Topic: Contemporary Part 1

Order Description For the past decade the Air Force has operated in a relatively permissive environment. What is the greatest challenge faced by a force accustomed to a permissive environment in establishing air superiority in a contested environment? You may want to consider technology, culture, experience, planning, or training. Support and defend your response with material and/or concepts from the course. All, Let’s begin with some basic terms starting with my own general definition of a permissive environment: Permissive Environment: Environments such as Iraq and Afghanistan where US air superiority was/is widely established without much anticipated or actual adversarial threat. Contested Environment: An environment where an adversary possesses the capabilities to deny our ability to operate or restrict our freedom of action in air space or cyberspace.[1] Highly Contested Environment: An environment where an adversary possesses the capabilities to offer prohibitive interference in one or more domains that requires application of advanced war-fighting techniques and capabilities to create desired effects.[2] In a 19 February 2014 article, “USAF Eyes Future of ISR,” Aaron Mehta makes the point that the USAF’s ISR mission underwent a complete revamping in the decade-plus missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, transforming from a support function “to a vital part of every combat operation…” (emphasis added by me).[3] Thus, while I’m not directing you to adopt ISR as the greatest challenge faced in order to establish air superiority in future contested environments, I’m suggesting this may be something worthwhile to consider, if, as Mehta believes, you agree that ISR is now a vital part of every combat operation. As Lt Gen Otto says in Air Force ISR 2030, “AF ISR is exquisitely equipped to operate in permissive environments. However, the President, Secretary of Defense, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Chief of Staff of the Air Force have all directed the transformation of our force to one more suited to win the nation’s wars in contested of highly contested environments.”[4] The question suggests you consider technology, culture, experience, planning or training as you craft your response. If you choose to discuss ISR, Mehta also includes comments from retired Lt Gen David Deptula, a predecessor of Otto’s, where he discusses institutional barriers that need to be overcome. “What we really need is to get rid of major commands that were designed for a world that existed in the middle of the last century, and upgrade them to the kind of 21st Century challenges that we’re facing today. That’s why we need an ISR major command, and we need to move our domain-centric commands into more functional commands,” Deptula says.[5] “We ought to be looking at consolidating force application into one command and meld cyber and ISR together into an integrated command, because cyber was an outgrowth of the intelligence field, and those two entities operate in conjunction with one another,” Deptula adds.[6] Feel free to also include institutional barriers as something you might consider and again, please don’t feel you have to choose ISR simply because I’ve devoted so much ink to it here. If you feel the greatest challenge lies somewhere else, by all means discuss what you believe. Either way, please don’t forget to support your responses with theories, principles and concepts from the course, though this question is one where you may elected to use more outside references than course references depending on what challenge you deem to be the greatest