Air Force looking for more investment in IT enterprise

The Air Force has not holistically focused on its enterprise as a whole, the service's chief information officer has admitted.

Speaking at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies on Dec. 14, Lt. Gen. William Bender — speaking for himself — conceded that the service has focused almost exclusively on cyber weapon system development and sustainment of the Air Force network, paying little attention to the rest of the enterprise. The force has invested heavily and paid much grater attention to offensive and defensive cyber capability, he said.

As part of this lack of attention and investment, Bender said the Air Force has found itself at the point where not a week goes by where he's informed about missions that are limited because there's a lack of capabilities to complete routine tasks.
“That’s a fact of doing business at this point,” he said.

The service has taken on efforts to strengthen its infrastructure, such as pushing hard toward the Joint Information Environment goals and Joint Regional Security Stack investment, noting the Air Force is the only service with this infrastructure paid for.

However, the Air Force has a significant portion of legacy IT with which it must continue to use and tolerate. These systems are about 70 percent of the spend, Bender said the previous day at an event hosted by the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association, and there isn't time or money to replace it.

This legacy IT portion is the first of five areas Bender outlined during both speeches as a means of getting the Air Force to a future digital platform for the digital world in which it operates. The four others include sensors and the internet of things; everything as a service; data, analytics, risks and threats; and a recognition of a digital ecosystem that involves working together with stakeholders outside the military and within the sister services, he said.
Bender also hit on the notion that the Air Force should focus on the combat cloud as a weapon system, especially within the construct of war fighting — that is, prosecuting war in an anti-access, area denial environment. This will involve taking advantage of current technology but then developing military unique capabilities related to cloud technologies so they become self-forming, self-healing and agile depending on the environment, he said.

The Air Force is also making a concerted effort aimed at mission assurance, something Bender has previously discussed several times. This focus is aimed at ensuring all airmen, not just cyber warriors, understand key cyber terrain, system interdependency and vulnerabilities to assure the Air Force’s five core missions: air and space superiority; intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; rapid global mobility; global strike; and command and control.