We are facing threats and challenges from key strategic competitors right now.
Talking about the force structure and its “goodness” in 2030 will not deter anyone who matters.
As a colleague has noted, “briefing slides about the future force kill the audience, not the enemy”.
We need to focus on what we might call the “zero to five military”.
What do we have right now to deal with an adversary in a crisis?
And how can we build on the key elements of the evolving force to get better in ways that will matter in the next five years?
It is not about augmenting the legacy force to fight in a legacy manner or rebuilding Cold War NATO and imagining Pacific defense 20 years ago and working to rebuild the past force.
It is about leveraging what we have added to the force recently which allows the US to go to war and fight and win today.
And based on that capability, we can evolve the force over the next five years to become even more effective and more lethal.
What can be forgotten is that today’s USAF, USMC and US Navy can fight right now at the speed of light and we have in motion already the means to build upon what we have in place to get better over the next five years.
In this sense, the future is now.
The definition I offer for” fighting at the speed of light” is a utility function in an offensive/defensive enterprise.
Distributed kill webs engage leveraging the relevant platforms to disrupt and destroy the enemy.
The time is right now to take advantage of 21st distributed sensing and communication systems to execute a successful Payload Utility function in order for Target Acquisition (TA) and Target Engagement (TE) to use the best payload available to mitigate multiple threats.
Offensively, the same principle applies better and better TA and TE allows all forces to engage using the best payload to destroy the enemy.
One should not confuse “fighting at the speed of light” to be waiting for Directed Energy weapons such as lasers and radio frequency RF weapons.
Rather, as directed energy systems come on line in the next five years, they will become part of the Payload Utility function as a “payload” which can seamlessly be integrated into a mixing and matching package of appropriate Kinetic or “Tron” warheads.