16th Air Force looking to reevaluate how it generates requirements with Phoenix Initiative
The Air Force’s information warfare organization is working more collaboratively with industry and academia to better inform how it can produce capabilities.
By
Mark Pomerleau
September 16, 2024
NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — The Air Force’s information warfare organization is looking to change how it develops requirements for new capabilities and concepts.
Created in 2019, 16th Air Force consolidated several commands and capabilities for intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, cyber, electronic warfare, information operations and weather, to set up an integrated information warfare command.
Given the breadth of its new missions and the consolidation of all these capabilities, the organization sought a different approach to generating new requirements and engaging with those outside the military through what it dubbed the Phoenix Initiative.
“What we want to be able to do is be more deliberate in our engagements with [industry, academic institutions and then government, science and technology, and research-and-development organizations], so that we can leverage that creativity, the innovative thoughts, to help harness those and then help us not only look at modern technology, but maybe help us to modernize from a process perspective within our structure,” Brian Cook, technical director of 16th Air Force, said in an interview Monday at AFA’s Air, Space and Cyber conference.
https://defensescoop.com/2024/09/16/16th-air-force-phoenix-initiative-reevaluate-how-generates-requirements/
