New Report: How the Air Force Measures and Trains for Readiness Needs a Revamp

Oct. 23, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

As the Department of the Air Force undergoes a sweeping “re-optimization” review focused on its readiness for great power competition, a new research report cites gaps in the department’s methods for measuring readiness and suggests advanced new simulators and relatred technologies could be useful to close those gaps.

The report was published Oct. 19 by the federally funded RAND Corporation and shed light on senior leadership’s concerns “that the current readiness assessment system is not providing sufficient insight into the capability of the force to meet future mission requirements because of the lack of quality outcome measurements in the readiness system.”

Those concerns about readiness seemingly culminated in a series of remarks by Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall in September.

“If we were asked tomorrow to go to war against a great power, either Russia or China, would we be really ready to do that?” Kendall asked rhetorically during a livestreamed discussion with Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force JoAnne S. Bass. “I think the answer is not as much as we could be, by a significant margin. And we’ve got to start spending a lot of time thinking about that and figuring out what we’re going to do about it.”

Then, in his keynote address at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference a week later, Kendall declared that “we must ensure that the Air Force and Space Force are optimized to provide integrated deterrence, support campaigning, and ensure enduring advantage.”

The re-optimization review, currently under way and set to produce recommendations by January, has five lines of effort, one of which is focused on “how we create, sustain and evaluate readiness across the Air and Space Forces,” Kendall said.

The RAND report, commissioned by the Headquarters Air Force Training and Readiness Directorate, could inform the review effort and its recommendations. Relying on interviews with subject matter experts and Air Force leaders, RAND researchers homed in on issues with the department’s current readiness metrics and recommendations for improving the test and training infrastructure to close those gaps.

“The [Air Force] is not measuring the most useful things to gain insight on the readiness of the force,” researchers concluded. “Legacy metrics focus on the ability of individual service members to conduct individual missions. But most National Defense Strategy missions require an integrated approach: Both USAF training requirements and how training is achieved need to change to capture more meaningful readiness metrics.”

Researchers highlighted three interconnected issues with current readiness metrics:

They don’t do a good job of measuring integration across services or even Unit Type Codes (UTCs), instead asking individual units and service members to assess their own readiness in isolation

They don’t reflect how the Air Force actually presents forces; individual units are assessed for different missions or environments, but the service then has to aggregate and extrapolate for the force packages it actually uses to respond to situations.

“Opportunities can be nonexistent or scarce for units to practice and demonstrate proficiency for certain capabilities,” researchers said, meaning leaders have to make educated guesses as to their forces’ readiness for certain missions.

“Addressing these gaps is not a simple matter of adjusting the current training infrastructure,” the researchers wrote. “Qualitatively different capabilities are needed to scale, integrate, and present complex scenarios and environments, which could be scheduled across units to aggregate force packages and executed to align with readiness reporting cycles. Furthermore, to fully close the gap in readiness assessment, the capabilities must allow some form of data collection to capture necessary and interpretable readiness measurements.”

The answer, the report suggests, are substantial investments in training infrastructure, particularly in simulators and “synthetic environments” that would allow the department to conduct more integrated training without massive, costly exercises; and to test troops’ readiness against threats and missions that might be impossible to recreate in the real world.

Such improvements would also provide more objective data on readiness, the report notes, helping leadership make more informed decisions.

In discussions with leaders from Air Combat Command, Air Force Global Strike Command, and Air Mobility Command, researchers found a common requirement for more and better distributed mission operations training, which would require expanding simulator training to more communities, standardizing the simulators and synthetic training environments currently used, and upgrading the IT infrastructure to support the connectivity required for such training—a frequent concern across many of the department’s technology efforts.

The Air Force’s main effort to address that demand is the evolving “Common Synthetic Training Environment,” which has been in development for several years. “This approach intentionally shifts the focus of training capabilities away from system-specific simulators to a modular, open architecture that directly supports integrated training across air platforms,” RAND researchers wrote. But they cited a range of technical challenges, from scalability to realism to integration, that continue to challenge developers.

The report concluded with five recommendations for the Air Force to consider:

Define readiness more broadly and add specific measures within that definition

Create processes to determine readiness for force packages that go beyond individual unit commanders

Add a field in the Defense Readiness Reporting System–Strategic where commanders can explain qualifying information relating to their subjective assessments

Establish a working group focused on data and measurement in support of the Common Synthetic Training Environment

Factor readiness assessment gaps when establishing priorities for training infrastructure

US, S. Korea, Japan Hold First Ever Trilateral Air Exercise, with B-52 and Fighters

Oct. 23, 2023 | By Unshin Lee Harpley

The air forces of the U.S., South Korea and Japan held their first ever trilateral aerial exercise Oct. 22.

One American B-52 bomber and three U.S. F-16s flew alongside two F-15Ks from the Republic of Korea Air Force, and four F-2s from the Japan Air Self-Defense Force.

The exercise marks a major milestone in the trilateral relationship between the allies, which saw a historic boost in August when U.S. President Joe Biden, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, and Republic of Korea (ROK) President Yoon Suk Yeol met at Camp David, Md., for the first ever standalone meeting of the three countries’ leaders and pledged to hold “annual, named, multi-domain trilateral exercises”.

“This aerial exercise builds on the continued interoperability of our collective forces and demonstrates the strength of the trilateral relationship with our Japan and Republic of Korea allies,” U.S. Pacific Command said in a release.

The drill took place in the southern part of the peninsula, where South Korea and Japan’s Air Defense Identification Zones overlap, according to the ROKAF.

In the past, U.S. Air Force aircraft have often conducted bilateral exercises with Japan and South Korea in succession. Just last week, the JASDF and USAF held a joint drill with two B-52s and a multiple fighter jets on Oct. 18, and a B-52 landed in South Korea for the first time in three decades after executing flyovers at the 2023 Seoul International Aerospace and Defense Exhibition.

Following the exhibition, North Korea’s state-run media KCNA criticized the B-52’s presence in the peninsula, calling it an “nuclear war provocative moves of the United States.”

The B-52 Stratofortresses, fom Barksdale Air Force Base, La., have subsequently flown to Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, for a Bomber Task Force rotation, according to Pacific Air Forces. The Stratofortress, known as the BUFF, is the Air Force’s primary standoff cruise missile carrier that can carry nuclear or precision guided conventional ordnance, with worldwide precision navigation capability.

While the Oct. 22 air drill marks the three countries first joint aerial collaboration, the three allies have conducted naval exercises before. Earlier this month, Washington, Seoul, and Tokyo orchestrated a naval exercise with the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan in international waters off South Korea’s southern Jeju Island.

The exercise was conducted to enhance their ability to detect and track targets, as well as data sharing in response to potential provocations by Pyongyang.

South Korea’s Navy also disclosed that this exercise incorporated training for intercepting North Korean weapons of mass destruction.

The three countries have also conducted a trilateral ballistic missile defense exercise earlier this year with the USS Benfold. At the trilateral summit this summer, leaders also agreed to establish a shared real-time missile warning system.

As the U.S., Japan, and South Korea tighten their ties, a potential trio of competitors may also be forming. In September, Seoul’s National Intelligence Service revealed that Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu proposed a possible trilateral naval exercise with North Korea and China while meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in July.

This emerging “trilateral imperialist partnership,” according to Bruce Bennet at the RAND Corporation, not only raises concerns about the prolonged conflict in Ukraine and its consequences but also presents a concerning potential for future conflicts involving nuclear weaponry.

Experts Say Hamas Used North Korean Weapons: What It Means for Israel, Nuclear Arms

Oct. 21, 2023 | By Unshin Lee Harpley

Earlier this week, South Korean officials and independent expert analysts said the militant group Hamas likely used North Korean weaponry in its surprise attack on Israel on Oct. 7, based on images and video evidence.

Among the North Korean-made arms found in the attack were F-7 rocket-propelled grenades (RPG) and 122mm artillery shells. A video examined by the Associated Press also showed Hamas fighters with Pyongyang’s anti-tank missile.

National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said he could not confirm the reports about the source of the rockets being used by Hamas on Oct. 19.

The kinds of weapons allegedly used can make the maneuvering of Israeli forces in an urban warfare operation more difficult, according to retired USAF Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem, the director of research for the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.

“RPGs could be used to shoot at Israeli helicopters during landing, liftoff, or in hover,” said Stutzriem. “But what they really want to do is if the Israelis go into Gaza, use the RPGs to attack mechanized vehicles that are carrying troops and weapons. And the mortars and rockets are terror weapons, also, in that they could be launched at Israeli civilians.”

Stutzriem highlighted that although these weapons may not be “game-changers” for the militant group, their potential significance hinges on the undisclosed quantity of North Korean arms, such as the anti-tank systems, in possession of Hamas.

Pyongyang has denied its weaponry was involved in the attacks, via its news agency KCNA. But a North Korean state newspaper has published an article blaming Israel for its “persistent criminal acts against the Palestinian people.”

Stutzriem says the discovery of North Korean weaponry in the possession of militant groups such as Hamas should not come as a surprise.

“North Korea has been building its illicit arms sales for a long time,” said Stutzriem. “The intelligence community has been watching this for decades, going back to the early 1990s. The way the regime has raised income is by selling largely, almost absolutely to the countries that are opposed to the allied democracies in the world.”

It is likely Iran facilitated the procurement of these arms, Stutzriem added.

Pyongyang has a history of selling missiles and sharing nuclear technology with countries such as Egypt, Iran, Libya, Syria, and the United Arab Emirates, according to the U.N. Security Council.

In 2009, Israel reported a North Korean cargo plane seized in Thailand was en route to Hamas and Hezbollah, carrying over 35 tons of weaponry, including rockets and RPGs.

Stopping the regime from profiting through weapon sales is “very hard,” said Bruce Bennett, an international/defense researcher at the RAND Corporation.

“North Korea can send weapons on ships or aircraft going to Iran. And then Iran can send them forward into Egypt and then into Gaza,” Bennett said. “There are some things we could do to potentially intercept some of those ships, but as long as there are third-party ships or third-party aircraft, it’s difficult to interdict that kind of flow.”

Bennett suggested a more practical approach would be for the U.S. to persuade its partners within the Proliferation Security Initiative, launched in 2003 to prevent the trafficking of weapons of mass destructions and material.

“One of the best ways Washington could do is go through the Proliferation Security Initiative,” said Bennett. “They’re not going to stop aircraft moving but they will stop ships moving if they think they have contraband.”

Through the PSI, the U.S. persuaded Panama to intercept a North Korean ship in 2014, carrying concealed weapons from Cuba back to Pyongyang beneath a million pounds of sugar.

Bennett added that among nuclear-armed states including Russia and China, North Korea stands out as the most probable candidate for selling nuclear arms to Middle Eastern militant groups, even though its leader Kim Jong Un would exercise extreme caution in doing so.

“I think Kim’s objective is to have 300 to 500 nuclear weapons. He said just last year that just for one of his missile systems, he plans to make 100 Navy missiles that all have nuclear warheads,” Bennett said. “So, my guess is once he gets to 200 to 300 range, he has what’s called the Nuclear Shadow, that is, he takes an action like sending nuclear weapons to Hamas.”

RAND projects by 2027, Pyongyang may possess around 200 nuclear weapons, several dozen ICBMs, and numerous theater missiles for nuclear delivery.

SDA Awards Deal to York for 62 More LEO Satellites

Oct. 20, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

The Space Development Agency awarded a contract for 62 more satellites for its extensive planned low-Earth orbit constellation, an agency spokesperson confirmed Oct. 20.

York Space Systems will produce the satellites for the Alpha segment of the Tranche 2 Transport Layer. The deal is valued at more than $615 million, presuming York earns the on-time delivery incentive built into the agreement, the spokesperson said.

SDA director Derek M. Tournear first announced the award at the 2023 Milsat Symposium in Mountain View, Calif.

York previously won Tranche 0 and Tranche 1 awards for the Transport Layer, as well as the Tranche 1 Demonstration and Experimentation System.

SDA has awarded contracts for 335 satellites to date as part of its Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture—more than quadruple the number of satellites the Space Force was publicly known to have as of Sept. 30, 2022.

The goal of the PWSA, split among a Tracking Layer and a Transport Layer, is to provide both missile tracking and connectivity from low-Earth orbit, with large numbers of smaller satellites to discourage adversaries from trying to shoot down or otherwise disable any one satellite.

“We’ll have hundreds and hundreds of these satellites up there,” Tournear said at the Mitchell Institute’s Spacepower Security Forum in April. “It will cost more to shoot down a single satellite than it will cost to build that single satellite. We just completely changed that value equation.”

New tranches are scheduled to launch every two years. Thus far, 23 Tranche 0 satellites have gone up, with Tranche 1 slated to follow in the fall of 2024 and Tranche 2 in 2026.

Tranche 0 is intended to be the “warfighter immersion tranche,” Tournear has said, giving service members the opportunity to work with the systems, understand their capabilities, and begin to imagine how they might be employed. Tranche 1 will then operationalize those capabilities, and Tranche 2 will provide global persistence. With each tranche, the number of satellites will increase.

Within Tranche 2, the Transport Layer will consist of three segments, each with different sets of capabilities. The Alpha segment, for which York won its most recent contract, will be the most basic, with capabilities similar to those in the Tranche 1 Transport Layer.

In August, SDA announced two contracts worth a collective $1.55 billion for 72 satellites in the Beta segment, which will have ultra-high-frequency and tactical communications payloads.

The Alpha segment is projected to have 100 satellites overall, and SDA is expected to announce a contract with a second vendor for the remaining 38 in the coming days.

Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture

TRANCHE	LAYER	# OF SATELLITES	CONTRACTORS
0	Transport	20	York Space Systems, Lockheed Martin
	Tracking	8	SpaceX, L3Harris
1	Transport	126	York Space Systems, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman
	Tracking	35	L3Harris, Northrop Gumman, Raytheon
	Demonstration and Experimentation System	12	York Space Systems
2	Transport	72	Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin
	Transport	100	York Space Systems, TBA
	Transport	44 (approx.)	TBA
	Tracking	52 (approx.)	TBA
	Demonstration and Experimentation System	20 (approx.)	TBA

Why the Air Force’s Only Tugboat Lives on a Space Force Base

Oct. 20, 2023 | By David Roza

The Department of the Air Force typically deals more with the ‘wild blue yonder’ than the deep blue sea, but it has a small fleet of maritime vessels for patrolling base waters, recovering target drones— and in one case, guiding vital supply ships to the U.S. military’s northernmost base.

Indeed, life at Pituffik Space Base, located 750 miles north of the Arctic Circle, would be much more difficult without Rising Star, a 71-foot tugboat that escorts fuel tankers and cargo ships, aligns them with the pier, and moves icebergs out of the way as the vessels enter North Star Bay on Greenland’s northwest coast.

Built in Morgan City, La., Rising Star entered service at Pituffik in 1992, becoming the latest in a long line of tugboats that have helped resupply the installation ever since it was first completed as Thule Air Base in 1953. The tugboat has two Detroit diesel two-stroke V-16 engines with 900 horsepower each. The engines are put to good use during the warm season from May to September, and especially during Operation Pacer Goose, the large resupply mission that usually happens from July to August.

When the weather starts to turn cold again in September, Rising Star is pulled out of the water to prevent damage from ice buildup, the public affairs office for Peterson and Schriever Space Force Base, which oversees Pituffik, told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

“The Rising Star is a vital lifeline for Pituffik, allowing for essential resupply which allow our Guardians and Airmen to carry out the mission of Pituffik,” the public affairs office said.

air force tugboat — The Rising Star tugboat pushes the Maersk Peary into position during a fuel resupply mission. The tugboat also pulls the fuel lines from the ship to the pier to connect to a pipeline. (U.S. Air Force photo)

Though the Air Force owns the boat, Rising Star is crewed by contractors—a captain and a deckhand.

“As fun as it is to tell visitors that we have the Air Force’s only tugboat, what really matters is that the Rising Star is operated by our outstanding contract partners to make our port safe for the vital cargo ships that re-supply us every year,” said Lt. Col. Michael Warren, deputy commander of the base. “The Rising Star is one more data point that points to the fact that life and operations on top of the world are only possible when the whole team—military, civilians and contractors—all tug together.”

In recent years, the boat has gone above and beyond its resupply mission. In 2020, the crew responded to a distress call from a leaking commercial boat about 50 kilometers south of the base. The weather was rough, with two-meter waves buffeting the vessels, but the tugboat managed to tow the powerless ship back to base, rescuing all six crew members on board.

Pituffik’s location at the “top of the world” makes it a strategic post for missile warning, missile defense, and space surveillance missions using a solid-state phased-array radar operated by the 12th Space Warning Squadron. The base also provides satellite command and control through its tracking station, one of seven stations around the world that form the Space Force’s Satellite Control Network. But even high-tech military space equipment sometimes needs a low-tech tugboat to keep ticking.

Experts Note Obstacles Facing Pentagon’s New Replicator Initiative

Oct. 19, 2023 | By Unshin Lee Harpley

Following the Department of Defense announcing its new Replicator initiative, lawmakers and experts voiced a range of opinions on the effort’s potential and challenges in a House Armed Services subcommittee hearing Oct. 19.

The Initiative, led by Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks, aims to rapidly deploy “multiple thousands” of cost-effective drones in “multiple domains” within the next 18-24 months. The Pentagon claims this effort will help counter China’s military size with a harder-to-predict, target, and defeat force, reducing human risk.

Bryan Clark, senior fellow for the Hudson Institute, emphasized the importance of Replicator in enhancing the U.S. military’s ability to analyze potential solutions creatively. However, he pointed out a critical challenge facing the initiative’s implementation

“The biggest challenge Replicator faces is integrating unmanned systems together in ways they are going to enable them to communicate with one another, be managed by command-and-control system, and then operate in a way that creates creative operational concepts for us to pursue, and dilemmas for enemies to deal with,” he said.

Historically, DOD has struggled with integrating systems between different services or domains, Clark noted. And the current approach for Replicator, which involves acquiring vehicles and entrusting their integration to individual services.

Last month, Hicks emphasized that the Replicator Initiative won’t require additional funding or create new bureaucracy by saying that DOD “will not be asking for new money” for fiscal 2024.

Without additional funding, however, Dr. Bill Greenwalt of the American Enterprise Institute voiced concerns that Replicator might divert resources from other crucial needs.

“Right now, there are very few pods of money that the department can actually use and move around in the year of execution, to essentially focus on things that look like they’re going to be something that we can scale up,” he said.

He also pointed out the challenges associated with changing the Pentagon’s culture and processes, urging a more “streamlined and innovative approach.”

His point was echoed by Dr. Paul Scharre, executive vice president at the Center for New American Security. who stressed “the need for speed.”

“The DOD has had recent successes and breaking the mold and moving quickly,” Scharre said. “The Defense Innovation Unit is brought in commercial technologies in a matter of weeks and months, not years and decades. But too often these innovation success stories have been small-scale. To fill thousands of systems, DOD will need to operate quickly at this scale. Something that is often struggled to do.”

However, should Replicator succeed with Congress’s support, Scharre said it could set a precedent for rapid acquisition. He also emphasized the necessity of the initiative, given the rising per-unit costs of traditional major weapons platforms.

Others, however, had concerns regarding the sources of components and materials that the U.S. relies on.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) asked the outside experts whether there is a clear understanding of the Replicator program’s objectives and the potential vulnerabilities it may create for the U.S. defense industrial base.

“I think that’s a question that the Congress needs to continuously ask,” said Greenwalt. “I’ve talked to a number of drone manufacturers who would like to scale up and they’re looking at the supply chain and a lot of that supply chain is not American or even allied.”

This dependency on foreign suppliers can be problematic when attempting to scale up production quickly.

In 2019, Congress passed a law prohibiting the Pentagon from purchasing Chinese-made drones and components. Nevertheless, Beijing continues to be the largest source of U.S. imports for machinery and mechanical appliances.

Should the Pentagon and Congress not work together to address the obstacles facing Replicator, Clark warned that this project is just increasing the size of forces without enhancing their effectiveness.

“It has a good goal of solving near-term operational problems faced by commanders, but its implementation, it’s going to have to make some changes that start aiming at the right types of objectives, not just math,” he said.

Navy Ship Downs Missiles and Drones as Attacks on US Bases Continue

Oct. 19, 2023 | By Chris Gordon

A U.S. Navy warship in the Red Sea shot down three cruise missiles and several drones on Oct. 19 that were launched by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels and potentially heading toward Israel, the Pentagon said.

The destroyer USS Carney was steaming in the northern Red Sea when it shot down the missiles and drones.

“This action was a demonstration of the integrated air and missile defense architecture that we have built in the Middle East and that we are prepared to utilize whenever necessary to protect our partners and our interests in this important region,” Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Brig. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder said.

The Pentagon also disclosed that there have been additional drone attacks against U.S. forces in the Middle East. The Al Tanf Garrison, a base in southeast Syria that is used by American troops and their Syrian partners, was targeted by two drones on Oct. 18.

“U.S. and coalition forces engaged one drone, destroying it, while the other drone impacted the base, resulting in minor injuries to coalition forces,” Ryder said.

That same day, Ryder said an early warning system at the al Asad base in Iraq signaled a potential attack on the base. Though no attack took place, a U.S. civilian contractor suffered a cardiac episode and died, Ryder added.

While the Pentagon did not specify the groups that mounted the missile and drone attacks, the Houthis have long been equipped by Iran, as have the militias in Iraq and Syria.

“This is an uptick in terms of the types of drone activity we’ve seen in Iraq and Syria,” Ryder said. “These small-scale attacks are clearly concerning and dangerous.”

The increase in attacks comes against the background of Israel’s confrontation with Hamas and the controversy over an explosion at a hospital compound in Gaza that appears to have killed scores of civilians.

The U.S. and Israel say a variety of intelligence establishes that the cause of the explosion at the compound was an errant rocket fired by Islamic Jihad, a militant group that fights with Hamas. Hamas has blamed Israel.

The U.S. has around 2,500 troops in Iraq and 900 troops in Syria. To deter potential escalation on the part of Iran and the militias it backs, the U.S. has sent more USAF fighters and attack aircraft to the region—F-15E Strike Eagles, F-16 Fighting Falcons, and A-10 Thunderbolt IIs—as well as the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier, which has four squadrons of F/A-18s.

Ryder stopped short of blaming Iran for orchestrating the latest drone and missile attacks, saying the U.S. was still evaluating the situation.

“We’re continuing to assess the nature of these attacks,” Ryder said. “In the past, we have seen Iranian-backed militia conduct these types of things.”

He also delivered a thinly veiled warning that such attacks might prompt U.S. military action.

“I’m not going to forecast any potential response to these attacks,” Ryder said. “I will say that we will take all necessary actions to defend U.S. and coalition forces against any threat. Any response, should one occur, will come at a time and in a manner of our choosing.”

Why Declassifying Space Is Such a Struggle, According to the CSO

Oct. 19, 2023 | By David Roza

An ongoing push to lower the classification levels of military space programs is “easier said than done,” due to a tangle of overlapping policies and laws, Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman said at an Oct. 18 virtual fireside chat with the Center for a New American Security.

“What everybody should recognize that is trying to think about this problem is how complex the fabric of security is,” he said. “It is a layering and layering of security rules, guidelines, policies, laws, that make it really hard to say ‘just change the classification of that.’”

For several years, lawmakers and top military leadership have said that overclassification makes it more difficult for the public to understand what the Space Force does, for Guardians to work with other services and partner militaries, and for the U.S. military overall to deter adversaries in space.

“If we’re going to be a force that is taken seriously and deters our adversaries, we need to start showing them things to deter them,” then-Space Force director of staff Lt. Gen. Nina M. Armagno said in 2021. “We need to show them what we have.”

But even the most powerful military officials say it is difficult to actually deliver on those calls to action.

“I am the original classification authority for some things and I go ‘I want that classification changed,’” Saltzman said Oct. 18. “They go ‘well actually, no you can’t because it’s connected to this system and it could reveal this.’ It’s like ‘well I thought I was–’ Well yeah, but it comes with parameters and guidelines and ‘yeah, but.’”

Some of those rules are straightforward, like certain facts or systems that can be accessed only by people with top secret clearance and a need to know, Saltzman said. However, others are more convoluted, like certain kinds of top secret information that can be released to a foreign national with top secret clearance only when certain conditions are met. Other rules allow some industry partners to be briefed at high classification levels but not others. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall expressed similar concerns before House lawmakers in April.

“The major effort that we’ve done recently on that is called Special Access Programs, where the Air Force, in particular, has a great many compartments and it’s hard to move across them,” he said. “The work we were doing on the Operational Imperatives, we had to go do an extensive amount of bureaucratic work to allow people just to talk to each other so they could share information.”

Still, there has been some progress. Saltzman said he would have been fired seven years ago had he discussed Chinese counterspace capabilities, such as jammers, directed energy weapons, and on-orbit grappling arms, as openly as he did during the Oct. 18 chat.

“That probably wouldn’t have been able to be discussed outside of the kind of rooms that don’t have windows ,” he said. “So I see progress. Unfortunately it’s not as fast as any of us operators really want.”

The CSO said there is “a substantial effort inside the Department of Defense to untangle this, to start to pull things apart,” but the wins may be small at first.

“We’re really looking for low-hanging fruit, quite frankly,” he said. “And any time we can drop something from special access to top-secret, we’re taking advantage of that. Any time we can drop something from top secret to secret, we’re taking advantage of that, because it opens up opportunities.”

Still, don’t expect to see many classified programs become unclassified in the near future.

“Not everything is going to go instantly unclassified because that puts things at risk that we can’t afford to have at risk,” Saltzman said. “It’s an ongoing effort … it’s far easier to brief than it is to actually pull apart and get all the regulations right.”

DOD’s New China Report Details CCP’s Growing Military Arsenal

Oct. 19, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

China’s military continues to expand its reach around the globe, building up strategic and tactical capabilities, especially its missile programs, according to a Pentagon report released Oct. 19.

The updated annual China Military Power Report says the People’s Liberation Army is developing:

Air-to-air missiles that can strike from beyond visual range

Conventionally-armed intercontinental missile systems

Increased numbers of nuclear warheads

While the 2021 edition of the China Military Power Report cited the PL-15 missile, a beyond-visual-range munition often compared to the U.S.’s AIM-120 AMRAAM, the update did not. In a press briefing, a senior defense official declined to discuss China’s long-range air-to-air missiles in any depth. However, unconfirmed reports indicate the Chinese are working on a more advanced long-range missile, sometimes called PL-XX or PL-21. The new DOD report seems to reference this development, noting noted that the People’s Republic of China is “exploring dual-mode guidance capabilities, which uses both active radar and infrared homing seekers that improve target-selection capabilities and make the missiles more resistant to countermeasures.”

In surface-to-surface weapons, the senior defense official said that if China does develop a conventionally-armed intercontinental missile, it would mark the end of a progression for the PLA Rocket Force, which has steadily developed short-, medium-, and long-range conventional ballistic missiles.

“It would give them a conventional capability to strike the U.S., for the first time for the PLA Rocket Force, and to threaten targets in the continental U.S. and Hawaii and Alaska,” the official noted. “And I think as we see them maybe exploring the development of those conventionally-armed ICBMs, it raises some questions about risks to strategic stability.”

Meanwhile, China continues to rapidly expand its nuclear forces, which U.S. officials have previously termed “breathtaking.” While last year’s report predicted the PLA may have “about 1,000” nuclear warheads by 2030, and 1,500 by 2035, this year’s report was less definitive; while still projecting “over 1,000” warheads by 2030, it does not offer a longer-term forecast.

More immediately, the report posits that China “probably completed the construction of its three new solid-propellant silo fields in 2022, … [with] at least 300 new ICBM silos, and has loaded at least some ICBMs into these silos.” In all, the report estimates Chine “possessed more than 500 operational nuclear warheads as of May 2023,” up from 400 a year ago.

While that growth is significant, China’s nuclear force is still small in comparison to the U.S. and Russia. Russia has nearly 5,900, according to the Federation of American Scientists, while he U.S. warhead inventory numbers more than 5,200.

“We see the PRC continuing to quite rapidly modernize and diversify and expand its nuclear forces,” the senior defense official said. “What they’re doing now, if you compare it to what they were doing about a decade ago, it really far exceeds that in terms of scale and complexity. They’re expanding and investing in their land-, sea-, and air-based nuclear delivery platforms, as well as the infrastructure that’s required to support this quite major expansion of their nuclear forces.”

While China’s nuclear capabilities grow, it is also updating its air fleet. The People’s Liberation Army Air Force”. The Pentagon report noted that “the PLAAF, “in particular, has received repeated calls from its leadership to become a truly ‘strategic’ air force, able to project power at long distances to advance and defend the PRC’s global interests.”

To do so, the report said, the PLAAF is investing in:

Upgrades to its fifth-generation J-20 fighter

Developing its H-20 bomber, projected to have both nuclear and conventional roles

“New medium- and long-range stealth bombers to strike regional and global targets.”

On top of that, the report notes for the first time that China has fielded the new Y-20U tanker.

“These new air refuelable aircraft will significantly expand the PRC’s ability to conduct long-range offensive air operations,” the report states. “In addition to aerial refueling, it is expected that there will likely be further Y-20 variants, such as a possible [airborne early warning and control] variant.”

Taken together, all these developments mean the PLAAF “is rapidly catching up to western air forces,” the report concludes.

At the same time, the PLA’s aviation forces have become increasingly aggressive in confronting and harassing U.S. and allied aircraft in the region, a trend the Pentagon highlighted earlier this week by declassifying and releasing dozens of photos and videos of threatening and unsafe behavior from the past two years.