The Air Force's Future Flag Experiment Is a Success

New York’s 21st Congressional District has a long and distinguished history of playing a critical role in U.S. national security. From the renowned Battles of Saratoga that turned the tide of the Revolutionary War to the work of Strategic Air Command’s missileers at Plattsburgh Air Force Base during the Cold War, to today’s continued service of the 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum, the region’s history of service and innovation is ingrained in Upstate New York and North Country culture. In today’s global climate of competition and instability, the innovative ecosystem in NY-21 is more critical than ever. 

Future Flag creates a process where industry can iterate and develop technologies unconstrained by conventional doctrine. The goal of developing new technologies is to provide new capabilities, which in turn require new doctrine. Unlike traditional approaches to development that allow for only slow evolution of doctrine to exploit new and emerging capabilities, Future Flag starts by throwing out conventional doctrinal constraints, allowing the operators and engineers to push their limits and test the art of the possible to rapidly provide vital capabilities to the warfighter.

The Future Flag series is already yielding critical results that are contributing to strategic deterrence in the Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM). The Air Force’s Air Combat Command worked with the Future Flag team to rapidly experiment with edge computing for the MQ-9 Reaper’s M2DO (Multi Domain) configuration in Lewis, NY. These experiments directly resulted in enhancing the MQ-9 platform with critical command and control and electro-optical/infra-red sensing capabilities, significantly increasing the Air Force’s ability to conduct unmanned-Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance missions in INDOPACOM.

It is critical that we continue to provide our service members with resources to conduct these vital missions. Following my advocacy, the final FY 2024 defense appropriations bill included $25 million for Air Force Research Laboratory-Rome to expand the scope of Future Flag. In keeping with my commitment to provide our warfighters with the very best capabilities, Future Flag represents one of the earliest and most effective forays into the arena of contractor owned, contractor operated large scale operational laboratories in the nation.

The DoD must better identify organizations and activities that embrace innovation, like Future Flag, and enable them to transition technology to the warfighter. To truly innovate and get capabilities to the warfighter at relevant speed and scale, DoD must scale Future Flag’s innovative model of aggressive experimentation and active risk reduction. The DoD’s repeated failure to appropriately manage risk in pursuit of innovation only shifts the risk to the operational community. Future Flag must be the standard in testing, evaluation, and experimentation, not the exception. The stakes are too high to fail at placing anything but the best capabilities in the hands of the warfighter. 

By Congresswoman and House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik.