Official: Airmen less blue-, more fight-oriented

  • Published
  • By Tech. Sgt. David A. Jablonski
  • Air Force Print News
WASHINGTON --  Airmen are contributing to the success of coalition operations in Iraq and Afghanistan by being less blue- and more fight-oriented, said U.S. Central Command’s deputy director of operations.

During a recent visit to the Pentagon, Brig. Gen. Douglas L. Raaberg described Air Force contributions to the joint warfighting operations in Iraq.

“People have to look twice to read ‘U.S. Air Force’ on our uniforms, and that’s a compliment,” the general said.

“Airmen are demonstrating a lot of innovation. They don’t think in terms of just their home base mission,” he said. “Instead they think of ways to better fight for their commander, who may be a Navy skipper or an Army colonel.”

General Raaberg manages strategic and operational employment of CENTCOM forces as well as joint and combined combat operations. He coordinates all aspects of air, ground, naval and special operations forces in CENTCOM.

Airmen bring a multitude of capabilities to the joint fight, including space-based assets, airlift and systems integration, General Raaberg said.

Airmen provide the ability for soldiers to see beyond the fight and to prepare for the next step by using space capabilities.

There are more than 600 unmanned aerial vehicles flying in Iraq today, controlled via satellite links, observing events simultaneously and providing images to Soldiers with hand-held computers.

“The Soldier on the ground can look over the mountainside or around the other side of a building before going there to see if, in fact, there’s something on the other side,” General Raaberg said. “This ability is already resident on Global Hawk.”

Airmen make this system better, he said, by finding new ways to coordinate that information through the various command levels so commanders can easily retrieve it for the fight they’re in.

Another area he said the Air Force is excelling in is linking different systems to enhance command and control.

“The next step for the future in a joint team is to continue to link not only individual systems, but to link the services’ system of systems to CENTCOM (operation),” General Raaberg said.

“When that occurs, you will have done several things,” he said. “You’ve now coordinated the UAV systems and linked space systems to terrestrial, sea born, ground operations and perhaps subsurface systems where the commander has even better control of the battle space than today."

After that, he said the next step is to link the F/A-22 Raptor to other aircraft and then link them to other command and control systems.

“Now you’re talking about a great capability,” General Raaberg said. “That’s why in a joint environment we support anything that gives a linkage to a better picture and a greater ability to rapidly target a problem. The only way to create an effect is to know what it is, monitor it and create a new effect at your time and place of choosing. That is the future of warfare.”

The general said he sees that future as bright.

“We are pretty darn sophisticated, but I see us getting even better over time,” he said.

However, the one thing Airmen should not do, the general warned, is to make current operations a template for the next fight.

Instead, he says it should be seen as just another part of a learning curve to build upon and use in tomorrow’s fight.