Accelerating B-21 Production Would ‘Make Some Sense’—If It’s Affordable: Kendall

Jan. 11, 2025 | By John A. Tirpak

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, on the verge of leaving the Pentagon, said he would accelerate production of the B-21 bomber if there was money to do so. But even so, it couldn’t happen right away, he said in an interview with Air & Space Forces Magazine.

More broadly, Kendall said drastically shortening the acquisition time of modern weapons is probably unrealistic, but that selective stockpiling of long-lead parts and materials could help position the nation for wartime surge production.

“If it’s affordable, that would make some sense,” Kendall said of accelerating B-21 production, but the problem is the flexibility of the existing infrastructure and contracting.

“There’s only so much we can do about it [the production rate] in the near term, and the near term, for me, is the five-year plan,” he said. “I have talked to industry about the possibility of higher rates than we currently have planned.”

The production rate of the B-21 is classified but is estimated to be fewer than seven aircraft per year at peak. Outgoing Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment William LaPlante has said the B-21 was structured to be a low-rate program to safeguard it against budget poaching. However, Air Force Global Strike Command leaders and others have suggested building more than the planned 100 airplanes is necessary to achieve needed sortie rates in a future major war.

Kendall noted that the ultimate number of B-21s to be bought will be a question for future Air Force leaders to determine. But he said the Air Force’s force structure has been “very heavily weighted toward relatively short-ranged fighters” for some time, and putting more emphasis on buying bombers could be “worthwhile” because “we’re somewhat out of balance right now.”

“It’s worthwhile to rethink that,” he said, because bombers have great flexibility to support global operations. But rebalancing the force could take years, if not decades.

“It will take a while to acquire more B-21s even if you increase the rate,” Kendall said. Even if that happens, “you can hang on to some of the existing bombers a little bit longer than we currently have planned” to preserve long-range strike capacity.

“Making that transition is going to take a little bit of time, but I do think it’s well worth considering, as we look to the future, and the flexibility you have with the bomber force.”

Kendall also said it is unlikely the Pentagon can return to some of the production capacity strategies heavily used during the Cold War, when there were competitive annual buys of engines, missiles, munitions, and more.

“When the Cold War ended … we shrank budgets dramatically, and an enormous amount of consolidation occurred” within the defense industry, he noted. As long as cost effectiveness and affordability are important, the cost of redundant production lines can be hard to justify.

“I don’t know that we’re going to be able to do a lot” of those Cold War-era competitive production programs, Kendall said, though he’s been approached about the idea, particularly for munitions.

The Pentagon should probably “put some capital into increasing our industrial capacity” to produce weapons, and especially “high-demand spare parts,” but it’s difficult because “there’s no way you can guarantee future production so we’ll have to find a way to do that up front.”

It’s a question that will be “critical” for the new administration, he said.

“Industry is not going to do it because we ask them to. They’re going to do it because we’ll pay them to,” he warned.

Expecting breakthroughs that will “dramatically shorten the lead times” in the production of sophisticated weapons is also “unrealistic,” Kendall said.

“It’s not going to happen,” he said. “We can probably cut some things off on the margin, but the complexity of those products and the supply chains that support them, make dramatic reductions in lead time really difficult to come by.”

Stockpiling some items “that are big drivers for those long lead times, done thoughtfully” could help shorten production surge time for some systems.

Kendall noted that privately held companies have the flexibility to change the production model much more than publicly traded contractors, and that tension will be felt in the coming years.

Anduril Industries, a private firm, has announced investment in new factories that it claims will drastically shorten production times on sophisticated systems like cruise missiles, and Kendall said it can move in that direction. “There is capital available out there,” he said, “but eventually it’s going to need a return. So I think the government should work with industry to find opportunities to do that sort of thing. But it’s going to have to be done in a way which makes sense for both sides.

Air Force Firefighting C-130s Activated for LA Blaze

Jan. 10, 2025 | By David Roza

All eight of the Air Force’s premier firefighting aircraft will fly from across the western U.S. to southern California this weekend to help fight the wildfires that have been scorching Los Angeles since Jan. 7.

On Jan. 9, U.S. Northern Command activated eight C-130 transport planes equipped with the Modular Aerial Fire Fighting System (MAFFS) to fly to the Channel Island Air National Guard Station, Calif., according to a press release.

In addition to the C-130s, the National Guard said Jan. 10 more than 880 Army and Air Guard members had mobilized, including helicopter crews, military police, and hand crews to work alongside local police and firefighters. Some 500 Active-duty Marines are also staging at Camp Pendleton, Calif. to help clear roads, hand out supplies, and search and rescue, said deputy Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh in a briefing. About 10 Navy helicopters will fly in with water buckets to help suppress the fires.

Channel Islands Air National Guard Station, located west of the record-breaking Palisades Fire, hosts the California Air National Guard’s 146th Airlift Wing, one of the activated C-130 MAFFS units.

The other units include the Wyoming Air National Guard’s 153rd Airlift Wing, the Nevada Air National Guard’s 152nd Airlift Wing, and the 302nd Airlift Wing, an Air Force Reserve unit based in Colorado. Together, the four units represent all of the Air Force’s MAFFS-equipped wings.

“U.S. Northern Command immediately took action as we watched and learned more about the fires in the Los Angeles area,” Gen. Gregory Guillot, head of NORTHCOM, said in the release. “Providing support to civil authorities is a valued part of our homeland defense mission.”

A U.S. Air National Guard C-130J Hercules aircraft equipped with the MAFFS 2 (Modular Airborne Fire Fighting System) drops a line of fire retardant on the Thomas Fire in the hills above the city of Santa Barbara, California, Dec. 13, 2017. (U.S. Air National Guard photo by Staff Sgt. Nieko Carzis)

MAFFS is an 11,000-pound metal tank that can drop 28,000 pounds of fire retardant in less than five seconds and be refilled on the ground in less than 12 minutes. The retardant helps keep wildfires from spreading so that ground crews can contain it, but the C-130s have to fly low and slow, often over mountainous terrain through smoke and over raging fires, to do it right.

“We’re going down to 150 feet and doing it far slower than we would normally do an airdrop because of the way the retardant comes out of the airplane,” a Nevada MAFFS pilot and former Navy F/A-18 pilot told Air & Space Forces Magazine in 2021.

“So, it’s lower, you’re heavier at max gross weight, you’re using far more power,” he added. “It’s hot, you’re at high altitude up in the mountains, canyons, obstacles, trees. Next to flying around the aircraft carrier at night, this is probably some of the most high-risk flying I’ve ever done.”

Civilian contractors perform the bulk of aerial firefighting, but MAFFS serves as a surge force for particularly busy fire seasons such as during the 2021 Dixie Fire in northern California. Congress created MAFFS in the early 1970s after the Laguna Fire, which destroyed more than 1,000 buildings and killed at least five people in San Diego County.

302nd Airlift Wing Airmen test the functionality of a Modular Airborne Firefighting System unit loaded inside the cargo bay of a C-130H aircraft at Peterson Space Force Base, Colorado, Aug. 2, 2023. (U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Justin Norton)

MAFFS air support is much needed for the Los Angeles fires, where 80 mile-per-hour winds have hindered aerial firefighting efforts. The wind is expected to slow down the night of Jan. 10, but other challenges remain: on Jan. 9, a civilian drone hit a CL-415 firefighting aircraft over the Palisades fire area, despite temporary flight restrictions made to protect firefighting aircraft, according to the Los Angeles County Fire Department.

No one was injured, but the plane’s wing was damaged and the aircraft was taken out of service during what may be the costliest wildfire in U.S. history. So far at least 10 people have been killed and more than 10,000 structures destroyed.

“The LACoFD would like to remind everyone that flying a drone in the midst of firefighting efforts is a federal crime and punishable by up to 12 months in prison or a fine of up to $75,000,” the department wrote on social media.

Who to Know in the New Congress for Air and Space Forces

Jan. 10, 2025 | By Greg Hadley

New leaders will take over the House and Senate Armed Services committees, with a new chair of the Senate panel, three new House subcommittee chairs, and a handful of new members.

The changes have wide-ranging implications for the Air Force and Space Force, as committee and subcommittee chairs hold great sway over policy and spending issues affecting the services.

Senate

Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) officially took charge of the Senate Armed Services Committee with his election Jan. 7. Wicker had been the ranking Republican on the committee for the past two years and now swaps seats with former Chairman Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), who will be ranking Democrat in the wake of the 2024 elections, which gave the Senate to the Republicans.

As chairman, Wicker is expected to advance plans for investing in the U.S. military unveiled last spring, in which he called for substantial increases in Pentagon spending.

Wicker opposes planned retirements of F-22 and F-15E fighter jets and wants to increase aircraft procurement above current plans by at least 340 more fighters in the next five years. He has also called for doubling the planned B-21 Raider fleet, from 100 to 200 bombers.

While being chairman cannot ensure those moves, Wicker’s views will have a major influence on the annual National Defense Authorization bill that sets Pentagon policy.

An Air Force veteran—he was a judge advocate general on Active and Reserve duty—Wicker represents a state best known in military circles for its shipbuilding industry, but that is also home to Air Force training hubs at Keesler and Columbus Air Force Bases. He is the the first former Airman to chair the SASC since Sen. Barry Goldwater, who led the committee from 1985 to 1987.

While the subcommittee chairs and ranking members for the SASC have yet to be announced, the full makeup of the committee has been. There are only three newcomers among the 27-senator panel: Sens. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), Tim Sheehy (R-Mont.) and Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.).

Banks previously served in the House and was chair of the House Armed Services personnel subcommittee. Slotkin was also a House Armed Services Committee member.

Sheehy represents Malmstrom Air Force Base, one of three ICBM bases, having defeated long-time Sen. Jon Tester, who was a top defense appropriator and a fierce advocate for nuclear modernization. Sheehy seems likely to continue that advocacy.

House

Unlike the Senate, control of the House did not change hands, although the Republican majority narrowed. Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) will remain as chairman and may renew his push to move the headquarters of U.S. Space Command from Colorado Springs, Colo., to Redstone Arsenal in his home state. During Trump’s first term, SPACECOM was directed to move, but that decision was reversed during the Biden administration.

Rogers announced new committee members and subcommittee chairs on Jan. 7, among them Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-Tenn.), who will chair the strategic forces subcommittee, which oversees space and nuclear forces. He will be a key figure with regard to modernization of the strategic bomber and ICBM fleets, as well as in investing in new systems, including weapons, for the Space Force.

Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.), will stay on as chair of the tactical air and land forces subcommittee, and Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), a former Air Force general, will lead the cyber, IT, and innovation panel.

New to the committee is Rep. Jeff Crank (R-Colo.), who succeeds Doug Lamborn representing the Colorado Springs area. Lamborn was a top Space Force advocate in Congress and notably broke from Rogers and many other Republicans in advocating for SPACECOM to stay in Colorado. Crank has said he will continue to promote that position.

Other new committee members whose districts include or border Air Force Bases are:

Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wisc.) – Volk Field Air National Guard Base

Rep. Abraham Hamadeh (R-Ariz.) – Luke Air Force Base

Rep. Mark Messmer (R-Ind.) – Hulman Field Air National Guard Base

In Final Speech, Hicks Touts Work to Thwart China’s A2/AD Strategy

Jan. 10, 2025 | By Greg Hadley

In her final address in the Pentagon’s No. 2 job, Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen H. Hicks touted her team’s work to quickly disperse U.S. military’s capabilities to better challenge China, while cautioning against miscalculation in the competition between the two great powers.

In a Jan. 10 speech at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, Hicks emphasized the bipartisan consensus that the People’s Republic of China and and its ambitions in the Indo-Pacific region are the top strategic concerns for the U.S. Under the Biden administration, she said, the Pentagon focused on “driving changes needed to outpace the PRC and ensure our enduring military advantage.”

Many of those changes came down to spreading out and scaling up capabilities, given how China “carefully crafted its elaborate military modernization” to focus on an anti-access/area denial strategy, Hicks said. Watching how the U.S. projected power with large deployments and central hubs in the 1990s and 2000s, China’s leaders geared their approach, she said, to “keep us out of the western Pacific in a crisis.”

In response, “we’re changing the game, and even changing ourselves where necessary,” Hicks said, focusing on becoming more distributed, mobile, and resilient.

For the Air Force, the development of Agile Combat Employment, in which combat forces disperse to numerous expeditionary airfields as opposed to large bases, is one part of that change. But Hicks also noted that the service is “hardening Pacific bases,” one of Secretary Frank Kendall’s operational imperatives for modernization.

Hicks highlighted the Air Force’s investment in Collaborative Combat Aircraft—semi-autonomous drones that will fly alongside manned platforms, carrying weapons or sensors to potentially distribute a formation’s capabilities.

Hicks’ own signature effort, known as Replicator, is likewise focused on drone development. Replicator seeks to field thousands of cheap autonomous drones across all domains, including loitering munitions, and other systems including undersea vehicles, quadcopters, and the Air Force’s Enterprise Test Vehicle program.

A Barracuda-250 cruise missile. Courtesy of Anduril

“Make no mistake, our novel concepts are imposing dilemmas that sow doubt in our competitors,” she said. “Sometimes with new capabilities like attritable autonomous systems, and sometimes by using existing capabilities in new ways.”

Hicks and other Pentagon officials say Replicator is set to hit its goals this coming summer.

“We knew execution was key with Replicator; that was part of our thinking from the beginning. It’s where other innovation visions had stumbled in the past,” Hicks said. “By driving both technology change and culture change, Replicator is showing that DOD can move fast to shape the battlespace and equip our warfighters with what they need to win.

That focus on scale and distribution extends to space, where Hicks noted efforts by the Space Force and others to move to “proliferated architectures” with large numbers of small satellites.

“We’re ensuring that the web of satellites DOD can draw upon is so great, that attacking or disrupting them would be a wasted and escalatory effort,” Hicks said.

On top of that, the Space Force has also shown it can launch satellites on accelerated timelines, improving resiliency.

The U.S. military must continue to pursue these programs to “deny the territory-conquering goals of a military that wants to someday exceed our own,” said Hicks, who will transition out of the Pentagon when the Trump administration takes over Jan. 20.

But Hicks emphasized that U.S. investment in new capabilities does not signal coming conflict with China; rather, Hicks said, “victory” in this strategic competition means assuring U.S. security and interests while at the same time avoiding war.

“We don’t believe conflict is inevitable,” she said. “But it’s our job to prevent war by always being ready for war if it comes. So where Beijing might see DOD anticipating a potential conflict, that’s because we’re concerned Beijing will instigate one. Both sides must try hard to avoid misunderstandings in this dynamic.”

Small Satellite Architectures Get New Boosts From SDA, NRO

Jan. 10, 2025 | By Greg Hadley

The Pentagon’s efforts to launch and connect hundreds of satellites in orbit got two separate boosts Jan. 9, courtesy of the Space Development Agency and National Reconnaissance Office.

First came a major milestone for SDA’s low-Earth orbit constellation, called the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture. Contractor York Space Systems announced one of its data transport satellites had established a laser communication link with a missile warning/tracking satellite built by another vendor, SpaceX.

Speaking at the Spacepower Conference last month, SDA director Derek M. Tournear described such a connection as the final demonstration needed to validate the agency’s plans for a network of satellites that can “mesh” and relay data around the globe at high speed. By using laser communications instead of traditional radio frequencies, SDA hopes to transfer more data faster, using less power and smaller equipment, with enhanced speed and signal security.

Back in September, Tournear announced that SDA had demonstrated a laser communications link between two SpaceX satellites. But going between two vendors served as a critical test of the agency’s decision to create standards for an optical communications terminal and then award contracts to more than half a dozen vendors. By proving out the standards, SDA can be more confident that all sorts of contractors can plug their systems into the architecture, increasing competition and driving down costs.

For the warfighter, validating the technology behind SDA’s “mesh network” is crucial to ensuring sensors and shooters around the globe can transmit data in seconds—a particularly important task for SDA’s mission of missile warning and tracking.

“Achieving the first inter-vendor, inter-layer laser link demonstrates the tangible value of open standards and collaborative efforts in rapidly achieving an integrated space architecture,” York CEO Dirk Wallinger said in a statement. “We are proud to support SDA’s vision for an interconnected space architecture for the warfighters.”

The laser link demo should also help SDA feel more confident proceeding with its next launches, scheduled for this spring, which will put the first operational PWSA satellites in orbit.

Shortly after York’s announcement, the National Reconnaissance Office successfully launched its seventh batch of satellites for a new proliferated constellation. The launch took place late Jan. 9 at Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif., with a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

The NRO has remained tight-lipped, as it usually is, about its constellation, only noting that it serves to bolster the agency’s intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities. In a release, the agency said it launched almost 100 satellites in 2024, and Director Christopher Scolese has said going back 18 months, that figure is more than 100. The plan is to launch hundreds more going into 2028.

Like the Space Force, the NRO wants to shift from a few large, exquisite satellites to large numbers of smaller, less capable birds.

Pentagon officials say fewer satellites offer “juicy” targets for an adversary such as China or Russia, who would have to take out only one or two using a direct-ascent anti-satellite missile or some other weapon to wreak havoc on the U.S. military, which relies heavily on space assets for navigation, communications, intelligence, and more.

With hundreds of satellites, on the other hand, the U.S. wants to deter an attack in the first place by ensuring it would be ineffective, Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen H. Hicks said in a Jan. 10 speech at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies.

“We’re ensuring that the web of satellites DOD can draw upon is so great, that attacking or disrupting them would be a wasted and escalatory effort,” Hicks said.

Hundreds of satellites also ensure global coverage in low-Earth orbit, where spacecraft do not have a persistent “stare” like they do in the higher geosynchronous orbit.

While the NRO and Space Force work on their proliferated architectures, the two organizations are also working on a joint venture to move the ground moving target indication mission to space—using satellites to track targets on land and transmitting tactical data to troops on the ground. It remains unclear how the NRO’s proliferated architecture will feed into that effort.

Chief to Airmen: New Standards and Enforcement Are Coming

Jan. 10, 2025 | By Chris Gordon

The Air Force is reviewing dress and appearance standards for Airmen and will begin to more strictly enforce regulations, Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin said in a video address to Airmen released on Facebook Jan. 10. The changes will start rolling out in the next 90 days.

New policies and standards will also cover other topics besides appearance. The main objective is to ensure rules and regulations are clear and not subject to interpretation or “selective enforcement,” Allvin said.

“This selective enforcement can lead to situations where the Airmen believe then they have the opportunity to do selective compliance,” Allvin said. “This is where the danger lies.”

Unclear or “complex” standards are “difficult to understand,” he added. And that has made them “more difficult to comply with, and maybe more challenging and difficult to enforce.”

Unified policies for the entire service help set the tone for Airmen to be “dedicated to the team above the individual,” Allvin said. “Better standards and accountability” will help Airmen be “proud not only to wear the uniform but have the discipline that is the backbone of the greatest air force in the history of the planet.”

The updates come in response to concerns Allvin and Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force David A. Flosi heard expressed by rank-and-file Airmen and senior leaders.

Specific policies are now under review and Allvin has told wing commanders to expect the first round of updates to be disseminated to commands in the next 90 days as final decisions are made.

Language will be revised to ensure policies, waivers, and procedures “are easy to understand, easy to comply with, and easy to enforce,” Allvin promised. “Along the way, we want to ensure they are aligned across the entire United States Air Force.”

Differences across commands and in enforcement have generated controversies in recent years. But the changes being developed now also flow from Allvin’s drive to unify the Air Force and diminish some of the cultural distinctions between Major Commands.

When Allvin rolled out organizational changes a year ago, he emphasized the new service-wide role for Air Combat Command, for example, which is now charged with ensuring force readiness across the Air Force. ACC Commander Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach has instituted more inspections and closer adherence to uniform policies over the past year.

Airmen from the 412th Medical Group stand at parade rest prior to conducting an Air Force Service Dress Class A uniform inspection at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., March 9, 2024. U.S. Air Force photo by Giancarlo Casem

Increased enforcement is not just about looks, Allvin said.

When “Airmen decide for themselves whether they should comply with a tech order or safety regulations, or other instructions … the damage is to property, is to our equipment, but most importantly, we get Airmen injured or killed,” Allvin says in the video, as the screen shows a photo of the burnt-out wreckage of a B-1B bomber that crashed as a result, according to an Air Force investigation, of lax standards enforcement. “That’s what’s at stake, and that is what is driving some of these decisions.”

Changes will be introduced in phases. “We’re not going to wait a year or two years to roll out an entire batch,” Allvin said. “As we make the decisions, we’re going to distribute them to the force to start enforcing as they come to you.”

Airmen can now expect tighter enforcement of regulations and commanders will be expected to hold more frequent formations and inspections.

“We’re also directing that episodically we have the formations to come together, in uniform, to do a couple of things,” Allvin said. “The first thing is to be able to look at yourself, look at your teammate, hold yourself and him or her accountable to ensure that you’re in standards, you are proud that you are wearing this uniform in a manner that befits the call to arms that we have answered. At the same time, it offers the opportunity for the command leadership to be able to share the very latest and updated guidance to ensure we are all on the same sheet of music.”

But even though standards are being revised, the imperative now is to take standards seriously and to enforce them appropriately, according to the USAF Chief.

“You do not need to wait until the next policy change comes out or the next standards update comes out to enforce standards,” Allvin said. “Enforcing standards shows your commitment to the institution.”

Kendall: CCA Increment 2 Shouldn’t Be ‘Exquisite,’ But Better than Increment 1

Jan. 8, 2025 | By John A. Tirpak

Analyses and wargames indicate the second increment of the Collaborative Combat Aircraft program should not be an “exquisite” aircraft—meaning very stealthy and equipped with many sensors and weapons—but it should have more capability than Increment 1, and an additional cost of 20-30 percent would be acceptable, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall told Air & Space Forces Magazine this week.

The CCA program is meant to produce semi-autonomous combat aircraft to fly in formations alongside with manned platforms, carrying extra weapons or, in later iterations, acting on their own or in concert with other CCAs on sensing or attack missions.

Yet the capabilities and the cost of these “wingman” drones remain a frequent topic of discussion among Air Force and industry leaders.

For the first increment, at least, Kendall has said the Air Force is shooting for a cost per airframe that is a “fraction” of the price of a crewed F-35, somewhere between $25-30 million each.

Preliminary work has begun on a second increment, but to date, Air Force officials had declined to define the characteristics it wants for this second bath, with the possibilities ranging from an even simpler and cheaper aircraft than Increment 1 to a very sophisticated platform that could penetrate deep inside contested airspace and conduct kinetic attacks.

Increment 2 should “definitely” not be “exquisite,” Kendall said.

“The idea here is affordable mass,” he explained during an extensive exit interview. Wargames and analyses have shown that CCAs in large numbers multiply combat options for the Air Force and impose a significant cost on any adversary, who must take each one seriously and dedicate missiles or countermeasures to stop them, Kendall said. Making a highly capable—and expensive—CCA would defeat that value, he said.

Yet Kendall also seemed to pour cold water on the notion that Increment 2 will be simpler and cheaper than Increment 1.

“I think, personally, something that has some increase in cost over Increment 1 would not be outrageous,” he said, citing a cost increase for the second iteration as “20 or 30 percent, something like that. But, again, it depends upon the mix, right? What capabilities do you put on every aircraft, every CCA? What do you distribute?”

The Air Force has typically equipped its fighters with “all the subsystems necessary for that fighter to essentially operate alone: its own sensors, its own [electronic warfare], its own countermeasures,” Kendall said.

But in the future, the secretary said, the service may instead choose to split up those capabilities among different CCAs as well as the manned fighter. An enemy would have to assume all the CCAs are similarly capable, “and that’s a substantial advantage for the user,” he said.

Kendall may also have been hinting at some of the options being explored for the Next-Generation Air Dominance system, which he characterized as a crewed successor to the F-22. Kendall has left decision-making on the way forward for the NGAD to his successors in the Trump administration.

CCA Increment 1—which has two variants being developed by Anduril Industries and General Atomics—is “moving forward really well,” Kendall reported.

“We’re going to get that fielded within the next few years. We’re going to get a lot of experience with that. What I have seen in simulations with our operators shows that it has enormous operational payoff, and we’ll get more experience with actually using them in operational units and operational exercises, and so on. We’re going to learn an awful lot from that,” he said.

At the same time, Kendall also wants to see updates and improvements. For the autonomy technology that underpins CCAs, the Air Force is still running programs like the X-62 Vista and the Viper Experimentation and Next-gen Operations Model–Autonomy Flying Testbed program, or VENOM-AFT.

For sensors, weapons, and airframes, work is “well underway” on Increment 2, and the Air Force is “sorting through different configurations for Increment 2, and what we want to do there, to get full advantage” Kendall said.

However, he reiterated that the Trump administration will make the final choice on what CCA Increment 2 looks like.

Ultimately, though, Kendall said he regards launching the CCA program and getting the first increment on contract is one of the signature programmatic achievements of his tenure as secretary. The CCA is “a transformative capability for the Department, for the Air Force,” he said.

New F-15 Electronic Warfare System Starts Full Production

Jan. 8, 2025 | By Greg Hadley

The Air Force has cleared a new F-15 electronic warfare system for full-rate production and awarded a $615.8 million contract to Boeing to install the Eagle Passive Active Warning Survivability System (EPAWSS).

EPAWSS comprises two kits manufactured by BAE Systems, which consist of “integrated radar warning, geolocation, situational awareness, and self-protection solutions,” according to the company. EPAWSS is standard equipment on the new F-15EX Eagle II, but the Air Force is also upgrading 99 F-15E Strike Eagles with the advanced technology, as well.

Boeing is responsible for modifying the F-15 and will be installing the system.

EPAWSS is the technology that turns the F-15EX into what some have called a generation 4.5 fighter, positioning it between conventional fourth-gen F-15s and fifth-gen F-22s and F-35s. The Air Force says EPAWSS can enable equipped jets to “deny, degrade, deceive, disrupt, and defeat radio frequency (RF) and electro-optical/infrared threat systems within contested and highly contested environments.”

Growing competition in the electromagnetic spectrum has set off something of an EW arms race, and the Air Force and its suppliers have been mum about specific EPAWSS capabilities. One EPAWSS capability officials have described is “cognitive” EW—the ability for the system to understand new threats and adapt its response without human input.

EPAWSS includes two kits. Group A kits comprise underlying parts needed to support the upgrade, while Group B kits include EPAWSS’ main components. Boeing’s contract covers “procurement of Group A and Group B kits, system engineering program management, and interim contractor support lay-in material,” the Pentagon said.

Work will be performed at Boeing’s St. Louis facilities, where the F-15EX is built, and in Nashua, N.H., home of BAE’s Electronic Systems Division.

The contract announcement did not specify the number of EPAWSS kits included. It did, however, state that procurement funds for the project will come from fiscal 2023, 2024, and 2025 investments. According to budget documents, the Air Force asked for 26 sets in fiscal 2023, 19 sets in 2024, and 21 in 2025. But documents also showed plans to install 4 sets in 2023, 14 in 2024, and 19 in 2025.

After 2025, the Air Force still plans to buy five more full EPAWSS kits, plus five Group B kits for the test aircraft that were already modified during the system’s development. Fifty-five fighters will get the kits installed over the course of 2026-2028.

Meanwhile, the service also plans to buy 98 to 144 F-15EX fighters—a number that has fluctuated in recent budget cycles. as Air Force and Congressional leaders have debated how many are needed.

Officials have described the F-15’s current EW system as “functionally obsolete” against modern threats, making EPAWSS vital to jam and/or spoof adversaries’ radars and signals to evade detection. The technology shares capabilities developed for the F-35, whose powerful EW system have earned rave reviews. BAE also manufactures that system.

F-16 External Fuel Tank Falls into Florida Neighborhood, No Injuries Reported

Jan. 8, 2025 | By David Roza

No injuries were reported after a 300-gallon external fuel tank fell off an F-16 fighter into a residential neighborhood outside Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., on Jan. 7, a base spokesperson told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

The tank fell off at around 11 a.m. and landed in Niceville, just 3.5 miles northeast of the base, the spokesperson said.

Eglin uses manned F-16s to test new weapons, uncrewed QF-16s as aerial target drones, and just recently received modified F-16s to test autonomous flying technology as part of the Viper Experimentation and Next-gen Operations Model – Autonomy Flying Testbed program.

The spokesperson could not say to which unit the mishap aircraft belonged but did say it was manned and the base later confirmed it is assigned to the 96th Test Wing. An investigation is underway.

“Eglin authorities are cleaning up the area and taking measures needed to ensure the fuel tank is safely removed,” the base public affairs office said in a press release. The base will fly a small drone over the area to survey the impact zone.

Photos posted online by local media outlet Mid Bay News show what appears to be the centerline fuel tank that hangs from the middle of the F-16’s fuselage, but the base spokesperson could not immediately confirm that was the specific type of tank that fell. The Eglin public affairs office later said in the release that it was a 300-gallon fuel tank.

Based on the photos, the tank landed in between two homes, a little over a quarter mile away from an elementary school.

On Facebook, the popular unofficial Air Force amn/nco/snco page posted photos allegedly showing the F-16 after it landed at Eglin with its center fuel tank missing.

“Only by the grace of God, it landed between two houses,” Niceville City Manager David Deitch told the Mid Bay News, which also reported “a strong smell of jet fuel” in the area.

Many service members are exposed to jet fuel throughout their careers, but the long-term health impacts of such exposure is not yet clear, according to a 2023 presentation by the VA.

The incident came about four weeks after an exercise which saw first responders with the Eglin-based 96th Test Wing practice responding to a “large-scale aircraft accident” with outside agencies.

Late last year, the Air Force Chief of Safety Maj. Gen. Sean M. Choquette rolled out a new effort that requires aircraft maintainers to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) so they can access more information about costly accidents. The move was in response to an increase in ground mishaps involving maintenance, aircraft towing, and other flight line work. The NDA is meant to give maintainers the same timely access to safety investigation findings that aircrew members already enjoy, he said.

“We said, ‘hey, [maintainers] need to be brought into the fold here, because ground operations mishaps were increasing, and they need to be better trained on where mistakes are being made,’” Choquette told reporters in October.

This story has been updated with more details from Eglin Air Force Base.