The Air Force’s intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) enterprise 13-to-15 years from now will be a network-centric environment due to potential adversaries moving to anti-access/area denial (A2/AD), according to a deputy chief of staff.
Air Force Lt. Gen. Larry James, deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, told an audience yesterday at an Air Force Association breakfast in Arlington, Va., that the ISR enterprise from 2015-2030 will be about solving problems by grabbing any data source available.
“It’s an environment where you honestly don’t care about what your source of data is,” James said. “You’re data agnostic (and) you’re sensor agnostic but you have the ability to reach into the network, or reach into the cloud, and gather the data you need to get as an analyst to solve the problem that you’ve been given.”
The Pentagon has played up the role ISR will have in future combat. After about 10 years of being able to do as it pleased in permissive environments, potential adversaries like China and Iran are gearing up for a potential United States presence by focusing on preventing entrance to a space (anti-access) or restricting movement within a space (area denial).
“However, if you think about future conflicts we may face, a non-permissive environment (is) more than likely in the airborne domain,” James said. “So, frankly, we may not have…the ability to fly Predators and Reapers and the ability to put those in harm’s way in those types of environments.”
General Atomics develops the MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles.
James added in future A2/AD combat, each of the Air Force’s domains–cyber, space and airborne–will be critical to successful ISR missions.