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The Future Naval Service Posture and the Need for a Reinvigorated Revolt of the Admirals
By Vince Martinez
Here we go again…
07/25/2011 – It seems we are in familiar territory again—collectively diving head first into a looming post-war era of demobilization, retrofit and reset. Coupled with a decreasing defense budget, dwindling service structure and doctrinally driven acquisitions, each service is in a pitched fight to defend their operational relevance and their service posture.
Add a new Secretary of Defense, allegations of acquisitions concern over high visibility programs, a chasm of divergent doctrinal perspectives, and it is as if we are reliving the “Revolt of the Admirals” in 1949 all over again.
Only, this time around–while there is plenty of banter behind the scenes–one key element is missing: The public display of vocal discord against an emerging defense posture that does not sufficiently bolster the Navy and Marine Corps team for future success—much of which has been defined without the benefit of a well informed perspective from the Naval Service leadership in defense of their doctrinal roles and responsibilities to the nation.
The hallmark of the Navy/Marine Corps team as described in the doctrinal publication “Forward…From the Sea” in the early 1990s has been slowly dismantled over the last couple of decades–one piece at a time. It hasn’t been with a lot of pomp and circumstance, nor has is come with a tremendous amount of public knowledge or visible impacts.
But is has manifested in decreased budgets, long range shipbuilding strategies that de-emphasize our amphibious capabilities, and through ship designs that do not maximize what the Navy/Marine Corps team has to offer. With the senior defense leadership being focused on sustaining and fighting a ground fight over the past few decades, it is clear that the utility of Naval Forces and the strategic impact they bring to the fight has suffered from a lack of attention and visible support.
The Naval Services are finding themselves in a pitched battle to claim and define, once again, their importance within the overall defense posture. Its relative value, however, can be simply be measured by the materiel condition of the fleet.
What are the major differences from what the public saw in 1949? Not much in the grand scheme of things relative to service level doctrinal perspectives. What has changed, however, is the fact that the technology for both friend and foe has grown exponentially more capable, the threats are often distributed, much more lethal and elusive, and the roles and missions for the Naval Services have expanded exponentially into a much larger spectrum of operations—including operations like Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief. Coupled with an operational tempo that is stretching the seams of the services themselves, along with the fact that the equipment being employed by the warfighters is not being replaced at a sufficient enough pace to keep up with the demand, you have a recipe for some significant challenges for the Naval Services in the coming years.
From Haiti deployment briefing Credit: USN (Credit: http://www.quantico.usmc.mil/Seabasing/docs/Haiti%20Collection%207.ppt)
To illustrate the impacts of lack of attention to the amphibious side of the fence, the current fleet of amphibious ships is comprised of a very high number of ship design configurations relative to the overall number of ships, precluding Program Managers from effectively and affordably executing lifecycle management strategies.
Many of those ships are being worn out and retired faster than ships can be procured and built to replace them. Even the replacement ships, unfortunately, are being assessed and fielded with the same mindset—single ship/single class deliveries are being proposed as potential materiel solutions in order to bridge to yet another class of ship in the out years—a strategy, which of course, will only exacerbate the problem. Grey bottom shipping isn’t the only major challenge facing the Naval Forces.
Many of the aircraft, ground vehicles, ground systems and black bottom vessels that support amphibious forces are also nearing or surpassing their original service life—some of which have no tangible replacements on the horizon.
As a result, the naval services are continually having to hemorrhage resources to not only ensure their gear is sufficiently ready to satisfy not only their operational commitments, but also to facilitate a bridge to often troubled programs of record that are supposed to replace the legacy gear in the first place.
Amid all of that, senior leadership in the Pentagon and within the congressional hallways often contribute to the friction by openly razing emerging programs along with the vendors that produce them, while the vendors are struggling to get through the acquisitions wickets that have been placed upon them.
Rather than incentivizing industry, this type of response seems to only frustrate those on the industry side—many of whom will remain critical to national defense in terms of the design, development, manufacturing and fielding of the much needed new and innovative capabilities that will be essential for sustaining a technological edge to carry the services into the future.
While everyone holds a part of the blame for troubled programs, often times–and against conventional wisdom—many of the problems are not the result of industry side inefficiencies, as many in the Pentagon or in Congress would assert. As an example, much of the blame for the large number of amphibious ship configurations originates from the rapid and undisciplined requirements creep that comes at the hands of unconstrained requirements generation. This clearly has negative impacts on not only the manufacturer and the ability to efficiently produce a ship, but also creates issues for acquisitions and the fleet in terms of maintenance and lifecycle management.
This, and a litany of other programmatic challenges resident within the Naval Services–along with the programs that drive them–demands a new and innovative approach for assessing and defining not only current and future operational impacts, but also for setting the stage for effectively managing, executing and overseeing enterprise level acquisitions in support of Naval Services warfighting requirements.
In 1949, it was the lack of a coherent strategic message that ultimately led to the super carrier United States falling prey to the Air Force B-36 Bomber initiative during the service level loggerheads.
Today, as in 1949, the future outlook for many of the capabilities resident within the Naval Services are at risk against other service priorities because of the lack of a focused message that adequately spans across the entire naval enterprise.
Today, the list of naval programs that are having to fight for resources in order to affordably survive not only includes new-start ships the LHA replacement, but also other transformational capabilities like the F-35B Joint Strike Fighter or the MV-22 Osprey–which if truncated or cancelled will negatively impact the agility and the flexibility of the Naval Service as a whole.
Joint isn’t always the answer…
Despite the great successes over the years inside of the Joint arena, there are still many challenges that loom in combat operations despite the overwhelming technological advantage that our services hold. This becomes particularly acute as we begin to examine our current and future operational capabilities in the light of service doctrinal roles.
The Marine Corps, as an example, is now actively moving toward reestablishing its amphibious and expeditionary roots aboard naval shipping. When embarked, and furthermore when employed across the spectrum of operations, what has typically been readily available in terms of Joint fire support over the last decade—as an example—will no longer be readily available. The service, then, has to be prepared to address that and other capability shortfalls as part of its doctrinal responsibilities when embarked aboard the Amphibious Readiness Group (ARG).
It is this particular operational shortfall, which has driven the Marine Corps to define a requirement for the F-35B. In addition to that particular niche, however, the F-35B is capable of not only providing V/STOL Close Air Support (CAS) like its predecessor the AV-8 Harrier, but through the benefits of technological innovation, also provides enhanced force protection through kinetic and non-kinetic fires, provides Electronic Warfare (EW) capabilities to support the MAGTF in all phases of operations, as well as providing a critical enabler for the command and control at sea or ashore.
At the same time, it also brings the attributes of a 5th Generation Fighter along with it, which simultaneously enhances the force protection umbrella for the ARG. Despite the fact that many would argue those capabilities are resident within the Joint Services as a whole, even when those capabilities are available for tasking, they may not present a solution that best serves the operational, tactical and environmental conditions on the ground.
Ganjgal Valley (Credit: http://militaryphotos.deviantart.com/art/Ganjgal-Valley-189755972)
Case and point: for the first time since Vietnam, a living Marine–Corporal Dakota Meyer–will receive the Medal of Honor for his actions in Afghanistan in September, 2009. Corporal Meyer bravely raced into the kill zone of a firefight in the Ganjgal Valley to retrieve the bodies of three Marines and a Navy Corpsman who were killed by enemy fire.
While the award is a celebration of Corporal Meyer’s ultimate bravery, what will not be listed on his Summary of Action are many of the external conditions that led to his bravery in the first place; much of which was the result of a glaringly tragic operational shortfall. In the executive summary of the investigation into the incident in the Ganjgal Valley in Afghanistan on 8 September 2009[1], it was clearly noted that Joint fire support was available within the Coalition Joint Task Force (CJTF-82) during the operation, but “Timely aviation and indirect fire support were not provided.” The report also goes on to state that repeated requests for the Quick Response Force (QRF) were not supported, and that a lack of situational awareness, decisive action and a sister services “…lack of commitment to support partner units with the same focus and emphasis as organic units” contributed to the operational failure.
While it is not my intent to minimize this tragedy to just a few sound bites or to commercialize the loss of lives, what is clear is that the Joint fire support system broke down enough to contribute to the death of three Marines, a Navy Corpsman and an Army soldier—along with several coalition Afghan Soldiers—due to lack of dedicated, responsive fire support that could have reacted when they needed it most.
An organic, USMC F-35B in the mix could have made a significant—if not life saving—difference in terms of building situational awareness for the ground force and the Tactical Operations Center (TOC) before, during and after the attack. The F-35B could also have supported through decisive action and the delivery of kinetic and non-kinetic fires, or by providing multi-spectral support prior to the operation to inhibit or deter the enemy’s desires to do harm in the objective area prior to the coalition troops ever arriving. Want to know why the Marines want and need the F-35B? Look no further than the loss of life in Ganjgal Valley.
Defining and Defending a New Way Forward…
While the challenges for the Naval Service span a vast array of systems and capabilities, the struggle for senior defense officials is often in taking tangible lessons from war and applying them directly toward the acquisitions, planning programming and budgeting, and requirements generation systems. The F-35B is only a single example of a programmatic struggle that is occurring because of the lack of a well-defined, Navy and Marine Corps strategic message.
USS United States, pictured in drydock with her keel laid. The cancellation of USS United States and her sister ships were the major factor in the "Revolt of the Admirals" (Credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolt_of_the_Admirals)
Without a strong, cohesive voice from the “Admiralty and Generalship” of the Navy/Marine Corps team, the ability to counter the advances of senior defense official decision makers who are attempting to fill a perceived hole becomes very difficult.
As a result of the lack of a strategic Naval Service message, the Navy/Marine Corps team will likely have to continue to accept decisions that directly impact the warfighter—at sea and ashore—because they have not had the opportunity to prep the battlefield sufficiently as a team in order to win the day.
It is high time for the Navy and the Marine Corps team to tackle these issues in a cohesive manner—especially relative to the amphibious forces—and portray the strategic nature of the Naval Service as a whole in a light that defines and defends a strategic role now and in the future.
It may be time for a re-visitation of the Revolt of the Admirals. This go-around, however, has to be the byproduct of a cohesive Navy and Marine Corps team. The Naval Services cannot afford to repeat history when it comes to today’s fight for resources, and they must be diligent in their pursuits to ensure the safety and stability of the nation they serve.
Changing the way the Naval Services define, field, fund and fight their collective operational capabilities is the only way to do this effectively. In the hallways of the Pentagon, it can no longer just be the about the Blue or the Blue supporting Green budget verses the Green Dollar budget. It can no longer be about unconstrained requirements generation or acquisitions program baselines that sacrifice capabilities for cost, schedule and performance without much needed input from the warfighters.
Through disciplined, inclusive and holistic alignment of capabilities across the amphibious force—as well as all the integration of all the elements that feed them—the overall operational impact of the Naval Forces has to be captured in a way that makes programmatic, budgetary and operational sense for the Naval Forces as a whole.
Make no mistake about it—even within the Naval Services—many will profess that this type of initiative will be extremely difficult to create, much less result in a balanced and effective set of solutions to present to the senior defense leadership.
Now is as good a time as any, however, to move on a strategic change of direction. It is time for the leadership to chart a new course in the development of the synergistic roadmap that define their collective futures—one that ensures the collective well being of the Naval Services as a whole.
An innovative, cross-functional and disciplined approach for doing exactly that has to be developed and implemented in the near term in order to ensure these service level challenges are addressed.
What everyone also knows, however, is that this type of innovative approach will only be possible through the vision, leadership and desire of a restless Generalship and Admiralty who recognize and know that it is high time for another Revolt of the Admirals.
F-35As at Edwards AFB June 2011 (Credit: Lockheed Martin)
07/25/2011 – The shift from the F-16 to the F-35A for the USAF will provide significant capability to improve operational performance and operational tempo. In an interview with Joel Malone, the shift was discussed and analyzed.
Joel Malone has extensive USAF operational experience. He retired in August 2008 from the Air Force. His last position in the Air Force was 35th Fighter Wing Vice Wing Commander, at Misawa Air Base, Japan. He had eight operational and training assignments in the F-16 over a 26-year period. He has been with Lockheed Martin during the past two years.
SLD: Could you discuss the challenge of configuration management for operational capabilities?
Malone: With the F-16, generally speaking there are least two configurations at any given time for an F-16 unit, whether it’s a training unit, or an operational unit that’s training. The two configurations are generally going to be an air-to-air configuration, basically a clean airplane with no wing tanks, no centerline tank or possibly a centerline tank.
And in addition to that, there’s going to be an air-to-ground configuration that’s going to be two wing tanks along with wing pylons in order to carry ordinance on the wings.
And if it’s an operational unit, most likely it’ll have an ECM pod, an Electronic Counter Measure pod on the centerline station, so it’s a dirty configuration. It’s a configuration that’s limited in Gs. It’s limited in AOA. It’s limited in what you can do with the airplane.
The goodness out of having that dirtier configuration with wing tanks, ECM pod, pylons in the wings is that it’s actually in the deployment configuration that if you had to go to war tomorrow, it’s ready to go.
An F-16 Fighting Falcon flies a close air support mission over Iraq May 7, 2006. The Hill Air Force Base F-16 is deployed to Balad Air Base, Iraq, in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. (Credit: US Central Command Air Forces 5/7/06)
And so at any given time, especially for an operational unit, they’ll have a very high percentage of their aircraft in a deployable configuration, which means wing tanks, ECM pod, targeting pod, pylons on the wings, and all of that helps basically make it so that they can get the airplane into its final deployment configuration as soon as possible.
And if they didn’t do that, then it would literally take days in order to get that kind of configuration change from a clean configuration.
In other words, there are at least two configurations at any given time on an F-16 ramp, and generally that’s going to be an 18-airplane unit or a 24-PAA unit. Generally, a 24-PAA unit we’ll be able to probably do a normal turn cycle of a 12 aircraft on the first go and then ten aircraft on the second or third go and then you’d have two or three spares available to keep up with the ops tempo.
A key challenge maintenance has in that kind of situation is they would have to have a ratio of air-to-air configured jets and air-to-ground configured jets, something like eight air-to-ground and four air-to-air and then probably one spare per configuration, and all it does is add to complexity on the flight line.
SLD: And your point is that it takes a period of time to shift from one configuration to the other, so you basically have a mixed fleet from the standpoint of two basic types of configurations, air-to-air and air-to-ground in your units so that you can deal with the complexity of training challenges the unit might deal with everyday.
Malone: That’s right. In the air-to-ground configuration, in that configuration where you have eight or ten airplanes in the air-to-ground configuration, sometimes you have targeting pods, sometimes you have HARM targeting system pods, sometimes you have to have different types of ordinance to do the real training mission so you might have say AGM-88s loaded on the wings. Those are HARM missiles, training missiles, and so on depending on the configuration on a flight line on a given day.
Let’s say an F-16 Block 50 unit in Misawa Air Base in Japan or Shaw Air Force Base in the United States or Spangdahlem in Europe, you would have three or maybe four configurations on a single flight line trying to manage the training requirements for an operational unit. It’s a difficult challenge.
It’s really hard to add that in and then sometimes you add in a Maverick missile requirement, you add on the air-to-ground configuration as well and so it really complicates the maintenance delivery schedule for every day operations when you have all these multiple levels of configurations required on any given day.
The beauty about the F-35 is that theoretically you’re going to have one configuration, you’re going to have 24 F-35As CSTOL sitting on a ramp in the basic configuration with no wing tanks, there are no pods to attach, you don’t have to attach pylons. Your training configuration and your deployment configuration are the same. You basically are able to train like you’d go to war in the worst case scenario with a very high threat environment, you would be in a position where you could deploy literally within a very short time period.
An F-16 Fighting Falcon connects with the refueling boom of a KC-135 Stratotanker. The refueling mission took place over Iraq, in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The KC-135 is part of the 340th Expeditionary Air Refueling Squadron, Southwest Asia, while the F-16 deployed from Hill Air Force Base, Utah, to Balad Air Base, Iraq. (Credit: US Central Command Air Forces 05/07/06)
The airplane is already configured, already ready to go, and it’s minimum amount of time to try to get into a configuration that you need to shift into combat operations.
SLD: So you’re able to neck down from two to four configured aircraft to basically one?
Malone: One, that’s right. And guess what? The clean configuration only requires military power to takeoff. Operators will have the option to not use afterburner in order to take off in a clean training configuration and so that potentially may help lower noise abatement in the surrounding community.
If you have a lot of ordnance on the wings, if you put it in its most heavy weight condition with let’s say external stores, then you’d have to use afterburner in order to takeoff. But if you’re in a clean configuration, even with internal stores, you would still be able to do a military power takeoff, which is not using the full thrust of the engine in order to make your takeoffs.
This basically helps solve some of the noise abatement issues that operationally you might have if you had to do afterburner takeoffs on every single takeoff.
SLD: Another aspect here is with regard to the weapon’s management on the two aircraft.
Malone: Yes, there are two internal weapons bays. There’s two, left and right – – and then in each bay, depending on what you want to take, you would upload different weapons and have the capability to carry up to in each bay one 2,000-pound class weapon and then also one AMRAAM missile, so with internal weapons, you’d be able to carry two 2,000-pound weapons along with two AMRAAM missiles.
If you chose to configure the airplane with only air-to-air missiles, you’d be able to carry two in each bay or four total AMRAAM missiles. And then there’s obviously the capability to carry smaller sized bombs/weapons, so you can carry smaller sized 500-pound weapons or thousand-pound weapons, or even small smart diameter bombs up to four per bay, so total of eight in the aircraft.
SLD: If I’m fully loading on the externality of the aircraft, in other words, I’m not concerned about stealth operation, is there going to much of a difference than between the 16, the 35 in terms of external weapons loading?
Malone: Essentially what you would have to do on the F-35 is take a pylon cover plate off the wing, on the underside of the wing and then you would upload a pylon. And then on there is a common configuration pylon across all three variants.
You would upload either bomb racks or you would upload missile rails in order to accommodate the type of mission you were flying that day, the ordinance that would allow you to train.
One of the things that have been designed out for the F-35, which uses the technology on the F-22, is a pneumatic air weapons eject system. The system uses bleed air from the engine to basically eject the weapon away or push the weapon away from the pylon or the missile rail or the ejector rack, and the F-35 is using the same technology.
It’s using pneumatic air from bleed air off the engine. The F-16, F-15, F-18, A-10 other legacy type platforms use a shotgun shell type of explosive device. These devices are basically used to safely push the weapon or push the missile away from the aircraft to allow it to separate and then operate as designed.
This shift in how you launch weapons is another layer of maintenance touch hours, labor hours, time consumed in order to accommodate making sure that you have the airplane safe for maintenance. It becomes a footprint item when you try to mobilize and deploy with these things. You have to accommodate for these explosive items in order to carry or airlift them in the theater.
You have to make this aircraft safe for maintenance in order to put the aircraft into a hush house and do an engine run or to take it into a hanger, you have to download those carts off the airplane and so it ends up taking time that in the F-35 and the F-22, you don’t have to do that because you don’t these explosive cartridges. You’re just using pneumatic air; bleed air to get the job done.
It’s one of those elements that have been designed in the airplane to save hours, save time, save mobility footprint. It’s a small thing, but these are the kind of things that add up across the board, maintenance man-hours, labor hours, airlift footprint, storage requirements, and training requirements. Such items add onto the logistics footprint that you have to accommodate.
Several F-16 Fighting Falcons taxi down the flight line in a single file line at Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska. RED FLAG-Alaska 08-2 is a Pacific Air Forces command directed field training exercise which provides joint offensive counter-air, interdiction, close air support and large force employment training in a simulated combat environment. The aircraft is assigned to Luke Air Force Base, Ariz. (Credit: http://air-attack.com/images/single/728/Several-F-16-Fighting-Falcons-taxi-down-the-flight-line.html)
SLD: Focusing upon the F-35 as a system, not an aircraft, there were certainly be a process going forward to design smaller weapons for this aircraft and for the next generation of multi-piloted aircraft as well. This fits a functionality of where we’re going to go as opposed to where we’ve been.
Malone: Absolutely. We’re building a fifth generation aircraft that must accommodate in some cases third and fourth generation type weapons. Certainly the weapons on the F-35 are precision guided or near precision with GPS. They’re the latest things that are out in the field, but at the same time we want to be able to accommodate the legacy fourth generation type weapons, we would like to see fifth generation weapons built in the future so that you have maybe a smaller size footprint, weapons that they do more with less; they would theoretically fly further and longer distance, but they’re smaller or packaged in smaller containers.
They will have more explosive capability but in smaller containers. All those things that you get with new technology potentially we would be able to harness with that new technology.
SLD: With the single configuration, there is a significant opportunity for partners in the evolution of combat air power.
Malone: The potential is there so that if one of our partner countries is developing a fifth generation type weapon, the potential is there that either that weapon could be accommodated and integrated on the F-35 and be available across the coalition.
SLD: You said that having these multiple configurations is a real challenge for the maintainers, you said even a nightmare for maintainers, but describe how in concrete terms how that presents a challenge to a maintainer trying to enhance operational tempo?
Malone: Notionally, a normal turn on a day-to-day training kind of schedule for an F-16 unit will be 24 permanently assigned aircraft squadron. They’re going to probably try to put up a 12-front, maybe a 14-front, 12 airplane or 14 airplane on their a.m. schedule.
Let’s say they have an a.m. and a p.m. schedule, they’re going to try to put up a 12-front. What this means is 12 airplanes on the schedule with probably two or maybe three spares. That’s a total of 14 or 15 total airplanes dedicated to the a.m. go and of those 14 or 15 airplanes, configuration-wise, four of them are going to be on the air-to-air training lines and then eight or ten, depending on how many front lines there are, will be an air-to-ground configuration and then their spares will be divided equally. So probably one air-to-air spare and either one or two air-to-ground spares depending on frontlines.
And then on the p.m. go, I’m going to probably have airplanes come back and some will need repair, so I’m not going to plan to fail here. I’m going to do a 12-turn ten-plan and that way when I come back and plan to fly the afternoon go. I’m not already out of airplanes because I’ve already broken a couple airplanes from the first go.
Theoretically if all 12 airplanes came down code one good to go, then you basically now have five spares to use in the afternoon go.
But if you needed to repair two or three in a 12-front, then you probably would’ve spared those out and so you may be down to the point where you can’t even turn, say put an afternoon go of ten airplanes, so you want to try to schedule to be successful, not to fail.
And so bottom line is four air-to-air lines, eight air-to-ground lines, and then spares divided equally. Chances are you’re going to have either two or depending on the air-to-ground configurations, you might have three or even four different configurations based on the training requirements for that day’s missions.
It becomes a very difficult challenge to schedule and move jets around in order to accommodate the training requirements for the individual pilots that are flying that day, and that’s the goal is to meet the training requirement for the pilots.
SLD: So this is basically managing the operational tempo and the role of maintenance in managing that ops tempo is what we’re describing.
Malone: That’s right.
SLD: With the F-35A, you have a different maintenance problem or challenge or approach, which allows you to address operational tempo differently. So take us forward into the 35A world and how you would reshape your mental furniture to get a different operational tempo.
Malone: I think you will have a standard configuration on an F-35 ramp, which would be a deployment configuration to go to war tomorrow. I would want to have those airplanes configured in a manner whereby the majority of those airplanes, if not all of those airplanes, would be configured so that I could deploy within the next 24 to 48 hours.
And in my opinion, it’s got enough internal fuel in the airplane already so that you don’t have to have wing tanks on the wings and you no longer need an ECM pod because that capability is built in the radar. You don’t have to have a targeting pod because the targeting pod is built into the airplane. You don’t have to have a Harm Targeting System pod on the airplane because the sensors are already built into the airplane. You don’t have to have pylons on the wings because that’s not the configuration that you would want to go into the first day of the war with. You’d want to have a clean wing so that you can be in a very low observable kind of configuration.
Unless you were training for a very specific mission where you wanted to show the capability to upload pylons and carry the heaviest weight loads, my every day configuration would be clean wings.
If I wanted to carry ordinance for some reason, I would carry them internally on that day’s missions, but otherwise I wouldn’t even carry those. The normal training configuration every day would match deployment configuration which would be clean and that would be across all the airplanes, 24 airplanes on the ground versus having three or four different configurations on an F-16.
SLD: Because you’ve had significant configuration simplification, you really change the whole maintenance problem. You’ve now allowed maintenance to focus much more on getting the entire flight line geared for operations rather than having a portfolio of capability that you’re maintaining.
The commander could actually focus very much on getting more ops done for his diversity of strike options rather than having less ops time because all the complexity of maintenance and operational support, so he’s going to get more ops time out of this.
Malone: I totally agree. You would have so much more flexibility on the day-to-day schedule if you had all of your airplanes configured in one single configuration. You would be able to pull the airplanes available that are on the schedule that day and be able to insert them into any line that you wanted to. You would just have a lot more flexibility to be able to meet the training requirements of the pilots, which is the ultimate goal, or the aircrew, that’s the ultimate goal there.
And I think it translates operationally as well. Operationally deployed, once you get in a theater and you’re ready to go, it’s a very simple task of uploading any additional ordinance that you did not carry into theater initially, you would upload that ordinance and the airplane is ready to go. You don’t have to upload anything that you airlifted in. Everything’s ready to go, so I think operationally it makes sense as well.
SLD: Single configuration has a major impact on weapons development as well. The current situation is a software Tower of Babel whereby weapons are integrated with a
type of aircraft or even a model of a type of aircraft. Software commonality across the fleet will mean that I can save time, effort and money on inserting weapons onto that single configuration F-35A.
Malone: Ultimately it comes down to what weapons are qualified by development test and then also operational test and evaluation. Which airplane? What weapons are what they call “seek eagle tested” and approved for carry and employment off the weapon system? The F-16 has now been around for quite a while and over the last 25 or 30 years, and has been modernized, upgraded, and it can carry a plethora of weapons that are out in the field today.
The F-35 will go through the same flight test requirement. Initially there’ll be a set of weapons that are very specifically driven toward precision and non-precision GPS type weapons and it’s a very limited scope. . Eventually the F-35 platform will end up growing and broadening to many more weapons, but that ends up taking time with more testing and flights to ensure the seek eagle process is accomplished.
Initially when the airplane goes operational for each of the variants, there will be a very specific list of weapons that the airplane can carry. It’s been designed and agreed to qualify the airplane with Block 3 and then ultimately that number of weapons that can be employed off each variant will grow like the number of weapons have grown on the F16, the F-15E, the F-18 and A-10 and other aircraft, Tornado, Typhoon, but each one of those platforms that were just mentioned all went through a growing curve where initially they qualified one weapon and they just continued to grow the number of weapons, but it’s a process they had to go through for safety and to ensure safe separation and safe weapons’ effects and the F-35 will go through that same process.
SLD: But the difference is this: what we I saw down at Air Armaments Command (AAC) at Eglin was they qualify each weapon up against the platform as you just described which costs a lot of money, and takes a lot of time. The big advantage here is one can qualify a new missile across a fleet.
Malone: What it does is reduce ultimately the number of test flights that you have to do across all three variants, but there will probably be a requirement to drop each individual weapon off each variant just to confirm safe separation. But there’ll be a lot of synergy; especially with the software that drives the avionics’ processes of stores’ management, radar handoffs and all the interfaces. And this should represent a significant savings of time and money within the testing and evaluation cycle.
07/22/2011: In late June 2011, Second Line of Defense visited McGuire Air Force Base and was briefed on the 621st Contingency Response Wing resident to the 21st Expeditionary Mobility Task Force. This unique asset operates globally to create airfields on demand to support the USAF’s ability to insert force worldwide in support of the joint force.The tour began with a discussion with Brigadier General Scott P. Goodwin, Commander of the 21st Expeditionary Mobility Task Force and with Col. Chris “Krispy” Patterson, Commander of the 621st Contingency Response Wing otherwise known as the “Devil Raiders.” After the overview discussion, we were shown various elements of the CRW capability and participated in a roundtable with several practioners of the CRW art. In later articles, each of these elements and the roundtable discussion will be discussed.
SLD: Could you explain the nature of the EMTF?
General Goodwin: There are two EMTF’s in existence, one on each coast. If you think about air mobility command, there are generation forces, maneuver forces, and acceleration forces. We are the acceleration forces. The generation forces are the bases that generate the airplanes and crews and put them out into the system. The maneuver forces are the airplanes and the crews, and the acceleration forces are those who are out there providing the enterprise, the en route network that the maneuver forces flow through.
SLD: They are the tip of the spear, so to speak?
General Goodwin: Exactly. We’re part of air mobility command, 18th Air Force, and again, one of the two EMTFs, we’re the eastern half of the enterprise; whereas the 15th EMTF traverses the western half of the enterprise.We look east to Europe, Asia, Africa and we’re kind of split with regard to South America. Depending on who’s there and who’s available, either CRW team might go there.Within each EMTF, there are two wings. You have an AMOW, an Air Mobility Operations Wing. And a CRW, or a Contingency Response Wing.
The AMOW essentially is the fixed portion of the enterprise. They operate all the hub locations. They function as the AMC hub locations in their theater of operations. The wing commander at Ramstein has got about 2,400 people in 16 countries, 21 locations. He touches about 40,000 arrivals and departures a year.If you look at passengers, cargo, departures, literally over half of what air mobility command does flows through, as you would expect, the eastern half of the enterprise. And they stay busy, any crisis that erupts there, they’re there supporting. It’s the fixed forward-deployed presence.
SLD: Could you explain the difference between the AMOW and the CRW?
General Goodwin: Ramstein is a fixed location or fixed hub. That is the AMOW. The capability to open up an operation where we have no standing air mobility command presence, that’s what the CRW does.For example, Haiti, we didn’t have a military passenger and cargo operation. But we needed one, because we were going to be pushing a lot of military airplanes, organic and charted aircraft into there, bringing aid. We needed somebody to provide the command and control, the maintenance, the aerial port, all those support functions for the DOD assets that were going to be flown in there. The CRW did that.That’s why we had these guys on-call to provide that mobile capability wherever we need it. And we don’t have a standing AMC presence.
SLD: And your role in all of this?
General Goodwin: I’m in essence, a regional vice president for a major airline: the regional vice president for Europe and the Mideast. And my job is to make sure that all those services that are required on the ground are provided. At Ramstein we have an air mobility command tenant organization. 521st air mobility operations wing [521st AMOW] provides all the support services for the C5s, the C-17s, and the commercial charters coming through there.
SLD: And also functions as a transit or service center?
General Goodwin: In essence, yes. We have a small command center there that will provide the command and control, redirect missions, we’ll provide them all the flight dispatch information. All the flight planning and weather information. We have maintainers there who will park the airplanes, refuel the airplanes, perform some minor maintenance.And we will do the on and offload of the airplane, be it cargo or passengers. And we’ll provide all the servicing of the aircraft, all the lavatory trucks. Meals, all that kind of things for all the airplanes that are coming through and transiting Ramstein. It’s a transient service operation.
SLD: How many people in the CRW?
Col. Patterson: About 650. We have about 50 different, what we call Air Force Specialty Careers (AFSC)Everything from contracting finance officers, PA officers, civil engineers, communications or everything you would need for the operation. The main ones are aerial port, maintenance, and command and control.But everything you would need to operate out at the deployed locations. For example, when we went to Pakistan last fall after the devastating floods in Pakistan…We needed everything from people who could set up tents, generators, electricity to give us a place to live, or people who crew the aircraft.We can create a very small, little base to support us.
SLD: I assume that having a group with experience is crucial to this command?
Col. Patterson: I’m sure we’re older than the average wing [average age]. We have very few first assignment airmen who come here.And once the Airmen have their fundamental skill sets down, we’ll teach them how to do operate those skills in an expeditionary environment. We’re going to teach them really how to solve problems in all sorts of environments. What we do in the complex environments that we enter…we’re all about solving problems and solving those problems in places where we’ve never been before. We really challenge our Airmen to think, and to think outside the box.
SLD: obviously, you’re harvesting your lessons learned as you have a core competence in being an expeditionary, tip of the spear operation, you’re trying to harvest the lessons learned for that.
Col. Patterson: Correct. And all that information is getting captured through the various databases on lessons learned. We’re constantly populating those databases…And no two deployments are ever the same. It always changes and that’s really our focus when we train and equip our airmen. We have the standard skill set that we try to train everybody to, but in practice, the airmen are problem solvers for a wide range of circumstances. That’s what we do.
SLD: This clearly is a team with core competencies to be a flexible insertion force
General Goodwin: I would say I think the main focus that we try to teach our airmen that it is about flexibility, because you just don’t know what it’s going to be when you get there. And so, we train hard while we’re here, and that’s what we do most of the time until they need us. You tailor the force to the operation.
SLD: You seem to have a template of what you need to see for a successful operation; and then you measuring against that template.
General Goodwin: Exactly. We will tailor it as required. And you talked about the flexibility of the command. When you think about the basic package to go out and open an airfield, it’s what 154 people? All specialties. A lot of them are one and two deep. And what they’re going to do with 154 people…if all I’ve got is an airfield, they’re going to drop in on top of that. Several C-17 loads will get all of them in there, all their equipment, everything they need to sustain themselves, plus operate the airfield catching two C-17s simultaneously, 24-hour operations.
For example, with two 24-hour operations providing airfield security, they will bring their own contracting people, they bring their own public affairs people. Everything. But that contracting guy who’s going to come, he may only have to write a couple of contracts, but he’s there for this 60-day deployment. The rest of the time, what’s he doing? Well, he’s setting up tents, he’s doing everything else he can. So, they’re very reliant on cross-training.
SLD: It is a light footprint?
General Goodwin: It’s very light; it’s very agile.
SLD: What spectrum of combat operations does the CRW operate within?
General Goodwin: Permissive to uncertain. Anything above uncertain, they’re going to need additional augmentation for force protection. For example, the biggest scenario would be something like having the Army jumping out of 17s to seize the airfield. They would set up the perimeter, secure the airfield, and then, our forces would operate
SLD: The CRW, although an Air Force operation, then supports the joint force?
General Goodwin: Exactly. And in fact, the CRWs, we always have four contingency response groups, two on each coast. One of them is always on alert as part of what we call JTF-PO. Joint Taskforce Port Opening. It’s a TRANSCOM organization where they’re married with an Army unit, and they would go in exactly as you talked about, either into a permissive environment, or immediately after a seizure force to set up the airhead and create that joint RSOI capability.
SLD: What is an RSOI capability?
General Goodwin: Reception Staging Operations Integration.They’re globally oriented; they’re a crisis response force. They open airbases and operate that air cargo/air passenger type of support at some austere location where there is no standing DOD presence. That’s their whole reason for existence.Again They are located primarily here at McGuire and we have onesey, twosies imbedded with Army and Marines. AMLOs, Air Mobility Liaison Officers who help teach them how to use air mobility. You’re talking to that marine unit that says hey, you’re going to go here, here’s how we can help get you to the fight, and here’s how we can help sustain your fight. They’re educated on our capabilities, and they are liaising with the ground forces.
SLD: How do you organize your operation with regard to time scale, short versus longer-term insertion?
General Goodwin: If we expected to be there for a short-term presence, you know, 30, 45, 60 days, I would bring in contingency response forces to open that airbase and operate it. And then, when the operation was concluded, they’d pack up, they’d go home; we’re done. Just like we did in Romania and Bulgaria. It was a short-term operation, it was a deliberate operation, so we knew about it in advance, so we sent in an assessment team of about a half dozen, eight people. They got the lay of the land, figured out what was there, what we needed to bring, what we didn’t need to bring, they came home, built our plan. We then sent the forces in, they did the job, they packed up, they came home.That was a short-term operation.
But now, let’s say it’s going to be a long-term operation. We’re opening up an airbase in Afghanistan. And we know we’re going to have a longer-term presence, ranging from six months, a year, or multiple years. The contingency response forces are going to go in there, they’re going to open the airbase and set the conditions for the AEF or the RFF forces to come in behind and operate that base long-term.They can operate in either mode.
SLD: There’s clearly an ownership issue here. Your forces are coming in and owning the operation for a period of time and then turning it over to a follow on force or simply terminating the operation?
General Goodwin: Exactly. The seizure force is going to kick the door down, we go in, initially set up house, and begin to prepare the base for the follow-on forces.
SLD: What happens when you get too much surge going on at the same time?
General Goodwin: You’ve spent time with 18th Air Force, you’ve spent time with TACC. That’s where we plug in with that. That’s where the interface happens, that’s where the conversation happens.
SLD: So then, they can give you more capability?
General Goodwin: Correct. What’s going to happen is we’re aware of the situation, there’s a conversation that takes place with General Allardice, the18th Air Force commander. He owns all these forces. Eighteenth Air Force is going to issue the orders that say okay, we’re going to send a group of contingency responders to that location for that purpose. Once they go, then the command and control of that operation is going to come back through the TACC for day-to-day execution.We’re the ground support side of what happens out in the field. We are the acceleration forces.
SLD: One of the amazing things is how many diverse operations are commanded by the TACC?
General Goodwin: Eight, nine-hundred missions a day.We’ve talked a lot about AMC and us being an acceleration force, which we are. But just to be clear, there is an airbase opening piece that is absolutely unrelated to air mobility command.For example, in Iraq, the CRW forces opened Tallil airbase, which went on to be an operating base. And we did not go there to set up a mobility hub, but opening an airbase is an air mobility command function. It doesn’t matter if it’s an AMC base or not, we will go and open it for the joint force. We can open up the base and hand it off to anybody for any purpose.
Col. Patterson: And we do train for that. We train for the how we open a base and then hand it off to somebody else.
SLD: What’s the rhythm between the actual going out and the rhythm of training?
Col Patterson: Our operations have picked up pace in the past two years, Haiti, Pakistan, Japan or Libya come to mind.But the operations pace is very cyclical and we frequently spend four months on alert preparing ourselves to deploy within 12 hours. [Joint Task Force-Port Opening is the four-month on alert. And normally when you’re on alert, that’s the quietest time. Most of the taskings that we respond to are not 12-hour taskings. We usually know days, weeks, months in advance. While we’re on alert, we use that as an opportunity to do a lot of local training and really polish our skills.
07/22/2011 Criminalized States and Terrorist-Criminal Pipelines
By Douglas Farah
The Changing Landscape of West Africa and Latin America
07/18/2011 – While the commodities for weapons trade was lucrative to the participants and costly in terms of human life and the financing of criminal and terrorist organizations, recent developments in the criminal terrorist nexus have radically altered the historic equation of power and influence of non-state actors and criminal states. The driving force in this reshaping of the landscape is the overlap of the drug trade, which increases by orders of magnitude the economic resources available to criminal operatives and their allies.
(Credit: Bigstock)
The numbers are striking. The “blood diamond” trade at the peak of the regional wars in West and Central Africa was valued at about $200 million dollars a year, and was usually significantly below that. Timber added a few tens of millions more, but it is probable that the total amount of the illicit products extracted and sold or bartered on the international market was less than $300 million during peak years, and usually was substantially less. Yet it was enough to sustain wars for more than a decade and destroy the fabric of society of an entire region.
In contrast the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) conservatively estimates that 40 to 50 tons of cocaine, with an estimated value of $1.8 billion, passed through West Africa in 2007, and the amount is growing.[1] The Pentagon’s Africa Command and other intelligence services estimate the amount of cocaine transiting West Africa is at least five times the UNODC estimate.[2] But even using the most conservative estimate, the magnitude of the problem for the region is easy to see. Using UNODC figures, the only legal export from the region that would surpass the value of cocaine is cocoa exports from Cote d’Ivoire. If the higher numbers are used, cocaine would dwarf the legal exports of the region combined, and be worth more than the GDP of several of the region’s nations.[3]
These emerging networks, vastly more lucrative with the introduction of cocaine, undermine the stability of entire regions of great strategic interest to the United States. The threat is posed by the illicit movement of goods (drugs, money, weapons, stolen cars) and people (illegal aliens, gang members, drug cartel enforcers) and the billions of dollars these illicit activities generate in an area where states have few resources and little legal or law enforcement capacity
According to Antonio Maria Costa, the head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, this epidemic of drugs and drug money flooding Guinea Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone and elsewhere has become a security issue. “Drug money is perverting the weak economies of the region…The influence that this buys is rotting fragile states; traffickers are buying favors and protection from candidates in elections.”[4]
Given this history, the broader dangers of the emerging overlap among criminal and terrorist groups that previously did not work together is clear. Formerly working alone in a business that could yield a few million dollars, these groups now stand to gain significantly more.
The new revenue streams are also a lifeline to Latin American non-state actors that merge the criminal and the terrorist. The two principal beneficiaries are the FARC, now estimated to be the world’s largest producer of cocaine; and the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico, with the world’s largest distribution network. Both pose a significant threat to regional stability in the Western Hemisphere and direct threats to the Homeland.
U.S. and regional African officials say members of both groups have been identified on the ground in West Africa, and that the money used to purchase the product for onward shipment to Europe is remitted primarily to these two groups, often through offshore jurisdictions via European financial institutions.
This means that even as the U.S. cocaine market remains stable or shrinks modestly, these non-state actors will continue to enjoy expanding financial bases as the European, African and Asian markets expand. For the first time in the modern history of the drug war, the United States market may not be the defining market in the cocaine trade, although much of the proceeds of the cocaine trade will continue to flow to organizations wreaking havoc in the Western Hemisphere.[5]
[1] Presentation of Antonio L. Mazzitelli, regional representative, United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime, Regional Office for West and Central Africa, at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, May 28, 2009.
[2] Presentation of Peter D. Burgess, Counter Narcotics Project Officer, U.S. Africom, at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, May 28, 2009.
[3] Extrapolated by the author from UNODC and Africom data.
07/22/2011 – Although Iran’s recent announcement that it wanted to create its own national Internet separate from the rest of cyberspace represents the most visible threat to an open and free global Internet, the State Department’s Internet Freedom agenda faces major challenges in the former Soviet bloc as well.
In early July, the office of the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media released the first survey of Internet regulations in the 56 states that participate in the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which includes the countries of North America and Europe as well as Eurasia. The report documents a range of tactics that OSCE governments employ to disrupt people’s use of the Internet, including incorporating surveillance tools into Internet infrastructure; blocking online services; imposing new, secretive regulations; and requiring onerous licensing regimes.
Europe and Africa seen in green as part of the global data system. (Credit: Bigstock)
The U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, also known as the Helsinki Commission, held a hearing on this issue of Internet on July 15. The Commission is an independent U.S. government agency created by Congress in 1976 to monitor and encourage compliance with the 1975 Helsinki Final Act and other OSCE commitments. It consists of nine members from the U.S. Senate, nine from the House of Representatives, and one member each from the Departments of State, Defense, and Commerce. Congressman Christopher Smith and Senator Benjamin Cardin co-chair the body. The Commission convenes public hearings and receives briefings from expert witnesses on OSCE-related issues and releases public reports on how the OSCE participating States are meeting their commitments.
In his testimony before the Commission, David Kramer, President of Freedom House, reviewed some of the findings of his organization’s “Freedom on the Net 2011: A Global Assessment of Internet and Digital Media.” Released earlier this year, this publication provides a comprehensive documentation of the general deterioration in global Internet freedoms in recent years. In many cases, previously sporadic or limited censorship has broadened and become more comprehensive and effective. Targets now can include thousands of websites, extending from opposition news sources to human rights groups to individual blogs or social-networking groups that communicate messages that the regime deems hostile.
Of the 37 countries reviewed, Freedom House has assesses five as being at particular risk of suffering major decreases in internet freedoms in the next year or two. Russia is one of these five countries. According to Freedom House, during the past two years, while the Internet remains Russia’s last relatively uncensored media for public discourse and even the expression of political opinions, Russians’ Internet freedoms have eroded. The Russian government has not attempted to establish a comprehensive centralized filtering system such as those in China or Iran. By Freedom House’s count, however, at least two dozen cases of Russian government harassment of bloggers occurred in 2009 and 2010, including 11 arrests. Furthermore, several newspaper websites experienced denial-of-service attacks after they published articles that could adversely influence offline events.
A number of Russia’s Internet Service Providers (ISPs) impeded access to the radical Islamist website Kavkaz Center. The sites Kasparov.ru, Rufront.ru, Rusolidarnost.ru, Nazbol.ru, Namarsh.ru, and Newtimes.ru have also been blocked in some localities for short periods. Article 282 of the criminal code allows the authorities to order the removal of extremist content. The law’s definition of “extremism” is vague and includes xenophobia and incitement of hatred toward a “social group.” The Ministry of Justice has a list of proscribed materials on its website that is updated monthly. The Ministry does not explain the criteria and procedures it uses to determine what materials are extremist. Nonpolitical reasons for content removal include posting child pornography and file-sharing services that violate copyright law.
Freedom House believes that the most common means authorities use to pressure service providers and content producers is to simply call them by telephone. Police and representatives of the prosecutor’s office call the owners and shareholders of websites, and anyone else in a position to remove unwanted material and ensure that the problem does not come up again. Such pressure encourages self- censorship since most providers do not wait for court orders to remove targeted materials. In addition to official monitoring and prosecution, websites critical of the government can become inaccessible due to unexpected “technical difficulties.” Several newspaper websites have experienced denial-of-service attacks when they publish with articles that could influence offline events in ways unwelcome by the authorities.
To counter these techniques, opposition websites increasingly use foreign-based Internet Service Providers as well as social networking sites. In response, the state and its supporters has increased its reliance on proactive manipulation of online discussions. For example, in March 2011, bloggers claimed to have found evidence that Russian authorities were hiring people users to post positive comments of the ruling United Russia Party and make negative remarks about the author of a targeted blog. Advertisements have reportedly begun to appear on Russian job sites for people who, as in China, the government or affiliated institutions will hire to manipulate online discussions by inserting pro-government comments on various online forums. Freedom House fears that the authorities will increase their Internet controls during the period before the December 2011 parliamentary election and the early 2012 presidential election.
Although difficult to shut down the Internet completely, the ability to block public access is not to be underestimated. (Credit: Bigstock)
The situation in other Central Asia and Caucasus countries is also mixed. Azerbaijan has been experiencing a rapid growth in Internet use in recent years. As a result, the government, which previously ignored the Internet, has begun applying media controls, already common regarding print and broadcast media, to the Web. According to the International Telecommunication Union, 27 percent of the population had access to the internet in 2010, a significant increase from 2008, when the penetration rate was roughly 14 percent. Access to high-speed broadband service is rare due to its high price. Government organizations and opposition parties made little use of Internet tools during the November 2010 elections campaign. The spread of Azerbaijani-language blogging platforms in the last few years has led to a surge in the number of blog sites.
The authorities have temporarily blocked access to a few web sites that ridiculed the president of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev. Access to the website of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Azerbaijani service, www.azadliq.org, has also been blocked. There is no appeals process since the government has not officially confirmed blocking web sites. In 2009, the authorities arrested two activists from the OL! and AN youth movements, Emin Milli and Adnan Hajizade, youth activists for posting a video that satirized the government’s policy of paying high prices for imported donkeys. The two were released in November 2010 following an international campaign on their behalf. Most hacking attacks come from Armenian internet protocol (IP) addresses. The government has yet to follow through on proposal made in 2010 to mandate that Internet-Service Providers (ISPs) obtain licenses and sign formal agreements with the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology.
The government of Kazakhstan reports an exponential growth in internet access, from a 0.7 percent penetration rate in 2000 to 28 percent or 4.3 million users by the end of last year. Almost all of these are Russian-language speakers surfing from home with a high-speed broadband connection. To promote transparency, Prime Minister Karim Masimov has directed every minister and government agency to discuss their work in a blog. Most of these are at blogs.egov.kz.
Like other governments in the region, Kazakh authorities use various tactics to control the media. Most of these focus on the more wisely used print and broadcast media, but there is some evidence that the state-owned ISPs blocked access to sites where Rakhat Aliyev, Nazarbayev’s former son-in-law, posted content. Access to other sites is also restricted through technical filtering by state-controlled Internet companies, cancellation of .kz domain names, and self-censorship by Internet hosts. In 2009, Kazakhstan’s Internet law was amended to make content providers and hosts legally responsible for what others post on their sites. Most ISPs in Kazakhstan hired moderators to censor content that could expose the hosting entity to third-party liability.
Georgia still has the freest Internet environment in Eurasia. Lower usage prices have led to surging use of the Internet and related telecommunications technologies in recent years. According to the International Telecommunication Union, Georgia’s Internet penetration has surpassed 30 percent, with 1.3 million Internet users in 2009. People with low income or living in rural areas still have problems gaining regular Internet access, while the country only had some 150,000 broadband subscribers out of a total population of 4.3 million. Silknet and Caucasus Online dominate Georgia’s ISP market, providing a combined market of more than two-thirds of all Georgian Internet users. The number of Georgian-language blog writers is small.
Freedom House found no reports of state censorship in 2009 and 2010, though many journalists working in the traditional media appear to lack knowledge about Internet tools. The Georgian government has removed the temporary blocs on access to Russian websites imposed after the August 2008 war, when Georgia experienced a major cyber attack from presumed Russian sources or sympathizers. Despite technical interruptions to international access, Georgian users can now access any website in the world and freely use advanced Internet software applications. “In fact, Freedom House notes, “content is so accessible that numerous sites offer illegal material such as pirated software, music, and movies, and the government has not enacted appropriate legal measures to combat the problem.” Only isolated cases of Internet repressions occurred, such as when the authorities detained two young students for allegedly insulting the head of the Georgian Orthodox Church in videos posted on YouTube. Furthermore, some advertisers withdrew their ads after Internet outlets published news articles that criticized the government or the ruling party.
Even in Eurasian countries where Internet freedoms are poorly protected, the Internet remains less subject to government restrictions than more traditional print and broadcast media, which are the main sources of news for most citizens. Advanced web applications such as the social-networking site Facebook and the microblogging service Twitter remain relatively free in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan. Users can and do post content critical of government policies. Even in Kazakhstan, ISPs that employ their own channels to connect to the Internet are often not blocked. For example, users can connect via cybercafés to sites excluded by ISPs that connect via Kazakhtelecom. In some cases, mobile devices can also access websites inaccessible via the regular internet, such as the website of the opposition paper Respublika. Foreign search engines, such as Google or Russia’s Yandex, do not censor their search results for Eurasian customers. Those citizens who are determined to access prohibited information can normally do so with via proxy servers and other relatively simple circumventions.
At the July 15 hearing, Mr. Rafal Rohozinski of the Canada Center for Global Security Studies and the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto discussed how many of the Eurasian countries were moving beyond the crude first-generation passive filtering software, such as the comprehensive Great Wall of China, to develop more sophisticated or active second-generation Internet controls that use selective firewalls against specific web pages at only certain times, bombard a site with messages to drive it out of service, and even manipulate the content of sites by, for instance, inserting selective pro-regime wording into a web page. Some are even using third-generation techniques such as launching malware attacks against human rights groups, monitoring their writings to arrest dissidents, and hiring hundreds of counter bloggers who pretend to represent a group but actually try to subvert it from within by stirring up tensions and disputes among members to discredit and debilitate the movement. Rohozinski warned that none of the circumvention programs or other tools yet developed by regime opponents have been able to counter these more active beyond-filtering measures.
In response to these new challenges, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor Daniel Baer said at the July 15 hearing that ensuring a free and open Internet was a core U.S. principle since “it derives from universal and cherished rights—the freedoms of speech, assembly, and association.” Baer affirmed that the State Department would continue to fund the development of new technologies to circumvent unwanted controls, training programs for Internet activists, and diplomatic initiatives to build “a global coalition of governments committed to advancing Internet freedom.” Even so, he and other speakers at the hearing warned that many Eurasian governments were set to roll out even more effective Internet censoring software in coming years.
07/20/2011: Connectivity is obviously crucial for a deployed unit. Mobile Command and Control (C2) is a core element of the CRW deployed. SSG. Levi Kelvin Scott II and Staff Sgt. Steven Bordenski provided an overview of the how this is done.SSG. Levi Kelvin Scott II: We’re the mobile C2 element. I do mobile C2 and communications, and I’m also responsible for being a ramp coordinator, as well as a CRT team chief. In my CRT capacity, I do load planning and aircrew.What we have is this truck, this trailer, and all of our C2 equipment. Basically, we have two different packages; we have our Alpha Echo, which is the larger package. We have 11 team members in Alpha Echo, we bring three officers with us, and eight enlisted personnel. And this package is basically for a mission where we’ll have operate 30 days or longer.For something that’s more short-term, we’ll send out an Alpha Fox. With this deployment, there are only four team members, an enlisted leader, and three other enlisted personnel to follow up with the enlisted leader.
With the larger package, we send a different package inside the trailer. What we have inside the trailer is we have tents, toilet paper, MREs, water. When we get out to the field, we can sustain ourselves for five days before we need to resupply. Everything that we need is inside this truck. We’ve got tents, cots, food, water, etc.
SLD: So it’s a self-contained module?
SSG. Levi Kelvin Scott II: It’s basically a self-contained module. Once we hit the ground, we’re ready to complete the mission. We can stay on the airfield for 24 hours; and can run a whole entire airfield with our personnel. And here’s our coms package. What we have here is the PSE5. We use this for air-to-ground communications, while UHF and VHF secure voice. And then, we have our laptops, basically, where we send our sitreps out.We’ve got a secure phone, which also sends secure fax. And here, we have the BGAN which gives us access to the Internet. We also have a satellite uplink, which connects us to the internet through the BGAN so that way we can do flight following, G2, we can also track cargo as it flies in the air and update TACC as to where the aircraft is. So, they have good tracking data.
SSG Borenski: I pretty much do the same thing Sergeant Scott does. We’re all seven Echo Alpha Echo. Some are Alpha Echo and Alpha Foxes are all primarily enlisted aviators that are assigned to CRW. We just get the perspective of the other side of the guys working on the ground.
SSG. Levi Kelvin Scott II: Instead of being inside the plane, we’re outside the plane seeing what goes inside the plane. So it’s actually a pretty enlightening experience.
07/19/2011 – The F-22 and F-35 have sophisticated sensors and self defense capabilities, which, in and of themselves, when combined with stealth enable these aircraft to become true game changers. But in and of themselves is not where the real game changing capability comes into play. Networking the aircraft is essential to shaping the new distributed air operations con-ops. Through networking, the U.S. can create a honeycomb with distributed decision makers able to shape a chaos generating strike capability that is predicated on the unique environment that is ever changing from one mission to the next.
With a solid communications structure, the 5th generation aircraft can function as a honeycomb which allows them to follow a distributed air con-ops. This allows them to become a roving motorcycle gang able to operate in three-dimensional space. (Credit: Bigstock)
The current USAF’s leadership unwillingness to put the MADL communications system into the F-22 makes absolutely no sense, and indeed represents a strategic refusal to leverage the capabilities of the aircraft.
The role of systems such as MADL was underscored in a recent discussion with a former senior USAF officer involved in the F-22 program. The former senior USAF officer referred to the opportunity to shape the 5th generation aircraft wolf pack as a “roving motorcycle gang.”
Q: Could you explain the significance of C2 modernization for the Fifth Generation Aircraft and for the transformation of air power?
Former Senior USAF Officer: When I was with the F-22 program, we were questioned on why would one spend serious money on C2 and C4ISR efforts associated with leveraging these 5th generation aircraft. If it can do anti-access in three days, then do I need to spend money on these LO communications systems?
Of course if you can’t communicate, it isn’t going to be three days.
Without collaboration you can’t kick down the door quickly. Also, the further you penetrate in, the less useful are our traditional triad of ISR platforms in the rear. This is true whether it’s from simple range equations or the difficulty traditional ISR platforms have finding things on the ground that far out due to terrain, graze angles, and the surface environment. This is true whether it’s radar or a passive sensor.
And that’s the heart of the envelope of why we have 5th Generation aircraft, namely to kick down the door to open the environment up to where it is feasible to bring in the rest of our forces. We need to find those doubles digit SAMs and hit those center of gravity targets. They’re not 50 miles across the traditional ISR FEBA (Forward Edge of the Battle Area) if indeed there is a FEBA that even exists anymore. Unfortunately, I think people lost the idea that there is some semblance of a FEBA with any environment that requires an “operation” or we wouldn’t need military force. .
And some seem to think that air operations are really manning no-fly zones, whether it’s Libya, or what we did over at Iraq for 10 to 12 years, and what we’ve done in Afghanistan. Those aren’t the hard challenges for air power.
Q: Why do you need low observable communications to make the 5th generation aircraft effective in their core missions?
Former Senior USAF Officer: One has to realize that anti-access denial can occur in even no-fly zone operations. For example, what we did over in OPEERATION SOUTHERN WATCH (OSW) and NORTHERN WATCH (ONW) in Iraq for the 10 years, we had areas that we didn’t fly because of heavy Iraqi fielding of Surface to Air Missile systems (SAMS) such as SA-2s and 3s.
You had circles all around the country where we could not fly because if you had a SAM site, you can’t over fly except under special conditions with special mixes of forces. The enemy can do “SAM bushes” and are able to manipulate your freedom of movement, and your tactics throughout what we call the contested region.
The Iraqis really restricted our ability to maneuver through the battle space. Once they do that, they can hide things. They created areas they can have their own freedom to maneuver and they are in the drivers seat. The 5th gen platforms bring freedom to maneuver throughout the battlespace.
U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptors fly in formation during a training mission, Dec. 6, 2009. (Credit: USAF)
It’s not just that there’s some mythical future peer competitor that is the problem. You have anti-access wherever you operate, unless you’re fighting against machine guns that are shooting in the sky.
With the F35, F22 you have the ability to execute offensive tactics wherever they want. They don’t have restrictions. Whoever you are arrayed against, has a much more challenging problem of defense. Whereas without 5th generation aircraft, they know exactly where we’re coming from most of the time.
In the old days, you used many aircraft in a sequence of activities. You have your jammers. You sit there pushed a whole through utilizing supporting assets such as EA-6Bs and Wild Weasel aircraft.
And with the whole opened up (frequently only a temporary measure) you tried to shove your force through, do your damage and then come back out. That’s the Cold War way and remains dominate today mindset driving our tactics in the contested regions today.
As the adversary adapts more sophisticated threat laydowns and tactical deception techniques our legacy forces become more susceptible to being surprised and becoming victim in some sort of a SAMbush or other counter-air activity
Overtime we have migrated to primarily medium altitude tactics to mitigate some of that counter-air threat such as the AAA and short range SAMS but our legacy forces remain susceptible due to threats such a s passive sensors searching for their large radar cross sections or their detectable signals transmissions. The use of Low Observable communications is a natural complementary capability for our Low observable aircraft.
Even in Libya we still had large areas that were defendable by the Libyan military heavily restricting our ability to maneuver with true air dominance; we had to take the SA-5s and other SAMs down before we could ever bring in our A-10s to go after the tanks pressing quickly toward Benghazi. If you go in with the Link 16 or you go in relying on voice coms on your 5th generation aircraft, it is like turning on big light bulb with the enemy able to see me now no matter where you are. So, you need to have the LO coms to gain the advantages of the 5th generation capability. The LO coms are a natural augmentation or complementary capability that comes with the new aircraft.
Q: You have described 20th century style air combat where one deploys a sequential force against adversaries putting defenses up, mobile or fixed. Most often, they used to be fixed. Now they’re more mobile. The adversary has more ability to hide and move. With the new aircraft you are reshaping your con-ops to mix with the defense to create a Rubik’s cube. The adversary is not sure where I am, and cannot how I will attack his defenses. Because he can no longer disrupt a sequential flow of operations, he now has to face simultaneous operations, which is Omni-directional.
I can actually shape, almost on the fly, some tactics and strategies that are very, very, very different.
Former Senior USAF Officer: Yes. When you look at the F22 and the way they’ve changed operations, you have a good sense of the shift. When they first started flying, they found that they were moving further and further apart from each other. Historically, you had your Flight leader and two wingmen to provide support. Your number two primary role was to provide visual support so no one shot you from behind while number one was leading the offensive.
Now with the 360-degree sensor coverage that comes from both better onboard sensors and the ability of the 5th gen platforms to share sensor data amongst them providing advanced situational awareness, you’re not tethered to traditional tactics. Instead of two airplanes filling one piece of the sky, I only need one; and that plane’s covering a bigger piece of the sky. And now I can have my wingmen and other flight elements further out extending the friendly presence in the battlespace while simultaneously restricting the enemy’s use of the same. By moving independently we can be much more flexible than before.
For C2 you obviously need to know where your planes are; you need awareness of where your own forces are operating. You need a common operational picture (COP), which is given both by what you can see from deeply penetrating an adversaries battlespace as well as what can communicated to the point of spear within that battlespace.
And you will adjust what you do with the COP. Your common operational picture may or may not include enemy tank forces. If your only mission is to get rid of SAMs today, you don’t really care and you can take those off your scope.
But the next day, your mission may be a Libya mission where you’re out there and supposed to be finding the tanks. You need the ability to put those on your scope. You need to be able to communicate where all these things are because you don’t know ahead of time what your mission is going to be. The networks need to be able to connect the disparate platforms and provide the right information at the right time to the users that need it.
Part of the High-High Mix but operational over the spectrum of operations, the combat systems enterprise of the F-35 is a game changer. (Credit: Lockheed Martin Photo)
This roving motorcycle gang, as it’s been called sometime, is essentially the freedom to maneuver. It allows the human brain to look at what’s on the scope and provide dynamic direction. The more SA you have concerning where your own forces are located and what their capabilities are, and the more you sense and can figure out what the enemy force is doing, then you can better take the optimal path of attack. This approach can be contrasted with the legacy-preplanned mindset where we determine in advance our tactics and targets. It is more of a flow and shaping of tactics against the reality of the evolving battlespace environment and enhancing your ability to complicate the adversaries approach to defense.
Q: This fleet operating in a distributed operations environment or operating like a roving motorcycle gang also means that your force is much harder to defeat. The adversary can’t know in advance with complete certainty how the Blue team is going to attack or what they’re going to attack.
Former Senior USAF Officer: The fifth gen isn’t just about stealth obviously; it is also about information dominance. These two capabilities allow the 5th gen assets the ability to freely move. And you can freely move because you know where everyone is as much as possible. CNI is a critical part of this operational capability. CNI is not just a bunch of federated radios that do one single function.
Q: What does CNI stand for?
Former Senior USAF Officer: CNI is Communication Navigation Identification.
Q: This allows the stealth aircraft to identify one another?
Former Senior USAF Officer: It’s a digital sweep, which takes care of your communication and IFF needs and navigation so that they’re integrated. The stealth airplane wants to limit its exposure for radar cross section (RCS) and signal emanations. You don’t want to have all kinds of antennas that might make you more detectable.
Q: This is not only a technology change but also a cultural change. Do you push back from the services?
Former Senior USAF Officer: When I was with the Air Force, and we went up to the JROC and the Army 3-star said, “but how are you going to talk to my soldier on the ground?” Well, which unit on the ground? If you go to the Army, you can find, depending on which unit you’re on, you have any number of different radios that we would need to field on every F22 or F35 to talk to that particular soldier. And then I go to the Marines and my coalition partners and find they have different radios and waveforms. So, you can’t have a separate radio for everybody, or I just would need a huge flying truck full of antennas and radios.
The LO airplane with all those antennas have reflectivity. You need to minimize the number of apertures you have. You can’t talk to everyone.
Hence the need for a network capability. The network solution is the logical solution, and even the Army themselves are going down this path. FCS was an attempt at that, and it fell apart. But they’re rebuilding it. Their COM networks are being developed realizing they have disparate networks and there is an inherent need for gateways to facilitate the ability to communicate together. This network is growing to include smart phones on the field as well as a large variety of handheld radios, C2 node radios, and vehicle radios. They all need to communication together. So they’re building a network in order to provide a seamless communication no matter units you have in the field and what particular hardware you have.
The Air Force, in reality, hasn’t grasped that as well. They’re not as far along in doing that. The initial fielding of Gateways in the AF connected the Link 16 and SADL networks but although operationally desirable there has been great resistance for any platform to take on this Gateway role. The AF has now fielded a livery small amount of gateways yet only under pressure to support support Army connectivity. They are now heavily involved in helping design the JALN, the Joint Aerial Layer Network, that will architect some of that. But we haven’t really invested much. We’re still primarily link 16 players, and if you’re not on link 16, you’re not part of the net. With the LO airplanes, its not really a feasible network to be on due to characteristics that are counter to stealth practices. Additionally being typically further forward in the battlefield it is more susceptible to jamming.
Q: Link 16 has significant limitations.
Former Senior USAF Officer: Right. And it’s already full and limited. We need to go to the next gen. The question is what kind of networks do you want to do? Well, you have to have a protected COM or guaranteed COM like MADL and IFDL on the F22. These are directional networks, they’re hard to jam and they’re hard to detect so they fit that protected case.
And you have to bridge that data back to the fourth gen airplane or the legacy forces to include command and control in the rear. You are going to want a network because you don’t know what radio/waveform the aircraft behind you or above you or what surface ship that you may be flying over is communicating on.
In the end you’re going to need to be able to network. In the end we want to have seamless end-to-end communications from the data producers to the consumers regardless of the equipment differences. This information flow needs to be agnostic to waveforms and hardware and needs to generate into more of a network just like you can talk between a Mac and PC. The focus should be on enabling this data/information flow rather than a single link or set of hardware, if we are instituting common data standards and taking advantage of gateways and smart routing you really shouldn’t care.
Q: And that was one of the goals of AMFJTRS, of course.
Former Senior USAF Officer: JTRS has started that. Unfortunately, the whole program cost so much money and they backed off and started to focus on very small parts. And so a lot of the Internet working parts are been deferred or are slower coming along.
But those benefits put the cost into perspective of the radios and the cost of putting those new waveforms into play.
Q: There are really two issues here. One is how the fifth generation aircraft find and work together in is this kind of wolf pack or roving motorcycle gang, and they then can communicate what they know back to other air assets and/or to ground assets. Presumably, you can put this into an airborne router, in effect, that could actually do some of this translation. You don’t have to have it done on the fifth generation aircraft itself.
Former Senior USAF Officer: You are correct. We’ve done a demo of the Battlefield Airborne Communications Node or BACN as a means of dealing with the second issue, which you mentioned. It was demo’d in the JEFX and it takes in and it listens to IFDL. And it can take that data and translate it into link 16 and rebroadcast it out or they send it down to C2. Due to Link 16 bandwidth and security limitations only a limited set of this data gets republished however it can all be routed to the appropriate C4ISR customer who can consume it all. With the greatly increased bandwidth for MADL we really need some type of track correlation function on the gateway to handle moving the large volume of track data and the associated security issues.
The whole point of a router in the sky raises the question of how far you want to go with your networking. Security becomes the first barrier. With an airplane like an F22, which has a number of classified capabilities, you can’t just send it to a router that can then just send that data to everybody. You have to be able to figure out who’s authorized to see what data or figure out what can be downgraded and then republished so the people get the important information that they need.
There’s a number of ways to tackle that problem. But none of them are funded to field today. There are only two government-owned BACN platforms fielded today and they do not have the ability to intercept and translate the IFDL or MADL data links from the 5th gen aircraft.
There are challenges to solve to make it more operational, and useful. One of the concerns is what they call the tether range, how far from the gateway can you be and communicate, and do you bring this gateway up close to the battle space with you because you have a range limit? Eventually you would like to either have a penetrating type of gateway or a relay bridge, a COM relay node. There are other proposals out there to put them on a fourth gen type fighter. Obviously an F-15 can get a lot closer than a BACN payload on a business jet like being used in Afghanistan today.
Another game-changing capability of the 5th generation aircraft is the platform's ability to function within a wolf pack, utilizing all of the deployed assets for control of 360 degree space. (Credit: Bigstock)
A Fighter could move forward a lot better than say a predator, because a predator can’t turn around and run away if required. A Predator can only go so far forward in the contested region and unable to penetrate the anti-access area. Satellite Communications are often thrown out as the obvious solution however the expense of outfitting each of these platforms is large and the availability of the required channels to support all this data flow is not there. One goal is to provide some sort of SATCOM gateway capability on some number of these penetrating assets to cover those cases where a Line of Sight “tether” is not feasible.
Q: The enablement of distributed operations obviously requires the LO COMS which you are describing to enable the roving motorcycle gang. At the same time, I have to craft capability to communicate back to the legacy fleet to make better use of them as bomb trucks or whatever. I need the LO COMS to operate as a honeycomb; and I need COMs tools to send back whatever data, I need to leverage other air, ground or naval assets.
It’s no longer air battle management I’m looking for. I’m looking for force structure management. Force enablement by taking whatever my forward deployed assets can generate and distribute them to the fleet. Because then I can get full value out of F-22s and F-35s and I can now task them to do certain things necessary for the ground forces or the surface fleet or whatever. But none of this happens if I don’t do what we’re not doing, which is I’m not funding the ability of this roving motorcycle gang to actually act like a roving motorcycle gang. If I don’t do that, I’ve created very expensive bookends.
Former Senior USAF Officer: Right. Today what we do, when we go out and we fly with the B2, it tends to be more procedural and very traditional, and we know where they are. You are forced to live with the goals that were determined at planning time. And if the conditions change, well then your plan falls apart.
Fortunately, there’s few enough numbers today that it’s a thing that a guy in a cockpit can manage to a certain extent. But as you bring in more Blue LO airframes and the enemy starts bringing in LO platforms, all of a sudden I have other numerous LO platforms (Blue and Red) that need to be identified.
It’s one thing to have birds on your radar that may be or may not an LO player. If it might be an enemy, I really have to know. Your risk of fratricide is going up because you’re bringing in more LO players, but not giving us the capability to communicate across the motorcycle gang the awareness of whom the blue and red forces are.
The F35 has some very good sensors such as DAS and some classified capabilities so that one person may have a better chance of ID’ing a person as a hostile but you need to be able to communicate and pass that critical data. When information is known the quickest and cheapest way for another platform to get the same important information is to have it communicated to him. We don’t want every platform in the battlespace taking the time to figure out where and what every other entity in the Battelspace is.
With regard to C2, you need a robust capability to share among the “gang” their knowledge. During the fight, the knowledge basis continues to grow and grow. And so how do you feed information both ways between the people who are operating forward and those who are not. You need to have that fifth gen and legacy force connectivity for C2 and to capture key information about fixing signals and entities across the battlespace.
Quote from Senior USAF General: “Why would anyone re-engine the AWACS with the 5th generation aircraft coming on stream?” (Credit: http://www.fas.org/programs/ssp/man/uswpns/air/special/e3.html)
That’s one of the issues with AWACs. If I can’t even see where the LO aircraft are then how can there be effective C2? I don’t know whom to pair against what threats when I can’t see my own friendly forces. How do I know who’s in best position to manage which challenge? The simplest of command & control breaks down when you don’t know where your own assets are. You can’t see them and our own layered defense plans fall apart when our Aegis and Patriots don’t know where or who the friends are.
Q: If you’re an F22 pilot and you’re an F35 pilot, and we know that’s the situation the AWACs is in, I’m not going to listen to him.
Former Senior USAF Officer: The quality of air tracks started exceeding the AWAC sensor’s ability years ago. With the 360 degree shared sensor picture of the F-22 and F-35 flights it is more a question of how much they really should be listening to C2. It’s good when you’re cold in the cap or hanging on the tanker but as soon as you get close to the fight, your radars and other sensors are of such a higher fidelity, that what you’re seeing is much more of a reality than the picture that AWACs is pushing. So, you start de-tuning this command of control, so that you can’t really argue that it’s command and control if there not listening to you because they are making their own decisions based on having a higher fidelity picture of both the enemy and friendly forces.
What this tells me is that my most valuable resources are not the legacy. It’s the new stuff. But I’m not investing in the new stuff to enable them to begin changes. My concern is that if we don’t get the point that this is a whole different game, we have already given up quantity for quality and you need to stay far ahead in that game well before the other guys make the investments to catch up.
Q: And the fluidity of the battlespace plays to the capabilities of the 5th generation aircraft and the new con-ops we are discussing. I can deal with fluidity by ingesting chaos into the adversary’s OODA loop.
Former Senior USAF Officer: The sensors that are forward on the fifth gen are the key to new con-ops. They help feed any of the rear fights that I might have, including any of the cyber fights.
One of the things about the fifth gen sensors, to include the CNI, because they have a set amount of apertures they try and take as much use of those as possible, that’s really the big advantage, the big leap forward. And so it’s not so much that it’s necessarily COM, it’s really the digital age. I can connect receivers to these apertures and I can do multiple things.
The Fifth Gen sensors are software defined. I can use this aperture to do IFF things, and then I can use the same aperture for landing, during landing phase. I can use it to sit there and sense and listen to enemy coms if I want to. More importantly we can take the results of our multiple sensors across multiple platforms to build a very high fidelity coherent picture of the battlespace.
Q: And the mobility of the defensives systems poses increasingly targeting challenges as well.
Former Senior USAF Officer: You’re going to have to develop your own targets because these things are mobile and are going to be up a short time. So, whenever you see them, you’re going to have to be able to, amongst yourself, deal with them. If you don’t deal with them and find them now, well it will be moved and that intel has limited value when you record it and bring it back. It’s not going to be there the next day. I can’t schedule a mission on that intel.
Q: Could you discuss the challenge of working the common data stream?
Former Senior USAF Officer: The ability to move the data means you need to be able to migrate it to the consumer who can best use it. And that doesn’t mean you need to talk to him directly. In most cases, that would be cost prohibitive and a waste of investment.
Generically we need to grow more standardized data. The ISR world has done that well. They have a thing called the JICD, which is the Joint Interface Control Document, which they’ve defined how to discuss parameters. Whether you’re doing jamming or ISR, or whatever you’re doing with the EW signal, there’s a standard and I can relay that. You can do multiple things with the same piece of data.
I collect a signal and then multiple users can use it for their applications or for whatever they want to use it. It doesn’t mean that there’s a single network that runs it all. If someone has the ability to data mine a network, they can harvest the available sensor data for their own uses. As you expand the amount of routers around the Battlespace to cross at those network Venn diagram crossovers, there should be sufficient routers that let information freely flow back and forth regardless of the disparate networks.
As you connect more circles, the routers keep extending and the network grows and grows. But you don’t need to keep making this guy directly connect to anybody in any of the other circles just as our ground Internet infrastructure connects computers and phones via a honeycomb of copper, fiber and wireless links.
Q: In many ways the challenge is confusion between the aircraft as a platform and an aircraft as a system shaping new con-ops. The fifth generation aircraft have amazing self-defense capabilities associated with advanced sensors, etc. But the networking of the aircraft, or in our terms, crafting a honeycomb of distributed aircraft requires an investment in communications and related capabilities. Having the one without the other will not allow the new con-ops to emerge and ability for the U.S. to ensure its ability to ensure air dominance in the period ahead.
Former Senior USAF Officer: The F-22s are custom mechanized today to do the function they were designed for. But they will be very good at doing ISR. Very good at it, but we haven’t spent a dime to make even the COMM connections to move that data out of the advanced sensor systems over to a network that will let you move it.
We don’t have the router in the sky to get the data off that platform and out to anybody else who could consume it. I’ve been a very big advocate of building a network so you can start taking advantage of the data that already exists. You can’t afford to put every sensor on every platform, just like you can’t put every radio on every platform.
The sensor systems are too big, too power consuming and May even have interference issues with other platform avionics. You can’t put every one on every airplane and it’s too unaffordable. So, take advantage of investments you’ve made. Connect your airplanes that you have to allow the data to move much more freely amongst them.
Q: To summarize: there are three investments that become important. First, it is necessary to complete the ability of these aircraft to talk, to work together in a wolf pack kind of concept. Secondly, it’s your ability to build an infrastructure that’s going to allow the flow of communication between those aircraft and everything else to create that network of the future. But rather than building the network of the future, you’re just trying to get the infrastructure, and then let a thousand apps bloom. Thirdly, is recognizing the link between the first and the second is that these are flying ISR platforms. They are not combat aircraft.
Former Senior USAF Officer: These 5th gen platforms are certainly combat aircraft however they are much more than simply ground or air attack platforms. For example F-22 sensors are designed to give them the operational picture they need to prosecute an offensive air-to-air attack. That is their mission. In essence, they’re their own ISR platform in regards to finding air-to-air entities, and figuring out who they are so they can prosecute that attack. But those same sensors can be seeing things that will help in the air to ground attack. And they’ll help in Special Forces or in a missile defense effort. But no one has paid to mechanize those activities or to move that data from the F-22 to those other consumers. Today when an F-22 sees most of this data, the machine does not prioritize it, communicate it, or store it, it simply throws it on the floor. It’s gone.
The sensor saw it and collected it. It’s just not being used. You basically have this valuable information available for users, but we can’t move it. We haven’t mechanized the ability to get it from a sensor faceplate of the 5th gen sensor to the end user. That end-to-end movement needs to be crafted and funded. Instead of having dedicated Air-to-Air, ISR, Wild Weasel, and Air to Ground platforms we have these 5th gen capabilities. In a true systems-of-systems construct they can be networked together to generate their own targets or support follow-on forces and can dynamically provide kinetic and non-kinetic force application to engage a wide spectrum of threats and targets.
William C. “Bill” Anderson is President and Chief Executive Officer of Anderson Global Innovation Group, Inc.; a Berlin, Maryland based firm specializing in energy technology commercialization, environmental sustainability, defense, real estate asset optimization and business development. Bill is also Chief Executive Officer of Generations Property Group, a family-owned real estate management firm serving Maryland’s Lower Eastern Shore. He currently serves as an Operating Partner at Pegasus Capital Advisors L.P., a New York City based private equity firm, Bill also holds several senior advisory positions in organizations serving the defense, aerospace, sustainability and energy markets.
Most recently, Bill was appointed by President George W. Bush and confirmed by the United States Senate to serve as Assistant Secretary of the United States Air Force for Installations, Environment and Logistics, and the Air Force’s Senior Energy Executive, based at the Pentagon in Washington, DC. As Assistant Secretary, he led an organization with responsibilities that included installations, military construction, base closure and realignment; environment, energy, safety and occupational health issues, and all logistical matters. For his efforts, Bill was presented the Decoration for Exceptional Civilian Service and the Presidential Award for Leadership in Federal Energy Management.
Born in Syracuse, N.Y., Bill is an honors graduate of Washington College in Chestertown, Md., and earned his law degree with honors from Syracuse University. He has also studied in the master’s program for international business at the University of Miami. Bill is a member of the Maryland and Florida Bars.
Bill previously served in a variety of financial and tax consulting positions at Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc., Arthur Anderson & Co., and Ryder Systems, Inc. He then joined the General Electric Company holding a variety of positions, including Tax Counsel, General Counsel and Director of Environmental and Quality Affairs for General Electric’s electrical products business in Europe. He returned to the U.S. as their General Manager and Senior Counsel, Environmental Health and Safety.
An avid bicyclist, he organized the U.S. Air Force Cycling Classic, an internationally sanctioned annual pro cycling event in Arlington, VA, and currently serves in an advisory capacity to the race promoters. Bill continues his commitment to our veterans and their families by serving as a member of the Board of Directors of the Raisin Hope Foundation, an organization focused on raising awareness of traumatic brain injuries and supporting survivors of TBI, including our wounded warriors.
From Haiti deployment briefing Credit: USN (Credit: http://www.quantico.usmc.mil/Seabasing/docs/Haiti%20Collection%207.ppt)
