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Air Combat Command boss Gen. Hawk Carlisle will
convene a week-long summit of the services in March to discuss the future of
the close air support mission, he told reporters during a Feb. 12 roundtable at
AFA’s Air Warfare Symposium in Orlando. “The real purpose is to talk about what
we’ve done [in CAS] and what we’ve learned” over the past decade-plus of combat
in Iraq and Afghanistan, Carlisle said, and adapt the mission for potential
future combat scenarios, such as contested or anti-access environments. Working
groups from the USAF, Navy, Marine Corps, and Army will meet and go over a
range of subjects from CAS tactics and procedures to data and information
sharing arrangements for the first few days, then will conduct and interim out
brief with Carlisle and his counterparts in the Army and Navy. Those findings will
then be presented to the service chiefs by week’s end, he said. “Everything is
getting wrapped around the A-10 ... this will try to get back to the mission,
what we have learned and what we think the gaps and seams are,” Carlisle said.
“And we’re hoping to solve a lot of this stuff.”
