AFD 35 Discovery Guide
Introduction
Air Force Doctrine 2035 is an initiative of the LeMay Center for Doctrine Development and Education to scout emerging technologies and assess their impact on airpower doctrine. Our goal is to prevent doctrinal surprises, avoid doctrinal stagnation, and catalyze doctrinal evolution to match the accelerated pace of technological change.
What is Doctrine?
“At the very heart of warfare lies doctrine.”
“It represents the central beliefs for waging war in order to achieve victory. Doctrine is of the mind, a network of faith and knowledge reinforced by experience which lays the pattern for the utilization of men, equipment, and tactics. It is the building material for strategy. It is fundamental to sound judgment.”
~ General Curtis Emerson LeMay, 1968
Doctrine is:
- The agreed-upon, operationally relevant body of best practices and principles
- Supported by:
- History
- Debate and analysis
- Exercises, wargames, contingencies
- Official advice (i.e., authoritative, but not directive)
- Normally, doctrine is the best way to proceed. If we must deviate, there should be clear and compelling operational reasons.
Doctrine is distinct from, supports, and is supported by policy and strategy.
Policy governs the use of force, shapes strategy, and affects the application of doctrine. Policy is transmitted through formal and legal means. It includes laws, directives, instructions, and regulations.
Strategy incorporates the ends, ways, means, and risks to achieve objectives. Doctrine provides the informed starting point for developing strategy. The success or failure of a strategy may affect policy and doctrine.
Air Force operational doctrine guides how the US Air Force organizes, presents, and employs forces that apply airpower--the ability to project military power through control and exploitation in, from, and through the air. 
Air Force Doctrine is contained in a library of publications that capture our distinct USAF capabilities across five core functions:
- Air Superiority
- Global Precision Attack
- Rapid Global Mobility
- Global Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance
- Command and Control
Furthermore, Airmen have gained a unique perspective of airpower that is distilled through several foundational statements:
- Control of the air is a necessary precondition for control of the surface.
- Airpower creates effects at the strategic level of warfare.
- Airpower exploits the principles of mass and maneuver simultaneously.
- Airpower applies force against many facets of enemy power.
- Airpower is not bound by geographical operating areas and creates effects
- throughout a theater.
- Airpower’s attributes combine to make it one of the most versatile
- components of military power.
- Airpower is a critical component of operations in the information environment.
- Airpower provides more than lethal effects.
- Airpower requires protection and sustainment to enable air operations and requires effective integration of capabilities, people, weapons, bases, logistics, and supporting infrastructure.
- Airpower’s unique attributes necessitate it be centrally commanded by an Airman.
These central beliefs of airpower frame our quest to discover how emerging technologies may alter doctrine in the next decade.
Our Asks:
- Contribute Insights: What doctrinal principles, or functions, would your capabilities, platforms, or tools affect? Not today, but in 2035.
- Demonstrate Technology: As stated, we don’t want to see current capabilities or applications used today. We want to see the potential “future” uses of your tech that might disrupt doctrine in the next decade. A demonstration should show potential future use, and/or create dilemmas not currently thought of.
- Connect the AFD35 Team with other experts: Provide contacts or an introduction (via email) to experts in one or more of the five tech areas we are investigating.
- Participate in our Wargame: Upon invitation, organizations, groups, or individuals may be allowed to participate in our AFD35 Wargame in April 2026 with the potential to impact doctrine development in the next decade.
Our Questions
Our core questions, divided by technology area, are designed to provoke critical analysis, scenario building, and doctrinal forecasting.
- AI & Autonomy
- How can AI, automation, and quantum science integrate with targeting doctrine to increase speed and lethality?
- How will artificial intelligence affect human judgement in the commander’s decision cycle?
- If AI can increasingly solve the “physics based” parts of our operational planning, how will that impact our planning processes, and the current balances between positive and procedural control?
- How will AI and automation impact authority delegation to enable rapid and fluid command relationship adjustments in C2 doctrine?
- Will the introduction of agentic AI drive changes to the planning and execution of air operations?
- Adv Materials & Production
- How can advanced materials and production impact the ACE scheme of maneuver and the ability to sustain forces?
- How will new production processes revolutionize supply chains and rewrite logistics, sustainment and air maneuver doctrine?
- Biotech & Neuroscience
- If highly convincing deep fakes are increasingly easy to produce, how can biotech and neuroscience help us to tell good information from bogus information for the purposes of intelligence?
- How will advances in neuroscience and human-machine teaming transform decision-making and reset command relationships?
- Robotics & Miniaturization
- How will proliferated autonomous drones alter doctrine for air superiority and airspace control?
- How will robotics and miniaturization affect freedom of maneuver in the space domain, and subsequently alter USAF space support doctrine?
- Quantum Science
- How will quantum sensing affect the joint functions of protection and C2, while maintaining the principles of security and surprise?
- If quantum computing makes it impossible for us to do traditional cyber-attacks without being detected, what other ways can we interfere with quantum protected adversary C2 systems?