WASHINGTON (AFNS) —
Only days before his tenure as secretary of the Department of the Air Force comes to an end, Frank Kendall offered a vision Jan. 13 for the security challenges the Air Force and Space Force could face in 2050 and what is needed to properly respond.
The perspective was laid out in a formal report entitled, “The Department of the Air Force In 2050,” and is studded with qualifying language. The report concedes “enormous uncertainty about the events that might transpire over the next 25 years, about the technologies that will be available by then, and about the threats to national security that will exist.”
Nonetheless, the report is emphatic that China will remain the most formidable adversary to the U.S. and its allies. It is unambiguous that “threats to our national security will still exist, and those threats will include both conventional and nuclear adversaries with the capacity and the will to challenge the interests, the values, and even the existence of the United States and its allies.”
And it warns that, “By 2050, if not well before, the Air Force and Space Force will not be competitive unless we make substantial improvements in how these forces are equipped, trained and operated,” the analysis concludes.
While Kendall included qualifiers in the document, he was direct on two points: “The Air Force will still be the centerpiece of resilient U.S. power projection in the future,” he said. “But if we are going to be competitive, we have to make substantial improvements; we’re going to need a lot more resources.”
Kendall made the analysis public during an appearance at The Center for Strategic and International Studies, an influential Washington think-tank. The report carries Kendall’s imprint. In fact, after considering options for how to produce the report, Kendall said, “I just ended up writing it myself. This is pretty much the Frank Kendall report.”
And while he did not say it directly, the report’s focus and priorities are clearly intended to shape future thinking about the department and how it continues the modernization Kendall triggered as secretary with the Reoptimize for Great Power Competition effort.
“Constrained budgets, reluctance to retire obsolete platforms, reluctance to embrace new technologies and exploit them fully, reluctance to limit our overseas commitments — all of these things can have a negative impact on our ability to get to where we’re going to need to be to be competitive with China in particular.”
Many of the transformations necessary to meet the challenges in 2050 are well underway, Kendall said. An aggressive move to use space is one of the most important, he said.
“We’re going to need a much bigger, much more capable, much more powerful Space Force,” Kendall said. “… That’s a transformation that’s already started and we’ve made some pretty good progress. … We also need a lot of counter-space capabilities. … We’re going to have to do something to counter the militarization of space that China has embark upon largely to target our joint force and largely to deny us the capabilities to do the same things to Chinese forces.”
The reason, he noted, is clear.
“The joint force won’t be able to go anywhere or do anything unless we are able to protect it from targeting from space. We’ve got to get that capability developed,” he said.
A failsafe and robust nuclear deterrent must be available, he said. The department must continue to refine and expand the use of artificial intelligence and cyber capabilities. That effort includes developing Collaborative Combat Aircraft, or CCA, that do not have a crew but are meshed with crewed aircraft such as the F-35.
“We are committed to fielding these and at scale,” Kendall said of CCAs. “This is not an experiment or a prototype. We’re going to put these in our force structure. Let’s get going and that’s where we’re headed.”
Kendall also spoke to continuing efforts to modernize the Air Force and Space Force and what that effort means.
“The idea of a next generation air dominance family of systems is valid,” Kendall said. “The work we’ve begun with CCA will continue and become a much bigger part of the force by 2025. There’s no question that various forms of AI are going to continue to grow.”
Modern warfare will demand it, he said. Combat in the future, he said, will be “highly automated, highly autonomous, action at long range, precision, [and where] space is a decisive theater.”
There will be more information available but also far less time to act.
“Response times to bring effects to bear are very short,” he said. “We’re going to be in a world by 2050 where decisions will not be made a human speed. They’re going to be made at machine speed. … Factions of a second matter and human beings can only handle so much data at a time,” he said.
Both Kendall and report agree that maintaining a nuclear deterrent is important. But unlike 50 years ago when Kendall was an Army officer stationed in Germany on the frontline of the Cold War, the world is more dangerous today since more adversaries are fielding those weapons of mass destruction.
“The broader issue of nuclear stability keeps me up at night,” he said. “It’s a different world when China, Russia and the US all have a thousand-plus nuclear weapons in the field. It gets more dangerous as other countries proliferate weapons. It gets more dangerous as people think about using tactical nuclear weapons … for military objectives.”
Kendall was also asked about plans by the incoming administration to make the government more efficient. While he agreed “it was fruitful ground to plow” he offered insights drawn from his own experience across 50 years of federal government service.
“You’ve got to do it professionally, you’ve got to do it with a deep understanding of what you’re actually trying to do,” he said.
“The past attempts at being more efficient, and I’ve been through some of them, generally say this: We’re going to be more efficient, I’m taking 10% of your budget, be efficient. Job done. That’s a cut. That’s not an efficiency exercise,” Kendall said.
He added later in the session, “People coming in need to realize there’s a lot to learn; that some of the impressions they may have, the assumptions they are making aren’t actually valid. The one about waste for example. That’s there’s all this efficient around waiting to be reaped. That’s there’s money piled up in corners that we can save if we just pay attention to it. They’re not true.”
Kendall stressed there are two paths in the DAF’s future.
“There are two futures, and they are bookended by one in which the 2050 report is fulfilled and one in which a number of other factors prevent that from happening,” Kendall told the CSIS audience.
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