16th Air Force Leverages Unified Information Warfare Efforts Against China, Russia

The 16th Air Force is focusing its cyber and electronic capabilities to unify the U.S. Air Force’s cyber efforts to better counteract challenges from China and Russia, its commander said Monday in a live-streamed discussion.

Speaking at the Aerospace Nation online event of the Air & Space Forces Association’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, Lt. Gen. Kevin Kennedy, a resource person at a previous Potomac Officers Club event, pointed out that on top of the Air Force’s to-do list is not a new tool but converging all the service’s capabilities under the “unity of effort” concept, Air & Space Forces Magazine reported.

Kennedy pointed out that the 16th Air Force, also known as Air Forces Cyber, has experts in the cyber, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance domains.

He noted that to generate a unity of effort, the 616th Operations Center was created in March 2020, combining the 624th and 625th Operations Centers to coordinate USAF’s worldwide cyber and ISR operations.

Within the new operations center, a competition-based system is being formed to enable the service to gather all relevant warfare information from all USAF components, Kennedy said.