EP 59 — Lt. Gen. Nahom (USAF, ret) on Why Predictability Matters More Than Money in Military Readiness

In a rapidly changing geopolitical landscape, Lt. Gen. Nahom, (USAF, ret), brings invaluable perspective on how Arctic security, budget realities, and emerging technologies are reshaping military strategy. In this episode of DIB Innovators, Lt. Gen. Nahom offers Dave unique insights into why the Arctic has become a critical frontier for national security while climate change creates new opportunities for competition between major powers. 

 

His experience as the Air Force A8 provides a candid look at why the military struggles to rapidly adopt innovative technologies despite having seemingly large budgets and highlights the difficult trade-offs between maintaining aging fleets and investing in modernization. Lt. Gen. Nahom's firsthand account of the Chinese surveillance balloon incident reveals significant domain awareness gaps in detecting unconventional threats, while his strategic advice for small defense companies — partner directly with combatant commands rather than individual services — offers a practical roadmap for navigating the "valley of death" in defense innovation. 

 

Topics discussed:

• How climate change is transforming the Arctic into a strategic battleground as retreating sea ice creates new shipping lanes that cut 10-14 days off transit between Asian and European ports, opening economic opportunities that bring competition and potential crisis.
• The misconception about military budgets illustrated through the "pass-through" phenomenon, where intelligence agency funding appears in Air Force numbers but isn't actually controlled by the service, leaving single-digit percentage budget flexibility for innovation.
• Why maintaining multiple aging aircraft fleets creates unsustainable weapon system sustainment costs, forcing difficult decisions about vertical fleet cuts to enable modernization.
• The domain awareness challenges exposed by the Chinese balloon incident, highlighting gaps in detecting and responding to unconventional threats that don't match traditional expectations of attack vectors.
• The cost asymmetry problem in modern warfare where adversaries deploy $1,000 drones that require $500,000 missiles to defeat, necessitating more cost-effective counter-UAS solutions.
• Why small defense companies struggle to cross the "valley of death" from initial AFWERX/SBIR funding to program of record, requiring partnerships between combatant commands and OSD to secure additional funding pathways.
• The critical need for predictability in maintenance and training schedules for aging fleets, which can dramatically improve aircraft availability and readiness virtually overnight when implemented correctly.
• How data integration rather than new platforms will transform warfare by 2030, enabling legacy systems like B-52s to work seamlessly with advanced platforms by closing hundreds if not thousands of kill chains inside a vulnerability period.
• The strategic imperative of reducing fleet types from seven distinct fighter fleets to four to cut maintenance and logistics costs while enabling faster modernization.
• The contrasting lessons from Ukraine and Israel conflicts versus the "ultimate away game" in the South China Sea, where geographic distances create fundamentally different operational challenges that many technological solutions from current conflicts won't address.