Mark Gunzinger, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said multi-mission, battle management and air and ground surveillance technologies have significantly matured since the E-10 days.

The report, entitled “Force Planning for the Era of Great Power Competition,” was published earlier this month by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), which I have previously called a “think tank’s think tank.” Its main conclusion is that while the U.S. military has focused on preparing for high-end conventional conflicts like the First Gulf War, China and Russia have been crafting strategies to achieve their ends without fighting those wars.

The big question the Air Force must now answer is whether the legacy JSTARS has enough service life to give the Air Force time to develop a systems-of-systems approach for doing the ground surveillance mission, said Mark Gunzinger, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. The technology is ready, he said, but it will take a big shift in thinking for the service to move from considering platforms to a concept of operations.

From Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments: “ ... a “more of the same” planning approach will not create a future force that is capable of projecting power effectively into threat environments where “every operating domain— outer space, air, sea, undersea, land and cyberspace—is contested.””

A new report from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments urges the Pentagon to shift its force planning to account for new war-fighting strategies adopted by China and Russia.

The United States Air Force should consider shifting its balance of its strike forces from fighters to long-range bombers.