Back in June 2020, Air Force chief Charles Brown said his top priority was Joint All-Domain Command and Control. In November, Brown updated that slightly. His top modernization priorities are now: (1) Nuclear modernization (GBSD, B-21); (2) Advanced Battle Management System — basically the program instantiation of JADC2; and (3) acquisition reform.
Steve Trimble from Aviation Week tweeted:
I remember when it was F-35, B-21 and KC-46. Now, it’s nukes (including B-21), ABMS and acquisition reform. I don’t think the F-35 and KC-46 budget is about to nose-dive, but it is possible sometimes to get too clever when Congress needs a very, very simple message.
The lesson for me here is that priorities are shifting from individual weapon systems to system of systems. ABMS is the military internet of things, and the acquisition process is the “machine that builds the machines.”
Nukes — including GBSD and the B-21 — are more legacy-style systems, but I think nukes may have risen to the top priority for more political reason. There’s been a lot of discussion to cut GBSD, particularly from the more progressive elements of the Democratic party. So it might be a defensive mechanism, because nukes didn’t make it anywhere in Browns top six priorities back in June.
But wouldn’t it be sad if the F-35, B-21, and KC-46A were still top priorities? F-35 got started in the 1990s. The KC-46 requirements were drawn up in the early 2000s. And the B-21, still in development, was first funded as Next-Gen Bomber in FY 2006.
I’ll leave you with a quote from the wise Mark Mandeles on this kind of shift in thinking: from a reductionist view of orchestrating individual weapon systems to “meta” concepts like organizations, system of systems, and operational concepts:
Viewed from the perspective of multiple levels of analysis, technological competition is indirect. There may be little functional difference in outcome between competing equipment. At the outset of World War II, for example, both Great Britain and the United States produced a series of naval and army aircraft engines of about equal overall technical merit and military utility. Yet, while performance of individual pieces of equipment may have been roughly equivalent, the US Navy-as an organization-was far more capable of resolving technological uncertainties and integrating acquisition of new types of aircraft with doctrinal strategies. Likewise, in 1940, technological competition between Germany and France was not in the operational performance of military equipment; it was in organization and operational concepts…
The historian’s focus on the individual obscures an important consideration about innovation; military competition actually occurs among the organizations that develop, produce, or use the competing weapons technologies.
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