Force Generation
March 5, 2025
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This transcript was generated with the assistance of AI. Please report inconsistencies to comms@afa.org.
Tobias Naegele:
Welcome everybody. I got to say, it’s a little bit blinding up here. We can’t see how many of you there are, but we’re going to do our best, we’ll talk this way. This session is about forced generation and the units of action. And each of the Air Force and the Space Force has unveiled within the last couple of years a forced generation model, AFFORGEN and SPAFORGEN for the Space Force, and defined units of action. So for the Space Force squadrons, for the Air Force. Let’s start General Miller with you. And I guess here I should introduce everybody. Lieutenant General David Miller is Commander of Space Operations Command at Peterson Space Force Base, not so far from here. And Major General “Abu” Ghandi is Assistant Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations at Air Force Headquarters. So you’re the right guys to be talking about this. And let’s kind of define for us what your units of action are, how you do your rotations, and why. Because the why and the pacing is very different for the two services.
Lt. Gen. David N. Miller, Jr.:
Sure, thanks Tobias. I think probably to start the discussion of our units of action is we probably need to start a little bit further back of where we’ve been to describe how we got to the units of action that we’re going to field. Which as you mentioned, the combat squadrons and the combat detachments. And I would say, you know, it’s not that long ago, even though I feel old sometimes, you know, in the mid to late 90s when I look back at how I was prepared in order to go and do my operational mission, just frankly just over here at Buckley Space Force Base, doing Space-Based Infrared System Initial Cadre, which we were operating the defense support program. At that time, I was in the Second Space Warning Squadron. We had, as part of our initial training, I had been given four sets of three-inch binders. One was the spacecraft itself for the defense support program, and you could read it up from TRW. One was on the sensor, and the other was on the mission infrastructure that we had. And there was a loose-leaf binder of temporary procedures that were associated with doing it. And my preparation was shadowing the operational teams that were on the floor and getting checked off on specific tasks. And there were probably a couple hundred of those. There’s a lot of things that were different then than they are now. One of the things that is most different was the threat. Back at that time, as you’ve heard talked about throughout this conference, it was largely a benign and permissive environment. There was not the direct ascent ASAT threat that we see right now that’s materialized both from Russia and China testing over recent years. There weren’t on-orbit capabilities that were being launched and demonstrated and fielded, demonstrating counter-space capabilities in proximity to some of our most sensitive national reconnaissance systems. There weren’t proliferation of directed energy systems or electromagnetic warfare systems. So I didn’t have a lot of requirement to train to the threat.
Tobias Naegele:
You were an operator.
Lt. Gen. David N. Miller, Jr.:
Exactly. And I was just basically doing the job, i.e. my focus was on maintaining the DSP spacecraft and releasing missile warning messages. Similarly, the dependence of the joint force on space was more of an adjunct. It was a nice to have as opposed to embedded in everything that they do at that time in the mid-’90s. And I think that’s really the cause that changed how we generate our forces is those two things, both the threat and how we are a part of the joint force viewed, no longer as a supporting element, but a prerequisite to have space superiority for the joint force to be effective, led to a relook at how we generate and prepare ourselves to fight. And that really was the foundational change in our model. So rather than a model where at that time where I was constantly doing crew work and on shift and I was just working, taking care of business, we needed to carve out time in order to focus on the threat, be aware of all the possible threat factors, including cyber threat vectors, have preparation for counter TTPs in order to counter those threats, and then simultaneously building into my training plan the integration with my other sister Space Force units because I don’t do clearing of my spacecraft alone. I need the Geo Space Situational Awareness Program to make sure that nothing is close to DSP-22. You see what I mean?
Tobias Naegele:
Yes.
Lt. Gen. David N. Miller, Jr.:
And in the past, none of those things occurred. So we needed to carve out time. And we needed to deliberately organize in order to do it better. So our force gem model is really based off of three things. The first has got to be threat informed. The second has got to be war plan aligned. And the third, and perhaps one of the most important things, it’s organized and synchronized as a team and presented at the simultaneous time together. So what we did was we built a model that lays out a combat squadron as our core unit of action. And in that squadron, we don’t just have a crew of operators anymore. We now add ISR, intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance experts as a part of that team. We add cyber defenders that are on mission, providing mission defense of our mission system networks. We also add a focus on our mission planning cell looking forward in the future because the component commander, who’s my main customer in space operations command, has requirements out in the future that I need to prepare for and that the team needs to plan for. And we also leverage our infrastructure on the base as well as our maintenance and sustainment function in a mission support element. That is the key to our unit of action. Those three components, the combat crew, the mission planning cell and the mission support element.
Tobias Naegele:
And the scale of that?
Lt. Gen. David N. Miller, Jr.:
It really will depend. The crew at Buckley is still about 20 people for sitting on the second space warrant squadron floor. The mission planning cell may only be a handful. Mission support element, about the same. But if you’re at a ground based radar, that size will be less than half of that. Those are just smaller crews and they all vary. I think the key distinction though is I now have a team that we deliberately plan for in a prepare and ready phase. Right now our course cycle for SPAFORGEN is six months long. I take them right now in a model that’s about three weeks for their prepare phase where they’re focused on building individual competencies. In their ready phase, we build them in three different instantiations. The first is on the unit core themselves. They build the habits as a team together because they need to know how each other are going to respond in any given scenario. We broaden out to the mission area. Missile warning as an example. It’s not just Buckley that does missile warning. We have the ground based radars. We’re about to field the proliferated warfighting space architecture that will do missile warning and tracking. There’s a whole enterprise of JTAGS units, Joint Tactical Ground Stations, across the globe. You actually do the detection, tracking, and targeting of threat missile systems as a team now where you didn’t do that before. And then the final phase before they commit is the integrated warfighting team phase. And that’s where they partner with those other sister units as I was describing. Or they’re joint or coalition partners before presentation. So we have a deliberate building block approach. And everybody goes in to commit together. They all know each other because they’ve all been training together. They’ve graduated through a single flashpoint exercise which is our final culminating event. They’re all cleared to the same level. For the first time in history, we’re doing those things. I mean, this is all new stuff for us. But it’s presented as a core team. And all those combat squadrons go together.
Tobias Naegele:
And the cycle at that point when they commit is how much time have they been from the beginning of that six months to the end?
Lt. Gen. David N. Miller, Jr.:
So right now, for prepare phase is three weeks. Six weeks is the ready phase. And then we do 105 days in the commit cycle for the team. So when you add all that up together, it’s about 24 weeks total. We just finished our first cycle. We started together in July — in one July. And they finished in 31 December. Was that six-month cycle? Every commander gave us feedback. One of their key feedback items is we need more time for the ready phase to train. So we’re going to move to an eight-month cycle here in June. And that’ll be one month focused on prepare, two months focused on the ready phase, and then five months in commit for a total eight-month cycle.
Tobias Naegele:
And then reevaluate again?
Lt. Gen. David N. Miller, Jr.:
Yeah. We’re not waiting for perfect. For too long, paralysis has prevented us from moving forward on things that we know are requirements that we have to do in order to meet the joint war plan requirements. So we have always said we’re going to iterate to excellence. And as we get more and more feedback, one of the things we learned in our feedback was that the intel threat picture that we need across our formations needs to be standardized in a shared awareness tool. That’s something we’re taking on to field out to all the units right now. And these are things that you can’t take for granted because we just haven’t done them before. And it’s because we’ve got awesome Guardians and Airmen who are — there’s 1,000 of them sitting on shift right now across the world doing the mission for us, just under 1,000. And they’re doing a fabulous job for us. But if we don’t get their feedback, we’ll never get to excellence that we want to get to.
Tobias Naegele:
All right. So let’s give Abu a chance to jump in here. And we’re going to switch gears and talk about AFFORGEN. So obviously, these first-generation models have similar names, very different cycles, very different histories. So we’ve gone from the Expeditionary Air Base a few years ago, which was already a change from crowdsourcing. And now we’re at Air Task Forces, or on the cusp of Air Task Forces. Walk us through where you are and where we’re going.
Maj. Gen. Akshai Gandhi:
Okay. Tobias, thank you. And on behalf of General Spain, the Air Force A3, and General Allvin, thanks for having us and having the opportunity to talk about what we’re doing with our AFFORGEN cycle. And honestly, it’s a journey. So if we walk back a little bit, you know, talk last year when General Allvin presented his keynote at AFA, he talked about a few different inflection points. I’m going to hit a couple of those real quick, because I think that sets the scene for where we’re going and why we’re doing what we’re doing. Post-9/11 era, lots of crowdsourcing, because we needed to have a continuous presence in the CENTCOM AOR. And what that amounted to was — it turned out to be a pretty permissive environment for us. So now as we look at the change in the strategic environment, we’ve got a situation where what — you know, that air superiority is contested. And we — our bases can be held at risk. And the crowdsourcing and, you know, the — you know, instead of deploying a squadron, we deployed parts of a squadron, which served us fine in that environment, but it’s not going to get us across the finish line should conflict break out in this new strategic environment. So a little bit of a back to the future where we’re resetting what our unit of action is going to be at the wing. Now, we — not the first time we’ve done this. That’s the way we fought the Cold War. But we can’t get from point A to point B overnight. There’s no pause button that we can hit while we retool and reengineer everything that we’ve got. You know, the enemy gets a vote. They’re going to, you know, be doing what they do. So we’re taking this in phases. And just like the Space Force, we’re not waiting for perfect. We’re taking incremental steps to move towards the eventual goal of a deployable combat wing or combat wings. But I’ll focus on the deployable combat wing because we’re talking about what we’re pushing forward into a theater of operations. So from the crowd source air expeditionary wings that we’ve had for a number of years, we established the expeditionary air bases. And those have been, you know, been through a couple iterations of those starting in October 2023 with the first round. And that was the first step. So go back to what we did with the crowd sourcing. You had lots of different, you know, just deployment groups that would go. Sometimes it was as little as one Airman. We tried to team up a few. But you took this group of folks that did their own individual training and followed some sort of a preparation message to go to the area of operations that they’re going to be operating in. And then they have to kind of form that team and learn how to work and operate together. Now, in a permissive environment, we could get away with this. And I guess it served us pretty well during that time frame because I think we were successful. With the XABs, we’re starting to move away from that where we’re taking a group of Airmen, a command and control layer. So, you know, the way the model is presented is you kind of have that command and control layer. You’ll have your mission execution layer and a sustainment layer down below. But the XAB takes that command and control layer and it forms them up as a team and they’re kind of sourced from a couple different bases. And they get some opportunities to train together and then deploy together. And then the rest of the team is kind of coming together.
Tobias Naegele:
It’s not meeting for the first time downrange.
Maj. Gen. Akshai Gandhi:
I’m sorry?
Tobias Naegele:
It’s not meeting for the first time downrange.
Maj. Gen. Akshai Gandhi:
That is correct. It’s not meeting for the first time downrange. So, as we move into air task forces, and the XAB was a good starting point because that’s what we could do relatively quickly. So, the first few iterations of that gave us the opportunities to start setting up the air task forces. And what the air task forces allowed us to do is take that command-and-control layer and PCS all these Airmen to the same base. So, when they’re going through their training, when they’re going through the different phases of the Afro-Gem process, they are, they’re working together as an integrated team. They’re learning their strengths and weaknesses. They’re learning where they need to, you know, to beef up on certain things. And more importantly, they’re building trust amongst themselves. And with that air task force, they will go forward. The mission elements will come in. The support elements will come in. And those mission elements and support elements will also participate in training events as they go through the cycle. So, the AFFORGEN cycle, it’s a different time scale for us in the Air Force. It’s 24 months, six months per phase. You start off with a reset phase. And that’s where folks are doing their individual skills training. They’re getting their basic stuff squared away. They go into a prepare phase where they’re starting to team up and build the teams. And then you have a certified phase where we actually have a certification standard that we’re going to apply to that. And that is for the environment that they’re going to be going into and then they’re available to deploy.
Tobias Naegele:
Your first ATFs are actually going into that phase now.
Maj. Gen. Akshai Gandhi:
They’re already in there. We have some certified ATFs. They will head out in the beginning of FY26. So.
Tobias Naegele:
And then beyond that, the wings 18 months or so later?
Maj. Gen. Akshai Gandhi:
So, our intent is beginning of FY27, we’ll have the deployable combat wings. So, that’s the kind of —
Tobias Naegele:
Just a year later.
Maj. Gen. Akshai Gandhi:
— where we’re trying to get to. That’s the objective at this point. And what that looks like is instead of with that ATF where you’re crowdsourcing, you know, you have that command-and-control team, but you’re still crowdsourcing from three or four bases. The intent is the predominance of the Airmen are going to come from one location and they’re going to be forged together. You know, they’ll learn how to operate, move, communicate, react in a contested environment, when they’re in a degraded situation, when they’re under fire, and they’re going to be certified to that effect as well.
Tobias Naegele:
Okay. So, in order to certify, and this is for both of you, in order to certify, you’ve got to go through certain levels of training. We talked about that. And essentially, that training is designed as a test, right? It’s to make sure that they can pass the test and you’re going to put them through a series of steps to get there. How has that changed as the threat changed and as you’ve changed your, the kind of organization that you’re putting together?
Lt. Gen. David N. Miller, Jr.:
I would say for us, so as opposed to a surge and then a deployment of an ATF, you’ve got to remember 93% or better of the missions that we execute are done 24/7.
Tobias Naegele:
Right.
Lt. Gen. David N. Miller, Jr.:
So, the nature of the maturation process will inevitably have some impact on the force that’s already in commit, but simultaneously we’re trying to spool in the changes, updates, tactics, techniques, procedures, or new operating concepts into what we’re going to bring into the next rotation as we bring in new forces. But to your specific point, ours is really tied to really two key things. And right now, it’s like I said, on a six-month cycle. Every combatant commander through their service component commander in particular provides to me requirements every year for General Schiess, it’s usually about every six months, of what they need our forces to be able to do. You can imagine in CENTCOM, particularly given what you saw in Iran and the missile threat in Israel just, you know, a number of months ago, obviously there’s a significant missile warning, tracking, and targeting ask that they have for us.
Tobias Naegele:
Kind of unprecedented.
Lt. Gen. David N. Miller, Jr.:
Exactly right. Similarly, if you’re focused on the Indo-Pacific, given the potential threat from PLA from counter space capabilities and so on, you can imagine that there might be more orbital warfare tasks that we would need to be training to. We take those tasks, tailor our ready and prepare cycles, in particular our ready cycles, the Delta commanders themselves own the mission area preparation. And that includes both the validation and certification of new tactics, techniques, and procedures, the update of new operating concepts, and ultimately their validation prior to going into the integrated warfighting phase. In our flash point, which is our graduation level exercise prior to commit, they will go through a representative, because I don’t have enough training fidelity at all the units to get everybody in. There’s a team that is selected. It’s about 10 to 12% of the force that actually gets a chance to participate. And we do a validation that they are ready to meet. And there’s usually going to be some regrets, but they’re ready to meet the intent of what the component commander needs. And then I, as a part of that completion every six months, validate to both the service component, so in this case, General Schiess is the example, and/or to the service chief, where we are in our readiness. We update the standards and measures as needed for our mission essential tasks accordingly. And then finally, we give a summary answer back in my program recommendation of, hey, this is the part I couldn’t mitigate with non-material solutions. This is the part I couldn’t mitigate by moving personnel around between units. This is new mission growth, or it’s closing combat capability gaps. And then I take that forward in part of my program requirement, which I’ve already submitted.
Maj. Gen. Akshai Gandhi:
All right. Top that. No, let’s talk — let’s approach that from the Air Force perspective. You’re — you’ve got to get your folks ready through those cycles, and that similarly is changing, right? Requirements are — and the requirements are not necessarily all identical for each of those ATFs or each of those deployable wings. So I think what we’re really talking about here is readiness. And readiness is one of those things that we have to take a look at. There are a couple different aspects of it that, you know, that factor in there. So when you’re talking about a — whether it be an ATF or a DCW, deployable combat wing — sorry, I’m trying to avoid the acronyms here today. But for us, it’s kind of a balancing act between personnel, equipment, training, and operations. And it’s very easy to — you know, those are kind of the levers that we have an opportunity to manipulate. And what we need to be mindful of is that as we make an input to any one of those four levers, that we do that in balance with the others. The different — you know, an input’s going to have a different amount of time that it’s going to take. So you put that input in, and it’s going to — you’re going to see an effect at some point in time, but it’s not going to necessarily be consistent. If you do something on the personnel side, do something on the equipment side, they’re going to have different times. So you have to pay attention to keeping those in balance. And while we’re doing all of this, we’re not going to get relieved of, you know, the steady state operations that are required of the Air Force as we’re going on day in, day out. So that’s where this force presentation model allows us to, you know — the other part of this is how do we characterize the risk that we’re going to take. So when we get to the full complement of deployable combat wings, our intent is to have 24 of those. So we’ll have six available at any given time in that six-month phase. And that’s what we’re going to present to the Joint Force. Sixteen of those will be in the active component. Eight will be in the reserve component. Now, what does that mean? It means that, hey, you’ve got six to — you know, Joint Force, you’ve got six to go do what — whatever tasking needs to be done, and we’re going to present that as a coherent — you’re going to get the — if you need something done, you’re going to get a full deployable combat wing. Now, what if the demand signal is greater than the six that we’re presenting? Well, there’s some in the certified phase, but now we have the opportunity to clearly articulate the risk to the Joint Force if you tap into other resources that are in that certified phase. They’re available — they can be presented.
Tobias Naegele:
But it’s going to cost you down the road.
Maj. Gen. Akshai Gandhi:
Exactly. So the other piece that goes into the readiness is training. Now, General Allvin talked earlier in the conference about, hey, we need to fly more, you know. And the flying’s not just for the pilots. It’s for the entire team that’s generating that combat air power. But I’m going to talk a little bit from the three perspective on the flying piece specifically. And, you know, it’s also been talked about in the conference earlier that, you know, pilots used to fly a lot more hours back in the ’80s. You know, that may be — in my career, which started in the ’90s, I didn’t see that kind of flying level, but nevertheless, we were able to be prepared. I was prepared for Operation Allied Force going into downtown Belgrade. I was prepared for Iraqi freedom when we started that into Baghdad. And the way we did that was a combination of flying and simulators. Now, our flying has fallen off, and we have a plan to kind of fix that by adjusting our readiness models and the way we approach certain things. But we’re also taking a look at the high-fidelity environments that we have. Now, if you look at today’s threat, and you look at, you know, a couple decades ago, it was pretty straightforward. We’re fighting some fourth-generation-type platforms, and there are a few numbers out there. And we could put some red air up, or we had some adversary squadrons. And that worked out just fine to prepare the forces. But now you look at the integrated threats that are out there, that are multi-domain, and some of that stuff you just can’t do in a live-fly environment. So what can we do? We can build — you know, we have built simulators. And this is not new. So if I go back to that example of flying in Operation Iraqi Freedom, you know, I remember, you know, kind of a little vignette that I like to think of is, hey, I’m over — I was prepared to go into the Baghdad area, and I remember one day tipping up on the — you know, tipping up, looking out the side of the cockpit, looking down, I go, wow, this is all familiar. Why? Because I’d mission-reported. I’d been rehearsed and trained against the threats in a high-fidelity simulator. And that was over two decades ago. So today, we have the ability to infuse, especially with our — you know, what we’re putting together with that joint simulation environment, very, very high-fidelity training that we just can’t reproduce in a live-fly arena. Now, also throw in the fact that there are certain things that we may not want the adversary to see us do. And we can do that in that environment that we can’t do in live-fly. Now, can we do everything in the sim? Absolutely not. You still have to get that air under your — under you in order to, you know, develop those competencies. You know, tactically, you can do lots of great things in the simulator, but we still need to focus on the administrative parts of flying. And it’s, you know, okay, so takeoffs, landings, all that kind of stuff, yeah, we do that. But it’s getting to the fight, dealing with the weather, wielding around your formation, whether it be a two-ship, a four-ship, or you’re in charge of a much larger strike package of something along those lines. So we’re using the technologies that are out there, you know, both in the air and on the ground to better build our readiness.
Tobias Naegele:
So, Rock, you were nodding when we talked — when you brought up JSE. I’m kind of curious what the Space Forces play in that kind of environment is. And I’m especially curious to see how, as you’re going — as you’re preparing forces for combat, they’re not going to fight by themselves. They’re going to be fighting in a joint environment. They’re going to be relying on each other, on inputs from other services. How are you preparing for that?
Lt. Gen. David N. Miller, Jr.:
Yeah. So the — I think a lot of that resonates, and I was nodding because you’re facing a lot of similar challenges. There’s going to be, for a number of reasons, activities that we will not do in a live fly environment. And some of it is because up until really the last year, almost the entirety of everything the Space Force had to offer to the Joint Force was presented all the time, and there was no carve-out for training or for utilization of these systems for tactics development, tactics testing, or anything else. So we’ve now gotten to a place where we can do those things, and as the service force provider, my team helps provide that. But that’s not going to be enough. And the simple truth is, the test and training infrastructure that we need in order to get to that level of integration across the Joint Force is not there yet. That’s why you see the service chief, you know, General Saltzman talking about the investment we have made in test and training infrastructure over the last couple of years. The ultimate end state we want to get to is at each location for every operational unit, they have the high fidelity simulator capability with threat emulation on a common platform that they can fight from to integrate and simultaneously can then do virtual reps and sets with the other Joint Force players. That is not a today capability. So what we are doing is a couple of things. On the one hand, we are working to upgrade the simulators to the extent that we can. And there are things that have been done, and some commanders have done a phenomenal job of getting more fidelity into their simulators. But they are not virtually connected yet. So there are other things we have to do. We don’t limit ourselves to those. And we do still virtual planning exercises, tabletop exercises, as well as mission rehearsals in preparation for the threat. In preparation for the Iranian threat that we anticipated in October, the missile warning and tracking team got together all of their units, level set everybody on what they expected based off the threat intelligence. And this was happening in hours, not necessarily in weeks and months in advance. And then began to go through rehearsals of what they thought that possible scenario would look like, including salvo launch rates and so on, and simultaneous attacks. There’s value to still being able to do those things, even if you don’t have a simulator that connects everybody together. What we’re also doing, though, is like I said, and that was our culminating exercise for Flashpoint, is bringing together representatives from all of the operational units, commonly cleared. And they go through, with some limited virtual capability right now, demonstrations of all the mission threats we know are coming. And we validate their readiness to perform based off their ability to plan, brief, execute, and debrief to standard there. Because we don’t have the high-fidelity simulation and threat emulation capability that’s virtually networked like a JSC, there will be some regrets that we are tracking and working to close. But it’s only going to be enough when we include the joint and coalition partners, too. So right now, Delta 8, which is our fighting SATCOM Delta, includes training events with Submarine Forces Atlantic associated with when they will need peak performance for SATCOM, the anticipated threat environment that they’re going to be operating in. They’re given access to very sensitive information about when they’re going to be operating and where. And they know what their priority requirements are for the submarine forces of the United States. We didn’t — there was nothing that was even happening like that just even a year ago.
Tobias Naegele:
Oh, wow.
Lt. Gen. David N. Miller, Jr.:
So we have multiple mission sets, Special Operations Forces cooperating with our electromagnetic warfare units and the evolution of a whole new EW and ISR targeting concept. Those are new things that the Guardians themselves are driving to solutions, and those will happen sometimes in a virtual network. But in some cases, we’re sending people to those formations or they’re coming to us, and we’re having to do the training there. I think in the next couple years, you know, the investment profile I’ve seen for test and training infrastructure will improve. If we realize those capabilities, I think by 2030, we’ll be in a much better place in terms of high fidelity, virtual capability that we can generate and operate across the force. But we can’t wait. The threat is already here. The joint force dependence on space superiority as a prerequisite to maneuver is already here. So they are doing those things today and formalizing in our SPAFORGEN model. That’s the key to that integrated warfighting phase, that last couple of weeks, is that’s the time when joint coalition and sister service capabilities are all brought together, I may also add commercial, are all brought together as a team, and they get exposed to that as a team. The challenge I have right now is because we don’t have that virtual infrastructure, I’m only getting a fraction of the force trained to that standard, and it’s not going to be to a high performance standard until I can get it distributed to everybody at all their operational locations. Does that make sense?
Tobias Naegele:
Yes. So General Gandhi, we were talking, let’s kind of pivot to the idea, you talked a lot about pilot training and flight training, but C2, command and control of those units is a big piece of the challenge. And in the combat wing or deployable combat wing structure, the concept really is that you’re going to have a command element, you’re going to have a sustainment element that kind of comes with it, and then the mission force elements get plugged in, right, or force generation elements. So you could end up with a fighter wing commanding a mobility unit or vice versa, correct?
Maj. Gen. Akshai Gandhi:
Absolutely.
Tobias Naegele:
So you’ve got to be able to see to that, how do you train those people to be able to manage, I mean they’re now, they’re commanding things that are not really their native force elements.
Maj. Gen. Akshai Gandhi:
So this is where we’re striving to break down some of the, you know, just the mindset that just because you came from a particular community, we grow up in a certain community, you know, for example, I’m a fighter guy, doesn’t mean that you don’t have the ability to command and control, you know, any capability, especially if we train you to it. If we provide those sets of reps in that training cycle to do that and we build the structure around it. So the way this works, you designate a, you know, a deployable combat wing comes from some base when we have this implemented. It’ll come from a base and that base will have certain platforms assigned to it. And the reason why I’m being kind of nebulous about what that is, is because the way we’re designing this is it’s not going to really matter. So you’re going to be trained to have a, you know, to command and control the forces that you have to be able to generate. And based on the mission assigned, you will have what we call, they’re called MGFE’s, which is a mission generation force element. But let’s just break that down to what it is. Those are kind of your combat formations, those squadrons that are coming in. Now, it doesn’t necessarily, you know, you’re probably bringing one, maybe two from your location that you’re deploying from. But we’re going to plug in other capabilities that are needed in that situation for the mission that’s been assigned to you. Now, this is nothing new. I was the AEW commander at PSAP. Like I said, I’m a fighter guy. We had fighters, yes, one squadron. We had one squadron of tankers. And we had one squadron of E-11’s, providing that C2 mission. So this is not something new. It’s something that we’ve been training for, you know, we’ve executed over time. Now, the difference that we’ve got here is now when we go through that prepare and certify phase, we’re exercising that entire team to work together. And those mission generation force elements, those different types of platforms that are coming in. So part, let me back up a second. So your C2 is made of, you know, your command staff, your A staff, and your special staff. Those are the key constituents to that organization over there. You may not have that expertise if you’re from a tanker base, and then you’re going to get some fighter units coming into your deployed combat wing. You may not have that particular expertise. And I could see why that, you know, people are like, hey, how’s this going to work? Again, we’re training together. And part of that mission generation force element is each one of those bring the appropriate expertise, and that expertise gets infused into that command and control layer into that A staff, so you bring that capability in there. We’re looking at commanding all aerospace forces assigned, not just what you grew up in. And that’s how we’re building that out.
Tobias Naegele:
Now you don’t have anything quite like that, General Miller, but you do have this kind of continuous evolution, and you have begun doing, you’ve integrated your, you have the new integrated mission deltas. It’s a little bit similar, because you’re bringing together different kinds of units.
Lt. Gen. David N. Miller, Jr.:
You bet. So the, it is analogous. I wouldn’t say it’s not anything like it. It is analogous. The whole point of us bringing together the integrated mission delta was to get to a level of unified mission readiness for generation of combat capability, as opposed to where we had been in the past, which we were splitting up key components of our readiness, in particular, our supply, sustainment, and equipping function between two different field commands. And what we were able to do in an integrated mission delta, and we just did the two of them up just a couple of months ago for missile warning and tracking and also for space domain awareness, is now within one single O6 command, they own all of the elements of readiness. They have the personnel. They have the equipment. They own the supply sustainment and function that we need for weapon system sustainment. And they also have the training capability. I spread that across all our unique mission units. And remember, for us, I don’t have 42 F-16 squatters or F-30s. There’s one unit that does wideband global SATCOM. It’s the 53rd Space Operation Squadron. The difference is the entirety of that SATCOM function mission area is underneath a single commander now. And she or he is going to have every component of readiness represented, either discreetly through the mission unit themselves, or in this case, a sustainment squadron that allows us to do it. The key, though, that you need to remember for our model that’s a little bit distinct is, you know, as opposed to the deployable concept, we fight from our bases. So for me, the space-based deltas, in particular, here at Buckley Space Base Delta 2, at Peterson Space Base Delta 1, they’re part of our weapon system. So the power, HVAC, anything that it takes to fight from that location is part of what I need in order to execute my operational mission. So we don’t have the same, you know, acronyms.
Tobias Naegele:
Base infrastructure is actually part of that.
Lt. Gen. David N. Miller, Jr.:
But all that weapon system infrastructure is part of what is assessed through the force generation process. When the Delta commanders, every six months, validate to me their readiness prior to presentation, the space-based Delta commanders stand up and validate combat support, defense forces, civil engineering, power, and HVAC. They validate their readiness to provide support to those units. So it’s — the integrated mission deltas are a key, but they can’t do the mission without the support from the weapon system infrastructure provided in the garrison forces represented in the space-based deltas as well. So for us — and remember, my space-based deltas, they got like one Guardian, the commander. Everybody else in that formation is an Airman. Half of space operations command is Airmen that are assigned to me. So the enterprise that generates readiness for the U.S. Space Force and provides space superiority capability to the joint force is an Airman and Guardian enterprise. It’s not just a Guardian enterprise.
Tobias Naegele:
Not just Guardians. In the Air Force, you do have some units that are — that do fight from their home bases. Are they going to be part of those — the deployable combat wings, or because they’re normally fighting from home station, that won’t be the case? So I’m thinking, for example, B-2s out of Whiteman, for example.
Maj. Gen. Akshai Gandhi:
So the short answer is, no, they will not. So I talked about the 24 deployable combat wings, those units of action that will be designated from, you know, the different bases. There are going to be other — there are other forces. There will be, you know, because we have more than 24 wings in the United States Air Force.
Tobias Naegele:
Right.
Maj. Gen. Akshai Gandhi:
So you have two other types of wings that we’re going to be working with. You’ll have the institutional wings, those ones that kind of, you know, they — kind of like our tech schools and our pilot training bases. Yeah. All the things — our test and evaluation enterprise. That’s your institutional piece. But on the combat side, there are kind of three kind of wings that we’ll be working towards. The deployable combat wing will be — we’ve already talked about plenty. You’ll have the in-place combat wing, and that could be ISR or a low-density, high-demand asset like the B-2 that you talked about. And then you’ll have combat generation wings. That’ll be a wing that has, you know, they’ll see to their home station to be able to, you know, make sure that they can generate and project power, project those mission generation force elements to the deployable combat wings. But they won’t have that full, robust layer to go somewhere else and set up operations. So that’s kind of what the Air Force will look like as we move forward. And one thing, because I think we’re running short on time here.
Tobias Naegele:
Yeah, we’re running out.
Maj. Gen. Akshai Gandhi:
But one thing I kind of want to emphasize, you know, this is an iterative process. And like I said, we wish we could go from right from where we were with crowdsourcing all the way to deployable combat wing. We’ve already talked about why we couldn’t do that. But I think there’s some proof in the pudding. Certainly room to iterate. There are certainly things that we’re going to learn along the way to get better, and we will. That’s what our Airmen do. They’re out there doing that on a daily basis. But let me use the vignette of the night of April 13th this past year, or in ’24. That was a night where Iran salvoed some 200 weapons against the State of Israel. Now, what’s not keenly — you know, we know that the Air Force had a banner night and just absolutely excelled. But what’s not immediately obvious is that that was right at one of those key points where theoretically we would be the weakest because we were rotating forces in and out of theater. So the folks who accomplished that truly remarkable feat have barely been on the ground for maybe a week. And I think that’s where the proof is in the pudding, because that team — and this was an XAB. It wasn’t even an ATF where we’ve had more training opportunities or a DCW where they’d spend that full 18-month cycle living together and learning each other and then going forward. But that XAB had had their training events, and they’d built enough sets and reps and the trust and the understanding of how to work together. So when they hit the ground in crisis, they excelled. Now, you fast-forward project that to when we can actually have a team formed with a mission focus, and they’re spending 18 months going from the basics all the way up to your high-end combat training. And look at what those Airmen will accomplish given that opportunity.
Tobias Naegele:
Okay. I’m going to let you get the last word, but I’d like you to pick up on that because your folks responded to the exact same event. You talked a little bit about it before. Where were they in the cycle?
Lt. Gen. David N. Miller, Jr.:
So at that point, they were — well, you’ve got to remember, we rotate in new combat crew. They only stay on for 105 days, right? So we were actually rotating in new people as a part of that. And it wasn’t just there. Remember, the missile warning — people think that there’s just one unit that’s doing it. The missile warning and tracking enterprise has multiple components to it, and they’re all under Mission Delta IV. So where they were, depending on whether it’s a JTAGS unit that is on a one-year remote or otherwise, they were probably in their first three or four weeks, depending on if they were just showing up as their second cycle started, or for some of them, they were at the end of that first five-month push. The good part was, if you talk to them directly, they’ll tell you that because they trained together, they spent time working together, they understood the TTPs that they needed to execute, and they were able to reshape what we did in October of this year. They directly tied their first-generation cycle progress to the outcomes that they were able to achieve. I mean, and this is an unprecedented level of launch activity, whether that is ballistic or other missiles, in a compressed time period that we just hadn’t seen before. A few years ago, you know, you’d train to a volley of maybe a dozen or two dozen missiles. This is hundreds of missiles. And the ask on the Space Force is no longer just duck. The ask on the Space Force is to provide target-quality information to the shooters so that they can intercept it. And that is where you see the modernization programs from our acquisition teammates bringing them in, but it’s also how we spiral in new capability into the first-generation cycle. So they had new tactics, techniques, and procedures. They coordinated new methodologies for release criteria. We reinforced some units because we knew there were going to be an increased demand and operational tempo. We sent some people from one unit to another unit just to backstop in the event that there was a longer-duration volley, and we had pace plans established in the event there was other threat activity focused on negating our space systems. If we didn’t have a first-generation model designed to do this now, all we would have been doing was what I did back when I was on crew, which is processing the launch events as quickly as I possibly could.
Tobias Naegele:
Scrambling.
Lt. Gen. David N. Miller, Jr.:
Exactly right. And so I think you see the benefit. And as different as the models may be, and there’s different terms, there’s a lot of commonality in the models. You got to be threat-informed. You got to be tied to the operational planning requirements and have your mission essential tasks. And you got to be synchronized as a team and presented as an entire unit as opposed to piecemeal. You can’t part-time warfighting. It’s a full-time thing. And getting the reps and sets required, there’s no replacement for actually doing the work. And I think that’s the key that the first-gen models bring that we just haven’t had in the past.
Tobias Naegele:
So I’m going to do a shout-out for my magazine, because Air & Space Forces Magazine, there are copies in the hall, has a cover story that looks at both of these, at the units that were in action. I think Greg Hadley wrote the stories in the front row over here.
Lt. Gen. David N. Miller, Jr.:
Shameless plug for Greg Hadley. Good job.
Tobias Naegele:
But I think it does a really good job of helping us to put a human face on what you’ve just been talking about. And what a remarkable thing it was for the young people who actually pulled off a pretty remarkable night of work.
Lt. Gen. David N. Miller, Jr.:
Absolutely.
Tobias Naegele:
So I want to thank them. I want to thank you for a great panel. I hope everyone joining, a round of applause for you. Thanks very much.