Gen. Kevin B. Schneider: Preparing and Prevailing in the Indo-Pacific

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome AFA’s Executive Vice President, Major General Doug Raaberg to introduce our next keynote, Preparing and Prevailing in the Indo-Pacific.

Maj. Gen. Doug Raaberg, USAF (Ret.):

Pacific Air Forces mission is to provide US Indo-Pacific Command with continuous unrivaled air space and cyberspace capabilities to ensure regional stability and security. The PACAF commander oversees a force of 46,000 airmen across the Indo-Pacific Theater, with a keen focus on enhancing warfighting advantage, advancing theater posture, strengthening alliances and partnerships, and shaping the information environment. This strategic vision ensures that US Air Forces are ready for the fight tonight. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming a leader responsible for airmen preparing and prevailing in the Indo-Pacific, the commander of Pacific Air Forces, General Kevin Schneider.

Gen. Kevin B. Schneider, Commander, Pacific Air Forces:

Yeah, I always warn people to save the clapping till the end if it’s warranted. But my staff was walking me through some of the preparations for this a while ago, and I’m going, “Man, 30 minutes in front of a big room. I don’t know if I can do that.” And they go, “Sir, do you know how much you talk during staff meetings?” So I promise not to suck the air out of the room like I probably do at Home Station. But thank you, I truly appreciate everyone’s time today. So for Air Force leaders, distinguished guests and airmen, it is an honor to be here. It’s an honor to talk about the challenges in the Indo-Pacific, and how you airmen, how our airmen, are advancing to prevail in the face of these challenges. So a little audience participation here. If you wear a PACAF patch on your uniform, raise your hand.

All right, good news, this applies to you. If you did not raise your hand, this still applies to you. So yesterday, General Alvin talked about this being a time of consequence and I could not agree more with that statement. And you look around the security situation, and I’m not going to try to recap what the Secretary and the Chief talked about, but there’s a couple of aspects about it that bring us all together. One, the security situation is certainly challenging. It’s more interconnected and it’s more volatile than has ever been at any other time. And there are malign actors out there that are upending the peace and stability across the globe. But I would say nowhere is that more present, is that more in our face than in the Indo-Pacific. So I’m going to walk through what we’re doing. I’m going to try to tell this in perspective of a story. And I have spent about a third of my career in the Indo-Pacific, so I have some perspectives on this. But in terms of the story, my personal story starts in 1990.

This was the comment Burt that we talked about beforehand. So this picture was taken of me summer of 1990, MacDill Air Force Base. I’m going through the basic course, learning to fly the F-16. So back in the day… And please feel free to laugh, my wife and daughters chuckle at this picture all the time. If you wanted to be an F-16 pilot, you fought to go to one of two places, in Germany or you fought to go to Korea, one of the two bases there. Why was that? Well, based on the security situation at time, what was going on in the world, those were the hot spots. Those were the places that we were potentially going to go into a fight. And if you were worth your salt, you wanted to be on the front edge of that. You wanted to be where the action was.

So I got my first assignment and I headed off to Osan, Korea late in 1990, I have not learned to smile. I did find a comb, not seen. There are black leather boots on all of us, white T-shirts and red scars. From left to right, Greg Marzolf, me, Chris Lane, Chris Juergens, and Carl Farquhar, who I think is somewhere in the room. [inaudible 00:04:44] if you’re there, give me a shout-out. He’s not in the room. Saw him last night though. Hey, so this was the security situation back in the spring of 1991 when this picture was taken. So 1989 Tiananmen Square happened. So I think we could see the repression and oppression of the regime in Beijing. But we didn’t have an idea or didn’t have an understanding of where the vector was going for the years to come. From the time this picture was taken to the time the previous picture was taken, Iraq invaded Kuwait, Desert Storm happened and the forces had returned home.

But we did not understand the long-term commitment that the US military was going to have in the CENTCOM AOR for decades to come. A couple of months after this picture was taken, the Soviet Union collapsed, and we started to understand how hollow that force was across the Warsaw Pact. But the one place that was still dangerous, that was still volatile, was North Korea. And it was violent. Again, I’m not telling you anything that you don’t already know. There was never a peace treaty signed at the end of the Korean War. It’s only an armistice. And Kim Il-sung and his forces would remind us of that from time to time. And we trained and prepared constantly. At the end of my 36 months at Osan, I turned in the training chem gear that I was issued and kind of like full metal jacket.

I used to leave a little tick mark on the side of my helmet for every exercise that we participated in where I had to throw on my MOPP gear. And at the end of 36 months, there were over two dozen tick marks on the side of my helmet. The other thing, and this was probably obsessive compulsive behavior on my part but not unusual for the folks in my squadron, we had alert packages. We knew where we were going on the first sorties of the war. If one kicked off, I knew my target. And most mornings when I drove to work, I would recite the alignment coordinates for the Alpha Diamond at Osan, 37.052. I can give you the longitude later, and I would recite my target coordinates down to the thousands. I could also tell you my IP to target run heading. And again, while obsessive compulsive, I was absolutely sure that I could get into an airplane without a data transfer cartridge or a lineup card and put weapons on targets.

Since then, in the last three and a half decades there have been a lot of changes in the Indo-Pacific. So today when we look around, we obviously see the revisionist autocracies that the secretary and the chief had talked about. And maybe if I could recap or just give you the thumbnail sketch of what that looks like. North Korea still a threat. While I worried about the mass invasion of infantry tanks, artillery and rockets, KJU has added ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and nuclear rhetoric to that threat. Russia is acute persistent. They have risen from the ashes of what had happened in 1990, and we see that every day as they conduct their illegal war in the Ukraine which violates both law and norms. But it’s the PRC, the People’s Republic of China, we’ve seen the growth of the people’s Liberation Army, the advancing of their arsenal. But more troubling than that it’s the behaviors that go along with that, the illegal, coercive, aggressive and deceptive behaviors.

And please do not quote me on that one, that’s General Bonner from the Armed Forces of the Philippines. And again, I could not agree more with how he characterizes that. And we watched the government in Beijing continue to bully and threaten others, challenging sovereignty and attempting to upend the status quo. A couple of examples. This is not a slide that comes out of pack out, but I do like it and I use it for this purpose. We see this bullying taking place in the air domain. Two lines on the chart, the one that’s in orange shows the Air Defense Identification Zone or ADIZ incursions that the PLA has conducted against Taiwan in 2023. And while that slope is fairly constant, it just shows a persistent presence and pressure being put on the Taiwan’s. The blue line or the green, depending on how this shows up for you, is 2024.

And you notice in May when President Lai was inaugurated, the slope on that line took about a 3X rise. And again, just indications of how the bullying and threatening behaviors continue to be exhibited. Some of you may have seen last month the government of Japan called out Beijing for an ADIZ violation that PLA aircraft had conducted in and around Japan, all the way up to and pressed up against their territorial waters and territorial airspace. And May of this year, PLA aircraft dropped flares in front of an Australian navy helicopter in international airspace conducting a UN mission, right in front of the helicopter that had to take evasive actions. Not the first time the PLA has done that. They did that to the Canadians last year. And in 24 October of last year, I think some of you may have seen the video of this, a PLA aircraft attempted to rejoin on a B-52 an international airspace coming within 10 feet of it at night with high closure, hazarding the crew and almost causing a collision.

But these unsafe behaviors are not restricted to the air domain. The secretary talked about this yesterday. This picture was taken on the 31st of August. This is a China Coast Guard vessel running in to the back end of a Philippine Coast Guard vessel, not once, not twice, but three times. Most parts of the world, when you put Coast Guard on the side of a vessel, you would think that they’re out there to save lives and to protect resources. That is not true in China. And again, the aggressive coercive behaviors exceed all norms on this. And we continue to see this at the Sabina Shoals and the Second Thomas Shoals on a regular basis, maybe to a smaller scale. Not an official endorsement, but 60 Minutes did a segment this weekend about this activity. They had a reporter on one of the vessels that had collided or been run into by a Philippine Coast Guard vessel.

So a lot of this stuff is going on, and this is just a small sample of the challenges that we’re facing in the Indo-Pacific. But if I were to stop the story here, it would be bad. But there’s a lot of goodness that’s going on and I would like to talk about that for a second. So here’s where our story gets good. We have three asymmetric advantages that adversaries could never hope to have. One is the growing network of alliances and partnerships that we enjoy. The second is the professionalism, and the discipline and the strength of our people. And the third is the inherent strength of the joint force. Through all the bad stuff that Beijing is doing for all the things that they continue to do in the air, maritime, informational domains, diplomatic domains, their bad behavior is opening a lot of doors for us.

I’m having conversations with counterparts in the region that my predecessors were not able to have, and there is a clear-eyed recognition of the dangers posed by the regime in Beijing. It has allowed us to increase the collaboration amongst allies and partners. It has allowed us to do more. It has allowed us to be in more places. That along with the inherent strength and the readiness of the US Joint force, brings together a sharpened blade of war fighting readiness across the spectrum. Real quick explanation of this picture. Go back one, sorry. I messed you up, Melissa. This picture was taken in Australia recently, Royal Australia Air Force airmen and US Air Force airmen building up a weapon. It’s going to get loaded on a US Air Force aircraft. You could take either side of that out of there. And we are interchangeable, interoperable, and able to do things together not only as a joint force, but as a group of allies and partners. That is taking place all over the region. And pictures like that continue to play out every day.

Next slide. So let me focus in on advantage number one. It’s the growing network of alliances and partnerships. So this picture was taken at the Pacific Air Chief Symposium the General Wilsbach hosted towards the end of last year. There’s over two dozen air chiefs from around the region and actually around the world. There’s a number of European air chiefs participating in this as well. This is a panel discussion and I think it’s of note when you look at who’s sitting on the panel, Royal Australian Air Force air chief, Indian Air Force air chief, Japanese Air Self-Defense Force air chief. So three of the four that participate in the quad, and on the far right is the Dutch air chief. What we’ve been able to do and make great strides and gains now both in the air domain and in others, is to continue to find ways to do more together.

Some of this may not sound as glamorous as it is, but we are opening up a lot of the agreements and arrangements that we’ve had before to find out ways that we can expand and build on those. That has opened up access, basing and overflight. It’s opened up exercises. We’re moving beyond bilats into multilateral events to be able to pull more and more partners in. There are greater opportunities for integration. I’m going to go back to the picture and focus in on the gentleman on the far right. Again, that’s the Dutch air chief who came all the way out to the Indo-Pacific. And he was one of a handful of European air chiefs. Jabba Steyr did not say this to me, one of his counterparts did. When I made the comment about, “Hey, that’s great that you’re so interested.” The response I got back was, “In Europe, we recognize the dragon has two heads. One may be pointed at the Indo-Pacific, the other’s pointed at Europe.”

So this is how it plays out. So this picture was taken in Alaska this summer, German Air Force Tornado, part of Operation Pacific Skies. If you can look really close at the top of the tail flash in the upper left-hand corner, there are three flags, Germany, Spain, and France. So for the better part of six weeks, those nations put fighter and transport aircraft through Alaska, through Hawaii, through Australia, through Japan, and through India. At the same time, the Italians were coming the other direction as well as with their aircraft carrier Kivor. So again, our European allies are putting their money and their resources where their mouth is. And again, in a clear-eyed recognition of the challenges out here, that has opened up a lot of doors. And there’s many more examples of this that I could talk about.

Next slide, asymmetric advantage number two it’s our people. And I could go in a lot of different directions on this. For all the bright and shiny objects that we put on ramps around the world and the hardware that we buy and that we field, it’s our airmen who make the difference. They are the ones that are staying ahead of the challenge. They’re the ones that are innovating. They are the ones that are never satisfied with status quo. I’ll quote the great American philosopher, General Mike Minihan on this one. “I will never admit to being as ready enough, as integrated enough or as agile enough as I would like to be. And our airmen embody that every day.”

I’m specifically going to focus on the Non-Commissioned Officer corps real quick. The NCOs are the backbone of our service. They’re the backbone of the joint force as well. And the reason that’s so important, because as we look at agile combat employment and I’ll talk about that here in a couple of slides, we train to work as small agile teams. We put a lot of trust in our young officers and certainly our NCO corps to get the mission done, to understand the threats, to take risks and to continue to do the job. They answer the call much rests on their shoulders and their ability to do this. So this picture is near and dear to my heart, and if you’ve flown the F-16 it should be near and dear to your heart.

I do not know the name of the crew chief in this picture, but I have seen it thousands of times in my life. Like many of you that have flown, I would get up to the jet, I would sign off the 781s, I’d hand them back to the chief. And I would jump in the jet and I would fly the last tactical mile. If it was in Korea, I’d fly the last tactical 52 miles from Osan up to OP-II to go do my close air support missions. If I was in CENTCOM it was closer to 1000 miles. But the piece of this was there’s absolute trust in the crew chief and the maintainers and all the support, everybody that had a piece in putting that jet in my hands for a few hours. And that is something that is just an inherent capability of our force, that we trust our airmen, we trust them to do their job and to do it well.

And because of that, I do now see that reflected in the NCO corps or the enlisted corps of our potential adversaries. Our allies and partners see this well, and they certainly recognize a need to develop a professionalized NCO corps. This picture was taken at the Indo-Pacific Air Force’s Academy class that was recently conducted. If you go back to the picture that showed the Pacific Air Chief Symposium with the Air chief sitting in the big table at the PACAF conference room, this is one of the initiatives that came out of that event, was to have a multinational NCO course where we could cross-level and build that capability.

It is focused on the building blocks of leadership, of readiness and on mission command. And this is not the United States sitting at the top of this and pushing down our tactics, our doctrines, our thoughts. The superintendent of this course does not come from the United States. The instructors from this course come from three different countries, the US, Australia and New Zealand. 20 students in the first course and we’re building to 60 in the next one. And again, we are integrated across allies and partners and we’re integrated across the joint force to build this capability and to build this asymmetric advantage out even more. The third advantage, number three is the strength of our joint force. We all live this. I could talk multiple examples. I’ll focus a little bit on some of the interactions with the US just because some of them are a little bit more closer in terms of to me, based on the job and things that have happened. I have a great relationship with all the component commanders.

I’ll focus on the one that I have with the Army though, so General Charlie Flynn, who’s the USAR PAC commander. Two weeks ago, we and our team sat down to do an Agile Combat Employment, Multi-Domain Operation Summit. We were looking for ways that we can combine our capabilities, the things that we bring in terms of fires, either offensive fires, defensive fires, logistics, sustainment, command and control. For as big as the Indo-Pacific is, sometimes it gets a little limited in terms of real estate when you get to the Western part of it. So we’re looking for ways that we can combine our efforts, work together, continue to be more effective and somewhat more efficient with the resources that we do have. I also have a relationship, one of the many hats I wear in my job with a 94th Army Air and Missile Defense Command, provides integrated air and missile defense for the theater.

The Commander Brigadier General Pat Costello has been saddled with me three times in his career. As a battalion commander we worked together, when he was a brigade commander we worked together. And now in his double-AMDC role, we work together. Pat is a fantastic leader. The two of us have worked together to figure out ways that we can move our IAMD, integrated air and missile defense footprint further into the theater to make it further integrated with allies and partners. Additionally, we’re working hand-in-hand with Missile Defense Agency with the Army, with the Navy and others on the Guam Defense System to build out that capability. And I realize that may not be the most exciting thing in the world, especially for Airmen, but it’s a highlight of what we do as a joint force, bringing our advantages together in ways that potential adversaries could never hope to match. So this is what keeps us ahead in terms of the three asymmetric advantages. Let me run through some specifics of what we’re doing to stay ahead.

I will admit the picture does not match the words that are going to follow, but I like the picture and here’s why. Two F-22s, the aircraft on the right is an FA-50 from the Philippines. The reason the F-22s are going into the Philippines is because I have an open door to fly fifth generation into the Philippines. And these aircraft were transiting through the Indo-Pacific. And we were able to jump fifth generation aircraft around the way we would like to, again, to project power and to move into positions. And I really appreciate the open doors that are being afforded to me by the counterparts in the region. But this is a lead-in to what we’re doing with the Philippines. We do exercise Cope Thunder. Back in the day when I was a lieutenant at Osan, we did Cope Thunder. We stopped doing Cope Thunder for Mount Pinatubo and a few other reasons, but we’ve started that back up again.

So a bilateral air exercise, which is great, but at the same time it’s a lead-in for exercise which is a multi-domain exercise with 14 nations, 16,000 personnel. And again, it just shows the continued open doors that we have with the Philippines and the ability to do more together. Another exercise example is Pitch Black. This is a Royal Australian Air Force LED event. And I got to go down there for part of it. Just to highlight at the bottom of the screen, 20 nations participate in this, 105 aircraft, over 4500 airmen. And we did a couple of firsts this time around. It was the first time that USF-22s deployed to exercise Pitch Black. It was the first time the Philippine Air Force left their country since 1960 to participate in an exercise. And they went down with their FA-50s. It was the first time that Papua, New Guinea brought an aircraft.

And again, it just highlights that we don’t have to look together or fly pointy-nose aircraft. We all can compliment each other for mission accomplishment. In addition, it was a first for the French Navy’s participation as well. Won’t go through all the flags at the bottom, but you’ll recognize that not all of them are in the Indo-Pacific Theater. Going back to the previous slide that talked about the European interest in the theater, there’s a big European play in this event and will continue to be that way for years to come. And again, kudos to Australia, their leadership in the region is absolutely pivotal.

Another thing that we’re doing to continue to stay ahead is to evolve Agile Combat Employment. Obviously the regional threats and somewhat of our geography in the Indo-Pacific drives us to do things maybe a little bit different than other parts of the United States Air Force. For those of you that are not familiar with Agile Combat Employment, we disaggregate our forces from our main operating basis. We do it for survival. We re-aggregate our forces for lethality at a time and place of our choosing, deliver effects. And we work with our joint partners, we work with our allies and partners to be able to get access to airfields and locations throughout the region. One thing that we continue to do and it goes back to the strength of our airmen, is we continue to challenge assumptions. So when I was in PACAF before a few years ago and we looked at Agile Combat Employment and the concept of operations, we started with a set of assumptions.

We are challenging every one of those. We are recognizing the changes in the environment based on the adversaries or potential adversaries. We continue to stay ahead by getting after that. All the PACAF units are doing this, but I’m going to give a special shout out to the wings in Alaska because they’ve got a little bit more flexibility to get after it. So to the men and women of the third wing, the 673 and the 354, we’re able to put them into exercises and events that really stress and test the limits of Agile Combat Employment. And that has paid off in huge dividends. So kudos to all of you, you can give yourself a hand.

Another thing we’re doing is bomber task force deployments. Picture taken recently out of Australia, fifth-generation aircraft for the United States Air Force and the Royal Australian Air Force. This is our advanced penetrating strike capability. We can present multiple dilemmas. We can do it from multiple axes. In addition, this capability and what Air Force Global Strike Command does is absolutely critical to support counter-maritime missions. And we work with General Bussiere and his team to continue to evolve the anti-ship capability, whether it’s through the platforms, through the weapons, whether it’s the tactics, techniques, and procedures because we’re in the business of sinking ships. And again, kudos to the bomber fleet writ large, not just the B-2s, but the B-1s and the B-52s as well to find innovative ways, to modernize capabilities, to continue to increase survivability. But most importantly, lethality in the A2/AD environment.

A couple of exercises that I’d like to highlight, bamboo eagle. This is where we bring the concepts together, both high-end warfighting and Agile Combat Employment together. I won’t go into the specifics necessarily. We do this regularly, and it’s not PACAP necessarily but it’s Air Combat Command, the Warfare Center plus the US Third Fleet. Not that we get this right one time, we practice so that we never get it wrong and we continue to refine those capabilities. Last exercise I want to talk about is REFORPAC. Again, both the chief and the secretary have talked about this as well as others. So for a number of years, as we have asked the wings to evolve their Agile Combat Employment capabilities, we have asked them to do it on their training schedules within their wing budgets. And they have done magnificent to doing that. They’ve refined the TTPs down at their level. And kudos to Air Mobility Command and to General Minahan.

In 2023, AMC conducted Mobility Guardian where they exploded or surged mobility assets into the theater. As we looked to ’25, we’re going to combine Mobility Guardian, the logistics, the sustainment, the enabling capabilities with all of the pointy end efforts that we do on a regular basis, and put those together under one umbrella. We’re bringing fifth generation fighters, ISR, bombers, command and control aircraft, air refueling, et cetera, into the Western Pacific at speed and at scale. Are we going to get it 100% right? Nope, we are not. Or are we going to learn some lessons? We absolutely will, but we are going to be able to prove time and time again that we can do this because we do it every day. These rehearsals, these innovative schemes of maneuver are just the beginning of how we deter, how we fight, and how we prevail in the Pacific.

So another picture from Australia also taken during Pitch Black. I like it for a lot of reasons, cool airplanes, men and women doing awesome work. It highlights the fact that we continue to hone our tradecraft. Again, we do not accept the status quo, and we recognize where adversaries are potentially going and we continue to stay ahead. So this is my call to action to us, not just to you, not just to me, I’m asking that you bring your training concepts to PACAF, your groundbreaking R&D, asymmetric warfighting capabilities. And again, there are great minds. There’s great efforts that take place all around the United States Air Force, and we have done a fantastic job of continuing to manage the challenges to peace and stability. But again, we cannot accept the status quo. I want to continue to stress and test agile combat employment, our ability to command and control, our ability to execute contested logistics, to do dynamic force movements around the theater, and to continue to stay on the cutting edge.

I’m reminded as I look at the wall clock in my office, that America’s Day both starts and ends in the Indo-Pacific. It’s not only in expansive region, but it’s critically important to the United States and to the world. So just my one takeaway for all of us is that your airmen are absolutely prepared 24/7, 365 to defend, to deter, and to prevail in the Indo-Pacific. Thank you very much. Appreciate your time today.