What influence does the Warfare Center have in bringing up things the MAJCOMs and others don’t?
If there is a tactics element we think needs work, there is a process to elevate those and seek approval to open up ways to handle that. We try to give them a well thought-out reason for what we want to do and I don’t remember a time where we have sent something up to the MAJCOMs where we did not get approval to go ahead.
What additional changes are anticipated as the center continues to evolve and adapt to meet changing technologies – ours and others – new threats, a changing geopolitical environment, and, of course, less money?
As force structure changes and systems mature to the point where they start to age out or new elements develop, such as cyber, we adapt as part of a constant maturation process.
We are responsible for operational testing for air, space, and cyber. We’re very good at air, because we’ve been doing that for decades; we’re pretty good at space, because we have a linkage to the Air Force Space Command and they’ve been doing it for decades. Cyber is a relatively new thing, maturing and converting at such a rapid rate, we are looking at some different paradigms.
U.S. Marine Cpl. Steven White, Marine Attack Squadron 513 aviation mechanic from Marine Corps Air Station Yuma, Ariz., marshals an AV-8B Harrier during Green Flag 12-8 June 20, 2012, at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev. The Harriers flew training missions that improved their ability to support U.S. Air Force Joint Terminal Attack Controllers and airmen on the ground, who were in turn training on their ability to call in air strikes. U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. William P. Coleman
Is the right answer to do ops testing here or at Cyber Command or in a partnership with industry, which sets off alarm bells with some people? I can’t build a better iPhone® than Apple, so there is a point where I have to rely on industry to contribute to some of this emerging technology. We have to think through how we are going to do that, which is part of the emerging technologies process.
Are you working on countermeasures against possible enemy cyber attacks on our networked battlespace and interlinked systems and weapons?
We try – and I think we do a pretty good job – to stay focused on all tactical and operational employments, both offense and defense, in the space and cyber domains.
Just like in the air, where you have to fight your way in and fight your way out to get bombs on target, you have to do the full equivalent of that in space and cyber. That takes you to terms like computer network attack and defense and ops and deployment. The aggressor squadrons are there to replicate other countries, the bad guys attacking our systems – including the space and cyber aggressor squadrons.
You started with air, then added space and now cyber. Is there anything else you anticipate on the horizon that might become a significant element at the Warfare Center in the next five or 10 years?
The five primary domains that warfighting occurs in are air, land, sea, space, and cyber. The air, land, and sea domains are fairly finite environments. Space has a certain finite level, too, in terms of how far out we can go into space to do things.
Cyber is unique in that it is the only man-made domain. It changes and morphs quickly, so in the future, what will change will be as cyber continues to change and capabilities evolve. We have to determine how those feed back to operations done in the air, sea, land, and space domains.
A U.S. Air Force F-15D Eagle, 433rd Weapons School, flies next to a U.S. Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet, Naval Strike and Air Warfare Center, during Midway White III, June 26, 2012, over the Nevada Test and Training Range. Midway White is a joint demonstration involving the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the USAF Weapons School, and elements of the Naval Strike and Air Warfare Center. U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Christopher Hubenthal
To what extent are you concerned about the U.S. military becoming too reliant on the digital domain – computers, GPS, etc. – things that could be fried by a major solar ejection, for example?
There are people who would like to go back to airplanes with reciprocating engines and iron sights, but technology advances; that’s just the way it is. And as technology advances and you learn to use it to your advantage, you have to maintain the basic skill sets for some period of time.
There is not a finite time, just some point where it becomes so reliant you don’t need to maintain the backward skill sets. In the 1940s, commercial airlines had parachutes on board for everybody. Today, there are not because airplanes are pretty reliable. So there are things that become reliable, but also things you have to be able to do.
One of the key tenets for the 57th Wing is to train to the CDO elements – contested, degraded, and operationally limited environments. Contested are things the enemy does to us, such as jamming. Degraded is just something that doesn’t work, maybe because a battery is dead.
Then there are operational limitations – weather, political realities, rules of engagement, etc. If country X says you can’t fly through their airspace, that is fair; they are sovereign nations. So we build scenarios with those things included so we become used to solving such problems. And if something knocks everything off the network, we have trained for that eventuality.
Any closing thoughts?
At the end of the day, the same things that probably kept my predecessors awake at night in the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s are things I think about today: Have I best prepared these young men and women to go to war for our nation, to provide the best airmen so the soldiers, Marines, and sailors on the ground and aboard ships are as protected as they can be, so they are prepared to defeat our nation’s enemies?
This article was first published in Defense: Summer 2012 Edition.