Lt. Gen. Tom Sharpy, USAF, NATO Allied Command Transformation’s deputy chief of staff for capability development, discusses developing new alliance capabilities, exercises, experimentation, wargaming and more with Defense & Aerospace Report Editor Vago Muradian at ACT’s 13th annual Chiefs of Transformation Conference in Norfolk, Va. Our coverage is sponsored by L3 Technologies and Leonardo DRS.
Lieutenant General Tom Sharpy
Deputy Chief of Staff for Capability Development
NATO ACT Chiefs of Transformation Conference
Norfolk, Virginia
December 2018
Vago Muradian: Welcome to the Defense and Aerospace Report. I’m Vago Muradian here at NATO Allied Command Transformation’s Annual Chiefs of Transformation Conference, the 13thannual gathering of some of the most innovative people from across the 29-nation alliance as well as partner nations who gather here this time every year in Norfolk, Virginia. Our coverage here is sponsored by L3 Technologies and Leonardo DRS.
We’re honored to have with us the Deputy Chief of Staff for Capability Development, Lieutenant General Tom Sharpy, of the United States Air Force. Sir, it’s a pleasure. Congratulations on the new job. Congratulations on the promotion.
Lt. Gen. Tom Sharpy: Thank you very much. It’s an honor to be here. I’m glad to be able to share the message of what we’re doing here and the relevance of what we do at Allied Command Transformation.
Mr. Muradian: You’re an officer who’s got a reputation for driving forward, driving programs forward, whether it was the aerial tanker program or working with General Everhart at Air Mobility Command to revitalize, innovate processes as well as how you guys deliver air power and industrial scale.
You’re here in this job which is new, the capability development job here at ACT.
Talk to us a little bit about how you’re going to be driving forward the capability development agenda, which is so important at a time of great power competition. We’ve heard from all the speakers, whether from General Lanata, From Sri Stu Peach, the Chairman of the NATO Military Committee and other airmen of the Royal Air Force, on his fourth four-star tour, which is extraordinary, who’s had, Sir Stuart has had an incredible career.
But talk to us a little bit about the whole team. Admiral Nielson is working this issue, Admiral Bennett as well. Talk to us a little bit about how you’re going to be driving this ball forward.
Lt. Gen. Sharpy: First of all, the big challenge is to learn, I’m amazed with the broad complexity of issues that we are dealing with across the alliance. So my challenge is to first of all, understand all the capabilities that we’re developing. I think right now, last count, we had 31 capabilities in some phase of development on behalf of the alliance. So I’m trying to figure out where we’re at in each stage, understand the complexity of each of the different capabilities we’re trying to deliver, and then figuring out how, you’ve heard this week, how we can do it faster.
One of the things that you’ve heard about is the NCS Adaptation where we’re changing a lot of the processes in NATO to be able to transform, to be able to meet the speed and complexity of the environment that we’re in. And one of the things that we’re implementing is a common governance model for common funded capability development.
That took a process that took sometimes up to 15 different approvals just for the material solution alone, and now we’ve broken it down to four mandatory approvals on behalf of governance. We’re working with management, with our partners at Allied Command Operations, the NCIA and NSPA agencies, along with the territorial host nations to make this a more disciplined approach to be able to have milestones, and everybody knows what’s expected and when it’s expected in the process to be able to take those 15 steps into four, and hopefully to meet the needs of the warfighter, that need of the nation that started with a capability gap and then deliver relevant capacity and capability to be able to influence the way that they conduct operations quickly and more lethally.
Mr. Muradian: And really, one of the things which you said, which I think people have a tendency of forgetting is they think Allied Command Transformation, or a lot of the NATO agencies is for the entire alliance. It is, but it’s also there to help member nations with specific challenges and problems.
As you look at capability development and a buzzword here, as everywhere in the defense community for the last few years, has been innovation. But militaries don’t innovate for the sake of innovation. They innovate to solve specific problems that they have. And we heard from Sir Stuart, you know, how military medicine, for example, was spurred forward and that war has a tendency of driving forward innovation.
From your standpoint, what are the key problems the alliance has to solve? What are some of the big things that are priority areas in terms of delivering the most important capabilities to the alliance?
Lt. Gen. Sharpy: Obviously you look at the alliance, it’s coming up on its 70thyear. Twenty-nine member nations and many partner nations. I think we have 50 partner nations that are here today participating in this conference. The goal is, within that alliance and that partnership, is to hopefully be a deterrent effect so that our adversaries determine that it’s not worth their effort to try and engage.
So that’s what we try to do. But we also have to build those capabilities so that if deterrence doesn’t work and an adversary tries to do something within the alliance, that we are able to respond quickly and with lethal force so that we can end it quickly and get back to normal operations and peace as much as we can.
So as we look across the spectrum of those capabilities, we have to make sure that we are not only keeping pace with our adversaries, but outpacing them in delivering those capabilities for tomorrow and at the speed of relevance, and not delivering capabilities that become obsolete because of the time it takes to do so.
Mr. Muradian: So from your standpoint, are you making a case across the breadth that there aren’t specific capabilities but actually if you’re an alliance and you’re in a great power competition, you’ve got to look at it as kind of a much more across the board thing as opposed to saying look, here are the four or five spots that we’re going to be picking to focus on.
Lt. Gen. Sharpy: Absolutely. I would say that in Allied Command Transformation we don’t make things. We don’t buy aircraft. We don’t buy tanks. But what we do is we make things better. So we’re the interconnective tissue that’s between all of those systems, whether it be command and control, whether it be the logistical support, whether it be the medical support. All of those other enabling functions that are required to conduct military operations and also just to be able to conduct readiness and exercises are the things that we deliver at Allied Command Transformation. So the benefits are not only today, but also to make sure that we’re delivering capabilities that are relevant into the future.
So some of the challenges that we have, and in the past we used to try and develop the panacea, right? The perfect solution. And that’s very hard, especially when technology sometimes outpaces the speed at which we can deliver. So what we’re going to look to into the future is to figure out how through exercises and modeling and simulations we can deliver capability that’s better than we have today, that’s relevant tomorrow, but is expandable and upgradable for beyond into the long-term future that we have to operate in.
Mr. Muradian: It’s not often you hear a military leader get up in front of a roomful of 500 other military leaders, and you played the tape of General Spencer, obviously head of the Air Force Association, former Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force, shout out. Our office is in Virginia, our Air Force Association’s headquarters building, and proudly so. Had a great interview he conducted with Jeff Bezos of Amazon. You played a clip about sort of the importance of failure.
So you said that we can afford to fail, was the message that you delivered to everybody in the hall. Talk to us about the importance of failure and sort of the intellectual cycle you want to see the organization. Obviously General Lanata has spoken about this also, and so has Admiral Nielson. What do you mean that we can afford to fail, and what’s the sort of cycle you want to see the command get into?
Lt. Gen. Sharpy: The takeaway from that video, and I appreciate being able to use it because it was such a poignant message. There were two takeaways that he said in there. He says if you’re going to do an experiment and you expect it to be successful, that’s not an experiment. That’s a demo. In the Air Force and in NATO we have this preponderance of efforts that we don’t want to fail. We have to change that model and we have to be willing to fail.
And also as he said, you know, he does thousands of experiments and those three or four that succeed pay for the rest. That’s the type of leap in military capabilities that we want to try and achieve, and if we play the safe road all the time and play by the rules, our adversaries aren’t doing that. They are experimenting and they are fielding weapon systems at an incredible pace that right now if we stay in the conservative model and have a risk averse approach to the way we do things, we’re going to be behind. As I said, we can’t afford to fail, so we must look at what is out there with our industry partners, find technology that can help make the systems that we have better, more relevant, more lethal, more agile, and field those capabilities faster so that our adversaries give pause and will think twice before they think about conducting something that may impact the alliance.
Mr. Muradian: When you talk about moving quickly, there’s this perception that innovators have to have pink hair and wear a hoody and kind of be late to meetings, and yet some of the most innovative people I know actually wear uniforms, have short hair, and are very punctual. Yet most of the people if not all the people in the room got to where they are by coloring generally within the lines.
How do you unlock the potential to get the speed? Because at the end of the day people fall back on well, this was the process. I’ve got to go and get my approvals and well, you know. How do you do this to really unlock the potential of all the people in the room who actually, some of them, have had maybe the best ideas ever, but actualizing them has always been the challenge?
Lt. Gen. Sharpy: So when you’re in a stable environment, being slow and methodical is okay. But as we’ve seen with the great power competition that’s going on across the globe, we’ve seen from some of the actions in the alliance’s AOR, the need for us to think differently, and the need for us to be able to deliver capabilities faster, means that we have to have a different mindset.
Innovation is not about changing everything. Innovation is about making small changes to processes across that DOTMLPFI spectrum. It’s not always about the material solution. It can be doctrine, it can be training, it can be education and interoperability. And so those are the things that we have to focus on. If we can do small changes across those spectrums, we will make big changes in the capabilities and the lethality that will then give our adversaries pause to be able to do something that might take us to conflict.
Mr. Muradian: Let me ask you a Trident Juncture question, because I want to ask you a wargaming question. How important is Trident Junction and what are some of the capability development outputs that are going to be happening? And talk to us a little bit about your experimentation approach because everybody has been talking about wargaming. There was a great synthetic environment question that was asked of Sir Stuart about creating a synthetic environment, because there’s a lot of stuff, for example, in the electronic warfare spectrum you don’t want to be testing in public.
Talk to us about this sort of virtuous exercise cycle which has always been important but seems particularly important since Trident Juncture I think had more than 20 experimentation sets that went within it.
Lt. Gen. Sharpy: Some of the things we did was just as simple as sharing. Sharing of information. For the first time in an exercise we took all the data that we used, shared it, and are now analyzing it to figure out what we learned and how we did operations. That’s something we haven’t done.
We did adaptive manufacturing where we did adaptive manufacturing on the field of an exercise for the first time. We did a bunch of biomedical evacuation and processes to help even enhance the capability that was talked about during the conference, about how we make the medical delivery better. Logistics across the board. We have a challenge with mobility across even the alliance and so we challenged those assumptions of how we would do things in a contested environment. And just across the board we did, like you said, 20 different experiments and we’re collecting the data, but we’ve learned a lot and we’re going to take those lessons and not make them lessons enmired, but we’re going to take them and now put them across that DOTMLPFI spectrum and change the way that we train. Change the way that we educate. And change the doctrine to match the capabilities that we have so that we can be more responsive, more agile and more lethal in case we’re ever called upon.
Mr. Muradian: How important are, you know people have a tendency of forgetting the vast amount of work the alliance does in terms of the very methodical, well researched road maps, for example. Talk to us about the most important road maps to what you’re trying to achieve and how they fit into your planning intellectual process.
Lt. Gen. Sharpy: One of the things we talked about was the emerging and disruptive technology road map. We implemented that last June and so I just facilitated a conversation about that. Really, it’s about how we can take those technologies that are out there and make our decision, enhance our decision-making capability, enhance our capability development processes, and the enablement of SACEUR’s AOR which are three priorities that the alliance gave us.
So we then went out with enabled lines of effort that are the synchronization functions that are cross-functional that we can use that aren’t revolutionary but just can make small changes across those spectrums to enable those capabilities faster, better, and across that alliance.
One of the things that I see the power of the alliance, imagine there’s 29 nations that bring with it the intellectual capacity, the investment by their nation, the leadership by 29, and the academic institutions that they bring and the diversity of thought that 29 bring. It’s an amazing opportunity for us to take all of that, synchronize it, consolidate it, and use it to figure out how we can be better, more effective, more efficient, and I think be a stronger deterrent for any potential adversary to think twice before they act.
Mr. Muradian: Let me ask you two questions before you get the hook. Question one is on wargaming. There’s a tendency, and you guys are the wargaming command for, obviously built the Trident Juncture exercise which was extraordinary, the largest NATO exercise since the Cold War. And yet all too often wargames, rather than illustrate challenges, highlight shortcomings, become sort of exercises to sort of justify the status quo. Right? I want to protect a particular weapon system, I want to protect a particular approach.
How is the command changing wargaming so that it goes back to its origins which is to be harsh, cold, objective reality? That splash of cold water on everybody’s faces to be like hey, you know what? This is not working. Let’s get to work on highlighting the problem set that we have to be addressing.
Lt. Gen. Sharpy: First off, at ACT we’re the warfighting development command. We do exercises for a couple of things, right? One is to make sure that our forces can do what we expect them to do. The interoperable charter that we have across all those capabilities that we’re developing to make sure that they can work together.
But then we also want to learn. We have to be able to see it does what we say, can we do it, does it work, and are the forces trained to be able to do it together? So that’s the challenge that we did.
The importance of exercises, especially as you have a dynamic environment, means we have to not push the traditional boundaries in exercise, but we have to push beyond and take what those experimentations, the modeling and simulations that we’re doing, to make our capabilities better going forward than they are today.
So what I saw in Trident Juncture was, for me, new to the operation and the organization, I saw a willingness to push beyond the current boundaries, to try things that we haven’t done, and to experiment and I didn’t hear anybody complain if it didn’t work.
Now what we need to do is if we tried something and it didn’t work, learn from it and make it better. Right? We don’t make things, we make them better. That’s what we’re going to do going forward, to take those things that worked in Trident Juncture, take those things that might not have worked, spiral develop them so that they can be better in the future going forward, and learning together and making sure it’s interoperable across the 29 is really what makes us so special, and what a great opportunity to be able to do that on behalf of all 29.
Mr. Muradian: The last question which is a resource question. So in almost every NATO job you have the power of the office, you have the power of the rank, and yet we talked a little bit about resources. Resources are actually controlled, as shocking as it might be for people watching this to realize, major grade officers sometimes who are the national, the funding conduits that go into the alliance.
How does that have to change ultimately? I discussed this a little bit with Camille Grand, the Assistant Secretary General for Defense Investment. From your standpoint, does that have to change? Because alliance leaders are entrusted, once a mission is agreed to, to execute a military operation and making life or death decisions. How does the funding picture have to change to give you authority, because at the end of the day the power of the purse is actually one of the most important powers that you have to set priorities, to drive an agenda, to drive change? Does that fundamentally have to change where General Lanata and folks of your rank and office have greater control over the national resources to apply for the benefit of all?
Lt. Gen. Sharpy: That’s a hard question, but I’ll stick to what I know.
I know that at Allied Command Transformation we need to do a better job of explaining what we’re doing in order to make those capabilities better. Right? If it was an operational need that was developed on behalf of a nation and it’s something that that’s vitally important that we need to do that, then we need to work through the management to tell that story about why we need it and how we’re going to deliver it and how much it’s going to cost throughout the life cycle of the program. That’s another benefit of the common governance model.
We now look at a weapon system or a capability across the entire life span of it as opposed to just buying something and then forgetting about it. The cost has got to be important.
And that’s important. Having been a programmer in previous lives, I understand the resourcing equation. But what we need to do is we need to, through our best military advice through the Military Committee and others, to explain the necessity of what this capability can provide. And I believe that if we do that correctly and tell that story, and back it up so it’s not based on emotion but based on the data, science and analytics and the modeling and simulation and the benefits of that capability and the way that it meets the need of the warfighter, I believe that leadership will then, if the resourcing decision comes back from any of the nations, that’s their responsibility, that’s their right. Then through the Military Committee and others, I believe that leadership can then go back and have an adult conversation to focus on why it’s more important than worrying about the dollars.
Because resources are precious. But in this new adaptation and some of the things that are going on, more nations are contributing, getting towards that two percent, and there’s also been a 20 percent investment in research and development, technological development, that the nations have asked for.
So there’s an opportunity here to do that. I believe that if the resourcing equation comes back as no, then I’ve got to go back and sharpen our pencils and tell that story to get to yes.
Mr. Muradian: And you have a great partner in Camille Grand. You two are going to be working very closely.
Lt. Gen. Sharpy: Absolutely. We are just one of the many organizations that support the 29 nations. Within the management function we have our partners at ACO and SHAPE and then we have the international staff and the military staff and also the two agencies of NSPA and NCIA. Camille Grand as Defense Investment is a huge partner and we talk a lot about innovation and investment and where we can get the biggest bang for our buck on behalf of the member nations.
Mr. Muradian: It was interesting that Sir Stuart also mentioned that there’s so much innovation that’s actually going on across the alliance and it’s really, really great to come down here and spend some time with you guys.
Lt. Gen. Sharpy: Innovation is going on everywhere. Our challenge is to figure out where that innovation that’s making the biggest impact is in the 29, and then share that across the alliance and then tell the story as to why we should make that across the alliance as opposed to individual nations. And it’s happening. We’ve just got to synchronize it and harness it and then tell that story of why we need to do it across the alliance, and I think that will have a huge impact on potentially deterring anybody from trying to do something that doesn’t make sense in our AOR.
Mr. Muradian: There was one important last question I wanted to ask you, which is about the Young Disruptors. That’s been a key feature. Every year there are different features and elements across the 13-year evolution of this conference. Talk to us about the Young Disruptors and why from your perspective it was so important and the perspective that they’re bringing to the conversation.
Lt. Gen. Sharpy: One of the outputs from last year was we had a couple of Young Disruptors that were here that were local. They brought a different perspective. Some of us, they see as us older military members that are stovepiped and we think one way. We wanted them to be able to come with unabridged thought and to be able to say hey, here’s what we think about this situation or potential capability, and then to bounce it off what they think because they have a different thought process, different methodology. They don’t think the same way.
That’s what makes this alliance so great, the diversity of 29, plus the Young Disruptors. Most of the nations brought a Young Disruptor from their nation that was funded. Then we also brought local innovators that are locally here to be able to do that.
Mr. Muradian: And just to point out, they’re 24 to 32, but many of them have military experience, some of them are active duty, some of them are reservists.
Lt. Gen. Sharpy: The ones that I engaged with, when you ask about their resume, even at age 24, 30, they have multiple companies, they’ve been to Iraq, they’ve been to Afghanistan, they’ve worked in State Department, they’ve worked for the Secretary of Defense. We definitely got it right with the amount of talent and the intellectual capacity and capabilities that they bring based on their business experience, based on some of their knowledge of defense, but more importantly, the way that they think and the way that they were able to apply what they learned in industry to help us to be able to add to the alliance was pretty incredible.
And I’ve got to follow up on one of the things that was said during one of our speakers. When he said people asked about authorities. He said listen, you have the authority to innovate. Don’t wait for people to tell you that you have the approval. Use the authorities that you have and maximize those authorities to innovate and to think differently and to be bold and to move forward until somebody tells you to stop.
I haven’t heard anybody at this forum over the last two days tell anybody to stop.
Mr. Muradian: That’s right, and that was Sir Stuart Peach, right, in his talk was saying you guys have the authorities. Go out there and knock it out.
United States Air Force Lieutenant General Tom Sharpy. The Deputy Chief of Staff here at Allied Command Transformation for Capability Development. Sir, thanks so much for being so generous with your time. I hope you have great holidays, and I’m looking forward to engaging in 2019.
Lt. Gen. Sharpy: Thanks, same to you, and have a great holiday as well.
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