Previous IFPA-Fletcher Conferences

The 34th IFPA-Fletcher Conference on
National Security Strategy and Policy:
Security Planning and Military Transformation

December 2-3, 2003
U.S. Chamber of
Commerce Building
Lafayette Square, 1615 H Street, NW
Washington, D.C.

Address by Lt. General Duncan J. McNabb, USAF, Deputy Chief of Staff for Plans and Programs, U.S. Air Force

Introduction by Dr. Jacquelyn K. Davis, Executive Vice President, IFPA

Lt. General McNabb: Jackie, following precedent, I'll include that in my remarks as we go. And Jackie and Bob, I'm very honored to be here on behalf of General John Jumper. And with the other three service chiefs sitting here, I'm hoping he's working the resource issues back in the Pentagon very well while you're over here.

This is a tremendous time for the armed services. And as I look at the Air Force, really, the next couple of years are going to be truly huge in their impact, especially for the future. And as you mentioned 1947 and 1986, I think the next couple of years are going to be that same kind of a push, as we get more joint in nature, and we get this transformation right, and set the course that will take us into the years ahead.

We sit here today with a combat ready and experienced force that just went through Kosovo and Afghanistan, and now Iraq. We're still at the global war on terrorism, so our folks are still learning, figuring out new ways, working together. We've really had a laboratory on combat. So as we look at transformation, it is one of those times when we can sit back and say, "Hey, we've been doing this in combat. We're missing here. We've missed a seam here. How do we work together better?" And so we have a real opportunity, the next two years, as we have a chance to reshape our force, first through the BRAC [Base Realignment and Closure], so that we can get our infrastructure right to serve our force structure, and then the QDR, which will kind of cement how we go about this transformation for at least the next six, seven, eight years.

I recently briefed our chief and secretary, and the other four stars at the Corona Conference of senior USAF leaders, recently held at the US Air Force Academy, and I talked to them about this being kind of like the perfect storm. You've got the BRAC. You've got the QDR. You have an election in the middle of that. And it's a great time to be the XP, because the chiefs all beat the heck out of us every day, going, "How are we going to do this all, and integrate it?" If you tie that with the fact that all the services are being equally dynamic on how they're looking at change, and how they're going to look for the future, and transform, we have to do it together. We have to learn together. We have to learn how to trust each other. And so it really is an excellent time to be part of all of this.

When we look at the recent conflicts, and what are some of the paramount lessons learned, that is probably the thing that we've got to look at first. And I think [what’s] paramount in that has already been mentioned. It was the transformational effect of truly joint concepts of operations, of working together in ways that we had not done before, teaming with the ground maneuver forces, with air and naval air power, in ways that we had just dreamed of before. And I think that all you have to do is look at the race to Baghdad, and think about both the Marines and the Army, and the Special Operations Forces, betting on air power in ways that, in the past, they hadn't depended on to the degree they did this time. They're not only talking about the direct strike capability, but they're also betting on our ISR enablers that would allow them to see what's out ahead of them, so to keep them safe. They're betting on our ability to resupply them with logistics, betting that we can open up another front for them if that is needed. And then, a space umbrella that allows all of this to communicate in ways and timelines that we had just hoped for before, that now, with the technology revolution, is going to allow us to really take advantage of that.

As General Schoomaker mentioned, I think that the expeditionary mindset, the [level] that we've got to get to—We really have to get away from the Cold War mentality. I think all of the services have really done tremendous things on getting past that, and looking to the future. For the Air Force, that's been our [objective]—becoming a really, truly, expeditionary Air Force, centered around our AEFs, our air expeditionary forces. And the thought there is that we've got to be able to have a sustainable rotation base that we can [use] day-to-day, through contingency ops all the way up to war, be able to surge it, bring it back down, reconstitute it, and do it in a way that allows our people to have some predictability, so that we get that retention that we all depend on in a very big way.

The other thing is, we had to open up [and improve] 38 bases in CENTCOM and EUCOM, and in many cases very, very bare bases with not a lot of support. And so we've got to get better at that. We've got to get better at [responding to] the joint forces commander when asked, being able to get in there, figure out what we've got to do, [and] again, working in a joint arena, figure out what everybody else can bring to the fight. And again, this combat laboratory that we've had over these last three conflicts allows us to really have learned from that. We just set up Eagle Flag up at McGuire Air Force Base to get the Air Force to be able to figure out, what are the packages we need to go in, tailored as they need to be by the joint forces commander, and then, ideally, get in there, open it up, in some cases turn it over to one of the other services. And so all of that is being worked. So, again, a very big step.

Kill chain compression. Putting cross hairs on the target is what our chief would say is, if we can do that in minutes rather than hours, again, the effect can be very dramatic. If you think about the B-1 that got the coordinates beamed to them, and 12 minutes later put down four JDAMs, when they thought that Saddam Hussein had gone into that restaurant, the part that folks maybe don't realize is that from the time that they saw that Saddam went in, it took about 45 minutes to go through all the way the chain, and get approval, which is really tremendous, when you really think about that. And then it took about 12 minutes for that B-1, once it was given the coordinates, to put bombs on target. If it had been 30 minutes, rather than 57 minutes, the effect might have been completely different. If you could get it down to 10 minutes, again, the effect could be completely different.

And so that's something that all of us are working on, and betting on critical enablers to do that. And I think that there's an awful lot that goes into the ability to compress that kill chain. And that would include all of those enablers, the things that we're doing in space. We are basically recapitalizing and transforming our space constellations all during the next five to 10 years. Again, all the services are betting that we can do that. And then you talk about ability to make decisions, so your command and control has to be upgraded. Our focus on AOC as a weapons system, making it just like any other platform, where you have standards. And their ability to talk to the other component commanders. General T. Michael Moseley, vice chief of staff, who was the combined forces air component commander (CFACC) during OIF and the JFACC—the air component commander—for Iraq and for Afghanistan, his ability to talk very quickly and intelligently through the data streams that they had, with the other component commanders, to make very quick decisions, work together, say, "Hey, we've got a seam here. How are we going to work that?" really enabled the kinds of things and successes you saw in Afghanistan and Iraq.

I think one of the best stories is of Tech Sergeant Markham sitting in Afghanistan, one of those embedded CCT members, who, when the general from the Northern Alliance said, "We'd like some air power," and in the past, he'd always ask for that, and they'd say, "Well, we'll get that to you." And it might be hours. It might be days. It might be never. When that general said, "Hey, I've got Taliban forces over there on that ridge, and if you could do something about that….” And he, again, was thinking that it would be in the next day or two, because he would be ready to ride. And Tech Sergeant Markham, the CCT member working with the SOF forces, identified that, got the coordinates, lazed it, got the coordinates, beamed those up, got approval from the Combined Air Operations Center, and 12 minutes later, all hell broke loose on that ridge.

Now, that not only created an effect, but I'll tell you what. That Tech Sergeant Markham was somebody with that Northern Alliance. They'd never seen somebody that you could go to. And again, it speaks very well to our young enlisted folks, and the folks that are out there that are just doing tremendous work. And it really is outstanding. So, again, compressing that kill chain in support of our joint partners is something that they're all depending on. And the other portion to this is the fact that, if we're going to do this right, we have to trust and build the confidence in each other. And that is not only done through warfare, but it's obviously training and exercises that we do. So that joint training, I think that as we look to the future, will be more and more the case.

Now, how do we make this happen? And I've got to say that as the resource guy, I kind of look at this a little differently from the jaded programmer's view. But right now, as I look at the Air Force—but I could probably say, this is true of all the other services—is that everybody wants more of what we can provide. Everybody wants more of our joint enablers, our space, our ISR, our airlift, and our tankers. And they also want more of our direct fire support or indirect fire support. They want more of our expeditionary capability, open up bases and so forth, our civil engineers and our medics, and all of the parts that go into that support. And you tie that with the fact that we had the very chronic under-funding in the 1990s. We also have a problem that we have to recapitalize our foundation in ways that in the past was not true. We had over a 200-year recap rate on our aircraft in the 90s. Two hundred years. Now, that just happens to be how many you have, and how many you were buying. And we were living off the excesses of the Cold War, what we had left. But we can't do that anymore, and it really put us in a trick.

Four years ago, our former chief of staff, General Michael Ryan, testified that we needed about $20 to $30 billion dollars a year more, just for recapitalization. Because the costs of operations and maintenance and aging aircraft was just eating our lunch, and we were spending an awful lot of money where it just didn't make much sense. I think when the Joint Staff and Office of Management and Budget did that for the other services, it was very comparable. And you tie those two. At the same time, in 2010, you're going to see a lot more baby boomers like me retire. And what you have is you're going to have 30 million baby boomers coming onto the books for Medicare and Social Security. At the same time, you only have 10 million new wage earners joining the workforce. There's going to be tremendous pressure on our fiscal resources. You tie that together, and the only way that you can meet all of those demands is through transformation.

And for us, the way we look at transformation is doing new things, using new things and old things in new ways. New things could be like stealth, like precision weapons, or old things like B-52s dropping precision weapons, and doing things, again, in different ways, or working with the SOF or the Army or the Marines in new ways, even using the old stuff. And then we modernize the old stuff as we need to, but again, those seams make a big difference, and making sure we fill those in.

So, what are the three components that we see as part of that transformation? It is organization. It's CONOPs. And it's technology. I already talked about technology, the fact that if you bring stealth together with our ability to do precision, you bring speed in there. I'll give you one example. And I'll also say, the enablers that allow that all to fit, the idea of taking two B-2s and four F/A-22s with small diameter bombs. You can create the same effect as you can with a 96-aircraft gorilla package going in there to take out 192 targets. Now, the support of those two different forces: one takes about 1,500 airmen to support, and again, 96 airplanes; and the other one takes six, and about 90 airmen. So, it is, again, you have some opportunities there if you put this all together.

So, the technology allows us some great synergy. But again, it's got to be figured out with the concept of operations. And I talked about the race to Baghdad. The concept of operations needs to be truly joint, because everybody is transforming at the same time. We need to continue to get better together. We need to figure out where we need to be, have complementary capabilities, and in some cases we're going to have redundant, because it's needed to be redundant, because it's such a critical area. And so that concept of operations, if you asked our chief and our secretary—and I think that the great work that the chiefs are doing and the CNO are doing now, in the commandant—they are working together in ways of saying, "How do we do this better together?" And you see a lot of partnering that goes on, that is going on, that, from where I sit, is superb. My counterparts are the same way, as we sit down and figure out, hey, how are we going to do this? How are we going to do this better?

And the final portion that we see is organizations. The huge focus that we have is to make our Air Force truly expeditionary. I talked about the AEFs. We're going to continue to refine that, get more people deployable, make sure they've got the right equipment, make sure that they are trained well. And all of that is going on. The other portion that we see as we bring on new equipment is that we want to make sure that we resource that equipment. We want to take full advantage of it. I'm an old mobility guy, and when I was working back in Military Airlift Command, we were getting ready to retire 267 C-141s, and buy C-17s to replace them. And everybody said, "Hey, tails, tails, tails. This is going to be really important." But the C-17 had about two and a half times the amount of cargo capability as the 141, and had about the same operating cost.

So, what we said is, "You can get by with fewer numbers of aircraft, but you've got to resource it accordingly. You've got to make sure that it's got the crew ratios, the parts, the spares, so we can get the utilization rate up. But the capability that you'll get with the C-17 will not only exceed the million ton miles that you're giving up, but the technological advances that allow it to go into tactical airfields and do things like a C-130 can will truly revolutionize how we do mobility." And all you have to do is look at where we are today. We now have 180 C-17s coming. But the way we use the C-17 today, we have much fewer than we had the 141s that it replaced. But it is doing things in ways that we only dreamed of before, again, working with the people that are our primary customers, which is normally our ground forces.

So, there's some real opportunities out there that we see, that as we bring on our new weapons systems, we want to do the same thing, take full advantage of the investment. And to take full advantage of the investment, in some cases, this is going to take new blending relationships. Again, General Schoomaker talked about the Total Force. That's the same thing that we see, the Future Total Force. I think we have a tremendous relationship between our Guard, Reserve, and Active Duty. They are fully embedded in our AEFs. They are part of it in a voluntary nature. And then they're also a very big part of it when they mobilize, so they become “full up rounds.” But they have the same standards, the same equipment. You know no difference between the three of them.

That part is going to be huge. And what we want to do is work with the Total Force in ways that we can say, "Hey, there's new opportunities out there to not only share airplanes, but we have new missions that you can play huge in. It can be Predator. It can be Global Hawk. It can be the new UAVs. It can be some of the command and control, because you're going to be able to do things from the continental US that you couldn't do before, in our DCGSs, and so forth." And what that will, again—in some cases, these guys, if they have two days availability, they can play. If they have two weeks availability, they can play. If they have six months availability, they can play. And when you ask the Total Force, one of their big things is how much they're gone. And if it takes them two weeks to get in theater, trained up, and two weeks to get back, sometimes, you know, they may only have six weeks of availability, and they may only be useful in that whole thing by three or four weeks. This allows them that if they have any availability, they can come do that. That protects them in their jobs, and so forth. We found in the mobility world that that is a huge advantage, because we could say, "Hey, if you can give us four days, you can do a round trip to Rhein-Main and come back." And it is a very different world. And so we just made sure our concept of operations, the way we did it, allowed the Total Force to play totally, and realize that they have special needs to be able to make this all work.

So, again, we see this as a tremendous opportunity that we're going into, a time when not only will we reshape our force, but also a time when we have a chance to shape our infrastructure to support that force, and doing it in a joint way that I think that we're having conversations about—I'll tell you, as a fairly young general officer, I will tell you that as I sit at this table, I can say that. But as I look at that, there are things that just—as I watch our chiefs of services work together, and our secretaries work together, and figure out ways that we're going to come together, that is going to be the biggest transformational effect of all. And we're excited about that. We are really excited about being part of the team. But again, it's going to take an awful lot of integration and coordination.

The biggest part of all this is obviously our airmen, soldiers, sailors, and Marines. As they learn about all of this, they get excited about this. They figure out these different ways. You know, our guys on horseback with the computer dangling on their saddle, and they've got their laser goggles, they're the ones that figured out how to get the coordinates, and work through, and get it up to the B-52 that could put the coordinates in the JDAM, and then the JDAM comes down and rains havoc. They're the ones that are going to take it to the next level. And the more they're learning right now, they'll take us, again, to a whole different level. So, with that, I think I'll stop there. But I look forward to the questions.

Questions and Answers

Audience: Jason Sherman from Defense News. My question is for General McNabb and General Schoomaker. Admiral Clark and General Hagee outlined a broad vision for where they'd like to take their services, with this notion of a sea base. Would the two of you be willing to endorse their vision, particularly the joint aspect of it, and say what role you see for your respective services in this sea base?

Lt. General McNabb: Well, if you ask us if we endorse, we obviously do. I think it's a great concept, and they are going to be betting on the Air Force support as needed. And I think that there's no question that this is the kind of thing that is, they come forward with that vision. We will look at how we need to support that vision for the employment of their forces.

One of the things that I think, and it kind of gets to maybe this end strength issue that you all talked a little bit—one of the things that you can see is, if we have to surge, and spin the dollars for a surge force, it becomes cost prohibitive. But one of the things that we can do by working together with capability-type packages, instead of talking about platforms, we talk about, what capabilities do we bring? What you can end up doing is often the combatant commander's packages of capabilities that will allow us to take care of each other's surges, and perhaps mitigate it. Where the Air Force might be surging and needs help, the naval and Marine forces come to fruition. Sometimes it would be a combination of air and Army forces coming together to say, "Hey, combatant commander, you need this."

So, I look at the vision of the Navy, the sea basing, when they brief that, to the programmers and the OPSDEPS, one of the things that became very clear is that our role in that is absolutely essential as well. And now the part is, how do we fold into that? That's the part that we were talking about the future of joint ops. I mean, it's great to see where they're going, and then we can say, "Hey, what else can we do for you? How could we make it even better?" And I think those relationships are really there. It's really going to make a big difference.