Think Differently, USAF Chief Says (Posted: Tuesday, June 07, 2005)

[Defense News, June 07, 2005]

As Gen. John Jumper winds down his 39-year career, he says he’s not worrying about his legacy as he and his staff react to the demands and lessons from wars, brace for base closings and wait for the results of the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR).

His focus is to shape the force of 2025, not 2005. That force will be smaller, but offer a wider array of capabilities, with manned combat aircraft playing an ever-diminishing role. In fact, one of his top priorities is to inculcate across the service the warrior ethos that has historically been strongest among fighter pilots.

He hopes that in the future, the Air Force will draw its leaders from other communities equally key to the service’s success, like space, communications and information operations career fields.

Q. How is the Air Force faring in the QDR?

A. We’re going to present the analysis and we’re going to make our case. Every time our case has been accompanied by analysis, we’ve done pretty good.

If we’re going to have to exist in contested airspace to accommodate the Army’ s new and evolving concept of operations, which says they’re going to put units around the battle space, and somebody’s going to have to get back to it quickly, you’re going to have to keep lanes and corridors open for C-17s to get through for re-supply and deal with things that emerge rapidly, then that’s the case we’re going to make, as we have done in the past.

Q. Could the F/A-22 Raptor purchase be cut below 180 planes?

A. Sure. I think there are people who are counting on it. People who want the money, the kind of people who want that money.

Q. How are your tactical UAV efforts going in Iraq?

A. We’re trying to do our part to organize UAVs over there right now. We have 750 UAVs. We get criticized because there’s not enough Predators.

What the maneuver commanders on the ground really want is streaming video — and … without having to get it through an intelligence apparatus and a priority apparatus. Well, we have a way to go directly from the captain on the ground who needs support into a system that provides them that support in minutes. It’ s called the close air support system.

OK, how do you get streaming video through the close air support system? Well, every airplane we have right now has a very high-resolution pod on it that does what? Takes streaming video off the ground. You put a card in the back of that pod and you can transmit that picture to a guy on the ground.

It’s the characterization of the problem. What they really want is streaming video, and it’s pretty nice when you can take that streaming video and talk — and accompany it with a few weapons and you request it through a net that already exists.

Q. Does the Air Force need a new platform for long-range strike?

A. The big question is: What is the biggest payoff? I can say that stealth and supercruise are really the only combination I see for the next 15 years that are going to deal with what’s out there today, that gets through and penetrates.

Q. Are you developing vehicles that can be launched from space that could carry smart weapons or a UAV?

A. Absolutely no.

Q. How important is your space initiative?

A. It’s essential to be able to pass information in the form of a data link or real-time target information. The only way you do it is with a network, and so you got to get the network there if the network doesn’t exist. What’s the network? Well, the network can be space, but we also have to be prepared for vulnerabilities in space. The other way to do the network is to do things like we’ve been talking about for four years since I’ve been in this job, that’s things like smart tankers, like E-10s, like things that can create a network, because they’re there and present for other reasons.

It includes ships at sea. It includes the idea of near space. It includes Global Hawks and UAVs. It includes every way that we can create to be able to pass information. We’ve got to stop thinking of it in stovepipe ways, but in network ways, and that’s what we’ve been trying to do.

Q. But none of that comes cheap. What programs are you willing to mortgage now to get it?

A. Some of it comes automatically. Tankers already exist in large numbers. They already orbit very close to enemy airspace. You don’t have to create a thing. You have to put a pallet of equipment on it that does what I just described. It’s already there. The Global Hawks, the U-2s, they’re already there.

What is in demand, and what we don’t have enough of, is real-time command and control, where people with operational experience sit in command centers and do the sort of coordination that is required in today’s world of very precise weapons, and in many cases, restricted rules of engagement which require that we get approvals from other authorities outside a normal chain of command or higher up in the chain of command — to be able to do that quickly so that you can stay inside an enemy’s decision loop, and you can do it with a minimum of manpower.

Q. How do you get beyond platforms?

A. If the thing I need to bring to the battlefield is GMTI [ground moving target] information, instead of having a discussion about Space-Based Radar or Joint STARS, we ought to have a discussion about how we’re going to evolve this capability into a network architecture that includes all of it.

As a matter of fact, we competed a bit to see how much should be in space, how much should be in near space, how much should be airborne in order to bring reliable, persistent, rapidly deployable ISR to commanders.

Q. How much of this is about looking at the problem differently?

A. I called [U.S. Transportation Command chief Gen.] John Handy and George Casey [commanding general, Multi-National Force-Iraq] and asked them if they would mind if I looked into this IED [improvise explosive device] business, because what I saw was truck routes coming out of the south, out of Kuwait, going through the very heart of the worst routes through Baghdad, out through Fallujah and out to the west and up to Mosul. We’re spending a whole lot of money, as we need to, on how to detect and find IEDs before they become a factor.

Who is asking the question: What are we doing to get these trucks off the road? So, I’m looking at C-130 load factors that are not very impressive. We’re wondering whether we have too many C-130s there. It’s because if you’re in the Army and you’ve got the task of moving a big load of stuff from point A to point B, you pull out your big-load-of-stuff checklist and it says make convoys or sling load helicopters and that’s the way they do it.

Nowhere does it say call the Air Force. And the Air Force, quite frankly, I wasn’t very impressed with either. We sort of held this mentality that we’ll sit back at the help desk and wait for somebody to ask us for some help. That’s not the way to do it.

By Defense News staff.