Another B-1 Back from the Boneyard: Air Force Regenerating Second Lancer in Four Months

July 24, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

The Air Force is resurrecting yet another of its B-1 bombers from the “Boneyard” at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz.

On July 2, an aviation photographer snapped images of a B-1, tail number 86-0115 and nicknamed “Rage,” taking off from Davis-Monthan. A service spokeswoman confirmed to Air & Space Forces Magazine on July 24 that the bomber had been regenerated by the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group and was being flown to Tinker Air Force Base, Okla., for updates and depot maintenance before being added back to the fleet.

“At the request of Air Force Global Strike Command, Air Force Materiel Command is in the process of regenerating a B-1B to replace aircraft -0126, which was undergoing heavy structures repair development at Boeing-Palmdale,” the spokesperson said. “Analysis determined regenerating an aircraft in AMARG storage could be accomplished faster, at lower cost and risk, than continuing the Boeing repair project.”

According to other photos captured by aviation enthusiasts, Aircraft 86-0126, nicknamed “Hungry Devil,” was assigned to Dyess Air Force Base, Texas. The Air Force spokesperson said the B-1 was at Boeing-Palmdale as part of an effort to develop a depot-level repair process for the Forward Intermediate Fuselage (FIF).

The spokesperson declined to say when “Rage” will finish repairs and return to the operational B-1 fleet, citing operational security concerns.

This marks the second B-1 regeneration in just a few months—in March, the 7th Bomb Wing at Dyess announced it was resurrecting a bomber nicknamed “Lancelot” to replace a B-1 that caught fire during an engine run in April 2022, resulting in a massive fireball that sent shrapnel flying hundreds of feet and the total loss of the aircraft.

Still another regeneration may be needed soon. A B-1, tail number 85-0085, crashed at Ellsworth Air Force Base, S.D., in January, which severely damaged the aircraft. The spokesperson said a final decision on the Ellsworth aircraft’s disposition—whether it can be salvaged or not—is still pending.

Should another regeneration happen, though, the Air Force will have resurrected three of the 17 B-1s it retired between February and September 2021, four of which were to be maintained “in a reclaimable condition,” Air Force Global Strike Command noted at the time.

While Congress repealed prohibitions on retiring B-1 bombers as part of the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, lawmakers have passed other provisions mandating a fleet of at least 92 bombers in the Primary Mission Aircraft Inventory, and forbidding the Air Force from modifying the designed operational capability statement for any B-1 squadron so that it can reduce capability or personnel—moves that could compel the Air Force to replace any B-1 incapacitated by mishap or years of hard flying.

The AMARG at Davis-Monthan regularly reactivates aircraft for the Pentagon, NASA, and partner nations. Aircraft sent to the Boneyard can be maintained in different conditions, depending on whether the Air Force wants to preserve the option to un-retire them. Generally speaking, the AMARG removes explosive devices, such as ejection seat motors, upon intake, then fills fluid lines with a preservative oil, closes off openings to keep animals and birds from nesting in the aircraft; and cover the cockpit, intakes and exhaust with a spray-on latex preservative to diminish the destructive effects of sun and heat.

Defense Leaders: We Need to Invest in Space, Unmanned Systems for the Arctic

July 23, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

Facing increased threats in the Arctic and growing concern about U.S. gaps in the region, the Pentagon will invest in more space-based and unmanned assets, defense officials said this week as they rolled out a new strategy for the region.

“A key focus … is championing investments that will enhance our awareness of threats in the region,” Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Arctic and Global Resilience Iris Ferguson told reporters July 22. “We want to make sure that we have the right sensing architecture and the right communications architecture for command and control.”

Since 2020, the Department of the Air Force, the Army, and the Navy have all released Arctic strategies calling for more investment in the region, and former U.S. Northern Command boss Gen. Glen D. VanHerck and others have noted a lack of funding for domain awareness.

Those concerns gained prominence in early 2023 when a Chinese spy balloon flew over the U.S. and Canada, including time near the Aleutian islands. More recently, new NORTHCOM commander Gen. Gregory M. Guillot revealed in March that Russian bombers approached American airspace from the northeast for the first time in two years. He also warned that the Chinese are likely to send warplanes near Alaska as soon as this year.

“The Arctic is perhaps the shortest and least defended threat vector to North America, and that’s what makes it so important,” Guillot’s deputy, Army Lt. Gen. Thomas Carden, said July 23 at an event hosted by the Wilson Center.

With Russia and China cooperating more and more in the Arctic, the U.S. needs better technology and infrastructure to sense threats and communicate them, officials say. Much of the infrastructure in place dates back to the Cold War, and the harsh conditions of the region take a toll on both buildings and equipment.

“It’s not like those sensors can exist in the Arctic, without some hardened, climate-controlled infrastructure,” said Carden. “You know, I spent a lot of time early in my career training for operations in the desert, and we used to have a say, ‘Life’s hard in the desert.’ I’ll tell you, life is harder in the Arctic, and we’re learning that very quickly.”

Installations like Pituffik Space Base are slated to get millions of dollars to modernize, Ferguson said. Meanwhile, the DOD is also eyeing sensors that can handle the conditions—and make it such that human operators don’t have to brave them as much.

“Domain awareness missions are well suited for uncrewed systems approaches in all domains, so sensing missions, ISR, etc.,” Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen H. Hicks told reporters July 22. “So this is a clear area where we can apply some of what we’re doing in the department. The features we’re looking for there are endurance, not putting humans at risk in a harsh environment. But at the same time … 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. So that means a lot of research and development and testing, and that’s where we’re focused in this area.”

GA-ASI and Inmarsat Government collaborated to deliver an enhanced high-latitude SATCOM solution, which allowed MQ-9 to fly north through Canadian airspace and past the Arctic Circle’s 78th parallel for the first time in history on September 2021. Image courtesy of General Atomics

Space also features prominently in the new strategy, with mentions of possible new missile warning/missile tracking, communications, and weather satellites, as well as more and more use of commercial satellites.

The Arctic’s location at the top of the world can mean spottier satellite coverage, requiring more polar-specific systems. DOD will work on those systems, while also trying to leverage partnerships to keep costs down, officials said.

“It’s an area that we haven’t invested in to date as much because of the inclination of our geosynchronous orbits,” Ferguson said. “We have to actively invest in the Arctic region in particular, we’ve been working over the last several years to leverage these kind of commercial assets to include testing and development … with our Air Force Research Lab.”

The Space Force has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in Next-Gen OPIR Polar for missile warning in the region, and the Space Development Agency is putting many of its satellites in polar orbit as well. The department is also working with NATO ally Norway to put a communications payload on a Norwegian satellite that will soon launch.

“This is actually a mission where the U.S. DOD, the Norwegian [Ministry of Defense], and Inmarsat came together to provide the capability way cheaper and way faster than any of those entities could have done by themselves,” Maj. Gen. Odd-Harald Hagen, the Defense Attaché at the Royal Norwegian Embassy, said at the Wilson Center event.

Meanwhile, the Department of the Air Force has helped companies like SpaceX and OneWeb to invest in polar coverage, Ferguson said, and the results have been encouraging. Now the next step is making sure operators can access those networks.

“What we’re trying to do is field hybrid SATCOM terminals for our users so that they can access multiple constellations,” she said. “That’s the next round. You have the satellite capabilities and the commercial capacity, but you need the users to have their terminals to be able to access it.”

While satellites and unmanned systems may play a key role moving forward, Air Force Maj. Gen. Benjamin R. Maitre also noted the importance of boots on the ground and manned platforms, trained to handle the Arctic’s unique challenges.

“We’ve stationed really the largest number of advanced tactical fighter aircraft, fifth-generation, within the Arctic, and that’s just us,” said Maitre, the director for concepts and strategy in Air Force Futures. “If you add in our allies like Norway that also operate the F-35, that is a compelling robust presence that we have in the Arctic.

“… With Norway, we’ve worked a lot with how we operate F-35s in cold weather, where we have a lot to learn from our allies. In Sweden, we’ve talked about dispersed operations in the Arctic that they’ve lived in a real fashion for over 50 years that we can still learn from. And with Canada, we’ve looked at dispersed power generation and what that means in these remote sites in a cold environment.”

Minihan: AMC Will Fall Short of ‘25 by ’25’ Goal to Better Mobility Aircraft Connectivity

July 23, 2024 | By John A. Tirpak

Editor’s Note: This story was updated July 24 to properly identify the source of several quotes; to correct the level of funding needed to reach AMC’s connectivity goal; and to clarify that Gen. Minihan did not say to what level the AMC fleet will have connectivity by 2025. Air & Space Forces Magazine regrets these errors.

Air Mobility Command will not meet Gen. Mike Minihan’s goal of equipping a quarter of its fleet with modern connectivity and situational awareness gear by fiscal 2025, but it remains an urgent need, he told lawmakers July 23.

Minihan, making his last appearance before the House Armed Services Committee as AMC commander, said achieving the “25 by ’25” goal by the end of his tenure in the next few months “regrettably, is not possible.”

Rep. Joe Courtney, citing staff members, said it would take $500 million to reach the 25 by ’25 goal, which would provide crews with urgently needed situational awareness. The upgrades were not included on the Air Force’s unfunded priorities list because the service is trying to do away with such off-budget requests, and Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin felt that spare parts were a higher priority, Lt. Gen. David H. Tabor, director of programs, said.

The level actually achieved before his his self-imposed deadline is unclear, but when pressed by Rep. Mike Waltz on the state of upgrades, Minihan did say they would be spread evenly across the fleet to different kinds of aircraft. But as long as the fleet is short of full connectivity, it’s “vulnerable,” he said.

“We are behind” Minihan said, pledging that AMC is doing everything it can “to catch up.”

The connectivity package is different for almost every type in the inventory, he said, meaning there’s no one-size-fits-all unit, but most are a “roll-on” set of pallets.

The failure to have already achieved this urgent capability is due to “decades of under-investment in mobility,” Minihan said, which was thought acceptable as long as the U.S. operated in a permissive environment.

The upgrades will allow aircraft “to tie into the tactical data links that the joint force uses, and we will be able to tie back to all the command-and-control echelons that the joint force, the combatant commands, [and] certainly my team that runs an Air Operations Center that’s globally engaged every day back at Scott Air Force base, would be able to tie through to all of that,” he said.

The “precious first moments of conflict are sure to be dynamic, and it is critical that our most relied-upon assets have the connectivity, and therefore the awareness, to put our joint force in a position of advantage,” Minihan said.

The connectivity he’s seeking would include fast download speeds and detailed data such as the security situation at the destination, potential air-to-air and surface-to-air threats, availability of fuel at the destination, the ability to rapidly divert, and the ability to see where safer landing places, with necessary support, are available, under combat conditions, he said.

Recent noncombatant evacuation operations in Afghanistan and Niger have proved the utility of the upgrades on equipped aircraft.

“What we’re finding out now is, when an airplane takes off from Europe to go do a mission down to Niger, is we’ve got instant connectivity. We know the current status of the airfield. We know the current status of the of the joint force,” he said. “we know the security measures. We know the fuel state. We know the cargo state, and that ability is an absolute game-changer. It both helps with effective, effectiveness and efficiency, but most importantly, it helps with the security of Americans, you know, both the air crew and those on the ground.

Such connectivity “would have been wonderful to have during the Kabul evacuation. We didn’t. So what we’ve demonstrated is we’re taking those lessons learned, we’re backing it up with data, and then we’re moving forward with affordable capabilities that exist now that don’t require massive modifications to the airplanes, and we’re having wonderful effects in the airspace and on the battlefield,” he added.

The NEO in Niger will provide “another set of data points when it comes to that roll-on kit, and we’re incorporating all those lessons learned into everything we’re planning for the fall. There’s some big exercises going on this fall, and then, most importantly, into the summer exercise series in the Pacific that’s going to happen in 2025.”

He added that the Air Force is running out of time to do the upgrades. “Simply put, the longer we wait, the more risk the nation incurs, and the more expensive it is to solve it,” he said.

AMC is coordinating with the Air Force’s command, control, communications, and battle management efforts to integrate airlift with the Joint All-Domain Command and Control push, Minihan added.

The upgrades are a prerequisite for success in a Pacific conflict, he said.

“What we can’t do is ever put those teams in a position where they’re relying on nine-hour old intel to make the decisions,” he asserted.

Without the connectivity upgrades, mobility forces will be blind to troop movements and lack battlespace awareness, he warned.

B-2 Test Launches New Low-Cost Anti-Ship Weapon at Warship in the Pacific

July 23, 2024 | By Chris Gordon

The U.S. military conducted an unusual exercise recently during which a U.S. Air Force B-2 Spirit stealth bomber helped sink a decommissioned U.S. warship in the Pacific using relatively inexpensive GPS-guided bombs.

As part of the massive RIMPAC maritime and air exercise, the U.S. sunk two warships with live-fire weapons: the ex-USS Tarawa, an amphibious assault ship, and the ex-USS Dubuque, an amphibious transport dock, in what is known as a SINKEX.

SINKEXs are training exercises in which decommissioned naval vessels are used as targets. This year, the USS Tarawa was hit by the U.S. military’s top-shelf maritime strike weapon, the multimillion-dollar stealthy Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM), which was fired from a U.S. Navy F/A-18F Super Hornet.

But the USAF also came to play, and in a novel way.

Along with Navy assets, the B-2 “proved a low-cost, air-delivered method for defeating surface vessels through a QUICKSINK demonstration,” the U.S. Third Fleet, which is responsible for U.S. Navy operations in the Pacific, said in a July 22 release.

“The B-2 was used to help sink the Tarawa,” a spokesperson for the Third Fleet added in an email to Air & Space Forces Magazine.

“This capability is an answer to an urgent need to quickly neutralize maritime threats over massive expanses of ocean around the world at minimal costs,” the release said.

After two decades of intensive bombing during the Global War on Terror, QUICKSINK and LRASM demonstrate just how much the Air Force’s focus has shifted despite the ongoing conflicts still raging in the Middle East, including some involving U.S. forces.

“This is a sign of the Air Force’s renewed focus on maritime strike, which it had walked away from after the Cold War ended,” Stacie Pettyjohn, director of the defense program at the Center for a New American Security, told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

QUICKSINK is a system now mated to JDAMs, the near-ubiquitous air-to-surface GPS guidance kit for bombs. It has additional guidance to turn those weapons into ship-killers, offering more value for money and giving commanders more options, the Navy and Air Force say.

“Torpedoes, such as the heavyweight MK-48, are still the primary method used to sink enemy ships,” the Air Force Research Laboratory (ARFL) says of QUICKSINK. “New methods explored through QUICKSINK may be able to achieve the same kind of anti-ship lethality with air-launched weapons, including modified 2,000-pound class precision-guided bombs.”

An F-15E Strike Eagle at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla. with modified 2,000-pound GBU-31 Joint Direct Attack Munitions as part of the second test in the QUICKSINK Joint Capability Technology Demonstration, April 28, 2022. QUICKSINK successfully destroyed a full-scale surface vessel as part of a demonstration in the Gulf of Mexico. U.S. Air Force photo by 1st Lt. Lindsey Heflin

Pentagon and open-source wargames have shown precision munitions, especially LRASMs, would be expended quickly in a conflict with China, in perhaps a few days. Torpedos are also expensive and can only be deployed by a few Navy platforms. The new Joint Strike Missile (JSM) is on its way in the coming years, but that still leaves room for a wide variety of anti-ship weapons in between.

“Both standoff and penetrating maritime strikes are needed to create the volume that’s going to be required to deny the first attempt by the PLA Navy to invade a friend such as Taiwan or elsewhere in the South China Sea,” said Mark Gunzinger, director of future concepts and capability assessments at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.

QUICKSINK capabilities are not brand new, with previous tests being conducted by fourth-generation F-15E Strike Eagle fighters in 2021 and 2022. The program is still a “technology demonstration,” according to AFRL, not a front-line weapon. Whatever the precise weapon, U.S. military leaders have noted that munitions stockpiles have been an easy place to save money. But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has stressed Western and Russian defense industries to near their breaking point, along with the prospect of the U.S. being involved in a conflict to repel China from seizing the self-governing island of Taiwan, have shown just valuable munitions are.

“It would be impossible to fight and win against China from only long-range,” Pettyjohn said. “It is also hard to generate sufficient mass over a period of time with standoff strikes.”

“QUICKSINK would complement existing anti-ship missile procurements and provide a much lower-cost weapon that could be bought in large numbers,” she added. “It would, along with LRASM and JSM, provide the Air Force with a range of maritime strike options that can be launched from different ranges.”

A QUICKSINK munition could also be especially valuable in disrupting undefended enemy logistics vessels such as cargo ships and oilers, which often lack their own advanced air defense systems, Pettyjohn added.

The latest test occurred during RIMPAC, which is the world’s largest maritime exercise, with 25,000 personnel from 29 nations participating, bringing with them 40 surface ships, three submarines, more than 150 aircraft, and 14 national land forces exercise in and around the Hawaiian Islands, June 27 to Aug. 1, according to numbers from the Third Fleet.

With the U.S. military focused on a possible flight with China over Taiwan, the U.S. has been trying to ramp up LRASM production. The missile is a derivative of the JASSM long-range cruise missile, which is made on the same production line by Lockheed Martin. But with tight government budgets, even if production could be ramped up, LRASMs are still pricey. The missiles cost upwards of $3 million a copy, which make them cost-prohibitive to buy in massive numbers, Gunzinger and Pettyjohn said. The Air Force plans to buy 115 LRASMs next year and around 550 by end of the decade.

“The Air Force and the DOD simply can’t buy enough of them to meet requirements,” Gunzinger said.

Gunzinger, a former B-52 pilot who focused on assessing capabilities to counter anti-access and area-denial (A2/AD) threats in different civilian positions, said the Pentagon and the Air Force are rightfully looking at developing cheaper, short- and medium-range standoff weapons, as stealthy aircraft cannot fly completely unfettered in contested airspace.

“Having a portfolio of different maritime strike weapons that includes high, low, and medium options is ideally what is needed,” Pettyjohn added.

As for QUICKSINK, the system has been in the making for a long time. In 2004, Pacific Air Forces practiced employing JDAMs against the ex-USS Schenectady in an exercise known as Resultant Fury some 20 years ago, and U.S. Airmen have been targeting ships for over a century.

The ex-USS Dubuque and ex-USS Tarawa were sunk on July 11 and July 19, respectively, just shy of the anniversary of Army Air Service Brig. Gen. Billy Mitchell’s sinking of another decommissioned vessel, the captured German battleship Ostfriesland, on July 21, 1921—one of the most significant events in the evolution of airpower.

“The most effective—and efficient—way to kill ships is from the air,” said retired Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, who was the two-star director of air and space operations for Pacific Air Forces during its 2004 Resultant Fury test and is now the dean of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. “The Air Force has a history of maritime attack, and it should double down on that history with appropriate funding support from the Congress.”

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.