The Air Force is reviving the capability development planning process championed during the Cold War by the now-defunct Air Force Systems Command to produce the next generation of aircraft and technologies needed for air dominance in the 2030s.
Speaking at the Air Force Association's Air Warfare Symposium in Orlando, FL, last week, Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh lamented that the service diminished its long-term developmental planning ability when Systems Command was deactivated in 1992, just one year after the United States demonstrated its technological superiority during Operation Desert Storm in Iraq and Kuwait.
"We have pockets of it, but institutionally we gave it away," Welsh said. "We have to bring it back."
The test case, he said, has already started through the concept known as Air Superiority 2030 -- a wide-ranging effort to produce the next generation of weapon systems to succeed the F-22 and F-35 fighter jets, including bombs and munitions. The second and third test cases will examine the future of the land-based nuclear force and electronic warfare.
Welsh said developmental planning is a way of "looking down the road" 20 or 30 years to identify capability gaps and assess the world environment, emerging threats, needs, programs of record, strategies, concepts of operation, emerging technologies, and costs. "It's a constant re-look at the issues that affect you over time," he said.
The service's desire to improve development planning is almost wholly in response to an urgent need to modernize the force and revive the Air Force's spirit of innovation, which officials believe has atrophied over the past 25 years.
"We must modernize the Air Force," Welsh said. "This isn't optional. We must do it. And it will be painful because we have to make difficult choices to get the money inside our top line at current funding levels to do it."
Welsh said during Desert Storm the Air Force had 188 fighter squadrons and in the fiscal year 2016 budget will shrink that force to 49 squadrons, and from 511,000 active-duty airmen to 313,000.
"I'd love to be able to tell you that that smaller force is more modern, more capable and younger, but can't," the general said. "We made Operation Desert Storm look ridiculously easy. It wasn't that easy, but we were that good and that large."
Speaking at a Feb. 12 media roundtable during the conference, Gen. Herbert Carlisle said Air Dominance 2030 supplants talk of a single sixth-generation F-X or F/A-XX to instead focus on multi-domain capabilities. He pointed to air, space and cyber capabilities as well as new munition loadouts.
"With the F-22 and F-35, two fantastic airplanes, air dominance in that [2030] time frame may not solely be an aircraft; it's the family-of-systems discussion," Carlisle said. "Stealth is wonderful, but you need to have more than stealth. Speed and maneuverability, sensor fusion, staying inside the decision OODA loop -- there's a portion of stealth that is hugely important and is part of it, but it's certainly not the only thing."
The general said long-range standoff munitions and even new air-to-air missiles to replace the AIM-120D AMRAAM and AIM-9X Sidewinder would be included in the air superiority discussion.
He said the capabilities being developed by America's potential adversaries, such as the Chinese PL-15 air-to-air missile, are "incredible."
"I believe if we look at this as we have in the past, we can figure out how to change the game and be better at it," Carlisle said, adding that high-powered lasers and microwave weapons are technical areas showing great promise.
'Planning for success'
According to Welsh, part of the capability development planning process involves being ready to exploit an emerging technology once it arrives. He said the current model involves waiting for a technology to emerge and then going out and looking for money to spin it into a program of record. Developmental planning, he believes, will allow the Air Force to look further ahead and make room in future budgets to capture that technology upon arrival.
"It may be laser applications for directed energy, new engine technology, one hypersonic test program," Welsh explained. "If we know that directed energy program is due to report something out in 2018 we should plan for success, have resources aside so we can immediately invest and exploit the success the program just gave us. Create a strategic pivot point for ourselves, don't wait for one to open the door and beat us in the face."
Welsh said industry must be consulted more, and must have greater oversight of the process so it knows where to direct its resources and efforts. At the moment, he said, industry is "behind the power curve" because the Air Force does not express what it plans to do if a technology succeeds.
"You should be part of this transition planning; you should be part of the capability collaboration team process and developmental planning," Welsh told industry during his conference presentation.
The Air Force's fiscal year 2016 budget delays the Next-Generation Air Dominance program's planned entry into the technology development phase by one year to the end of 2016. Commonly referred to as the sixth-generation fighter project, the program receives $8.3 million in the FY-16 budget request for operational concept studies, technology assessments and to mature air superiority-related technologies. -- James Drew
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