Balancing Stand-off and Penetrating Airpower
September 24, 2025
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This transcript was generated with the assistance of AI. Please report inconsistencies to comms@afa.org.
Mark Gunzinger:
Well, good morning everyone. So, I’m Mark Gunzinger, Director of Future Concepts and Capability Assessments at the Mitchell Institute. So, welcome to this morning’s panel on Balancing Our Air Forces Combat Airpower, the best panel of the entire ASC. So, as you’ve heard this week, we’re now facing a security environment that is more complex and more challenging at any time in our recent history. The Air Force must be ready to defeat peer aggression in the Pacific while simultaneously defending the United States and deterring nuclear attacks. But the problem is, the Air Force lacks the capacity and the mix of capabilities needed to meet those requirements at acceptable levels of risk. And that’s why it must rebuild and it must rebalance its forces. So, rebalancing is a topic of this panel. The Air Force has a generational opportunity to rebalance its combat capabilities as it transitions to a force design that fully supports the National Defense Strategy. So, to discuss this balance and the opportunities to achieve that, please welcome our distinguished panelists. First, Major General Jason Armagost, Commander, 8th Air Force and Joint Global Strike Operations Center. David Alexander, President, General Atomics, Aeronautical Systems, Incorporated. Vice President for Business Development, Cobra Harrigian. Thank you for joining us today. And finally, Robert Winkler, aka Otis, Vice President, Corporate Development and National Security Programs, Kratos. So, gentlemen, thanks for joining us today. And let’s dig into a couple questions to focus on this issue. Let’s start with a fun one. Operation Midnight Hammer. Now, that was an awesome display of American air power, but it was a single strike, or if you want to call it a raid, it was a one-off. And the National Defense Strategy, frankly, requires our Air Force to prepare for a high-intensity air campaign against a peer adversary and sustain it on a protracted timeline if necessary. Also, defending the homeland, deterring nuclear attacks on the U.S. Now, those are all additive force structure requirements. So, gentlemen, what are your thoughts on these requirements and priorities to create a more balanced Air Force to meet them? Armo, let’s start with you and then open up to all the panelists.
Maj. Gen. Jason Armagost:
Okay, great. Thank you. Thanks, Gonzo. It’s great to be up here on stage with a former boss, former squadron mate, and a consumer of some fantastic ISR over a very long period of time now. So, it’s an honor to be up here. Okay, so I heard two things. High intensity, and I heard protracted in that question. And to kind of flip the script a little bit on the raid concept for Midnight Hammer, I’m going to call it a strategic attack just because that’s actually what it was in effect. Although, yes, numerically I would also characterize it as a raid. But from the 8th Air Force perspective, I was considering the totality of the bomber enterprise and the command and control of that enterprise leading up to that strike and then for whatever came after that strike. And we didn’t know, of course, when the strike was conducted that a day and a half later there would be a ceasefire. Okay, so back to the force structure aspects of that, I completely agree that kind of what you have at the inception of a campaign or a conflict is the deterrent force that is available to you because it is the known quantity. And so the board is set with that force structure and you therefore then have to, if deterrence has been lost, in that case an adversary has chosen to fight that force structure. Okay, so we are in a time of strategic choice, I would argue, about what our force structure looks like going forward. And if that is true, it’s always worth returning to kind of the foundational principles, even just basic military principles of mass economy of force and maneuver in this case when it comes to force structure. And so mass is kind of inherent to the long-range bomber, but it can mean different things in an age of when precision has developed, when domains have connected and crossed. And then it also can mean different things based on the access requirements of the adversary you’re going up against. But I will submit that as we make these choices going forward, your long-range air power and frankly the logistical, the air mobility command structure that goes with that and is inherent to it is your maneuver strategic force. So I would turn it over from that point and see where we go on the discussion.
Gen. Jeff “Cobra” Harrigian, USAF (Ret.):
Okay, I’ve got a couple thoughts on this. So I’m just going to say we don’t have enough stuff. How’s that? You know, my time in AFCENT as commander there and then my time in USAFE, it was crystal clear that to General Armagost’s point, from a deterrence perspective, we would struggle to make sure we had the posture that was necessary to deter, you know, whether it was the fight in the Middle East or when I came back to Europe. When you think about it, what do we have in Europe? I don’t know, General Deptula probably has this memorized or you did. You know, we had like 20 — actually General Goren just walked in. He probably knows. What do we have, like 20 fighter squadrons in Europe? And when I was there, I had seven. How are we doing? What’s that look like? And so I think as we, you know, take a step back and look at the world we’re living in today, it just makes you question, okay, we’re going to have to have a force that’s going to have to make it over to the fight. And as much as I love all our intel folks in the crowd and INW, it’s never perfect and the adversary gets a vote. So I always felt like we were going to fight with what we had, at least for the beginnings and for the beginning part of the operation. Europe, I was fortunate, had a lot of allies at my side, whether NATO was going to play or not. That was part of the equation that we had to bring into what we thought our force structure needed to be versus what we expected to support us. I think the other part of this whole force structure side is, and we’re probably going to talk about this more, is, you know, the whole outside force versus inside force. And I always chuckled. Like, oh, we’re just going to leave Europe when the boerfuck starts? Pretty sure that’s not going to happen. And so thinking through what that balance looked like, because I was also going to need bombers. You know, you look at some of the specific operational scenarios we had in Europe, it was going to take a pretty robust force that we did not have in theater. And so I know Mitchell Institute’s done a bunch of work on that. I would hope as we look at some of the things that we’ve learned from Midnight Hammer, what the Israelis have done, what’s going on in Ukraine, that collectively gives us an opportunity to not only look at what we have in theater, but more broadly what our Air Force has to bring to the fight. It was 31? Would you just Google that or just memorize it? 31 to 7. Not good.
David Alexander:
Wow. Yeah, let me just double down on that. First off, thanks for having me up here. And just so everybody knows, I’m the only design engineer with all the fighter pilot guys. So if I don’t use all the right terms, forgive me. But, you know, protracted timelines means more platforms. You know, I think we’re all kind of doubling down on that. More platforms means more crew, means more maintainers, on and on. And we don’t have a lot of time to get more platforms and more crews. And that’s why I think, you know, this push in large numbers of collaborative combat aircraft really supports this protracted air campaign. Especially when you consider the tyranny of distance in the Pacific and how far you’ve got to go. And things like agile combat employment and how you get these aircraft there without overburdening the tanker line, which is so crucial to anything going on in the campaign. So, you know, CCAs can do a lot for this. We can also take on, you know, the effort of protecting the high value airborne assets, keeping them safe. Because without those platforms, you’re not going to be performing your combat missions with your manned fighters. And so I really think, you know, that’s the right job going forward is having these unmanned aircraft with a lot of autonomy and save on the air crew. Make it save lives and not have to wait 15 years for that to happen. We can do it quick. So, anyway, I would say we’re on the right track with this collaborative combat aircraft as a force multiplier to get us there a lot quicker.
Robert Winkler:
Yeah, so I’ll just add to the very end, you know, when we look at a force design, you need to look at capacity, you need to look at capability. But then you need to look at flexibility. Because the U.S. Air Force is the only swing force in the joint force. So the same assets that COBRA was going to use in or is using in Europe are the same assets that we’re going to shift over and use in the Pacific, are the same assets that you’re going to use at Midnight Hammer or anywhere else in the Middle East or anywhere else for the next conflict that arises. And that means that you shouldn’t specifically design your entire force to any one theater. You have to flex between all of those theaters. But it also means that you have to have the numbers that COBRA and BAMBAM were talking about, that you have to have the numbers to be able to achieve the effects that you need in that theater while you’re holding everybody else at risk. And so when we’re talking about the nuclear deterrence, that’s a no-fail mission. We got to get that done. Homeland defense, that’s a no-fail mission. We got to get that done. And then attacking or deterring peer adversaries and winning those fights is also a no-fail mission. We have to be able to have a stacked force design that can handle all those things potentially simultaneously. I think that in the Air Force’s force design, it accurately describes the fact that there is pretty much no sanctuary. We have to be able to survive and operate throughout the entire span of conflict and through the entire globe. And we can’t assume that we’re not going to be under attack anywhere in the world. And so the homeland defense and nuclear deterrence part are going to be even more important as we move forward. We have to resource those in our force design and plan for those in our force design in the same way.
Mark Gunzinger:
Yeah, that’s a big takeaway from this panel, all four panelists who said that. We can have the best balanced mix of capabilities in our Air Force, the right technologies, but if it lacks capacity, we can lose. So Midnight Hammer, back to that just for a bit. Its success was due in no small part to the rollback of Iran’s air defenses combined with penetrating strikes by stealthy aircraft, augmented by standoff attacks. But in a conflict with China, our planners must not assume that our Air Forces will have the time and the freedom of action to first roll back China’s IADs before conducting strikes and other operations to defeat a PLA offensive. So Otis, would you start us off by briefly discussing how China is prepared to challenge the U.S. military, our Air Force, in all domains as part of their counter-intervention warfighting strategy? And for you and all the panelists, what does this mean for the Air Force’s future capabilities mix?
Robert Winkler:
Yeah, thanks, Gonzo. I think you started off with pulsed operations, right? So we take a little bit of a deep dive into that. So pulsed operations, I think everybody knows, is where we’re going to mass fire power at the timing, at our choice in the timing and location, to get localized air superiority to apply effects to the enemy, specifically in China. And that works great. The important thing of that is we’re going to mass fire power and we’re going to gain and maintain local air superiority. Those two things. But the flip side of that is we’re doing it in pulsed operations because we don’t have the capacity or capability to do it 24 hours. And I think what that does then for China in particular is it seeds the timing and tempo to the enemy. We will come in, we will be able to bust down the door and have the effects that we need and put their targets at risk, but only for a limited period of time. What we need and what we’ve seen in some of these, the war games that we’ve gone through, is we need the ability to affect timing and tempo 24/7. And Dave mentioned it, right? There’s some, one of the big takeaways that came out of the war games that we participated in were the ability to fight from the first and second island chain. Fight to make sure that the enemy couldn’t use that airspace at their will any time that we weren’t there. And we continued to apply pressure from that first and second island chain against the enemy. And it broke, actually broke the war wide open and it was the major change agent for us. I think that was one of the biggest takeaways for me is not standing off, running in, having an attack that looks fantastic and then pulling back out again. But actually staying there and putting pressure on the enemy continuously. Absolutely. We all know, we’ve all talked about for years, the tyranny of distancing in the Pacific and how we’re going to break that tyranny of distance. Well, how are we going to break the tyranny of pulsed operations to fill in the white spaces between our pulses and maintain that pressure on an adversary?
Mark Gunzinger:
Other panelists?
Maj. Gen. Jason Armagost:
All right, I’ll go ahead. So I’ll connect the last question to this one by saying that Global Strike Command, Eighth Air Force in particular in this case, is globally committed actually every day. We run command and control operations globally. We run planning operations with literally every combatant command on a daily basis. And so that preparedness and readiness to conduct something like a strategic attack on Midnight Hammer is something we practice and are ready to, we’re prepared to understand first, but then also to plan the consequences of a force structure that we live with. Now, that being said, I was lucky enough to grow up as a young lieutenant and then as a captain in a squadron that was really kind of figuring out what the F-16 Block 50 was with a harm targeting system and what that meant for IADS rollback. And that kind of has been a framework for my entire career, my kind of mental approach to planning operations, to conducting operations. And so the IADS rollback is an important component of that and the distinction between your penetrating force and your long-range force and post operations, how those all kind of play out. So the way I look at it though day to day is that we cannot forget that we have to compete first against the counter-intervention strategy of China in the case of in the Pacific. And by competing, I use that as a bomber task force is our competition to build coalitions, to integrate with other countries and to really learn better the environment in which operations would be conducted. And so that’s a very effective tool, arguably, but it also lays out the fact that our force structure is insufficient to meet the need for bomber task force in this case. And then I would also say take the approach from a competition perspective of technological innovation that’s happening on both sides. So what does it mean? And from a planning perspective with the totality of our global combat forces, I look at it as an attack surface. And so just because China demonstrates some new capability doesn’t mean we push back from the table. We look at it as an opportunity to disrupt the flow of what that technology actually means in combat and in competition.
David Alexander:
Well, yeah, I would just say on top of that, in between the pulses, imagine now if you have platforms that all look the same, but in between the pulses, they actually do something different. And you can disrupt the enemy with a platform that was air to air and now it shows up and it’s doing stand in jamming or it’s doing air launch decoys, advanced decoys, and you can disrupt in between the pulses with something that looks just like something that came at them before. So again, having the platforms ready and then having them with modular payloads where they can actually surprise the enemy with different capabilities in new missions.
Gen. Jeff “Cobra” Harrigian, USAF (Ret.):
Let me just tag on two things. First, don’t take this the wrong way, but I look at a single pulse midnight hammer. How quick could we turn to do another one? What’s our readiness look like today? What would our ability to sustain this fight for three, five, ten days? You pick a number. We’re challenged. And so we need to be eyes wide open right now about our ability to do that because, again, the enemy gets a vote here. So I know collectively the team’s working hard to do that, but money’s not going to fix that problem overnight. So I think the big idea of being creative about how we generate combat power and then regenerate it is something we’ve got to keep spending time thinking about. And then, you know, David, I’ll just pile on to your persistence piece. We don’t have enough weapons. We don’t have enough airplanes. So whatever we’re doing in there between pulses better survive. We’ve got to figure out what that’s going to take to do that because if it’s not survivable and you’re losing weapons or other capabilities that aren’t really generating the combat power or the effects you’re looking for, then I would say just wait for the next pulse, which the enemy will figure out. So I think working our way through that and, you know, again, war games are very helpful. But we’ve got to continue to use the modeling and operational analysis that’s available to us to continue to smoke out how the enemy’s going to respond because they’re not 10 feet tall. Yeah, they’re doing a lot of, you know, very technologically advanced capabilities, bringing those to the fight. But we’ve got people, and our people are good. Given the opportunity to solve those problems, we need to take advantage of that.
Mark Gunzinger:
Okay, so no panel on this topic would be complete without mention of family systems. So Mitchell Institute has led a series of workshops and war games, thanks for bringing that up, Otis, to assess the effectiveness of different Air Force war structures in a Pacific conflict in the future. So planners, operators, tech experts, industry have all worked together to understand what kind of capabilities would lead to a future force design for the Air Force that can fight and win in the Pacific as well as meet the Air Force’s other global operational requirements. And that force design should be based on a family of systems that includes fifth and future sixth generation aircraft and the munitions they deliver. So, Cobra, let’s start with you. What are your thoughts on this foundation and the capabilities they must bring to the fight?
Gen. Jeff “Cobra” Harrigian, USAF (Ret.):
Yeah, thanks for that. So, fundamentally, I think we’d all agree family of systems is a great idea. You know, it makes sense. You look at the PowerPoint slide, you’re like, I understand what we’re trying to do here. But I would argue job one is they better connect. And thus far, we have not had great success in being able to do that. And so while we continue to improve that, what I would argue in the near future is we continue to identify those key capabilities that are within the family of systems, whether it be from an intel perspective, the airborne layer, or even with our joint force, we identify those key capabilities inside the family of systems that we have got to ensure they’re connected. And I’ll be a little bit more specific with respect to I’m talking about in some cases it’s comms, it’s weapons quality data, and it’s the ability to ensure that collectively we have a shared understanding of what’s happening in the environment. That all sounds good, but it’s hard. And so we ought to be leveraging each and every exercise real world operation to go back, identify those gaps, and then go collectively work together with industry to get the warfighter in a prioritized fashion the capabilities they need the soonest.
Mark Gunzinger:
Absolutely.
Gen. Jeff “Cobra” Harrigian, USAF (Ret.):
Otis.
Robert Winkler:
Thank you. So I love the term family of systems because what I really — I think what it means in general is, hey, the things that we have ultimately designed connection from the get-go, we’ve designed it in, that’s great, right? But the sad part about it is we should be doing that across the entire joint force. We have to figure out a way to get the entire joint force to be part of the family of systems. Otherwise you’re going to have very bespoke, very high-end, you know, outstanding capabilities to do one-offs. But when you’re trying to mass that firepower in the Pacific to meet any effect that the commander needs, but in particular to stop the amphibious assault across Taiwan, it’s not going to be just one bespoke kind of grouping of people. And so what I challenge everybody is we should be looking at whether it’s an industry, whether it’s in the requirements, whether it’s in the blown-up J-SIDS process as they put it back together again, that we need to connect across the entire joint force first, and then second is our coalition partners.
Maj. Gen. Jason Armagost:
All right. Sometimes I wish, like, we could go classified on these panels. Because I agree 100% kind of across the board here. There are interesting things happening behind the scenes to connect things that should have always been connected, but to invigorate the things that we know that can make a difference. So that’s thing one. The way I kind of approach this conceptually when it comes to family of systems, you kind of have a capability trinity of a platform, the sensors that it has organically, and then the munitions actually and how those connect inside of that range of capabilities. But they are wrapped in the comms and the data movement that brings first a shared understanding of the environment so that you can maneuver through and affect that environment. And so that’s just what I would — I think we’re — we know more about how to make the family of systems better. But, again, it comes back to the strategic choices we need to make to actually make that material.
Gen. Jeff “Cobra” Harrigian, USAF (Ret.):
If I could just pile on here. You know, you think back to the start of the Ukraine-Russian war. We were able to sort through so many policies to share information, make this connection happen. Why are we waiting for a war? Anybody want to answer that? Yeah. I don’t think anybody can answer it. But I think it’s fundamentally, I think, a mission for all of us as we continue to educate policymakers, the requirement to do this and, as I say, completely bake it in from the beginning, but we still have to have the policy to release it oftentimes. And that was a significant challenge for us. And, you know, thank goodness we had the right leaders to help us work through that. But let’s not wait until day one because we’re not going to win if that’s going to be the approach we take.
Mark Gunzinger:
Connectivity with other forces, we really need a JADC2 and not a SADC2. David, do you have a comment?
David Alexander:
Yeah, well, you know, maybe a little layer deeper is — and to pile on about, you know, let’s not wait until it happens to figure out how to fix it. But let’s train that way. But the whole — especially for unmanned platforms, the whole arena of connectivity and distributed command and control, I mean, we can figure out what you’re going to lose in overtime and how you mitigate it. And I really think we’ve got to take our systems and figure out that ahead of time and actually run your training that way. So, you know, when everything’s great, you’ve got SATCOM. When it’s not, you’ve got semi-autonomous, you know, waypoints. And then when that goes away, you’re going to have a line of sight to a manned aircraft and you’re going to be in full autonomy mode. And at that point, you’re in a battle mode and you’re telling it whatever you see, kill it. So I think those layers, different layers of control, as you lose this distributed C2 piece, I think you’ve got to train that way to make sure it’s not a surprise when you get there. Like, oh, gee, my geo-SAT was just jammed. Now I don’t know what to do. We can’t get ourselves into that position again. And I think with semi-autonomous and full autonomy, we will be able to not have to have any comms, you know, when it gets really tough, you know, in the endgame. Just turn these systems loose and let them do their thing. But, yeah.
Mark Gunzinger:
All right, so let’s talk about a non-controversial topic, the kill chain balance in the Air Force and kill chain resiliency. Because a couple more key insights from Mitchell exercises is the need to ensure that the Air Force’s balance is capacity to complete long-range standoff kill chains and penetrating strike kill chains. So we need both, without question, both standoff and penetrating. But an excessive reliance on kill chains that are highly dependent on multiple main sensors, long-range communications, and other capabilities, now that can create opportunities for the PLA, which is ready to conduct systems-V systems warfare against our forces. So, panel, what are your thoughts on kill chain vulnerabilities, the Air Force’s future balance, kill chain balance, and also how we can make them more resilient to what China is going to try to do with us? Otis, start with you.
Robert Winkler:
So I love the question. I think when you’re thinking about where we are in the kill chain in a long-range versus more of an organic, I think about it more of a penetrating capabilities versus more of a standoff, stand outside capabilities. And the stand outside capabilities, regardless of whether it’s airborne or ground launched from a missile, is fantastic. It has huge deterrent value every single day. It underpins everything that we’re doing with nuclear deterrence with our ICBM force that is sitting out in the missile fields right now, ensuring that we can hold any target at risk anywhere in the world and have a strategic effect on that target at the time and place of our choosing. What it doesn’t allow you to do, though, is apply the mass that’s required. It might, if we had an unlimited budget and we could just buy many, many different conventional or nuclear armed missiles or air launched missiles that can go a long way. But for the most part, what we’ve tried to do with whether it’s conventional prompt strike or long range hypersonic weapon, applying any of those things at scale is probably going to break the bank and not achievable with what we want. And so you have to have that capability. It gives you great options. It gives the national security policy makers great options when it comes to deterrence value and off ramps as the conflict starts. But we also need that penetrating capability. And that penetrating capability gives you a much more robust kill chain. That long range kill chain where you’re trying to maintain custody of a target is really relying on the comms that we just got done having a conversation that the comms don’t exist for short range, let alone something that’s going to go a long way and the ISR that we need. It gives the enemy points that could contest the kill chain all the way across. If you go more of the penetrating attack, that brings organic firepower with you. It also brings organic ISR with you, whether it’s ISR from a CCA, whether it’s ISR from your own mission systems, your own radar, your own IR systems that are in the aircraft. You can hold targets at risk that way. And the cost curve as you penetrate in, you can bring a lot more mass and especially a lot more mass against moving targets. You bring all of the kill chain with you. You apply those effects and then you can do that over and over again.
Maj. Gen. Jason Armagost:
I’ll amplify that from a slightly different vector. So on the worst day, we have to have a kill chain, right? So if we’re starting there, and it has to be organic because in many cases there’s been attacks in space, there’s EMP, there’s an environment that is insufficient to a long range kill chain in many, many cases, right? So if we’re starting there, that can, and if we plan it and choose properly, can have trickle up effects into that conventional environment where you do have that penetrating long range organic kill chain that can do some very interesting things, but then also robust the long range kill chain. So it’s kind of saying the same thing, but it starts in a slightly different place to get the same effect.
Gen. Jeff “Cobra” Harrigian, USAF (Ret.):
I think I’ll pile on to that a little bit. First off, we’re never going to have enough money to buy a whole bunch of these. But you remind me when the Russians shot their first hypersonic when I was at USAFY. Everybody freaked out like, “Oh!” Like, what do they get out of it, three of these things, or is this just for fun, or what’s the deal here? Yeah, you remember? And so now we get into this, you know, okay, we’re off to the races here, we got to go do this. I would argue, I agree, I mean, this is part of the game now. We need to understand how we’re going to do it, we’re going to have to train to it. But I also think, you know, because we talk about balance, like, what, 90/10, 80/20? Like, context is everything when it comes to this, you know, because again, we’re a global force. And as we look across the globe and look at, you know, the most dangerous, most likely, how do we optimize the money we have to get the most bang for the buck? So arguably, we’ve got to do it, and I completely agree with you, you leverage the insiders to help you with the long range. And then we train to that and learn from it so that we go back and put the money against the right priorities to fund it, to make it real. Because if it’s not real, then it’s not going to deter anybody.
Mark Gunzinger:
Okay, a lightning round question here, and then I’d like to give about a minute to each panelist to wrap up, because time marches on. So during Mitchell’s war games, the experts, the air and space power experts who may be called on to fight and win against China and Russia and our other adversaries, have stressed the need to deny operational sanctuaries to an adversary. For instance, they said, trying to defeat a peer adversary’s missile attacks on our forces and bases by relying only on Tetris-Mid defensive systems, that’s a losing proposition. We’re behind the curve on that always. So the Air Force, uniquely as a service, must be prepared to go on the offensive to disrupt the operations of an adversary’s air and rocket forces. So panel, would you please share your thoughts on denying sanctuary and strategic attacks?
Maj. Gen. Jason Armagost:
I’ll start. So I was the operational imperative lead for OI-6 from ’21 to ’23, and Secretary Kendall at the time, at the first outbreak, for the first season of that, asked one question of our team. And he said, you know, without getting into the specifics, he said, “How do I hold that at risk?” And that is actually the central question for virtually everything we’ve talked about today. Because unless you can hold something at risk, you have eaten away or chipped away at your ability to deter. And so if the adversary thinks they can get something for free and we can’t respond, and they know we can’t respond, then that is the central question that actually all these strategic choices have to revolve around.
Robert Winkler:
So General Armagost, a little bit earlier, talked about an IADS rollback. That has been part and parcel of the way that the United States Air Force goes to war for a long time. It’s because it is easier to destroy the missiles that are coming up at you, or destroy the airplanes while they’re on the ground versus in the air. But for some reason, when we’re looking at force design as of late, we’re of, “Oof, they’ve got a lot of missiles. And they’re going to shoot them all at us.” Yes, that will happen. The enemy gets a vote in this and they’re going to try to stop us from doing what we want. But our job as Airmen, or old Airmen for me, and us up here, is to take that attack to them. Airpower is inherently offensive, and we do our best work when we’re taking the fight to the enemy. Destroying those missiles before they actually come to Guam, or before they come to the first island chain, or destroying the bombers that are coming out before they take off or right before they get in any shoot box, is a key to our success. And we should apply a lot of the force design capacity and capability to going after those targets.
Gen. Jeff “Cobra” Harrigian, USAF (Ret.):
So I’m going to take a more strategic view of this because I would argue this comes down to policy. You don’t have the po… Mr. NSE, if you don’t have the policy to go do this, certainly we’re going to generate the TTPs and hopefully the capability to do it. But, and I got to be careful what I say here, but if you think about when I was at AFSCENT, what was going on in Yemen, and what Iran was doing in Yemen. If we had gone after them then, and taken care of business, would we be where we were six months ago? Think about that. We didn’t have policy. So if we think we’re going to go in and, you know, go deep, I will say collectively for all of us, this is an educational process with our political leaders and walking them through why we think this is important. We may lose, and they may say, “Thank you for that, Otis, but here’s what you’re doing.” They’re going to have, you know, the ability to hang out there and build combat power because we’re not ready to do that. So it’s a thing. And if you’re, you know, coming up in the ranks now, you need to acknowledge that’s part of what we owe our leaders. We give them options, and that’s got to be one we put on the table and be willing to deliver on it.
Mark Gunzinger:
And if you don’t build an Air Force with those capabilities and capacity, then you deny that option to future presidents. David?
David Alexander:
No, I would just pile on to say that, you know, if you’re going to go after the sanctuaries, you’re going to have to do that with platforms. And so you need the hardware and the capability to go do that. And, you know, perhaps sometimes we’re not doing, going after sanctuaries, we just don’t have the hardware and the platforms and the people to go do it. And I really think we need, across the way for air superiority, a force multiplier with our systems right now. We need it quick. And so I’m really encouraged, you know, that what we’re doing on collaborative combat aircraft program right now, because we can do that force multiplier. And you now, now you have the options, you have the platforms, and you have the autonomy to go deep and you might lose a few. But believe me, you’re going to make a difference when you have a large quantity of platforms to go after it.
Mark Gunzinger:
Absolutely right. Gentlemen, five, 10 seconds each. Final thoughts, anyone? Armo?
David Alexander:
It was great to be up here with small teammates and new teammates.
Robert Winkler:
Yeah, thanks for the time. Hopefully we can take some stuff away.
Gen. Jeff “Cobra” Harrigian, USAF (Ret.):
It’s a hard problem. Get more money in our Air Force and buy more stuff.
David Alexander:
I like that buy more stuff thing. Anyway, thanks for having me and really, really appreciate the opportunity. Very good topics.
Mark Gunzinger:
Well, thank you, gentlemen. Now for the audience, I urge you to stop by Mitchell Institute’s booth. We’ve got free reports for you. No food, sorry. But before we depart, please give our panelists a big round of applause.