In this article
The Department of the Air Force defines Great Power Competition as a global contest involving rival nations with far-reaching interests and influence, extending across traditional and emerging domains like space, cyberspace, and AI.
This unprecedented scope presents the USAF with complex, technologically demanding challenges. As the Air Force's recent guidance starkly warns, "We are out of time." To maintain its edge against near-peer competitors, the USAF must embrace cutting-edge tools that offer enhanced clarity, efficiency, and adaptability in strategic planning and execution. These innovative solutions will enable the Air Force to navigate the intricate demands of modern global competition and maintain its preeminent position.
Winning the Tech Race
GPC accelerates technology development, especially for systems that can operate across domains, process vast amounts of data, deploy weapons systems rapidly, or allow sustained operations.
The Air Force warns, "Great powers have the resources to field advanced military technologies that increase the tempo, range, precision, and destructive capacity of military operations."
The Air Force is in a race where cutting-edge software and algorithm refinements could provide decisive advantages. While the DoD built its approach on antiquated processes focused on counterterrorism, Great Powers have emerged by using more unconventional, agile resourcing to invest in cross-domain initiatives.
For the last two decades, the US military’s strategic environment was marked by a significant focus on counterterrorism and counter-insurgency operations to combat non-state actors engaged in asymmetric warfare. One key aspect of this period was the relatively limited technological competition with our adversaries. While the U.S. did face some advanced IEDs and other threats, for the most part, it maintained overwhelming technological superiority over its adversaries. This technological overmatch is no longer a given when assessing Chinese and Russian capabilities in the Pacific and Europe, respectively.
Over the course of the last two decades, China sharply increased its military budget and ‘reorganized its defense industrial sector to improve weapon system research, development, acquisition, testing, evaluation, and production.’ These efforts have resulted in new intermediate-range ballistic missiles, hypersonic missiles, and fifth-generation fighter aircraft, to name only a few capabilities our adversaries have recently developed. To maintain our dominant footing in the Pacific and NATO regions, these threats must be quickly countered and technologically surpassed.
To maintain a decisive advantage in tech development, the Air Force can turn to the private sector for commercial off-the-shelf (COTS), rapidly deployable software solutions that enhance the speed, accuracy, and effectiveness of complex funding decisions. Advanced software solutions can significantly augment the Air Force's ability to make rapid, data-driven funding decisions in the high-stakes technological race of GPC.
An environment of disparate, siloed, and static databases places an undue burden on planners. In the face of rapidly evolving threats, it takes too much time to collect the right data, meaningfully organize it, and use it to make enterprise-wide funding decisions for large, intricate technology and weapons portfolios. Software that automates data collection and organization frees up time for the analysis necessary to make the best decisions.
Frameworks that incorporate value, cost, and risk while integrating qualitative and quantitative data can enable rapid prioritization of initiatives, optimized resource allocation across multiple domains, and agile portfolio management, ultimately accelerating the delivery of critical capabilities to warfighter and enhancing overall readiness for Great Power Competition.
Agile Decision-Making: Countering Uncertainty and Tackling Competing Priorities
The shift towards reoptimizing for GPC presents significant resourcing challenges for the Air Force. These challenges span across multiple domains and require careful consideration of both immediate needs and long-term strategic objectives.
The unpredictable proliferation of capabilities by adversaries means that the threat landscape can change dramatically within a single PPBE cycle. The pace of technological advancement in areas such as artificial intelligence or hypersonic weapons creates significant uncertainty, which makes predicting the most impactful technologies and their strategic consequences extremely challenging. One solution to this problem is the ability to easily create and compare a multitude of scenarios, allowing planners to rapidly assess different potential futures and their financial impacts on resource allocation. This would enable the Air Force to quickly pivot to alternative, readymade funding plans to quickly counter emerging threats.
Another primary hurdle is the constraint of existing Congressional budget allocations. As the Air Force states, "Reoptimizing for Great Power Competition does not change our FY24 or FY25 budget requests." This means that initial reoptimization efforts must be accomplished within current fiscal boundaries, requiring difficult decisions about resource allocation. The Air Force “will work within funding flexibilities Congress has provided to implement near-term actions, although reprogramming actions are possible.” This underscores the need for creative, agile financial management to meet new strategic imperatives.
Underlying the challenge of limited budgets, a critical tension exists between maintaining current readiness and investing in future capabilities. The Air Force acknowledges this problem: “The tension between improving today's readiness and investing enough to create meaningful advantages in future fights is a key consideration for this entire effort.” This balancing act is further complicated by the speed of our adversaries’ technological development. Substantial investments in these emerging technologies are essential for maintaining a competitive edge, yet they must be balanced against the need to sustain and upgrade existing systems.
Air Force leaders face a tough dilemma: they can’t wait for corresponding budget increases to reoptimize and restructure for GPC, nor can they afford to simply invest in near-term readiness at the expense of future capabilities or vice versa. They must make hard choices about how to apportion increasingly limited resources. This showcases the need for data-driven budget and portfolio optimization. Using centralized data to analytically prioritize 1-N lists, modern planning COTS solutions can offer a clear and concise picture of which portfolio items should receive strategic funding cuts or increases, depending on the mission’s goals and requirements. This approach ensures that – to the greatest extent possible – funding decisions are defensible and fully aligned with strategic objectives, thereby maximizing the overall value of investments.
The Road Ahead
As the United States Air Force navigates the complex landscape of Great Power Competition, the need for innovative, agile decision-making tools has never been more critical. The challenges posed by near-peer competitors in multiple domains - from cyberspace to outer space - demand a level of strategic foresight and resource allocation precision that traditional planning methods struggle to provide.
The Air Force's stark warning that "we are out of time" underscores the urgency of adopting cutting-edge solutions to maintain technological superiority and strategic advantage. Modern software tools offer the potential to revolutionize how the Air Force approaches its most pressing challenges, from optimizing its technology portfolios to reimagining its basing strategy in the Pacific.
By leveraging advanced planning and budgeting capabilities, the Air Force can:
- Rapidly prioritize initiatives across complex, multi-domain portfolios
- Optimize resource allocation in the face of budget constraints
- Model and evaluate multiple scenarios to enhance strategic agility
- Align investments with long-term strategic objectives while maintaining current readiness
- Make data-driven, defensible decisions that maximize portfolio value and performance
As the technological race accelerates and the operational landscape evolves, the Air Force's ability to make swift, informed decisions will be a key determinant of its success in Great Power Competition. By embracing innovative planning solutions, the Air Force can ensure it remains at the forefront of military capability, ready to meet the challenges of today and tomorrow.
The road ahead in Great Power Competition is fraught with complexity and uncertainty. However, with the right tools and a commitment to data-driven decision-making, the Air Force can navigate this landscape with confidence, maintaining its position as the world's preeminent Air and Space Force.
