Sea Control - Sea Control 337 - Why Aviators are the Greatest Threat to Naval Aviation

Episode Date: April 17, 2022

Links1. "Winged Luddites: Aviators are the Biggest threat to Carrier Aviation," by Noah Spataro, Trevor Phillips-Levine and Andrew Tenbusch. War on the Rocks, January 10, 2022.2. "Regaining the High Ground at Sea: Transforming the Navy's Carrier Air Wing for Great Power Competition," by Bryan Clark, Adam Lemon, Peter Haynes, Kyle Libby and Gillian Evans. Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 2018.3. "US Navy Fly Two Remotely Controlled EA-18G Growlers in Test Flights," by Graham Allison. UK Defense Journal, 5 February 2020. 4. "Midrats Episode 614: Big Navy vs Reconnaissance & Strike Capable Drones." USNI Blog, January 22, 2022. 5. "The Rise of A.I. Fighter Pilots," by Sue Halpern. The New Yorker, January 24, 2022.6. "The Future is Unmanned: Why the Navy's Next Generation Fighter Shouldn't Have a Pilot," by Walker Mills, Trevor Phillips-Levine and Dylan Phillips-Levine. CIMSEC, February 25, 2021.

Hey, folks, it's Jared. Walker Mills is your host today, and he has a trio of aviators, Noah Spataro, Trevor Phillips-Levine, and Andrew Tembush, discussing the future of naval aviation. This episode was edited and produced by Jonathan Selling. We are still looking for additional audio editors. We're happy to provide you some very basic training materials and instruction in a low-stress environment.

So if you're interested in finding a way to contribute to SimSec and add to your resume and personal skill set, please send us an email with your resume to seacontrol at simsec.org. Finally, I want to take the opportunity to recommend our partners in the SimSec Podcast Network, the Bilge Pumps. You can find Alex, Jamie, Drack, and a pile of Iron Brew bottles wherever you download your podcasts. On that note, I'll turn it over to Kimbersman. You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International Maritime Security. Welcome back aboard the Sea Control Podcast from the Center for International Maritime Security.

Today, we're talking with Colonel Noah Spool Spataro, an unmanned systems operator in the Marine Corps, Lieutenant Commander Trevor Mrs. Phillips Levine, a Navy F-18 pilot, and Lieutenant Commander Andrew Kramer Tenbush, a naval flight officer. I'll be addressing them using their call signs for the podcast. I'm your host, Walker Mills. Today, we're going to discuss their recent essay in War on the Rocks, Winged Luddites, Aviators are the Biggest Threat to Carrier Aviation. Spool, welcome aboard. Can you introduce yourself a bit more formally to our listeners? Yeah, thank you. I'm a Marine, Colonel and Pilot. I started in the direct air support

control community and then I've been flying, managing and commanding remotely piloted aviation for about a decade and a half. I completed the National Cyber War College program last year and and i'm currently on the joint staff doing joint all domain command and control awesome thank you mrs how about you can you introduce yourself hi walker thank you for having me uh as previously mentioned i'm a fat pilot and i've been in the navy for about 15 years the recently just completed deployment and uh in the process of moving to start my new job over at uh strike at the nautic which is naval air warfare development center where i'll be working with the close uh close air support schoolhouse over there. Awesome. And finally, Kramer, same to you. Tell us about

yourself. Yeah, Walker, thanks for the invitation. About 14 years in the Navy, weapons systems officer at FAA team. This was in VFA2 Bounty Hunters with Mrs. where we joined up for this article. Previously was in the Top Gun course in 2014, was an air integration instructor at Strike, N5 of Nautic. And then kind of non-traditional tour, went over to the UK to help them start up their carrier airway and carrier strike group and develop their collective training system. And then back as a department head and now at the U.S. Naval War College in Rhode Island. Awesome. And before we start, I'd just like to remind our listeners that the opinions presented here are solely our own and should not be taken as representative of any of the

institutions that we're associated with. Mrs., to start out, can you kind of give us some context on what the state of naval aviation is in regards to unmanned systems? Where are we now? Where are we today? Sure. So as far as unmanned systems within naval aviation, the most recent milestone was the MQ-25 completed carrier landing trials last month. As far as the fielding of other UAS platforms or unmanned aerial systems there's the navy feels numerous group one group two and some group three include um and then we also have the fire scout the mq-8 bravo which is flying from small boys or the ddgs um but the the main evidence for the article was that uh this despite the navy embracing unmanned systems and uh various other you know throughout the force

both surface uh undersea as well as um you know limited fielding of the the smaller groups of uas from other platforms, we have yet to field a capability in carrier aviation. And right now, that capability is undergoing trials and hopefully will be fielded in the next five years. Can you just clarify, when you say groups or groups one, two, three, what does that mean in regards to unmanned systems? The group one, group two, you think of group one, like a Puma, if you're familiar with that system, which is a handheld UAS that you can throw into the air, used with special operations and some ground forces. Group two, think ScanEagle, which is kind of an aging platform by AeroEnvironment that's working its way out, but it provides

longer loiter, higher payloads, and actually the person who would be more of an expert in the system would be Spool, says he's worked with these systems quite a bit. Group three, one of the larger, I think it's below 1,250 pounds of payload. Don't quote me on that, less than 250 knots and less than 18,000 feet. So Spool, so you have a little bit of a different perspective because you're more familiar with the Marine Corps unmanned systems. So what's going on in regards to unmanned systems in the Marine Corps and in the other services? Yeah, just to pick up where he just left off is I kind of grouped these capabilities in three different categories and the terminology is loose, but the group two and below are really, you're more tactically

oriented. And oftentimes, most of the time, three as well, group three, they're close to the operators. They're typically line of sight systems. And so when you're talking most group three systems, kind of like the Marine Corps has got previously used Shadow and is just now transitioning away from RQ-21, there's a pretty significant tail to that. So, there's a lot of logistics required. You get a lot of the challenges of what you would have with your larger systems, but you you're very limited on on your range the the group two and below are man portable typically they they pack up transport pretty quickly and easily in many cases on the low end of group three you're talking you know two three hundred pound airplanes and below then they're what's really

changed over the last several years is the ability to do vertical takeoff and landing. And so the Marine Corps has capitalized on that. And there's a number of activities that are going on. Years past, Flux Rotor is an example. And then more recently, the VBAT experimenting on Marine Expeditionary Units. And so that vertical takeoff and land removes a lot of that launch recovery equipment and and that logistics tail that to move it all around and so it gives you a lot of versatility what it also does it allows you to to get to move the asset and capitalize on the endurance that you have closer to where the fight's at and so you can get more reps and sets if you need to adjust the platform or use it differently change out sensors refuel get it back

Like Marine Special Operations had been using a number of these different types of platforms, particularly on the small end from basically 55 pounds and below for many, many years. And I helped work through several urgent needs statements in the early days for quadcopters and all kinds of advanced opportunities with there too. And a lot of that was just because of the speed of change in small compute and optics and specifically cameras and laser pointers and all kinds of new opportunities. So where the Marine Corps is at right now also is kind of a transition period with large UAS. So when we're talking about the bigger platforms,

we're in the process of building a remotely piloted aircraft community. So they're pilots remotely piloting a 10,000-pound airplane. the mq9a and so what's interesting about that is when when you have a very long endurance airplane that can carry a significant load then you have power and a ride for any number of different capabilities that you want to integrate so that the marine corps specifically is kind of in a as i was saying the transitory uh you know period here as we as we still understand and and and design the force for the the significant opportunities in in the middle class or the middle group of capabilities that i was just talking about capitalize on the smaller groups

as well and tie to loitering munitions and uh tactical sensing down at the at the lowest level So think about like an Air Force in a box kind of concept where you can bring all these specific capabilities that you might need and you can pick from the menu and use them as you need. And then also integrating and repurposing our Marine Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Squadrons to really capitalize on the opportunities that the Air Force has been using for many, many years, about a decade and a half with capabilities like the MQ-9 Alpha. Do we know how the unmanned systems, especially the larger Group 5 systems, are going to be integrated into something like the Marine Expeditionary Unit or these other marine organizations? Or is that kind of still in process? there's a lot that is is being worked and discovered right now uh on those and and i'll i would just offer that because of the flexibility of the platforms the flexibility of uh payloads in that you know swap in a ride that i was kind of talking about when you've got the power and you have the size weight you know power so the swap and then you have the speed range and

persistence than how we previously can constrain ourselves in a mental model of something being attached. You have to have ownership. It has to be on your, say, ship, amphibious ship in order to be able to task or maintain that capability. That's not always the truth, and particularly when you have very long endurance and so what we found over time is that there's there's significant challenges you've got to give up there's a lot of compromise you have to be willing to accept if you want to constrain something to the deck cycle the upgrade cycle for a ship itself to get the communication systems and whatever else you need the emissions control just understanding what it is that you can have there and then the limit on endurance particularly so the range from

the boat itself so i just i say that because it's it's one of those things that you know marines oftentimes think about is well if i don't own it i can't task it and i can't use it well with with your very large unmanned systems i'd offer you a quick look at the mk9b and you're talking about a platform that can fly for 40 plus hours if you design that airplane to come from a boat you would need, well, you wouldn't be able to get the same endurance with even reasonable payload. So there's trade-offs. I don't know if that answers the question or if that kind of helps maybe. Yeah, that absolutely does. I think that's a lot of interesting stuff to think about. Kramer, so I want to shift over to you and ask if you had any thoughts that we didn't cover on

unmanned systems in the Navy and also ask if you saw anything that was going on in the UK when you were working with the Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier, if they're integrating any kind of unmanned systems into that that you were aware of? No, off of their Type 45 and Type 23, ScanEagle is definitely a major component for the ISR piece there. But necessarily, I don't personally have much experience with UAS and the Navy on the American side, just have been seen. The way that they integrated those capabilities would definitely be an added benefit. And I would say right now, from an outside perspective, obviously no longer being

at the Naval Aviation Warfighting Development Center. However, we did just go through in VFA-2 and CVW-2, the carrier air wing integrated training detachment back about a year ago now. There was no representation, nascent representation there of how we would integrate those systems had they come on board, yet being looked at, at least introduced to the operational carrier air wing. And that is definitely something where I see an underrepresentation going forward of how those systems can provide a capability of commander. So another question I had for you, Kramer, is, you know, I think I've seen a couple of places in probably USNI proceedings, the argument that the kind of the future of the NFO could be, I think the common analogy is like

quarterbacking unmanned systems. I mean, do you think there's anything to that, that the kind of the backseater can lead on some of these unmanned systems in a way that maybe a pilot in a single seat aircraft wouldn't have the bandwidth to do? No, I think Mrs. would probably be best to comment on this with his specific knowledge regarding UAS and the overall systems. But I personally believe that's more trying to find a job for the NFO than necessarily identifying the requirement and then from there identifying what resource needs to be placed to that requirement. I personally do not think that validates the role of the NFO or the weapons systems officer going forward. I think it would be operators, whether they be on a ship or from right now,

if you were trying to introduce those capabilities from a fifth-gen aircraft that was also being supported by unmanned aerial systems, where a lot of benefiting from the artificial intelligence that is introduced both in the fifth gen aircraft as well as the UAS, reducing the number of humans in the system there that are airborne especially, and then supporting with the current model with the operators being there on the ground. Makes sense. Okay, so Mrs., over to you. Do you have thoughts on using the NFO or the weapons officer as kind of an unmanned quarterback, Or is that also trying to find a job for someone rather than looking at the requirement? The way I kind of look at it is like, what do you want the future force to look like?

And we are trying to do more with less people. So you are creating a requirement for additional humans at the combat edge, so to speak, if you are saying that they're going to be there quarterbacking. So one of the things that now that does that mean that there isn't value to having somebody who's dedicated to operating them? There is there is absolute value to doing the contention that we have, though, is that it doesn't necessarily need to be in the NJAT or the or the person at the combat edge. That person can be a little bit more removed. Or if you are going to put a human up there, then use the automation, use the technology in order to reduce the requirement to just, you know, that person. So one of the stopgaps that we had was like, you got to understand that one of the arguments they're using right now is that they're saying that autonomy, artificial intelligence is not mature enough, and we can't trust it enough in order to execute the mission forward. And so we need somebody to constantly monitor, constantly assess what they're doing. And the argument is that the pilot will probably be task saturated.

And so you need somebody dedicated to that. But when you look at what preliminary research is showing, both from NPS and other universities, when they're looking at swarming behavior, connectivity requirements, so forth, it's the amount of communication, the amount of monitoring, what they call is benevolent neglect, I believe is what it's called. But basically, having somebody constantly inserting and monitoring could potentially be detrimental to future systems. And then the other part of that is that the communication required to monitor or to influence them is actually relatively minimal. I believe the MTS study showed that they retain connectivity up to a 90% comms loss. So at that point, do I really need to have somebody close, which is the reason for having somebody at the combat edge? And the answer is potentially not. So we should probably utilize platforms as interim stopgaps, utilize the platforms that we have and modify them so they can be more effective in controlling these intelligent agents until we eventually step to a portion or step into the future where we have enough trust in these systems to trust them to do what they need to do without somebody necessarily being there monitoring every second of it.

So one of the things that we talked about in the paper, which was put forth by regaining the high ground at sea, which was a think tank study. One of them was it suggested like using current fighters that are in production, like the F-35, the F-18 or E-18 or the E-2D advanced Hawkeye, which are currently in production, modify them so they can do this. And this could carry us for another couple of decades. And in fact, we have modified, I think they perform a test at Pax River recently where they modified E-18 ground where control another F-18 that was flying remotely. I want to ask Spool, you know, at the kind of the heart of the essay that you guys have written, what's the biggest obstacle to the widespread or more widespread adoption of end-man systems in naval aviation and Marine Corps aviation? A big part of the article was really talking about embracing this cultural aspect of the challenge of adoption. And the reality is, you know, this is within any paradigm shift that you see. And just think of the early adopters all the way through, you know, crossing the chasm of adoption into the main adopters and getting all the way to the laggards, who are really the ones that will not buy that new device, that new phone.

They won't replace their rotary phone until they can no longer buy one. And so there's quite a bit of that in some Navy culture, particularly when you look at ship systems, because there's so much of a ship, particularly when you look at the large and very long existing ship plans, the ship building plans, we're talking 40, 50 year plans, and trying to sustain these platforms. And then if you look at major acquisition programs, particularly for aviation, you're looking at typically a 10 to 15 year development cycle and then a 25 plus year sustainment cycle. So when you develop a new platform that is now butting up against changing culture and how we train and how we think about a fight, trying to work through a paradigm shift and do capability development and fielding and getting our funding right, and what's so different? Well, I would offer the biggest difference, and it goes back to a couple of things that Mrs. was talking about. Those things that he talked about are possible because software is defining everything. And those capabilities that are delivered happen because a little bit of code changes. So when your material capability, the performance that it delivers, the capability that it provides can change with a little bit of code, but the way we certify airplanes and the way we certify our control systems has not changed with the times.

That becomes really, really challenging. And that's while also facing. So that's kind of the mechanics of it and the reality of getting a system certified and deployed and working through the training and retooling the force while also trying to deal with the culture. And so one of the most interesting things, and we touched on this in another interview, but just the basic idea of this cultural challenge lays out in very clearly in the choice for warrant officers to fly the MQ-25. And I think that's a really important thought thread, because where it leads you is it's a play. It very much plays out cultural decisions. But by choosing warrant officers, you will not have the leadership that we then put in the Pentagon in future years, maybe 20 years from now, 30 years from now. You won't have that leadership that's transitioned from other communities, that is now an admiral, deliberately building programs or in the MARC or Syscoms, building and delivering these capabilities. You just, you cut it off at the knees. We could have fantastic warrant officers flying these things. That's not the point. The point is, is that we're not investing in our future leadership that is going to take the risk and own these programs in the future.

And by making that decision now for a capability that is still in early test and development, we're looking at probably 20 to 30 years before that next major decision could be made. And we see that with the wings that the Marine Corps chose after it went to the Naval Heritage folks and got cleared. They're double anchor wings. They're not single anchor wings, even though they're remotely piloting an airplane. They sign for the airplane. They fly it. It's not autonomous. But these are the kind of choices, cultural choices that we're making these days.

So I want to shift over to Mrs. and Kramer and ask, in the navelation community, what's the attitude towards unmanned systems? I mean, do you guys feel that there is resistance or is it kind of mixed? You know, how do your peers and your leadership kind of see the unmanned aviation? I'll start off and then I'll go to Kramer. I think it's mixed. There was definitely, after we released the article, you could see some of the bitter roll that came about from that. But honestly, with walking around on a carrier, most people were complimentary. So I think people are open to it. And we kind of touched it on the last podcast. And I think it was brought up by one one of the hosts that one of the things that we brought up which is lacking is iteration people are killing the systems before we can iterate before it can get in the hands of warfire before we can like truly be like okay there's this is a cool capability it doesn't work for these reasons

let's let's see how we can fix it um and one of the things that the host had brought up was well yeah so if it never gets in the hands of warfire then it will never people will never know it they will never know or will never know about they'll never trust it um and that's kind of like a leadership thing so he referred to as a dual loop and what we kind of see is like once people kind of talk about it kind of get a little bit understanding to it they're actually relatively open to it and there was an article recently that was released by the new yorker with the overall theme in that article is that once once aviators are introduced to it once they kind of understand it they're more willing to accept it but you have to introduce it to them and i don't

feel like that that's happened as much in history as it is happening now. Thankfully, it's happened now. So I believe right now that you have a lot of people on the fence, and then you have a few people who will actively resist. And unfortunately, some of those people are potentially in positions that can influence the direction of future procurements and acquisitions. I think this has hit on it perfectly. The big thing is trust. I was just recently introduced that there's a whole department and faculty assigned here at the Naval War College to trust on autonomous systems. And the New Yorker article was absolutely fantastic in laying out just exactly that topic. A common phrase often said, even by Mrs. and myself on the ship or even on

the flight line is, the aircraft, the system, the ship are trying to kill you. And that is, it sounds simple, but that is a mentality mindset that's instilled in you from your initial flight training. And it provides a lot of robustness in terms of ability to respond to an emergency or emergency situation or something that's unexpected. However, unless we're introducing the capabilities of unmanned systems to our aviators, who are then going to become leaders within the Naval service, we're not going to have that integration of capability to the highest extent that we could adopt it. And we're going to be unfortunately handicapping ourselves going forward. And that's a part of that we laid out in the article. I think that the New York article is

a fantastic follow-on read if somebody has read our article to dive more into that, specifically looking at the DARPA alpha dogfight trials. And then as Mrs. said, more specific, trying to measure how that trust of a system is actually, could be quantified and then used for specific improvements within the community. But overall, unless the aviators are introduced to unmanned aerial systems at an early stage in their career, I think there's going to be some resentment harbored towards them just from that fact of the trust rather than what they can actually provide an augment. And unless there is some mandate that requires us to continue increasing the amount of integration we have from unmanned aerial systems, I don't personally think you're going to see that

naturally by aviators themselves. There are so many different ways that we could look to integrate these systems. And the things we were promised, I'll not say promised, but were originally briefed about what MQ-25 could do, or you see what the X-45 and X-47 were able to do, and they did not cross that, quote-unquote, valley of death from the acquisition community at DARPA, or sorry, from DARPA into the actual operational acquisition community, were receiving, or at least being told they were receiving a platform that is not necessarily as capable as those more basic, those earlier systems provided. One of the primary critiques I think we saw from the article was that maybe we weren't fully in the know or fully briefed going forward. But there is something

to say about providing enough information where you want to stay in an organization that is going to continue to progress. So unless we have trust and thought that the service or the organization that we're a part of is moving that direction, it's hard to maintain the buy-in when you see that resistance from your peers. But at the same time, as Mrs. said, I've personally, in direct contact, only received complimentary interactions about the article and the thought-provoking nature of the discussion we've started. Some of the other comments that were just indirect via Twitter or whatnot were the ones that I think we're talking about more negative. But again, all the direct commentary has been positive.

Overall, I had very positive feedback from a lot of folks and to include the constructive criticism. And I, you know, warmly welcome that because that's the whole point of of writing and and really deeply thinking through this. And I think that was that was part of what motivated this team to put this together and that we see the tremendous opportunity. We see tremendous need to educate and create these exposure events, build trust, and what we saw, and one of the things I specifically did was dig into the justification documents, the research development documents, our docs, and make sure that what was being said with the outside voice matched what was being put in the documents that get you money and allow you to spend money against capabilities. And just what I found is that it's not that leadership

was intentionally putting things off or lying or anything like that. It's just the reality of what it takes to build a capability and the amount of time and effort, the money that has to be put in, laid in, and how that has to align with your justification documents and your requirements, the reality that we saw as we dug into this was that additional capabilities specifically to arm to put an MQ-25 or something like it further out at range so it can really be complementary to the manned system is a lot farther out than what we think is probably realistic for what the need is.

And so just trying to rectify that and trying to figure out not just what the opportunities are, but how can we move faster, understanding that we don't have unlimited time and we definitely don't have unlimited resources. So I definitely want to say we'll make sure to put the links to the New Yorker piece and the other interview that y'all did below the podcast. And I also want to kind of follow up with a little bit of a more pointed question, just to kind of clarify, because it seems like the kind of impetuous, the inspiration for the essay was that you all felt like there was cultural resistance to unmanned aviation. But then at the same time, it sounds like you got positive feedback. So I wanted to kind of, you know, is it a where is the resistance coming from?

And is it resistance from kind of a career perspective? You know, anytime there's a like you said, a paradigm shift, you know, there's going to be some winners and losers on a career level. Is it a lack of trust? Is it simply that the process is going slower than you think is necessary? I just wanted to kind of clarify, when we say resistance, what does that look like and where do we think that it's coming from? I'll start that and I'll let Mrs. and Kramer jump in on it. I think, at least for me, the resistance is what is playing out. What we're seeing is decisions that are made, like the ones that we've already talked about. Those are deliberate moments where you snap the chalk line and say, okay, from this moment forward, we're going to man, train, and equip a specific way. We're going to deploy in a specific configuration. We're going to fund specific activities to include test and evaluation. And if you're not familiar with what it takes to arm a manned weapon system and the test and evaluation that is required, because a lot of this relates back to reducing risk for catastrophic failure to 10 to the minus ninth, that's pretty high.

And so when the resistance that we're seeing is that those all the decisions that we've seen made so far do not accelerate the capability. And and that might be a misrepresentation, but that's that's the impression and that's what the data is showing. And so when you compare to the Lattice story as an example, and you compare to the adoption of tanks versus cavalry and machine guns and all these examples throughout history to include aviation, the adoption of naval aviations, you know, is a value add to the battleship. That's kind of the problem set that we're talking about. And I think, you know, Mrs. and Kramer have some good thoughts on this one, too. Go next here. as so as we were talking about earlier it it depends there we've definitely i've definitely met people who um are not very keen on the systems um one of the things that any using the

u.s air force as an example anybody can type in and if you type into google search and look up air force remote pilots and the uh the awards um specifically combat awards you'll see that there was a there was a big upset within the within the branch as far as trying to give certain combat awards to rpa pilots and what the capability that that system brought those people were contributing was very was very powerful and was very meaningful to the war effort however but because they weren't physically in the location and because people weren't familiar and understood how the paradigm shifted with remotely piloted aircraft and what those people were contributing there was a lot of resistance to recognizing them for the efforts that they're putting in

as far as within aviation it's like i said you know like we've mentioned before like once people are exposed to it once they're once they learn about it they're they're much more open to it but they there has been a couple of instances in which we have met our peers sometimes superior in which they are they really discount the systems and the potential that they can bring and that basically that manned aviation is, specifically manned fire aviation, strike aviation, is the premier organization and it will be going forward for the foreseeable future. I think Mrs. and Colonel Spatero hit it on the head there. The only thing I'd add or really emphasize from what Colonel Spatero said is purely the outcome.

So the level of integration we've seen to this point, What we're being told is going to be the primary mission set of MQ-25 as well as where it's being placed in the aviation command and logistics wing in terms of administrative chain of command and man, train, and equip. And then finally, what we've been briefed to this point on are the design requirements for the NJED going forward. So really, the outcome is the resistance that we see. And again, that outcome ultimately responsible and accountable for the folks that are previous majority of previous strike fighter pilots that are now in the leadership positions in the flag levels. And the other thing that I kind of wanted to bring up on that is a time period, is a time piece, right? So we are, NJAD is being constructed as a future of naval air power. And that's going to, we're talking about 2035 and beyond timeframe for initial fielding. And then it's going to carry us for foreseeable several decades afterwards.

So in that gap, we are essentially handcuffing our decisions and our platforms. And to us, it appears that we are not providing enough space to integrate for any leaps or any incremental improvements in the technology. And right now we're seeing pretty rapid advances. And so we are handcuffing ourselves in a way to, or at least not handcuffing, but steering the decision-making process into where things are right now. And we're not really taking into account where things are going to be in 2035. And I think an earlier SimSec article that we wrote, Walker, you know, kind of touched on that subject as well. And sorry, can you just clarify what NJAD is? So NJAD is Next Generation Air Dominance.

There are two different programs that kind of talk to each other. One of them is the Air Force and the other one is the other effort is the Navy. with all in mind that that we've talked about kind of in terms of obstacles and and issues um with the project moving forward i did want to kind of leave you an opportunity to say you know with all that in mind are you optimistic do you think that the the establishment is is going to be able to make these changes and in order to kind of rise to the level and and widespread adoption and incorporation of unmanned systems into um not only the acquisition but incorporation into kind of concepts and, and war fighting that, um, that we think needs to be done? I think there's tremendous

opportunity. Uh, I I'm a glass half full kind of guy in general, but you know, it's, it's not just the challenges that we've talked about here. There's some, there's some real issues that we need to get our, our arms around. And I think the people are, are that start point. So I'm very optimistic because I believe that we have the talent, we can attract the talent, and we can train and get after the capabilities that we want. But most of what we've talked about today isn't really talking about what AI for mission systems or where autonomy can really take us. and and so i think there's tremendous opportunity ahead and the air force seems to be a lot more aggressive about experimentation in this space but i'm i'm still concerned i'm very hesitant

in what you know what will it what will be the impetus that's the concern is you don't want the impetus for adoption to be forced because of massive bloodshed and so you know i'm very hopeful that that we don't have to go through that again um you know in a new generation of air warfare that where man and unman can really complement each other instead we have to we have to face what the opposite of that looks like and uh there's a study i'll just leave you with this thought there was a study that was done that was different than the alpha dog fight and i this really impressed on me that the potential here in that an intelligent agent against a scripted agent so the best scripted fighter pilot that you can make and beyond visual range engagements

the intelligent agent outperformed by 3200 percent so if if we had to see that if we had to witness that, if we had experienced that for carrier aviation or for any of our strike fighter communities, that would be very difficult to recover from in a short period of time, which then makes you put you into most likely a very protracted war. And so I would like to think that we can get in front of that and understand it and experiment and model and sim and really get after that trust, little teaspoons of trust to build the buckets of trust that we need. I, too, am optimistic. I mean, if you look at the initiatives, if you look what the chief of naval operations is putting out and the initiatives that are his priorities, I think we are saying the right things. Only time will tell if, you know, they, you know, it becomes actions and deeds at this point.

But overall, I believe, at least from it, from what I've heard, what we've seen, that the force appears to be moving in the right direction. Yeah, I would just say that I'm optimistic as well, purely by the response we received. And again, to those that reached out on some of the comments to the article with criticism and constructive criticism that we may have may have not been fully in the know or understood what was going on. I think the biggest part of this is starting that discussion and then seeking or seeing that positive response from our peers, specifically in the mid-grade officer level where Mrs. and I have received that. That is very promising. But again, the timeline that Colonel Spatero clearly identified and illustrated there is the concerning part to us. We saw operating in the South China Sea, the endurance limits of the manned air wing and the number up and the mission sets that we were being asked to hold at risk. We were not often able to meet those. And therefore, the benefit that these systems, we see that they could provide and the timeline that it would take to acquire them is the concerning thing to the operator going forward. But again, in terms of attitude from our peer group, that has been a great thing that has come out of this article for us to appreciate and to actually see. And hopefully this continues the conversation going forward.

I just want to leave one last thought on this, too. We put a lot of effort into taming the message because the intent was not to piss anybody off. we want to make sure that it was very clear that this is we're trying to think through some very hard issues that have a lot of emotional charge behind them and and that's why the cultural topic is such an important one to work through so i just thought it was important to to call out first that these are just our opinion dudes trying to think through hard things and trying to share what we think we've discovered and what we think you know is actually being transmitted and see if possibly there's a better way to work through this. No, I'm certainly very glad you did. And

I'm, you know, the writer in me wants to respond to Kramer that, you know, once you'd never read the comments, but it sounds like y'all were able to get some kind of some good and some constructive feedback. You know, I remember first hearing that this was something that was going to happen and being excited about that and hearing some of the ideas and then seeing it in War on the Rocks and that, you know, you got other people wanting to interview you and hopefully some follow-ups and good projects. So that's, you know, exciting, at least, you know, from where I sit outside that community. And so unfortunately, we're just about out of time for today. But before we go, I do want to give you all a chance to just say, if you're, you know,

if you guys are working on anything currently and if there's anywhere that you want to be found online that uh that our listeners can find you online so starting with you mrs right now i'm not working on any active projects um but um if uh if readers or listeners want to get in touch with me they can reach me on twitter at tpl or excuse me tp levine 85 over to you kramer no i know this this thought project is has really inspired me to dig into more of uh what's commonly referred to is a larger group as the ethics of lethal autonomous weapon systems and and the trust piece as well both from the comments we received from our article as well as the new yorker article so this may be something i continue to pursue here at the naval war college in addition to my other

course of studies awesome it's cool yeah so you can find me on linkedin noah spitaro and you can find me on Twitter at Cogent RAS, Robotics Autonomous Systems. So yeah, feel free to DM me as well as far as what I'm working on. Not much right now other than work. That's consuming all of my time and the rest of the time that I don't have as well. I'd like to thank my guests, Noah Spataro, Trevor Phillips-Levine, and Andrew Tenbush for talking to us today. Take care. © BF-WATCH TV 2021 The wines of white and red Oh, put it on the shimbo now

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