The Air Force Chief Scientist has a simple yet urgent message to the force … and it centers upon new weapons, speed and preparing for war with major rivals by fast-tracking promising new technologies to war through prototyping and operational integration.
Citing the recently released Air Force Science & Technology strategy, Dr. Victoria Coleman says the service has correctly placed a heavy and quite pressing emphasis upon leveraging, delivering and preparing nearer-term “transformational” technologies to war.
This has been the case with the Air Force at large in recent years, as the service has creating things like fast-tracked 804 budget funding to accelerate prototyping or the use of digital engineering to ensure new systems such as next-gen ICBMs, hypersonics and even a 6th-Generation aircraft arrive well-ahead of schedule.
Now, the services’ science and technology division wants to more fully incorporate the research, laboratory and new innovation process into this approach to an even greater degree. This is for a simple purpose … to stay ahead of very serious adversaries committed to rapid, new weapons developments specifically intended to counter or rival U.S. systems.
Coleman had a number of ideas regarding how the U.S. can best get there by drawing upon what the Air Force Science and Technology strategy calls “transformational” technologies.
Long-Term Payoffs vs. Near Term Projects
She pointed to a key breakdown articulated in the S&T strategy to include a key distinction between longer-term payoff efforts and nearer terms projects likely to quickly bring new systems to war. In many cases, such as with lasers, AI or Quantum computing, there may be both long and short term applications and research able to both envision future advancements yet still generate earlier deployable break-off components.
“The goal of the strategy and what has been implemented is that 20-percent of the S&T budget is dedicated to transformational efforts,” she added, explaining that the service is hoping to achieve change in five different domains, to include information sharing, rapid decision making, speed and reach of destruction and lethality,” Coleman told the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies in an interview.
She described it as achieving an optimal balance of sorts between the importance of having a “grand vision” while also making sure to “deliver capability incrementally.”
