To all of you. This is dean i would like to thank air combat general mike holmes for joining us today. Now, after so many years of service, in key positions throughout our air force, he needs no little introduction. Ill summarized by saying he has excelled in operational, staff and academic pursuits at every level. As a result, he is brought in an surpassed degree of competence to his current job. As the command of air combat command, hes responsible for organizing, training and equipping air force and Intelligence Forces for rapid deployment. With that i would like to turn it over to you, to share with us what issues are at the top of your priority list these days. Especially when it comes to the operational employment vero space assets in key regions, around the globe. Im shaking his stick over to you. Thank you thanks for those kind words. Hello everybody, thanks for spending some time with the Mitchell Institute thanks for giving me a chance to talk a little bit. As he point out air combat command is primarily our job primarily is to present combat ready forces, but are components are ac seen as, or we are presented as a result were pretty pretty and focused a lot of the time. At the top of my list right now, our efforts to mitigate the impact of covid19 on our capabilities in other people and are a sissi airman in families that responded very very well and weve been able to maintain our capability and most of our capacity throughout. We are also very interested are a he headquarters as you may have seen it says people first, mission always. Which is one of our core beliefs. We are very focused right now. On the air force an air combat command efforts to dig into and to address the things that are keeping our airmen to maintaining their best lives and keep with the mission. As you know that also been nominated. I can now confirm hes been nominee by the president to take my place as a sissi commander. But in his role, working to find tune and present a new air force force generation and force presentation system. Well talk more about it in some of the corrections. So those three things are at the top of our plate every day, and the next thing as we work through this season of our budgets from the hill. And always the was we are building the 22 bomb. I describe it as a funding, is this tragic gap where the air force finds itself at a place for not big enough to meet the requirements has buildup barren asheville security strategy. And then we are perhaps we have time to be able to keep all our force modernized, to keep up with the threats and read enough to go fight with adversaries. Finally when you look at what a job is when we are trying to set our parties as we go forward. We know theres talk about what will happen to defend budgets as we go forward. Both with investments that we made, through covid and an election here coming up what will happen to the budgets as we go forward. You prioritize our work efforts to have balance loosely. I would paraphrase is to primary things we do. One is to control the air and space in the department of the air force, and the electromagnetic spectrum. Joint force says freedom to operate, and freedom to act across all our capabilities. And to, to provide the chair of the sea to that makes . Thats on top of our plate. You have some questions out allow me to expand on those. Thank you for that excellent overview. Lets dig a little deeper into some of these issues. When you and i were far younger, we had the privilege of flying in an air force that was legendary. They summarized the well when he talked about desert storm compared to todays. With less than half the forces. As a commander responsible for reading these commands, could you give us some of your insights into how this challenge is affecting your combat command and how you are on their way to deal with it . When you talk about a smaller force with increasing demand, i would agree that that is true. And it dries a collision for ac forces for preparation with combat having the red capability in the right modernization in the right readiness and the presence for competition in deterrence around the world every day. Every day there is a collision trying to find a training time and to try to be confident enough to get adversaries. And to compete and deter as the National Security strategy we were testing our boundaries than violent extremist organizations and are continuing battle, with isis eisele in the love on. And other places. And then our efforts to reach a lasting solution to the problems in afghanistan. You have that collision between those two things, and then a collision between operating to be those things. And modernization and readiness. The goal in the way we try to work through that is to find some predictable white space we call it. White space on the counter. You have a counter what you do next year you got things written in for your vacation and work trips and all youre doing. And the white space is when you rest and recuperate. When i have predictable white space for all our units. Whether its traditional aviation units or whether its our siphon i. S. Our analysts and the forces that are working every day and do that you need time, but you also need the training resources. Thats live a virtual. Or in a constructive environment where using a computer to generate things to bridge and between. The investment to simulate and vans integrated air defenses around our threats being able to put a control system together. Thats on the live environment, or up in jay park in alaska. Or whether thats in our simulator environment we need wide space to train and we need the night Training System to train in. Then we take this new forest generation presentation concept that were socializing with the joint staff to help us do that. At the same time weve had an Expeditionary Force structure that others worked hard on. Theres a couple things that never brought forward, it kept us from exercising. One of them is having command Elements Incorporated with it, to be able to take it forward as a group and pull them together. And then another one is having that builtin white space to work with it. Were working on trying to get a model that takes the air forces and breaks them into six bins. On a 36 month schedule. So wed be able to bring forces for certain needs and have some forces to present in contention of Response Force and the secretary of defense and president needs while ensuring white space to train between those. He trained for that mission or you might need to go against an adversary. Then you have to train for your specific rotational mission, which might be in afghanistan and said. And all that depends on the people in their attention and how you keep people around. We think its a key to doing that. It provides predictability for folks. But some guarantee time at home. The temple is certainly a part of people keeping them around, but doesnt answer all of it. The answer near the drive of having to pick up and move puts pressure on families, but they bounce passes. And Building Careers on their own. And on the Education Opportunities for the children. All the Service Secretaries have been working together to work with the states to improve the ability to bring the tour folks to. Thanks for that very comprehensive answer. Clearly that is the concerns restricted sounds like ac and your leadership as really wrapped around that moving into the future. Lets talk a little bit but resource as youre well aware the 2020s a really makeorbreak for Aircraft Systems are gonna be replaced, or missions are gonna have to the challenge is the air force faces with the cd forest represent the tip of the iceberg in this regard. And you alluded to it, but given the covid19 emergency funding which makes an already difficult efforts more challenging. Whats your take on the situation when you speak to leaders on capitol hill and beyond, how do you explain to them the need for the air force to remain committed to its key modernization goals . Thanks dave i go back to where it we are too small for the global requirements, but in some ways were too big to the for the budget that we have. If you go back and look at some of the things of the promises in the 20 years went back to 1990, the air force but new airplanes were able to do that in realtime under the 20 years after that we bought about 25 aircrafts a year. That but as to an aging force lets decide to talk about. Iran at transition that into new ideas, we are proud of the work that we have done were trying to come up with a vision a new approach to how that would take to counter new adversaries anyways. Weve watched china and russia spend the time since desert storm to come up with new approaches to counter our strength and take advantage of our weaknesses. Our folks at work through ways to bring that back them, and not try to go with the things weve always done to counter what they do. The hard part for that is what you lead into finding the money to make the to transform to do things in a different way. If the key problem is that were in a battle of long range fires with adversaries weather trying to keep us at arms length, and keep us distant, we are trying to find and destroy multiple agile intelligent or anti satellite systems, mobile longrange fires, local air defenses in many places there shooting at ports and airfields which are predictable and easy to find. That means well rely on things like advanced by management systems. To try to help us close that killed chain. Doubles find those targets and have a credible ability to take them out. Thats networks and productivity, we may come back and talk about d. C. To or whether its we are stuck in this. As we look at the rising costs of maintaining the capabilities in those 30 year old system that we have, each one of them has a different problem that we are working. You have miracle workers and that have dedicated their lives, there has never been an air force in the history of the world that could get as much out of the aging platforms as we are able to do because of them. If you look at the f22, the focus in the primary problem there is not having enough engines to meet our requirements. As weve been driving them northern. Which means, taking airplane apart. For the a ten its wings and being able to replace the wings on the airplane. So they could continue for longer service life. The f16 they have service live on them, but they need some modernization to be useful. Against current threats. So its a lot of inputs to get in that modernization. To get the requirements for them. And then for the f35s, the air plane is maturing. Or happy with the aircraft we have. We are figuring out how to sustain the airplane for the long term at an affordable cost. And then our platform the seven seven platforms. Its primarily engine availability and the depth of time to keep those aging airplanes flying. Thats a long story to get to that we cant afford not to continue to invest and not sustain it as well. The bottom line is but you let me into that here at our time figure out our new that and if we are required to hold on to everything through that process particularly as the budgets go down. We appreciate what congress is doing to recognize our requirement. They sent mandates to say the air force has to have 2000 fighters, and equivalent of that across the course he look at those numbers it comes really close the 386 squadrons the air force was the air force you need. The problem is how do we have for that at the level that weve been given. For not gonna get the money to for that there would have to make some hard choices. Yes sir and i think you know this thats one of the things are trying to help you with here at the Mitchell Institute and thats to make the Decision Makers over on the other side to understand that you can do one of two things. You could either provide the resources to provide the needs of the defend strategy, for change the expectations of the National Defense strategy. Its a real challenge and thank you for laying that out. Intending to raise the awareness of the importance of modernizing our forces to be able to deal with what it is. The leadership of the nation wants the air force to do. Lets move on. If you let me. I went through the traditional things that you dont use easy commanded to talk about. If you look at the competition where in today, with china and russia and with iran and north korea. The primary tool is being used in that competition is Information Warfare. Theyre certainly a military component to that Information Warfare russia and china used military forces to drive points to drive influence, to drive achieving their goals without combat. But the primary tool is Information Warfare. As we move forward or have to look at the investments there. How much should be invested in the department of defense for Information Warfare, what should be invest in other places. Covid definitely highlights new challenges that a National Security strategy has to take into account. Even with competition for National Security dollars, and the stimulus driving that down, i think we could all sort of expect to hear people talk about, or some justification that arent National Security dollars should not be spent theres a variety of threats and information, pandemics and other things are enough to work through. How are gonna spread these resources across. Now for what its worth, its interesting to know when you look at four security pillars in the United States is based on diplomacy, information and the economic element. The only wanted does not have is a cabinet designed to it is information. I think thoughts are spot on in that regard. The nation needs to move out in that respect. One of the things that the subject of, it is fundamental to our Aerospace Nation if you will. Is the whole issue of training. Training pilots, general mcgee just released a gal groundbreaking concept. That revitalize is out here for should be training its pilots. Would you talk to us a bit about the project reforge concept . It was the premiere seeking to solve and how youre aiming to go about doing it . Thanks dave. Two years ago i think, i traveled on their invitation to israel and spent some time with the israeli air force. I took five commanders with me. One of the things we noticed with the Israeli Air Forces cabin, they purchased an advanced trainer in their case of the leonardo and the advanced training. Although the airplane does not have a radar, more advanced targeting, when youre in the airplane it feels like it does. But generating constructive threats, they were able to train their cruise extensively and rapidly. Against those threats in a much cheaper platform. When we look at the work that eighties lead, in new piece to the next. And now we marked into you pd two point oh 2. 5 and three point oh. They found by making the curriculum in the steady material, people were able to progress faster. It by training in a computerized environment, they kept a record of everything the student did. Theyre also able to judge the proficiency in the different skill and focus returning inaudible instead of doing a one size fits all thing for every student. Theres an opportunity to put those two things together a shortage of pirates in the air force in the aca shortage is not assured to pilots its a shortage of experience fire pilots. Our goal is to say what is the most fastest effective way to produce experienced fighter pilots. In the way we would measure that would be, could we produce training that can Transition One of our Operation Air airplanes without having to do what we call it deep coarse or basic course or a person thats never been a fighter crew member before. So we proposed to lease some airplanes while we are waiting for the tea seven to arrive and do experiments to try to produce more pilots and more experienced pilots sooner and we think taking advantage of the capabilities of that new trainer along with the Training Systems with the atc will give us a great opportunity to meet the requirements of the shortage that we have in the fastest best way, and other benefits that come with it, it for example youve got your wings and a seven or eight Month Program focused on the t6 data air to air and ground Ground Missions against a local fighter and step across the street and do a local checkout and stay and not have to make those moves that are driving our feet out of the air force. We think there are a lot of opportunities to win, to produce better pilots faster and to increase retention and without cutting down anne and put pressures on family. On behalf of many folks whove been part of the air force, where the challenges, i just really would like to applaud your efforts in moving our training regime into the future, and we all look forward to seeing progress in that regard. You mentioned earlier, the importance of joint all domain commanding control, it is no surprise that general gold fiend has made a notion anne to a cornerstone cornerstone of a chief of staff junior. A combat commanders huge component whose assets and personnel are required to act wise is vision. The imperative for combat cloud, five plod this emphasis. When you discuss this vision, the key stakeholder on capitol hill, how do you describe the stages of implementation . What are the court elements that need to be fielded and how do you envision operating concepts of change . Thank you dave. We had a chance to talk on this in a couple of places. There are some videos out there of some longer versions of this. What i would highlight right now is when you talk about your combat cloud, like he or abms and jbc2 its making use of all the information that is out there, getting into places where it needs to be and make better, faster decisions because of that. That is certainly essential to the idea. How do you make all the information that we already collect useful to all war fighters. The term is to connect every sensor and every shooter to every commanding control platform, but we are connecting back and forth and between all those forces. Connectivity is the next element to be able to connect those things together. Yeah thinking of it as an internet and military things. Its the same ideas that are bringing connectivity and devices all over the country and the world to be able to share Information Machine to machine without asking us. How can we bring that to our military tools . When you pull that together there will still be a need for thinking about what sensors do you need, and what platforms do you need . Every sensor to every shooter but what sensors and what shooters will be required to provide the data that you need to support those decisions . Finally, at air combat command, peoples First Nations always is focusing on the people that will be involved in this effort and people who will be actually using it to provide these resources. We are building a capability at shadow Operation Center to be able to take the tools and ideas and networks that are being built in anne abms and across the services. Other jbc2 efforts and be able to sit down with connectivity you could do this command of control from anywhere but you still have to do it from somewhere. Somebody has to do it from somewhere. We proposed to bring the people there with the connectivity and the data to put them into anne where we can and it irritants changes and moderates test process, testing and trial as soon as we code them and see what we need to correct on them. And to move from there into the air force has air Operation Center. The army has court and division and brigade headquarters. The navy has commanding control centers for individual ships. The next step to me, is lets get that the vindman developmental playground going. Shadow op center and lets move to a iteration to one of those existing facilities and see how we would do it differently and with these tools will allow people in those centers to be able to do differently. Weve made Good Progress with some demonstrations of the kind of things that we can do. What i would advocate for is to put people there, to commanding control problems with these new tools and see where takes us. Very good. Just elaborating a little more on the concept. In many ways, fifth Generation Fighters with their sensors processing power, connectivity and ability to close a kill chain represent the lead element anne epitomized by what predators and have done over the last decade plus. What have these different technologies taught you about this vision . You know, i think i would go back up to the connectivity. The f35 has a tremendous radar to do radar maps. It has automatic target recognition. In many cases, can determine a threat better than a pilot could with the naked eye. Yet, we did not build it to simultaneously transport that data all the way back. It is more designed to accept data from other platforms going forward. Platforms, weapons, a lot of the pieces are there. If we start by conducting what we have now together, it is a really, it is a great capability across the joint services if we just start by connecting all our sensors to all the shooters and commanding control notes that we have now, with the data and Network Technology that is there. It would be the basis for what we are going to do in the future. That is why we say lets just go ahead and get started and iterated overtime. Very good. Anne while we often focus the community tends to focus on the hardware to actualize the tendency to your ethos at air combat command, people first, mission always, highlight the fact that it ultimately comes down to the people. Can you chat with us just a bit on how you would describe the attributes and what you would like to see in an airman equipped to succeed in this world . Over the last three years, weve been on a journey. I had to use that word. At air combat command to realize what i call a Mission Command approach to command control, based on having a sleep clear simple command, and getting feedback from the people that are executed when you build it, and then an execution. Our first real test to that capability we built was when Hurricane Michael came through almost two years ago and we were able to provide commanders intense across our command and the comments that were helping us, and allow that Wing Commander to exercise all the authority we could give him anne. We gave him a task force to help him remove the airplanes that were still there. We left it under his control under the commanders intent. We sent a Civil Engineer task force down across the air force but we left it under his control. The lessons we learned there was an really good stead with covid and our approach to handling covid where we gave an intent. We talked about it back and forth with our commanders, got the feedback on the intent and what we left them alone because they had the best view of conditions on the ground in the base, the workforce, their community and the requirements they had to maintain readiness. I think the attributes who are looking for in the system are people that have the ability to marry that. They could be comfortable with having a lot of data, but also need to be comfortable with acting and making decisions based on less than perfect information. They need to be comfortable with accepting authority and responsibility and moving out and making decisions and then giving feedback back to that headquarters. They need to be comfortable with taking a commanders intent and interpreting that, turning it down to the lower echelons. To make the system work, if all we did was increase the connectivity where we still expect that every echelon to report back up and all the way out to a new multi domain Operation Center, we could probably do that faster than we can do it now, but it would not be fast enough to win in the environment that we are talking about. The idea is to have a system that will let us communicate and to have feedback from the people to push the data to the people that need it to be able to win that battle of longrange fires. To be able to target our temple and adversary and the only way we can do that is have people to be empowered on the ends of that system to take action based on the available information that they have. It is a process to build that trust between echelons and to teach each other how to work that command and Feedback Mechanism back and forth. Awesome. All great to hear. We wish you all the best of luck. As we change the manner in which we bring folks up to be able to think like that as well as and power the forces that are at the legion leading edge of the fight. Related to topic, man unmanned teaming is something of an increasing interest thanks to programs like sky borg. What is the imperative behind this technology and can we talk a little bit about your vision for how you expect that technology to evolve in the operational realm . That its the air force we are going down based on the idea that if you go back to the situation we are in with china and russia, that if they know they only have to target tens or even 100 ports and airfields that we have to move resources into to get close enough to operate, that we simplify their problem, and so what can we do to move away from our dependence on those forts and airfields and one of the ways to do that is agile combat informant when we practice being able to move rapidly between operating out of 100 airfields and complicating the targeting problem. Then the next step to see what can be done so when you get to create owes and experiments that we are doing in the air force research lab, it is designed to see, can we still provide relevant high temple combat one of the ways to do that is with a lower cost, youve got to be able to network that together. Weve got to be able to communicate like we talked about an internet and military things. With all of our resources. There is work that has to be done to decide, like you always do, what is the right knee in the curb between cost and capability . What signatures does a vehicle has to have. How much are you willing to pay for something how do you balance that . There is also advantages that we see our partners in australia trying to the boeing project. Can you extend the reach of an f 35 with an unmanned to put sensors forward, or pushing weapons forward that is able to geometrically increaser paper belittled forward to have more platforms and be able to do more things. The question is how do we learn about it . One of the ideas were intrigued with is at air combat command is taking the vehicles being developed and trying that in our training environment. You have to work through some safety issues, trust and confidence issues, but if we can take those systems and let them train algorithms against us and let us train against them, what can we learn and what can we build and capability and turn around and use it as an asset . Its a great way for us to learn about what is possible and to start training the algorithms that are required for Autonomy Systems to operate. I think it is a path that we want to try to walk down here over the next 35 years or so, to see what is possible in that environment, because we need adversaries to train against. We need to see what is possible in these unmanned aircrafts so we can spend money to proper resources. I think the audience recognizes that it is not just as simple as going out and buying a bunch of uninhabited aircraft. As you described, it is a complex interaction between man and unmanned aircraft. It certainly holds a huge potential and it is great to see the path youve laid out in the context of training in some pretty unique ways as well, also solving some of the red air challenges that the air force bases. He air force recently lost an f 22. We talked earlier about the challenges that you face in the interns of demand versus available resources. Do you see, or lets put it this way, has the air force considered an option to bring up the early block f 20 twos to a full level of operational capabilities given the air force will not build anymore new ones, can we take those tf coated jacks jets . I think we look at it every year when we go to balance budgets between those competing demands we talked about. One approach to it would be three two p modification to the newer block airplanes to just keep working through the old ones and increased cost, because there is more modification that has to be done. But when you make that decision you have to balance the continuing modernization requirements for the block 30 and for the newer airplanes that are out there. With the money that it would take to do that, and with the investment and looking at future counter air systems and perhaps other approaches. It is not just a tradeoff of fighting the money to do that, its where with the money come from and where is the best place to spend your counter air dollars . They are looking at ways to use those older airplanes smarter as we move the ftu the objectivity is to fly the older planes to and have to transition with two operational and the red are red air requirements for them and read a requirements for the ftu. To make an effective use of the older airplanes while we save our limited modernization dollars for those new airplanes. Thank you. Anne we covered many topics, but what is it that we are missing . What is keeping you up at night if anything . Tucker you gave me a good chance to talk about this the other day. My retirement has been approved. We are scheduled to a change of command upon my retirement. As i look at my last couple of months in the air force, i think going back to where we started, how has the world changed over the last couple years with covid anne against our country people trying to interfere with our elections, people trying to shape our Public Discourse and put us against each other as americans, and what is the right response as we go forward in our National Security strategy and approach to our problems . We know russia first, has work to develop capabilities to reach out directly touch our homeland. I talked to someone at north calm, he believes that russia has built a deliberate capability to try and convince us to stay hands off. By being able to reach out and touch us in the United States. He thinks that is an addressable problem, that we will have to put money against and do it for a reasonable amount of money. The big thing is going back through and taking a look at, what are the existential challenges that our country faces and what is the right use of our National Security dollars to address this as we go forward and do we need to take a look at the threats to our country and how we are distributing those resources. Weve come to the end of this portion of our discussion. Thank you very much general homes for your superb insights. I would also like to personally thank you for your spectacular career of service in as we in the air force association, we wish you all the best in your future endeavors. Thank you. As an alert to our listeners, our next event is on june 29th, where the Mitchell Institute will host the u. S. Air forces in europe commander john cobra. The release of our newest steady, long range strike. It can be found on our Mitchell Institute website. We will now open the session for questions from our audience. As a reminder to our listeners, i would ask you to use the raised hand function and when you are called upon, please share your name and affiliation. Let us kick off round table, if you will, with john good afternoon, general. Good to talk to you again. This is jon from air force magazine. Could you elaborate on some of the things that you were saying about the f22, as i was reading the reformed your document it sounded like that would make a good case for bringing more of those older f22 s up to combat status. I was wondering if that was an unintended consequence of that report or do you see that as more likely now that it has been in the last few years . Did i hear you correctly that you will employ some if 20 twos as red air . Can you talk more about the engine situation . I had not heard that before . Is it possible to remanufacture those and maybe use the court from the f1 35 . I will try to go backwards a little bit. The problem we had, john, is we started using the airplane over syria and ways that were not forecast. Our top ranked guys work through our competing priorities. What we were flying, what we were spending their. We worked well with pratte whitney and air suppliers. We had to work through yeah part of what we were trying to do is to see what we could do to make more capacity without spending more money. If we could reduce the requirement for our flying Training Units to train you students, then we could take some of that trading coated arm. We already paid for it. Weve already paid for the people that flight and operated it. Could we provide increased capacity in that way . If you look at the older block f22, they are already combat capable even without bringing them up to higher standards. I would certainly pick one of those over some of our legacy airplane airplanes fashionable fight. One option would be, to be able to turn them into combat squadrons over the several years if we work through make Something Like the reforge option war and be able to repurpose some of our fta you capacity and to combat capability. And the red air . The basic idea for that is if you have three squadrons, and some portions of the three squadrons will be flying red air every day, we typically augment them we use them as red air every day already. The question comes down to, which ones would be the best one to use in red air . I have my blue air guys training all the time in the most modern and capable versions of it. Then let the guys that are stepping in to be red air that they fly the older airplane. That is one of the options that we are looking at as we move the ftu up here. Its one of the things we will try. Thank you. Teresa. Hi general, this is teresa from breaking defenses. Thank you for being here today. I wanted to talk a little bit in detail about the c2 excuse me ive got a problem with my voice today. But also with how you are better able to employ your forces because you now have better c2 capabilities. You mentioned that upfront. Can you elaborate a little bit on that . Im trying to trace back to anything i specifically said. I mean i think that we have worked hard to create that Mission Command of empowering people at the lower level echelons in our units to take control and use the authority and responsibility weve given them to make decisions. I think that has been very effective for us in dealing with the crisis that we face. As we work to fill new capabilities, new technical capabilities on the command control side, we want to make sure we build them to empower and enable that and we want to make sure we do not inadvertently build systems that are more centralized as we go forward. Again, it is about sharing the data that we have at every echelon, or at least every issue on that needs. Theres too much data to push everything to everybody. It is working through deciding who needs wet and getting it to them. Having the connectivity that enables data to move around and deciding which sensors and platforms and weapons are required. Can i just follow up quickly . How are you talking to congress about this . I noticed that the senate and the Senate Committee essentially try to put back a whole lot of old platforms for new c2 capabilities. I wonder im wondering how you are making that argument to your friends and congress. We do appreciate the professional staffers up there and members that they support and the committees they support. They work hard to understand the requirements. They are right. There are a lot of requirements out there and we could use everything we have and a little bit more. I think the argument that we will make as we go forward is, we are fighting down so where the key existential threats to the United States . And as budgets may decrease in the coming years already because of service and stimulus funding and all the things that people are talking about. How might we prioritize that . We will make the case that we need to put some priority on modernization and readiness and with the leverage that we have to trade between those three areas. Capacity, modernization and readiness. That we may have to trade some capacity to get to the modernization we need to be able to win against enemy threats. Thank you. How about retired Lieutenant General bill. Bill, i show that you are and muted but we cannot hear anything right now. Ill tell you what, i will give you one more shot and we will move someone else and come back to you. Nothing. Okay. Valerie. Can you guys hear me . We can, valerie. I want to ask you about the aircrafts leasing for the reforge concepts. I know that a couple months ago you put out a search for the chief 15, and the and 3 46. Can you clarify whether involves just the t50 or potentially both or either of those aircrafts . Could you provide any more specificity about how many planes or how many hours, however your quantifying the size of that why not expedite t7 production instead . Was it just cost and production prohibition . Or was there Something Else . The tee seven is a great airplane. We cannot wait to get our hands on it. But it is several years away from us getting our hands on it. Boeing and sob are working through to operational airplane. Theyll tell you that they were pretty darn close in their prototypes to an operational airplane. I got to fly the airplane. Its a great airplane. I agree. But it still takes time to work through the issues and turn that into an operational platform. What we are trying to do is use the time while we are waiting to get that operational platform to work with teams at atc and trying to figure out the best ways to use their plane as we go forward. In our initial market research, there was thought that there might be only one airplane that was going to be bid against it, but as we did more market research, we found out that there were multiple people that want it to bid and they were going to bid with a couple of different airplanes, at least, and certainly competition is an our interest so we want to have the competition to see if we can come in at an affordable cost. Frankly, our bug budgets are tight and we have to have the option that if nobody comes in we may try to do this in a different way. Our acc Service Contract agency is working through a approach to this. We are working to refine it and talk with the potential vendors to try to get to a process and see if somebody will come in with a cost that we can afford. Im not going to talk about the specific number of airplanes but its not many. It is designed to let us see how long it takes us to train a forced to do it and how long does it take us to build an experience and finish a program and that airplane. To be qualified to fly the airplane and go into a fourth or fifth generation fighter and do a short transition course instead of a long one. Those are the metrics we use. We think it is a good use of the time between now and when the tee seven starts to roll off the production line. If i could follow up quickly. Can i just ask, when are you guys going to release the rfp for that and when will you make your selection . Im not the Contracting Agency but what we are trying to do is get airplanes available for us to use by the summer of 2021. Then we will work through the process to try and deliver that. Thank you, valerie. How about marcus . Thank. You can hear me ok . Yes. General, i want to ask you about without the commercial pilots that are out of work right now with covid and airlines briefing before they get back to where they were at the beginning of 2020, how does that impact your Pilot Shortage in the way that you think about we certainly have some pilots that were able to leave the air force and reconsidering that decision. People that were reaching in, service were planning on moving to the airlines are now thinking through that decision. We think that some of those will decide to stick around with us for a while longer. Some will decide to come in and some will make a year to year decision, and wait and see what happens. It gives us a trend a chance to try and convince them to stick with us which is an opportunity for us. In the larger areas, as you look at the pilot force out there in the country. Atc is working through other options on alternative paths to wings. You can put your specific questions to them, but it is questions like hey, can we bring a pilot that is already a commercial experienced pilot and can we put them through a Short Program in the air force to make them an air force pilot . To make them a professional military aviator on top of their already developed aviation skills and see that allows us to take advantage of some of the folks that are there . And we are also looking at a way to go out into Pilot Training programs and work with them to design where we could take some of those university or School Based Programs and bring them straight into the air force. Education and Training Command has a lead on Pilot Training initiatives and they are working through this. Men and women who are pilots and are leaving who are deciding that want to leave . Is it substantial numbers . Every year there is a group that went through Pilot Training ten years ago. They come up on the decision to leave. We have some fairly small where we reduced Pilot Training. Approximately, its 900 people a year that come up against that decision for the first time. I think all 900 of those people, and thats an approximate number. Could be 1000 or 800 or so in some of those years. We hope all 900 of those people will reevaluated their decision and we hope that we can convince them to stick around and find meaning and purpose in what they do. Thank you. I will tell you marcus, there is also a market out there for folks who left the air force and are affiliated with the Air National Guard and were flying with the Air National Guard with the air force reserve in parttime rules. There are also folks that are out there that are interested in getting more mandates or coming back into full time status. We are working with them as well. Last question. Courtney. Thank you for taking the time. Courtney with inside defense. I want to go back real quick. This might have been addressed earlier, the discussion around the f22 and possibly repurposing some of the ftu can you get into the possible details around how many aircrafts you might be looking at . What level of cost analysis you are doing right now and i know this is something that acc has looked into in the past. What is on the table right now . What are the details you are weighing in on . I would tell you that right now, this is primarily a think peace for air combat command. Can we make that reforge Initiative Work . It is also based on work were doing as we look at the flying training in general. You take those two key capabilities and you apply them to ftu, which is making curriculums available for students 24 hours a day. Progressing at their own pace. A Continuous Monitoring of students. To know when we can proficiency advance from one step to the next. But when they need a little bit more training at that step, it gives us the opportunity to decrease the amount of time they spend at our flaying train units, which means we do not even as many aircrafts dedicated to that, which means maybe you can repurpose some of those to operate them into additional combat capability without spending any extra money. When we move to the 95th fighter squad after the hurricane down there. We took their aircraft and split them up. We went to bigger f22 squadrons, which produced some efficiencies of scale. It helped us train those quadrants better and faster. We went from six operational squadrons of about 21 airplanes to five squadrons of 24 airplanes. People that have grown up in the air force know that it is for scale, it is easier to train your crews at a 24 aircrafts quadrant then it is 18 or 21, because you can fly more frontlines in the morning. What we are looking at is that we are able to repurpose some of that flying Training Unit capacity, then with that allow us to take some of the flying Training Unit airplanes and recreate a sixth after the five squadron. And even if they are the older f35s it might not have exactly the same avionics in guts, but it is still a very capable airplane which will give us again additional capacity and combat capability without spending extra money. We are looking at those ideas. They are in the future to be implemented. If they are ever implemented. They depend on our ability to use the things we have learned, to use the things we might learn in a reforge initiative to see if we can makeshift airplanes from training coated airplanes into combat coated airplanes. We have come to the end of this event. I have to tell you, it was a real special honor to host general homes and again, we wish you all the best and a chanted thank you for all youve done for our air force and will continue to do in the future. From all of us at Mitchell Institute and the afa, thank you dave. Thank you for all the times you guys have made these discussions possible. I dodged a bullet by not getting we could not get his mic to work. By. What do you think we can do about that . Forced johnson to questions from members of the house of commons on his governments reopening efforts and response to the coronavirus pandemic. Later, the Prime Minister commented on the terrorist that claimed the life of one American National telling members quote, we will not let this kind of senseless murder distract us or in any way allow us to be intimidated or to change our way of life and quote. This is 35 minutes. We are now going ahead to the questions to the
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