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Two recent DefenceiQ conferences provided unique insights into the way ahead for air and sea power. The first conference with the International Fighter Conference 2020 and was held (virtually) on November 18 and 19, 2020. The second was held on December 1, 2020 and focused on the evolution of amphibious forces.
Read together, they provide an update on the way ahead for force structure evolution to deal with the challenges posed by peer competitors, notably Russia and China.
The work done by Defence iQ is first rate and encourage any of our readers to sign up for future conferences relevant to their interests.
The International Fighter Conference 2020 addressed a number of new or evolving approaches to shaping combat air platforms, from the Australian loyal wingman program, to the USAF Skyborg program, to the Franco-German-Spanish FCAS program, to the Italian-Swedish-UK Tempest program, to the USAF’s next generation air dominance platform, and to the evolution of U.S. and allied naval aviation.
In addition to, or in parallel to or crossing to the platform discussions was the focus on the changing eco system for integrating platforms and capabilities across an extended battlespace in which peer competitors would contest U.S. and allied operations.
These discussions embraced topics like, human-machine teaming and enabling technologies, combat cloud teaming, the USAF and its JADC2 programmatic efforts, the role of space-based assets in empowering the force, and how to connect the force to prevail in the multi-domain fight and meeting the challenge of countering A2AD in today’s fight.
The Future Amphibious Forces Conference provided as the moderator of the day, a noted former British General, highlighted at the end of the day, “We have had a very good conversation throughout the day about the future of amphibious forces.”
But as he also noted, the key challenge really was to sort through where one wanted to take those forces in terms of “what kinds of wars or conflicts were being prepared for or prioritized.”
His question underscored the core challenge facing any discussion of the way ahead for Maritime special forces or amphibious forces: What is their role in the high-end fight?
What is their role in crisis management?
And how related are the answers to these two questions?
Put another way, focusing on amphibious forces and their future quickly takes one into the realm of warfighting capabilities now, the next five years and the decade ahead.
In turn, the question is posed as well with regard to what capabilities are desired and for which concepts of operations to shape what kind of warfighting outcome?
The Hunter class’s schedule is under pressure. Granted, the government and Defence are confident they will achieve the milestone of prototyping on schedule by the end of 2020, so pretty much right now. Since that’s purely an exercise in checking that the shipyard’s systems work, it doesn’t really say anything about maturity of the Hunter class itself, particularly since the prototyping will start by building blocks of the UK’s Type 26 version of the frigate, not ours.
Defence put the Hunter on its list of projects of interest (that is, not exhibiting symptoms bad enough to make it a project of concern but sending up some red flags requiring high-level attention) earlier this year ‘due to delays in finalising the design documents and weight increases to the Type 26 Frigate design’.
That doesn’t mean the project will miss the key milestone of starting actual construction by the end of 2022, but it may well mean that construction will begin with a design that is less mature than is desirable. As the Naval Shipbuilding Advisory Board noted in last month’s Senate estimates hearings, all shipbuilding projects start construction with an incomplete design. Defence says the Hunter’s final critical design review is planned for mid-2024, around a year and a half after construction starts.
It all comes down to where you’re willing to accept risk. But as bitter experience has shown—for example, with the Collins-class submarines and air warfare destroyers—when a project starts with unresolved risks, redesign and rework increase both the cost and the timeline.
Considering the government picked the most immature of the three participants in the frigate project’s competitive evaluation process and then agreed to five major modifications to the original design, it’s not surprising that schedule risks are mounting. No doubt the pandemic isn’t helping.
We also learned at estimates that the government is considering options to manage the emerging schedule risks, but based on its reiterated commitment to start construction by the end of 2022, moving that date doesn’t appear to be one of them.
Defence has now disclosed the date of a key milestone at the other end of the Hunter schedule (document 26). Considering the government stated in its July defence strategic update that we can no longer rely on 10 years of warning time ahead of a major conflict, it’s cold comfort to know that initial operating capability (the first ship being available for operations) is still 11 years away.
Upgrades and crew numbers will keep the Anzacs afloat
In light of the Hunter class schedule and the two-year delivery drumbeat, it’s vital to keep the Anzacs a relevant capability for another 20 years. So it’s good that the upgrades being performed under the Anzac midlife capability assurance program (AMCAP) appear to be going well, including the new long-range air-search radar.
There’s been some news for those following the long saga of HMAS Perth’s efforts to get back into the water after it was taken out of service in late 2017 because the navy couldn’t crew it. Originally it was due to return to service before January (ANAO audit report, page 39). That’s now shifted to late 2021 after the navy decided to put the ship through the AMCAP since it was already out of the water (page 20).
The good news is that the navy is now confident it will have enough personnel to crew all of its Anzacs as well as the Collins-class submarines, which is quite a turnaround from where it was only a few years ago.
It’s a salutary reminder that it doesn’t matter how much you spend on ships if you don’t have the people to operate them.
How many personnel the navy thinks it will need for its much more substantial future fleet is one of the pieces of this complex puzzle that is still unresolved. The 2020 force structure plan says the government will consider Defence’s long-term personnel requirements next year. With the navy acquiring a larger fleet of much larger ships, that could require a substantial increase.
Marcus Hellyer is ASPI’s senior analyst for defence economics and capability.
USS Zumwalt (DDG 1000) successfully executed the first live fire test of the MK 57 Vertical Launching System with a Standard Missile (SM-2) on the Naval Air Weapons Center Weapons Division Sea Test Range, Point Mugu, Oct. 13.
The ships’ stealth and ability to operate in both the open-ocean and near-shore environments creates a new level of battlespace complexity for potential adversaries. The Zumwalt class will also operate as a key enabler in the acceleration of new warfighting capabilities and rapid development and validation of operational tactics, techniques, and procedures.
I am in the throes of finishing up my book on the evolution of Australian defence strategy over the past several years, from 2014 until now.
With the announcement of the new government defence strategy by Prime Minister Morrison on July 1, 2020, it seemed a good time to draw together the work I have done over the past several years in Australia.
The book provides a detailed narrative of the evolution over the past few years of how Australia got to the point where it currently is with regard to national defense.
Hopefully, the book will provide a helpful summary of that evolution. It is based on the Williams Foundation Seminars over this period, and highlights the insights provided by the practitioners of military art and strategy who have presented and participated in those seminars.
In that sense, this book provides a detailed look at the strategic trajectory from 2014 through 2020.
During my visits to Australia during this time, one of my interlocutors in discussing Australian and global developments has been Jim Molan, retired senior Australian Army officer and now a Senator. I have included in the book, the interviews I did with Senator Molan in the appendix to the book as a good look into the dynamics of change being undergone over the past few years.
Recently, Senator Molan has launched a podcast series looking at the way ahead and how Australia might address the challenges which its faces.
This is the fourth podcast in his series.
He starts each podcast with this introduction:
“Sun Tzu, the Chinese strategist tells us that strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory.
“But tactics without strategy is just noise before defeat.
“My name is Jim Molan and welcome to our Noise Before Defeat podcast.”
Everybody Loves Australians
we tend to think that everyone loves us. And as a middle power, a liberal democracy, we are not a widely unpopular nation, but not everyone loves us and respects us. And I jokingly refer to this as the Bali syndrome. Now as a general public, we go to Bali, everyone loves us.
And we think that the rest of the world loves us as well. But I guess I only say that to be contentious. But of course in my own experience, every time I go overseas with the military someone tries to kill me. So I guess there is a bit of a different view of all of us….
But as a liberal democracy which is allied by common beliefs to the US, Australia does represent something to particularly focus on by authoritarian groups or by authoritarian countries. And if you can’t give the US a kicking, you might be able to give a small ally a bit of a kicking.
We are seen as a threat to such authoritarians’ governments because of what we are, because we offer an alternative to authoritarianism. We’ve seen this with Islamic terrorists and with aggressive comments made by China’s department of foreign affairs and China’s controlled media. We’re also an object of attention, as I said before, as a strong ally of the US. We may also attract aggression because we’re a resource rich country….
But when we look at the next step up from gray zone, that is truly assertive or aggressive behavior, threats or real challenges, we do need to mention China, but not only China. We need to mention China because for years we lived at the edge of the world, long way away from most crises and most conflicts.
Now we don’t. Now we are in the region where the biggest crisis could occur. So it might be healthy to focus only on China, as so many do. And I’ve said a number of times, the US considers that the threats to what is generally referred to as the West consists of four nations and an ideology.
And I’ve listed those four nations as being Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran, and the ideology being Islamic extremism. Now, we’re allied to the US, and we live in the priority region for the United States, what they call the Indo-Pacific. In the region that they are making the assessment that this threat exists. So it’s fair to say that this is our threat as well. And the US, back in their national security strategy of 2007, talked about those four nations in real detail.
And I’m advocating that we do a national security strategy. So when we see the American version of this, that is truly relevant. And they spoke about Russia, which we should never forget is an Asian power, but a challenger to the US across the world. Russia has got interests in the Baltic and in Ukraine, and in the Southern Caucuses.
And the effect of this is it disperses the amount of US power that we might like to think exists to come and back us up. China, of course, is the rising power. It has been aggressive. Militarily and economically it’s extraordinarily powerful. It’s wealthy, and it’s got a high degree of central control. So unlike democratic nations, if China wants to do something, its population is normally the last people that they consult about it.
The biggest problem in the Middle East at the moment is Iran, 90% of our oil comes from the Middle East, and we’re making very, very good moves to establish our strategic reserves. But in this area we are particularly vulnerable. And North Korea, of course, is nuclear armed, it’s unpredictable.
But I don’t think it represents as such a particular threat, it is just unpredictable. And of course, I speak about Islamic extremism, which is still across the world. It’s in our region, in the Southern Philippines, and it’s waiting for a chance to rise again. It certainly exists in the source of all our oil in the Middle East in a very frightening way.
We are totally dependent for our prosperity on sea trade. This is a vulnerability which is forced on us from outside the nation. We accept a bit of responsibility because we have got ourselves into a situation where most of our trade comes from one country. But as tension builds much less, if conflict occurs our ports are a single point of failure for Australia. I put ports and sea transport in the same category.
It’s a major vulnerability. And of course, people forget that Australia, we own about a handful of ships. But normally we don’t own shipping which we can rely on to move our exports if we need to. It’s very easy to close us down from an economic point of view, or from access to essentials, and to stop our export of resources which is our wealth….
What defines defense capability is the ability of a nation to do things. That is, win wars or conduct operations. All we have to do is look back over recent history. Clever countries often achieve superiority over the mighty US because the US has global responsibilities, as I’ve mentioned.
And challengers only have local interests and can focus their forces on a local area, or use different techniques, I should say, denying US strength. The classic example being Vietnam. I could see that so obviously when I was in Iraq. The US had 150,000 troops in Iraq, but Al Qaeda was never more than a few thousand.
And they tore that nation to bits because they used extreme violence from the middle of a population. And of course we know that ISIS was even worse. We could not be everywhere, and they’d played on this weakness.
The US produces, every two years, a national security strategy. And Congress mandates that. It is the law. This looks at all the tasks that the US has in national security, and the strength of its military and its economy, and its people and its states. And it says what the US can actually do. Not what it spends or what it has, and that’s the difference. An example is that in 1991 the US had a Navy of 600 warships.
Now it has less than 300, and the Chinese Navy is larger than the US Navy. Now I suspect that the 300 US battleships are better than the larger number of Chinese battleships, but they’re not much good if they’re in the Mediterranean and the problem is in the Pacific. No, but even more important than just counting ships or planes or tanks, what a nation can actually do is the real test.
And in 1991 roughly, at the end of the Cold War, the US had a strategy which it called it’s two and a half war strategy. It had a capability in that extraordinary nation to win, fight and win two major wars. One in Europe, perhaps, one in Asia. As well as fighting and winning a mine war, maybe in South America or in the Middle East, wherever, at the same time. Now when you think about that, that is just extraordinary.
But now their national security strategy has changed significantly. In 2017 their national security strategy aims for them to win one war, and that’s against China. And to hold in a second war. Now, that really is, by any measure, a 30 to 50% diminution of US power since 1991. That is a terrifying thought for all the US’s allies around the world.
The lesson that we should take from this is that the US cannot come to all its allies aid as it could during most of the post-World War II period, because it was the biggest kid on the block. But still, there is a strong belief in our society that US power is infinite.
And I had that belief when I went to Iraq and I worked in the belly of the beast. I worked in the midst of the US military for that year, and I realized how limited its real power is. It is not infinite. And the US is sick to death of spending on defense, especially when it thinks that its allies are not assisting to carry the burden of world defense….
Could Australia ever defend itself against China, even with the right strategy and its implementation over time? I think that we have an enormous defense potential in this country. We’ve just decided not to realize it at the moment. Despite COVID, we’re still a fabulously wealthy nation. And we certainly have something worth defending. Therefore we must ask ourselves, do we have a choice? To talk about that in detail, I would rather wait for the next podcast. But the answer to your specific question, is that at the moment, no, we couldn’t successfully fight China.
Even the US is having doubts about whether, in certain circumstances, it could win against China. Nor could we at the moment, which is part of our big strategy, nor could we at the moment deterred Chinese aggression because of our national security power. But to be positive, if we applied ourselves, as I’ll explain in the next podcast, we could become a regional superpower. So all is not lost. This is not a deeply disappointing or frustrating situation. We could do it, we just need to decide to do it.
And the point I make though, is that we are unlikely in the real world to ever be trying to deter or defending ourselves against the full might of China. What we should use as our planning scenario is to defend ourselves against what I call a collateral attack from China during a US and China war. And I think that is the realistic test. This is what we should be stress testing ourselves and the entire nation against. And we could do it, Sarah, we just need the will and we need the time….
We must assume that we will be on our own. This is a psychological step that we must take. Because we’ll be on our own, self-reliance across the nation to maintain our security should be our entire focus. Australia must be prepared as a nation, and not just the IDF. And we must be independently strong. We will not be able to depend on the US, if we ever could, of course. We can do this, we just need, as I said, we need the will and the time.
In fulfilment of its pledge to provide additional support to enhance the operational efficiency of the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF), mandated to bring an end to the Boko Haram insurgency, the European Union (EU) has provided command, control, communication and information systems (C3IS) to the Force.
In line with the agreement for implementation of this support, training has been jointly organised by the service providers and Force headquarters, based in N’Djamena, Chad, for personnel who would operate the C3IS equipment across the MNJTF sectors, according to Colonel Muhammad Dole, Chief of Military Public Information, MNJTF.
While declaring the training opened, the Force Commander, Major General Ibrahim Manu Yusuf commended the EU for the provision of the C3IS equipment, describing it as ‘most critical’ to enhancing the operational performance of the troops in the field.
The Force Commander expressed appreciation for the additional support, which is closely related to the recent provision of helicopters and petroleum oil and lubricants through the framework of the African Union to MNJTF. The C3IS project will enable conveyance of classified messages and communication through the secured net. Yusuf commended the service providers for their display of resilience and vigour in the execution of the project.
The Force Commander assured the EU that all the support provided will be optimally utilised in accordance with the global best practices to enhance the operational efficiency of the troops. He urged the Sector Commanders, in whose custody the equipment will be, to ensure proper utilisation, maintenance and safety of the equipment.
On its part, the MNJTF has taken steps to provide alternative power supply at the Sector HQs in order to ensure uninterrupted power supply for the communication equipment.
When completed, the C3IS system is expected to enable rapid deployment of strategic and operational communication capabilities within the MNJTF area of operation.
The MNJTF is a combined multinational formation of mostly military units from Benin, Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and Nigeria. First organised in 1994, the force is mandated to bring an end to the Boko Haram Insurgency.
With regard to the offshore patrol vessels and the continuing upgrades to the Collins class submarines, progress continues.
Offshore patrol vessels
The Australian National Audit Office’s recent performance audit of the OPV project was as positive as any ANAO report I’ve ever seen.
When the government announced the winner of the tender, it was surprising to many that the German company Lürssen working with the inexperienced Australian shipbuilder Civmec was chosen over the experienced Australian shipbuilder Austal and its German design partner Fassmer. The ANAO audit also reveals that Lürssen’s bid was the most expensive of the three options.
However, the report notes that despite the higher cost, the tender evaluation panel assessed the Lürssen proposal to offer ‘genuinely … distinct advantages (i.e. additional value) over the AustalFassmer proposal—including a superior capability, a sound prime contracting model, program management and shipbuilding proposal, along with a modern purpose built facility’.
In light of that assessment, the audit report contains two intriguing statements that point to some highly unusual elements in the project’s decision-making process.
In contrast to the standard public service practice of providing frank advice, Defence didn’t recommend its preferred option to the government and stated this was at the defence ministers’ direction. The ANAO was unsupportive of that approach: ‘A core function of departments of state is to provide substantive advice to responsible ministers, to inform governmental decision-making … Defence should have offered its ministers an opinion on its assessment of value for money in the circumstances.’
The ANAO also queried the government’s last-minute announcement that it would bring Austal, whose own bid had been unsuccessful, into the successful tenderer’s bid. This, the ANAO notes, was not covered in the terms of the original request for tender; imposed greater cost, effort and scheduling pressures on Lürssen; and posed ‘potential reputational risk to Defence and the Australian Government’. Ultimately, Lürssen and Austal could not come to terms and Austal is not part of the project.
The ANAO says Defence informed it that both of these unusual things were done at the direction of the defence ministers. Unfortunately, Defence could not produce any record of either ministerial direction or consultation. Which goes to confirm the oldest (unwritten) rule of the public service: when a minister directs you to do something unusual, get it in writing.
While the project started with an incomplete design, it appears to be on budget and schedule (although risks remain). Defence likes the OPV design so much it’s going to use a variant of it as the basis of its future mine-clearance and military hydrography fleet. According to Defence they will be built in Western Australia using excess capability at Civmec’s facility in Henderson.
But one might suggest that if Defence is going demonstrate that Adelaide’s new frigate shipyard’s systems work, rather than prototype frigate blocks that are destined to become artificial reefs, it might put that state-of-the-art shipyard to work also building more OPVs—affordable ships that we can actually use—preferably in imaginative ways to enhance the navy’s warfighting capabilities.
Collins-class submarines
Ensuring the Collins submarine remains an effective capability is the key to a successful transition to the Attack class, so it’s one of the moving pieces that make up a coherent whole. In light of the demands on South Australia’s workforce I discussed in part 1, moving full-cycle dockings from Adelaide to Henderson to spread the load could be a significant risk mitigator for the entire shipbuilding enterprise—while potentially creating other risks. But a decision to move needs to be made in a timely fashion.
After the government was burned by committing to make a decision last year on whether to move and then not meeting that commitment (in fairness, things like bushfires probably consumed its attention), it now simply says it will make a decision when the time is right (Senate estimates, 21 October, page 5 and page 62) and after a ‘deliberative process’ takes place.
The government has made it very clear (page 62) that if full-cycle dockings do move west, the first one there would start in mid-2026. That’s the docking that will also be the first Collins life-of-type extension (LOTE), the program that is intended to keep them relevant for a further 10 years and bridge the gap to the future submarine.
Starting in 2026 might appear bad for two reasons. The first is that ASC, which sustains the Collins and has conducted studies into the feasibility of a move, said that it would take six years to set up a new full-cycle docking capability (page 6). So we’re already inside that window. But ASC also said it could be done in less time. One assumes this is another issue that comes down to the government’s appetite for risk.
The other reason 2026 might raise concerns is that one could assume that since the LOTE dockings are going to be more complex than a ‘regular’ full-cycle docking, it might be preferable for the new West Australian workforce and facility to cut their teeth on the last of the regular dockings rather than jump straight into the first LOTE. Again, ASC has argued this isn’t necessarily the case (page 15); a clean break and fresh start in the west in 2026 would have less ‘baggage’ and could be the best way to go.
Either way, one state is going to get bad news. But as the old saying goes, bad news doesn’t get better with time, so it would be preferable for the government to get on the front foot, make an announcement, and allow Defence and its industry partners to plan accordingly.
Marcus Hellyer is ASPI’s senior analyst for defence economics and capability.
ATLANTIC OCEAN (Oct. 18, 2020) –The amphibious transport dock ship USS San Antonio (LPD 17), fires rolling airframe missiles during Surface Warfare Advanced Tactical Training (SWATT), Oct. 18, 2020.
The Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group is participating in SWATT off the coast of Virginia to maintain readiness, proficiency and lethality. (U.S. Navy video by Lt. M. Errin Dobbs)
The International Fighter Conference 2020 provided insights with regard to the evolution of combat airpower, notably with regard to enablers and effectors, and pathways to shaping greater force integration and multi-domain warfighting capabilities.
But to do what exactly?
And how best to do it?
The clear assumption of most of the presentations was that the conflict for which the fighter force was preparing was for the high-end fight against peer competitors or cutting through the ambiguity, China and Russia.
As these are nuclear powers, the question is and remains, how does the nuclear dimension weave itself into a major conventional war?
The only mention of the nuclear dimension was during a discussion about the French aircraft carrier Charles De Gaulle and its approach to operations. Here the readiness in being during deployment to deliver nuclear strike by onboard Rafales was discussed.
The French indeed have been the clearest among of the Western nuclear powers on the need for tactical air delivered strike and have continued their work, including modernization of weapons to indeed deliver this capability in their neighborhood as part of their deterrent posture.
As Pierre Tran has put it with regard to the most recent French defense budget: “The draft budget includes €1 billion of studies to develop the nuclear ballistic missile submarine, and a fourth generation nuclear-tipped, air-to-ground missile, the air-sol nucléaire 4ème génération (ASN4G) to replace the present nuclear-armed cruise missile, dubbed air-sol moyenne portée amélioré (ASMPA).”[1]
The training to execute an air delivered tactical nuclear mission, provides pilots with an overall understanding of a complex strike mission which then carried over into the capabilities to excel at non-nuclear strikes as well.
This was evident when the French Air Force participated in the 2018 strike against Syrian chemical weapons sites.
As Murielle Delaporte put it: “Achieving all this synchronicity, C2 integration, redundancy, target selection and precision strike require in other words a very high level of technicity, which tends to stem in France from the fact it has been a nuclear power for more than five decades. In fact the whole French armed forces model is built around deterrence. France’s quick reaction force is defined upon the rigor, reactivity 24/7, safety and ability to penetrate a theater first, far away and in depth.
“French Air Force Base 113 in Saint-Dizier is one of the historic fighter base and nuclear base and it is from there that long-range raids can be performed, such as the 10-hour flight that was performed from the mainland to Syria this month over a distance of 7,000 kilometers (which required a total of five air refuelings).”[2]
In addition to the core point, often forgotten or deliberately ignored, there will never a major conventional contingency against China or Russia that will not involve the nuclear dimension, certainly in terms of understanding how a campaign would be conducted.
There is also the critical issue that the attrition of the adversary’s ISR and C2 systems will inevitably affect those systems which are part of the nuclear warfighting system as well. And when there is a focuse, as the conference did, upon enhanced machine-to-machine and man-machine interactions to speed up the ability to kill adversary forces, the question of which targets with which significance are we talking about?
This is especially important when considering one of the most challenging of the warfighting issues – how to deal with heavily fortified areas from which either China or Russia would project force and how best to go after those forces.
For the Russians, we are talking about Kaliningrad and the Kola Peninsula. With regard to the direct threat against the Baltic states, Russia would project power from their territory against these states under the assumption that they have a sanctuary and given the proximity to St. Petersburg, which certainly is protected in part by Russian tactical nuclear weapons, complicates the picture.
This is why the United States for one is working on longer range strike conventional weapons to ensure that the Russians don’t believe their own thinking too much about an ability to push a conventional force from their territory as if that territory is a sanctuary.
And with regard to the Chinese, one presentation did raise the new USMC Commandant’s focus upon Marines building an Inside Force that would operate inside the First Island Chain as envisaged by the Chinese but that does raise questions of how the operations of such a force would affect Chinese nuclear as well as conventional calculations.
As Paul Bracken, the author of the second nuclear age, has put it: “The first thing is to realize it is woven into the entire fabric of a Pacific strategy. You don’t have to fire a nuclear weapon to use it. The existence of nuclear weapons, by itself, profoundly shapes conventional options.
The nuclear dimension changes the definition of what a reasonable war plan is for the U.S. military. And a reasonable war plan can be defined as follows: when you brief it to the president, he doesn’t throw you out of the office, because you’re triggering World War III.”[3]
You can have have all of the Future Force Design 2030s or Future Combat Systems or Tempest discussions you want, but you have to be able to fight tonight, and that imperative is crucial for operational Air Forces, and any future capabilities take a back seat to that requirement.
Which raises the broader question: How do innovations being driven now shape how the future force will emerge? This certainly impacts on discussions about artificial intelligence and remotes or UAVs and what their role will actually be in the next decade as opposed to 2040 or 2050, which is long after I am dead.
The need to drive greater capability to make decisions more rapidly using ISR data and finding ways to execute decisions at the edge but ensure that the evolving strategic decisions are effective is a clear one.
Many of the presentations at the conference were indeed focused on technologies and approaches which were being shaped to ensure that the United States and its allies could operate their forces more effectively in a contested environment and to do so with the ability to draw upon the range of combat assets available now and in the future.
That is the real meaning of shaping multi-domain capabilities, for objectives are set by domain but the kill web approach looks to leverage combat assets in several domains to achieve those domain specific objectives.
The role of maritime air forces was discussed at the Conference as well. The role of sea-basing in generating capabilities which can be leveraged for full spectrum crisis management is expanding for sure. The impact of technologies and training are leading to ways to reimagine the role of amphibious and large deck carrier forces, and some of those changes were discussed at the conference.
In short, the International Fighter Conference 2020 although virtual was not simply that. It had some important impacts on the continuing process of rethinking the way ahead with the evolution of airpower in the reset of military strategy.
