State of the Air Force: Adapting Air & Space Power
to National Security Requirements in the 21st Century
It is my great pleasure to be here with you this evening, and to be back in
Cambridge where I spent a not so "quiet" four years in the midst of
the Vietnam War at this city's "other" well known learned institute.
I was a doctoral student in the "Decision and Control" program of
the Harvard Business School, but took half of my classes on the college side
of the River. Of course, at the time, I was a Lieutenant and then a Lieutenant
Commander in the United States Navy, pondering the mysteries of decision theory,
operations research, management control, marketing and corporate finance, as
well as the even greater mysteries of parenting young children. At the time,
however, many of my fellow students were more interested in the wisdom of the
likes of Jerry Garcia, the Chicago Seven, and Timothy Leary, all of whom were
wearing slightly different uniforms from those of my "tribe." But
even the editors of the Harvard Lampoon and I shared one passion - the Boston
Bruins, who I am happy to learn are making Bobby Orr proud with their prospects
in this year's Stanley Cup playoffs.
I'm also honored to have Dr. Sheila Widnall here tonight, whose historic position
as first female SECAF I will never forget…especially for one reason: I
hear it announced during numerous tour groups each day as they walk by her portrait,
which hangs outside my office. But of course, I know her as a brilliant scholar
who managed the Department of the Air Force at a very critical time in terms
of technology developments and force structure contraction. Today, I also know
her as someone who had temporarily taken absence from her senses to take the
job of Secretary of the Air Force. But, as someone who has served for 11 months
in this job, I am even more in awe of her for serving four years in this position!
I would also like to welcome and thank our distinguished French guests who
are currently engaging in the very tumultuous, yet glorious exercise of popular
sovereignty known as democratic elections. The conduct of these elections reflects
just one of the ties that bind us over a relationship that now exceeds 2 centuries
of comity and alliance, the first chapter of which reached a high point on the
fields approaching the colonial town of Yorktown. I would like to thank our
hosts at MIT as well. I have long held this institution in great regard, and
continue to rely on the disinterested wisdom and expertise of your colleagues
at Lincoln Laboratories as our Air Force grapples with a number of complex air
and space problems.
****
On September 12th of last year, I received a memo from my boss, Secretary Don
Rumsfeld, with a reference to Roberta Wohlstetter's book, Pearl Harbor -
Warning and Decision. I don't think Don realized that Roberta is one of
my very favorite people, let alone historians. Besides being brilliant, she
spent many an evening making sure that I, along with Andrew Marshall, ate well.
You can understand how the Secretary, our entire government, and even I were - on that day - trying to understand, or at least put into context the completely unexpected attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and our Pentagon, as well as the crash of the flight filled with heroic passengers in Pennsylvania that immortalized the phrase, "Let's Roll." But the note Secretary Rumsfeld sent me also included a foreword to Roberta's book, by Thomas Schelling (of that other University nearby, and a man I got to know while a graduate student) in which he observed that "there is a tendency in our [government's] planning to confuse the unfamiliar with the improbable. The contingency we have not considered seriously looks strange … what looks strange is thought improbable … what is improbable need not be considered seriously."
It is a perilous loop of logic and, as Schelling puts it, "a poverty of
expectations - a routine obsession with a few dangers that may be familiar rather
than likely. Alliance diplomacy, interservice bargaining, appropriations hearings,
and public discussion all seem to need to focus on a few vivid and oversimplified
dangers. The planner should think in subtler and more variegated terms and allow
for a wider range of contingencies…But the 'planners' who count are also
responsible for alliance diplomacy, interservice bargaining, appropriations
hearings, and public discussion; they are also very busy. This is a genuine
dilemma of government."
Ladies and gentlemen, this is the reason we need centers of thought
such as this great institution to help us in our thinking - to help us focus
outside of only the "few vivid and variegated dangers" with which
we are engaged most hours of our days. So, I thank you for your energy, your
brain power, and your opinions on aerospace policy, and the collective effect
these have for the security of this great nation.
****
Prior to September 11, most people in the Defense community were engaged in
an intensive series of studies and debates about the proper path for modernizing
and transforming our armed forces for the challenges of the 21st century. In
that series, terrorism and other asymmetric threats were identified as areas
of particular interest for future defense planning…emphasis on "future."
Well, as Yogi Berra, whom I believe made as much of a career out of paraphrasing
Hegel as he did hitting home runs in the World Series, once said, "the
future ain't what it used to be." For us, the distant, amorphous future
has become a clear, present, and immediate danger.
Yet we should not fail to recall some events in American history that threatened
our very existence, yet from which we emerged stronger and more unified than
ever before:
Last Saturday marked the 227th anniversary of the "shot heard 'round the
world," which marked the start of the American Revolution--just up the
road at Lexington. At the time, no one referred to the "asymmetric"
effects of that shot, but it really had a disproportionate effect on the thinking
of the British as they sought to keep their colonies under some notion of imperial
hegemony, another term that had yet to come in vogue.
And I would be remiss to avoid mention the title of this evening's dinner, named
after the famed Jimmy Doolittle of the Army Air Corps, the historic predecessor
of the United States Air Force. Last Thursday was the 60th Anniversary of the
immortal "Doolitttle Raid" on Tokyo, which many at the time thought
of as a nice shot in the arm for American morale. There were those, including
a few Harvard economics professors, and one in particular who has done more
to confuse thinking about airpower than any other, who thought that it and other
bombing operations of World War II did little to win the war. And it is true
that Doolittle's T-Birds of the 34th Bomb Squadron, and the Tigers of the 37th
Bomb Squadron, missed most of their assigned targets in Tokyo, and many crashed
into the hinterlands of Manchuria. In fact, for many reasons including that
they were launched very early because of the suspicion that the USS Hornet had
been discovered, few made it to their assigned targets.
And yet, and precisely because I am a Harvard graduate with the requisite
arrogance of the breed, I must point out that almost 11 years ago I, along with
my colleague Barry Watts, wrote and article for the Journal of Strategic Studies,
entitled "Choosing Analytic Measures," in which we described the raid
as one of the most one-sided asymmetric attacks in the history of warfare, even
if that asymmetry was not acknowledged at the time. But think about what the
Japanese did, just 5 months after Pearl Harbor because of Doolittle's attack:
****
But just as the Japanese at Pearl Harbor, I would submit to you that terrorists
who attacked America on September 11th gravely miscalculated - they believed
the foundation upon which our nation stands was something they could target.
Well, let me tell you something about Jimmy Doolittle and his successors. As
I mentioned, crews form the 37th Bomb Squadron and the 34th Bomb Squadron took
part in the Doolittle Raid. On the first night of operation Enduring Freedom
last fall, we flew B-1 crews from both those squadrons into Afghanistan. I'm
sure not just Barry Watts and I find it interesting that the first real retaliations
for the last two major attacks on US soil were led by two of the same bomb squadrons,
separated by 60 years and several generations of technology. The Doolittle Raiders
have a direct link to Operation Enduring Freedom, and as I speak to you this
evening, I am proud to salute the enormous bravery of today's raiders form those
squadrons. I'm confident that if old Jimmy saw the "steel on target"
in Afghanistan from his successors, he would have his own take on who might
constitute the "greatest" generation.
What and whom we are all about, as Americans, is not something that can be bombed,
or exploded, or taken away. America is an idea - a grand and on-going experiment
like no other in the history of mankind. As Alexis de Tocqueville observed over
150 years ago, "Where else can we find greater cause of hope or more valuable
lessons [than in America]?…The principles on which the constitutions of
the American states rest, the principles of order, balance of powers, true liberty
and sincere and deep respect for law are indispensable for all republics; they
should be common to them all; and it is safe to forecast that where they are
not found the republic will soon have ceased to exist."
*****
I have every confidence that the American people and our government will remain
resolved to wage and win this war between Freedom and Fear--a confidence reflected
in another witness by de Tocqueville; "Americans alternatively display
passions so strong and so similar first for their own welfare and then for liberty
that one must suppose these urges to be united and mingled in some part of their
being. Americans in fact do regard their freedom as the best tool of and the
finest guarantee for their prosperity."
But as President Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld have explained, we are very far
from the end of a conflict that will continue to involve every agency and means
at our government's disposal. In the months ahead, the Department of Defense
and the Air Force will continue to adapt and strengthen our air and space capabilities
in order to take advantage of the current technologies to ensure our ability
to meet this and future threats.
*****
Since I became Secretary of the Air Force almost 11 months ago, I've spent a lot of time on the road, meeting many people across the Air Force, industry, and our communities. But wherever I go, I've engaged with folks about how we intend to shape our Air Force so it is poised for the current century - not for the century of world wars and a cold war that we left behind (what seems like) long ago -- and during which most of our systems were built.
My focus has fallen into four general categories: strategy, people, efficiency,
and the industrial base. And it seems to me, that our performance in the space
arena will be a very special key indicator of how well the Air Force as a whole,
will fulfill our responsibilities for the 21st century.
My first priority, then, is to work with my colleagues to adjust our
strategic parameters to the challenges and opportunities of our new security
requirements. Our business is Global Reconnaissance and Strike, where strike
includes putting troops in harm's way. Our challenge is to focus our strategy
and people and investment toward maintaining and enhancing the asymmetric advantage
that the Air Force provides the nation.
To do so, we need to get after and fully act upon a space roadmap that details
with some degree of fidelity how we plan to integrate air and space operations
in pursuit of global reconnaissance and strike superiority. We need to drive
our plans, doctrine, systems and policies to incorporate fully the promise of
air and space power.
For example, how will we maintain the air and space dominance that many observers
have come to take for granted even as we explore new ways to leverage systems
and technologies? In this regard, I am thinking about our emerging plans for
the F-22 as a dramatically enhanced air-to-ground system. Dramatically enhanced
through both situational awareness via space links, and direct links to Sergeants
on the ground using GPS to guide precise weapons to nearby targets.
How do we provide persistent intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR)
across a critical swath of territory, in all weather scenarios, 24 hours a day,
7 days a week, for up to a year?
How will we provide for instantaneous, not 'time critical,' attacks?…Cruise
missile defense? Support of distributed forces on the ground? How do we best
control skies filled with manned, unmanned surveillance as well as attack systems?
And, what kind of architectures should we pursue for national missile defense?
These questions will increasingly occupy America's best minds in the years ahead.
Second, we have an imperative to attract and retain the best, most
technically proficient people for every task performed by airmen, while particularly
accelerating our efforts to develop a space cadre for the Air Force.
This includes continually developing tangible measures of affirmation that capitalize
on the brilliance and expertise of our airmen and civilians. It also means things
like proper housing for families and educational opportunities for our folks.
How to attract and keep the talent we need is worth a separate discussion of
its own. Suffice it to say, that if we fail our people, we will fail our country
in war at some point in our future.
My third priority is to seek efficiency and cost effectiveness in all
that we do, in part by applying best business practices and processes to our
operations and particularly to our acquisition programs, many of which, I must
say, are facing serious, yet basic, execution challenges. And, here again, any
of my predecessors can attest to the resistance of so many in Washington to
novel but potentially efficient business practices-like looking to see whether
leasing commercially derived aircraft makes sense!
Finally - and related to our challenges in fielding systems - our nation faces
a critical need to provide more incentive to industry for innovation. Over the
past several years, this problem has been manifest in the dwindling number of
suppliers to the Air Force missions in space from the double digits to only
a handful. I argued against the laissez faire approach pushed at the time by
those in charge of the Department of Defense-even though I was in the industry,
and developed a business strategy to exploit the foolish moves of the period.
Unfortunately, I predicted the difficult situation in which we find ourselves
today. It is not healthy to have so few firms competing that the question of
who controls whom-we or they-cannot be avoided.
This is what I consider an unfriendly environment to innovation, and why the
Air Force will work to stir up the industry by bringing in ideas from outside
the "Big Guns" in the industry if necessary. At the same time, impressive
achievements by foreign industries will also lend a healthy incentive to American
international companies to continue to be as creative as possible.
****
General Jumper and I often speak about integrating air and space into a seamless
force for this 21st century. This is an effort that was begun several years
ago, but many of the same challenges we have been facing in our efforts through
the years to integrate and operationalize space remain:
****
Our overall goal is to be able to find, fix, assess, track, target, and engage
any target, anywhere in the world, within hours or minutes, as appropriate.
The platform and the weapon, kinetic or otherwise, need to be tailored to the
situation. So, having a portfolio of sensors, properly fused, decision tools,
and various platform / weapon systems is the key to the future. And, here, I
have no intention of limiting these to the Air Force. Gaining the desired effect
on the battlespace will be a function of the capabilities of all the Services.
For instance, we need to understand that the meaning of "strike" is
a broad idea that describes creating the right effect at the right place at
the right time - whether that is through humanitarian air drops, precision weapons,
insertion of combat troops, or information operations, to name a few.
And as we consider all of these, we cannot lose sight of the fact that we are
part of a larger team, and we must continue to work on ways to cross-communicate
and integrate with our sister Services and our allies and coalition forces.
We need look no further than the skies above to bear witness to this reality.
Our NATO partner nations have deployed AWACS aircraft to America to help defend
our air space…the first time since the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 -better
known in these parts as the John Quincy Adams Doctrine, after President Monroe's
Secretary of State, Harvard graduate and future President and Congressman -
that a European force is helping to defend the continental United States. With
the move to strip alert for the aircraft of Operation Noble Eagle, the defense
of American airspace, we can release the NATO AWACS aircraft to return home.
I was proud to extend America's gratitude to a number of these NATO aviators
last month at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma. They were very proud of their
contributions.
The list of challenges we face is formidable, and by no means exhaustive. Yet
we know that, as technology evolves through this century, solutions to most
of these will be found less in the use of conventional platforms used as we
previously thought, and increasingly in transformational capabilities, including
using old systems in new ways.
****
Proximity notwithstanding, capitalizing on emerging technology will come with
a significant price tag, and we must maintain a realistic budgetary framework.
We simply cannot afford every program. And, we cannot afford to continue to
fail on any single program we have.
Of course, there are certainly resource allocation levels to avoid - something
that apparently eluded President Calvin Coolidge. Faced with emerging aviation
needs of the Army Signal Corps, he asked, "Why can't they buy just one
airplane and take turns flying it?" Norm Augustine had fun with this point
many years later.
****
Back in Washington, DC, the Department of Defense, the Services, the White House
and the Congress are in the midst of similar budget decisions for 2003 and beyond.
A lot of work remains to be done, but I can tell you the task is less daunting
when you have folks like the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, General John Jumper,
and Under Secretary of the Air Force and Director of the NRO, Peter Teets on
either side of you at the decision table.
****
Aerospace power is now, and will continue to remain, vital to American security.
The decisions we make in DC over the next few months will be based on maintaining
the critical asymmetric advantage of air and space power that has served our
country and the other free nations so well in the past.
But we are certainly fallible, and we know that we do not have all of the best
answers. So we aggressively seek alternatives and unexplored possibilities,
and try to avoid the insidious horse-blinders that have befallen some of history's
sharpest minds.
For example, I have no doubt that Vannevar Bush - one of the great scientific
minds of the 20th century (and a former vice president of MIT) - in retrospect
would have changed his 1946 decision to sink the Navy Bureau's attempts to generate
support for its fledgling satellite program.
I am also confident that he would have excised the section of his book, Modern Arms and Free Men, where he wrote, "some military men, exhilarated perhaps by a short immersion in matters scientific…[have regaled us] with the exposition of missiles fired so fast that they leave the earth and proceed around it indefinitely as satellites, like the moon, for some vaguely specified military purpose." Rest assured, John Jumper, Pete Teets and I are committed to avoiding similarly self-inflicted wounds.
*****
Quite a few American, British, French and other allied personnel are engaged
this night in faraway lands - in combat, humanitarian, support, and diplomatic
missions on our behalf. Our prayers and good wishes are with them all tonight.
This war against international terrorists indeed cuts across geographical and
political boundaries; it cuts across religious beliefs and cultural differences;
and it cuts across economic and nationalistic concerns. But it is not a new
struggle for a new purpose.
Those who would rob others of their individual rights have been around since
the beginnings of mankind-and they are not likely to disappear. However at this
time, it is up to us, and no others, to deter international terrorists from
further action, for the sake of our children and their children's children.
And we are engaged, today, in efforts that will damage terrorists' capabilities
for a very long time.
This is why America's Air and Space Forces must remain superior to any other
nation's-as a deterrent to aggression against us, and if deterrence fails: for
immediate action. It is also why advances and integration of technologies and
capabilities with allied and friendly forces must improve.
****
I'm terrifically impressed at the capabilities and dedication within the Air
Force that I've discovered in my first 11 months as its Secretary. Americans
- indeed, anyone in the world who has benefited from the air and space capabilities
that have brought them freedom from oppression, humanitarian support, natural
disaster relief, or basic security - have many reasons to be proud of our Air
Force.
Ladies and Gentlemen, until very recently, I used to keep a nameplate on my
desk labeled "Summer Help"-the term of endearment used by senior military
officers when by themselves for the appointees of any Administration. The political
appointees on my staff asked me to remove it, as they said my particular brand
of humor had not taken throughout the bureaucracy. So, I put it away. The sign
was designed to remind me of the temporary hold I have as the custodian of the
Department of the Air Force.
Yet it is no less a reminder to me that I must make the most of every opportunity to advance air and space capabilities, and there is little time to waste. I am joined in this effort by supremely talented folks in the Air Force, which continue the lineage of superb airmen like Hap Arnold, Jimmy Doolittle and Curtis LeMay…and, I am proud to add, John Jumper.
So, when I receive credit for the accomplishments of the Air Force, I humbly recall the words of Sir Isaac Newton; "If I have seen farther, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."
Thank you for your attention, your generosity and your dedication to the preservation of freedom.