Transcripts For CSPAN2 U.S. Air Force Plans For New Technolo

This hourlong event was cohosted by the air force association and Mitchell Institute for aerospace studies. The executive director, thanks to our panelists for making it here. The fall of the soviet union brought in a number of aircraft. Most some areas were reduced even further. There is the actual combat command the remaining aircraft. The capitalization efforts for to our delays, the trend that accelerated with 9 11. The notion of pure competition was provided with an updated way of king. Today the air force finds itself the smallest, oldest aircraft fleet and its history. Near the mission area with high demand with nonstate actors still posing a threat on the low end of the spectrum, nations like iran and north korea remain in contention, china and russia presenting a scale not seen since the cold war. There comes a point when a small number of aircraft can only be stretched so far. This is exactly what the secretary of the air force talked about when she made a for 386 operation squad. The fiscal year 2018 nba a calling for multiple studies to assess inventory requirements. That brings us to our panel here today. Thank you for joining us with the congressionally mandated effort. We have Lieutenant General tim fay, chief of staff of strategy, integration and environment discussing the current state of the air force regarding this issue. Over to you. Thank you to the air force association and the Mitchell Institute for arranging this event and i would like to thank the Cost Assessment Program Evaluation office for their support throughout the project and to make your participation today possible. The study i am about to present with a team of analysts and viewers, i am honored to present their work to you. Next slide, thank you. There were several high density operations or high intensity operations in the indo pacific theater. We focus on this due to the large distances and sparse spacing operations to determine implications for aircraft in terms of range, payload and missions. What aircraft inventories can be based safely and have the capability and capacity to get to the fight . We found high risk potential for ground losses at many locations the us and allies might use. In the past the us has been fortunate to conduct air operations from relatively in vulnerable locations based in sanctuaries that this is not the case today and will not be in the future. These aircraft risk being destroyed on the ground or on the deck before they have the opportunity to launch and engage in adversary. We can reduce this risk, and preserve our forces by expanding basing operations and associated logistics required to operate from them. Now aircraft. Bombers provide the background of power projection through their longrange and large payloads and they are essential to the indo pacific. We recommend obama retirements until substantial be 21 deliveries have occurred and that should be around 2035. The us needs every bomber it has in investing capable rates to 80 , to provide additional viable bombers out of the current inventory of 157 and this would reinvigorate readiness. Bombers can operate from stateside basis including hawaii and alaska, extremely long distances dilute the combat power they can deliver, selecting and expanding additional bases in the indo pacific to support bomber operations is an economical way to better leverage this viable capability. Every refueling is the second key to power projection and these tankers are as vulnerable on the ground as primary combat aircraft. Tankers share the same basing operations. The us is fortunate to have the kc 46 entering the inventory. For some time the majority of tinker inventory, with an average age of 60 years old. Accordingly the kc 46 production extending indefinitely as the kc 145 ares are retired. Regarding Fighter Aircraft the indo pacific poses a particular challenge. The duration of combat missions is limited to 10 hours except in infrequent special circumstances. This is the human limit due to the pilot, unrelated to the specific type of fighter. Forward based fighters are vulnerable but moving them to rear bases puts them too far from the operating area to be effective especially with typical payloads that are a fraction of bomber failure. Nonetheless, fourthGeneration Fighters can play a valuable role in many scenarios while offering up fifthgeneration aircraft to fly fifthgeneration missions. Among the fighters, the ability to carry larger payloads was consistently valuable in our modeling. Shifting to training aircraft, the t 308c is nearly as old as our tanker fleet and needs to be retired more quickly than planned near production. The t1 will soon reach the end of its service life. The air force should not replace it and instead transition back to the nonspecialized Pilot Training with the t6 and tx. This Training System serve the air force well for decades up to the mid1990s producing a more universally assignable pilot and provides flexibility the air force needs. On the subject of the tx this airframe conserve as an economical Homeland Defense fighter if it is adapted to carry armaments, onboard sensors and refueling capabilities. Todays fourth and fifth Generation Fighters operating more threatening environments that are not the case at home, plus they are more expensive to operate and maintain. And armed fighter can save money while performing this Important Mission taking fourth and fifth Generation Fighters available for the away game. It also would open rich costeffective opportunities for companion fighter and bomber training, Adversary Air support, exports and collaboration with allies and partners. Us strategic airlift appears to be healthy for the next decade but this is the only quickly us airpower capability not in or near production. Significant retirements for the aircraft will begin in the mid2030s. Therefore, by the end of the study window by 2030 we must have a plan in place to serve life extension, aircraft develop and or some other option to maintain adequate strategic airlift capacity and the retirements that will be coming. In closing you may have noticed i skipped part of a fighter discussion, namely forward based fighter challenge. We believe the answer lies in congressional deterrence. New basing options for bombers and tankers can rebalance the correlation of forces in the indo pacific combined with robust programs to exercise command and control, interoperability with our allies and partners, new concepts of operations that employ a coordinated mix of aircraft show great promise to improve our conventional deterrence posture and thereby reduce the risk of conflict in this important theater. I look forward to your questions. I would like to start by saying thank you to the air force association for wonderful support in the study we executed last year coming out earlier this year. I am struck that afterthefact three studies conducted independently had many of the same recommendations. We even had different methodologies. And we focused on wargameing at workshops digging into potential operating concepts that could drive a need for different capabilities and different core structure but a lot of those concepts are similar to what my partners at the table have looked at and considered. The need for increased longrange strike, increasing survivability, moving towards sixth generation of force is more survivable in contested areas in these are things we share in our insights. Next slide please. So the report we released to the public starts with a bit of diagnosis before we get to the prescription. Alder smaller air force, the slide is a reflection of greater detail. I invite you to take a look at that report, and next slide. And lack survivability in the context, the fight against china and russia with contested environment. The air force is investing in stealth technologies, new weaponry, and other things when a lot of those capabilities are yet to come. You see a snapshot of todays force against different threat environments. Here are the metrics but frankly we used, seems we did not impose a consistent strategy, planners and policymakers and operators for wargames and other activities. These metrics came from them. How can we best align our air force and new Defense Strategy and what operating concepts and capabilities help the air force to do that . These are the metrics that pop out of those discussions . Obviously improved lethality in the future, would this allow the air force to do things better than a candidate or do things that cant do today . For potential new old aircraft and other capabilities we consider the opportunity for going investment and capability we need in the future. That would reduce risk in the future, not just in the nearterm. We thought it would be useful to lay that out today. Next slide. If you ask us what the single most important recommendation came out of our study it would be the construct which was required by the 2000 and team in baa. It was a different between what the air force and mine proposed, we took an independent look at the construct and concluded the first rosenblum on top, priorities for the air force in the future, most sustained and obviously Strategic Deterrence to defend the homeland and be prepared to feed the Campaign Strategies of two great power aggressors nearly simultaneously, china and russia nearly simultaneously. When you think of potential conflict with europe, with russia in the Baltic States or another region primarily it would be air, ground, cyberspace etc. In the pacific against china, the South China Sea, it would be maritime, air, cyberspace. I will throw in the electromagnetic spectrum with measure. I am not saying and we didnt say the army and other marine corps would not have a role. Of course they would but look at the predominant forces that might be used in the scenarios i might show you in a second. Air was a heavy player so we thought it would be prudent to recommend a construct that looked like this that didnt ignore conflict with a list aggressive iran or north korea or engaging in longtime peacetime competition. The case is the size and shape of the force, to defend the homeland and be prepared to defeat aggression, then you want to take that force structure and test it against other requirements to make sure we have the bases covered. There may be soft capabilities where we come out of those bottom three. Next slide. Here are the scenarios in workshops and wargames, one was set in the South China Sea in 2035 time frame. We have a lot of new capabilities in the force by that time. We wanted to see how they change operating concepts and a second conflict in the baltic sea region and here are the assumptions explaining some detail in our report. We wanted to lay out the foundation for recommendations. The scenarios we use that assumptions we adopted all had an impact on future capability, capacity for the air force. Next slide. Homeland defense and Strategic Deterrence didnt look at that. The point was made by a majority of our participants in workshops and wargames that we cant ignore the growing threat to the United States Cruise Missile attacks and other conventional attacks and there is probably going to be a requirement for additional force structure, air force might need to sustain, to deter those threats against the us and the United States. I emphasize the numbers you see below are the structure our participants recommended with the additive to a structured to deploy to engage in conflict against china and russia in the future. Those are unclassified for the us government. Next slide. Here is a role up. When you add to gather the forces needed to engage in this scenario plus Homeland Defense and Strategic Deterrence in the event of Nuclear Armed great power adversary, they pop out to primary aircraft pmi and total aircraft inventory you see here and i circle a couple of recommendations as we use the same metrics the air force uses to determine numbers of squadrons for pmi aircraft so it is apples to apples and you can see we made recommendation for increasing Fighter Squadron and an increase in longrange capabilities in the form of future bombers. Next slide. I showed you this slide already. If you ask what was the second most significant recommendation it would be this. Increased survivability, ability to operate, highly next slide. The structure i showed you stacks up like this. That is a significant shift. It is not a force structure that can be developed by 2030. It is what we recommend be developed over the next 15 to 20 years so we are calling the future force of 35 plus force if you will. Some of the specifics if you go back a couple slides, slide 8 please. We recommended accelerating be 21. Start them as quickly as possible and we believe that would be possible in the late 2020s and early 2030s and recommend maximizing procurement of the f 35. This generation as quickly as you can as we begin to invest in new capabilities like penetrating electronic attack aircraft which should be one and the same, multimission capability penetrating i guess our systems, multimission Unmanned Aircraft that can help with base defense and other missions in europe and the pacific and Unmanned Aircraft, multimission for other missions. We also recommended increasing the size of the tank are forced to support the larger force that extends from a force finding construct that would require the air force to organize and equip and be prepared to defeat aggression by china and russia simultaneously. That will wrap it up and i look forward to your questions. Let me add my thanks to the air force association and to the right as we work on our analysis they were independently doing the same and we waited with baited breath to see the studies and how they compare to the work we did on the classified side of the house. Different assumptions, different scenarios, different timelines but as mark mentioned we had similar outcomes at the macro level so that was a very interesting and different methodology. Want to thank them and their team for the insights they brought to us. With the theme shifting to the current conversation. I want to borrow from the acting secretary of the air force, matt donovans comments that he made. Let the paint a picture as we talk about the national Defense Strategy in the air force we need will satisfy the national Defense Strategy. Our adversaries studied how to equip the air force, invested in technology and strategies in ways that reduce our advantages by exploiting our vulnerabilities. Also designing a force they hope can avoid the strengths. Because of these trendss we have a national Defense Strategy that refocuses on the need to build a force that competes in strategic environment characterized by power competition that underlined this discussion. From an air force perspective i can assure you we have and continue to move aggressively with the national Defense Strategy. In our program we set the vector which we were able to talk about a little more. We step on the accelerator and you will see that. We are building airspace forces that are more lethal, resilient and seamlessly integrate with joint force teammates, allies and partners. How do we do that and what is our framework as we shift from old to get to the new. The Modernization Priority is performing multidomain command and control. Multioperations executed the command and controls without creating, scale and tempo platform and trucks. By sensing, connecting, fusing data and getting it to decisionmakers to create multidomain dilemmas for our adversaries, we will talk more about that during q and a but this is the discussion you heard about the building highways instead of focusing on trucks. Second, we are laser focused on space. Us air and space must compete on space. As acting secretary of the air force donovan noted yesterday this will require advanced capabilities, innovative theories and joint doctrine. This will assure our dominance. We will look at generating combat power and the gentlemen discussed concept that we are considering and looking at assessing. We will do this across the globe, this global air force and simultaneously arrange with our global power capability. We will bring this together with multidomain command and control at times, places and volumes of our choosing and finally we need to do that while performing logistics for logistics under attack and working on logistics support, ready and persistent. To get four lines going and into the field, with our teammates, along with our staff. We look forward to seeing more detail as we get through that. As acting secretary donovan said yesterday now is the time for bold moves that will ensure air and space forces will extended bandages to have the same or better advantages than we do today. With that i also look forward to some questions. Thank you for all your points. To lead off a few questions. We talked about the years of austerity, budget cuts that have been taken and we are still hearing headlines about the need for further cuts and are their stories you would like to convey your points you would like to convey about the need for the air force to reset in a concerted fashion . The question Congress Asked the air force is what does it take to implement the national Defense Strategy at a level of acceptable risk . What the air force did was went through exhaustive fuel analysis that you heard the secretary of thousands of iterations of operational analysis to make sure we understood what it takes to execute that strategy, 386 operations and we are at 312, too small to execute the strategy the nation asked for at the level of risk that is acceptable. That said folks go to the resource question as Mitchell Institute<\/a> for aerospace studies. The executive director, thanks to our panelists for making it here. The fall of the soviet union brought in a number of aircraft. Most some areas were reduced even further. There is the actual combat command the remaining aircraft. The capitalization efforts for to our delays, the trend that accelerated with 9 11. The notion of pure competition was provided with an updated way of king. Today the air force finds itself the smallest, oldest aircraft fleet and its history. Near the mission area with high demand with nonstate actors still posing a threat on the low end of the spectrum, nations like iran and north korea remain in contention, china and russia presenting a scale not seen since the cold war. There comes a point when a small number of aircraft can only be stretched so far. This is exactly what the secretary of the air force talked about when she made a for 386 operation squad. The fiscal year 2018 nba a calling for multiple studies to assess inventory requirements. That brings us to our panel here today. Thank you for joining us with the congressionally mandated effort. We have Lieutenant General<\/a> tim fay, chief of staff of strategy, integration and environment discussing the current state of the air force regarding this issue. Over to you. Thank you to the air force association and the Mitchell Institute<\/a> for arranging this event and i would like to thank the Cost Assessment Program Evaluation<\/a> office for their support throughout the project and to make your participation today possible. The study i am about to present with a team of analysts and viewers, i am honored to present their work to you. Next slide, thank you. There were several high density operations or high intensity operations in the indo pacific theater. We focus on this due to the large distances and sparse spacing operations to determine implications for aircraft in terms of range, payload and missions. What aircraft inventories can be based safely and have the capability and capacity to get to the fight . We found high risk potential for ground losses at many locations the us and allies might use. In the past the us has been fortunate to conduct air operations from relatively in vulnerable locations based in sanctuaries that this is not the case today and will not be in the future. These aircraft risk being destroyed on the ground or on the deck before they have the opportunity to launch and engage in adversary. We can reduce this risk, and preserve our forces by expanding basing operations and associated logistics required to operate from them. Now aircraft. Bombers provide the background of power projection through their longrange and large payloads and they are essential to the indo pacific. We recommend obama retirements until substantial be 21 deliveries have occurred and that should be around 2035. The us needs every bomber it has in investing capable rates to 80 , to provide additional viable bombers out of the current inventory of 157 and this would reinvigorate readiness. Bombers can operate from stateside basis including hawaii and alaska, extremely long distances dilute the combat power they can deliver, selecting and expanding additional bases in the indo pacific to support bomber operations is an economical way to better leverage this viable capability. Every refueling is the second key to power projection and these tankers are as vulnerable on the ground as primary combat aircraft. Tankers share the same basing operations. The us is fortunate to have the kc 46 entering the inventory. For some time the majority of tinker inventory, with an average age of 60 years old. Accordingly the kc 46 production extending indefinitely as the kc 145 ares are retired. Regarding Fighter Aircraft<\/a> the indo pacific poses a particular challenge. The duration of combat missions is limited to 10 hours except in infrequent special circumstances. This is the human limit due to the pilot, unrelated to the specific type of fighter. Forward based fighters are vulnerable but moving them to rear bases puts them too far from the operating area to be effective especially with typical payloads that are a fraction of bomber failure. Nonetheless, fourthGeneration Fighters<\/a> can play a valuable role in many scenarios while offering up fifthgeneration aircraft to fly fifthgeneration missions. Among the fighters, the ability to carry larger payloads was consistently valuable in our modeling. Shifting to training aircraft, the t 308c is nearly as old as our tanker fleet and needs to be retired more quickly than planned near production. The t1 will soon reach the end of its service life. The air force should not replace it and instead transition back to the nonspecialized Pilot Training<\/a> with the t6 and tx. This Training System<\/a> serve the air force well for decades up to the mid1990s producing a more universally assignable pilot and provides flexibility the air force needs. On the subject of the tx this airframe conserve as an economical Homeland Defense<\/a> fighter if it is adapted to carry armaments, onboard sensors and refueling capabilities. Todays fourth and fifth Generation Fighters<\/a> operating more threatening environments that are not the case at home, plus they are more expensive to operate and maintain. And armed fighter can save money while performing this Important Mission<\/a> taking fourth and fifth Generation Fighters<\/a> available for the away game. It also would open rich costeffective opportunities for companion fighter and bomber training, Adversary Air<\/a> support, exports and collaboration with allies and partners. Us strategic airlift appears to be healthy for the next decade but this is the only quickly us airpower capability not in or near production. Significant retirements for the aircraft will begin in the mid2030s. Therefore, by the end of the study window by 2030 we must have a plan in place to serve life extension, aircraft develop and or some other option to maintain adequate strategic airlift capacity and the retirements that will be coming. In closing you may have noticed i skipped part of a fighter discussion, namely forward based fighter challenge. We believe the answer lies in congressional deterrence. New basing options for bombers and tankers can rebalance the correlation of forces in the indo pacific combined with robust programs to exercise command and control, interoperability with our allies and partners, new concepts of operations that employ a coordinated mix of aircraft show great promise to improve our conventional deterrence posture and thereby reduce the risk of conflict in this important theater. I look forward to your questions. I would like to start by saying thank you to the air force association for wonderful support in the study we executed last year coming out earlier this year. I am struck that afterthefact three studies conducted independently had many of the same recommendations. We even had different methodologies. And we focused on wargameing at workshops digging into potential operating concepts that could drive a need for different capabilities and different core structure but a lot of those concepts are similar to what my partners at the table have looked at and considered. The need for increased longrange strike, increasing survivability, moving towards sixth generation of force is more survivable in contested areas in these are things we share in our insights. Next slide please. So the report we released to the public starts with a bit of diagnosis before we get to the prescription. Alder smaller air force, the slide is a reflection of greater detail. I invite you to take a look at that report, and next slide. And lack survivability in the context, the fight against china and russia with contested environment. The air force is investing in stealth technologies, new weaponry, and other things when a lot of those capabilities are yet to come. You see a snapshot of todays force against different threat environments. Here are the metrics but frankly we used, seems we did not impose a consistent strategy, planners and policymakers and operators for wargames and other activities. These metrics came from them. How can we best align our air force and new Defense Strategy<\/a> and what operating concepts and capabilities help the air force to do that . These are the metrics that pop out of those discussions . Obviously improved lethality in the future, would this allow the air force to do things better than a candidate or do things that cant do today . For potential new old aircraft and other capabilities we consider the opportunity for going investment and capability we need in the future. That would reduce risk in the future, not just in the nearterm. We thought it would be useful to lay that out today. Next slide. If you ask us what the single most important recommendation came out of our study it would be the construct which was required by the 2000 and team in baa. It was a different between what the air force and mine proposed, we took an independent look at the construct and concluded the first rosenblum on top, priorities for the air force in the future, most sustained and obviously Strategic Deterrence<\/a> to defend the homeland and be prepared to feed the Campaign Strategies<\/a> of two great power aggressors nearly simultaneously, china and russia nearly simultaneously. When you think of potential conflict with europe, with russia in the Baltic States<\/a> or another region primarily it would be air, ground, cyberspace etc. In the pacific against china, the South China Sea<\/a>, it would be maritime, air, cyberspace. I will throw in the electromagnetic spectrum with measure. I am not saying and we didnt say the army and other marine corps would not have a role. Of course they would but look at the predominant forces that might be used in the scenarios i might show you in a second. Air was a heavy player so we thought it would be prudent to recommend a construct that looked like this that didnt ignore conflict with a list aggressive iran or north korea or engaging in longtime peacetime competition. The case is the size and shape of the force, to defend the homeland and be prepared to defeat aggression, then you want to take that force structure and test it against other requirements to make sure we have the bases covered. There may be soft capabilities where we come out of those bottom three. Next slide. Here are the scenarios in workshops and wargames, one was set in the South China Sea<\/a> in 2035 time frame. We have a lot of new capabilities in the force by that time. We wanted to see how they change operating concepts and a second conflict in the baltic sea region and here are the assumptions explaining some detail in our report. We wanted to lay out the foundation for recommendations. The scenarios we use that assumptions we adopted all had an impact on future capability, capacity for the air force. Next slide. Homeland defense and Strategic Deterrence<\/a> didnt look at that. The point was made by a majority of our participants in workshops and wargames that we cant ignore the growing threat to the United States<\/a> Cruise Missile<\/a> attacks and other conventional attacks and there is probably going to be a requirement for additional force structure, air force might need to sustain, to deter those threats against the us and the United States<\/a>. I emphasize the numbers you see below are the structure our participants recommended with the additive to a structured to deploy to engage in conflict against china and russia in the future. Those are unclassified for the us government. Next slide. Here is a role up. When you add to gather the forces needed to engage in this scenario plus Homeland Defense<\/a> and Strategic Deterrence<\/a> in the event of Nuclear Armed<\/a> great power adversary, they pop out to primary aircraft pmi and total aircraft inventory you see here and i circle a couple of recommendations as we use the same metrics the air force uses to determine numbers of squadrons for pmi aircraft so it is apples to apples and you can see we made recommendation for increasing Fighter Squadron<\/a> and an increase in longrange capabilities in the form of future bombers. Next slide. I showed you this slide already. If you ask what was the second most significant recommendation it would be this. Increased survivability, ability to operate, highly next slide. The structure i showed you stacks up like this. That is a significant shift. It is not a force structure that can be developed by 2030. It is what we recommend be developed over the next 15 to 20 years so we are calling the future force of 35 plus force if you will. Some of the specifics if you go back a couple slides, slide 8 please. We recommended accelerating be 21. Start them as quickly as possible and we believe that would be possible in the late 2020s and early 2030s and recommend maximizing procurement of the f 35. This generation as quickly as you can as we begin to invest in new capabilities like penetrating electronic attack aircraft which should be one and the same, multimission capability penetrating i guess our systems, multimission Unmanned Aircraft<\/a> that can help with base defense and other missions in europe and the pacific and Unmanned Aircraft<\/a>, multimission for other missions. We also recommended increasing the size of the tank are forced to support the larger force that extends from a force finding construct that would require the air force to organize and equip and be prepared to defeat aggression by china and russia simultaneously. That will wrap it up and i look forward to your questions. Let me add my thanks to the air force association and to the right as we work on our analysis they were independently doing the same and we waited with baited breath to see the studies and how they compare to the work we did on the classified side of the house. Different assumptions, different scenarios, different timelines but as mark mentioned we had similar outcomes at the macro level so that was a very interesting and different methodology. Want to thank them and their team for the insights they brought to us. With the theme shifting to the current conversation. I want to borrow from the acting secretary of the air force, matt donovans comments that he made. Let the paint a picture as we talk about the national Defense Strategy<\/a> in the air force we need will satisfy the national Defense Strategy<\/a>. Our adversaries studied how to equip the air force, invested in technology and strategies in ways that reduce our advantages by exploiting our vulnerabilities. Also designing a force they hope can avoid the strengths. Because of these trendss we have a national Defense Strategy<\/a> that refocuses on the need to build a force that competes in strategic environment characterized by power competition that underlined this discussion. From an air force perspective i can assure you we have and continue to move aggressively with the national Defense Strategy<\/a>. In our program we set the vector which we were able to talk about a little more. We step on the accelerator and you will see that. We are building airspace forces that are more lethal, resilient and seamlessly integrate with joint force teammates, allies and partners. How do we do that and what is our framework as we shift from old to get to the new. The Modernization Priority<\/a> is performing multidomain command and control. Multioperations executed the command and controls without creating, scale and tempo platform and trucks. By sensing, connecting, fusing data and getting it to decisionmakers to create multidomain dilemmas for our adversaries, we will talk more about that during q and a but this is the discussion you heard about the building highways instead of focusing on trucks. Second, we are laser focused on space. Us air and space must compete on space. As acting secretary of the air force donovan noted yesterday this will require advanced capabilities, innovative theories and joint doctrine. This will assure our dominance. We will look at generating combat power and the gentlemen discussed concept that we are considering and looking at assessing. We will do this across the globe, this global air force and simultaneously arrange with our global power capability. We will bring this together with multidomain command and control at times, places and volumes of our choosing and finally we need to do that while performing logistics for logistics under attack and working on logistics support, ready and persistent. To get four lines going and into the field, with our teammates, along with our staff. We look forward to seeing more detail as we get through that. As acting secretary donovan said yesterday now is the time for bold moves that will ensure air and space forces will extended bandages to have the same or better advantages than we do today. With that i also look forward to some questions. Thank you for all your points. To lead off a few questions. We talked about the years of austerity, budget cuts that have been taken and we are still hearing headlines about the need for further cuts and are their stories you would like to convey your points you would like to convey about the need for the air force to reset in a concerted fashion . The question Congress Asked<\/a> the air force is what does it take to implement the national Defense Strategy<\/a> at a level of acceptable risk . What the air force did was went through exhaustive fuel analysis that you heard the secretary of thousands of iterations of operational analysis to make sure we understood what it takes to execute that strategy, 386 operations and we are at 312, too small to execute the strategy the nation asked for at the level of risk that is acceptable. That said folks go to the resource question as Congress Works<\/a> the resourcing questions. I will say the air force staff is not standing still. We are looking at new innovative technologies, operational concept in other ways to, in addition as we take that, how we can make it not just more but better as we get after executing national Defense Strategy<\/a>. I would say we understand the air force is too small for whats been asked of us and appreciate the help congress has given us the last several years and we are going to need a little help if we are able to execute the national Defense Strategy<\/a>. What do you think are the most significant recommended capability and capacity shifts looking at both future and do you have us how that affects the air force . I briefly touch on this in my opening comments. The most significant shift is a chart i showed you where in the future when we recommended far more survivable environments. You have to survive to accomplish your mission. More than a question of aircraft and platforms but also the connective tissue. A new generation of weapons and Everything Else<\/a> that improve survivability and we think that is the most significant shift followed closely by the need to increase the range and payload, there is another chart that shows how the range and payload of combat air force has decreased since the end of the cold war and reversal is necessary especially when you think of conflict in the vast expanses of the indo pacific region. I agree with all these points. The biggest capability and capacity shift is the need for additional basing options and that piggybacks on the chiefs requirement for better logistics and agile logistics. Rethinking how we view our bomber course is very important and that is the basis of that recommendation. We dont have the luxury of being able to choose when we might have a time of higher tension or have to fight. We have to take care of these things as soon as possible is the mix of austerity in the past decade combined with a small force and tempo has been the primary thing which is heard our Mission Capable<\/a> rates and investing on new resources to get those back to where we are which means the portions we have today should we need to at the same time we need an are to the future on bringing those high end capabilities and cuttingedge things into the force. It would be remiss of me not to agree with your point about overseas posture. That is something that was stressed by every participant in our study. In the indo pacific, if you want to thwart the antiaccess capabilities of russia and china a big step in that direction is to have a right posture. That helps close the disadvantage russia would have, if your forces are present and operate on night one, marrying up with your maintainers and Everything Else<\/a> so i absolutely agree. Have to think about future posture and force structure capabilities. Please wait for the microphone and identify yourself and your affiliation for a particular member of the group. Steve trumble. Can you say how conclusions or determinations related to the air force of 386 squadrons and for the overall panel, if this is an attempt to replicate what the navy did in 201617 with force structure analysis, seems to report joining that for 382, that didnt work out so well for the navy even though it got picked up by a campaign it hasnt led to any firm plan to get to that. Where do you think this is going to go . Is there a feasible path beyond what we have today . Regarding the relationship between the reuters report in the air force we need our effort, completely independent of that, that announcement came in the middle of when we were doing our study. We began with an end oh pacific type of challenge. We modeled it at varying levels of intensity going up to an intensity in excess of anything that would actually occur. The thing we do is see what requirements for aircraft, payload would fall out of that so we werent focused as much on identifying the numbers of squadrons or those types of things so the net result is the force we recommend is approximately the same. There are some differences as the force that is currently programmed by the air force, not including the 386. That is the approach we took. Hope that answers that. We took a slightly different tack, looking at europe and the pacific computer. We believe the force structure capabilities you need for conflict with russia would be different to some extent than what you need to engage in conflicts in the pacific, different geography, different basic structure, different logistics. We thought it was important to take a look and the capacity for both of those in addition to capacity to sustain Strategic Deterrence<\/a> and defend the homeland at the same time led to recommended squadrons and so forth. Our overall number, we never add that up. We didnt think that was important. If we did it would be larger than the air force. We had a Different Force<\/a> planning structure than they use but we also didnt consider how many cybersquadrons might be needed in the future because we focus on aircraft inventory where the air force looked at the future force. As far as feasibility, frankly i am happy to address potential costs. When Todd Harrison<\/a> asks that question. We hope this informs on how resources are apportioned not just within dod but to dod to build a future joint force to implement the Defense Strategy<\/a>. Two points i would make. Fairly significant shift in strategy. A tremendous change from where we were to where we are with the new strategy and i would say this is the first time congress, whatever it took to do the strategy, this is a strategy driven analysis, not a resource constrained what can you do at a certain budget line. They wanted to know what it took and we did that for the first time without being resourced constraints because that was what was asked of us, fairly significant change. Steve burke. Quick question, talk about building tomorrows air force yet you didnt talk about airman, the Human Capital<\/a> strategy for improving the way we do business. A quick story of one of the other Service Secretaries<\/a> i mentioned said that any better ideas . My concern is did we lose an opportunity to go back to congress and say the Human Capital<\/a> strategy of the air force has opportunities to improve the way we do business, to emulate some commercial practices where they make sense, other Services Practices<\/a> where they make sense. It is an open question to the panel. Thanks for the question. A great call out. The airman of the future will be different from the airman we all were when we grew up because it will be a different environment. I will tell you we are working hard right now on defining that analysis that goes behind the air force. Part of that is Human Capital<\/a>. That is numbers. Some of it is also how we train, how we educate our airmen. Air education and Training Command<\/a> has done tremendous work in this area. You are concerned with Pilot Training<\/a> not just in the pilot force now but expanding out into other areas like maintenance because we recognize that the airman of this generation demand a different way of education, a different way of learning and they do it at their pace, we have been able to see tremendous results with that so we have a long way to go with that, getting right after that. Thanks for playing that out. I am teresa hitchens. You mentioned space, and related to that, the first is air force Space Command<\/a> is pushing hard to expand the Strategic Focus<\/a> of the air force from its current focus on National Security<\/a> space for civil space. I wondered how to balance those missions given the problems with the current threats. The second question. How we have a space force, shouldnt that be the job of the space force . We are doing great work on that. And the resources and capability. The tough challenges you have to work through. We are working through those challenges and the resource level working to capacity capability and Readiness Challenges<\/a> at the same time, raymond is working on the same challenges as well. On the second part of your question, i am not sure i would define, the source of your question. It is a separate space strategy and an air force strategy. I am with decision lens. With resourcing in the future of how to invest in the future, the great progress in cutting sustainment. And having worked with a lot of military leaders on how to do that puts the burden back on congress. How would you define when we are operating with congress at an effective level . What needs to happen with congress and the service arm can collaborate in a way, not just looking for more money, not that we are, but having a come to jesus moment, as far as we need to be. To reinvest what we dont need and what to stop doing. Looking at me again and. You caught the remarks, as we pointed out, we are doing Amazing Things<\/a> to make it ready. Just fantastic. Doctor huber had a great discussion yesterday how maybe we should have a milestone of elderly when a system is sold, it takes above and beyond to sustain it to the required levels such that that is no longer a prudent thing to do. He had a great discussion about shifting from geriatric, if you will, sustainment, driving back towards the pediatric side of sustainment by doing things faster and smarter and understanding things. Acting secretary donovan talked about the potential by some estimates we could save by moving these conditions on the solar fleet but the combination of technology of Artificial Intelligence<\/a> and maintenance Type Technology<\/a> as we look at faster and smarter acquisition model that was referenced, all of those are elements of how we start to shift that sustainment back to that curve and those are his words. I cant take credit for that concept. I would like to add to that the need to divest excess infrastructure. I will say the brak word. It is not politically feasible but the air force has excess infrastructure and if they could divest it and turn some of these savings to investing in acquisitions that would help accelerate the future force. I also agree that more flexibility to retire old capabilities as they become less relevant and less survivable, one caution, doing so before they are replaced by new capabilities frankly increase already existed in the credibility gap so there needs to be some caution but in the long run modernizing the force and recapitalizing it will reduce sustainable cost. Question for mister gerber. Your slides went too fast. Were you suggesting the air force not to buy ftx for Homeland Defense<\/a> with other missions. How do you stand on that . You talk about survivability of future platforms. I wonder if you could characterize why it cant come earlier . He looked at buying the ftx, modern version of the f 15, and not penetrating and built and designed for a more threatening environment flying over virginia. That being said. The f15 ex would be not part of the acquisition programs. He would leave the f 35 plan. Pressing on with that, what we found is there is a place for fourthgeneration capability and our aircraft are rapidly aging out based on when they were designed and built. And enduring capability that has a superior Payload Capacity<\/a> looks attractive. There are lots of things to consider and that would be the point for further study but that was the conclusion we came to. One thing on tx. We recommended considering tx or atx, potentially a Homeland Defense<\/a> capability as well, modified variant of the tx and certainly for fmx. That frankly could be a force multiplier and free up capabilities like the f 20, to do fifthgeneration and reduce the hours they burn for Homeland Defense<\/a>. A better word is next to jen and the be 21, the next generation capability, very survivable, what we talk about in our report and that will join the force before 2035. Building on Current Technology<\/a> is feasible before that. Funding, resources is always a barrier. That is why we recommend increased resources for the air force so they can accelerate the feeling of these nextgeneration capabilities. Dave and mark. This caught my attention. The ftx, did you not look at other platforms out there . You were focused on a variant of tx. My question, they were existing in the future, you focused on those. We actually do. The conclusion of ftx that a lower acquisition cost doing that mission. In terms of other options, because the tx will be brought by the air force, there are good economies of scale that could be had by adopting the same airframe to other missions. Economies of scale during the cost of operating and maintaining aircraft for everyone who has that. This is another good point mentioned earlier, we had different methodologies. That is why we looked at other capabilities where we made the same conclusions about the potential of that. We are not in the business of picking winners and losers. The main emphasis is to take a look for strategy capability gap, to bring the air force closer for Defense Strategy<\/a>. Be prepared, be prepared to defeat aggression as part of the great powers. We have a lot of capability in the air force best suited for these permissive environments that describes the majority of the air force force structure. How do we react to future force which is more survivable in a highly contested environment. We didnt make that a main focus but we came to similar conclusions. Defense daily, two quick questions for the panel. And anything about the Light Attack Experiment<\/a> was wondering if your analysis to consider that effort to be dead in the water, or any reason you dont think that is a viable inclusion in the future, and allies getting more f 35s, into your analysis for u. S. Air force needs. Minor study focused on resources and time, to dig into these niche capabilities, some of which were in special operations, they did not analyze the light attack, doing experimentation is very prudent with this method. In terms of fms the synergies of working with allies and partners are extremely compelling especially sharing a lot of training already, jet Pilot Training<\/a> as well as Aviation Leadership Program<\/a> and the extent to which we can train our ally and partner aircrew and then have them potentially go back to their home nation and fly similar aircraft bringing interoperability and the possibility of exchanges, part of the national Defense Strategy<\/a> has to do with strong partnerships and alliances. I agree with what you said. That was not a main focus of our study but i invite you to look at the other reports. We put out reports in defense of nato and what nato allies might do, particularly poland and the United Kingdom<\/a> and the capabilities that would complement and be additive to what the us would bring to a major conflict. A part of japan, australia, canada for that matter. I would like you to look at those. I wont going too many deeper than that. General say, building highways, we just had these studies which count the numbers of trucks that are required. Sa dependent on infrastructure that dont make it in the future, where it is likely likely to be nasty indeed. Talking about highways, to talk about platforms. That is a shift we are to make. The prioritization for modernization, recognizing in war fighting of the future, the command and control creates difficult to limits for potential adversaries. And adversary and a group of ships or adversary with a group of armed vehicles. If i am able to bring near simultaneously effects from all domains from subsurface on the surface of the water or the surface of the land or the air and from the area ranged from special operations, from cyber, from space, think about the difficulty of those dilemmas for potential adversaries he is trying to sort and deal with all those things near simultaneously. We understand the importance of going after that. The air force architect who many of you know is working hard for doctor roper helping us pick up the system and my team is linked closely with preston and we are moving out to give the chief new detail and new content as we get after this important concept. You didnt ask but one quick comment. A highway without trucks. You need to look at the operating concepts first, figure out how we are going to operate as part of a joint force, part of the Coalition Force<\/a> in the future and once you assess that, you can Start Talking<\/a> about capacity, and you are looking for the wrong capacity. It would be nice when we talk about future capabilities it would be nice to flip the switch and all of a sudden be there, but the fact is our current force that we are going to use one way or another for the foreseeable future perhaps mostly through 2030 even as we bring nuclear abilities online so i think the highways we are building are going to be pivotal in linking the current force we have now much more effective than we could have imagined. I know weve been a lot of work considering how to cut to put meat on the bones to this but im curious if you can give us any more insight into what that work has shown to every one last year. What is been flushed out over the last year . And then also as we look to the fy 21 budget i realize you cant talk specifics, but where should we look to see the air force when it reflected in in e 21 budget, or is that going to be a few years out . What i would say, what you should expect to see from air force is what acting secretary donovan talked about yesterday. Those four key areas we have prioritized to be able to execute the national Defense Strategy<\/a> with an operating concept that we find is pretty effective. As multidomain command control, space, power, logistics under attack. We work very hard with our air force war fighting integration capability to flush out exactly what those things were, to value them, and ensure those things we are recommending for potential investment were significant contributors to making us more lethal and more effective in that fight. With that, thank you, everybody for being here today. Gentleman, thank you. [applause] this is the story of how this whole new economy was built and ive always been interested ever since i was working in washington in how business and government interact with one another. They have an artistic relationship feels like a collaborative relationship. The real story of American History<\/a> is one of Publicprivate Partnership<\/a> in many ways, in ways sometimes are unseen and so this was, this door is really great way to get into that. University of washington history professor Margaret Omara<\/a> discusses her book the code sunday night at eight eastern on cspans q a. I house judiciary subcommittee held a hearing on women in the criminal justice system. I heard from representatives from the American Civil Liberties<\/a> union and the Prison Policy Initiative<\/a> as well as the author of orange is the new black. This is two and a half hours. 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