[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] my name is david tula, dean of the institute for aerospace studies. Joining me is cohost, the editor of war in iraq, ryan evidence. Our topic this morning is the future of air superiority. Over the next decade and a half, the United States is at risk of losing its ability to control the domain in combat. Budget pressure for delaying key investments are adversaries continue to advance. With this in mind, Brigadier General alex brenna which led a team of airspace cyberlogistics and support experts in an exhaustive review of options to gain and maintain control of error when necessary. It was called an Enterprise Capability Collaboration Team support ecc t. For short and a resulted in the air force air superiority 2030 flight plan. To read the other key experts in air security for colonel tom colquitt tour, the Constant Development leader and mr. Jenks failing, the Analysis Team lead. We are very pleased they could join us today to explore this vital missionary. After the study was finished in the flight plan completed, general grange heard a series of four articles on the topic originally published by war in iraq. They were so well done that i asked with the approval if we could combine them into a Mental Institute policy. Its finished and we are releasing it here today, so please be sure if you havent already gotten a copy, get one and read it cover to cover. The way we run the pale today is in a discussion format with brian and i alternating with a few introductory questions and we will be sure to leave plenty of time for audience participation. Before answering the first question, well give Panel Members a couple minutes to get a little background in acting introductory remarks remarks today to make. With that, over to you. Great to be the cohost of this event. I just want to say very briefly when i first started a few years ago, one of the things that was striking was the air force was the least active service in participating public debate especially compared to the other services in particular. That is changed over the last couple of years in a series of articles played a big role on that. I want to emphasize how unusual it was for a Senior Leader to write such a sort of rigorous, well thought out original articles and throw it out against the wall where it is vulnerable to a lot of public criticism and i just want to commend the general for that and thank him for that and it was part of a wave of much more air force Public Engagement in organizations like the Mitchell Institute are crucial to that. I just want to commend the panelists for being part of this and sticking your neck out there in supporting more Junior Officers to do the same. I turn it over to you, gentlemen. Great, thanks. We are excited to be here. If an idea cant stand up, it may not be the best idea. Think that is my philosophy with this, getting it out and supporting us. We appreciate the opportunity to advocate for what we did in 2030. The city is a little over a year old now, but we stand by everything that came up in the ecc t. Work. Theres been progress on some things in one direction and progress in other directions other pieces of it. One of the things we said as we finished air superiority was and would it would likely be a divisiveness that chief of staff signed on the bottom line and thats certainly true. Its also certainly true provided intellectual framework to think about air superiority in the time frame. The way i would frame kind of the biggest intellectual outcome of this study is when we think about air superiority, we dont think about jet fighter combat anymore. It comes in order to achieve air superiority effect a condition that you set for the joint force. And so, that is why theres so many different pieces to this and it lays out a Broader Vision for where the air force could go in the future if it chooses and its resources stay aligned to to this in a fair sample resources, youve got an opportunity to bring air power of all kinds, space power of all kinds in cyberSpace Capabilities to bear in order to set the air security. If we just think of it as fighter combat, were not going to get where we need to go in the future. That is the bottom line of it coming integrated network of capabilities that we would advocate for from the study perspective. Did you want to say anything up front . All right, great. We will take questions. The first question will bounce back and forth and then throw it back to the audience. Theres a lot thats been said about the air force relationship with autonomy and one of the common criticisms you hear is the air forces against more Unmanned Systems because it is serviceware Fighter Pilots place in your role. One of the things that came out of this report in the articles that preceded it is an unfair characterization. I would love to hear the three of you comment on that and also talk about where you are thinking in terms of air superiority. I would say were not against economy. Its just how you use the economy. Its essentially a technology enamored started at a component level. Theres a difference between unmanned platforms and autonomy. They hope the user make decisions more quickly and eventually get to an Autonomous Vehicle and assault. I will add a piece of that for my personal yvonne autonomy. I go back to the concept of a network. We are talking about different pieces of capabilities that come together in a network fashion. For the networks perspective, autonomy looks like the ability is something that operate on its own. A couple ways you can do that. Or you can do it with some other capability that the gray matter between the ears of maybe me if im ever lucky enough to fly again providing that autonomy in the network appeared the beauty of thinking about it like that as you can get away from the emotional arguments of our Fighter Pilots going to be around and think about it from a capability perspective. What can make the best decisions under conditions where you need to operate independently because information is denied toward the platform. Can a machine be about or is there no subject to the required that you need Something Else and where will the trade point be . Its a little bit of an unfair characterization when we talk about autonomy. The question of where the point of autonomy happens. In the day flying an f16, when i first started flying that was a couple miles away from a nonverse area. Its an autonomous wingman to hit the target appeared years before that the bullet out of a gun. He was after that a longer range missile at the point of autonomy and you move it back. We been adjusting with the point of autonomy is based on capabilities we have a machine autonomous operations and where do you make that link happened. The ability to infuse logic into an aircraft and kind of man machine teaming is really powerful. The center fusion engine on the airplane brings in information together and presents it to with its easy to take us. Right now it does. Without the michigan polling information and something a human cannot uncover you wouldnt be where you are. The point of autonomy is a piece of debate i would focus on. Gentleman in the paper in the air security plan, you talk about the whole notion of family of systems. Could you comment and provide my definition to the audience in terms of what youre talking about when you describe family systems . Maybe take out one for starters. Weve got a good basis for how we pull that together. Absolutely. When youre thinking about the family systems coming out to look a capability youre trying to produce in the battle space. When you look at things in isolation, you can see how one thing performed against another. What a complex problem we are trying to get into for the future is how the evolution has occurred. Essentially a deficit overlapping multispectral environment where a lot of entities in concert with others. To affect in that area, airspace or any airspace you want to produce an effect, you need to operate with the other entities in that environment. When we look at all the various capabilities and analytically look at those things, without benefit of various technologies, various ideas and concepts, but when you put it into the environment, you have to work together. That became readily apparent throughout the course of the year that to operate in an environment in the unit of them operating in concert together. I think thats exactly right. So a family of system emerges after you look at how you accomplish everything you have to, target track, engage is one of them, but based on a logistical others. If technology was at the point you could make one system to do all of that in some Package Liquor platform, maybe you would want to do that. Maybe you wouldnt. Really its about how he pulled these different pieces of it . How do you fix it . Does that have to be in the same platform or can it be spread out and disaggregated and what we found as you might expect the most effective and efficient way to do it is to disaggregate capabilities away from just being in one place. Its a question over to aggregate, what he disaggregate in how people different pieces of capability together over time. I would say one criticism we face, estate and ive used a few times. We always get criticized for the air force typically gets criticized thinking about families of systems and families of capabilities and you end up building platforms. My answer to that is thats really not how we are operating right now in syria lets say. Sydney was made that it was an f18 that shot down over syria. It doesnt matter from an airmans perspective. The network of capabilities should come together, the f22s there were ever to quarterback and protect troops on the ground. As long as that network is able to provide air superiority, thats what its all about. Devoted family of system and capabilities, just sometimes part of my family can be a little bit dysfunctional and sometimes work really well together like my family on our good days. Could you talk a bit about the changing relationship between survivability in how the air force is changing the way they think about each of those components in relationship with each other as a result of your efforts . Okay, survivability, theres lots of ways to survive. Historically, it could have been speed. You increase an aircraft speed at 50 knots and made it more survivable. You also made it more lethal. Now i think it is a lot or complex. It can be speed. It can be altitude. It can be stopped is another thing we added to the toolkit 30, 40 years ago. Electronic warfare is a form of stealth if you will first up is part of Electronic Warfare. The right cocktail for the right mix of capabilities are what will make something survivable in the future and understanding the right cocktail based on the projected red is what is necessary and be able to identify what technologies you have in your toolkit to make things more survivable, whether it be a weapon, data link or platform. I think in the article is i even mentioned as an f16 pilot many years ago in our tactics manual talked about one of the best ways to be able to survive is to decrease adversaries out there messing with these. Theres a link we dont think about between survivability. All that much better chance of surviving if they take adversaries out at some point. It becomes complex as the balance and not the Detailed Planning for any system or capability or platform is going to get into how do you balance of the attributes. Very good. We look toward the future in the 2030 timeframe im removing to a world that is more and more dominated i operations in cyberspace and in our space. Is air superiority really going to be as important 2030 and beyond as it has been in the past . There are other capabilities just as important achieving conflict. I will start for this one. So, i think you cannot think of one domain without thinking about others. From an airmans perspective we look at how cybercapability infuses those domains as well. So one of the things as we were briefing air superiority we always said is you cant have it be superiority without air security and maybe you cant have space without air security in the future. There will be pockets of places where that doesnt apply. If you look at the network of capabilities we abdicate forward, theres a number of Space Capabilities that would apply, whether communications, whether its intelligence, whatever it happens to be that feeds into this network. Getting the front end accomplished, the most important piece of it to find if you need to go after to get air security, the whole thing breaks down. Inversely, if you think about space superiority comments he had him take satellite somewhere in the middle of the notion. You cant get air superiority over the islander rock with a piece of land, wherever it happens to be so you can tackle the entire satellite capability and take it out in the worst case, with a a connecticut sector nonkinetic effect come if you dont have air security come you cant take care of it. You may not be a would have space superiority if you cant get air security over certain pieces of the globe on the ground as well. They are highly interconnected in the 2030 timeframe and i think again at the network and how it comes together that will be able to bring all of them together and make some tradeoffs. Youll go well, the joint force commander you might make a tradeoff that says the Space Capabilities the most important thing right now, so im going to put all my air superiority forces in this network and concentrate deny an adversary the ability to deny me space or it might be a different piece because we have Ground Forces operating and you dont want them start the adversary capabilities either. One thing useful is if you flip the equation around and said what the adversary had air superiority . What freedom of action does they get them . It gives the ability to deny cyberspace where operators are. We talked about they can deny you space and air superiority and attack your forces on the ground. Weve had that happen 1953 we dont intend to let it happen in 2030. Anything to add to that . I would say Going Forward its important to have a multidomain approach and that includes the error domain as well. Error domain is needed for not just space, but land. I mean, you can look in europe that somebody was able to utilize the error domain and deny it from us. Our Ground Forces would be exposed sensors on the ground, whether a radar looking for Ballistic Missiles were defending space would be exposed to Adversary Air so they are all interrelated. If i could ask one question. [inaudible] i start monday. And that. And that too after wicked draw back the curtain a little bit and talk about what it is like to run and be a part of a working group like this in terms of managing talent, navigating bureaucracy where some might be more amenable to what youre doing than others. The importance of having civilian talent on the team as well as military talent. Efforts like this are becoming increasingly important to our services and joint force innovate. Thats a really great question, ryan. We were the first ect that the air force had done, so there was no template for how we were going to do this. I was fortunate that we identified some great books to be on the team and we had a very diverse set of folks who were kind of on a team of 10 to 12 people. One up and down at and down his assignments have been in the 15 months or so that we were together. That small port 10 to 12 folks is not nearly sufficient to get after all the issues we had. We needed a core of cyberand space expertise that wasnt really here in the d. C. Area, both kind of the center of our work was. To reach out to the space command, go down to san antonio where capabilities are in reach to a much broader group. Over the life of the ect, several hundred people participated bring in all sorts of different opinions and viewpoints to live. And it was it was not just operators. They could look out one of the logistical impacts of overcoming their intelligence professionals who look at how we need the intelligence requirements come a whole host of specialties came together. Leading a diverse team like that, you know, the most important thing is to come up with a shared vision. One thing airmen do share a vision about is making sure we can accomplish our core mission, where they can get it done, whether its putting up full motion video in the middle east or whether it is making sure gps is operating on a daily basis. The air force will get it done. When you bring people together and say this is the mission of the air force. Not air combat command or some piece of it. Is their superiority . Or forced labor superiority . Therefore semaphores have the mission. Air force intel of admission. All of a sudden a mission and we share an airman can get that kind of work done. Importantly it wasnt airmen. We did reach out to army and navy counterparts with a robust dialogue both understanding the requirements were from us as well as how we could ensure that we provided them the cover air superiority does. The air superiority underwrites so much of what we do. If you think a law that goes downrange on a daily basis, you think about cargo resupply happening, had been able to get the Afghan Air Force up to where it is, none of thats possible without superiority. Across the board is a great team that came together. We talked about bringing in civilian expertise because that was key as well. When you think of and deborah like this, you have the entire air superiority. In the course of the year you have a very limited amount of time, a deadline to get at the very end. Thats almost impossible to do all of that. Whatever place you are at. The opportunity here was a fantastic opportunity to open up the aperture, bringing a lot of experts. We had access to the experts in the air force studies and analysis. We had those folks there, folks at air force Research Laboratory , but not only the air force analysts brought together, folks are movi