Doug Birkey: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Aerospace Advantage Podcast, brought to you by PenFed. I’m Doug Birkey, Executive Director at the Mitchell Institute. Here on the Aerospace Advantage, we speak with leaders in the DOD industry and other subject matter experts to explore the intersection of strategy, operational concepts, technology and policy when it comes to air and space power.

Crewed aircraft. They’re a key component of tomorrow’s Air Force. We hear about types like collaborative combat aircraft, the FQ 42 and FQ 44 all the time. President Trump talked about ’em when he announced the F 47 NGAD program was rolling forward, and we certainly see our adversaries are moving this way too.

However, crewed systems aren’t new. The US has been the global leader in this zone for decades. We’ve dabbled in this field going all the way back to World War II, but things really ramped up in the months right after 9/11 when the MQ 1 Predator redefined elements of modern airpower. It was followed by the larger, more capable MQ 9 Reaper. The RQ 4 Global Hawk, it’s also been a key part of this construct, too. [00:01:00] Plus the RQ 170 gives us a glimpse of penetrating uncrewed systems might look like. And there are a lot of other systems out there that are classified. It’s a bottom line, a ton of activity in this zone, and that’s what we’re here to discuss today.

We’ve got our very own Brigadier General Houston Cantwell with us to explore his perspectives as a pilot commander, now a member of the Mitchell Institute team, thinking about what it means to further advance in this world of crewed airpower. And as you know, he began his career in the F 16, but he later moved to the MQ 9, and then the RQ 4.

It’s a tremendous range of insight because he knows what it means to strap into the jet and launch in a combat sortie, but he also knows what it’s like to operate an unmanned aircraft in harm’s way. So with that, Houston, thanks for being here.

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: Hey, great to be here, Doug. Thanks.

Doug Birkey: So first off, I really want to thank you for sharing these experiences. The fact that you’ve got firsthand insights in both these worlds is so unique and it really allows for a range of insights where normally people are on one side or the other, but for you to have views on both, it’s just incredible. [00:02:00] So thanks so much. So to kick this off, I’d like to help the audience understand these two worlds at a human experiential level. Can you help us compare what it was like to strap into the Viper versus enter the ground station for a reaper to fly a sortie? They’re both forms of frontline airpower, but the experience, it’s way different, I’d assume.

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: Yeah. I’m really glad you started off this way, as the vice superintendent over at the Air Force Academy, this was the most common question that I would get from the cadets. I mean, these are kids trying to figure out what are we gonna do for the rest of my life? And the fact that I had done both, they wanted to get my insights and go, which path do I want to take as a cadet? So, flying jets, it’s just simply more personal. You build a relationship with that machine. I mean, think about the guys in World War II, the nose art. They would name their aircraft. I personally remember landing in Masawa, Northern Japan, in the middle of snowstorms on an icy runway, barely coming to a stop, by the end of the runway, thinking, whew, that was close.

And you think, [00:03:00] wow, I just defeated the weather. I overcame the odds. Came home safe, got the mission done. I’ll just say in the unmanned aircraft, it’s not quite that way because your life is never actually on the line. You’re sitting in a ground control station on the ground. You can actually go years without actually seeing the aircraft.

And so there are times when guys will be flying combat missions for years at a time, but because they’re in, let’s say Las Vegas and the aircraft are in Afghanistan. You just never actually see your aircraft.

Doug Birkey: Now, and we’ve talked about this before when, believe it or not, we’re coming up to a point where types like Predator and Reaper, they’re coming up for museum displays, in fact, and it’s important we do that.

But when we ask folks like, Hey, what are the historic tales? Which tales, what missions that we should really preserve? We get a lot of blank stares.

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: Sometimes you gotta do some digging. Yeah, because you gotta really look in the records ’cause they might not know. ’cause they don’t know what tail number they were on when they flew that really important mission.

That’s one other thing I wanna point out about the mission itself. Although the [00:04:00] physical experience may be completely different, flying manned versus unmanned, the mental strain when you’re doing a close air support mission is exactly the same because you are right there. You are talking to the JTAC, there are lives on the line, and you are about to employ lethal force on behalf of your nation.

Doug Birkey: Wow. Yeah. So, taking what you just said there, let’s break this down from an effects perspective. I mean, at the end of the day. A missile comes off a rail and we net an effect and the missile really doesn’t know or care what it came off of. It could have been, your F 16 or your MQ nine, but what does that mean for the pilots and the involved crews?

I mean, you said in one sense it feels the same yet on the other hand, I would question that a little bit. I mean, in that Viper you’re zipping along a couple hundred miles an hour. You’re juggling a lot of things real time. And in the ground control station, it’s a different set of sensors that are giving you data streams and all that, there’ve gotta be different challenges and opportunities with each type of scenario. Am I wrong?

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: Yeah, for sure. Let’s [00:05:00] highlight the fact that this conversation we’re having right now is gonna generally focus on one specific tactical scenario and that is gonna be a permissive environment doing close air support, because that’s essentially what the Reaper and honestly a lot of the Vipers have done while in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Doug Birkey: Last 20 years.

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: Exactly. I have to tell you, when I started this whole journey and they told me about this thing called the Hellfire Missile, I kind of laughed and scoffed at it because, and the Viper were flying Maverick missiles and those had 250 pounds of explosive. Hell Fire had 20 pounds. And, uh, it just didn’t seem like it could do much. But I’m here to tell you that the Predator with its persistence and its precision, allowed pilots, allowed crews, actually, because the sensor operator was absolutely vital in the tactical success of this platform, to succeed every time. And in the future, we’re gonna have to look at who’s gonna be providing that end game guidance, because is it gonna be a man or is it gonna be a [00:06:00] machine?

Right now, whether it’s manned or unmanned, we are letting a human being provide end game guidance for these air to ground engagements. The sensor operator guides it all the way in. You’ve got the F 16 pilot using a laser guided bomb that’s guiding it in. Or maybe they’ve typed in the coordinates for a GPS guided munition. But again, essentially it is the human is deciding where is that weapon going to go. What’s gonna happen in the future? I don’t know.

Doug Birkey: Yeah, no, you’re hitting on a really key point in that’s information’s role in the experience and that’s really what gets you combat success. You know, we talk about it with the OODA loop. Observe, orient, decide and act. Well, how do you compare that process if you’re in a manned aircraft versus an unmanned one?

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: Well, I think essentially the military is gonna have to decide carefully, consider what decisions are gonna remain human, and what decisions go to the machine. And this is gonna have to be, maybe the battle space becomes too dangerous for [00:07:00] humans. Maybe directed energy, the next generation of surface to air missiles, whatever that may be, maybe it’s too dangerous. So, we retrograde the humans just outside of that super wez, whatever that may be. And then we have to decide what decisions are gonna be made at the edge of the battle space. And maybe the computers need additional computing power.

Maybe we need the supercomputers that are really at the edge, that have data links that allow unprecedented amounts of data to go into those decisions. These are concepts that we haven’t really thought through. We haven’t war gamed, but as we start to mix manned and unmanned systems, it’s gonna come to the fore and we’re gonna be able to war game this kind of thing.

Doug Birkey: So, on the information piece, when you’re in, when you’re strapped into the jet, you obviously have a lot of real time, almost like subconscious awareness where you know what direction you pointed. If there are assets that you can visually see, you got ’em off your wing or whatever. But there’s a lot going on.

I mean, the task [00:08:00] saturation of just keeping that jet going the right way at high speed and all that, that’s challenging. In an unmanned asset, you have tremendous sensors, but you don’t have that subconscious just there I am strapped in, we’re going along. What does that feel like? what’s the difference when you’re executing that mission?

Because you might’ve been staring through that, video feed and you’ve built pattern of life and you have tremendous SA (situational awareness) that way. But there’s common sense stuff that like if we’re driving down the highway, you just kind of know what’s around you. You don’t have that, right? Am I wrong or how does that affect the mission?

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: Yeah, for sure. Flying the F 16 kind of interesting that one of the things you’re most concerned about is running into another airplane. I remember in Afghanistan, ironically, I almost ran into an MQ 1 ’cause we were all stacked above the target, getting a nine line from someone on the ground.

And honestly, I don’t know if he was a little bit out of his block or I was a little bit outta my block, but I went beak to beak with an MQ 1. That MQ one probably never even knew that I was there. But it made my blood pressure go up. I can tell you that much. But going [00:09:00] back to what you’re saying, your global situational awareness. You have more intelligence feeds when you’re on the ground as an MQ 1 pilot than you do as an F 16 pilot. Now, I think the fifth gen fighters, certainly the sixth gen fighters, are gonna have access to data links that we just don’t have access to now. But that’s gonna introduce the importance of the electromagnetic spectrum to allow those electrons, to allow those data links to go freely across the battle space.

Doug Birkey: Yeah.

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: Which right now we take for granted because we’ve been fighting in a combat situation where we have free use, not only air superiority, but spectrum superiority. And moving forward, those two are going to be challenged in ways we haven’t even seen before.

Doug Birkey: Yeah, that’s really fascinating. How does this come into play when you’re, talking about teaming with other assets in the theater? I mean, we’ve been doing that with crewed aircraft since World War I. And what does it mean when you look at teaming with un crewed types?

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: Yeah, this was exceptionally [00:10:00] challenging with the MQ 1 and MQ 9 given the speed differentials that those persistent platforms brought compared to fourth gen and fifth gen fighters.

But I will tell you, we made some success. You mentioned the RQ 170 earlier. It travels at a much faster speed than these propeller driven aircraft. Some deliberate efforts have been made to incorporate that unmanned platform into what you’ve just been talking about, which are these large strike packages, which is exactly how we’ve practiced in the past. I’ll push back slightly because I wonder if we’re asking the right question ’cause historically, the US Air Force has relied solely on speed and mass.

So, it’s like a football play. We get everybody up to the line of scrimmage, we know what the play is gonna be. Quarterback says, ready, ready, hike. And at that point, everyone executes violently and as fast as possible against the enemy to overwhelm them. And it’s kinda like a football play, [00:11:00] but in the future, maybe it’s gonna be more like soccer.

Maybe as we get into these protracted engagements, there’s gonna be intelligence being collected across the battle space from both air, space, sea, and land. And we’re gonna be continuing to look for opportunities across the battle space over long periods of time. And then once we find out where that, where we can exploit that then we move with speed and maybe with a very small force, whether that’s a ground force or an air force, or maybe something from space. And we exploit that advantage in a very precise manner, which would differ vastly from the way we’ve looked at airpower throughout the end of the 20th century.

Doug Birkey: Yeah, and thinking about my question, I think one of the problems too, and how I’m framing it, is that when I say we’ve been teaming for a long time, it’s through one given paradigm. That generally happens when you do human to human type teaming relationships. [00:12:00] Even if you’re geographically separated in different assets. What really matters is the effect you want to achieve. The uncrewed types might be using totally different paradigms that suit them, but it’s not necessarily gonna be somebody on your wing in traditional human teaming fashion.

Do I have that right?

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: Yeah. And the challenge, again, going back to we’ve only in mass effects use the MQ 1 and the MQ 9, which generally haven’t been put into these large packages to begin with.

Doug Birkey: Yeah, that’s really interesting. So, most students of airpower, they recognize that the MQ 9 we call it uncrewed, but really you are operating it through remote links.

I mean, you’re in a ground control station and the aircraft could be on the other side of the world, but you are generally operating it. Some things are automated with it for certain aspects of the mission, but you are exercising a lot of direct control. Things like collaborative combat aircraft, they’re gonna be way more autonomous.

You’ve lived in that [00:13:00] world to a degree with Global Hawk and RQ 170. Could you help the audience understand what this means from an operational level and, and how you think about executing a mission in that more automated world?

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: Yeah, sure can. I’m gonna go real tactical for a second though. Going right into the ground control station. In an MQ 9, you have a control stick and a throttle. Heck, you even have rotor pedals. In a Global Hawk, you have a keyboard and a mouse. That is the only way you can tell the aircraft what to do. So in MQ 9, you can go tell a pilot to go fly a mission and 10 minutes later he can hop in a ground control station and control the aircraft however he or she sees best fit.

In a Global Hawk, the mission planning is extremely arduous because when you decide you want to go do a certain type of mission. You have to plan out every point from the time you start the engine on the ground plot out every point for the taxi out to the runway, and then every point down the [00:14:00] runway.

And then while you’re airborne, you have to come up with a branch plan for if the engine, if the engine fails, if you have a malfunction in the navigation system, if you lose your data link. The aircraft has to have a branch plan for each one of those situations at each point in the mission plan.

And it takes a very long time to build these mission plans. And so the more automated the aircraft becomes, the more arduous the mission planning is going to become. Now I, granted, there’s gonna be become more automated systems, so you’ll have computers doing this. Right now it’s very manual, but it is a very long process to build these mission plans for the automated aircraft.

Doug Birkey: So what I’m hearing in many ways is if you’re in the Viper or even an MQ 9 almost instincts and just training, you can just go execute based off commander’s intent.

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: Yeah.

Doug Birkey: Global Hawk, it’s obviously very nascent autonomy and so you literally are [00:15:00] building out the plan, literally, and then different codes, depending if…

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: Point by point .

Doug Birkey: Yeah. So, really the next step is going to be trying to allow CCA to operate in a more deliberate fashion without the literal execution. Every step along the way. Allow it to exercise some AI judgment to a degree. To bring it back a little bit more in line with where that F 16 or MQ 9 were that, that it can kind of just determine some of that based on more macro inputs.

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: Exactly. You mentioned the role of artificial intelligence. It’ll be interesting how artificial intelligence plays into the airworthiness discussion, because right now, I mean, rightfully so, the Federal Aviation Administration watches every unmanned aircraft like a hawk because their first priority is safety.

And even MQ 9, which is operated very similarly to any manned aircraft, is watched very closely because of that data link that could be severed at [00:16:00] any moment. We’ve heard in artificial intelligence that even the folks that write the code for the artificial intelligence can’t always tell you definitively why did the artificial intelligence come up with that solution?

Doug Birkey: Right.

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: And so when you’re telling an aircraft to fly left or fly right to climb or descend, the Federal Aviation Administration is gonna wanna know exactly why is it doing certain things right? And that’s gonna become a challenge.

Doug Birkey: So, getting informed judgment, but is also predictable enough judgment to do the human teaming or operate amongst human assets that are gonna operate a certain way. And it goes back to trust is huge.

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: For sure.

Doug Birkey: That’s really interesting. So if we think about how we train pilots in the future, you know, it’s not just for the human teaming piece. President Trump said it types like the F 47, they’re gonna be partnering with uncrewed aircraft and same is gonna be true for other types.

F 35, B 21, F 15 EX, whatever, they’re [00:17:00] gonna be doing this, this manned unmanned teaming partnership. How are airmen gonna have to adapt to maximize the potential inherent in these uncrewed partners while working to, to mitigate some limitations? We’re talking about it right now, this notion of intuition.

How do you handle that? How do you handle trust? What are your thoughts on that? Because I think we’re gonna be building airmen differently to live in this world.

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: Right. How do you properly credential an airman? We’ve been doing pilot training since the beginning of the Air Force. It hadn’t changed very much because we’re a low risk organization.

And because it’s a tried and true process. We’ve created some very successful pilots over the years. When we came up with the RPA pilot training pipeline, we thought, hey, it worked for pilots. Helped build airmanship. So let’s apply a lot of the same principles to these RPA pilots. And so we required them to solo in a Cessna type aircraft and then we had them fly a T 6, 180 degree [00:18:00] dome simulator to build their airmanship.

Even though when they’re flying the RPA, they will never actually have 180 degrees of visibility anywhere. And so you bring up a great point as we continue to go down this automated train and as we continue to have more and more unmanned aircraft. We’re gonna have to look back on these training processes and determine how do we actually develop airmanship in our young aviators?

Doug Birkey: Yeah, because the F 47 pilots need to know how to fly with each other, but they also need to know how to trust and effectively engage with their unmanned teammates. Whether they’re right off the wing or hundreds of miles away.

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: Exactly. And some folks have opined, I watch my kids play video games. They play those first person shooter games. And somehow these young kids are able to build a three dimensional scenario using two dimensional screens. And I can tell you as an old guy, [00:19:00] when I try to play those games, it is very difficult for me to build that three dimensional world that these young kids are building. Like, it’s like it’s an intuition for them. And so, I think they’re onto something though. Maybe we need to be looking at how do you build a three dimensional situational awareness off of two dimensional screens? It’s a fundamentally different skillset set.

Doug Birkey: And and it really brings into play when we talk about fifth gen and six gen, they’re information dominance machines. In many ways, way above and beyond just anything that might do is normal airplanes. And so how they manage that information and help the, the pilot think of that strategic level, real time, is gonna be very different when they’re dealing with the unmanned players.

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: It’s gonna be very different and the new challenge that’s gonna come into that is you’ve got, as a pilot, flying the F 47. You’re very concerned about the health and wellbeing of that F 47 [00:20:00] because your safety is directly tied to that. But then you’ve got these uncrewed wingmen that are massing your effects. Well, how much responsibility do you have for those aircraft?

Doug Birkey: Right.

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: Last time I checked the United States Air Force puts one pilot in command for each aircraft. Is this F 47 pilot gonna be the pilot in command of the unmanned aircraft on his wing as well?

Doug Birkey: Right.

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: Or is there gonna be a second pilot that’s on the ground somewhere that is doing the administrative portions and has the overall safety and wellbeing of that unmanned aircraft for their responsibility. These are important discussions that are gonna have to go on as we continue the development of these very advanced systems.

Doug Birkey: Yeah, and if you layer in how contested the electromagnetic spectrum is gonna be, I think that’s why we’re talking about the AI because these aircraft are gonna have to work off a command [00:21:00] intent and have some autonomy, literally, because whether they’re connected or not is gonna be different. And certainly the type of scenario you talked about with Global Hawk would not work for the pilot of the F 47. They cannot literally type out these very deliberate commands. I mean, it’s just, they gotta say, go do this, and it just knows how to do that, and it’s going to develop the best way to do that given realtime circumstances.

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: So, that becomes one of the other large challenges facing us, is from what I’ve seen, again, I’ve been MQ 9, RQ 4, F 16. There has not been enough research when it comes to workload on the human. So you’ve got a human flying an airplane. What additional processes can that human take on when it comes to other aircraft?

Doug Birkey: Yep.

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: And we need to have simulators, we need to have exercises where we test this. Whether it’s at test pilot school or whether it’s at who knows what scenario this is, but we have to run this through and become experts. We need to be the leading experts around the [00:22:00] world of how do we build operators that can fly one machine and then control either the weapons of another machine, the sensor of another machine, and how is that information best presented to the decision maker and when is that information presented.

Doug Birkey: Yeah, and I think to the operating assumption, so if you think about an F 22 over Syria, they had dominance. I mean, those guys are home free. They could really think about the broader strategic environment. Whereas if you’re over Beijing, you’re worried about staying alive. I mean, how contested that’ll be. You are just trying to get through it alive and not get shot down. And I, and I’m almost reminded of scenarios that I’ve chatted about with, with Vietnam era pilots that when they were in high threat zones, the task saturation were just executing the core mission was so extreme that they begin without even knowing it, load dumping. And they would not hear very deliberate radio call saying, Hey, MiG is on your tail. Or a SAM just launched at you [00:23:00] and they got shot down and they never heard the call.

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: Yeah.

Doug Birkey: Which brings into question and you want these guys to operate CCA on top of it?

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: And so now you’re an F 35 or an F 47 pilot in the missile engagement zones being fired at, and you’ve also got degraded electromagnetic spectrum, so you don’t even know what commands are making it to your unmanned wingman or not. And then you gotta figure out, all right, if I lose data link, what are my unmanned wingman programmed to do at this particular moment in time? That is a lot for someone to process.

Doug Birkey: And that’s why it cuts to why the AI portion of this is so critical, and we have to be very careful about the paradigms we’re using where Global Hawk. I mean, it blew people’s minds how sophisticated that was when it first came out. I remember when it flew around the world and I think it was landing in Australia or something, and it nailed the center line, I mean.

Aviation Week wrote an article about this, it was unreal. And hats off to those folks who did that, but that was over 20 years ago. And where we’re having to go now and the pressures, I mean, it’s absolutely a completely different [00:24:00] game. And we need to be very careful about the paradigms we’re using so that we’re not trying to, you know, proverbial, square peg, round hole kind of deal that we’ve gotta be, what’s the effect we want?

And then you build backwards off of that to ensure you’re doing it in a way that optimizes the end goals, not just aiming for some process that might be obsolete.

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: As we, uh, try to figure out how do we adopt what has been a very successful, brief execute debrief mantra in the single seat fighter community, I wanna bring in some comments that General Guastella once made when he was the Air Force A3

Doug Birkey: A fighter pilot’s, fighter pilot..

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: So I was at an AFA convention. I was just in the audience and General Guastella was talking about, “Hey, we’ve got these new concepts out on the ramp. They’re gonna be called CCAs and they’re gonna be these loyal wingmen. And I dunno about you guys, but it’s gonna be great because right now, fighter debriefs, they’re hours and hours long. But now that I won’t have that lieutenant in the, in the [00:25:00] debrief room with me, it’ll just be me by myself. I can just tell the machine that it was, it got screwed up and didn’t basically walk out. So debriefs essentially get so much easier.”

And of course the audience thought it was really funny. And honestly I thought it was pretty funny too. But as I look back on my experience as an RQ 4 pilot who flew a completely automated system, I actually think. We’re gonna wish we had that lieutenant in the debriefing room because I can tell a lieutenant what they messed up and from pilot to pilot, tell them, here’s what you need to do next time to do better. But now I have to tell a software engineer “hey, here’s what I need the system to do.” And that is a totally new challenge that operators, whether it’s a fighter pilot, a bomber pilot, a navigator, weapon systems operator. We don’t speak that language.

And the computer software engineers don’t speak our language. So, now we need to get some interpreters to allow this [00:26:00] iterative process that we’ve done so well in the Combat Air Forces for years. We have to bring in a technologist to translate this into real weapons effects using software. And that’s gonna be a new challenge.

Doug Birkey: That’s wild. And it also brings into play why the software and the AI is gonna be so dynamic and you’re gonna wanna update it real time.

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: It has to be dynamic. If it’s not, we don’t. Yeah we don’t keep an advantage.

Doug Birkey: We’re not waiting two years for new drop. No. and it really brings into questions about what do Air Force maintainers do? And it’s not just electrical and hydraulics and cheap metal. I mean, they’re gonna have to excel in this stuff because they’re a key part of that enterprise for every sortie.

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: Exactly.

Doug Birkey: That’s really interesting. So this brings up another key point. Too often people focus on the notion of unmanned technology based on goals of getting things cheaper or faster. And I hope that happens. It’d be great. But I think there’s some fundamental advantages that uncrewed types are gonna bring to the [00:27:00] table that go way past that. And it’s gonna be the fact that we don’t have to begin with human factors as a key assumption for the mission. That we can do things very, very differently.

And a key example that is pretty obvious is the ranges in the Pacific are massive and you put a human on an ejection seat and in a tight cockpit for 10 hours and they finally just kind of hit the mission area zone. I mean, good luck. I know what I feel like after 10 hours in a road trip and they gotta go fight at the highest edge of performance and then go home. CCA does not get tired. There’s a benefit to that, but are there other. Scenarios where you could see this paradigm affording different advantages?

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: Yeah, I really do. And I think this thought of leveraging the differences could not be more important as we look at the future of unmanned systems. When I was a kid, I used to hear the stories of, “oh well, you know, when we get unmanned systems, they won’t be limited to nine Gs. They can do 12 Gs or 15 Gs.”

Well, the problem is [00:28:00] the engines that can actually sustain 12 to 15 Gs. Those are very expensive systems, and so what we’re starting to see is, as you just mentioned, endurance is an actual capability that unmanned systems have that are a distinct advantage. Also, how high an aircraft can fly. It’s a physiological limitation. If you go above 50,000 feet, you need to be in a space suit.

Doug Birkey: Right.

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: Or you should be in a space suit. You could hurt yourself. Unmanned systems can fly. As long as Bernoulli’s principle, we will let them to as long as there’s air particles up there. And so we need to take advantage. I love flying the RQ 4 because number one, it was above the thunderstorms, and number two, it was above all commercial traffic. And so you could just point and go wherever you needed to go. Then your fuel burn rates are lower. Everything is better above 50,000 feet. Right. And yet, I don’t think we as an Air Force have embraced that because we’ve had a paradigm since our beginning that [00:29:00] most aircraft are manned. And they operate below 50,000 feet and that’s just the paradigm. In fact, if you want to really get busy, operate in the 18 to 28,000 foot regime, that’s where everyone wants to be.

Doug Birkey: Sure. No, and I think this brings in another point too, where we say CCA, and I think we come into the conversation thinking kind of like a unilateral thing. Like every fighter we’re trying to make it better and so they just kind of do these building block approaches and all that. And so we’ve got F 35, now we got F 47, we kinda know what they look like and all that.

Yet for CCA, we might be building them very, very differently. Where we might have some very high performance ones, we might have ones that are very simple and we want different mission attributes on them, but their design, their creation and all, it’s gonna be very effects based. Or do you want high capability, but maybe low quantity? Do you want lower capability, but tons of quantity that could give you different conops? Are they attributable? You name it. That’s really gonna [00:30:00] change how we engage too, So another factor that I think is coming into play here is that CCA are not just a unilateral product. We are gonna increasingly be designing them for different desired end state effects. Some are gonna be very capable, which is gonna probably mean we don’t have as many and we’re gonna wanna get them back home safe.

Others are gonna be cheaper in high volume. Maybe they come back, maybe they don’t. We’ll see. And others might be purely attributable by design because we want those combat effects. We want them to soak up missiles, you name it. But how do you think that plays into the equation?

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: I think that’s a great question, Doug. There are so many questions surrounding what is the concept of operation that is CCA? Because it’s so classified, I think a lot of people are filling in the blanks with their own ideas.

And depending on what the concept of operation ends up being, it might be, as you mentioned, the super MEZ penetrator sometimes. [00:31:00] Other times it may be a persistent sensor that is providing multi-spectral intelligence to a small package of penetrating aircraft that need information that don’t wanna radiate themselves because they don’t wanna give away their position. So they’re collecting information from this fleet of unmanned aircraft that are unafraid to emit and gather information and then send it back to whatever the small package of aircraft are going to be. There’s so many opportunities out there. It’s only gonna be limited by our creativity.

Doug Birkey: Right, it’s fascinating stuff. So, you’ve got experience both in manned and unmanned aviation, and clearly we’ve been talking about it. There are thoughts that you have that are very unique. Are there certain lessons learned you’d like to pass on to the folks working in CCA? I mean, whether they be the technologists innovating the systems or folks in uniform working on CONOPs?

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: Yeah. I think we need to look real carefully at what are the [00:32:00] effects that we want to get out of this new unmanned system? The last time we used a penetrating unmanned system to buy down risk was back in Vietnam. We had penetrating spy drones because our aircraft were all getting shot down. So, we had these low level drones that would go try to take pictures, actual optical pictures of the runways and of the sams themselves before the manned aircraft would go in.

While those unmanned systems were not very effective due to a lot of technological, advancements that hadn’t occurred yet. So, we need to decide what processes need to remain with a human and what are we comfortable pushing to a machine? We need to decide what are the edge processes going to be. Similar to automated driving, there’s gonna be situations that the machine may not be programmed for. Elon Musk has been saying there’s gonna be a fully automated car next year for the last eight years. And it hasn’t happened. And [00:33:00] yet he is collecting more data than anyone else through his fleet of Teslas to try to break down every possible situation that could occur in a two dimensional ground, unmanned or automated car process. Now we’re going three dimensional. Now we’re going actual weapons. So you’ve got lethal force involved. There’s gonna be a lot of situations that we call edge processes that it may make most sense for quite some time to keep a human operator in the loop. To ensure we get the tactical effectiveness that we need.

Doug Birkey: Yeah, and you’re actually hitting on the point where why you’ve gotta actually fly these things a fair amount because there are some that’ll say, “oh, we’ll just keep ’em in the box until we need ’em.” No, you actually have to go use ’em to get the data to improve the AI, I would assume.

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: Couldn’t agree more. Also, another point about CCA, we’ve been talking about it for so long, we [00:34:00] need to get them on the ramp as soon as possible. We need to get them on the ramp so we can start figuring out the logistics processes we need to get them on the ramp, get them in the hands of the war fighter so that we can begin that iterative process that allows the war fighter and allows the developers to work between each other and translate war fighter speak into technological speak.

Doug Birkey: Right.

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: And that has to start, and it can’t start until you get the actual aircraft in the hands of the war fighter.

Doug Birkey: No, that’s really fascinating. So as an operator and looking at CCA entering the operational force here pretty soon, how would you advise we grade CCA homework as they progress? I mean, there’s obviously gonna be an initial capability and then subsequent tranches, but what does good look like for the first traunch and what should we expect from subsequent ones?

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: I think it’s really important to look at CCA from the perspective of tactical level effectiveness. So [00:35:00] without CCA, how effective is the F 35? How effective is the F 47? Okay, now add CCA. How much more effective are these aircraft gonna be when you have the team of systems going in against a specific tactical scenario? If we can say, honestly, that we’re more tactically effective, then we’re moving in the right direction.

Doug Birkey: Yeah. It’s interesting ’cause that’s what I understand from that Blue Ribbon Commission that evaluated whether we progressed with NGAD. That was one of the key elements as you put them together. And it was exponentially better, but it was that team that, that made it better. It was not F 47 alone. You had to have the CCA there to, to really clinch the deal.

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: Yeah. And you know, Doug, there’s gonna be some challenges there because we mentioned it before, the challenges associated with the electromagnetic spectrum. They’re hard to model. It’s hard to model effects. It’s hard to model when you bring lots of systems together. We had the Israeli [00:36:00] at Attache here a few months ago. One of the things he said was, when all the systems get turned on. It gets really messy.

Doug Birkey: Yeah.

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: And if anyone would know, he would know.

Doug Birkey: Now, that’s a really good point. Again, why we gotta go back to really flying these things and fielding ’em as fast as possible. And I think it’s one of the key reasons, and people need to appreciate this. There is so much more risk in many ways going slow on this than just getting it out there and learning as fast as possible and understanding that the different tranches afterwards are gonna absorb those lessons learned. I mean, that’s kind of how the SpaceX model worked.

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: Yeah.

Doug Birkey: And that’s not the way the government likes to go sometimes. So we’re getting towards the end of the time block here, but I want to take us back to your personal experiences. Just big picture, what got you into unmanned aviation? I mean, you’ve been part of this historic rise with this very unique technology. How’d it begin?

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: Yeah. it’s always been a passion of mine for some reason. I honestly can’t tell you why, but back in September of 2001, I was an [00:37:00] intern in the Pentagon as a captain, and the job of an intern is to go out and learn. And I found a civilian. I said, “Hey, I’ve heard about these new airplanes. They’re called predators, and they’re like, out in Nevada. Would you pay for me to go out there and learn about this?” And of course he thought I just wanted to get to Vegas and go party. But honestly, I just wanted to go out to this place called Indian Springs and go learn about these new aircraft.

So he pays a TDY and I go out there and on September 7th, 2001, I am out at Indian Springs Airfield.

Doug Birkey: Are you kidding me?

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: And I’m learning about these new things called predators, and they sound like lawnmowers in the air. And I gotta tell you, it was an unforgettable trip to my, have my first touchpoint.

Doug Birkey: So you saw the real pioneers?

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: Oh yeah. It was back, like I said, 2001 or first week of September and heard the good and the bad and the ugly, everything in the middle. But they were already making an important contribution to our national security even that early. [00:38:00]

Doug Birkey: Were you blown away when they became national news topics in the subsequent months?

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: Well then. I was back. So I go out to Vegas and I’m back in the Pentagon on 10 September and then of course 11 September happens. And then honestly the rest is history when it comes to the predator. And it was just fascinating to see that entire community continue to exponentially grow due to the demands being placed on all of those incredibly talented airmen.

Doug Birkey: It’s amazing. So putting your general hat on for a minute. Are there thoughts you’d offer leadership as they get ready to take this next step in progressing towards CCA? I mean, what can we do better this time around than things that we did as we kind of worked our way through RPA world under some pretty difficult combat pressures, et cetera?

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: Yeah. That first trip out to Indian Springs really set the tone for, I’ll just say the frustration and the uncertainty that [00:39:00] surrounded that entire career field for decades. Honestly, a lot of that hasn’t changed a whole lot. So if there’s, one thing I would recommend is keep the RPA community informed as much as possible.

There’s so much security and classification around the CCA, we need to break those down. We need to let this community know. Let the RPA community know where are we going with unmanned. People are gonna assume the worst. There’s gonna be rumors out there, “oh, they’re getting rid of the MQ 9. Oh, they’re getting rid of the, whatever system it is.” And if airmen don’t see themselves in the future, they will find alternative jobs.

Doug Birkey: And I think you really want their expertise there because, we’re talking about here, you guys from that world see things fundamentally different. And how you see it is so much more aligned with where CCA is gonna need to go.

And so why would we wanna surrender that advantage? I think RPA community is gonna be integral with standing up where CCA goes. It’s an experienced bench. Why would you ignore that?

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: Absolutely integral. They, [00:40:00] these are seasoned and combat proven aviators. That understand weapons effects, understand so much of what makes our Air force successful. And can help plan that next, whatever the next thing is. We need to retain that talent as long as we can.

Doug Birkey: Yeah. You dealt with a lot of industry vendors in your time working RPAs. What lessons learned do you have for them? Because obviously when we work with CCA. We’re asking a lot from industry. I mean, we’re pushing the state of the art when it comes to the airframes, the AI, different models we want with more, plug and play, on the software side and mission systems. Thoughts on advice?

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: Yeah. I really hope industry can keep the Air Force and the Space Force honest about the importance of the electromagnetic spectrum. We in the Air Force get so focused on what’s cool. On the single seat fighters, on what’s sitting on the ramp, on the actual weapons effects.

How are we gonna go [00:41:00] downtown penetrate the WEZ, how are we gonna go actually get bombs on target. But in the 21st century access and use of the electromagnetic spectrum is gonna be absolutely essential to our continued success. And many of the companies are doing a great job of coming up with new technologies of ensuring access to the EM spectrum. But we in the United States Air Force have to continue to develop the young professionals that understand this, can utilize it and can keep us successful across the EM spectrum at our time and place of choosing.

Doug Birkey: Yeah. Incredibly important. Final thoughts?

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: Final thoughts. So, when I started my research on the unmanned community and began to learn all that I could, I heard stories that that broke my heart.

Just disgruntled airmen who were frustrated that they had been non [00:42:00] volunteered into the community. And over time, the community has evolved and the community proved over the last 20 years to be, if you listen to former Undersecretary of Defense, Mike Vickers, when he was talking about the Global War on Terror. He called the Predator Reaper Program, the most effective tool that the United States had against Al-Qaeda.

Doug Birkey: Wow.

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: Truly tremendous. And so it’s been an uphill battle when it comes to where has unmanned technologies gone or where did it start and where is it going? And the community has faced headwinds. But one of the highlights of my experience in the community was I got to write a paper when I was at, uh, air Command and Staff College, and it was, on the history of the predator. And as part of my research, I got to meet Tex Hill. And Tex Hill he was probably 91, years [00:43:00] of age at the time. This is back in 2005.

Doug Birkey: And, and just for everybody’s information, he is one of the most famous World War II fighter pilots that existed. He’s one of the original flying tigers.

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: So triple ace. Credited with 18 kills as a Chennault flying tiger. And I wanted to know, what does Tex Hill think of this new technology? The fact that the, his United States Air Force was going unmanned. And so there I was at his dining room table in Texas and I turned to him and I go, “Hey, General Hill. You know, I dunno if you’ve heard, but there’s all these new unmanned systems that are being developed and I was just curious, what are your thoughts on the Air Force adopting all of these new unmanned systems?”

And he turns up to me and he goes, “Houston, I think they’re great. They’re gonna save a lot of lives.”

Doug Birkey: That’s incredible. Absolutely incredible.

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: And I thought that was such, [00:44:00] such an important perspective from someone who had flown in World War II and lost so many of his friends.

Doug Birkey: Yep. Now, and it comes back to the point of airpower.

The entire reason why the pioneers push for it so hard is it’s about the combat winning effects. It’s not about bleeding out more than the other guy. And if we can get it done smarter and more effectively and more decisively, that’s where we need to go for the future. And that’s why I think the young crewed systems can be so important.

So dude, we can’t thank you enough for your time today. Really appreciate you being here.

Houston “Slider” Cantwell: Thanks, Doug. It’s been great.

And with that, I’d like to extend a big thank you to our guests for joining in today’s discussion. I’d also like to extend a thank you to our listeners for your continued support and for tuning in to today’s show.

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