Aerospace Systems Operators at RAF Scampton. Our people remain our greatest strength
variety of bewildering shifts in the character of future armed conflict. Simply put, many of the certainties that have underpinned the RAF and USAF’s force structures, operational doctrines, and acquisition strategies for the past few decades are slowly eroding in the face of new types of threats and challenges. These challenges are myriad. Potential adversaries increasingly seek to exploit a range of new technologies and capabilities expressly designed not only to degrade or complicate the ability of the RAF, the USAF and their coalition partners to operating smoothly in a joint environment, but to contest outright their capacity to exercise full-spectrum dominance on the multi-domain battlefield. These threats represent a problem that is greater than the sum of its parts: not simply an aggregation of new technologies, but the harbinger of a momentous paradigm shift in the character of armed conflict, with profound implications for the two nations’ air forces and their continued ability to function as effective instruments of military power. The magnitude of the problems that the RAF and the USAF will confront in the 21st century is daunting. In consequence, the imperative to find creative solutions to seismic shifts in the character of warfare will represent the single most significant area of continued co-operation between British and American airmen. That co-operation will
assume many forms, the most evident of which will likely revolve around ever-closer integration of technological capabilities, and the sharing of platforms, systems, and intelligence. The collaborative nature of the development of the F-35 exemplifies these trends, as do the RAF and the USAF’s joint training initiatives and their on-going coalition efforts in realworld operational environments. Such obvious manifestations of close teamwork do not, however, exhaust the range of possibilities available to the two services as they pursue shared solutions to common problems. If the historical record is any indication, the most fruitful and lasting form of co-operation between British and American airmen over the next century will transcend matters related to resource-sharing or the closer integration and synchronization of operational practices, important as such initiatives might be. Instead, it will emphasize, as its principal point of departure, a series of sustained efforts to conceptualize, in an analytically rigorous and intellectually honest fashion, the implications for both air forces of the challenges they are likely to face. Only in this way can the RAF and the USAF foster a shared culture of innovation and adaptation necessary to maximize their effectiveness and strategic utility in the 21st century.
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