The military is on the cusp of a fundamental change in the intelligence realm, said Adm. Gary Roughead, Chief of Naval Operations. After many years of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, combatant commanders now have access to nearly real-time intelligence, giving them huge advantages on the battlefield and allowing them to make decisions quicker than ever before, Roughead told reporters Wednesday during a meeting in Washington, D.C. “When we look back on the two ground wars, . . . the biggest change I have seen has been the fusing of intelligence and operations in a way that we’ve never done before,” said Roughead. He added, “The ability for intelligence to be in the hands of the operators and the decision-makers [in] better forms and more quickly . . . has been truly extraordinary.”
An important U.S. Air Force E-3 Sentry AWACS command and control plane was among the aircraft damaged in a March 27 Iranian missile and drone attack on Prince Sultan Air Base, Saudi Arabia, people familiar with the matter told Air & Space Forces Magazine.