Air Force seeking greater technology breakthroughs

Air Force officials maintain the recently unveiled Science and Technology Strategy places concentration on maximizing and expanding technological advantages in the era of the peer-to-peer threat.

“This strategy isn’t just a list of technologies,” Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson said regarding the 32-page report blueprint for the next decade and beyond. “Our approach will be to predict where adversaries cannot easily go and make sure the Air Force gets there first. The Air Force will prioritize five strategic capabilities while maintaining the ability to dominate time, space, and complexity across all operating domains.”

The capabilities include resilient information sharing, which may include developing mesh networks and agile systems with real-time spectrum awareness; rapid, effective decision-making, which may include advances in artificial intelligence, machine learning and predictive data analytics; and complexity, unpredictability, and mass, which may include upgrades to multi-domain command and control, developing low-cost air and space platforms and other advances. They will also include global persistent awareness, which may include advances in “modal sensing” and developing new laser and mutlistatic radars as well as speed and reach of disruption and lethality, which may include hypersonic flight, scramjet propulsion and a new generation of smart munitions and tools for cyberwarfare.

“Transforming the force will require a change in mindset requiring everyone involved to stretch their thinking from what is possible to what is conceivable,” Richard Joseph, the chief scientist of the Air Force, said. “Most of all, it requires that the S&T and operational elements of the Air Force work together to confound the strategies of our adversaries.”