The Hoover Institution National Security Task Force hosted a round table discussion with General David L. Goldfein, Chief of Staff of the US Air Force. 

Task Force participants drew on the Chief of Staff’s 37-year career to discuss the past, present, and future of the United States Air Force. As the Air Force shifts from a “hardware" service to a “software” service, some achievements and initiatives will serve the branch well into the future, while others will need rethinking in the context of the changing national security environment. Participants probed the implications of radically different budget environments during a period of modernization and new challenges to air and space superiority; cooperation and interoperability with allied forces; the rise of autonomous, multi-domain systems, and what that means for tradeoffs in personnel and training; and, to address each of those challenges, creative opportunities to facilitate interactions with private sector technology talent and nontraditional business partners.