Government leaders to discuss issues arising at the intersection of defense ministries and the industries that serve them. Todays Event Features the honorable andrew hunter, assistant secretary. He is here to deliver prepared remarks and have a conversation about how the air force is working to field next generation technologies. I would like to think andrew and our audience for joining us. Putting this in context, i would like to underscore who we are. The Atlantic Council works to develop sustainable, nonpartisan strategies to address the most important security challenges facing the United States and its allies and partners. It honors the legacy of service and embodies the e those of nonpartisan commitment to the cause of security in cooperation with allies and partners and dedication to the mentorship of the next generation of leaders. In the center, the program i lead generates ideas and connects stakeholders in the defense ecosystem to promote an enduring military advantage for the United States, allies and partners. Our work identifies defense strategies, capabilities and resources the United States needs to deter and if necessary prevail in future conflict. This event example phis one of the ways one of the ways we undergo this mission. The air force is undergoing a transformation, responding to a changing threat environment and new emerging technologies. This reoptimization effort is described as a strategic pivot in the departments acquisition approach to ensure the rapid fielding of new capabilities. This approach is guided by the 2022 National Defense strategy that emphasizes innovation, technological advances and recruitment of a highly Skilled Workforce to maintain u. S. Strategic and operational advantages over competitors. The air force is moving forward ambitiously to field next generation platforms and Collaborative Combat Aircraft while also working to more quickly adopt advanced software and digital services. The Rapid Procurement of leadingedge technology to support u. S. Defense assets is something we spend a lot of time thinking about. It was the focus of our recently released commission on innovation adoption final report that determined while the u. S. Is a world leader in innovation, it has an Innovation Adoption Program adoption problem. I am pleased to say our work will continue with our new commission on software this year. In that context we are excited to welcome to the Atlantic Council the assistant secretary of the air force, the honorable andrew hunter. In his role as assistant secretary, he oversees air force research, development and position activities for over 550 Acquisition Programs. He also serves as the principal advisor to the secretary of the air force and air force chief of staff for development and modernization efforts. He previously served in the Obama Administration as the director of the joint rapid acquisition cell where he quickly built reconnaissance capabilities and Innovative Solutions to chemical weapons. Mr. Hunter is the director of the Defense Industrial initiative group. Early in his career, he was an official member of a committee. Following his opening remarks, he will join the director of our democracy project for a moderated conversation. Before turning things over, i would like to remind everyone that this event is public and on the record. We encourage our online audience to submit your questions to our moderator. Be sure to identify yourself and your affiliation. We will collect those questions through the event. Our in person audience may ask questions directly using the microphones in our studio. When we begin the q a portion, please queue up in the aisle. We also encourage you to follow the conversation on x. Without further ado, thank you for joining us, and assistant secretary hunter, thank you. [applause] thank you clementine and steve for moderating and organizing this event. Its an honor to be here. I had limited opportunity to be around the general himself, he was a remarkable figure. It is great to be here. Great to be here at the Atlantic Council. I want to talk about exactly the things clementine previewed. The air force initiatives currently underway. Two related ones in particular are focused on Operational Imperatives we believe are necessary and driven directly from our National Defense strategy and the missions it assigns to the department of the air force, including both the United States air force and space force. I have a colleague who manages our space force programs. The strategy, they are closely related, their activities and capabilities are closely related and we work in close concert on the abilities we believe are implied and necessary to fulfill missions under the National Defense strategy. Our Operational Imperatives initiative has been out there for some time. It is closely related to our more recent initiative, reoptimizing for Great Power Competition. Our Operational Imperatives work has been focused on identifying discrete modernization programs and projects necessary for the air force to fulfill its mission and accelerate them and filled them in a rapid timeframe. Reoptimizing for Great Power Competition goes beyond looking at modernization, beyond just Acquisition Programs. It really looks at the entire department of the air force enterprise. All of our offices and structures to ask the question, is the structure we have today fit for purpose for the missions assigned to the department of the air force in the Defense Strategy, or are they perhaps still in a structure or shape or burdened by the legacy of previous strategies . Previous National Security focuses for example, wars in the middle east and the global war on terror and dont align with Todays Mission and where we see it going in the future. That part about the future is important. Theres a lot of urgency of today. That very much is driving action for the department of the air force. We also recognize the competition part of the initiative is incredibly important because the competition is not shortterm, it is longterm. It will be a mostly peaceful competition over a long period of time. We cant be exclusively focused on nearterm threats although we are focused on nearterm threats. We have to understand the longerterm shape of a strategic competition in which we are engaged and lame for that as well. No simple task. Its what weve undertaken with the secretary and the chiefs reoptimization initiative. To talk a little about the why, i will preview and leave you a little wanting i hope, because the details will be part of the initiatives for reoptimizing our things you will hear a lot more about at the air force Association Event that starts monday next week, so stay tuned for that. If you will not be in colorado, definitely tune in. You will hear a lot more about specific and discrete initiatives. Want to talk a little bit about the why and some of the problems we are trying to solve. I also want to talk a little bit about how we can get after those problems using examples of programs many of you are probably familiar with that have been some of our guiding benchmarks to say how do we make sure we are postured repeatedly as a matter of routine rather than an exception that made its way through the system even though the system is not designed to support it . In terms of the problems we are trying to solve, talking about the Operational Imperatives, they are driven by discrete missions the air force, i will focus mostly now on the air force, but keeping in mind we work closely with the space force, that the air force has to be able to accomplish. And specific technical capabilities required to do that. The nature of those technical capabilities is in some ways different from what weve had to be able to do in the past. Not entirely different, and if you go back some decades when we were in a longterm, longrunning strategic competition with an adversary, in that case, the cold war and soviet union, we had to continuously generate new capabilities. It was a move counter move situation in terms of it being a strategic competition could you could never rest, you could never relax. We had to have systems designed for that purpose. Although it has its flaws and certainly had its critics, our acquisition system was largely designed in that environment, designed to engage in a strategic competition with a very competent, capable strategic competitor. Not unlike the situation we find ourselves in today. What is the nature of that . A lot of the things we have today, complex systems that have to work in close coordination with one another. We have fleets of Tanker Aircraft that work in close coordination with a bomber force that are supplied with weapons experts in the air force developing capabilities. All of these things have to work in an integrated fashion to be successful. We were april to leverage that investment over the last 20plus years to do very i would say hi provision High Precision highly impactful things like airstrikes around the world, but at a very modest scale. Usually something where you can leverage intelligence resources and other resources in a way that allow you to be very judicious and built up over a period of time and do what you want to do. Then you have done it and you can rebuild and reset. In terms of strategic petition, doing the same thing but at a pace and scale completely unlike anything we have done before. That drives a huge necessity for integration between and among systems. Integration at a higher degree than in the past. Weve talked about this quite a bit in the last year because we stood up for the first time in the United States air force what we characterize as an integrating program. The job was to deliver the program. There is a Friend Network among peos to make sure they are working together and leveraging each others capabilities but that is sort of something that happens on the side or as a result of individuals. Its not something we currently are postured necessarily to do systematically. In the cold war we did have System Centers and commands that performed some of that integrating function. But most of that was an efficiency that was efficiencied away at the end of the cold war. We need to do more of that, even more than in that previous period. We created an integrating peo to accomplish this task. His mandate is for command, control battle management. The integration of command and control across essentially the entire force for the department of the air force, but having to tie in of course to the entire joint force and ultimately with allies and partners as well. An incredible complex task, something that secretary kendall, who knows a thing or two about signing complex jobs to people, says its the most complex job hes ever had to give. Thats an example of what im trying to talk about that we are driving toward, the ability to do integration in the acquisition and acquisition will department because our system enables it. That is a huge part of what we need to accomplish, what we know we need to accomplish good the second thing i want to highlight is the need to take science and technology and turn it into fielded capability at an accelerated pace. Go faster, turn the wheel faster and that we see as well. The National Defense strategy talks about a pacing threat, and i like to say the pace is really fast. Its the pace we have to meet we have to be able to take technology from the s p phase, and i would assert because i believe it that there is a good s p work happening. Theres also incredible work in the commercial sector and abundant commercial investment we can leverage for department of the air force purposes. The challenge is finding a way we can take that work and integrate it and deliver it at a much faster pace. Rather than something that happens occasionally, something that happens routinely and with deliberate purpose. The example i would like to point to hear, our program to deliver Collaborative Combat Aircraft. We have an initiative within air force research laboratory. I was looking at how to apply Artificial Intelligence to unaccrued systems to uncrewed systems to allow them to partner with crewed capability. Thats led to an Acquisition Program that is to deliver an affordable capability that can partner with our aircraft to do a wide variety of missions for the United States air force to include strike. And other traditional aircraft missions. Weve been able to take something directly happening, transition it directly into a program of record, leveraging a lot of other foundational architectures about which i will say more in a minute and get on a path to deliver capability and field capability on a rapid timeframe. Thats what we are looking to make a routine way of how we do business. And more to come on how we think we can accomplish that goal. The third piece is we understand , as it was true in the past and a very challenging security environment, longrunning strategic competition, we need our nerves and allies more than ever. The things we do, the way we approach our problems, the partner and ally piece of it has to be integrated as early as possible. Ideally from the first moment on the front end. In terms of what is right look like it, we have been working assiduously with our closest partners and allies to integrate them as well. Certainly the Office Initiative is a highlight. We are working with multiple countries to have them as early adopters and early partners and enablers in that approach and in the interrations of that. And iterations of that. Thats another element that is really critical in our overall impulse for optimizing for Great Power Competition. I want to talk a little bit about how we see we will likely do this. Not the specific initiatives but more the nature of the kind of change we think we need. I alluded earlier to the need to work with industry, so as has been pointed out many times by my mentors and predecessors, the capability we field, we understand industry is the critical partner delivering those capabilities. We alone are not going to be successful in fielding capability without substantial work and substantial investment from industry, including traditional Defense Industry, what i would call emerging Defense Industry, those who have committed themselves to the Defense Sector and are hotly engaged now and looking to grow both their capability and presence and our Defense Industry and space, and companies that are truly commercial that maybe arent looking to grow their Defense Space but willing to do it if there is money to be made and have inherent capability we can leverage and need. I think we understand that industry ultimately is critical source for the things i described, both the core capabilities traditionally provided and the extent of integration and expertise to do extensive integration required. We have to work in Close Partnership with industry to deliver these capabilities. Partnership is kind of a loaded term in the acquisition space. It is popular to talk about industry as partners and other times it is not. We go through a cycle. Let me be more specific. Im trying to use partnership in a fairly specific way. What we want to partner on is a series of architectures, architectures that provide standards, interfaces and the ability to link things together. You can imagine the kinds of architectures and standards we have for wifi or bluetooth. Industry gets together, its not a conspiracy, it is a standardsetting process, a way of aligning activities of Different Companies to the benefit of all and to me, most important to the benefit of the air force and department of defense, to ensure that capabilities can be integrated in a logical way and relatively seamless way where we dont have to reinvent the wheel 100 times over. Its not a static thing, you dont pay once and you are done. It is a living thing. Standards and interfaces, we see the famous ones in the commercial world, constantly evolved and updated. That suits our purpose exactly. We know we have to be able to constantly of all our capabilities and update them. When i am talking about partnership in industry im talking about partnering on a core set of architectures. Department of the air force architectures, many of them could be department of defense architectures. They enable us to field that capability, field it quickly, and integrate it and of all rapidly over time. These core foundational architectures for the great enabler for that and we cannot do it without a Close Partnership with and distribute i will give you an example. Im talking a little bit theoretically. We have a pretty concrete example, advanced mission systems, government Reference Architecture. It was developed to allow if you will