An Interview With Chris Sheppard (Continued)

SLD sat down with Chris Sheppard, a manager of USAF programs for Northrop Grumman Corporation’s government relations group, to discuss the interaction between the F-16 and F-35 as the U.S. Air Force builds its capabilities into the 21^st century.  We asked Chris to share his personal experience as an F-16 pilot, his work on the F-35, and how the two compared.  Chris works at the Fighter Demonstration Center in Arlington, Virginia, a facility shared by Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Pratt and Whitney set up to showcase the Fifth Generation Fighter capabilities.  Chris Sheppard has flown all F-16 blocks, “A through D,” he says, and has closely followed the fighter’s evolution from block to block in his current line of work at Northrop Grumman.  A graduate of the Air Force Academy, Chris Sheppard is now an Air National Guard F-16 pilot and has flown F-16s operationally on active duty and with the reserve component, and participated in a number of combat exercises including Operation Northern Watch, Operation Southern Watch, and Operation Iraqi Freedom.

The F-35 is intended as the replacement for the F-16.  This interview explores how the new fighter will execute future missions differently, as well as how the two fighters may work together during the transition.  We also discussed with Chris Sheppard how customers can get greater connectivity between the two aircraft. Below is the second part of the interview.

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SLD: You had referred to the F-35 pilot, as a tactical decision maker, but doesn’t the F-35 play a much more strategic role in the new paradigm?If you look at the Afghan operation it’s much closer to the Marine Corps concept of distributed operations, much like the Marines talk about the “strategic corporal.” In effect, some of the formations will be almost strategic in character in a decentralized operation.

Chris Sheppard: That is true.  Fighter pilots are typically thought of as being tacticians in the Air Force construct of operations.  Although they will continue to be front-line tacticians, having an asset like the F-35 provides the capability to have much more situational awareness and have a much more strategic impact on decisions made in the battle space.  Part of the paradigm shift is viewing flying forces –in this case the fighter community- as part of the strategic, vice tactical, picture.  This is similar to the concept you spoke of previously regarding the situations our ground forces find themselves in today’s fight – their decisions and subsequent actions can have significant strategic ramifications.

In the current fight, we’re continuing to appreciate the value of leadership and critical decision making at every level.  The F-35’s ability to gather data and present it in a manner where decisions can be made puts this platform on a new step with regard to its strategic importance in terms of real-time decision making.

When time isn’t as critical, some decisions can be passed back to the rear echelons when there’s time to even more deliberately ascertain, analyze, and then proceed with the proper response.  Many times decisions need to be made in real time- not only on the ground but in the air as well.  The need to have that information there and to make the right decision is invaluable.  One never knows.  I’m sure the “strategic corporal” to whom you referred earlier didn’t anticipate the time he or she would be expected to make a decision that could have battlefield effects larger than they ever dreamed possible.  But that’s what we’re facing now with this type of threat and I think we’ll continue to see in future world events.

SLD: Does stealth really change Concepts of Operations?

Chris Sheppard: Stealth provides the ability for true first-look, first-shot in a traditional kinetic effect, force-on-force type application.  One has to ask: with the evolution of enemy weaponry and the projected evolution of threat aircraft by other countries building fifth-generation-like aircraft, will they be of the caliber of fifth generation aircraft that we see in the United States and with her allies? Perhaps not.

Will they be built in vast quantities?  I think there’s general agreement that probably will be the case.  Having the benefit of very low observable stealth on these aircraft does require that weapons be carried internally.  This provides the aircraft the opportunity to have a much decreased chance of detection to not have to go into those force-on-force types of scenarios, depending on the situation. 

Pilots have to be mindful of ground threats as well.  With today’s precision-guided weapons, the aircraft is like a truck that’s carrying weapons into a combat envelope where they can be deployed, and then returned to base.  That’s a fairly typical mission.

One benefit of the F-35 is the ability to reconfigure and carry even more weapons externally when the threat environment is assessed to be permissible to this type of configuration.   This enables the benefit of internal and external stores to carry more ordnance to service more targets if called upon to do so.  The F-35A can carry approximately 18,000 pounds of ordnance when fully loaded internally and externally, far exceeding the payload of the F-16 and F-18.

SLD: There’s a capability on the aircraft that may not be widely appreciated and that’s DAS.  What does DAS do? And what does it do for your air-to-air combat and also what’s the potential for DAS to contribute to the Army and the Marine Corps on the ground?

Chris Sheppard: The Northrop Grumman Distributed Aperture System (DAS) is truly one of the game changing capabilities resident on the aircraft.  We’re already seeing increased interest in its application on rotary wing aircraft, and on other assets for missions and roles such as missile defense, among others.

The Distributed Aperture System provides multiple capabilities to the aircraft.  First, there’s no need to fly with night vision goggles, which we do now when conducting combat operations at night. The night vision goggles that we currently fly with are dependent upon the amplification of ambient light.  In a sense, your night vision goggles are just another sensor.  They don’t simply turn night into day and one must look and analyze before acting – much like a radar, much like a targeting pod.

The Distributed Aperture System (DAS) provides an EO/IR picture in a different spectrum than night vision goggles, such that it’s not dependent on ambient light, so now flying below cloud decks, and flying anywhere there’s an overcast sky, or where ambient light’s not present, is possible.

The second thing is its ability to detect missiles.  There’s a lot of growth capability in the Distributed Aperture System.  I think we’re only on the cusp of understanding what its true value will be to the war fighter.  Its ability to detect and accurately locate firing points of missiles and anti-aircraft artillery is key to getting other sensors locked on to where that threat came from, so the appropriate action can be taken – whether it’s kinetic or non-kinetic.

DAS has a situational awareness mode that simultaneously tracks all aircraft within range, spherically about the F-35.  This capability will have significant implications in air combat maneuvering, for launching off-boresight weapons, and for overall survivability.

There are also growth modes for the Distributed Aperture System which will significantly enhance the platform’s networking capability.  DAS works in a spherical context and is always on, all the time, always detecting.  Perhaps our biggest challenge is DAS taking in so much information that the next step is to figure out how to manage and distribute all the data it can provide.

SLD: One thing that’s not appreciated is how the F-35 can potentially reshape the next generation of UAV operations. In the manned-to-unmanned evolution, what do you think about the possibility of off-loading data to an unmanned flying data recovery system?

Chris Sheppard: There are multiple options.  One of the consistent concerns of combatant commanders articulated over and over again is the need to hand off data in a usable format.  It’s about turning data into actionable intelligence.  The capability needed is well-articulated; our challenge is to devise the most efficient manner to manage the data and make the intelligence actionable.

SLD: So the F-35 can contribute by managing data choke points for leaders who have to make real-time decisions in a tight timeframe?

Chris Sheppard: The F-35 could aid by gathering and assimilating data from others in some circumstances, or acting as a data provider to other systems.  If the objective is to get the data off board to preserve the processing power on the jet for other functions, it can be a data provider.  Perhaps in other circumstances the best option is to utilize on-board fusion capacity, then relay.  We’re now evolving into a system-of-systems construct, and we can readily see how such a “flying combat system” — when integrated with the ground forces — provides important new capabilities from which to develop the future of air as well as ground and sea operations.

SLD: Let’s turn to the transition from the F-16 to the F-35.  As squadrons of F-35s are added, how will the F-16 mission evolve?

Chris Sheppard: We’ve already started to see the evolution in the concept of operations and concepts of employment.  Fifth-generation fighters are working with fourth-generation fighters, not only from the U.S. perspective, but from a coalition perspective, in exercises throughout the world.  The ability for the F-35 and the F-22 to provide the benefit of fused data discussed earlier in this conversation, and hand that off, whether via voice, data link or other methods, to other fighters is invaluable.  Even after these fifth-generation fighters have gone into a highly contested threat area and expended all their ordinance, they’re still of tremendous value in coming back to act as battle space managers.

Looking at this from a battle management perspective, we may have a scenario where F-16s are utilized as a ‘bomb truck’ carrying weapons into a less contested battle space.  The F-35 can track and identify potential targets from denied airspace, and signal back or provide awareness to legacy aircraft for follow on tactics.  Our ‘bomb trucks’ may launch missiles from the less contested areas eliminating threats while the F-35 continues to conduct its operations in the anti-access battle space.  This invites a whole new conversation on the next evolution of weapons for the F-16, F-15, or Eurofighter.

SLD: Northrop Grumman recently introduced the Scalable Agile Beam Radar (SABR), which promises to be an important enhancement for the F-16, both for the U.S. and potentially for allies. How does SABR contribute to the fourth to fifth generation fighter evolution?

Chris Sheppard: The entire aerospace and defense community will continue to raise the question: “What will become of the fourth-generation force structure, especially the great number of F-16s—both domestic and international?”  We rely upon the F-16 for not only for overseas contingency operations, but also for mission of air sovereignty alert in the United States.  We work very closely with allied nations flying similar platforms throughout the world.

Developing an affordable sensor for legacy aircraft that doesn’t require any modifications to the outer mold lines of the aircraft and which can be put into the aircraft on the flight line without having to go through a depot modification and lose aircraft availability is tremendous.

In terms of capability, Northrop Grumman has leveraged its core competence in Active Electronically Scanned Array radars to provide the highest possible commonality in keeping with the objectives I just stated. This will give the F-16 enhanced capability, relevance, and much improved sustainment.  An F-16 AESA system like SABR will provide much greater situational awareness; more precise, multiple target tracking for both air and ground targets; and a very high resolution synthetic aperture radar map capability.  Some capabilities are ported from the F-35 – like much greater electronic protection.    The bottom line is it gives the F-16 aircraft much greater operational availability and relevance.

The real value that comes out of all this is the leveraging of technology.  The ability to leverage investments in fifth-generation fighter technology back into fourth-generation fighters keeps them relevant with sensor enhancements.

It’s not about turning fourth-generation fighters into fifth-gen fighters; that’s not possible.  In order to add value and keep them relevant you have to explore doing things like sensor enhancements, i.e. putting active electronically scanned arrays and other sensors on board, not in a very low observable context, but in support of the total force structure to keep those aircraft relevant.  It’s generally accepted that we’re going to continue to need F-16s in our force structure; all invested in our fighter force structure are going to have to make some tough decisions with regard to how our future force will be balanced and what’s a right mix of fifth-generation versus fourth-generation fighters.

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*** Posted on March 31st 2010

SLD sat down with Chris Sheppard, a manager of USAF programs for Northrop Grumman Corporation’s government relations group, to discuss the interaction between the F-16 and F-35 as the U.S. Air Force builds its capabilities into the 21^st century.  We asked Chris to share his personal experience as an F-16 pilot, his work on the F-35, and how the two compared.  Chris works at the Fighter Demonstration Center in Arlington, Virginia, a facility shared by Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Pratt and Whitney set up to showcase the Fifth Generation Fighter capabilities.  Chris Sheppard has flown all F-16 blocks, “A through D,” he says, and has closely followed the fighter’s evolution from block to block in his current line of work at Northrop Grumman.  A graduate of the Air Force Academy, Chris Sheppard is now an Air National Guard F-16 pilot and has flown F-16s operationally on active duty and with the reserve component, and participated in a number of combat exercises including Operation Northern Watch, Operation Southern Watch, and Operation Iraqi Freedom.

The F-35 is intended as the replacement for the F-16.  This interview explores how the new fighter will execute future missions differently, as well as how the two fighters may work together during the transition.  We also discussed with Chris Sheppard how customers can get greater connectivity between the two aircraft.

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Designated the AN/AAQ-37, and comprising six electro-optical sensors,
the full EO DAS will enhance the F-35’s survivability and operational effectiveness
by warning the pilot of incoming aircraft and missile threats,
providing day/night vision and supporting the navigation function
of the F-35’s forward-looking infrared sensor
(Credit: DoD Joint Program Office)

SLD: Chris, thank you for taking the time to sit with us.  So let’s get back to basics here.  What is an F-16 and can you describe its mission?

Chris Sheppard: You’re welcome, I’m glad to be here.  The F-16 is a highly maneuverable, combat proven multi-role fighter aircraft designed and developed in the late 1970’s to execute air-to-air combat and air-to-surface attack missions.  Its purpose was to provide an affordable, high-performance weapon system, not only for the United States, but also for partner nations.

Chris Sheppard: Let’s talk about this in terms of what industry calls ‘block evolution’.  The F-16A refers to the Blocks One through Twenty, single seat aircraft; the F-16C began with the Block 25, and now we’re up to Block 52+ in this evolution.  The ‘Block’ is an important term that traces the F-16s evolution in capability.  Without changing the outer mold lines of the aircraft, we’ve been able to add capability with each subsequent Block and adapt the aircraft to continually changing roles and missions.
The F-16’s roles and missions are continuing to evolve.  The F-16 has evolved to be a real workhorse for US and allied nations in many mission areas including air-to-air, air-to-ground, and close air support.  It has also proven significant in the dynamic targeting role, which we call DT, and the non-traditional intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) role, to help troops on the ground conduct their missions.
Two pertinent missions we’re executing today in the ISR role are armed overwatch and armed reconnaissance.  Obviously, the original mission of the aircraft was to deliver kinetic effects when called upon in accordance with the rules of engagement, but now we’re also utilizing the aircraft as an ISR platform to maximize the value of the time we’re getting from the aircraft while airborne.  The SEAD and DEAD roles — the suppression of enemy air defenses and the destruction of enemy air defense roles — have evolved through Block upgrades on the aircraft also.

SLD: When the Air Force introduces the F-35, it will likely include some of these F-16 missions and capabilities but overall the F-35 provides a very different capability.  How would you distinguish the two aircraft and how will the F-35 affect the missions sets with which the F-16 has been tasked?

Chris Sheppard: The legacy fourth-generation fighters, which we speak of being F-15s, F-16s, F-18s, have become more stealthy over time with each subsequent block upgrade as they have taken on some low observable treatments to help achieve a little more stealthiness.  It’s really the advanced avionics upgrades that have always been a cornerstone of the new Blocks.  Also, by leveraging global positioning systems (GPS) and laser-guide technologies, these aircraft become more effective and precise kinetically armed assets, especially with the evolution of advanced precision-guided weapons.
But there are inherent limits to upgradeability of the legacy aircraft.  The fifth-generation aircraft, the F-22 and F-35, are built from the ground up with many advanced capabilities in mind that can’t be attained from adding on or strapping on pods, et cetera, to ‘fourth-generation’ aircraft.
Fifth-generation aircraft are designed from the ground up with very low observable stealth.  This is very important from a threat perspective in the advent of already-fielded and future radar, avionics, and weapons.  There’s also integrated sensor fusion, where primary sensors – like the APG-81 in the case of the F-35 – are highly integrated with the Electronic Warfare system or the electro-optical Distributed Aperture System (DAS).  Sensor fusion is the kind of visceral capability that can’t simply be added to legacy aircraft or retrofitted on later.  Sensors and accompanying software must be part of the design architecture from the get-go for fusion-compatible applications.  There are other aspects as well — net enabled operations, the ability to gather information and then share the information with users who need the data real time.
As I mentioned before, the F-16 was developed in the late 70’s with countries in the European Participating Air Forces (EPAF).  Similarly the F-35 is being developed with eight partner nations, and in the United States with three services, the Air Force, the Navy and the Marine Corps.  In addition, we have security cooperation partners who participate in the Program, with prospective foreign military sales; other countries are already inquiring about the aircraft.
All of these partners will help the coalition with basing options, and the overall team capabilities will be significant.  The fleet will have range and persistence, and as I mentioned earlier, the sensors; and the ability to share the information as a team versus having systems that don’t communicate or aren’t designed from inception to communicate with each other.
While the F-16 has gained impressive capabilities with each subsequent Block upgrade, the one core difference with the F-35 is the bottom up approach for integrating capabilities.  This includes stealth. Integration is a central idea from the beginning.  The F-35 brings all partner nations into a unified advanced warfighting and interoperability standard in one giant leap.

SLD: This fact of integration, plus an open architecture, will allow an easier upgrade process: those are two very important discriminators in thinking about the F-35 versus the legacy aircraft. Because Northrop Grumman supports so much of the integrated aspects on the aircraft in terms of the sensors and the AESA radar, could you comment a little bit about the advantage of integration and the advantage of this kind of foundational upgradability?

Chris Sheppard: I’ll cover them in sequence.

• Fifth-generation fighters bring one main advantage to the war fighter and to the combatant commander: survivable situational awareness. Situational awareness, by definition, is the perception of environmental elements within time and space, being able to comprehend the meaning of all the data coming in and then being able to project the status in the near future.  In today’s battle space, there’s much more data being thrown at war fighters near-simultaneously.  It’s imperative fighters—for tactical and strategic reasons—to have complete, accurate, and up-to-the-second situational awareness.
  With all this technological and situational complexity on one human decision maker, the benefits of the F-35 stand out and here’s why.  First and foremost, you have to have the sensors on board to gather the information that you need to target, pass intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance information, or–if need be–deliver kinetic effects on a target.  Northrop Grumman provides the Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar; the Distributed Aperture System (DAS); data link; communication, navigation, and identification system, in addition to the center fuselage structure of the aircraft.  The avionics systems work in concert with each other and play key roles in making sure actionable intelligence is there, at the ready.
• The second thing you need is fusion, the ability to take information from all these—and other–sensors (on or off board) and fuse together in a manner such that the human decision maker isn’t assimilating all this while flying and trying to apply rules of engagement, et cetera.  Having the ability to fuse this information together and make it actionable is key.
• Thirdly, we must be able to display this information in a manner in which a human decision maker can make tactical—and strategic–decisions.  The first priority for the pilot is to execute tactics and not to be caught in a quandary of wondering whether information is valid or not.  Data needs to be presented as valid right away.  The F-35 and the F-22 have the displays which allow the pilot to make decisions with confidence and execute in accordance with the rules of engagement.
• Lastly, the fifth-generation fighters bring the ability to network and the road maps to get this data off the platform to either element mates in the formation, to members of the coalition who are flying other F-35s in the battle space, or to get the data on to the ground when needed.  F-35 fulfills the non-traditional ISR role when the guys and gals on the ground are using information garnered from the F-35’s sensors or information is being passed back to various operation centers.

And so those four elements of situational awareness — the sensors, the fusion, the display and the ability to network —, I think, really make it stand out above all ‘fourth-generation’ aircraft.

SLD: What about the impact on the upgrading process?

Chris Sheppard: Upgrades are needed just as quickly as we experience technology shifts.  Modular, open system architectures are a key core competence of what we at Northrop Grumman bring to the fight.  The customer has invested billions of dollars in these aircraft to provide hardware and software solutions that are common and leverage that investment across platforms, including fourth-generation fighters.

SLD: What effect do the global partnerships have on leveraging investments, since really for the first time, multiple players are investing concurrently?

Chris Sheppard: The global investment in the F-35 translates into unprecedented operational flexibility for our teammates worldwide.  It’s going to provide an advanced sustainment model that changes the logistics and services paradigm. This aircraft is going to be around for many, many decades.  We’re still building F-16s and the first one was delivered in 1978–who would have imagined?  I believe Lockheed Martin has delivered over 4,500 F-16s worldwide which is truly amazing and testament to the those who build, fly, and maintain the aircraft.

Credit: DoD Joint Program Office

SLD: What can you say about the F-35 as far as providing the man-in-the-loop in an era where we’re seeing the deployment of so many UAV platforms?

Chris Sheppard: I think that there are tradeoffs between the unmanned and the manned aspects of flight.  It kind of snuck up on us and it happened very quickly with the advent of 50 plus UAS combat air patrols.  I think that the persistence that those platforms provide is invaluable.  I think that they offer advantages with regard to niche capabilities based on the physical flight characteristics of those platforms.
They still have, in a sense, a human in the loop, albeit not in the cockpit.  I think the F-35, from a fighter perspective, is able to leverage its ability to have a real time decision maker on the scene, communicating via voice and every other means with which the aircraft can communicate, certainly fills many of the gaps that occur in the plethora of situations in combat, or in the overseas contingency operations we’re engaged in, that can’t be filled by an unmanned platform.

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*** Posted on March 22nd, 2010

In this final part of the interview, we discussed with General Dubik the way forward in Iraq.  We discussed first the continuing process of transition 2009-2010 and then the question post-2010 of building a longer-term relationship with Iraq as well as the challenges of working with the Iraqis to provide for the territorial defense of Iraq in a dangerous region of the world.

SLD: One of the things I puzzle about is the stockpile of kit that we have in Iraq now. How do we reach judgments about what the Iraqis need for legitimate defense? And how do we help provide equipment either from the stockpile or through some other mechanism?

Lieutenant General Dubik: Well, I’ll respond in terms of the process. I’ll use our Humvees as an example. In October 2007, General Odinero and I came to the belief that there were a good number of Up-Armored Humvees – the older models – that were going to end up costing more to ship home, refurbish, and then reissue to the force, than it would to just simply refurbish them to sufficient level in Iraq and give them to the Iraqi security forces.

So we negotiated a sufficient price with the Department of the Army and the Department of Defense, and we used the Iraqi Security Force Fund to finance that. It was the fastest way to do that.  We started turning around Humvees for the Iraqis by, I think, March of 2008, to the tune of several hundred a month.

SLD: And so it came out of the Iraqi security funds that you were talking about?

General Dubik: Yeah, and that was an absolute essential move, because these Humvees increased the capability and confidence of the Iraqi Security Force, almost more than any other piece of equipment.  M-16s were the other one that we did, but M-16s were jointly funded, part by the Iraqi Security Force Fund and part by the Iraqi money.

With respect to the Humvees, the Iraqi part was paying for all the spare parts, and they paid for all the maintenance. This is another example of cost sharing that we used to accelerate the growth and capability of the Iraqi Security Forces.

So I expect, to get back to your question, that there will be other pieces of equipment that we draw down like that, where if you do the cost analysis, it’s going to cost a heck of a lot more to bring it all the way back, refurbish, and reissue, than it would be to sell it to the Iraqis.  And there will probably be an agreement as to who pays for what and how much.

SLD: As we think beyond internal security, to national defense, what kind of arms equipment policy should we pursue?

General Dubik: That should be transparent to our allies and partners in the region, it shouldn’t be anything that is in anyway hidden, and it should be treated as a natural movement – from a military focused on internal defense and counter-insurgency to a military appropriate for self-defense.  For example, they’re now starting to purchase M-1’s and they may purchase other ground equipment. We want them to purchase airplanes from us, I think anyway.  They’re now approaching a point when that should start to happen.

In January 2008, the Iraqi Minister of Defense came to the United States with a plan, a phased plan, to move his forces from internally focused to self-defense focused. And that phased plan included equipping – changing of the equipment of his force. The plan was very well thought out. The Minister’s plan had phases in 3 or 4 units year hunks, so that each country – the U.S. and Iraq – in the right interval could come to an agreement whether they wanted to continue to move down those phases or not, whereby at the end of the phases, the Iraqi defense forces were outfitted with mostly American equipment.  During these phases, the Iraqis would also accomplish whatever sizing and reorganizational changes they had to make.

General Dubik: “Aircraft – fixed-wing and rotary-wing – ground vehicles,
weaponry like artillery, and naval shipping, all are going to be necessary
to make the shift from internal defense to self-defense.”
(Photo: Iraqi Air Force College to Train With T-6A’s,
Bagdad, U.S. Air Forces Central Public Affairs, March 8^th, 2010)

Aircraft – fixed-wing and rotary-wing – ground vehicles, weaponry like artillery,  and naval shipping, all are going to be necessary to make the shift from internal defense to self-defense. From the Iraqi standpoint, they’re predisposed to outfit their forces with U.S. equipment because they recognize it’s the best in the world. On the other side of the coin, U.S. equipment is the best in the world, but it’s also the most expensive in the world and the equipment that requires a certain degree of capability to maintain and train on it.  But they understand that, and will demand the proper training – for maintenance and operation – with all the equipment they buy.

The difficulty with executing that plan though is the payment scheme required for that project. Iraq has not been given Dependable Undertaking Status (DUS), which is a category of FMS purchase that allows a country to pay as equipment is delivered, not pay 100% up front.

Currently, the way FMS program works in Iraq is that if they want to buy 100 tanks they have to pay 100% up front. It’s moved into the New York bank and then as that equipment is delivered, the bank releases the money to the American company. This is not a good position as far as Iraq is concerned, and in fact such a position is an obstacle for them to buy U.S. equipment.

SLD: Isen’t it an inefficacious tool to allow the next phase of the transition?

General Dubik: Right, and it causes Iraq to look to other equipment providers, at least it’s one of the reasons they look elsewhere.  It’s not the only reason, though.  Certainly Iraq does not want to rely on one nation for all its equipment, no nation would want to do that. And they’re looking for the best possible purchase power and value for their money. Every nation should do that. But not having the DUS status is an inhibitor.

SLD: How would you describe the situation now as we face the 2010 transition and the need to shape a post-2010 defense strategy? What do you expect to happen post 2010, what’s your sense of a 2011 Iraqi agenda? And then we’ll turn to the question of the next 5 years?  What are the building blocks to get to a longer term working relationship and what’s possible?

General Dubik: I’m going to begin like I do with every issue: by asking what is the starting point.

• Where are we located in history? That point for me in Iraq is that the war is not over. If you think the war is over then you’re already in the wrong intellectual space and you’re going to make the wrong decisions.
  The war is not over; luckily we’re in a much better phase now then we were 2007-2008.  The phase of the war we’re in now is to consolidate and expand gains and prevent resurgence of violence and the insurgent’s ability  to re-shape the situation.   The task in this phase of the war is primarily focused on governance and economics, and less on actual fighting by the security forces.  There will be fighting, but the main task with respect to the security forces will shift to professionalization of both the military and police as well as within the ministerial workforces of defense and interior.
  On the governmental side, this is a sovereign nation that is proud of how much it has achieved in a very short time, but it still is an emerging sovereign nation, and the presence of a strong and active U.S. embassy and other embassies from our allies and regions is important to continue the learning of Iraqi governmental leaders.
  And I don’t mean just within the Prime Minister’s office; I mean the set of parliaments and ministers and every one else. Many leaders have spent their entire adult life either under Saddam or as exiles, so as well intentioned and as proficient and desirous to move Iraq forward as they are, they need help in understanding and using the kinds of governmental levers that exist in a democracy. So, I think, we want to continue to engage and expand the legitimacy of the government.

• Second, we should be very aggressive in helping Iraq structure the right environment for developing of a private economy. How many years have they had a command economy?  This is something that I think there’s a lot of developmental opportunity here.
  If we can do that, those 2 things, governance and economy, then insurgency will peter out because the government will be (A) legitimate and (B) people will see that their future is better assured under the government and under the economy that the government has laid out, than under any kind of future that an insurgent can lay out for them.
  That’s how insurgencies end, they don’t end with a signing ceremony or everybody goes home, they just peter out in time.

• On the security side the task is to continue to professionalize the force. This is not going to happen by 2010, this is a 2011 and beyond task.   Ultimately they’re going to want to separate the military from the police.  They are going to want to do this in terms of military involvement in internal security affairs of the nation.  Part of “normalcy” will be to focus the military on sovereign self-defense.
  We’ll want to be involved with that because there will be restructuring of the military from the size that it is to a smaller size, from it’s equipment that is really primarily focused on dealing with insurgency to equipment that’s focused on external defense – from a population protection mode to a self defense mode.  That’s a lot of retraining and reorganizing.  We’ll also want to be involved – and from my discussions with them, they want us to be involved – in the professional training and education of this set of leaders of certain NCOs. So schools, exchanges, that kind of stuff, will be central.
  That’s the professionalization on the military side.

• On the police side, they’re really transforming from a confession-based system to an evidence-based system. This has huge implications for forensics and investigatory development, for literacy development, for rule of law and judicial development.
  This is nothing short of a cultural transformation in the police of that country and is a multi-year project; we’ll want to be involved with that. Minister Bolani has been very aggressive already in starting these changes.  But he understands more is required and is dedicated to delivering what is needed.

SLD: How do you view the long-term challenges and obligations?

General Dubik: From my standpoint, we want to be involved with that because of the geostrategic location of Iraq.  This is Mesopotamia. This is the conjunction of Iran and Persia on one side and the Arabs on the other, with an important NATO ally to the North.  This area has been historically an important area; it will continue to be important. It has the third and possibly the second largest oil reserve in the world and oil companies are now starting to invest in that production: it is already at 2.2 million barrels a day, and it is going to go easily above that if the investments pan out over the next 5 or 6 years.

So it has strategic importance for the U.S. and the allies for that reason. It has a major port that’s in the Persian Gulf and a very important waterway, so it’s astride Iran. So there are just a lot of reasons why this is a strategically important country.

We have spent thousands of American lives and countless Iraqi lives helping Iraq get to this point. I think we want to have a long-term friendship with them. The potential, my view anyway, for Iraq to participate in other kinds of operations outside of Iraq ultimately is also very high. The potential to demonstrate that you can have a legitimate, representative government that is tied to its Islamic roots is a very important ideological demonstration in the larger war against al-Qaeda and their affiliates.

So there are geostrategic, ideological, and moral reasons to be there and I think the long-term strategist is going to want to look for ways to stay connected to Iraq.

SLD: Let me ask you just one final question:  Iraq is located in a tough region in the world.  What is expected of the United States with regard to the defense of Iraq?

General Dubik: This is not something that falls just on us, but there is a conjunction of nations who are in a position de facto for some period of time to continue to provide strategic assurance to the Iraq that we helped emerge.  While they build the rest of their security apparatus that is associated with a normal sovereign state, there is a need to provide for defense.

It is the case that parts of a force can be built faster than other parts. If you build an air force in today’s world, you build an air force that has pretty high technical capability.  This capability is required in several areas: in its pilots and its maintenance group, its command control structure, with English as it’s primary language and integration across complicated systems. That takes a long time to develop.

Can you get some pilots in an airplane that moves fast? Yes, very quickly. But will they do anything? No. So if you’re building an air defense capability for that nation that takes a long time.

Back to General Powell’s comment about “you break it you own it.”  We have some obligation to the re-emerging Iraq. In my opinion, the U.S. will want to shape common agreements with Iraq to our mutual self-interest.  This might well entail providing assurance of air security, for example, as a part of the post-2010 national agreement.  There may be other specific security issues that it would be to our mutual self-interest to stay involved with.  And there are the longer-term developmental issues that we talked about earlier – these are all real possibilities that may be included in a post-2010 U.S.-Iraq agreement.

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***Posted March 15th, 2010

Abstract from an interview conducted with Brigadier General Lawrence D. Nicholson, Commanding General, 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, Afghanistan, on Thursday March 4th, 2010
(Source: DOD News Briefing with Brig. Gen. Nicholson from Afghanistan Thu, 04 Mar 2010 18:50:00 -0600)

 

Question: General, operational question.  It’s Otto Kreisher, working  for Semper Fi magazine.  We know that the MV-22 Ospreys were used in the Marjah operation, but there’s some question as to whether they were doing milk runs into Shah Aziz or whether they actually got into the fight. Could you give me a little rundown on how you used the Ospreys and what they contributed?

GEN. NICHOLSON: Yeah, I’d be glad to.  I’ll tell you, if there’s any perception or notion that we’re babying or coddling the Ospreys, you need to come out here.  We have done tactical inserts.  In fact, when we went into Now Zad behind enemy lines at three in the morning, we used Ospreys, because they were the right platform for that mission, that long-distance carry.
I’ve been flying around Ospreys for the past two weeks almost every day, in and out of small and very rugged LZs in Marjah.  So, you know, I know that impression was out there, but I’m telling you straight, we are using the hell out of these things, and we’re putting them in very, very challenging environments, and we are not coddling or babying them at all.So the only thing I could offer you is, come on out here and we’ll put you on one and we’ll fly you in and around Marjah.  But certainly no shortage of correspondents has been riding in these things, all hours of the day, daytime, nighttime insertions, sometimes under fire.  And so nobody here is babying those things.

Question: How are you doing as far as having available birds?

GEN. NICHOLSON: We brief it every morning.  Every morning I get the reliability stats, and we’re averaging about 70 percent.  You know, 70 percent is pretty good. That’s, in fact, standard for my helicopter fleet.  So we’re doing very well on reliability.

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***Posted March 7th, 2010