Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Dave Goldfein addressed a standing room only crowd during a multi-domain battle contemporary forum at the Association of the U.S. Army Annual Meeting and Exposition at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center here Oct. 4. He was one of a panel of presenters made up of senior leaders from all the services as well as one from the Australian Army.
Held every October, the AUSA Annual Meeting and Exposition is the largest land power exposition and professional development forum in North America. The three-day conference featured briefings and forums on the readiness and modernization challenges facing the joint force today.
The forum Goldfien participated in focused on the multi-domain battle concept, which is based on the realization that America’s enemies will challenge U.S. supremacy across multiple domains.
According to Goldfein, success in future operations is tied to the concept of multi-domain and multi-functional integration in air, land, sea, space and cyberspace.
“As a joint force and team, the military needs to focus on collecting enough information so commanders can make decisions and move forces at a pace the enemy can never keep up with,” Goldfein said.
He illustrated his vision of using a multi-domain, multi-functional team approach using a scenario about a personnel recovery mission in which a member is injured in hostile territory.
The first step, he explained, is someone would call it in. The signal would reach headquarters via satellite to communicate information about the injured member. Real-time data would be collected, including details about the injury, blood type, and equipment required to perform the rescue. He went on to say that at the same time, the Air Force is moving and cataloguing where the enemy is and calculating what needs to happen to ensure success of the recovery mission.
“That shows air, land, sea, space, cyberspace – all coming together to do a single mission in a networked approach,” Goldfein said. “Ladies and gentlemen, I would submit to you that we already know how to do this, but now it’s a matter of taking it to the next level.”
