Fighters from Around the World Join in on Massive Exercise in Australia

July 16, 2024 | By Unshin Lee Harpley

Australia’s ‘Pitch Black’ air combat exercise kicked off this week with an array of fighters that marks its biggest iteration ever since starting in 1981.

“With approximately 140 aircraft and over 4,000 personnel from 20 nations participating, this year’s iteration of exercise Pitch Black is the largest participation in its 43-year history,” the Australian Department of Defense said in a statement.

The three-week exercise, running from July 12 to Aug 2, is primarily based at Royal Australian Air Force bases Darwin and Tindal in the country’s Northern Territory, strategically located for the host nation’s defense cooperation with regional partners.

The U.S. Air Force sent six F-22 Raptors from the 27th Fighter Squadron at Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Va., to Tindal earlier this month.

“This will be the first time the F-22A has participated in this exercise,” a Pacific Air Forces spokesperson told Air & Space Forces Magazine. The spokesperson explained that the Air Force deployed Raptors to Tindal during the previous iteration of the exercise in 2022, but the F-22s did not participate in the joint fighter training.

U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Austin Diaz, 27th Expeditionary Fighter Generation Squadron crew chief, starts up a stored energy system to supply air to an F-22A Raptor during Exercise Pitch Black 2024 at Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) Base Tindal, Australia, July 15. U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Andrea Posey

Among the 20 participating nations, 16 countries are deploying aircraft for combat training, while four will contribute personnel to observe and contribute to the exercise.

“For the first time, aircraft and personnel from Philippines, Spain, Italy, and Papua New Guinea and embedded personnel from Fiji and Brunei will participate in the exercise,” the Australian statement noted.

The Philippines, making its debut at the biennial exercise, sent FA-50PH Fighting Eagle aircraft to join the event last week, landing at Darwin, marking the first deployment of that air force’s aircraft for an internationally hosted exercise outside their own territory.

“The big thing that we’ll take away is a strong friendship with the Philippines and exercises like this will continue to strengthen that,” Australian Air Commodore Pete Robinson, who is leading the exercise, said in a statement. “We’ll walk away with a stronger partnership together.”

Additionally, the exercise will feature aircraft from France, Germany, India, Indonesia, South Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and the United Kingdom, along with personnel from Canada and New Zealand.

Italy, another first-timer in the combat training, has sent six F-35A and F-35B aircraft, four Eurofighters, a KC-767 refueling aircraft, and an E-550 Conformal Airborne Early Warning aircraft as a command-and-control platform, along with approximately 400 air force members.

The continued presence of the German, French, and Spanish air forces will be evident in the coming weeks as part of their Indo-Pacific fighter deployment mission called Pacific Skies. The initiative spans five exercises, starting with Arctic Defender in Alaska earlier this month. They will maintain their fighter commitment in the area with the Rim of the Pacific exercise in Hawaii, followed by two additional exercises in Japan and India throughout August.

This year’s Pitch Black serves as a platform for several NATO members to train for the first time with the alliance’s partner nations of the region. The European nations’ concerns over China’s military ties with Russia have prompted NATO to increase its focus on Indo-Pacific partnerships. At its 75th summit in Washington, D.C., last week, the 32 member states called China to “cease all material and political support to Russia’s war effort,” casting direct blame on Beijing for its role in Russia’s ongoing conflict in Ukraine for the first time.

“What happens in Ukraine today can happen in Asia tomorrow,” outgoing NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said July 11.

On top of fostering new partnerships, the training will immerse advanced fighter jets in complex scenarios, focusing on tactical execution of large force employment, offensive counterair, and ground operations.

“We’ll see the complexity rise throughout the exercise,” explained Robinson. “So relatively simple to start with, but the last week of the exercise, it’s fairly complex, building on all the lessons learned over the three weeks to be able to do those complex tasks.”

New Engine Core Upgrade for F-35 Powerplant Passes Preliminary Design Review

July 16, 2024 | By John A. Tirpak

Pratt & Whitney and the F-35 Joint Program Office have completed the preliminary design review of the Engine Core Upgrade of the fighter’s F135 engine, the company said this week, adding that the ECU is “on schedule and exceeding expectations.” Pratt is a subsidiary of RTX.

The review “was a successful first step toward the capability the ECU will provide in meeting the challenging performance and durability requirements of the F135,” F-35 propulsion program manager Navy Capt. Mitchell Grant said in a press release. The ECU will “ensure that the U.S. and our international partners remain well-positioned to outpace adversary threats,” he added.

The Engine Core Upgrade will give the F-135 “increased capability and performance,” Pratt F135 vice president Chris Johnson said.

Critical design review is anticipated to take place in mid-2025, and the upgraded engine is supposed to be ready for fleet use in 2029.

The 2024 defense appropriations bill included $497 million to do detailed design work on the ECU.

The ECU was the propulsion choice made by the Pentagon after a long debate about whether to pursue more powerful Adaptive Engine Transition Program (AETP) engines developed by Pratt and GE Aerospace. Because the AETP engine was designed for the Air Force’s F-35A variant, that service would have had to bear the development cost alone, and Secretary Frank Kendall said in March 2023 that USAF couldn’t afford a unique engine. It was “the right decision,” Kendall said at the time, but one he said he’d like “another shot at,” given the advances the AETP engine would have offered in thrust and range.

An ECU would still have been necessary for other users of the F-35, and if the Air Force had pursued an AETP engine, two logistics trains would have been required to support the powerplants, which would not have much in common. “Commonality” has been the watchword of the F-35 since the program’s inception, and any user requiring unique equipment, software, or sustainment has to “pay to be different.”

Besides cost, the main attraction of the ECU is its compatibility with all three variants of the F-35. Either of the AETP engines would have required extensive new engineering and development to make them work with the short takeoff /vertical landing F-35B and carrier-capable F-35C.

Instead, the AETP technologies are being carrier over to the Next-Generation Adaptive Propulsion (NGAP) engine which will power the Next-Generation Air Dominance platform. Both Pratt and GE Aerospace are again working on that program. The NGAD will use a smaller engine than the F135, so a direct transfer of that powerplant won’t work with it.

The ECU is needed because the F-35 Block 4 upgrade will require more power for electronic warfare and to run the improved fighter’s more powerful processors. But it will also need more cooling capability, because the upgraded electronics will run hotter than on previous F-35 models.

To that end, the Joint Program Office is likely to release a request for proposals in the near future for a new Power and Thermal Management System. Government sources said that after long discussions with industry—notably with Honeywell, which makes the existing thermal management system, and Collins, which has developed an Enhanced Power and Cooling System (EPACS) for the F135 at its own expense—the JPO will probably pursue a competition for a new cooling system. The expense of a competition would be justified by reducing wear-and-tear on the F135 engines and getting more service life out of them.

Can JADC2 Help the Air Force Build a New Nuclear Command and Control System?

July 16, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

The Pentagon’s plans to invest billions of dollars to upgrade and modernize nuclear command, control, and communications can benefit from the work now being done to create a sweeping joint all-domain command and control (JADC2) system linking sensors to shooters in every domain0, a top Air Force general said July 15.

Lt. Gen. Andrew J. Gebara, Deputy Chief of Staff for Strategic Deterrence and Nuclear Integration, noted the connection during an AFA Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies Aerospace Nation interview. Yet even as analysts agreed, serious questions about how to defend the NC3 network, which some have called the “fourth leg” of the nuclear triad, loom ahead.

“When I was a lieutenant, we would have a completely separate NC3 system from our conventional command and control systems,” Gebara said. “And at the time, we would just put a multibillion dollar satellite up into GEO orbit and then just not think about it anymore because it works pretty well and no one can get after it. That’s not the world we live in today. And so we need to leverage the benefits we’re gaining out of joint all-domain command control.”

Those benefits mean ensuring that if one means of getting a message through fails, another can be found.

Conincidentally, a new report from the Atlantic Council, released the same day, comes to the same conclusion: “The highly integrated nature of modern command, control, communications, and battle management (C3BM) systems necessitates the integration of NC3 capabilities into a broader system-of-systems across the C3BM enterprise,” wrote analysts Peter L. Hays and Sarah Mineiro.

JADC2, often referred to now combined JADC2 (adding a C in front of the acronym) is an ambitious effort to connect sensors and shooters across the globe in different domains, transmitting data at lightning speed to accelerate decision-making.

Similarly, nuclear leaders want to apply that same kind of thinking to new NC3 solutions, potentially leveraging commercial as well as military components to ensure resiliency under attack. According to budget documents, the Air Force plans to invest some $68 million in research and development into “leveraging emerging commercial-based technologies” for NC3.

Gebara noted that NC3 isn’t going to be a single system. “It’s really several hundred nodes that all make up one large system,” he said. “It isn’t one radio that you can just mass produce and give to everybody, because there’s different ways the message has to get through, whether it’s from space, whether it’s terrestrial, whether it’s what have you.”

Yet while JADC2 and NC3 “must be developed in synchronization,” according to Pentagon budget documents, there are clear differences about the needs.

“I think there will always be a human in the loop for nuclear command and control,” Gebara said. “There’s going to be a lot less automation in nuclear command and control than you might see in conventional [JADC2].”

Lt. Gen. Andrew J. Gebara, Deputy Chief of Staff for Strategic Deterrence and Nuclear Integration on Monday, July 15, 2024, at the Air & Space Forces headquarters in Arlington, Va. Photo by Mike Tsukamoto/Air & Space Forces Magazine

“The modernization of NC3 systems must continue to meet unique requirements for positive and negative control, unlike any other command-and-control system,” Hays and Mineiro wrote. “The recognition of these unique requirements drives special emphasis on understanding deterrence scenarios and objectives, technical capabilities, and potential commercial contributions.”

The Atlantic Council report noted that while JADC2 can emphasize speed and experimentation, NC3 demands a more cautious approach.

Space will play a key role in both efforts—the Space Development Agency’s Transport Layer will be the “backbone” of JADC2, and the Space Force plans to invest billions of dollars on a new NC3 satellite constellation called Evolved Strategic SATCOM to succeed the Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) satellite constellation.

Given that the Air Force manages both the land and air legs of the nuclear triad and that 75 percent of NC3 systems reside within the Department of the Air Force, the two services must work closely together, Gebara said.

“We’ve been side-by-side, shoulder-to-shoulder for years. I think it’s actually only growing stronger,” Gebara said. “We have reinvigorated what I call the Nuclear Oversight Council. So this is a Secretary of the Air Force-led, co-chaired by the two service chiefs, four-star-level conference that happens three times a year, that is dedicated to the nuclear mission space.”

Hays and Mineiro see risks ahead, both in growing threats in space and Space Force plans for proliferating military satellites in low-Earth orbit. They want greater study of “the nuclear surety implications for the current exploration of disaggregation as a means to ensure resiliency.” The want any satellites supporting NC3 in low-Earth orbit to be hardened against nuclear attack.

Recent revelations that Russia is developing a nuclear weapon for space underscore the risk posed by such weapons. “A high-altitude nuclear detonation (HAND) would raise the peak radiation flux in parts of the Van Allen radiation belts by three to four orders of magnitude,” the Atlantic Council report says. That could “cause the failure in weeks to months of most if not all LEO satellites not specifically hardened against this threat, result in direct financial damages probably approaching $500 billion and over $3 trillion in overall economic impact, and present daunting response challenges, since the attack would be outside of any state’s sovereign territory and not directly kill anyone,” the authors wrote.

The Space Development Agency, which is fielding the proliferated space architecture in LEO, is not planning such nuclear hardening, at least not publicly. SDA Director Derek M. Tournear has said the organization’s satellites will not be hardened against such an attack, but rather only hardening sufficient to ensure operational effectiveness in that orbit. Some of those satellites are meant to be used for missile warning/missile tracking, which could contribute to NC3.

The unique function of nuclear command and control is what makes the stakes so high. “It is absolutely critical that the President has the ability to get a hold of those nuclear forces at all times, in all situations, no matter where he is, what time of day, what time of night, what type of weather, what type of threat,” Gebarra said. “The president of the United States has to be able to talk to a second lieutenant in the missile field in single-digit minutes in order for the system to work.”

CSAF Wants Airmen to Read Up on Drone Warfare, George Marshall, and More

July 16, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin wants Airmen to study up on drone warfare in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, citing their “transformative impact” on modern warfare, as part of the latest installment of his Leadership Library.

Specifically, Allvin is recommending a report from the think tank Center for a New America Security released in February, one of four new additions to his list of books, films, podcasts, and papers for Airmen to peruse.

“Evolution not Revolution: Drone Warfare in Russia’s 2022 Invasion of Ukraine,” by Stacie Pettyjohn, CNAS

Pettyjohn, a senior fellow and director of the Defense Program at CNAS, previously worked at the RAND Corporation where she served as the director of the strategy and doctrine program in Project AIR FORCE.

Her report on drone warfare relies on secondary sources, interviews with experts, U.S. officials, and NATO leaders, and analysis and “provides an insightful analysis of the changing character of war, focusing on the role of drones in modern warfare,” Allvin wrote. “As Airmen, it is crucial to stay informed about the latest technological advancements and their implications for the battlefield.”

Pettyjohn reached several conclusions in her report, including the importance of drone stacks over drone swarms, the use of long-range “kamikaze” drones,” and emerging counterdrone systems. Such insights come at a key time for the U.S. Air Force as it works on Collaborative Combat Aircraft, the autonomous drones meant to fly alongside manned fighters, and also seeks to counter growing drone threats around the world.

“George Marshall: Defender of the Republic” by David L. Roll

Roll has written several books about World War II-era leaders, including President Harry Truman, Defense Secretary Louis Johnson, and presidential adviser Harry Hopkins. Allvin, however, is recommending Airmen read Roll’s 2019 biography of Army Gen. George Marshall, who went on to serve as Secretary of Defense and Secretary of State and played a key role in the reconstruction of Europe after World War II.

“By examining Marshall’s leadership style and decision-making process, Airmen will gain valuable insights into strategic planning and crisis management,” Allvin wrote. “This work will aid Airmen seeking to better understand the complexities of leadership and the importance of character in shaping outcomes. General Marshall was clearly an extremely effective leader in a time of consequence.”

“Leading Change,” by John P. Kotter

Kotter, a management consultant and a professor at the Harvard Business School, is considered an expert in organizational leadership, and his book “is a must-read for Airmen seeking to drive meaningful change and innovation,” Allvin wrote. “Drawing on real-life examples, Kotter outlines a multi-step process that enables leaders to navigate the complexities of change and overcome resistance. By understanding the nuances of change management, Airmen will be better equipped to create a more agile and adaptive force.”

Kotter has published more than half a dozen books on organizational change and leadership, but “Leading Change” was his first. Allvin’s selection dovetails with his mantra of “Following Through” on major changes the Air Force has initiated in the past several years.

“Unveiling the Motivation Vacuum in the Workplace,” from At the Table with Patrick Lencioni

A podcast episode that “offers practical strategies for leaders to enhance motivation, retention, culture, and productivity,” Allvin wrote. “The key to success lies in aligning individual and team goals while fostering resilience. This episode provides valuable insights into the challenges of maintaining motivation in the workplace and offers actionable solutions for leaders to create a more driven and productive team.”

Like Kotter, Lencioni is a management consultant and author.

Schneider Electric Transforms Yokota’s Power Grid with Self-Funded Energy Upgrades

July 16, 2024 | By Patrick Reardon

Yokota Air Base’s location in Japan gives the U.S. Air Force a strategic operational advantage of rapid response within the Indo-Pacific region—but it’s also a location fraught with weather events that threaten the installation’s power grid. With tsunamis, typhoons, and earthquakes comes the risk of losing primary power, leaving critical infrastructures out of operation and in the dark.

To manage this risk at Yokota Air Base, the Air Force turned to Schneider Electric, the global leader in the digital transformation of energy management and automation, to execute one of the largest resilience-focused performance contracts ever undertaken by the Department of Defense. Construction on the comprehensive project began in January 2021 and was implemented in November 2023. The improvements delivered through an Energy Savings Performance Contract (ESPC) includes $406 million of guaranteed energy savings over the course of the 25-year contract—meaning it requires no upfront investment from Yokota Air Base or U.S. taxpayers.

“[Yokota Air Base] leveraged funds that they’re already budgeting—that’s the benefit to doing an Energy Savings Performance Contract,” said Meghann Ison, Schneider Electric’s project development manager.

Schneider Electric has executed five other ESPCs with the Air Force over the last five years. Each one uses Schneider Electric’s off-the-shelf technologies but is customized for the specific mission needs of the base. Yokota Air Base needed uninterrupted, base-wide power and continuous service to thermal loads, even during emergencies and power disruptions. Schneider Electric’s solution included a new 10-megawatt combined heat and power plant as an alternative source of primary power, along with a new-and-improved “intelligent” microgrid equipped with across-the-board automation systems.

“By tying those three main automation systems together—building automation, process automation, electrical automation—they have a wealth of information because it’s all digitally connected and inter-networked together,” said Jeff Worley, Schneider Electric’s global solution architect on the Yokota Air Base ESPC. “They have a single pane of glass to view those systems from various places across the base—having that eco-structure of a digital ‘internet of things,’ if you will, is a big advantage to them.”

Ison and Worley estimate Schneider Electric’s upgrades will reduce Yokota Air Base’s energy and water costs by nearly 30 percent, translating to $12.3 million in annual savings. Schneider Electric reports that the state-of-the-art improvements will conserve more than 30 million gallons of water, 75 million kWh of electricity, and 33,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year.

Completing the project didn’t come without technical, logistical, and language barriers. Not only was Schneider Electric challenged with an OCONUS project, but also with getting equipment from around the world to Yokota Air Base during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“These projects are the ultimate team sport,” Worley said. “It was not just the team of a hundred Schneider Electric people from all over the world that helped with this, but it was also the facilitation of the Air Force Civil Engineering Center (AFCEC) and Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), the local squadron of engineering on the base, and just keeping that mission in front of us. That if the base has no power, they have no technology. And if they have no technology, they cannot complete the mission. And that was the rallying point for us through the project.”

Installing a brand-new power plant at one of the Air Force’s largest and busiest bases presented another challenge. Transferring Yokota Air Base’s critical loads from the old system to the new one required a complete shut-down of utility power in 750 buildings on base—including air traffic control towers and other mission-critical infrastructures. But Schneider Electric’s “islanding” test proved that the base could operate independently of the utility and critical operations wouldn’t be interrupted, even during a blackout.

“It was very satisfying how quickly the engines were able to add load,” Worley said. “We had the base from total blackout to restored 10 megawatts of power in 30 minutes. And even we didn’t know it would do it that quickly.”

Ison added that Schneider Electric will continue to play an important role in Yokota Air Base’s new resiliency measures throughout the ESPC’s entire 25-year lifecycle. She said Schneider Electric personnel will remain on base as augmented support to Yokota Air Base’s Civil Engineer Squadron.

“We have several full-time employees on site day after day to ensure that those sources are up and running, and the base has a resilient, secure power solution,” Ison said.

Learn more about how Schneider Electric’s innovative solutions and energy performance contracts are posturing Air Force installations around the world for better resiliency and readiness.

USAF ‘Absolutely Committed’ to Keep Minuteman Going While Sentinel Is Delayed

July 15, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

The Air Force will take steps to ensure its Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles can keep operating while the new Sentinel ICBM is delayed—but the moves won’t constitute a service life extension program, Deputy Chief of Staff for Strategic Deterrence and Nuclear Integration Lt. Gen. Andrew J. Gebara said July 15.

Minuteman III has had multiple service life extensions throughout its long history, turning what was originally meant to be a 10-year program into a 50-plus-year mainstay of U.S. nuclear deterrence. The most recent, which wrapped up in 2015, was meant to keep the missile operational through 2030.

Sentinel had been scheduled to reach initial operational capability by September 2030, but the Pentagon and the Air Force announced last week that the program will be delayed at least three years, as cost overruns sparked a program restructuring.

Now, at least some Minuteman missiles will likely to have keep going until the end of the 2030s, as the Air Force plans a phased approach swapping in Sentinel for Minutemen over the course of several years. Full operational capability for Sentinel had been set for 2036, before the latest delays were announced.

Officials have repeatedly said Minuteman III is nearing the end of its service life due to its age and parts obsolescence, and Gebara warned during a Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies event that still more issues could come up.

“Minuteman is going to have to continue. I can show you charts and budget lines and the like that gets after every one of the challenges we see in Minuteman to keep it relevant,” he said. “But we can only program and plan to what we know is going on, and what we can predict is going on. And as we go to the right, whether it be Minuteman … whether it be whatever have you, there’s always the chance of an unknown unknown.”

With certain parts no longer being manufactured, the Air Force will need long lead times for procuring some of them, and retired Air Force Col. Jennifer Reeves, a senior resident fellow at the Mitchell Institute and former ICBM wing commander, noted to Air & Space Forces Magazine that projecting future maintenance needs for the missiles is a relatively new, still unfolding effort.

“We didn’t think things were going to be around this long, such that we would have to do forecasting of when components and whatnot were actually going to fail,” she said.

Congress, the Pentagon, and the Department of the Air Force are all ready to spend to keeping Minuteman viable, Gebara said.

“Our Air Force is absolutely committed to making sure Minuteman is sustained,” Gebara said. “We have good funding for that now. We will continue and have pledged to continue with Congress if unknown unknowns happen on Minuteman, we will get after that and make sure that that’s covered until such time as Sentinel stands alert.”

Despite that, Gebara dismissed the idea that the work on Minuteman would be a full-fledged service life extension, or SLEP.

“A SLEP was one of the considerations [Pentagon acquisitions boss William LaPlante] looked at to see if that made sense, and a long-term SLEP still does not make sense for Minuteman,” Gebara said. “What is going to happen is Minuteman sustainment to keep it viable until Sentinel is delivered.”

The Air Force also considered a SLEP to Minuteman when it was first working on Sentinel, during an analysis of alternatives in 2014.

Permanent modifications, like a SLEP, to fielded programs are regulated by a formal process under Air Force policy—for changes that cost $100 million or more, Headquarters Air Force must approve a form submission.

Instead, Reeves suggested, Gebara’s comments indicate the Air Force is “going to be listening to what the missiles are telling them,” she said. “When problems happen, they’ll deal with the problems as opposed to a sweeping program that goes through and fixes x, y, and z components of all of the weapons to make them last longer, extend that life from an official perspective.”

Indeed, the Air Force regularly spends tens of millions of dollars each year on modifications to Minuteman and has initiated SLEPs for subcomponents without declaring one for the whole missile.

A formal SLEP would also likely raise questions from critics of Sentinel, but both Gebara and Reeves argued the need for Sentinel remains unchanged. Reeves compared keeping Minuteman going to maintaining an old car—technically possible, but expensive and ultimately a short-term solution.

As the costs to Sentinel rise, Gebara argued the Air Force is upping its oversight of the program to ensure it stays on track, from appointing a new ICBM Modernization Site Activation Task Force czar to replacing the program executive officer to its plans for establishing a new Nuclear Systems Center.

“You have the operational commander as a two-star guy focusing on beddown in the program. You have a PEO that’s a two star,” Gebara said. “You have a three-star lead policy here. And then you have a three-star nuclear materiel manager at the Nuclear Systems Center. So I think that’s a very broad growth in that oversight and leadership, and really what that translates to is experience, it’s not just about stars. It’s about how much those acquisition leaders have experienced in the past, and so I have high confidence that they’ll be able to get after [that].”

Space Force Appoints First Ever Foreign Officer for Command Staff

July 15, 2024 | By Unshin Lee Harpley

In an “unprecedented” move, the Space Force has welcomed its first foreign officer to join the service’s top staff. Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman appointed Air Marshal Paul Godfrey as Assistant Chief of Space Operations for Future Concepts and Partnerships, a brand new role in the service.

Godfrey is expected to “integrate allies and partners with the U.S. Space Force’s capability development strategy,” a spokesperson from the service told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

“I don’t believe a foreign officer has ever been assigned to a service staff at this level before now,” Saltzman wrote in a letter distributed to Guardians on July 12. “This is a significant step forward in promoting closer cooperation with an important ally, and it exemplifies the kind of partnership we need to internalize as a service.”

International exchanges are not uncommon for military officers, but Godfrey is perhaps the highest ranked at air marshal, equivalent to lieutenant general. At a slightly lower level, last year Pacific Air Forces named Royal Australian Air Force Air Vice-Marshal Carl Newman as deputy commander under then-PACAF boss Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach. Newman, alongside his fellow deputy commander Lt. Gen. Laura L. Lenderman, assists in managing nearly 46,000 personnel across the Indo-Pacific region under PACAF’s command.

A month into his tenure, Godfrey is charged with advising Saltzman on all matters related to achieving U.S. space superiority and resilience through international partnerships.

Godfrey brings a wealth of experience, both in space and in collaborating with the U.S. military. During his nearly three decades in the Royal Air Force, he became the first ever head of U.K. Space Command, and also served in the Middle East at the U.S. Air Force’s Combined Air and Space Operations Center and participated as an exchange pilot with the 55th Fighter Squadron at Shaw Air Force Base, S.C.

A Space Force spokesperson clarified that Godfrey’s new position as a Guardian aims at fostering partnerships globally, engaging allies across the regions of Indo-Pacific, Africa, and Europe.

“Partnerships allow us to build trust, share information and truly integrate operations to maximize resilience and defend against aggressive behavior,” Godfrey said in a release. “It is a real honor to serve in this new position alongside my U.S. counterparts to deepen allied relationships and promote safety and security in space.”

“The Space Force will succeed or fail based on the strength of our partnerships,” Saltzman wrote. “Despite the Space Force’s status as the preeminent military space power, the simple fact is that we can’t succeed without allies and partners. Operations in space are too complex, too risky, and too variable for us to go it alone.”

Saltzman also emphasized that “our people, policies, and processes must be integrated by design” with those of our allies and partners.

“This is why we are pushing so hard on security classification reform, ensuring we can share the right information with the right people when it matters most,” Saltzman added in his note.

In January, the Pentagon approved a new space classification policy that “completely rewrites” the Space Force’s approach to handling secret programs, aimed at enhancing collaboration with commercial industry and global allies.

“The more things that can be shared with allies and partners, I think, the deeper that relationship could be, and that’s not going to happen overnight, but that is the path that hopefully, we have set ourselves on.” former assistant secretary of defense for space policy John Plumb said in January.

New Report: Pilot Error, Overbearing Supervisor Caused MQ-9 Crash

July 15, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

An inexperienced pilot’s errors exacerbated by an overbearing supervisor caused a U.S. Air Force MQ-9 to crash into the sea in the Middle East last September, a new accident investigation board report has found.

The Sept. 3, 2023, accident destroyed the $26.1 million aircraft, and had not been disclosed until now. It was among three unrelated Class A mishaps across the service in a five-day span that month.

According to the investigation report, the MQ-9 was launched by a Launch and Recovery Element in Africa, but controlled for its mission by a crew from the 162nd Attack Squadron at Springfield-Beckley Air National Guard Base, Ohio. The mission was within U.S. Central Command’s area of responsibility.

After completing the mission, the MQ-9 was returning to Africa when something in the electrical system malfunctioned. The drone pilot correctly diagnosed the malfunction as a “Starter-Generator failure,” investigators said. But then the pilot failed to follow the malfunction checklist for electrical system issues, making “numerous errors” in the process, and the operations supervisor created confusion over whether the malfunction was something worse that it actually was.

An MQ-9’s electrical systems are usually powered by two independent sources: the starter generator and the permanent magnetic alternator, or PMA. The PMA powers flight-critical avionics, while the starter generator powers things like satellite communications. If the starter generator dies or malfunctions, batteries can power SATCOM and other systems for a little while, and the crew can set a new emergency mission profile to have the aircraft return to base even after SATCOM dies.

In this case, the MQ-9 had enough power from the PMA to fly back to the original launch and recovery element, but the pilot accidentally calculated how much longer the aircraft could fly based on a dual generator failure.

Meanwhile, while the pilot was still working on the checklist, the operations supervisor added to the confusion by telling the pilot to conduct a generator reset—a maneuver that should “only be attempted if the aircraft was assessed unrecoverable,” investigators noted. This created uncertainty about the nature of the malfunction.

Initially, crew members decided to conduct a crash landing at a forward operating base, but the operations supervisor directed the drone pilot to climb and drop the aircraft’s landing gear. That slowed down the aircraft, reducing its ability to reach the base on its remaining power. Pivoting, they decided to crash the MQ-9 into the water near a U.S. vessel.

The pilot guided the drone to a patch of water near the vessel and set it to loiter there shortly before the crew lost connectivity as the battery gave out. At any point before the battery gave out, investigators wrote, the aircraft could have been saved—if the crew had set its emergency mission to return to the launch and recovery element. But when connectivity was lost, without an emergency mission set, the aircraft continued to loiter over the water until it ran out of fuel. That took more than two hours in this case. The bulk of the wreckage was not recovered.

Investigators laid most of the blame on the pilot and operations supervisor:

The pilot did not properly run the electric systems malfunction checklist, which would have confirmed the starter generator as the cause of concern and ensured the crew set the launch and recovery element as the emergency mission profile.

The operations supervisor, meanwhile, “was the only voice to the [launch and recovery element] and the Combined Air Operation Centers and in that role was the source of confusion” about the nature of the malfunction, the aircraft’s recoverability, and whether the launch crew could recover the aircraft.

The inexperienced pilot “exhibited poor general knowledge of the electrical system,” investigators added. During a training simulation, the pilot “was slow to recognize and act on emergency management, … made multiple errors and omissions to checklists, … made frequent incoherent statements, and finally … demonstrated scattered skills and below average performance.” He was required to retake the necessary training.

The operations supervisor, meanwhile, “provided excessive advice and direction” and, despite being an evaluator pilot, did not follow the malfunction checklist correctly either. The supervisor was too quick to focus on crash landing, the investigators said, instead of assessing the source of the malfunction and whether a standard recovery was possible.

The Air Force suffered a string of MQ-9 mishaps and downings over the past 18 months.

In January 2023, a contractor crashed a drone, causing $16 million in damages in California. In May 2023, engine failure led another MQ-9 to crash at an undisclosed location in Africa, where it was destroyed. And in September, another contractor was killed after she walked into the propeller of an MQ-9 during ground testing.

On top of that, the Air Force has disclosed at least one MQ-9 crash in 2024—U.S. Air Forces in Europe announced a Reaper crashed in Poland in January.

In addition, six reapers have been damaged or destroyed by Russian fighter jets and Iranian-backed militias since March 2023:

February 2024: Houthi rebels, supported by Iran, downed an MQ-9 off the coast of Yemen into the Red Sea

January 2024: An MQ-9 crashed in Iraq. U.S. officials said the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group of Iraqi militias supported by Iran, likely shot down the drone with an Iranian-provided surface-to-air missile.

November 2023: Houthi rebels shot down an MQ-9 over the Red Sea.

July 2023: In the span of a few days, Russian fighters intercepted MQ-9s over Syria twice, both times releasing flares that damaged, but did not destroy, the drones.

March 2023: A Russian fighter collided with an MQ-9 during an intercept over the Black Sea, causing it to crash and be destroyed.

For the Air Force, Warrant Officers Will Be a Critical Link in Digital War with China

July 15, 2024 | By Shaun Waterman

The Air Force’s first cohort of warrant officers in 65 years will be already skilled cyber or IT specialists, and their training is designed to teach them how to become the critical link between warfighters and their leaders on technical issues, according to the officer in charge of training them.

“They’re there to advise the operators, their commander, and higher-level leadership on how to use these [cyber and IT] capabilities, and to be on the front lines, using those capabilities themselves,” Maj. Nathaniel Roesler told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

The warrant officer program, unveiled in February, creates a new layer of leadership in the Air Force—a way service members can progress their careers without having to broaden and generalize their skills to rise up the ranks of NCO leaders. It’s also meant to equip the service to compete against China and other great powers in the digital domain, where technical skills can be decisive.

“As an NCO progresses in their career, they tend to become more of an organizational leader, a people manager, and so their skills broaden,” said Roesler, the commandant of the newly minted Warrant Officer Training School at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala.

“We’re a technical service. … We want our warrant officers to be a foot wide and a mile deep in their expertise,” he said. “They’re really there to grow in a particular skill. As they progress in their career, become even more specialized, we want to increase their level of knowledge and their ability to operate in the Air Force.”

The eight-week program the Warrant Officer Training School has developed is not just the first Air Force warrant officer program for more than 65 years (the last USAF warrant officers were created in 1958), Roesler said—it is effectively the first ever.

“Remember,” he said, “the Air Force inherited its warrant officer program from the Army,” so in designing their training, the school had to start from first principles. They began by deriving five “Warrant Officer Foundational Principles”—communicate, advise, influence, innovate, and integrate—from the service’s 24 Foundational Competencies for Airmen.

It is no accident that “communicate” comes first.

Twenty-first century warrant officers, Roesler explained, need to be “exceptional communicators under stress, they need to be able to credibly advise their commanders who are leading these operations,” while also having the specialist technical knowledge to understand the capabilities they are bringing to bear. The school aims to turn out individuals who can work across services, he added.

“We’re not trying to make warrant officers into better cyber operators,” he explained. “They come to us with those skills, with years of practical experience. What we’re doing with them is building them into …the Air Force’s leading professional warfighters, technical integrators, and trusted advisors.”

Those three targets he lists are the three “program learning outcomes” for the school. They were derived, along with the five foundational principles, from the service’s 24 foundational competencies.

The credible advisor role includes training in “legal awareness,” “ethical decision making,” and “change management.” Technical integrators need to understand “deployment operations,” “great power competition,” and the “international environment.” It also requires “emotional intelligence.”

Professional warfighters also need to study “dress and appearance,” “physical readiness,” and “core values,” as well as “force structure,” “chain of command,” and “U.S. Constitution.”

Some of these elements will be included in a 10-14 day “on-ramp” being designed for civilians with specialist skills recruited directly into the warrant officer program if that’s required in the future, said Roesler.

“Right now they are all prior service, E-5 and above” he said of the school’s prospective trainees, but once the on-ramp proves out, the school would be ready to expand to include these so-called “Street-to-seat” candidates.

In the meantime, Roesler explained, the on-ramp would be valuable for the experienced NCOs in the initial cohorts, too. “It’s always good to brush up on those skills: Air Force history, culture, and chain of command. It’s valuable training for anyone, but particularly for people who don’t have prior Air Force experience,” he said.

Program learning outcomes are the key to “outcomes-based military education, which is how the Department of Defense does education,” said Roesler. “They think about military education in a way that can be measured, that can be trained to, that can be assessed: How well we’re doing and how well the service member is doing in that education.”

That outcomes-based approach was also informed by research into optimizing human performance, according to Lt. Col. Andrew Wonpat, the interim deputy Principal Cyber Advisor to the secretary of the Air Force.

“There’s this idea: We’re just gonna run,” he told AFCEA’s recent TechNet Cyber event in Baltimore. “We’re just gonna run stronger, harder, faster, longer. And that’s not how it works. That is not how Olympians train. That’s not how you identify, assess, and develop Olympians. It’s not how industry develops its high performers, it’s not how the [Special Operations Forces, or] SOF community does it.”

A key attribute for warrant officers will be the correct cognitive approach, Wonpat said, “When you receive new information, can you update your model to get you to a new and novel solution?”

So far the program is only for Air Force personnel, not Space Force, but Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall has talked about expanding it to other specialties besides IT and cyber if the program is a success in those two fields.

“The awesomeness about the Warrant Officer [program] is, it’s new,” Wonpat said, “They don’t come with a lot of baggage, of traditions. They haven’t got to break through a lot of ‘We’ve always done it that way.’”

Working with the DOD CIO Workforce Innovation team, Wonpat said he’d sought to understand about the warrant officer program, “how does this scale across the service or the DOD?”

The Air Force has announced two cohorts of 30 trainees, Roesler said, the first starting in October and graduating in December, the second reporting for training in January and graduating in March. A planning document, posted on the web and verified by Air & Space Forces Magazine earlier this year, said the service plans to be able to scale up to 250 graduates per year.

”We’re postured to scale to whatever size, essentially, the Air Force needs,” said Roesler. But he added that individual warrant officers, because of their skills and their critical positions at the hinge of new capabilities, would have an asymmetric effect. “They will have an outsize impact,” he said.