Time To Start Fielding Tomorrow’s Airpower Capabilities Today

Three years ago, the National Defense Strategy Commission created headlines when they concluded: “The security and well-being of the United States are at greater risk than at any time in decades. America’s superiority—the hard-power backbone of its global influence and national security—has eroded to a dangerous degree.” The situation has not improved, especially when it comes to airpower. China is developing a broad range of new technologies that foreshadow a staggering leap over U.S. military capabilities, and they are doing so in quantity—everything from multiple fifth-generation fighters to a new stealth bomber to hypersonic weapons. The U.S. Air Force—due to 30 years of underfunding—is lagging in this contest, and the results will prove disastrous if current trends continue unchecked. A key part of the solution to reset this imbalance is to rapidly transition new technologies into operational capabilities. A way to do that is by fast-tracking the fielding of unmanned aircraft that are designed to team with manned aircraft.

Today’s Air Force aircraft inventory resembles a museum collection. B-52s, KC-135s, T-38s were acquired during the Eisenhower and Kennedy Administrations. UH-1s were purchased during the Johnson era. A-10s, F-16s, F-15s, KC-10s, E-3s, and B-1s were designed when Nixon was in office and purchased during the Carter, Reagan, and Bush years. Newer designs that are more viable today, like the B-2 and F-22, saw their production cut short far too early. The only way to dig out of this geriatric situation to is to aggressively buy new aircraft—the stealth F-35 fighter, KC-46 air refueling tanker, F-15EX high-payload fighter, and B-21 stealth bomber—while also rapidly advancing promising concepts through aggressive testing, experimentation, and fielding.

This latter course—doubling down on new technologies to bring them to the operational world as fast as possible—is not a new idea. In fact, it is how the Chinese caught up to the United States. Consider Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General John Hyten’s recent comments on hypersonic technologies: “…what you need to be worried about is that I think the last five years, maybe longer, the United States has done nine hypersonics tests. In the same time…the Chinese have done hundreds. Single digits versus hundreds is not a good place.” Reversing this situation in favor of the U.S. calls for an urgency of effort to catch up. That means aggressive testing, learning from failures, and pressing forward with new lessons applied at the speed of need, not the speed that got us where we are today.

This lean-forward mentality is exactly how the U.S. Air Force rapidly advanced its unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) capabilities in the late 1990s and early 2000s—an era of tremendous capability growth. As former Air Force Chief of Staff General “Buzz” Moseley, recounted: “I was the first wing commander ever to get these things [MQ-1 Predator UAVs] when I commanded the 57^th Wing at Nellis. General Fogelman called me one day out of the blue—and you normally don’t get a call from the Chief—and he said effectively: ‘I’m giving you these UAVs.’ And I said: ‘Boss, what do you want me to do with them?’ He said: ‘I don’t know but figure it out and see what you think.’” Moseley continued: “That was in the spring of 1996 and that summer we deployed them for their first missions in the Balkans. These guys have never come back. Not once since the summer of 1996 have the UAV squadrons all been home.” This is the plan of action the Air Force needs to replicate.

This raises the question, what key capabilities are emerging today? First and foremost are manned-unmanned teaming aircraft of the Air Force’s Skyborg program. Aircraft like Kratos’ XQ-58 Valkyrie and General Atomics’ MQ-20 are testing concepts to partner with manned combat aircraft in an additive fashion to execute a variety of missions—like adding extra sensors to a strike package, bringing more weapons into a fight, and serving as advanced battle management nodes. Using highly advanced autonomous technology, these aircraft fly far more independently than older generations of uninhabited aircraft. They are truly uninhabited partners capable of very sophisticated mission functions.

These aircraft are not ready to fly into harm’s way tonight, but they are sufficiently advanced to warrant aggressive operational testing. Engineers and technologists have considered a range of mission scenarios, but it takes actual operational employment in a controlled setting to really understand the challenges and opportunities presented by these aircraft. How do we develop tactics, techniques, and procedures that their manned counterparts will find useful? What does “trust” mean in a manned-unmanned aircraft scenario? Transitioning from the lab to the real world of operational experimentation and innovation will markedly accelerate discovery. Ultimately, it could lead to accelerating combat capability to arrive when it is critically required.

There is also another consideration in developing these new technologies: the business case. Their development and fielding must advance rapidly enough to retain industry and non-Department of Defense (DOD) investment interest. The Air Force is aptly pursuing many of its most ambitious technology development efforts by harnessing non-traditional firms, talent, and investors. These entities will remain committed if they advance at the speed of relevance. Slow down and DOD risks losing them to alternate opportunities. For non-DOD investment money, that means ensuring desired returns are gained at a speed commensurate with other investment opportunities. Results need to be secured quickly as they are in the private sector, not the decades traditionally associated with DOD programs. Fail to meet that pace and the DOD will see the new business entrants and their investors head for the exit.

Air Force Chief of Staff General C.Q. Brown’s clarion call is: “Accelerate change or lose.” The security challenges facing the United States demand nothing less. It is the lesson General Moseley learned with the early UAVs at Nellis, which subsequently transformed air warfare. It is the realization General Hyten shares regarding why China is moving so fast with their hypersonic programs. The Air Force is headed in the right direction with its Vanguard Skyborg effort. Develop baseline capabilities, acquire limited numbers, fly them aggressively in real-world scenarios, apply lessons learned, and rapidly iterate to the next generation. That’s the path to getting the aircraft ramp at Nellis AFB to increasingly look like a blueprint for the future.