Striking the balance: today's war, tomorrow's threat

Published Feb. 16, 2007

Thanks, Don, for that introduction. And just for all of you folks in the front row--these things will not work for you, so just don't bother in writing any questions down. Don asked me is there any questions that I wanted him to ask me, and I said, No. Thanks for that introduction, it's always great to be here.

This is an opportunity for me to get out and see these new technologies that the industry is bringing to the table and try to be able to share my views on what's happening in the combat air forces and where I think we're heading. Now since we've just finished a significant election in our country and we're bearing down on another even more significant one, it reminds me of the crowd that was listening to one political speech and a fellow in the back was having a hard time hearing and he loudly asked his friend near the front, "What's he talking about?" And his friend from the front row just as loudly called back, "He ain't sayin!" So I'll try to be clearer. In order to do that I thought I'd start out with a Cliffs Notes. Now I always try and enrich your life when I come down here, I don't know if you know, but did you know that CliffsNotes is all one word, and a CliffsNotes was started by a Nebraska native named Clifton Hiligas in 1958, and I thought not . So that's your educational enrichment for the symposium.

To be serious there really are some CliffsNotes that you need to note, because they aren't just bumper stickers, they're the way that we, and certainly in Air Combat Command, weigh our programs and our processes and make our decisions. You heard the Chief talk about, and the Secretary, global vigilance, global reach, and global power. That's a key to understand what we're about, because our aim is to see first, to understand first, and to act first. And those are sort of our first principles. And that's across air and space and cyber, integrating those three domains that we intend to dominate forever. When we talk about the war, and we talk about our people and we talk about recapitalization, there's a balancing act. We've got to balance that particular force. You'll hear me talk about faster, cheaper, and better, and that's the filter that I use across all of my command.

To do those things faster but only those things that really need to be done faster, I can't afford to do things faster that really doesn't give me the payback, that doesn't leverage my investment. When I talk about cheaper, those things that I can actually afford to invest in to do things cheaper, the business case, and to constantly review that business case because the world changes. The cost of living in the world changes, and then finally better, and that includes those things that I can't do at all. But particularly in better, it's important that I focus on doing those things that's the first leveraging capability, the first slice of leveraging military capability that's affordable to me. Because I may not in today's world be able to apply it all across my force, so I've got to institutionalize that where it makes the most sense, gives me the most pay-it-back, and I'm not interested in novelty. Several years ago as we started talking very seriously about UAVs, advantage of the UAV was its persistence, the advantage of the UAV was not the novelty of not having someone in a cockpit, so we look at these things as faster, better, cheaper, not novelty.

Now, running through all of these CliffNotes, if you will, is a theme we picked for this symposium--striking the balance, today's war, tomorrow's threat, and the future's technology, because overall I do balance really defines the challenge I face as COMACC (Commander, Air Combat Command) every day. In fact from my perspective this balancing challenge is one we all face, including you, the talented industry, that gets me the technology to do what I have to do now, and tomorrow, and 30 years from tomorrow. I have to balance risk, I have to balance capability, and then I have to balance transformation.

Our ability to balance those things is really why we're here as a service today. This is a year of celebration for the Air Force; 18 September this year we'll have been in business for 60 years. And before that celebration (Gen. Kevin P.) "Chili" Chilton and his folks will celebrate 25 years as a space force, September 1st. And before that on July 5, 2007, we'll remember that a year ago, we stood up AFNET (Air Force Network) operations, our initial consolidated defense of our cyber systems. And we also stood up that same day our first network warfare wing, the 67th with integrated surveillance, attack, and defense on our way to a major Cyber Command.

And there's a story there, it's a story of progress and taking risks and meeting challenges and balancing that risk and capability and transformation. We've come along way; remember when warfare started and then rapidly became about commanding the high ground; fighting for it, occupying it, and controlling the flow of battle from it. When man took flights many years ago, it was quickly acknowledged that air was the high ground. Vigilance, reach, power, freedom from attack, freedom to see and attack, and then we entered space considered by some at the time to be the ultimate high ground. And over years of pain and turmoil, we went from the begrudging tactical exploitation of national capabilities to now what we call national tactical integration; satellites and aircraft in machine-to-machine conversations, and space underpins everything we do--space-borne, early warning, ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance) , communications bandwidth, the ability to exploit weather, not just react to it, and situation awareness that tracks over 14,000 manmade objects in space, which truly global vigilance, reach, and power. Now we're at the dawning of a new ground cyberspace, and as many manifestations it's the new high ground. And just as we're clearly seeing the way that we may have to fight with and defend the high ground of space, we're assured that we must fight within and defend cyberspace, and certainly learn to command and control at least the things that fly through cyberspace. Across all of our domains we need to have freedom from attack and the freedom to attack.

And I think there's another domain out there that we probably need to consider, and I call it the cognitive domain. We talked much about the battle for hearts and minds, but frankly we do little to have practical effect. On one hand, we attempt to bring mathematical over-precision to things like cultural and ethnic anthropology and societal or cognitive engineering, and on the other hand, we insist on forcing ourselves into asymmetric warfare by being too noble to use our asymmetric strengths. And those things are not just GPS-guided (Global Positioning System)500-pound bombs; remember Blitzkrieg and guerilla strategies both depend upon infiltration and isolation, and so it is with this war on terrorists and in information operations. We need to be able to probe and test for strengths and weaknesses and exploit opinion differences, internal contradictions, frictions, obsessions, (inaudible), distrust, discord, and (inaudible) disorder. We need to create mental confusions and contractions and indecisiveness and panic, corrupt and inject and confuse and create ambiguity--why do the terrorists get all the fun? The hand doesn't have to be faster than the eye if the eye doesn't know where to look, and so perhaps in another time, another COMACC will stand here and commemorate not only the birthdays of air and space and cyberspace, but perhaps the cognitive battle space as well.

Now the theme of the last symposium was forging an interdependent force, the path ahead, and we're still on that path, a joint, interdependent, globally responsive, persistent, precise force. Last year, we were all tied up in budget battles--the BRAC (Base Realignment and Closure) was just signed into law, we were all waiting the QDR (Quadrennial Defense Review) release, and we've been busy since then, and these are exciting times. We're putting the Raptor (F-22) to work at Langley (AFB, VA.), and it's on its maiden overseas voyage right now to participate in PACOM theater security operations from Kadena (Air Base, Japan). The first production F-35 has eight or so flights under its belt. We brought CSAR (Combat Search and Rescue) back to the CAF (Combat Air Forces) last April and we'll soon get a new CSAR platform. A few months back, (Gen.) Tom Hobbins' folks from USAFE dropped the first small diameter bombs in combat as a Strike Eagle struck insurgent positions back in November. My 55th Wing from Omaha (Minot AFB, Neb.) (inaudible) just celebrated having our RC-135s gone for 6,000, that's 6,000 consecutive days in Southwest Asia. That's a perfect underscoring that we continue to fight the Long War.

We had a challenge in 2006; OEF, OIF, and ONE (Operations Enduring Freedom, Iraqi Freedom, and Noble Eagle) -- last year, we flew our 14,000 sorties in support of Afghanistan and Iraq. Last month I had 127 Air Combat Command aircraft deploy to 16 different locations, and I'm proud to say not only did we kill our share of people that needed killing, but last year we also had the safest year in the history of Air Combat Command in tact. So in all of the turbulence and stress our professionals are keeping their focus where it needs to be. Our chief goals remained at: prosecute the war on terrorists, provide for airmen and their families, and provide for new capabilities that will keep America and allies in control of the air and space and cyber domains globally. We need to fight the fight of today but we need to look beyond that, and we need to look beyond tomorrow, and that's the easy part is saying it, but doing it forces hard choices that we balance today's fight with tomorrow's threats, while also pursuing future technologies.

All of these priorities are competing for limited resources. Sometimes it forces us to stop doing things we'd like to do or delay things that we need to in order to meet some future demands, and that's why you see buys being truncated, installs of equipment not being done fleetwide, and us being much more demanding about plug and play ability and that readiness of the systems we come to you for. We made some tough choices about reducing the force in order to self-finance our future force. We're in a one force, one fight, one shot world right now--one interdependent joint force, one combined focus on a fight, and one shot to get it right for the next 10 or 15 years.

When I talk about one force, we've got to have a total force, and I call it a one force force approach to meet the challenges that we face today and tomorrow and 30 years from tomorrow, and I'm talking about integrating the Air Force Reserve and Air National Guard--new missions, new organizations, and new expectations of our air reserve component. We're continuing to develop programs that benefit the Guard, the Reserve, and the active duty with classic associations where the active owns the iron, and the ARC (Air Reserve Component) provides augmenting manpower and active associations which is just the reverse. And these are imperative in times of numbers that are being reduced and certainly important for me to gather the advantages of that great experience that I have in my ARC force and apply it to my young force that I bring every day into my active duty organizations, and maximize combat capability not only for the big war, but for this grinded out AEF (Air and Space Expeditionary Force).

As an example of what we're doing, right now we've associated risk in Virginia Guard with the F-22 wing at Langley Air Force Base. We've got 31 Guard pilots that'll be flying the F-22, along with associated maintenance and support skills. We've got five already trained and we're training two in every new class. That was sort of a heartrending decision that I had to make, because that's 31 active duty pilots that's not going to fly the newest, best fighter on the planet, but it was the right decision to make when you look at the total force capability. We're going to do the same thing at Holloman (AFB, N.M.), we're bringing the Raptor in there, the F-16s we're going through essentially the same drill at the 388th and the 419th right now, and by putting those units together, I can draw out some active duty and send them down to McEntire (Air National Guard Base, S.C.) to plus-up the unit there, so across the force as we bring this thing out, we'll have more day-to-day capability, more AEF capability, and then a greatly enhanced go-to-war capability when we mobilize.

Predator operation is another example of where we're fully integrating the ARC. California Guard is trained and just stood up a squadron at March Air Reserve Base at a ceremony not long ago, the 163rd Air Refueling Wing is no more. It officially became the 163rd Reconnaissance Wing. Arizona and North Dakota Air Guards have operators ready and will receive their ground stations some time over the next year. The Texas Air Guard will be on line in 2008. The New York Air Guard will operate the Reaper around 2010, and it will have the capability to carry 500-pound bombs, multiple Hellfires (AGM-114 missiles), a CSAR radar -- a great capability.

So we're building these new organizations using a blank sheet of paper, without the influence of what we used to do or what we did in the Cold War structure. Those are some hard choices that we have to make. One of the great successes we've had is out of Beale (AFB, Calif.) --if you go to Beale and you watch the U-2s and you watch the Global Hawks flying out there, you find we've got actives, Reserves, and Guard all working together on those missions, whether it's intel analysis, whether it's keeping the comm. up, to keep the links going with those airplanes and UAVs, and that's a great example of taking the best of both breeds, the ARC end and active duty, putting them together, and getting ourselves more combat capability. It's not easy. I mean, I'm sure there's folks out here who are in the Guard and Reserve, and you're in the Guard and Reserve because either you couldn't be in the active duty or you didn't want to be in the active duty and the concern is, as you take those two cultures together, you've got to bring in the strengths of those Reserve and Guard operations and marry that up with the strengths of the active duty, rather than taking all the weaknesses. We've been doing that for years and years in big airplanes, and (Gen. McNabb) Duncan knows that well, and we've been partnering with them to figure out how they do it and make it look so easy because if we get into these other airplanes we've got to work through some of the same issues that we haven't before.

We talked about one force, but it's one fight. That's important; we're in a Long War together with our joint and coalition partners around the world. And it's not just for this war in Iraq and Afghanistan but it's for the next 30 years. The enemies in this Long War are not our usual suspects, not traditional military forces but extensive, widely dispersed global terrorist networks. These enemies use terror, propaganda, and indiscriminate violence to advance their beliefs. And so this war, in turn, requires unconventional and approaches from us to prevent the terror to defeat this range of threat. So our challenge is to strike this balance between the golden BB that I'm always being promised that's going to solve my problem in developing effective and flexible tactics, techniques, and help us adapt and prevail at irregular warfare.

On a technology side, I need foliage-penetrating sensors and ground-penetrating sensors and hyperspectral sensors and multi-amp fusions and machine-fused intelligence and open architectures and collaborative systems, and weeks, even months long, persistence, but I still need to recapitalize my force, and I need a fifth generation force that'll give me a globally responsive and persistent vigilance, reach, and power.

Now I've already said that cyberspace is our new high frontier and almost everything I do is either on an Internet, an Intranet, or some type of network--terrestrial, airborne, or spaceborne. Everybody out there knows that they can get into my network and slow them down or corrupt them or cause me to lose faith in them or shut them down completely, that's going to give them a big advantage, because cyberspace is our primary medium for command, control, communications, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance. It's where we provide that reach and speed, distance, stealth, massed effects, and precision across natural and manmade boundaries. And it's inseparably entwined in everything that we do. We're already at war in cyberspace; have been for many years. Those of you who are riding on a "dot org" network know that the last couple of weeks, there's been a big attack against the "dot org" servers across the United States. That becomes the challenge, as General Cartwright said: How do you react to that attack? How do you trace it back? What are the legalities included in actually finding the organization or the people that's doing it, and what do you do when you do find them? And can you do anything--is a huge challenge.

So it's time to get our CONOPS (Concept of Operations)together and bring that concept to something we can institute because we have to have something that covers a wide range of electronic signals from satellite communications and internal computer networks to electronic warfare. You know, the terrorists are using cyberspace now, remotely detonated roadside bombs; terrorists use global positioning satellites and satellite communications, using Internet financial transactions, radar and navigation jammings, blogs, chat rooms, and bulletin boards aimed at our cognitive domain; e-mail, chat, and others providing shadowy command and control, and finally overt and covert attacks as I mentioned on our servers.

Technology's evolving exponentially, and this is probably the only warfighting domain in which we have pure competitors and we have to stay ahead of them. I mean, just to use a present day example, it shouldn't come as a surprise to you that three old retired guys in COMMACC won an AFA golf tournament when the winners were calculated with computers. I mean, 8th Air Force and all these cyber guys work for me, so we see this threat clearly and it's not just in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A few months ago, the Chinese government issued a defense white paper clarifying its military policies and offered some rare insights into the Chinese leadership's strategic view of the world, a paper harped repeatedly on the need for technological modernization. By the middle of this century, China should be capable of, "winning informationized war." It said, referring to the computerized battlefield on which future wars will be fought. (Inaudible) aside, I would note that, you know, this is the same Chinese government that just fired a direct ascent weapon and hit a target satellite, so this is not just a theoretical threat.

Now these symposiums are important because they help us unify our message. Now's the time to tell our story; now's the time to bring our message to the new Congress, to our representatives back home, and deliver it with a common voice. It's one force, it's one fight, and it's one shot. The time to recapitalize is now; from 1975 to 1990, we purchased an average of 230 Air Force fighters each year. From '91 to 2000, we averaged just 28. We operate the oldest in air and space inventories in the history of the United States Air Force. We have a growing fleet of aircraft that we need to retire in the next five years. They're aging, they're increasingly expensive, and they're starting to lose relevance. We have to change and we have to consolidate and we have to focus on what we can afford to do, and what we can afford to maintain. I recently read a story by some think tank guru about 1st Lt. Dave Deptula, flying the same aircraft that his dad, (Lt. Gen.) Dave Deptula the elder, flew 30 years ago. That's not a good story. And if you go to the B-52 community, you go to the KC-135 community, it's a worse story. The last pilot to fly the KC-135 has not yet been born. That is another not good story. Most of us don't have 30-year-old cars, but if you do, I'd imagine that you drive them on Sunday afternoon when the sun's high, it's not raining, the streets aren't crowded. And I got a lot of 30- and 40-year-old cars and I'm taking to Indianapolis every day, and it's on the backs of my great maintainers and our repair depots that we're able to do that.

Remember the last time we did this we were struggling for B-1s and F-15s and F-16s and we took the money out of readiness, the hollow force of the '70s. We can't do that today, we're in the middle of a war. We have to preserve our readiness and still recapitalize and the only place you get that kind of money is from reducing people and platforms. The imperative is this; since 1996, our average mission capable rates across the force have slipped in only single-digit percentages really on an average, but the cost per aircraft in Air Combat Command to hold that line has gone up 87 percent, and it's climbing. That is a staggering cost. I sign a lot of letters to people we lose in Air Combat Command and what I don't want to have to do, is write a letter that says, "Dear Mr. and Mrs. Smith, your son or daughter is dead because a wing fell off their jet on takeoff. I knew it was going to happen, but I didn't know when, and I'm sorry I had to take a chance with your kid's life." You know, that's a stark reality of what we're facing, and of course, we're dealt a hand and we've got to play it so we're going to balance that acquisition and sustainment and ensure that we can do the things we have to do today in the war, and we'll build a force for the future.

Twenty-two years ago this week, President Reagan delivered an important State of the Union address in which he outlined what was eventually dubbed the Reagan Doctrine, and his elegant words are universal and timeless, and especially applicable today. He was especially fond of reminding people that freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass the torch (inaudible), it must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same. Reagan's warning can be portrayed as this: "The history of failure in war can be summed up in two words--too late; too late comprehending the deadly purpose of a potential enemy, too late in preparedness, too late in uniting all possible forces for resistance, and too late standing with one's friends." So we must strike a balance now to execute today's war, prepare for tomorrow's threats, and explore the future's technologies to ensure that this great Air Force continues to have birthdays in air and space and cyberspace. And it's you and I and our children and grandchildren that walk out of this shadow of terrorism into the sunlight of freedom and choice--it's our birthright.

And I leave you with this thought, the last time that I spoke I was chided later by some folks that thought my closing thoughts were better suited for a pep talk at the line of departure for combat than at a symposium. Now let me clear to everyone--your United States Air Force left the line of departure for Desert Shield in 1990, and we never came home. There were 32,000 of us gone from home this morning, most in harm's way, and we intend not to come home until we have finished this war. We will go wherever we must to do what we must for as long as we must. There's a United States Air Force so that there could be a United States. "Too late" is not in our vocabulary, so on behalf of the 105,000 of America's sons and daughters that make Air Combat Command, I thank you for your support of us and for listening to me this morning.