Podcast: Understanding Air Power With Former USAF Futurist

The definition of air power has remained the same for more than a century, but the doctrine, tactics and technology continues to evolve.

As the Russia-Ukraine war rages on and the U.S.-China rivalry heats up, Aviation Week invited the former "chief futurist" of the U.S. Air Force, retired Lt. Gen. Clinton Hinote, to talk what the application of air power means today and how it is likely to evolve over the next decade.

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Rush Transcript

Steve Trimble:

Welcome to the Check 6 Podcast. My name is Steve Trimble and I'm the defense editor for Aviation Week.

The theme of the podcast this week is air power because we've got both the Global Air & Space Chiefs' Conference coming up on Wednesday and Thursday in London, and that's followed immediately by the Royal International Air Tattoo at RAF Fairford. Now, a key theme and discussion point at both of these events is going to be the current state of air power.

So we invited on the show none other than Lieutenant General Clinton Hinote who is currently transitioning from his current role as chief futurist of the Air Force into retirement, and we invited him here to talk about the current state of air power, how it's evolving, and the technologies that are coming that are going to change the way we think of air power in the future.

So thank you. I would say General Hinote, but I think you prefer Mr. Hinote right now.

Clint Hinote:

Q is fine. Clint is fine. If people want to give me an honorific, I'm trying to say Dr. Hinote because I'm trying to transition from that identity as a general to that identity as a citizen of the United States. So anything is fine. Clint is totally fine.

Steve Trimble:

Well, welcome from the people who are the citizens of the United States, welcome to that.

Clint Hinote:

Good to be back in that group.

Steve Trimble:

And how many days of retirement have there been at this point?

Clint Hinote:

Well, it's only been in five weeks since my last day in the office. I'm technically still on terminal leave. And so, I'm still very much in that transition state of going from something to something and it's a weird world. So thanks, Steve, for having me on. I really appreciate it.

Steve Trimble:

Well, no, thanks for making the time. I guess, we're now in the future that you were planning for the Air Force before, but before we go into where the future is going, so we wanted to talk about air power and what that means now and in the future. So if I could, it feels like a classroom type question, so I apologize for that, but can you provide your understanding of the US definition, the textbook definition of what air power means or is today?

Clint Hinote:

Well, yes, and it's a lot deeper than just a textbook answer, but Billy Mitchell said it and I actually think Billy Mitchell's definition is the best, and he just said air power is the ability to do something useful in the air. I actually think that's a pretty good definition. It extends all the way from carrying things in a way that would be different than if you had to do it by land sea to fighting in the air and fighting over the air, fighting for control in the air and everything that would be encompassed in that. We typically think of air power in the United States Air Force and five bins, and those bins are the ability to do global mobility, command and control, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, global strike, and air superiority.

Steve Trimble:

In those five buckets are categories of air power, I like to focus on air superiority, which I guess the Air Force often is accused of focusing perhaps too much on, but it is a very relevant part of this discussion. So what's the situation today for the US Air Force with air superiority, both capacity and capability?

Clint Hinote:

So in the case of air, it's just simply can you use the air for military purposes and can you deny the use of air for military purposes? It's two sides of a same coin. And I think it's really important that we remember that because to a great degree, we've been blessed with a time when we haven't had to think too much about establishing air superiority.

I certainly think since we got involved in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and certainly, I remember I was advising the air component commander the first night of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and I remember saying that we had not had a chance to establish air superiority and when the president was asking could we use F-117s to go and try to knock out Saddam Hussein early in the conflict. They came to me because I was an F-117 expert at the time and I said, well, we haven't established superiority in the air, so there is a high risk. And it turns out maybe we overestimated how willing the Iraqis were to fight for Saddam Hussein. It turned out they weren't so willing. But that being said, it was still quite a challenge to think about going into a place that was highly defended and not having done any preparation on it.

In today's world, as we think about great power competition, we are having to return to what the doctrine says about air superiority and about how not only do we have to focus on using the air and establishing the conditions where we use the air, but we also have to focus on denying the air to the adversary because our potential adversaries, both Russia and China, have the ability to extend air power into places we don't want over our friends, over our allies, partners, over our friendly forces, and into our formations. And so, we have had to go back to the basics when it comes to establishing air superiority and focus both on using the air and denying its use.

Steve Trimble:

I hear the term being said more and more from the Air Force and Pentagon type circles, this term of pulsed air superiority as possibly the goal in the future versus comprehensive air superiority perhaps. That's probably not the right term. But how would you define pulse air superiority and what does that look like compared to maybe our expectation built on what we've seen over the last 20, 30 years with US air superiority?

Clint Hinote:

Right. Again, I think this goes back to the basics about fighting over the air. And clearly, we're in a new era from that point of view, but it looks a lot like it did. And so, what we are dealing with now is that we have adversaries who can, and they've actually invested well and they have systems that can deny our use of the air unless we're willing to accept a lot of attrition, and of course we're not. We're not going to go into a fight accepting it attrition. We do understand that attrition will happen if we ever have to truly fight Russia or China, but we're not going to go in and just go into the meat grinder.

So what has happened is that these countries and others have invested in these sets of capabilities. So as we think about projecting that air power into these highly contested areas, what we know we have to do is that's not going to be for all time in every place at every altitude. And what we have had to go back to is remembering that to some degree, superiority in a domain is temporal. Meaning that you can't do it forever, at least not at first. And so, one of the big things that we've been working on is what does it mean to create windows of superiority in the air, on the ground, at sea? And that has become a focus for the joint force, I think that is the right focus. And it is driven by our adversaries capabilities.

Now, that being said, I don't think we throw our hands up in the air and go, "Oh, we can't ever establish air superiority." I just think at first in the very early stages of any campaign when we're having to fight these very capable adversaries, you're going to have to think about it temporally. You're going to have to think about it like you can organize your force to create superiority so that you can do something and then you'll retreat back, or you'll try to regroup, and so it'll be a struggle back and forth for air superiority. But over time, what you hope and what we plan on in our concepts is that those windows become longer and longer, and eventually you do establish something that feels like a durable air superiority, but it takes some time and it takes a lot of work by the joint force and that's where you get these ideas of pulses.

Steve Trimble:

I suppose another way of looking at it might be like where we're seeing right now in Ukraine and Russia as mutual denial to an extent over the battlefield, over the hottest parts of the battlefield. When you look at scenarios, especially involving China, well, in what is the West Pacific for us and how far that is away. Do you think the goal in the future, especially as China is developing and we're developing our own capabilities, is it that pulse air superiority or is it mutual denial as we see today to some extent?

Clint Hinote:

Yeah. I guess, I don't see it as an either or because the definition of air superiority was always we're going to try to use the air to our advantage and deny its use. So that denying use part of it has always been part of air superiority. And even if you can't establish the durable capability to do something in the air over your friendly forces at all times. As we're seeing in Ukraine, the denial part is incredibly important and their ability to survive and deny. Early in the campaign they were able to deny any real durable air superiority by Russia. I think that made a huge difference. It's hard to see how the war unfolds like it has if Russia establishes air superiority all the way to Kyiv, for example.

I think the campaign looks very different at this point. They weren't able to do that. Russia was not able to establish because Ukraine had enough capabilities to deny. And I think that favored Ukraine, because Ukraine is on the side of the status quo. If we go back to borders from several years ago, we think we're winning from a Ukrainian point of view.

So Russia's job is to try to go and project power and take over, and assume control of territory. And because of that, the denial of a use of medium or a domain is good for the defender. I think that would be true in the case of a Taiwan scenario where China is trying to forcibly reunify with Taiwan, as long as Taiwan is able to deny the use of the sea in the air to come at them. Well, that's good for Taiwan. And if we can help Taiwan with those capabilities, that's good for us, especially as our president has said that we ought to be ready to defend Taiwan if China chooses aggression.

So, I'm of the opinion that as we think about this idea of denial, even a state of mutual denial of air superiority, that's part of air superiority and it generally favors the defender and we're generally on the sides of the defender. We're generally on the sides of the status quo across the globe. We generally don't want to see Russia and China, or Iran, or anybody else be aggressive and go and invade peoples. And so, as we are on that side of things geopolitically, I actually think the ability to deny in any medium including the air is a good defensive thing to do. This is why I've talked about helping Taiwan develop surfaced air missiles and surface-to-surface missiles, and surface to maritime missiles. These types of capabilities are very good defensive denial capabilities and could really make a difference early on in a conflict between the mainland China Communist party and Taiwan itself.

Steve Trimble:

With that as the context, there's a lot of investment going into technology for next generation narrow dominance on all sides at this point looking at that future. And in the US Air Force, obviously a lot is hidden behind closed doors, but what we are sure about that future one is that there's probably adaptive propulsion going on because there's a next generation adaptive propulsion program in the budget, but there's also collaborative combat aircraft. And I'm curious how you see that capability moving forward. It does seem like the biggest change I can think of in air superiority technology since the jet era maybe. What are your thoughts about that?

Clint Hinote:

Steve, I actually think you're onto something here. What I am seeing, and it really makes me excited about the future of air superiority is several technologies and concepts coming together at the same time around this idea of what does it take to establish air superiority in the future? And so, the first one I would say is I absolutely believe that this idea of commanding and controlling across the domains, and you'll hear that called JADC2 joint, all domain command and control. Those are both a set of technologies and a set of concepts that I think is going to be key. What that does is it allows you to not think of the symmetric fight in the air where you just have fighter airplanes and fighter airplanes and they're going after it. That's still important. It's still important that we can do that, but if you can use other domains to establish air superiority and to attack the adversary's use of the air, that's good.

There are other technologies I'm really excited about as well. You mentioned adaptive propulsion. I am so proud of the industrial base of our country. And especially, the engineers who have been able to come up with this incredible technology of adaptive propulsion. So you add to that new missile technologies, and I'm especially excited about the ability of our industrial base, our scientists and our acquirers to find ways of using hypersonic missiles to better establish air superiority. I think that's coming. I think hypersonics are a big part of what we're going to need. You're going to use them in all situations. Some of them are going to be boost glides, some of them are going to be ramjet, but we are getting closer and closer to having real hypersonic missile capability.

And then, the last one you mentioned that I'm really excited about is this idea of human machine teaming and the ability for us to manipulate risk with aircraft that don't have people in them and that they're working together with aircraft that do have people in them and that you're able to do the best of both worlds. You're able to use the UNC crew, their aircraft for things they're best at, and use the crew aircraft and the minds of the actual pilots and operators in things that they're best at.

So what I see is that these collaborative combat aircraft are going to allow us to do things like take more risk early in the campaign to do some things that really opens up the ability for the crude fighters to come in and do some real, real effective operations against the adversary that will include against the high value assets that our adversary is putting in the air. They have AWACS, they have tankers, they have long range bombers. I'm not sure that everybody's tracking that, but that's part of air superiority is we can't let them use the air in those ways, and so we have to have the ability to affect them. And so, this combination of all these technologies, JADC2, adaptive propulsion, missile technology, and uncrewed aircraft, collaborative combat aircraft, I see those coming together in a very different way.

Steve Trimble:

And you've mentioned all the sweeping portfolio of investments of all these different technologies that are all being developed in parallel and in sequence to come together at some point. And I guess what's your feeling on whether you're optimistic or pessimistic that they're going to come together at a pace and a time that will be relevant to the application of air superiority in certain situations in the future?

Clint Hinote:

Right. Steve, I'm going to both show you my optimistic and pessimistic sides here. First, my optimistic side, these technologies exist today. Nothing I have talked about so far is not either flying or being put together or being tested. All of these things, thank goodness, are coming together in the technology space. The adaptive engine exists. The technology exists. The technologies for JADC2, they exist. We don't have to go invent new waveforms, they exist. The technologies for uncrewed platforms, they exist, and we're going to have to do a lot of integration and that's coming, but those technologies exist today and we're very fortunate for that. What my pessimistic side is, we have to get out of the way and we have to empower our people.

Here is what I'm concerned about. Is that the lack of appreciation for risk across the military operations' portfolio. So this is what I mean by that. There is no doubt that people inside the Pentagon, in the places that are out there talking with the contractors trying to acquire these weapons for our people, there is no doubt that they recognize the risk of underperformance of cost schedule and performance of the actual contractor. That is true, and we've got lots of good processes for dealing with that.

What I am afraid of is that there's not a concurrent appreciation of the risk that tomorrow's war fighter runs if we don't take some risk now. Meaning, if we don't empower some real movement and some ability to move fast within the acquisition system, and especially to encourage these contractors to move fast. In my new life, I'm establishing relationships with quite a few companies, and I typically drawn to the companies that have really bold visions and they're trying to do something new for the United States, for the Department of Defense. And they come and they are really excited about the technologies and the concepts that they have.

And then they run into the overall system of systems that is the Department of Defense, and they get very frustrated with it, and I understand it. And so, what we've got to be able to do, and I believe this is a square burden on the leaders inside the executive, especially within defense. I also believe it's a burden that the members of Congress have and will take on. I know that several members of Congress feel this right now, but this idea of we've got to create pathways for exciting companies to come forward with new technologies and have a shot. And if we can do that, we create so much more and we have the ability to take advantage of so much more of the innovation that is coming out of all sorts of places, but especially in the innovation ecosystem of the United States.

We are still so blessed with people who are trying new things and attempting to do things we've never thought of. And it cannot be business as usual in the Pentagon. It cannot be business as usual in the authorizing and appropriations committees. We need to move fast. If we don't, tomorrow's war fighter is going to lose. And so, I think people see this, right? And so, the optimistic side in me is that nothing I've mentioned about air superiority is not happening now. We don't have to go and invent the wheel here. We just need to take advantage of the great technologies that exist. At the same time, I do think we need to reinvent how we get it. And in that case, I have seen good ideas come to the fore, but I'm also wary that a lot of bureaucracy tends to fight that new type of thinking, and we're in the struggle as we speak.

Steve Trimble:

Well, I think that's a great way to end the discussion. Unfortunately, we don't have time for more, but there's so much more we could discuss. But again, thank you very much for coming on our podcast. And again, congratulations on your career and your retirement. We wish you best for your future, your personal future as opposed to the Air Force's future.

Clint Hinote:

Well, Steve, thank you so much. I spent 35 years doing the country's business in the Air Force. It was the honor of a lifetime. My hope is that in being able to have conversations like the one that we just had, that some of the things I saw and learn inside the Air Force and in my government service can help the cause on the outside. And so, thanks for the opportunity to have a great conversation.

Steve Trimble:

And so, in this week's podcast, now we're going to be heading out to both of those events I mentioned earlier this week, the Global Air & Space and Chiefs' Conference, as well as the Royal International Air Tattoo. You can read all of our news and analysis from those events on Aviation Week's Show News app. No subscription is required. You can search for it in the App Store or Google Play, or just head to aviationweek.com/app. That's aviationweek.com/app. Bye for now.