Page 9 - Williams Foundaiton Air-Land Integration April 15

New Approaches to Air-Land Integration

Although it was predominated by army people the reality is it needs to work as a joint organization and I
would like to go back to the point you discussed.

Not only do you have to package this small team, but also this small team has to be capable of dynamically
repackaging the force on the fly with joint effects. For example, if you now need additional EW, the combat
team will able to leverage additional EW from the joint force.

You now need the ability to coordinate direct air land integration fires and you need more F-35 support to
deliver that effect.

The reality is that we potentially need to look at as we move beyond this decade of pushing support further
down from division level and making it more readily available and more dynamically available to the small
group level.

The time responsiveness of an Air Tasking Order that's 72 hours old is really not going to make it.

I would suggest that time line needs to be radically truncated.

The Chief of Army made the point at the Airpower Conference that in many ways we are still using
procedures and approaches that go back to World War II for air-ground operations; this makes no sense in
terms of technological advances and operational shifts.

We need to shape a 21st century approach.

It is as a said, not about air-land integration, it is multi-domain integration at the small group operating level.

Question: A key question involves C2 and information parsimony. It is really about empowering the
maneuver group with in the words of Air Commander Australia, “right information at the right time.”

Answer: The importance will be on the filter that can potentially gather up all of this data.

What's the most important time sensitive information I need?

The ability to pull data that's relevant to the combat situation at the time, and to use rapidly is what we need,
not vast collections of data to be examined by historians.

That's going to be a key for us because we've got so many senses now that are currently connected to our C2
systems within the ADF we're potentially overwhelming ourselves.

We are reaching the maximum capacity of our processing exploitation and dissemination capability. We
need to provide that filter and connect information up to provide intelligence.

Latency is important here. It might be the best bit of intelligence but if it arrives too late it's worthless.

Question: During your presentation at the Williams Foundation seminar, you showed a small UAV which
costs around $12,000 which can be used by the small combat group.

You made the point that it was not just about enabling the small group, but opening up the possibility
that the close contact picture might be then available to support the overhead or sea-based strike force.

Could you discuss your thinking here?

Answer: When that information stops becoming just important to that squad leader, platoon commander or
company, it can become crucial for divisional commanders as well.

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