The Air Force’s top intelligence-surveillance-reconnaissance officer, Lt. Gen. David Deptula, took a tour recently in Southwest Asia to see how the intel airmen have implemented a centralized mission planning cell and modified tactics and techniques to accommodate the war on terror. He also took time to meet with British airmen, whose GR-4 Tornados are providing intel to ground forces. Deptula is at the center of USAF efforts to reinvent ISR and the ongoing unmanned aerial vehicle executive agent brouhaha.
A new Air Force plan for how many fighters it needs in the next decade marks a sharp upturn from what it thought it needed just seven years ago. But analysts worry that the aspirational plan now in Congress' hands doesn’t make a tight enough connection to national strategy.
