Space Force Focused on the Ground for Anti-Satellite Weapons

April 3, 2025 | By Shaun Waterman

As it develops new weapons to attack satellites, the U.S. Space Force is focused more on ground-based efforts where the technology is more mature, the service’s top general said April 3.

“Our initial energy—and some of this is because of the technology readiness level in our industry—is mostly ground-based, looking up to space,” Gen. B. Chance Saltzman told the bipartisan U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, an advisory panel chartered by Congress.

“As you start to move to orbit, the technological threshold is a little higher, and so we’ve not put our dollars there initially. And so we are more interested right now in ground-based capabilities,” he added.

China, on the other hand, is “investing heavily” in both ground and space-based weapons, Saltzman warned.

The three kinds of non-cyber weapons—kinetic weapons, directed energy weapons, and radio frequency jammers—“can be on orbit, or can be on the ground, pointed up. The [People’s Republic of China] is investing heavily in all six categories,” he said.

China’s investments in anti-satellite weapons, sometimes called counter-space capabilities, and other technologies like quantum satellites, “represent an inflection point in space access that may result in China overtaking U.S. leadership” in the domain, he warned.

At the same time, China’s progress in space means that it is becoming more dependent on space-based capabilities, and therefore more worried about aggressive kinetic testing, like the Russians’ use of a direct ascent anti-satellite (ASAT) weapon in 2021, Saltzman added. That may reach a point where it causes friction between the two nations.

“The PRC has developed such a need for space capabilities that the idea of irresponsible behavior by anybody else is starting to affect the way they see the space domain as well,” Saltzman said. “It used to be that only the U.S. really took full advantage of space, and others didn’t need it as much, so it became a vulnerability.

“Now I think the PRC, for example, certainly needs to use space capabilities to achieve what they want to accomplish. … They did not like the 2021 destructive ASAT test by the Russians either. This is irresponsible behavior, and I think they see that it could potentially jeopardize the way they want to use space.”

Nonetheless, Saltzman added, there is still potential for the two U.S. adversaries to cooperate. “My job is to think about the worst-case scenario, and that’s where they collude to work against our national interests,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Space Force is fighting with one hand tied behind its back, constrained by policies based on outdated ideas about space, bemoaned Saltzman.

“We continue to struggle with overly restrictive space policy and outdated ways of thinking, dating back to when space was a benign environment,” he said in his written testimony, “Much of our guidance and direction continues to frame space as a strategic resource rather than a warfighting domain.”

Moreover, “We restrain ourselves from doing what is needful to avoid creating improper perceptions of ‘weaponizing space.’ In reality, space has been weaponized for at least two decades, and our slowness to absorb that reality has held back our progress.”

Asked to elaborate during the hearing, he said Space Force commanders “still have to go to very high levels of approval to do some of the basic things that you would think are just normal operations, testing, tactics, development, training.” He added that Guardians often had to train “in simulation, not in actual live practice … because of policies are in place.”

He said he believed that when policy issues get the high-level attention they need, leadership generally comes out with the right answer, but it takes work to get there

“I wouldn’t characterize this as … we chose the wrong policy,” he said. “I characterize it as, to some degree, space has been literally out of sight, out of mind, and so it just hasn’t risen to [a high enough] level.”

Whenever the Space Force tries to get a policy changed “whether it’s testing capabilities or or putting resources to a particular kind of capability, when those rise to the right level, generally, we can get people to acknowledge, yeah, this is probably a good idea. It’s just still a low priority in terms of the policy regime to even take a look at. And so I just feel like we’re lagging in the importance of establishing declaratory policy, and establishing the kind of policies we need to move fast.”

On the other hand he acknowledged that space is seen very differently than it was a decade ago, a change in the national conversation prompted, to some degree, by the Space Force’s establishment.

“I’m not afraid to say offensive capabilities. … I’m not afraid to say disrupt, deny, degrade,” enemy satellites, he said. But he acknowledged that “10 years ago, I would have been in serious trouble with my bosses, with Congress, with the media.”

Asked whether China was pulling ahead of the U.S. in terms of its space capabilities, Saltzman said the picture was more complicated than implied by the analogy of a “space race.”

“A race implies a very simple set of rules that everybody understands, and somebody’s ahead and somebody’s behind, and you cross the finish line and you can determine who the winner is,” he said. “It’s far more nuanced than that. And so to say one person’s ahead or their learning curve is faster, [is] to some degree, overly simplistic, but I understand why the question is asked.”

First Mission-Ready Skyraider II Arrives at Air Force Special Operations Command

April 3, 2025 | By David Roza

Air Force Special Operations Command marked a new chapter with its latest aircraft April 3 when the first Skyraider II fully modified for military use arrived at Hurlburt Field, Fla.

A modified crop duster, the OA-1K will provide airborne eyes, ears, and precision fires to support ground troops in permissive airspace, just as its namesake, the A-1 Skyraider, did in the Korean and Vietnam Wars.

AFSOC commander Lt. Gen. Michael Conley said at the welcoming ceremony that the aircraft’s small maintenance footprint and ease of swapping out sensors, weapons, and communications equipment will play a key role in future conflicts.

“Skyraider II represents not just a new platform, but a modular solution to our national security needs,” he said, according to a press release. “It will redefine how we approach joint campaigning, crisis response and the evolving landscape of modern warfare.”

Produced by Air Tractor and modified by L3Harris, the Skyraider II replaces the U-28A Draco, a small intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance aircraft that also operated in austere conditions. Officials have spoken of Skyraider II’s ability to “collapse the stack” of up to 20 ISR and armed defense aircraft that are sometimes called in to support special operations missions against violent extremist organizations.

“This aircraft embodies the very essence of our command: it’s agile, it’s adaptable, and it’s always ready to deliver lethality,” Conley said.

The first production aircraft was supposed to be delivered in October 2023. Delays pushed it back so that the first operational aircraft arrived April 3, though an experimental version made a brief appearance at Hurlburt in January, when AFSOC officially dubbed it the Skyraider II.

In the coming months, more Skyraider IIs will converge at Will Rogers Air National Guard Base, Okla., as the aircraft’s formal training unit stands up there. Pilots have already been familiarizing themselves with a pair of standard issue Air Tractor AT-802Us, but those aircraft lack the modifications L3Harris is installing on the operational planes.

Demand for special operations aviators has surged since 2019, in some cases exceeding peak levels seen during the Global War on Terror, Conley told the House Armed Services’ Intelligence and Special Operations subcommittee at a hearing in February.

Despite the high demand, U.S. Special Operations Command scaled back its planned buy of OA-1K aircraft from 75 copies down to 62 last March, a 17 percent drop “due to resource constraints,” the command said at the time.

About three months earlier, the Government Accountability Office published a report skeptical about the 75-fleet buy, but a SOCOM official said at the time that the report did not cause the command to trim its desired fleet size.

Attending the ceremony at Hurlburt was retired Lt. Col. Bill Buice, a former A-1 Skyraider pilot who flew in Vietnam, and Phillip Edward Jennings, who rescued him after he was shot down.

“The ingenuity, courage, and discipline of not only you, but your fellow Skyraider pilots, demonstrated why these missions are so critical to our partners on the ground,” said Conley. “It is today’s Air Commandos who are now tasked to carry on that mission.”

Let’s Put the ‘Tech’ into Military Technology Policy

April 3, 2025 | By Victoria Coleman and H.S. Philip Wong

Power projection is more than projecting military might—a nation’s economic power is the foundation of its capacity to project national power. And technological development is an important component of that power. In citing its reasoning behind the 1987 Nobel Prize for Economics, given to Robert Solow, the committee wrote: “Technological development will be the motor for economic growth in the long run.”

It, therefore, behooves us to seriously consider how nations should promote technological development. The basic tenet of the U.S. approach has long been for the federal government to fund basic research and let the commercial sector compete to develop technologies that benefit society, create jobs, and fuel economic growth. But is it really this simple?

In the days after World War II, when the U.S. had undisputed economic power and a massive lead in technology, monopolistic corporations with large research laboratories performed not only basic science research but also served as the north star that guided research toward commercialization. American industry’s giant lead in technology masked its underlying inefficiency in translating basic research into applied research. Corporations focused manufacturing on improving productivity rather than improving products to make them more competitive.

The world today is very different. Economic powerhouses bring competition to our shores: from China, India, Israel, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, Vietnam, and Europe. Some competitors are allies and partners, sharing American values; others have different world views. Regardless, these competitors are not waiting for basic research to trickle down into technology products. They are actively nurturing technology development and fueling advancements in both manufacturing and technology products. They are building new supply chains and deploying their increasingly highly educated workforces to perfect the manufacturing process.

Without the ability to manufacture, no amount of research and development can bring competitive products at scale to the marketplace.

Manufacturing advanced technology products, such as semiconductor chips and batteries, is not just about churning out the same thing repeatedly without change. Innovations in materials, processes, and design driven by lessons learned on the manufacturing floor enhance product engineering every bit as much as design and product R&D do.

America may continue to bring home Nobel Prizes, but increasingly, others are building and scaling the technologies enabled by our inventions. Bridging the “lab-to-fab” gap, as touted by the 2023 CHIPS Act, is essential but not nearly enough. We have seen first-mover advantages such as flat-panel displays and electric vehicles slip away from our hands. Sustained technology leadership requires excellence in manufacturing at every level, from components to systems. Manufacturing as a discipline itself merits dedicated R&D and policy. This is nowhere more apparent than in the semiconductor industry.

We’ve seen this story before. The CHIPS Act is only the most recent federal initiative in a long line of efforts to secure America’s lead in semiconductors. Earlier programs like VHSIC in the 1970s and Sematech in the 1980s aimed to solve the same problem. And for a while, they did. But when attention and investment faded, so did the gains, opening up the field to our competitors.

Technology policy must, therefore, be approached not as a one-time fix but as an ongoing commitment. This includes crafting good policies that go beyond nurturing inventions and actively encourage domestic scaling. If invention is 10 percent of the process of building value and competitive advantage through technology, scaling is 90 percent.

Initiatives like the Microelectronics Commons, which aims to accelerate the passage of semiconductor innovation from lab to fab by building and sharing domestic prototyping facilities, are essential for success, as are programs for training and retraining the domestic workforce required for scaling. Creating a favorable scaling environment through deliberate ecosystem building, including the judicious application of export and import controls, rewarding scaling with special purpose tax credits, and removing overburdensome regulations are also critical success enablers, as is measuring whether scaling is working—and adjusting as needed when global competitors change course.

This is especially challenging in the U.S., where the default instinct is to let the market decide. But the market doesn’t optimize for long-term strategic outcomes—it prioritizes short-term profits. In mature industries like autos or chip manufacturing, the focus is on efficiency and margin; in newer industries like tech design, the focus is on breakthrough innovation. Both are necessary, but the incentives diverge.

In the global competition for technology leadership, what often separates the winners from the losers is the government’s determination to use every available tool to create and nurture both the invention and scaling ecosystems. That is the strategic challenge ahead.

Victoria Coleman was Chief Scientist of the Air Force during the Biden administration and Director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) during the first Trump administration. She is now CEO of Acubed and Head of Research & Technology for Airbus North America. H.S. Philip Wong is a professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University and a former vice president of corporate research at TSMC, the world’s largest semiconductor foundry.

Caine: US Has Lost Electronic Warfare Skills, Needs to Enhance Training, Ranges

April 2, 2025 | By John A. Tirpak

Over 20 years of wars in “permissive environments,” the electronic warfare skills of the U.S. military have atrophied, requiring a new emphasis on EW training and new investment in simulation and training ranges, the prospective Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told lawmakers.

Among nearly 300 written questions Lt. Gen. Dan Caine answered for the Senate Armed Services Committee ahead of his April 1 confirmation hearing, he touched on the state of the Pentagon’s EW enterprise, saying several American electronic capabilities writ large are not adequately protected from electronic attack, and simulation capabilities are poor and in need of substantial upgrade.

“Against the most advanced adversaries, the joint force would likely face challenges protecting itself from electromagnetic attack,” Caine said in the written testimony. During the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, when U.S. forces were not challenged by a peer, “the Joint Force has lost some muscle memory defending against electromagnetic attack,” Caine wrote. “Operations within this spectrum have changed significantly, while the most advanced adversaries have done their best to rapidly evolve.” He said that if he is confirmed, he’s committed to ensuring that the Pentagon “continues to invest in training and additional capabilities in the electromagnetic spectrum.”

If confirmed, Caine would succeed Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., who used almost exactly the same “loss of muscle memory” comment in his July 2023 confirmation hearing to describe the state of U.S. military electromagnetic warfare capabilities.

In January 2021—when he was Chief of Staff of the Air Force—Brown pledged to refresh the EW and electromagnetic spectrum operations enterprise in the service, saying that the service had been “asleep at the wheel” in this area because of a lack of a peer competitor during the Global War on Terror.

Soon after, the Air Force stood up the its first ever spectrum warfare wing, the 350th Spectrum Warfare Wing. Underneath it, the service has established the 850th Spectrum Warfare Group and the 388th and 563rd Electronic Warfare Squadrons The various units assess Air Force spectrum warfare capabilities and develop tactics and techniques for combat in the EMS domain.

As to EW ranges, their “current state … is inadequate,” Caine said.

“Despite some investments, these ranges have not kept pace with current technology or the threat environments in which we expect to fight,” Caine added. “These ranges often fail to provide the necessary fidelity, capacity, and complexity required to prepare forces for modern electromagnetic warfare threats.”

While the Pentagon has said that simulation can substitute for live-range electromagnetic warfare exercises in certain circumstances—especially when it doesn’t want to reveal to potential observers what it is doing—Caine said that even these simulators are “insufficient.”

“Although facilities like the Air Force Electronic Warfare Evaluation Simulator (AFEWES) and the Joint Simulation Environment (JSE) exist, they are not fully integrated with other systems and lack sufficient capacity to fully develop new joint electromagnetic warfare concepts,” he said. “These gaps hamper the Joint Force’s ability to experiment with and refine concepts in this area, leaving us vulnerable to emerging threats.”

The Air Force has EW training ranges at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla.—where the 350th SWW is headquartered—as well as one in Idaho, three in Nevada, two in South Carolina, one in Texas and one in Utah. Snyder Electronic Warfare Range, near Dyess Air Force Base, Texas, is used by all the services. The Nevada Test and Training Range is used during large-scale Red Flag exercises. Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., has a Digital Test and Training Range and is integrated with the JSE.

NORTHCOM Wants to Buy New Tech to Down Drones Within ’24 Hours’ of Sighting

April 2, 2025 | By Unshin Lee Harpley

Amid an uptick in drone activity nationwide, the commander responsible for safeguarding North American airspace said U.S. Northern Command is acquiring new technology to swiftly deploy to bases around the country to counter these threats.

“What NORTHCOM has done is proposed a process where we would bring in ‘flyaway kits’ to supplement, or in the case where there are no capabilities, provide the initial capability at that base to defeat [drone threats],” Gen. Gregory M. Guillot, commander of NORTHCOM and North American Aerospace Defense Command told the House Armed Services Committee on April 1.

“Flyaway kits” are, as the name suggests, mobile packages that are “rapidly deployable, prepackaged counter-drone technology, along with personnel trained to employ that technology, that can be dispatched via commercial aircraft to get to the installation in need,” a NORTHCOM spokesperson told Air & Space Forces Magazine. The idea is to send these kits to military sites that lack sufficient counter drone capabilities as needed.

The technology would include a drone detection system, countermeasures—such as jammers, lasers, or kinetic systems to take down drones—and control software to manage the devices. The goal is to have these kits available for use “within a year,” the spokesperson added.

The Pentagon has been seeking an effective counter-drone solution for small unmanned aerial systems, hosting its first event last year for companies to showcase their latest technology to detect, track, and neutralize them.

The Falcon Peak exercise in October, hosted by NORTHCOM and NORAD, featured both kinetic systems—such as nets—and nonkinetic weapons to disable small drones. Technologies from DroneHunter by Fortem, Cerberus XL by Teledyne, CUGAR by Leidos, and SPYNEL by HGH were among the countermeasures tested in “complex, realistic scenarios” during the event.

Lt. Gen. Thomas Carden, Deputy Commander, U.S. Northern Command speaks with industry partners and distinguished visitors at Falcon Peak on Fort Carson, Colorado, Oct. 30, 2024. Falcon Peak is a USNORTHCOM led counter-small unmanned aircraft system experiment and the first Department of Defense C-sUAS initiative focused on detecting, tracking, and mitigating sUAS incursions at DoD installations in the United States. U.S. Department of Defense photos by Josh Armstrong

“There is perhaps no better example of the rapidly evolving strategic environment than the emergence of small unmanned aerial systems (sUAS) as a threat to infrastructure and personnel in the homeland.” Guillot wrote in testimony to lawmakers. These drones, mostly small enough to be “fit into a backpack,” have emerged as a “significant risk” in a relatively short period of time, he added.

As the “flyaway kit” is currently in the development phase, the NORTHCOM spokesperson said specific equipment and manufacturers cannot be discussed at this time.

The push to deploy UAS-killing technology grew urgent following a series of high-profile drone sightings between November and December 2024 that halted public airport and military flight operations.

One of the first sightings was reported in New Jersey in November, after police officers spotted drone activity during patrols. A few days later, the Federal Aviation Administration imposed a flight restriction in Bedminster, N.J. After that, another restriction was placed over Picatinny Arsenal military base in the state, lasting from Nov. 25 to Dec. 26. In early December, unknown drone activity forced the shutdown of runways at New York’s Stewart Airfield.

On Dec. 12, New York and New Jersey senators, including Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.), penned a letter to the heads of the FBI, FAA, and Department of Homeland Security, demanding a briefing on how the agencies were working to identify and address the source of these incursions, expressing “urgent concern regarding the UAS activity.”

At the time, then-White House National Security spokesperson John Kirby told reporters that the administration was actively investigating the matter but was unable to “corroborate some of the reported sightings.”

However, there were confirmed drone sightings at or near military bases like Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif.; Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio; and Hill Air Force Base, Utah.

Overall, Guillot said 350 UAS detections were reported last year across 100 different military installations. While he attributed much of the activity to hobbyists, he also noted that law enforcement partners had uncovered “evidence of a foreign intelligence nexus” in some of these incidents.

“The widespread availability of small drones, coupled with a complicated regulatory structure and limitations on UAS countermeasures based on concerns for flight safety and privacy, has created significant vulnerabilities that have been exploited by known and unknown actors,” Guillot added.

As part of the command’s ongoing effort to employ the flyaway kit, Guillot noted that another event, dubbed ‘Falcon Peak 25.2,’ will be held in August, featuring a “larger slate of vendors, participants, and systems.”

“We have a great relationship with the FAA that would allow us to operate the ‘Flyaway kits’ quickly,” Guillot added. “We just need to procure and field those kits so we can respond to [incidents like those at] Picatinny and Stewart fast; my goal would be inside of 24 hours, being able to respond.”

VENOM F-16s Getting Closer to First Flight

April 2, 2025 | By David Roza

A test program meant to pave the way for Collaborative Combat Aircraft drones took another step toward flight April 1 with the arrival of the last fighter jet to complete its fleet.

An F-16 landed at Eglin Air Force Base Fla., to join the Viper Experimentation and Next-gen Operations Model-Autonomy Flying Testbed program, or VENOM for short, according to a recent press release. That brings the total to number of F-16s for VENOM to six, a base spokesperson told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

VENOM is part of the Air Force’s effort to develop Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), which will integrate unmanned, semi-autonomous drones with manned platforms. Because CCAs are less costly than manned aircraft, they offer a way to beef up the Air Force’s shrinking number of combat aircraft.

The VENOM effort is similar to, but separate from, the X-62 Vista, another program where the Air Force is modifying an F-16 to explore the maneuvering and tactics of autonomous aircraft. VENOM focuses specifically on manned/unmanned teaming development.

“With regards to VENOM-AFT, rapid tactical autonomy development focuses on ‘speed-to-ramp,’ meaning, go as fast as you can, safely, to ensure we get CCA flying as quickly as possible,” Lt. Col. Joe Gagnon, commander of the 85th Test and Evaluation Squadron at Eglin, said in a press release last April when the first three F-16s arrived to be modified for VENOM.

In April 2024, the first three aircraft for VENOM arrived at Eglin to be modified. In its latest release, the base said those aircraft are still being worked on. Modifications include software, hardware, and instrumentation adjustments that let the aircraft fly autonomously. But pilots will still sit in the cockpit to monitor the systems and provide feedback.

The latest jet joins that modification process.

f-16 venom — An F-16 Fighting Falcon undergoes modifications as part of the Viper Experimentation and Next-gen Operations Model – Autonomy Flying Testbed program at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida. (U.S. Air Force photo by Samuel King Jr.)

Even while the jets are still being physically modified, the VENOM program has modeled and simulated “countless aircraft combat scenarios” since 2024, including one-on-one and two-on-one combat and within-visual-range and beyond-visual-range, according to the release.

“These simulations provide an efficient way to train the autonomy to learn complex air combat tactics.” Maj. Trent McMullen, the 40th Flight Test Squadron’s advanced capabilities division chief, said in the release.

“A specific scenario can be run 1,000 times and the variations and decisions made throughout that mission can be studied,” he added. “We can then make recommendations to the developers on how to improve the autonomy’s behaviors and overall performance.”

On the hardware side, the goal is to ensure autonomous commands cannot break the aircraft by exceeding its flight envelope, or the pilot by exceeding human tolerance for aggressive maneuvers, McMullen explained.

When software and hardware tests are done, a fully-modified VENOM F-16 will enter ground testing, which will likely move fast because operational and developmental test are both at Eglin.

The release said a fully-modified F-16 may be ready to start testing within first 18 months of the first jet arriving. That means tests should start in October.

“As the VENOM program’s first flight approaches, we are excited to test novel autonomous solutions,” McMullen said. “The strides we’ve witnessed in the simulation environment suggest VENOM will help advance aerial combat capabilities for future crewed and uncrewed platforms.”

In March, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin unveiled the service’s first two CCAs, one produced by General Atomic called the YFQ–42A, and another produced by Anduril Industries dubbed the YFQ–44A.

AFWERX’s New AI-Powered Tool Will Track Objects in Orbit, Even as They Maneuver

April 2, 2025 | By Shaun Waterman

AFWERX, the Air Force’s technology incubator, is funding the development of an AI-powered tool for identifying and tracking objects in low-Earth orbit, even as they maneuver and try to cloak themselves.

The tool, dubbed Rapid Analysis of Photometric Tracks for space Object identification and behavior Recognition or RAPTOR, is being developed by Slingshot Aerospace, an El Segundo, Calif.-based company specializing in using new technologies for space domain awareness missions like satellite tracking, space traffic coordination, and space modeling and simulation.

Slingshot did not comment on the value of the award, but an analysis by GovTribe put the total possible value at $1.2 million.

“Tracking space objects has become much more difficult” in the past two or three years, Dylan Kesler, Slingshot’s vice president of data science, told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “It used to be that you could basically get an orbit and understand that those objects would continue on in that [predictable] orbit based on physics.”

But in recent years, LEO has grown more crowded with the launch of thousands of small satellites for the new Starlink constellation and its aspiring competitors. Moreover, Kesler said, increasing numbers of both commercial and military satellites are conducting rendezvous and proximity operations. Both Russian and Chinese satellites have carried out such missions that look like practice runs for attacking satellites in orbit, while commercial vehicles were being developed to maneuver, refuel, or even repair on-orbit assets.

As a result, the SDA mission has grown “much, much more complicated,” said Kessler. “With many of the objects that we have most interest in, they’re highly maneuverable. They’re getting near other objects, so it becomes difficult to distinguish them. And they’re increasingly using technologies because they don’t want to be seen.”

RAPTOR will use machine learning to analyze photometric data derived from light reflected by the satellite as it passes overhead. Slingshot collects the data using a global network of 200 advanced telescopes, said Kesler. “We’re not looking at a resolved image,” he said, because the objects are tiny compared to celestial bodies and hundreds of miles above the Earth. “At the distances we’re working with, we don’t actually see the shapes of the objects, we get literally one pixel, but in that pixel is a lot of photometric information about the wavelengths of light.”

When subjected to AI analysis, he said, that data would yield a “fingerprint” of the object, a unique signature which could be used to identify it, if it moves unexpectedly and turns up later in a different orbit.

“To the human eye, they’re indistinguishable, but not to AI,” said Kesler.

RAPTOR creates “a whole new data stream” for space domain awareness, Kesler added. It could also be useful to the commercial space sector “to monitor their own spacecraft or to monitor other spacecraft from, say, other companies or governments that are not cooperative and sharing information” about how their vehicles are maneuvering.

In addition, a simulation engine Slingshot is developing would enable signatures to be developed based on data about a particular satellite—its size, geometry, and composition—even before it was launched, Kelser said. “So a big part of the RAPTOR project is developing fingerprints for objects that we expect to see, not just what we’re actually observing in orbit.”

RAPTOR will be a technology demonstration for the Air Force, Kesler said, but Slingshot will use the system for its own mission. “We’re not just doing a demonstration, we’re actually building systems that will become part of Slingshot’s space sensor network and space domain awareness work,” he said.

Right now, Slingshot, along with the rest of the SDA industry, is focused on identifying and tracking objects in orbit, but RAPTOR would enable the next step: to start predicting behavior and figuring out intention.

“I think much of the industry is still working on characterizing objects and figuring out orbits, but we’re going to be able to predict behaviors, and we’re going to predict outcomes and intentions eventually, and this is the first step to getting that far,” Kesler said.

Caine Touts Unusual Experience for Chairman as Asset in ‘Unconventional Times’

April 1, 2025 | By John A. Tirpak

President Donald Trump’s nominee for Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff touted his highly unusual background for the job as an asset and reaffirmed his commitment to stay apolitical during a confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee on April 1.

If confirmed, Lt. Gen. John “Dan” Caine would be the first Air National Guardsman to serve as the nation’s top military officer. He would also be the first Chairman to have never been a service chief or a combatant commander. U.S. law requires the Chairman to have that experience but says those requirements can be waived “if the President determines such action is necessary in the national interest.”

“Yes, Senators, I acknowledge that I’m an unconventional nominee. … For many Americans, I’m an unknown leader,” Caine said in his opening statement.

Yet, “these are unconventional times,” Caine added, and he asserted that his experience as the top military advisor to the head of the CIA was a close approximation to the kind of role he will play as Trump’s principal military advisor.

Caine also noted his time as a combat F-16 pilot in the Air National Guard, assignment with Special Operations Command, and even his experience as an entrepreneur as useful in directing tighter financial accountability from the services and attracting new entrants and startups to defense work.

The confirmation hearing served as the public’s first extended look at Caine, whose nomination came after Trump abruptly dismissed Air Force Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. as Chairman.

At the 2024 Conservative Political Action Conference, Trump recounted meeting Caine in Iraq in 2018 and seemed to say the general put on a “Make America Great Again” hat and said “I will kill for you.” At his hearing, however, Caine said he believed Trump “was actually talking about somebody else,” and that he has never worn “political merchandise or said anything to that effect.”

At other points in the hearing, Caine faced questions about how he would handle political pressure or unlawful orders. He reaffirmed that his loyalty is to the Constitution and emphasized that as Chairman, his role will be advisory, that he will not be in the chain of command to operators, and that it will be up to other officers to execute presidential orders.

Asked about the recent “Signal” controversy, in which senior administration officials discussed an imminent strike on Houthi targets in Yemen using the commercial, encrypted “Signal” messaging app instead of secure government channels, Caine said that if he had been included in the discussion, he would have raised concerns about the prospect of it being monitored by hostile entities.

“I think we all can agree that we need to always protect the element of surprise,” he said. “We protect our servicemen and women who are going into combat operations.”

Caine said his focus will be to urge and motivate the service chiefs to find faster ways to field technology that will preserve the nation’s military superiority, which he said is at risk as China improves its own military at a rapid pace.

“Our national defense requires urgent action and reform across the board. We must go faster,” Caine said. “We must move with a sense of urgency. We can never forget that our number one job is to create peace through overwhelming strength, and if need be, fight and win our nation’s wars.

Caine said he fully supports the modernization of the nuclear triad as the foundation of American security, including a new Sea-Launched Cruise Missile for the Navy. All of Trump’s top Pentagon nominees have voiced support for nuclear modernization thus far.

Middle East

Under questioning from Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), Caine said Iran should never be allowed to have nuclear weapons and that a nuclear-equipped Iran would be an “imminent and existential threat” to U.S. forces in the Middle East and possibly elsewhere.

Cotton, noting that Trump has said “there will be bombing” if Iran refuses to cooperate, asked Caine if he would provide “the best candid advice you can about viable military options and the likely consequences?”

“I think that’s what the job of the Joint Staff is to do, is to provide a range of options for the President to consider and then allow him to select whatever those options should work best for him,” Caine replied.

More broadly, Caine agreed with a statement from Sen. Angus King (I-Me.) that terrorism is not getting the attention it deserves.

“What I’m very worried about now is a resurgence of terrorism,” King said. “Syria potentially could become another base for ISIS. There are thousands of ISIS fighters in jails in Syria. If they’re released, that could be a major challenge. West Africa is now a major area of al Qaeda activity. … It doesn’t take many terrorists to create serious problems for this country and for people around the world.”

Caine agreed: “We have to keep pressure on the terrorists. … Unfortunately, we can never take our eyes off of it completely. The challenge that somebody would want to do harm to us or to our interests around the world is not going to go away anytime soon.”

Air Force Issues

If confirmed, Caine would be the sixth Airmen to be Chairman, and during his confirmation hearing, service issues came up a few times.

Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) asked about the possibility of increasing the Air Force’s fleet of new B-21 bombers from its current plan of 100 aircraft to 200, but Caine said he needed a chance to study the requirement.

“After the analysis portion … I’d like to speak to the other joint chiefs and the combatant commanders whose requirements Raider will fulfill before I commit to supporting any particular number of B-21,” he said. Pressed, he said he “would not hesitate” to recommend buying more if the analysis supports such a decision.

Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), meanwhile, brought up intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance in one of his questions, saying “the Air Force specifically has been on a mission to eliminate ISR as one of the key missions. It’s disappeared even as a term in several of their documents in recent years,” and that each service needs more resources so that it can do its own ISR.

“ISR and the ability to have indications and warnings to make decisions for commanders … is a key and essential part of our overall ability to execute the missions that we must do,” Caine replied, without getting into specifics.

Air Force’s Last Active-Duty F-15C Made Its Final Flight at Kadena

April 1, 2025 | By Unshin Lee Harpley

The Air Force’s last Active-Duty F-15C made its final flight earlier this year, as Kadena Air Base in Japan continues its long goodbye to the iconic fighter after more than 45 years of operations.

The Eagle’s last sortie at Kadena took place Jan. 24, the base’s 18th Wing announced in a recent release. The aircraft is now being converted into a maintenance training aircraft.

The same day, Kadena activated the 67th Fighter Generation Squadron and deactivated the 18th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron. The Air Force has been moving from aircraft maintenance squadrons to fighter generation squadrons for several years now as part of an effort to have operators and maintainers work side-by-side. Maj. Eric Boehm, who had commanded the 18th AMS, assumed command of the 67th FGS

Kadena is also making the transition as it prepares to welcome a new fleet of F-15EX Eagle IIs. The Pentagon announced last summer that it would put 36 F-15EXs at the Okinawa base to replace its 48 F-15C and D fighters, and in a recent press conference with local media, 18th Wing commander Brig. Gen. Nicholas Evans said he expects the first F-15EX fighters to arrive between March and June 2026, per Stars and Stripes.

After more than four decades of service, Kadena began phasing out its F-15C/Ds in 2022 as the Air Force leaders said the Eagles had become increasingly limited as they outlived their intended service lives. By April 2023, the base was hosting a farewell ceremony with then-Pacific Air Forces commander Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach, followed by more milestone retirements.

At the same time, the 18th Wing has declined to identify how many F-15C/Ds were left at the base, citing operational security concerns. The March 26 release was the wing’s first acknowledgement that its entire F-15C fleet is now gone or grounded, though it made no mention of the wing’s two-seat F-15D models.

The 18th Wing did not immediately respond to queries from Air & Space Forces Magazine.

A U.S. Air Force F-15C Eagle takes off after the 67th Fighter Generation Squadron activation ceremony for its final flight at Kadena Air Base, Japan, Jan. 24, 2025. U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Catherine Daniel

Throughout the divestment process, the Air Force has deployed rotations of fourth and fifth-generation fighters, including F-15Es, F-16s, F-35s, and F-22s, to supplement its posture at the strategic base, located just 400 miles from Taiwan.

Some of the fighters being retired went to the “Boneyard” at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz., while others were sent to other Air Force units, according to the 18th Wing. Kadena also kept a few jets to train weapons loaders and maintainers.

Additionally, some of the 18th Wing’s Airmen went to Portland Air National Guard Base, Ore., early this year for 60 days of training on both the F-15 and the F-15EX. The training focused on adapting from “an air-to-air exclusive mission to a multirole mission,” to incorporate air-to-ground tactics and advanced weapon systems, the wing said in a release. Given the similarities between the Eagles and the Eagle II, squadrons should be able to switch from the F-15s to F-15EX aircraft with fairly minimal training.

Portland became the first installation to receive the operational F-15EX last year, marking the first time an Air National Guard has gotten a new-type fighter before the Active-Duty force.

The Air Force initially planned a fleet of 144 F-15EXs, but in the fiscal 2025 budget proposed limiting the fleet to just 98 aircraft. The House Armed Services Committee, in its version of the 2025 budget, directed the purchase of an additional 24 aircraft, for a total fleet of 122 Eagle IIs, but that budget never passed.