Page 11 - Williams Foundaiton Air-Land Integration April 15

New Approaches to Air-Land Integration

You have these really nice pieces to the puzzle sitting in the container, but until you begin to look at the
picture your trying to create through the overall puzzle, you do not know which bit goes where.”
With regard to F-35 as an example, Davies argued the following:
“I think Joint Strike Fighter on its own, a fifth generation air combat aircraft, could be regarded as just an air
combat aircraft.
If you want to shoot the bad guy down, if you want to defend the battle space for a land maneuver or for a
maritime strike, that’s fine.
But what we’re beginning to appreciate now is that it’s not just an air combat asset it is also an ISR node.

FIGURE 4 THE HEADS OF THE RAAF AND THE ROYAL AUSTRALIAN ARMY ARRIVE AT THE JERICHO DAWN EXERCISE, MARCH 18, 2014. CREDIT:
AUSTRALIAN MINISTRY OF DEFENCE

If you were to then put two more pieces of your puzzle down and go, “Well that’s starting to form a bit of a
picture here,” in the center of your puzzle. ”
What else could I do if it was truly an ISR node?
How do I manage that asset differently than if it was just going to shoot down another fighter?”
Although the puzzle analogy suggested an overall approach what he really was focusing on the interaction
between the evolving bigger picture; and relooking at what each piece of the puzzle might be able to do in
fitting into a new puzzle big picture so to speak.
“How would you operate the air warfare destroyer differently as you add a Wedgetail, a P-8, a Triton or
an F-35 to its operational environment?
And conversely, how could the changes in how the destroyer would operate as you evolve systems on it, affect
how you operate or modernize the other pieces of the evolving puzzle?”
Plan Jericho is about opening the aperture on thinking both about the pieces and the various puzzle pictures,
which can be created.

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