Overview

Two decades of conflict in the Middle East have shaped the USAF's cultural habits for a specific type of enemy: one who has offered minimal opposition to air, space, and cyber supremacy. The nature of these conflicts has encouraged a creeping centralization of command and control (C2). This shift has been out of convenience. Emerging peer competitors signal the need to decentralize out of necessity. This paper argues that unless the USAF leads a doctrinal shift to centralized command, adaptive control, and decentralized execution, it will suffer increasing paralysis due to A2/AD lines of operation specifically designed to exploit today's centralized control paradigm. In the near future, technological peers will be focused on hitting the USAF where it hurts most. The A2/AD focus on C2 denial portends a formidable challenge to U.S. C2. These changes in the character of war, coupled with a shrinking U.S. defense budget will require adaptive control. USAF culture is well suited for centralization, but a rebalance toward decentralization will be necessary to employ this model. In addition to bolstering our communication and network security, the USAF should use the C2 concepts presented in this paper to commit to the mission command philosophy instead of maintaining the hope that a technophile, brute-force network defense will hold against a technological peer. Hope is not a course of action.This compilation includes a reproduction of the 2019 Worldwide Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community.Airpower's Master Tenant and Anti-Access/Area Denial: Hope is Not a Course of Action * 1. Introduction * 2. Elemental Determinants of Centralization/Decentralization Balance * 3. Battle Networks and Their Impact on Control in Air Defense * 4. A Search For Elemental Determinants of the Centralization/Decentralization Balance * 5. Relationships of the Elemental Determinants and Impact on Adaptive Control * 6. Future Peer in Asia-Pacific Forces Decentralized Control * 7. Recommendations * 8. ConclusionLike the French military which relied upon climbing out of the trenches at Verdun to win World War One and hoped that the next war would be carried out the same at the Maginot Line, the American military which won a victory in the Gulf War also hopes to continue the Desert Storm type addiction during the 21st century... It was little imagined that the blind spot in the visual field of the Americans would just appear [as blind faith in technology to solve all political problems].

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