The nascent AirSea Battle partnership between the Air Force and Navy will take place on three levels, says Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz. Cooperation “between the nation’s two strategically oriented and globally postured military services” will be institutional, conceptual, and material, he said Tuesday in remarks at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. It will be “institutional” since there will be formal agreements on collaboration, he said. It will be “conceptual” in terms of strategies on “how Navy and Air Force systems will integrate and operate together,” he continued. And the partnership will be “material” via “interoperability among current systems and integrated acquisition strategies for future joint capability,” he explained. The construct will “amplify our joint effectiveness, making it that much more difficult for potential adversaries to keep pace,” asserted Schwartz. (For more, read AirSea Battle from Air Force Magazine’s August issue.)
In Part 2 of a series exploring the Software Acquisition Pathway that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recently made mandatory, we look back at how the acquisition reform has its origins in problems with the F-35.