USAF Moves Fighters to Create a ‘Super Squadron’ of F-16s near North Korea

July 23, 2024 | By Unshin Lee Harpley

The U.S. Air Force is shifting nine extra F-16 fighters to its base closest to the Demilitarized Zone that splits North and South Korea, creating a so-called “Super Squadron.”

The fighters are coming from Kunsan Air Base in the southwestern part of Korea to Osan Air Base, located only 50 miles south of the DMZ.

The 36th Fighter Squadron at Osan will go from 22 jets to 31 with the additions, according to a base release. The transfer will be a yearlong test for how to “maximize combat effectiveness,” with the service evaluating its impact on sortie generation, maintenance, and manpower.

“This test is an opportunity for us to see if squadrons of this size increase our training effectiveness while also increasing our combat capability if deterrence fails,” Lt. Gen. David. R. Iverson, 7th Air Force commander and U.S. Forces Korea deputy commander, said in a release.

Airmen from the 36th Fighter Generation Squadron park a U.S. Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcon at Osan Air Base, Republic of Korea, July 9, 2024. U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Chase Verzaal

Along with the fighters, some 150 Airmen including pilots, engineers, and combat support personnel are relocating to Osan base. The bases are roughly 100 miles apart.

“While we execute this test, we understand these changes may present some challenges for our Airmen and Families,” Iverson added, saying leaders are working to mitigate those impacts while “increasing readiness and war fighting capability.”

The other fighter squadron at Osan Air Base, the 25th Fighter Squadron, remains the only internationally based unit to hold onto the A-10 aircraft. While the exact timeline of how long the Air Force will continue operating the attack aircraft at the base remains uncertain, the fleet has a maintenance contract with several South Korean firms until 2029.

With the increased F-16 presence at the base, some analysts have suggested the USAF may retired the A-10s from the peninsula earlier than originally planned. Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall has described the A-10 as “increasingly obsolete and very difficult to maintain,” as the service has been pushing to gradually retire the fleet.

A U.S. Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcon lands at Osan Air Base, Republic of Korea, July 9, 2024. U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Chase Verzaal

The shift in F-16s to Osan is the latest move by the Air Force to adjust its fighter posture in recent months. PACAF’s 2030 Strategy, released in September 2023, noted that “our current basing posture, optimized 70 years ago, adversely affects our ability to rapidly respond to natural disasters and man-made crises today” and pledged to re-optimize the command’s basing.

Earlier this month, the Pentagon announced it would base 36 F-15EX aircraft at Kadena Air Base in Japan to replace the base’s remaining F-15C/Ds. Over the last several years, in preparation for the retirement of the 48 F-15C/Ds at the base, the service has been rotating fighter deployments to the strategic base in Okinawa, only 400 miles east of Taiwan.

The service is also adding four dozen F-35As to Misawa Air Base to replace its 36 F-16s, making it the first foreign base in the Indo-Pacific to host USAF F-35 fighters and the second overall, after RAF Lakenheath in the U.K.

“In the last year and a half or so, the world has become a very dangerous place,” former PACAF Commander Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach said early this year, citing burgeoning concerns regarding China, North Korea and Russia which he considered a Pacific nation.

Osan received its first F-16s back in 1988, after Kunsan became the first overseas base to convert from F-4 Phantom to F-16s in 1981. The Air Force’s latest modernization effort aims to upgrade the F-16 fleet with 22 modifications to include a new radar with active electronically scanned array and Center Display Unit-technology. Kunsan received its first upgraded F-16 last year.

Why Mobility Airmen May Need a Unique Deployment Schedule

July 23, 2024 | By David Roza

The relentless demand for airlift, aerial refueling, and aeromedical evacuation means that the new Air Force Force Generation deployment schedule (AFFORGEN) may need to be tweaked to fit mobility Airmen, according to the outgoing head of the 18th Air Force.

AFFORGEN lays out a two-year cycle made up of four phases: prepare, certify, deploy, and reset, each of which lasts six months. The high demand for the 18th Air Force could clash with that.

“Our Airmen don’t necessarily have the luxury of having a six-month reset in the traditional sense that it was designed,” Maj. Gen. Corey J. Martin told Air & Space Forces Magazine. ”I understand why we have it, but for the 18th Air Force, as it was designed, it is probably not sustainable, because of the amount of operations we continue to do in that reset band.”

The only Numbered Air Force in Air Mobility Command, the 18th claims about 36,000 Airmen and civilians across 12 wings and more than 400 aircraft. Every three minutes around the clock, an aircraft assigned to the 18th Air Force is taking off or landing after refueling fighters on the way to a combat zone, hauling supplies for a humanitarian relief effort, or a wide range of other missions, Martin said.

The fleet has faced particularly high demand lately. For example, usually around 50 of the nation’s 222 C-17 transport jets are on a mission on any given day, but in the weeks following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, that spiked to about 106.

“We have to be ready anytime,” Martin said. “Before Oct. 7, people did not expect that that’s where we were going to be focused. And immediately afterwards, we had aircraft bringing in air defense artillery to locations in the Middle East literally overnight in some cases.”

mobility airmen — U.S. Air Force Maj. Gen. Corey Martin, 18th Air Force commander, speaks with a marine patrolman assigned to the 6th Security Forces Squadron during a tour at MacDill Air Force Base, Florida, Sept. 15, 2022. (U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Lauren Cobin)

AFFORGEN is meant to help whole units train and deploy together, rather than the piecemeal approach over the past two decades where Airmen were often deployed in small batches from bases across the country. But it could be a tough fit for mobility forces, which may not be able to truly rest as the “reset” phase requires.

“That is probably where it would be difficult for us to stay exactly true to the AFFORGEN cycle as it was advertised,” Martin said.

Martin is not the first to raise such concerns. In January, Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. James C. Slife said AFFORGEN is still being adjusted and that it will not be a one-size-fits-all approach, as the service writ large strains to meet the needs of combatant commanders.

“That’s the tension the secretary of defense has to deal with every single day,” Slife said at the time. “There’s an insatiable demand from combatant commands. There’s a limited capacity from the services.”

Units flying drones like the MQ-9 also face year-round operational tempo, as Maj. Gen. Clark J. Quinn described at the 2023 Air Warfare Symposium.

“The group commander over there mentioned that just a few weeks ago, one of his squadrons for the first time ever, was not flying a combat line,” Quinn, then deputy commander of Air Forces Central, said about an MQ-9 unit at Shaw Air Force Base, S.C. “[AFFORGEN] is not going to quite work out into six-month bins for that MQ-9 community just yet.”

Air Mobility Command is working with the Air Force to tailor AFFORGEN for mobility troops, Martin said. While the exact fit is yet to be determined, there is a precedent in the form of the Readiness Driven Allocation Process (RDAP), a tool which for the past four years or so has helped allocate mobility assets for operations and training.

“RDAP helps us balance what we call risk-to-mission: our ability to respond, and risk-to-force,” Martin explained. “My responsibility is not only to have forces ready today, but I also have to be thinking about ‘Can I have forces ready in six months?’ We can’t burn everything out now.”

U.S. Marines from Marine Wing Support Squadron 174, Marine Aircraft Group 24 board the back of a C-130J Hercules assigned to the 40th Airlift Squadron during Exercise Balikatan 24 at Basco Airfield, Philippines, April 28, 2024. (U.S. Air Force photo by 2nd Lt. Cyan Brown)

Training For the Future

RDAP could also help wing commanders balance day-to-day operational demands with the need to train for possible conflict with China or Russia. One key technique is what Gen. Mike Minihan, the head of Air Mobility Command, calls “explode into theater,” where mobility troops race from their home stations to the conflict zone as quickly as possible.

That ability is important because the Air Force likely will not have months to build up strength for a future conflict as it has for conflicts in the Middle East over the past several decades, Martin explained. Mobility wings are practicing the technique in exercises such as Hazard Leap and Hazard Spear, where a C-130 transport crew flew 26 hours from Texas to Guam to support a Marine training operation in the Philippines, and Project Magellan, a maximum endurance operation where a Kansas-based KC-46 flew nonstop around the world in 45 hours.

Those drills are great examples of exploding into theater, Martin said, but they require time and resources that mobility troops may not have in spades due to their high ops tempo. RDAP and AFFORGEN will have to account for those needs, but in the meantime, it helps that Minihan and Martin encouraged wing commanders to accept a higher level of risk so that Airmen can practice other wartime skills, such as landing on a blacked-out airfield or refueling aircraft with the engines running, which saves time on the ground.

“There is a slightly elevated risk with engines running and refueling operations, but with the amount of precision artillery that adversaries have, being on the ground is probably a less safe place than being in the air,” Martin said.

Those kinds of tactics, techniques, and procedures were not so widely practiced just a few years ago, the general said, but the blessing from higher-ups to take more risk makes it more common.

“There is an increase of risk, but we’ve gone about it in a responsible way, and we need to fill some of the gaps,” he said.

c-130j — U.S. Air Force Capt. Eric Albers and Capt. Blayne Hayes, both 40th Airlift Squadron, begin landing a C-130J Hercules during Exercise Balikatan 24 near Lal-Lo Airfield, Philippines, 28 April, 2024. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Leon Redfern)

Connecting and Commanding

If training and ops tempo were not enough to handle, 18th Air Force troops are also pursuing new beyond-line-of-sight communications technology that will keep mobility aircraft plugged in with other aircraft and operations centers hundreds of miles away.

While such systems are widely available in other parts of the Air Force such as Air Combat Command, Air Mobility Command is still getting up to speed in terms of connectivity. Last year, Minihan set a goal to connect 25 percent of the tanker and transport fleet with beyond-line-of-sight communications by 2025.

Rather than wait for a more comprehensive funding solution from higher levels of the service, wing commanders at the 18th Air Force are using discretionary income funds to buy roll-on, roll-off comms systems such as RTIC and the Airlift Tanker Open Mission Systems.

“We are not sitting idly by and waiting,” Martin said. “Wings at the 18th Air Force level are finding ways to try to plus those up as the Air Force looks for ways to fund it more holistically.”

At the same time, mobility Airmen still need to perform when enemy interference makes long-distance communication impossible. Coming up in the early 1990s when comms tech was not as advanced, Martin recalls being taught the importance of mission command, where subordinates get after the commander’s intent despite loss of contact with the commander.

“The majors and lieutenant colonels that were instructing me to fly had grown up in a time where they had to understand mission command, because they were not always connected to a global command and control network,” he said.

Technology and the loss of a chief rival in the form of the Soviet Union allowed the Air Force to drive for efficiency, at the loss of some crew autonomy, the general explained. Now, existing networks may not be available against adversaries such as China and Russia with sophisticated electronic warfare systems.

“We have to get the force adequately connected, but in the interim, we are developing a crew force that is able to, in the absence of it, to be able to take commander’s intent, and to have that initiative,” Martin said.

After more than 30 years in service, Martin will retire Aug. 9 and relinquish command of the 18th Air Force to Maj. Gen. Charles D. Bolton. It is a busy time for the Numbered Air Force, but Martin is encouraged by the dedication of its Airmen.

“Every three minutes, 18th Air Force aircraft are taking off or landing as most Americans have the opportunity to sleep six or eight hours,” he said. “The fact that there are mostly young men and women who signed up to do that for their country around the clock … makes me proud to be the 18th Air Force commander. And as my time in the service is coming to an end, it makes me encouraged for the force that we have for the future.”

CMSSF: As Space Force Moves Ahead with New Force Generation Model, ‘Unknowns’ Remain

July 22, 2024 | By Chris Gordon

How the Space Force prepares its personnel to train and fight wars continues to evolve, the service’s top enlisted Guardian said recently.

The service is working on multiple significant personnel changes at once, Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force John F. Bentivegna said in a telephone interview with Air & Space Forces Magazine during a recent trip to the Middle East, during which he visited roughly 60 deployed Guardians in U.S. Central Command.

The Space Force’s new model of presenting forces, billed by service leaders as one of the most fundamental changes in the service’s history, is known as SPAFORGEN and is now in the process of being fully implemented two years after its introduction. But while the Space Force now knows how it wants to present forces in the future and what missions it will conduct, the personnel that make up those forces still face some outstanding questions.

“Other services and the Space Force, identifying missions that we’re going to transfer over, for the most part that’s all done,” Bentivegna said.

However, it remains to be seen exactly which space-focused service members now outside the service will ultimately join the fold as Guardians.

“That’s kind of an unknown we’re working through right now,” Bentivegna said. “In almost my entire career executing space operations, I don’t think there has been a mission I’ve ever done that didn’t have a total force integration perspective where I was either working with the Reserve or the Guard.”

Some space-focused Air Force Reserve personnel can already apply for transfer to the USSF under the Personnel Management Act, a provision of last year’s authorization bill.

“We’re in the process right now of offering opportunities to those Reservists today,” Bentivegna said of roughly 370 positions that are eligible to transfer. “The first tranche that’s open right now is asking when they want to come over full-time. So the unknown right now is how many of those individuals, that talent, is expressing interest to come over and join the Space Force full time. … The first selection board will happen here in the beginning of the fall. We will kind of see how that goes.”

But for those who want to be part-time service members, things are still in flux.

“A lot of part-time talent we have, we haven’t asked them to join yet because we’re still trying to work through what part-time means in the systems, updating systems and policies to do that,” he said. “We’ll continue to leverage the normal relationship as it exists today. So that’s a little bit of a variable as we’re kind of working through that.”

Air National Guardsmen may transition to the Space Force under a Department of the Air Force-supported legislative proposal included in some versions of the 2025 National Defense Authorization bill under consideration. The idea has met some resistance from some lawmakers.

For now, the CMSSF said the Space Force will “wait and see what happens” to Air National Guard personnel.

“They offer not only kit—systems—but also the talent as well,” Bentivegna said. “And we’re waiting to see where Congress decides to give us some kind of direction one way or the other.”

Even when it comes to full-time Guardians already in the service, Space Force is still maturing into its own organization. One of the USSF units deployed to U.S. Central Command is the 5th Space Warning Squadron Detachment 2. Their mission, using a system known as JTAGS, was conducted by the Army for nearly two decades before it became a Space Force mission in 2023. But up until a few months ago, Soldiers were still deployed in that Space Force unit as service members cycled in and out based on their deployment schedules.

Joint Tactical Ground Station Guardians pose for a photo with Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force John Bentivegna at an undisclosed location within the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility, July 14, 2024. The JTAGS career field and mission transferred from the Army to the Space Force in October 2023. U.S. Air Force photo

“There’s the generic, here’s how the how the mission is evolving,” Bentivegna, on his first visit to CENTCOM as CMSSF, said.

Then there is SPAFORGEN, a deployment model the service says is designed to best staff those missions. SPAFORGEN, Bentivegna explained, is designed so “all of the units that are presented across the service components and combatant commands, all kind of synchronized onto one rotation.”

While SPAFORGEN is applicable across the service, it is mainly designed to give so-called employed-in-place forces more training time, which the Space Force says is a must in the face of increasingly complex and realistic threats posed by China, Russia, and other possible adversaries. Units have three phases—prepare, ready, and commit—and one entire cycle will last six months. “Combat squadrons” will be the main “units of action” the Space Force presents to combatant commanders, with “combat detachments” as deployable units.

“Deployable forces, it’s more of a natural cycle where you go downrange for six months at a time,” Bentivegna said, after which Guardians can take leave, develop in their careers, and train to deploy again. “It’s the employed-in-place who have the greatest impact [from SPAFORGEN], by giving them the space they need in the prepare and ready phases of SPAFORGEN to kind of take them away from being warfighters on a day-to-day basis, allow them to hone their skills, and do the advanced training.”

The service-wide synchronization happened at the beginning of this month, when employed-in-place Guardians started their commit phases on July 1.

For now, things are going well, Bentivegna said. “Feedback from the very initial stages was really positive,” he said. “But we’re going to continue to collect data throughout the entire cycle to see what other changes, if any, need to be made.”

Bentivegna praised Guardians for taking on the challenges inherent to setting up a new service—at home and deployed.

“You can hear the planes flying overhead. You can see the planes on the tarmac,” Bentivegna said. “We’re asking them to be masters of the domain that they’re never going to touch, never going to feel, never really going to experience, which is kind of a unique challenge for a warfighter. But they’re doing a phenomenal job of embracing that.”

New Strategy: US Will Keep ‘Watchful Eye’ on China, Russia’s Arctic Cooperation

July 22, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

In its updated Arctic Strategy released July 22, the Pentagon says it will take a “monitor-and-respond” approach to the region, as officials warned that more cooperation between China and Russia and the effects of climate change present growing challenges in the area.

The Arctic is “becoming a venue for strategic competition,” Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III wrote. In response, the U.S. military must “enhance its Arctic capabilities.”

Melting ice is creating bigger shipping lanes and more access to the Arctic than ever before, Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen H. Hicks told reporters. Meanwhile, Russia remains active even as its war in Ukraine rages on, and China has sought to assert itself as a “near-Arctic” nation.

“Although the vast majority of the Arctic is under the jurisdiction of sovereign states, the PRC seeks to promote the Arctic region as a ‘global commons’ in order to shift Arctic governance in its favor,” the strategy states, referring to the People’s Republic of China.

The strategy also notes that while Russia and China’s interests are not completely aligned, the war in Ukraine has pushed them closer together and they have upped their military cooperation in the Arctic specifically with more exercises.

“It’s very noticeable and concerning,” Hicks said.

Deputy assistant secretary of defense for Arctic and global resilience Iris A. Ferguson also noted that both Chinese and Russian warships have exercised off the coast of Alaska in recent months, with the U.S. keeping “a watchful eye.”

That watchful eye is in line for upgrades, however. The harsh conditions and the unique location of the Arctic make it challenging to keep up equipment and infrastructure, and DOD wants to maintain “robust domain awareness and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities,” Hicks said.

Monitoring

To up domain awareness in the region, the strategy calls for the Pentagon to invest in new technologies like updated radars, new satellites, and better communications networks. Hicks also told reporters she is interested in developing new unmanned platforms to perform domain awareness missions so that humans don’t have to in the harsh conditions.

“You have to ensure that even those uncrewed systems are survivable long enough at least to endure or are so inexpensive that their attritable nature is still worth it for the mission you’re putting them on,” she said. “So that means a lot of research and development and testing, and that’s where we’re focused in this area; Looking at the possibilities of where uncrewed systems can bring value.”

Yet Ferguson noted that many of the same problems that affect manned systems in the Arctic could also plague drones.

“Where we can lean into remote platforms, it can make a lot of sense,” she said. “However, it’s really tricky to operate remote platforms due to weather and due to connectivity issues. And so that’s where we’re trying to lean is looking at how we can test and do some R&D around ensuring these platforms can can operate.”

Specifically, the strategy says the Pentagon will “maintain” its current investments in manned and unmanned ISR platforms for the Arctic, while conducting an “analysis of requirements for future unmanned platforms.”

Responding

To prepare to respond to a crisis in the Arctic, the Pentagon wants to keep conducting regular exercises and develop its “regional expertise.”

The strategy notes regular exercises with an Air Force presence like U.S. Indo-Pacific Command’s Northern Edge, Northern Command’s Noble Defender, and European Command’s Arctic Challenge as ways to build that expertise, in addition to operations such as “supporting NATO’s Air Policing mission in Iceland; and providing airlift and refueling capability to U.S. and appropriate Ally and partner aircraft in the Arctic region.”

Air Force leaders have emphasized the importance of improved training in the Arctic before. In 2023, Lt. Gen. David S. Nahom, head of Alaskan Command, cited the issue during AFA’s Air, Space, & Cyber Conference.

“We frankly don’t do a good job in terms of training. We’re not just training aircrew how to fly but [wanting] everyone in the command to learn how to fly. The conditions require for that. How we train and how we operate can be improved,” Nahom said.

Perhaps the Air Force’s most unique Arctic capability is its LC-130, equipped with skis to land on ice. The “Skibird” fleet has gotten some upgrades over the years, but some lawmakers are calling for the aircraft to be recapitalized after decades of use.

Beyond the LC-130, though, the Air Force has a strong presence near the Arctic with F-16 and F-35 fighters, KC-135 tankers, and HH-60 helicopters all at Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska—and the Pentagon strategy noted that fighter presence in particular will continue to grow.

“By the 2030s the United States and our Arctic Allies will operate over 250 advanced multirole combat aircraft that could be deployed for Arctic operations,” the document states.

“That’s another incredible statistic to show the alignment of our allies and partners,” said Ferguson, “that the majority of our Arctic allies will have the F-35.”

B-52s Mark Historic Firsts with Finland and Romania, Intercepted by Russia

July 22, 2024 | By Unshin Lee Harpley and Chris Gordon

Two B-52 Stratofortresses flew through Finnish airspace for the first time ever over the weekend, before landing in Romania to start the first ever operational deployment of the aircraft from that country.

The strategic bombers, from Barksdale Air Force Base, La., flew across Norway before flying over Lapland, Finland’s northernmost region that borders Russia, Sweden, and Norway. Russia, which shares more than 800 miles of border with Finland, took note.

While flying in formation with NATO allies’ fighters, the B-52s were intercepted by two Russian aircraft over the Barents Sea in the Arctic on July 21, U.S. Air Forces in Europe (USAFE) said in a statement. The Russian Ministry of Defense said it scrambled its MiG-29 and MiG-31 fighters to intercept the bombers approaching the Russian border over the Barents Sea.

However, unlike previous incidents involving U.S. drones and manned aircraft over the Black Sea and Syria, the Russians did not behave recklessly during their intercept of the B-52s in USAFE, two U.S. officials told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

“The intercept was deemed safe and professional,” a command official said.

Russian intercepts of American and allied aircraft since Moscow’s February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine have turned risky at times. Intercepts of aircraft are not inherently objectionable to the U.S., which conducts its own intercepts of Russian warplanes flying near Alaska in international airspace several times per year. Russian bombers are also sometimes intercepted in international airspace in Northern Europe by NATO jets that sit on alert.

But in March 2023, a Russian fighter clipped a USAF MQ-9 propeller while intercepting the drone over the Black Sea, causing the operator to crash the uncontrollable aircraft into the water. Over the summer, Russian warplanes routinely harassed American manned and unmanned aircraft over Syria in incidents U.S. officials said sometimes “put lives at risk.”

In the July 21 incident, the Air Force said in a release that the bombers were flying “in accordance with international law,” which Moscow did not dispute.

“The crews of the Russian fighters identified the aerial target as a pair of U.S. Air Force B-52H strategic bombers,” the Russian Defense Ministry wrote on Telegram. “As the Russian fighters approached, the U.S. strategic bombers turned away from the State Border of the Russian Federation.”

The bombers from Barksdale’s 20th Bomb Squadron touched down at Mihail Kogalniceanu Airbase, Romania, afterward, where they are currently operating as part of Bomber Task Force 24-4.

The mission saw the two bombers integrate with numerous NATO fighters. Two Finnish F/A-18 Hornets, two German Eurofighter Typhoons, two Polish F-16s, two Hungarian JAS-39 Gripens, and two Romanian F-16s escorted the bombers on their journey. The operation was also supported by U.S. refueling aircraft, including one KC-46 and two KC-135s from the 100th Air Refueling Wing, a USAF unit based at RAF Mildenhall, United Kingdom.

“In today’s global environment, it is vital that we be postured to deliver a range of sustainable capability from great distances,” Gen. James Hecker, the head of USAFE and NATO Allied Air Command, said in a statement. “This iteration of Bomber Task Force offers an excellent opportunity to refine our agile combat employment tactics, techniques, and procedures.”

Finland’s Defense Minister Antti Häkkänen posted to social media confirming the cooperation with the long-range bombers in Finnish territory, saying that it was “a normal cooperation carried out in the territory of a NATO member country and it demonstrate the basic pillar of common defense and deterrence.”

The U.S. will soon preposition aircraft and vessels in Finland following the signing of a bilateral Defense Cooperation Agreement between Häkkänen and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in December. While specific details regarding the types of U.S. assets to be stationed in Finland have not been disclosed, Washington is expected to deploy its assets and forces across various designated military facilities in Finland for future training and exercises, as outlined in the agreement.

The presence of the B-52s in Finnish airspace and in Romania comes in the wake of NATO announcing plans to bolster defense and cooperation for its Eastern Flank region.

An initiative outlined in the Washington Summit Declaration includes plans to establish a NATO presence in Finland, and fully integrate the nation into NATO plans, forces, and command structures to leverage their capabilities.

“The U.S. is dedicated to work alongside our NATO Allies and partners along the Eastern Flank to ensure we have the combined skills and coordination capabilities necessary to maintain regional safety, security, and stability,” said Hecker.

Editor’s Note: This article was updated on July 23 with additional details.

Air Traffic Control For Drones? Air Force Tests Out New System

July 22, 2024 | By David Roza

The Air Force achieved a milestone in May by testing out a new tool for controlling high volumes of small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS) in military airspace. The new system is part of a larger government, military, and industry effort to develop Unmanned Aircraft Systems Traffic Management (UTM) systems as the number of small drones for public and private use explodes.

In the near future, the skies may be crowded with small drones delivering packages, inspecting infrastructure, responding to 9-1-1 calls, ferrying passengers, and other tasks at a scale that current air traffic control systems just can’t handle.

“We are expecting millions of drones and their operations in a day, which is a magnitude order different than what happens with current aviation where there are 50,000 aircraft, and [only] about 6,000 at peak in the sky,” Dr. Parimal Kopardekar, director of NASA Aeronautics Research Institute, said in a 2021 NASA video about UTM.

“The question is, how do we manage these millions of drones without burdening the current air traffic control system?” he said.

air traffic drone — An Uncrewed Aircraft System Traffic Management (UTM) at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla. (U.S. Air Force photo by Samuel King Jr.)

Current ATC systems rely on human controllers who see the entire picture of the local airspace talking voice-to-voice with human pilots who do not. By contrast, UTMs rely on drones sharing information with each other to create a common picture that is automatically updated to show each drone’s flight plan.

“That allows [drones] … to figure out a path that will avoid other vehicles in the sky,” Kopardekar explained.

The goal is to bring order to what could otherwise be a chaotic situation: the NASA video alluded to city streets before the invention of road rules, when automobiles, pedestrians, and horse-drawn carriages competing for space led to “general mayhem ruling the day.”

While UTM has applications in the civilian world, MacDill Air Force Base, Fla., became the first Air Force base to use the technology in military airspace, according to a July 12 press release. This specific system is called the Collaborative Low-Altitude Unmanned Aircraft System Integration Effort (CLUE).

Senior Airman Brooks Dingman, 6th Operations Group air traffic controller, or ATC, uses Collaborative Low-Altitude Unmanned Aircraft System Integration Effort, or CLUE, June 6, 2024, to establish constraint to let small Unmanned Aircraft System, or UAS, operators know where ATC approval is required to fly drones at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida. (U.S. Air Force courtesy photo)

The CLUE UTM was developed by the Air Force Research Laboratory to prepare airfield managers, Security Forces Airmen, civil engineers, and other fields for ensuring safe UAS traffic overhead. MacDill first tested out the system in 2022, but it needed refining. Two years later, the system “began formal operational feasibility assessment activities,” according to the press release. The tests mark a major milestone because it is the first UTM system that the Air Force will operationally assess, Phil Zaleski, AFRL CLUE program manager, said in the release.

In the test, UAS operators asked CLUE for permission to fly the drones, and if their request was granted, operators could fly within an allowed area. CLUE updated the operators with new information and warned them if the drones went beyond approved conditions, the release explained. The network also integrated with a range of sensors, including a counter-UAS system, to detect, track, and identify small drones.

It was not clear what the results of the test were, but overall, the system cuts down on “lengthy, manual and advanced planning procedures,” which “will be critical to achieving real-time flight planning and mission execution,” James Layton, MacDill’s chief of plans and programs, said in the release.

The Air Force’s Zero Trust Strategy Is Out—and Acknowledges Big Hurdles.

July 21, 2024 | By Shaun Waterman

The Department of the Air Force faces significant hurdles in implementing the Pentagon’s latest cybersecurity approach, dubbed Zero Trust, and will fail altogether if it continues to lag on key issues, according to its own strategy document.

The final section of the 27-page strategy, quietly published earlier this month by the department’s Chief Information Officer (CIO) Venice Goodwine, is titled “Risks,” and calls out seven issues which could cause problems in the transition to Zero Trust, or even derail it entirely:

Institutional resistance to the massive cultural shift required

Lagging development of tools for automated data tagging, labeling and management

Nascent state of endpoint cybersecurity for non-IT equipment like IoT devices and weapons systems

A lack of industry open standards leading to proliferation of proprietary solutions and danger of vendor lock-in

The need for a complete refitting of Air Force data centers which the department can’t afford until 2028

Operational blind spots

“Delays in these areas risk preventing DAF’s transition to advanced Zero Trust maturity,” states the strategy.

The CIO office declined to make anyone available to Air & Space Forces Magazine for interview, but in a written statement, Department of the Air Force spokesperson Laura McAndrews said Zero Trust is a more challenging transition than prior IT changes because “it is an architectural imperative that touches every device, user, and piece of data in the Department.”

From Castle and Moat to Every Room Guarded

In the traditional cybersecurity model, often compared to a castle surrounded by a moat, once a user logged on and was admitted across the drawbridge, they could wander at will inside the castle. A hacker able to steal the username and password of even the most humble employee would have effectively free reign inside the network.

In Zero Trust, every room in the castle is guarded. Getting across the drawbridge only gets you inside the rooms you have permission to enter. A hacker impersonating an employee will only get access to the data and resources the employee would have.

But that requires every single piece of data in the Air Force enterprise to be sorted and labeled, so that it is clear how sensitive it is and who needs access to it, explained Chris Hughes, president and cofounder of Aquia, a cybersecurity consultancy that has done work for the Air Force.

“The data has to be tagged to dictate who can access it under what circumstances,” said Hughes, a former Air Force staff sergeant.

Given the staggering scale of the task, he said he wasn’t surprised the work was lagging. “It’s going to be very, very daunting to go about implementing a robust data tagging and labeling strategy and to keep it up to date,” he said, “Because so much [data] is being created so quickly, changed, interacted with, modified, across the entire Air Force enterprise. It’s just a daunting task.”

But the scale and speed of the data is only part of the problem, according to Patrick Arvidson, who was the National Security Agency’s technical director for weapons and space cybersecurity prior to retirement in 2022, and has been consulting in the private sector since.

“I love my brothers and sisters in the federal government, but many of them are perfectionists in the cybersecurity area,” Arvidson said. “They want the 100 percent solution instead of the 80 percent solution. And that is crippling.”

Perfectionism, said Arvidson, is a cultural issue in the federal government and particularly troublesome for Zero Trust.

“One of the cultural shifts that has to happen is understanding that with Zero Trust, or anything else that we’re getting on to, it’s okay to have an 80 percent solution. Let’s plan for the 80 percent and then manage the other 20 percent,” he said. “Because you’re never going to get the 100 percent solution.”

Institutional Resistance to Change

The mention of institutional resistance to change as “the greatest risk to this strategy” is Hughes’ favorite part of the document, he told Air & Space Forces magazine.

“That institutional inertia which they called out … is most certainly the biggest risk to any modernization effort. Not just Zero Trust, but any modernization effort in a large bureaucratic enterprise,” he said. “It’s in the nature of both humans and large bureaucracies. We’ve got this environment in the government, in particular, where they’re very risk-averse.

“Change can make people uncomfortable. Maybe they’re used to the way they operate, or they’re used to a certain workflow, or they’re used to using certain products, and you want to change that. That may make them feel uncomfortable, or even threatened, if they’ve built expertise in the way things are traditionally done.”

Spokeswoman Laura McAndrews acknowledged that Zero Trust involved centralizing decision-making about the network and the broader IT environment. “It is a fundamental change of the span of control away from individual programs towards enterprise capabilities,” she said, adding that resistance was common in organizations “where services of common concern deliver the promise of expanded functionality and greatly reduced cost at the cost of giving up some autonomy.”

The changes are also happening as programs are “in the middle of their execution cycle, which can be very challenging for enablement and adoption of enterprise services,” she said.

Dangers of Vendor Lock

Long term, experts said, the lack of industry-wide standards for cybersecurity functions like event logging or incident reporting is likely to be one of the most severe problems, because it means Air Force managers might quickly find themselves trapped with a single vendor or even a particular combination of vendors.

“There is no true plug-and-play environment,” Arvidson said, “and if there’s no plug-and-play environment, you have no competition, because I bought a product and now I can’t get rid of the product, because I can’t swap it out, because everything on it is customized and I’ve built my network around it.”

He said even bringing in additional products from different vendors could paradoxically worsen the vendor lock problem, because every new product brought in requires custom integration, representing a sunk cost which would be lost by switching to a new vendor.

“Let’s say my product’s doing fine and I bring in a secondary product, and I invest money into integrating that, and I bring in a third or fourth or fifth product, over the next few years. Then I’m stuck. I can’t swap the base layer out because that’s what all the other products are integrated with, but I can’t even swap out one of the secondary products except at great expense because they’re all custom integrations.”

Even technologies built to allow interoperability are not themselves standardized, he said, giving as an example proprietary Application Programming Interfaces or APIs, which allow applications to communicate with each other through a specially designed gateway.

“The API system right now is completely proprietary,” he said, “Industry is not standardizing on it because it’s not profitable to standardize on it. They’ve built their products their way, right? Integrations are a moneymaker.”

Arvidson said the problem would take strong leadership from the federal government to fix.

“If you really want to actually leapfrog this forward, pull everybody together in a room and say, ‘Guess what?’ We are going to make a standardized API for the federal government that every product’s got to meet,” said Arvidson. “And then after that, it will roll downhill fast, because once you start to see the prices drop because you’re flexible and you can swap products in and out, things will open way up.”

Zero Trust would potentially enable huge cost savings by allowing Air Force managers to “collapse the networks,” Arvidson said.

Currently, an Air Force base will have three networks: unclassified, secret and top secret. Each will have its own routers and switches, even its own cabling, as well as its own desktop or laptop computers. But once secret or top secret traffic leaves the base, it travels across commercial networks, protected by strong encryption.

“What if I could do the same on the base?” explained Arvidson. “What if, instead of a [unclassified] NIPRNet, a [secret-level classified] SIPRNet and the [top secret] JWICS, I just run everything on one network, and I can get rid of 80 percent of my IT infrastructure. … All this is about leveraging technology to free up resources.”

Blind Spots

But Zero Trust has its blind spots, too, argues Arvindson. “Look at the MoveIt attack” which exploited a flaw in file-sharing software to steal data from law firms, accountants, and other large businesses, he said. “The bad guys didn’t move [across the network], the data moved to them. They sat out on an API gateway and let the data move from cloud to cloud, and took the data that way.”

“Now if your data is encrypted in transit, like the military’s, then they won’t be able to access it, which is awesome. I don’t want my adversaries to be able to read my plans and projections. But if the adversary just decides to encrypt that data again, like a ransomware attack, we can’t access it either. They’re denying us the data. They still meet their objective, right?

“And the zero trust approach doesn’t fix that,” he concluded.

China Halts Nuclear Arms Control Talks with US: Why and What’s Next

July 19, 2024 | By Unshin Lee Harpley

Earlier this week, the People’s Republic of China confirmed it is halting its nuclear arms control talks with the U.S., in retaliation for the U.S. continuing to sell arms to Taiwan. The move reinforces a “pattern of behavior” from Beijing, experts say.

“A part of their goal is to link the Taiwan issue to other issues that Washington views as important,” Brian Hart, China Power Project Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “Essentially, they’re saying ‘the U.S. and China can’t make progress on issues of strategic or national importance without addressing Taiwan.’”

A similar situation unfolded in the wake of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August 2022; Beijing cut off a number of areas of dialogue and engagement, including key areas of military-to-military engagement.

“It took a lot of effort to rebuild some of those areas of dialogue,” says Hart.

China has long avoided nuclear arms talks with the U.S. and Russia. Despite Russia suspending discussions with the U.S. last year, Washington continued to pursue bilateral engagement with China to prevent misunderstandings. Discussions with Beijing gained traction in the last few months as both nations engaged in semi-official consultations.

Now, however, progress is stalled.

Apart from using Taiwan as an excuse, China perceives such negotiation as constraining itself without achieving a level of parity with other major nuclear powers like the U.S. and Russia, said Daniel Rice, a China military and political strategy subject matter expert at the Krulak Center for Innovation and Future Warfare. Beijing avoids committing to weapons agreements to gauge not only a “temperature read” of the foreign relations, but also prevent itself from being disadvantaged when engaging on the topic, said Rice.

“It provides them just more flexibility in the way that they approach their military modernization,” Rice said. “In terms of nuclear buildup, China wants to have its own autonomy in decision making. Having a formal agreement, if it ever reached that point, would fundamentally limit Beijing’s options by essentially handcuffing itself to an international, or at least a bilateral agreement on those matters.”

China’s rapid advancements in nuclear power has been a significant concern for the U.S. and its allies. The Pentagon estimates China could possess more than 1,000 operational nuclear warheads by 2030, many of which will be deployed at readiness levels. Last week at the NATO summit, the alliance warned of Beijing’s expansion and diversification of its nuclear arsenal, pointing to “more warheads and a larger number of sophisticated delivery systems” and urging China to engage in strategic risk reduction talks.

The current weapons count isn’t a major concern for U.S. defense leaders, as Washington holds about 3,700 nuclear warheads, compared to Beijing’s estimated 400 warheads. But with their substantial investment in nuclear weapons, the Chinese aspire to achieve “a greater level of parity with Washington and Moscow, so that it could also make decisions and engage on these issues from a position of greater strength and somewhat equality,” said Hart.

Now, with both China and Russia refusing to negotiate measures to constrain the nuclear arms race, experts are concerned. On top of that, tensions remain high across the Taiwan Strait, as China eyes to bolster its arsenal so that it has a “greater leverage in the event of a Taiwan scenario,” according to Hart.

This underscores the critical modernization of Washington’s nuclear triad.

“The way we counter these threats is through deterrence, and it must be backed up with a credible force,” Jennifer Reeves, Senior Fellow of Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, said. “We have no ability to have this conversation if we are not seen as a credible threat. This country must recapitalize its nuclear enterprise, and do it as quickly, swiftly, and as competently as possible. This has been languishing for 30 years.”

The Pentagon’s ongoing effort to modernize the nuclear triad includes acquiring 100 B-21 bombers to replace legacy B-1s and B-2s by the 2030s, and procuring the land-based Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile to replace the aging Minuteman III. Despite cost overruns, Sentinel survived a Department of Defense review and received a green light to proceed earlier this month—which Reeves stressed “our only option at this point.”

Following China’s decision to discontinue talks, the State Department said the PRC’s approach “undermines strategic stability and increases the risk of arms race dynamics.”

“But we, the United States, will remain open to developing and implementing concrete risk-reduction measures with China,” spokesperson Matthew Miller said.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry official said China stands ready to maintain talks with Washington on international arms control but demands that the U.S. “must respect” China’s interests in Taiwan.

F-35 Deliveries Resume After a Year on Hold

July 19, 2024 | By John A. Tirpak

Lockheed Martin began delivering F-35s again on July 19, after a year of building the fighters and putting them directly into storage because their Tech Refresh 3 systems and software were not fully tested. Lockheed Martin can now receive progress payments for the jets, some 90-100 of which accumulated during the delivery hold.

Two F-35As were delivered, both to the Air Force: one to Dannelly Field, Ala., where it will serve with the 187th Fighter Wing of the Air National Guard, and one to Nellis Air Force Base, Nev. An Air Force spokesperson said the two locations were next line to receive F-35s when deliveries were halted. The service was not prepared to make further comment.

The deliveries will take place using a “phased” approach, the F-35 Joint Program Office said.

Lt. Gen. Michael J. Schmidt, program executive officer for the F-35 JPO, determined in the last few weeks that operational units could safely fly with a “truncated” version of the TR-3 software, after it demonstrated sufficient stability in flight tests. F-35 partners and users had already green-lighted the plan to accept a “truncated” version of the TR-3 in order to get deliveries moving. The long delivery hold had disrupted absorption and equipage plans among users, who could not efficiently train new pilots and maintainers of the fighter.

“We have initiated a phased approach to the delivery of TR-3 F-35 aircraft,” Schmidt said in a press statement. “The first phase will deliver jets with an initial training capability in July and August. By the end of August, we will be delivering jets with a robust combat training capability, as we continue towards the delivery of full TR-3 combat capabilities in 2025.”

Lockheed Martin told Air & Space Forces Magazine it will now deliver new F-35s “as they come off the line, per our standard procedure, while also preparing and delivering the jets previously awaiting delivery to an ensure an efficient backlog recovery and unwind.” A spokesperson said the jets that have been awaiting delivery “have been maintained to ensure efficient delivery procedures are able to occur as quickly as possible. The jets are being updated with the latest software release prior to DD250,” which is the process/document that goes with delivery of a new aircraft.

Lockheed also said U.S. jets will be delivered first, as they go through an “airworthiness process.” International users will receive deliveries later, “as the unwind progresses.”

Bridget Lauderdale, Lockheed’s vice president and F-35 general manager, said the “TR-3 and Block 4 represent a critical evolution in capability and their full development remains a top priority for us. …[These] and further software updates over the life of the program will ensure the F-35 continues to be an effective deterrent and the cornerstone of joint all-domain operations now and decades into the future.”

Schmidt said the JPO’s focus “has been on providing our customers with aircraft that are stable, capable, and maintainable, and this phased approach does that.”

Although “much work remains,” Schmidt thanked the government and industry team for the work it has put into delivering the TR-3-configured jets.

“This is an important first step,” he said. “I am confident our team will work tirelessly to achieve the desired and necessary results that our warfighters, allies and customers require,” he added.

“We weren’t expecting to receive more jets until the end of the year, but the timing couldn’t have been more perfect,” 187th Fighter Wing deputy commander Col. Chistopher Germann said in an Air Force press release. “With the additional aircraft, we can provide the maximum amount of training to continue to be proficient and effective with these jets.” The delivery means “increased flying hours for our pilots and hands-on experience for our maintainers.”

Neither Lockheed nor the Pentagon have been willing to say how many jets have been stored or where, saying it’s a security risk to do so.

Two major support facilities for the F-35 will be completed at Dannelly over the next few months; a supply building and a simulator facility, the wing said in a press release.