The ACE Mindset
March 4, 2025
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This transcript was generated with the assistance of AI. Please report inconsistencies to comms@afa.org.
Heather Penney:
I’d like to welcome everyone to our panel, “The ACE Mindset.” I’m Heather “Lucky” Penny, Senior Resident Fellow at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, and I will be moderating today’s discussion. It’s no secret, after 20 plus years of supporting counterinsurgency operations, the Air Force has grown accustomed to operating in uncontested environments with assured supply lines. Tomorrow’s operating environment, however, will be different. Our peer adversaries have developed and fielded advanced long-range strike capabilities that can hold our bases in the Indo-Pacific and Europe at risk. Even non-state actors have taken advantage of readily available technologies like small first-person view drones and long-range cruise missiles to strike the U.S. and allied air bases. Today and well into the future, we can no longer guarantee free access to or from our air bases. While the last 30 years have been a period where large bases have been a sanctuary to U.S. forces, United States Airmen have a history of fighting under attack. The good news is that our Air Force leaders recognize the rapidly changing operating environment and are pushing the envelope to ensure our Airmen are prepared for the realities of tomorrow’s fight. We know how to do this, and we need to rebuild the skills to effectively fight the base, to continue to generate sorties and execute combat operations while under attack. Our ability to fight and prevail in any contested environment will depend on it. Through initiatives like Agile Combat Employment and Mission Ready Airmen, we will complicate the adversary’s targeting problems and empower our pilots and Airmen to think outside the box to meet the demands of today’s operating environment and the future. This is no easy task, and more needs to be done to be ready for tomorrow’s fight. To discuss these challenges and how the Air Force leaders are developing solutions, I’m honored to be joined by our air power leaders. First, I’m excited to welcome General James Hecker, Commander USAFE Africa, and NATO’s Allied Air Command, along with his Command Chief, Chief Master Sergeant Randy Kwiatkowski. I’m also joined on stage by General Kevin Schneider, Commander of PACAF, and his Command Chief, Chief Master Sergeant Kathleen McCool. So with that, let’s begin. I’d like to open with a question for all of you. In April and October of 2024, Iran launched waves of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drone strikes against Israel. During the attacks, Israeli air bases were targeted but continued to operate and generate combat sorties. With that, could each of you provide some lessons that you’ve learned from these attacks? And General Hecker, I’ll toss the ball to you. Would you start us off?
Gen. James Hecker:
Well, thanks, Lucky. I appreciate it. And let me first take you back to 9/11/2001. And she probably doesn’t want me to do this, but she was in the DC National Guard. And when the World Trade Centers got hit, she was airborne protecting the sky. So she knows what she’s talking about. I saw Trappers in the crowd here. He delivered, you know, saw this firsthand on what Iran did, as well as their proxies to Israel. It was a pretty large attack, over 200 combination of one-way attacks, cruise missiles, as well as ballistic missiles. The big lesson learned that I got out of this is intel is great because it gives you some time to get ready for it. The second thing is a layered defense is great as well. You know, we had a lot of the Navy there in the sea that could start picking these off. We had an H ship from Lake and Heath that was over at CENTCOM at the time, along with some of our allied aircraft that were there. They were able to pick off a lot of the one-way attacks. And then behind them, you had Iron Dome. So you almost had kind of three layers, and Iron Dome itself is a layered defense kind of thing. And we saw how successful it was. You know, out of the over 200, you know, only a few got through. And luckily, there wasn’t many casualties. And Israel was ready for it. They knew it was coming. They didn’t expect, I don’t think, to get 99%. So they were doing ACE-like activities, getting things airborne, et cetera. That was the 13 April attack. And then Iran went to a little bit of school, and when it was in October, that attack was primarily ballistic missiles. And on ballistic missiles, you can’t really shoot those down with AMRAAMs and 9Xs, like the one-way attack vehicles or the cruise missiles. So that required more exquisite things, like SM-3s, Patriots, and also Iron Dome, Arrows, three missiles, and those kind of things. So when I look back and reflected how does this, you know, affect, you know, my theater and what’s going on with Russia and Ukraine right now, one of the big lessons was we cannot afford to spend $500,000 on a 9X to take a $30,000 one-way attack out, or a $1 million AMRAAM to take a $40,000 one-way attack out. Because we’re not going to be able to do this for very long if we do that. So one of the things we started looking at is what are cheaper ways of doing this? And luckily, Ukraine had already kind of worked that. Right now, Russia is up to about 100 one-way attack vehicles a day. That’s 100 a day that go into Ukraine. So when you combine the two attacks that occurred on Israel, that was roughly 400 missiles, that’s four days in Ukraine. So you’ve got to come up with cheaper ways of doing this. So we’ve looked at that. Ukraine has really helped us out with how to detect these things, how to shoot them on the right side of the cost curve at a much cheaper price point. And industry, quite honestly, has helped us quite a bit. I’ve talked to a lot of them. They’re coming up with things, and we’ve used them with like APKWS at $30,000 a round to be able to take these things out. Ukraine does it a lot with AAA. So we need to do that. But we need to do it at a cheaper price point. And that’s what we’re working on, and that’s the big lesson learned that we got out of the Israeli strike.
CMSgt. Randy Kwiatkowski:
Awesome. I would add to that, too. We saw, I think one of the key lessons, another key lesson that we took away from that was our resilience in dispersed operations is paramount. You know, we saw 99% of the weapons that were launched against Israel get intercepted in April, and a handful of them, of the 180 that were launched against Israel in October, a few of those got through Israel’s defenses, but they weren’t enough to cause damage that stopped operations. As a matter of fact, at a couple of installations that Israel was operating out of, Nevitim and Hatzoram, they sustained operations while they were being attacked. And this just highlights the fact that, you know, our focus on having dispersed operations and that redundancy is key to winning the fight. Another lesson learned that we had is really our ground crews are the operational backbone of mission success. The fact that these installations were able to continue generating sorties means that our maintainer’s focus on the mission was razor sharp. Also, the ground teams that were refueling, rearming, and regenerating aircraft, fixing runways, really highlights the fact that, you know, multi-capable and mission-ready Airmen, those aren’t just buzzwords. Those Airmen are literally the heartbeat of mission success. And the third thing we walked away from was you’ve got to have, you know, logistics under fire is essential. The fact that even post-attack, Israel was still able to generate sorties highlights the fact that the ammo Airmen, the refuelers, the runway repair Airmen, they had all the resources they needed to continue to sustain operations. Even though Iran was throwing everything they had to kind of stop that cycle, that strategy was unsuccessful. So if there’s a lesson there, it is really any force that’s going against a near-peer has got to focus on sustaining that supply chain even when the missiles are falling.
Gen. Kevin Schneider:
Yeah, thanks. And I’ll piggyback on the excellent comments already made. But, you know, as I look at both — I’m more focused on the October attack because I think that probably has the greatest application or the greatest lessons learned for application in the Indo-Pacific theater. I’ll overly simplistically describe it as, you know, a high-volume ballistic missile attack. And certainly when I look at what the People’s Liberation Army is capable of doing, that’s the focus. For me, some of the big takeaways — and it goes without saying — it’s readiness. You know, clearly the Israelis were prepared. They had trained for that. They recognize and certainly live every day inside a weapons engagement zone. So this is something that they had thought about. They had had a plan for dispersal. They had a plan for moving aircraft out. They had a plan for how their Airmen were going to react. They had a plan for how they were going to repair. And again, also goes without saying, a certain warrior ethos that goes along with that. You do not have the time necessarily to train or prepare when you, you know, live every day inside a WES. And that’s the reality inside the first and second island chain that’s being imposed upon us. Another big lesson or takeaway for me is, you know, the ability to sense and understand the airspace and the battle space around you. It puts a great emphasis and a great demand signal for, you know, for air domain awareness and understanding what is coming at you so we have greater time to react. Another thing for me is, you know, throughout all of these, you know, the PK of enemy systems is not 1.0. The CEP is not zero meters. So we have the ability to continue to operate within our air base and recognize that, you know, we will have to disperse. We will have to go to other locations. But we also have the ability to continue operations within the confines of our own air base as we do that as well. Defensive systems matter. You know, I continue to push for, you know, more and more defensive systems in the Indo-Pacific. Have a great relationship with USARPAC, United States Army Pacific, you know, what they bring as well as the US Navy for ballistic missile defense. But we’re continuing to find ways, you know, taking those lessons from base defense to be able to go, all right, what do each of the components bring to the fight and recognize at least in the Indo-Pacific? The Air Force and the Army are probably going to power project from land. We’re probably going to power project from similar locations. So are there capabilities that they have in their formations? Are there capabilities we have in our formations that we can build on this? And that’s, you know, incumbent about upon having a command and control system that allows systems and capabilities to plug into that quickly. But I’ll, you know, wrap that up, all of this with, you know, continued training and continued proficiency in the skill sets will allow us to be, you know, effective under fire and to be able to disaggregate when we need to and then aggregate to take the fight back to the enemy.
CMSgt. Kathleen McCool:
Yeah, it’s really hard to answer or to top those great responses. What I will say is one of the things our Airmen are working in PACAF every single day to deter aggression and deliver the lethal effects that are needed. But sometimes our Airmen think about this in a future concept or a future fight or a date that will happen not thinking about that it could be today. And so one of the most recent examples was in CENTCOM when our Elmendorf Airmen were called to deploy at a moment’s notice. And they were able to execute the most rapid deployment ever of F-22s. And within 72 hours of reaching, of receiving the call they were executing combat sorties. So it gave us an opportunity to remind our Airmen that this could happen at any moment. And it also gave us an opportunity to work our ACE concepts, our Agile Combat Employment, by sending a small contingent team of F-22s with maintainers and equipment to our partners within the region. And so I took away from this and I tell our Airmen readiness is not just about preparing for the future. It’s knowing that anywhere in the globe at any moment you could be called to respond to the threats that are escalating.
Heather Penney:
So generating combat sorties depends as much on the professionalism and skills of the ground crews who are turning the aircraft as it does our pilots. So with that in mind, Chiefs, how are USAFE and PACAF enhancing their training programs to ensure that our Airmen can execute the principles of ACE under high pressure and real world conditions?
CMSgt. Randy Kwiatkowski:
Yes, ma’am. We’re looking at really hard at how we develop all of our Airmen, especially our ground teams, to execute Agile Combat Employment. The first thing is through mission ready and mission capable, multi-capable Airmen. Think through taking a C-130 crew chief and giving them the skills they need to refuel an F-16. Or taking other mobility aircraft Airmen and certifying them to service F-15s and F-35s. So it’s really a force enabler in that aspect. We also have Agile Combat Employment baked into exercises like Agile Wolf at Ramstein and Castle Forge in Greece. These exercises really are showcasing how we get after, you know, again, that mission capable or multi-capable mission ready Airmen. And I think that’s really it. So thank you.
Heather Penney:
Chief?
CMSgt. Kathleen McCool:
Yeah, I would say to that point, it’s about the practice that we’re doing all the time. Every exercise that we’re executing, we’re taking our junior officers, we’re taking our NCOs and senior NCOs, and we’re expecting them to execute under mission command. So they have to know what it is that our commander’s direction is, what it is they’re expected to execute. And at Yokota recently, there was an exercise where they were working on rapid airfield damage recovery. So that in the circumstance that we were to have an attack, we could get out there, fix the airfield as fast as possible, and be able to generate sorties again. Another example comes out of Anderson at Guam, where we, our contingency response group is training alongside the Army and the Marine Corps to ensure that we have the jungle skills that’ll be necessary in an Indo-Pacific fight. So it’s every day getting the reps and sets, being prepared, and everything from our third expeditionary wing being able to go out and exercise Agile Reaper, which the boss and I were able to go witness our Airmen using their creativity and their initiative to be able to come up with ways of executing missions. And then at the 15th wing at Hickam, they have instituted warrior Airman training, which is really about getting our Airmen back into a thought process of what this fight would look like. And always being exposed to high-stress environments that will mimic what it is they would face in an Indo-Pacific scenario.
Heather Penney:
So Generals Hecker and Schneider: Our allies and partners are key to successfully implementing ACE, across Europe and the Pacific. Having our allies and partners by our side is a huge benefit, but it also creates a unique set of challenges that we need to overcome to increase our overall effectiveness. In that vein, could each of you describe how your respective commands are working to increase interoperability with our allies?
Gen. James Hecker:
Well, from a perspective in NATO, you know, you got 32 nations. No one’s going to agree typically to buy all of the same thing. Because they’re going to want to buy American, they’re going to want to buy European, et cetera. So you have different systems that aren’t interoperable to begin with, and you paid good money for them. And then it takes almost the same amount of money to make them interoperable. That’s not a good business practice to do. So you take a mission, like we talked about at the beginning of this, like integrated air and missile defense. And what we’re doing in NATO is we’re putting requirements, you know, because I can’t — it would be great if we just all bought the same thing, right? Because then it’s automatically interoperable. For instance, the F-35. You know, we’re going to have 750 by 2034 in Europe. They’re all interoperable. We don’t have to spend a dime more. But that is the exception. It’s not the norm. So what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to say, okay, in order to do integrated air and missile defense, we need to be able to sense from the surface basically with all the one-way attacks down at 100 feet, all the way up into space. That’s a requirement. Another requirement is to be able to take out low-altitude one-way attack vehicles anywhere from 100 knots, you know, to 200 knots. And then we got medium-altitude traditional aircraft, maybe cruise missiles and those kind of things. And we need to be able to also take out ballistic missiles, some that are, you know, supersonic and some that are hypersonic. So those are the requirements. So buy, you know, all 32 nations, buy something that meets that requirement, make sure that it is open architecture, and then it’s very cheaply able to be interoperable after that. It’s not near as expensive. So we call that integration by design. So we put out the requirements, make sure it’s open architecture, it meets the requirements, and then we put it together. So that’s the way we’re trying to work that at NATO. Sometimes we’re successful, sometimes we’re not. But that’s the way we’re trying to get after that. When it comes to ACE, we have a lot of different airfields that we can land at. And when I first got in, you know, I was at Holloman, and our mission was the Cold War. And at that time, we knew where we were going to operate from. We knew where we were going to bunk, where we were going to eat, what our mission was, where we were going to fly. We knew all our divert bases. We could divert anywhere. We could get gas from our allies. We could sometimes fix the aircraft, and even sometimes get munitions from our allies. Over the last 35 years, we’ve taken a knee in NATO when it — when it came to that, because the threat just wasn’t there. So we’re having to implement all those things, cross-servicing and those kind of things. We’re getting there as far as being able to get gas and those kind of things, but we got a ways to go. But we’re starting to get back on the right foot, and that will help enable ACE.
Gen. Kevin Schneider:
Yeah, again, awesome comments by General Hecker. So for me, interoperability, and you’ll recognize the limitations of my academic upbringing as I say this, but it’s simply — it’s our ability to work together. We do not need to have the same equipment. We do not need to all look alike, certainly in the Indo-Pacific. There are times that when we’re in briefings, and General Hecker lays down the F-35 map of what Europe looks like, and I have some envy with all the partner nations in NATO that are purchasing the F-35. We are not going to replicate that in the Indo-Pacific, and we don’t need to necessarily. Again, we don’t all have to have the same kit, but to his point, we have to have the same vernacular. We have to have same or similar tactics, techniques, and procedures, and we have to have an ability to communicate. And this is where I go a little bit, you know, old guy doing red air and come up with my own game plan, but sorry, lucky. But it puts a big onus on all of us, you know, especially for our command and control systems. They have got to start that are capable of REL to our partners. We cannot just bolt on or try to bolt on this capability. You know, integrated by design is what General Hecker said, and that’s certainly absolutely true of what we do in terms of interoperability. I’m looking around at a couple of the other MAJCOM commanders here. You know, every two weeks, we send a report to the chief about our biweekly report in terms of what we did. And very fortunate, you know, in PACAF, through the course of our exercises, a lot of them have gone past bilats, and there are multilats, we exercise the interoperability every single exercise, and a big bulk of my biweekly submission is about interoperability steps and things that we have done. And I’m going back to my hour time in Japan, circa 2020. I remember one of the first things we did with the Koku J-tai, the Japanese Air Self-Defense Force, was an exercise called Pacific Ronin, and able to get, you know, Japanese lift, Japanese fuelers putting fuel into US F-16s, which seems like, you know, fairly basic blocking and tackling. But those were things that we had to do, and we’ve been able to, you know, rapidly evolve past that, since that. And again, I’ll take the conversation in a little bit different direction, sorry. But interoperability isn’t enough. Really want to focus on interchangeability. So this is a picture of interoperability, and it looks pretty cool. So this is three nations’ worth of F-35s right now. You know, Royal Australian Air Force, the Koku J-tai, and the United States Air Force. That’s great, because we’re all flying the same kit. Next slide, please. But this is interchangeability, if you go to the bomb building one, please. This is our ability to do each other’s jobs, not just to work together. But this is, you know, two Airmen from different nations building a bomb. And if you took the American Airmen out of this picture, we would still get the bomb built. We would still be able to put it on an aircraft to go deliver a mission. And so now it’s, you know, learning each other’s jobs. And I think there’s a lot of potential here on the ground for us to be able to do this. And it’s something that we were exercising through the course of the summer. We did a bomber task force down to Amberley in Australia. We got to practice this. We did a CAPEX in Japan that had three nations, you know, learning how to build each other’s bombs and be able to load them on aircraft. And so these are the evolutionary steps as we, you know, again, continue to learn on the interoperability side. But take this up to the next level.
Gen. James Hecker:
Yeah, I agree, Gumby. Going from interoperability to interchangeability is the way to go. And we’re doing small steps. You know, it looks like you’re doing the same. But we can’t go fast enough. Because you never know when it’s going to happen. And you can’t have a USF-35 land at an Italian Air Force base and break with a part in an Italian — can’t give you the part. Because, you know, it’s theirs. And it’s not part of your thing. So working on that. And that’s some policy changes. Actually, it’s not just training. We have to get some policy changes to make that happen. But it’s just definitely something that needs to happen. And you could almost take it a step forward, further than that. You know, what if a force ship from the Netherlands landed at Lake and Heath, and one of the pilots got sick? You know, why shouldn’t a US pilot be able to jump in the Netherlands aircraft and go ahead and take off? Now, we’re several years away from that. But that’s what we need to strive for.
Heather Penney:
Over the last 30 years, the Air Force has grown accustomed to operating out of large bases with assured interior lines. Today, however, the operating environment in Europe and the Indo-Pacific is a much more challenging and potentially highly contested. Chiefs, would both of you spend a few minutes discussing how you’re preparing your Airmen for this new reality? And how are you adapting to the unique demands of each of your theaters?
CMSgt. Kathleen McCool:
Yeah, I’ll start with — I think the first and most important is our Airmen have to understand the why. And so I have a unique perspective, having three sons in the Air Force, and a nephew, and a niece. And — oh, thank you. Thank you. One of those family members was recently participating in an exercise, and I asked him, “Hey, tell me about Bamboo Eagle.” And he just gave me this blank stare. And I said, “The exercise you were on.” And he said, “What’s an exercise?” And I said, “Weren’t you on the West Coast?” And he said, “Yes.” And I said, “What do you think you were doing?” And he said, “Fixing airplanes.” And I said, “True, you were. But it’s bigger than that. And here’s why it matters. Here’s the why.” And his eyes were about this big. So I came back, and I talked to General Schneider, and I talked to our teams about telling our Airmen why they’re doing it. Why does having a free and open Indo-Pacific matter? What does that look like for their future? And then once they understand the why, they’re much more committed to being able to execute the actions that we need them to do. And so some of the ways we’re getting after that, one is the Inter-Pacific Air Forces Academy Initiative that we’re working on, where we’re bringing in allies and partners from across the Indo-Pacific to talk about mission command, to talk about resilience, leadership, what that’s going to look like when we’re working together. The other thing that we’ve done is we’ve reinvigorated Pacific Paladin, and that’s something where we’re bringing in senior NCOs, and we’re talking to them because I truly believe in the chain of command. And I can influence our senior NCOs about why it matters, what it is that we’re going to expect from them, and then expect them to take that back into the field and give that to our Airmen. And so as we head into Resolute Forge, our largest exercise that’s going to happen in the Pacific this summer in 2025, I want our Airmen to know that the agile combat employment techniques that they’ve been practicing are going to be even more important as we go into this exercise so that we can walk away knowing where we need to continue to put our capabilities to match the threats that we’re going to face.
CMSgt. Randy Kwiatkowski:
Yeah, that’s an awesome answer. There’s no doubt our junior enlisted Airmen, our NCOs, our CGOs are the most connected, most competent, most capable generation of Airmen that we’ve ever seen in our Air Force. So where I think we need to evolve is how do we create great decision makers at the tactical level? In our area of responsibility, we’ve got 19 million square miles of real estate, and there’s not an installation inside of that that has sanctuary from harm. So when things go south, and Airmen, you know, obviously we know that all of the domains are going to be contested. So when things go south, how are Airmen at the tactical level, you know, we need to prepare them to execute mission type orders, air tasking orders, while they’re disconnected from that comm node. And I look through that challenge like our PACE communication plan. So our primary means of communication, we do it every day. Our alternate means of communication, we may practice that during exercises. When we get to contingencies, we really rely on our operational leaders to invest in, mentor, and groom our tactical level leaders for the environment they’re in. But it’s when all things go to hell, and you go from our primary means down to an emergency in rapid time, like we can’t be caught with not knowing what to do. So we’ve got to develop that decision making process at the tactical level. And I think that’s through injects and vignettes that you bake into your exercise plans, that push people out of their normal decision making process to think through challenges in ways they’ve never thought through them before. And if we continue to do that, we wash, rinse, repeat, we push to the point of failure, we give them feedback, and it just continues to build that decision making process. And we’re sharing that expectation across all of our wings, we’re sharing it across UCOM, we’re sharing it across AFRICOM. Because in the event our Airmen need to be ready, like we’ve got to make sure that they are ready.
Heather Penney:
General Hecker, the operating environment in Europe is vastly different than the Indo-Pacific. Though the distances between major bases and forward operating bases are smaller, the European environment comes with its own set of unique challenges. Could you walk us through how the United States and its NATO allies are approaching the ACE mindset in a European context?
Gen. James Hecker:
Yeah, I have the opportunity to talk to the Ukrainian air chief once every two weeks or so. And they’ve been very successful not getting their aircraft hit on the ground. And I ask him, I said, “How is that? What do you do?” And he goes, “Well, we never take off and land at the same airfield.” I’m like, “Okay, you know, that’s pretty good, keeps Russia on their toes.” I got tons of airfields from tons of allies and we have access to all of them. The problem is I can only protect a few of them. I can’t do what we talked about earlier on with, you know, the Iran attack on Israel. We can’t have that layered effect for thousands of air bases. There’s just no way it’s going to happen. So you have to pick a few of your main operating bases, and we’ve done that, and we do that with our allies as well. Where are they going to be? And we put what we can as far as defensive measures in for those airfields. And then that’s where we’re going to mainly operate out of. And then we can ACE the other fields. You know, we used to talk about ACE a long time ago. We didn’t use the term ace, but we aced amongst our own airfield, right? We just moved the aircraft around. We put decoys out. We put sandbags down. Well, now we have to ACE amongst different airfields. And we started off thinking that we could do that for maybe a week or so. And that was going to work, at least in my theater. But over the last three years of conflict, the targeting cycle on the Russian side has decreased significantly. So to go think you’re going to land at another airfield and hang out there for a week with no defense, you’re going to get schwacked. It’s going to happen. So you can only stay there for a little bit. And then you’ve got to get back to your main operating bases. So you’ve got to figure out, you know, where do you pre-deploy weapons, which we’ve done amongst a handful of bases right now. Well, equipment. And where’s that going to be? And are you just going to stop for a gas and go? Go do your mission and then go back to your main operating base to get weapons. Somebody else jumps in the aircraft, jumps in and gets a gas and go. It’s going to be much shorter operations. You know, we’re not talking weeks anymore. We’re talking days. And sometimes we’re talking hours if you want to be survivable. And then back at your main operating base, you’ve got the layered defense. You’re going to have the few that get through that we saw in Israel. And if it’s a lot of ballistic missiles, it may be more that get through. But now you have the Airmen back there to do the rapid runway repair and those kind of things to get up and running again. So it’s really evolving the ACE concept. And I think the way I’m going to do it is going to be a lot different than the way Gumby’s going to do it in his place just because the distance, you know, and not as access to as many airfields and those kind of things.
Heather Penney:
So the Air Force wants to populate the Indo-Pacific with dispersed operating locations to support ACE. However, the Air Force also needs to invest heavily in resilient infrastructure at its main operating bases. So General Schneider, could you speak to what the Air Force is doing to balance the demand for resilient infrastructure while also building out ACE operating locations across the Indo-Pacific?
Gen. Kevin Schneider:
Yeah, Lucky, that is a tough answer to give because it is a challenge. You know, for all of us that are commanders and, you know, who work for a combatant commander, we owe that combatant commander options across the spectrum of what we do as a military force, you know, whether it’s humanitarian assistance, disaster relief operations, all the way up to combat and conflict in a highly contested environment. So the demand signals for how we project power are different. And I’ll also say, you know, you’re right, it’s different in the Indo-Pacific than it is in Europe. Do not have NATO. I have a couple of, there are five bilateral treaty partners, you know, two of them, you know, for Korea and Japan where we share basing. So we have alliance relationships on those bases. For both Scorch and I, we both have a joint force demands on our bases and there are benefits to that as well. I like having the Army on our bases, especially when they have patriots and other capability that helps us defend. So, you know, we will have the need for, you know, bases, you know, the main operating bases from which we operate. The challenge becomes, you know, at some point, you know, we will need to move to austere locations. We will need to disaggregate the force and we will need to operate out of other locations. Again, one for survivability and two to, again, provide responses, response options for the combatant commander. Both of those cost money. And we in the Air Force have been having to make internal trades, certainly in the Indo-Pacific, as to do we put that dollar towards, you know, fixing the infrastructure at Kadena or do we put that dollar towards restoring an airfield at Tinian in the second island chain. And those are things that we continue to balance. The Pacific Deterrence Initiative, PDI, is not the same as the European Deterrence Initiative. PDI does not come with money and in many ways, it’s a little bit of an internal bookkeeping effort. But it’s just one of those things I continue to, you know, to talk to the Chief of Staff of the Air Force and highlight, you know, these are the things that we need at our main operating bases. These are the things that we need to project power. And we have these discussions in the, you know, the Board of Governors, if you will, that the Air Force holds as we make decisions on our budget going forward. But again, no easy decisions there, but just ones that we’ll have to continue to articulate. And certainly, you know, a lot that our allies and partners provide for us in this space as well. So continuing to work with them to gain greater access to those fields that are already in operating condition that, you know, have a less lower demand signal fiscally for the United States Air Force.
Heather Penney:
Thank you. As we come to the end of this panel, I’d like to offer our panelists the opportunity to provide some closing thoughts. Chiefs, I’d like to start with you. And Generals, you can have the final words.
CMSgt. Randy Kwiatkowski:
Well, ma’am, I just want to say thanks for everybody here hanging out until after 1700 on a great night. But I also want to just thank AFA. Thank AFA for everything they do to take care of our Airmen and our Guardians and our families in so many incredible ways. And it’s been an honor to be part of this.
CMSgt. Kathleen McCool:
Yeah, I’ll say echo. Thank you to AFA. Thank you to the individuals that were here today. It is absolutely an honor to get to serve alongside our Airmen, alongside fantastic teammates. And it’s just — it’s a great opportunity.
Gen. Kevin Schneider:
I showed up in PACAF in 2015 on a previous assignment. And the A58 was a guy — Steve Basham. I wonder where he is these days. Actually, he’s about three-quarters of the way back up the center aisle. And I remember one of the first conversations, he was talking about agile combat employment, where we were going, and some of those initial steps and things that we were thinking about. We have evolved. We have learned a lot of lessons. And ACE agile combat employment today in concept, in theory, in practice, and in execution is much different. Because we have done the sets. We have done the reps. We have worked with allies and partners. And we have continued to evolve. So, again, this is something that we do not accept status quo. And I applaud our Airmen at all levels for continuing to put the blood, sweat, and tears into this to figure out how we remain effective and to stay, you know, steps ahead of any adversary out there.
Gen. James Hecker:
Gumby, ditto to that. You know, prior to this job, I was at Air University. And one of the jobs there is we had the doctrine center. And we had to put out doctrine. And ACE concept was coming along. But we had no doctrine. You know, doctrine is typically built on past mistakes and lessons learned and those kind of things. So, we put together, I didn’t even know it existed. There’s a thing called a doctrine note, which is, you’re just kind of throwing something out there to get people to talk about it. And it has evolved, like Gumby said, so much since then. And it evolves differently. It’s different in my theater than what’s going to be in your theater. And when you look at, you know, GUI at NORTHCOM, it’s going to be different in the states. So, we just got to keep our minds open. And don’t just get set on one concept. Evolve, make sure that we stay survivable. Get lessons learned from active wars that are going on now, like we’re doing with Israel and Ukraine. And just keep pressing forward. And it’s great Airmen. And it’s also great people of industry, which are both present in this room. And we need both of you to make this happen. So, I can’t thank all of you enough for everything you do. And let’s just keep pressing forward.
Heather Penney:
Generals, Chiefs, thank you so much for joining us here today.