[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] okay, folks. Okay, folks. If we could, could you grab your seat. Grab a cup of coffee. If i could get my panelists to sit down, well get started. Quite a crowd. Well, good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to our August Mitchell institute forum. Today our subject is the next Generation Air dominance for engad and for those of you i havent had the good fortune to meet yet, im the dean of Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Power studies and were pleased to have with us the president of the air force association Lieutenant General bruce wright. Amongst a whole set of distinguished visitors, to include general mike lowe, former vice chief of staff of the air force and first commander of air combat command. Weve got an expert panel with us today to discuss this topic. Say, again . [laughter] theyre all youngsters, sir. [inaudible] anyway, weve got a great panel this morning to discuss this topic and we planned the session to ensure that theres a lot of feedback and discussion, but before i introduce our panelists what i thought id do is offer a couple of remarks to set the stage for the discussion. Air superiority, the ability to deny enemy forces access to key portions of the sky, is today a bedrock mission for the department of defense. Everybody over there in each one of the services understands that the viability of soldiers and marines on the ground, ships at sea, space and cyber installations, logistics lines are fundamentally dependent on this mission. Americas air superiority and incapacity, however, is becoming more challenged and while all the services contribute to this mission, the vast percentage is executed by the air force, which say its spider aircraft inventory cut by half in the years since the cold war. Fifth generations fighters f2 prematurely canceled and an f35 was delayed. The result is gaeriatric air from carter and reagan era well past. And the fighter increase with nearly three decades of nonstop deployment to the mideast. Remember, the air force has been at war since 1991 not just since 2001. Meeting the sustained tempo with decreasing supply of aging aircraft have pushed both pilots, support pnnersonnel and aircraft to the brink. The result is increasing risk for the nations defense. The engad program is therefore especially important because its a means of approach for air superiority with assets necessary to prevail in the information age. Every aircraft sitting on a fighter ramp today was designed before the smartphone redefined the way we gather, process and share information. These same trends have had an impact on modern combat operations. Just as a land line is of diminishing value, so, too, are the vast percentage of aircraft that compromise our inventory. And designs from the early 60s and late 70s. The engad program represents a crucial need to reset the nations air superiority force. Now Design Concepts are still classified, but its expected that stealth enabled superiority, advanced Electronic Warfare capabilities, robust sensors, processing power, and the ability to share data in a realtime collaborative fashion will stand as key attributes. Its also likely that engad will not be one specific aircraft. Rather, it will compromise a system of manned and Unmanned Aircraft to integrate network teeming and desired mission effects. Regardless of the system specifics, its critical that the engad program move ahead as scheduled. That said, budget cuts recently enacted by the House Appropriations defense subcommittee targeted the air forces next Generation Air dominance program and theyre putting the future of the nations air superiority at risk. As the office of management and budget recently explained and i quote, this 50 reduction in funding would result in a threeyear slip in advanced Development Timelines and the advancements of Critical New Technology programs, unquote. While some may question the cost of the program, its important to ask a different question. Whats the cost of not securing the sky . Victory is simply impossible without it and countless lives put at risk. Taken in that like, the hack to some of this Program Stands as the unaffordable path forward. With that said, let me introduce our panelists and lets get on to hearing their perspectives. On to my immediate left is retired Lieutenant General john do dog davis and he served as commandant as the last command. In the course of his career hes flown over 4500 in the f5 and fa18 and also the deputy of Cyber Command so hes fully aware of what the networks are about and cyber is about. Today hes an independent consultant and National Commander of the marine corps aviation association. Sitting next to him is Major General mike fanman fantini, the air force fighting capability. And in this position he leads air force for design capability and development for future air force concept. He served as a swng commander more than 32 hours in the mt and and major dave cooler crum. Hes in the acquisitions arm responsible for directing and programming more than 159 Fighter Bomber and missile Weapons Program an air force Weapons School graduate in the f15 and commanded an f22 squadron and wing along with multiple strategy and requirement staff on the joint staff, secretary of Defense Staff and at the United States air force. So what were going to do today well have general fantini kick off followed by general u of m c and wrapped up by general davis. Fanman, over to you. Thanks everyone for showing today and to afa for hosting, and mitchell in particular for their advocacy. As the director of war fighting integration, i tend to swim in a deeper pool of the concept side of the house and thats probably where ill drop my proverbial anchor there to give a tip of the hat to the Naval Services and navy and marine corps. Were in increasingly competitive environment with russia and china as they present this Global Challenge to our nation. The really interesting thing ive not seen in 33 years the Department Come together and centered on a document of this National Defense strategy that has allowed us to focus on this near peer competitive space. Make no mistake about it, we need to continue to execute our Core Missions of homeland defense, foundational nuclear deterrents, prepare and be able to defeat that peer adversary while holding another one at bay, and then finally, continuing to engage in the countering violent extremist challenge. And that is a tall feat. We will not be able to accomplish that without the ability to continue to control the skies. And as i thought to prepare my remarks, i kind of harkened back to 35 years ago when folks would say, engaging the enemy one at a time was the finest air superiority. As ive matured in my thinking throughout that time, i came to realize that the enemy got a vote and weve learned from that and the reality is that air superiority is going to give us the freedom of maneuver that enables our joint forces to execute whatever mission our nation asks us to do. So without that ability to conduct that mission of air superiority, unless we really understand how were going to pull this together from the multidomain operations perspective and the true ability that we have a vision more of connecting any sensor to any shooter, of any service, across any domain, when were able to realize that and maintain that decision superiority every our adversaries, we will be able to accomplish air superiority at a time and place of our choosing and more importantly, its really a conversation of how we are creating air space and cyber superiority at a time and place of our choosing that allows us to gain that freedom of maneuver in the air domain. So the next generation of air superiority flight plan, the work that went on two or three years ago, thats given us a dem template what we need for the future and resourcing these various capabilities. When you ask me as the director of war fighting integration, what do we see in the future . We see the ability to fight in from and through space. We see the ability to connect the sensor and shooting joint, all domain command and control, if you will. We have to be able to generate combat power inside and outside the proverbial bubble. And we have to be able to attack from a distance and the reality is, were going to blend these things together. When we talk about the mission of air superiority, we are talking about bringing these things together in a multidomain operation for that freedom of maneuver. And then obviously, we have got to figure out against how the adversary is producing capabilities to counter ourselves, or to counter our nation, is how do we do the sustainment and logistics side of the house. And thats why when you talk to air superiority, you talk cyber superiority and space superiority, we look at it now from a holistic perspective of a enterprise approach which is why my organization stood up. We see this as an enterprise challenge. We dont want to have a conversation of widgets. We want to have a conversation on how the highway brings any proverbial truck into the fight. And how does that do that effectively . And so right now, we plan to show our investments in pivoting to the future along those four areas that i talked about, space, multidomain, command and control, ability to generate combat power and we have to do this with Logistic Support under attack and thats where we see the division of air superiority of these things pulling together. With that im happy to hand over to my friend, Major General cooler crum. Thank you. And also, good morning everyone as well. I look out in the crowd, i see friends, mentors, icons and remember statute of limitations on anything that may have said or done in the past, a special thanks to general wright, and the general for hosting us, sirs. Thank you for what youve done, your service and your continued advocacy for air power in the things that we do and its great to be here with you for this venue. I do have to tell you though, i was asked by general wright would i come and talk. I was thrilled to do so and honored to do so, but what i forgot was what is the speech topic assignment part of the ask. And so i felt like i was back in eighth grade when i was the last one to the teacher and my book report had to be on war and peace. So when you talk about next Generation Air dominance, thats the sort of magnitude, and certainly theres nothing i could say in a short period of time that would encompass it. Well give you kind of our thoughts on what our vision is for air superiority in the futu future and where were going. What is engad, it is not a thing. It is not a platform, it is not a substitute. Next generation of air superiority is a networked, connected family of systems that works together to get after the things we need to get after for our nation to ensure air superiority. It is not one thing. It is a multitude of things and so when you see us pursuing engad, what we are pursuing is a multiple number of technologies and capabilities that we can bring to bare bear in the way that general fantini talked about, from air, cyber, land, sea and space. All of that connected is what we want it to be. And the other thing that we know about what engad will be is that it will be constantly evolving. There is no more flag in the sand and for the next series of decades weve ensured air superiority for our nation. Its going to be constantly changing. The chief talks about the ps of next generation of air dominance. We know that whatever we bring to bear we have to penetrate, penetrate in stealth, speed, in quantity, overwhelming the enemy. It has to persist. Loiter, endurance, it means air, cyber, able to persist inside the enemys defenses and i tell you, it has to protect. It has to protect itself, maybe it has to protect others. So weve got to build this network of systems together and then it has to proliferate and proliferate does not mean ness ly quantity. By connecting people and connecting the different capabilities we have together those cross the network and make it stronger. And it has to be able to punish. Air superiority means being able to take over the battle space from the enemy and do that. And the way that we are thinking about this is, again, not a single platform or single theme, but a network that everything connects. Everything that shares data, and so people talk about, well, does that mean only new things . It does not. It means everything contributes, and everything brings something together and its changing the way we design, build, test, train and sustain these new technologies. And when we talk about those and youve heard my boss, dr. Roper, the chief of air force acquisitions talk about a sentry series ideas. And the sentry series of ideas rooted in what we did in the 50s and that is we built a series of different airplanes just to prove out. Weve got the same mindset when it comes to developing capabilities, but its not airplanes, its technologies. Its rapidly being able to innovate. Its using digital design, modeling, assimilation, so people talk about well, the sentry series built a number of airplanes that werent very good as well. Well, if we do the right way of digital modeling and digital simulation, what we can do is rapidly prototype and look at what different capabilities and designs can do in that digital model and we can go and fail and succeed in the Digital World very fast and where things are promising, then we rapidly move to prototyping. And the promise of digital engineering and modeling and assimilation, is we can look at things not just in the design phase, but in the Production Phase and in the sustainment phase so we can take a good look at what different parts and different components will mean. I will tell you that too often we look at just the production numbers of a system. But its the sustainment of that system that cost us in the long run. And we know we have to do this because of all the things that like the general talked about, technology is moving very rapidly and if no one believes, i hope, that todays technology is going to be the same five years from now, three years from now, maybe six months from now. So how do we Design Capabilities and systems that are rapidly upgradable . They are modular in nature . What we know is weve got to be able to do this on a very quick cycle. Why were so excited about digital engineering and when we look at those things and weve laid out the scope, what we know is, we have to have that on government Reference Architectures that allow us to take the best and brightest of all of our Industry Partners and integrate quickly into those systems. Next generation of air dominance is not a thing, its not a truck, its a series of capabilities and technologies that were developing to work together. Theyre connected and the highway is what gets us going. And when we look to the future, the future is not as general just said or you did, fanman. You know, the old mentality was oneonone engagement. Engad is not a one for one replacement for fighters or anything else, its a system of things designed to complement. Ill turn it over. Can everybody hear me . Dave, thank you very much for inviting me from my mountain lair in north idaho. And my coming out two years up there and thankful for what the Mission Institute does, basically tell a story, have a forum for open debate and share ideas and working on getting this right. Its interesting, too, the marine corps is not, i would not say actively involved in the engad program, but we viewed f35. Im not speaking for the marine corps, im speaking as a private citizen we need to get this right. We live in trying times and frankly for a long time. When i was a young guy i was with the british near the german border. We were ready for the cold war to be a real war and i learned a lot about what potential high attrition combat was going to be like. It wasnt an air force fight, it wasnt an army fight, it wasnt a marine fight, it wasnt a it was going to be a coalition fight and everybody was going to play. I learned a lot. I learned a lot in preparing for that fight and also when i worked for the general after that, basically the wars that flowed from the end of the gulf war, you know, with the general used to call the stepchild chechnya. And one thing has a student of history and ive had a chance to read quite a bit in the last few years, we really suck at predicting the future. Were terrible at that. But we at this desk up here, i used to, these two gents to my left do now and all of us as citizens have a responsibility to be ready for the fight that looms at our bow. And since we cant predict what that can be, we need to be ready worst case. Protect our freedom, our friends, our way of life. I feel strongly from that as a retired person and talk from that advantage point Going Forward here. So the marine corps is involved in an f35. I brought that program in and its doing well. Its doing well and i would say what were looking we dont look for a straight fighter we look for a fighter that serves a variety of customers and we, like my friends at the table here we fight as a team. A slightly different focus sometimes, but ours is Marine Ground task force and we try to optimize that and its a joint construct in many ways. In order to do that we have to plug in the air force, the navy, the army and our coalition partners. We believe were the force that has to be most ready when the nation is least ready, knowing that people can pontificate about having the future suitcase, we know what its going to be. We know thats not the case. We have to be ready for the worst. And we invest and continue to invest