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.)
The Pentagon’s new counter-drone task force will play a direct role in arming Airmen with new weapons to defend Air Force agile combat employment, or ACE, air bases in austere locations against enemy drone attacks, the director of Joint Interagency Task Force 401 said Oct. 14.
