Gen. Michael Moseley, Air Force Chief of Staff, said that it is useful to keep USAF’s abilities in mind. “What does an air and space force do?” he rhetorically asked at AFA’s Air Warfare Symposium Thursday. As the service’s leaders like to point out, the mission is to fly and fight. What makes the Air Force special? Moseley said, by way of example, that the US Army is the finest land combat force ever assembled, and the US Navy has no peer on the seas. They each dominate a single domain. The Air Force, he observed, is master of two domains: air and space. If the Air Force comes to dominate the realm of cyberspace, as is cited in the new USAF mission statement, you can make it three domains.
The Air Force is launching an effort to develop a new stand-off missile with a range of 1,000 nautical miles, or 1,150 miles, that would eventually be used for both air-to-air and air-to-surface missions.