You either have to have your system think, on the other end when you can’t talk to it, or you have to be able to talk to it all the time. And the truth of the matter is that you want both of those things. You want good autonomy and you want good robust com links that aren’t going to be destroyed. And, both of those need time, effort, and treasure to go after.

 

It seems that we’ve been in an atmosphere where it’s been a very permissive environment for the use of unmanned aerial systems. But the future may not be so permissive, and they will probably be actively jamming whatever they can jam.

Right. Right. So, it’s hard to jam a com link, a SATCOM link, unless you’re jamming the satellite. You know, when you get into a sophisticated threat environment, the joys of Predator operations start to fall apart.

 

Do you think that there’s a time somewhere in the future where all the aerial systems are going to be unmanned? Or, do you think there will always be a man in the loop?

Is there a time? Yes. It is not something that I can see right now and I’m a technical person. I have my hands in all of our technology, and I don’t see the date of that happening. I can tell you that mankind’s clever and crafty and that we will get there, but that brings on a whole other conversation of the rules of war. You know, the rules of war are grounded in the notion that both parties are at risk. A fighter pilot flying over a foreign country with a bomb on his airplane is at risk as he’s prosecuting a target on the ground. And the notion of that risk creates a whole behavior model that we all have. There’s a mutually assured threat, a mutually assured destruction. When you are completely autonomous, that goes away. There’s a lot of discussion on this if you read literature about the rules of war and where it goes. A full-out autonomous air wing attacking the country where no human is at risk other than the enemy … it is something we all need to think very carefully about.

What would you say is the one thing that most people don’t appreciate or are unaware of with respect to what NAVAIR does?

I’ll take a global view to answer your question. For 70 years, the high seas have been kept open to freedom of navigation by the United States Navy. And the way that happened is when somebody starts to act up and it starts to get ugly, the very first thing that shows up off their coast is an aircraft carrier, where no permission is asked or needed. Where there’s incredible firepower and an incredibly protected base from which our nation can exert its will on despots and bad people. And I think that that conversation very frequently gets lost. There were 56 days where the only operations that could happen against ISIS when the president said ‘go,’ the only force that could be applied came off of aircraft carriers. I think that that is an underappreciated value of the aircraft carrier and naval aviation. In my view, there will be a day – just like there’s going to be a day that we can work completely autonomous – there will be a day that the aircraft carrier goes the way of the battleship and is not necessary or viable. It’s just that I can’t see that day. I don’t see the day in my lifetime. I would much rather execute the nation’s will for a lot less money, but I can’t see a different way of doing it right now. There will be that day, but I just don’t see it yet.

 

What program or programs would you pick out as a success story or as success stories over the past few decades as far as NAVAIR goes?

Well, there’s a number of them. I would tell you that the Super Hornet was a classic recovery from a bad A-12. You know, we learn lessons multiple times in our lives. We went too much for the gusto on the A-12, and got a deal that was too good to be true – which is usually the case – and in the end, you were either going to have to spend a bunch more money, or you were going to have to compromise on your values of what you wanted. And the onset of the Super Hornet – on cost, on schedule, workhorse airplane – was a classic NAVAIR maneuver. A very balanced airplane. It can be there the first day of the war when you’re looking for a package. But, it can also work on day two, three, four, five very well.

I think the P-8 is an incredibly successful program that’s just going to rock the world. From the P-3 that has been one of the most successful programs in the history of naval aviation, I think you’re going to see the same thing with the P-8. I think when people start to understand the radar system in an E-2D, you’re never going to have enough of them. You know, they’re just incredible – that’s an incredible radar. The JDAM [Joint Direct Attack Munition] and JSOW [Joint Standoff Weapon] weapons, these GPS/INS weapons are just an incredible breakthrough in a joint program that has truly made a huge difference in the way the world was progressed. Those are huge programs.

 

I notice you were going to be the A-12 operational test director? Is that right? If it would have gone further?

Yes. That was entertaining.

 

I’m hoping that somebody will write the book about that at some point, to really get the whole story. I guess that was interesting.

Yeah, I was just a peon lieutenant in those days but, man, there was a lot of technology crammed into that airplane.

 

It certainly looked impressive. Is there anything that I should have asked you that I didn’t ask you?

There’s a two-sided coin here that I’m going to tell you about, and in the middle is the balance that I think is right.

There is a tremendous value to your systems commands maintaining an excellent technical base so that they can implement the technical authorities that are vested from Congress to the CNO to the SYSCOM. NAVAIR kept their technical base and in all the downsizing of people did not give it up. I credit brilliant men like Dr. Al Somoroff and [retired Vice Adm.] Joe Dyer. They truly protected the intellectual capital of the Naval Air Systems Command. Other systems commands have not been so lucky. I worked with our Air Force brothers all the time and they gave up too much of their technical expertise and handed it over to the contractors, which is an out-of-balance thing. It’s not that our contractors are bad, they’re fantastic companies, but you’ve got to have that check and balance of technically competent government engineers and they lost it. So that’s the one side of it.

The other side of it is, government can be very socialistic and controlling. There is a temptation to grow for the sake of growth and set excessive standards that are laborious and unnecessary. Government can be a self-perpetuating organism that you have to fight all the time. And so as a SYSCOM commander, the thing that I think is lost on folks is the balance between these two extremes … you’ve got to have the right technical authority, but you’ve also got to fight this incessant desire to grow a bureaucratic organization. And finding that balance, I think, is the key. You know, finding that check and balance is a key attribute leaders must have. From a guy that’s just done it, that is the way [I] try to run every organization I’m part of. I will always try to find those balances between the two and keep them in tension so that they self-cleanse, and so that you don’t get a SYSCOM that the first answer out of their mouths is ‘Oh, alright, you want me to do that, send more money and let me hire 1,000 more people.’ It can’t be that answer. It can’t be that answer all the time. By the same token, the Pentagon can’t say ‘oh, you SYSCOMs are too darn big; I’m cutting you 1,000 people’ without any logic or rationale. Somewhere in there is that balance that is essential to our security. It really is.