By Mohammed Tijjani
The Chief of Air Staff (CAS), Air Marshal Hassan Abubakar, says future air warfare in the country will revolve around intelligence gathering, surveillance, rapid mobility, precision attack and use of unarmed aircrafts.
Abubakar stated this to newsmen shortly after presenting a lecture to participants of Senior Course 46 of the Armed Forces Command and Staff College (AFCSC) Jaji, on Thursday.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the lecture was on “The Future of Air Warfare in the Nigerian Air Force – My Command Philosophy”.
The CAS said that the Nigeria Air Force (NAF) would deploy all assets and personnel to counter internal and external threats to national security.
He added that the NAF would intensify collaboration with other security services and engage in strategic alliance with other countries.
Abubakar said that strategic alliance was critical in achieving the set objectives of ensuring the security of the country.
“There is no service or nation that can do everything all by itself. There are a lot of strategies that can be derived from collaboration, joint operations and cooperation,” he added.
Abubakar noted that the armed forces had in the past not taken the advantages of the opportunities in jointness.
“The armed forces have woken up to realise the critical need for jointness in achieving set objectives of securing the country against adversaries,” he added.
The CAS said as part of strategic alliance, Nigeria would work with the Czheck Republic in the training of NAF personnel.
“Last week, we were in Czheck Republic in the effort to establish strategic alliances.
“Part of the results of the visit is that we will have the Czheck Air Force to train some of our pilots and also to establish high level maintenance facilities for us in Kano.
“We have also started such alliances with other countries such as Pakistan, China, Egypt and many other countries.
“I think that is the way, going forward, because there are several advantages to be derived from such collaborations and cooperations,” he said.
Abubakar believes that going forward, Nigeria would benefit immensely from such alliances.
The CAS said he had conducted assessment of the NAF operating environment, procedures, theatres of operations and establishments across the country.
He said that this enabled him to develop his command philosophy anchored on repositioning NAF to effectively meet the air power demand of national security in all operational environments.
“We also identified five key enablers that will drive the command philosophy which included optimisation of our force structure and establishments for enhanced operational effectiveness.”
The Air Chief added that other important key enablers of his command philosophy was the focus on research and development and use of technology.
He stressed that the NAF as a very technical force, needed to intensify research and development activities to not only maintain its facilities, but also fabricate appropriate ones to enhance national security.
“We realised that continous depending on foreign vendors for our defense needs, is bad for us, we therefore established a robust research and development organisation for us to go off the dependence.
“We have gone very far and achieved alot in terms of research and development and some of the products we have been able to come up with have been in use.
“We now have ownership of our technologies and we even produce and sell them commercially.
“We are in advanced stage of completely having a UAV that is fully produced and operated by NAF, among others. It is a work in progress.”
The CAS appreciated the AFCSC for providing world class training for officers of the Nigerian Armed Forces.
Abubakar said he would continue to give priority to the training of NAF personnel so as to have a very efficient mission oriented force focused on protecting the country. (NAN)
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