Air Force war lessons will not be 'shelved'.

The Air Force intends to take immediate action to determine whether the lessons learned from the conflict in Iraq should lead to near-term changes in the service's budget, said Gen. T. Michael Moseley, Air Force vice chief of staff.

This marks a different approach from how the Air Force managed its conclusions from Operation Desert Storm, in 1991, he told a gathering of defense industry officials, in Washington, D.C. After that conflict ended, the Air Force Staff spent a year compiling lessons learned, but the results ultimately were shipped to the Air War College and the Command and Staff College, for academic analysis.

Now, the plan is to "capture" the experiences from the war and establish if and how they should influence "corporate investments," such as current and future procurement programs, said Moseley.

"We will look at what lessons should be funded," he said.

In the past, "lessons were put on the shelf," said Moseley. His boss, Gen. John Jumper, specifically directed his staff to not let that happen again. It is important to take action while there is still "momentum" for change, he said. Otherwise, the natural tendency is to let things go back to the way they were.

Moseley became vice chief in September. He previously was the commander of U.S. Central Command Air Force, and directed the air war in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

He stressed the "joint" nature of the Iraqi conflict, and predicted that it is unlikely and unadvisable for any future war to be fought by a single service. Further, OIF reinforced the notion of a "total force," with heavy participation by the Guard and Reserves. Of the forces under his command in OIF, about 25 percent were Guard and Reserves, he said.

One OIF-related issue that surely is getting high-level attention is "battle damage assessment," or the ability to determine whether an air strike achieved the commander's intended goals, Moseley said. "We are working BDA from the top down and from the bottom up," he said. In future air wars, "we need better ways to pass data, stream video and determine the effects" of an air strike.

For example, he said, a pilot may be certain that he dropped a 2,000-pound bomb through the roof of an enemy command-and-control compound, but he may not necessarily know the results of the strike, such as whether the enemy inside the building stopped transmitting.

As the reconstruction phase in Iraq continues, among the Air Force's priorities is to help Ambassador Paul Bremer secure airfields and reopen Baghdad's international airport, Moseley said. One of the major obstacles is the spread of shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles within Iraq.