Reoptimization for Great Power Competition

GPC Key Decisions

USAF Case for Change

Air Force FAQ for Reoptimizing Great Power Competition

“We need these changes now; we are out of time to reoptimize our forces to meet the strategic challenges in a time of great power competition.”

~ Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall

The United States faces a time of consequence marked by significant shifts in the strategic environment. To remain ready, the U.S. Air Force must change.

In early 2024, the Department of the Air Force unveiled sweeping plans for reshaping, refocusing, and reoptimizing the Air Force and Space Force to ensure continued supremacy in their respective domains while better posturing the services to deter and, if necessary, prevail in an era of Great Power Competition. Through a series of 24 DAF-wide key decisions, four core areas which demand the Department’s attention will be addressed: Develop People, Generate Readiness, Project Power and Develop Capabilities.

Today, the Air Force once again finds itself at a critical juncture—an era of Great Power Competition marked by a new security environment, a rapidly evolving character of war, and a formidable competitor. This new era requires understanding its challenges and the attributes needed to succeed.

Embracing change is not a choice; it is a necessity. The Air Force must “reoptimize” into an enterprise prepared for high-end conflicts and long-term strategic competition.

QuEST (2025-08-08) Intern “Rising Talent” Outbrief Presentations

Air Force Research Laboratory

Video by Kevin D Schmidt

Aug. 8, 2025 | 59:41

In this edition of QuEST, highlights our in-house rising talent

Abstract:

Pain experiences of humans are still widely researched and debated, but using what we currently know about a pain experience can lead to further development of uses of AI in real life scenarios. By comparing pain experiences in humans and the sensed stress, mechanical breakdown, and other factors that affect collaborative combat aircrafts (CCAs), how can we further develop CCAs to be more capable of completing not only their own jobs, but also more capable of being assets in reaching a target or completing a mission other than their own? In other words, how do we make CCAs antifragile rather than unbreakable? Comparisons will be drawn between human anatomy and physiology and CCAs in order to determine possible future routes.

Key Moments and Questions in the video include:

-Natalie “Chronic” Ryan-Summer intern
-Pain and CCAs: Summer 2025
-4th summer with ACT3 and Cap as a mentor
-Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA)
-Possibilities
-Possible Failures
-Consequences
-Human Pain
-Gate Control Theory
-Muscle Hypertrophy
-Antifragility
-Making CCAs Antifragile
-Use of Pain
-QuEST Contributions
-CCAs
-William “Bedcheck” Crane
-An Applied Category Theoretic Approach to the Compositional Optimizations of Co-Design Problems
-A Definition of Co-Design, and Co-Design Problems
-How to Become God, Step One
-A Need for Compositional Optimization
-How to Become a God, Step Two
-Methodology: Modeling via Job-Shop Scheduling Problem (JSSP)
-Applied Category Theory (ACT) as the Language of Compositional Design: formalizing co-design through categorical structure
-And Now Implementation - Algebraic Julia & Catlab.jl
-Lessons Learned -> Embrace Humility
-My Question on Qualia
-1st Lt Cameron Goodbar
-Emergent Synergy: A functional Interpretation of Consciousness
-Bottom Line Up Front
-Let’s back Up
-Let’s Start Small
-Moving Up the Chain
-Off We Go… More