Five vectors

So while we met to develop a communications plan we realised that we first needed to articulate what we wanted to communicate and we instead started work on developing a formal Air Force strategy.

Air Force’s strategic plan for the next decade

A clearly-articulated Air Force strategy is essential to focus Air Force organisational effort, internal decision-making, external decision-shaping and engagement and communication. Air Force also needs a framework within which Jericho can sit. Innovation and modernisation are not in themselves a strategy, even if they gave us a heck of a good start.

We have reaffirmed the requirement for Air Force to be a truly integrated joint force in order to maximise our effectiveness. The sum of the services operating together is clearly greater than any of us operating individually. To this end, integration and jointness forms part of our baseline.

We do not have a contemporary and comprehensive Air Force strategy document, however, a highly effective strategy has been in play. It has been the evolution of the Air Force ORBAT in a deliberate and structured way; planned against our anticipated needs and it has involved the achievement of technical mastery by all airmen. This strategy has evolved through the succession of previous chiefs of air force but it was reliant on the chief of the day to drive the strategy. Society is more connected than ever before, the espoused ‘strategic corporal’ has never been more effective as a result of the reach and speed of social media.

It is within this context that it is clear that a strategy capable of being read and understood at all levels is required to ensure consistency of focus – empowering Air Force to move forward with an integrated, coherent set of objectives in support of the joint mission.

Integration is an increasingly critical element of air power and warfighting more broadly and it is this integration that is the baseline of the Air Force strategy. Our 10-year strategy can be articulated under five distinct vectors. These are:

1. Joint warfighting

2. People

3. Communications

4. Infrastructure and

5. International engagement.

These vectors have been chosen for their simplicity and we can tailor appropriate language for clarity. Vectors have both direction and magnitude and we can measure success against them. These vectors will enable coherent communications in Air Force and empower Air Force leadership’s decision-making.

Delivering this strategy also recognises that Air Force needs to embrace a new view of leadership. We must recognise that corporals are our most junior leaders and leadership belongs at every level of Air Force. It is not just me and my team in the headquarters who lead the delivery of air power. The flight lieutenant has to provide leadership in his or her sphere of influence to make sure we can deliver our fifth generation strategy effectively.

So our strategy is also about empowering our airmen to do their job, and letting them empower others. The Air Force strategy will help leaders at all levels of our organisation to know what we expect of them.

A fully fifth generation Air Force will either not be realised or will take quite some time to deliver without a strategy to guide us.

The quote attributed to Sun Tzu is right: “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory [but] tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat”.

Joint warfighting

Joint warfighting is the future requirement of the ADF.

But the reality for Air Force is that we might more accurately think of ourselves as “able to do joint if required”. We know, as a basic tenet that “fighting jointly” only comes from being joint. This requires a fundamental step-change in our approach to warfighting as well as acquisition and sustainment.

We are driving for an integrated ,not a federated, Air Force organisation.

This will mean moving beyond the “philosophy” of joint into an integrated reality where Air Force trains, exercises and deploys as the air power element of every ADF operation. We know we have to support and be supported by whole-of-Defence elements, particularly within the domains of space and cyber, data collection and intelligence product. “Joint by Design” means we must invest in gaining the trust of our Navy and Army. This trust – between Navy, Army, Air Force, APS, JOC and CASG as well as all other stakeholders outside Defence – will be critical to Air Force’s success.

Innovation and modernisation are not in themselves a strategy.

Joint warfighting – learning to fight together, plan together and design our force together – will take daily interaction, commitment and resourcing. It will also take acknowledgment that sometimes the priority will be to not do a proficiency or skill upgrade to become an expert pilot, or get your first live weapon launch. Instead it will be to support Exercise Hamel or support the readiness of HMAS Canberra. Successful integration does not happen in a few months, but it will be the foundation of the way Air Force does business in every element of its activities.

People

Air Force is fundamentally about our people. Whether we have the most advanced or the oldest air power system, Air Force’s capability edge is generated in large part by the people who operate them.

The advanced technological nature of our machines means the preparation of our people is vital to Air Force as a combat effect. Technology has matured to a point that the careful preparation of airmen, including their technical, social and personal proficiencies, will greatly shape their influence on the air domain.

We have to train our airmen effectively from the outset and provide them with ongoing career opportunities to develop their skill-sets. I will amplify Thomas Jefferson and Dr Martin Luther King here and say while all airmen are created equal – diversity is the key to success. All airmen have a significant part to play. This means importing skill-sets, training and insight from globally advanced industries such as the technology and aerospace sectors as well as using Air Force’s contemporary and more intimate system of personnel management to develop the workforce. We must offer our personnel new skill-sets from within and outside Air Force, ensuring our training remains relevant and keeps pace with the continued evolution of technology and world’s best practices.

That means we do not have the best that Australia has to offer.

Women represent 19. 2 per cent and indigenous Australians represent 1. 1 per cent of our Air Force. That means we do not have the best that Australia has to offer.

We still see significant instances of unconscious bias, failure to meet Air Force values and outright sexist behaviour. We have established a clear vision to grow female representation to 25 per cent by 2023; as a minimum and not as a goal.

Let me be clear – Air Force must change our approach to recruiting, training, retaining and career managing our people. It is just as important as the hardware they use.

Communications

We live in a communication-agile age and there are two parts to the Air Force communications strategy. One part is improving the physical hardware to allow secure and unhindered communication between our decision-makers. By that I mean datalinks, information, cyber and network security. The other part, and important to me, is improving our internal and external communications to ensure consistent and effective messaging and advice.

Communication and data transfer is a key component of air power. Our latest capabilities rely on sharing data to inform the operators and allow more efficient and effective decision-making. Mission assurance will only be achieved if we have fast, coherent and secure information flows and effective command and control. Interoperability has not, to date, been a force design requirement. Our communications strategy must therefore include managing the delta between what we already have and what we are acquiring.

VCDF is driving the combat “joint by design” construct for the ADF and we need to work actively to manage the seams in our existing capabilities as well as those that will continue to emerge. The recent airborne gateway demonstration at Puckapunyal is an example of a tactical effect, but we do not have a longer-term strategy that captures how we will evolve. For example, establishing coherence between communications in the space, cyber and air domains is a desirable end-state for any combat force. But we have not begun to articulate the structure, the redundancy options in terms of denial or disruption, or the potential security vulnerabilities that drive our next decision-points. Redundancy and resilience will have to inform our approach to communications, even as we seek the highest forms of technology to speed up and enhance our warfighting and air power.

Our common operating picture has limitations. It does not have the fidelity to which we aspire, for reasons as disparate as who is trying to use it; different missions we are executing in it and; the different external stakeholders contributing to these missions.

Clarifying this common operating picture and increasing its fidelity will require more than just the next technology. It will require an Air Force strategy to drive resource allocation and coherency in our plans. No bases means no air power; no people means no bases.

Moving past hardware, the second part to the communications vector relates to our internal and external messaging. The airman on the hangar floor at Edinburgh does not have a reliable mechanism to read and understand, provide feedback or contextualise decisions made by Air Force.

Our airmen today are educated and motivated with an increasing need for engagement and relevance. If my headquarters cannot articulate a clear way ahead then how can I expect the LACW or the FSGT or the AIRCDRE to use their inherent skills to reinforce the message, to improve the message and to ultimately improve the outcome. As I have said before, Air Force leadership is about all levels of the organisation, not just about me.

Infrastructure

The broad basing template for Air Force developed in the 1930s and was refreshed in the 60s and is in many aspects no longer suitable for the 2020s. Infrastructure is about more than just messes, flight lines and whether they are in the Northern Territory or Victoria. It is about our ability to generate and sustain air power.

Bases are intrinsic to air power. Air Force fights from our bases while Army prepares from theirs and Navy sails with theirs. Bases are Air Force’s home, our launch point and arguably our centre of gravity. They provide the fundamentals of maintenance, ordnance, mission-data and real-time, mission-critical information to our warfighters.

The Air Force demographic is also changing. Stability, job opportunities for spouses and social consistency for teenagers are recruiting and retention factors driving tenure and job satisfaction. Today we have over 1,000 members who are classed as “married with dependents working unaccompanied”. This means they are geographically dislocated from their families for the whole duration of a posting. We need a strategy to manage the complex and changing demographic environment that is modern Australia.

No bases means no air power; no people means no bases.

We need to understand our workforce better, in terms of their needs and their desires and match our infrastructure to best suit. It is about who they are, where they can work, and how we can work to ensure they stay with us as part of Air Force’s future.

I recognise that Air Force needs to partner with the Department’s Estate & Infrastructure Group to ensure we get the basing and infrastructure element right – for our people, for our platforms and ultimately for their effective delivery of air power. This means hardening and adjusting Australia’s onshore basing as well as considering carefully the future of Air Force’s basing footprint.

It means thinking in versatile ways about basing as an operational concept – where agile and mobile basing may become critical to our operations dependent on where we expect to be deployed. In a high-end conflict, the ability to move easily between bases may be key to our mission success.

It means identifying that only through Air Force people is air power delivered.

So we will use the three-point spectrum of people, infrastructure and air power to triangulate our basing needs. I am prepared to be bold about our basing.

International engagement

The White Paper has emphasised the importance of Defence’s international engagement in advancing Australia’s security interests and Air Force has a role to play in delivering this outcome. We will embark on a cultural change around how Air Force has typically regarded international engagement.

In the past, we have taken a somewhat transactional approach, especially at the tactical level. We have often centred around exercises that directly meet our own training, qualification and certification requirements. We have focused on particular engagements to improve our intelligence sharing or for exposure to advanced technologies. Given the criticality of air bases to Air Force, engagement has also extended to maintaining access to key overseas airfields. These are all valid reasons for pursuing international engagement but they are not the only reasons.

To misquote a former US President, this means Air Force needs not only to ask what international engagement can do for us but, what can we do for international engagement? In answering that question, Air Force will start by strengthening our relationship with International Policy Division in order to support our implementation of the White Paper. This will include increasing the priority Air Force places on broader Defence international engagement activities, including language training.

Further to meeting the White Paper’s articulation of international engagement, Air Force will focus on building and encouraging a rules-based global order. Air Force will work closely with our allies, partners and other like-minded Air Forces to determine how we can make a practical contribution to ensuring freedom of navigation.

Air Force will also continue to pursue international engagement opportunities through individual and collective training and exercises to build transparency and trust with other nations, especially those in our region. This will likely mean an increase in the level of our overseas activity.

We understand that the world is networked. We, in the air domain are networked. So we will seek to strengthen our international person-to-person relationships at all levels. We will also work on developing new relationships with a view to increasing our global reach and access and providing mission-assurance in the air domain for the ADF and our partners.

So, Air Force has a strategy. What next?

Because we have a strategy, we can now plan our next steps. Here I have only outlined the vectors – the five general directions – in which we will travel over the coming decade to achieve our goal of becoming a fully fifth generation Air Force. These are the organisational activities we will emphasise alongside our business-as-usual of being professional masters in the air domain.

I will in coming months release a formal strategy with these vectors, our goals and the pathways to get us there.

This release will be but a first step. It will outline where we are going and what our plans are. We will also align our internal planning processes and structures with the vectors of our strategy, so that Air Force’s directions are firmly set and realised.

Air Force’s strategic plan over the next 10 years will centre on Air Force’s modernisation and integration – of its people, capabilities and relationships to ensure that Air Force can continue to meaningfully contribute to ADF operations as part of allied and global partnerships.

We must realise the full potential of fifth generation. To do so will require Air Force to communicate effectively our aims and articulate our needs to ensure our expected end states are achieved.

Because the strategic environment is constantly evolving, we need to ensure that we maintain our organisational constants of technical excellence, readiness and force preparedness to meet any future challenge.

Additionally, we need to ensure we have a clear view to the long game of strategy that will see Air Force evolve in the context of the information age. This is an age dominated by technology but ultimately controlled by the people at the centre of all our military systems.

Air Force’s vectors will set us on a path to success in this age – both to adapt to change coherently but also to prevail against the challenges that will be inherent to Air Force’s future as we become the first fully fifth generation Air Force in the world.

This is an edited extract of a speech given by Air Marshal Davies to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in Canberra on July 19.