MILITARY US AIR FORCE 2030
What Kind of Air War in 2030?
What kind of wars will the 2030 Air Force- fighting as part of a collation and using
families of capabilities networked together –
have to fight? They will be different wars from
the ones the US armed services’ air power
have been asked to fight since the end of the
Cold War.
Speaking at an Air Force Association
seminar in Washington DC on July 11,
Commander, Air Combat Command General
Mike Holmes said US airpower has been
fighting, “a tightly controlled war, where every
bomb is controlled and judged at a higher
level, which has led to an environment where
airmen learn to wait and do as they are told.”
Holmes stressed how the current
approach is not going to be feasible
against the near-peer enemies that may
be encountered in 2030: “We now face
adversaries that are doing things quickly... our qualitative military advantage is fading
against peer adversaries. The battlespace
has changed in Europe [a reference to
Russia’s increasing capabilities]. In this
new battlespace, the Army and Marines are
working on a multi-domain battle and the Air
Force is working on multidomain command
and control. Future conflicts may be
multiregional, hard to constrain in one region,
as well as multidomain, including space and
cyber.”
Who Will Build 2030 Airpower?
Changes in airpower projected for 2030
mean a new set of private sector partners
may become very important quickly.
Worldwide, the aerospace industry
contracted and consolidated in 1991 after
the end of the Cold War, leaving a relatively
few large companies at the top of what
amount to complex food chains. However,
since then, what had been niche players
have become vitally important when they
can provide a capability that is needed that
no one else has available. Few had heard
of General Atomics in the 1990s until the
conflicts in the Balkans brought home the
need for medium-altitude, long-endurance
unmanned air vehicles (UAVs). Today their
Predator and Reaper UAVs are a major part
of US and international airpower.
Other private sector outsiders may
become vital enablers of airpower through
the Air Force’s goal of including them in its
revitalised experimentation process. None
of the four aircraft types flying in the OA-X
experiment (observation-attack experimental)
at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico,
in July and August 2017, was from the
biggest aerospace companies. The Air
Force has already said that its next steps in
experimentation will turn to the world of high
technology, to make use of the innovations
that have enabled the massive increase in
civil sector communications and connectivity- of which the smartphone is the most
visible of a vast number of technologies – to
the networked capabilities that are widely
seen as being an integral part of 2030
airpower. Other services are also looking
at experimentation to leverage enhanced
private sector expertise.
An airman assigned to the 527th Space Aggressor Squadron, monitors a
frequency instrument prior to running a test to determine a fighter squadron’s GPS
capability during Exercise Red Flag. US Air Force space aggressors instruct units
on how to identify threats and mitigate their effects. TSgt David Salanitri/US Air ForceAn F-16 avionics specialist attempts to
determine if the aircraft’s systems are failing
while under space warfare attack by simulated
enemy forces. TSgt David Salanitri/US Air Force