Space Force Awards First Commercial Reserve Contracts

April 1, 2025 | By Greg Hadley

The Space Force took its first tentative steps last month toward leveraging commercial space providers to augment military capabilities with four small, short-term contracts to enhance space domain awareness.

The first contracts under the Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve program total just $1.1 million for 90 days beginning March 1, Col. Richard Kniseley told Air & Space Forces Magazine. More deals will follow.

“Most likely we will look to expand and renew,” Kniseley said. “If the right budget comes into place, we will expand into additional members. Even when the pilot programs are going on, we’re keeping an eye on other companies that we want to onboard at a later period.”

CASR is an attempt to create a space complement to the Air Force’s Civil Reserve Air Fleet, which leverages commercial airlines to provide aircraft and crews available in times of crisis in exchange for day-to-day contracts. Similarly, the Space Force wants to establish pre-set agreements to leverage commercial satellites in times of conflict or crisis.

“What we’re attempting to do in CASR is to establish the acquisition contracting framework to ensure that the capabilities will be there” when needed, Kniseley said. “But within that framework, we’re able to get commercial more involved.”

The very nature of conflict in space is part of the challenge. The Space Force chose to start with “pilot” agreements so program directors can learn as they go, unsure of all the nuances such agreements might need over time. The biggest difference: “A commercial airliner will not go into a [war zone],” Kniseley said. But the same can’t be said of space assets. “Space is operating over China and Russia every single day. Even if they are not on contract, a lot of them are in the fight—they’ve been getting cyber attacked. They’ve been receiving certain level of threats.”

Crucial differences and questions like whether the Pentagon will act to protect companies in the event they are attacked; how companies will be compensated if they are attacked and/or damaged; and whether agreeing to support the Space Force might require space companies to curtail use by other customers are all open to debate.

While those details are being worked out, Kniseley said his team is experimenting. Those first four CASR pilot contracts are “executing under normal DOD terms and conditions,” Kniseley said. The Space Force is not naming the firms over concern that identifying them could make them targets. The contracts give the service a baseline level of capability and pre-fixed prices for “surges.” In return, companies get to participate in wargames and exercises, opening a valuable window into military space operations.

The likely next mission area for CASR is satellite communications. A recent wargame with commercial SATCOM providers sought to better understand how commercial services could be integrated into military systems and processes, Kniseley said. Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman has cited commercial satcom as a natural fit for CASR.

“We know that the demand signal for satellite communications is almost unlimited—it’s an insatiable appetite for that kind of capability, certainly more than the government can put on orbit,” Saltzman said while visiting AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies last week. “When we go to crisis or conflict mode, we know we’re going to have an increase in the needs for satellite communications. And so the idea was, well, we can use this kind of Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve construct to pre-negotiate our contracts, talk about what we’ll need, talk about all of the work that has to be done, so that when the crisis kicks off, that’s all behind us, and we can sign on the dotted line and immediately, or near immediately, have access to more capacity.”

Kniseley said he hopes to add CASR contracts for satellite communications within the next six months. Still more missions could follow: tactical surveillance, reconnaissance, and tracking, for example, and “small launch”—the ability to get a small payload into space in a hurry. The Space Force has experimented with ways to be tactically responsive in rapidly launching space missions.

“I’m pretty hopeful by the end of the year, you’re actually going to see your first set of full CASR members as well,” Kniseley said. “So the program is definitely going full steam ahead.”

New Air Force ‘Doomsday’ Wing Boosts Nuclear Command and Control

April 1, 2025 | By David Roza

The Air Force welcomed a new wing meant to improve command and control over the military’s nuclear enterprise. The 95th Wing combines command and control units from the Active-Duty Air Force, Air National Guard, and Air Force Reserve under one roof to streamline command and better advocate for resources.

The wing was provisionally activated Oct. 1, 2024, officially activated Feb. 28, then commemorated on March 28 with a ceremony at its new headquarters at Offutt Air Force Base, Neb. The ceremony also saw the inactivation of the 595th Command and Control Group (C2G), which ensured senior U.S. officials could maintain nuclear command, control, and communications (NC3) and command conventional forces during a crisis.

The 595th flew and maintained the Air Force’s fleet of four E-4B National Airborne Operations Center (NAOC). Also known as the “Doomsday plane,” the E-4B is a Boeing 747 hardened against the effects of nuclear detonations, including electromagnetic pulse, and equipped with worldwide communications gear.

The 595th used to be a standalone group under the 8th Air Force, which flies bombers under Air Force Global Strike Command. Most other component units of the 8th Air Force are wings, larger organizations that generally receive more resources.

“Since its realignment in October 2016, the 595th C2G has grown exponentially, but the level of professionalism demonstrated by these Airmen has never faltered,” Maj. Gen. Jason Armagost, commander of the Eighth Air Force and the Joint-Global Strike Operations Center, said at the ceremony, according to a press release. “These professionals serve in a dynamic environment to maintain ‘the watch’ and fulfill a host of no-fail missions which are foundational to nuclear deterrence and national security.”

Maj. Gen. Jason Armagost, left, commander of 8th Air Force and Joint-Global Strike Operations Center, holds the guidon steady as Col. David Leaumont, 95th Wing commander, unfurls the 95th Wing guidon during the 95th Wing activation ceremony, March 28, 2025, at Offutt Air Force Base, Neb. U.S. Air Force photo by Charles Haymond

The professionals will keep serving, though now as part of the 95th Wing. Former 595th group commander Col. David Leaumont took the helm of the wing at the ceremony.

Besides the former 595th, other units that are now part of the wing include the 253rd C2G, of the Wyoming Air National Guard, and the 610th Command and Control Squadron, an Air Force Reserve unit stationed at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz.

The new wing stands up as the Air Force seeks to modernize its strategic arsenal with new stealth bombers, upgraded B-52s, and new intercontinental ballistic missiles. The Navy also probably needs more ballistic missile submarines, Gen. Anthony J. Cotton, head of U.S. Strategic Command said in March. The changes are meant to deter nuclear-armed adversaries, namely Russia and China. The threat is “significantly greater” than it was in an earlier era, and “this is not ‘Cold War 2.0,’” Cotton said.

NC3 needs to keep pace with the changes, Leaumont said at the ceremony.

“The nation realized they needed support on nuclear weapons management,” he told local news channel First Alert 6. “The one thing that they did not include in that was the nuclear command and control and communications piece, or NC3. So this wing fixes that problem.”

More changes could be on the way. Cotton warned in October that the decades-old NC3 enterprise is desperate for an upgrade, and artificial intelligence could help.

“AI will enhance our decision-making capabilities,” the general said at the 2024 Department of Defense Intelligence Information System Conference. “But we must never allow artificial intelligence to make those decisions for us.”

Heather Penney, senior resident fellow at AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, noted in an October podcast that NC3 is often taken for granted, “because it’s largely invisible … underground cables, computers, communications links, and a very few specialized aircraft and satellites are the backbone of this mission function,” she said. “But it’s not like we see those things at air shows or on promotional posters.”

Last April, the Air Force awarded a $13 billion contract to replace the NAOC with the Survivable Airborne Operations Center (SAOC). The current E-4Bs have been flying since the 1970s and are struggling amid “capability gaps, diminishing manufacturing sources, increased maintenance costs, and parts obsolescence,” according to budget documents.

In May, contractor Sierra Nevada Corporation, announced it had secured five Korean Air 747-8 passenger jets to host the SAOC system. The aircraft were built around 2015 and will be about 15 years old when the first ones enter service.

Leaumont expects 79 additional troops will come to Offutt initially as part of the new wing, but that could grow by 500 to 700 more people as more aircraft come online “early next decade,” he told First Alert 6.

The 95th Wing traces its roots to the 95th Bombardment Group, which flew B-17s in World War II. The group was re-activated as the 95th Bomb Wing during the Cold War, where it flew B-35s and B-52s. Most recently it was the 95th Air Base Wing assigned to the Air Force Flight Test Center at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.

“We are looking forward to both carrying on the heritage of a storied World War II unit, while moving forward with the complex missions providing national-level command and control to the most senior officials leading the United States,” Leaumont said, according to the release.

More A-10s Deploy to Middle East, This Time from Idaho

March 31, 2025 | By Unshin Lee Harpley

Multiple A-10 attack aircraft from the Idaho Air National Guard deployed to the Middle East over the weekend. More than 300 Airmen from the 124th Fighter Wing, along with the attack aircraft, were sent to southwest Asia within U.S. Central Command’s area of responsibility on March 29.

The move comes just two days after the Air Force confirmed the arrival of “a number of” B-2 stealth bombers on the island of Diego Garcia, which is within striking distance of Yemen, where the U.S. has launched a renewed campaign against the Houthis.

“The 124th has a legacy of service to our state and nation, and this mission further cements our commitment to protecting the United States of America and securing our interests around the globe,” Maj. Gen. Tim Donnellan, adjutant general of Idaho and commander of the Idaho National Guard, said in a release. “Readiness and relevance are our strengths, whether performing our state mission here at home or our federal mission abroad.”

The move follows officials telling Air & Space Forces Magazine earlier this month that additional aircraft are expected to be sent to the Middle East as part of the buildup against the Houthis. The exact role the A-10s will play remains unclear.

Airmen and several A-10 Thunderbolt II’s from the 124th Fighter Wing, Idaho Air National Guard, prepare to leave for a deployment to the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility March 29, 2025. The deployment is supported by more than 300 Airmen. (U.S. Air National Guard photo by Tech Sgt. Mercedee Wilds)

The Air Force added that duration of the deployment is dependent on the “needs of the U.S. Air Force and mission requirements from combatant commands.” While a local CBS affiliate reported the wing is scheduled to be stationed in the area for about six months, the Idaho ANG was not immediately available to confirm this.

On March 27, Air Force Global Strike Command confirmed the arrival of B-2 bombers at Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. The island is roughly 2,200 miles from Yemen, and the B-2 has an unrefueled range of about 6,000 nautical miles.

The A-10, built for close air support with maneuverability at slow speeds and low altitudes, has been crucial in major conflicts since the Gulf War in 1991. Its iconic GAU-8/A Avenger 30mm cannon can destroy heavy armor, including tanks, and it is equipped with advanced counter-measures for surface-to-air threats.

The aircraft have been repeatedly sent to bolster airpower in the Middle East since Hamas’ attack on Israel in October 2022 and the ensuing unrest in the region. A-10s deployed in March 2023, then again in October 2024 alongside an F-16 Fighting Falcon squadron and an F-15E Strike Eagle squadron. On Nov. 29, an A-10 struck militants preparing to launch rockets at an American position. Just last month, the Air Force posted photos of the aircraft conducting presence patrols to defend an undisclosed location in the Middle East.

Since the Idaho ANG received its first Warthogs in 1996, the Wing has frequently deployed to support combat operations across the Middle East, including its largest deployments include those in 2020 for Operation Freedom’s Sentinel and in 2016 for Operation Inherent Resolve. After three decades, the A-10 fleet will begin its retirement in the fall of next year. The 124th Fighter Wing is set to transition to F-16 fighters starting in spring 2027, pending the completion of an environmental analysis in the coming months.

Former Air Force Secretary Didn’t Include NGAD in His 2026 Budget Plan

March 31, 2025 | By John A. Tirpak

The Next-Generation Air Dominance fighter—announced as the F-47 by President Donald Trump this month—wasn’t going to be in the last Air Force budget request from President Joe Biden’s administration, former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall revealed in a recent podcast, saying he believed there were higher priorities for the service to address.

Appearing on the Defense and Aerospace Report, Kendall said he paused the NGAD program last summer because “we just didn’t have enough money” in projected budgets to afford the planned sixth-generation fighter and other top priorities. While latter iterations of the budget included more funds, it was still not enough for all the most pressing needs, he said.

The Pentagon had previously projected that the NGAD program would cost nearly $20 billion over five years.

The Biden administration put together the fiscal 2026 budget to hand off to Trump’s team as it was preparing to leave office, and NGAD “wasn’t in it, and it was not a higher priority than the other things on my list,” Kendall said.

There was “no place left to trade off, within the Air Force budget, to fund it,” Kendall said of NGAD, which he acknowledged will cost “more than twice the price” of the F-35, which costs around $90 million per copy.

Kendall felt that certain missions—counter-space and air base defense being two he cited—were more important than NGAD. Without air base defense, he noted, “the F-22s, F-35s, and the F-47s will never get off the ground.”

How exactly the Trump administration will handle that delicate balance remains to be seen as it prepares its own 2026 budget submission.

“Again, it’s about affordability and it’s about strategic priorities, and the Air Force will have to sort it out,” Kendall said.

NGAD’s History

Trump, alongside Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin, and Lt. Gen. Dale R. White, announced Boeing would build the F-47, a major coup for the company after Lockheed Martin won the F-22 and F-35 competitions.

Former Air Force acquisition executive Andrew Hunter, who served under Kendall and also appeared on the podcast, said the NGAD submissions from Boeing and Lockheed Martin were “quite creative” and very close, technically.

Boeing may have had the edge, he suggested, because it saw the competition as a “must-win.”

“What you see sometimes on these things is, the incumbent is a little more risk-averse than the company that doesn’t have the installed [industrial] base at risk,” he said. The challenger can sometimes “be a little more innovative, or risk a little more in their proposal.”

The NGAD program, he added, was structured to encourage innovation. The F-47 will serve as “Increment 1 of NGAD, right? With the concept being that there will be future increments. And so it was designed not to be this ‘all or nothing,’ ‘hey, if you don’t win this, you’re out for the next three decades’ competition. It was designed to be something that…if you win, you have an order for 100, roughly, aircraft, but there’ll be other orders coming down the pike, and so you stay in the game.”

Hunter was quick to note, however, that “obviously time will tell how many increments ever get built.”

Kendall agreed that the offerings were very close technically, and that Lockheed “could have won this.”

Lockheed will have solid work with the F-35 for many years, he explained, but Boeing only had the F-15EX, which has a limited planned production, so Boeing, “if it was going to stay a viable fighter builder going forward, had to win this competition.”

Podcast host Vago Muradian asked how much past performance played a role in the competition, noting that Lockheed has two fifth-generation stealth fighter production programs under its belt, while Boeing has none, and Boeing has in recent years struggled to produce the KC-46 tanker, T-7 trainer and MQ-25 Navy tanker while losing nearly $10 billion on those programs.

But Kendall noted struggles with Lockheed over the price and schedule for F-35 Block 4 upgrades and sustainment, “so nobody’s got a clean record in terms of past performance.”

Hunter added that while past performance is nearly always a criteria, “it rarely is a differentiator.” He also said that technical performance is “rigorously validated” in such competitions.

“We don’t just take a company at their word if they say, ‘Yeah, our design meets your criteria for observability,’ right?” he said.

Kendall cautioned that “there’s risk with anybody we picked at this point. These are new designs. They’re aggressive designs. They’ve got a lot of new technologies [that] are going to be integrated together. That’s always very challenging. So I expect that there will be issues in risk that arise that have to be dealt with, no matter who won this.”

Calling the NGAD competition “viable,” Kendall suggested one of the companies “moved faster to demonstrate the key technologies, but the other one did get there and demonstrate them as well.” He didn’t say which entrant demonstrated capabilities more quickly.

“The designs are quite different,” he added. “ … It’s interesting how, when you give people the same problem, you can get engineers that come back with very different solutions. But I think we had a valid competition,” Kendall said.

The NGAD program has its roots in a program called the Aerospace Innovation Initiative started by Kendall when he was undersecretary of Defense for acquisition, technology, and logistics in the Obama administration. The initiative produced “X-planes” but not prototypes of the NGAD crewed airplane, called the Penetrating Combat Aircraft.

“When I started [it] … it was designed to mature technologies for a sixth-generation tactical aircraft,” he said. “There were certain desirable characteristics we were after, but I basically got $1 billion put into the five-year plan, into the budget, split evenly between the Navy, the Air Force and [the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency] to do a technology maturation program.”

When Kendall returned to the Pentagon as Secretary of the Air Force in 2020, “the X-planes had been built. They’ve been successful, and the Air Force had started down the path towards what is now known as the F-47,” he said.

The NGAD has always been intended as a “family of systems,” Kendall noted, with the crewed fighter only one element. Others include space-based sensors, offboard communications links, new weapons, and the Collaborative Combat Aircraft program.

The F-47 started out to be a “pretty direct descendant of the F-22…that’s essentially the design we have,” Kendall said, but under his tenure, it also took on the ability to “do other things, particularly controlling CCAs.”

Future

During the Oval Office announcement that Boeing had won the F-47 contract, Trump suggested a “toned down” version of the F-47 might be available for export, but Kendall thinks foreign sales are unlikely.

With the NGAD, “the emphasis was on getting as much capability as we could into the platform. That’s what has led to the very high price that the F-47 will have,” he said.

“I would be very surprised if any of our partners were prepared to pay that unit cost for a new aircraft. I’ve heard some stories that suggest that they would have bought the F-22 if we’d been willing to share the technology. I’m not sure that that’s true,” he said.

On top of that, he questioned whether allies would want the fighter if its capabilities were “toned down.” Some are pursuing sixth-gen fighters of their own.

The Navy will also not be buying the Air Force’s version of NGAD, though Hunter noted that the Navy’s own effort—called the F/A-XX—is sharing technology developed for the F-47.

“Even though we didn’t do a joint program here, like the F-35 … the approach means that at the architecture level, you’ve got compatibility with the Navy program,” Hunter said. The NGAD will be able to “seamlessly integrate” with the Navy’s systems, he said.

Northrop Grumman is competing for the F/A-XX against Boeing, with Lockheed having been eliminated. Kendall revealed that Northrop Grumman participated in the technology demonstrator program, but it was not chosen to go to the final round of the NGAD competition. Northrop has only revealed it “did not bid” the NGAD.

The Air Force has said that Boeing won the NGAD based on “best overall value” to the service.

Kendall said industrial base considerations—such as expanding the number of active-production fighter companies, so Lockheed would not have a monopoly—was not a consideration in the final analysis.

Lockheed has not yet said if it plans to protest the NGAD award to Boeing. If it does, the Government Accountability Office has 100 calendar days from the date of the protest to adjudicate whether the Air Force acted fairly in its choice of Boeing.

Other Priorities

In the never-released 2026 budget request where Kendall cut funding for NGAD, he said he instead prioritized missions like counter-space weapons and air base defense.

“We need to move forward aggressively with counter-space,” he said, noting that China now has scores of satellites designed to target U.S. forces and enable Chinese long-range fires. “So we had to respond to that, and I thought that was an important national priority … to defend our forces, but also our allies.”

Air base defense was another. China has “fielded literally thousands of weapons to attack” Air Force operating locations “with cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and hypersonics,” he said, and a cost-effective defense against them is crucial.

Air base defense is an Army mission, but that service’s limited number of Patriot and THAAD air defense systems “are not going to get you there,” especially given the Air Force’s Agile Combat Employment plan of operating from many locations and playing a shell game to protect them, Kendall said. Not long before the end of his tenure, Kendall pointed this out and said he’d be “comfortable” taking over the air base defense mission from the Army, since its plans won’t deliver the needed protection in a timely fashion.

“The economics just don’t work,” with Patriot and THAAD, he said, “So we need something more cost effective than those, and that was [also] not in the budget.”

F-35

Kendall said the Air Force “absolutely” needs Block 4 of the F-35.

“No question about it,” he said. “We’re in a race for technological superiority against a formidable opponent, and we cannot stand still. And 100-200 F-47s, that we’re not going to get for several years, is not going to keep us competitive. We’ve got to do more than that, and that has to include, I think, the Block 4 as well as the [Collaborative Combat Aircraft] and the Increment 2 of the CCA.”

Former STRATCOM Bosses: US Must Recommit to Nuclear Deterrent to Combat Russia, China

March 31, 2025 | By Greg Hadley

Russia’s actions in Ukraine and China’s growing arsenal show that America needs to revamp and revitalize—not retrench—its nuclear deterrent, former U.S. Strategic Command bosses said March 31.

Their remarks on a webinar hosted by AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies come as the Pentagon embarks on the early stages of a sweeping modernization effort touching programs across the nuclear enterprise. Some critics call modernization too expensive and unnecessary, advocate for reducing the U.S. nuclear arsenal, or suggest cutting one leg of the air-land-sea nuclear triad entirely.

Retired Air Force Gen. Kevin P. Chilton, who led STRATCOM from 2007-2011 and wrote multiple research papers for Mitchell on nuclear deterrence, said ideas about cutting costs or force structure skip over the threat that the nuclear triad is meant to deter.

“We just kind of brush aside the fact that these weapons are so devastating and are in fact an existential threat to the country,” he said. By existential, he added, “I mean tear up the Constitution, back to an agrarian society, throw away everything in history since 1776.”

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine underscored that threat—as well as the need to maintain a comprehensive deterrent, said retired Air Force Gen. C. Robert Kehler, who led STRATCOM from 2011 to 2013.

“Just imagine, on the day the Russians invaded Ukraine, if we had removed ICBMs, if we had withdrawn our nuclear forces from Europe, if we had restricted the number of [nuclear submarines] we were putting at sea, if we had significantly, unilaterally reduced the number of weapons, etc., etc. We hadn’t done any of that. And I think the United States was in a much better place on that day than we would have been otherwise.”

Early in the invasion, Russia announced it was putting its nuclear forces on high alert—the start of what many Western officials deemed nuclear saber-rattling. It reached a crescendo in October 2022 as Ukraine succeeded on the battlefield and Russia launched a disinformation campaign suggesting Ukraine would use a “dirty bomb”—an idea U.S. and European officials feared the Russians would use as a pretext for deploying nuclear weapons.

Retired Navy Adm. Charles Richard, who led STRATCOM from 2019 to 2022, said the war in Ukraine took conversations about nuclear deterrence out of the theoretical realm.

“Based on Russian actions in the Ukraine war, I think in the first time in STRATCOM’s history, we were enhanced above a day-to-day posture based on the threat that we faced,” he said, declining to reveal any more details.

Like Kehler, Richard suggested the conflict shows why the U.S. needs a stronger nuclear deterrent than what it has now. For example, he said, the U.S. Air Force should put some of its bomber fleet on alert status, ready to go at a moment’s notice, something not seen since the end of the Cold War.

“I think a lesson out of the Ukraine crisis [is] in many situations, the signaling flexibility that the bomber leg gives you is absolutely a desirable attribute,” Richard said. “There are now an equal number of situations that by the time you figure out you need that air leg, generating it is going to be considered escalatory, and you’re just going to be too late.”

Indeed, there are a range of posture changes and ideas that need to be reconsidered, both Kehler and Richard agreed, driven by China’s rapidly expanding nuclear arsenal to create what experts are calling a “tripolar” world.

“The emergence of a three-peer … world changes everything when it comes to what I would consider classic analysis of strategic stability,” Richard said, defining strategic stability as a state where no one is incentivized to make the first strike. “All classic strategic stability work was based on a bipolar two-party world. That world does not exist anymore.”

While Kehler said he believes the “fundamentals” of strategic deterrence remain sound, the mechanics of achieving it against Russia and China, two adversaries who have declared a willingness to work together, are complex.

“We’re using familiar terms, but today’s environment is a lot different than the Cold War, and so I would encourage all of us not to refer to today like a new Cold War,” Kehler said. “Because I think that the requirements and the environment are so different today that we fall into a trap of thinking about how we did this yesterday, as opposed to how we need to do this today, and then how do we need to do this tomorrow? The situation is different.”

Against that backdrop, any consideration of removing one leg of the triad is incredibly risky, the leaders agreed. In particular, while the new Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missiles has come under fire for soaring costs and slipping schedules, “you simply don’t have the capacity to deter two peers at the same time without your ICBM leg,” Richard said.

While the price tag of Sentinel—some $140 billion—and other projects is high, the former STRATCOM bosses argued that the true cost of nuclear modernization is about the nation’s survival.

“Although conventional might is important as well to deter, every dollar spent on conventional weapons is wasted if we don’t, first and foremost, have the backstop and foundation of an adequate nuclear deterrent,” Chilton said.

Historically, the government invested 6 or 7 percent of its defense budget to modernize its nuclear deterrent for a few years at a time, Kehler said.

“Last time we did that was during the Reagan years, and we’re living off of those systems yet today,” he said. “And so we go through times when we do life extensions or we do some modernization effort, but compared to the investment benefits that we get elsewhere in the Department of Defense by maintaining the deterrent the way we do, I think that’s a great investment for us.”

Civilian Cyber Vulnerabilities Threaten Pacific Deployment Plans: Report

March 31, 2025 | By Shaun Waterman

The U.S. military’s ability to deploy troops across the vast Indo-Pacific theater relies on critical civilian infrastructure like airlines, railways, and ports that is vulnerable to disruption by enemy cyber attacks, a new report warns.

In a war with China, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could seek to cripple America’s ability to fight with cyber attacks on civilian infrastructure it relies on to move forces across the continental United States (CONUS) and out into theater, said the Cyberspace Solarium Commission 2.0, a non-profit successor to the original CSC, created by Congress to study how to defend the U.S. against large-scale cyber attacks.

Despite the threat, the Pentagon’s efforts to secure that infrastructure are inadequate and siloed off from the broader efforts of the federal government to protect the nation from cyberattack, the commission declared.

“We use the commercial rail, ports, and aviation system to move our troops, equipment, and supplies forward,” retired Rear Adm. Mark Montgomery, the director of CSC 2.0, told reporters on a conference call last week.

Specific deployments like a Special Forces team going to Yemen might rely exclusively on military transportation like aircraft or naval vessels, Montgomery explained. But in any major mobilization, even troops being taken to the battlefield by military transportation would likely have to rely on civilian infrastructure to get to their port of departure.

“For broadly moving our forces, for generating the forces that we need to fight a major war, we’re going to use our commercial rail, port, and aviation systems 95 to 98 percent,” said Montgomery, a former staffer for Sen. John McCain and executive director of the original CSC.

In a potential major conflict with China, the U.S. would have to move tens of thousands of troops—if not more—in short order. The sheer scale would require the military to rely on civilian transportation.

“U.S. adversaries know that compromising this critical infrastructure through cyber and physical attacks would impede America’s ability to deploy, supply, and sustain large forces,” the commission stated in its report.

What’s more, China appears to be acting on that knowledge. Public reporting from the U.S. intelligence community indicates that a Chinese cyber actor called Volt Typhoon has prepositioned itself within the networks of civilian critical infrastructure providers.

“That’s not espionage,” said Montgomery, “That is operational preparation of the battlefield by the adversary. That is China saying, ‘Not only do you, Mark, now know that your warfighting is enabled by your [civilian] transportation systems, but we, the Chinese, know it too and we’ve done something about it.’”

According to the U.S. intelligence community’s annual threat assessment, in the event of an imminent conflict with the U.S., China would “consider aggressive cyber operations against U.S. critical infrastructure and military assets to impede U.S. decision-making, induce societal panic, and interfere with the deployment of U.S. forces.”

DOD is taking steps to defend against the threat. For years now, Pentagon leaders have considered what it could mean if an adversary hacked into a U.S. base’s energy grid, for example, crippling the military’s ability to do its mission.

And within the fence line, Montgomery said, they are succeeding—he described U.S. military bases as “the Noah’s ark of infrastructure: There’s two of everything.”

But its efforts to work with civilian critical infrastructure owners and operators have not been coordinated with the broader efforts of the federal government to protect critical infrastructure against foreign cyber attacks.

During a conflict with an high-end adversary, it’s “likely to attack U.S. critical infrastructure in an attempt to constrain Washington’s policy options, including its capacity to mobilize the armed forces. Inhibiting the U.S. military’s ability to move troops and materiel from ‘fort to port’ takes a significant capability off America’s chessboard. Ensuring the resilience of U.S. critical infrastructure must be a top priority for the nation as a whole and for DOD in particular,” concludes the report.

Aerial Porters Test New Gear to Load Faster, Reduce Injuries

March 31, 2025 | By David Roza

Aerial porters at Travis Air Force Base, Calif., are trying a new technology meant to reduce strain and injury risk for “port dawgs,” the Airmen who balance math, physics, technique, and elbow grease to move heavy cargo and passengers on and off aircraft, often under difficult conditions and tight deadlines.

The 60th Aerial Port Squadron bought a collapsable conveyor belt that can unfold in the cargo hold of an aircraft. Airmen use a belt loader similar to those used by commercial airport ramp agents to get cargo into a narrow-body aircraft, and then the collapsable belt helps them move it to the proper spot in the hold.

The belt is called TISABAS, short for Tim Saves Backs.

“It operates like an accordion, folding out as you need it and folding back up when you’re done,” Tim Fulton, CEO and founder of Ramper Innovations, which produces TISABAS, said in a Travis Air Force Base press release.

“It keeps everything flowing with less effort,” he added.

TISABAS is the latest technology meant to take some of the load off aerial porters’ shoulders, backs, hips, and knees. In 2021 and 2022, some Airmen tested out a pneumatically-powered exoskeleton to boost leg strength and reduce fatigue. Two port dawgs moved a pallet weighing about 3,500 pounds, which usually takes four or five people to move.

“I can definitely tell a difference; there’s a lot less pressure on my knees and I can feel the assist this system gives,” one of the porters, Chief Master Sgt. Sean Storms, said in a press release at the time.

The idea is that technology can help porters move more cargo faster, get hurt less, and therefore have longer careers and less pain in retirement. The same goes for TISABAS.

“When I started this project, my goal was simple,” Fulton said. “I wanted to create something that would save people’s backs and make their jobs safer and more efficient.”

Airman 1st Class Alejandro Fontanez, 60th Aerial Port Squadron fleet service agent, transfers baggage from an aircraft belt loader to a Ramper Innovations TISABAS conveyor system inside of a Boeing 757-200 jetliner at Travis Air Force Base, California, March 15, 2025. (U.S. Air Force photo by Brian Collett)

Ramper Innovations sells TISABAS as a stronger, more reliable belly-loading machine for cramped narrow-body aircraft cargo holds than what current equipment provides.

Air Force aerial porters often work in large C-17 and C-130 transports with ramps that load into more spacious cargo holds. But a Travis Airman said TISABAS would come in handy.

“Before this system, loading bags meant Airmen were constantly bending down in tight spaces and manually hauling up to 70-pound bags back and forth across the aircraft,” Staff Sgt. Robert J. Thompson, 60th APS fleet operations supervisor, said in the release.

“In the summer months, that confined space gets extremely hot, and we have to rotate Airmen out frequently to avoid heat exhaustion. With TISABAS, we’re skipping those steps, moving bags faster and safer,” he added. “I estimate it triples our loading speed, which tightens our aircraft downtime windows and keeps missions moving.”

As Maryland ANG A-10 Departs for Boneyard, Its Future Flying Mission Is in Doubt

March 30, 2025 | By Unshin Lee Harpley

The first A-10 “Warthog” departed Warfield Air National Guard Base, Md., last week, the first step in a process that could leave Maryland Air Guard the only one among the 50 states without a flying mission. Negotiations to acquire a follow-on flying mission have stalled.

“Our Airmen—and the state of Maryland— should not be left as the only state without a flying mission,” said Brig. Gen. Drew E. Dougherty, state assistant adjutant general for Air in a release. “It’s more than tradition. It’s a critical component of our national security.”

An F-16 Air National Guard squadron will continue to operate out of Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, but that unit is actually assigned to the District of Columbia, and is not part of the Maryland Air Guard.

The first of the 21 A-10s from the ANG’s 175th Wing flew off to the boneyard at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz., on March 26. When the last of the A-10s go, the wing will retain only the 175th Cyberspace Operations Group, pending an environmental analysis this fall. The final decision about the base’s future will be made by the next Secretary of the Air Force.

An A-10 from the 104th Fighter Squadron, departs Warfield Air National Guard Base at Martin State Airport, Md., on March 26. His A-10C Thunderbolt II, aircraft 705, the first 175th Wing Warthog retired to the boneyard at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz. (U.S. Air National Guard Photo by Airman 1st Class Sarah Hoover)

Former Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall approved the transfer of the 121st Fighter Squadron and its Fighting Falcons from the D.C. Air National Guard to Maryland in a bid to preserve the flying mission for the state. The effort, supported by Gov. Wes Moore, Sen. Chris Van Hollen, and then-Sen. Ben Cardin, was apparently part of a poltitical deal in which the D.C. city government would secure rights to build a new stadium and return the NFL’s Washington Commanders to Washington, D.C., where they played before moving to suburban Maryland.

That decision was never finalized and further comment will be left to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, according to an Air Force spokesperson. Calls to OSD were referred to the White House’s National Security Council. The NSC did not immediately respond to inquiries.

Former President Joe Biden signed the RFK Stadium Revitalization Act, giving Washington, D.C., more control over the site of the former Robert F. Kennedy Stadium, which was recently razed. But Maryland’s apparent payback—the fighter squadron transfer, may not come to be. Asked about the transfer, Moore’s office said March 28 that the governor is “actively working with our Congressional Delegation and the new Administration in Washington to have a long-term flying mission for the Maryland Air National Guard.”

Van Hollen’s office could not immediately provide a comment.

A source familiar with the matter told Air & Space Forces Magazine that, as of now, there are no plans for the Maryland ANG regarding the squadron transfer.

Maryland Air National Guard Lt. Col. Steven Montalvo, 175th Wing inspector general and an A-10 pilot with the 104th Fighter Squadron, signals farewell before flying his A-10C Thunderbolt II from Warfield Air National Guard Base at Martin State Airport, Md., to its resting place in the desert at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Tucson, Ariz. (U.S. Air National Guard Photo by Airman 1st Class Sarah Hoover)

Maryland Army National Guard Maj. Gen. Janeen L. Birckhead, adjutant general of Maryland, said the state is “fully committed to fighting for a future flying mission in Maryland.”

“Our Airmen deserve the opportunity to continue demonstrating their world-class skill in the air, as well as in cyberspace,” Birckhead added.

The Air Force is phasing out the beloved A-10 “tank-killer” jets, with plans to retire some 56 Warthogs in fiscal 2025. The service must find new missions for A-10 bases; some, like Moody Air Force Base, Ga., will get getting new F-35s. Others, like the Idaho Air National Guard’s 124th Fighter Wing and the Indiana ANG’s 122nd Fighter Wing are getting F-16s. Like Maryland’s 175th, the Ohio ANG’s 179th Airlift Wing is converting to a new mission; it transitioned to become the 179th Cyberspace Wing in 2023.

Maintaining a flying mission is important to elected officials, because aircraft are physical reflections of American power and because having them attracts federal and state investment, bringing jobs and emergency response capabilities to the area. A Purdue University study found that the 122nd Fighter Wing in Indiana contributes $113 million annually to the state’s economy, supporting 1,100 jobs.

The 104th Fighter Squadron has flown the A-10 for over four decades and its Airmen completed nine combat deployments in the past 20 years to Iraq and Afghanistan, striking Taliban and al-Qaida forces. It was the first unit to fly the A-10C variant into combat.

“The 175th Wing has proven time and again that we are capable of adapting, leading, and excelling in every mission we’re given,” Dougherty said.

Experts: US Military Needs ‘Software Literate’ Workforce, Not Just Coders

March 28, 2025 | By Shaun Waterman

To make the best use of the technological advantage offered by America’s economy, the U.S. military doesn’t need squadrons of coders writing programs—it needs a “software literate” workforce that knows the right questions to ask of technology contractors, according to a new report from a blue ribbon commission of current and former government officials and technology executives.

The final report of the Commission on Software-Defined Warfare also recommends that the Department of Defense’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) establish an “enterprise data repository” to collate all the data collected by the different military services and agencies and assemble it into sets “readily usable for analysis and refinement for AI training, functional, and operational pipelines.”

Reform of the DOD’s test and evaluation procedures was also among the report’s nine recommendations, commission members said during a launch event March 27.

There was a palpable sense of excitement among commission members at the window of opportunity offered by the new administration, along with an urgency to meet the threat of a rising China.

“Defense tech is the new crypto,” said commission member Tyler Sweatt, CEO of defense tech start-up Second Front. “Everyone wants to get in.”

Although the U.S. remains the most innovative economy of the world, its adversaries may soon outpace America in terms of how quickly they adopt advanced technology, warned commission co-chair and former Defense Secretary Mark Esper. “If we don’t quickly pivot to a new way of acquiring commercial software much more quickly than we do today, we will lose our preeminence,” he said.

As an example, he cited “In Ukraine, the Ukrainians see something happen on the battlefield with the drones they’re making, and they reprogram them. They rewrite the software overnight to adapt to the threat, to defeat it.”

America’s adversaries were watching and learning, he said. “So that is the speed at which we need to be operating.”

Workforce issues will be a key determinant of success in that competition with China, said Tate Nurkin, an Atlantic Council senior fellow and report co-author.

“We need people who are trilingual,” he told Air & Space Forces Magazine after the event. “They need to speak software” to understand the language of coders; but they also have to understand the needs of warfighters in the field and the rules that govern DOD acquisition. “There’s not a huge supply of people with all of those skills,” Nurkin said, and the need was “very urgent.” People with one of them could be quickly trained in the basics of the other two, he said.

Software literate didn’t mean able to code, said Sweatt. “It means knowing the right questions to ask, understanding what the limitations [of a software package] are, the inputs, outputs and dependencies, without needing necessarily to be able to understand the bits and bytes, the 1s and 0s.”

The new administration understands the urgency, commission members said. Several cited a March 6 memo from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, titled “Directing Modern Software Acquisition to Maximize Lethality.”

It directs “all DOD Components to adopt the Software Acquisition Pathway (SWP),” a new way for planning and executing the department’s software purchases that avoids the clunky and often yearslong traditional process of identifying requirements. It also orders senior military leaders to use new acquisition powers granted by Congress, such as Other Transaction Authorities (OTAs) and Commercial Solutions Openings (CSOs) “as the default solicitation and award approaches for acquiring capabilities under the SWP.”

The memo is a “really positive step in the right direction,” director of the Atlantic Council’s Forward Defense program Clementine Starling-Daniels told Air & Space Forces Magazine after the launch event.

“The secretary is incredibly serious about bringing cultural change to the department, to change the mindset,” she said. If he succeeds, it will be a “game-changer,” she added.

Report co-author Pete Modigliani was a little more cautious, noting that the software acquisition pathway has been around for several years now. “We have about 2,000 acquisition programs, about 85 of them are in the software pathway. … There’s a lot of work still to do to change the culture, the processes,” he said.

As an example, he pointed out that Chapter 10, Section 3453 of the U.S. code, “is the statute that says you have to have a preference for [buying] commercial products and services. The department violates that law daily. ‘We’re special, we’re different. We’ve got to buy customized. We’ve got to spend years developing some one-off solution.’”

Commission member Whitney McNamara warned against unrealistic expectations: “We’re not the first software commission. We’re probably not the fifth software commission,” she said, adding that the commission was “standing on the shoulders of giants,” and leveraging prior studies and recommendations.

She said, in selecting their recommendations, the commission members “thought a lot about what’s actionable, what’s realistic, but also what’s going to move the needle.”

For instance, their call for reform of operational test and evaluation procedures would break through a big logjam which held up software deployment. “There’s a bias to live testing,” she said, which didn’t work for software.

“Renting a field and going out to determine if a drone is behaving as you expect—if it doesn’t, the field doesn’t tell you why, and so it isn’t a productive way to rapidly test and validate capabilities.”

The report “re-emphasizes the need to reinvest in a digital infrastructure that allows us to quickly verify and validate some of these software based capabilities,” she said.

In general, she said, the commission steered away from “thinking that we could throw money at some of these problems,” and had “a sort of unwritten rule … no new organizations. We don’t necessarily believe a new box on the org chart is going to move the needle.”