Air Traffic Control For Drones? Air Force Tests Out New System

July 22, 2024 | By David Roza

The Air Force achieved a milestone in May by testing out a new tool for controlling high volumes of small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS) in military airspace. The new system is part of a larger government, military, and industry effort to develop Unmanned Aircraft Systems Traffic Management (UTM) systems as the number of small drones for public and private use explodes.

In the near future, the skies may be crowded with small drones delivering packages, inspecting infrastructure, responding to 9-1-1 calls, ferrying passengers, and other tasks at a scale that current air traffic control systems just can’t handle.

“We are expecting millions of drones and their operations in a day, which is a magnitude order different than what happens with current aviation where there are 50,000 aircraft, and [only] about 6,000 at peak in the sky,” Dr. Parimal Kopardekar, director of NASA Aeronautics Research Institute, said in a 2021 NASA video about UTM.

“The question is, how do we manage these millions of drones without burdening the current air traffic control system?” he said.

air traffic drone — An Uncrewed Aircraft System Traffic Management (UTM) at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla. (U.S. Air Force photo by Samuel King Jr.)

Current ATC systems rely on human controllers who see the entire picture of the local airspace talking voice-to-voice with human pilots who do not. By contrast, UTMs rely on drones sharing information with each other to create a common picture that is automatically updated to show each drone’s flight plan.

“That allows [drones] … to figure out a path that will avoid other vehicles in the sky,” Kopardekar explained.

The goal is to bring order to what could otherwise be a chaotic situation: the NASA video alluded to city streets before the invention of road rules, when automobiles, pedestrians, and horse-drawn carriages competing for space led to “general mayhem ruling the day.”

While UTM has applications in the civilian world, MacDill Air Force Base, Fla., became the first Air Force base to use the technology in military airspace, according to a July 12 press release. This specific system is called the Collaborative Low-Altitude Unmanned Aircraft System Integration Effort (CLUE).

Senior Airman Brooks Dingman, 6th Operations Group air traffic controller, or ATC, uses Collaborative Low-Altitude Unmanned Aircraft System Integration Effort, or CLUE, June 6, 2024, to establish constraint to let small Unmanned Aircraft System, or UAS, operators know where ATC approval is required to fly drones at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida. (U.S. Air Force courtesy photo)

The CLUE UTM was developed by the Air Force Research Laboratory to prepare airfield managers, Security Forces Airmen, civil engineers, and other fields for ensuring safe UAS traffic overhead. MacDill first tested out the system in 2022, but it needed refining. Two years later, the system “began formal operational feasibility assessment activities,” according to the press release. The tests mark a major milestone because it is the first UTM system that the Air Force will operationally assess, Phil Zaleski, AFRL CLUE program manager, said in the release.

In the test, UAS operators asked CLUE for permission to fly the drones, and if their request was granted, operators could fly within an allowed area. CLUE updated the operators with new information and warned them if the drones went beyond approved conditions, the release explained. The network also integrated with a range of sensors, including a counter-UAS system, to detect, track, and identify small drones.

It was not clear what the results of the test were, but overall, the system cuts down on “lengthy, manual and advanced planning procedures,” which “will be critical to achieving real-time flight planning and mission execution,” James Layton, MacDill’s chief of plans and programs, said in the release.

The Air Force’s Zero Trust Strategy Is Out—and Acknowledges Big Hurdles.

July 21, 2024 | By Shaun Waterman

The Department of the Air Force faces significant hurdles in implementing the Pentagon’s latest cybersecurity approach, dubbed Zero Trust, and will fail altogether if it continues to lag on key issues, according to its own strategy document.

The final section of the 27-page strategy, quietly published earlier this month by the department’s Chief Information Officer (CIO) Venice Goodwine, is titled “Risks,” and calls out seven issues which could cause problems in the transition to Zero Trust, or even derail it entirely:

Institutional resistance to the massive cultural shift required

Lagging development of tools for automated data tagging, labeling and management

Nascent state of endpoint cybersecurity for non-IT equipment like IoT devices and weapons systems

A lack of industry open standards leading to proliferation of proprietary solutions and danger of vendor lock-in

The need for a complete refitting of Air Force data centers which the department can’t afford until 2028

Operational blind spots

“Delays in these areas risk preventing DAF’s transition to advanced Zero Trust maturity,” states the strategy.

The CIO office declined to make anyone available to Air & Space Forces Magazine for interview, but in a written statement, Department of the Air Force spokesperson Laura McAndrews said Zero Trust is a more challenging transition than prior IT changes because “it is an architectural imperative that touches every device, user, and piece of data in the Department.”

From Castle and Moat to Every Room Guarded

In the traditional cybersecurity model, often compared to a castle surrounded by a moat, once a user logged on and was admitted across the drawbridge, they could wander at will inside the castle. A hacker able to steal the username and password of even the most humble employee would have effectively free reign inside the network.

In Zero Trust, every room in the castle is guarded. Getting across the drawbridge only gets you inside the rooms you have permission to enter. A hacker impersonating an employee will only get access to the data and resources the employee would have.

But that requires every single piece of data in the Air Force enterprise to be sorted and labeled, so that it is clear how sensitive it is and who needs access to it, explained Chris Hughes, president and cofounder of Aquia, a cybersecurity consultancy that has done work for the Air Force.

“The data has to be tagged to dictate who can access it under what circumstances,” said Hughes, a former Air Force staff sergeant.

Given the staggering scale of the task, he said he wasn’t surprised the work was lagging. “It’s going to be very, very daunting to go about implementing a robust data tagging and labeling strategy and to keep it up to date,” he said, “Because so much [data] is being created so quickly, changed, interacted with, modified, across the entire Air Force enterprise. It’s just a daunting task.”

But the scale and speed of the data is only part of the problem, according to Patrick Arvidson, who was the National Security Agency’s technical director for weapons and space cybersecurity prior to retirement in 2022, and has been consulting in the private sector since.

“I love my brothers and sisters in the federal government, but many of them are perfectionists in the cybersecurity area,” Arvidson said. “They want the 100 percent solution instead of the 80 percent solution. And that is crippling.”

Perfectionism, said Arvidson, is a cultural issue in the federal government and particularly troublesome for Zero Trust.

“One of the cultural shifts that has to happen is understanding that with Zero Trust, or anything else that we’re getting on to, it’s okay to have an 80 percent solution. Let’s plan for the 80 percent and then manage the other 20 percent,” he said. “Because you’re never going to get the 100 percent solution.”

Institutional Resistance to Change

The mention of institutional resistance to change as “the greatest risk to this strategy” is Hughes’ favorite part of the document, he told Air & Space Forces magazine.

“That institutional inertia which they called out … is most certainly the biggest risk to any modernization effort. Not just Zero Trust, but any modernization effort in a large bureaucratic enterprise,” he said. “It’s in the nature of both humans and large bureaucracies. We’ve got this environment in the government, in particular, where they’re very risk-averse.

“Change can make people uncomfortable. Maybe they’re used to the way they operate, or they’re used to a certain workflow, or they’re used to using certain products, and you want to change that. That may make them feel uncomfortable, or even threatened, if they’ve built expertise in the way things are traditionally done.”

Spokeswoman Laura McAndrews acknowledged that Zero Trust involved centralizing decision-making about the network and the broader IT environment. “It is a fundamental change of the span of control away from individual programs towards enterprise capabilities,” she said, adding that resistance was common in organizations “where services of common concern deliver the promise of expanded functionality and greatly reduced cost at the cost of giving up some autonomy.”

The changes are also happening as programs are “in the middle of their execution cycle, which can be very challenging for enablement and adoption of enterprise services,” she said.

Dangers of Vendor Lock

Long term, experts said, the lack of industry-wide standards for cybersecurity functions like event logging or incident reporting is likely to be one of the most severe problems, because it means Air Force managers might quickly find themselves trapped with a single vendor or even a particular combination of vendors.

“There is no true plug-and-play environment,” Arvidson said, “and if there’s no plug-and-play environment, you have no competition, because I bought a product and now I can’t get rid of the product, because I can’t swap it out, because everything on it is customized and I’ve built my network around it.”

He said even bringing in additional products from different vendors could paradoxically worsen the vendor lock problem, because every new product brought in requires custom integration, representing a sunk cost which would be lost by switching to a new vendor.

“Let’s say my product’s doing fine and I bring in a secondary product, and I invest money into integrating that, and I bring in a third or fourth or fifth product, over the next few years. Then I’m stuck. I can’t swap the base layer out because that’s what all the other products are integrated with, but I can’t even swap out one of the secondary products except at great expense because they’re all custom integrations.”

Even technologies built to allow interoperability are not themselves standardized, he said, giving as an example proprietary Application Programming Interfaces or APIs, which allow applications to communicate with each other through a specially designed gateway.

“The API system right now is completely proprietary,” he said, “Industry is not standardizing on it because it’s not profitable to standardize on it. They’ve built their products their way, right? Integrations are a moneymaker.”

Arvidson said the problem would take strong leadership from the federal government to fix.

“If you really want to actually leapfrog this forward, pull everybody together in a room and say, ‘Guess what?’ We are going to make a standardized API for the federal government that every product’s got to meet,” said Arvidson. “And then after that, it will roll downhill fast, because once you start to see the prices drop because you’re flexible and you can swap products in and out, things will open way up.”

Zero Trust would potentially enable huge cost savings by allowing Air Force managers to “collapse the networks,” Arvidson said.

Currently, an Air Force base will have three networks: unclassified, secret and top secret. Each will have its own routers and switches, even its own cabling, as well as its own desktop or laptop computers. But once secret or top secret traffic leaves the base, it travels across commercial networks, protected by strong encryption.

“What if I could do the same on the base?” explained Arvidson. “What if, instead of a [unclassified] NIPRNet, a [secret-level classified] SIPRNet and the [top secret] JWICS, I just run everything on one network, and I can get rid of 80 percent of my IT infrastructure. … All this is about leveraging technology to free up resources.”

Blind Spots

But Zero Trust has its blind spots, too, argues Arvindson. “Look at the MoveIt attack” which exploited a flaw in file-sharing software to steal data from law firms, accountants, and other large businesses, he said. “The bad guys didn’t move [across the network], the data moved to them. They sat out on an API gateway and let the data move from cloud to cloud, and took the data that way.”

“Now if your data is encrypted in transit, like the military’s, then they won’t be able to access it, which is awesome. I don’t want my adversaries to be able to read my plans and projections. But if the adversary just decides to encrypt that data again, like a ransomware attack, we can’t access it either. They’re denying us the data. They still meet their objective, right?

“And the zero trust approach doesn’t fix that,” he concluded.

China Halts Nuclear Arms Control Talks with US: Why and What’s Next

July 19, 2024 | By Unshin Lee Harpley

Earlier this week, the People’s Republic of China confirmed it is halting its nuclear arms control talks with the U.S., in retaliation for the U.S. continuing to sell arms to Taiwan. The move reinforces a “pattern of behavior” from Beijing, experts say.

“A part of their goal is to link the Taiwan issue to other issues that Washington views as important,” Brian Hart, China Power Project Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “Essentially, they’re saying ‘the U.S. and China can’t make progress on issues of strategic or national importance without addressing Taiwan.’”

A similar situation unfolded in the wake of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August 2022; Beijing cut off a number of areas of dialogue and engagement, including key areas of military-to-military engagement.

“It took a lot of effort to rebuild some of those areas of dialogue,” says Hart.

China has long avoided nuclear arms talks with the U.S. and Russia. Despite Russia suspending discussions with the U.S. last year, Washington continued to pursue bilateral engagement with China to prevent misunderstandings. Discussions with Beijing gained traction in the last few months as both nations engaged in semi-official consultations.

Now, however, progress is stalled.

Apart from using Taiwan as an excuse, China perceives such negotiation as constraining itself without achieving a level of parity with other major nuclear powers like the U.S. and Russia, said Daniel Rice, a China military and political strategy subject matter expert at the Krulak Center for Innovation and Future Warfare. Beijing avoids committing to weapons agreements to gauge not only a “temperature read” of the foreign relations, but also prevent itself from being disadvantaged when engaging on the topic, said Rice.

“It provides them just more flexibility in the way that they approach their military modernization,” Rice said. “In terms of nuclear buildup, China wants to have its own autonomy in decision making. Having a formal agreement, if it ever reached that point, would fundamentally limit Beijing’s options by essentially handcuffing itself to an international, or at least a bilateral agreement on those matters.”

China’s rapid advancements in nuclear power has been a significant concern for the U.S. and its allies. The Pentagon estimates China could possess more than 1,000 operational nuclear warheads by 2030, many of which will be deployed at readiness levels. Last week at the NATO summit, the alliance warned of Beijing’s expansion and diversification of its nuclear arsenal, pointing to “more warheads and a larger number of sophisticated delivery systems” and urging China to engage in strategic risk reduction talks.

The current weapons count isn’t a major concern for U.S. defense leaders, as Washington holds about 3,700 nuclear warheads, compared to Beijing’s estimated 400 warheads. But with their substantial investment in nuclear weapons, the Chinese aspire to achieve “a greater level of parity with Washington and Moscow, so that it could also make decisions and engage on these issues from a position of greater strength and somewhat equality,” said Hart.

Now, with both China and Russia refusing to negotiate measures to constrain the nuclear arms race, experts are concerned. On top of that, tensions remain high across the Taiwan Strait, as China eyes to bolster its arsenal so that it has a “greater leverage in the event of a Taiwan scenario,” according to Hart.

This underscores the critical modernization of Washington’s nuclear triad.

“The way we counter these threats is through deterrence, and it must be backed up with a credible force,” Jennifer Reeves, Senior Fellow of Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, said. “We have no ability to have this conversation if we are not seen as a credible threat. This country must recapitalize its nuclear enterprise, and do it as quickly, swiftly, and as competently as possible. This has been languishing for 30 years.”

The Pentagon’s ongoing effort to modernize the nuclear triad includes acquiring 100 B-21 bombers to replace legacy B-1s and B-2s by the 2030s, and procuring the land-based Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile to replace the aging Minuteman III. Despite cost overruns, Sentinel survived a Department of Defense review and received a green light to proceed earlier this month—which Reeves stressed “our only option at this point.”

Following China’s decision to discontinue talks, the State Department said the PRC’s approach “undermines strategic stability and increases the risk of arms race dynamics.”

“But we, the United States, will remain open to developing and implementing concrete risk-reduction measures with China,” spokesperson Matthew Miller said.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry official said China stands ready to maintain talks with Washington on international arms control but demands that the U.S. “must respect” China’s interests in Taiwan.

F-35 Deliveries Resume After a Year on Hold

July 19, 2024 | By John A. Tirpak

Lockheed Martin began delivering F-35s again on July 19, after a year of building the fighters and putting them directly into storage because their Tech Refresh 3 systems and software were not fully tested. Lockheed Martin can now receive progress payments for the jets, some 90-100 of which accumulated during the delivery hold.

Two F-35As were delivered, both to the Air Force: one to Dannelly Field, Ala., where it will serve with the 187th Fighter Wing of the Air National Guard, and one to Nellis Air Force Base, Nev. An Air Force spokesperson said the two locations were next line to receive F-35s when deliveries were halted. The service was not prepared to make further comment.

The deliveries will take place using a “phased” approach, the F-35 Joint Program Office said.

Lt. Gen. Michael J. Schmidt, program executive officer for the F-35 JPO, determined in the last few weeks that operational units could safely fly with a “truncated” version of the TR-3 software, after it demonstrated sufficient stability in flight tests. F-35 partners and users had already green-lighted the plan to accept a “truncated” version of the TR-3 in order to get deliveries moving. The long delivery hold had disrupted absorption and equipage plans among users, who could not efficiently train new pilots and maintainers of the fighter.

“We have initiated a phased approach to the delivery of TR-3 F-35 aircraft,” Schmidt said in a press statement. “The first phase will deliver jets with an initial training capability in July and August. By the end of August, we will be delivering jets with a robust combat training capability, as we continue towards the delivery of full TR-3 combat capabilities in 2025.”

Lockheed Martin told Air & Space Forces Magazine it will now deliver new F-35s “as they come off the line, per our standard procedure, while also preparing and delivering the jets previously awaiting delivery to an ensure an efficient backlog recovery and unwind.” A spokesperson said the jets that have been awaiting delivery “have been maintained to ensure efficient delivery procedures are able to occur as quickly as possible. The jets are being updated with the latest software release prior to DD250,” which is the process/document that goes with delivery of a new aircraft.

Lockheed also said U.S. jets will be delivered first, as they go through an “airworthiness process.” International users will receive deliveries later, “as the unwind progresses.”

Bridget Lauderdale, Lockheed’s vice president and F-35 general manager, said the “TR-3 and Block 4 represent a critical evolution in capability and their full development remains a top priority for us. …[These] and further software updates over the life of the program will ensure the F-35 continues to be an effective deterrent and the cornerstone of joint all-domain operations now and decades into the future.”

Schmidt said the JPO’s focus “has been on providing our customers with aircraft that are stable, capable, and maintainable, and this phased approach does that.”

Although “much work remains,” Schmidt thanked the government and industry team for the work it has put into delivering the TR-3-configured jets.

“This is an important first step,” he said. “I am confident our team will work tirelessly to achieve the desired and necessary results that our warfighters, allies and customers require,” he added.

“We weren’t expecting to receive more jets until the end of the year, but the timing couldn’t have been more perfect,” 187th Fighter Wing deputy commander Col. Chistopher Germann said in an Air Force press release. “With the additional aircraft, we can provide the maximum amount of training to continue to be proficient and effective with these jets.” The delivery means “increased flying hours for our pilots and hands-on experience for our maintainers.”

Neither Lockheed nor the Pentagon have been willing to say how many jets have been stored or where, saying it’s a security risk to do so.

Two major support facilities for the F-35 will be completed at Dannelly over the next few months; a supply building and a simulator facility, the wing said in a press release.

Weaker Conventional Military Led Russia to ‘Asymmetric’ Space Nuke: DOD Officials

July 19, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

Russia’s lack of conventional military superiority when compared to the U.S. and the rest of NATO is driving its development of “asymmetric” capabilities like the nuclear anti-satellite weapon that generated headlines earlier this year, multiple Pentagon officials said this week.

In turn, increased aggression by both Russia and China is driving larger questions about how the U.S. can deter conflict, particularly in space, senior leaders said during events around the globe.

When the White House confirmed reports in February that Russia was developing nuclear weapons to target satellites, national security leaders warned that such a weapon would have devastating effects not only for the U.S. military but for the entire global economy.

At the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado, U.S. Space Command boss Gen. Stephen N. Whiting said July 17 a space nuke “would affect United States satellites, Chinese satellites, Russian satellites, European satellites, Indian satellites, Japanese satellites, and so it’s really holding at risk the entire modern way of life.

But the Pentagon has known about the program for years, said Defense Intelligence Agency director Lt. Gen. Jeffrey A. Kruse.

“None of this is news breaking,” Kruse said in Aspen. “We have been tracking for almost a decade Russia’s intent to design the ability to put a nuclear weapon in space. They have progressed down to a point where we think they’re getting close, and so that was a lot of the discussions that you saw in the media.”

Kruse thinks Russia’s interest in nuclear space weapons reflects the state of its military after more than two years of brutal, indecisive warfare in Ukraine.

“Their lack of conventional superiority drives them to asymmetric solutions,” he said. “They see this as a potential pathway that they might want to pursue. The exposure of it will potentially change their path. I am not sure that we know that yet.”

Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy Vipin Narang echoed the “asymmetric” point at the Center for a New American Security on July 19, saying Russia can afford to target space because its military and economy is less dependent on satellites than those of other countries.

“We are so dependent on space for our way of life, but also the way we prosecute and wage wars. Space is critical to the joint force,” Narang said. “And Russia is not as dependent on space for its way of life or the way it prosecutes wars. And so Russia sees that asymmetry.”

Indeed, while Whiting described the Soviet Union as the “original space superpower,” observers have noted that those capabilities declined over the years and are far from what they once were. In Ukraine, experts say the Russians have used their space assets to some effect but failed to take full advantage.

“Russian forces have struggled to both collect sufficient tactically useful information from satellites and disseminate that information to warfighters in a timely manner, due to their rigid command structure,” Robin Dickey and Michael P. Gleason wrote in April for an Air University journal.

“Russian space capabilities do not play a significant role on the battlefield,” Center for Strategic and International Studies fellows Clayton Swope and Makena Young wrote in June. “Russia’s version of GPS, called GLONASS, is extremely unreliable.”

Narang also noted that Russia has fallen behind the U.S. and NATO in most military areas besides nuclear, where the country sports an inventory of low-yield “tactical” nukes, despite their outsized impact.

“I prefer to refer to them as treaty-unaccountable nuclear weapons, because any use of nuclear weapons will fundamentally change the character of conflict and has strategic impact,” Narang said.

Similarly, a nuclear weapon in space may not directly kill any humans, but its impact would be broad, and the U.S. must convince Russia that deploying such a weapon would be irresponsible, impractical and hard to control, Narang argued.

“Command and control on terrestrial Earth is hard enough,” he said. “How are you going to command and control this thing and have confidence that you can command and control? And what happens if you cannot?”

Brown Visits Philippines and Japan, Pledging to Bolster Ties in the Face of China

July 18, 2024 | By Unshin Lee Harpley

Air Force Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, held meetings with defense leaders from the Philippines, Japan, and South Korea during a trip to the Indo-Pacific this week. In the Philippines in particular, Brown discussed ramping up joint training between the two nations amid Chinese hostility towards Manila.

Brown, the highest ranking U.S. military officer, met with Philippine National Security Advisor Eduardo M. Ano, Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr., and Armed Forces Chief of Staff Gen. Romeo Brawner Jr. to discuss furthering the defense alliance between the two nations. His meeting with Brawner focused on “enhancing bilateral defense cooperation, strengthening joint military exercises, and addressing regional security challenges,” the Philippines Armed Forces said.

“I do see that the relationship is gaining momentum,” said Brown in a statement, adding that the Philippines’ relationships with other regional allies are also growing. “I think it’s a positive trajectory.”

During his inaugural visit to Manila as Chairman, Brown also toured a “U.S. rotational access site, designated as part of the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement(EDCA),” according to a Pentagon release.

Under the 2014 EDCA agreement between the two nations, U.S. troops have access to designated Philippine military sites for joint training, exercises, and interoperability. In 2023, the countries agreed to add four locations to the agreement, with the U.S. pledging to help modernize the facilities with projects including runway upgrades, building communication systems, and infrastructure. The U.S. now has access to a total of nine bases where they could position aircraft and vessels in the country.

The U.S. and Philippines have boosted their joint training, following last year’s territorial disputes between the Philippines and China over the Second Thomas Shoal. Those incidents have continued, with the latest seeing Chinese coast guard attacking on Philippine fishing vessels with water cannons.

To defuse tensions, China and the Philippines have recently signed a new accord enabling direct hotline between their presidential offices, according to the Associated Press.

After Manilla, Brown traveled to Tokyo to meet with his counterparts from South Korea and Japan as part of the Trilateral Chiefs of Defense meeting between the three nations. The meeting covered China’s escalating regional aggression, North Korea’s persistent nuclear and missile activities, and its deepening military alliance with Russia amidst the Ukraine conflict.

“I expect that the three of us sitting here in Tokyo today will send a message to regional threats,” Brown said July 18 in a statement. “But also, more globally, on the strength of our relationship, our alliances and the work that we need to continue to do together.”

During the meeting, Brown assessed regional security, reviewed progress in trilateral information sharing, and explored ways to deepen security cooperation with Japan’s Gen. Yoshida Yoshihide, Chief of Staff of the Joint Staff, and South Korea’s Adm. Kim Myung-soo, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Since last year’s presidential summit between Washington, Seoul, and Tokyo, the three allies launched a missile data sharing system and have held several joint exercises, including the latest ‘Freedom Edge’ exercise in June, focused on ballistic missile and air defense, as well as antisubmarine warfare.

B-2 Gets Big Upgrade with New Open Mission Systems Capability

July 18, 2024 | By John A. Tirpak

The B-2 Spirit stealth bomber has been upgraded with a new open missions systems (OMS) software capability and other improvements to keep it relevant and credible until it’s succeeded by the B-21 Raider, Northrop Grumman announced. The changes accelerate the rate at which new weapons can be added to the B-2; allow it to accept constant software updates, and adapt it to changing conditions.

“The B-2 program recently achieved a major milestone by providing the bomber with its first fieldable, agile integrated functional capability called Spirit Realm 1 (SR 1),” the company said in a release. It announced the upgrade going operational on July 17, the 35th anniversary of the B-2’s first flight.

SR 1 was developed inside the Spirit Realm software factory codeveloped by the Air Force and Northrop to facilitate software improvements for the B-2. “Open mission systems” means that the aircraft has a non-proprietary software architecture that simplifies software refresh and enhances interoperability with other systems.

“SR 1 provides mission-critical capability upgrades to the communications and weapons systems via an open mission systems architecture, directly enhancing combat capability and allowing the fleet to initiate a new phase of agile software releases,” Northrop said in its release.

The system is intended to deliver problem-free software on the first go—but should they arise, correct software issues much earlier in the process.

The SR 1 was “fully developed inside the B-2 Spirit Realm software factory that was established through a partnership with Air Force Global Strike Command and the B-2 Systems Program Office,” Northrop said.

The Spirit Realm software factory came into being less than two years ago, with four goals: to reduce flight test risk and testing time through high-fidelity ground testing; to capture more data test points through targeted upgrades; to improve the B-2’s functional capabilities through more frequent, automated testing; and to facilitate more capability upgrades to the jet.

The Air Force said B-2 software updates which used to take two years can now be implemented in less than three months.

In addition to B61 or B83 nuclear weapons, the B-2 can carry a large number of precision-guided conventional munitions. However, the Air Force is preparing to introduce a slate of new weapons that will require near-constant target updates and the ability to integrate with USAF’s evolving long-range kill chain. A quicker process for integrating these new weapons with the B-2’s onboard communications, navigation, and sensor systems was needed.

The upgrade also includes improved displays, flight hardware and other enhancements to the B-2’s survivability, Northrop said.

“We are rapidly fielding capabilities with zero software defects through the software factory development ecosystem and further enhancing the B-2 fleet’s mission effectiveness,” said Jerry McBrearty, Northrop’s acting B-2 program manager.

The upgrade makes the B-2 the first legacy nuclear weapons platform “to utilize the Department of Defense’s DevSecOps [development, security, and operations] processes and digital toolsets,” it added.

The software factory approach accelerates adding new and future weapons to the stealth bomber, and thus improve deterrence, said Air Force Col. Frank Marino, senior materiel leader for the B-2.

The B-2 was not designed using digital methods—the way its younger stablemate, the B-21 Raider was—but the SR 1 leverages digital technology “to design, manage, build and test B-2 software more efficiently than ever before,” the company said.

The digital tools can also link with those developed for other legacy systems to accomplish “more rapid testing and fielding and help identify and fix potential risks earlier in the software development process.”

Following two crashes in recent years, the stealthy B-2 fleet comprises 19 aircraft, which are the only penetrating aircraft in the Air Force’s bomber fleet until the first B-21s are declared to have achieved initial operational capability at Ellsworth Air Force Base, S.D. A timeline for IOC has not been disclosed.

Air Force Scholarship Puts Aviation Rookies on the Path to Become Rated Officers

July 18, 2024 | By David Roza

Kristopher Koberg was a sophomore at the University of Iowa in 2021 when he saw an Instagram ad for a new program offering free flight hours for high school and college students. An Air Force ROTC cadet hoping to fly for the Air Force, Koberg applied, though he was skeptical at first.

“I tried to find information on the Aim High Flight Academy and I couldn’t find anything online, so I was like ‘man, I hope this is real,’” Koberg told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

As it turns out, it was real, and a few months later Koberg traveled to Milton, Fla., where he and about two dozen other students took part in the first class of Aim High Flight Academy, an aviation scholarship funded by the Air Force that offers a three-week introductory flight program for teenagers and young adults to earn up to 15 flight hours and give them a leg up should they pursue a career in aviation.

The program is intended for aviation outsiders: applicants must have fewer than five powered flight hours to be considered. For Koberg, it was a life-changing experience.

“Those three weeks were the most impactful three weeks on my Air Force career,” said Koberg, now a second lieutenant just starting Air Force pilot training. “It put me on a different trajectory because of the connections I made, the friends I made, and understanding the possibilities that can happen in the Air Force.”

aim high flight academy — A student from the Air Force’s Aim High Flight Academy gets ready to fly solo as the culmination of a three-week aviation course in 2021 at an airfield in Milton, Fla. (Courtesy photo)

The program started in 2021 after the Air Force realized that a small amount of flight experience can make a big difference in early assessments for pilot training. To become aviators, candidates must score well on the Air Force Officer Qualification Test and the Test of Basic Aviation Skills (TBAS), a kind of cockpit simulator that measures hand-eye coordination, spatial awareness, and multitasking.

The scores from those two tests factor into a candidate’s Pilot Candidate Selection Method (PCSM) score; the higher the PCSM score, the better chances he or she has of landing a rated slot, which includes pilots, combat systems officers, and air battle managers. Prior flight experience helps strengthen the skills tested by TBAS, and the total number of previous flight hours also counts towards the PCSM score. But flight lessons are expensive.

“Right or wrong, people who have more money can pay for flight lessons and those hours will increase your score, no matter what,” said Capt. Adam Ozols, director of Aim High Flight Academy.

In turn, candidates with higher scores have a better chance of making it through the pilot training pipeline: a 2018 RAND report found that more than 20 percent of candidates in the bottom quarter of AFOQT and TBAS scores failed initial flight training, while less than 2 percent of candidates in the top quarter did the same.

Past flight experience showed a similar correlation. “Candidates with more hours of flying experience were also less likely to be eliminated” from initial flight training and primary pilot training, RAND wrote.

Amid an ongoing pilot shortage, Aim High Flight Academy is an effort to “level the playing field,” Ozols said. “Those 15 hours will go a long way and it will increase your score and make you more competitive.”

The Air Force itself does not teach Aim High students: instead, the students are split among nine universities with aviation programs around the country, where they receive three weeks of flight training from FAA-certified flight instructors. Travel, training, food, and lodging are all paid for by the Air Force, and some students even fly their first solo flight by the end of it. The program started with about 72 students in 2021 and has grown to 268 students this year.

Last year, 70 percent of the students came from underrepresented demographic groups, and this year’s share is 68 percent. Ozols emphasized that the goal is not diversity for diversity’s sake, but rather to draw talent from as wide a pool as possible in order to strengthen the Air Force. He compared it to a college football team bringing athletes in from all over the country rather than just one state.

“You want that diversity and inclusion so that you can have the best people on your team,” he said.

Aim High Flight Academy students practice in a flight simulator. (U.S. Air Force photo)

Aim High is one of several programs under Air Force Recruiting Service’s Detachment 1, where one of the goals is to boost the diversity of the Air Force pilot corps, the vast majority of which are White men. Another program is Aviation Inspiration Mentorship (AIM) teams: rated officers, non-rated officers, and enlisted Airmen who field questions about military service and build relationships through community outreach events.

AIM mentors play an important role at Aim High, since so few Americans have a family member in the military today, said Leslie Brown, chief of public affairs for the Air Force Recruiting Service.

“The questions can be quite basic: Can I have a family? Can I have a pet? Can I have a car? Can I wear civilian clothes?” Brown said, referencing the questions she heard during an “Ask an Airman” event in 2018. “That’s how much of a disconnect there is.”

It can also be helpful for ROTC cadets; chatting with Air Force aviators was one of the highlights of Koberg’s Aim High experience.

“Each and every one of them said their plane was the best,” he recalled. “That meant wherever I end up, I will fall in love with it, so having that security was just fantastic.”

Years later, after commissioning as a second lieutenant, Koberg paid it forward by mentoring at an Aim High class earlier this summer at Tennessee State University.

“I think just us being there really allows the students to connect a face to what the uniform is,” he said. “We’re not just a bunch of random people: we have a story, we’re real, and we help them out.”

Though the program was just three weeks long, Koberg found himself building deep bonds with the students, talking about life goals, interpersonal relationships, and the joy of flying. It was a “full circle” moment.

“You’re not just an Air Force member, you’re a mentor to them,” he said.

The impact of Aim High Flight Academy is hard to quantify, because the Air Force cannot collect data on people under the age of 17, Brown said. The next step is to reach back to past students and ask if they wound up joining the military, going to college, pursuing a career in aviation, or some other path.

In the meantime, another challenge is meeting the rising tide of applicants. Last year Aim High received around 1,500 applications, Ozols said. While any plans to possibly expand the program are above his pay grade, Ozols hopes it will continue.

“It can be really expensive to get flight hours, so for us to be able to spread that wealth out and give young adults the chance to do that is what we really focus on,” he said.

The application window for the 2025 Aim High Flight Academy runs from Oct. 1-31, and application details can be found on the Air Force Recruiting Service website.

“It’s for anyone and everyone that has maybe a little bit of interest in aviation,” Koberg said. “It doesn’t matter where you’re from or who your parents are. We want anyone who’s interested to have that opportunity.”

After SpaceX Rocket Mishap, SPACECOM Boss Has ‘Full Confidence’ in Fast Return to Launch

July 18, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

The head of U.S. Space Command said he was confident launch provider SpaceX will soon be back to regular operations after a rare mishap involving one of its Falcon 9 rockets, but he was also grateful that the U.S. has more than one family of launch rockets to choose from at a time when the Space Force is trying to fortify its presence in Earth orbit.

The mishap occurred July 11 when the engine of the upper stage of a Falcon 9 rocket malfunctioned during a commercial launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif.

The first stage of the launch went as expected, but reports indicate the upper stage engine had a buildup of ice. A livestream of the launch ended, but SpaceX CEO Elon Musk later said the engine exploded. It is the first Falcon 9 failure since 2016, prompting all Falcon 9s to be grounded.

“It just so happened that last Friday morning [July 12] I was in Seattle, Wash., visiting SpaceX Starlink,” Space Force Gen. Stephen N. Whiting said July 17 at the Aspen Security Forum. “We showed up, and some of their senior leaders were there, and they were very transparent, giving us insight into what had happened.”

SpaceX has reportedly asked the Federal Aviation Administration to allow Falcon 9 to return to flight while an investigation into the mishap proceeds. The rocket has become a key part of U.S. access to space, accounting for the vast majority of American launches in 2023.

For the Pentagon in particular, Falcon 9 has already conducted two National Security Space Launches in 2024—carrying missile warning/missile tracking satellites for the Missile Defense Agency and Space Development Agency in February, and a Space Force weather satellite in April. That’s in addition to a Space Systems Command smallsat as part of a “rideshare” in March.

“I personally have full confidence in SpaceX working with the FAA, working with NASA, working with the Space Force, to figure out what happened and continue launching,” Whiting said. “They’ve launched the Falcon 9 hundreds of times. I’m sure they’ll figure this out quickly.”

Any delays could have a ripple effect, especially as SDA plans multiple launches in succession this fall to fill out its Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture in low-Earth orbit. SpaceX has been awarded the vast majority of those missions.

Yet Whiting projected confidence that there will be no delays.

“It also speaks to the wisdom of our national space transportation policy that says we as a nation need two independent families of launch rockets to get to all of our orbital regimes,” Whiting said. “And certainly SpaceX is providing one of those. And we have another through United Launch Alliance. And that’s a great thing for the nation, that we can continue to launch even while these investigations go on.”

The Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies presented a Schriever Spacepower Series with Gen. Stephen N. Whiting, Commander, United States Space Command, United States Space Force on Monday, June 24, 2024, at AFA headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. Photo by Mike Tsukamoto/Air & Space Forces Magazine

ULA is in the process of certifying its new rocket, Vulcan Centaur, for National Security Space Launch missions, needing one more successful launch. But even beyond the two major providers in ULA and SpaceX, the Pentagon has made a concerted effort in recent months to bolster competition in the launch industry—and ensure “assured” access to space.

In June, the Space Force announced it was adding newcomer Blue Origin to the NSSL program as part of a “lane” intended for less critical missions with a higher tolerance for risk. Still other companies will be able to join the program through annual “on-ramps.”

Earlier this month, the service authorized Blue Origin and Stoke Space to compete for launches under its Orbital Services Program-4, for fast-turnaround launches and small payloads—a companion program to NSSL.