Now Enlisted Airmen Can Stay in Uniform Longer

Dec. 8, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

Faced with a recruiting shortfall, the Air Force is loosening its “up or out” rules, adding two years to the maximum time in service at every enlisted grade up to E-8.

The new High Year of Tenure (HYT) limits go into effect immediately, although Airmen have been able to ask for extensions for the past year. The Air Force confirmed the changes, which were detailed in a memo leaked to Reddit this week. The new rates:

GRADE	RANK	Old High Year of Tenure	New High Year of Tenure
E-1	Airman Basic	8	10
E-2	Airman	8	10
E-3	Airman 1st Class	8	10
E-4	Senior Airman	10	12
E-5	Staff Sergeant	20	22
E-6	Technical Sergeant	22	24
E-7	Master Sergeant	24	26
E-8	Senior Master Sergeant	26	28

The added time gives Airmen the option to stay and continue to compete for promotion, rather than face a deadline to leave. To opt out of the extension, Airmen facing HYT limits between Dec. 8, 2023 and Sept. 30, 2024 must ask for and receive approval prior to their original HYT date of separation or by Feb. 16, 2024, whichever comes first.

Airmen already approved for separation or retirement under the original HYT rule will automatically have their HYT extended.

“The Air Force is taking proactive action to fully leverage our Congressionally authorized end strength and HYT extensions maximizes the retention of experienced talent to enhance mission effectiveness,” an Air Force spokesperson said.

Enlisted retention remains strong at around 89 percent in fiscal 2023, down only slightly from the highs of the COVID-19 pandemic and largely in line with historical trends. But the Air Force finished fiscal 2023 about 10 percent short of its Active-Duty recruiting goal, and the lingering effects of record-high retention have slowed promotion rates in the noncommissioned officer ranks. That’s pushed more Airmen up against their HYT limits.

Air Force officials say they need to rebalance the force to ensure the force is sized for effectiveness and that Airmen gain the experience needed to take on leadership positions. Extending HYT will give more Airmen another shot at promotion and the Air Force time more flexibility to keep the experienced Airmen already in the force.

‘Presence Matters’: Space Force Activates New Component for Europe and Africa

Dec. 8, 2023 | By Chris Gordon

The U.S. Space Force, U.S. European Command, and U.S. Africa Command activated their newest service component on Dec. 8, in an expansion of USSF’s growing reach into combatant commands.

“This is an important day in the history of the Space Force as we mature our organization and our partnerships to take on the challenges of the space domain,” Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman said in remarks at a ceremony held at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, where the component will be headquartered.

U.S. Space Forces Europe and Africa (SPACEFOREUR-AF), under the command of Space Force Col. Max Lantz, gives the USSF into its own organization in the vast combined area of U.S. European Command and U.S. Africa Command.

“We are activating the component because presence matters,” Lantz said.

Previously, U.S. military space capabilities in Europe and Africa, which Lantz already headed, were part of the air component, U.S. Air Forces in Europe-Air Forces Africa (USAFE-AFAFRICA), in a model that predated the Space Force as an independent service. Inside combatant commands, services provide their own components that the command can draw on. Now, the Space Force has its own organization.

The activation of Space Forces Europe and Africa is a “critical step” in USSF’s growth as its own service with its own voice in operations, Saltzman said.

“Space has become more and more central to joint operations,” he added. “We are better connected, more informed, more precise, and more lethal thanks to space.”

The official party for the U.S. Space Forces Europe & Africa activation ceremony stand at attention during the USSPACEFOREUR-AF activation and assumption of command, at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, Dec. 8, 2023. USSPACEFOREUR-AF will provide U.S. European Command and U.S. Africa Command a cadre of space experts who collaborate with NATO allies and partners to integrate space efforts into shared operations, activities and investments. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Edgar Grimaldo

SPACEFOREUR-AF is now the fourth service component embedded in one of the U.S. military’s regional commands, joining U.S. Central Command, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, and U.S. Forces Korea. Joint combatant commanders and Space Force leaders say the new organizations help better articulate what space capabilities are available and ensure they are taken into account and put to use.

“The joint force’s missions increasingly rely on space and the Space Force is committed to ensuring that the force has the space resources it needs to succeed,” Saltzman said. “That is particularly important here in the European and African theaters of operation. The Space Force is already very actively involved in supporting efforts in the region, with our support to Ukraine being most visible.”

The USSF is considering establishing components in other commands, possibly including U.S. Cyber Command, U.S. Special Operations Command, and U.S. Forces Japan.

“Space operations is our daily lives, our operations, our activities, and our investments,” Marine Corps Gen. Michael E. Langley, the head of U.S. Africa Command, said during the ceremony. “All the space-based assets [are] ensuring the joint force has the right information at the right time to fight and to win. SPACEFOREUR-AF will work with all other components to ensure that space planning and support is embedding in all of our operations.”

Like the rest of the Space Force, SPACEFOREUR-AF is a small organization. But throughout 2023, after the plans for SPACEFOREUR-AF were announced, senior U.S. military space leaders visited Europe to strengthen the U.S. military space alliances. On Dec. 1, the U.K. agreed to host a new advanced space tracking radar system along with Australia and the U.S.

The activation will “finally normalize how space forces are presented to the theaters—sound, structural changes,” Lantz said. “The component we’re standing up today will never be as small, under-ranked, or less resourced than at this very moment. Starting tomorrow, we will gain in strength, understanding, and resources in order to add value to EUCOM and AFRICOM. Every day we will get better.”

The new U.S. Space Forces in Europe-Space Forces Africa patch is displayed at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, Dec. 6, 2023. U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Jared Lovett

Here Is How Congress Plans to Keep Tight Oversight of New Fighters and CCAs

Dec. 8, 2023 | By John A. Tirpak

House and Senate lawmakers, in their recently unveiled compromise 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, are seeking tight oversight of both the Air Force and the Navy on their respective versions of the new and highly secret Next Generation Air Dominance fighter and the Collaborative Combat Aircraft programs

Specifically, lawmakers are demanding briefs every six months on virtually all metrics of the projects.

NGAD is a term used by both the Air Force and Navy to describe their future crewed stealthy air dominance aircraft; in the Air Force, the NGAD will succeed the F-22 and is described as a “family of systems” to include offboard sensors and accompanying aircraft. CCAs are uncrewed, autonomous aircraft that will accompany and fight alongside crewed aircraft, performing missions such as electronic warfare, defense suppression, or as carriers of additional weapons.

Though similarly named, the Air Force and Navy/Marine Corps NGADs and CCAs are not joint programs like the F-35, although program officials have said they are sharing information and coordinating as the projects develop.

In reporting language attached to the NDAA, conferees said their provisions are aimed at program “accountability” for NGAD and CCAs. First, they want a baseline for the programs, and then “a matrix that identifies, in six-month increments, key milestones, development and testing events, and specific performance goals for the engineering manufacturing and development [EMD] phase … of the programs.”

The matrix would give the Technology Readiness Levels “of major components and subsystems” as well as “key demonstration and testing events.” A TRL identifies where a particular technology is on a scale of 1-9, with 1 being highly experimental and 9 being mission-proven in the field. In recent years, the Pentagon has demanded a TRL of 6 for most new capabilities to proceed to engineering manufacturing and development.

“Key demonstration and testing events” is likely a reference to milestones such as first major aircraft joins; first systems power-ons, first flights, etc.

Lawmakers also want regular updates on design and software maturity; subsystem and system-level integration maturity; manufacturing readiness levels for critical items; the status of manufacturing; “system verification, validation and key flight test events;” reliability; availability for flight operations, and maintainability.

Possibly more problematic for the services, the lawmakers specified a long list of items for which they want detailed, itemized costs. For some programs in recent years, Congress has directed the Pentagon to identify costs over the program’s entire service life—which could be more than 50 years. Such estimates are challenging, small variations can become quite large over times, and inflation estimates are scarcely more than a guess.

Nonetheless, every six months lawmakers want the service Secretaries to give their “cost position … on the total cost for … the EMD phase and low initial rate of production lots of the programs” and a matrix “expressing the total cost for the prime contractor’s estimate for such EMD phase and production lots, both of which shall be phased over the entire EMD period.”

Specific costs must be provided for:

the air vehicle

propulsion

mission systems

vehicle subsystems

air vehicle software

systems engineering

program management

system test and evaluation

support and training systems

contract fees

engineering changes

direct mission support

government testing

ancillary aircraft equipment

initial spares

contractor support

modifications

The first update will be required six months after the Secretaries provide their initial reports, and these will represent the program baseline for EMD as well as low-rate initial production. Each update will have to explain progress made on the specific category, cost changes incurred, and the Pentagon Comptroller will have to sign off on these reports as accurate, with their assessment of cost, performance, and schedule “trends.”

Moreover, each Secretary is to define Key Performance Parameters (KPPs) for the NGAD and CCA for the “threshold and objective costs.” These KPPs are also to be stated for “each cost category” outlined in the language.

The services are also told to identify “the highest acceptable cost for that category” as well as “an objective value indicating the lowest cost expected to be achieved by that category.” Those costs are to be stated in various ways, including:

Unit recurring flyaway cost

Average procurement unit cost

Gross/weapon system unit cost

Aircraft cost-per-tail-per-year

Aircraft cost-per-flight-hour

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall announced in May that solicitations for NGAD have gone out, and that a single offeror will be selected in 2024 to build it. Operational capability is expected circa 2030. Kendall has voiced a somewhat shorter timeline for the initial version of CCAs to be in service, saying the first ones could be flying in 2028.

The Senate is expected to action on the NDAA in the next few days, and the House could pass it shortly thereafter, putting the defense policy bill on track to become law before January.

Air Force to Start Tracking Why Some Recruits Back Out Before Joining Up

Dec. 8, 2023 | By David Roza

Starting in January, the Air Force Recruiting Service will track why applicants leave the accessions process before signing the dotted line. The goal is to understand what makes people who are interested in serving decide to leave, and if there is something the Air Force can do to improve its processes.

“We currently have only anecdotal data that says why someone leaves the process,” an AFRS spokesperson told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “This will require the recruiter to go in and annotate a specific reason why someone is stopping the process.”

One person keen to see the resulting data is Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee’s subcommittee on personnel. Warren grilled the heads of the services’ recruiting commands, including AFRS boss Brig. Gen. Christopher Amrhein, at a Dec. 6 hearing, saying that many healthy candidates are held up in a lengthy medical accessions review process due to conditions as minor as a childhood wrist sprain.

The senator cited military data showing that one out of every six recruits needed a medical waiver in fiscal 2022. Getting through a review could add 70 or more days to the applications process for Army recruits, she said.

“Now obviously we want a screening process that catches disqualifying medical conditions, but do each of you agree that it is a problem if our process is creating unnecessary barriers to enrollment?” she asked. “It is an even bigger problem if all of that red tape is causing some healthy applicants to drop out of the recruitment process altogether.”

air force recruiting — U.S. Air Force recruits tour a KC-135 Stratotanker at MacDill Air Force Base, Florida, June 14, 2023. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Lauren Cobin)

The Department of Defense Inspector General reached a similar conclusion in a May 17 report, when the watchdog office wrote that the length of time it takes military entrance processing command and the services to review medical information and other process requirements “affect whether an applicant remains in the accession pipeline. Understanding these barriers to entering military service is integral to inclusion.”

Part of the problem is Military Health System Genesis, a new electronic health record system that provides a single health record for service members. The system connects to most civilian health information exchange networks, giving the services and U.S. Military Entrance Processing Command (USMEPCOM) access to an applicant’s medical history. But that history “is often incomplete or contains insufficient information to make a waiver determination,” DODIG noted, which slows the process down because the services then have to request extra documentation. Genesis is often difficult to use, further slowing down the process.

Time is of the essence of the services, all but two of which, the Space Force and the Marine Corps, failed to meet recruiting goals in fiscal 2023. The DODIG recommended that each of the services establish tracking mechanisms to capture data on applicants medically disqualified by USMEPCOM, make sure each potentially eligible applicant is provided a choice of whether to proceed with a waiver request, and document the reason a waiver was not requested to inform change in each service’s recruiting process.

Each of the services agreed, and at the Dec. 6 hearing, Warren demanded to know when such mechanisms would be in place. Amrhein said a system will be in place in January that will record “why a member specifically disengaged from the recruiting process.”

It may take time to capture long-term trends in the data, since the new system will track data from January onwards and not from past years.

“We have no way of collecting data from the past from this since the applicant would have to tell us,” the AFRS spokesperson said.

The hope is that better information will help AFRS get more applicants into uniform and help ease its long-term recruiting challenges.

“We cannot afford to lose people who have already demonstrated a willingness to serve,” Warren said. “These are the people who say ‘I want to do this.’ Especially if the only barrier is something that would be quickly dismissed by a medical review.”

US, UK, Australia Agree to New Space Tracking System: What It Means, When It’s Coming

Dec. 8, 2023 | By Chris Gordon

SIMI VALLEY, Calif.—The U.S., U.K., and Australia have agreed to place advanced space tracking radar sites in their countries in a major new initiative that will expand the AUKUS agreement.

The three countries will host and operate the Deep Space Advanced Radar Capability (DARC), a state-of-the-art ground-based radar system, by the end of the decade.

“It is all in process, it is in motion, and it is real,” Dr. Mara Karlin, the Department of Defense’s number two policy official, told Air & Space Forces Magazine in an interview at the Reagan National Defense Forum on Dec. 2, a day after the new AUKUS agreements were reached. “We put some real meat on the bones.”

Though it was initially conceived as a pact to provide Australia with nuclear-powered submarines, the AUKUS agreement now stretches from undersea to outer space. The acronym stands for the collaboration between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States and was formalized in March 2023.

The DARC initiative and other cooperation between the three countries received a boost when their defense chiefs—Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, Britain’s Defense Secretary Grant Shapps, and Australia’s Defense Minister Richard Marles—gathered together at the headquarters of the Defense Innovation Unit in Silicon Valley on Dec. 1 to formalize an array of new agreements as part of so-called Pillar II of the AUKUS agreement, which focuses on developing advanced military technologies

“Many AUKUS-related advanced capability activities remain classified,” the ministers noted in a Dec. 1 joint statement after the meeting.

The DARC initiative, however, is not a secret. The first site will be in Western Australia and is expected to be operational in 2026. Two more sites, one in the U.K. and one in the U.S., are to follow by the end of the decade.

“It goes beyond talking in generalities,” said Charles Galbreath, a retired Space Force colonel and senior fellow for space studies at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. The DARC sites will be linked together and will boost all three nations’ ability to gather and share data.

Most of the U.S.’s ground-based space domain awareness capabilities consist of Cold War-era missile tracking radars or decade-old optical sensors that were not designed for the current space environment. DARC provides a way to strengthen the Space Force’s domain awareness, which officials said must be improved as the number of satellites and the amount of debris in orbit increase.

“DARC offers higher sensitivity, better accuracy, increased capacity, and more agile tracking than current radars capable of tracking objects in Geosynchronous Earth Orbit,” according to the Space Force. “Its ability to provide global monitoring extends beyond inclement weather and daylight, which are limitations of current ground-based optical systems.”

In a Dec. 2 news release, assistant secretary of defense for space policy Dr. John Plumb cited the ability to “leverage the geography” of the three countries. That point was echoed by Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman and top military space officers from the U.K. and Australia.

“Shared domain awareness is going to become increasingly important, not just for us to track objects and avoid collisions, but also to monitor activities, identify threats, and then make informed decisions about how best to respond,” Galbreath said. “That’s going to be important for the United States and our allies in a potential future conflict.”

The locations of the countries are “optimally positioned” for the DARC system, which will be built by Northrop Grumman, particularly for tracking objects in Geosynchronous Earth Orbit (GEO), according to the Space Force.

“You have to have sites scattered around the world,” said Brian Weeden, a former Air Force space operations officer at the Secure World Foundation. “By geographically spacing around all these radars and telescopes, linking them all together, sharing data between them, you get a much better network than what any one country can do by itself.”

Though much of the work under Pillar II remains under wraps, the collaboration covers agreements in artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and domain awareness, including DARC. The focus is “making sure that U.S, U.K., and Australian warfighters are able to see what’s happening, understand what’s happening, make decisions, and then act with decisive advantage,” Karlin said. “That’s an important frame as we’re trying to further build it out.”

DARC is a real-world example of how the U.S. is increasingly relying on partners who, just a few years ago, were not involved in military space operations, she noted.

“The National Defense Strategy talked about how we need a resilient space architecture,” Karlin said. “What a fantastic case study of helping to make that a reality by working with our allies.”

Britain’s Cameron Urges More Aid for Ukraine: ‘Good Investment’ for Degrading Russia

Dec. 7, 2023 | By John A. Tirpak

Urging support for Ukraine, British foreign secretary and former prime minister David Cameron argued aid rendered so far has provided a huge return on investment for the U.S. and the West, not only preventing Russian President Vladimir Putin from chalking up a “win”—which would encourage him toward more aggression—but sending a message of unity to China and reassuring U.S. allies.

Speaking at the Aspen Institute on Dec. 7, Cameron said America has spent about 10 percent of one year’s defense budget aiding and arming Ukraine since Russia’s invasion in early 2022. With that, Ukraine “has destroyed half of Russia’s pre-war military assets.”

“Now, if that isn’t a good investment, I don’t know what is,” Cameron said.

“Ukraine doesn’t even really have a navy, but they have managed to sink about a fifth of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. … I’m sure the Pentagon is excited by the value for money on offer, there. I mean, it’s a remarkable thing,” he added.

Amid uncertainty over whether Congress will approve more aid for Ukraine, Cameron argued for more support and patience, saying the ultimate outcome in Ukraine “takes time … and is worth investing in.”

It’s an investment being shared across the world, Cameron said—European military, civilian, economic, and humanitarian aid is roughly $160 billion, and the U.K. is the second largest donor after the U.S. at $44 billion

Ukraine aid has also helped reinvigorate the U.S. industrial base, Cameron noted, pointing to recent analyses that found almost 90 percent of the money spent on Ukraine stays in America to manufacture weaponry and materiel.

That production is key, he added, because the Russian invasion has been “a tremendous wake-up call to the West” to resume building up war stocks.

“All of that work that’s taking place is very important. And I think we’re at a point where we’ve got to stop thinking about how we’re running down our existing stocks to supply Ukraine,” Cameron said. “We need to think much more about how we build up our stocks. And I think in [a] more dangerous and insecure world … supply chains, stocks, defense commitments, these things have become more important.”

Given the positives, it is critical Congress approve more aid to encourage other allies around the globe to keep supporting Ukraine, he said.

“You’ll be able to go to all the other European countries and say, ‘right, you’ve seen what the US have done. Now [you] will need to join in,’” Cameron said.

Failure to support Ukraine, on the other hand, would be “a victory for Putin … and if it is, it won’t be the end of this,” Cameron predicted.

“If we let him win in Ukraine, it will be somewhere else next. And it won’t just be American money that’s at risk. It might be a NATO country [that is attacked], so it could be American lives,” he said. Avoiding all this is worth “10 percent of your defense budget.”

Addressing criticism of corruption in Ukraine, Cameron said “Ukraine isn’t perfect” but is focused on fighting potential corruption to head off just such charges.

He also countered critics who say sanctions against Russian assets outside Russia haven’t worked. “That’s $400 billion” that Russia doesn’t have “for its war machine,” he said.

“I think there’s a very strong argument for saying, let’s, instead of just freezing that money, let’s take that money. Spend it on rebuilding Ukraine … if you like, a down payment on the reparations that Russia will one day have to pay for the illegal invasion that they’ve undertaken,” Cameron said, suggesting it is one of the topics he will take up in meetings with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken this week.

Cameron confessed to sometimes hoping for a return to better days like the late 1980s and early 1990s, —when “the Berlin Wall was falling, the Soviet Union was breaking up. Russia was becoming a friend, China was joining the World Trade Organization. Democracy was spreading across Europe and in many ways across the world, more and more countries, were adopting market-based economics,” he said.

But the West has to accept that those days are not coming back anytime soon, Cameron warned, calling Ukraine “the great test for our generation, the great challenge for our generation: are we going to defend this democracy? And are we going to recognize that European security is also American security, and we should stay united on this?”

Making a final pitch for more U.S. aid to Ukraine, Cameron warned that “if that money doesn’t get voted through, there are only two people that will be smiling. One of them is Vladimir Putin in Russia. The other one is Xi Jinping in Beijing. And I don’t know about you, but I want to I don’t want to give either of those people a Christmas present.”

44 Guardians Selected for Promotion to E-8, E-9

Dec. 7, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

The Space Force’s top enlisted ranks are gaining 14 new chief master sergeants and 30 senior master sergeants, the Air Force Personnel Center announced Dec. 7.

Competition to reach the E-8 paygrade grows fiercer with each passing year. The latest cycle, 24S8, included the largest-ever pool of eligibles, but just 30 of 423 eligible master sergeants were selected, a rate of just 7.09 percent. Still, that’s better than 21S8, when just 6.25 percent of 64 eligible master sergeants earned another stripe.

USSF Senior Master Sergeant Promotions: 2021-2024

YEAR	SELECTED	ELIGIBLE	RATE
2024	30	423	7.09
2023	35	328	10.67
2022	29	259	11.20
2021	4	64	6.25

It’s also taking longer to get promoted. Average time in grade reached 5.04 years and time in service reached 17.8 years, both highs.

On the other hand, promotions to chief master sergeant held were nearly identical to last year, with just one fewer eligible and one fewer selectee. Average time in grade inched up to 3.18 years and time in service also inched up slightly, to 20.91 years, but figures are below the highs set two years ago.

Space Force Chief Master Sergeant Promotions: 2020-2023

YEAR	SELECTED	ELIGIBLE	RATE
2023	14	54	25.93
2022	15	55	27.27
2021	10	45	22.22
2020	2	8	25.00

The Space Force continues to chart its own path on promotions, expanding the use of promotion boards for lower enlisted ranks. Given all USSF’s transfers from other services, then-Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force Roger A. Towberman said the Space Force had to adjust to fairly compare promotion candidates with wildly different backgrounds. Evaluators cannot rely on “shortcuts or proxies that we might have used when we all knew each other,” Towberman warned.

In September, Towberman told attendees at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference that USSF was exploring a concept he called a “fully qualified promotion system,” which he argued would put “promotions in the hands of the Guardian,” eliminate “competition against each other, and encourage cooperation with each other.”

Speaking later with reporters, Towberman and his successor, CMSSF John Bentivegna, Towberman said the concept would build on the system used for lower ranks, where Guardians attain the necessary skills and certifications to earn their promotions at a pace largely of their own choosing.

“Are we able to evolve that into other grades?” Bentivegna said. “I think taking away some of the individual competition and making really more of a team-focused promotion and evaluation system, if you will, I think is very beneficial for us, especially.”

That idea remains in development. Meanwhile, the Space Force continues to grow: The Space force grew from 8,400 at the end of fiscal 2022 to 8,600 as fiscal 2023 ended. It is poised to increase to 9,400 in 2024, under the new compromise NDAA released by Congress this week.

Congress to Air Force in NDAA: Slow Down Fighter Retirements

Dec. 7, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

The compromise 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, unveiled Dec. 7, pumps the brakes on the Air Force’s plans to retire dozens of F-15E, F-16, and F-22 fighters. The measure is expected to win approval from both chambers and signed into law by President Joe Biden within weeks.

Congress will limit to 68 the number of F-15E Strike Eagles USAF may retire from now through fiscal 2029—well short of the 119 aircraft the Air Force had hoped to send to the boneyard. The limit is a compromise. The Senate version of the bill would have blocked all Strike Eagle retirements through fiscal 2029.

The conference report, which includes more than 7,000 sections, requires the Air Force to report on the total cost of all modifications for invested in each F-15E and F-16C/D it plans to retire, along with the estimated remaining service life for each.

“The conferees applaud the Air Force’s effort to field F-15EX across the Active duty, Reserve, and Air National Guard components equitably, but remain concerned that tactical fighter capacity is not sufficient to meet combatant commander warfighting requirements at an acceptable level of risk,” the report states.

The conferees want similar concessions on other fighters, and want the Air Force to first set out a 12-year plan by April 1, 2024, defining “the rationale for any plans to activate, divest, deactivate, or change the mission of any unit” and “any plans of the Secretary to augment or supplant existing piloted tactical fighter aircraft capability or capacity with Collaborative Combat Aircraft.”

Congress’ intent appears to be to bar any planned F-16 retirements until fiscal 2025, giving lawmakers a second chance to block such moves if they don’t like the answers the Air Force provides in the spring.

Similarly, the compromise keeps in place existing law that bars the Air Force from retiring any F-22 Raptors. Service officials say their 32 Block 20 F-22s are among the most expensive planes to keep in the inventory, are too expensive to upgrade, and will never be used in combat. They have twice tried to retire the older F-22s. But lawmakers, backed by analysts, say giving up those airplanes will move combat-coded F-22s into training roles, effectively shortening the lifespans of those remaining F-22s and making fewer fifth-generation aircraft available for combat.

The larger portion of the fifth-gen fleet are F-35s, and Congress followed recommendations from the General Accountability Office and the F-35 Joint Program Offic to address concerns.

Under the pending NDAA, Congress followed GAO guidance, seeking to require the Pentagon to re-designate as “major acquisition subprograms” the Tech Refresh 3 and Block 4 upgrades—called continuous capability development and delivery—and the propulsion and thermal management modernization program. That would force the Pentagon to more clearly spell out the costs and status of each, both of which are valued in the billions of dollars.

The bill also requires the Air Force and Navy to develop “validated propulsion, power and cooling, thermal management, and electrical power requirements for the planned service life of the F-35,” and for the Joint Program Office to designate two new aircraft each of the F-35A, B, and C variants to serve as developmental testing and evaluation aircraft. JPO director Lt. Gen. Michael Schmidt has indicated the program needs more test aircraft.

While lawmakers opposed the Air Force on most fighters, they cleared the way for more A-10 Warthogs to be retired, appearing to end years of resistance to their demise.

Among other aircraft, the bill would:

Block retirement of any RQ-4 Global Hawk drones

Block further reductions in the KC-135 tanker fleet

And hold at 16 the minimum number of available E-3 AWACS.

After Link 16 Success, SDA Boss Expects More Advanced Datalink Tests to Come

Dec. 7, 2023 | By David Roza

After proving last month that the Link 16 data network can broadcast from space to the ground, the director of the Space Development Agency expects to test similar connections for datalinks that are more advanced than the 1980s-era network.

“Link 16 is the one that’s most prolific, but there’s a lot of different tactical datalinks and we want to be able to talk to as many of those as possible,” SDA director Derek Tournear said Dec. 7 in a discussion with the National Security Space Association.

Link 16 is a tactical radio technology that U.S., NATO, and allied nations use to transmit voice, text, and data to friendly forces up to 200 or 300 nautical miles away, Tournear explained. The problem is that in a near-peer conflict, a battle may take place over a larger area. The military is preparing for that possibility with Joint All-Domain Command-and-Control, which aims to “take any and all available sensor data and get it to any and all available shooters as quickly as possible,” Tournear said.

“In order to do that, you have to have a tactical datalink that works essentially globally, it works beyond line-of-sight,” he added.

The test last month involved sending signals to and from low-Earth orbit satellites to ground-based receivers using terrestrial radios, paving the way for beyond-line-of-sight secure communication ability. Despite the results, new datalink systems may be required in a future fight.

“Cool, but Link 16 is a 1980s datalink with limited bandwidth and a very narrow, easily jammable frequency range,” wrote defense newsletter The Merge, founded by former Air Force weapons systems officer Mike Benitez, in reaction to the test. “We hope it’s a placeholder for a better datalink and those satellites are built with that in mind.”

York Space Systems announced the first-ever successful demonstration of Link 16 technology from space on its Tranche 0 (T0) satellites.

New and improved datalink tests are expected as part of SDA’s tactical satellite communication (TACSATCOM) program, which itself is connected to multiple on-orbit test initiatives, Tournear explained. The initial Link 16 test used three satellites that form part of SDA’s Tranche 0, an initial batch of 28 satellites meant to demonstrate capabilities of the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture, a network of hundreds of satellites to be built over the next decade or so that will provide advanced targeting, missile warning and tracking.

The next batch, Tranche 1, begins launching in September and will consist of up to 161 satellites that can be used in real-world operations. One element of the batch is the Tranche 1 Demonstration and Experimentation System (T1DES), a group of satellites that uses beyond-line-of-sight and low latency data transfer to help connect other spacecraft. Tournear said T1DES can serve as a platform for testing new datalinks, and so can Tranche 2 Developmental Experimentation Satellites, where the goal is to demonstrate that the spacecraft constellation can talk to a wide swath of systems.

“We want to test out a wide range of new tactical datalinks, because there are a lot of tactical datalinks that are used,” Tournear said.

Airspace

Last month’s Link 16 was not without friction. An ongoing dispute between the Pentagon and the Federal Aviation Administration meant the test had to take place in the territory of an undisclosed Five Eyes (an intelligence network including the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) country.

“Our friends at the FAA, their primary concern is to make sure that there is absolutely zero possibility of any kind of risk for commercial air traffic,” Tournear said.

Link 16 shares radio frequency bands with some of the navigation aids used by commercial aircraft, he explained. That means whenever the Department of Defense makes a change to a radio, even if it is just new software, it has to go through a Navy certification process and be approved by the FAA before it can be used over national airspace.

“We have not completed that testing for our radios on orbit yet,” Tournear said. “We’re in the process of doing that. We expect to get those tests completed very quickly and then FAA will allow us to have a temporary frequency authorization over the national airspace.”

The agency had to get a waiver from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to transmit a Link 16 message to a Five Eyes nation and over international waters, but Tournear hopes to “check the boxes” so that SDA can test datalinks over national airspace in the near future.