US AIR FORCE 2030 MILITARY
Fighting networked
Brigadier General Alex Grynkewich,
speaking at a forum on US Air Force air
superiority and air combat technology
held at the Mitchell Institute for
Aerospace Studies in Washington on July
10, said: “I eschew the word ‘ ghter’.”
As the leader of the Air Force’s Air
Superiority 2030 Flight Plan study, he was
responsible for looking at what is needed
for the 2030 air force that Goldfein is
aiming to build, and it is not necessarily a
sixth-generation ghter.
Explaining the concept, Grynkewich said
not to think about ghter jet combat: “..
. but a network of capabilities that come
together to achieve the condition of air
superiority. This will require the integration of
so many different pieces, but if we just think
of air superiority as ghter combat, we will
not get where we need to go in the future,
when, by the late 2020s, highly contested
environments will become untenable for our
future force structure no matter how much
we modernise.”
As part of its research on a next-
generation air superiority ghter, the US
Air Force has coined another new phrase:
penetrating counter air (PCA). To enable
the Air Force to conduct the PCA mission
in 2030 the methodology will be all about
networks and how to accomplish an
effects change.
Grynkewich believes the most ef cient
way is to disaggregate capabilities rather
than have them in one place. For the
future, Grynkewich wants to, “think of PCA
as a node in a network, not an F-22-like
capability or its direct replacement, that can
nd, x and, some of the time, complete
the kill chain.”
The Air Force is already taking action
to create a future air superiority capability.
Its FY2018 budget request submitted
earlier this year included $4.5 billion over
ve years – some $300 million in FY2018,
ramping up to $500 million in FY2019 and
$1.5 billion in FY2020 – to fund the Next
Generation Air Dominance research and
development effort. Building on the Air
Superiority 2030 Flight Plan study, carrying
out additional studies and analyses to
guide what the Air Force needs to invest
in for a future capability against near-peer
threats.
Also speaking at the forum on July 10,
Colonel Tom Coglitore, concept development
lead for Air Superiority 2030, said: “The
18-month analysis of alternatives study [for
the PCA capability] will be completed in
about 12 months.”
The Air Force Science Advisory Board is
studying technologies that could enable a
PCA capability.Coglitore thinks a PCA capability lls
a future gap that the Air Force perceives
will exist in the operational environment
normally at the high end where gaps show
up, in traditional counter air missions,
air-to-air, escort, sweep, suppression of
enemy air defence, defensive counter air –
the type of missions the Air Force needs a
capability for.
However, Colonel Coglitore is concerned
about survivability of a PCA capability in a
2030 world, one that may be dominated by
long range, potentially highly lethal, air-to-air
and surface-to-air missiles: “The right mix
of capabilities are what will make something
survivable. There are lots of ways to survive.
Historically, it was speed. Now it is a lot more
complex. It can be speed, altitude or stealth,
and EW [electronic warfare] which is a form
of stealth.”A striking image of a laser beam fi ring in to the night sky. This image depicts a sodium guide star laser,
built by Boeing and the Air Force Research Laboratory, operating on a telescope at the Starfi re Optical
Range at Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico. This is not a laser weapon system, but one used by
AFRL scientists to acquire detailed images of objects in Earth orbit. David VergunBy 2030, the F-22 Raptor will
be one of the oldest fi ghter
types in US Air Force service.
MSgt Benjamin Wilson/US Air Force