AF ISR Agency Speech – AF 60th Anniversary

Good evening, everybody, and Happy Anniversary!  You sure know how to  put on a celebration out here.  I want to thank Maj Gen Craig Koziol, current members of the AF ISR Agency and its alumni, the Freedom Through Vigilance Association, for the invitation to be here with you tonight, and for the opportunity to share a few of my thoughts on this occasion.  It’s always great to get out of the Pentagon, but being here in San Antonio is an absolute blessing!! 

AF ISR Agency’s legacy has spanned more than half a century and, as such, occupies an important place in our Air Force history.  It’s nigh impossible to overstate the value of what AF ISR Agency brings to air, space and  cyberspace operations today as well as the extent to which the Agency’s strategic importance will continue to grow.  I cannot think of a  better place to be to celebrate our dual anniversaries -- the 59th  anniversary of AF ISR Agency and its predecessor organizations,  and the 60th anniversary of our United States Air Force – so thank you again for the invitation to come and participate in your celebration.

Tonight I’d like to reflect a bit on where we’ve come from, where we are, and where I think we’re heading both in terms of the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance business we’re directly involved in, and with respect to our Air Force as well. 

AF ISR Agency’s beginnings are closely tied to the birth of our Air

Force.  As America emerged victorious from World War II, our leaders

recognized that national security required both an Air Force and continued

intelligence operations.  One month after the Air Force was

established in 1947, Colonel Richard Klocko and others were entrusted with laying the groundwork for a new, separate air force major command charged with the responsibility for processing and reporting special intelligence

information.  Their efforts came to fruition in October of 1948 with the

establishment of the United States Air Force Security Service.  This

new major command was tasked with conducting extremely sensitive cryptologic missions and with providing communications security, or “COMSEC” for our still-fledgling Air Force.  USAFSS and its follow-on

organizations have provided critical intelligence services in every major conflict since.  From enabling UN air and naval interdiction of the North Korean advance from Manchuria to Wonsan, to pioneering information ops in the 21st century, AF ISR Agency and its predecessors’ efforts have been

integral to defending our nation and its vital security interests. 

Regarding the extent to which Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance, or “ISR” have advanced since these early years, it’s difficult to fully comprehend the quantum technological leaps we’ve made in moving from the days when we sent observation balloons wafting over the battlefield, to today when we are unequivocally the world’s vanguard in ISR.

As ISR airmen and professionals, we recognize and embrace the ability to rise above the constraints of terrain, literally, and to transcend the strictures of the horizontal perspective; whether from a hot air balloon or a low-earth orbiting satellite, we have refused to think or to operate in less than three dimensions.  And with the advent of this notion of “cyberspace,” you might say we’ve planted our flag in a fourth dimension as well...

In fact, as expansive as the list of 20th Century advancements in ISR  is, I submit it can be succinctly characterized as resulting from our tireless efforts to capitalize on and exploit that third dimension and in so doing, also pushing technology to new limits every step of the way.   

There is an old chicken and egg debate about whether new technologies  precede or follow the vision for their use; in other words, whether doctrine is created to make use of new technology, or vice versa.  My take on the technology debate is that airmen, throughout our history as a  Service and technically even before, have consistently pushed technology to keep up with our expanding vision of what ISR can offer.  Our legacy hinges on visionaries like Major General Doyle Larson, who conceived of the vast necessity for expanding ISR’s capabilities and influenced the lives and personal history of many of us here tonight.  That’s the kind of star our Service’s ISR capability was born under, and that’s the tradition we must  carry forth. 

For the last century we have witnessed a steady progression of  technological advancements, thanks to innovative airmen determined to make the inconceivable become commonplace.  The result is that today, the Air Force makes such seamless use of Speed, Range, Lethality, Precision,

Stealth, and Versatility that we scarcely notice the leaps in technology

these characteristics represent, or the sizeable technical hurdles that

had to be overcome in achieving them.  It’s often not until an opportunity like this event, presents itself that we reflect on and appreciate how far ISR and our Service have come in such a relatively short time.

The technological progression we have witnessed in ISR and the Air Force has been astounding as we moved from balloons and dirigibles, to unmanned aerial systems and satellites.  We broke the sound barrier; we broke free of gravity; and we broke the Soviet bank....We extended ranges until we could pilot aircraft across the globe; and now we can pilot them FROM across the globe! We put a Global Positioning System in space, facilitating our ability to put precision weapons on target.

But Airmen have put technological advancements to work in a variety of

capacities that lie well outside the realm of pure combat-related ISR.

- We’ve assisted evacuation efforts of countless non-combatants from hostile environments, most recently Lebanon;

- We’ve been instrumental in humanitarian assistance operations ranging from providing Tsunami relief in the Pacific, to aiding Katrina survivors at home.

Given all this, it’s not hard to make the conceptual leap to what I would call the second main theme of AF ISR Agency’s nearly sixty years of service to our country: the manner in which we have altered how war is conducted. 

Mind you, the face of combat was irrevocably changed as soon as we began to leverage the air domain.  Where wars were once fought over prohibitive expanses of land and sea, where distance was measured in terms of weeks and months, today we hold the globe in our palm.  We can deliver air, space and cyber effects anyplace, in any weather, day or night, with precision -- and not in the span of weeks, but at the speed of light. 

Thanks to the drive and initiative of the airmen who have put a Century’s worth of technological advances to work for us, we have moved combat to the next level.  I will not tell you that the fundamental nature of warfare has changed, but I am saying that in making the chess board three-dimensional, we have unquestionably changed how the game is played.    

We can directly target all aspects of our adversaries’ systems, from their leadership to their heartland, getting TO there without having to go THROUGH there.  World War I trench warfare will never be repeated.  Nor  will the need to push hundreds of thousands of our men and women forward into hostile lands or across contested beaches.  We have taken command of air, space and cyberspace and have increasingly bent them to our will, always with our eye on this goal:  to project capability, without projecting vulnerability.

In fact, one could argue that we have SO altered the conduct of  Warfare, or certainly the ability of our adversaries to counter us on the traditional field of battle, that today’s enemies may no longer oppose us force-on-force.  They recognize the futility of doing so. 

On the other hand, the terrorists who’ve declared open war on us and our way of life and the very freedoms we cherish, instead are resorting to unorthodox or “asymmetric” means of conducting war.  Suffice it to say... we have learned that they understand Global Vigilance, they’ve been schooled in Global Reach, and not surprisingly, they’ve developed a healthy respect for the meaning of Global Power.  And, they also understand and are fully aware of our tremendous ISR capabilities and are engaged daily in finding ways to counter those capabilities and deny us a tremendous leverage we hold through our ISR dominance. 

The result is that rather than massing on the other side of the Fulda Gap, they are hiding in ones and twos among innocent civilians with whom they blend almost imperceptibly.  Yet, ISR still finds them.  It may take 600 hours of Predator Unmanned Aerial Vehicle time to ferret them out and track them until they are in the open, as it did with the now former Al Qaeda-in-Iraq leader al-Zarqawi.  But that is where the versatility of air, space and cyber power comes into play.  We can lead-turn our enemies’ adaptations with our own. 

Flexibility is not only the key to airpower, it’s also the key to dispatching radical terrorist leaders to the afterlife.  And I’ll guarantee al-Zarqawi not only didn’t know we were watching him from above, he’d never have guessed we were watching him from Las Vegas!...(And they say the odds are against you there...)

The bottom line is that the curtain has not yet come down on what has been  AF ISR Agency’s sizeable role in the development of US military power, and the furthering of our global influence.  Quite the contrary, this might just be the one place where the real estate market shows no signs of going soft...

So, on the occasion of AF ISR Agency’s 59th and the Air Force’s 60th anniversary, those are some of my thoughts about air and space power and on AF ISR Agency’s ongoing and significant role in their advancement.

On all counts,  our nation’s Air Force, and the Air Force ISR Agency have an incredibly bright future, full of challenges and opportunities we will tackle and conquer, just as we’ve been doing for more than a half-century!  Our ISR Agency will be rapidly expanding its missions across the depth and breadth of our ISR functions and intelligence disciplines, from signals, to geospatial, human source-derived, to measurement and signatures.  I see no limits to our horizons, and am indeed excited, no thrilled at the knowledge of what lays ahead for us.

For the Air Force’s 60th anniversary year,  we’ve established a logo, “From Heritage to Horizons,” in part to remind us of the airmen who went before us, with their hallmark indomitable spirits, who tirelessly advanced the yoke of progress forward to where we stand today.

But above all, beyond the acknowledgment of our proud past or the recognition of our infinite future possibilities, these four words subtly but unmistakably spell out the responsibility we have been entrusted with; namely, we are called to forge that linkage between the legacy we’ve been given, and the future we now face.  It is incumbent upon us to take our Service’s ISR capabilities, From Heritage, to Horizons, in the storied tradition of those who did exactly that before us, in order that we might similarly pave the way for those who will follow. 

Happy Anniversary, everybody…and here’s my sincerest wishes for many, many more!  Thank you!

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