Author Description

As a smaller Air Force transitions to an Aerospace Force to start the new millennium, space offers a vantage point where no point on Earth is denied to a sensor system. Joint Vision 2010 describes leveraging technological opportunities to achieve information superiority to enable full spectrum dominance. A key component of information superiority is airborne command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) assets. In a time of budget constraints, the Air Force must make some hard decisions regarding tradeoffs between current and future capabilities. This thesis offers a C4ISR framework to help identify categories that may bring to light some of the important issues associated with moving airborne capabilities to space. The framework is used to categorize current and future capabilities of airborne and space assets, and to compare and contrast C4ISR operations in these two environments.