Finding doctrine in the desert - How the Air Force is shaping the future of the joint force fight

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  • DAF PEO C3BM Public Affairs
NATIONAL TRAINING CENTER, FORT IRWIN, Calif. --  All too easily lost in the thunder and adrenaline of a live-fire military exercise are the doctrinal teachings that linger long after the dust has settled, the circular error probables have been calculated, and the equipment has been flown back to home stations.
 
Col. Frank Biancardi II, Air Force’s lead for Project Convergence - Capstone 5 and member of Air Force Futures, is working hard to ensure that this is not the case. Capstone 5 is the latest iteration of Project Convergence – an Army Futures Command-hosted exercise held in part at the National Training Center, that brings joint, coalition, and various Army echelon forces together to focus their efforts on emerging technologies and concepts crucial to enabling a data-centric and networked fighting force. Air Force participation is essential to creating the joint force experimentation “sandbox” that Project Convergence is predicated on.
 
Military doctrine, that corpus of knowledge comprising the best way of doing things to achieve objectives through the application of armed forces, can be developed in the forge of combat, through studying the conflicts of other nations, and by examining one’s own wargames and exercises. What is crucial, is that it is gathered and learned because it becomes the foundation of what “right looks like.”
 
PC-C5 is an illustrative recent example of how military experimentation grounds are used as testbeds for developing the operational principles that will ultimately contribute to “joint doctrine” – the collected body of wisdom that establishes common frame of reference and interoperability when the services go to war as one.
 
Biancardi said Joint Warfare Concept 3.0 guided the Department of the Air Force and Air Force Future’s command and control development from the beginning.
 
“Working with the Joint Staff and the Office of the Secretary of Defense has helped us to define Air Force requirements and orient experimentation toward informing and guiding capability development and implementation of Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control concepts, and our portion, the DAF BATTLE NETWORK,” Biancardi said. 
 
The chief objective of PC-C5 is the evaluation of current C2 capabilities and identification of C2 modernization opportunities that can improve warfighter lethality. Accordingly, Department of the Air Force experimentation selection focused on C2 improvements within the construct of the DAF BATTLE NETWORK infrastructure for participation in PC-C5.
 
Subsequent analysis of the exercise will also deliver evaluation of current tactics, techniques, and procedures; identification of capability gaps; and potential materiel and non-materiel solutions for C2 modernization – with joint force implications.
 
The baseline indicator for improved service interoperability that Biancardi will be evaluating is how seamlessly Air Force capabilities are connected to and integrated with the other services participating in the experiment at the Corps and Division level.
 
“We’ll then evaluate how well that connectivity holds up by stressing the Joint Long-Range Kill Chain,” he said. “Then, measuring warrior capability to operationalize tools to successfully complete mission threads that align with the exercise scheme of maneuver, we’ll assess whether or not the technology or equipment under examination contributed to decision advantage.”
 
While Biancardi characterized PC-C5’s joint environment and the opportunity to test established and new technologies across different networks, firewalls, and cultures as “progress in and of itself,” he noted that the Air Force was intentional in making Joint Long-Range Kill Chain closure a PC-C5 focus.
 
As technology continues to advance, and “system-of-systems” approaches displace demand for cross-domain solutions, an adage about the formulation of military doctrine never being complete rings true. Rather, doctrinal development in the martial sense is a road devoid of destination, for as quickly as an idea is committed to writing, a new tactic or technological breakthrough comes to the fore, demanding revisitation of settled thinking on warfare.  
 
At PC-C5, Air Force support to the exercise delivered simulation, key connectivity, and a venue for DAF level experimentation – key modalities essential to both joint success today and paving the doctrinal road ahead.
 
“New technologies reshape Air Force interoperability and internal operations, oftentimes necessitating doctrinal evolution,” said Lt. Col. Nicholas Sahagun, Air Force Futures Test and Evaluation Branch Chief. “PC-C5 provides crucial joint experimentation to inform and refine doctrinal decisions for the future.”