HMAS Toowoomba departed Fleet Base East for a three month deployment to South East Asia.
The helicopter frigate will participate in exercises with foreign navies and regional engagement including Malaysia, Vietnam, Papua New Guinea and Singapore.
Credit Photos: Australian Department of Defence
March 25, 2018
By Robbin Laird
During my most recent visit to Australia, I had a chance to discuss the way ahead for the newly established Air Warfare Centre with its dynamic director, Air Commodore Joe “Vinny” Iervasi.
The Air Warfare Centre was launched as part of the Plan Jericho initiative at the time when Air Marshal Geoff Brown was the air chief, and was forged, designed and shape to work 21st century force integration, not simply to train air warriors to fight in a legacy manner.
In part this was done in recognition that the F-35 is not a legacy fighter, but a “flying combat system” which can form the foundation for a kill web approach to warfare, in which the relationship among sensors and shooters changes and with that the need for a new C2 approach and learning new ways of doing things.
As Air Commodore Iervasi puts the challenge: “How do we learn what we have not done before?
“We can train and get better at legacy approaches, but how do we learn what we have not experienced before and how do we leverage our new platforms to transform and create an integrated force?”
His focus is upon a 2-6 year period ahead and how to prepare the force to execute new concepts of operations leveraging ongoing integration capabilities.
He even projected the notion that the best outcome for the Air Warfare Centre would be to be transformed in a decade into a Joint Warfare Centre.
He sees the RAAF with their new platforms, new thinking and evolving approaches as being in a good position to lead a transition, but one which is about forging a very different force from the legacy force.
One aspect of the difference is that the separate force elements train and prepare for joint exercises, but how do they know what is an evolving joint capability and how do you train for what you don’t know”
He advocated moving more training time into joint exercises and training rather than the relative high proportion of time spent on service or platform specific training.
The overall challenge facing the Air Warfare Centre is to shape a fifth generation force and how that force might come together in combat situations to prevail.
“The Air Warfare Centre is focused on the blending between bottom up initiative, top down direction, and to foment and facilitate the ideas, the concepts, the wherewithal, the tactics of actually knowing and shaping what an integrated force needs to do in the evolving combat environment we are facing.”
“Because we’re trying to integrate a force the way a force has never been integrated before, we’re going to have to do so in innovative ways. Innovation is going to be a byproduct of integration.
“It is going to be a byproduct of immersing ourselves in current and emergent technologies and sort out what they actually might mean operationally.
“In other words, it’s our drive to integration that’s actually going to necessitate an innovative approach.”
Throughout the interview, he was very clear on the importance of breaking out of legacy patterns and thinking and finding ways to train for the future fight with the force you are crafting.
“Our senior leadership, including myself, has never grown up in the combat environment which is now evolving rapidly. We need to unlearn as well as learn to shape an effective way ahead.”
How do you shape a future force structure based on where you need to go, rather than what you have inherited?
From this point of view, how do you leverage the simultaneous acquisition of the F-35 by Australia and its core allies to drive change in new ways rather than simply treating it as nice new toy?
Illustrative of his approach is setting up a working group to meet in Adelaide later this month to work on ways to work leveraging the F-35. Nellis, NAWDC, the RAF Air Warfare Centre as well as the Aussies will meet in Adelaide to discuss ways to think about fifth generation operations.
“Each of our warfare centers inherently has a particular strength.
“How do we leverage those strengths and come up with an approach where we can generate collectively initiatives to test and experiment and drive operational changes in the joint force?”
“How do we actually create an expanded multi-disciplined team and collaboration environment in Australia such that we are open to the opportunities that present themselves?
“Doing things better is the bottom line.
“When I talk about multi-disciplined teams, I am speaking broadly. I am not just focusing on the operators of our airfleets.
“It’s the engineers, scientists, industry, and academia coming together with operators to develop new concepts for emergent domains, specifically cyber and space.
“What we’re attempting to do in our air warfare center is create multi-disciplined teams physically co-located at our major bases Amberley, Williamtown, and Edinburgh, with each service’s main warfighting elements.”
“For example, Williamtown is close to Sydney where we’ve got Forces Command HQ for Army and Fleet Command HQ for Navy. Up in Brisbane, we have HQ 1 Division and HQ of the Amphibious Task Group in proximity to Growler, Super Hornet, Combat Support Group and a large portion of our air mobility fleet.”
“Our core integrators are our air warfare instructors and we see them in the role of driving operational integration initiatives within a 2-6 year time line of implementation.”
In effect, the Air Warfare Centre is generating various vignettes of the evolving operational environment and then testing capabilities, and new ways of using those capabilities, against that projected operational environment.
And by working within a 2-6 year time frame, they can be realistic, drive change and not get excessively metaphysical.
It is not about the world in 2030; it is about driving change for a fifth generation enabled force able to shape a more effective and integrated force in the near to mid-term.
And doing so, with close collaboration with the other services and the allies who are themselves rethinking their approach to combat operations.
Air Commodore Joe ‘Vinny’ Iervasi, AM
Commander Air Warfare Centre
Royal Australian Air Force
Air Commodore Joe Iervasi was born in Sydney. He joined the RAAF in 1985 and completed flying training in 1989. He has been flying the F/A-18 Hornet since 1991.
Air Commodore Iervasi served at No 3 Squadron as a junior pilot before proceeding on exchange to No 5 Squadron RAF flying the Tornado F3. During this tour he deployed on Operation Deny Flight enforcing the no-fly zone over Bosnia-Herzegovina (1995). Upon return to Australia he served as a flight commander at both 77 Squadron and 75 Squadron.
In 2001 Air Commodore Iervasi completed the inaugural Australian Command and Staff College at Weston Creek and was subsequently posted to Capability Systems in Russell Offices. During this period he was responsible for the development and sponsorship of F/A-18, F-111 and Hawk major capital equipment projects, with the most notable being the Hornet Upgrade Project. In 2005 he returned to Williamtown as the Senior Operations Officer at 81 Wing and subsequently assumed command of No 3 Squadron in Dec 2005. He was promoted to Group Captain on 12 Jan 2009 and served as Chief of Staff Air Combat Group.
In 2010 Air Commodore Iervasi completed the Defence and Strategic Studies Course and was appointed as Officer Commanding No 81 Wing (F/A-18) in December of that year. In January 2013 Air Commodore Iervasi was posted as Chief of Staff to the Vice Chief of the Defence Force.
Following this posting Air Commodore Iervasi was promoted to his current rank of Air Commodore and deployed to the Middle East as the Director, US Central Command 609th Combined Air Operations Centre at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. He returned to Australia and was appointed Director General Air Command Operations (Headquarters Air Command) and Director General Air (Headquarters Joint Operations Command) where he commanded global air operations including Operation OKRA. In December 2016 AIRCDRE Iervasi was appointed Commander Air Warfare Centre.
Air Commodore Iervasi has over 3000 hours flying fast jets and is an A Category Fighter Pilot. He holds a Bachelor of Science Degree, a Masters of Management in Defence Studies and a Graduate Diploma in Strategic Studies.
He has been awarded the Medal in the Order of Australia (2009), Australian Active Service Medal (Balkans and ICAT Clasps), Afghanistan Medal, Defence Long Service Medal with Third Clasp, and the Australian Defence Medal. He was appointed as a Member in the Order of Australia in 2016.
The Air Warfare Centre
The Air Warfare Centre was built on part by incorporating elements of the former Aerospace Operational Support Group or AOSG which comprised the Development and Test Wing and the Information Warfare Wing, and also had responsibility for the Woomera test range.
In its place the new AWC is structured into directorates, comprising Integrated Mission Support, Capability and Logistics, Test and Evaluation, Information Warfare, Air Force Ranges, and Tactics and Training.
“By working with the other force element groups, Army, Navy and defence industry, the AWC will allow Air Force to generate rapid, cogent and integrated capability solutions that are needed now and into the future,” Air Commander Australia Air Vice-Marshal Gavin Turnbull said at the opening of the Centre.
“It will identify innovative solutions and translate those into capability by driving integrated tactics and advanced warfare across Air Command.”
The establishment of an air warfare centre was heralded by then Chief of Air Force Air Marshal Geoff Brown in his launch of Plan Jericho in February 2015.
The subsequent Plan Jericho ‘Program of Work’ document noted that: “Air Force lacks the systemic ability to generate rapid, cogent and integrated combat capability solutions in response to current and future capability gaps and bottom-up innovation opportunities.”
In response it promises that: “an Air Warfare Centre … will become the centre of innovation and thinking for integrated operations.”
The Air Warfare Centre (AWC) exists to deliver timely and relevant advice to the warfighter in response to operational and tactical problems facing the products and services delivered by the Air Force. It is deliberately structured to draw on Subject Matter Experts from across all Air Force domains in formulating recommendations and seeking answers to operational and tactical warfighting challenges.
It will actively engage Joint, Allied, Australian Defence Organisation and Industry Stakeholders to deliver the best possible operational solution. Cross‐platform, multi-domain integration is at the heart of the AWC intent and culture. Where obvious solutions do not exist, the AWC will harness the broader workforce to deliver innovative alternatives.
It will provide highly specialised military facilities and services including innovative military aviation prototyping and solutions to enhance air warfighting capabilities in every sphere. It is critical to establishing the Royal Australian Air Force as a modern and fully integrated combat force that can deliver air and space power effects in the information age.
Why create an Air Warfare Centre?
The AWC was created at the direction of the Chief of Air Force to address opportunities to improve Air Force’s ability to maximise the operational effectiveness of fifth-generation, networked capabilities through improved integration across Defence and increased knowledge sharing with allied AWCs.
What is the Air Warfare Centre?
The AWC is a Force Element Group (FEG) within Air Command. The AWC was established on 11 January 2016 and will achieve Final Operational Capability in 2020.
AWC is comprised of the following:
Headquarters AWC
Headquarters AWC provides the staff functions that enable AWC operations headed up by Chief of Staff for core functions, and a Director of Capability Assurance, for technical governance, logistics and capability development.
Integrated Mission Support (IMS)
IMS is located at RAAF Edinburgh in South Australia. The IMS mission revolves around the key tenets of ‘Integration’, ‘Innovation’ and ‘Information’. IMS drives Innovation across both the AWC and more broadly across Air Force through leadership, organisational change and the engagement of a diverse array of subject matter experts to rapidly solve complex Operational problems as part of ‘Integrated Project Teams’. The ‘Innovation Hub’, the ‘Jericho Dawn’ and the ‘Science and Technology’ programs focus on engagement with industry to develop and demonstrate innovative solutions to address capability gaps in the force‐in‐being.
The ‘Operations Analysis’ and ‘Knowledge Management’ sections ensure critical decisions across the organisation are underpinned by appropriate research and credible evidence and that the AWC product is available to the ‘right people at the right time’. Finally, IMS liaises with and provides information exchange on behalf of the AWC with allied peer organisations through our Liaison Officers.
Information Warfare Directorate (IWD)
IWD is located at RAAF Edinburgh in South Australia and centralises the Air Force’s tactical information warfare elements. It provides the wider RAAF with an integrated and tailorable information warfare operational capability drawn from the Intelligence, Electronic Warfare and Information Operations fields. IWD enables the development and management of the RAAF’s Information Warfare capabilities.
Test and Evaluation Directorate (TED)
TED is located at RAAF Edinburgh in South Australia and delivers comprehensive, timely and integrated Test & Evaluation through a flight test squadron, aviation medicine and a unique engineering/manufacturing capability.
TED provides support and advice throughout a weapon system life‐cycle including preview testing (risk reduction to inform acquisition), developmental, acceptance and operational Test and Evaluation (T&E). It enables the warfighter through the provision of specialist medical advice, research and training and aeronautical information service.
Air Force Ranges Directorate (AFRD)
AFRD is located at RAAF Edinburgh in South Australia and improves the way Air Force conducts Live, Virtual and Constructive simulation with other elements of Defence and our coalition partners, in order to deliver more effective warfighters. AFRD enhances the way Air Force tests war material and trains the warfighter and standardises all range requirements to deliver a more realistic and practical testing environment.
Tactics and Training Directorate (TTD)
TTD is located at RAAF Base Williamtown in New South Wales and is tasked with the development of multi‐discipline, high‐end integrated tactics and training across the Air Force through a combination of training, education and integrated exercises. TTD transforms the way we think about and teach air warfare. It also conducts operational analysis to inform integrated tactics analysis to better enhance warfighter effects.
https://www.airforce.gov.au/about-us/structure/air-command-headquarters/air-warfare-centre
By Robbin Laird and Ed Timperlake
We have been working the challenge of the transition from the land wars to contested operations with peer competitors for several years.
Now it appears this is becoming a challenge more visible Inside the Bletway.
For example, the Navy League is holding its Sea-Air-Space exposition in Washington from April 9-1, 2018 and, it appears, that ways to operate in a contested environment is becoming recognized for the game changer it is.
According to the Navy League: “The largest maritime exposition in the U.S.Sea-Air-Space is now the largest maritime exposition in the U.S. and continues as an invaluable extension of the Navy League’s mission of maritime policy education and sea service support.
“The Sea-Air-Space Exposition will continue to support the mission of the Navy League and lead the way as “THE” Exposition to attend each year to display the most current information and technology relevant to maritime policy.”
The event is well covered by the analytical press and we can harvest some findings from the coverage of the exposition with regard to the way ahead with meeting the core challenge, namely how do the US and the allies respond to the challenge of peer competitors and to the evolution of the maritime, now air-sea battle, going forward?
The evolving Allied perspective, one which we are heavily engaged in working on in the UK, the Nordics and Continental Europe, is how best to deal with the Russian challenge?
Russia is not the Soviet Union, and the new Russian air and sea strike and defense assets are being used to shape a strategy different from the Soviet Union, but a major challenge it clearly is.
A piece by John Grady published April 10, 2018 by USNI News highlights allied perspectives.
The optimism for peace at the end of the Cold War has proven to be a mistake as Russia used the lull in Western defense attention to occupy Crimea and aggressively support separatists in Ukraine and insert itself in the Syrian civil war, three chiefs of European navies agreed on Monday.
“We were very optimistic in 1989,” Vice Adm. Andreas Krause, Inspector of the German Navy, said on Monday at Navy League’s Sea Air Space 2018 exposition. “2014 came like a surprise.”
Meanwhile, the Chinese began paying more attention to affairs in and around the Mediterranean, including establishing its first overseas military base in the Horn of Africa
“It is a matter of fact that we need to take [Chinese presence] into account” in assessing the changed security environment. It also means improving our capability to deter possible future aggression, said Chief of Staff of the Spanish Navy Adm. Teodoro Lopez Calderon.
For Spain, it means building up its military-industrial strength to produce more capable submarines and frigates that can operate with NATO partners. It also means working with navies and coast guards in the West and North Africa to curtail human trafficking and other illegal activities. He estimated 70,000 illegal immigrants tried to reach Spain last year.
In Sweden, “we’re emphasizing our region,” the Baltic where Moscow is increasingly making its maritime presence felt at Cold War levels – in the air, on the surface and below. Rear Adm. Jens Nykvist, Sweden’s Chief of Navy, said.
“It is an increasing number of ships” of all flags – commercial and military, operating in the Baltic, and that has really changed Stockholm’s approach to security off its 1,700-mile coastline.
All three said these geopolitical changes have focused their nations’ attention on increasing defense spending and emphasizing modernization and replacement of aging systems. Calderon said that modernization spending was central to deterrence….
The US Navy is forging ahead with innovations with regard to the air components of their combat fleet operations.
One coming capability is the UAV tanker.
As Paul McLeary of Breaking Defense noted concerning the US Navy and its presentations at the opening of the conference:
One bright spot on the day was the progress seemingly being made on the Navy’s unmanned tanker drone program, the MQ-25 Stingray, with Lockheed Martin announcing that their entry into the competition will include the General Electric F404 turbofan engine (which powers the Super Hornet) and landing gear made by United Technologies Corp.
The company’s Skunk Works office unveiled a “flying wing” concept dubbed the Stingray that differs from the designs from competitors General Atomics and Boeing, who are working on wing-body aircraft.
Lockheed also raised some eyebrows on Monday in rolling out a video showing its MQ-25 launching two AGM-154 Joint Standoff Weapons.
The Navy says its on track to choose a MQ-25 vendor this summer, and will award a contract for the four engineering and manufacturing development aircraft.
A significant addition to the fleet this year will be the Triton.
We have highlighted the importance of the coming of Triton in various pieces on our website, but its coming to deployment this year will be an important contributor to shaping a more effective extended reach combat force.
This development was highlighted at the exposition.
As Paul McLeary of Breaking Defense noted:
The U.S. Navy is preparing to deploy a new generation of high-altitude drones to the Pacific this summer, sending two MQ-4C Tritons to Guam.
The coming deployment comes at a time of heightened military tensions with China, which is also busily shipping surveillance and electronic warfare equipment to several of it scontroversial outposts in the South China Sea.
The deployment of the 131-foot-wingspan drone will give the Navy new new set of eyes in the vast reaches of the western Pacific, intensifying the building race between Washington and Beijing to push more ships, aircraft, and radar systems into the region.
Late last month, a 40-ship Chinese flotilla, including its only native-built aircraft carrier,sailed into the South China Sea.
The Northrop Grumman-made aircraft, a variant of the Air Force’s Global Hawk, will deploy initially with electro-optical sensors capable of tracking maritime targets from as high as 60,000 feet.
It will push that data back to ground stations at Naval Station Mayport, Fla., or Naval Air Station Whidbey Island. Wash., or to nearby P-8A Poseidon submarine hunters.
“One of the main reasons that the Navy decided to fund Triton was to have that teaming arrangement, to be able to communicate back and forth between P-8s and the Triton aircraft,” Capt. Dan Mackin, the Navy’s Triton program manager, told reporters at the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space Exposition.
The deployment will also allow the P-8s to focus more on the submarine hunting aspect of tis mission, leaving other ISR missions to the drones.
“You want to give the P-8 the ability to perform the anti-submarine warfare mission while tying to high-altitude ISR mission,” Mackin said.
“One of the things we’ll do is pass information back and forth between the two aircraft and the situational awareness of the fleet will be enhanced. Both aircraft have the ability to do chat, so both crews will be able to communicate back and forth”
And Sam LaGrone added this to the announcement of the deployment of the first Triton’s to the Pacific:
Under the current concept of operations for the platform, four airframes will make up one 24-hour, seven-day orbit.
“One on the way out, one on station, one on the way back and one in maintenance,” Mackin said.
The first capability will combine a series of electro-optical sensors and radar to track maritime targets from as high as 60,000 feet over the ocean and compare tracks to automated identification systems on ships.
A Triton will relay the information back to one of two main operating bases in the U.S. – Naval Station Mayport, Fla., and Naval Air Station Whidbey Island. Wash. – or to nearby P-8A Poseidon anti-submarine warfare aircraft….
Part of the IOC process will include adding a top secret “multi-intelligence” function to Triton that will eventually replace the Navy’s Lockheed Martin EP-3E Aries II manned signals intelligence platforms. Congress mandated the Navy retire the EP-3E Aries II only after it had found a way to field a similar capability.
Eventually, the Triton program will consist of five four-aircraft orbits around the world. The operators will reside in the two main bases at Mayport and Whidbey Island.
“The system is made up of an aircraft and a main operating base where the warfighter starts taking that data over wideband SATCOM link you start assimilating that data, put that data together to understand the [maritime picture],” Mackin said.
The Navy will have five operating bases where the aircraft will be maintained, launched and recovered. The forward bases will be at Naval Air Station Sigonella, Italy; an unspecified location in the Middle East; Naval Air Station Guam; Mayport; and Point Mugu.
With the coming of the Triton, which has highlighted in many ways the limitations of the cumbersome DoD requirements setting process, how might the Navy be addressing ways to get equipment into the hands of the warfighter more rapidly?
The new head of N-9, the Navy’s deputy chief of naval operations for warfare systems, Vice Admiral Bill Merz discussed a way ahead during the Exposition.
In an article by Megan Eckstein, the way ahead was described by the Vice Admiral.
“Capability is where we would really like to put most of our energy – that’s where we can turn the capability and make our fleet more lethal much more quickly than just building capacity. And then there’s the capacity piece, the 355-ship navy….”
Merz told USNI News on Monday that he is looking to invest in projects that will boost fleet “capability, which is a slightly higher priority for us than capacity.”
“We can turn those much more quickly than building a whole new ship and getting it fielded,” he told USNI News after his Monday panel talk.
“If you just add new ships, that’s just a linear improvement to what we’re already doing. If you can build ships and put this kind of capability on it, now you get a geometric improvement or maybe even an exponential improvement.”
To give the innovations some top-cover from Navy leadership – and also to provide some oversight – the Navy and Marine Corps are working through an Accelerated Acquisition Board of Directors that meets quarterly and votes on which projects to take a chance on. Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition James Geurts chairs the board alongside either the chief of naval operations or the commandant of the Marine Corps, depending on whose project the board is considering.
Merz said during the symposium that, thanks to acquisition authorities Congress gave the military services, they can bypass testing requirements and jump to the front of the line for funding in some cases – but not just any program deserves this kind of treatment, he said, and the Navy and Marine Corps are trying to prove judicious in using these authorities.
The Accelerated Acquisition Board of Directors must ask itself, “can we develop this? Can we develop it quickly or accelerate it? And then, should we? Because there’s an opportunity cost every time we do this,” Merz said.
“Sometimes things frankly don’t need to be accelerated,” particularly if a system’s entry to the fleet is properly phased with the sundown of a legacy system, or if the threat it protects against remains consistent.
But because the programs that are approved by the AA BoD can be high-cost and high-stakes programs – such as the MQ-25A Stingray unmanned carrier-based tanker and the Large Diameter Unmanned Underwater Vehicle programs – the BoD provides top cover and a “bubble of protection … until you get through a demonstration and show this thing works,” Merz said.
He added that the BoD approval to move ahead also signals a “full commitment” to the program…..
And finally a bit of reality shock setting in.
If you are going to engage in operations in contested areas, getting logistical support is a key enabler of whether you can fight at all and certainly whether you can fight and win.
In this report by Ben Warner, the Navy and Marines are clearly focused on working through better ways to deal with this challenge.
Future Navy and Marine Corps war games and exercises will include delivering supplies and personnel to contested environments with the goal of gaining an understanding of how using logistics wins fights.
The services want to rehearse delivering equipment to a contested environment because future engagements are likely to include fighting to the fight, according to a panel of military logistics experts during a panel discussion at the Navy League’s Sea Air Space 2018 exposition.
“We must definitively exercise plans and not fairy-dust logistics like may have been done in the past,” said Patrick Kelleher from the Marine Corps logistics command.
Wargames and exercises in the past have often started with the assumption all required equipment and personnel were in place for the start of the practiced engagement, Kelleher said.
The problem with making this assumption is the military has no way to see what deficiencies exist or experiment with new technologies. Now, the process is much more deliberate, with the Navy and Marine Corps learning what takes place when assembling forces, said Rear Adm. Pete Stamatopoulos, the Navy’s director of logistics.
“For the first time we have what’s called an expeditionary logistics needs assessment team,” Stamatopoulos said.
This team concentrates on figuring out how to address delivering supplies to expeditionary operations. Part of the challenge is the Navy currently has 250 logistic systems and about 1,600 applications.
“Those systems developed over many, many decades are stove-piped,” Stamatopoulos said.
“We need to move them to a different operating environment. something that’s connected but can be disconnected in a contested environment…..”
The shift from the land wars to operating in multi-domain contested operations is a profound shift and will affect the performance and redesign of the combat force.
We will have a forthcoming report from a Williams Foundation seminar which focuses directly on this challenge and how to shape a way ahead.
The Arrival of a Maritime-Domain Awareness Strike Capability: The Impact of the P-8/Triton Dyad
By Murielle Delaporte
Afghanistan and operations in the Middle East against jihadist terror groups mark the rebirth of the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) as probably the most modern and innovative air force among US allies and partners.
The Aussies deployed a new force package during their most recent Middle East engagement, as C-17s, F/A-18As and F/A-18Fs operated with the E-7 Wedgetail Air Battle Management aircraft and the A330 MRTT tanker.
During a visit in March 2018 to RAAF Richmond near Sydney, I discussed the RAAF’s experience with the head of the Air Mobility Command of the RAAF, Air Commodore Bill “K9” Kourelakos….
For the Aussies, their experience in the Middle East with this new air combat package is also about “closing the triangle between NATO, the United States and Australia” in terms of interoperability.
Kourelakos says the RAAF has de facto become a key force knitting the coalition together by acquiring clearance to refuel more and more aircraft. Today the KC-30A can refuel the F-16, Tornado, F/A-18, E-7, KC-30, B-1 and the F-35A. And at the time of the interview it was acquiring certification for the P-8A. “With the coming of the F-35, we are expanding our work on small receiver operations with fighters”, he noted.
For the full story see the following:
Robbin Laird
During a visit to Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) Base Williamtown in March 2018, Murielle Delaporte and I had the chance to talk with the new commander of the Air Combat Group, Air Commodore Kitcher.
RAAF Williamtown is undergoing significant infrastructure modernization as it prepares for the F-35A and as the RAAF’s Air Combat Group (ACG) spearheads the transition in the air combat force.
They are undergoing a quite rapid transition from a legacy aircraft to a fifth generation force in terms of completely retiring their Hornets in favor of acquiring their F-35As.
ACG is moving from flying a legacy Hornet force along with Super Hornets and the E-7 (Wedgetail) to one in which Growlers, E-7s, Super Hornets and the F-35As are integrated to shape the new generation air combat capability.
This is a unique combat capability and represents a shift to the RAAF working with the USAF alongside their continuing long standing and excellent working relationship with the USN.
From this, the RAAF will shape something a bit different than the US forces will fly themselves.
“We’ve had a long and very fruitful relationship between the Royal Australian Air Force and the US Navy.
“We have flown the P-3 and now the P-8.
“We have operated the Classic Hornet since, since 1986, and more recently, the Super Hornet, and the Growler.
“It’s been a long and enduring relationship, which has proved beneficial to both, and certainly we couldn’t have got where we are with Super Hornet and Growler without the outstanding support the US Navy provided us.
“With the F-35A we’re expanding our relationship with the US Air Force.
“And clearly standing up our squadron at Luke AFB and working with the USAF has been beneficial and a key driver to this evolving relationship.”
During a visit to Williamtown, two years ago, I visited the base with an eye to looking at infrastructure changes.
Those changes were just charging with one of the first F-35A buildings just being built.
Now two years later, infrastructure is being built up significantly and we toured the base to see many of these changes.
Air Commodore Kitcher talked about the changes which are designed to augment the ability of the base to operate with the new aircraft but also to enhance the ability to command the evolving force.
ACG Head Quarters is located in a building that was a former battery shop. Now a modern building to support the command, as well as other Headquarters and commands from RAAF Williamtown is being built.
The base is being wired to handle the advanced data systems being established with a clear eye to efficiency, effectiveness and security.
“We are seeing two basic types of change.
“The first involves the base refreshing itself. This involves base redevelopment with the base infrastructure being renewed and replaced, including runway and taxiway extensions.
“The second involves building the infrastructure and support facilities for the F-35A squadrons which will train and operate from the base.”
The OBISC or On Board Information System Center for the F-35A is built with personnel working in the Centre.
The Number 2 Operational Conversion Unit (2OCU) building is largely complete and will support the training squadron but will also house Number 3 Squadron (3SQN) when they return from the US at the end of 2018.
“3SQN will come back to Australia at the end of the year and work on the Australian Validation and Verification Activities for F-35A.
“By the end of 2020, they will move into their own facilities and the training unit (No 2 Operational Conversion Unit (2OCU)) ) will move into the buildings vacated by 3SQN.
“2OCU will look after all aircrew and maintenance training for the RAAF F-35 capability.”
By the end of 2020, there will be over 30 F-35s at the base “which is initially sufficient aircraft for 3SQN and 2OCU, and that’s our Initial Operating Capability number of aircraft.”
The basic change from Hornet to F-35A at the base is driven by the data rich nature of the aircraft and the security changes associated with handling and processing the data.
From this point of view, working with Super Hornets has been part of the overall transition as well as it introduced the RAAF to the challenge of handling data differently from our legacy aircraft.
“We need to be able to port various security grades of data into and around the facilities on the base.
“AF learnt many lessons when introducing the Super Hornet and we will build on managing those sensitivities for the introduction of the F-35A.”
The F-35 community has been stood up at Luke AFB with various nations training together at the facility for the initial cadre of pilots and maintainers generated by the Luke AFB training facilities.
“We have been impressed by the approach and attitude of the USAF trainers as we are working closely with them in training 3SQN aircrew and maintainers.
“And we have been extremely impressed by the attitude from USAF leadership which allowed RAAF personnel to fully integrate the with the US folks in the 61stFighter Squadron at Luke.
“It would have been very easy to have two teams just working out of the same squadron, but that’s exactly what the USAF did not do..
“The USAF and RAAF have worked in an integrated manner, which the RAAF is extremely thankful for.
“For example, RAAF personnel have fulfilled key squadron executive positions such as flight commander.”
Air Commodore Kitcher highlighted the strategic goal of ACG with regard to the transition as follows: our challenge is to actually transition to the new capabilities in minimum time whilst ensuring we keep the overall force healthy.”
Mission Ready F-35s Delivered to RAAF from SldInfo.com on Vimeo.
They have an aggressive schedule with regard to F-35A transition.
They are transitioning from four Hornet to four F-35A squadrons in just four years.
“That is a more rapid change, and a more aggressive schedule than any other F-35 user is on track to do.”
And in that transition, a key objective is establishing a “healthy training system in Australia.”
And this training system will be supporting F-35As at Tindal Airbase in the Northern Territory as well.
That base is undergoing a significant infrastructure rebuild as it will receive F-35As early next decade as well.
Incorporating the F-35A, the Super Hornets, the Wedgetails and the Growlers into an integrated air combat force is the broader transition facing the RAAF.
The challenge, which is a good one to have from the standpoint of Air Commodore Kitcher, is to learn how to fight effectively with a fifth generation enabled force.
“Learning to fly the F-35A is not the hard part.
“Working the mission command piece is a key driver of change for sure.
“And although we are working closely with the USN and the USAF, we will do things differently as we integrate our unique force package and adapt it to Australian conditions.”
Another part of the transition is working the sustainment piece.
“We need to ensure that we have the required number of experienced and capable technicians to generate the number of sorties we need to generate, and the sortie rate is supported by the engineering and logistics systems.”
And we discussed another key aspect of combat transition, namely learning or shaping the C2 piece of the force evolution.
What can be overlooked with regard to the F-35 is that it is many ways part of the transition to distributed C2 rather than being viewed as a classic ISR capability, whose function is to distribute data widely in the battlespace.
Given the challenge of operating in a contested environment, within which adversary’s will seek to disrupt the ISR flows which the US and the allies have been able to generate within previous land centric wars, a key challenge will be to take decisions in a contested environment.
As Air Commodore Kitcher said: “With the fifth generation aircraft, there are key missions they need to perform themselves and just do it, potentially without proliferating information support to the broader force.
“Everyone’s going, “But I need the information that can come off the aircraft.
“We need to be able to say no you don’t, in this particular case, you don’t need that information right now, you may get it later.”
“It is about sorting out and collectively agreeing, from the tactical squadron to the higher HQ’s, what we should choose to do versus what we can do,” Air Commodore Kitcher said.
And that is a good way to end.
Clearly, Air Commodore Kitcher and his team are focusing on what needs to be done to deploy, develop and shape a fifth generation enabled force and prioritizing and executing those needs to get the job done.
Editor’s Note: The third slideshow are shots of classic hornets operating at Williamtown Airbase the day of our visit in March 2018 and are credited to Second Line of Defense.
Robbin Laird
During a visit to Amberley Airbase, Murielle Delaporte and I had a chance to talk with Group Captain Steve Pesce, Officer Commanding 86 Wing, comprising the RAAF’s C-17, KC-30A, B300, CL604 and B737 fleets.
We discussed his perspectives on the future of air tanking, and specifically the next steps in the evolution of the KC-30A, including enhanced sustainability in combat operations.
The development of the Automatic Air-Air Refueling (A3R) boom to the KC-30A is viewed by the Group Captain as both part of the strategic evolution of tanking and as a significant upgrade to the KC-30A as an operational platform.
He has been involved with the KC-30A program for about 10 years, and has seen the aircraft move from design to reality and to become “the preferred tanker” in Middle Eastern operations.
He sees automation and robotics as part of the change involving the evolution of tanking itself.
From his perspective, in a conflict against a “near-peer” adversary the RAAF and allied forces may not have the luxury of secure tanking in uncontested airspace.
Air forces will gain transient advantage rather than total control of the air and will support surface assets that will be more dispersed across a larger Area of Operation (AO).
Demand for AAR (and air mobility in general) will increase as the survivability of a large tanker is reduced.
Distributed operations in contested airspace will become a norm, and that means in his view the end of the classic larger tanker operations.
The manned tanker will operate further away in the battlespace and become the mother ship for tanking remotes operating as refueling nodes to expendable assets deployed forward,
“My view of the future battlespace is that sensors and shooters will be more proliferated, integrated and reach further and with greater precision.
“There will be a natural move towards dispersion to improve survivability and delivery of fuel will be critical.
“The future of a large tanker will be to support more distributed and dispersed operations and we will be looking at small tactical refuelers providing fuel to tactical air combat assets – these tactical assets will likely be cheaper, unmanned and more expendable.
“That is where A3R comes in.
“I see an advantage in the automatic boom because it reduces the workload on the operator who in the future may be managing or controlling formations of UAV during AAR.
“As we learn to use this technology, it will be part of shaping the skill sets to transition to the next phase, of a large tanker replenishing smaller, automated tactical refuelers.”
Another aspect of change associated with KC-30A is part of the evolution within the battlespace as seen by Group Captain Pesce.
Namely, the proliferation of communications and sensor technology throughout the air combat force will include larger platforms such as C-17 and KC-30A, by including new SATCOM and other linkage technologies.
This is designed to support not only a dispersed force but also provide network redundancy in a disrupted and contested EM spectrum.
In the near term, the RAAF is working with Airbus Defence and Space and with other tanker allies to enhance the sustainability of the MRTT.
“We use the MRTT as a multi-mission asset and do not have the luxury of a larger force like the USAF which can afford to have a specialized tanker. We use the KC-30A as a multi-use platform supporting a multi-mission force.
He noted that multi-mission philosophy extended to the maintainers of the tanker, which are part of a broader RAAF effort to rotate maintainers throughout the air combat fleet to gain proficiency throughout the force.
Such multi-platform proficiency was viewed as an essential capability to support a small force operating as a force package either within Australia in some future military contingency or in a force projection package away from Australian territory.
“Our maintainers are initially trained with regard to specific platforms but we will rotate them across multiple platforms as well. A technician might work on a KC-30A for six years and become a maintenance manager.
“Typically, one would then be promoted to say a Sargent and then those Sargents might then be posted to a different aircraft type, like F-18s.
“At the same time, we will have sergeants from F-18s posted to KC-30A and they will then need to be retrained on that platform.
“This approach comes at a cost. But the clear gain is that you have a broader pool of cross-trained workers.
“As a smaller air force, we need an agile and multi-trained maintenance force to enhance our effectiveness.”
For Group Captain Pesce, a key challenge is “to enhance the sustainability of the fleet. It is a very high demand asset and indeed we are using the tanker at twice the level we anticipated.
“This means we have to look at ways to extend the life of the operational fleet and to improve the sustainment approach.
“A challenge faced by all military platforms leveraging a large commercial fleet is that the configuration used by the military is simply a small subset of a much larger commercial fleet, whether 737s or A330s.
“This means that the configuration of the commercial aircraft is always evolving, whereas the military wishes for configuration for the military asset to remain common.
“And a common configuration enhances our ability to work with allies flying the same platform as well.”
“The key discussion we are having with Airbus focuses on configuration control for the fleet in order to reduce costs of sustainment for the users.
As the fleet of tankers gains more operational experience, more accuracy is achieved with predicative knowledge concerning the key military parts of the A330, which has been transformed into a tanker.
And getting better domain knowledge of predictive parts performance is a key part of ensuring the timely supply of parts to ensure that the dispatch rates of the fleet remain high, again because it is a high demand asset.
Improvements in logistical support are a key way ahead for the KC-30A in the RAAF.
As Group Captain Pesce concluded: “If you are a small air force, you want as small a logistics footprint as possible to ensure optimal combat effectiveness.”
Certification of KC-30A with Various Aircraft
Editor’s Note: Featured photo shows a RAAF KC-30A Multi-role Tanker Transport from RAAF Base Amberley performing refuelling operations for USAF B-1B Lancers in addition to RAAF F/A-18F Super Hornets and E/A-18G Growlers during Exercise Lightning Focus.
The B-1B Lancers participation in this exercise was part of the Enhanced Air Cooperation program, which aims to increase the interoperability between Australia and the United States.
The second slide gallery are photos shot during the visit of the Second Line of Defense team to Amberley in March 2018.
Recently, Australia more than doubled its F-35A fleet when Lockheed Martin delivered three F-35As (AU3, AU4 and AU5) to the Royal Australian Air Force team stationed at Luke Air Force Base, Arizona, USA.
These are Australia’s first Block 3F Lightning II ‘Mission Ready’ jets which are being used to train USAF and RAAF pilots and maintenance crews.
The first F-35As will arrive in Australia in December 2018 to ensure continuity in Australia’s air combat capability during the drawdown of the F/A-18A/B Hornet fleet that the F-35A is replacing.
April 10, 2018
Australian Department of Defence
In a recent interview conducted at RAAF base Williamtown, the Commander of Air Combat Group, Air Commodore Kitcher highlighted the strategic goal of ACG with regard to the transition as follows:
“Our challenge is to actually transition to the new capabilities in minimum time whilst ensuring we keep the overall force healthy.”
They have an aggressive schedule with regard to F-35A transition.
They are transitioning from four Hornet to four F-35A squadrons in just four years.
“That is a more rapid change, and a more aggressive schedule than any other F-35 user is on track to do…..”
And he discussed as well the nature of the aircraft and its impact on missions:
What can be overlooked with regard to the F-35 is that it is many ways part of the transition to distributed C2 rather than being viewed as a classic ISR capability, whose function is to distribute data widely in the battlespace.
Given the challenge of operating in a contested environment, within which adversary’s will seek to disrupt the ISR flows which the US and the allies have been able to generate within previous land centric wars, a key challenge will be to take decisions in a contested environment.
As Air Commodore Kitcher said: “With the fifth generation aircraft, there are key missions they need to perform themselves and just do it, potentially without proliferating information support to the broader force.
“Everyone’s going, “But I need the information that can come off the aircraft.
“We need to be able to say no you don’t, in this particular case, you don’t need that information right now, you may get it later.”
“It is about sorting out and collectively agreeing, from the tactical squadron to the higher HQ’s, what we should choose to do versus what we can do,” Air Commodore Kitcher said.
Interview with Paul Bracken
In February, the U.S. Department of Defense released the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review, a report that outlines the state of the nation’s arsenal of nuclear weapons and the threats it faces from other nuclear powers, as well as recommending policies and strategies for the future of the nuclear force.
In his preface to the report, Secretary of Defense James Mattis notes that since the last Nuclear Posture Review, released in 2010, the strategic environment has changed, with North Korea provoking the international community and Russia and China modernizing their weapons and taking increasingly aggressive actions with their conventional forces.
“We must look reality in the eye and see the world as it is, not as we wish it to be,” Mattis writes.
“This NPR reflects the current, pragmatic assessment of the threats we face and the uncertainties regarding the future security environment.”
Yale SOM’s Paul Bracken, an expert in business and defense strategy and the author of The Second Nuclear Age, assessed the Nuclear Posture Review in a recent article.
Among the themes of the document, he writes, is an acknowledgement of a return to “great power rivalries” with Russia and China after 15 years in which U.S. foreign policy was dominated by counterterrorism.
He adds that the document is intended to signal Russia and China that the U.S. will counter their modernization efforts by replacing existing weapons, but will refrain, for now, from prompting a new arms race by creating new weapons.
“There is no mention in the Review of new weapons or new capabilities,” Bracken writes.
“The United States will replace weapons in its arsenal with those that have the same essential features. At a time when technology is disrupting the entire industrial and business universe, and where the United States leads the world in such innovation, this is a noticeable omission.”
Yale Insights talked with Bracken about the Nuclear Posture Review and the consequences of the rivalry with Russia and China—for U.S. foreign policy and for businesses operating in a world that is increasingly globalized and increasingly contentious.
Q: What is the Nuclear Posture Review? What’s important about the most recent review, which was released in February?
Paul Bracken: The Nuclear Posture Revue is a congressionally requested report on the status of the U.S. nuclear forces’ arsenal, which would be the bombers, the long-range missiles, the submarine force, and any other nuclear weapons that we have.
And the questions it poses are, Are we keeping around what we need to keep around? Can we get rid of certain things? Has the world changed so that we want to adjust the arsenal in some way?
It hasn’t been around very long.
This is the third one.
In 2002, the Bush administration put out a very hawkish report. I believe the term arms control was never mentioned once.
In 2010, the Obama administration kind of retaliated, if I may use the word, and put a very dovish plan out there that said we should get rid of nuclear weapons.
And this one, I would say, is important because it adjusts for the new realities of the 21st century.
The environment is changing, and a government report finally catches up.
Q: What’s new about the approach in the newest report?
Paul Bracken: This one, to me, has no ideological elements in it, which is a curious circumstance given who our president is now.
The people who did this thoughtfully deliberated, and they recognized the fundamental problem, which is that other major powers—mainly China and Russia, but there could be others, possibly India—have modernized their strategic forces.
And if this goes on and the U.S. does not respond, there could be serious consequences. Not so much at the level of a nuclear war, but it would affect the U.S. ability to negotiate in the Western Pacific and South Asia and in the Middle East.
And if this perception were to grow that the U.S. has not invested money in modernizing its nuclear forces, then these consequences could be serious, and this report is the first one to explore what some of those are.
Q: Who reads these reports? What kind of impact do they have?
Paul Bracken:: It’s a very good question because these have had, traditionally, almost zero impact on the world. Maybe small impacts on budget.
I think this one will be different.
First of all, it’s being read very carefully in Beijing and Moscow, and in other places.
Secondly, it is going to free up a lot of money, which will be invested in a modernization of U.S. nuclear forces.
Now, this is being driven by the political context of the Republicans being in office this time, but I think this one also captures a very important point—a sense in the Pentagon, the intelligence community, and in the American public that we have been focused on counterterrorism and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which the American people, and in my opinion, most of the officers in the Pentagon, do not understand.
Not even that we’re winning or losing, they just don’t understand why we are there. And that Russia and China have been building up their military, and we’ve been focusing on the wrong issues for the past 15 years.
Building democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq. Counterterrorism. Important in some sense, but they’ve let other countries build up and outpace us.
This report catches that theme, and I think that’s much more important than a lot of the bureaucrat-ese.
Q: In your article about the nuclear posture review, you wrote, “By no means does it call for a new nuclear arms race. Actually, it signals restraint. But it adds a critical proviso. Unless restraint is given in return, the United States will be compelled to take more ambitious improvements in its nuclear deterrent posture.”
Paul Bracken: My reading of this report is that it is a signaling device, and what it says is we don’t want to get into a nuclear arms race because it’s wasteful, it’s dangerous, and all sides could spend their money much more usefully on conventional war forces or on economic development.
But we’re not going to look over and not notice some of the things you, Russia, or you, China, are doing.
So if you want to sit down with us and talk, we are prepared to do so, but we will no longer just glide along as if nothing is happening.
Q: What would more ambitious improvements look like?
Are we talking new types of weapons?
Paul Bracken: A subtext of the document is that we are in the midst of a technological military revolution, and this comes from the digital technologies finally coming into the armed forces.
Many new weapons, many new capabilities.
There’s more innovation in defense today than at any time since the early 1950s at the very start of the Cold War.
And so what I think this document is really threatening isn’t that we’re going to build more nuclear missiles or nuclear submarines.
What it’s saying is, we’re going to unleash American innovation, and we would prefer not to do that. Our response to you isn’t to build more missiles.
We will honor all of our arms control agreements, but we will build new capabilities that will potentially open up a new arms race with unknown consequences.
It’s like Pandora’s box, this new technology, because the new digital technologies spill over into the nuclear balance.
Q: I’m trying to picture what that would look like.
Paul Bracken: I’m going to give you a couple of concrete examples, okay?
There’s a term you hear in business schools all the time now: big data. There’s all these huge amounts of data that are out there, and companies are finally trying to figure out, how can we use it?
Well, you could use that data to track enemy weapons.
For the past 25 years, people thought that the most invulnerable, survivable kind of nuclear weapons were mobile nuclear weapons. Basically you put a nuclear weapon, a nuclear missile, on a truck or some sort of a mobile launcher.
Now, if we were to listen into the telephone conversations of the crews, which in some cases can mount into the hundreds of individuals, if we had acoustic sensors that could track these systems around, or take pictures of them with spies using cellphones, we could track those.
The presumption of the past 70 years, that a first-strike nuclear attack on another force is impossible, now looks like it could be upset.
That could be destabilizing.
What does that mean?
That means they would take counter-measures, which are dangerous.
They would build more missiles so that they could ensure survivability. This is just one example of many I could give you where the new cyber technologies are spilling over into the strategic balance.
Q: A theme of the NPR is the return of a great power rivalry.
Who are the great powers today?
Paul Bracken: In Washington, and I would say the world agrees, the great powers, the major powers, are seen as the United States, Russia, and China.
There are other big powers. Super economies like Japan, but Japan doesn’t have much of a military. The United States is doing all kinds of deals with India now as a counterbalance to China.
But there’s a recognition that we now live in a multi-polar world.
Q: What are the manifestations of the rivalry beyond nuclear weapons?
Paul Bracken: The other manifestations that we’ve seen so far have been low-level, low-intensity operations.
Let me just give you a couple of these.
One is the construction of islands in the South China Sea by Beijing, which are being turned into military bases.
This is going to make operations for the United States Navy extremely difficult in the Western Pacific.
What does difficult mean?
It means they can be harassed. It means that if there’s an escalation, there could be firing on U.S. ships, and the hope, it is thought, on China’s part, is that they want to coerce the United States Navy out of the Western Pacific as a region where it is too dangerous to operate.
Let’s turn to the other side of the world and give you another example.
The United States was perfectly willing to support paramilitary operations and alliances in the Middle East to try to knock President Assad out of office. The Russians came in and countered the U.S. move.
The fact that the Russians had new kinds of nuclear weapons makes this whole thing a much more dangerous game, so the U.S. is not as willing to do it.
A second example in the western part of the world is the U.S. support for so-called color revolutions, like tacit support for the overthrow of the government of Ukraine in 2014. A horrible government. Pro-Russia. Abused its citizens, but a government nonetheless that was elected by the people of the Ukraine.
Now, we could get into a big debate whether that’s good or bad policy.
My point would be that the strategic balance is influencing something very important, that’s in the central core of the United Nations charter: non-interference in the affairs of another country. I think the United States did interfere in the internal affairs of Ukraine, and effectively Russia. They’re countering with their actions in the 2016 elections.
So these nuclear posture reviews are having immediate political effects.
It isn’t something off in some unimaginable world of nuclear war.
Q: Is it important for the U.S. to signal that it’s not interested in starting an arms race?
Is this reflected in the fact the report does not recommend any new systems?
Paul Bracken: The U.S. would very much like to avoid any repetition of the Cold War, where each side built up truly absurd levels of nuclear weapons, which became completely and utterly unusable and expensive to guard and protect.
No one benefited from this.
Ultimately, we won the Cold War, but it created a world that was extraordinarily dangerous. If 1% of those weapons had gone off, you would have a catastrophe as if you take all the wars of the past 500 years and put them into an afternoon.
This is a clearly undesirable thing.
The United States is trying to signal to Moscow and China we do not want to go down that road again.
Q: How should businesses think about this rivalry?
Paul Bracken: Businesses play a huge part in this.
First of all, the national innovation system of the United States is fundamentally changing because of Defense Department dollars, and the same is true in China with their defense department. All of this emphasis on big data, much of the cyber technology, that comes out of R & D programs of the Pentagon, of the National Security Agency, the CIA.
We saw this in the Cold War with satellites, most of which were presented to the public as peaceful attempt to predict weather.
But these, as we all know now, had many military implications. The investments in big data that are used every time you use the GPS in your car—all of that came out of Defense Department money. And since early 2000s, there’s been a huge spike in investment.
So what businesses need to know about this is that the Pentagon is the mother of all venture capital companies.
A lot of the smartest companies are carefully tracking NSA and DOD investments for new technologies for commercial purposes.
Now, a different impact on business—I would say the most fascinating one to me and one I teach here—is, how do we make good decisions about technology?
Which areas to invest in, which areas not to invest in.
How do we think about the subject of technology management and technology leadership?
One of the biggest gaps in American business education is technology management.
I think we need to develop a lot more case studies of how technology develops and technology management.
We need to think about ways of looking at the future.
Technology scenarios and how they can develop is another thing I’m experimenting with in my courses, and I’m very happy with a lot of the results so far.
In the Department of Defense, they talk about leaders who will make the hard choices, even if it affects them negatively in political or economic terms.
I see a lot of companies that look at the world that way—if it’s a tough choice, that’s why we have senior executives to make that choice.
Let me describe a different way of looking at technology and leadership, and that is, are these the choices that I have really in the first place?
Maybe I don’t have the right choices being presented to me, so anytime I make the hard choice,
I’m missing another choice that no one even presented.
One of the things we’ve learned in technology management is that the band of possibilities of what could happen is usually much larger than what many leaders think, so they should spend more time doing what I call environmental scanning—finding out what other people are doing.
When it comes to a big technology investment, don’t automatically accept the alternative that somebody gives you. Spend a lot more time asking yourself, are these really the alternatives?
Are there better ones out there that my staff hasn’t simply noticed?
Q: During the Cold War if you were IBM or some other American company, you basically didn’t really operate in the Soviet Union.
Today a U.S. company could be operating in China or vice versa.
Paul Bracken: Another important area is the national security implications of these high tech companies like Tencent or Alibaba in China, or their counterparts here in the United States.
There’s nothing today to prevent a company in China from buying a Silicon Valley company. And you don’t have to go in and actually take the technology.
A better way may be to take the engineers, and have them work for you in Singapore. Or, just send the information they gather back to Beijing, all perfectly legal today. How a company compartments sensitive information inside of it is something we’re seeing become much more important in business.
A high tech company in the United States, if they’re operating in China, they’re not going to have this open attitude where all employees share information because they know they’re going to lose their intellectual property.
In many ways the multinational companies are between a rock and a hard place, because if they give away sensitive information in China, they have all kinds of problems in the United States.
On the other hand, if they don’t give it away in China, then the Chinese government says, “Well, you can’t operate here.
“We just happen to be the biggest market in the world, with many of the best artificial intelligence engineers and quantum computing experts.”
Q: With these companies that are operating in so many countries, does that have any impact on how the Pentagon is able to do its job?
Are they exerting an influence on foreign policy?
Paul Bracken: One could try to get the United States government to change something in a foreign country. But the tradition in the United States is that we will not do that. China has a very different tradition.
It is just learning this game, but in China, they really will and have lobbied Congress below the radar to get changes in some of our laws.
Just think of the espionage consequences of this. It almost makes corporate employees more lucrative targets than somebody working for the enemy’s government, or their army, or their intelligence service.
The real secrets in technology are in the private sector, probably in China as they are in the United States, so I think we’d have to be naïve if we didn’t think the intelligence services around the world are really looking at multinational companies and technology companies in all kinds of ways.
And Edward Snowden’s revelations a few years ago I think give credence to that view.
It’s a very interesting world out there.
Republished with the permission of the author.
Editor’s Note: The graphic above was displayed during a recent speech by President Putin, announcing that Russia had acquired new nuclear weapons. This graphic shows incoming warheads about to strike Florida, if one missed the point
And throughout his time in power, Putin has frequently used recourse to the nuclear threat as part of political and diplomatic pressures on states.