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Secure Research Wing broadens Air University horizons

  • Published
  • By Tech. Sgt. Sarah Loicano
  • 42nd Air Base Wing Public Affairs
MAXWELL AIR FORCE BASE, Ala., --  Air University marked a progressive step forward in faculty and student academic research opportunities with the opening of a new Secure Research Wing Aug. 19, 2015.

A project two years in the making, the research wing is intended to address limitations in academic studies stemming from the inability to provide students and faculty access to classified research and facilities. The new wing provides a protected, classified area for students and faculty to access current Air Force doctrine, lessons learned from ongoing operations, as well as secure computer systems and video teleconference for collaboration and research.

"The purpose of the secure research wing is to accelerate and enable Air University to connect with the ongoing requirements that the Air Force has for thought, for strategy, and for lessons learned," said Col. Tony Meeks, director of the LeMay Center War Gaming Institute. "The purpose of the secure research wing is to provide a means to an end for faculty and students to connect with those hard ongoing problems that the Air Force faces."

A need for an Air University secure research area grew as a result of the Blue Horizons program, a strategic elective course for Air Command and Staff College and Air War College students. Blue Horizons students take a long-range strategic perspective, making airpower projections 25 years in the future and providing recommendations on what airpower needs to be for the nation.  In order for students to have a better understanding of future challenges and possibilities, Meeks said they need to be better informed.

"We are informing the debate. It's about air superiority, sort of an Air Force think tank. We attempt to provide analysis and recommendations to Air Force leadership," he explained. "Research doesn't exist in a vacuum; you may not recognize that a capability exists today, or you might over or underestimate its ability. Without a secure research facility, students will not have access to recent, relevant data."

The addition of a secured research facility will allow students and faculty the choice to conduct research and analysis on classified or unclassified, publicly releasable topics, something Meeks said will allow Air University to keep Air Force leaders better informed from a military perspective.

"When you're talking military and timely and relevant, you're talking classified information," he said. "It gives us better prepared and informed students for the challenges we are facing today and more relevant research to aid Air Force leadership in making decisions for tomorrow."

For some students and faculty at Air University, the research facility supports another dimension of airpower - one that is becoming increasingly important to how the Air Force operates - cyber space.

"We have to be able to understand how technology can be used for warfighting; how to operationalize cyber technology in support of the mission," said Col. Bill Young, director of the Cyber and Electronic Warfare Research Task Force.  "The research wing gives us a capability to do high-end classified research that we otherwise would not be able to do, and it gives us the capability to test ideas that come out of design-thinking research."

Funded and supported by Air University, the Carl A. Spaatz Center for Officer Education and the Air Force Research Institute, the "field of dreams" research wing is expected to be a cost saving opportunity by bringing more experience to students at the speed of collaboration, and helping reduce or eliminate the need for travel.
"Having a secure wing is a tremendous capability that without we are limited in what we could provide for the Air Force and the nation," said Young.

Overall, education leaders here hope that the secure facility will provide a voice for Air University to participate with a greater influence in the airpower debate, and be a space for industry collaboration.

"This is part of the transformative effort to make Maxwell a part of a larger, broader community of experts and an opportunity to allow Air University to expand how we communicate with our stakeholders, with air staff and with combatant commanders across the world in an effort to be relevant to the challenges they face today, the threats they have identified in the future and just be there on the ground floor as we figure out what the Air Force needs to be prepared to do," said Meeks. "This puts Air University back on the map as the center for air power and strategic thought."