Editorial
Welcome to the 42nd edition of the JAPCC Journal. Continuing with our Annual Theme, Air Power at the Edge: Securing NATO’s New Frontiers, this edition returns to a question underpinning every capability we field: how do we prepare the people who will operate at that edge, and the architectures connecting them? Capability is bounded less by what the Alliance can buy than by what it can crew and connect. Aircrew, controllers, and the command and control (C2) arrangements that bind them set the rate at which everything else becomes useful.
We open with departing reflections from our Executive Director, Lt Gen Thorsten Poschwatta, whose stewardship has shaped this Centre’s contribution to Joint Air and Space Power. Major General Marios Bantouvas then describes the Hellenic International Flight Training Centre as a shared Allied training asset. In ‘How to Train Your Pilot’, a companion piece sets a deliberate marker: however capable synthetic environments become, live flying and the guide by instructors’ real-time judgment cannot be replaced.
Our Transformation and Capabilities section examines where our structures must change to keep pace with technology. Colonel Kevin ‘Tread’ Anderson explores the seams between the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and NATO command and control in the High North, where two architectures must function as one. Major Eric Yuan then considers the requirements for the future aerial refuelling fleet, and James Black and Stuart Dee from RAND Europe discuss the promise and the barriers to fielding Directed Energy Weapons. Subsequent articles highlight the decryption risk quantum computing poses to Air C2, and the promise and limits of optical satellite communications.
Our authors then turn to integration. One traces how Tactical Air Control Parties must evolve into multi-domain teams employing small uncrewed systems and electronic warfare. Another argues for Artificial Intelligence as the means to fuse sensor data at the tempo Integrated Air and Missile Defence now demands. A third makes the case that Live, Virtual, and Constructive (LVC) infrastructure must be built for interoperability from the outset rather than retrofitted later. It sits alongside ‘How to Train Your Pilot’: that piece asks where LVC belongs in the pipeline, this one how it should be built.
Our Out of the Box contribution looks back to look forward. It analyses the first year of the invasion of Ukraine through Russian helicopter losses, and what they suggest about the cost of adapting too slowly.
Taken together, these contributions describe an Alliance that must think as quickly as it fields. That is the standard the JAPCC sets for itself, continuing the discussion at our forthcoming Joint Air and Space Power Conference.
This edition also introduces dedicated International Standard Serial Numbers (ISSNs) for the print and online Journal, strengthening its publication identity and discoverability. We invite you to share your views through our new Reader Feedback Survey. Scan the QR code on page 86 and help us shape future JAPCC publications.
Vito Cracas
Colonel, ITA AF
Assistant Director, JAPCC
