Editor’s Note: Over the last several years, convergence has become a commonly used term to capture the combination of various new technologies and their potential to transform missions and applications in ways that were previously unknown. Nearly all the military Services are looking at how artificial intelligence, machine learning, new methods of determination location, and cloud-based information systems can help them not only do their jobs more efficiently and effectively, but can help leap-frog U.S. capabilities ahead of adversaries across the globe. Air Force Magazine has been tracking this shift in the Air Force, where the new 16th Air Force is focused on the convergence of cyber, electronic warfare, and information operations. Air Force and Joint Staff leaders spoke at the recent Billington Cybersecurity Summit about the way the Air Force is changing the way it thinks, trains, and fights to “win wars in the information age,” according to news reports.
“It’s a synergistic cocktail” when information operations, cyber, and EW are brought together to obtain information advantage, said USAF Lt. Gen. Bradford J. Shwedo, the Joint Staff Chief Information Officer, using the OODA (observe, orient, decide, act) loop as an example. “Most people, when they look at it, they think about their own loop, and the need to get it smaller and smaller, because the faster loop wins. But they forget there are two loops … The enemy has a loop too, and you can also win by making his loop longer and more lethargic.”
Read more in Air Force Magazine’s story, “Air Force Must Change the Way it Thinks to Win New Age of Information Wars.“