ORLANDO, Fla. (AFNS) -- Now eight months into his tenure, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David L. Goldfein provided an Air Force update during the Air Force Association Air Warfare Symposium here March 2, 2017.
Continuing dialogue from his three focus areas – revitalizing the squadron, strengthening joint leaders and teams, and multi-domain command and control – Goldfein also shared his attributes of future conflicts and challenged industry partners to find innovative technology and solutions to get to its end state.
“We’ve been breaking barriers for 70 years – it’s in our blood,” Goldfein said. “Whether it’s the sound barrier or the outer reaches of space, or race or gender – our approach as a service has always been, ‘bring it.’ I’m optimistic about our future.”
Goldfein used the conference platform to speak extensively about multi-domain C2.
“If you think about multi-domain C2 as a place you’re already too limited,” he said. “If you start thinking about it as a bunch of computer screens in a place you’re already too narrow. It’s a (concept of operations), it’s a way of thinking.”
Goldfein’s attributes to war include bringing Air Force capabilities together to pressure an enemy in a resilient manner, utilizing multiple domains, integrating all services and ensuring coalition-friendly systems. The chief of staff said he believes the framework to joint warfighting lies within the pairing of these attributes with the multi-domain C2 mindset.
“Victory in future conflict as I described it to you, will go to that leader who can control his or her forces to create multiple dilemmas from multiple domains and achieve the precision speed, and is able to maneuver forces both kinetic and non,” he said.
Goldfein continued, “It’s so perfect to have an AFA convention focused on fusion, because it’s the multi-domain command and control piece that will allow us to achieve all of the attributes I talked about, and bring them together so we can be global chess masters in this security environment.”