16th Air Force Positions Itself for Next-Generation Information Warfare With New Commander
Stood up a mere five years ago, the U.S. Air Force’s 16th Air Force/Air Forces Cyber is poised to change further, said its new leader, Lt. Gen. Thomas Hensley. Top service leaders are currently considering how to elevate the cyber portions of the Numbered Air Force (NAF) to be a service-level component. Currently as a NAF, the entire 16th Air Force is a component of Air Combat Command. The NAF specializes in cyber; weather; intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; and other aspects of information warfare.
“Secretary of the Air Force [Frank Kendall] wants to elevate cyber, and we are going to elevate cyber to be a service component command,” Hensley explained in a call with reporters on Aug. 29. “That brings in the question then, what is the future status of 16th Air Force in its totality? ... We have some very senior leaders that are going through a very deliberate process to determine ‘what is the right way forward’ with cyber being elevated. We are getting pretty close to a decision on that."
For the evolution to service-component command, the leaders are examining, in part, 16th Air Force's cyber authorities, under Title 10 and Title 50, the general continued. "We certainly want to keep those together in one organization so that we have unity of command and unity of action so that we can move with speed and agility to produce IW outcomes.”
With a year under his belt as the deputy commander of the NAF—under 16th Air Force Commander Lt. Gen. Kevin Kennedy, who retired in July after 34 years of service—Hensley said he sees a bring future for the Air Force’s information warfare (IW) competition force and the service’s abilities as a whole, no matter what the new organization looks like.
“Our IW efforts [are about] how we are supporting the air components, how we are helping them work in information warfare capabilities into their operations, activities and investments, how we help them to reveal and conceal while exposing and disrupting adversary malign activities against our nation,” the new commander said.
The NAF is also looking to move to a new location, albeit still on its current base, Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, Texas. The service’s 502nd Air Base Wing is helping to orchestrate the move to the new facility.
“The Airbase Wing, they remain committed to helping ensure that we have the adequate infrastructure and the facilities to accomplish our mission to support the nation,” Hensley stated.
The NAF, however, does not yet know the size of the staff that will be needed.
In addition, the 16th Air Force has built an Information Warfare Operations Cell within its existing Operations Center. “We pulled the team together so that we could see how we could take all the convergence of capabilities and authorities that we have at 16th Air Force and support all of the Air Components with their operations activities and investments,” Hensley said.
The cell has had “a couple of syncs” with various air components. The general sees the cell in the “walk” part of the “crawl, walk, run phases” of the Information Warfare Operations Cell’s maturity. “We have generated some outstanding lessons learned on how we can support the Air Components, all the way from the unit level ... and everywhere in between.”
Lastly, Hensley noted how Air Force Cyber would continue with its key role in preparing offensive cyber warriors, in particular.
“We've got the responsibility to do the organization, training and equipping of airmen to do offensive cyber operations—and defensive cyber operations for that matter,” Hensley said. “And with that mission, we then present forces to U.S. Cyber Command so that Cyber Command can use those airmen to conduct global offensive cyber operations in support of all of our combatant commands and the joint force.”
