Iraqi war shows continued importance of air dominance - Lockheed Martin

Dain M. Hancock, president of Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, said lessons learned in the Iraq war were likely to drive aerospace technology development for the next several years, with the continuing importance of air dominance emerging as one of the main lessons.

"Operation Iraqi Freedom is producing lessons and observations that will have profound effects on international defense policies and the industry," Hancock said, speaking to the news media at the 2003 Paris Air Show at Le Bourget airfield.

"One of the things we saw was an unprecedented degree of networking and connectivity of information," he said."However, the war demonstrated, once again, the critical importance of having air dominance and the benefits it holds for enabling a swift victory and minimal loss of lives."

He added that the Iraq experience "serves as an inarguable endorsement of the need for next-generation aircraft systems such as the F/A-22 and F-35 (Joint Strike Fighter)."

In other comments, Hancock discussed the next generation of technology as it relates to 'cognition' in the battlespace - that is, how force commanders and combatants can use all the information that will be made available to them from sensors, satellites and other assets.

"There has been a realisation within defense agencies that the cognitive domain is where battles are truly won and lost.Having vast amounts of information is of marginal value if it cannot be quickly interpreted and applied to strategic decision-making," he said.

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