AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference Emphasizes Change

With a theme of “Achieving Decisive Advantage in an Age of Growing Threats,” this year’s annual Air, Space & Cyber Conference drew more than 18,000 attendees. The professional development event hosted by the Air & Space Forces Association attracts high-ranking officials such as the secretary, chief of staff and chief master sergeant of the Air Force; the chief of space operations; the chief master sergeant of the Space Force; and commanders from all 11 major commands in addition to industry professionals.

Taking place Sept. 16-18 the at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland, the event also welcomed about 300 GovCon exhibitors. Miss America 2024, the Air Force’s Second Lt. Madison Marsh, also made an appearance to talk about ways that military members can reshape perceptions of what it means to serve.

Modernization Mindset

Modernization was a common theme at this year’s conference. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin talked about how the provisional Integrated Capabilities Command will lead efforts to prioritize modernization in key investment areas while working to establish the new Air Force Institutional Command next year.

“We have to integrate across different system centers,” Allvin said. “We have to think with a systems focus, not a platform-centric focus. … We must be building [holistically] from the beginning … not assembling everything at the end.”

With change comes a need for new skills, and industry can help here, said Lt. Gen. Brian S. Robinson, commander of Air Education and Training Command (AETC). Airman Development Command is establishing a 25-person Enterprise Learning Engineering Center that will work with government contractors on new technologies, learning engineering and methodologies for re- and upskilling Air Force members.

“AETC is charged with producing Airmen who have the functional competencies needed to enter the operational force,” Robinson said. “Our charge is to get those skills and competencies ingrained in our people in an integrated fashion with the entire mission set in mind as early as possible using the best technologies, techniques, and human-centered learning as we can.”

Budget Priorities

Looking into fiscal 2026, domain awareness and counterspace systems top Air Force and Space Force leaders’ wish lists. Although it’s too soon to say how budgeting will shake out, the Space Force – the newest and least-funded military service – needs to make investments that will effectively protect and defend against adversaries, Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman said.

“A new mission requires new resources and new funding, so I don’t have a good answer for what those sources are,” Saltzman said. “But you know, we’ve got $800 billion-plus, and we’re going to have to make the decisions about where we need to invest to make sure we can do all the missions effectively.”

Budget planning relates to another topic of conversation at the conference: the level of acceptable risk. To determine that, the Space and Air Forces are looking at how they structure and use resources.

“It’ll never be the Space Force alone,” Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. Michael Guetlein said. “It will never be the Air Force alone … We are all going to have to fight in a very integrated fashion. That is a completely different way of acquiring our systems, [and] we have to acquire our capabilities from the start, understanding that they are a part of a larger enterprise.”

Other officials emphasized the need to strengthen the defense industrial base. For instance, “when we think about how we reinflate the defense industrial base, part of that is, instead of asking for these exquisite, fully integrated platforms, we’re able to disaggregate and allow companies to focus on a particular thing that fits into a government architecture, so they can be part of our system, air superiority being just one example of that,” said Gen. Jim Slife, vice chief of staff for the Air Force.

With Great Power Comes Great Competition

In October 2023, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall released guidance for the Department of the Air Force’s effort to reoptimize for the Great Power Competition, the global fight for dominance in international politics. This differs from past battles in that “most competition between rival powers occurs below the threshold of open hostilities,” according to the document.

As part of that, the Space Force announced the new Space Futures Command in February.

“What we’re talking about here is nothing less than re-baselining the way we identify, mature, and develop the concepts that will shape our service for years to come,” Saltzman said. “This is critical because there are so many things we need to get right… We face new requirements, new expectations, and new threats which demand that we field new organizations, new training, new equipment, and new operational concepts.”

To be prepared for this new competition, Lt. Gen. Leah Lauderback, Air Force deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and cyber effects operations, stressed the role of cyber readiness.

“When we say ready, it’s ready for competition, crisis, and conflict,” Lauderback said. “This is an era of great powers competing with one another, and if our deterrence fails, then we’re in crisis and conflict. We have to be thinking from a warfighting aspect, whether that’s warfighter communications or if that’s cyber operations, that we’ve got to be ready.”

We can’t wait to see how all these changes play out at next year’s Air, Space and Cyber Conference, scheduled for Sept. 22-24, 2025.