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Air Force Warfighting Integration Decision Support
By Air Force Lt. Col. Jordon Cochran
Smart investing to get the most bang from the acquisition buck
Given today’s fiscal realities and emerging
threats, the need for warfighting
integration (WFI) has never been greater.
What is WFI, and why is it so important for
you to understand it In this context, WFI
is the ability to maximize interoperability
and effectiveness of warfighting systems
to produce synergistic capabilities for
joint warfighters by effectively informing
and influencing corporate planning,
requirements, programming and acquisition
processes.
Effective warfighting integration accelerates
the observe, orient, decide and act
(OODA) loop process and provides the
joint force commander with information
superiority that yields decision superiority,
which ultimately translates into
domain superiority and more effective
use of scarce warfighting resources.
WFI is not about developing advanced
weapon systems and having them operate
in isolation; nor is it about taking the
latest technology and adding so much
complexity that it is improbable or too
expensive to field or making investment
decisions without understanding the
second- and third-order effects that need
to be considered in today’s tightly constrained
budget environment.
For these reasons, the Secretary of the
Air Force Chief of Warfighting Integration
and Chief Information Officer (SAF CIO/
A6), Directorate of Warfighter Systems
Integration (SAF/A6W) has been working
on methods to better inform senior leader
decision making with respect to WFI.
One especially promising effort is the
Warfighting Integration Decision Support
Tool (WFI DST) that has been created by
SAF/A6W personnel in partnership with
the Air Force Enterprise Architects (SAF/
A6PA) organization with assistance from
MITRE Corp. and Systems Planning and
Analysis, Inc. contractor support.
There is a need for senior leaders to
have a mechanism for viewing programs
and their dependencies from a crossfunctional,
holistic perspective. Although
there are subject matter experts with
knowledge of these relationships, there is
a need to institutionalize a “programmatic
common operating picture” that can be
used to ensure everyone involved in planning
and programming has a shared and
sustained view of real relationships and
dependencies. This is what the WFI DST is
attempting to address, and the project is
off to a very promising start.
The tool harvests available authoritative
data, such as that found in the Air
Force Automated Budget Interactive Data
Environment System (ABIDES), program
element monitor (PEM) data briefings,
major command (MAJCOM) architecture
artifacts, and subject matter experts’
knowledge, and fuses it together to
provide increased programmatic situational
awareness, particularly with interprogram
touch points. Figures 1 and 2
illustrate the power of the tool.
Evidence over Eloquence
To promote evidence-based over
eloquence-based investment decisions,
we have mapped Air Force programmatic
and operational relationships for nearly
1,000 program elements across the 12 Air
Force Service Core Functions as well as
nine Capability Portfolios. This includes
Air Force Service Core Functions
• Nuclear Deterrent Operations
• Air Superiority
• Space Superiority
• Cyberspace Superiority
• Global Precision Attack
• Rapid Global Mobility
• Special Operations
• Global Integrated Intelligence,
Surveillance and Reconnaissance
• Command and Control
• Personnel Recovery
• Building Partnerships
• Agile Combat Support
Air Force Capability Portfolios
• Net-Centric
• Command and Control
• Battlespace Awareness
• Force Application
• Protection
• Force Support
• Logistics
• Building Partnerships
• Corporate Management and
Support
Figure 1. An example of basic first-order programmatic relationships between program
elements that enable a particular mission capability.
Figure 2 depicts the enhanced first-order
and second-order programmatic and
operational relationships among program
elements that our WFI analysis produced.
This mapping effort provides visibility of
how programs and capabilities are linked,
particularly across functional lines. In this
example, there are three core functions
spanned: Command and Control (C2),
Nuclear Deterrent Operations (NDO)
and Cyberspace Superiority. Key DST
functionality includes this ability to easily
discern programmatic versus operational
relationships between programs, to
hyperlink directly to related authoritative
data, and to quickly scale a view across
multiple degrees of separation (which
translates to first-, second- or third-order
relationships).
As the Decision Support Tool matures, the knowledge base gets richer and richer by leveraging stakeholders’
and subject matter experts’ authoritative information contributions. This ever-expanding knowledge base holds
great potential as a continuity and training aid.
programmatic mappings to the Joint
Capability Areas (JCAs), Joint Capability
Gap Analysis and Air Force Enterprise
Assessment. These mappings enable the
user to quickly visualize the operational
capability supported by a given program
or program element and has value in
decreasing the time spent on data gathering,
leaving more time for course of
action analysis and decision making.
At this point, we recognize that there is
much more work to be done as we refine
the quality and quantity of data in the
DST by leveraging an Air Force functional
integrator’s expertise. We are collecting
authoritative data, which includes many
architecture artifacts contained within
MAJCOM master plans and PEM briefings,
and feeding data into the visualization
tool. Just as we fuse and expose sensor
data on the battlefield, we ought to be
taking the same approach from a planning
and programmatic perspective by
exposing lead integrator knowledge to
the enterprise. In the coming years, if we
can use functional architectures as the
authoritative, integrated source of operational
and programmatic relationships,
we will be in a position to better understand
the collateral effects of investment
decisions and avoid or mitigate unintended
consequences.
The WFI DST allows users to view programming
through a warfighting capability
lens and expedites research and data
gathering to allow more time for analysis,
advocacy and better-informed decision
making. The DST’s visualization of crossfunctional
relationships is potentially very
powerful, not only in terms of helping
portray an enterprise perspective, but
also serving as a knowledge base for
those who are new to the programming
world and may not fully understand the
programmatic and operational linkages.
As the DST matures, the knowledge
base gets richer and richer by leveraging
stakeholders’ and subject matter experts’
authoritative information contributions.
This ever-expanding knowledge base
holds great potential as a continuity
and training aid. Further, the tool has
the potential to enable more effective
horizontal integration across service core
functions, platforms, systems and programs
leading to lower costs, improved
interoperability and enhanced netenabled
warfighting capabilities.
The WFI DST uses a commercial offthe-shelf
software product hosted on a
secure classified government network.
The DST allows the user to craft tailored
views of the data and permits “what if”
data excursions without corrupting or
modifying any of the underlying authoritative
source data.
The WFI DST shows great potential to
enable warfighting integration in a visible,
actionable and enduring way by leveraging
enterprise architectures and authoritative
data sources to better inform Air
Force corporate decision making.
The shared view of programmatic reality
it provides will facilitate coordinated
planning, programming and budget execution
to realize envisioned capabilities
and maximize joint warfighting effectiveness
in the years to come.
Email questions to SAF/A6WS at saf.a6ws.
strategydiv@pentagon.af.mil.
Lt. Col. Jordon Cochran is the deputy of the
Warfighting Integration Strategy Division in the
Secretary of the Air Force, Office of Information
Dominance and Chief Information Officer.
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