Jericho Dawns

But the addition to the Program of Work for Plan Jericho of a project focusing specifically on modernising the Air Force education and training system is evidence of a growing realisation that it is not only access to the latest technology that will give the RAAF of the future that winning edge.

The advantage is anticipated to increasingly come from the people who the RAAF recruits and trains.

“We added Project 16, and that is about education and training, and that was a gap that we had in the first 18 months of the program,” Plan Jericho director Group Captain Pete Mitchell tells Australian Aviation.

“A fifth-generation Air Force needs fifth-generation warfighters, as well as platforms, as well as networks and infrastructure and IT and the like, to make that all work. ” When it comes to developing a contemporary training environment, everything is on the table.

“We are not getting a significant number of extra uniformed people over the next 10 years, so how do we approach the new technologies and the new capabilities without a significant increase in workforce? We will have to do that through empowerment and innovation,” GPCAPT Mitchell says.

People power

While the Air Force education and training system might be good at producing experts in particular fields, the joint warfighting mindset must be encouraged from the very beginning, as fellow Jericho director GPCAPT Carl Newman explains.

“[The system] produces a lot of technical expertise; people who are very smart in their lane for their particular platform, until they reach middle management and then we ask them to think outside their platform,” says GPCAPT Newman, who until recently was officer commanding 84 Wing within Air Mobility Group.

“But if we want to be a truly integrated force then we need to start growing those skill-sets of folks [so that they] know how they work with other aspects of not just Air Force but Army and Navy, all the way through, and so developing an education system that can start building that right from the outset, so we have better joint warfighters as they come up through the pipeline. ” Not only are all aspects of the training system potentially up for review, but the service’s workforce hierarchy could also be set for disruption as the RAAF strives to secure the highly skilled people it will require.

In the field of cyber-security, for example, it might be desirable to have Air Force personnel moving over into industry to gain new skills, and then being brought back into Defence as the need arises.

“There will still be some traditional cores that will be the foundation of Air Force capability, but more and more we see these disruptive technologies that we need to understand,” GPCAPT Mitchell says.

“Do we have elements that are transient in the workforce? They come in and work for us for two or three years, then do they go back out to industry and work with finance institutions in cyber threats?” However, it is not clear how such an approach would fit with the RAAF’s rigid workforce structure, as things stand.

“If we want to remunerate somebody, pay them for a particular skill, it has to be associated with rank,” GPCAPT Mitchell observes.

“Well, that person might have the skills, but might not necessarily have the aptitude or the standing [for us] to say: yes, they can go and be a group captain off the street. But that is the only way I can pay them potentially for what we see their skill-set is worth.

“So how do we challenge that? That is a good organisational challenge, and not insignificant. ” Achieving the timeline for growing the RAAF’s capacity to contribute to the joint cyber capability (Project 6) might require the adoption of an alternative approach to workforce management, as the Program of Work for Plan Jericho states.

This cyber capability project is therefore closely linked to the workforce management strategy implementation project (Project 15), which in turn has a clear link to the new education and training system modernisation project.

“We have an extremely rigid rank remuneration recruiting process,” GPCAPT Mitchell says.

Who do we identify that can look at disruptive innovation? GPCAPT MITCHELL

“As we look at the challenges on a global scale for skill-sets, recruiting and the like, we already see that younger generations can often spend quite a short time in a particular organisation, then they up-skill and go do something else, whereas traditionally Air Force will build somebody over 20 years to make them a technical master. The cyber workforce is an example that we look at. ” Part of the plan for Project 16 is the idea of establishing a professional development program that would encompass all RAAF personnel and would span entire careers, providing a baseline for further specialised training where necessary.

“Who do we identify that can look at disruptive innovation; so rather than incremental innovation that we would expect everybody to be able to do, improving their own business, how do we identify those skills and attributes in people who are demonstrating an ability to think outside the box?” GPCAPT Mitchell asks.

“How do they communicate that? Can they deal with new technologies? How do they deal with the uncertainty that we might face when tactics or technology or procedures are going to change so quickly that they [cannot be] wedded to the way they were trained originally? “There is a real opportunity there, and there is a lot to be learnt, I think, from industry and other civilian academic institutes about how they are approaching training and education. ”

Industry partnership

The RAAF hosted an event at the Australian International Airshow inside a C-17A Globemaster heavy transport to demonstrate how it has been working with industry.

Having identified obstacles to realising the integrated force envisaged by Plan Jericho, the RAAF has partnered with industry to leverage the innovation of the private sector and seek help in developing solutions.

The media event held at the Avalon Airshow showcased some tangible things Air Force has done to rapidly acquire some existing capabilities, as well as to explore the potential future use of cutting-edge technology.

“When we look at our capabilities that we need to deliver, doing that on a slow, more traditional Defence acquisition timeline does not meet the technology opportunities that are available, and it does not necessarily meet the rapidly evolving threats and the multitude of threats that we might be asked to go and face,” GPCAPT Mitchell tells Australian Aviation.

Plan Jericho emphasises the need to take advantage of spiral development programs in order to frequently refresh systems to keep pace with evolving technology, and stresses the importance of paying closer attention to enabling capabilities.

A partnership with BAE Systems is regarded as the most formal arrangement to have been established within the Jericho program. The company has been working with the RAAF to develop and trial what is referred to as the ‘Acquisition Sprint’ methodology, demonstrating a new way of acquiring and sustaining capabilities.

“One of the challenges that we see is that as an organisation as a whole we are quite risk-averse at innovation and saying: if I gave a particular company with a new or emerging technology some money and it did not come off, will I accept the risk,” GPCAPT Mitchell says.

“Pretty soon you need to get some runs on the board. But we are confident that we have a good way of working out where we should invest, or at least where we should explore, and where we should take some risk to do that.

“And certainly at the moment that provides a lesson in itself about how the organisation as a whole approaches risk, and even how we partner with industry; how we manage our programs across the board. ” So the question is: is it okay to fail? “Absolutely, we have to,” GPCAPT Mitchell declares. “In my opinion, if we are not failing we are not pushing hard enough. ” Fellow director GPCAPT Newman continues: “If we fail because we did not understand the risk then we have done it wrong.

“If we understand the risks and we know that there is a reasonable risk of failure, but we make a sensible decision to continue because we can exploit a great benefit, and we fail, then that is not necessarily a bad outcome and you will have learnt a lot of things along the way that will inform the next project. ” Responsibility for the Jericho Dawn series of capability demonstrations has been transitioned to the Air Warfare Centre, which is tasked with delivering integrated warfighting solutions, and will be identifying opportunities to integrate current and imminent capabilities, working on a time horizon of zero to three years. Meanwhile, the Jericho team itself will be concentrating on looking beyond that to explore possible military applications for disruptive technologies.

“As an example, late last year we ran a Jericho Dawn using the Microsoft HoloLens to explore what visualisation might do for advanced command-and-control concepts or data management, trying to make richer decisions in a complex battlespace more quickly, with better information,” GPCAPT Mitchell says.

“It was a successful demonstration. We probably need to do another one that is a bit more targeted; we have got an idea on where we might go with that.

“But are we going to see people in [Headquarters Joint Operations Command], for example, running around with HoloLens while they are doing mission planning in the next two years? Probably not, because it is a bit further out there, but it is an example of what type of technology is coming and how we might apply that militarily. ” A potential application for the HoloLens holographic computer is in trying to make the complexity of electromagnetic spectrum management easier to understand through the use of visualisation.

Catalyst for change

Answering directly to Deputy Chief of Air Force Air Vice-Marshal Warren McDonald and Air Commander Australia AVM Gavin Turnbull, the Jericho team oversees the 16 projects in the Program of Work, takes the lead in the RAAF’s engagement with industry, and looks for opportunities to educate and support across Defence, industry and academia.

“Upsetting the norm, not being in the traditional chain of command, being able to go across all areas, certainly gives us freedom,” GPCAPT Mitchell says.

“Our own budget obviously provides us with that ability to not have to go to somebody else to get approval, so if we think it is a good idea, it meets one of the themes and we think it is worth a calculated risk, then we can execute on that. ” The team has been deliberately kept small, with only six other members besides the two directors.

“The small team in Jericho allows us to focus a really high burst of energy in those areas that need that kick-start, that catalyst,” says GPCAPT Newman.

“And that is the value of that small team in Jericho: where we can plug in. Here is an injection of dollars or people or intellectual space to help you move that on to finally achieve that endgame that the Chief is looking for. ” Having been intentionally restricted in terms of its size, the team can remain agile and adaptive, in line with the Plan Jericho vision for the future force. Importantly, this capacity limitation means that Air Force at large is being put under pressure to deliver change, rather than relying on the Jericho team itself to fund and implement these initiatives.

“We do not have to own something,” GPCAPT Mitchell explains. “If we want to transition to something else, you actually force the capability owners to have to be able to develop the sustainment plan and induct that technology or capability. ” Indeed, being given the freedom to operate as outsiders within the RAAF gives the Jericho directors a unique perspective.

“We also see a lot of elements of projects that are working in their own space, and they know they have to reach out and integrate with a whole bunch of interdependent projects, but sometimes it can be so easy for them to be so focused on their piece, whereas we can sit above that,” GPCAPT Newman says.

“Have you thought about this? Are you engaging with that? Are these principles that you are embedding into that project to make sure you really do achieve interoperability and leverage those interdependencies?” And so far the hard work seems to be paying off.

“Just seeing over the last two years what Jericho has enabled Air Mobility Group to do in improving the air-land integration piece and the interaction with Army, and the connection with our [command-and-control] systems, pushing technology into the aircraft that arguably should have been there four or five years ago, but there was not a drive to do that,” GPCAPT Newman observes.

“Plan Jericho came down and it gave the group permission to start doing those things that perhaps should have happened a long time ago.

“It has not only enthused the folks who are working on those fleets in Air Mobility Group, but it has also enthused Army and [Special Operations] Command folk that are seeing these capabilities come through that will make real change and real value add to the way that they go out and execute their combat mission. ” Whether it is integrating capabilities or modernising education and training, change is in the air. And that change is happening rapidly.

In my opinion, if we are not failing we are not pushing hard enough. GPCAPT MITCHELL

“Over the last two years, we have seen an Air Force that has undergone tremendous change, not just in bringing capabilities on board, but mindsets that are out there, and how to innovatively use those capabilities,” GPCAPT Newman says.

“And I would hope it is not five or 10 years [before] we see a different Air Force; I would hope at the end of this year we will have seen significant change with our Air Force, and keep pace with the change that is happening with the global complexities that are out there.

“It is a really exciting space to work in with shape where our Air Force needs to go. ”