Robbin Laird
Recently I talked with my colleague Brian Morra, who served in the USAF and worked in defense industry for several decades. We discussed the challenge of how to enhance “the fight to night one force” in the short to mid-term.
He started by citing an example which highlights how the force can leverage its C2 and ISR advantages mentioned earlier by Secretary Wynne to shape new con-ops. The case is of the USAF working with the U.S. Navy in ship defense – both combat and commercial – against the Houthis in the Middle East.
As he noted, the Houthis have been using a wide range of strike capabilities against shipping. The dilemma of using high-cost weapons to defend against much cheaper projectiles has been a key problem.
The USAF came up with a con-ops innovation to deal with the problem. F-16s operating in the Middle East have been using their LITENING targeting pods to identify targets and to kill or degrade those targets using laser guided weapons hitherto used in air to ground operations. The aircraft can carry weapons for higher value targets but have used a much lower priced weapon to kill many of the Houthi’s projectiles.
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