Page 6 - Williams Foundaiton Air-Land Integration April 15

New Approaches to Air-Land Integration

Conference and the second was during the Williams Foundation seminar on new approaches to air-ground
integration.

For the Chief of Staff, it about having the “right effect, at the right place and the right time” for the joint
ground force, whereby he clearly meant the joint maneuver force. He underscored that the core challenge
was the co-evolution of the ground, air and naval forces to deliver a timely capability against the tasks or
missions in the area of interest.

He argued that the technology was outpacing our concepts of operations and argued that if Wellington came
back to see operations in World War II, he would see a decisive difference in how the ground forces
operated in the combined arms context.

But that if one would look from World II to now, although the technology had changed dramatically, the
differences in concepts of operations are not as significant as the changes in technology would allow.

FIGURE 2 LT. GENERAL CAMPBELL AT THE JERICHO DAWN EXERCISE, MARCH 18, 2016

He argued that we needed to become significantly more innovative in our conceptual thinking to find ways to
better leverage technology and to prepare to better use advancing technologies and capabilities.

Here he saw two great opportunities.

The first is to break the hold of incrementalism and imagine significant disruption driven by dynamics of
change being introduced in the man-machine relationship. He argued that we need to think from the future
back into our current thinking to shape a better way ahead in the joint arena.

The second is to move from the very divergent data, communications and related systems to shape more
convergent efforts, in effect, to shape more effective co-evolution of the key elements of combat power.

And to shape a more effective joint land force it is crucial to determine where the key capabilities might most
effectively be placed, throughout the multi-dimensional combat force.

“In some cases, we are looking for the touch points where best to evolve a capability,” by which he meant that
rather than looking for organic upgrades to each platform, the challenge was to look at the joint force and
determine which elements of the evolving capability can perform optimal tasks within the overall force
capability.

Second Line of Defense

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