Launched 20 years ago, DIACC has grown to establish itself as the world’s largest and most prestigious international forum for air power. Hosted by the UAE Air Force and Air Defense, DIACC is attended by air power leaders from over eighty nations worldwide and senior executives from across the full spectrum of technology providers.
The need for tomorrow’s air forces to advance from traditional approaches represents a generational shift in the design and delivery of future air power. Providing a vital platform for allies and partners to converge at leadership levels to share the latest perspectives, lessons learned, and outlooks on future force planning, DIACC keeps the strategic discussion moving forward.
As the combat cloud is actualized as an operating paradigm, the Joint Force will process immense amounts of data and information rapidly. Data and information will be the most coveted tools for achieving mission success and the greatest weapons in themselves. Information management and force connectivity will become key mission priorities underpinning the ability of the Joint Force to quickly and seamlessly transition between low-intensity, permissive conflicts to high-intensity, contested, multi-domain operations. Within this future operating paradigm, the embedded application of AI across the planning and operations cycles will be vital for allowing the Joint Force to operate inside the observe, orient, decide, and act (OODA) loop of adversarial decision-making, maneuvers, and effects.
The dynamics of command and control and the mission command will be fundamentally altered as planning and operations processes are evolved with increasing levels of automation and the accelerating absorption of autonomous systems into force structures. Communications between the ranks will become more fluid and rapid but less frequent as the Joint Force becomes a self-synchronizing system of systems – man, machine, manned, unmanned, autonomous, sensors, and effects – operating across the operational domains. This new way of warfare will need transformational leaders to embrace and inspire change in an AI-driven world where decision-making is delegated to the lowest levels possible. New ways and means of working and operating are needed to cultivate warfighters that can think, fight, and win across the height, breadth, and depth of the contemporary battlespace.
The 10th DIACC focused on evolving to a new ‘beyond joint’ operational paradigm, where air power synergistically leverages multiple domains to coordinate and execute synchronized effects across the full length, breadth, and width of the contemporary battlespace. Building on these discussions, the 11th DIACC will place the focus on the most critical levers of change for securing future competitive advantage: leadership transformation and embracing and inspiring change in an AI-driven world.
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