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Air Force is drafting a proposal for a new concept of operations for theater intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, Lt. Gen. David Deptula, deputy chief of staff for ISR, said Tuesday in Washington at AFA’s annual Air & Space Conference. The problems with command and control, and the need to get more bang out of all the services’ ISR assets drove the Air Force to seek executive agency for unmanned aircraft, Deptula said. However, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England’s decision to create a series of joint committees for UAVs, rather than make the Air Force the executive agent, didn’t address all the ISR issues, Deptula said. “There’s more work to be done,” he said. (Air Combat Command boss Gen. Ron Keys agrees and says the situation is in the hands of committees, whose work he likens to “cul-de-sacs down which good ideas are lured, then quietly strangled.”)
Since President Donald Trump first unveiled his “Golden Dome” missile defense initiative in late January, much of the focus for it has been focused on space—how the Pentagon may deploy dozens, if not hundreds, of sensors and interceptors into orbit to protect the continental U.S. from missile barrages. But the Air…