How Air Force Tankers, Transports Can Survive In High-Tech War

By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR.

“We're looking at airframes of the future that will have common cockpits, advanced propulsion systems, (and) signature management," Miller said. The goal “really is understanding (how) to modify or build an airplane that allows us to operate through that threat environment."

AFA: Air Mobility Command's tankers and transports would be big, slow targets in a major war, but without them, most of the US military can't move. The imperative to fly fuel, supplies, and troops in the face of high-tech threats – from anti-aircraft missiles to cyber attack – is forcing AMC to change its approach to aircraft upgrades, communications networks, and what they ask airmen to think about every day, its new commander told reporters here this morning.

AMC wants to stimulate innovative thinking by all its people, Gen. Maryanne Miller said, but “not so much on innovation for innovation's sake” – they have to be “much more focused.” On what? “It needs to be on our resilient and agile response,” she said, “being able to operate in that contested, degraded, or operationally challenged threat environment.”

There are a lot of buzzwords in that sentence, but they add up to a major change in mindset for strategic transport and logistics. While roadside bombs have ravaged ground convoys in Afghanistan and Iraq, US pilots and sailors can usually assume that they'll arrive alive. Until last year, the joint Transportation Command – overseeing Air Mobility Command, Military Sealift Command, and the Army's Surface Deployment and Distribution Command – didn't even factor into its war plans that an enemy might shoot down planes or sink ships. But Air Mobility Command is already under constant attack in cyberspace, and advanced adversaries such as Russia, China, or even Iran have long-range missiles to challenge US dominance of the air and sea – what's known as an Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2/AD) strategy.

Transportation Command is now well into a congressionally-directed Mobility Capabilities & Requirements Study (MCRS) that “is looking at all the things that you're describing,” Miller said when I asked about such factors. TRANSCOM is working with the Pentagon's independent office of Cost Assessment & Program Evaluation (CAPE) and the Air Force, she said, with AMC providing extensive data on how it's operated over the years. Due out “later this fall,” she said, the study will look at the evolving threats and make recommendations on how many tankers and transports AMC needs, and of what kinds.

Full article: https://breakingdefense.com/2018/09/how-air-force-tankers-transports-can-survive-in-high-tech-war