Sixty-eight percent of all airmen entered service after 9/11, so they have never known an Air Force that was not involved in wars. The high operational tempo of the last decade is the new normal for today’s force, said CMSAF James Roy during AFA’s Air Warfare Symposium in Orlando, Fla., on Feb. 24. Airmen want to know how they are going to keep their edge, said Roy. “That’s a good question, because I think that’s the question of the future,” he said. Senior leaders have to make sure they are up to the task and figure out how to ensure airmen remain motivated, said Roy. “I know we can do it. We made the transition after 9/11 very, very quickly, and airmen have shown us they are willing to produce every single day,” he said.
The Space Force is playing midwife to a new ecosystem of commercial satellite constellations providing alternatives to the service’s own Global Positioning Service from much closer to the Earth, making their signals more accurate and harder to jam.
