Gen. Stephen Wilson
WASHINGTON: Air Force bomber capabilities already provide the US president with unilateral options today for striking deep within enemy territory, says Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Stephen Wilson, taking a sideways swipe at Army efforts to develop new ground-based missiles
“We used to have in one of our mission statements this thing that talked about ‘sovereign options,” he told the Air Force Association (AFA) Friday evening. “I’m not relying on anybody else. I can do this and … I don’t need other people’s approval. I don’t need other nations’ approval.”
“I think this is an important aspect,” Wilson stressed, answering a question about how the Air Force should frame the simmering rivalry for primacy in long-range strike between the Air Force and the Army as DoD wrestles with defining service roles under its emerging strategy of All-Domain Operations. “I think that’s another [term] we should use in our lexicon and our thinking.”
Further, Wilson explained, t is also important to remember that the Air Force has already invested heavily in long-range capabilities — “the infrastructure, and the C2, and the platforms that are able to deliver the weapons.” That investment translates into cost-effective capability, he stressed, at a time when DoD is trying to “get the price per round down to something that flips the cost curve, and puts it on our adversary. You know, there’s there’s an advantage of having all of our joint teammates involved in this,” Wilson conceded. “But, I think what the Air Force brings to it is that ‘sovereign option’ where we’ve invested in much of what I just described. It’s already in place. … Because the bombers exist, the strike platforms exist, the C2 exists and the infrastructure is just fine.”
“The point about ‘cost per round’ is a critical consideration. I think ‘cost per target’ or ‘cost per effect’ are even better metrics,” Mark Gunzinger, director of future aerospace concepts at the Mitchell Institute, said in an email today. “In a major conflict with China or Russia, target sets could run into the many thousands of separate aimpoints—far larger than target sets attacked in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan over the last 30 years cumulatively. So, munitions affordability is an important factor to consider, since funds available to procure them is finite.
“Buying very long-range (1,000 nm-plus) surface-to-surface missiles that each cost tens of millions of dollars may not be the best investment, especially compared to buying much larger numbers of smaller, less expensive air-launched weapons that can achieve the same effects on targets,” he added.
As Breaking D readers know, the Air Force and the Army (despite routine public denials of infighting) are jockeying for both operational and budgetary primacy in conducting future strikes deep into enemy territory as DoD seeks to build up capability against peer competitors Russia and China. Indeed, current Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Brown and his immediate predecessor, David Goldfein have delicately, but clearly, suggested a review of service roles in long-range fires might be needed, especially as budget austerity looms in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis.
The issue has come to the fore as DoD nears completion of a new Joint Warfighting Concept that will shape future requirements and spending priorities for integrating military operations across the air, land, sea, space and cyberspace domains. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley has assigned each service with a lead responsibility in crafting that concept, interestingly putting the Navy in charge of fleshing out the approach to long-range global strike. (The Navy, it should be remembered, has long experience coordinating missile strikes across its far-flung fleet, for example with the AEGIS Weapon System (AWS) coordinating anti-aircraft and missile defense.)
Air power advocates argue that the Army’s top-priority Long-Range Precision Fires program, which aims to rebuild the artillery with new long-range cannons and surface-to-surface missiles to hit far-way ground targets, is breaching traditional service boundaries.
Army officials counter that its efforts will help support the Air Force by bringing new options to take out formidable enemy air defenses — while avoiding heightened risks to pilots. Indeed, concern over increased Chinese and Russian abilities for layered anti-aircraft and anti-ship defenses – known as Anti-Access/Area Denial – is one of the reasons the Air Force is working on concepts for teaming uninhabited air vehicles empowered by artificial intelligence (AI) with piloted aircraft under research and development programs such as Skyborg.
“All of the services are pursuing new long-range strike capabilities today, kind of like little kids chasing a soccer ball, and someone needs to ask which investments will maximize our nation’s long-range strike warfighting potential, what future mix of weapons will help optimize cost-per-effect. I don’t see anyone doing that today in DoD,” Gunzinger said.
In his remarks Friday, Wilson also addressed another area of operations that could be caught up in inter-service rivalry in the future: electronic warfare (EW). He praised DoD’s new Electromagnetic Spectrum Superiority Strategy published last week, noting that while the Air Force has had long experience in EW — which DoD now dubs “spectrum operations” — it had paid the issue “short shrift” when the US military focused on combatting terrorism. That is changing, he explained, with Gen. Mark Kelley getting ready to stand up a new “spectrum warfare wing” under Air Combat Command.
As As Breaking D readers know, the 16th Air Force was created within Air Combat Command last October, integrating the former 24th and 26th Air Forces into a single headquarters to manage combined intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, cyber, electronic warfare and information operations.
“I’m a passionate zealot on spectrum superiority. If we don’t dominate the spectrum, we will lose,” he said. “Across all the domains, it doesn’t matter what domain you have, right, airspace, cyber, maritime, land… It’s a critical aspect of warfighting.”
Vice Chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. John Hyten is in the process of putting meat on the bones of the new strategy as co-chair of the Electromagnetic Spectrum Operations Cross Functional Team. That, as Sydney reported last year, is sorting out which service is responsible for what, as well as sifting through the myriad different programs in hopes of streamlining expenditure and fostering improved coordination.
