NGAD Review to Finish Before End of Year, Allvin Says

NGAD Review to Finish Before End of Year, Allvin Says

Oct. 28, 2024 | By Chris Gordon

The future of the Air Force’s next-generation combat jet will be decided by the end of the year, the service’s top officer said Oct. 25. 

“We intend to have that by December,” Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin said at the Military Reporters and Editors Conference in Washington, D.C. “We also want to be able to influence the Department’s Presidential Budget Submission in February.”

As currently conceived, the Next-Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) combat aircraft is a “very expensive, very capable crewed platform,” Allvin said. The Air Force paused the project this summer as it was reaching a decision point for choosing between competing designs to replace the F-22 Raptor. Rather than commit, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall wanted to make sure the Air Force wasn’t betting its future on a capability that might be had at lower cost if requirements were changed.

The NGAD design precedes the progress USAF has made with semi-autonomous Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA). Allvin said the Air Force plans to have more than 150 CCAs in service within the next five years.

CCAs don’t require life-support systems and could be developed at a fraction of the cost of manned fighters. That’s raising questions about what the mix of unmanned and manned aircraft should be.

“NGAD is a family of systems,” Allvin said. “One piece of the system is the NGAD penetrating counterair crewed platform. Some would say it’s the follow-on to the F-22. … It is part of a family of systems. That family of systems includes Collaborative Combat Aircraft, which are uncrewed. But those are already underway.”

The Air Force is studying its future force design at the same time, driven by China’s growing military and its anti-access/area denial strategy in the South China Sea. The manned NGAD platform was supposed to be able to penetrate those defenses, but the threat today is greater than it was just a few years ago.  

“The ability to say, ‘We know that when this platform delivers, it is going to meet the threat’—I think we’re less certain about that than we were when we designed it,” Allvin said.

“We are now in the point where … if we go down this path, this will be a very, very costly program,” Alvin added. “The question is, with the cost, the capability, and where the threat is, is it the right [choice]?”

Pausing to consider all the options is not “slow rolling or stalling,” Allvin said. “I would call it something that’s prudent because once we go through this one-way door, it’s hard to pivot.”

The Air Force has pegged the cost of NGAD at “hundreds of millions of dollars,” but Kendall said in September that he wants NGAD capability in a far less costly platform: no more than the cost of today’s F-35—less than half the cost of the projected NGAD crewed aircraft. 

CCAs are what changed Kendall’s thinking. Designed to work in close collaboration with F-35s and B-21 Raider bombers, they could reduce the requirement for a penetrating combat jet and make additional B-21s more attractive to Air Force planners. The Air Force has never said NGAD would resemble the F-22 or other fighter-type platforms, designed to outmaneuver rival fighters. Its mission is to penetrate and suppress enemy air defenses, which might make it more like a smaller, faster stealth bomber.

Would the Air Force consider buying more than the 100 B-21s now planned? Allvin answered: “We have not taken that off the table.”

Yet developing and fielding crewed NGAD aircraft remains a possibility, Allvin said. “I don’t like people having the presupposition that because we’re pausing and analyzing, we’re walking away from it,” he said. “That decision has not been made.”

A blue-ribbon panel, including three former Air Force Chiefs of Staff, one former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and two leading civilian experts is reviewing the evidence now and will recommend a way forward in December.

“As we are analyzing this, we need to understand, ‘Is this the best for the cost of what we think the threat is going to be?’ and ‘Is this the best way to be able to achieve air superiority?’” Allvin said. “And if it turns out that this platform design, as currently instantiated, is the best … we have to figure out how to pay for it.”

Air Force F-16s from Germany Deploy to Middle East

Air Force F-16s from Germany Deploy to Middle East

Oct. 27, 2024 | By Chris Gordon

As tensions spiral in the Middle East, U.S. Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcons from Germany have flown to the region, U.S. Central Command said Oct. 25.

The F-16s are from the 480th Fighter Squadron at Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany, and represent some of the service’s most advanced models. 

They arrived just a little before Israeli aircraft attacked Iran on Oct. 26 in retaliation for Tehran’s ballistic missile attack on Israel on Oct. 1. The U.S. is hoping the fighting between Israel and Iran will end at this point and has warned Iran against escalating the confrontation. 

Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III told his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant, that day that “the United States is well-postured to defend U.S. forces, facilities, and partners across the region” and that “Iran should not make the mistake of responding to Israel’s strikes, which should mark the end of this exchange,” according to a Pentagon readout of the call.

The 480th Fighter Squadron has some of the Air Force’s most capable F-16s, the so-called Block 50 jets that specialize in suppressing enemy air defenses. They will eventually replace the F-16s previously deployed to the Middle East from the 510th Fighter Squadron, based at Aviano Air Base, Italy, which were sent to the region in the spring. But to boost U.S. airpower in the region, the return of the Aviano F-16s has been delayed, giving the U.S. two F-16 squadrons in the Middle East.

An image from video shows a cockpit view of an F-16 from the 480th Fighter Squadron, Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany, operating as an opposition force for a counter-air exercise in June 2024. Chris Gordon/staff

U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptors are also in the region while additional squadrons of F-15 Strike Eagles and A-10 Thunderbolt II attack planes also arrived in the past month. The U.S. has also bolstered its air defense in the region with the deployment of a Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) ballistic missile defense system to Israel.

The Air Force F-16s, F-15E Strike Eagles, and F-22s that have deployed to the Middle East are equipped with active electronically scanned array (AESA) radars. That makes those fighters more capable of taking down drones, such as those launched by Iran, which fly at a low altitude and have a small radar cross-section, a senior U.S. defense official told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

“We are deploying them … as timely as we can,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin said when asked about the Air Force units sent to the region at the Military Reporters and Editors Conference on Oct. 25. “We certainly intend to fulfill all of those as soon as possible.”

‘Every Dirt Boy’s Dream’: RED HORSE Airmen Restore Pacific WWII Airfield

‘Every Dirt Boy’s Dream’: RED HORSE Airmen Restore Pacific WWII Airfield

Oct. 25, 2024 | By David Roza

Clearing jungle and laying asphalt in tropical heat may not sound like fun to most people, but it’s a way of life for Rapid Engineer Deployable Heavy Operational Repair Squadron Engineers (RED HORSE) Airmen, who have spent the past year or so restoring World War II-era airfields on the Pacific island of Tinian.

“This is a huge scale,” Senior Master Sgt. Zachary Long of the 513th Expeditionary RED HORSE Squadron said in a video about the restoration effort posted to the Air Force Civil Engineers YouTube channel on Oct. 24.

“I mean, we’re talking like 500 acres, this area is, and [the Airmen] have the opportunity to run all the heavy equipment,” he added. “You can’t beat it. This is every Dirt Boy’s dream.”

Dirt Boyz is the term for civil engineer Airmen who get their hands dirty pouring concrete, operating bulldozers, fixing pipes, and all the other work involved in maintaining an air base or building a new one. Few units get more sweaty or dirty than RED HORSE squadrons, which move out fast to build or repair airfields, hangars, and other facilities when the Air Force needs it in a hurry.

Last year, the 820th RED HORSE Squadron from Nellis Air Force Base, Nev., arrived at Tinian to restore the runways at North Field, a complex of ramps, runways, and taxiways at the island’s north end. North Field was where Little Boy, the first nuclear weapon used in warfare, was assembled and loaded onto the B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay before its flight to drop the bomb on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945.

Tinian, Mariana Islands, 1945 after airfield construction, looking north to south. The massive North Field, 313th Bombardment Wing in front, West Field, 58th Bombardment Wing, in background. (U.S. Air Force Historical Research Agency photo)

The Enola Gay was just one of hundreds of aircraft that took off and landed there after the U.S. seized it from Japan in August, 1944.

“As soon as the island was seized, the Seabees, the Navy’s construction battalions, began work on the largest airbase of World War II—and in fact the largest airfield in the world at the time,” according to the National Park Service. Eventually 40,000 people worked at the base, which had six 8,500-foot runways: four in North Field and two more farther south at West Field. 

International observers view the pit where the first atomic bomb used in warfare was loaded onto the Enola Gay, a B-29 Superfortress, Tinian, Feb. 13, 2024. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Akeem K. Campbell)

From there, B-29s took off to bomb Japan and Southeast Asia, but the airfields were largely abandoned by the U.S. military between 1946 and 2003, when Marines returned to Tinian for a training exercise. Marine aircraft and Guam Air National Guardsmen used a few North Field runways in the 2000s and 2010s, while Seabees and Marine engineers started improving infrastructure on the island at least as early as 2020. 

The former West Field became the Tinian International Airport and is still in use to this day: Air Force F-22 fighters landed there for the first time in March 2023. That year, the Air Force went public with its plans to restore North Field, with then-Pacific Air Forces commander Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach telling Nikkei Asia that the area would be transformed into an “extensive” facility. The Air Force received $79 million in its 2024 budget for construction projects on the island.

An F-22 Raptor assigned to the 525th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron, Kadena Air Base, Japan, launches from Tinian International Airport, Northern Mariana Islands, during Exercise Agile Reaper 23-1, March 2, 2023. U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Hailey Staker

The return to Tinian is part of a strategy called Agile Combat Employment, where, in a conflict with China, small groups of Airmen would launch and recover aircraft from small, scattered air bases to avoid being targeted by long-range missiles. Tinian is one of several locations across the Pacific where the Air Force may operate in a future conflict. 

But preparing those airfields takes work, and that’s where units such as RED HORSE come in. The 823rd RED HORSE Squadron from Hurlburt Field, Fla., spent more than six months restoring and rebuilding North Field, putting up new structures and clearing eight decades of overgrown vegetation, according to an April press release. The 823rd went home in April, but other RED HORSE units and Navy Seabees took up the task, with the goal of restoring over 20 million square feet of degraded World War II pavement. Restoring is easier than building brand-new runways, Airmen explained.

“Building new is not the way to go and it’s very expensive,” Lt. Col. Frank Blaz, former commander of the Guam Air National Guard’s 254th RED HORSE Squadron, said in the Civil Engineers video. “Repairing and rehabilitating what exists is a much better economic solution.”

Sometimes the work involved hacking through the jungle with a machete to find GPS coordinates marking the airfield boundary, Master Sgt. Jody Branson, operations superintendent with the 513th Expeditionary RED HORSE Squadron, told the Wall Street Journal in a recent video.

“This was part of the battle that we fought every day, going through the jungle to mark these points the entire day through the rain, through the humidity and the heat of the day,” he said. 

Tinian’s North Field photographed from above in 2024. (Screenshot via YouTube/Air Force Civil Engineers)

The work paid off: squadron commander Maj. Blake Rothschild told the Journal that the team cleared North Field’s Charlie runway, which was completely covered in vegetation before they arrived.

“Over the last 60 days, what they have opened up is really monumental,” he said. “It’s crazy how fast they’ve done it.”

Completing the mission could take years, but it’s a top priority for Air Force officials, including Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin.

“Our Airmen at Tinian are successfully expanding our Agile Combat Employment options to enhance deterrence, increase flexibility, and, if needed, rapidly generate combat power,” Allvin said after visiting Tinian in April. “They are the pathfinders for advancing our scheme of maneuver in the Indo-Pacific.”

Northrop: USAF Weighs Buying More B-21 Bombers

Northrop: USAF Weighs Buying More B-21 Bombers

Oct. 25, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

As the Air Force rethinks requirements for its Next-Generation Air Dominance fighter, it appears to be reconsidering the number of B-21 bombers it needs, as well. 

“I think that’s exactly what the Air Force is looking at,” said Northrop Grumman CEO Kathy Warden, which makes the B-21 and is not competing for NGAD. “They are undertaking a force structure design review, and the Secretary has been open about looking at the various options they have for increasing their force size and has talked specifically about NGAD. And we know that B-21 is in the mix as well.”

Warden made her comments during an earnings call Oct. 24.

The Air Force is in the midst of a congressionally mandated force structure review and, at the same time, rushing to complete the NGAD requirements analysis ordered up after Secretary Frank Kendall paused NGAD ahead of a down-select decision on two competing designs this summer. NGAD has always been seen as an extension of the B-21 family of systems, a necessary addition to ensure the Raider gets to its target and makes it back out safely.

Air Force officials have insisted 100 Raiders is sufficient to the current need, though others have argued for building more. But Warden said Oct. 24 that the size of the B-21 fleet is one factor in part of a broader requirements review.  

Cost is a major factor. Kendall paused NGAD because of the cost of each aircraft. Having previously suggested that each sixth-generation jet could cost multiple hundreds of millions of dollars, he said in September he’d prefer to pay no more than the cost of an F-35, or $80 million to $100 million per tail. 

The difference, spread across a fleet size of 200-250 fighters, would yield tens of billions in savings. That’s where the B-21 comes into play. Asked during the Oct. 24 earnings call if NGAD savings could fund more B-21s, Warden made her comments.  

The Air Force uses 2010 as the base year for calculating B-21 costs, when the unit cost per bomber was contractually set at $550 million. That puts its cost in current dollars at about $780 million. However, Kendall told Congress in April that the B-21 was below cost projections for low-rate initial production. The cost ceiling will go up for subsequent aircraft. 

“It would be premature for me to suggest where that force structure review will end up,” Warden said of the Air Force study. “But I do think in the coming months, we may get a better indication from the Air Force as to how they’re thinking about B-21 quantities in the long run.”

In March, then-deputy chief for planning Lt. Gen. Richard G. Moore Jr. told lawmakers that a decision on a larger fleet wouldn’t be needed until the 2030s. A month later, Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin said he wasn’t looking to buy more than 100 because technological developments could produce something better by the time all those aircraft are built. 

Others have argued for more Raiders, however. Air Force Gen. Anthony J. Cotton, the head of U.S. Strategic Command, has said he would “love” to have more B-21s. 

“If you take a look at the real world operating requirements the Air Force has, [planners] fully understand that the Air Force’s combat capacity must grow,” retired Col. Mark Gunzinger of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “And if the challenge is to fight tonight, to respond over global ranges … that drives requirements for longer range capabilities, larger payloads, and capabilities that can operate in degraded, highly contested threat environments. That is a prescription for penetrating bombers. It’s a very common sense narrative for why we need to rebuild our bomber force.”

Gunzinger said the U.S. needs to scale up to deter two peer adversaries in Russia and China, and that more B-21s, procured at a faster rate, is the best way to do so. 

“The most cost-effective way of doing that is to increase the acquisition of B-21 because it’s a two-for-one deal,” Gunzinger said. “It enhances conventional defense and it enhances nuclear deterrence.”

But Gunzinger questioned the idea of shifting spending from NGAD to B-21.

“I don’t think the capabilities they’re looking for in NGAD would mean that they could trade off NGAD for B-21 or vice versa,” Gunzinger said. “The fact is, the Air Force is so small and so old, it needs both, and it needs them in quantity.”

Another analyst, Christopher Bowie, has said: “We should plan to build more than the 100 currently on the books [because] no matter how capable an aircraft, it can only be in one place at one time.” 

Citing studies from the Mitchell Institute, the MITRE Corporation, and the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, Gunzinger assessed that that the Air Force needs a bomber fleet of 300 or more aircraft, with 200 or so of them being stealthy, penetrating bombers like the B-2 or B-21.

All that discussion preceded Kendall’s decision to “pause” NGAD rather than commit to one design. He now has a senior-level panel, including three former Air Force chiefs and a former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, looking at options, and he has promised a decision by year’s end. If that triggers a reassessment and new competition, it could set back the NGAD program by years.

Not surprisingly, Warden said Northrop stands ready to increase B-21 production if asked. 

“In the short run, we remain very focused on delivering them optionality. The performance that we are delivering gives them a capability that is in production now that is well below the cost target for the platform,” she said. “And we believe that that’s the role of industry, to give the government options as they think about their force structure.” 

Warden said she expects the Air Force to award a second low-rate production contract before the end of the year. The service awarded the first LRIP contract after first flight of the bomber last year, though officials declined to disclose exact figures on the size of the deal and the number of aircraft covered. 

Why the Pentagon is Betting Big on Long-Range Ukrainian Drones: ‘It Works’

Why the Pentagon is Betting Big on Long-Range Ukrainian Drones: ‘It Works’

Oct. 24, 2024 | By Chris Gordon

The United States is giving Ukraine $800 million in support to manufacture long-range drones, so Kyiv can do more to counter Russian aggression with its own weapons. 

“They’ve developed the capability to mass produce drones that are very, very effective and that can go impressive distances,” Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III told reporters Oct. 23 following a trip to Ukraine earlier this week. “So it makes sense to invest in that capability and their ability to continue to scale.”

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has led to the proliferation of drones across the battlefield, with both sides using quadcopter-style and first-person view (FPV) drones with increasing sophistication. Moscow has also employed Iranian-designed Shahed drones to pummel Ukrainian infrastructure. Ukraine, in turn, has developed drones that U.S. officials say can hold Russian targets at risk hundreds of kilometers beyond the front line.

“That’s a qualitative improvement that we’ve seen by the Ukrainians in the past year,” a senior defense official said.

The U.S. assistance serves two purposes. It strengthens Ukraine’s ability to carry out deep strikes against Russian targets, and it will also build up the country’s ability to make its own arms at a time when the West’s industrial base is strained by demand from Ukraine, Taiwan, and Israel.

“[The Ukrainians] have such a vibrant and diverse drone industry that’s doing really, really exciting things, and they’re doing them for really cheap,” Stacie Pettyjohn, director of the defense program at the Center for a New American Security, told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

The U.S. and its allies first came to Ukraine’s aid with donations of weapons—everything from replacements for Ukraine’s Soviet-era weapons to F-16 fighters. But the U.S. has readiness concerns about giving Ukraine certain types of weapons in short supply such as American-made missiles and drones.

“You have got to be very clear-minded about what kind of operational outcomes we think Ukraine is going to get out of these long-range drones because we’re dealing with our own very serious problems in the Indo-Pacific and we are running out of materiel to give Ukraine,” from U.S. stockpiles, Caitlin Lee of the RAND Corporation told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

While the U.S. has provided Ukraine with ATACMS surface-to-surface missiles, it has not allowed Kyiv to use them to strike targets inside Russia.  But there are no similar restrictions on Ukraine’s use of drones, which are slow and carry a much smaller payload than an ATACMS but still represent an important military capability.  

“This is where a classic counterair strategy of attacking the another’s air base would be useful, even if they don’t destroy that much,” Pettyjohn added. “If they can hold it at risk and disrupt operations for several days, that’s a real operational effect.”

Another advantage, Austin noted, is that the drones are far cheaper to make than a ballistic missile, meaning that Kyiv can field a larger number of them. 

“We’ve seen them strike targets that are 400 kilometers beyond the border and even deeper with precision, and they can do that at a fraction of the cost of a ballistic missile,” Austin said.

U.S. allies also are trying to support Ukraine’s defense industry. Denmark, Canada, and the Netherlands are participating in a global fundraising campaign that seeks to raise $10 billion in 2024 for the production of Ukrainian weapons. The campaign is called “Manufacturing Freedom.”

“If they’re going to be able to sustain their efforts, gotta be able to afford it,” Austin said. “It makes sense for us to invest in what they’re doing. It works. It’s effective and it’s precise.”

Data Integrity, Not Cyber Attacks, Are What Most Worry Space Command’s Cyber Boss

Data Integrity, Not Cyber Attacks, Are What Most Worry Space Command’s Cyber Boss

Oct. 24, 2024 | By Shaun Waterman

What keeps the digital warriors charged with fighting America’s wars in space awake at night isn’t cyber attacks per se, but more nebulous threats to the integrity of their data, the chief information officer of U.S. Space Command told an industry conference. 

“The cyber threat is known to everyone,” Tse-Horng “Richard” Yu explained in a keynote address to AFCEA’s TechNet Indo-Pacific in Honolulu, Hawaii, calling the threat “serious, very important, and dangerous, real. I’m concerned about that.” 

But he added, “that’s a known-known. It’s when we start exploring the unknown unknowns that I have a hard time sleeping at night.” Chief among these are threats to the integrity of data, he said. 

For instance, if an enemy could invisibly alter the timing element of the position, navigation, and timing (PNT) service provided by GPS, even to a minuscule degree, the effects could be devestating to the Space Command mission—SPACECOM’s strategic missile defense capability depends on absolute precision, Yu said. 

“When there’s an ICBM coming this way, and we have to shoot it down with an interceptor, [that’s like trying to shoot] a bullet with a bullet. Not only do we need to know the x, y, z of that location, but timing is very important, because it’s flying in excess of 10 kilometers per second. So if our timing is off by even a fraction of a second, you can see that we’ll miss the target,” he said. 

There are many different ways U.S. adversaries might try to get the access they’d need for that kind of mischief. 

“I’m concerned about our supply chain, for example, where things can get through into our network and disrupt—without me knowing—my data set,” Yu said. 

Being able to rely on the integrity of data is critical but complicated, he said. “How do we, for example, know our timing is being spoofed? How do we know if our data is being spoofed?” he asked. 

Conventional cybersecurity is all well and good, he said, but it has its limits.

“In your house, you have perimeter defense on your doors and windows, so if somebody opens or breaks the door or the window, you’ll know about it. In the cybersecurity world, what if they got into my house? I have no way of finding out what they’re doing. That is scary,” Yu said. 

Yu acknowledged that there are technologies already available, and employed by Space Command, to check data set integrity. “I would love to have more capability to check the authenticity of data so that we don’t have the PNT, for instance, drifting off by fractions of a second all the time and causing havoc for our precision capability that our joint forces use,” he said. 

He called this approach to ensuring data integrity “zero trust at the data level,” riffing off the Zero Trust approach to cybersecurity, now being imposed across the military. In Zero Trust networks, all users and connections are considered suspect, their access and authorities reduced to the bare minimum needed to do their job. 

Reestablished five years ago (an earlier iteration was stood down in 2002), Space Command is a combatant command, one of the 11 organizations that actually plan and fight America’s wars. Like Strategic Command or Transportation Command, it’s a functional command, managing the satellite communications (SATCOM) and other spaced-based capabilities like GPS that are so vital to the modern military. But, uniquely, it’s also a geographical command, like Africa Command or Central Command, with an area of responsibility (AOR) that starts 100 kilometers above the Earth’s surface.  

That unique AOR is part of the reason why data integrity and cybersecurity are so important for Space Command, said Yu. 

“Our mission happens in the digital terrain. We fly the satellites through the digital terrain. We send the information from our functional services, like PNT, SATCOM, those kind of functional services through the digital cyber terrain. So everything we do is in that digital terrain,” he said.

Even the name of the chief information officer’s organization reflects the key role of the cyber domain for Space Command. In most military organizations, the J6 is named for some variation of Command and Control, Communications, Computers and Cyber. But at Space Command, the J6 organization is called the digital superiority directorate. 

“The forefathers of the U.S. Space Command understood that in order for us to deliver our space capability to the joint forces, we must first attain digital superiority,” Yu explained. 

But digital superiority isn’t an end in itself, he added: “In my mind, digital superiority is a way to get to decision dominance for our joint forces.” Decision dominance means being able to collect and process data faster than the enemy so that commanders can make better and faster decisions than their enemy counterparts. It means “we can see, we can think, we can analyze, we can act, all faster than the enemy, so that we can kill them or avoid them faster than they can even see us,” Yu said. 

Lockheed Working on Tech to Integrate F-35 with CCAs

Lockheed Working on Tech to Integrate F-35 with CCAs

Oct. 24, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

Lockheed Martin is investing in new technologies to enable its F-35 fighters to easily control and interact with up to eight autonomous Collaborative Combat Aircraft—and planning to bid in the next-round of the Air Force’s autonomous drone program, company officials told investors during an Oct. 22 earnings call. 

The Air Force bypassed Lockheed in the first increment of CCA development, contracting with drone leader General Atomics and startup Anduril instead. The defense giant sees Increment 2 as a viable opportunity and the ability of future drones to collaborate with the Lockheed-built F-35 and F-22 as crucial to their success. The two fifth-generation jets are the Air Force’s most advanced fighter aircraft.

The Air Force wants to start fielding CCAs by the end of this decade. Lockheed officials say they’re already working on integration. 

“We’ve developed a pod that will enable the F-35 to control even today the CCAs,” CEO Jim Taiclet told analysts during a third quarter earnings call. “And we have a flight control system and a communication system in development that will enable that as well. And that could be converted, I think, to F-22 as well.” 

A Lockheed spokesperson told Air & Space Forces Magazine that Taiclet was referring to “internal investments we’ve been making that enable a single fifth-gen pilot to operate multiple uncrewed systems (or CCAs) from the cockpit of a fifth-gen aircraft. This work is focused on ensuring that our fifth-gen aircraft stay ahead of future capability integrations, like CCA control.” 

Exactly why an external pod is needed is unclear. It’s possible the pod has other purposes, or that it is a testbed for proving technology that, eventually, would be integrated into the existing F-35 through software or hardware updates. Lockheed announced two years ago it would invest $100 million in its own “Project Carrera” to develop manned-unmanned teaming technology. That plan included $20 million in F-35 development work.  

Lockheed’s Skunk Works division showed reporters a control station at at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference in September. General Manager John Clark said the station was for linking fifth-gen aircraft to CCAs, “and how all of this autonomy infrastructure and all this collaboration software helps facilitate the ability for a fifth-gen operator that’s got to fly his or her own airplane, and still interact with four to eight CCAs, and do so in an effective fashion,” said Clark. 

The Lockheed spokesperson added that the system “makes the control of multiple CCAs possible from a simple pad/tablet configuration.” 

The Air Force has said little in public about how manned fighters and CCAs will communicate and the interface pilots will use to manage their robotic wingmen. The F-35 can use both Link 16, the widespread tactical datalink, and its own stealthy Multifunction Advanced Data Link. 

Last month, the Marine Corps announced it had conducted a test flight in which an XQ-58A drone “demonstrated newly added Link 16 capabilities … marking the first time the Department of Defense controlled an air vehicle using offboard expeditionary methods.” The release did not specify those methods. 

Establishing a datalink between a manned and unmanned aircraft is just one part of the challenge. Officials must also figure out how to synthesize sensor data gathered by CCAs and integrate that into what a human pilot sees, optimized for relatively simple decision-making. 

Lockheed has already unveiled a Sniper Networked Targeting Pod for the F-35, with an advanced datalink allowing fourth-generation fighters to communicate securely with the F-35 and a new radio allowing the fighter to form a mesh network with other aircraft and ground and sea assets. 

A company official told Air & Space Forces Magazine that Taiclet was not referring to that pod in his comments. 

An F-35 can also be fitted with an external gun pod, but that compromises the aircraft’s low-observable characteristics. Lockheed did not offer further insight about the CCA pod.  

CCA Increment 2 

While Lockheed whiffed on CCA Increment 1, the company remains in the hunt for “Increment 2.” 

In September, Clark told reporters that the company overshot its target with a “gold-plated” CCA for starters, exceeding Air Force requirements. This time, the company is focusing on a lower-cost design. Taiclet said Oct. 23 Lockheed anticipates the Air Force will be looking for scale in Increment 2, which would seem to favor cheaper drones. 

“The way it’s been described to us is Increment 1 was proof of concept, more of an experimental kind of approach,” Taiclet said. “Increment 2 is going to be targeted to be fieldable, combat-ready, scalable design and production of the uncrewed teaming half of the system. So we are fully dedicated to that.” 

Quantity is an important factor, Taiclet argued.   

“We have to be able to meet the J-20, which is the Chinese [fifth-generation] combat tactical aircraft, with enough numbers in the Pacific,” he said. “The F-35 and F-22 now are the only really competitive jets against the J-20 one-to one. We have to field enough of those aircraft in a short enough timeframe to maintain an effective deterrent in the Pacific.”  

Taken together, Lockheed believes it can demonstrate the scale needed for Increment 2. 

“We have Skunk Works working on both the parent and the child, if you will, when it comes to all CCA concepts, Increment 2 is going to be really where we’re, I think, most competitive, because we can show that we can control these vehicles with today’s technology already at scale,” Taiclet said. 

NGAD 

The question of scale and speed may take on greater immediacy given that the Air Force has chosen to pause the Next-Generation Air Dominance program. Requirements for the planned sixth-gen fighter are again under review as the Air Force worries that initial designs were too costly to make them affordable in any kind of mass. The introduction of CCAs and the potential to introduce a stealthy tanker aircraft, dubbed Next-Generation Air Refueling System (NGAS) could alter the development picture, Secretary Frank Kendall has said. 

Taiclet said Lockheed continues to pursue sixth-generation combat aircraft concepts and will keep its options open. But advances in autonomy suggest a manned NGAD fighter may not be necessary.  

“We need to be able to bring autonomy and the CCA concept into fifth-gen and sixth-gen, if there is one,” he said at one point. 

“We’re preserving our optionality based on what the U.S. government and services determine to be their strategy for tactical fighter deployment over the next 20-30 years,” he said at another. “Part of that strategy is having Skunk Works continue to develop technologies that could be implemented for a sixth-generation tactical aircraft that’s a step function above what the F-22 and F-35 can do today.” 

PACAF Deputy: Large-Scale Exercise Next Summer Will Feature Nearly 300 Aircraft

PACAF Deputy: Large-Scale Exercise Next Summer Will Feature Nearly 300 Aircraft

Oct. 24, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

Editor’s Note: This story was updated Oct. 25 to include the official name of REFORPAC.

REFORPAC, the large-scale exercise in the Pacific planned for summer 2025, will be on a scale unseen by the Air Force in recent memory: nearly 300 aircraft spread across 25 locations. 

Lt. Gen. Laura L. Lenderman, deputy commander of Pacific Air Forces, detailed the size of the exercise during a keynote address at the AFCEA TechNet Indo-Pacific conference on Oct. 23. 

“The goal is to integrate and experiment with logistics, sustainment, and enabling capability to bring fifth-gen fighters, command and control aircraft, and airlift and air refueling into the Western Pacific at speed and scale, with approximately 25 operating locations, almost 300 aircraft, and sister services and partner nations involved,” Lenderman said. 

If the Air Force meets those numbers, REFORPAC—short for “Resolute Force Pacific” and sometimes referred to as “Return of Forces to the Pacific”—will significantly outstrip other major exercises the service has held in recent years in terms of number of aircraft and operating locations: 

Even Air Defender, the largest air exercise in NATO history held last June, had 250 aircraft, including 100 U.S. planes. 

Lenderman also said the Air Force will use the exercise to focus on Agile Combat Employment, the operational concept in which small teams of Airmen deploy to remote or austere locations, generate airpower, and move again quickly as needed. 

“We’re conducting multiple simultaneous ACE operations, and it’s an opportunity to refine our capabilities, strengthen our partnerships, test and stress ACE, and shift interoperability into interchangeability,” the general said. 

Lt. Gen. Laura Lenderman, Pacific Air Forces deputy commander, thanked Col. James McFarland for his service and welcomed incoming commander, Col. Julie Sposito Salceies, during the 613th Air Operations Center Change of Command Ceremony on Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, June 26, 2024. U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Mark Sulaica

ACE originated with PACAF, and leaders have stressed its importance in a region where the Air Force may need to “island-hop” or operate from locations with World War II-era airfields. 

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin said in August that REFORPAC will include elements from U.S. Strategic Command; U.S. Northern Command; U.S. Indo-Pacific Command; and Air Mobility Command, and that it will dovetail with other major exercises like Bamboo Eagle and Talisman Sabre, a large biennial Australian-U.S.-led event.

Officials say REFORPAC is just one in a series of large-scale exercises the Air Force will implement in the coming years as the service attempts to reorient itself for great power competition against China and Russia.  

Service leaders say that shift has to be done with urgency and speed given the pressing nature of the threat. 

“Time is not on our side when it comes to offensive and defensive operations, logistics, sustainment, command and control, or battle management,” Lenderman said. “We no longer have the luxury of long-term development for perfect solutions.” 

Instead, exercises like REFORPAC will help the Air Force identify stress points and innovative solutions to challenges—and Lenderman wants industry to help. 

“What we ask of you is to bring your best ideas, bring your concepts, bring your newest technologies, bring your ready kits to the Indo-Pacific theater at a level ready for experimentation,” she said. “Help us challenge our status quo. Help us stress Agile Combat Employment and our ability to command and control and execute contested logistics and our ability to perform dynamic force movements throughout the theater.” 

WATCH: How BAE Systems Is Delivering the Air Force an Electronic Warfare Advantage

WATCH: How BAE Systems Is Delivering the Air Force an Electronic Warfare Advantage

Oct. 24, 2024

Joshua Niedzwiecki, Vice President and General Manager of Electronic Combat Solutions at BAE Systems, shares how BAE Systems uses mission-based systems (and how those systems will work within the U.S. Air Force’s new Integrated Capabilities Command) to provide an EW advantage to the warfighter’ future fight.