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Past Event

A 21ST CENTURY DEFENSE INITIATIVE EVENT

The Air Force's Role in Irregular Warfare and Counterinsurgency

U.S. Military, Defense Strategy, Military Technology

Event Summary

On April 24, the 21st Century Defense Initiative at Brookings hosted General Norton A. Schwartz, chief of staff of the United States Air Force, for a discussion of the Air Force’s strategic and operational role in conducting irregular warfare and counterinsurgency operations. General Schwartz addressed the challenges the Air Force will face while combating evolving insurgencies and future irregular threats. He also outlined the unique capabilities that the Air Force can bring to bear when conducting these types of operations.

Event Information

When

Friday, April 24, 2009
10:00 AM to 11:15 AM

Where

Saul/Zilkha Rooms
The Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Washington, DC
Map

Event Materials

Contact: Brookings Office of Communications

Email: events@brookings.edu

Phone: 202.797.6105


As the current chief of staff, General Schwartz is the United States Air Force’s highest ranking officer. Along with the other military service chiefs, he serves as a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Senior Fellow Peter W. Singer, director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative and author of the new book Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century (Penguin Group, 2009), provided introductory remarks and moderated the discussion. After the program, General Schwartz took audience questions.

Transcript

PETER SINGER:  The amazing changes in technology that we’re experiencing right now, such as the growing use of unmanned systems, which with Moore's law are becoming more and more smart and more and more lethal.

You have a changing generation that’s entering into service. You have the millennials joining, who are digital natives who have never known the world without computers; a generation that, to them, the Vietnam War is as distant as World War I was to the baby boomers. You have changing domains of security, in which those young airmen might be called upon to serve. They might be called upon to protect assets in space; they might be called upon to carry out a humanitarian disaster response in Africa. And then finally we have a changing economic and budget environment, which is acting to both heighten those threats, as well as maybe constrain the responses that we can make.

And the key is that each of those changes, an individual would be historic in challenging just by itself, but they’re happening all at once and growing, and that makes them all the more challenging.

Participants

Introduction and Moderator

Peter W. Singer

Director, 21st Century Defense Initiative

Featured Speaker

General Norton A. Schwartz

Chief of Staff, United States Air Force


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