Page 29 - Williams Foundation Integrated Force Design Seminar

Designing the Integrated Force: How to Define and Meet the Challenge?

“We are trying to at least be prepared for and begin to understand that it is real is 5th generation
methodology.

“It is as big a step as it was at the advent of air power in World War I.

“But we are not, in my view, the best at taking such big steps.

“We tend to fail to see that there is a step to be taken, and keeping doing what we have done well in the
past.

“But more importantly, we revert to a Maslow type hierarchy. “Can I touch it? Can I see it? Can I be part of it?
Does it fulfill me both in a technological sense, but as importantly, in a mental and emotional sense?”

“Because as an Air Force we recognize that we need to take a major step forward, we are confronting what
it will be mean to have a fifth generation operating model, rather than just acquiring a new airplane.

“It is challenging, but you can’t meet the challenge if you do not recognize the strategic opportunity.

“We put in motion “Plan Jericho” precisely to shake up thinking and to get on with crafting the journey of
becoming a fifth generation air force.

“We have to learn that there is a new way of doing business, and if we didn’t show some clear recognizable,
understandable, and air force-involved steps along the way, it would’ve always been just a little bit too far.

“We’re demonstrating that it is possible by the rethink associated with Plan Jericho.

“We have acted under the assumption that Plan Jericho is a compass not a roadmap.
“The new strategy focuses on the five vectors of change and if we follow those vectors and implement the
changes we can succeed in becoming a fifth generation air force and a powerful asset for the ADF in terms of
enhanced joint effects.”

Question: It is clear that the challenge is not so much to connect a force via a network to become
integrated as it is about training, shaping and empowering a 21st century network of 21st century
warfighters.

And from taking to many of your key officers responsible for introducing or operating the new platforms,
it is clear that they get the point it is not about simply operating a new platform, it is about becoming an
integrated fifth generation combat force.

How do you best support this transformation?

Air Marshal Davies: “A key benefit from the Plan Jericho approach is reshaping the language.

“It is not about how does this new platform fit into the force as it is, it is about how does this new platform
enable the force to fight the way we need to be able to in the future?

“It has to be realistic but in a sense the reality we are looking at is not just the Air Force as it has fought in the
past and present, but the Air Force as it vectors towards the future fight.

“If you don’t do this you will be only discussing and debating platforms in the historical combat space.

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