The military needs to rethink the way it develops and approves strikes in combat and possibly restructure component commands as the Air Force-led joint all-domain command and control effort takes root, said Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. The Advanced Battle Management System demonstrations this year, in which dozens of aircraft and sensors feed into a cloud-based picture of a battlefield, shows that the established way of selecting targets and fires is too slow and cumbersome to be effective in the future. Under current doctrine, a Joint Targeting Coordination Board comprised of several leaders, including external agencies, multinational partners, and subject matter experts from various specialties, develops targeting priorities. But if the military can bring together its sensor and shooter information instantaneously, “We’re not going to be able to have boards with humans in the loop that actually sit down and kind of validate targets,” Brown said during a virtual National Defense Industry Association conference on JADC2.

Real-time, highly-detailed airfield status around the Pacific theater was one of the standout features of the Valiant Shield/Advanced Battle Management experiment run in September, Pacific Air Forces chief Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach reported at an AFA Mitchell Institute streaming event Oct. 27. It's the single feature he would most want to put in place right away. Wilsbach said allies and partners are eager to get involved with ABMS, but one of the biggest challenges will be creating a seamless and obvious software-driven way to share information with those allies who are cleared to get the data.

As allies in the Pacific start receiving and operating their own F-35s, Pacific Air Forces Commander Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach is advising them to take full advantage of the jets' fifth-generation capabilities right from the beginning. They should not follow USAF's example, he said, in which the Air Force used the F-22 like an F-15C for years before fully exploiting the jet's fifth-gen capabilities.

If the U.S. Space Force is going to be successful in a domain that makes the Indo-Pacific area of operations look small, speed is key. That’s why Chief of Space Operations Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond said the newest military service is positioning itself to play a leading role in the Defense Department’s digital transformation efforts. The service also wants to rewrite long-standing space doctrine, which thought of space capabilities merely as a tool to make the other domains better. “It’s no longer good enough to just think about space as a benign domain, … you have to treat it as a warfighting domain, and you have to look at what else you can do besides just making the other domains more effective,” Raymond said during an Oct. 27 National Defense University webinar.

Air Mobility Command needs to develop a force prepared for a high-end fight, advance new capabilities beyond the traditional role of the heavy aircraft, embrace the role in ferrying the joint force forward, and ensure the nation’s nuclear mission can be fueled and ready, the new leader of the command said. AMC boss Gen. Jacqueline D. Van Ovost, who took over the command in August, used a keynote address at the virtual Airlift/Tanker Association conference on Oct. 27 to announce AMC’s new strategy, which follows in the footsteps of new Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr.’s “Accelerate Change, or Lose” directive. “Now we need to focus and accelerate the command into the future,” Van Ovost said. “Required in this change is greater integration across the services and increased collaboration with all stakeholders to deny our adversaries any seams to exploit.”