Please note, this is Part II of Secretary Roche's and General Jumper's testimony
Other Contingency Operations
In 2003, the Air Force remained engaged in America’s war on drugs and provided support to NATO ground forces in the Balkans. Since December 1989, Air Force airmen have been an irreplaceable part of the interagency fight against illegal drug and narcotics trafficking. Deployed along the southern U.S., in the Caribbean, and Central and South America, airmen perform this round-the-clock mission, manning nine ground-based radar sites, operating ten aerostats, and flying counter drug surveillance missions. The Air Force detected, monitored, and provided intercepts on over 275 targets attempting to infiltrate our airspace without clearance. Along with our interagency partners, these operations resulted in 221 arrests and stopped hundreds of tons of contraband from being smuggled into our country.
In the Balkans, airmen are fully committed to completing the mission that they started in the 1990s. Today, Air Force airmen have flown over 26,000 sorties supporting Operations JOINT GUARDIAN and JOINT FORGE. These NATO-led operations combine joint and allied forces to implement the Dayton Peace Accords in Bosnia-Herzegovina and enforce the Military Technical Agreement in Kosovo. At the end of 2003, approximately 800 airmen were supporting NATO’s goal of achieving a secure environment and promoting stability in the region.
Additionally, the Air Force engaged in deterrence and humanitarian relief in other regions. While the world’s attention was focused on the Middle East in the spring of 2003, our nation remained vigilant against potential adversaries in Asia. The Air Force deployed a bomber wing -- 24 B-52s and B-1s -- to the American territory of Guam to deter North Korea. At the height of OIF, our Air Force demonstrated our country’s resolve and ability to defend the Republic of Korea and Japan by surging bomber operations to over 100 sorties in less than three days. This deterrent operation complemented our permanent engagement in Northeast Asia. The 8,300 airmen who are stationed alongside the soldiers, sailors, Marines, and our Korean allies maintained the United Nations armistice, marking 50 years of peace on the peninsula.
Our strength in deterring aggression was matched by our strength in humanitarian action. In response to President Bush’s directive to help stop the worsening crisis in Liberia, we deployed a non-combat medical and logistics force to create a lifeline to the American Embassy and provide hope to the Liberian people. An Expeditionary Group of airmen provided airlift support, aeromedical evacuation, force protection, and theater of communications support. Flying more than 200 sorties, we transported and evacuated civilians and members of the Joint Task Force (JTF) from bases in Sierra Leone and Senegal. The 300 airmen deployed in support of JTF-Liberia reopened the main airport in Monrovia, and ensured the security for U.S. military and civilian aircraft providing relief aid.
Strategic Deterrence
The ability of U.S. conventional forces to operate and project decisive force is built on the foundation of our strategic deterrent force; one that consists of our nuclear-capable aircraft and Intercontinental Ballistic Missile forces, working with the U.S. Navy’s Fleet Ballistic Missile Submarines. In 2003, these forces as well as, persistent overhead missile warning sensors and supporting ground-based radars, provided uninterrupted global vigilance deterring a nuclear missile strike against the U.S. or our allies. The dedicated airmen who operate these systems provide the force capability that yields our deterrent umbrella. Should that deterrence fail, they stand ready to provide a prompt, scalable response.
Exercises
The Air Force’s success can be attributed to the training, education, and equipment of our airmen. Future readiness of our operations, maintenance, mission support, and medical units will depend on rigorous and innovative joint and coalition training and exercising. This year we are planning 140 exercises with other services and agencies and we anticipate being involved with 103 allied nations. We will conduct these exercises in as many as 45 foreign countries. Participation ranges from the Joint/Combined command post exercise ULCHI FOCUS LENS with our South Korean partners to the tailored international participation in our FLAG exercises and Mission Employment Phases of USAF Weapons School. From joint search-and-rescue forces in ARCTIC SAREX to Partnership for Peace initiatives, our airmen must continue to take advantage of all opportunities that help us train the way we intend to fight.
In addition to previously designed exercises, recent operations highlighted the need for combat support training. During OEF and OIF, the Air Force opened or improved 38 bases used by joint or coalition forces during combat. Our Expeditionary Combat Support teams established secure, operable airfields in Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, and in Iraq. They also built housing, established communications, and erected dining facilities that are still used by other services and follow-on forces today. To prepare our airmen for these missions, we have created EAGLE FLAG, an Expeditionary Combat Support Field Training Exercise. During this exercise, combat support personnel apply the integrated skills needed to organize and create an operating location ready to receive fully mission capable forces within 72 hours. From security forces and civil engineers to air traffic controllers and logisticians, each airman required to open a new base or improve an austere location will eventually participate in this valuable exercise.
Our ranges and air space are critical joint enablers and vital national assets that allow the Air Force to develop and test new weapons, train forces, and conduct joint exercises. The ability of the Air Force to effectively operate requires a finite set of natural and fabricated resources. Encroachment of surrounding communities onto Air Force resources results in our limited or denied access to, or use of, these resources. We have made it a priority to define and quantify the resources needed to support mission requirements, and to measure and communicate the effects of encroachment on our installations, radio frequency spectrum, ranges, and air space. We will continue to work with outside agencies and the public to address these issues. The Air Force strongly endorses the Readiness Range and Preservation Initiative. It would make focused legislative changes, protecting the Air Force’s operational resources while continuing to preserve our nation’s environment.
Lessons for the Future
As we continue combat operations and prepare for an uncertain future, we are examining lessons from our recent experiences. Although we are currently engaged with each of the other services to refine the lessons from OIF, many of the priorities listed in the Fiscal Year 2005 Presidential Budget submission reflect our preliminary conclusions. The Air Force has established a team committed to turning validated lessons into new equipment, new operating concepts, and possibly new organizational structures. Working closely with our joint and coalition partners, we intend to continue our momentum toward an even more effective fighting force.
One of the most important lessons we can draw was envisioned by the authors of the Goldwater-Nichols Act. ONE, OEF, and OIF all validated jointness as the only acceptable method of fighting and winning this nation’s wars. In OIF, the mature relationship between the Combined Forces Land Component Commander (CFLCC) and the Combined Forces Air Component Commander (CFACC) led to unprecedented synergies. The CFACC capitalized on these opportunities by establishing coordination entities led by an Air Force general officer in the supported land component headquarters and by maintaining internal Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and coalition officers in his own headquarters. Both of these organizational innovations enabled commanders to maximize the advantages of mass, lethality, and flexibility of airpower in the area of responsibility.
Another lesson is the Air Force’s dependence on the Total Force concept. As stated above, September 11 brought with it a new tempo of operations, one that required both the active duty and Air Reserve Component (ARC) to work in concert to achieve our national security objectives. The synergy of our fully integrated active duty, Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve team provides warfighters with capabilities that these components could not provide alone.
Our reserve component accounts for over one-third of our strike fighters, more than 72 percent of our tactical airlift, 42 percent of our strategic airlift, and 52 percent of our air refueling capability. The ARC also makes significant contributions to our rescue and support missions, and has an increasing presence in space, intelligence, and information operations. In all, the ARC provides a ready force requiring minimum preparation for mobilization. Whether that mobilization is supporting flight or alert missions for ONE, commanding expeditionary wings in combat, or orchestrating the Air Force Special Operations roles in the western Iraqi desert, the ARC will remain critical to achieving the full potential of our air and space power.
A third lesson was validation of the need for air and space superiority. Through recent combat operations, the Air Force maintained its almost 50 year-old record of “no U.S. ground troops killed by enemy air attack.” Without having to defend against Iraqi airpower, coalition commanders could focus their combat power more effectively. In addition, air and space superiority allowed airmen to dedicate more sorties in support of the ground scheme of maneuver, substantially reducing enemy capability in advance of the land component.
We also need to continue to advance integration and planning -- integration of service capabilities to achieve JFC objectives, interagency integration to fight the war on terrorism, and information integration. Integration of manned, unmanned and space sensors, advanced command and control, and the ability to disseminate and act on this information in near-real time will drive our combat effectiveness in the future. Shared through interoperable machine-to-machine interfaces, this data can paint a picture of the battlespace where the sum of the wisdom of all sensors will end up with a cursor over the target for the operator who can save the target, study the target, or destroy the target.
Finally, there are three general areas for improvement we consider imperative: battle damage assessment, fratricide prevention/combat identification, and equipping our battlefield airmen. First, battle damage assessment shapes the commander’s ability for efficient employment of military power. Restriking targets that have already been destroyed, damaged, or made irrelevant by rapid ground force advances wastes sorties that could be devoted to other coalition and joint force objectives. Advances in delivery capabilities of our modern fighter/attack aircraft and bombers mean that ISR assets must assess more targets per strike than ever before. Precision engagement requires precision location, identification, and precision assessment. Although assets like the Global Hawk, Predator, U- 2, Senior Scout, and Rivet Joint are equipped with the latest collection technology, the Air Force, joint team, and Intelligence Community must work to ensure that combat assessments produce timely, accurate, and relevant products for the warfighters.
We are also improving operational procedures and technology to minimize incidents of fratricide or “friendly fire.” In OIF, major steps toward this goal resulted from technological solutions. Blue Force Tracker and other combat identification systems on many ground force vehicles allowed commanders situational awareness of their forces and enemy forces via a common operational picture. Still, not all joint or coalition forces are equipped with these technological advances. We are pursuing Fire Support Coordination Measures that capitalize on the speed and situational awareness digital communications offer rather than analog voice communications and grease pencils.
A third area we are actively improving is the effectiveness of the airmen who are embedded with conventional land or Special Forces. With assured access to Air Force datalinks and satellites, these “Battlefield Airmen” can put data directly into air-land-sea weapon systems and enable joint force command and control. We have made great progress in producing a Battlefield Air Operations Kit that is 70% lighter, with leading-edge power sources; one that will increase the combat capability of our controllers. This battle management system will reduce engagement times, increase lethality and accuracy, and reduce the risk of fratricide. This capability is based upon the good ideas of our airmen who have been in combat and understand how much a single individual on the battlefield can contribute with the right kit.
Summary
The airmen of America’s Air Force have demonstrated their expertise and the value of their contributions to the joint and coalition fight. These combat operations are made possible by Air Force investments in realistic training and education, superior organization, advanced technology, and innovative tactics, techniques, and procedures. In the future, our professional airmen will continue to focus advances in these and other areas guided by the Air Force CONOPS. Their charter is to determine the appropriate capabilities required for joint warfighting and to provide maximum effects from, through, and in air and space. This structure and associated capabilities-based planning will help airmen on their transformational journey, ensuring continued operational successes such as those demonstrated in 2003.
ENSURING AMERICA’S FUTURE AIR AND SPACE DOMINANCE
Air Force lethality, mobility, speed, precision, and the ability to project U.S. military power around the globe provide Combatant Commanders the capabilities required to meet the nation’s military requirements and dominate our enemies. Consistent with the DoD’s focus on Joint Operating Concepts, we will continue to transform our force -- meeting the challenges of this era, adapting our forces and people to them, and operating our service efficiently. We will adopt service concepts and capabilities that support the joint construct and capitalize on our core competencies. To sustain our dominance, we develop professional airmen, invest in warfighting technology, and integrate our people and systems together to produce decisive joint warfighting capabilities.
DEVELOPING AIRMEN -- RIGHT PEOPLE, RIGHT PLACE, RIGHT TIME
At the heart of our combat capability are the professional airmen who voluntarily serve the Air Force and our nation. Our airmen turn ideas, tools, tactics, techniques, and procedures into global mobility, power projection, and battlespace effects. Our focus for the ongoing management and development of Air Force personnel will be to: define, renew, develop, and sustain the force.
Defining our Requirements
To meet current and future requirements, we need the right people in the right specialties. The post-September 11 environment has taxed our equipment and our people, particularly those associated with force protection, ISR, and the buildup and sustainment of expeditionary operations. Our analysis shows that we need to shift manpower to stressed career fields to meet the demands of this new steady state, and we are in the process of doing this. We have realigned personnel into our most stressed specialties and hired additional civilians and contractors to free military members to focus on military specific duties. We have also made multi-million dollar investments in technology to reduce certain manpower requirements. We have redirected our training and accession systems and have cross-trained personnel from specialties where we are over strength to alleviate stressed career fields, supporting the Secretary of Defense’s vision of moving forces “from the bureaucracy to the battlefield.” Since 2001, we've exceeded our congressionally mandated end strength by more than 16,000 personnel. In light of the global war on terrorism and OIF, DoD allowed this overage, but now we need to get back to our mandated end strength. We are addressing this issue in two ways: first, by reducing personnel overages in most skills; and second, by shaping the remaining force to meet mission requirements. To reduce personnel, we will employ a number of voluntary tools to restructure manning levels in Air Force specialties, while adjusting our active force size to the end strength requirement. As we progress, we will evaluate the need to implement additional force shaping steps.
We are also reviewing our ARC manpower to minimize involuntary mobilization of ARC forces for day-to-day, steady state operations while ensuring they are prepared to respond in times of crisis. Since September 11, 2001, we’ve mobilized more than 62,000 people in over 100 units, and many more individual mobilization augmentees. Today, 20 percent of our AEF packages are comprised of citizen airmen, and members of the Guard or Reserve conduct 89 percent of ONE missions. We recognize this is a challenge and are taking steps to relieve the pressure on the Guard and Reserve.
In FY05, we plan to redistribute forces in a number of mission areas among the Reserve and Active components to balance the burden on the Reserves. These missions include our Air and Space Operations Centers, remotely piloted aircraft systems, Combat Search and Rescue, Security Forces, and a number of high demand global mobility systems. We are working to increase ARC volunteerism by addressing equity of benefits and tour-length flexibility, while addressing civilian employer issues. We are also looking at creating more full-time positions to reduce our dependency on involuntary mobilization.
We are entering the second year of our agreement to employ Army National Guard soldiers for Force Protection at Air Force installations, temporarily mitigating our 8,000 personnel shortfall in Security Forces. As we do this, we are executing an aggressive plan to rapidly burn down the need for Army augmentation and working to redesign manpower requirements. Our reduction plan maximizes the use of Army volunteers in the second year, and allows for demobilization of about one third of the soldiers employed in the first year.
Future Total Force
Just as in combat overseas, we are continuing to pursue seamless ARC and active duty integration at home, leveraging the capabilities and characteristics of each component, while allowing each to retain their cultural identity. We continue to explore a variety of organizational initiatives to integrate our active, Guard, and Reserve forces. These efforts are intended to expand mission flexibility, create efficiencies in our Total Force, and prepare for the future. Today’s Future Total Force team includes a number of blended or associate units that are programmed or are in use. The creation of the “blended” unit, the 116th Air Control Wing at Robins Air Force Base, Georgia, elevated integration to the next level. With an initial deployment of over 730 personnel, and significant operational achievements in OIF, we are now examining opportunities to integrate active, Guard, and Reserve units elsewhere in order to produce even more measurable benefits, savings, and efficiencies.
The reasons for this type of integration are compelling. We can maximize our warfighting capabilities by integrating active, Guard, and Reserve forces to optimize the contributions of each component. Reservists and Guardsmen bring with them capabilities they have acquired in civilian jobs, leveraging the experience of ARC personnel. Integration relieves PERSTEMPO on the active duty force. Because ARC members do not move as often, they provide corporate knowledge, stability, and continuity. Finally, integration enhances the retention of airmen who decide to leave active service. Because the Guard and Reserve are involved in many Air Force missions, we recapture the investment we’ve made by retaining separating active duty members as members of the ARC.
Renewing the Force
To renew our force, we target our recruitment to ensure a diverse force with the talent and drive to be the best airmen in the world’s greatest Air Force. We will recruit those with the skills most critical for our continued success. In FY03, our goal was 5,226 officers and 37,000 enlisted; we exceeded our goal in both categories, accessing 5,419 officers and 37,144 enlisted. For FY04, we plan to access 5,795 officers and 37,000 enlisted.
In the Air Force, the capabilities we derive from diversity are vital to mission excellence and at the core of our strategy to maximize our combat capabilities. In this new era, successful military operations demand much greater agility, adaptability, and versatility to achieve and sustain success. This requires a force comprised of the best our nation has to offer, from every segment of society, trained and ready to go. Our focus is building a force that consists of men and women who possess keener international insight, foreign language proficiency, and wide-ranging cultural acumen. Diversity of life experiences, education, culture, and background are essential to help us achieve the asymmetric advantage we need to defend America’s interests wherever threatened. Our strength comes from the collective application of our diverse talents, and is a critical component of the air and space dominance we enjoy today. We must enthusiastically reach out to all segments of society to ensure the Air Force offers a welcoming career to the best and brightest of American society, regardless of their background. By doing so, we attract people from all segments of society and tap into the limitless talents resident in our diverse population.
In addition to a diverse force, we also need the correct talent mix. We remain concerned about recruiting health care professionals and individuals with technical degrees. To meet our needs, we continue to focus our efforts to ensure we attract and retain the right people. We will also closely monitor ARC recruitment. Historically, the Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve Command access close to 25 percent of eligible, separating active duty Air Force members with no break in service between their active duty and ARC service.
Developing the Force
Over the past year, we implemented a new force development construct in order to get the right people in the right job at the right time with the right skills, knowledge, and experience. Force development combines focused assignments and education and training opportunities to prepare our people to meet the mission needs of our Air Force. Rather than allowing chance and happenstance to guide an airman’s experience, we will take a deliberate approach to develop officers, enlisted, and civilians throughout our Total Force. Through targeted education, training, and mission-related experience, we will develop professional airmen into joint force warriors with the skills needed across the tactical, operational, and strategic levels of conflict. Their mission will be to accomplish the joint mission, motivate teams, mentor subordinates, and train their successors.
A segment of warriors requiring special attention is our cadre of space professionals, those that design, build, and operate our space systems. As military dependence on space grows, the Air Force continues to develop this cadre to meet our nation’s needs. Our Space Professional Strategy is the roadmap for developing that cadre. Air Force space professionals will develop more in-depth expertise in operational and technical space specialties through tailored assignments, education, and training. This roadmap will result in a team of scientists, engineers, program managers, and operators skilled and knowledgeable in developing, acquiring, applying, sustaining, and integrating space capabilities.
Sustaining the Force
The Air Force is a retention-based force. Because the skill sets of our airmen are not easily replaced, we expend considerable effort to retain our people, especially those in high-technology fields and those in whom we have invested significant education and training. In 2003, we reaped the benefits of an aggressive retention program, aided by a renewed focus and investment on education and individual development, enlistment and retention bonuses, targeted military pay raises, and quality of life improvements. Our FY03 enlisted retention statistics tell the story. Retention for first term airmen stood at 61%, exceeding our goal by 6%. Retention for our second term and career airmen was also impressive, achieving 73% and 95% respectively. Continued investment in people rewards their service, provides a suitable standard of living, and enables us to attract and retain the professionals we need.
One of the highlights of our quality of life focus is housing investment. Through military construction and housing privatization, we are providing quality homes faster than ever before. Over the next three years, the Air Force will renovate or replace more than 40,000 homes through privatization. At the same time, we will renovate or replace an additional 20,000 homes through military construction. With the elimination of out-of-pocket housing expenses, our Air Force members and their families now have three great options -- local community housing, traditional military family housing, and privatized housing. Focus On Fitness
We recognize that without motivated and combat-ready expeditionary airmen throughout our Total Force, our strategies, advanced technologies, and integrated capabilities would be much less effective. That is why we have renewed our focus on fitness and first-class fitness centers. We must be fit to fight. And that demands that we reorient our culture to make physical and mental fitness part of our daily life as airmen. In January 2004, our new fitness program returned to the basics of running, sit-ups, and pushups. The program combines our fitness guidelines and weight/body fat standards into one program that encompasses the total health of an airman.
TECHNOLOGY-TO-WARFIGHTING
The Air Force has established a capabilities-based approach to war planning, allowing us to focus investments on those capabilities we need to support the joint warfighter. This type of planning focuses on capabilities required to accomplish a variety of missions and to achieve desired effects against any potential threats. Our capabilities-based approach requires us to think in new ways and consider combinations of systems that create distinctive capabilities.
Effects Focus: Capabilities-Based CONOPS
The Air Force has written six CONOPS that support capabilities-based planning and the joint vision of combat operations. The CONOPS help analyze the span of joint tasks we may be asked to perform and define the effects we can produce. Most important, they help us identify the capabilities an expeditionary force will need to accomplish its mission, creating a framework that enables us to shape our portfolio.
• Homeland Security CONOPS leverages Air Force capabilities with joint and interagency efforts to prevent, protect, and respond to threats against our homeland -- within or beyond U.S. territories.
• Space and Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance CONOPS (Space and C4ISR) harnesses the integration of manned, unmanned, and space systems to provide persistent situation awareness and executable decision-quality information to the JFC.
• Global Mobility CONOPS provides Combatant Commanders with the planning, command and control, and operations capabilities to enable timely and effective projection, employment, and sustainment of U.S. power in support of U.S. global interests -- precision delivery for operational effect.
• Global Strike CONOPS employs joint power-projection capabilities to engage anti-access and high-value targets, gain access to denied battlespace, and maintain battlespace access for required joint/coalition follow-on operations.
• Global Persistent Attack CONOPS provides a spectrum of capabilities from major combat to peacekeeping and sustainment operations. Global Persistent Attack assumes that once access conditions are established (i.e. through Global Strike), there will be a need for persistent and sustained operations to maintain air, space, and information dominance.
• Nuclear Response CONOPS provides the deterrent “umbrella” under which conventional forces operate, and, if deterrence fails, avails a scalable response.
This CONOPS approach has resulted in numerous benefits, providing:
• Articulation of operational capabilities that will prevail in conflicts and avert technological surprises;
• An operational risk and capabilities-based programmatic decision-making focus;
• Budgeting guidance to the Air Force Major Commands for fulfilling capabilities-based solutions to satisfy warfighter requirements;
• Warfighter risk management insights for long-range planning.
