The Future Air Force: How Do We Get There?

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Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.):

Well, good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I think we’re going to have a magnificent panel today on Future Air Force and How We Get There. But first, what I’d like to do is take a moment to remember someone who had an outsized influence on building the Air Force that we have today. Jim Roche, the 20th Secretary of the Air Force, passed away last month at the age of 86. As President George W. Bush’s First Secretary of the Air Force, he held the job from 2001 to 2005. I had the distinct honor of working for him on the air staff during some of that time and to witness his visionary contributions, many of which still resonate today, improving readiness, networking our weapon systems, integrating air and space, and developing combat drones or uninhabited aerial vehicles or RPAs, or whatever you’d like to call them that could fly in tandem with piloted aircraft. So as we shift now to address the Future Air Force and How We Get There, keep in mind that the visionaries we host today stand on the shoulders of people like Jim Roche.

Now, the Air Force today is at an inflection point. Our Airmen are performing incredibly well in current operations, you heard that from the Chief this morning, in every single mission area. However, it’s clear that we must continue to modernize the Air Force if we’re going to continue to project credible, sustainable, and lethal air power. We must also do that at scale because the Air Force simply can’t get any smaller or older. When we faced these kinds of challenges before, just look at how the Air Force successfully reinvented itself in the 1970s and ’80s to better meet the threat, and we can do that again. To discuss these important topics and how we get to the future Air Force we need, we’ve got an impressive panel of Air Force leaders who can answer that question. So let’s jump right in.

Gentlemen, the volume of military operations over the last few years have provided innumerable lessons learned. So please talk to us about what you think are the most important takeaways and how that’s shaping your thinking about building tomorrow’s Air Force.

Gen. Schneider, let’s start with you and we’ll go down the line.

Gen. Kevin Schneider:

Yeah. Zatar, thank you very much. Certainly, a lot to go into on this one, but I’ll highlight maybe the three big ones that I note and focus on. The first one is Command and Control. And as we continue to learn and apply the lessons real-time, we continue to look for ways to improve the resiliency in our C2 nodes and improve the resiliency in our data pathways. Much work has been done and much work will continue into the future, but the enterprise focuses on that and as well it should be. The second lesson learned has to do with Agile Combat Employment. And while there are elements of Agile Combat Employment that perhaps are more passive into terms of dispersal, taking a look at our active defenses and what capabilities we need to put into the field. And a part of that goes back to the first, which is Command and Control, how do we get that information down to the unit level, down to the hub and spoke so they know what they’re dealing with.

And then the last piece goes to resiliency. And the Chief did a fantastic job in his remarks talking about the resiliency of our Airmen, but it drives our exercises to be as realistic and as challenging as possible. It also, I would argue, resiliency in our logistics and sustainment systems to be able to operate at the speed of need in a contingency or in a crisis environment.

Thank you.

Gen. Adrian L. Spain:

Thanks to AFA for having us here. It’s always a pleasure to be back on stage with these fine gentlemen and talking about important topics to the Air Force and the department. Agree completely with Gumby, C2 Command and Control matters, communications matters, speed matters, resiliency matters. I think that the biggest, and I don’t think we learned anything in OEF that we didn’t already know about ourselves, I’ll be real frank with you. I think we have been talking about some of these challenges for a number of years. OEF just kind of laid bare some of those things that have been in front of us for a while and it just reminded us that we have to get after some of these things.

And I think the biggest thing is that the strategic environment has changed. We do not operate from sanctuary any longer. A lot of the elements that Gen. Schneider talked about are really symptoms of the fact that the strategic environment is different than it was for the last 25 years. And on the heels of a 25-year 9/11 anniversary, we fought a certain particular way for a number of decades. And this environment that we are in, not that we’re going into, not that we’re preparing for, the environment that we’re in resembles a time well before 9/11 where we were preparing to fight a peer adversary in an existential way. And we see what that looks like through the experience of OEF. Our bases are under attack and we have to continue to generate air power in spite of that, which means we have to be able to move, we have to be able to be resilient under attack, and we have to be able to sustain the force under those kinds of pressures to win.

And so those are the things that we will continue to resolve in our path ahead, but those are lessons that will continue to keep us going forward.

Lt. Gen. Kenyon K. Bell:

Yes. Thank you very much for having us here and I will echo several of the comments already made. I’ll start with our Airmen, preparing our Airmen for what I call the What If. There have been several situations in which we would not have thought that right now our Airmen would be going into. So making sure that we have resilient Airmen for whatever may be coming their way. And it’s hard to anticipate exactly what that’s going to be, but it’s making sure we have resiliency, readiness from the whole Airmen concept, physical, spiritual, mental, emotionally, all of that has to be in play because we’re going to ask them to go do some things that we may not anticipate and that’s for today’s fight as well as moving forward.

The other area that I think, again, I agree, I don’t think that this is necessarily anything new under the sun, but the area of uncontested logistics is over, if it ever was. So we will have to continue to fight our way in from a logistics standpoint and being able to sustain and rejuvenate, regenerate ourselves kind of while we’re in contact, someone has mentioned that recently, and that is a concept that we certainly need to think through quite a bit on. And then finally, force protection. We cannot take that for granted at all. There is no sanctuary and so we have to really think through how we’re going to make sure that we are protecting our bases from a force projection standpoint.

Lt. Gen. Christopher Niemi:

Thanks for the question. I think of the panelists, I probably have the longest time horizon. I’m focused out on about the 10-year timeframe. And so what I was doing was watching to see what could we learn in our experiences over in the Middle East in the last six months that was inconsistent with the trends that I saw. And over a year ago, we’d identified things like we are going to have to increasingly protect our assets at airbases, investments in point defense and things like that, but that accelerated it because it became clear because of some of the experiences that we had over there.

Similarly, as was touched on by Secretary Meink’s in his comments this morning, we recognize the need to move from a relatively small number of very exquisite platforms that have served us well in past conflicts to having a broader toolset where we have a larger number of both platforms and weapons that mass that he alluded to. And so I didn’t see anything in the conflict to Gen. Spain’s point that led me to believe that we are on the wrong track, but always carefully watching to make sure that indeed we are pointing in the right direction.

Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.):

Very good. Now, already today, this being the first day, we’ve had several folks talking about the need for modernization for all the reasons everyone in this room understands. But I think what would be instructive for the audience is to hear a little bit from each one of you about the respective roles of the operational end user, the MAJCOM commander, the Lead MAJCOM, Headquarters Air Force.

And so Gen. Schneider, if you could kind of lead us off about what your expectations are and then we can talk to Gen. Spain from lead MAJCOM and then A4 and then A7.

Gen. Kevin Schneider:

Yeah, absolutely. And whether this was done willfully or not, the way you have us set up on stage I think is probably instructive despite the very hurtful comments in the green room about setting us up by age on this panel.

But Modo touched on a little bit, each one of us have a little bit different time horizons and because of that, we have different takes and assessments on risk. And I would say we all own pieces of the risk, but the operational end user, whoever has OPCON, TACON owns the risk to mission and the risk to force to the joint force commander. A lot of that is going to sound like readiness and that is really how I would say the operational end user is focused on dealing with the readiness challenges of today. But that risk cascades or moves all the way down this chain.

So for the things that we’re dealing with today, I look to the lead command for help and Gen. Spain has responsibilities across the entirety of the Air Force to help look at how to buy down that current readiness risk with an eye towards where Gen. Niemi is looking to buy down institutional risk in the future. It’s my job, I would say, to get to the point of the question is to articulate the warfighter risk today into the rest of this chain, so that we can make corporate decisions about how we make that transition from readiness today to modernization into the future and understand each step along the way, where are the risks to the commanders at each part of the process.

Gen. Adrian L. Spain:

Yeah, this is an interesting question. In Air Combat Command, I think we live in a couple of world, two worlds specifically, the zero to five-year world of risk that mirrors what the assigned MAJCOMs live through that are working directly for combatant commands. I’m a service retained command. I present forces to them. We’re the emergency call when they don’t have enough forces in the region. And so, I feel the same risk that they do today. We’re sending out forces today and so that risk is very acute for us as well. And so we’re working on what that risk is for us right now while also in the one to five-year range trying to buy down that risk in the near term as much as possible to present those forces to a combatant commander and a joint force commander.

At the same time, as a Lead MAJCOM requirements owner, I have to think 5 to 25 years out for roadmaps for the force structure that we have. Now, a lot of that is going to be colored by the force structure that we have. I really truly believe that, particularly in the next five years, the force that goes to war is going to look a lot like the force that we have today. There’s not going to be that much demonstrable change. But in 10 years from now, it could look completely different depending on which choices we make, which Modo will talk a little bit more about. As we go through those doorways to make choices, we have to look both to the future, where do we want to be based on where the threat paths are going and what do we want our force to look like. But also with an eye towards, hey, what is the risk in the near term of us making this choice.

And then, we all owe the Chief of Staff and the Secretary our advice on how to make those decisions and where those risks exist, so they can make a holistic formulation of a risk strategy to inform their choices. And so, I think I work in both camps, so I’m the swing space between the assigned MAJCOMs and the future 5/7 kind of looking folks that are setting requirements for the service.

Lt. Gen. Kenyon K. Bell:

So the way I view this is you have a lot of best friends in the job on the staff, logistics, engineering, and force protection. And there are a lot of folks who are interested in making sure that their weapon system, their equipment, their people are certainly funded and resourced where they need to be. The risk discussion is exactly right. And so for today’s fight, we have to make sure that we are pushing forward readiness for today, but then also thinking about where we might be moving forward in the future, how are we preparing ourselves for what that might look like. So the lens from which we view this is taking an enterprise view across all of those. We’ll talk maybe a little bit about how we’re balancing out the modernization, balancing out the sustainment, and then the operational requirements.

And so we’re thinking through what do we need today in order to be able to sustain the efforts that we have today, but then at the same time, how do we put the right processes in place in order to be able to look forward to the future and are able to sustain the future fight as well. So that enterprise view is kind of what we do in making sure that all of our best friends are well taken care of across all the MAJCOMs, all the platforms with all of the people that are set aside in order to be able to sustain readiness.

Lt. Gen. Christopher Niemi:

I think the question highlights the constructive tension across the Air Force when you go from the people that are on the hook today and there’s real risk and the folks that are trying to decide where we’re going to get to. One thing that sometimes causes confusion is the timelines that we have. And so I just wanted to highlight for the audience, right now the Air Force across the MAJCOMs and eventually up in the half is working on our 2029 budget. So those are things we’ll stroke a check for in 2029, which means there’s a good chance it won’t even deliver till 2031. And you’re going to see it in significant numbers in like 2033. So that’s seven years. We’re trying to make a decision now and anticipate what is the world going to look like in 2033, what do we need to resource and buy in order to be ready for that.

And there are some options to move inside of that timeline working with Congress and OSW and other stakeholders. But to give you a sense, you’re going to create a lot of broken glass when you do that and you’re probably going to get access to something on the order of tens of millions of dollars, which sounds like a lot, but when you start buying things like F-47, it’s not a whole lot of money. If you want to get access to billions of dollars, so a hundred times that, then you got to work within that seven-year timeframe that I’m alluding to. And it’s not easy because there are an awful lot of things that we would like to snap our fingers and be able to address today, but the tools that are available to us are pretty limited in the short term.

Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.):

I’m reminded, Modo, when you were talking about 2032, that that’s also when social security goes insolvent. So that’s going to be a challenge too.

Now, you already discussed the different time horizons that are operating under. How do you manage the inherent tension between meeting today’s needs and future requirements? And you don’t all have to answer it, but whatever.

Gen. Kevin Schneider:

I’ll take the first swing at it. And again, I live in the today to three to five years into the future. So I’ll put a demand signal on that sounds a lot like readiness. 90% to 95% of the force of the platforms that are sitting on our ramps today are the ones that’ll still be on the ramps three to five years from now. So as I do that, it becomes a enterprise debate and I think Modo captured it well, how we spend money today solving near-term problems by setting ourselves up for the future. And Elmo highlighted as well. We have to lay out the risks to the Secretary and the Chief to have full understanding of where those risks are going to be today, tomorrow, 5, 10 years from now.

Gen. Adrian L. Spain:

Yeah. I think a healthy process here is always under tension. It shouldn’t be that we all agree all the time. That should not be the goal or the end state. If it is, then we aren’t giving the Chief and the Secretary our best advice. And so we should always have a little bit of tension on what our positions are because we are looking at slightly different angles and slightly different time horizons. And I think I said holistic decision, it’s really a fully informed decision. That’s what we want to get to the Chief and the Secretary, a fully informed decision that allows them to weigh the risk and then make a choice. And those choices sometimes favor the near term, “Hey, this is what’s going on right now. We can’t afford to take more risk in certain areas, therefore we’re going to prioritize near term over what might be a potentially one-way door for a far term or extend out a timeline to a future capability.”

The flip side of that is we may make a choice to buy down risk in the future and future readiness by prioritizing the future, which means that we aren’t going to have those same amount of resources to put against our current forces because it’s going to take seven years for that to actually materialize and that money has to go to someplace that is not immediately going to help us win tomorrow, meaning like literally tomorrow in 24 hours, not tomorrow in the future. And so as long as our process is allowing us to have the debate that is required and the tension that is required to get to a fully informed choice for those decision makers, then it’s the right process. We don’t all have to agree with the choices. We don’t all have to agree with each other’s positions, but we have to have the process that allows us to bring those views to the table so that they can make the decisions that they believe are necessary at the time.

Lt. Gen. Christopher Niemi:

So when I look at the role of the half, I think probably one of the most important roles is to set the conditions so the MAJCOMs can be successful. And so when we build the POM, a big part of that is making sure that they have the resources, the equipment, the manpower, et cetera in order to do what they need to do. A lot of times I think we try and do too much work in the half. And my own experience is that even though there’s good people trying their best, until you get a piece of equipment out in the field and get a chance to experiment with it, try some different things, see what works, see what doesn’t work, then you’re not going to know what you really need. And so what I’m trying to focus on is to get it close enough that when it goes down to Gen. Spain or Gen. Schneider, that they have enough to be able to figure out what right actually looks like when I give them an 80% solution.

Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.):

Okay.

Gen. Adrian L. Spain:

Zatar, if I can add just one more piece to this is our ability to not draft off one another, but take the terms and conditions of the environment that we’re in and actually force the future that we want in this space. And so in some of those ways, there is some give and take, there’s a little bit of compromise required because we don’t have the resources that we want to buy everything.

So the Secretary mentioned, in his remarks this morning, that we’ve tried for a long time to establish a gap and then jump it between older capabilities and newer capabilities and that reconciliation was intended to bridge the gap really where you have to increase the investment so that you don’t take too much risk now while you also accelerate the move to the future. That’s why something like that is so important, an infusion that allows you to not have to establish a gap where you’re paying double for a similar capability or a replacement capability is a really important concept, particularly for the Air Force. And often, we are unable to do that within the resources that we’ve been given. And so we have to make really gut-wrenching choices at the end of the day with the money that is available. And so, just acknowledging that the more we’re successful in allowing the system to not have to jump a gap, the better those risk choices are going to be both for the near term and for the future.

Lt. Gen. Kenyon K. Bell:

And I’d also add that I think that those healthy tensions come with highlighting everything that’s required in order for us to be able to do the jobs that we do. Infrastructure health, for instance. I mean, we talk a lot about capabilities and weapon systems, but at the same time, we’ve got to also bring in the infrastructure and the various accounts that enable us to be able to make sure that those weapon systems can do what they do because you’ve got a facility that’s ready. And so that comes with your FSRM dollars and then we start talking about MILCON and so forth. But all of those tensions have to come into play so that we have that complete picture of what decisions we’re making and what we’re leaving on the table.

Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.):

Okay. How do the roles of your respective organizations change when you’re looking to field new capabilities like long-range kill-chain, CCA, palletized munitions, so on and so forth? Who should be driving the operational concept requirements and integration?

Gen. Kevin Schneider:

Again, I’ll take the first hack. And I think the operational commanders should be driving the operational concepts that go along with that, but it is a voice, an important voice, but a voice in the larger process. And I’ll piggyback on Kenyon’s point, we fund platforms. Our POM is built by line item things out there and we make decisions based on stuff. What is left out of the mix is the DOTMLPF that goes along with that and we find ourselves buying the risk afterwards. We field stuff, we try to force a concept on, but we don’t have the supporting structure that goes along with that.

Again, not exactly the answer to the question, but this is a holistic discussion that involves all of us as we bring operational concepts on board. It is more than just the equipment or the shiny thing that sits on a ramp. It’s everything that enables it or allows it to be successful.

Gen. Adrian L. Spain:

I have a focus area in ACC about bringing the future forward. That focus area is really centered on operationalizing new capability and new concepts and doing that as quickly as possible so that when it’s ready for the field, there isn’t a 6 to 12-month delay in actually utilizing it at its highest effectiveness. And so I believe the lead MAJCOM has an acute role in CONOP development and taking a look at those capabilities that are coming since we are the swing space for long term and near term, anticipating those things, and building a process and an operational design that helps us to operationalize it at the tactical level.

This is really hard for new things. When we have something that’s new and novel for the service, this is very difficult. Kenyon talked a little bit about this. Air Force is a tribe of tribes. I think that’s a strength, not a flaw, but when new new comes along, there is no tribal ownership there. You have to convince the tribes that this is a good thing for them if they’re going to get it. They have to change some of their operational approach to take on a new thing that might be a little bit threatening.

And so this is a hard thing for us to do, but I think it’s one of the realizations I’ve come to in the year I’ve been in the seat is that in addition to a Lead MAJCOM staff effort, you have to tag a commander somewhere with responsibility to take on the role of wringing this out because the staff can’t do it. They can do only so much and at some point I’ve got to get it onto the line and get somebody to ring out the concept to tell me, “Hey, is this right? Are we on the right path or do I need to double back and try something else?”

Lt. Gen. Kenyon K. Bell:

Everything we’re going to do in the fore is going to be able to enable operational maneuver for the Lead MAJCOMs or the geographically-identified MAJCOMs, et cetera. So we have to be able to skate to where the puck’s going to be, so that we can be prepared for being ready for today’s fight, but at the same time preparing ourselves to be able to pivot and be ready for what’s to come in the future. So it’s staying in tune to what that scheme is going to be that’s being decided. And then, that way we can look into the future into what type of Airmen do we need, what type of processes do we need in place in order to be able to support it.

Lt. Gen. Christopher Niemi:

I’d like to piggyback on some of your comments, Gen. Spain. CCA is an interesting one. I’m spending a lot of my time and energy on that and that’s a new, new capability. Now, I grew up and I spent most of my time flying fighters. And so, I can imagine a day in the future, 10 years, maybe more, where a CCA autonomy algorithm does a better job flying a fighter airplane than I did as a captain. That hurts my ego a little bit. But at the same time, I see that this trend is happening and we’ve got to find a way to do that. And as you institutionalize these capabilities, it’s not too surprising that maybe fighter pilots are not too enthusiastic about the idea of fielding a capability they will start to replace some of what they do, how they define themself. And so I think it is the new new that’s really hard, but I think that the work that’s in the MAJCOMs, both in the component and the Lead MAJCOM is very important.

When I look back to my own experience, I was fortunate enough as a captain to do some of the initial test in the F-22. And I would tell you that the initial tactics manual that we got basically was a find replace F-22 for F-15C. And if we weren’t such a bunch of hardheaded fighter pilots and we would’ve followed that, we probably wouldn’t have figured out a lot of the tactics that we use even today. And so it’s very, very important to get these tools down into the MAJCOM, into the warfighter hand, out to places where we have sort of our thought leaders, places like the Warfare Center, Nellis Air Force Base, and let them figure out how do we use them in the future, what’s the potential for them.

Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.):

Very good. Now, you touched a little bit on it, Modo, there toward the end, but when we’re looking at the future Air Force, how should we decide the weight of the effort between improving CONOPS today, like doing ACE better versus shifting to alternative CONOPS, like making the Air Force less dependent on ACE?

Gen. Adrian L. Spain:

I’ll kick off that. I think it starts with what problem are you actually trying to solve. Does the CONOP that exists sufficiently address the problem? You probably wouldn’t be asking the question if it did. Could it, if we modified it, is your first question. And then if it can’t, then I’d probably need to transition to something new that helps us, but it’s also a matter of balance. ACE was really birthed out of necessity. I cannot protect these forces any longer. What is a way to protect them better? I can move them around and protect them better and create a targeting problem. We’ll call that Agile Combat Employment.

But if I could perfectly protect all my forces at a location, I would not move. There’s no reason to move. I’m only creating turbulence for myself if I do that. I have a logistics problem I’ve got to worry about. I’ve got a fuel problem I’ve got to worry about. I have a C2 problem I have to worry about when I move around more. I’m moving because I must move to survive and then I have to figure out ways to aggregate to be lethal again. So if you ask the question, “Hey, does the CONOP still answer the problem or answer the question of relevance,” and that answer is no, are there things that I can do within our current sphere that can help us with that. If that answer is no, okay, we need to go to a clean sheet. But until then, I think you have to really dig in and figure out, “Hey, are these concepts no longer valid in the way that we’re using them or are they no longer valid concepts.”

Lt. Gen. Christopher Niemi:

Clearly, you got to do both and manage the tension between them. For ACE, we’re advocating Half 5/7 for preposition material, building out additional airfields because we see relatively near-term returns on investment there and we know that we have capability gaps that have to be addressed. At the same time, probably more than my other fellow panelists, it’s my responsibility to look and go, “Hey, is there something you can do to reduce this vulnerability that adversaries have clearly picked up on and we can expect they will continue to use against us in the future.” And so we’re exploring alternative platforms, alternative CONOPS, how can technology reduce our dependencies to do things like ACE so that in the longer term we have other options that we can pair with it.

Gen. Kevin Schneider:

I would say that by its nature, as highlighted, Agile Combat Employment while very active in that things are moving around, airplanes are moving around, people moving around, supplies, sustainment, it is a passive concept in terms of dispersal. So as we bring in active defense capabilities that allow increased protection, allow us to generate more sorties in a contested environment, again, CONOPS can be modified and adapted. It also provides us more options that we give to combatant commanders and senior leaders in our ability to execute whatever problem we are trying to solve.

Gen. Adrian L. Spain:

One of the key tensions is always when is the technology ready, right? Maybe that’s the key tension. For Gen. Schneider, unless it is fielded at scale and resilient and we have a logistics tail, it’s not ready. I don’t want to put words in your mouth, Gumby, but probably not going to be willing to trade very much yet until it meets those conditions. But like Modo said, if we don’t make some bets right now, seven years from now, we’re going to pay a penalty for that. And that’s the tension. And so if you think this stuff is easy, it is not. If you’ve tried to predict the future before, you’ll get what I’m saying. Like this stuff is really hard, a lot of really smart people have tried to do this well and they’ve done the best they could under the conditions within which they were working and now it’s our turn.

And so, one thing I can promise you is that we’re all committed to tackling this problem during our time and making the best decisions that we can for the Air Force of today, given the risks that we see in the strategic environment that I started with, while also preparing our Air Force of the future to be ready to continue to win in the early to mid 2030s. That’s also our job. And so these tensions, this tension of when the technology is ready and when do we make the big bet is the risk decision that I’m talking about for the Secretary and for the Chief, mostly the Secretary under those acquisition authorities. When is the technology ready enough to go to take something that’s been traditional conventional force for us and start making trades in chunks enough that buy down the risk to the future and increase only a little bit the risk to tomorrow or the risk to today? And so, as we continue to work this, that tension will always exist until we get an infinite amount of money, which I don’t predict we’re going to get anytime soon.

Gen. Kevin Schneider:

Yeah. Not putting words in my mouth at all. I’d say as a member of the Board of Directors, I’m very interested in modernization because I want successors to be successful. As a component MAJCOM commander, modernization timelines don’t touch me. So unless it shows up as a fielded unit with patches on sleeves, then it’s a different part of my brain and it’s a different level of interest that I have in terms of modernization programs.

Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.):

Gen. Niemi, this one’s for you. The Air Force leveraged a mix of stand-in and stand-off capabilities against Iran. What lessons have you taken away from this last conflict concerning the right mix in the future between stand-in and stand-off munitions?

Lt. Gen. Christopher Niemi:

Yeah, this is a great question because it’s like religion and sex and politics, the things you’re not supposed to talk about. So I can’t comment directly on the combat operations over in Iran, but what I will say is in the past, we have very successfully used a model where we had extremely capable aircraft, think like a B-2 or an F-35 that were able to basically employ cheap weapons like a JDAM. And from a cost-effectiveness perspective, that model works really well as long as you can continue to operate those aircraft at relatively low risk. In other words, you can get to a point with air superiority where you can basically operate with impunity over a country. We did that in Iraq, we did that in Afghanistan, and we’ve done that in other places.

The trend that I see, and I try and think through the lens of like what’s happening, what is the macro level trend that it might have some noise and go up and down, but it’s still moving in this way, is that it’s becoming harder for a number of reasons to produce that sustained air superiority that’s largely uncontested, certainly against a pacing adversary. And so because we’ve relied on relatively inexpensive weapons, direct attack dropped off of expensive airplanes, we want to move and increase the capability and capacity for standoff. Not to say we’re not going to do stand-in, but because we want to add some more tools to the quiver for people like Gen. Schneider and Gen. Spain so that commanders in the future have more options available to them. Historically, we’ve had very few stand-off weapons and they were very expensive. And so, what we aim to do in the force design is to increase the capacity and lower the cost to increase the options available to the warfighter.

Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.):

Okay. Gen. Bell, here’s one for you. We’ve become familiar with Gen. Wilsbach’s focus to fly, fix, and fight. With that in mind, what strategic decisions are we making to modernize our forces under the A4 portfolio to be prepared to fight in a future fight?

Lt. Gen. Kenyon K. Bell:

Yeah, fly, fix, fight, and it’s definitely the mantra. And if you haven’t heard him say it, two most important things that we do are flying and fixing and of those, fixing is the most important. I just thought I would throw that out there. Seriously, but he’s also been very clear about saying you don’t have to be a maintainer to be a part of that fix. There’s multiple areas that enable our mission. But one of the things that we are doing is we’re looking, I’ll give two. First is taking a look at our overall readiness of our force. So the aircraft readiness machine is starting to become more of a household terminology and that is when we look at it at a corporate level, both balancing sustainment, modernization and operations, making those corporate-level decisions, understanding the impacts of each of those, bringing it up to the Vice Chief level to make decisions that are going to improve readiness overall.

Each MAJCOM gets to choose what is their north star and then, now we get to chase that number and try to figure out what do we need to do, what are the constraints that we need to overcome in order to be able to get and improve overall aircraft readiness. So that’s one and I think that is already starting to pay off. July was the very first one, ARM meeting that we had, the process of ARM, and it paid off with some very specific go-dos that we set up for the Vice Chief’s level.

The other is in the people area. So we talked about what we currently have, the people that we currently have and what we need to project forward. In an ACE environment, we do need to have maintainers that are going to be need to go and do multiple types of things. And so we are revamping the 2A career field strategy. The way that we bring Airmen in, it’s not going to be the way that we’ve done it in the past. We will have them go through kind of an 18-month area in which they’re going to be sortie generators and understanding about maintenance fundamentals right upfront. And then, at that point, then they’ll get to go off into their specialty, one of 14 different specialties, and then we’ll have some subdivision from that. So you have the aviation maintenance technicians and then, we’ll have the very specific master aviation technicians, a smaller subset, that will then allow us to have that core nucleus.

We all are very familiar with that seven level who’s on the flight line. When the toughest problem comes up, go talk to sergeant such and such. And so that’s that master aviation technician. And we’re going to kind of codify that within the process as we’re bringing our Airmen up, and raising up a different type of force to be able to attack both the problems that we have right now as well as the problems in the future.

Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.):

Very good. Gen. Schneider, 60 seconds. As the PACAF commander, you oversee an enormous AOR. Where do we stand with our Domain Awareness capability and why is it so important that we pursue multi-domain approaches?

Gen. Kevin Schneider:

Again, it is a massively large AOR and I can’t think of any commander that is satisfied with their particular Air Domain Awareness. We can always be better, want more, have more accuracy in all that we do. I see the answer as being a layered approach and I heard loud and clear the Secretary talking about space-based capabilities and I watch with high interest as they continue to deliver. But I would also argue that for the sake of resiliency and the sake of our ability to respond across a spectrum and to deal with highly contested environments, plural, space, airborne based and certainly terrestrial based capability has to be part of our portfolio going forward.

Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.):

Well, very good. And unfortunately, we’ve come the end of our time. But gentlemen, thanks for your insights. I thought it was an extraordinary discussion. And from all of us here at the Mitchell Institute, we wish you and everyone else in the audience have a great aerospace power kind of day. Thank you.