[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] my name is david tula, dean of the institute for aerospace studies. Joining me is cohost, the editor of war in iraq, ryan evidence. Our topic this morning is the future of air superiority. Over the next decade and a half, the United States is at risk of losing its ability to control the domain in combat. Budget pressure for delaying key investments are adversaries continue to advance. With this in mind, Brigadier General alex brenna which led a team of airspace cyberlogistics and support experts in an exhaustive review of options to gain and maintain control of error when necessary. It was called an Enterprise Capability Collaboration Team support ecc t. For short and a resulted in the air force air superiority 2030 flight plan. To read the other key experts in air security for colonel tom colquitt tour, the Constant Development leader and mr. Jenks failing, the Analysis Team lead. We are very pleased they could join us today to explore this vital missionary. After the study was finished in the flight plan completed, general grange heard a series of four articles on the topic originally published by war in iraq. They were so well done that i asked with the approval if we could combine them into a Mental Institute policy. Its finished and we are releasing it here today, so please be sure if you havent already gotten a copy, get one and read it cover to cover. The way we run the pale today is in a discussion format with brian and i alternating with a few introductory questions and we will be sure to leave plenty of time for audience participation. Before answering the first question, well give Panel Members a couple minutes to get a little background in acting introductory remarks remarks today to make. With that, over to you. Great to be the cohost of this event. I just want to say very briefly when i first started a few years ago, one of the things that was striking was the air force was the least active service in participating public debate especially compared to the other services in particular. That is changed over the last couple of years in a series of articles played a big role on that. I want to emphasize how unusual it was for a Senior Leader to write such a sort of rigorous, well thought out original articles and throw it out against the wall where it is vulnerable to a lot of public criticism and i just want to commend the general for that and thank him for that and it was part of a wave of much more air force Public Engagement in organizations like the Mitchell Institute are crucial to that. I just want to commend the panelists for being part of this and sticking your neck out there in supporting more Junior Officers to do the same. I turn it over to you, gentlemen. Great, thanks. We are excited to be here. If an idea cant stand up, it may not be the best idea. Think that is my philosophy with this, getting it out and supporting us. We appreciate the opportunity to advocate for what we did in 2030. The city is a little over a year old now, but we stand by everything that came up in the ecc t. Work. Theres been progress on some things in one direction and progress in other directions other pieces of it. One of the things we said as we finished air superiority was and would it would likely be a divisiveness that chief of staff signed on the bottom line and thats certainly true. Its also certainly true provided intellectual framework to think about air superiority in the time frame. The way i would frame kind of the biggest intellectual outcome of this study is when we think about air superiority, we dont think about jet fighter combat anymore. It comes in order to achieve air superiority effect a condition that you set for the joint force. And so, that is why theres so many different pieces to this and it lays out a Broader Vision for where the air force could go in the future if it chooses and its resources stay aligned to to this in a fair sample resources, youve got an opportunity to bring air power of all kinds, space power of all kinds in cyberSpace Capabilities to bear in order to set the air security. If we just think of it as fighter combat, were not going to get where we need to go in the future. That is the bottom line of it coming integrated network of capabilities that we would advocate for from the study perspective. Did you want to say anything up front . All right, great. We will take questions. The first question will bounce back and forth and then throw it back to the audience. Theres a lot thats been said about the air force relationship with autonomy and one of the common criticisms you hear is the air forces against more Unmanned Systems because it is serviceware Fighter Pilots place in your role. One of the things that came out of this report in the articles that preceded it is an unfair characterization. I would love to hear the three of you comment on that and also talk about where you are thinking in terms of air superiority. I would say were not against economy. Its just how you use the economy. Its essentially a technology enamored started at a component level. Theres a difference between unmanned platforms and autonomy. They hope the user make decisions more quickly and eventually get to an Autonomous Vehicle and assault. I will add a piece of that for my personal yvonne autonomy. I go back to the concept of a network. We are talking about different pieces of capabilities that come together in a network fashion. For the networks perspective, autonomy looks like the ability is something that operate on its own. A couple ways you can do that. Or you can do it with some other capability that the gray matter between the ears of maybe me if im ever lucky enough to fly again providing that autonomy in the network appeared the beauty of thinking about it like that as you can get away from the emotional arguments of our Fighter Pilots going to be around and think about it from a capability perspective. What can make the best decisions under conditions where you need to operate independently because information is denied toward the platform. Can a machine be about or is there no subject to the required that you need Something Else and where will the trade point be . Its a little bit of an unfair characterization when we talk about autonomy. The question of where the point of autonomy happens. In the day flying an f16, when i first started flying that was a couple miles away from a nonverse area. Its an autonomous wingman to hit the target appeared years before that the bullet out of a gun. He was after that a longer range missile at the point of autonomy and you move it back. We been adjusting with the point of autonomy is based on capabilities we have a machine autonomous operations and where do you make that link happened. The ability to infuse logic into an aircraft and kind of man machine teaming is really powerful. The center fusion engine on the airplane brings in information together and presents it to with its easy to take us. Right now it does. Without the michigan polling information and something a human cannot uncover you wouldnt be where you are. The point of autonomy is a piece of debate i would focus on. Gentleman in the paper in the air security plan, you talk about the whole notion of family of systems. Could you comment and provide my definition to the audience in terms of what youre talking about when you describe family systems . Maybe take out one for starters. Weve got a good basis for how we pull that together. Absolutely. When youre thinking about the family systems coming out to look a capability youre trying to produce in the battle space. When you look at things in isolation, you can see how one thing performed against another. What a complex problem we are trying to get into for the future is how the evolution has occurred. Essentially a deficit overlapping multispectral environment where a lot of entities in concert with others. To affect in that area, airspace or any airspace you want to produce an effect, you need to operate with the other entities in that environment. When we look at all the various capabilities and analytically look at those things, without benefit of various technologies, various ideas and concepts, but when you put it into the environment, you have to work together. That became readily apparent throughout the course of the year that to operate in an environment in the unit of them operating in concert together. I think thats exactly right. So a family of system emerges after you look at how you accomplish everything you have to, target track, engage is one of them, but based on a logistical others. If technology was at the point you could make one system to do all of that in some Package Liquor platform, maybe you would want to do that. Maybe you wouldnt. Really its about how he pulled these different pieces of it . How do you fix it . Does that have to be in the same platform or can it be spread out and disaggregated and what we found as you might expect the most effective and efficient way to do it is to disaggregate capabilities away from just being in one place. Its a question over to aggregate, what he disaggregate in how people different pieces of capability together over time. I would say one criticism we face, estate and ive used a few times. We always get criticized for the air force typically gets criticized thinking about families of systems and families of capabilities and you end up building platforms. My answer to that is thats really not how we are operating right now in syria lets say. Sydney was made that it was an f18 that shot down over syria. It doesnt matter from an airmans perspective. The network of capabilities should come together, the f22s there were ever to quarterback and protect troops on the ground. As long as that network is able to provide air superiority, thats what its all about. Devoted family of system and capabilities, just sometimes part of my family can be a little bit dysfunctional and sometimes work really well together like my family on our good days. Could you talk a bit about the changing relationship between survivability in how the air force is changing the way they think about each of those components in relationship with each other as a result of your efforts . Okay, survivability, theres lots of ways to survive. Historically, it could have been speed. You increase an aircraft speed at 50 knots and made it more survivable. You also made it more lethal. Now i think it is a lot or complex. It can be speed. It can be altitude. It can be stopped is another thing we added to the toolkit 30, 40 years ago. Electronic warfare is a form of stealth if you will first up is part of Electronic Warfare. The right cocktail for the right mix of capabilities are what will make something survivable in the future and understanding the right cocktail based on the projected red is what is necessary and be able to identify what technologies you have in your toolkit to make things more survivable, whether it be a weapon, data link or platform. I think in the article is i even mentioned as an f16 pilot many years ago in our tactics manual talked about one of the best ways to be able to survive is to decrease adversaries out there messing with these. Theres a link we dont think about between survivability. All that much better chance of surviving if they take adversaries out at some point. It becomes complex as the balance and not the Detailed Planning for any system or capability or platform is going to get into how do you balance of the attributes. Very good. We look toward the future in the 2030 timeframe im removing to a world that is more and more dominated i operations in cyberspace and in our space. Is air superiority really going to be as important 2030 and beyond as it has been in the past . There are other capabilities just as important achieving conflict. I will start for this one. So, i think you cannot think of one domain without thinking about others. From an airmans perspective we look at how cybercapability infuses those domains as well. So one of the things as we were briefing air superiority we always said is you cant have it be superiority without air security and maybe you cant have space without air security in the future. There will be pockets of places where that doesnt apply. If you look at the network of capabilities we abdicate forward, theres a number of Space Capabilities that would apply, whether communications, whether its intelligence, whatever it happens to be that feeds into this network. Getting the front end accomplished, the most important piece of it to find if you need to go after to get air security, the whole thing breaks down. Inversely, if you think about space superiority comments he had him take satellite somewhere in the middle of the notion. You cant get air superiority over the islander rock with a piece of land, wherever it happens to be so you can tackle the entire satellite capability and take it out in the worst case, with a a connecticut sector nonkinetic effect come if you dont have air security come you cant take care of it. You may not be a would have space superiority if you cant get air security over certain pieces of the globe on the ground as well. They are highly interconnected in the 2030 timeframe and i think again at the network and how it comes together that will be able to bring all of them together and make some tradeoffs. Youll go well, the joint force commander you might make a tradeoff that says the Space Capabilities the most important thing right now, so im going to put all my air superiority forces in this network and concentrate deny an adversary the ability to deny me space or it might be a different piece because we have Ground Forces operating and you dont want them start the adversary capabilities either. One thing useful is if you flip the equation around and said what the adversary had air superiority . What freedom of action does they get them . It gives the ability to deny cyberspace where operators are. We talked about they can deny you space and air superiority and attack your forces on the ground. Weve had that happen 1953 we dont intend to let it happen in 2030. Anything to add to that . I would say Going Forward its important to have a multidomain approach and that includes the error domain as well. Error domain is needed for not just space, but land. I mean, you can look in europe that somebody was able to utilize the error domain and deny it from us. Our Ground Forces would be exposed sensors on the ground, whether a radar looking for Ballistic Missiles were defending space would be exposed to Adversary Air so they are all interrelated. If i could ask one question. [inaudible] i start monday. And that. And that too after wicked draw back the curtain a little bit and talk about what it is like to run and be a part of a working group like this in terms of managing talent, navigating bureaucracy where some might be more amenable to what youre doing than others. The importance of having civilian talent on the team as well as military talent. Efforts like this are becoming increasingly important to our services and joint force innovate. Thats a really great question, ryan. We were the first ect that the air force had done, so there was no template for how we were going to do this. I was fortunate that we identified some great books to be on the team and we had a very diverse set of folks who were kind of on a team of 10 to 12 people. One up and down at and down his assignments have been in the 15 months or so that we were together. That small port 10 to 12 folks is not nearly sufficient to get after all the issues we had. We needed a core of cyberand space expertise that wasnt really here in the d. C. Area, both kind of the center of our work was. To reach out to the space command, go down to san antonio where capabilities are in reach to a much broader group. Over the life of the ect, several hundred people participated bring in all sorts of different opinions and viewpoints to live. And it was it was not just operators. They could look out one of the logistical impacts of overcoming their intelligence professionals who look at how we need the intelligence requirements come a whole host of specialties came together. Leading a diverse team like that, you know, the most important thing is to come up with a shared vision. One thing airmen do share a vision about is making sure we can accomplish our core mission, where they can get it done, whether its putting up full motion video in the middle east or whether it is making sure gps is operating on a daily basis. The air force will get it done. When you bring people together and say this is the mission of the air force. Not air combat command or some piece of it. Is their superiority . Or forced labor superiority . Therefore semaphores have the mission. Air force intel of admission. All of a sudden a mission and we share an airman can get that kind of work done. Importantly it wasnt airmen. We did reach out to army and navy counterparts with a robust dialogue both understanding the requirements were from us as well as how we could ensure that we provided them the cover air superiority does. The air superiority underwrites so much of what we do. If you think a law that goes downrange on a daily basis, you think about cargo resupply happening, had been able to get the Afghan Air Force up to where it is, none of thats possible without superiority. Across the board is a great team that came together. We talked about bringing in civilian expertise because that was key as well. When you think of and deborah like this, you have the entire air superiority. In the course of the year you have a very limited amount of time, a deadline to get at the very end. Thats almost impossible to do all of that. Whatever place you are at. The opportunity here was a fantastic opportunity to open up the aperture, bringing a lot of experts. We had access to the experts in the air force studies and analysis. We had those folks there, folks at air force Research Laboratory , but not only the air force analysts brought together, folks are moving to mount the johns hopkins, partners and industry providing a lot of great analytic work theyve done over the course of the year. When you open not the analytic lens to be able to bring all that information and be able to help focus what we need to do a provide more creation that allowed us to basically open up the aperture to folks they really think about the difficult problems we face in a very detailed analytic approach to it. I was a fantastic opportunity to use the authority that she gave at to be able to give all that information together to better inform the team in better inform the chief moving forward. Okay, very good. One more question from a friend and that we will open up to the crowd. One of the things discussed in the report is this whole notion of penetrating counter air. Some people are scratching their craniums about why we are talking about another aircraft when we have an even finish the fielding a vf 35. Could you comment on pca and what it means . Sure, i will start and then probably provide a little more insight as well. So, i guess i go back to it is all about the network and how you accomplish and affect change. If you look at the pieces of the network, we went into this wideopen and said if there is a way we can do air superiority with just space forces are just cyberspace forces, we wanted to fully develop those end if there is a way we can do it passively, lets say an apt 117 over baghdad in 1991 i would argue had air superiority. Nothing could affect it in the freedom of action, freedom to maneuver in that space. If there is a way to build that on a larger scale where you could project air superiority without having to instantiate other capabilities to go along with it, we were all for it. What we found is we went through a number of different conceptual frameworks. We had stand off and stand in. We had various instantiations of where the point of autonomy was that we spoke about. We found the biggest gaps where it defined and fixed capability at the front end of the kill chain. The concept of the counter air capability came from really think of it more as a network than a fighter than the f22 are at 35. Its not a replacement for those. It is a distinct capability that i would argue will provide the keynote to help six. Since its fair comment in may complete some of the kill chain some of the time to kill whatever is fair or engage in whatever manner seems appropriate. That could be used for a connecticut, nonkinetic or any number of things. Theres a lot of focus, but you have to put in the context of the broad airspace and cybernetwork to really understand why its important. Its an important piece of it i wont downplay it, but that doesnt mean its any more important are less important than other things we came up with. A great example, you could build all the great things that take off and land that you want, but if you cant get him off the ground because you havent thought through the logistical piece of that, piece of that, in a more contested environment, the capability doesnt exist. It is just in your imagination. Fill in a little bit. I look at pca asset is a capability, a necessary capability, but its just one portion of a family of capabilities. So it is more larger than pca. If you look at the capability that we are looking to pursue, it is more than just a player. I would look at it more as it more as like a west end Surrey Center truck if you will. Those folks who say it is a fighter, they are kind of looking at it old school versus how we have looked at it for several years. Thats a great point and something we try to highlight in the article. As we went through the ecct, for a period of time is specifically precluded ourselves from using the word fighter and thats why we got away from the term effects. We adjusted our thinking basically because we have mental models and try to get rid of these that concern our thinking. It is about much more than that. The attributes of pca needs in terms of range persistence, survivability, all those things may or may not look in the final negotiations like it does today. Going to be some indifferent. Even using the word fighter most of the time for it in the end will have enough designation, who knows. It is going to be something different. The more we can break our minds away from thinking of it late 20th century warfare, the better off we will be. I just add to the bombers, too. Its a longrange sensors shooter. We need to get over this acrid mistake nomenclature. I get it. We are not going to undo 100 years of tradition but you know, something a simple semantics as a fact that things as important as air superiority inventory. Secretary gates terminated less than not the military requirement to case you didnt understand they did have a heck of a lot more than shoot down airplanes. This has been vividly demonstrated over the skies of syria were the f22 provides the means of integrating and infusing information and enhancing the rest of the force. We have two people with microphones. If you please wait to ask your question until one of the folks brings the microphone, we will get started right appear. The question regarding reach. Weve gotten inventory now that kind of descended from the concept. If you Start Talking larger distances and persistence, then it seems a couple of ways of doing that, one has to cover more quickly and the other is to remove the human limitation on platforms. Have you looked to the pca studies for concepts start to place more value on sustained highspeed in quite a few decades. Thats a good question. I would say a couple things. From a speed to come others to think speed allows you to do and that is to get to where you need to go to a quickly and be more lethal. The Biggest Issue from a reach perspective right now is getting over the distance you need to fight. When you look at the antiaccess strategy, what theyve done is push back the area you can operate from in various adversaries are doing this. It works really well and we do the same thing. If you can push back an adversary further away than they can strike you, it goes back to a think the analogy of whos got the longer lens. And now the environment we are going off keeps us further away. He needs some range to cover the ground to get into where you are going. If you can get to that location and persist in that environment, that really is more about survivor ability with large and how do you pair supersonic to hypersonic speeds with the other attributes of stuff and defensive measures that you can put onto capability. In though, i think it is to be determined exactly how all that is out. You can persist come you dont need to cover the distance to where youre going to persist quickly if you have enough volumes in the Something Else there to persist. It will be complex. The logistical piece will be interesting, to win how you build the appropriate range through more efficient image and refueling concepts and beyond. How do you make sure that you can get across the ground to get yourself in the air. I hope that answers your question. [inaudible] could you talk about the progress thats been made . A i would say once the report came out in the chiefs signed it last may over the summer of the air force is looking to shift its resources toward areas which will enable superiority to be enabled. What we typically do is identify in the future 10, 20, 30 years in the future, identify capabilities as well as our look at the threat and then identify the gaps that we have. The air superiority ecc tea identified those gaps, reaffirmed others and made it clear to where those gaps were and they spent last summer in the fall looking not how they were going to shift their resources in different areas, basically Different Missions and environments and where those gaps are. Some of that youve seen in the budget that was rolled out in fy 18 and others you will see in the future budget. As we go forward. We plan out to 30 years, so some of that outside you wont see and youll see every five years as the president s budget rolls out. Another aspect to that as well. If the acquisition and oversight in the air force how we look at the problems we are faced with . Over the course of this year as well they developed a cdc since the Concept Working Group to actually oversee where do your First Air Force is putting resources for the future. Each one of these meetings they have at each of the levels, they have a few out to use the ones of air superiority 2030 flightplan as how we are progressing along the Development Plan built out in the capability consistent with the document. It is continual reinforce in each one of these meetings. Just a couple of minor things ill mention as well. The airspace and cyberthings that have happened since we finished up the past 35 is part of the plan. This modernization effort going on for f22 modernization effort that are important that need to happen. Thats progress. You guys are familiar with ongoing discussions so i wont belabor that. Thats kind of from a stateside, that they had missed the air force commander continues to make progress for ensuring the capability to operate in the contested environment in the flush out the cybermission teams are in a cyberdid from a protection another capabilities. Weve got to be 21 coming. Youre talking about air superiority as an enabler for all multidomain. What is penetrating counter areas much as you can say . We know its not a fighter. What is a . Altaic the easy one here. Once again at the capability and will fill a future gap that we receive going into the future primarily in the operational environment. The highend of the operational environment where your gaps normally show up in what the in the traditional Counter Air Missions of air to air escort or sleep in seed and defense to counter air. So those are the type of Traditional Missions if you will that we need to capability for in the operational environment in order to enable a joint force that would be operating in or through those environments. A longrange, real fast and Unmanned Aircraft of some sort of all those attributes are being studied right now so theres been a study underway that began about six months a girl and those different options, the trade space if you will is being examined to identify to fulfill the capability to operate in nonoperational environment that we perceive a feature gap. I think the things we would know now is it is longerrange. Its got more persistent than survivable in the tradeoff between speed and other aspects will be key in if you think of it as a sensor shooter, thats a pretty good base to start. The center part is probably more important because the sensors enable not just shooting from things in the environment cannot but also enables any standup weapons in the inventory to be employed from further away. I think those are the key pieces from my perspective. I know its a hard question. You talked about multidomain. You talk about sensors. You talk about persistence. How important is it going to be Going Forward as different capabilities come online and be more important for at 17, f22, as 35. Weve seen an evolution here. Can you talk about the pros and cons of this lp platform versus Something Else. Sure. Ill start in an alternate over to talking about from an analytical perspective. A kind of goes back to the concept of survivor ability. We were guilty for a while of thinking that was talking about survivor ability. Something was the better off it was. To me, when you compare it with a discussion of survivability, he talk about Electronic Warfare that could supplement in how speed plays and just in very generic terms the faster you are, you can be last lp. The detailed work that the analysis alternatives have talked about will give the final answer. One thing i would say is the price of entry in the highend environments. The question of how far do you have to putsch technology versus how much can you mitigate the threat. Analytically as well. As they progress for whats coming next, its actually a very important aspect of that in that it combines above the other capabilities. It will be a tradeoff of all of those where they will say how much do we need, how much of the other and how fragile is the reliance across other capabilities together. You may need a certain amount. If Everything Else does the work great, how much do you need to provide that. There is a bit of redundant the. [inaudible] over the next 10 to 20 years. What are some of the technical challenges . So, okay. Itll be here there is a lot of great progress that has been made. When we open up the aperture to look at all the capabilities that anybody could bring into the environment, direct energy has a lot of promise. If they can deliver the deep magazine theyre talking about, it can enable us to target quickly, that would be a capability thats highly desired. This allowed a integration that has to occur before that can happen in an airborne platform currently to be able to do this in the environments we are talking about. As we look at the system capability plans and the overarching capability to do, plan, direct energy factored into a number of areas in investment in those technologies still continue to mature those. Once we can integrate those onto the platform, everything from offensive capabilities to defensive capabilities. A lot of promise. Thatll be a matter of where we can start the integration in the system. I would just say, whether youre talking platform or west end were not sure exactly where you are going, but there is no real requirement direct to energy. There are requirements for survivability, legality and if Directive Energy can fit nicely into one of those lands, we are definitely examining that, directed energy if you will, but also comparing them to other alternatives. To look at where technology allies, cost, logistics, integration, those are all things we have to take into consideration in order to incorporate direct that energy into capability. [inaudible] how does that factor into the study of upgraded platforms than what is the point of all of this if we cant get the balance including a 35 above are 100 aircraft being delivered to the air force to start rejuvenating the force. [inaudible] alastair was the first one that feeds back to johns question. One of the things what we found when we looked at 2030 was we typically come up with a single point solution, but the short is to say would be a goldplated solution for something we want to fill the capability gap of mac its really hard to do in one big technological lead. This is in good taste dropping the nomenclature of the six generation talking instead about capabilities. What we would advocate for across all sorts of capabilities, pca is to go through kind of a development prototyping fielding and some of it even overlapping across capabilities would say in the case of pca, if your first work to feel the late 2020s, early 2030s, maybe that is not directed energy because the technology hasnt quite closed and didnt buy its way onto the platform yet. Maybe a couple years later there is a leap forward in the directed energy technology. I want Directive Energy as soon as i can get it and as soon as it works is not a moment before, not a moment after if you will. When the moment happens we need to have in place the ability to incrementally approve and imported in. We talk about the fighter analogy of as we learn more from aerodynamics, we learn more in airplanes quickly became outdated because he made advances in aerodynamics and the soviets were making back and forth. We are fighting more. If information technologies, all those sorts of things advancing at a much faster rate than the 1950s. To me, if you dont have an incremental approach and you dont build and the ability to prototype and field and or upgrade the platform, youll fall behind because youll try to make too big of a technological leap. Until you get that capability feeling. Breaking into the second part of the question about how does this factor into f35. My biggest point on ms. Is all of the air superiority capabilities are not meant to compete with a 35. At 35 is capabilities that will be critical to air superiority. But talk about block for modernization of third say you can have the volume that comes with ef 35 there as well. You know, we need as many as quickly as we can afford them, but you do have to balance that against Space Capabilities and building the spaceport writing capability. Youve got to balance that against cybercapabilities. The biggest thing that can help us make this a rational program over time is stable and predictable budget. If we dont have a stable and predictable budget, every time i come up a tradeoff that will be invalid another year and that sometimes makes us look like we are highly irrational over at the pentagon. We are just react being to where the line is. All have one common error. Earlier we talked about our team in the diversity was key to success. Im not sure we talked about the acquisition folks on the team, but we did have professionals on our team and i think that is what general holmes is alluding to. We need to change on the way we develop our systems. We cant snap a chalk line end quote as our eyes and wait 15 or 20 years and allow all these Technology Development cycles to occur inside the 15 or 20 year cycle. The upgradability is more important than building new platforms. Yeah, i think it depends. Even in the context of a new platform, whatever that was, you want upgradability in that as well. Having the Mission System where you can rapidly reconfigure new sensors. We want to be illiterate do that a lot faster. Also the associated hardware cycle with sensors. You might want to upgrade your radar receiver or whatever it happens to be. The longest thing is things like the engines and capabilities. Within the family of capabilities, some things might be developed more like an f16 of the 1970s, significantly different than it is today and other things might feel a lot more rapidly like the Century Series called back. I wonder if you could clarify the next generation aired hominids, are they interchangeable . Is there an umbrella over that . If you could talk about how your study is considered just requirements, did you look at the size or we are more focused on capabilities . To the general work to bam bam, the first part, next generation era dominated is simply the name of the Program Element or the pot of money that we have and is also the name of the analysis of alternatives that is ongoing double determine the attributes for the penetrating capability. I wouldnt say theyre interchangeable. Penetrating counter air is just the capability we are pursuing. Nged happens to be the name of the budgeted. Your checkbook is just named nged. It is the name of the study. The reason we recognize it can be hard to follow. Nged is the program of the mint had fully fleshed out with the attributes were going to be in various alternatives. It is a legacy time than i would argue preceded the ecct in consumption that came out of that. We are wrestling ourselves with nomenclature a little bit. Second part of the question for you. The second question is about how many we need. Its a very complex question as we look at the future because no one can predict exactly what they will be fighting them. We are given a lens from the department of defense to look at the strategic analysis scenarios given to each of the services to use as a lens with which to measure their force. Its going to be a combination as a look at the pca in other capabilities within 2030 flight plan, as we look at that, we have to put that against future scenarios. Occasionally as the National Military strategy will change over the years as well. To nail down an exact number is a difficult thing to do for an analyst to do, especially looking 30 years after the future. Those are the lenses with which we are given to examine these forces. To give your number right now depends on the capabilities and how they performed together in that environment. Hi, general, what do you see the importance of cyberthreat against interpretive and change which is enabled superiority. Is this something youre looking not as a potential timeframe . Is yeah, absolutely. Ill answer in this way. In the 2030 timeframe, this didnt come out in the study so much as some of the work since it is internal to the air staff and the air force writ large, the chief of staff of the air force talks about that a lot. Hes got a Capability Collaboration Team looking at that as well. Theyre several levels of it. Start a broad level of command and control, multidomain courses. To get your question, i would narrow it down to the squadron level. Our basic fighting element in the air force. That remains true in 2030 although you could, but these different construct. I think you are going to need the resident cyberexpertise to protect your networks. No longer will he Squadron Commander be worried about generating air power to fill orders a pizza find Squadron Commander. He will also have the worry about how do i ensure that the mission Planning System connected to a broader Enterprises Working or how do i the Squadron Commander might have to worry about exactly how the f35 system being defended in a particular alr. You will have the resident cyberprotection expertise push down to the lowest possible level. I wanted to ask about the timeline for fielding pca. Its been here since the study came out in your time to work on the aoa and these technologies. Does that change your assumption around the 2030 timeframe . If you could also talk about how critical fun team is to be able to meet that timeline. This year theres a bump for transport. How critical is that in keeping on track or could you guys make that up during the out years . The second part of it. The first part of it, you know, i would say that nothing has changed in at least the assessment of when the requirement is. The requirement for all the capabilities was called 2030 for a reason by the late 2020s these highly contested environments becoming untenable for the Current Force Structure no matter how hard we work to modernize them. I dont think the requirement has changed. The good thing kind of behind the curtain and hard to see from the outside just looking at the lines is because we had, if you remember when we put out our unclassified flight plan, Development Areas and plans underneath that. Some of the technologies in system Development Plans you can pursue will help across multiple areas. We will be more efficient with our investments by knowing if we are going to be looking at a certain Sensor Technology it may be useful in different systems than we were advocating for. That work is continued, even without any bump up in funds from nged or pca is, that aoa was adequately funded over the last year. That is my assessment and any increase in funds and where that is going is probably going to exceed what we can talk about here. Ill just say its important to buy down the risk of the key technologies. I would just say we are funded to complete our study in about a year and then we are also looking at Risk Reduction activities that would be related to this capability. For those of you who are watching out there and dont have an opportunity to pick up a paper, you can get it online at www. Mitchell aerospace power. Org. Mitchell aerospace power. Org. Be sure to read more. Ladies and gentlemen, please join us in thanking our Panel Members for their time and great interest today. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] we believe this discussion on use air power on a website cspan. Org or you can do at any time in his entirety online. If you missed in the conversation. Take a conference on turkey i year after they failed to come and turkeys role in the middle east. They should be starting shortly. [inaudible conversations] is it okay . [inaudible conversations]