Posted on 12/24/2003 7:59:18 PM PST by BenLurkin
EDWARDS AFB - It's not every day a four-star general turns up, even at the nation's premier flight test facility. When he does, he's going to get the full tour, from F/A 22 Raptors to the world's most famous flightline to the latest upgrades in the dining facilities. Gen. Gregory S. Martin is chief of the Air Force Materiel Command, the component of the service that provides the research, development, testing and acquisition of the nation's air arsenal.
Maj. Gen. Doug Pearson, commander of Edwards, and staff provided a lightning tour for Martin on his first official visit since assuming command in August.
Visits by four-star generals are relatively rare if you consider that such officers come with names attached like Colin Powell and Norman Schwarzkopf. Dwight D. Eisenhower and George C. Marshall were four-stars when they were planning Allied victory in World War II.
"There just aren't that many four-star generals," one lieutenant murmured awaiting the commander's arrival.
On the other hand, there aren't that many premier flight test facilities. Really, only one.
"People at Edwards should feel very good about what they are contributing," Martin said.
Five air conflicts waged by the United States during the last 15 years were achieved with "unprecedented speed, precision and minimum loss of life," Martin said, thanks in large part to the work done by the test and development teams at Edwards.
The short list of wars in which U.S. forces dominated the air include Panama, Gulf One, Balkans/Kosovo, Afghanistan and most recently, Iraq. While U.S. air crew dominated the sky, most of the once-vaunted Iraqi air force lay buried in the desert sand.
So, if congressional and defense critics argue that high-speed, high-technology birds like the Raptor are not needed, Martin has a ready reply.
"The F/A 22 is not being built for today's threat," he said. "It is being built for the next 30 or 40 years."
The world the United States encounters as the remaining superpower remains unstable and in constant flux, with high levels of military air assets in development by Russia and China, and even an economically inert nation like North Korea striving to develop strategic arms.
"We don't know where the world is going to go," Martin said. "We didn't understand the tentacles of terror until the terrorists struck in our own homeland."
The Air Force mission is "to move to the next level" to dominate in a battle space foreseen to be constantly evolving in decades to come.
Among projects on tap for enhanced development are the countermeasures used by aircraft such as C-130 and C-17 transports, the kind of planes making the steep descent into Baghdad International Airport. Such planes are dodging missiles - some of them very low tech - fired from the ground.
"We have to develop countermeasures for the asymmetric threat, and we are working on (advancement) in chaff, flares and other technologies are in development."
Only by planning ahead has the United States maintained its edge in air superiority, Martin said, citing development of stealth technology and munitions guided by global positioning satellite as projects with origins dating back 20 to 30 years.
Pentagon planners and The Boeing Co. officials fell under withering scrutiny earlier this year for a plan that would involve Boeing leasing a fleet of new tankers back to the Air Force to succeed the current fleet of KC-135s that have been flying 40 years or more. The KC-135 was modified with new cockpit technology in Mojave in recent years, but, again, Martin said the need is not for the present.
A Pentagon acquisition official was fired and the tanker deal contributed to a series of management scandals that toppled Boeing leadership in recent months after government accountants concluded the company was overcharging the government by eight figure sums.
"It is unfortunate that became a propriety issue," Martin said. "It is very important what the taxpayer should, and should have to, pay for."
He added, "We have to let this investigation go ahead; meanwhile the operational requirement goes unsatisfied."
Looking at the world through the lens of Air Force blue demands the U.S. maintain its air superiority, and that as in the case of the Raptor, the USAF tanker fleet also requires updating for the 20-to-30-year ahead frame.
Meanwhile, Air Force development advances on a number of fronts, including pilotless combat air vehicles. Martin cited the arming of Predator hovering drone aircraft with Hellfire missiles. The "pilot" flies the Antelope Valley-produced Predator from thousands of miles away, sighting targets such as al-Qaida operatives and raining the Hellfire on them from the remote site.
"We need to buy aircraft that can do things that people can't do … like staying up 20 to 30 hours." Such systems, he said, should be less expensive, and handle an aspect of air superiority that is done better on automation.
The new Materiel Command chief foresees a key role for Edwards in years ahead as the base that has the advanced state-of-the-art test facilities such as the Doug Benefield Anechoic Chamber, an installation that measures radar signature of aircraft.
"You need to have the infrastructure that supports success," he said.
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