Next-Gen Combat Aircraft
March 5, 2025
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This transcript was generated with the assistance of AI. Please report inconsistencies to comms@afa.org.
J. Michael Dahm:
Good morning and welcome to the AFA warfare symposium panel discussion on next generation combat aircraft. I’m Mike Dahl, senior fellow for aerospace and China studies at the AFA Mitchell Institute. So we’ve enjoyed a number of fantastic panels for the last two days. I think you’d agree, and many of them have focused on the future, on what’s coming next. We’ve talked about next generation air superiority, next generation munitions, next generation nuclear command, control and communications and Future Force design. In this panel, we want to focus down and spend the next 40 minutes discussing next generation combat aircraft with military leadership and industry leaders, and we have a fantastic panel to do just that. To my left, on your left, I’d like to introduce Major General Ty Neyman. He is the director of strategic plans, programs and requirements for Air Force Global Strike command. Mr. Tom Jones, the president of Northrop Grumman aeronautics systems. Mr. Greg Ulmer, the president of Lockheed Martin aeronautics and MS Jill Albert, the president for military engines at Pratt and Whitney, so we’ll get right to the questions Major General Neuman. I’ll start with you in yesterday’s discussion on Future Force design, the general officer, panelists talk about talked about dominating mass and precise mass, and raised questions about whether our next generation of aircraft should penetrate threat envelopes or standoff at a distance with long range munitions. I think they ultimately concluded that the Air Force needs a mix of high end and low end capabilities as well as a mix of stand in and standoff capabilities. So I’m interested in how you would envision a next generation force design that balances stand in and standoff capabilities for both deterrence and war fighting.
Maj. Gen. Ty W. Neuman:
Yeah. Well, thanks, Mike. And on behalf of Joan Busca, who can make it this week, I’m happy to be here on this panel and participate in AFA again, and very successful AFA so Joan detool and the entire staff that’s that’s put this on. Thank you very much for hosting this. This actually, I’m excited about this, this panel. It’s actually, like you said, it fits in very nicely with many of the panels you had throughout the week, and the tone and the tenor of where we are with modernizing our force is the exact right conversation we need to be having right now here on a panel here with the senior executives for many of our prime contractors that are helping support and build out what our future force is going to look like. So I’m a little bit outnumbered here on that side of things, but I’m going to represent the operational community and the Operational Requirement side of it. You’ve heard through Future Force design and some of the weapons and things like that on what we need, but I’ll tell you, and I mentioned this a couple years ago when I was sitting on a panel what we are doing in Air Force, Global Strike command and the capabilities that we’re bringing to the future of war fight is changing the way we’re thinking about war fighting, absolutely fundamentally thinking about changing the way we do war fighting. We’re taking the prefix out of our airplanes so no longer a fighter, a fighter, a bomber, a bomber, a cargo airplane, a cargo airplane. We’re actually taking a different look at how we employ combat aircraft and who plays in the fight and where they actually fit into the mix. Most directly affected from the Global Strike perspective, and with teaming up with Northrop, of course, is the B 21 the B 21 is fundamentally changing the dynamics of war, fighting and how we think about it. We’re building a an all aspect penetrating platform that has the range access and payload to meet the threat of not only today, but into the future. We’re building it in such a way that it’s going to be adaptable. It’s going to be adaptable with its open, open system architecture. It’s going to be adaptable to calm and networking, and it’s going to be adaptable to entire family of systems, of weapons, sensors, platforms, calm, space, you name it. And we think about those type of capabilities into a single platform. Now think about that exponentially over a huge number of assets. And I know there’s a lot of talk on quantity, and I won’t get into speculation on what the right quantity actually is, but what I will challenge the community writ large, both in the in the department, as well as the industry, is to think differently about six generation capability. Think about the type of technology that you’re working on out there, that you’re delivering to the war fighter, and how we can do deterrence differently, how we can message that differently, how we can connect differently, and if necessary. Three fight and win wars of the future for our nation, the B 21 is certainly bringing that as we think about think about not only the B 21 but we have to think about what our legacy capabilities also bring to bear. So what I’m telling you is, if we had an unlimited checkbook, we would buy all six generation capabilities and be fully networks centric. And it all have fantastic capability. We don’t have a blank, blank check. What we have, though is an incredible fighting force. We have an incredible fourth and fifth generation force that has to be sustained, and it has to be in the fight in the future, and so how we mix with the future capabilities that we’re delivering with what our legacy systems are is really going to is really the key to the right balance of both stand in and standoff. And I know we’ll get more into the standoff stand in piece of that. But what I’m telling you is we can’t go all in, put all our eggs in one basket on one platform. It’s going to be a mix of things across the board, yeah.
J. Michael Dahm:
And as a China expert, I am appreciative of the fact that the conversation usually revolves around China, but there is, as I have often been reminded, there’s a whole lot of world that is not China that the Air Force needs to needs to be able to deliver effects. And so.
Greg Ulmer:
Hey, Mike, yes, maybe a little industry perspective with the fact that, you know, maybe it’s not a B 21 maybe it’s not an F 35 so five years ago, 10 years ago, if you were in aeronautics, you were very siloed business. You had an F 35 program office, an F 22 and F 16, A, c1, 30 and so what we started to do, and we would go about our work in those silos, we didn’t we thought of an F 22 is nothing but an F 22 so what we’ve done over the last 10 to five years within aeronautics is okay. Let’s create an air combat Council within the aeronautics team, where f 30 5f, 20 2f, 16 and, oh, by the way, I was part of that problem on the other side. And never shall the two ever meet. Right? So the architect for F 22 never met with the architect of F 35 Believe it or not, today they are now corporately, we doing the same thing, corporately within aeronautics. So Greg and his team is meeting with Robert Lightfoot and the space team relative to Air and Space integration. So I have aeronautics engineers embedded in space. Space has that broadly across industry. Now we’re doing the same thing. And so I’m not I am not unfamiliar with Tom, I am not unfamiliar with Joe. We talk all the time about collaboration, because, to your point general, about we have very strong capabilities in and of themselves when we add and connect those capabilities. And this is not rocket science. We’re all talking about this in the moment, and we have been for a few years, but that collaboration really does add up to one plus one equals three, or maybe even four for what we have available for us today. And so I think as industry, we’ve really got it. Collaboration is different than it used to be, and rather than just purely prime sub relationships. It’s the collaboration. We’ve got to work better across the industry collaboratively. So, you know, spending most of my..
J. Michael Dahm:
I’m just going to jump ahead to, you know, to the question that I was going to ask you, since you, since you jumped in on collaboration. I spent a lot of time watching China innovate. They’re innovating quickly. I think we’re all aware of that. I don’t think they’ve caught up to the US in most technology areas, but they’re cycling really, really fast, right? So it’s just a math problem. If they keep cycling faster and we keep cycling slower, eventually they’re going to to catch up. So Greg, how do you how do you, how do you envision the role of innovation in partnership in the development of next generation air power capabilities? You’ve already talked a little bit about that. But can you give any other examples of successful collaboration?
Greg Ulmer:
First, a little color. So, innovation partnership? Gee, that’s not a new concept. You know, if you think back across air power, air speed, altitude, stealth comms. We needed to innovate. We needed a partner, relative across those simple spectrums. And so what’s different today than it was in 1940 5060, et cetera, is the tech stack. The tech stack is more integrated than it’s ever been. And so we have really got to work that tech stack in terms of the collaboration I just referenced. So I’m going to provide a couple specific examples of why I think and how we’re doing that innovation. And I’ll start with F 35 so f 35 last fall, we did a demonstration on F 35 where we put an open system gateway on the airplane. We flew the airplane out of Fort Worth. We then filtered classified data through an open system gateway using commercial SATCOM link. We then transferred that data downlink to the UK RCO office in barnborough, and we took that data and inserted it into the Nexus c2 system for the. K, first time ever done on F 35 that potential is exist today. We have the capability. We have the technology today. But it took us a very long time because of partnership, because the government to government, to get the clearances, to get all that to lay flat. It took us a long time to make that happen. Another good example, I think, on F 22 so on F 22 for, at least for Lockheed Martin, point of view, it’s the first true open system architecture for the operational flight program in the F 22 so it’s a very agile open architecture, and we can bring apps to bear very rapidly on the F 22 program. And by the way, they’re not Lockheed Martin apps. They’re third party apps, relative to how you come and plug and play with the F 22 and so we’re very we’re very driven to, and I say we, as an enterprise, I think, to get to an open systems architecture such that we can come plug and play third party apps. It might be prime to prime, prime to sub, totally third party apps to the program. What that allows for is agility. It adds, it adds for affordability. It also adds for speed, to bring those capabilities forward rapidly. And then I’ll just, I’ll just end on, you know, as we leverage, I’ll call fifth Gen. So from a Lockheed Martin again. And I, you know, I started with, it’s us, and I’m using Lockheed examples. But that’s, that’s the space I live in. We’re leveraging F 35 tech stack, F 22 tech stack. How do we control autonomous vehicles? How do we control CCA is out of a cockpit. Oh, by the way, you can do it with a with a tablet on your on your lap, that’s connected to, but not necessarily integrated in the ofd of the airplane. Or it could be behind the glass, right? That is true. Innovation Partnership. Technology Advancement very rapidly, and you kind of come to the as you step into that, you kind of have your mind kind of bounds what the potential in that is, and you very quickly find the potential is much larger. How many can you control? I won’t get into the numbers here with you, but it’s a lot more than you think from a cockpit. And the F 35 or the F 22 pilot is now more a Mission Planner than he is just executing a specific mission. So those are just a couple.
J. Michael Dahm:
Yeah, that’s, that’s excellent. And I would hasten to point out that for all of the Chinese cheerleading about, you know, flying, CCA is using their J 20s, they actually built a two seat J 20, so the guy in the back could be doing all the work, because it was too much for the guy in the front. Anyway. So you know, General Neuman, a minute ago, was talking about the talked about the B 21 and how impressive it’s turning out to be. And we’re very fortunate to have Mr. Jones here, representing North Grumman, which has been leading development and production of the B 21 Raider. So Tom You know, the B 21 has been in flight test for more than a year now. How’s it progressing? How will the B 21 stay ahead of the threat? And even though General Neuman didn’t want to talk numbers, I was going to ask you, how should we get more B 21 faster? You know, should we and how would we make that happen?
Tom Jones:
All right, thank you. There’s a lot of questions there, so I’ll see if I can cycle through them, starting off with performance on the test program. I’m very pleased with where we are, both in terms of cadence and performance. So I think it was at the Fall AFA, we talked a little bit about the cadence we’re seeing the flight test program, regular tests, sometimes even being able to perform up to two tests in single week, which, if you think about the first year of a flight test program, that’s pretty phenomenal. Also, if you just step back and think about it, we’re operating within the combined test force, so we have people from the Air Force operating, maintaining that aircraft with us, with, you know, good procedures for maintenance, but they’re doing regular flight line maintenance with fairly early stage procedures, and we’re able to turn around a first serial number aircraft flight multiple times in a week, which I think bodes very well for making this a daily flyer, which is something we promised from the beginning. I think that cadence also speaks a little bit to you know there’s discovery in every test program, but to date, if you’re able to fly at that cadence, it’s an indication that the discovery is not at a significant level. In terms of performance, our tests continue to match closely with our digital data. We’ve talked a lot over the last several years about our digital engineering models, where we have models that we’re looking for tight correlation, we’re seeing very good correlation. There’s other places where we maybe modeled a little bit of extra margin in to make sure that we had the performance we needed, and we’re seeing good margin in the places that we model margin. So all in all, doing really good I think I would attribute the. Success we’re having in flight test and ground test, for that matter, to the rigor we were able to put in with our partners in our CO early on in the program. We talked early in the program a couple years ago about some of the test facilities we have in Melbourne, our flying test bed, we have multiple test lines. We’re able to run hardware and software integration labs at we’ve seen, in general, about a 50% reduction in the period of time it takes to certify software builds, which is pretty phenomenal. And if you think about it, and we’re using that both using our test environment, but also we use a commercially inspired Software Factory concept, I say commercially inspired, because if you look at what we need to do in the defense industry, it’s a step beyond, right? It’s not just cranking out software, it’s software with air worthiness. There’s other types of worthiness, I won’t get into that a bomber has to fit into, right? But having a software DevOps factory that captures that entire process and speeds up, I think is pretty cool in terms of the Flying test bed. Before we ever even got to first flight, we had more than 200 flights on the flying test bed with over 1000 flight hours where we were able to exercise, hardware, software, sensors, navigation, communication suites, right? So after you get into the Mission Systems Integration, that’s usually a lot of places where you can get a lot of discovery, we’ve got 1000 hours plus of discovery and Mission Systems Integration behind us, which I think bodes very well for for where we’re going overall. Two more things that I’d add on the test program before talking about modernization. You know, we it was funny, as we moved into getting ready for first flight, there was a lot of worry that this is a heavily instrumented aircraft. And had we instrumented ourselves to the point where we’re going to be scared to do anything, actually, really well thought out test plan. And as a result of that heavy instrumentation and real time feedback we’ve got, we’re actually able to analyze test results while the aircraft is still in the air, which is part of what helps us maintain that cadence that we’re doing. Final thing on test as a result of all that risk burned down through the digital engineering models, we’ve had one software change to the operational software in the first year of flight test again, which I think is pretty cool in terms of modernization. I mean, Greg, you hit, hit the nail on the head. We’re doing a lot of the same things in terms of really trying to figure out b 21 started with the concept as it being part of a family of systems, and we’re very much looking at how we fit in with all the other assets out there. And I think one of the biggest and most intriguing elements of how we’re looking at modernization is we have a partnership with General Neuman’s team in Global Strike command and our CO in our digital environment, we have a very advanced simulator that’s able to simulate current and future threats. We’re actually able to collect as a team and understand how that’s going to affect how we fight going forward. And that’s important, because, as a technologist, we can come up with all sorts of cool things, but it’s bringing in these, you know, brilliant, oh, sixes that the general is So, you know, graciously allowed us to have access to that bring the knowledge and the TTP development that has to be linked hand in hand with the technical development. Finally, the $100 question on numbers. So, you know, ultimately, it is up to the Air Force and the administration to determine what the right number of bombers are that need to be acquired as a contractor, it’s my responsibility to make sure that the Air Force has the optionality to make that decision. What does optionality mean? It means that we need to be performing on schedule. Check, we need to be forming on budget. Check, we’re hitting our affordability targets as well. It means we need to be performing. And I think, as I mentioned, in terms of our test program, I believe we’re showing that the B 21 is on the path to become the most lethal airborne weapons system in the world, and that’s the optionality that we’re bringing. And certainly hope the Air Force strongly considers it to be a key part of peace through strength. General, I don’t know you’re going to see some of the test results. What are your thoughts?
Maj. Gen. Ty W. Neuman:
Yeah, no. Tommy, hitting the nail on the head. And I would contend it’s not just an Air Force decision when it comes down to the actual quantity, because the nuclear mission, because, you know, that’s a national mission, because of the capabilities that we’re developing and fielding on a B, 21 that is a national mission. It’s actually. Force enabler, force multiplier for the entire joint force. And if we’re going to, if we’re going to spend the time and energy to get after this and then produce more than what we have on record right now, the nation is going to have to be like, Yes, this is where we’re going to go. This is the future. Let’s get after it. And I think it’s, it’s going to be much larger than Air Force aspect. And when it comes to weapons, I think you brought up a great point. We’re bringing in and developing the most complex STL weapon, basically weapon load out that we’ve ever seen in the history of warfare in one platform at the same time. So think conventional, nuclear integration. Think electronic attack, electronic warfare, all those type of things being all packaged into into one. That’s the type of technology and stuff that this is bringing bringing to bear. So there’s a lot, there’s a lot to unpack there. There’s a lot, lot of work to be done. But back to what Tom was talking about on the success of the test program. I think the success of the test program is found in some of the failures and hiccups we actually found, any time we hit a roadblock, the team that comes together on the on the government side as well as the industry side, it’s, it’s remarkable. I mean, it is not, you know, nobody goes in with a preset notion on how we’re going to fix this. It is a complete team effort. It’s collaborative. In some cases, you know, we’re there to determine what risk we’re going to take and move the program forward, and very little time is wasted in decision making as far as that process and moving that forward. So fantastic work all the way around.
J. Michael Dahm:
All right, so we’ve talked we’ve talked about open systems architecture, we’ve talked about mission systems. We’ve talked a little bit about weapons. Turns out, you need to generate lift to have a functional airplane. So I’d like to turn to propulsion. And we have Jill albertelli here from Pratt and Whitney, and it strikes me that nothing really matters if we don’t have reliable power propulsion, and increasingly, the ability to cool down all of these heat generating systems that folks are putting on board. So Jill, where do you see emerging engine technology taking us in terms of next generation propulsion requirements and solutions? Sure.
Jill Albertelli:
First of all, thank you for having me here today. It’s my honor. And to Tom, I’d say, congratulations, and thank you for the partnership as well. Lot going on. It’s probably appropriate that I’m the last to speak as the afterburner on the panel over here. Thank you for that. But also, in all seriousness, and very similar to what both Greg and Tom said, and also what general Neuman said, it’s about technology. Yes, we put them on platforms, but my job is also to make sure every advanced technology can be spiraled into what already exists, as well as be developed for what’s there for the future. So when you think about propulsion, yes, it gets us from point A to point B and hopefully back to but it’s also about powering the capability of the air vehicle. No doubt about that. We talk a lot about stealth, but it’s also definitely about speed, about maneuver capability, and about electrical systems that we help to support on the jet. As we look at it, you know, for generations, it continues to evolve. A lot of times, people think about stealth. They think about radar. It’s definitely about heat signature, and that’s where we have to play a role and help out. So we look at the evolution, you know, to go to something that’s low observable and maybe generate less heat and cool down, as you said, the systems across the jet, you know, definitely see that in the f1 19 on the F 22 after the f1 35 on the F 35 aircraft. And also in our next generation, as we’re working on prototypes, our x a 103 for six generation applications. But if you take it back for just a moment, it’s about capability for stealth, yes, it’s coatings for engine parts. It’s definitely the design that’s needed. But you also couple that with an f1 19 on thrust vectoring capability so you can maneuver your way out of a tough situation, very critical as part of all of that, you move it forward to F 35 and you have your short takeoff and vertical landing capability, millions of lines of code to make that happen, and it has to be flawless every single time. So all of that type of capability continues to evolve really well across the bat as we look as the f1 35 engine, we then, of course, are bringing additional capability and additional access, if you will. But to really provide as a jet continues to be upgraded for what the needs are, so things like range capability, et cetera. And congratulations, Greg, a million flight hours. My thanks to the women and men that fly the F 35 jet. So congratulations, Tom, you’re a big piece of that too. You gotta congratulations. So we take the million flight hours on the F 35 plus a million flying hours on the F 22 combined. All together to evolve the next technology. So as we looked at our adaptive programs, there’s actually adaptive technology that will be put into the f1 35 as part of our engine core upgrade. That’s pretty significant. And we will continue to evolve the jets that are out there to keep those fleets flying as capable as as can be and lethal as can be, we think forward to our next generation. Of course, I can’t talk about any of that, but will I will talk about is how we’re collaborating. That digital environment is probably one of the most critical things that we can do so that my Air Force customer can see what I’m doing as I’m doing it be part of the development as that engine progresses, it doesn’t get better than that. We completed a detailed design review recently, and I will tell you it went as well as it did because of the collaboration that’s been happening just, you know, certainly along that program time period. So we all love to talk about fighter jets, fighter engines, bombers, but we recognize that other piece of it as well. So as we think about collaborative combat aircraft, we have the ability to pull commercial off the shelf assets that already exist, so we can very quickly get that out and have that be useful for the need that’s out there. So that’s something we’re very focused on as well. And then there are things like, you know, a rotating detonation engine. Very simple design, a lot of power to it. Can make effectors, etc, go very far, very fast. That’s really the next evolution piece that you’re going to see a lot more about as well. So few things going on. We have to cover all the fields. We have to cool everything down and give the capability that’s needed in support of the great work that all these guys do.
J. Michael Dahm:
Okay, so what I’m hearing is lots of innovation, lots of collaboration. Digital engineering is helping us to speed development along, but we need the industrial base to make all of this happen. If the demand signal from government and the military goes up. You know, we need specialized materials, industrial capabilities, specialized facility, highly skilled workers. So I’d like to ask all of you to comment on what investments and policies you think are needed to ensure that we have that defense industrial base for next generation aircraft production now and in the future.
Tom Jones:
Okay, yeah, go start. Okay. So you know, there’s a lot about the defense industrial base in the news. The last couple years, we looked at how we as a nation respond to replenishing weapons base. So I think I’ll address this in two parts. First part is, don’t worry, it’s not all bad. I do believe we industry can scale okay. And the reason I say that is because I’ve seen it firsthand. The last you know, I’ve been in the current role I’m in. I’m in my fifth year now, watching the ramp up of B 21 in Palmdale. That was a tripling of the workforce, right? We were bringing people in, basically almost right out of high school or from working jobs as servers at restaurants, right? We figured out how to hire the people. We figured out how to train the people, and then we got them out. And you know, if you walk down the factory line. Every time I walk down the factory line, it’d be 21 it’s amazing, right? It’s like the American dream. You got this awesome Lethal Weapon System, and you’ve got all these folks that just three, four years ago, were coming in door with no skills. They’re knocking it out in the park. They’re proud, you know? And you want to talk about job creation, you know, we’re talking about 1000s of jobs that we can create, so it can be done, right? But you have to focus. You have to focus on the training, you have to focus on the processes, things like that. And we can scale. Second part, where I do worry is in our supply chain, and in particular, the small businesses that we have, okay? They have been hit by COVID, the great resignation, hyperinflation and a high degree of uncertainty. You know, within the commercial aviation market, which, if you look at what drives aviation sub tier suppliers, it’s not any of us, right? It is or not the primes. It’s commercial aviation that is having a real hard effect on them. Now, I think, to date, we’ve done a really good job as primes of you know, managing through those uncertainties, making sure we’re keeping the production lines going. But I think we should take lessons learned out of this, we’ve been an area of extended economic uncertainty. It could continue or could go away and it could come back later on. So we need to take thoughts of, how do we work with small businesses? I like fixed price production programs, okay? It’s a virtuous cycle. Once you have a stable design. You go in a fixed price, it’s a great incentive for industry to get more efficient. We get profits, we turn around and we sell it back cheaper to the government the next lot. However, in these terms of times of uncertainty, very long programs, which are also good because you get more savings baked in as a result of that, there has to be some mechanism for dealing with economic uncertainty, both in labor costs and material costs, and I think we’ve been slow to adopt that in our industry, and we need to think about that as safeguard going forward. And then secondly, if you’re small business, you you know cash flow is a big issue. You worry about making payroll, so making sure that we can get payments on a timely manner and that both of these issues, frankly, has to start from the top, because we as industry partners can’t consistently give better business terms to our suppliers than we’re getting. That’s you know, business malfeasance would not be allowed to do that, right? So we have to look at these policies, figure out how we start them at the top and flow them down so that we keep not just the primes but the entire industry base strong.
Greg Ulmer:
A couple thoughts from my perspective. You know, for the last 510, years, low price to win, right? That really drives a behavior and approach to business and perhaps best value may be a better approach. And what does that mean? So Tom referenced small, small businesses, right? And from I’ll use the F 35 as an example. We have many cases within the supply base where we have one source of supply. That’s a very fragile supply base. We also have a very global supply base. So I won’t mention the country, but we had a country removed from the program chill, and I got to work through 840 parts that we had to resource very rapidly, very difficult to do. And so what really kind of drove that is low price to win, and I think we’ve really got to focus on the best value. And some of the best value may be dual, triple, sourcing supply. And in that you can be, you can create competition, by the way, in that kind of approach to that. So I think we’ve got to be very focused on that. And then I’ll kind of tie back to the workforce we do have, you know, for the first time in my career, I would say in the last five years, the bench strength I could really rely on in the past, that I could find the subject matter expertise. I’ll call them artisans, that had the experience to do what we needed them to do. We are now having to go to high school, and perhaps even below that, to start having a relationship. Bring back the vocational training, bring back the vocational learning, create experiences. So within Lockheed Martin, for example, we actually have high school students interning right with us, and we’re creating a value for them, contributing for our nation. They’re not just flipping a hamburger, they’re actually providing for our national defense, and it is so it’s very exciting to me, personally to see an 1819, year old working on an F 35 who goes home you have a family day, and the pride that they have their family, and they’re standing in front of an F 35 and I think we can easily get back to that, but we’ve got to be very focused on that. We have got to create, really, I’ll say the artisans, so that we can produce.
Jill Albertelli:
I would just add that and to create those artisans show them how it is a little bit different than maybe the job their grandfather had. It’s much higher tech, but the skill is still needed so that they understand everything that’s going on there. So fully agree with both Greg and Tom really reaching out extremely early. We’re in the high schools as well. We’re actually in grammar schools because we kind of turned everybody and said, We need everyone. We need everyone in the defense industry and aviation industry overall. The thing I would add is relative to capacity. So Pratt and Whitney is both a large commercial as well as defense provider for aviation. And you know, we can’t have that single point of failure that Greg referenced. So some things that we’re doing at Pratt, because we look across the broader business, we’ve invested over a billion dollars in capacity. One example is over just under 700 million in Asheville, North Carolina, with our turbine airfoil facility, which we will both have the casting capability, but more important capacity to be able to do the volume that’s needed as well as you know, the very, very high tech end of it, encodings, et cetera. That’s for both the military applications and commercials. So in some cases, we just have to go and create the capacity ourselves.
Tom Jones:
If I could throw two more things on that, I thought about as my colleagues were speaking here. I. I think getting a national focus on the importance of the trades again, and the fact, like Jill said, that the trades are becoming more technical. There are, you know, there is a lot. There’s this fallacy created, I think, that everyone has to go to college to be successful. There’s a lot of trades people that end up very, very successful running their own businesses. If you look at our organization in Palmdale, you know, I’ve got about 9000 people there, of my VPs and directors that are there, 50% of them started life on the factory floor as a technician and worked their way up. So there is definite, definite career path there, and we need to encourage people to go into that. And the second thing, talking about trying to get a workforce skilled, I do believe that digital engineering is going to enable more rapid learning curves in the technical engineering ranks, because what we’re seeing is the ability to iterate on designs. You know, I was lucky enough to start my career working very small black programs. Quick Reaction, I got to see lots of program life cycles in my first 10 years of industry. You can now do that digitally and learn so much more. So again, there’s a lot of challenge ahead of us. I’m optimistic by what I see. I think it’s a challenge that we can rise to, and we can use digital engineering and the training and to reach out to schools, all these things we’re talking about. It’s all part of what we can do to make sure we get the industry base where we need to be.
J. Michael Dahm:
All right, we just have a few minutes left. I think we could continue this, you know, this discussion for a while. But I’m just going to ask sort of a wrap up question in terms of what would be helpful. You know what? General Neuman, what would you like to see more of from our next generation aircraft industry and and for our industry partners, what can the government and military do to help you deliver the best next generation aircraft technology? And I think I’m going to start at the far end, and we’ll give general Neuman the last word. So Jill?
Jill Albertelli:
Sure thing. So I guess aligned with everything we were just talking about, as far as particularly workforce, just consistency in investments, stabilizing that. Because if it’s up and down, of course we can react. We do every single day, but having that stability makes more people want to be in this industry as well. That would be, really where I would focus. The one thing I’d say though so pride in Whitney celebrates 100 years this year. Congratulations. So for 100 years, we’ve been working with the Department of Defense, and the best thing that we can all do is what we work to do every day, continue to collaborate, continue to be completely transparent, and be able to push ourselves so that we continue that innovation. No question about it.
Greg Ulmer:
Great, I think, I think we need to think about how we procure So we’ve talked a lot about, how do we work across the spectrum? Is it A, B, 21 or is it a, you know, length 21 that does both emission but the way we’re procuring our material is through program offices. And so do we need to think about how that structure and it it established itself over decades? Is it a time, and I know we’re doing some work today to look at the acquisition organization, but I think we really need to look at that and rather than silos, is it more capability kind of approach in terms of acquisition? It gets pretty tough, because quickly you get into contracting and dollars and et cetera. But I think if we’re going to go as fast as we can go with as much innovation, we really have to look at the procurement system and do we need a reform where we’re bringing capability and we’re all going to be competitive in that? I mean, we’re all going to want to play but I just think the current model, based on the speed of technology, maybe there’s a better way. Okay?
Tom Jones:
I start looking at the success of B 21 and what our CEO did, there stable requirements, stable funding, and also the use of active contract management. We are all on the bleeding edge of technology, right? We have superior air superiority as a nation because of this great tech base and, of course, our warfighter skills. But you’re going to encounter risks, and giving a program office the ability to fund risk mitigation efforts in the course of a development program, I think, is key. I think also, as we look going forward, a few other things. You know, wherever we can minimize requirements is better. Gives more degrees of freedom to look at cost savings, schedule savings, etc, looking for opportunities and tests. You know, what we’re seeing coming out in digital engineering should be able to reduce the time we spend, both in developmental tests and operational test. And if you look at any aircraft over the last several decades, you spend more time in that phase of program than you do in the actual upfront design and first article build. And then we got to make sure that we have contracting vehicles that actually incentivize that. I’ve seen cases on programs. I won’t name them where we’ve come forward. And said, we can eliminate these tests because of this fidelity in the data, and we have program offices that want economic reconsideration for reducing scope, so you’re saving money. And you know, there’s actually a disincentive to do that. So I think we need to look at how we can really drive more efficiencies and harvest things out of the digital engineering.
J. Michael Dahm:
Well, General, I am sorry that you were so outnumbered by these captains of industry, but I’m going to give you the last word to tell them what it is you would like to see more of from them. So yeah.
Maj. Gen. Ty W. Neuman:
Well, you know, thanks, thanks again for allowing me to be here on this panel. This is a great panel. And honestly, 40 minutes is not nearly enough time, as you can tell. We’re all pretty passionate about this, and, and, and I’m one of them. I’ll tell you, we are really in an exciting time in the work of the National Security, Department of Defense, everything else, as well as what we’re doing with industry. If you haven’t noticed, there’s a lot of change going on right now, and I, you know, I truly embrace the fact that we are really looking hard about how we’re going after things. I’m working closely with, with all three of these folks, as well as everybody that’s down the hall, in the in the big in the big room down there, there is so much going on and so much interest in the national security business right now, it’s really actually overwhelming, and everybody’s coming forward to help us out with some of the big challenges that we have. So from a government side, I think there are some things that we can really help the defense industrial base out with. First and foremost, we have to be clear eyed at what our vision is for what the future war fighting capabilities need to be right. And to Tom’s point, the requirements don’t have to be so specific anymore. They can actually be a lot, a lot more broad in general. But we need to least have that vision forward on how we’re going to tie things together, how we envision warfighting the future, and the type of threats and stuff we need to be able to defeat. So that’s, that’s, that’s the first thing. The second thing is, you know, the acquisition strategy, the acquisition model, and so on so forth. I’m not an acquisition expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I’ve seen, I see how long it takes us to to go from a requirements validation to a delivery of that requirement. And in today’s environment, it is too long. It was it’s too long 10 years ago. But the fact that it takes me 10 years to go from our requirement to a delivered capability in today’s environment is completely unsatisfactory. I think we also need to take a look at bringing forth multiple vendors on the same types of weapons systems and not locking ourselves in too much, because we have to have flexibility, we have to have competition, we have to be dynamic, and we have to open up the aperture on who can bring us capability and technology into the work or into the Department of Defense that we can actually get after from that perspective, certainly that we have challenges Inside the Department of Defense, when it comes to our overall top line, we have to make some really tough choices because of we’re fiscally constrained. We actually our shareholders are the taxpayers. Our taxpayers are going to hold us accountable for the type of things that we spend our money on. And therefore, we have to make some really tough decisions if we could build a an entire force of super high end Type Kit builders. We would we clearly can’t do that. So we have to maintain a our capacity in legacy systems. And so this is where that my challenge, back to the defense industrial base is, and I work with these guys on a regular basis. I have to ask Jill to bring the most high, highly efficient engine to the B 21 because I have, I have to sip gas, and I have to go a long ways with very, very heavy weights. And then I have to go back to her and say, Oh, by the way, I have a 1960s model airplane that I have to have, you re engine to keep flying for another 30 years. I have parts from every one of these vendors up here that I have to continue to produce, and while they may not be the most glamorous and most profitable thing, the defense industrial base has to get out, you know, get after it for us and actually produce those parts. We have to maintain a ready force. Our legacy, fourth and fifth generation capabilities have to be the deterrent force, if you will, and a warm, winning capability that we bring forward into the future, because we can’t buy all B 20 ones from now until then. The last thing I would say is the airmen. And first, I want to say thanks to the airmen that are doing the mission and continue to sign up and do this day in and day out. The stress put on their families is absolutely incredible, but we thank them each and every day for doing that. But I want to also tie that back to the industry side. I think our industry partners should get national service credit for the amount of work that they do in this and. I think if we want to get a get our nation behind the national security work that we’re doing, it starts with the defense industrial base. It starts with the worker that is on the production line, you know, having motivation to show up every day, on time, clear minded and ready to work, because they are making a difference for their nation. And I think that’s been lacking in the past, and we have to figure out a way to excite, you know, our younger generation of experts and engineers and innovators and cyber experts and coders and all that kind of stuff to come into this industry, because it is making a difference. It’s making a difference. Every one of these, these companies up here and that are here this week, are making a difference. Our young generation workforce needs to know that, that our nation needs them right now more than ever.
J. Michael Dahm:
So all right, thank you. Well, on that note, we’ve run a few minutes over time, but I do want to encourage you to visit the Mitchell the Mitchell Institute booth, it is way down at the end of the hall by the exhibition center. You can find all kinds of policy papers and things about next generation aircraft, collaborative combat aircraft, and a whole host of other topics. But with that, please thank help me in thanking our panelists today and have a great air and space power panel day.