DOD to Track Suicide Deaths By Job Specialty Under New Law

Dec. 23, 2024 | By David Roza

A provision in the fiscal 2025 defense policy bill will require the Defense Department to include the military occupational specialty of service members who die by suicide in its annual report on suicide deaths, though it remains to be seen how much data the department will actually disclose.

Section 736 of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2025 calls for “the number of suicides … disaggregated by the military occupational specialty (or other similar classification, rating, or specialty code) of the member,” as well as a compilation of such data to determine which career fields have a higher per capita suicide rates compared to other career fields, the overall suicide rate for each service, the Department of Defense, and the national rate.

Congress passed the provision and the rest of the NDAA on Dec. 18, and it is currently awaiting President Joe Biden’s final signature. Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) backed the provision, which comes four months after the Defense Department delivered a report breaking down suicide deaths by job specialty since 2011.

That report was mandated by the 2023 NDAA, which tasked the Pentagon with providing a breakdown of military suicides since 2001 by year, military job code, and status (Active-Duty, Reserve, or National Guard).

Advocates hope releasing that data will help officials better understand the stressors affecting specific military jobs, retired Air Force Master Sgt. Chris McGhee told Air & Space Forces Magazine in April.

“Anecdotally we know [suicide rates are] really bad in certain career fields,” said the former F-16 maintainer, who helped champion the NDAA measure to King’s office. “I consider this to be a starting point to investigate what is going on within those career fields that is driving these suicide rates.”

The Pentagon delivered “Report on Incidence of Military Suicides by Military Job Code” several months late in July. The report identified groups of military jobs with the highest rates of suicide, but it did not break the data down by individual career fields. Fields as disparate as special forces, conventional infantry, and military training instructors were lumped together into one category, as were aircraft maintainers from a wide range of types of aircraft and maintenance specialties.

The Pentagon said it lumped fields together because calculating rates when the number of deaths totaled less than 20 would invite statistical instability. The report also did not include data going back to 2001 as directed by the NDAA—the Pentagon said it did not have a system for reliably tracking suicide deaths before 2011. But a 2010 DOD study of military suicides from 2001 to 2009 suggests otherwise, and also lists suicide deaths even when they were fewer than 20.

In September, King told Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III that the data fell short of what was required by law.

“I am concerned that the Department did not fully comply,” the senator wrote. He requested the Pentagon redo the report with the “raw data” going back to 2001, and to include caveats where it might lead to inconsistent data.

“I urge you to include as much information as possible rather than rejecting all data for a given year,” King wrote. “Including the ‘raw data’ with the rates will help to address the challenges you identified with invalid or incorrect conclusions based solely by comparing rates.”

After the letter, the Pentagon and King’s office began working through how to provide that data. A defense official told Air & Space Forces Magazine that the department was concerned about privacy.

“DOD must ensure that our publicly reported data does not result in the identification of service members who have died by suicide,” the official said. “We have a responsibility to maintain the privacy of decedents and their loved ones. Moreover, releasing data that has been stratified by numerous categories (i.e., job code, age, duty status, year) introduces serious privacy concerns for our service members and their families.”

McGhee pointed out that the 2023 NDAA technically does not require the report be made public, just as long as it is sent to Congress. But with just a month until President-elect Donald Trump takes office, the discussion is on hold until new Pentagon leadership comes in.

“We have long memories: we know that DOD fell short, and we will raise that with the next group of DOD officials,” a staffer tracking the issue closely with King’s office told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “We’re focused on the windshield, but we have an eye on the rearview mirror.”

King’s office has been working on the section in the 2025 NDAA requiring job specialty data in future annual suicide death reports since the start of this year, the staffer said. Frustration with the July 31 report drove language in a joint explanatory statement accompanying the NDAA, which closely echoes King’s letter to Austin.

In instances of incomplete data “we urge the Department to include as much information as possible in the report rather than rejecting all data for such years due to incompleteness,” members of Congress wrote in the statement. “We also urge the Department to include raw data in addition to information about rates of suicide as a way to provide some insight on military suicide, even if the full data for a given year is incomplete.”

However, the bill itself allows the Defense Department to exclude “such specialties that the Secretary determines would not provide statistically valid data” in its breakdown of suicide deaths by job specialty. A King spokesperson did not see a contradiction between that clause and the joint statement.

“It actually shifts the pressure on [the department] to provide as much information as they can justify,” he said. “Because if you were to have somebody say, ‘well, I didn’t think that that was significant,’ that would not be a pleasant exchange in a room full of Senators with long memories.”

The bill does not require the Pentagon to explain what it considers statistically valid. Still, the staffer indicated a collaborative relationship between Congress, the Pentagon officials charged with suicide prevention and data collection efforts, and watchdogs such as the Government Accountability Office.

“My assessment is that the department is not trying to hide something. There is no nefarious activity, and Sen. King has never said they’re hiding something from him,” he said, pointing out that the Defense Department proactively met with members of Congress to discuss its annual suicide report before its release this year.

“That is new behavior from the Department of Defense, engaging members ahead of time and not just sending an email to the committee ‘we’re going to release this report tomorrow. Have a nice day,’” he said. “Our approach is, and Sen. King has said this several times: ‘hey, we are working together with you to address this problem,’ and that is our approach.”

McGhee was skeptical, arguing that the department “willfully ignored” the 2023 NDAA’s mandate and may do the same with the 2025 NDAA.

“While I appreciate any progress, the language deeply concerns me,” he said. “Allowing the DOD to determine what is ‘statistically valid’ undermines the intent of the law. Worse, this provision doubles down on passivity. Congress has shifted from mandating action to ‘urging’ the DOD to comply when possible.”

Service members and veterans who are in crisis or having thoughts of suicide, and those who know a service member or veteran in crisis, can call the Veterans/Military Crisis Line for confidential support available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Call 988 and press 1; text 988; or chat online at VeteransCrisisLine.net/Chat.

The Hole in Trump’s Defense Team: Next SECAF Is a Mystery

Dec. 23, 2024 | By Tobias Naegele

President-elect Donald Trump announced his choices to fill out the top positions on his Pentagon team Dec. 22, but the next Secretary of the Air Force remains a notable vacancy.

Trump announced his nominees for a half-dozen key roles in the office of the Secretary of Defense.

Deputy Secretary of Defense

Stephen Feinberg is slated to take on the Pentagon’s No. 2 job, akin to its chief operating officer. Feinberg, 64, is a career financier and the billionaire cofounder of the investment firm Cerberus Capital Management. A donor to all three of Trump’s presidential campaigns, he chaired Trump’s Intelligence Advisory Board from 2018-2020. Like Trump’s nominees for Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, he is a graduate of Princeton University.

Under Secretary of Defense for Policy

Elbridge “Bridge” Colby has been tapped to lead the Pentagon’s policy shop. Colby authored Trump’s 2018 National Defense Strategy, which identified China as the principal threat to U.S. global power and remained largely intact under the Biden administration. A notable China hawk, Colby, 45, was Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy and Force Development from 2017-2019 during the first Trump administration. He is an Ivy Leaguer like Feinberg and Hegseth—Colby graduated from Harvard College and Yale Law School—and is a political centrist, having spent eight years as an analyst and senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a bipartisan thank tank with historic ties to the Obama administration, and founded the Marathon Institute, a think tank created to developing “strategic insights and frameworks needed to deal with the deep and difficult problems of great power competition.”

Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition & Sustainment

Michael Duffey will be nominated for DOD’s top acquisition job. Duffey held positions in the Pentagon and at the Office of Management and Budget during Trump’s first administration. He is not an Ivy Leaguer, having graduated from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. A past executive director of the Wisconsin Republican Party, he leveraged that role into a series of jobs within the first Trump administration, finishing as program associate director for national security in the Office of Management & Budget. He spent the past few years as a consultant, cofounding Equinox Global Solutions, which describes itself as a market intelligence firm advising businesses with “expertise in defense, energy, the environment, science, technology, intelligence, foreign assistance, and international finance.”

Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering

Emil Michael is set to be the Pentagon’s top technologist. Michael, 51, helped lead Uber as its Chief Business Officer from 2013-2017. Prior to that, he was special assistant to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates during the Obama administration. Harvard educated as an undergrad, Michael earned a law degree from Stanford.

Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs

Retired Navy Cmdr. Keith Bass will serve as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs. Bass has led medical departments in the Department of Defense, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the White House Medical Unit. Keith will be leading the charge to ensure troops are healthy and receiving the best medical care possible.

Trump’s nominee for Defense Secretary remains Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News host and Army National Guard major whose nomination initially looked troubled due to widely published allegations of sexual impropriety, alcohol abuse, and overspending during his time with a pair of non-profit veterans organizations. But Trump has stuck with Hegseth, and resistance in Congress, while still possible, has become more muted in recent weeks.

Trump also said Joe Kasper will Chief of Staff for the Secretary of Defense. Kasper, a Navy veteran, was special assistant to Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson and Acting Secretary Matt Donovan in 2019-2020. He has a decade of experience as a staff member on Capitol Hill, much of it with former Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter.

Trump previously named John Phelan, a businessman donor with an MBA from Harvard, to be Navy Secretary and Daniel P. Driscoll, an Army veteran and Yale Law School graduate, to lead the Army. Driscoll has been a senior advisor to fellow Yale Law grad Vice President-elect J.D. Vance.

Among the names floated for Air Force Secretary, the most frequently named in media reports has been Andrew McKenna, CEO of investment firm McKenna & Associates and a licensed pilot. He owns and operates a vintage P-51 Mustang and a T-6 Texan, and has flown with the Air Force Heritage Flight Foundation.

DOD, Lockheed Agree on Price for Next 145 F-35s

Dec. 23, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

The F-35 Joint Program Office has agreed in principal to pay up to $11.8 billion for the next 145 F-35s from manufacturer Lockheed Martin—but final details on the deal won’t be hammered out until the spring.

The action specifies that the cost will not exceed $11.76 billion for Lot 18 jets, pegging the average price for the three F-35 variants at $81.1 million. Work on the jets is to be completed by June 2027.

The Department of Defense announced the “undefinitized” deal Dec. 20, saying final details will be worked out in the coming months. The Defense Acquisition University defines an undefinitized contract action as one that has “some aspect that is left open, to be determined prior to the start of contract performance.” Lockheed and the Pentagon previously agreed to an undefinitized contract action for F-35s in 2018, saying then that it allowed the company to receive funds to keep up production while final details were being negotiated.

Among the 145 jets included are:

48 F-35As for the Air Force

16 F-35B and 5 F-35C models for the Marine Corps

14 F-35C models for the Navy

15 F-35A and 1 F-35B models for F-35 program partners

39 F-35A and 7 F-35B models for Foreign Military Sales customers

Exact costs per type and service were not disclosed.

Getting the undefinitized action is important for Lockheed; officials said in October that the company was fronting its own money to keep F-35 production up while negotiations dragged on.

It could also be important given the upcoming change in presidential administrations. While President-elect Donald Trump has been highly complimentary of the F-35 and some Republican leaders want to boost defense spending, other administration insiders have been critical of the jet—most prominently Elon Musk, co-chair of the “Department of Government Efficiency.” Musk’s commission is supposed to advise Trump on cost-saving moves, and Musk has criticized both the F-35 program and the purpose of building crewed aircraft, rather than uninhabited drones. Musk’s comments have drawn sharp rebukes from both sides of the political aisle.

Air Force Reopens Competition for New F-16 Ejection Seats

Dec. 23, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

The Air Force is reopening the competition for its Next-Generation Ejection Seat program, giving vendors the chance to offer their solutions for a new seat for the F-16 while sticking with its choice for the F-15.

The service announced the decision Dec. 20, four months after it first cracked the door with a “sources sought synopsis.” Now officials say they will continue work with Collins Aerospace on its new seat for the F-15 while seeking other options for the F-16. Those options could carry over to the F-22 and B-1.

In October 2019 the Air Force announced its intent to award a sole-source contract to Collins for its new ACES 5 ejection seat, declaring it was the “only company able to meet the Government’s minimum requirements for the NGES program.”

In 2020, USAF and Collins agreed to a $700 million deal covering the F-15 fleet, planning at the time to also put the ACES 5 the all Air Force fighters—except the F-35—as well as on the B-1.

But now, with “new data, updated market research, and evolving operational demands, the Air Force will issue a revised acquisition strategy for the F-16 and F-22,” the service said in its release. The F-16 will be first.

“The decision to re-open the competition underscores our commitment to continually assess our strategies to ensure we meet warfighter needs and timelines,” said Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology, and logistics Andrew Hunter in the statement. “By reassessing market conditions and fostering competition, we ensure industry delivers the best possible solutions for both current and future Air Force requirements.”

The main competitor for Collins is Martin-Baker, the only other manufacturer of ejection seats for Air Force planes. Its seats are on the F-35, the T-6, the T-38, and the A-29—and most prominently, its newest seat, the US18E, is being installed on new Block 70 F-16 fighters built by Lockheed Martin for foreign partners. As part of that process, the seat was qualified in coordination with the F-16 program office and the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center.

A company official confirmed to Air & Space Forces Magazine that Martin-Baker will pursue the new F-16 opportunity on NGES, offering the US18E.

Collins, meanwhile, has a long history on Air Force programs. Its ACES II ejection seat flies on the F-15, F-16, F-22, and B-1, and the ACES 5 was tapped for the new T-7 Red Hawk trainer.

ACES II was first developed in the 1970s. Kevin Coyne, a member of the SAFE Association, an organization focused on safety and life support systems, previously told Air & Space Forces Magazine that while upgrades and modifications have been incorporated since then, new technology has developed that can reduce injuries and help pilots and aircrew survive the hazards of being hurled from their aircraft in flight—events that can cause all sorts of traumatic injuries. Coyne also said maintenance on ACES II seats can be difficult, requiring the removal of the aircraft canopy and extra equipment.

ACES 5 makes improvements in those areas, Coyne said. If selected, it would replace the ACES II seats.

Refueling and Maneuvering Satellites in Orbit Is Key to National Security

Dec. 23, 2024 | By Aidan Poling

Military history shows that the best defense is almost always a maneuvering offense supported by solid logistics. This was true for mechanized land warfare, air combat, and naval operations since World War II. It will also be true as the world veers closer to military conflict in space.

China and Russia have each demonstrated anti-satellite missiles that can destroy satellites in space. Each has also developed various offensive capabilities that can temporarily or permanently disrupt U.S. satellites on orbit.

In response, the U.S. Space Force is investing in increased resilience, with a proliferating number of smaller, less costly satellites for communications and missile warning. But resilience can make systems more survivable; it cannot, alone, deter conflict.

Because orbits are predictable, satellites are relatively easy to attack. The ability to maneuver can mitigate that risk, but that presents another problem: Maneuver requires fuel, and fuel is limited on spacecraft because each additional ounce comes at a cost. Launch costs mean that size and weight are significant limiting factors on any spacecraft. As a result, today’s satellites carry only a limited supply of fuel. Nor are today’s satellites designed to be refueled. Once they deplete their initial reserve, they are all but dead.

This is an unnecessary design flaw that should be addressed in all future satellites. Mandating that satellites support refueling and developing tanker spacecraft and commercial service providers to deliver fuel can extend lives and revolutionize the way satellites are operated.

Air Force tanker crews revel in their motto—“Nobody kicks ass without tanker gas”—because they dramatically extend the range and duration of all refuelable aircraft. The ability to refuel in orbit would enable satellite operators to “maneuver without regret,” both to avoid potential conflict with adversary satellites and, when necessary, to hold adversary spacecraft at risk.

An artist illustration of a Northrop Grumman SpaceLogistics Mission Extension Vehicle (MEV). MEV delivers life-extension services; docking with a client satellite running low on fuel and also take over attitude and orbit maintenance. With two ongoing commercial missions (MEV-1 in 2020 and MEV-2 in 2021), SpaceLogistics is the first and only company to successfully perform on-orbit satellite servicing of commercial geostationary orbit (GEO) satellites. **SpaceLogistics**

U.S. Space Force and U.S. Space Command leaders are eager for this capability. U.S. Space Command boss Gen. Stephen Whiting has argued that “it is time to bring dynamic operations and on-orbit logistics and infrastructure to the space domain.”

Not being able to refuel satellites in orbit severely limits operational flexibility and empowers adversaries. It forces operators to choose between exposing satellites to risk in a game of orbital cat-and-mouse or shortening their lifespans each time they expend precious fuel.

Satellites should fly “until missions are complete, not until the fuel we launched with is depleted,” notes U.S. Space Command boss Gen. Stephen Whiting.

To date, however, Whiting’s plea remains unanswered, while China has already begun to develop its own satellite-refueling vehicle and to conduct wide-ranging satellite maneuvers.

Lt. Gen. Douglas A. Schiess, Commander of Space Forces-Space, a key operational command, says he needs spacecraft to be able to “dogfight in space.”

The Space Force has requested $16 million over five years to research on-orbit servicing and refueling. That’s a start, but it’s too little to achieve the needed results in a timely manner. More must be invested to enable change in a timely manner.

A robust investment of $200 million each year over three years can put the Space Force on track to develop an initial operational satellite refueling and sustainment capability—setting the stage to change the game in space competition. Doing so is a strategic imperative.

The Space Force has already identified a “preferred refueling interface standard” but has not yet required all future satellites to be designed for future refueling. Without investment, however, a commercial industry will never develop to do this kind of work.

Investing in on-orbit refueling capabilities is about maintaining America’s strategic advantage in space. As on land and at sea, the adage that “amateurs talk tactics, but professionals talk logistics” applies in space as well. For decades, the United States has built up logistics advantages in the air, at sea, and on the ground. The ability to maintain and sustain equipment has been among its most important force multipliers. It’s time to do follow that playbook in space, as well.

How Miss America 2024 Took the Air Force Somewhere New

Dec. 20, 2024 | By David Roza

Most second lieutenants don’t work with the highest levels of the Air Force and meet thousands of people in a yearlong coast-to-coast speaking tour. But then again, most second lieutenants are not Miss America.

When 2nd Lt. Madison Marsh became the first ever Active-Duty service member crowned Miss America on Jan. 14, top Air Force officials recognized an opportunity to reach women and girls who otherwise might not consider military service as an option.

“The Air Force hasn’t seen anything like this before, but also, on the flip side, Miss America hasn’t seen anything like this before,” Marsh told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “This was a collective opportunity on behalf of the Air Force to reach new audiences that we might not necessarily have been able to reach before.”

The need is real: in a 2023 youth poll, just 27 percent of female respondents said they felt confident they could complete boot camp, 29 percent said they could leave family and friends for an extended period of time, and 8 percent say they could fight in a war, compared to 50, 42, and 28 percent of their male peers. Propensity to serve is also consistently lower among women than men.

“Therefore, women who are qualified and capable of military service may not believe they could serve in the military or would be successful,” wrote one group of researchers in 2023.

Marsh sought to offer a different narrative: femininity and military service are not mutually exclusive.

“I was worried that I was going to have to sacrifice parts of my personality or parts of my life in order to put on the uniform,” she said. “And then we had this opportunity this year, collectively, for all women in the military, to show that we don’t have to give up our personalities. And that doesn’t go for just women, that goes for every person that puts on the uniform.”

miss america air force — 2nd Lt. Madison Marsh, crowned Miss America 2024, poses with women at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh in Oshkosh, WI, on July 24, 2024. Throughout the airshow, Marsh spoke with attendees about aviation and careers in the Air Force. (U.S. Air Force photo by Miriam Thurber)

Marsh emphasized she is not the first woman to spread that message: thousands of others live it every day. But Miss America is a high-profile position, and Marsh spread the message wide: she visited 29 cities, conducted 51 media interviews, and performed 41 speaking engagements in front of hundreds of thousands of people. She drove the pace car at the Daytona 500, threw the opening pitch at a Mets game, and appeared on Good Morning America.

Did it work? Marsh found out at parents’ weekend at her alma mater, the U.S. Air Force Academy, where a freshman shared a personal story.

“She said that she was really on the fence about accepting her appointment to the Air Force Academy,” Marsh recalled. “But when she saw that I won Miss America, she realized she didn’t have to give up who she was to join, and so that was her deciding moment to go through with it.”

Elsewhere, Marsh met a noncommissioned officer who decided to reenlist after speaking with her. Young women in Delaware told Marsh that, before meeting her, they didn’t know women could wear makeup and thought women had to act “more like men” while in uniform, according to a press release. Marsh also saw elementary school children draw two images not often seen together.

“Kids aren’t just drawing me with the Miss America crown and the sash or heels,” she said. “These little kids are drawing me with planes and the Air Force logo and a bald eagle and the American flag.”

Sitting on Marsh’s desk is a double-image an eighth-grader from Colorado painted of her: from one angle she’s in her crown and sash, while from the other she’s in her uniform.

“Even though to a lot of people, those seem like very different things, at the end of the day, no matter if I’m wearing the uniform or the crown and sash, I’m still me,” Marsh said.

A Full Plate

A big part of being 2nd Lt. Marsh is living a life of service. Marsh was just 17 when her mother passed away from pancreatic cancer. The next year, she co-founded the Whitney Marsh Foundation, which has raised over $250,000 for cancer research so far. Soon after that, Marsh turned to pageantry to help get her through Doolie year at the academy.

“I was struggling—being removed from my family, grieving my mom, and now I’m in a really tough military environment,” she said in a January press release. “I decided to take a stab at pageants to see all the different ways that it could help me.”

Marsh recognized community service, leadership, and public speaking as overlapping values in both the Air Force and pageantry. In her senior year, Marsh was crowned Miss Academy 2023, then Miss Colorado 2023, and then the newly commissioned physics major pinned a new gold bar to go with her crown and sash.

The original plan was to someday become an astronaut. Marsh earned a pilot’s license at age 17 and received a billet for pilot training after graduating from the Academy. But she deferred pilot training for a two-year master’s degree in public policy at Harvard Kennedy School through the Air Force Institute of Technology’s Civilian Institution Programs. She also started an internship researching early pancreatic cancer detection at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, so that her policy studies are informed by science and vice versa.

Marsh put those studies on hold after winning Miss America. Pentagon officials, the top public affairs leaders in the Air Force, and Marsh’s commanders at AFIT-CI came together to hammer out Marsh’s current public affairs/recruiting role.

“Basically, anytime I go and do Miss America events, I’m also giving back to the Air Force to ensure people know about the message of what it means to serve as 2nd Lt. Marsh,” she said in the January release.

2nd Lt. Madison Marsh stands with pancreatic cancer survivors at the PanCAN Purple Stride fundraising event in New York City, April 27, 2024. (Photo via Pancreatic Cancer Action Network)

Meanwhile, Marsh still meets with cancer patients and oncologists, and she went to Capitol Hill earlier this fall to advocate with the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network. Pancreatic cancer is difficult to detect early, which lends to its high mortality rate, and pancreatic cancer research funding lags behind that of other forms of cancer.

Marsh said her cancer advocacy work goes hand-in-hand with serving as the public face of the Air Force, particularly when talking about leadership.

“When I’m in uniform, I can’t go about soliciting funds for my foundation, but I can still talk about my mom’s story. My leadership and the way I live my life is mostly because of the experiences that I’ve had from losing my mom,” Marsh said. “And then when I’m at Miss America events, even if I’m talking about my nonprofit, I’m still talking about the amazing leaders I’ve experienced in the Air Force.”

Marsh’s tenure ends when the next Miss America is crowned Jan. 5, a moment she predicts will be bittersweet.

“I’m really excited to go back to school, serving the Air Force, to do all of these fun and interesting things that I’m passionate about for the rest of my life,” she said. “But I know that I got to meet so many wonderful people this year … I’m always going to remember that.”

For now, Marsh will finish her Harvard degree, where she wants to focus on crafting health care and research policy for underserved communities, such as her home state of Arkansas. What’s next for Marsh’s Air Force career is up in the air, but she’s confident she’ll find a rewarding post.

“Above all else, if I’ve learned anything from this year, it’s that your service isn’t attached to what you wear,” Marsh said. “It’s all about what you do and who you are.”

That’s Not Santa: NORAD Tracks Russian Jets in Alaskan ADIZ

Dec. 20, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

Four Russian warplanes entered the Air Defense Identification Zone off the coast of Alaska on Dec. 18, North American Aerospace Defense Command announced—the first such incident in three months.

The Russian Defense Ministry announced on the social media site Telegram that it had sent two Tu-95 Bear-H bombers, accompanied by fighter escorts, on a 15-hour flight “near the western coast of Alaska.”

NORAD usually makes headlines this time of year for its annual Santa Tracker. But as tensions around the globe rise, NORAD’s attention right now is on Russian Bears, not Santa and his reindeer.

The Alaska ADIZ is a “buffer zone” of international airspace where aircraft are expected to readily identify themselves. Both NORAD and Russia noted that the aircraft did not enter U.S. or Canadian airspace.

“This Russian activity in the Alaska ADIZ occurs regularly and is not seen as a threat,” NORAD said in its release. On a post on the social media site X, the command praised the Alaskan NORAD region’s response, noting the contributions of multiple units, including:

The 611th Air Operations Center

The 176th Air Defense Squadron, which serves as the regional air operations center

The 211th Rescue Squadron, which flies HC-130J aircraft that can refuel other aircraft

The 962nd Airborne Air Control Squadron, which flies the E-3 AWACS for airborne command and control

The 18th Fighter Interceptor Squadron, which flies the F-16

The 168th Wing

The 22nd Air Refueling Wing, which flies the KC-135 and KC-46

The 348th Reconnaissance Squadron, which flies the RQ-4 drone.

Outstanding work by the Alaskan #NORAD team for their operational excellence during Tuesday’s Russian ADIZ incursion. Complex mission, great discipline! (Imagery is from previous NORAD operations) #BravoZuluTeam #WeHaveTheWatch @ANRALCOM @11th_Air_Force

611th AOC, 176th ADS,… pic.twitter.com/lkXwT9rKbG
— North American Aerospace Defense Command (@NORADCommand) December 20, 2024

The incursion into the Alaskan ADIZ was the first NORAD has acknowledged since Sept. 23. As it did this time, NORAD’s release noted that such activity occurs regularly and is not considered a threat. But the command revealed days later that it scrambled an F-16 to conduct a routine intercept of the Russian aircraft. During the intercept, a Russian Su-35 fighter cut across the front of the F-16 in what is known as a “headbutt” maneuver. The U.S. military called the encounter “unsafe,” and criticized the Russian aviator’s actions, saying they were “unprofessional and endangered all.”

The December incident was the 12th instance of 2024 in which NORAD said Russian aircraft entered air defense identification zones around the U.S. and Canada . In July, Russian and Chinese bombers flew together for the first time in the Alaskan ADIZ, raising alarms about the two countries’ growing ties and China’s foothold in the Arctic region.

Why Do We Need a Space Force? Here’s This Guardian’s Answer

Dec. 20, 2024 | By Charles Galbreath

The Space Force is now five years old, yet most Americans don’t even know it exists, not to mention what it does or why we need it. That’s an uncomfortable fact and a problem for the entire nation that every Guardian needs to understand and take seriously.

Every Guardian must be able to clearly convey why the Space Force exists, what the service does, and why it is critical to national security.

In the lead-up to the fifth anniversary of the founding of the Space Force, Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman detailed “six Space Force truths” that define the service and the Guardian identity. These aren’t meant to be memorized and regurgitated, but rather to be embodied and articulated in each Guardian’s own actions and words.

Just a few years ago, while I was still on active duty and working at the Pentagon, a young man saw the distinct blue thread spelling “U.S. Space Force” on my uniform and stopped me on the street.

“Are you really in the Space Force?” he inquired. When I replied that I was, he quickly followed up: “Can you tell me why we need a Space Force?”

Informed by late-night talk shows and social media, the creation of the newest service seemed to him more a joke than a critical element of our national security. I’m sure many Guardians have experienced something similar.

To make the discussion as relatable to him as possible, I started by describing the ways he might be using space on a daily basis and how dependent he was on space capabilities without realizing it. We talked about communications satellites transmitting entertainment and news content, navigating local roads with the Global Positioning System (GPS), being able to access money at ATMs because of the timing signals from GPS satellites, and accurate weather forecasts made possible thanks to sensors orbiting the Earth. And as valuable as all those things were to him, I said, “…they’re even more valuable to the military.”

Space systems guide our ships, aircraft, and many weapons. Space communications connect the Air Force, Army, Navy, and Marine Corps to synchronize operations globally, provides vital intelligence and weather data to plan those operations, and generates warnings when an enemy launches missiles at us or our allies. Space makes the U.S. military more effective and efficient.

“But there are potential adversaries who want to deny us those benefits,” I explained. Highlighting China and Russia, I talked generally about their ground-based, space-based, and cyber weapons whose sole purpose was to take away our space advantage. To make matters worse, both are also fielding their own space capabilities so they can threaten our Airmen, Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines.

The threats and consequences are so severe, I told him, we need a military service whose only job is to preserve America’s access to space and, if necessary, deny those advantages to our adversaries. This cannot be a part-time job for another military service. It needs to be the dedicated job of one military branch.

“That’s why we need a Space Force,” I concluded.

The whole conversation lasted less than two minutes. Then the young man asked one more question that struck me with its clarity: “Why don’t you guys just say that?”

Fast-forward to today. The Space Force is now five years old, and that question still lingers.

Guardians and the Space Force must tell their story every day, to everyone who doesn’t know it. The six Space Force Truths offer a template, but each of us must be willing and able to explain it in our own words.

The Space Force’s recent initiative to instill operational experience into every new Space Force officer is crucial. Just as “Every Marine is a rifleman,” so too must every Guardian be a space operator. Similarly, just as every Marine can explain why the Marine Corps exists and why it is critical to national defense, every Guardian should be able to do the same for the Space Force. In a sense, every Guardian is a spokesman.

Whether to friendly audiences or skeptics and critics, the Space Force must engage the public to convey how central space is to everyday life, and how essential it is to have a military branch dedicated to ensuring the freedom to navigate, communicate, and operate in, from, and through space.

Having a United States Space Force requires a significant national investment. The taxpaying public is right to wonder what value they will derive from such sacrifice. Guardians, whether military or civilian, have a civic duty to help them understand what that value is.

Late-night comedians and social media trolls love to mock what they don’t understand. Rather than politely smiling, the Space Force should instead meet the challenge head-on and tell their story.

Every American taxpayer should understand that the Space Force makes our way of life possible—every bit as much, if not even more directly, than each and every other military service.

At least that’s one Guardian’s perspective.

A birthday cake for the Space Force’s 5th birthday awaits cutting during a ceremony at Patch Barracks, Stuttgart, Germany, Dec. 17, 2024. U.S. Air Force photo by Master Sgt. Michael Mason

Experts: US Not Organized or Equipped for the Coming Electromagnetic Wars in Space

Dec. 20, 2024 | By Shaun Waterman

Space-based capabilities like GPS and satellite communications are vital to modern warfighting—and they are also most easily attackable via the electromagnetic spectrum via jamming or spoofing the radio transmissions that provide their command and control. But the Department of Defense’s electromagnetic warfare efforts in space are hamstrung by poor coordination and a lack of communication between stakeholders, experts said.

David Zurn, chief of test engineering at the Georgia Tech Research Institute, has worked on electromagnetic warfare (EW) programs for a decade or more. During a panel discussion at the Association of Old Crows’ symposium this month, he warned of the Pentagon’s vulnerability when it comes to what he calls “EW counter-space.”

“A day without space is really a day without 21st century warfighting,” said Zurn. “Space, however, is completely dependent on reliable data in its [Telemetry, Tracking and Command] links,” the radio transmissions that enable ground stations to communicate with and control satellites in orbit.

Satellites generally aren’t capable of autonomous operation, Zurn noted. “We’ve got to have the TT&C links to operate those vehicles, and the data we get from them [for surveillance or communications] is critical. If those data links are cut off, we’re not going to get that info and we’re not going to be able to communicate across the force,” he said. But they can easily be jammed.

The conflict in Ukraine “is obviously the poster child for this. We’ve seen significant use of jamming, both against commercial and military [space] assets in Ukraine. So we’ve seen that EW counter-space is going to become normal … in future conflicts,” he added.

The problem is made doubly urgent because the barriers to entry for EW attack in space are comparatively low: “Pandora’s box is open there, and I don’t think it’s going to close,” he said.

“Resilience to space EW should be a critical DOD priority. I don’t think it is based on what I’ve seen from an investment perspective and an acquisition perspective,” Zurn concluded.

Another issue holding resilience back is communication breakdowns between stakeholders, according to Jared Duckworth, a former Navy EW officer who now works on Joint Electro-Magnetic Spectrum Operations (JEMSO) as a contractor for the MITRE Corp. JEMSO encompasses both jamming (offensive EW), counter-jamming (defensive EW), and spectrum management activities.

“When we start talking JEMSO, especially EMS operations in space, it is so diverse, so complex, so enormous, that each one of us is going to have a different perspective,” he said during the panel discussion, “It doesn’t mean that anyone is wrong, but we have to understand the big picture.”

In that regard, Duckworth compared space EW to the elephant in the parable of the three blind men, each of whom is touching a different part of the animal. “Each one of them comes up with a different perspective of what the elephant is,” he noted.

In a subsequent interview with Air & Space Forces Magazine, Duckworth noted that the organizational picture in DOD is “a little bit confusing” when it comes to EW in space:

U.S. Strategic Command is the executive agent responsible for JEMSO and is the requirements owner and the user representative for tools being developed.

The other combatant commands actually execute JEMSO operations

In space specifically, U.S. Space Command executes JEMSO ops, while the Space Force and its acquisition elements like Space Systems Command and the Space Development Agency buy the tools.

“In any large organization like DOD, it is always very difficult to make sure everyone has the whole picture of what’s going on,” Duckworth said.

As an example, he pointed out that combatting EW attacks on satellite communication downlinks is the responsibility of the end user—whichever combatant command is at the bottom of the downlink being jammed. But attacks against the uplinks generated by those end users are the responsibility of SPACECOM, which also had ownership of any attacks against TT&C links in either direction.

“So you always have this push and pull of these huge organizations going in different directions and having different resources, and there’s a lot of overlap between them,” he said. “Figuring out who has what responsibility, what the process is, and what information everyone needs … is where everyone is starting to come to the table to work together.”

Add to that the fact that all these organizations and concepts are still in the infancy, and it is a challenging recipe, he said. The Space Force came online nearly five years ago, and U.S European command’s JEMSO unit reached initial operating capability in March 2019.

“All these communities just stood up within the last five or six years. … So we’re still learning roles and responsibilities,” Duckworth pointed out. “Operationally speaking, I would say the communication is impressive. There’s a lot of dialog that takes place.”

But the development/acquisition side is less impressive. “Getting a lot of the acquisition technical people to speak, define roles, responsibilities, processes, and get at who really should be responsible for what part is the critical point,” he said.

Part of the problem is the cross-cutting character of spectrum operations, Maj. Gen. Steve “Bucky” Butow, head of the space portfolio at the Defense Innovation Unit, told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

“I’m fortunate,” he said, explaining that “space is a well-defined vertical in the Department of Defense. There’s a Space Force that operates in the space domain and so my portfolio is well-aligned with that.”

By contrast, he said, technology portfolios can cut across verticals across all the domains and “require a lot more hand-holding and a lot more engagement.”

“Electronic warfare is very much one of these horizontals, and it always has been,” he added. “One of the areas we need to innovate on is policy.”

The policy challenges are especially grave, Duckworth added, because of the relatively low barriers to entry for EW, even in space. GPS signals can be jammed and civilian ones spoofed with cheap, easily available hardware.

“You don’t need any kind of space launch capability to do EW [in space], and you don’t need very good space domain awareness, because of the proliferation of [commercial off-the-shelf] equipment,” he said.

As a result, smaller countries that aren’t typically considered space powers or even non-state actors could wield EW in a “‘David and Goliath’ kind of situation,” Duckworth said.