The State of the Air Force - 2009 Published Sept. 14, 2009 Thank you Joe for that introduction, and also thanks to the Air Force Association for hosting such a great conference. After years of going to the Wardman, my car wanted to go up the Rock Creek Parkway; but we made it here and it is a great venue for the AFA. We appreciate your partnership in expressing the importance of air and space power to America's national security. You also give voice to the concerns of Airmen--active, Guard, Reserve, and retired, on a wide range of issues--from pay and benefits, to health care, to ensuring our Airmen operate the world's most capable equipment. Year after year, you always manage to outdo yourselves at this convention and bring together an amazing set of speakers and experts to address the critical challenges facing our Air Force. For these and all of the other things you do, we give you our thanks. Well, it's been quite a first year. Last year at this venue, I wasn't sure how long I'd be at the helm of our Air Force, and as you know, it was some time before I knew whether to empty out my desk or start hanging pictures. But, I promised you that regardless of the length of my tenure, I would work every day to make the Air Force even stronger and better for the next generation. I'm grateful to Secretary Gates and the President for having the opportunity to continue to serve our Air Force, and this year, I reaffirm my pledge to continue spending every day making the Air Force even stronger and even better. I'd also like to thank my wingman in this effort, General Norty Schwartz. Norty is an incredible leader and is making a positive impact on our Air Force every day, in the joint community, and with our international partners. I can't think of a finer or better prepared officer to lead our Air Force. We've achieved a great deal in the last year, and I'm pleased with our progress as we head into year two. I just returned from a late August visit to Iraq and Afghanistan, where I saw the dedication, talent, and patriotism of our Airmen firsthand. Seeing how well our Airmen are performing in combat reminds me just how blessed we are with the caliber of young men and women who put on an Air Force uniform every day in defense of our nation. And because of the tireless and dedicated work of our Airmen, we achieved some significant milestones last year while making vital contributions toward the defense of our nation and winning today's fight. · We surged new capabilities into the fights in Iraq and Afghanistan, including increasing MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper production to achieve 36 Combat Air Patrols (CAPs) -- 18 months ahead of schedule. · We deployed six new MC-12 ISR ( intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) platforms to Iraq through an acquisition program hardly existed one year ago. · We surged rotary-wing CSAR (combat search and rescue) assets to support joint medical evacuation and casualty evacuation missions in theater. · We activated 24th Air Force as the Air Force component to U.S. Cyber Command. · We stood up the Air Force Global Strike Command to centralize command and control of all Air Force nuclear operations and to provide clear lines of authority. · We stabilized our active-duty strength at about 332,000 to relieve chronically stressed career fields and source emerging missions, including ISR, nuclear operations, aircraft maintenance, cyber, Special Operations forces and acquisition. · We began implementing a comprehensive Acquisition Improvement Plan that focuses on revitalizing the size, experience, and skill of our acquisition workforce, taking a more disciplined approach to requirements definition, and executing stable, lower-risk budgeting to yield more reliable acquisition. Norty and I have devoted many hours to addressing these issues, and we are now transitioning beyond the immediate challenges of the last year to the larger, longer-term challenges facing our Air Force. The bottom line is that our Air Force is at yet another inflection point in its history, where changes in the strategic environment, new technologies, and changes in resources together combine to reshape our capabilities and set us in new directions. As I reflect on my more than 20 years of association with the Air Force, and AFA, I'm struck by how unpredictable, and in many ways unforeseeable, the future can be. If you recall, back in 2000, then-Secretary Whit Peters and General Mike Ryan issued a document they called Air Force Vision 2020 that set the course for what they believed to be the optimum force structure 20 years into the future. Of course, one year before 9/11 turned out not to be a great time for forecasting future needs. Examining their vision at the halfway point, it's clear that we are not building the Air Force that we thought we would build back in 2000. Consider the following: · In 2000, we predicted that by 2020 we'd have fielded over 1,600 fifth-generation fighters and retired nearly all of our fourth-generation fighters. However, due to program delays, we've had to extend our fourth generation fleet. We now expect that in 2020 we'll have over 1,000 and maybe 1,200 fourth generation fighters, and just over 40 percent of our projected fifth generation fleet. · We foresaw over 80 space platforms in our 2020 inventory; today, we expect we'll have just over half that number, but we're using more commercial space assets than we ever have before. · That vision force greatly underestimated growth in several communities. Today, our Special Operations forces, personnel recovery, and manned C2ISR inventory have each grown 33 percent larger than planned. · In 2000, we projected a fairly small unmanned aerial system fleet in 2020, of less than 80 in our inventory. Of course, today's glide path takes us to more than 380, with the strategic and cultural implications vastly greater than those numbers alone would indicate. While Vision 2020 didn't quite materialize, there was nothing inherently deficient in the document--we need vision documents along the way. We could spend all morning talking about why we have not realized the force we sought to build in the year 2000. But, that discussion would begin and end with today's highest priority: Bringing air, space, and cyber capabilities to bear in concert with the Joint and coalition team to win today's fights in Iraq and Afghanistan, 9/11 changed the international security environment and our response has in many ways brought new Air Force capabilities to the forefront. Our commitment to supporting the joint fight is borne out by the numbers. Historically, we have spent just over 30 percent of our budget on what might be called "foundational" -- things like base operations, headquarters functions, test and training, defense health program, and maintenance. The remaining 70 percent can be grouped roughly into two categories: combat forces and joint enablers. While this 70 percent has remained fairly constant, we've seen a consistent shift away from investment in just the combat forces, and toward joint force enablers. Over the last 10 years, our spending on combat forces--like ICBMs, bombers, fighters, and munitions, for example--has decreased from roughly 29 percent to 22 percent of our budget. That 7 percent has been absorbed into joint force enablers: airlift, air refueling, C2ISR, space, and intelligence, to name a few. Investment into these joint force enablers has been and continues to be justified by their immense contributions. · The forward presence of U.S. forces in these conflict zones, especially the remote regions of Afghanistan, would not be possible without air mobility. Since OIF and OEF started, we've moved almost 13 million passengers, almost 5 million tons of cargo, and offloaded over 1.6 billion gallons of fuel. · Overhead ISR has emerged as the linchpin of today's fight. In the past 18 months, we've increased our full-motion video capacity by more than 250 percent. Today and in the future, joint force commanders will expect to have persistent full motion video fully linked with other sensors over a wide area and over specific areas of the battlespace--a quantum leap in real time situational awareness provided by the Air Force. · Worldwide satellite communications and global GPS signals allow our ground forces to communicate, to move large amounts of data, and to navigate precisely every minute of every day. · Our Distributed Ground Systems have become a global enterprise that provides rapid and seamless ISR analysis and distribution from airborne, space, and cyber-based collection to combatant commanders around the world - shortening the kill chain and allowing higher-fidelity decision making. Besides our joint enablers, these conflicts have also highlighted many Air Force capabilities--career fields like Security Forces, civil engineering, EOD (explosive ordnance disposal), aeromedical evacuation, among many others -- and allowed these incredible men and women to effectively step out of the shadows and into the spotlight...directly and prominently contributing in ways we could not have envisioned even a decade ago. While demand for some of these joint enablers and specialty career fields will vary in future conflict scenarios, the broader lesson is that this full range of capabilities is necessary for the effectiveness of our nation's joint expeditionary team. While we are providing the joint force crucial enabling capabilities today, we must also continue driving more strategic balance into our force structure for the future. There is broad consensus that the security challenges we will likely face in the coming decades should not be classified as regular or irregular, high end or low end. The most dangerous will have multiple components, which will require new thinking about the composition of our force structure, and the ways we'll employ it. In Secretary Gates words, "what is needed is a portfolio of military capabilities with maximum versatility across the widest possible spectrum of conflict." Given these new realities, it's critical to note that our efforts to balance our force have occurred in an increasingly resource-constrained environment requiring very difficult, and sometimes painful decisions. Consider the following: Since 2000, our aircraft inventory has gotten 10 percent smaller, but our operating and maintenance costs have increased 19 percent. During that same period, the number of Airmen decreased 7 pecent, but our personnel costs rose 16 percent. These rising costs show no signs of abating, and other costs show dramatic increases, to include projections of defense health costs potentially doubling in the next ten years, if we don't do anything about it. Because of these increasing burdens, we must continue to bring acquisition costs under control. While many Air Force programs execute successfully, we have had our share of the acquisition issues that face the entire Department. Our Acquisition Improvement Plan takes a long-term view and is intended to strengthen our workforce, and give them better analytic tools and processes to make more informed choices and improve program oversight. Looking ahead, it will be increasingly difficult to justify modifications to older aircraft that will not be part of our long-term future capability, especially when those programs experience significant cost growth and constrain our ability to field the next generation of systems. Likewise, we are looking for opportunities to find functions and activities where extended contractor support has yielded unsatisfactory cost growth and we are bringing those functions and activities back under direct Air Force management under our "in-sourcing" program. In fact, we have already initiated in-sourcing actions that replaced out-sourced contracts with 2,500 Air Force civilians, saving approximately $970 million across the FYDP. Additionally, we will in-source another 2,400 full-time positions in 2010, and have more planned in the future. As Secretary Gates wisely observed, we can't expect to eliminate national security challenges through higher defense budgets; to do everything and to buy everything. At the same time our costs are increasing, we are almost assured of little to no growth defense budgets in the coming years. We're not in a situation where we can adapt to changing requirements by adding people and money. Instead, we have to make trades--painful trades--within our existing functions and resources. Our perception of risk will change. In some functional areas, doing less may reflect a smaller requirement rather than increasing risk. In other areas we may accept short term risk for a longer term gain. And in others, we are deliberately shifting resources for new capabilities to reduce risk. These choices are at the crux of very difficult decisions we made regarding the F-22 and restructuring of our fighter force. As we've noted before, budget pressure intensifies competition between competing mission areas, and buying more F-22s meant doing a lot less of something else. We weighed the F-22 decision heavily and executed some internal budget drills to find the $13 billion dollars required to fund 60 more aircraft. But, in the end, the Chief and I determined the Air Force could provide more capability to the joint force by funding other priorities. Similarly, as we transition to a fifth-generation fighter force, we decided to accelerate the retirement of 250 of our oldest fighters to free up manpower and funding. We'll use the nearly 4,000 manpower positions to process, exploit, and disseminate intelligence for the current war and provide added manning for nuclear deterrence operations. We'll use the over $3.5 billion dollars saved to modernize Air Force fighters and bombers that will be with us for the long-term and to procure munitions more in-line with today's requirements among a series of other important capabilities that this new age of warfare clearly requires. Certainly there are risks in these decisions, but consider this one example: While it has been more than 55 years since the last American serviceman came under attack by enemy air-to-surface fires - and certainly we intend to keep it that way - the last time an American serviceman came under cyber attack was at the beginning of this sentence, and the need for more ISR and other joint enablers is just as urgent and compelling. So we must continue to adjust priorities and balance Air Force capabilities. Our first year started with difficult challenges already awaiting us in nuclear, cyber, and acquisition, quickly followed by the nation's economic crisis and a significant reduction in resources available for DOD and for the Air Force, causing us to terminate or reset several programs. It has been a tough year indeed when our legislative priorities include asking for Congress to close production lines and retire airplanes. With these decisions behind us, other hard choices will take their place. But we also expect to achieve greater clarity in our vision for the Air Force about what we are for and where our priorities lay. We started with the people who make our Air Force a strong, reliable, and respected partner in the joint warfighting team. The Air Force has long been recognized as the Service for exceptional commitment to families. This reputation is well deserved, but will only continue only through the dedicated effort and focus of our senior leaders. Accordingly, General Schwartz and I have designated July 2009 to July 2010 as the "Year of the Air Force Family." Along with Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force Jim Roy who's been an exceptional advocate for our enlisted force, we are all dedicated to the well-being of our Total Force Airmen and civilians, and our Air Force families--addressing their hardships and needs, what we might do to make Air Force life more compatible with family life, and how we can build a greater sense of community across our force. Air Force families and communities backstop, they underwrite, and share the sacrifice in all our Airmen do. Supporting families is not only the right thing to do for our Airmen; it is the smart thing to do for our Air Force. With a continuing focus on our Airmen and their families, and our short-term gains consolidated, we are now beginning to develop our long-term vision to make the Air Force even more capable. Necessary to implement this long-term vision is decision space; time and money that we can only acquire by determining which of our missions and programs are congruent with the future security environment, and which are excess drag that will slow us down. We'll gain this decision space by determining which programs maximize our capability for each of our core functions, and continuing to make the hard decisions that will advance our Air Force in those directions. Our plans are relatively clear in some areas: - Complete F-22 production at the program of record but continue with planned upgrades, focus on ramping up F-35, minimize 4th generation investments to essential modifications only - Build more ISR platforms - MQ-9s, RQ-4s and similar capabilities - Press forward with our plans for the C-5Ms and CV-22 - In the satellite world continue with Advanced Extremely High Frequency satellite, Wideband Global SATCOM system, and Global Positioning System-III - Further our plans in building partner capacity and IW capabilities - And, among the most important, succeed in the coming KC-X procurement Further change and growth seem likely in the space and cyber domains. And certainly we have more work to do in the nuclear mission, in long-range strike, and personnel recovery. No my friends, we are not building the Air Force we thought we would build ten years ago. The strategic environment, new technologies, and a full cycle of resource changes--up, down and flat--have brought us to a different place; they compel us in new directions. Some of these directions are clear today, some remain to be written; written by the Air Force leadership here today, General Schwartz, General Chandler, our MAJCOM commanders, our headquarters' staff, by the Total Force team of active, Guard, Reserve, and civilian Airmen. Shaping these new directions will not always be easy, but--consistent with our heritage--these new directions will always seek to move us forward. As our Air Force is in transition, we must be bold and embrace change. It is one of our great strengths. Our Air Force is born of innovation, our Airmen are innately adaptable. We have been challenged many times in our history; this is yet another opportunity that we will take on together. Because we stand on the shoulders of generations of smart, innovative, and sometimes disruptive Airmen who have handed us a majestic legacy. I'm proud to join with you as we propel ourselves into this uncertain but hopeful future, one that we are determined to shape and build as the foundation for generations of Airmen to come. Thank you.