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'Securing the High Ground: Dominant Combat Air Force for America' is our strategy for the 21st century. It defines why we exist and focuses our effort and resources to meet the Nation's security and military strategies. Fully nested under the United States Air Force's Strategic Plan, this strategy outlines the Combat Air Force (CAF) critical contributions to protecting democracy and guarding freedom. This plan is a broad conceptual document backed by detailed supporting concepts and plans designed to enable the CAF to adapt and overcome the challenges created by a rapidly changing security environment. The strategy builds upon the CAF's foundation and heritage as the world's dominant combat air force. CAF leadership in innovation and integration, combined with the asymmetric advantage its forces provide to our Nation, ensures success for the joint force. From the ultimate backstop of our Nation's defense - nuclear deterrence - to the ongoing conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, the long war on terror and across the full spectrum of conflict - the CAF defends our Nation now and in the future. The 21st-century CAF is an innovative, organizational construct that will develop, plan and employ integrated, coercive combat capabilities - from air, space and cyberspace - to create war-winning effects for our Nation. 'Securing the High Ground' provides the CAF its mission and vision while focusing the development, sustainment and execution of the preeminent combat airpower of America's joint force. It provides guidance to all CAF Airmen, from those just entering service to those in the upper levels of command, from active duty, reservists and guardsmen, to our dedicated civilian workforce. The strategy, priorities and objectives described herein set the stage for follow-on development of a more detailed collection of operational concepts and planning documents that will integrate all CAF capabilities and ensure the realization of our vision., The original document contains color images. All DTIC reproductions will be in black and white.

We are a nation at war. Our military is engaged in a fight against groups and individuals who follow an ideology that has as its fundamental tenets a hostility toward our people, our beliefs, and our values. Airmen, Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, and representatives from across our government who are engaged in this bitter fight will emerge with perspectives shaped by their experiences in combat against extremists who use terror as their primary weapon to achieve their objectives. And we are also at war in cyberspace -- a relatively new domain that, like air and space, crosses military, civilian, economic, and especially information aspects of our national interests. We have already witnessed and experienced hostile incursions in cyberspace. Nothing demonstrates the contested nature of cyberspace more than how its capabilities were used to support physical attacks on our governmental and financial infrastructures on 9/11. Encrypted communications and cellular phones were used for the first attacks on the World Trade Center buildings in 1993. Aided by computer-based flight simulators, hijackers trained, planned, and funded a more successful attack. The attacks against the World Trade Center in New York had, as a secondary objective, the catastrophic degradation of the financial information upon which a large segment of the United States' economy depends., Published in Strategic Studies Quarterly, p5-117, 2008.

Warfighters rely upon cyberspace to command and control forces in the 21st century. Revolutionary technology has presented cyber capabilities, which can provide decisive effects traditionally achieved only through kinetic means. Recognizing the domain's importance, Secretary of the Air Force Michael Wynne announced Air Force Cyberspace Command (Provisional) in September 2007 to bring together the myriad existing cyber capabilities under a single commander. This new command will provide combat-ready forces equipped to conduct sustained operations in and through the electromagnetic spectrum, fully integrated with global air and space operations. This Air Force Cyber Command Strategic Vision is a foundation for the tremendous work that lies ahead as the organization achieves initial operational capability in 2008 and postures for full operational capability in 2009. It explains the mission of Air Force Cyberspace Command in the context of the strategic realities faced by the United States and how our capabilities will enhance the Air Force's global vigilance, global reach, and global power, while expanding the options available to the Joint Force. Air Force Cyberspace Command will be a dynamic warfighting organization integrating capabilities, systems, and warriors to establish cross-domain dominance. The Strategic Vision describes how we will develop 21st century cyberspace warriors and how they will control cyberspace to deliver sovereign options for the defense of the United States., The original document contains color images.