'If We Don't Change, We're Going To Lose': Air Force Strategy Dep. Chief Hinote - Breaking...

A top Air Force officer for strategy and multi-domain operating concepts delivered a stark message today: “Time has run out for change. We can’t push this problem down the road. If we don’t change, we’re going to lose” in the future, Lt. Gen. S. Clinton Hinote told an audience at the Air Force Association’s 2021 Air, Space & Cyber conference.

Hinote, speaking on a panel with other Air Force officers, said, “There was a time when wargames were set in the future, and those weren’t going very well, but it was a future problem.” But now, he said, “I believe it’s a today problem. What would things look like if we went tonight?

“Not in all cases, but in more and more cases, we are at parity with our competitor. I don’t think that’s okay. I don’t think you think it’s okay. The [Air Force] secretary doesn’t think that’s okay,” he said, referencing an earlier speech at the conference. “If tomorrow’s warfighters fight the way we fought yesterday, we’re going to lose, and that’s not okay. We will not be able to protect our allies [in the Indo-Pacific] if we can’t project power in airspace. Right now, if we were to try to do it, we’d have to depend on a platform that would fail.”
So, what to do about it? Hinote said the Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2) concept is the way forward. “As a former wargamer, I don’t know how to win a future conflict without joint all domain operations,” Hinote said. “There’s never a silver bullet. There’s never a single technology… although JADC2 is [as] close” as anything.

In addition to developing the JADC2 capability, the Air Force has to look specifically at nuclear modernization, as well as “thinking differently” about vertical lift and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR). Hinote said the Air Force is specifically thinking about future ISR as “a multi-sensing grid,” wherein all types of data are collected, transmitted, analyzed, and then used to make decisions.


But Hinote said there are challenges, increasingly in cyberspace. “What’s going to happen is [some adversary is] going to try to corrupt our database, and we’re going to try to corrupt theirs.”
Digital Acquisition ‘Is The Future’

Lt. Gen. Duke Richardson, a top official in Air Force acquisition on the panel, said today he views “winning” as having two meanings: the design and development of new aircraft and acquisition reform. Richardson oversees programs worth $60 billion annually in research and development, test, production, product support, and modernization.

As to acquisition reform, Richardson said that entails setting reasonable requirements, putting professionals in charge, and empowering those professionals. Richardson stressed that digital acquisition “is the future.”