The Latest Stories from the AFA 2017 Conference
WASHINGTON: Marine Corps aviation is on a “glide slope” to reaching acceptable readiness levels by 2020, the deputy commandant for aviation said Friday. But today the only units fully ready — with enough spare parts, trained maintainers and air crews, and adequate monthly flight hours for pilots — are two squadrons flying brand new Lockheed Martin F-35B…
By Richard Whittle
CAPITOL HILL: In a rare public event, the No. 2 member of the House Permanent Select Intelligence Committee (HPSCI), Rep. Adam, said a cyber attack on a US satellite could be considered an act of war. While this may sound like common sense to some, the question of whether using cyber to interfere with or disable…
By Colin Clark
Dave Deptula, dean of the Air Force Association’s Mitchell Institute of Aerospace Power Studies, was the first general charged with overseeing drones and the Air Force general in command of the Air Operations Center when the first Predator fired a Hellfire missile. Dave knows drones, their capabilities and the laws and policies governing their use. He provides a…
By David Deptula and Joseph Raskas
The authors are with the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster issued a warning April 5 to the Senate Armed Services Airland subcommittee saying that the service will be “…outranged and outgunned by many potential adversaries in the future….” This statement garnered much attention in the media, but it artificially assesses Army capabilities…
By David Deptula and Doug Birkey
CAPITOL HILL: After a decade of improvements to space acquisition after more than a decade of disasters, the most troubled program being built by the US Air Force is again a space program. So said the man who should know: Lt. Gen. Sam Greaves, head of the amazing but often-reluctant-to-speak folks at Air Force Space and…
By Colin Clark
ROSSLYN, Va.: Air Combat Command’s intelligence director has her head in a cloud – the Combat Cloud — and she wants the defense industry and academia to join her there. Maj. Gen. VeraLinn “Dash” Jamieson, ACC’s intelligence director, wants industry and academia to help the Air Force figure out how to integrate the data that flows…
By Richard Whittle
Many observers of the US military would agree that the best ideas are often not to be found among its generals and admirals. If you want to find good and disruptive ideas in the military, you get to know the majors and colonels. One of the standard comments you’ll hear about smart colonels is that they…
By Colin Clark
CAPITOL HILL: As the Air Force train pulls out of the station, the Navy’s running alongside asking to be pulled aboard. Both services will need to replace aging nuclear missiles sometime ca. 2030. They could save money by coordinating their modernization programs — but the Air Force is on a tighter schedule and the window…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
CAPITOL HILL: America’s missile defense strategy is “not sustainable,” the deputy director of the Missile Defense Agency said today. We can’t keep buying multi-million-dollar interceptors to shoot down adversaries’ ever-growing arsenals of much cheaper offensive missiles, said Brig. Gen. Kenneth Todorov. We have to find a better way, Todorov said: lasers, jammers, something. That means…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
The 21st century is defined by connectivity, from our iPhones to the networks that power our economy. The US military is not immune to this. Either it seizes opportunities presented by the information age, or risks precipitating problems if it retreats into anachronistic paradigms. Well into the late 20th century, combat power was largely measured…
By Doug Birkey