Page 12 - Leverage and Learn_Neat

Leverage Allied Investments and Combat Learning Experience in Modernizing the U.S. Military

He sees a significant opportunity to unlock potential by shaping new logistical approaches such as evident in
the C-17 support model.

There are green shoots all over the United States. The United States is the most innovative society in the world,
without a doubt. One green shoot is the C-17 support model. By using a very innovative industrial working
relationship with the deployed force, support costs are going down, not up. So why not adopt this model for
the new force being built. We certainly are going to focus on that with P-8 and F-35. The US logistical
support system and the congressional mandated Title 10, 50:50 requirement to protect government Depots
severely hampers and constrains the services and has a significant impact on their force readiness.”

He added “You've just got to invest in the new systems and follow their logic and prioritize it above
everything else and be prepared to cut away things that don't make sense in the future. You should cut away
half the stuff that you needed for Iraq in Afghanistan because you're not going to fight like that in a world of
peer competitors. It is like the Nike slogan: Just do it.”

Other core allies have noted what Brown is talking about, and I have heard that from those allied militaries in
my global travels. To take one example, a senior RAF officer who flew in Red Flag 17-1 noted “he would
never wish to fly with an AWACS if he had a Wedgetail. The AWAC constrains; the Wedgetail supports of
fifth generation force.”

And the Aussie tanker has had dispatch rates and performance metrics off the charts compared to the current
crop of USAF tankers.

Lt Gen (Ret) David A. Deptula, who has a been a proponent of rapidly moving toward new concepts of
operation enabled by fifth generation aircraft, supports Brown’s points, “We have all the capabilities
necessary to dramatically improve our warfighting capacity, we just have to gather the will to apply them in
new ways unencumbered by paradigms of the past.”

In short, we can learn from allies. If we want to make America great again, ironically the path goes through
working on an across the board transformation of US force interacting with cutting edge allies.

ALLIES AND 21 CENTURY WEAPONS SYSTEMS: THE CASE OF THE COMING
ST
OF THE F-35 TO EUROPE

st
A key dynamic with the shift from the land wars to shaping a 21 century combat fore is the crucial
opportunity the US and its closest allies have to learn from each other thanks to the number of core weapons
systems being bought at the same time. Almost hidden in plain view is the emergence of a significant driver of
change –-flying the same aircraft at the same time, and cross learning from each other.

A case in point is the F-35. There was much recent press on the arrival of USAF F-35s in Europe, landing at
RAF Lakenheath and operating from there and then some of those aircraft going to Estonia and then Bulgaria.
SACEUR himself showed up at RAF Lakenheath and underscored how significant the arrival of these aircraft
was for a training mission in Europe.

For example, in an article by Robert Wall entitled “US jet fighters flex muscle amid Russia tensions” published
in The Wall Street Journal, the arrival of the USAF jets in the UK and in Europe is highlighted. It is noted that
the U.S. does not intend to permanently deploy the jets in Europe until 2020, and that “several allied air
forces, are also buyers.”

Second Line of Defense

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