The U.S. Air Force wants to tie a lot of non-kinetic technology together for the fight in Afghanistan, but the integration challenge is formidable.

“Do we really know what we need to do?” asked Maj. Gen. David Scott, Air Force director of operational capability requirements. He asked the Association of Old Crows in Washington this week if the services and industry have even “accepted non-kinetic as a military option? We may be able to do something electronic, spectral, non-kinetic, that can win a war.”

But there is already a huge road bump — the need to integrate hundreds of allied systems in Afghanistan that will not communicate with each other. Moreover, even issuing a simple order requires translation into 20 languages.

“As we look across the information operations [IO] and electronic warfare spectrum, how do we tie it all together” even as the technology and battlefield are both becoming more complicated, Scott asks. “There are a lot of things out there that we are standing up. We’re in the infancy of understanding IO and cyber warfare. [Yet many things are unclear, like] what is the effect, what is the capability? We’re not there yet.”

However, he warns that some adversaries of the U.S. and its allies are already in the fight. “Look at what happened in the Baltics with the Russians [computer attacks on Estonia and later Georgia] or study what the Chinese are doing,” Scott says. You realize this is a spectrum, an environment, that we’ve got to figure out. We need to figure out, from a warfighter’s perspective, how to get into it and how to protect it.”

Yet, in late September, a summit of U.S. Air Force four-star generals rejected establishment of a major Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) command that could coordinate operational planning for the emerging arsenal of non-kinetic and asymmetrical weaponry (Aerospace DAILY, Oct. 6). That decision stopped any talk of a cross-discipline command that could have sped development, rationalization and use of ISR, unmanned aerial vehicles, information operations, electronic attack, cyberwarfare and other non-kinetic weapons.

“I don’t think we’re going to do an ISR command,” Scott says. “When you start standing up another command, it takes people and manpower costs a lot of money. What we’re trying to do in the ISR realm is to pull that — GMTI [Ground Moving Target Indication], electro-opitical, full-motion video, manned and unmanned — all together to give the warfighter the right tools. That’s under the A-2 [Air Force intelligence] currently, but we’re working a process to operationalize that. The ISR task force can’t go on forever. You’ve got to normalize it.”

How about an EW command? The answer is still no. “We’re working hard with Air Combat Command on where we’re going to go,” Scott says. “We understand that in the [world of the electromagnetic] spectrum there are a lot of gaps and seams and we’re figuring that out. I’m not sure that a command will fix that. I don’t see us going to an EW command or an ISR major command. Will we ever make it a Numbered Air Force? We could, but we’ll have to work on that.”

Photo: Northrop Grumman