Air Combat Command boss Gen. Hawk Carlisle will convene a week-long summit of the services in March to discuss the future of the close air support mission, he told reporters during a Feb. 12 roundtable at AFA’s Air Warfare Symposium in Orlando. “The real purpose is to talk about what we’ve done [in CAS] and what we’ve learned” over the past decade-plus of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, Carlisle said, and adapt the mission for potential future combat scenarios, such as contested or anti-access environments. Working groups from the USAF, Navy, Marine Corps, and Army will meet and go over a range of subjects from CAS tactics and procedures to data and information sharing arrangements for the first few days, then will conduct and interim out brief with Carlisle and his counterparts in the Army and Navy. Those findings will then be presented to the service chiefs by week’s end, he said. “Everything is getting wrapped around the A-10 … this will try to get back to the mission, what we have learned and what we think the gaps and seams are,” Carlisle said. “And we’re hoping to solve a lot of this stuff.”
The Pentagon has concluded a new agreement to buy laser-guidance kits that turn rockets into drone-killing weapons. BAE Systems and the Defense Department announced a framework deal of up to seven years for 25,000 Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System guidance kits annually for the U.S. military.