JOINT BASE LANGLEY-EUSTIS, Va. --
U.S. Air Force Gen. Mike Holmes, commander of Air Combat
Command, and his wife, Sara, visited the 363rd Intelligence Surveillance
Reconnaissance Wing here Sept. 5, 2018.
Holmes met with senior leaders and attended several
briefings to learn more about the 363rd ISRW’s mission, Airmen and innovation
initiatives.
The 363rd ISRW, the first and only one of its kind in the
Air Force, focuses on precision targeting production, special operations ISR and full-spectrum analytical support for tactical warfighters.
During his visit, Holmes spoke about the importance of the
Airmen assigned to the wing, who conduct reach-back operations or are technically
deployed while completing their mission at their permanent units to assist service
members with boots on the ground overseas.
“We will never have enough people to provide every air
component commander with the amount of (intel Airmen) they would like to have," Holmes said. "We
have some specialized problems that as their people rotate through, they
wouldn’t have time to find that specialized answer, so we’re going to continue
to do reach back. It helps us have people focus on a specialized
problem that might apply to more than one combat command, and it lets us take
people and focus them on our most important problem today. Where if they were
all in (U.S. Air Forces Central Command), AFCENT would never let them work on a
(United States Forces Korea) problem, but because they’re in a reach back, they
can go where the problem is that day.”
As adversaries continue to field increasingly advanced
technologies, the Air Force continues to innovate to stay ahead of the curve. Through
innovation, the wing uses its analytical capabilities and targeting expertise,
to pull meaningful patterns from collected intelligence data to produce
made-to-order targeting products for operational and tactical-level warfighters.
“Innovation fits into everything the 363rd is trying to do,”
said Holmes. “The 363rd is on a three-year journey of inventing itself as
another ISR wing, so everything they do, they are figuring out how to do. There
aren’t checklists they can go to; there aren’t books that tell them how to do
it. They are reinventing it as they go.”
ISR serves as the global eyes and ears on adversaries, hence
why it is one of the Air Force’s five enduring core missions. In 2017, the Air
Force was tasked with nearly 25,000 ISR missions, collected 340,000 hours of
full motion video and produced 2.55 million intelligence products.
According to Holmes, the 363rd ISRW plays an important role
in helping fulfill the Air Force’s overall mission to dominate air, space and
cyberspace.
“Over the 15 years of the kind of war we’ve been fighting
in the middle east, we’ve focused on doing what they would call dynamic
targeting, where the target is identified by a ground commander and we would go
hit that target that day,” Holmes said. “Traditionally, when you’re going to
fight against a peer adversary — Russia, China — a rouge nation —Iraq, North
Korea — the scale of what you need to do is so much bigger that you have to do
more precise targeting. The Air Force traded away the people that knew how to
do that, so we can support that kind of fight, and now we’re rebuilding that
capability to solve problems without worrying so much about what platform we’re
using or which people we’re using to do it.”
In addition to speaking with senior leaders, Holmes thanked
Airmen for their hard work and dedication to the mission, and encouraged them
to continue innovating. He also personally recognized Airmen for their actions in support
of the wing’s mission by presenting his commander’s coin to them.
“I admire the 363rd for inventing what they do as they
go — there’s a certain kind of person that is comfortable with that, and they
appear to be,” Holmes said. “I think they’ve done a great job on starting to
figure out where we need to go with our targeting processes in the future, they
do more than that. Also, with analyzing new threats, it’s helping us get ready
for shifting this fight and competition against peer adversaries, and I just
say keep going, don’t look back.”
During the visit, Sara also met with spouses to discuss the
key spouse program and efforts to improve Airman and family resiliency within
the 363rd ISRW.