THE WATCH STAFF
The U.S. Air Force’s highest-ranking civilian official said both his service and the U.S. Space Force must act quickly to modernize if they are to counter gains made by the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, speaking during a January 19, 2020, “virtual fireside chat” sponsored by the Center for a New American Security, said that while the U.S. military remains the “best in the world,” recent actions by the PRC and other potential adversaries have dented its “presumption of superiority,” according to an Air Force news release. U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III has described the PRC as America’s “pacing threat.”
“We cannot go forward with a presumption of superiority that our military dominance demonstrated in the first Gulf War. … A lot of things can change in 30 years, and they have.”
Kendall, pictured, told the Washington, D.C, think tank.
(Pictured: An artist’s depiction of the future B-21 Raider stealth bomber.)
“I’m trying to instill in the whole department a sense of urgency. … These operational imperatives are the things we have to do to be successful and to have a successful deterrent,” Kendall said. “These problems are already upon us.”
Kendall offered seven “operational imperatives” as a path forward for the Air Force. They are, according to the news release:
Resilient space order of battle: Space is a conduit for intelligence, navigation, communication and other critical military capabilities. “We recognized space was a contested domain and we had to take aggressive action to protect our assets in space and also to deal with the threatening assets that potential adversaries might have,” Kendall said.
A fully networked, multidomain command and control system: The Air Force’s Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS) is the service’s contribution to the overarching Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2). Kendall agrees that linking sensors to data management and advanced command and control systems will help the U.S. own the decision space in conflicts, but he wants ABMS to be more tightly defined. “We need to focus it on things with the highest operational payoff,” he said.
Next Generation Air Dominance: Kendall foresees a collection of capabilities — including a manned platform teamed with multiple uncrewed combat aircraft — that can operate as a unit. “It will define in more clarity what else we need beyond an advanced platform that is the follow-on to the F-35 and F-22.”
Target acquisition at scale: “The whole idea of ABMS starts with the acquisition of things we need to worry about and giving us high-quality information so we can prosecute those targets, those threats, as effectively as possible,” Kendall said, pointing out there is overlap among some of his imperatives.
Resilient basing: Kendall wants to use Agile Combat Employment (ACE). This concept moves the Air Force from a small number of large, fixed airfields to smaller, more mobile facilities. The PRC, he said, has aggressively added weapon systems and tactics designed to damage or destroy fixed facilities. “ACE is designed to make that problem harder for an adversary,” he said. “We’ve made some progress in that area, but we need to be much more specific about the needed investments and allocate resources to them in a cost-effective manner.”
Readiness: “We have a deterrence-based strategy that’s backed up by the ability to fight effectively if deterrence fails,” he said. “Being able to fight effectively depends upon mobilizing our force, moving it to where it needs to be and supporting it when it’s there.”
Global-strike capabilities: This includes the continued development of the B-21 stealth bomber and also has other components ranging from uncrewed combat aircraft that can operate in tandem with the B-21 to command and control systems. Kendall said achieving the goals behind the imperative requires a focus on capability rather than just platform. “It’s a system-of-systems that surrounds the B-21 that makes it effective,” he said.
IMAGE CREDITS: NORTHROP GRUMMAN, U.S. AIR FORCE