a proposal to build an air operations center, as soon as that is looked at by a country, then they realize that they’re gonna probably lose all interaction and integration with us. They take that, they look at that with everything that they do. And what we have to do is just be present. That starts at the general officer level. General Minot was just in theater yesterday, as a matter of fact. And then it goes into, when you do that, then you’re invited to the exercises. We do big exercises with air superiority. We do combat search and rescue. We do a lot of space. We do some medical stuff, too. So everything Air Force. South Com actually only supports one of those, hosts one of those, as a joint staff initiative. And then the others are, they’re actually hosted by Columbia and Brazil, and we think Argentina, possibly in the future. The big thing is that we have to be in the room. If we are in the room, that keeps the malign state actors out of the room. And it works, but you gotta have forces to do that, and you gotta have funding to do that. So a big shout out, Sir General Wilsbach to ACC. We’ve always figured out a way to make things happen. People are out there that wanna participate, and we need to try to find the funding for it, and somehow we do. And a huge shout out to any of the Guard out there, the Reserves that are out there in the audience. They are participating in everything, and they want to. And together, we work as a team, and again, I talked about that Argentina win. That was the whole team, from years and years. And every time any Airman goes down South, they do a fabulous job, and they represent the United States Air Force, and the United States of America extremely well.
Lt. Gen. Gus Guastella, USAF (Ret.):
Thank you very much, that’s a great answer. You know, to your point about the F-16, in that example, which by the way, is used a lot of places, when they buy US equipment, that means it’s gonna be a decades-long relationship. And somebody who goes through training next year, the F-16 at wherever, at DM, or wherever, Tucson, wherever they’re doing it now, that person, someday later, may be the Chief of Staff of their Air Force, and that’s what those long-term relationships build when they go with US.
Brig. Gen. John B. Creel:
Yes, sir, we just added a foreign liaison officer from Argentina, and most of our foreign liaison officers leave this post, and usually go on to the general officer ranks. So it will continue for generations when you do deals like that.
Lt. Gen. Gus Guastella, USAF (Ret.):
Great to hear. So back over to our north side of the house, and we have seen in the news, if you look at what’s happened in Trapper’s AOR, if you look at what happened in Russia, there’s proliferation of unmanned aerial systems in those fights. Those of us who saw on the news here, we had unobserved, we observed a lot of the UAS’s over Langley Air Force Base, and Vandenberg Space Force Base. What can you tell us about that?
Lt. Gen. Luke Ahmann:
Yeah, so I’d first identify, I mentioned the multiple hats we wear down at Tyndall. That’s a challenge, but it’s also an opportunity. So NORTHCOM was recently designated as a coordinating authority for counter UAS in their AOR, and then ACC took the ownership for the Air Force. So right there, you start to see some of the benefits of the synergy of having those, of the organizations that we have grouped together grouped together to address the problem. I would point out two things when I look at this. First is the challenge of the problem itself. And that’s what you pointed out, Gus, is that proliferation is way outpacing any way that we are coming up with responses to it. Because it’s so easy to acquire, because it’s easy to modify, because it’s easy to work around, a lot of times on class systems that are designed to defeat it, it’s a very challenging problem to get after. And that’s where we need to challenge industry to think about solutions that are agile, open software, modifiable, to be able to address the changing environment in the arena. The second problem I think that we also have to recognize, and this is maybe more of an issue in the homeland than it is with Trapper’s AOR, is a policy perspective. There’s a lot of challenges when you look at 130i and what we can do on an installation versus once it crosses the wire and goes to civil authorities and all of that gray area in between. There are some risks we can take in exploring that space, but in the end we have to work on the authorities to make sure we can get that right as we start to address the problem. One of the things that we are doing to get after this is a program called Athena, which for lack of a better term is a cop. So back, much like I described the Golden Dome, you have to start with some common domain awareness. And what this system does is take multiple systems, so it’s not a sensor, it’s not an effector, but when we stood it up in the NCRCC out in Chantilly for the inauguration, we plugged 20 plus different sensors into this system from across the interagency. And what that allowed us to do is create a common picture across the interagency, so because we have a very challenging policy perspective, we could then pass that information to the right person that could do something about it. And that type of effort is how we’re looking at it. Holistically, we have to continue to work on the sensor and effector integration.
Lt. Gen. Gus Guastella, USAF (Ret.):
Absolutely, thanks very much. And you know, that’s a great lead in, because I’m gonna kind of almost take the same question over to Trapper to you. You’ve seen a lot, and you guys, I want you to brag about your own Airmen, have done a lot in the counter UAS domain and to help our partners over there. So where do you see air power going and evolving in your fight as you deal with these emerging threats?
Lt. Gen. Derek France:
We’ve seen in this theater hundreds of one-way attack UAS. And so, you know, famously, April 13th and 14th, there were roughly 300 one-way attack, sorry, roughly 200 one-way attack UAS that launched out of Iran, across Iraq and Jordan and Syria into Israel as a target. But there have been over 300 launched from the Houthis out of Yemen into the Red Sea against ships or the longer range ones up into, towards Israel and militia groups in Iraq, launching UAS against US and coalition bases and against Israel as well. So the total of all that over the past 18 months is well over 700 one-way attack UAS. Coalition forces have managed to engage and shoot down over 300 of them. And so the challenges there are a couple. One is the cost curve. When we shoot down a 20 to $30,000 one-way attack UAS with an AIM-9X, that’s not great return on investment, but if that’s all you got, then you’re gonna shoot it down. So we’ve done some experimentation with some AGR rockets that have been modified with a proximity fuse to take that down, as well as some other things. Base defense has a lot of good systems that protect our bases. The challenge there is to try and get them integrated and talking to each other so that you have a system that can cue each other and pick the right system to engage those threats and have the end state effectors. But it really starts with a sense and an understanding of the long-range air domain awareness. And so General Wilsbach and team did a great panel earlier on air superiority. In my mind, it starts with that. We have to understand what’s going on in the air to have air superiority. It just doesn’t happen without it. You have to know what’s out there so that you can make operational-level decisions when it comes to the weight of effort you need to put forward to tackle it, how you bring other partners into the mix, and how you engage that threat so that you chip away, if it’s a larger wave, you chip away at it before it gets to the target you’re trying to defend. So a lot of great work by our Airmen. I mean, heroic work, rooting around at low altitude at night, hunting slow-moving UAS at 100 feet is not for the timid. And we’ve put out some decorations to several of our Airmen in the theater, notably from April, and the Airmen are doing fantastic work out there. Thanks.
Lt. Gen. Gus Guastella, USAF (Ret.):
Thanks for sharing that. All right, let’s take it back into the cyber domain. Shanks, you previously mentioned that the high-tech nature of cyber and IT operations within 16th Air Force, are there any ongoing projects that are focused on the discovery and integration of emerging technologies? And how does that tie into recruitment efforts?
Maj. Gen. Larry Broadwell:
Yeah, so emerging technologies and tools, they are the lifeblood of 16th Air Force. I mean, we began the talk talking about, we’ll be inundated, we’ll be overwhelmed by the information that’s gonna be available by the sensors, both air-based, land-based, and space-based sensors. So it’s not the fact that we’re gonna, we won’t have enough information, it’s what do you do with it? And so emerging technologies are gonna help us. This is where, as a general officer, I’m supposed to wave my hand and say AIML, and you guys go, yeah, but he doesn’t know anything that he’s talking about, and frankly, I don’t. But what I do know is it’s critically important. And consequently, 16th Air Force, we have an initiative called the Phoenix Initiative. And the Phoenix Initiative is run by our technical director, an SES with a deep technical expertise, and the idea is really twofold, threefold. One is to have a storefront, or an interface with industry to be able to come and bring ideas to us routinely, because there are frankly times when we just don’t know what’s available, and so we welcome them in. The other is to establish long-term relationships with other public organizations, academia as well as industry. What I’m noticing is the best, like kind of the white-hot areas of innovation are areas where the tactical expert is confronted with a problem, and he meets with academia and/or industry to solve the problem. And so our job is to bring those technical experts with those vexing problems to academia and to industry to try to solve the problems. And we’re having great success. Now has it solved all the problems? No, one of which has been brought up twice already, and I think the predicate to all of our most important work that we have in front of us is a SIP cop that we can action from, whether that’s the delivery of water bottles to the delivery of kinetic effects and everything in between. We gotta have a cop and a SIP that is available to us to be able to action from, and that’s one of the areas that we’re keenly focused in. If there’s anybody interested in teaming with 16th Air Force, I welcome, you can find me after the talk, and the only thing I can do is promise you that you’ll do meaningful work with people that you respect in an organization that values integrity, service, and excellence. Thanks.
Lt. Gen. Gus Guastella, USAF (Ret.):
Fantastic. Thanks, Shanks, that’s great to hear. All right, Shrimp, to you, you know, I remember as a Capota commander, sometimes the combatants have an insatiable, you know, desire for presence, and they want heel-to-toe deployments. Clearly, you don’t have that luxury, but can you share with us, what are some of the easiest wins that can create effects in your AOR that really go a long way, although may not be extremely costly or heavy on impact deployment-wise?
Brig. Gen. John B. Creel:
Yes, sir, one is going on right now, actually, it’s a global medical engagement. It’s called LAMAT. That’s the Lesser Antilles Medical Team. What that is is, right now, we’ve got about 160 professional medical professionals across the Air Force, and that’s active, reserve, and guard. And what they do is, they go in with PDSs, they go in and look at individual sites, and instead of them just determine, like, where we should send our people and what we should do, they go ask. They go to hospitals, they go to clinics, and say, “Hey, what do you need?” And they say, “Hey, we haven’t been able “to do this particular procedure in, like, 10 years.” Okay, well, we’re gonna find those experts, and we’re gonna go to that location, and that’s when you have, like, a thousand people show up for that one procedure. That’s what happened last year. So that’s a medical thing. Obviously, that’s not, like, pure air component stuff, but we use different things when we’re trying to get those air assets into theater. Like, for instance, last year, at Cruzex in Brazil, we had six F-15s come in from the Louisiana National Guard. That whole process took a while to figure out how to do and fund, but it was amazing. That was the first time we had them down in that area. They were in Colombia the year before from Florida, but that’s the first time Brazil had had that exercise in, like, five years after COVID and everything happened. But what we do is we plug in different things. When we, in between big, the exercises, and not just things that, like, we’re here at, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention space. We always have space going on in our theater. Everything, it’s driving the space, and just so everybody knows, we plan to stand up a space component now in May, so we’re planning to do that, and that’s gonna add on other things that we’re gonna be able to do to tie into the air component.
Lt. Gen. Gus Guastella, USAF (Ret.):
Great to hear, thank you. Okay, we’ve got time for one quick final question for the team here, and talk to us a little bit about Noble Eagle and what it does for our country and how you’re evolving Noble Eagle in light of the changes and threats to homeland.
Lt. Gen. Luke Ahmann:
Yeah, so Noble Eagle, obviously, is the 24/7 defense, homeland defense mission we do that I mentioned at the beginning with predominantly fighters around the CONUS supported by tankers and an AEW. That’s, for the most part, been done the same way since 9/11, and it’s fairly rigid in the sense that it’s not very agile. It doesn’t allow a lot of flexibility, and what we’re looking at now is to change the paradigm a little bit, so with existing resources, with existing authorities, and with the same, with very little risk to mission, doing it a little differently to really allow for some ability to build readiness ability to campaign in ways that we haven’t done for a deterrent factor in quite some time because we’ve been focused on a VEO threat to create some flexibility for the CFAC and how we manage that, and then, in the end, create the same effects, and some examples are, for the readiness front, if we’re getting ready to deploy a unit that also has an ACA commitment, relieving them of that commitment for ACA so they can solely focus on, say, going to Trapper’s AOR to do some missions down there, campaigning, again, in a way that we haven’t done in a while, so responding to a bomber task force that’s coming back from UCOM, for example, and intercepting them like we used to and we just haven’t trained for in a while, flexibility to move some assets around and have different response times and create some deterrent effect is the effect we’re going to look for, and we think we’re gonna continue to evolve the thinking and learn from how we start to roll it out and then continue to evolve it over time.
Lt. Gen. Gus Guastella, USAF (Ret.):
Fantastic, thanks. Well, thanks for what your team does to defend the nation. So, Trapper, quick for you, I know we don’t have a lot of time, but the F4 gen, can you talk to us a little bit how that new model and the things that are flowing and affecting your AOR, how are you employing it?
Lt. Gen. Derek France:
You bet, so a lot of our AEWs, all of them, in fact, are XABs, and so the model of bringing over a wing commander from CONUS that’s a sitting wing commander and his A-staff and core team to stand up the AEWs that we have in theater, one of the five AEWs. And so we’ve seen a lot of value in that, in that they come over with a core team of leadership and A-staff that knows each other and have trained together and worked together and prepared for a deployment together. So they hit the ground running really well. The other thing that we see that’s a positive is the A-staff construct in crisis and in conflict worked really well with the AFSCENT A-staff. To be candid, I had to remind the AFSCENT A-staff that there’s an A-staff down at the wing sometimes ’cause they would, you know, our A6 would go to the comm squadron instead of saying, “No, they have an A6.” So we’ve seen some value there. There are some challenges. You know, a sitting wing commander right now, we’re asking them to run a wing forward and still pay attention to some degree to their wing back home. And I think the wings back home, I can’t talk to that directly, you know, being forward, but I think the wings back home are gonna have some lessons learned working through that. We’ll move forward, you know, with the other dynamics. The one thing I will say that will be a challenge for any of the models is the six-month rotation is challenging from a relationship building in theater. And so, you know, when everyone changes over every six months, that becomes a challenge as far as building relationships down to the lower level. And so it’s not insurmountable. It’s something we acknowledge and work hard at mitigating, but that is one of the challenges that we’ve seen.
Lt. Gen. Gus Guastella, USAF (Ret.):
Thanks for sharing that. All right, Shanks, how does information operations strengthen our ability to maintain deterrence?
Maj. Gen. Larry Broadwell:
Yeah, so it’s one of those gray area activities that I think doesn’t get a lot of attention, but it should. It’s one that, frankly, we don’t do as well, we, the United States, don’t do as well as we probably could. I mean, we have way too much mission than the military we have to support it around the globe. And so we have to make the best use of the military, the ops activities and investments that we’re making around the globe. And one way to do that is operations in the information environment. And so we at 16th Air Force are trying to be in a more proactive stance. Like with BTF is coming through, the AFSIN AOR, we’re intercepting bombers as they come back into the, or an intercept over in Alaska, and what we’ve made is we wanna be able to have a truthful message on the ready to be able to get out into the information space. Too often what we find is that the lies outpace the truth. And so what comes to mind in the AFSIN AOR is the Hamas rocket that actually misfired and hit the hospital there in Gaza. And it was 30 hours later, I was still reading on the bumper line of the cable news networks on speculation that this was an Israeli airstrike into this hospital when we knew it wasn’t. And then when finally the Israelis came out with our backing and articulated, hey, this is what happened, it had been nearly three days. And so it almost falls on deaf ears and you don’t have the same effect. And so we really wanna be on a more proactive footing when it comes to ops in the information environment to be able to accentuate what we’re doing.
Lt. Gen. Gus Guastella, USAF (Ret.):
That’s a great, great example, thank you. All right, very last, Shrimp, over to you for last thoughts on what takeaways for what we can do differently or better, anything from your area you wanna share with us?
Brig. Gen. John B. Creel:
We’ve got really good partners in Central and South America. They wanna partner with us and we are the partner of choice for many reasons. The only thing that we have to do is teach them a little bit and let them run with it. And it’s good because we can actually go into South America and we can go into an engagement with some of their jets and we come back and we both learn from each other. And it’s not just us teaching them, they’re also showing us things. And that’s the type of partners that you wanna have. And what we need to do is just, like I said, be in the room and we’ll all learn and get better and counter those threats.
Lt. Gen. Gus Guastella, USAF (Ret.):
Fantastic, thanks. Ladies and gentlemen, we wish you could love to go on, but we’re out of time, but we wanna thank, please, let’s thank this fantastic panel for the great work they do.