Reshaping 8th Air Force

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  • 5th Bomb Wing Public Affairs
MINOT AIR FORCE BASE, N.D. (ACCNS) --   Computer information is one of the new focus areas helping to reshape 8th Air Force, the numbered Air Force commander said when he visited Minot Air Force Base recently.

Lt. Gen. Bruce Carlson spoke to base Airmen about the importance of information operations, the future of the B-52s and other changes being made to the numbered Air Force, based at Barksdale Air Force Base La.

Recently, 8th Air Force absorbed the Air Force Network Operations and Security Center, and General Carlson said the move was prompted because 8th Air Force continues to evolve. Part of that transformation was to move the Air Force information operations under one single command.

The 8th AF has been evolving over the past three years, and we have gone from being a single bomber numbered Air Force to the global effects NAF, the general said. Part of that evolution has been to move all of the Air Forces information operations, intelligence collection, command and control and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance forces into 8th Air Force as well as the bombers.

The general said it was a natural evolution to move command and control of the Air Force network under 8th Air Force because computer systems are the core business of the numbered Air Force right now. Theyre in charge of computer network operation; getting computer network operations command and control makes sense, he added.

Because of all the information processed through computers, General Carlson said, Airmen must start thinking of the computer network as a weapons system and take command of it as they would a bomb or missile.

Twenty years ago, we didnt have any computers in the Air Force. Today, anything we do is affected by a computer and, consequently, its a weapons system, the 33-year veteran said. If we dont treat it as a weapons system and a virus or a worm gets in there, we can be out of the airlift business. [When] we treat it like a weapons system, then we begin to have command and control. [We can keep] the rest of the Air Force functioning because we have developed that discipline standard.

Information operations are gaining dominance in all levels of combat planning and execution. General Carlson said 8th Air Force learned a number of valuable lessons from Operation Iraqi Freedom, including how to get bombs on target faster and how to disrupt enemy networks.

[In OIF], we learned how to integrate kinetic, bombs on target operations with non-kinetic operations in a much more effective and efficient manner, the general said. Really talented people that know a lot about non-kinetic operations have to impart that knowledge to people who know how to drop bombs and break things. We learned how to do that better then weve ever done before.

The general also said the Air Force now has more combat capability using the lessons learned from OIF.

We now have a group of people who know how to integrate non-kinetic effects and we know how to call upon them to get them into the fight, he said. We [also] developed non-kinetic weapons and now have weapons systems that we can use to attack the enemys non-kinetic stuff.

As computer network systems grow, information assurance will become a huge part of enemy deterrence, according to the general.

Everything we do is affected by our computer networks. People realize that if theyre going to come after us, they need to come after us on our networks and in space because these are two things we really have an advantage in, he said. In the future, a competent enemy will come after us using space [technology] and our networks, so we need to be prepared for that. Thats one of the missions of 8th AF to prepare for that attack on the network.

The 5th Bomb Wing just deployed more than 300 people and about six B-52s overseas in support of OIF. General Carlson said even though the Air Force is drawing down deployed forces following OIF, he expects the tempo of the bomber mission to increase as senior leaders start to understand the importance of the aircraft.

There were many years where the bombers were seen as the folks who sat nuclear alert, and many of our bombers were developed and brought into the inventory without any conventional capability at all, he said. Weve changed that around, but it is a very expensive and complex system, and it took a while to get that conventional weapon capability in the bomber force. The demand for the bombers will increase over time as we continue to upgrade and modernize our force.