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Fireside Chat: An Evening with the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force
Darin Goodwiler, Managing Direct of Compliance, Ethics and Risk interviewing General David Goldfein.
Three focus areas of General David Goldfein are Organization and Personnel Improvement, Enhancing Multi-Domain Command and Control to collect and transform data into intelligence to make rapid decisions. The fight will extend beyond our borders. Multi-domain air, space, sea, land, cyber and undersea are important in being able to connect these domains in new ways within information sharing. Multi-Component which can allow for different ways of information sharing and how to bring coalitions together and the speed at which the conflict progresses. Building resilience with layers is the most effective way to ensure safety. Due to new technology, anything that is connected in an aircraft and has a network entry point is vulnerable to cyber-attacks. The U.S. is facing a wartime pilot shortage of around 1,500 short. Due to airlines hiring, it creates a competitive market between them. For the U.S. air force, 90% of the air force has not seen a day of peace over continuous fighting for 26 years. Goldfein met with commercial airlines to discuss strategies on how to balance national defense and commerce.
The F-35 the Department of Defense’s largest procurement project has a $1.5 trillion over its expected 55 years of flying and an early production $135 million per aircraft. Is air superiority worth the cost? Being able to maneuver and let those on the ground to know that the aircrafts above are there to protect them and keep them safe. Once the F-35 is started, it’s checking the overall network and is fighting in the cyber war to protect the man of control. Before the pilot even takes off, he is receiving real time information as to how the space war is going and how he or she should complete the mission. The Department of Defense’s Cyber Commander, Admiral Mike Rogers combats the cyber war that is ongoing during a mission. The Service Chiefs job is to present ready forces to the combatant commander that is operated by 39 different teams. Each Service Chief must also protect their own critical information. In air and space domains, a team is present to design and implement cyber security throughout the domain’s infrastructure. The public and private partnerships seem farfetched due to the amount of money that is invested in cyber security.
A question was asked as to how pilots of the F-35’s receive the information, interpret it, and how it’s filtered. The youngest member of their organization can decide on the security classification on any document with the click of a button. However, it takes the oldest member of the organization to reverse that which takes a long process that many do not want to go through. The Commander in Chief makes it clear that making progress means buying with and through our partners, but the one click decision making it is not shared. To move forward, dealing with risk is imperative because it is not a business that is lenient. Being able to share the information with the pilots is critical. In doing so, a common architecture of data must be created to create an easier way to share information. Without common architecture, data should be converted creates a slower process.
A Vietnam veteran asked “What is the next generation of technology used by future services?” Goldefein’s response was that the military didn’t create the new technology, but rather the industries on the outside. Goldfein told a story about how stealth technology came about, and it was found by an engineer who loved to read technical journals that had been translated to English. In his Russian journal, he found the math equation that would be able to formulate stealth technology. For the future, AI (Artificial Intelligence) and autonomy, human machine teaming, as well as directed energy are being worked on to surpass any threats while being in the air.
When asked about the differences of piloted aircrafts versus remote controlled, Goldfein says that when you are flying above as the pilot there is a different sense of the situation as opposed to looking through a 2-D screen. The experience of looking down and seeing what is going on beneath them and to proceed their attack must be precise because if the pilot messes up they will be fully accountable for their mistake. In terms of being able to share data and information, Goldfein says that they are not going at a fast enough rate in making it possible. When asked how he would compare different aircrafts, it is no longer comparing the aircrafts alone, but rather the technology and the family of resources that is backed by it. The victors of the world will have the ability to share information at rapid speeds that will allow for faster and better decision making.
Having the layer of defense in space can breakout at any moment. The architecture of the satellites are significant to maintain space security. In the business of communications, space security must be maintained privately as well as publicly to coordinate more reliable security. It must be maintained while space is becoming more congested and contested.
