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AFGSC commander speaks on competitive edge, long-term strategic competition

  • Published
  • Air Force Global Strike Command Public Affairs

Gen. Timothy Ray, Air Force Global Strike Command commander, gave a keynote speech addressing global strike and the critical competitive edge it presents at the Air Force Association’s Air, Space and Cyber Conference, Sept. 16 in National Harbor.

Starting with the shift in our nation’s defensive posture as a result of the 2018 National Defense Strategy, Ray highlighted the reemergence of long-term strategic competition and great power competition. Key to this discussion is the role the Air Force plays and the capabilities that tie into the competitive edge.

“It’s an incredibly different dynamic for us to have long-term strategic competition,” Ray said. “We have been in a competition in the Middle East, and we’ve done some great work, but ladies and gentlemen, that campaign was not an existential threat. Nothing there has ever created any doubts in our mind about our ability to deliver world peace.”

According to Ray, that ability to deliver world peace ties in to providing deterrence options to the nation’s leadership.

“I’m not in the deterrence business,” Ray added. “Deterrence belongs to the president of the United States, to the secretary of defense, the secretary of state, and it belongs to the chairman. I’m a war fighter.”

That same war-fighting mentality has been applied to the Airmen who maintain two-thirds of the nation’s nuclear triad.

“When I think of our triad, we have promised the extended deterrence of all of our allies in Europe and in the Pacific,” Ray said. “So whatever we do to our triad does not live in a vacuum.”

Ray stated the challenge presented to AFGSC is to maintain capability that no other nation can in the short term until new bombers and intercontinental ballistic missiles arrive.

Click here for the full presentation.