Your Air Force, Up for the Challenge.

An Airman’s perspective by Maj Jeremy Renken

The Air Force faces some profound challenges in the years ahead, and I’d like to explain where we are, where we are going, and why “innovation” is an essential element of our Service vision.

The turbulence of the last three decades can hardly be overstated. As the world thawed from the Cold War and the constant specter of global nuclear war thankfully diminished, long-suppressed crises around the world emerged that demanded U.S. leadership. In every case, the Air Force provided ready forces to ensure immediate global reach, vigilance and power. It is a testament to our Airmen that their daily successes set the stage for effective U.S. policy, but that success came with a cost.

During that same period, routine investment in new equipment took a backseat to providing the enabling forces for a series of unanticipated conflicts. While we invested in research and development for a next-generation of munitions, fighters and bombers, we frequently deferred the cost of procuring them and leaned heavily on combat forces we inherited from the 1970s and ‘80s. We face relentless strategic demand, evolving adversary capabilities, and dire need to replace aging airframes and infrastructure — all while the Nation asks us to “do more with less.”

Air Force aircrews accept that certain risks are inherent in their job. Both in combat and training, aviators push their bodies and aircraft to the limits of performance to ensure they can exploit every possible advantage; but our flyers and maintainers face new risk operating supersonic, high-altitude and high-g airframes well beyond their designed service lives. Deferred procurement of new fighters, for instance, has driven the average age of our combat forces so high that most of our aircraft now qualify for “antique vehicle” license plates.

While balanced electronics modernization can ensure that aging fighters boast viable combat systems for some time to come, modernization does nothing to undo the wear years of intensive use in extreme conditions placed on these high-performance machines. Increasingly, this has meant that our Airmen become unwitting test pilots, discovering how age compounds with stress to produce in unforeseen “failure modes.”[i] Sustaining safe operations with older aircraft requires more intensive and intrusive inspections to look for the early warning signs of structural failures. This in-turn raises the cost and complexity of maintaining old aircraft,[ii] and rising maintenance cost places further pressure on our ability to procure new aircraft. The Air Force must address fleet demographics or the cost of simply maintaining what we have will curtail our ability to remain relevant in a dynamic future security environment.

I want to explain what I think the Nation needs in terms of “relevant” airpower. While we are coming through a period of significant uncertainty, some themes are likely to anchor U.S. policy for the next several decades. First, the Nation must remain able to assure allies and partners that it is in their interest to remain within the current, transparent, peaceful architecture of U.S. guaranteed global security. This means the Air Force must be able to monitor and enforce existing security arrangements as a member of both a Joint and Coalition team.

It also means that we must be able to defend willing partners should an aggressor seek to undermine the authority of legitimate treaties and stable norms by imposing their will through violence. If a competitor believes the United States cannot, or will not, counter aggression, then the strength of our collective security fades. Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy said, “the strength of our arms gives us confidence in our peace.“ This means not only the ability to punish an aggressor after the fact; it also means the ability to defeat his efforts wherever, and at whatever moment, he may choose. Our Air Force, more than any other service, must provide proof of American readiness, speed and reach that ensures no potential aggressor is tempted to risk his own destruction.

21st century security challenges are likely to follow a few archetypes, and airpower has a role in countering each. The DoD has explained the threat of “Anti-Access/Area-Denial” (A2/AD) in terms of long-range military defenses; but a worst-case strategic scenario would be where future A2/AD capabilities enable a hegemon to deny the United States or our allies access to vital resources or lines-of-communication. Our economy is intertwined within globalized markets and the world depends on legitimately traded resources and free global commons. Should a hegemon attempt to deny access to either, the U.S. must be equipped to restore access by force,

The second archetype is a state that uses the threat of WMD, particularly nuclear weapons, to destabilize regional security, exploit U.S. regional allies, or directly threaten the American homeland. In this case our regional allies and partners are often uniquely vulnerable and rely on the United States ability to employ airpower in support of limited objectives. The final case is the problem of countering violent extremist organizations that terrorize American citizens or serve as irregular proxies for America’s enemies.

The former case is clearly the most consequential; the latter two are more likely. Relevant airpower must address all of these challenges, and we must prepare to do it with fewer resources than previously expected. This is exactly the kind of wicked problem that demands an innovative solution. Confined within existing architectures of multi-decade acquisition cycles, rigidly divided active and reserve components, and industrial era concepts of force presentation, we can only meet that challenge through a vast infusion of National treasure. The heritage of the Air Force is to look beyond outmoded institutional solutions. It is innovation that lets Airmen go “over, not through” problems, and we need to offer new solutions rather clinging to infeasible paradigms.

For instance, it is clear that the Air Force needs to replace its aging fighter fleet, but our old way of viewing the problem artificially limits our options to either extending the life of aging fighters or going “all-in” on the F-35. While the Air Force is committed to the F-35, it would be prudent to explore pathways for augmenting our high-end fighters with low-end aircraft that can do 80 percent of the mission for 30 percent of the cost.

In addition to emphasizing cost as a design constraint, we may need to consider the investment of developmental time in a new light. The pace of technological adaptation is accelerating, and the multi-decade developmental timeline of many Air Force programs limits the warfighter’s ability to access cutting edge tools. This goes beyond “acquisition reform” and speaks to the need to ensure programmatic risk, acquisition oversight, and intended capabilities are holistically linked. Lower risk programs that demand fewer resources in terms of time and money should not be subject to the same oversight burden designed for our higher risk programs. Ensuring we can apply our science, technology, and manufacturing expertise to remain a step ahead of adversaries in both relevance and quality means we must encourage speed where prudent. The pursuit of “generational” leaps may mitigate our ability to get gear that’s “good enough” when and where we need it.

Finally, innovation is a human contribution that will come from our Airmen. We must build pathways to make better use of human capital in our total force by becoming more inclusive, flexible and empowering. The Air Force is on track to make better use of associations between active and reserve squadrons. While these work at the unit level, at the individual level we need to breakdown the “one way doors” that separate components.

There is no reason why a cyber specialist should consider it career damaging to step from active duty to reserve duty in order to work with industry, but our tightly structured career paths currently make that damage inevitable. There is also no compelling reason why a competent officer in the reserve component shouldn’t be able to step back into active duty to fill a job for which they are the best-qualified. Innovation flourishes when diverse people, with diverse expertise, are empowered create diverse solutions. To that end, our Airmen deserve help removing some of the structural barriers that stifle innovation. That way, we reciprocate the sacrifice Airmen make to the Air Force by giving them the autonomy, mastery and purpose that unlocks their best contribution.

If some of these ideas seem surprising, or even a little risky, that’s a good indicator that they’re sufficiently innovative. Innovation involves intentional disruption to the status quo. Keeping America safe, secure and a superpower with fewer resources than we once believed necessary is a strategic innovation challenge. I have confidence that America’s Airmen are up to the task.

[i] On 2 Nov, 2007, 27 year old F-15C Tail 80–0034 broke up in flight due to structural failure. The failure occurred due to a miss-manufactured part that was never caught because no inspection criteria for it existed.

[ii] Matthew Dixson, RAND Corp, “The maintenance Costs of Aging Aircraft,” 2008, RAND, Santa Monica, 8.