The China Threat
September 22, 2025
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This transcript was generated with the assistance of AI. Please report inconsistencies to comms@afa.org.
Michael Dahm
Good afternoon, I am Mike Dahm, as recently introduced. Last year at our Air, Space & Cyber Conference, I hosted a panel on this very stage, titled The China Problem. This year we’re calling it The China Threat. I did not select this title, but I wouldn’t read too much into it other than to say that the China problem does in fact seem to be getting more threatening each year. So since our last exciting episode, we’ve seen two purported sixth generation aircraft prototypes in the skies over China. We caught a glimpse of a Chinese AWACS built on a Y-20 airframe dubbed the KJ-3000. The PLA officially acknowledged the JL-1 air-launched ballistic missile carried by an H-6 bomber, which apparently rounds out China’s nuclear triad. Meanwhile, China’s space launches have surged, increasing by over 30% in 2025 compared to last year. The number of payloads China has delivered to orbit has doubled since 2024, with an initial build out of not one, but two Chinese mega constellations of low Earth orbit satellites similar to U.S. Starlink. And those are just some of the few Chinese air and space highlights from the past 12 months. So to discuss these and other developments in the People’s Republic of China, I’m pleased to be joined this afternoon by four leaders and senior intelligence professionals who guide the US Air Force and Space Force on the challenges posed by China’s military, the PLA People’s Liberation Army. To my left and yours is Lieutenant General Max Pearson, who recently assumed his position as Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence. As the A2, he is responsible to the Secretary of the Air Force and Chief of Staff of the Air Force for policy planning, oversight, and leadership of Air Force intelligence operations. His counterpart in the Space Force, to his left, is Brigadier General Brian Sidari, Deputy Chief of Space Operations for Intelligence, United States Space Force. Next, we have Master Sergeant Stefan Blazier, who recently assumed the position of Senior Enlisted Leader for the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence. Chief Blazier is the primary enlisted advisor to General Pearson and has a deep background in force development. And finally, we have his counterpart and Chief Advisor to General Sidari, Chief Master Sergeant Ron Lerch, Senior Enlisted Advisor to the Deputy Chief of Staff, Space Operations for Intelligence, who in addition to his senior enlisted advisor role is also quite popular on the international speaking circuit. Something we’ll get into in just a minute. So thank you all for being here. Let’s jump into our questions. So earlier this month, we watched a military parade in Beijing where the PLA showcased fighters, bombers, special mission aircraft, surface to air missiles, uncrewed aircraft, the list goes on. They also had some interesting looking collaborative combat aircraft, if Chinese commentators are to be believed. And that’s to say nothing of new ballistic missiles and medium range ballistic missiles with hypersonic glide vehicles. So General Pearson, what do you take away from PLA military modernization and the things we saw in the parade?
Lt. Gen. Max E. Pearson
Thanks, Mike. I would say we need to start by recognizing that we as a joint force have been fighting for decades. And we’re not just been fighting, but we have been conducting realistic department wide large force exercises like the chief talked about this morning. And all of that display of our military power has served as a bit of an open book. And adversaries have watched and observed us for years. The PLA, the PRC has observed how we fight, the techniques we use, the weapon systems we have. And when you combine that with intellectual property theft that has fueled a lot of their modernization that you discussed, that really has enabled them to do what the chief mentioned. They have deliberately developed and modernized to counter our American way of war, to counter our ways of fighting, our tactics, our techniques, our weapon systems. And that dynamic, I think, renders everything that we discussed this morning all the more important. It really puts the sense of urgency to the need for us to innovate as a force.
Michael Dahm
Okay, as I mentioned in the opening, within the past year, we’ve seen the PLA fly two prototype aircraft, what appear to be sixth generation fighters. The Internet’s calling them the J36 and the J50. And love it if you could provide some insights to our audience on those new aircraft, but I won’t hold my breath. More generally, what can you say about Chinese military technology development? Do you think the US still holds a technological edge? Or should we be concerned that the PLA is beginning to outcycle our defense industry in terms of fielding new technologies? And General Pearson, I’ll let you continue with that.
Lt. Gen. Max E. Pearson
Yeah, that’s a great question. In full transparency, I’m not in a position to make solid comparisons between the US Defense Industrial Base and the PLAs, but I can certainly talk about the latter. And I think what we need to recognize about PLA modernization and their defense industrial base is their whole of society approach. And I think many in the audience have heard discussions of this. We’ve talked about it previously in terms of military civ fusion. Now I think the PLA calls it the National Strategic Integration. But what this is is sort of a blending of the commercial industry to the military industry, integrating input from academia, all centered on and focused on problems set by the PLA to develop capabilities that advance their weapon systems and that advance their military power. And that, I really also should say that that is underpinned by consistent assured funding sources and combined, I think that really has fueled a lot of what we’ve seen out of PLA modernization in recent years. And you ask, am I concerned? I don’t know. This past weekend I watched a B-25 Mitchell fly at the Andrews Air Force Base Air Show. And we built 9,800 of those aircraft in four years, while at the same time building more P-51s and C-47s and B-17s and B-29s, etc. And I recognize that was then and this is today. We certainly have work to do. But I think that’s really why the department is putting such an emphasis on reinvigorating our defense industrial base and refining our acquisition process and why we hear our leaders focus so much on innovation. The need to do that really is legit.
Michael Dahm
All right, any other comments? No? So we’ll turn to the space domain. Last October, Beijing released its first National Space Science Development Plan, a strategic blueprint for developing its space-based science and technology sector. Many commentators, including our own Chief of Space Operations, General Saltzman, are saying that China’s space development plan lays out Beijing’s intent to surpass the United States in the space domain and become the world’s preeminent space power. General Sidari, in broad terms, how do you see competition with China in the space domain evolving? And what are the trend lines regarding China’s space and counter space capabilities?
Brig. Gen. Brian D. Sidari
Thanks, Mike. Excuse me. Obviously, you always keep up with what your boss says, right? But China has moved their development to the left to get those capabilities to enable how to defeat the joint force, right? And so it is concerning how fast they’ve done it. General Pearson, you talked a little bit about the property theft, how they call it. We used to call it the sieve mill fusion. But they understand, cuz they’ve studied us, the Chinese, for so long, how we enable the joint force with those space-based capabilities. One, you just talk about PNT or Global Satcom or Sensing, and they’ve realized that they need that to enable their force to be successful. So that’s one. Two is, how do we deny or how do they deny our ability to provide those capabilities? And so it’s concerning how fast they’re going. Again, moving their things to the left where we get on these cycles, which it is what it is. But it is concerning. I’m concerned about when the Chinese figure out how to do reusable lift that allows them to put more capability on orbit at a quicker pace, cadence, than they currently exist. You talked a little bit, Mike, about how they’ve put more satellites on orbit. Still do not compare to the US. But it is concerning once they figure out that reusable lift. The other one is the mega constellations. They’ve seen how the mega constellations provide that capability to the US joint force and the West, and they’re mimicking it, right? So that does concern me of how fast they’re going. But we’ll see, right? It’s easier said than done. So they do have to figure it out, and they do have some challenges that we haven’t dealt with.
Michael Dahm
Excellent. So, Chief Lerch, I spoke about you being on the international speaking circuit. And earlier this year in London at the Chatham House Space Security Conference, you raised the specter of China making progress in what you called potentially game-changing space technology. We could probably spend all afternoon talking about China’s emerging on-orbit capabilities. But in addition to what the General was just saying, can you provide some specifics about China’s most important cutting-edge technologies in the space domain that we’ve seen in the recent years and maybe what might be on the horizon?
Chief Master Sgt. Ron Lerch
Yes, certainly. So when we’re talking about the game-changing capabilities, to just pull the thread a little bit further on what General Sidari just talked about, this refueling activity that the Chinese have conducted on orbit with the SJ-25 and the SJ-21, two systems that they have that were doing this during the spring and early summer, we have to remember that it’s game-changing for them. They have to have on-orbit refueling as a capability because they don’t access space as frequently as we do. And so when it comes to replenishing our toolkit, getting more capability, reconstitution, having reusable launch is what affords us that ability, and the Chinese don’t have that. So for them, pursuing things like refueling on orbit, it is game-changing for them. Beyond that, I will tell you that we joke all the time that we wish that we could just have like a static threat brief that we put on the shelf, and then maybe like once or twice a year, we dust it off and we’re good to go. Unfortunately, that’s not the case because it seems like every month there’s something new. The two things that I’ll just sort of talk about specifically that are recently developing, the Yaogen 45 was recently launched this month. It’s a remote sensing system, but if you look at where it’s actually being put in the slot, it’s in MEO, right? So this is 2,000 kilometers above Earth. Very unusual to put a remote sensing satellite higher than MEO. And so that alone is very interesting, but if you go back a year ago around May, the Chinese started to put these smart Skynet satellites in MEO as well. And so it looks like a year ago, they started to put the infrastructure at MEO to be able to move around data, and then you have a year later, the Chinese are now putting remote sensing capability at MEO as well. That’s interesting, and that starts to paint a picture of that they value remote sensing to the point where they want resiliency and layers of it, right? We know they can do that from GEO, we know they can do it from LEO, and now you’re seeing them move to MEO as well. And then the last thing I’ll hit on, the TJS series of spacecraft, these are experimental communication satellites. This year alone, the Chinese have put about five of them on orbit, which is highly unusual compared to previous years. The only thing I’ll say about those particular spacecraft is that, one, the Chinese have clearly learned to put nice little mission patches sort of affixed to these missions, similar how the US does. They refer to these as the kings of the North, South, East, and West, hinting that there’s a sort of family of systems with these particular spacecraft. More importantly, these spacecraft that are sitting at GEO are not supposed to be sliding all around the GEO belt, but the history of these experimental spacecraft has shown that that’s exactly what they do, which is very uncharacteristic for a system that’s supposed to be providing satellite communications.
Michael Dahm
Yeah, and just to follow up on that, you said the SJ-25 was refueling the SJ-21. And we know from previous reporting, the SJ-21 is the satellite that actually drags other satellites out to graveyard orbits, which is very concerning. Yep, all right, so with that growth in PLA air and Space Force, rather air and space capabilities in mind, I noticed in recent testimony that Air Force Secretary Mink said, we will deter China through investments in our people, our readiness, and our posture within the Indo-Pacific region. But it strikes me that if China is the pacing threat, it seems like we should be making investments in our people readiness and posture throughout the force and not just within the Indo-Pacific. So, Chief Blazier, within the Air Force, what investments are we making in our people and our readiness to compete with and deter the People’s Liberation Army?
Chief Master Sgt. Stefan Blazier
Thanks, Mike. On this, I think what you’d have to think about, and everybody I think resonates with them, is as much as Airmen or Guardians would love to attend a good lecture or a good briefing, they’d much rather learn by doing. And we’ve kind of been talking about the threat quite a bit, but I remember a couple years ago, we talked about doing large scale exercises. And now if you look at from this morning, and you think about thousands of Airmen, hundreds of platforms and aircraft. I mean, our Airmen are out there doing and learning. And they’re not just doing it alone, right? It’s across the deaf with Guardians, with joint partners, with partners and allies. And I think what’s amazing about this is some communities would say how we assemble and how we certify. Some specialty communities or kind of units would say, hey, we’ve always done that. But for a large part of the Air Force, that’s not how we organize, train, and equip. It’s not how we certified. And specifically, we knew with a high end fight, we can’t expose them to learn when they get deployed or learn when they go forward. And so particularly with the department level exercises, that commitment to doing that directly ties into readiness. And I think that’s crystal clear. Another thing that I think is really, really important is we’re also kind of pushing on the war gaming front. And so if you guys have never heard of EWI, I’m sorry, AFWI, AFWI, so the Air Force War Gaming Institute. Our Airmen are gaming now. What I mean by that, it’s everything from board games all the way down to our Airmen leadership schools, all the way into high end games that before would have been somebody that was more senior folks like us, would have been exposed to. But now you’re getting reps and sets and really getting people to think about their role and share about what they’re gonna do when they organize as teams. That is really kind of pushing the envelope so we can actually exercise mission command for people to think, move, and empower that force at the echelon necessary to be able to move quickly at scale.
Michael Dahm
Excellent. So, General Pearson, we’ll circle back to you. Talk a little bit about force design. So reading the Air Force posture statement for fiscal year 26. Quote, while many other serious threats exist, the Department of the Air Force views China as its sole pacing threat. The US Air Force and Space Force have structured our long term strategies around this reality and specific threats from China directly influence the department’s fiscal priorities reflected in the FY 26 budget request. So how is Air Force Intelligence rather postured to reinforce the force design framework and inform leadership initiatives to counter and deter the China threat?
Lt. Gen. Max E. Pearson
I’ll start by saying that the Air Force force design is absolutely founded on the intelligence production that has come out of the Air Force Intel Enterprise as well as our defense and IC partners. I mean, it really is the baseline. It forms, it frames or outlines how we talk about, how the Air Force talks about force design. And frankly, as the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, like that makes me proud and happy. And it should do the same for all of the Air Force Intel professionals who have contributed to that Intel record. From a question of how we’re postured, I mean, I think our posture is about our Airmen and the functions that they execute, right? We have Airmen across the Air Force DCGS Enterprise and cryptologic centers that are regularly discovering the unknown and delivering tailored intelligence to warfighting commanders across the command. We’ve got ISR and soft Intel flying units that do the same from altitude and do it remarkably well. That Intel as well as other intelligence enables our analysis and targeting enterprise to tailor that Intel further into really specific products that fuel very specific processes within our force design, our capability development, and they do it really well. Airmen in the National Air and Space Intel Center, a big part of this as well, that they deliver science and technical intelligence that fuels capability design, fuels acquisition decisions, characterizes adversary weapon systems in really, really important ways. And that intelligence available to senior decision makers and senior leaders, but also leveraged heavily by our Airmen out there in our flying and operational wings, we call them our unit level Intel or ULEA Airmen. So they are taking that intelligence from all the parts of our force that I’ve discussed, as well as some direct feeds from combat support agencies. And providing tailored intelligence, in some cases making sense of, in real rapid time at pace, making sense of that intelligence and delivering it to war fighters on a regular basis. And those people, those leaders that come out of those warfighting units, combined with the intelligence pros on my staff, who are providing deep dives, really tailored sort of RFI, rapid research. I mean, that’s the broad engine that fuels the force design. And again, it’s a force design that is underpinned, really, by intelligence that comes out of that Air Force Intel enterprise.
Michael Dahm
Yeah, and I would foot stomp that as a recovering intelligence officer myself, having sort of seen the light in what can be done, especially with today’s open sources, commercial satellite imagery, things like that. I really applaud what NASIC and the Space Intelligence Center are doing with unclassified publications. Not just to inform the public, but I think to inform our decision makers in Congress and more broadly, so that they can have conversations with their constituents about these types of important issues. And it’s not just all behind the green door. So circling back again to Chief Lerch’s comments at the Space Security Conference, Chief, you said that we, that is the US Space Force, see great risk right now, not because of the unprecedented growth of Chinese space capabilities. I’m sorry, we see great risk right now because of the unprecedented risk of Chinese space capabilities, as well as unmanaged competition. And it’s really the unmanaged competition I wanted to focus on. And I’m interested to hear more about what you’re characterizing as unmanaged competition. And General Sidari, you’re ultimately responsible for intelligence support. Where do you see the risks and potential flashpoints in the space domain between the US and China? And Chief, we’ll start with you.
Chief Master Sgt. Ron Lerch
Yeah, so just like any other intel person that’s out there, we always steal the best work that’s out there. So I can’t take credit for the term unmanaged competition. That’s a term that’s historically been associated with the rise in nuclear weapons, right? And it really talked about that time, that period of time where from testing and an actual employment to actual treaties being signed. That decade we call the Cold War, right? But also that was that unmanaged competition where you had strategic actors who there was great risk because they sort of had no restraints on them. And there was no framework and there was nothing in terms of an enforcement agency to stop them from doing anything. So you fast forward the hands of time and you look at today and you look at the space domain, high stakes as well. We’ve all heard the speech about a day without space and everything terrible that can happen from GPS to Uber drivers, you name it. We live in a high stakes world where the last sort of framework or treaty that was signed that had any kind of teeth was in 1967, the Outer Space Treaty. And all it said was, hey, no WMD on orbit, right? And we live in a world today, as General Siderio has already talked about, where there’s a variety of counter space threats that exist that are not just nuclear, there’s conventional threats as well. We have strategic actors competing. We’ve already talked about sort of the pace that the Chinese are going at. And so we are finding ourselves now in that era of unmanaged competition. And the one thing that I will say that’s good is that the organizing premise for the Space Force is the CSO’s competitive endurance. And the one particular part of that that matters in this conversation is when we talk about doing responsible counter space campaigning. We are filling the leadership gap that exists right now in space by saying as a military service that we want space to be usable by everyone. We look at the long term stability of it as important. And we do not want to take a war to space, but if we have to, we’re happy to go there.
Brig. Gen. Brian D. Sidari
To add on to what Chief Lurch said, I think the biggest one I’m concerned about is unintended escalation. Right, in air domain I can see, but in space, right, not everybody can see it. And so the issue becomes, are operations, activities, or investment the joint force is doing, does that rise up the escalation ladder and what do we do about that, cuz you have unintended consequences. I think the other one is just like the Chief said and General Saltzman is responsible campaigning. We can say a lot of things, the Chinese don’t believe what we say, they believe what they see. So you have to do operations to ensure they know the boundaries of what’s going on. That helps us control escalation. And if you can’t talk, then you’re just trying to figure it out, and that’s a bad place to be. But it goes back to what Chief Blazier said, large force exercises, the ability to practice, the ability to learn in peacetime, and the ability to fail but not become a failure is incredibly important. And I think it wraps into how do we manage escalation so each side knows what you’re doing responsibly.
Michael Dahm
Yeah, and having been involved in talks as a military attache with the People’s Liberation Army, I can tell you that a lot of times, it’s more than just a language barrier, but we are just talking past each other. So what turns out to be a signal gets completely misinterpreted. We were trying to signal de-escalation and they took it as an escalatory signal. So, all right, so we heard that the Department of the Air Force considers China its sole pacing threat. My personal frustration is that China seems to always be the problem that will wait, especially when the Air Force and Space Force are dealing with shooting wars in Europe and the Middle East. So for the chiefs, what programs or initiatives do the Air Force and Space Force have to drive awareness among Airmen and Guardians about the growing challenges we’re facing from the PLA? Chief Blazier, you already talked a little bit about training and doing to sensitize them to those threats and those challenges. What else do we have on the plate?
Chief Master Sgt. Ron Lerch
So briefly, I’ll touch on a couple Space Force things specifically. One thing that we do at the headquarters level, for those who aren’t tracking, we do this unclassified threat fact sheet. It’s actually coordinated through PA, it’s released quarterly. It even goes through OSW Space Policy folks in terms of making sure that this is something that we can release, not CUI, but completely unclassified. So much so that it’s on LinkedIn. For the Guardians out there, we use a Guardian one app. It literally gets uploaded to the app. So anyone right now who doesn’t have the app, you can go there, download the app, search threat fact sheet, and everything that I just said will be there. And that’s how sort of transparent we’re being in terms of trying to communicate the threat. The second part to that is through Starcom, right, which is training for us as akin to what AETC is. They have baked in education about the threat, and China in particular, at every echelon that you can imagine. So it’s not just the PME, it’s not just at a session. Even for our Guardian civilians, they’re getting an orientation course where they are getting spun up on the threat, and they’re understanding sort of what the competition looks like when talking about China specifically.
Chief Master Sgt. Stefan Blazier
Yeah, I’ll add on. You’re gonna see a big theme here between the Space Force and the Air Force on threat awareness. If you had kind of gone ten years back, largely any scenario we would have had, any kind of learning event was gonna be sent conscripted. If you look at today, what AETC has done through basic military training, tech training, and really we’ve kind of pushed forward this airmanship continuum to deliberately take things that maybe would have just, I often used to joke, okay, what happens in PME stays in PME. That’s not good for us. Because when you think about that, every time someone is out of your unit, it’s an investment in their readiness. And Chief Master of the Air Force Flossie has really kind of pushed us to tear down some of these previous walls on training, education, and experience. And just to really think about how do they come back to the unit better? And what we’ve seen is you tend to unify people that maybe are practicing different specialties when you put the threat in the classroom and say, hey, what do you gotta do to win? And that has really kind of driven some things. And so if you were to look at PME, we talk threat awareness. We used to just say, hey, sorry, that’s classified, we can’t tell you about it. Now we’re getting classified briefs, I mean, very commonly. It’s a standard at the Senior NCO Academy. It’s very common to see it at base development seminars. I was even talking to a command chief the other day at ALS. They’re doing classified briefs on the threat, on China, and on security in the Pacific. And so just see this kind of big push, and I think it’s really unified us to understand, hey, we wanna play win and ball, but we gotta play together. And another thing I kinda wanna highlight is I believe she, I hope she’s in the audience, but warrant officer Anita Godfrey, are you out here? There she is. Anyway, so we used to have, we kinda had two academies with our international partners, we had one in Europe, we had one for South America, Central America. But she is actually the commandant of the Inter-Pacific Air Forces Academy, initiative set up at PACAF, to bring together those partnership relationships. Because we believe, and I gotta quote Chief Lurch here, often imitated, never duplicated, the strength is in our enlisted force, and our NCO, and our Senior NCO Corps. And so how we do that and share those lessons with our teammates in the Pacific Theater to make sure it’s a free and open Indo-Pacific is just one way we’re getting at that. Last thing I’ll give is kind of a shout out to Cassie. Raise your hand if you’ve ever gone to Cassie’s website, please. Anybody here? Okay, so more people can check this out. So the China Aerospace Studies Institute has all kinds of information, unclassed information that you as commanders, as SELs, can do to actually inform your personnel about the threat. And I’d encourage you to check it out. And if anybody wants to come see me, some of you from the Gulf War days might remember this, the old playing cards. So if anybody wants to come up and get this set of Cassie playing cards on Chinese equipment, first one’s to you.
Michael Dahm
All right, excellent. Yes, and we had Cassie’s director and chief of research here on the stage last year to talk about the China threat. And so again, big shout out to Cassie. So I think this might be some short answers, given the challenges with predicting the future. But for both of the generals, I think we often think of China’s military advancements in the context of a Taiwan scenario. But I’d observe that Taiwan is probably just the first step in China’s long-term strategic goals and global ambitions. Their appetite for natural resources, they’re probably going expeditionary. We see development of heavy lift aircraft, aircraft carriers. Just today, the Chinese press was reporting on the catapult launch of the J-35, the J-15, and the new KJ-600, kind of an E-2 wannabe off of their newest aircraft carrier. So those terrestrial capabilities combined with an expanding on-orbit presence all seem to point to more of an expeditionary PLA. So the question is, beyond the Taiwan Strait, what are you thinking about the capabilities of the PLA? And what might be around the corner? What future challenges might that represent for the Air Force and the Space Force?
Lt. Gen. Max E. Pearson
Yeah, future capabilities are, in fact, hard for Intel professionals to talk about on stage. But I certainly want to talk about geography, though, because I think there’s a really important point here, right? We see the PLA, in addition to the support base in Djibouti, the PRC and the PLA continues to pursue military installations, cooperative basing agreements, and partnerships in a lot of places. I mean, we’re seeing this across Asia, in the Middle East, Africa, across the Pacific. And we’re seeing PLA partnering with others, right? Strategic bomber patrols with Russia, naval patrols with Russia, as well as exercises PLA, Russia, and Iran, fourth of which just happened, right? So what I think that means for us all is that we need to understand, we need to study, we need to pay attention to China in all of our theaters. And so the resources that the two chiefs just discussed, they’re fantastic, they’re useful. My hope is that people actually go to them and dig in because the China challenge is not just a challenge for Indopacom.
Brig. Gen. Brian D. Sidari
Yeah, no, that’s great, sir. And we’ve talked about this previously. The Chinese have made no qualms about what they intend to do from Mao to Peng to Juntao, Ximen, and Xi Jinping. They wanna be the global power. And you can’t do that just regionally, it’s globally. Which means they’re gonna be expeditionary, because they have to secure interest to fuel the CCP and the PRC. So we do have to pay attention. As you get older, you reflect on former bosses and what they tell you, and you actually pay attention when you’re older. We had a boss and he used to say, future conflict will be wars of cognition. And so just how do you think, right? We talked about it, Chief Blaser, you talked about it through PME, Chief Lurch talked about it. How do we think about the future and how do we evolve our warfighting concepts, operational concepts, TTPs for employment, bound against that threat? And it’s just not high end, it’s low end to high end, which is what China presents to the joint force.
Michael Dahm
All right, so we’ve got a few minutes left. We’ll go to the lightning round, running short of time. Give each of you an opportunity for some closing thoughts by asking, what are the greatest challenges from the PRC facing the Air Force and Space Force? What haven’t we talked about today? Like those specifications on the J-50 and the J-36 that I asked about before. But more importantly, do you have any concerns or do you think the Air Force and Space Force have what they need to address those challenges? So we will start with, what did I say here, Chief Blazier? We’ll start with you.
Chief Master Sgt. Stefan Blazier
A quote that I think is very true right now is the more we sweat in peace, the less we bleed in war. And we really have to make sure, I think, the pace of change, we are starting to address it, but we have to address it even more. I think it’s the biggest concern. That’s everything from acquisition for the systems and platforms that we equip our personnel with and our forces with. All the way to the curriculum to make sure it’s relevant to the scenarios and the rehearsals they do that are realistic. To really make sure that we’re as lethal and as ready as possible as a deterrent.
Michael Dahm
Chief Lerch.
Chief Master Sgt. Ron Lerch
In an attempt to end optimistically, we talked about so much technology and things that China’s doing that’s scary. I think it’s understated and not appreciated enough the fact that, as Blaze hinted at earlier, we really gotta double down on giving opportunities and trust to our enlisted corps, cuz that is something that flat out doesn’t exist in the PLA, and they’re desperate to try to figure out how we’re doing it. You look at just the makeup of those organizations, we know, we refer to what we have as the leadership triad in our squadrons. There is no leadership triad in the PLA at the squadrons. The senior enlisted leaders, they don’t even have a seat at the table. They’re just watching from the outside to see what the decision makers and the political commissars are deciding to do for the vision and the sort of outlook for that organization. So I think we really gotta just look at this from an opportunistic perspective and say that what we’re already doing with our enlisted corps is phenomenal. We just gotta push them even harder and we gotta ask them to do even more things. And I suspect that we’re gonna actually rise up and do that, no problems.
Michael Dahm
All right, General Sidari.
Brig. Gen. Brian D. Sidari
I think the big one that I think through is being proactive, not reactive, waiting for the PLA to do something and go, we have this to counter it. That’s one. Two, I think we need to think in simultaneity and not sequential. And so they do something, we respond. We need to think globally. We need to throw dilemmas up globally to make them choose and then turn them to be reactive, impose a cost on them to counter the United States Space Force, United States Air Force. That’s what I’m thinking.
Michael Dahm
And General Pearson, we’ll give you the last word.
Lt. Gen. Max E. Pearson
It’s a great point. I think it’s really important for us to just recognize the point that we’re in. And hear what our leaders are telling us. I mean, if I’ve done anything, if I feel anything, it’s a sense of urgency behind everything we heard this morning. And I think your question, do we have what we need? We have challenges. We have equipment challenges. We certainly have funding challenges. We have training challenges that we’re working on. But we’re moving in the directions we need to move. But I feel real strongly that we as a department and as a service, and I won’t speak for the Space Force, but we need to move at the pace our leaders are calling us to move. And deep down, I know we can do it, right? I mean, of course I look at this through the lens of an Intel professional, right, as the DCS for Intel. And I ask myself regularly, are we postured to deliver on what we need to deliver? And we talked a lot about threat, and I don’t wanna talk more about threat. I agree with Chief Lurch, like we could talk technologies that we’re watching all day. And maybe not answer all your questions, Mike, but we could keep talking about it. But I think it’s adhering to the task at hand, but I know our people can do it. I mean, for decades, I have watched Intel professionals within my service, and frankly within the joint service, whether they are civilian, whether they’re active duty, TFI, contract partners, very much believe in everything Chief Lurch said. The NCO core, the Airmen core, I mean, we ask Airmen to do, people in the Airmen tier of our enlisted force to do, and they deliver amazing things. And most of the successes that we have delivered in the Intel world are in the shadows by design. But I know we can do it. I know we’ve got the brainpower. I know we’ve got the ability to innovate. I’m very convinced if we focus on the task at hand, the Airmen will rise to any occasion.
Michael Dahm
Excellent.
Lt. Gen. Max E. Pearson
Thanks, Mike.
Michael Dahm
And so I’ll just take the podium’s prerogative here and say that we do have a lot of challenges in the United States Air Force and the United States Space Force. We talk a lot about that. We are open and we are transparent with our public and with our legislative decision makers. But Chief Lurch touched on this. We need to talk more about the challenges that China has. One of the things that I’ve said about the recent parade, I started out talking about that. The Chinese are showing us exactly what they want us to see. If you’re familiar with operations, conceal, reveal, right? The Chinese are revealing exactly what they want to reveal in their controlled society and they are concealing all of those things that they do not want us to be talking about. So the folks at NAICS, the folks at the Space Intelligence Center, the organizations that all of these professionals lead here on the stage are doing God’s work behind the scene to identify those challenges that the Chinese military is facing. And with that, thank you for a great discussion. Please thank our panelists for this afternoon. And have a great Air and Space Force kind of day.