With a theme of “Attaining Decisive Benefit in an Age of Rising Threats,” this yr’s annual Air, Area & Cyber Convention drew greater than 18,000 attendees. The skilled growth occasion hosted by the Air & Area Forces Affiliation attracts high-ranking officers such because the secretary, chief of employees and chief grasp sergeant of the Air Power; the chief of area operations; the chief grasp sergeant of the Area Power; and commanders from all 11 main instructions along with business professionals.
Happening Sept. 16-18 the on the Gaylord Nationwide Resort & Conference Middle in Nationwide Harbor, Maryland, the occasion additionally welcomed about 300 GovCon exhibitors. Miss America 2024, the Air Power’s Second Lt. Madison Marsh, additionally made an look to speak about ways in which navy members can reshape perceptions of what it means to serve.
Modernization Mindset
Modernization was a standard theme at this yr’s convention. Air Power Chief of Workers Gen. David Allvin talked about how the provisional Built-in Capabilities Command will lead efforts to prioritize modernization in key funding areas whereas working to ascertain the brand new Air Power Institutional Command subsequent yr.
“We’ve got to combine throughout totally different system facilities,” Allvin mentioned. “We’ve got to suppose with a methods focus, not a platform-centric focus. … We should be constructing [holistically] from the start … not assembling every part on the finish.”
With change comes a necessity for brand new expertise, and business might help right here, mentioned Lt. Gen. Brian S. Robinson, commander of Air Schooling and Coaching Command (AETC). Airman Growth Command is establishing a 25-person Enterprise Studying Engineering Middle that can work with authorities contractors on new applied sciences, studying engineering and methodologies for re- and upskilling Air Power members.
“AETC is charged with producing Airmen who’ve the purposeful competencies wanted to enter the operational drive,” Robinson mentioned. “Our cost is to get these expertise and competencies ingrained in our folks in an built-in vogue with all the mission set in thoughts as early as potential utilizing the very best applied sciences, methods, and human-centered studying as we are able to.”
Funds Priorities
Wanting into fiscal 2026, area consciousness and counterspace methods prime Air Power and Area Power leaders’ want lists. Though it’s too quickly to say how budgeting will shake out, the Area Power – the most recent and least-funded navy service – must make investments that can successfully defend and defend towards adversaries, Chief of Area Operations Gen. Likelihood Saltzman mentioned.
“A brand new mission requires new sources and new funding, so I don’t have a very good reply for what these sources are,” Saltzman mentioned. “However you realize, we’ve obtained $800 billion-plus, and we’re going to must make the choices about the place we have to make investments to ensure we are able to do all of the missions successfully.”
Funds planning pertains to one other subject of dialog on the convention: the extent of acceptable threat. To find out that, the Area and Air Forces are how they construction and use sources.
“It’ll by no means be the Area Power alone,” Vice Chief of Area Operations Gen. Michael Guetlein mentioned. “It can by no means be the Air Power alone … We’re all going to must combat in a really built-in vogue. That could be a utterly totally different method of buying our methods, [and] we have now to accumulate our capabilities from the beginning, understanding that they’re part of a bigger enterprise.”
Different officers emphasised the necessity to strengthen the protection industrial base. As an example, “once we take into consideration how we reinflate the protection industrial base, a part of that’s, as a substitute of asking for these beautiful, absolutely built-in platforms, we’re capable of disaggregate and permit corporations to give attention to a selected factor that matches right into a authorities structure, to allow them to be a part of our system, air superiority being only one instance of that,” mentioned Gen. Jim Slife, vice chief of employees for the Air Power.
With Nice Energy Comes Nice Competitors
In October 2023, Air Power Secretary Frank Kendall launched steerage for the Division of the Air Power’s effort to reoptimize for the Nice Energy Competitors, the worldwide combat for dominance in worldwide politics. This differs from previous battles in that “most competitors between rival powers happens under the brink of open hostilities,” in accordance with the doc.
As a part of that, the Area Power introduced the brand new Area Futures Command in February.
“What we’re speaking about right here is nothing lower than re-baselining the way in which we determine, mature, and develop the ideas that can form our service for years to return,” Saltzman mentioned. “That is vital as a result of there are such a lot of issues we have to get proper… We face new necessities, new expectations, and new threats which demand that we subject new organizations, new coaching, new tools, and new operational ideas.”
To be ready for this new competitors, Lt. Gen. Leah Lauderback, Air Power deputy chief of employees for intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and cyber results operations, burdened the position of cyber readiness.
“After we say prepared, it’s prepared for competitors, disaster, and battle,” Lauderback mentioned. “That is an period of nice powers competing with each other, and if our deterrence fails, then we’re in disaster and battle. We’ve got to be pondering from a warfighting facet, whether or not that’s warfighter communications or if that’s cyber operations, that we’ve obtained to be prepared.”
We are able to’t wait to see how all these adjustments play out at subsequent yr’s Air, Area and Cyber Convention, scheduled for Sept. 22-24, 2025.