16th Air Force and Convergence for the Information War
By Lieutenant General Timothy D. Haugh, Lieutenant Colonel Nicholas J. Hall, Major Eugene H. Fan
| July 27, 2020
The world has changed, and our approach to warfare must change with it. As traditional organized power structures erode, disorder fills the void. We are moving from successive regional conflicts to a future characterized by continual global competition. This circumstance will reward those who can leverage information for strategic advantage. The 2018 National Defense Strategy (NDS) described this new paradigm by emphasizing the need to compete with adversaries now.[1] The Air Force recognizes that we are already in competition below the threshold of armed conflict. Within the Air Force, the standup of 16th Air Force as an Information Warfare (IW) Numbered Air Force (NAF) in October 2019 represents a direct response to this new reality. In the document directing the standup, the Air Force described IW as “The employment of military capabilities in and through the information environment to deliberately affect adversary human and system behavior.”[2] Our task is to synchronize – Cyberspace; Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR); Electromagnetic Warfare (EW); Information Operations (IO) – across the continuum of cooperation, competition, and conflict, and support the joint force’s ability to compete, deter, and win wars across multiple domains.
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