Air-to-Air Sensors and Weapons

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Maj. Gen. William D. Betts:

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for trekking out to the suburbs here in Colorado C Ballroom. Control of the air opens up so many options for our Air Force and for the joint force. Its importance could not be overstated. We’ve got four expert teammates here that are going to help us discuss how we fight for control of the air.

And I’ll introduce them going from immediately on my left and on down the line. We have Mr. Taylor Frank, who is the Executive Director of Strategy & Development within Boeing’s Air Dominance division. He is responsible for a broad portfolio that includes the F-15, the F-22, the F-18, the T-7, the MQ-25, and the MQ-28. To his left, we have retired Air Force Colonel, Dr. Dan Javorsek. He’s the Aviation Chief Engineer at Applied Intuition, which is an AI company. In his 24-year military career, he commanded the F-35 operational test team, and he served as a DARPA program manager where he pioneered the use of AI and machine learning.

Two animals left is Major General retired, Jon Norman. He is the Vice President of Requirements & Capabilities for Air & Space Defense Systems at Raytheon, an RTX business. He served more than 32 years in the United States Air Force and held many prominent roles, including positions at SAF/AQ and the NSA and the vice commander of Pacific Air Forces. And to his left at the end of the line, is Major General retired Steve Sergeant. He was appointed Chief Executive Officer of Marvin Test Solutions and Vice President for Strategic Development for the Marvin Group in June of 2012. With over 30 years of senior executive experience in all aspects of aerospace operations and testing, Steve is leading MTS’s growth as a global test solutions leader.

Gentlemen, we’ll hop right into it. All right. So, this first question, we’re just going to go on down the line until we run out of things to say. So, typically, a panel that’s titled Air-to-Air Sensors and Weapons would imply an organic kill chain. I would like to know from each of you, how has the advent of the long range kill chain construct shifted the way in which sensors pass queues and how has it affected your business? Mr. Frank, you first please.

Taylor Frank:

Thank you, sir. And thanks for having me here today. So, I’ll talk about a couple of different things, then pass the ball down. The first part of the question around the title of the panel, when I first saw the title of the panel, I think it was extending the range of air-to-air weapons and sensors. And the first thought that popped into my brain was, “It’s missing a word. It should be extending the effective range of air-to-air weapons and sensors?” And maybe that’s a subtle nuance, but it was important for my brain to key off of that word effective because that’s like a tier zero anchor that you can then go and talk about organic, semi-organic and inorganic, which bridges into the long range kill chain piece.

Second thought about the advent of the long range kill chain, beyond line-of-sight enabled kill chains. What does that mean relative to overall change? The analogy or the mental image that I get when I think long range kill chains, beyond line-of-sight kill chains, is going from 2D chess to playing 3D chess. So, you’re still playing chess, you still have the same chess pieces, but it’s a completely new dimension and it’s a different game. And that brings with it more moves, different strategies, but also complexity and risk.

And I have this image in my brain of the 3D chessboard I had growing up at my grandparents’ house. It was this plastic thing that you had to screw together and it fell apart all the time. And I can’t get that out of my brain thinking about how fragile it was. So, that’s just a mental image. And then, the last piece on the how do sensors create data and pass queues and how does the advent of the long range kill chain change that?

In one aspect, it doesn’t at all. If I’m an RF sensor, EO/IR sensor, whatever it is, I’m generating data and I’m passing it off. Whether it’s an organic single ship kill chain, a multi-ship kill chain or a beyond line-of-sight thing, but everything else changes. Where that data goes, the architectures it passes through, the consumers of that data, where it’s processed, latency in minutes, not seconds or nanoseconds, like everything else does change. So, that’s kind of that transition from 2D chess to 3D chess in my mind.

Maj. Gen. William D. Betts:

That’s great. I like the analogy of 2D chess to 3D chess. I think it speaks to the complexity exactly with what we’re dealing with. So, Dr. Javorsek, what can you add?

Dr. Dan “Animal” Javorsek:

Yeah, you bet. When I think of long range kill chains, I oftentimes focus on the first two parts of that word, long range or parts of that phrase. And that is, it’s really the long-range piece that is what forces us to consider distributing the kill chain.

So, when you think about an organic application of this, especially depending on what framework you choose to put it on, whether it’s the standard fine, fix, track, target, gauge assess, or there are alternatives to it. But if you think about that, one of the ways when you start distributing this is that you have all these component services that now have to be considered.

And so, while it’s a nice bumper sticker to talk about, say any shooter, any sensor anytime, which fits nicely on the back of a car or something like that, it turns out that there are a whole host of other complications and considerations that you need to really factor in. And this goes beyond just the technical aspects, but also the tactics that might be involved there.

And so, when you think about the closing the kill chain organically, a lot of these decisions have already been made for you with the sensing modalities that you have aboard the airplane, as well as the weapons that you might be shooting with. In this particular case, when you distribute this, you now no longer have to think about the fitness of any individual comp, or not the overall fitness, but also the fitness of each component. And you start really running into a combinatorics problem that can get quite large, right? And this is where I think a whole host of opportunities exist that have come out of the software space to assist in precisely these things.

And, in fact, this idea that the kill chain, the overall kill chain fitness, the individual sub-service fitness is something that transcends just the queuing piece of this whole thing. And so, when you think about collaborative autonomy, oftentimes people will mark, say that in their minds, they’ll paint a couple of small UAS or a couple of collaborative combat aircraft that you see down on the show floor there. But you’ll oftentimes miss that when we talk about collaborative autonomy, we’re really talking about assessing these subcomponent aspects and services in the kill chain. And I think that’s something that’s really changed our approach in our industry on the AI side of things.

Maj. Gen. William D. Betts:

Okay, right. Yeah. I mean, you definitely add something to describe the complexity. I think along the lines of your analogy of 2D chess to 3D chess, I guess, is the upside that comes along with the long range kill chain. Something we think about at ACC all the time is we must do the long range kill chain, if you have no option. But you must not only do the long range kill chain because of the complexities that you talked about. General Norman, what can you add?

Jon Norman:

I appreciate that. I look at… It is a very complex scenario. So, you have chaos at range that we need to be able to discern from that, the indications and warning, be able to correlate and fuse that data together so a single track is a single target, present that to the employer with an identification on it, maintain track custody until it hits a point that you can employ ordinance. And then, employ that ordinance at max depth so that you achieve the highest PK, so that we preserve that munitions.

And then, we always stop right there and we forget about the battle damage part of it. And I think that builds on the autonomy and the collaboration that we can take advantage of AI in. And so, it’s having the weapons communicate with each other. So, we’re watching target sets as we’re flying through that threat environment that are engaged with priority engagement orders, and then we can get a real-time battle damage assessment. So, we’re not ending up double or triple targeting the threats. That long range kill chain, it has to be, in essence, really agile mesh network so that it doesn’t become fragile.

So, there’s no single point of failure. It’s got to be adaptive. And most importantly, it has to be tailorable to the shooter. It does a pilot no good to have a sensor overwhelming. It’s SA dumping. We got to provide the data that’s targetable to that pilot, and it has to be in a format that matches the weapons requirements for queue. And then, that network has to be agile enough that it can provide that in flight target update to support those very long-range shots. And then, finally, we got to pair it with weapons that are able to exploit that long range kill capability. So, it’s a challenge, but it’s one that I think industry is up for.

Maj. Gen. William D. Betts:

Right on. Okay, great. General Sergeant, what can you add, sir?

Steve Sargeant:

It’s always great to go last, isn’t it? After all the great things have been said. So, I’m going to dive into this from a little bit different perspective, and that’s the test and measurement piece because this is no longer a future concept. This is the reality today. This is how we’re fighting today, those in uniform.

So, we no longer go out like Storman and I used to do. If we were lucky, the offboard sensor and the group we had to work through was AWACS. Coming to our cockpit inside our formation to our single weapon and long-range kill change was the range of that longest weapon we had on board and the range back to AWACS. Well, it’s a lot more complex than that today. It’s an interconnected node of combat network, sharing tracks, targeting data, identification, and engagement authority across aircraft offboard sensors, command elements, and sometimes space and cyber layers today as well. And I think that those last two pieces are evolving rapidly.

And with the growth that was alluded to yesterday with Space Force, I think we’re going to see a lot more of that soon. That shift fundamentally changes how we need to think about testing evaluation, and sensor and weapon platforms performance can’t be evaluated any longer just as, how’s that weapon doing? Now, it’s, how’s that weapon doing with detection range, track quality, targeting accuracy, weapons probability of kill? Who would have thought about that outside of Storman and I thinking about, “Hey, is it the right angle off? Are we at the right range? Do we have enough energy for the weapon to get there?” Now, it’s the track quality good that’s coming into our cockpit influencing the track that we are now working to kill.

And it’s heavily influenced by network latency. We didn’t think about that. We thought about maybe AWACS being jammed or bad weather interfering with the comm. But now, network latency, data fusion quality, back to animal’s part with AI, time secretization and cross-platform queuing. Those things have all advanced in the last five years and I think are on a rapid climb to advance even further in the next couple.

So, a contested environment was mentioned. Every time we step out the door, it’s a contested environment and we have to make sure that that data flows in those contested environments, which puts the burden on testers to ensure just like we did years ago when we started testing satellites so there was never a SBIRS launch failure again by testing on earth what was not tested by using the chambers to test.

Well, we don’t have chambers for airplanes the same way. But we have ranges, we have digital engineering, and we have actual on range testing. Those things need to be rung out in a fully contested environment to ensure that those systems, that long-range kill chain is viable in a degraded scenario, and that it will still allow the military members that are on station to do their job to be able to actually take out the targets that they’re set to take out. So, the testers need to sit back and look at the environment, not make it bigger, longer, and slower, but more sophisticated early on.

Maj. Gen. William D. Betts:

Okay, fantastic. A couple of comments on that real quick before we move on to the next question. The first one is, I think bandwidth frugality has to be something we think about a lot when we’re talking about self-healing networks and being able to operate in contest because they’re going to be coming after our bandwidth.

So, only passing those critical elements that need to be passed to make this work. And I guess my second point is, fortunately, the Air Force and people much smarter than I have thought about the complexities of testing this enterprise. And so, we formed a long-range kill chain combined test force that’s going to be looking at exactly what you’re talking about there.

Okay. So, in order to move us toward a self-healing network, something that is resilient enough that can survive, I picture us needing a lot of sensors. So, this next one is for you, Mr. Frank. How does industry plan to equip and connect more airborne assets to contribute as sensors within this kill web?

Taylor Frank:

So, short answer is in a number of different ways, and we’re certainly thinking about it and planning it and trying to do it. Just anecdotally, last week I was with our MQ-25 team, so Navy program. It’s an airplane that initially is meant to be a tanker for the Navy. So, it goes, flies 500 miles plus from the boat and refuels tactical aircraft. But when it goes out downrange from the boat, it has an extra pylon on the airplane that carries 3,000 to 4,000 pounds.

And what we are digging into is, what would the tactical or operational benefit be of hanging a Block II IRST off that pylon? And as it’s out there for 14 hours down range from the boat, what would it look like to just pipe back consistent, persistent, data off of that IRST to contribute to the air picture of the airway?

So, just anecdotally, we’re certainly doing that. We’re trying to lean into it in a variety of places. I would offer a word of caution though, which is I think most of us in the government certainly want to put more sensors on more airplanes, but you got to avoid all of industry going wild dingo in every which direction. It’s super important for the government to really stay the course on things like reference architecture here, especially as we talk about all these complexities, data or frugality and all these things. You need all of industry in the same boat rowing in the same direction.

And that’s where in my mind the GRA comes into play. And that’s what allows the government to switch rowers between seats or change or in and out. And the importance of that in this context can’t be overstated. The government setting the standards, owning the interfaces and be able to do that. That’s why 6Gen in my mind is one of the reasons why it’s so important relative to righting the wrongs of prior generations can’t overstate the importance of that.

The last piece here though, in terms of more sensors on more airplanes to help enable our weapons and enable PK of our weapons, a little bit of a soapboxy thing. But I can’t stop thinking about the fact that we have a weapons problem. Our adversaries have longer range weapons and they have more of them. Yet, our default solution is to build new airplanes and put more sensors on airplanes. And I’m like, “When are we going to get after the weapons problem with weapons?”

So, the department’s done a great job of injecting competition and disruption into the air to ground and air to surface space. I think upwards of nine or 10 different companies have programs of record to sell weapons, air to surface munitions to the government. When are we going to do that on the air-to-air weapon side? It’s just something that I can’t stop thinking about. Where’s the disruption? Where are the new entrants? Where is the innovation? When are we going to get after solving a weapons problem with better weapons ourselves? So, slightly different tack.

Jon Norman:

Well, Will, I could add to that.

Maj. Gen. William D. Betts:

Please.

Jon Norman:

If that’s okay. So, great question. And I think that’s the challenge that our war fighters have given us. And so, our company, for instance, and I know there’s others that are doing the same through IRAD and in design, that architectural design of the weapon. So, it has to be upgraded easily via software to enhance the new capabilities.

The attribute of range or speed, we’re adjusting in the way that we fly it and we’re looking at different propulsions. So, prime example, we’re flying AMRAAM twice as far as we’ve ever flown it before. We’re looking at even longer-range tests that we’re doing on IRAD with StormBreaker, great glide weapon on IRAD. We’re doing both ground launched and we’re looking at an air launch variant of that to greatly enhance the range of it. And then, in our advanced programs, we’re doing the same thing.

So, working with the Air Force, with the Navy on new propulsion material, new rocket motors, working with the primes that make those rocket motors to give the war fighter more capability in their kit. So, the hypersonic is an attribute, the high supersonic is an attribute. We want to be able to give that war fighter options in the future. So, your point is spot on and it’s up to us working very closely with the war fighter partnering with them to make sure we get the requirements right and we’re investing wisely in the development of those next capabilities they need.

Maj. Gen. William D. Betts:

Okay, yeah. Thanks for that, General Norman. And Dr. Javorsek, I could tell when they were both speaking, you were like, “Oh, yeah,” you like what they were saying. I did too. On the topic of right data standards and data passage, how can we improve our data passage capabilities between the Department of War assets, not just Air Force assets, but Department of War assets to improve all domain sensing?

Dr. Dan “Animal” Javorsek:

Well, I’ll start. I’m looking on your shoulder, you’ve got a weapon school patch, so I’m going to give you the weapon school answer. It depends. Obviously, a lot to unpack there. I think that if you, at the very beginning you start, you say, “I think we’re maybe using the wrong language.” And that’s going to be apparent here in a second. But if you think about it right now, we focus on data. We keep talking about data.

Data, while foundational, it’s really important that that data be converted into information. And then, when put into the proper context, provides knowledge that you can then make a decision on. Case in point, just like Taylor just mentioned, if you want to put an IR sensor out there, that sensor is going to be pushing out a large amount of data, but can you convert at the tactical edge into knowledge, which is much lighter load and lift for the bandwidth? Just to really answer your question, I think it fits into three categories. It’s that knowledge piece that I just talked about. It’s also authorities and classification.

And so, it’s pretty easy for us to jump into that knowledge and technical solution because that’s fun for us to do. And there are a whole host of clever ways in which you can, I would say, do that processing at the tactical edge, which allows you to have a lower, say, requirement for what you send over the network. That also allows you to be graceful in your degradation when it’s under attack.

And while I could go off on crazy tangents on some things we did in the past research wise with regard to say bioinspired approaches for these sorts of things that are fascinating, just as a little seed for anyone who’s actually interested in this, think about the way that humans communicate. We don’t communicate like Link 16 does, right? So, if you think about how Link 16, it’s a time division, multiple access type of thing.

So, each airplane or each node is running around saying the same thing over and over and over at its proper time. That is not how we humans communicate, right? As humans, what I do is I build a mental model of both those around me and my adversary, and then I propagate that model. And based on that, I say, “Well, the last time I talked to General Sergeant was a few years ago. So, what’s changed since then?” And I only pass information that’s changed. I don’t give him my entire resume every time we meet.

And that idea is something that’s absolutely fascinating when you talk about culling this. But if I get after your question, and that is, “What is going to change this data or knowledge passage problem?” When you start distributing the kill chain across these different services, you run into pretty sizable authorities problems, right? If you’re organic, you own the data that’s running around on the bus traffic of your airplane, you don’t have to worry about priorities or what that data or information is being used for elsewhere. When you start saying, “I’m going to distribute this across say a space layer,” now I can guarantee you that space layer is doing something else right now.

So, if you think about the problems that we have to solve, they fit into these three categories of composition, orchestration, and adaptation. And it’s the adaptation piece that this thing absolutely helps with. And then, finally, and arguably, probably the most important way to help this data passage problem is tied to classification. We have a fixation and an absolute love for secrecy and stovepipes. Anybody out there wearing a uniform is 100% aware of exactly what I’m talking about. It is exceptionally rare to get the information, the data, the information, the knowledge into the hands of who actually needs it at the time they need it so that they can save their own lives or prosecute whatever their objectives are.

This is a policy problem and it is foundationally limited by the way that we think about this data. We have a tendency to think of it in rest, this data at rest. So, as a result of it, I have to put all these stovepipes and walls up between it, and I’m unable to really pass the information that’s necessary to make the decision at the tactical edge. However, I would say offer up that one policy change worth considering is that when data is in motion, maybe it doesn’t have quite the same classification requirements because it’s going to be static and the people that actually have access to it to make decisions might be able to benefit from it.

This might not work for every silver bullet, but it might work for an awful lot of the data challenges that we encounter on a day-to-day basis. And you might say, “Okay, Animal, this is a solved problem.” We got data offices and all these data, these outfits that do this rhetoric time and again, and they think the popular quote or the famous quote goes, “Don’t tell me what your priorities are. Show me where your money is and I’ll tell you what they are.”

Case in point, when I retired a couple of years ago, we were still driving F-35 wise, we would land after a test mission, three different squadrons in different states, and I would have to put a Lance Corporal in a Ferrari and drive them through the desert in the middle of the night with a top secret, or not top secret, but a classified hard drive so that I could actually analyze and our team could analyze the data. That should be embarrassing for us in the 21st century, and it’s fundamentally shows some of the limitations on the priorities that we placed on data.

Maj. Gen. William D. Betts:

Right on. Harrumph to breaking down the stovepipes. I mean, that is definitely one aspect to improve in, I guess, the capability of our networks and our weapons. We’ve been talking a lot about capability. I’ll shift gears to capacity just for a second. And so, something that we’re very mindful of at Air Combat Command is I don’t just need the number of weapons to target a certain number of air-to-air targets. I need that number of weapons at each of my possible operating locations that I could take off from on any particular day. And so, this question will go to General Norman, what can we do to increase the capacity coming to our war fighter more quickly?

Jon Norman:

I appreciate the question. I think you’re seeing it in action right now. I know other companies have. We just signed up for a framework agreement for, as a critical munitions list. And so, it’s an all-in effort. It’s a partnership with the government. It has to have transparency. It’s a very proactive partnership with all of our supply chain and coordinating that across industry so that we don’t create points of failure where we need to invest in additional suppliers or qualified additional suppliers we are. It’s partnering with other industry so that we can take advantage of the AI and the lessons learned that they have in added manufacturing so we can accelerate, deliver more now. And that’s exactly what we’re doing.

And then, this company, we’re looking at not just on AMRAAM as one of the use cases. We have five different weapons. But how do we take those lessons that we’ve done with AMRAAM and apply them across the other programs, even if they’re not on the list, because we want to be able to build that wartime capacity so that if we are called upon as an industry to deliver more for the war fighter, we can execute that. And we’re seeing exceptional results from those lessons learned in StormBreaker and across our portfolio.

I think all of us in the industry have to do that and we have to partner. And as we’re doing that, we’re going to accelerate potentially some of the obsolescence. So, being very mindful as we design the replacements for those parts, specifically the microelectronics, so that we’re developing an architecture in that weapon that’s future-proof, that we can upgrade it at speed with software and it’s interoperable, not just with our US partners, but also with our allies so that no matter where we fight, we have kit that’s ready to go.

And I think the final thing is also looking at how we can modify those weapons because they’re already integrated, they’re already fielded, our munitions handlers are trained with them, our pilots are used to working with them. How can we improve upon those capabilities so that we can hit some of those attributes that they’re demanding?

So, the collaborative weapons, we’re working with Shield AI to see how we can do that better with our networked weapons. How can we fly further? We’re working with all of our engine manufacturers, whether it’s air breathing propulsion or rocket power to provide longer range. And I think all of us have to do that. This isn’t a single point transactional event with the government. I think the bar’s been set and this is going to be a long-term effect that across industry. We’ve got to keep those open lines of communications and we’ve got to keep the war fighter involved from the design and the development phase on, not just at the acquisition phase.

Maj. Gen. William D. Betts:

Yeah. General Sergeant, let me comment on that real quick. And I’ll let you pile onto that.

Steve Sargeant:

Yeah. Go ahead.

Maj. Gen. William D. Betts:

Right. And we were talking about capacity. I’m going to switch back to capability just for a second because we said it a couple of times in terms of long-range being an attribute that we value and we have to. Another attribute that comes along with a long-range is that the missiles have to be fast, right? They can’t just go a long way. They’ve got to get there in a hurry.

So, I just put that aside for a second. We may come back to that later. General Sergeant, the question I was going to ask you next is related to this. And so, I’ll let you pile onto that. And then, I’ve read, and then answer. And the question I was going to ask you is, we’ve got to go faster and that helps with capacity from a test perspective, what can we be doing to go faster on that? But then, I’ll let you pile on to that one first.

Steve Sargeant:

Okay. So, let me pile on to Norman’s answer first. So, General White is obviously trying to get airplanes in the air faster, manned or unmanned, it doesn’t matter, bombers, fighters. You can only get them so fast, physics or physics, okay? They’re going to get faster than they are today, I think, to delivered. Same thing with weapons, and of the last three weeks or so, there’s been some great movement forward there on faster and bigger stockpiles sooner.

However, we’ve got some capability today with the airplanes we have on a ramp, whether manned unmanned or not, with the armament, and the armament can be modified to carry more weapons and get more of those weapons to the target area faster with the war fighter. So, that’s another dimension to look at, and we’re actually doing that for customers around the world today.

So, working with what you have already can help the war fighter get more bang on the target faster and maybe do that faster than even some of the modifications to these network weapons, just using the ones that we have. So, back to how do we get through testing faster? And that’s always the question asked of every test organization. And I think I wasn’t disappointed yesterday because test and how to do test faster came up yesterday with the three leaders of the Air Force and their speeches.

So, the reality is when looking forward, we’ve got great tools today we didn’t have before. Digital engineering has come a long way and hardware in the loop testing. So, we can get a lot done before we ever load the weapon on an airplane to go on a range and see that we are actually confirming readiness versus testing individual discovery behavior of how things operate.

So, we could do a lot before we ever step to the airplane today. And I think we need to do more of that. And I’m pretty sure across the organizations that’s being done. I know it’s being done in industry and I’m sure it’s being done in Department of War. Standardize the interfaces and the instrumentations that’s used in the testing so that each relevant event validates integration rather than retesting basic functions. And those involved in tests know that a lot of times, you’re just peeling back some of those things you went through on Test Card one, two, and three when you get to Test Card seven, eight, nine.

So, those standardized interfaces and instrumentation can help. And then, one that got brought up yesterday that I thought was back to the future again. And that’s except iterative releases. “Don’t wait for perfect,” I think was the quote. “Get good enough out there. Get it out there where we know that it works. We want to make sure that the testers ensure that the system is safe and it functions as advertised, but it doesn’t need to be perfect. Perfect, we can expand performance parameters and later increments.” So, we’re fighting the war, but we’re getting better. We did that in a big one called WW2, because what we started fielding was not what we were fielding toward the end of that war.

Maj. Gen. William D. Betts:

Okay, fantastic. All right. I’m going to ask one… We got about seven minutes left. I’ll ask one final question. We’ll get about two minutes each or so. General Sergeant, I’ll have you go last again, which means you got to pick up whatever’s left, but the good news is you get the last word. So, we’ll go down the line here. All right. Mr. Frank, you starting. When designing the future force, what are your considerations for finding the right balance between exquisite high-cost sensors and weapons and fielding cheaper, more rapidly produced options in mass?

Taylor Frank:

What’s the expression like half the road to recovery is a minute you have a problem? So, one of the answers to your question is in there, it’s finding the right balance. So, balance is key. The consideration that keeps coming to mind for me is like the United States Air Force has commitments it needs to see to 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, over and over again. And a lot of that is lower intensity, medium mission intensity type environments. So, there’s kind of a day-to-day business that the Air Force has to conduct and support the joint force.

On the other hand, of course, we have to think about what it looks like to deter if not prevail in a high-end conflict. And when we talk force design or force structure, I can’t help but think we usually talk about the latter, which is that high-end force, B-21, F-47, all the cool things up there. And then, attritable systems, sending me attritable systems, affordable mass on the lower end. And how do we balance between those two things?

The consideration in my mind is what’s in the middle that services that first problem set. What are the airplanes that… Bad word coming. What are the airplanes that you can beat the crap out of every day and do they just keep going for the next 50, 60 years? And I’m worried that middle layer of workhorse stuff that handles like your normal day-to-day things gets left out of the calculus, which is why force design is so important in thinking about that.

Maj. Gen. William D. Betts:

All right. Perfect. Dr. Javorsek.

Dr. Dan “Animal” Javorsek:

Yeah. I think at the heart of your question here is probably one of America’s biggest blunders in the modern era. And I say that because in Desert Storm, in fact, I think on the agenda, there’s a Desert Storm talk this afternoon. In Desert Storm, we learned a lot, a lot of good things. But we also learned that exquisite can lead to an overwhelming victory in certain types of conditions. And it’s in certain types of conditions that I think we maybe made some mistakes. And that is we’ve doubled down since Desert Storm on these exquisite things. And when it comes down to it, I would say that while I certainly appreciate all the work that the B2 has and can do, when you look at from things from China’s perspective, I don’t think they’re scared of 19 of anything, whether it’s B2s or not.

And so, there is an element of this reinvigoration of what a high-low mix looks like. And as I would say is the foundation of all this. And it’s important to remember that in order to get something new, you don’t necessarily have to build something new. In my previous life as a test pilot, I used to have to describe the difference between developmental tests and operational tests. And I oftentimes, especially over Thanksgiving or something, I would say, “Developmental test pilots basically look to see what a thing was designed to do and make sure it does what it was designed to do.”

What I love about operational tests is that they don’t care what it was designed to do. They care what it can do. And when you start thinking about the affordable mass problem and some of these things, realize we have a remarkable amount of latent capability locked up in our system right now. It’s just that we don’t think of it as being able to do the things that we may want them to do. And I’ll just leave you with that. I think the solution to this is there is a lot that we have in our inventory that if you just think about what it could do, it might open up a lot of deterrent value for the nation.

Maj. Gen. William D. Betts:

Nice. All right. General Norman.

Jon Norman:

You hit on it in your earlier remarks. So, we have to be able to support multiple bases at multiple different locations. Having that supply chain to move that ordinance around is probably going to be unexecutable in a very dynamic wartime environment.

So, that quantity has its own quality. The capability of the systems that we’re fielding, whether it’s a sensor or a weapon, it’s got to be scalable. If everything is built to the platinum level hammer, everything looks like a nail to you, and it’s going to be unaffordable. Weapons are typically the bill payer. We go through ebbs and flows on that and we all have to recognize that.

So, I think the department is pushing all of us hard to not just accelerate the production and delivery of this kit, but to also work for the efficiency so we can drive down the cost as we’re looking at more efficient ways to produce. We’ve got to be able to do that. We’ve got to balance the quantity and capability. And then, we have to take advantage of all the digital engineering that we’ve done and the digital twins. And we got to model this at the campaign level and we have to see how it works. Do we have it right? And then, take all of our exercises that we do, feed those into the models, and then refine upon that to see where we need to buy more of the high capability and where we need more of the quantity. And I think the department is doing a good job with that, but it’s something that all of us have to be partnered with in the future to make sure that we land at the right end.

Maj. Gen. William D. Betts:

Perfect. Two minutes. As promised, the last word.

Steve Sargeant:

Great. Thanks. So, the first two days, I think we’re off to a great start. On this one, it boils down to exquisite sensors, generate decision quality tracks, mass weapons exploit them, and separating the sensor from the shooters leads to scale, as long as you’re enabling the shooters to have the benefit of what the sensors bring in. Open architecture was mentioned yesterday in the opening speeches.

Open architecture leads to lower cost systems, leveraging high confidence, targeting data, instead of requiring exquisite sensing systems on every shooter. We can’t afford that. And we really can’t afford, you mentioned Department of War going out and doing things jointly. We can’t afford to have all these systems that just won’t talk across the network. But yet, everything needs to be designed from the beginning with degradation in mind, graceful degradation, hopefully, because there will come a time when those high-end assets are going to be limited and we still have to be able to function, which we’re not going to talk about the close in fight today. Everything we’ve been talking about is beyond visual range, but I would argue that when those things break down, the visual fight is definitely going to take place.

So, don’t throw away the gun and don’t throw away short range weapons in your move to design for the future because its systems will always break down and we need to design to be able to operate with and without all that data.

Maj. Gen. William D. Betts:

Perfect. All right. So, that, we nailed our TOT. We did. All right. So, I’ll just close out by saying that your comments on within visual range reminded me of the charge that we were given yesterday in terms of our senior leaders in the Air Force are putting our acquisition enterprise on notice to be on war footing. You mentioned World War II. Our enemy is playing 3D chess. We can’t be on war footing without our teammates in industry. Thanks. Great contributions, guys. And thanks for being here. Thank you.

Steve Sargeant:

Thank you.