Overview
AFD35’s insights will be rigorously tested through multi-faceted, mission focused wargames designed to simulate contested environments, future force structures, and adversary responses. Wargaming is the critical proving ground to evaluate the utility, risks, and doctrinal viability of each concept before integration into Air Force Foundational Doctrine Publications (AFDPs).
Integration
The AFD35 Team will take our distilled insights from research with dozens of industry, academia and military organizations and build scenarios around key mission areas.
- Control of the Air (Air Superiority)
- Long Range Precision Strike
- Homeland Defense
- Operations in the Information Environment
- Logistics, Sustainment, and Air Mobility
Each scenario will examine the impact and potential doctrinal influence of our five technology areas on a 2035 Air Force: Artificial Intelligence and Autonomy, Advanced Materials and Production, Biotechnology and Neuroscience, Robotics and Miniaturization, and Quantum Sciences.
These are technologies that will shape core missions, strengthened by the ability to command and control (C2) complex forces, the ability to see, understand, and anticipate the battlespace through intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), and Enhanced cognition, endurance, and resilience (Human Performance) ensure Airmen can adapt, lead, and make ethical decisions in ways machines cannot.
How we will integrate these technologies into key future missions:
Our AFD35 exploratory doctrinal questions will allow participants to enable concepts, approaches, and activities that can be incorporated into future doctrine for execution.
Control of the Air (Air Superiority)
Explore: How will proliferated autonomous drones alter doctrine? Will advanced materials and miniaturization render defenses obsolete?
Enable: Shift battle activities toward decentralized, machine-aided networks to manage drone swarms at machine speed, ensuring commanders retain judgment as AI accelerates kill chains, while fusing quantum sensing and miniaturized platforms for early detection.
Execute: Doctrine that executes air superiority through resilient networks and adaptive platforms, ensuring enduring advantage in contested environments.
Long Range Precision Strike
Explore: How can AI and quantum integrate with targeting? Will agentic AI change planning?
Enable: Synchronize distributed, AI-guided strikes with fluid authority delegation, as teams integrate neuroscience tools for rapid target evaluation and ethical decision checks, to provide predictive targeting through quantum-enhanced sensing.
Execute: Doctrine that strikes globally, adapts relentlessly, and never stops.
Homeland Defense
Explore: How do we counter drones, hypersonics, and quantum-protected Command and Control?
Enable: Link military and civil defense into layered, multidomain structures while ensuring human endurance and resilience during prolonged crises, and integrate advanced sensing to anticipate threats before they cross borders.
Execute: Doctrine that executes defense as a layered, continuous, and omnidomain construct, ensuring resilient protection and dominance across all operational environments.
Operations in the Information Environment
Explore: How can biotech help distinguish truth from deepfakes? How does AI shape influence?
Enable: Fuse information ops with military action to secure influence, while enhancing judgment, resisting deception and manipulation, and mapping the digital battlespace to expose adversary narratives.
Execute: Doctrine that executes operations with the recognition that information is a domain of conflict equal in importance to air and space, requiring deliberate integration across the spectrum of warfighting.
Logistics, Sustainment, and Air Mobility
Explore: How will advanced production and robotics revolutionize supply chains?
Enable: Dynamically redirect supply flows in contested environments and sustain crews and logisticians through high-tempo operations, while tracking assets in real-time to ensure resilient sustainment.
Execute: Doctrine that executes logistics with agility, resilience, and aggressive momentum to ensure mission success in any environment.
Red Team Focus: Predicting Adversary Futures
Central to each wargame is a robust Red Team element, designed to:
- Emulate peer and near-peer adversary doctrines, tactics, and strategic behaviors
- Integrate culturally guided perspectives that reflect adversary values, decision hierarchies, and risk tolerances
- Project disruptive future capabilities, allowing Blue Teams to assess operational vulnerabilities and doctrinal shortfalls
This ensures that outcomes are not shaped solely by U.S. concepts of warfare but are stress-tested against realistic, competitive adversary models.
Distilling Outcomes: Deliverables for the AFD35 Symposium
Wargaming outcomes are not standalone solutions; they are refined into actionable deliverables that feed the AFD35 Symposium, including:
Air Force Doctrine Notes (AFDNs) capturing rapid insights and immediate doctrinal recommendations
LeMay Academic Series Papers providing deep analytical dives into scenario dilemmas and conceptual gaps
Doctrinal Planning Tools such as checklists, templates, and scenario injects for Air Component planners
Senior Leader Briefs summarizing wargame-derived recommendations for operational and strategic decision-makers
Symposium Readiness Reports distilling key tested concepts for debate, refinement, and endorsement
Why This Matters
Proofing our efforts through a wargame ensures doctrine is not speculative, and is shaped in conflict conditions, validated through realistic adversary models, and translated into warfighter-ready frameworks that strengthen the United States Air Force’s ability to compete, deter, and win in an increasingly contested future.