Page 5 - Williams Foundation Air-Sea Integration Seminar

Shaping an Integrated Force in the Extended Battlespace

Clearly, the RAAF has something similar in mind as they work with the U.S. and the Asian allies in the region or
to operate in Europe or the Middle East.
The Williams Foundation then extended the discussion to the dynamics of change between air and land forces.
Senior Army and Air Force officers presented their thinking to the seminar on air-land integration earlier this
year. The terms of reference for the seminar highlighted the way ahead.
“Air forces need to be capable of delivering air and space power effects to support conventional and special
operations in the land domain. Air-Land integration is one of the most important capabilities for successful joint
operations.
The last decade has seen a significant shift in how airpower has supported ground operations.
With the introduction of systems like Rover, the ability of airpower to provide precision strike to the ground
forces saw a significant change in fire support from a wide variety of air platforms. Precision air dropping in
support of outposts or moving forces introduced new capabilities of support.
Yet this template of air ground is really focused on air support to the ground whereas with the shift in the
global situation, a much wider set of situations are emerging whereby the air-ground integration approach
will become much wider in character, and the ability to insert force rapidly, as a precision strike capability,
and to be withdrawn will be a key tool in the toolbox for decision makers.

FIGURE 1 DISTRIBUTED C2 FROM THE BLACKBURN PRESENTATION AT THE SEMINAR.

Fifth generation enabled operations will see a shift to a distributed C2 approach which will clearly change
the nature of the ground-to air command system, and the with the ability of fifth generation systems to
generate horizontal communications among air assets outside the boundaries of a classic AWACs directed
system, the change in C2 will be very wide ranging.”
A number of practical ideas as well as conceptual thinking was provided at the seminar which the foundation
followed up in additional sets of meetings.
What was clear in discussing with Army officers during the time of the latest seminar is that practical steps
have indeed been taken since that seminar which reflects the approach outlined at the seminar.
Two key examples of this are the Army looking clearly to ways to leverage Wedgetail in supporting ground
maneuver forces, including having Army officers onboard the aircraft and gaining practical knowledge about
the aircraft and becoming stakeholders in the further evolution of the capabilities of the E-7 itself.

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