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Welcome to Blue Horizons
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Multi-Year Future Study being Conducted
for the Air Force Chief of Staff

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Mission Description Back to Top

    Blue Horizons 2007 (aka Horizons 21)

           Before academic year 2006, Lt Gen Wood, then AF/A8, tasked Air University to start a series of long range studies looking 20 years into the future to provide a vision for what the Air Force must start doing today to be prepared for the challenges of 2025 and beyond.  The Air Staff has the responsibility for looking into the future and determining where it must invest in people, training, education and technology.  The difficulty of long range plans is that the future is opaque and the pressures of everyday activity leave little time for reflective thought or allocating funds for concepts that will not materialize for decades.  The last major internal study of the future, Air Force 2025, was done at Air University in 1996 where over 260 officers worked through the research that led to a multi-volume report outlining alternative futures and technologies required for those complicated and dangerous worlds.

         The Blue Horizons study is designed to answer questions similar to those addressed in the Air Force 2025 study. These include: What are the emerging technologies that will shape the US Air Force and the conflict arena in which it must operate in 20 years in the future?  What could air, space and cyberspace power look like 20 years in the future?  Who will have access to emerging technologies that can make a difference?  How soon will these important technological achievements become fielded systems?

          Blue Horizons 2007 was the first year of what has become a continuous effort involving a group of CSAT staff and Air War College faculty and approximately 45 students each year from the Air War College and Air Command and Staff College. That first year’s efforts were led by Dr. Grant Hammond, Mr. Ted Hailes, and Lieutenant Colonel Jim Rothenflue. Under their leadership, the students researched future systems and technological concepts working closely with subject matter experts from the Air Force Research Laboratory, the Defense Research Projects Agency, major universities and businesses, and other government laboratories and agencies.  In addition to producing the reports posted here, the result was a cadre of officers conversant enough in critical areas of emerging technologies to ask critical questions and make assessments of systems in directed energy, biotechnology, nanotechnology and cyber technologies and what they mean for the future of the U.S. Air Force.

           Blue Horizons 2007 was only the beginning of a series of annual long range vision studies which are known collectively as “Blue Horizons.”  These annual studies serve as an input for the development of Title X wargames, Strategic Planning Guidance, Quadrennial Defense Review scenarios and the development of service requirements.

           Blue Horizons is overseen by the Air Force Futures Group, and run by the Center for Strategy and Technology. The individual research papers, group technology assessments and briefings given to the Chief and the Air Staff are designed for easy use by staffs at all levels with researchable data base, synopsis of major concepts, and power point slides.  Points of contact for Blue Horizons are: Colonel Michael Smith and Mr. Ted Hailes.

Executive Summaries Back to Top

Briefings Back to Top

Selected Papers Back to Top

Other Blue Horizon Papers Back to Top


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page updated/reviewed 1 June 2011