Senate Confirms Brown as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs

Sept. 20, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

The Senate confirmed Air Force Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. as the next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Sept. 20, clearing the way for Brown to become the first Airman to serve as the nation’s top military officer in 19 years.

Brown was approved in a bipartisan 83-11 vote as lawmakers circumvented the legislative hold of Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), just a few days before the term of the current Chairman, Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, was set to end.

It is not immediately clear if Brown will be sworn in to his new position before Oct. 1, when Milley’s term expires.

Also poised for roll-call votes in the coming days are Gen. Randy George to be the next Chief of Staff of the Army and Gen. Eric Smith to be the next Commandant of the Marine Corps.

For months, hundreds of general and flag officer nominations have been stuck in the Senate. Tuberville’s hold prevented them from being approved all at once by voice vote, while Senate Democrats resisted calling up nominees for individual votes.

Tuberville (R-Ala.) placed his hold to protest a Pentagon policy to provide paid leave and travel funds for troops requiring reproductive services, including abortions, who are based in states where those services are not available. The Republican said he would be willing to vote on nominees individually, but Democrats argued doing so would take up too much floor time and encourage more blockades in the future.

On Sept. 20, Senate Majority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) reversed course and announced he would bring up Brown, George, and Smith for individual votes after Tuberville indicated he would try to bring up Smith’s nomination for a vote himself in an unusual procedural motion. Schumer accelerated the Senate’s lengthy legislative process to file cloture and vote on Brown in one day, and Tuberville did not object.

Tuberville did, however, vote against Brown’s confirmation, as did 10 other Republicans—an unusual occurrence. Nominees to be Chairman have traditionally been confirmed quickly and unanimously by voice vote, though Milley was approved by a 89-1 roll-call vote.

Brown’s confirmation ensures the Chairman job will not be filled on an acting basis, something that has only happened once before in 1993. The Army, Navy, and Marine Corps have all been without a Senate-confirmed leader for several weeks.

It remains to be seen if or when the Senate will hold an individual roll-call vote on Gen. David W. Allvin, who has been nominated to succeed Brown as Air Force Chief of Staff. Should lawmakers not do so before Brown is sworn in as Chairman, Allvin will become acting Chief of Staff in addition to his current job as Vice Chief of Staff.

If Allvin is confirmed, his job as Vice Chief would be filled on an acting basis by the most senior officer on the Air Staff until his nominated successor, Lt. Gen. James C. “Jim” Slife, is confirmed.

More than 100 Air Force and Space Force general officer nominations are still awaiting confirmation.

Still, Brown’s ascension to Chairman marks a milestone for the Air Force, which has not had a general in the position since Gen. Richard Myers retired in 2005. All told, he is the sixth Airman to be Chairman.

A career fighter pilot with most of his experience in the F-16, Brown has 3,000 hours of flying experience, including 130 combat hours. Brown, the son and grandson of veterans, has command experience in the Middle East, Europe, and, perhaps most importantly, the Indo-Pacific. Prior to becoming Chief of Staff, Brown was the commander of Pacific Air Forces.

Introducing Brown as his selection for Chairman back in May, President Joe Biden called him a “a proud, butt-kicking American Airman.”

“Gen. Brown is a warrior descended from a proud line of warriors,” Biden added. “He knows what it means to be in the thick of battle and how to keep your cool when things get hard.”

F-16s, AC-130, and More Operate over Remote Alaskan Regions

Sept. 20, 2023 | By Unshin Lee Harpley

U.S. and Canadian forces recently conducted joint exercises around some of the most remote, austere islands in Alaska.

“Operation Noble Defender” took place near Shemya, Attu, and St. Lawrence islands—scattered in the Bering Sea and less than 500 miles from Russia—and featured air, ground, and naval forces from both nations operating under the authority of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and U.S. Northern Command.

The operation, which took place from Aug. 15 to Sept. 10, aimed to practice detecting, deterring, and protecting against potential threats to North America and the Arctic region, even in challenging weather and harsh conditions.

Gen. Glen VanHerck, the commander of NORAD and NORTHCOM, emphasized the increasing interest of the Arctic region due to environmental changes—making the ability to execute operations in the region more critical than ever. He highlighted the significant need for readily available, well-trained, and equipped forces capable of operating in the Arctic to defend North America.

“As strategic competitors take advantage of greater access and influence in the region, NORAD and USNORTHCOM must demonstrate the readiness and capability to persistently operate in the arctic,” VanHerck said in a statement.

Operation Noble Defender consisted of two components: Operation Polar Arrow and Operation Polar Dagger. Operation Polar Arrow, the air component of the operation, was conducted from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska. From this strategic location, aircraft embarked on a journey across the vast expanses of Alaska and the Arctic Circle, braving harsh and austere weather conditions, a spokesperson from NORAD told Air and Space Forces Magazine.

North American Aerospace Defense Command CF-18 Hornets and F-16s Fighting Falcons fly in formation with an E-3 Sentry airborne warning and control system in support of Operation Noble Defender over Alaska, Aug. 24, 2023. U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Ricardo Sandoval

U.S. and Canadian aircraft participated in this phase to demonstrate their ability to deploy assets in coordination with special operations units and to maintain air sovereignty. NORAD aircraft, including F-16 Fighting Falcons and CF-18 Hornets, flew alongside an E-3 Sentry airborne warning and control system, showcasing interoperability. KC-135 tanker aircraft also supported these operations.

Operation Polar Dagger, designed to integrate joint special operations units and test new capabilities while defending critical infrastructure—enhancing all-domain awareness and strengthening the force’s understanding of the region—involved collaboration among air, ground, naval, and special forces. The Air Force’s 17th Special Operation Squadron deployed an AC-130J Ghostrider aircraft, accompanied by MH-60 Blackhawks from the Army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment and UH/MH-60 Blackhawks and CH-47 Chinook helicopters from the 207th Aviation Troop Command, Alaska Army National Guard. Additionally, the USAF Special Operations Surgical Team from the 720th Operational Support Squadron provided rapid trauma medical support for the integrated air, ground, and maritime operations conducted as part of the maneuver.

East-Coast-based U.S. Naval Special Warfare Operators (SEALs) engages with an AC-130J Ghostrider as the aircraft conducts a flyover on Attu Island, Alaska, Aug. 31, 2023, as part of Operation POLAR DAGGER. U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Matthew Dickinson

Noble Defender is a recurring exercise aimed at showcasing the ability of the U.S. Alaskan NORAD Region and Canada to enhance integrated deterrence and layered defense. In a previous edition held in June, the operation involved U.S. Air Force F-15 and F-16 fighter aircraft from Ellington Field Joint Reserve Base in Houston, Texas; Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base in New Orleans, La.; and Homestead Air Reserve Base in Florida. And back in January, the operation had four Air Force F-35s deploy to Thule Air Base in Greenland for the first time, followed by a series of air drills.

NORAD, a joint Canadian and American command, employs an array of space-based, aerial, and ground-based sensors, air-to-air refueling tankers, and fighter aircraft on alert, controlled by an advanced command and control network.

On-Demand PME, New ‘Foundations’ Courses Coming for Enlisted Airmen

Sept. 20, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

The Air Force plans to make online educational materials available to enlisted Airmen “on demand” by late 2024, one of several changes the service announced Sept. 20 as part of a new “Enlisted Airmanship Continuum” for developing service members.

Other changes include “Foundations Courses” for junior enlisted, noncommissioned officers, and senior noncommissioned officers starting in October that will eventually become a prerequisite for Airmen to attend the service’s enlisted PME programs—Airman Leadership School, NCO Academy, and SNCO Academy.

Finally, the Air Force plans to expand its “Prepping the Line” initiative, which sets Job Qualifications Standards for Airmen to be certified on for certain supervisory roles.

“This shift is about the long game and building the force of the future,” Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. and Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force JoAnne S. Bass wrote in a letter to the force. “We owe every Airman deliberate developmental opportunities throughout their careers to grow and become their very best. They will be the difference makers in the future fight, and we are choosing to invest in them now to ensure we remain the Air Force our nation needs.”

On-Demand PME

On-demand PME will “provide unrestricted access to relevant content for Airmen, when and where needed,” Brown and Bass wrote. A background paper from the Air Force clarified that the initiative is still being worked with a scheduled release in late 2024.

An Air Force spokeswoman confirmed to Air & Space Forces Magazine that on-demand PME will not replace the need to attend enlisted PME courses like Airman Leadership School, NCO Academy, and SNCO Academy.

Rather, it will be “online content Airmen can continually return to or to learn about something new, such as emotional intelligence [or] Air Force Budget Life Cycle,” the spokeswoman said.

The Air Force has made digitizing and upgrading different enlisted programs a priority in recent years, with varying levels of success. Despite Bass’ push to move to digital testing for the Weighted Airman Promotion System by 2022, paper tests and Scantrons remain standard. myEval, a new personnel evaluation web application, was paused in November 2022 because it was too difficult to use, followed by myEval 2.0 in March.

On the officer side, on-demand educational material has been a key part of the revamped Undergraduate Pilot Training curriculum, allowing for students to learn at their own pace, officials have said.

Foundations Courses

Bass first previewed the Foundations Courses during a livestreamed discussion with Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall on Aug. 30, saying they would replace the Air Force’s professional enhancement seminars.

“We’re about to make those things mandatory,” she said at the time. “We will make sure that we have relevant content that we are supplying and giving you, empowering you with, so that you can continue growing those around you.”

The three new Foundations Courses—for junior Airmen, NCOs, and senior NCOs—will launch in October at the base level but will not become mandatory for enlisted PME until late 2024, according to Brown and Bass’s letter.

“Content for all foundations courses will be updated, and standardized by Air University and Development Advisors, with the intent to remain current and relevant to maintain our competitive advantage,” the background document added.

The EFD Action Plan to reimagine and explore a new ecosystem. The new EFD Model – Enlisted Airmanship Continuum (100–900) – connects institutional, functional, and base delivered education, training, and experiences. The Enlisted Airmanship Continuum is introduced at Basic Military Training, reinforced by Foundational Competencies in each AFSC’s Career Field Education and Training Plan, and embedded throughout the entire continuum. U.S. Air Force graphic

Enlisted Force Development

In January 2022, Brown and Bass released their Enlisted Force Development Action Plan, outlining 28 force development objectives to be completed over the next two years.

One such objective was to review the existing enlisted PME continuum “to ensure it meets the needs of today’s warfighter and delivers development at the right time,” leading to the Sept. 20 announcement.

More broadly, Bass has sought to revamp the foundational documents and processes by which enlisted Airmen progress in their careers. During her tenure as CMSAF, the Air Force has released updated “Blue” and “Brown” Books—“The Profession of Arms: Our Core Values” and “The Enlisted Force Structure,” respectively. In addition, the service trotted out “The Blueprint,” a 32-page “living” document updated regularly with new information and links intended to be a resource and reference for enlisted Airmen throughout their careers.

Air Force Acquisition Boss: In Upcoming Reorganization, Speed Is the Priority

Sept. 19, 2023 | By John A. Tirpak

In the major “re-optimization” review of the Air Force ordered by Secretary Frank Kendall earlier this month, speed of acquisition will take top priority, superseding cost and performance as secondary factors, service acquisition chief Andrew Hunter told reporters last week at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber conference.

Kendall’s sweeping review—requiring major commands and other organizations within the Department of the Air Force to submit an action plan by Jan. 1—directs reorganization along five lines of effort: overall organization, equipage, personnel, readiness, and “supporting the force.”

Asked how restructuring the “equipage” enterprise will differ from run-of-the-mill acquisition reform—a longtime cottage industry in Washington—Hunter said the directive reflects the urgency of responding to the accelerating threat from China.

“Where one lays the priority in acquisition reform has shifted over time,” Hunter said. “Between the three different priorities of acquisition—the acquisition system cost, schedule, performance—sometimes the priority that takes center stage shifts, and that’s been true of the acquisition reform debate.”

Where once the priority was on controlling costs—to the detriment of speed—it has shifted to getting new gear fielded rapidly to deter China, he said.

Speed, he said, “is absolutely foremost” among the priorities of schedule, cost, and performance, but he didn’t rank the other two factors in terms of their priority.

The term “acquisition reform” has become “kind of generic,” Hunter added, but in the context of Kendall’s reorganization, it is “incredibly focused” in the context of re-optimizing for competition with a near-peer threat like China.

“We know the capabilities that we have to maintain, develop … or recapture” in terms of “competitive advantage with the pacing threat.” He reiterated previous Air Force comments that China enjoys an edge in certain kinds of weapons and in spectrum warfare, and that USAF’s edge in many areas has eroded.

“We will be doing things that are directly tied to achieving those outcomes; organizationally, process, budgetarily, all of the above, very focused on those specific goals,” Hunter said of the review.

The guiding idea will be “the ability to deliver … integrated capabilities through a development pipeline,” he said.

That means “unity of effort starting from [science and technology], incorporating advances and commercial technology that are happening outside of DOD … through AFWERX and our AFWERX 3.0 initiative,” Hunter said.

There will also be efforts to ensure new capabilities fit within the Air Force’s overall architecture, “that there’s a home; a place for them to go, and then that they tie into our acquisition strategies and our program approaches that then deliver a field of capabilities and upgrade and sustain those capabilities over time,” Hunter added.

The acquisition system already does those things, but Hunter said the review will provide focus to ensure “as little friction—as little gap—as possible between stages of the development process.”

The goal is to accomplish normal acquisition processes “at pace and scale across different parts of the enterprise to deliver integrated capabilities and specific areas to stay ahead,” Hunter said. “There’s plenty of work for us to do to up our game in that area.”

In his keynote speech at the conference, Kendall emphasized that there is “no time to lose” in restructuring the service to be able to quickly pivot to new technologies and organizational structures, in order to keep China off balance and present it with cost-imposing demands.

He said the re-optimization review will conclude in January and immediately shift to “an analysis of alternatives to execution” of recommended changes.

Service officials said the review will likely not drive significant changes in the fiscal 2024 budget, but will provide a foundation for the fiscal 2025 request.

USAF Will Test Out a New Way to Organize Deployments: Air Task Forces

Sept. 19, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

In an attempt to build more cohesive teams of Airmen, the Air Force will test out a new system for grouping and deploying troops overseas, top service leaders announced last week at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference.

Air Task Forces, or ATFs, are intended to replace the service’s model of Air Expeditionary Wings with “forces all packaged together in a light-footprint, deployable unit,” deputy chief of staff for operations Lt. Gen. James C. “Jim” Slife told reporters.

Under the current system, small groups or individual Airmen with different unit type codes are pulled piecemeal from across the service for deployments.

“We deployed wings to Desert Storm,” Slife said. “We no longer deploy wings … we deploy bespoke collections of UTCs that have never trained together before they get to where the action is. That has been an efficient way to operate. It largely works in a relatively uncontested environment where you have large main fixed operating bases that are going to be free from attack. That’s not the world we’re living in anymore.”

In contrast, ATFs will consist of Airmen who train and deploy together under the new Air Force Force Generation Model and include different “force elements” allowing them to function more independently. Specifically, Slife pointed to four elements every ATF will need:

Command: A commander, deputy commander, senior enlisted leader, and expeditionary “A-staff” patterned off the Air Staff to provide support for the commander. According to an Air Force release, ATF commanders will be colonels, the deputies will be lieutenant colonels with at least one squadron command assignment, and the senior enlisted leader will be a command chief master sergeant.

Mission Generation: Operational, maintenance, and intelligence forces—“all of the things you need to generate sorties on a day-to-day basis,” Slife said. Some will include fighter aircraft, others airlift, other ISR, and so on.

Combat Support: The forces necessary to establish a base and enable the mission, like civil engineers.

Combat Service Support: Personnel needed for “running a main operating base, providing for airfield security, air traffic control, lodging, sustenance, all those types of things at a main operating base,” Slife said.

A June release from the Air Force broke down force elements even further based on specific function like opening, establishing, operating, and “robusting” an air base; command and control; different kinds of missions like air superiority or intra-theater airlift; or “Demand Force Teams” for highly specific skillsets.

Not every Air Task Force will have all of those more specific force elements, Slife said.

“If you’re going to INDOPACOM to do a series of exercises, you may not need a substantial force protection capability as part of that task force, for example,” Slife said. “If you’re going to CENTCOM, where there is a large main operating base that is reasonably well developed, you may not need as many civil engineers as if you were going to build from scratch.”

The service is still figuring out the exact formulations. To that end, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall announced during his keynote speech that he had approved the creation of three Air Task Forces “to serve as pilots in order to experiment with ways to more effectively provide deployable integrated units.”

Two of those ATFs will be for the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility, and one will be for U.S. Indo-Pacific Command.

“These are not the final permanent deployable units we expect to form, but they are a major step in the right direction and we will learn from this experience,” Kendall added.

In a subsequent release, the Air Force detailed that the ATFs will group, train, and deploy Airmen and units together as part of the new four-phase Force Generation Model. They will also include the expeditionary air base squadron teams the Air Force introduced last year.

The pilot task forces will officially enter that force generation model in the summer of 2024 and deploy beginning in the fall of 2025. The exact units involved in the task forces were not disclosed, and more details will be released in the coming months, the release stated.

Still, the move reflects a broader shift within the Air Force to organize itself around missions, not functions, said Slife, who has been nominated for Vice Chief of Staff. As he has in the past, Slife expressed concern that the service has centralized resources to become more efficient—at the cost of flexibility.

Lt. Gen. James C. Slife meets with junior leaders at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference on Sept. 12, 2023.

In that regard, Air Task Forces go hand-in-hand with some of the Air Force’s other major initiatives like Agile Combat Employment and Multi-Capable Airmen. In order to have teams of Airmen that can disperse from central hubs to operate from remote or austere bases—like ACE calls for—the service will need to include support and command elements. In order to keep those teams lean and agile, Airmen will have to be ready to take on duties outside their career specialties.

Getting Airmen ready for these challenges and new ways of operating is “100 percent dependent on having a disciplined force generation cycle that allows you the time and space to train,” Slife added. And staying disciplined means some Airmen won’t always be available for their usual jobs at their home bases.

“AFFORGEN is going to allow us to accept some moderate, prudent risk in day-to-day garrison operations in order to build and train these Multi-Capable airmen teams and then deploy them as part of a task force,” Slife said.

AFSOC Wants MQ-9 Reapers to Act As ‘Capital Ships’ For Smaller Drones

Sept. 19, 2023 | By David Roza

The head of Air Force Special Operations Command envisions a future where MQ-9 Reaper drones act as ‘capital ships’ from which smaller uncrewed aerial systems (UASs) launch to establish a sensor grid or a communications pathway for the joint force.

The command is working with drone vendors to explore how to establish that kind of network and how wide it can expand, AFSOC boss Lt. Gen. Tony D. Bauernfeind told reporters Sept. 12 at AFA’s Air, Space, & Cyber conference.

“Can we establish a network that goes 5 miles, 50 miles, 500 miles?” he said. “I don’t know, we have to work the physics and the tactics, techniques, and procedures to find out how far we can push these networks out that will then give us that grid that we need to support the joint force.”

The UAS network is a key component of Bauernfeind’s top acquisition priority, a project called adaptive airborne enterprise (A2E). Under A2E, MQ-9s would grow beyond their traditional role as intelligence and strike platforms. They would become mobile control centers for a network of small drones or other systems which could form an “expansive sensing grid” to find targets or create a communications pathway “for our special operations forces that will be in the deep battlespace,” Bauernfeind said.

“The future is this: AFSOC operators will have the capability to operate an MQ-9 Reaper, while also managing and synchronizing sUAS platforms capable of delivering various payloads, from anywhere—whether that be in the back of an AC-130, home station, or a hotel room halfway around the world,” a release last month from the the 27th Special Operations Wing noted.

Bauernfeind pictures MQ-9s, which inhabit the Defense Department’s heaviest drone category, Group 5, launching drones from the lightest categories—Groups 1 and 2, which weigh under 55 pounds. Standing up a network to control all those machines at once will take some work, the general acknowledged, since the current infrastructure for commanding uncrewed aircraft is outdated and inefficient.

“Our ISR infrastructure, specifically our MQ-9 architecture, has really been the same architecture that we have seen since the 1990s,” he said. “It takes over 150 personnel or Airmen to maintain a single MQ-9 orbit. That doesn’t seem too unmanned to me.”

mq-9 reaper — U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Nicholas Hatcher, 49th Wing chief of safety, left, and U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Austin Shuta, 29th Attack Squadron instructor sensor operator, prepare to launch an MQ-9 Reaper during Agile Combat Employment Grand Warrior at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico, July 21, 2023. U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Antonio Salfran

The large footprint also limits how many Reapers AFSOC can send to meet combatant commanders’ demand for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. The command runs a fleet of 50 MQ-9As with three MQ-9Bs on the way, though not all of these are ready to deploy at any given moment. Bauernfeind wants to experiment with automated software so that a single human operator can control three Reapers.

“We’re going to wrestle with that … because this is going to change how we think and the architecture required,” he said.

Bauernfeind appears to be in step with his predecessor, Lt. Gen. James C. Slife, now deputy chief of staff for operations.

“When we got into the remotely piloted aircraft business in the 1990s, we did it the way that you might expect the Air Force to do it … one pilot, one cockpit, one data link to one airplane,” Slife said at an AFA Warfighters in Action in 2022. “That’s a very manpower-intensive methodology for operating aircraft.”

Automating some tasks could significantly reduce that manpower requirement, Bauernfeind said. And while the Air Force has been slow to adopt such technologies, it has started to do so in areas like automatic takeoff and landing and satellite communication launch and recovery, which have extended Reaper on-station time by 35 percent—a boon for combatant commanders.

“We’re getting a lot more holiday cards,” he said.

Automated takeoff and landing is now being implemented across Reaper pilot training, but Bauernfeind sees more difficult automations on the horizon.

“We’re going to have to learn to be uncomfortable with not having a person in the loop, but a person on the loop,” he said. “How are we going to trust ourselves that that automation is working, and we don’t have to have a good young American sitting there staring at that sensor feed 24/7, 365?”

The general is not the only one considering those questions as the Air Force and the Defense Department work to automate some of their most important weapons systems, from aircraft to submarines to cruise missile warning, in order to decrease manpower requirements and increase decision-making speed.

Distributed networks of sensors and communications pathways like the one Bauernfeind envisions complement the military’s larger pursuit of Joint All Domain Command and Control, the Pentagon’s sweeping plan to connect sensors and shooters across the globe. Bauernfeind wants to move fast to bring that kind of capability to the joint special operations force.

“As we move forward into adaptive airborne enterprise, it’s very important to me that we push and we go faster,” Bauernfeind said, indicating his troops would conduct three demonstrations over the next year. “In fact, I want to fail forward, I want to fail fast.”

How At-Scale Agility Could Address Structural Challenges in the Department of the Air Force

Sept. 19, 2023 | By Patrick Reardon

Many government organizations have pursued “agility” with mixed success, confusing whether it’s “nimbleness” or “a culture element.” According to McKinsey & Company, agility is objective, and attained by balancing stability and dynamism. Striking that balance can help unlock major opportunities for the Department of the Air Force.

“If you have only stability, then you might be a low functioning bureaucracy. If you have only dynamism, then you invite chaos,” says Kirk Rieckhoff, a senior partner and leader of McKinsey’s Defense practice. “Organizational agility refers to the ability to achieve the optimal balance between stability and flexibility. This involves having certain aspects of the operating model, such as personnel, processes, and budgets, remain stable. It also entails embracing dynamism and adaptability when it comes to task assignment, resource allocation, and responses to a changing environment. This equilibrium empowers leaders to adapt and remain nimble over time.”

McKinsey & Co. has been around for nearly a century and serves between 80 and 90 of the Fortune 100 companies at any given time. While best known for its work in the private sector, McKinsey has supported public sector organizations since WWII. Its work ranges from developing the first Presidential transition team to reorganizing federal science offices into NASA. McKinsey has served every executive cabinet agency in the U.S. and two thirds of U.S. States.

“[The Air Force] is such a large and distributed organization that getting things done quickly and at scale is a significant lift,” says Rachel Riley, a partner in McKinsey’s Public Sector and People/Organizational Performance practice. But she emphasizes there’s nothing about public sector organizations that make them intrinsically slow—in fact, she cites the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s rapid response to 9/11, FEMA’s reaction to Hurricane Katrina, and the Air Force’s rapid response to the COVID-19 pandemic as prime case studies of public sector agencies that have executed missions with tremendous agility during times of crisis. Achieving at-scale agility within the Air Force is no different.

“The Air Force was born out of innovation,” Rieckhoff says. “There’s a ton of opportunity for government to bring some of those great lessons from the way it works in an agile manner in times of crisis. It just requires a holistic, aspirational approach to do that in the day-to-day business of running the organization.”

According to Rieckhoff and Riley, McKinsey has helped private and public sector companies implement agility into their organizations to improve performance, productivity, organizational health, speed, and work design. Even large, highly regulated, technically complex companies have infused these agile concepts into the fabric of their organization and found success in improving speed, employee satisfaction, and performance.

The Air Force has a structure and set of processes that are well suited and optimized for a relatively slowly changing environment. The current competitive pressures on the Air Force, however, require a faster ability to adapt as highlighted by the CSAF’s Action Orders. To make agility happen today, it requires almost single-minded focus of the most senior leadership.

“The SECAF’s clear priority and laser focus on the operational imperatives are the best example of the level of effort required to make change happen in the Air Force today,” says Riley, though she adds that that’s an incredibly high bar to allow major change to happen. “Many of the Air Force’s pilots, pathfinders, and lighthouses get stuck in purgatory. Our research has found the way out is to reverse the approach. Rather than focusing on a great idea and scaling it across the Air Force, focus instead on a specific unit and apply all the ideas at once. Depots are a great example, or a flight line.”

She also emphasizes the importance of personnel and upgrading existing talent within an organization to meet mission. She cites LEGO as a success story in this area. As covered in McKinsey’s new book Rewired, LEGO provides at-scale opportunities within its workforce to upskill their employee’s digital talents to empower a company-wide digital transformation.

McKinsey has found that mission-driven organizations have a special competitive advantage that plays a key role in finding that balance between structure and dynamism: the mission itself.

“The most critical enabler for agility is a clear, inspiring mission that every member of the team identifies with and is working towards. Unfortunately, that inspiration can often get buried under the weight of unnecessarily complex processes and structures,” Rieckhoff says. “But that’s also what gives me the most hope for the future of the Air Force … [as] an agile innovation engine for the next century of American security.”

USAF, Pentagon Take Steps to Make Sure Sentinel Hits Its Operational Service Date

Sept. 18, 2023 | By John A. Tirpak

The Air Force is accelerating some activities in its Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile program in order to make sure it meets its “no fail” initial operational capability date of September 2030, Pentagon acquisition and sustainment chief William LaPlante said last week.

“It wasn’t that we have to fix an IOC problem,” LaPlante said during a press conference during AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber conference Sept. 12. “It was [schedule] pressure. … We knew we had a sporty schedule to meet IOC.”

LaPlante directed the creation of an integrated master schedule to take account of development of the Sentinel missile, the construction of 450 launch silos, the command-and-control network to tie them together, and other elements critical to achieving the aggressive plan to have a minimal land-based nuclear deterrent ready to go in seven years.

“Everyone should look at what we’ve learned now” and how programs “can be smarter about doing [things that] potentially will save time later,” he said.

Concerns about delays to the LGM-35 Sentinel surfaced earlier this year after the release of a Government Accountability Office report that projected the program as being a year behind schedule, though with IOC still expected between April and June 2030, before the September 2030 deadline required by U.S. Strategic Command.

“Sentinel is behind schedule due to staffing shortfalls, delays with clearance processing, and classified information technology infrastructure challenges,” the GAO report said. “Additionally, the program is experiencing supply chain disruptions, leading to further schedule delays.”

Specifically, LaPlante said Sept. 12 there are long-lead items in the Sentinel program now expected to take two years to procure, whereas when the program was sketched out before the COVID-19 pandemic, the expectation was for six months.

“So I gave them authority to purchase them now,” LaPlante said. He has also urged the prototyping of Sentinel launch control centers, “now, earlier, so we can learn the lessons rather than wait until this later point,” he added.

Still other parts of the program are being addressed as well, LaPlante said, to ensure they’re ready when needed.

“Every program manager should be doing exactly this. This is what’s called active program management … that’s what we did,” LaPlante said.

There’s been no slip in the planned IOC date “because we’re trying to finish the integrated master schedule. And as we’ve been saying, the IOC is tight, and there’s no margin right now,” he acknowledged, while saying the Pentagon will learn more more about the likelihood of achieving IOC as “pull to the left” plans are implemented.

Northrop Grumman, the prime contractor for Sentinel, has been building facsimiles of Minuteman III silos and systems to smooth and accelerate the process of building or renovating them, Maj. Gen John P. Newberry, program executive officer for strategic systems, told reporters at a separate press conference.

“Currently, we have 450 launch facilities today in Minuteman, and the intent is to refurbish … all of them and place a Sentinel inside,” he said.

Newberry acknowledge the effort has been likened in scope and timeline to the construction of the interstate highway system, but said Northrop and its subcontractors have a good plan to accomplish the task.

“We’re also in construction right now, by the way, in terms of test infrastructure at Vandenberg [Air Force Base, Calif.], converting two, soon to be three, launch facilities,” Newberry said, which will help Northrop with the conversion process and lead to “early identification of issues.”

He also said LaPlante will consider opportunities to start construction earlier at F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyo., the planned first operational site for Sentinel.

“And so we’re going to start with two launch facilities earlier than planned, and also launch centers, and do that at F.E. Warren,” Newberry said.

Starting earlier will also help the Air Force deal with the “uniqueness” of every missile base that will get the Sentinel, such as their geography and soil, he said.

Newberry acknowledged the civil engineering effort to build the silos is “a huge challenge. You think about weather, you think about roads. … I’m not trying to downplay that. This will be a sizable construction effort, but it’s getting to design and then [we] begin construction.”

Maj. Gen John Allen, head of the Air Force installations and mission support center, also said a new, streamlined process is being developed for the design and construction of the silos.

The Nuclear Weapons Center and Northrop will partner directly with the Army Corps of Engineers “to deliver this construction,” Allen said, a partnership that amounts to “essentially, a construction task force,” Allen said.

“It is considerably different than the 30 years that I’ve been watching construction in the Air Force. It is a big, big deal,” Allen said. “And I think it is going to get us that agility we need to do … a missile silo a week to get to 450.”

Competition Defines New Collaborative Combat Aircraft Program Now, But Not Forever

Sept. 18, 2023 | By John A. Tirpak

The Air Force wants to keep the competition for its Collaborative Combat Aircraft program open for as long as possible. But rather than repeatedly and continuously reiterating the platform, the service will choose a contractor to take the winning elements and integrate them into a fighting system, leaders said at last week’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference.

“We will always have a continuous competition piece of this, but the government will not be” the system integrator, Brig. Gen. Dale White, program executive officer for fighters and advanced aircraft, said in a press conference at ASC.

The Air Force has programmed $5.8 billion for CCAs from fiscal 2024-2028, with the goal of fielding at least 1,000 of the unmanned, autonomous aircraft by the end of the decade. While White would not discuss the timeline or mechanics for releasing requests for proposals or choosing winning contractors, he did say an acquisition strategy exists for CCAs, and “we will eventually get to a place where we do a downselect to a vendor that … does the integration of the autonomy and has the vehicle and then the mission systems as well.”

Up until that point, there will be “this continuous loop of competition from the mission system perspective…[and] who brings the best capability from an autonomy perspective,” White said. Eventually, the acquisition strategy “tells us what the end product looks like.” He also emphasized the Air Force has not “closed the door” to any concepts yet.

Service leaders dropped a variety of hints about the CCA program without giving a detailed timeline for the program. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said it will be developed in “two increments.” The first will be a more basic version intended to quickly get airframes on the ramp, while a second version will be more complex and capable of more sophisticated missions.

“The goal is not to have multiple variants that we have to try to maintain or sustain,” White explained. “There [are] still some traditional aspects of acquisition. The only difference here is we will keep … continuous competition” for mission systems.

There is not a specific target cost of CCAs yet, and White acknowledged that “there are absolutely some different cost points. But those cost points also represent capability. They represent size, they represent range, they represent all of those attributes.” The Air Force will be trading those attributes against each other.

The service is looking for “the sweet spot” between range, payload and capability, White said. There are many potential bidders on the program—White pointed to the AFA exhibit hall, brimming with “a very broad representation of vehicle capabilities,” especially in the field of artificial intelligence.

Scenes at the Tech Expo at the 2023 Air, Space & Cyber Conference at National Harbor, Maryland. Photo by Mike Tsukamoto/Air & Space Forces Magazine

Moreover, experimental versions—at least of some of the autonomy and AI elements—are already in the hands of testers who are exploring potential tactics and the ‘knee in the curve’ between cost and capability, he said. That interaction with operators will play a big role in winnowing down the field of entrants, as will production capacity.

“We have to take all that into consideration,” White said.

Brig. Gen. Chris Niemi, Air Combat Command’s director of plans, programs, and requirements, said another factor—and a big one driving the Air Force’s choices on CCAs is that the service expects to endure far more attrition in a future war than it has in the last 35 years. The F-15, he noted, was “able to rack up a 104-to-0 kill ratio,” and while he would “love to be able to maintain” that kind of lopsided dominance, “that’s just not the threat environment that we see.”

If “you’re going to experience more losses, we see great utility in having platforms” whose loss is more bearable than an F-35 with a pilot onboard, he said.

“Those are the types of tradeoffs that are being enabled,” he said.

Air Force acquisition executive Andrew Hunter, in his own press conference, said CCAs will have to be built “in an entirely different scale” to achieve “affordable mass.” That means being designed from the start to be mass-produced.

While Kendall has said he sees CCAs as coming in at “a fraction” of the cost of an F-35, no senior leaders would bound that more tightly.

“It will not cost as much as F-35, but it’s also going to be simpler in design. And so that is core to our strategy, core to our efforts,” Hunter said. The cost versus capability tradeoff is “very much a part of the front-end process for how we get to CCA,” he said. “And it does require … discipline and how do we think about what you’re asking the platform to do to ensure that continues to be something you can produce effectively and affordably.”

Kendall told reporters that the “capabilities across the vendors that we’ve been engaged with and talk to [are] very robust and that leads to us feeling like we will be able to make rapid progress.”

What’s still unknown, Kendall said, is how many CCAs can effectively pair with a crewed aircraft. He said it will be “at least two” but has speculated that five may be the right number. Operational analysis shows the more CCAs a crewed airplane can manage, the better, he said, and the Air Force is looking for contractors that can enable that control element the most effectively.