JOINT BASE SAN ANTONIO-LACKLAND, Texas –
Vice commander of the 25th Air Force, Brig. Gen. James Cluff, along with Brig. Gen. Peter Lambert, Air Combat Command director of intelligence, discussed the future of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance during a panel discussion at the annual Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association’s Alamo Ace conference Nov. 15 in San Antonio.
“The future of ISR is here, and it’s our Airmen,” Cluff said in his opening remarks. “What we have to do is harness the power of technology that will make our Airmen better able to produce the data and information that our decision makers need to win our nation’s wars.”
An example of this is a technical sergeant assigned to the Air Force Technical Applications Center who is uniquely certified as a Cloud Computing Security Professional, Cluff said.
“What he has done in his job at AFTAC is save $2 million in his first year by working with partnerships across the enterprise to better tag data,” said Cluff, adding that the team tagged and uploaded four years’ worth of data that is now available for numerous agencies to use.
“This is a young man who has the passion and the smarts to take some of these advance technologies and enable warfighting,” Cluff said. “When I say the future is here, he is an example of that future.”
In addition to the Airmen, Cluff said it is also important to understand the importance of networks in future operations.
“I think we need to stop talking about the information age and start talking about the network age. The network age is today,” he said. “We see it in the IC community, in the work we have to do to network information, to fuse information. You see it in your daily lives. We are all networked. It is going to be how we harness those networks that will make us succeed in warfare; it’s going to be how we target our enemies’ networks that lets us succeed in warfare.”
Another capability Cluff addressed is cyber. The synergistic power that can be obtained through harnessing ISR, cyber, electronic warfare and information operations into the information warfare arena is absolutely going to be critical to future warfighting, he said.
The 25th Air Force provides full-spectrum decision advantage to warfighters and national leaders through globally integrated ISR, electronic warfare, information operations, and strategic command and control.
The three-day Alamo Ace event was an engagement opportunity for intelligence and information technology professionals, as well as leaders from the military and civilian industries, to discuss collaboration, innovation and integration. The more than 1,600 professionals in attendance focused on cyber, ISR, medical IT and education or training career fields during keynote presentations, panel discussions and information-sharing.