B-52s Keep Up Surge in Bomber Activity over Korean Peninsula

July 1, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

Multiple B-52 Stratofortresses flew over the Korean Peninsula on June 30, escorted by U.S. and South Korean fighters as part of a “combined aerial training event,” both countries’ militaries announced.

The nuclear-capable bombers flew alongside U.S. Air Force F-16s and F-15Es and Republic of Korea Air Force F-35As and KF-16s, according to a release from the ROK Ministry of Defense.

“The training offered the alliance an opportunity to further strengthen its interoperability by demonstrating a combined defense capability, rapid deployment, and extended deterrence in the defense of the Korean Peninsula,” a U.S. Forces Korea release stated.

The B-52s were from Barksdale Air Force Base, La., and not part of the ongoing Bomber Task Force deployment of B-52s from Minot Air Force Base, N.D., which began June 14. Those bombers recently landed in Indonesia, the first time ever for a B-52, in a gesture of partnership with the strategically important southeast Asian country.

In contrast, bombers have been a regular sight for South Koreans as of late. This latest exercise marks the seventh time in the last six months that B-52s or B-1s have flown above or near the Korean Peninsula.

On Feb. 1, two B-1s and F-22 Raptors flew with South Korean F-35s over the Yellow Sea, just west of the Peninsula.

On Feb. 19, two B-1s flew with F-16s and ROK F-35s through the Korean Air Defense Identification Zone, a buffer area that includes international airspace near the Korean Peninsula.

On March 3, the South Korean Ministry of National Defense announced one B-1 had flown with South Korean F-15K and KF-16 fighters over the Yellow Sea.

On March 15, a single B-52 flew with U.S. Air Force F-16s and ROK Air Force F-15s over the Peninsula.

On March 19, a pair of B-1s flew with F-16s and South Korean F-35s as part of the joint combined exercise Freedom Shield 23

On April 14, B-52s flew with USAF F-16s and ROKAF F-35s.

Prior to the recent flurry of activity, U.S. Forces Korea had announced just two USAF bomber sorties over the Peninsula in the last two years.

All seven training exercises have taken place since Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III visited South Korea in January and pledged to ramp up military exercises to include expanded use of air assets such as fifth-generation fighters and strategic bombers.

Austin’s pledge was largely seen as reassurance for South Korea after North Korea conducted a record number of ballistic missile tests in 2022. Growing concerns about those tests led some South Korean officials to suggest the nation should conduct nuclear drills with America or even pursue its own nuclear weapons program.

U.S. officials say they remain committed to the longstanding policy goal of denuclearizing the entire Korean Peninsula, and in April, President Joe Biden and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol announced a joint declaration meant to bolster the U.S.’s nuclear “umbrella” to deter attacks on South Korea.

The document included a declaration that the U.S. would enhance the visibility of its strategic assets in the region.

Korean Peninsula B-52s — The Republic of Korea and U.S. conduct a combined aerial exercise with the deployment of U.S. Air Force B-52H Stratofortresses over the Republic of Korea, June 30, 2023. Photo by ROK Air Force

3,700 Airmen No Longer Rate Special Duty Assignment Pay

July 1, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

In a move that will cut the take-home pay of thousands of Airmen, the Air Force is reducing the number of Airmen who qualify for special duty assignment pay beginning in October.

Officials planned similar cuts a year ago, only to reverse course before the changes went into effect. Exactly who will or won’t be eligible has been withheld from public view. The Air Force offered no justification for withholding the actual list, which it has released in the past. The other military services also routinely publish details of who qualifies for the special pay, which is worth from $75 to $450 per month.

What is clear is that after a board review last month, the Air Force cut from 103 to 70 job specialties the number of fields that will merit special pay beginning in fiscal 2024, which starts Oct. 1. Four new specialties will qualify. The full list is available on myFSS, accessible to anyone on Active duty, but hidden from spouses, the public, and Congress, among others.

Airmen whose assignments no longer qualify will be paid half the current rate through fiscal 2024, as an interim step to ease the pain of the cut.

Rates for seven specialties will decline; in those cases, the cuts will take effect on Jan. 1, 2025, however, allowing a grace period of 90 days to ease Airmen into the change.

According to Air Force budget documents, the 3,708 Airmen who will no longer receive SDAP will suffer a net lost of $4.04 million, or about $90 per month on average. Most will actually lose $75 or $150 per month.

Last year, when the Air Force also planned SDAP cuts, the reductions would have been less far reaching, with 489 Airmen losing a total of $1.5 million, or an average of $255 per month. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall cancelled that plan amid an outcry over paycuts at a time of high inflation.

According to the Air Force release, the board reviewing requests for SDAP this year were unaware of the budgeted funds for the program until after each request was considered.

The Space Force hosted its own SDAP board for the first time for fields that had moved into its jurisdiction. That board approved 14 job specialties, while cutting three, adding two, and “rolling” one into an existing approval. Space Force budget documents indicate funding and the number of Guardians included in the program is expected to stay flat in 2024. The Space Force followed the Air Force’s lead and withheld the list from public release, linking from a public press release to a private webpage. Department of the Air Force public affairs officials were unable to offer an explanation for withholding the details.

State Department Greenlights F-35 Sale for Czech Republic

June 30, 2023 | By John A. Tirpak

The State Department has OK’d the sale of two dozen F-35As to the Czech Republic, along with 25 Pratt & Whitney F135 engines, aircraft spares, and assorted weapons, including AIM-120 AMRAAMs and AIM-9X Sidewinders, collectively valued at up to $5.62 billion. The Czech Republic joins nine other countries in Europe and 17 worldwide that have selected the F-35 for their combat air forces.

Although greenlighted by the State Department, the sale is not yet a done deal and negotiations on the final package continue. The State Department said there may be industrial offsets as part of the sale. Congress can still object to the transfer, and it wasn’t disclosed when deliveries are expected.

Still, the June 29 announcement marks yet another positive development for the F-35, which has not lost a single competition to other Western fighters in Europe in recent years and is the only fifth-generation Western fighter now being offered.

More than 120 F-35s are flying in Europe today, operated by the U.S., Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands and the U.K., while Belgium, Finland, Germany, Poland, and Switzerland have all selected the fighter and are awaiting deliveries. Spain and Greece are reportedly evaluating the jet as well. Lockheed Martin, which builds the fighter, anticipates that 500 F-35s will be flying in Europe by 2030.

Worldwide, seven other countries are operating the F-35 or have the jet on order.

Turkey was an original developmental partner on the F-35 and planned to acquire 100 of the jets but was ousted from the program when it moved to acquire S-400 air defense systems from Russia. NATO partners said operating the two systems in close proximity would give Russian personnel in Turkey crucial insights about how to detect and defeat the F-35. Turkey has opted to pursue an indigenous fifth-generation fighter, which resembles the F-35, called the TF-X.

The Czech Republic announced its choice of the F-35 in June 2022, picking the fighter over Lockheed’s own F-16 Block 70, the Eurofighter Typhoon, and Sweden’s JAS-39E Gripen. The Czech Republic has been operating 14 JAS-39C Gripens under a lease arrangement, and the Swedish government had offered to let it keep the jets if it also bought the E model, but Prague declined to do so. The Gripens will be returned to Sweden in 2027, which may be when the F-35s are expected to arrive.

“Only the most-advanced fifth-generation fighters will be able to meet mission requirements in future battlefields,” Czech defense minister Jana Cernochova said in 2022, announcing the results of the Czech Air Force’s analysis of the offerings and choice of the F-35. Senior Czech officials have also touted the F-35’s networking capabilities and ability to integrate with F-35s in other countries as well as with other advanced NATO combat aircraft. Czech air force officials have also said they expect to operate the jets into the 2050s or later.

The deal approved by the State Department also calls for 86 Raytheon-built GBU-53/B SDB II Stormbreaker Small Diameter Bombs, along with training equipment and inert training rounds; 12 Mk 84 2000-pound penetrator bombs and Boeing KMU556/557 tail kits to turn them into Joint Direct Attack Munitions; 50 Raytheon AIM-9X Block II Sidewinder air-to-air missiles; 10 AIM-9X guidance units; 18 AIM-9X Captive Air Training Missiles (CATMs); and four AIM-9X CATM guidance units, as well as AIM-120 AMRAAM CATMs, among other munitions, training gear and accessories.

Non-kinetic gear to be supplied includes DSU-41B optical target detectors; ALE-70 Radio Frequency Countermeasures Transmitters; Identification, Friend or Foe (IFF) gear; electronic warfare data and “Reprogrammable Lab Support;” countermeasures to include chaff and flares; Built-in Test (BIT) reprogramming equipment; contractor logistics support, and various equipment to test and maintain the aircraft, systems and engines, as well as spare and repair parts, software support and other items.

“We are honored the Czech Republic government is interested in the F-35,” a Lockheed spokesperson said. “The choice of 17 nations to lead future fighter fleets, the F-35 is the only fifth-generation fighter offered today, and the only fighter designed to connect the 21st century security battlespace and counter the next generation of threats in Europe well into the 2070s. We will continue to provide the support the U.S. government requires about an acquisition with the Czech Republic.”

The Czech F-35s would likely be serviced in Italy’s airframe depot and the Netherlands’ F135 engine depot.

New Study: USAF Needs Big Cash Infusion to Overcome Aging Fighter Fleet

June 29, 2023 | By John A. Tirpak

Without a large corrective investment, the Air Force’s aged fighter force is breaking under the pressure of its small size, insufficient training time for high-end warfare, and chronic shortages of pilots and maintainers, according to a new report from the Air & Space Forces Association’s Mitchell Institute.

“We’re on a collision course” with real-world demands outstripping the fighter force’s ability to answer the call, said retired Lt. Gen. Joseph Guastella, one of the authors of the report. Fighter force readiness could “fall off a cliff,” added Guastella, whose last job in the Air Force was as deputy chief of staff for operations.

The Air Force’s resources and capabilities don’t match the National Defense Strategy, said retired Lt. Gen David Deptula, dean of the Mitchell Institute. In the face of an assertive China with rapidly increasing military capabilities, an aggressive Russia, and continuing demand for airpower from regional commanders, the need for comprehensive, capable airpower has never been greater, he said.

“It may take losing” a major war to get the public to understand the gravity of the deficit in airpower, he said, and by then, it will be too late.

A “modernization holiday” of the fighter force since the mid-1990s has left the service in a “capacity freefall,” said Doug Birkey, co-author and Mitchell’s executive director. He described USAF’s fighter force as “geriatric” and woefully undersized for what the nation expects of it.

The report authors urged the Air Force to buy more F-35s, especially since force structure decisions of the past hinged on the assumption that the fifth-generation F-35 fleet would be fully acquired by the early 2030s—but that never materialized.

The A-10Cs, F-15C/Ds, and F-16C/Ds which were designed in the 1970s “now average 41, 38 and 32 years old,” Birkey said, and all have long outlived their planned service lives. Age has a cost, Guastella added: the older aircraft get, the more more maintenance and parts they require, which in turn means fewer flying hours for crews.

For the first time, Deptula said, China’s pilots are getting more flying hours than U.S. Air Force pilots, and that additional training “makes a difference.” The Navy and Marine Corps have their own fighters, but their first objectives are fleet defense and close air support. The Air Force is expected to provide the bulk of fighter capacity over all regions but has been shortchanged in funding, Deptula argued.

“Over the last 30 years, the Army has received $1.3 trillion more than the Air Force, and the Navy has received $900 billion more,” he said. “It’s time to redress these imbalances” and correct the long-overdue recapitalization of USAF’s fighter force, especially in light of the modern threat, he said.

The authors did not offer an exact dollar figure by which the Air Force’s budget should grow, but Deptula said the nation can bear the additional expense needed to correct the long neglect of the fighter force. The cost of not doing so far outweighs the expense of fixing the situation, he argued.

Asked to “triage” the various fighter programs now on the books—whether the Next Generation Air Dominance fighter or Collaborative Combat Aircraft are more important than F-35 acquisitions, for example—Deptula said the whole slate of capabilities is needed and none can be traded off.

The Mitchell report offered 10 recommendations:

Buy more fighters

The fighter force has dwindled from 4,556 aircraft in 1990 to 2,176 today—and will continue to fall, as USAF is retiring 801 fighters and only buying 345 through 2028, the report notes. Although the Air Force is requesting 72 fighters in 2024, the number it has long said it needs to buy every year, that number no longer stops the rate at which the fleet is aging. To achieve a sustainable 20-year refresh rate, the report says, USAF needs to buy 109 fighters a year. That would hold down long-term sustainment costs. By contrast, 72 maintains a 30-year refresh rate. Collaborative Combat Aircraft are not included in either calculation.

Stick with F-35 Upgrades

The Joint Program Office that runs the F-35 program must keep the Technical Refresh 3 and Block 4 upgrades on schedule. This requires a coordinated team effort among the JPO, industry, the Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, and allied partners.

Develop a Force-Sizing Construct

The Air Force should develop and implement a force-sizing construct, and explain to Congress why it is necessary. In 2018, the Air Force set a goal of 386 squadrons, but Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said last year that USAF is no longer pursuing that goal. Gen. Mark Kelly, head of Air Combat Command, has said the Air Force needs 60 fighter squadrons, and the report endorsed that figure as a floor. Right now, the nation has no public yardstick by which to measure how much airpower it has or needs, Deptula said.

Harness Cost-Per-Effect Analysis

Birkey argued fighters and fixed-wing combat aircraft generally yield a much lower cost per effect achieved than other means. Deptula pointed to investments by the Army and Navy in capabilities like long-range hypersonic missiles “with a small warhead, that cost $40-$50 million per shot” that have little impact in an extended air campaign. For two such missiles, the Air Force could buy an F-35 which could be reused again and again, he said. Services need to consider how to prosecute targets in the most cost-effective manner, he insisted.

Ensure Testing Doesn’t Slow Fielding

The Air Force has a deficit of testing capability, but “perfection is the enemy of ‘good enough’,” the paper states. Deptula said the U.S. no longer has the luxury of time to get new systems just right; instead, testing must be streamlined, test capacity must be expanded, and new technologies should be used to compress testing cycles.

Monitor Industrial Base Capacity

The industrial base “cannot support” the level of production the Air Force needs, Birkey said, thanks to years of the Pentagon buying a bare minimum of tactical aviation assets. The Ukraine war has highlighted the need for greater capacity and the Pentagon should assess its industrial base and provide incentives for surge production, the report said.

Stop ‘Divest to Invest’

The Air Force’s plan of retiring older equipment and using the savings to fund new systems “may have worked when inventories were larger” but no longer makes sense when fighter numbers are so low, the report argues. The planned reduction of more than 1,000 USAF aircraft across the next five years shows how short the Air Force is of needed modernization funds, and if it plays out, it will be a “capacity death spiral,” Birkey said. More funding is needed “today to modernize for the future and make up for years of anemic aircraft buys.”

Human Capital

Guastella said the Air Force has “spent years admiring the problem of the pilot shortage” but hasn’t taken any significant steps to correct it. The fighter pilot shortage is the most acute, and there is also a lack of qualified maintainers. The Air Force needs to make a full press on assessing retention, expanding its training capacity, and setting manpower force-sizing goals, the report states.

Guard and Reserve

The Air Force has been using its Reserve force and Air National Guard as operational adjuncts. Guard units are slated to bear the brunt of coming divestments, Birkey said. Moreover, retiring aircraft without an immediate replacement flying mission means people will leave the Guard and Reserve, and the Air Force can’t afford to lose that expertise, he argued. The report urged members of the Air Guard—who are free, in their private lives, to advocate to Congress—to be a “powerful and credible voice on Capitol Hill” to signal the “severity of the problem.”

The Allied Component

The report recommends increasing production capacity for F-35—currently topping out at 156 per year—to meet increasing demand following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Allied fighter forces flying the F-35 are among the key strategic values of the joint strike fighter, Deptula said. Yet the Air Force should be careful not to assume all allied fighters are available all the time. Allies in the midst of a war theater will be focused on homeland defense and may not have capacity to contribute aircraft to coalition air operations against an aggressor.

NORAD, Allies Practice Intercepting B-1s Returning from Europe

June 29, 2023 | By Chris Gordon

The U.S. and its allies intercepted American B-1 bombers coming across the Atlantic toward North America, in a NORAD-led exercise simulating an enemy attack on June 26.

During an exercise dubbed Noble Defender, B-1 Lancers that were leaving Europe after a month-long Bomber Task Force deployment were successively tracked and intercepted by the U.S., Canadian, British, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, and Swedish militaries.

A NORAD official told Air & Space Forces Magazine two B-1s were met in the skies by four U.K. fighters—two F-35s and two Eurofighter Typhoons. Denmark sent two F-16s, Sweden sent two JAS-39 Gripens, Norway sent two F-35s, and Finland sent two F-18s.

“All nations sequentially intercepted … B-1 Lancers in the North Atlantic region and off the east coast of Canada as it transited from Europe to North America on June 26,” NORAD said in a statement posted on Twitter.

Protecting from the simulated threat to the U.S. and Canada were two U.S. F-15C Eagles from Barnes Air National Guard Base, Mass., two Royal Canadian Air Force CF-18 fighters—a variant of the American F/A-18 Hornet—and a U.S. KC-135 Stratotanker, the NORAD official added. NORAD, short for North American Aerospace Defense Command, is a joint U.S.-Canadian effort.

On June 26, #CANR CF-18s took part in an intercept training scenario of a 🇺🇸 Bomber in the North Atlantic off the East Coast of Canada as part of #NORAD Op #NobleDefender demonstrating a layered defence capability for North America. @NORADCommand @RCAF_ARC pic.twitter.com/8Cn65NBmT1
— RCAF Operations (@RCAFOperations) June 27, 2023

“NORAD units executed maneuvers designed to defend the eastern approach of North America from simulated cruise missile threats in this particular operation,” according to the 104th Fighter Wing at Barnes.

The NORAD official noted that the command holds regular iterations of Noble Defender, which vary depending on the specific exercise, to keep its forces ready

“These intercepts demonstrated a cooperative and collaborative layered defense to strengthen our ability to deter potential threats,” NORAD added in its statement.

The intercepts made a full-circle deployment for the B-1s assigned to the 7th Bomb Wing at Dyess Air Force Base, Texas. The “Bones” were immediately met by a Russian Su-27 fighter when they entered European airspace in late May. A total of four B-1s completed the BTF, which involved the first landing of U.S. bombers in Sweden since World War II, as the U.S. looks to signal its growing alliance with the prospective NATO member.

U.S. Air Forces in Europe said in a press release that the highlights of the deployment included “the historic landing in Sweden and the first-ever hot-pit refueling in Romania.”

“The landing in Sweden fortified not only the friendship between the U.S. and Sweden, but the collective defense of Europe,” the USAFE release added.

The aircraft also flew over the Baltics and Balkans, participated in an Arctic defense exercise, flew all the way to the Middle East and back in a live-fire launch of a JASSM long-range cruise missile and JDAM guided bombs over Jordan and Saudi Arabia, and participated in the Paris Air Show.

“Throughout their rotation, the B-1B Lancers have built critical relationships throughout the Arctic, Central, and Eastern European regions, which has enhanced the coalition’s ability to respond to incursions threatening freedom of maneuver and navigation,” USAFE said.

Just 14.5 Percent Of Eligible Airmen Make Tech Sergeant, Lowest Rate in 27 Years

June 29, 2023 | By David Roza

Out of 36,913 eligible Air Force staff sergeants, just 5,354—14.5 percent—were selected for promotion to technical sergeant this year, the Air Force announced June 29. The rate is the lowest since 1996, when just 11.2 percent of eligible Airmen were selected for E-6, not including supplemental promotions, Air Force Personnel Center spokesman Michael Dickerson told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

The announcement marks yet another rough promotion cycle for noncommissioned officers. Air Force officials announced last year that there will be lower-than-usual promotion rates among the NCO corps in the near future, as the service looks to course correct after promoting too many Airmen with insufficient experience into senior noncommissioned officer ranks.

“The majority of the experience decline was attributable to the Air Force trying to achieve an enlisted force structure with too many higher grades,” Col. James Barger, Air Force Manpower Analysis Agency commander, said in a statement at the time. “We also found that experience levels would continue to decline unless the Air Force lays in more junior Airmen allocations and fewer E5-E7 allocations.”

The trend is set to continue for at least another year or so: Barger said at the time that the goal was to reach a “healthier” distribution of Airmen across grades by fiscal 2025.

Amid a rash of low promotion rates in 2022, the competition for promotion to staff sergeants (E-5) was particularly brutal—just 21.1 percent of eligible Airmen were promoted, the lowest mark since 1997. This year’s E-6 numbers exceeded that, in contrast to the promotion rates for technical sergeants trying to hit the E-7 rank of master sergeant, which recovered slightly in 2023.

All told, 4,998 out of 28,831 eligible Airmen were selected for E-7 this year, a rate of 17.34 percent, the Air Force announced in May. That figure was the third lowest rate for E-7 since 2010, but it was up from 2022’s 14.8 percent.

The 1996 low point for E-6 promotions also took place within a batch of lean years. The selection rate for E-6 never rose above 13 percent from 1993 to 1996, excluding supplemental promotions, Dickerson pointed out. The military rapidly shrank throughout the 1990s in response to the end of the Cold War, going from about 2.1 million personnel in 1990 to under 1.4 million in 2000, according to RAND.

Though technical and master sergeants had a lean 2023, one rank of enlisted Airmen enjoyed their highest promotion rates since 2012. In March, the Air Force selected 1,629 master sergeants to promote to the E-8 rank of senior master sergeants out of an eligible 16,031, a rate of 10.16 percent.

YEAR	SELECTED	ELIGIBLE	RATE
2023	5,354	36,913	14.50
2022	5,430	33,935	16
2021	9,422	34,973	26.94
2020	8,246	28,358	29.08
2019	9,467	29,328	32.28
2018	8,416	27,555	30.54
2017	8,167	25,552	31.96
2016	7,501	33,569	22.35
2015	8,446	35,863	23.55
2014	6,684	38,344	17.43
2013	5,654	37,608	15.03
2012	8,518	37,402	22.77

Sources: Air Force news releases, Air Force Times

Head of ICBM Cancer Study Says the Air Force Is ‘Fully Invested’

June 28, 2023 | By Chris Gordon

The Air Force’s study into possible cancer risks associated with work on intercontinental ballistic missiles will be a comprehensive review—and will not favor the service over evidence, medical officials leading the effort insisted.

“We need our solutions to be driven by science and data,” Col. Tory Woodard, the commander of the U.S. Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine (USAFSAM), told Air & Space Forces Magazine in a recent interview alongside a cadre of other experts.

Long-held concerns of former missileers and other personnel that supported the Air Force’s ICBM mission came to the fore earlier this year after a presentation detailing cases of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a blood cancer, at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Mont. appeared online. Gen. Thomas A. Bussiere, head of Air Force Global Strike Command, which is in charge of the nation’s ICBM fleet, soon ordered a review of the issue, which led to the Missile Community Cancer Study designed by USAFSAM. The study has two parts: environmental sampling and an epidemiological study, which will take 12-14 months to complete, to assess cancer rates.

“This epidemiologic study that we’re focused on is very complex,” Woodard said. “It has a lot of layers, a lot of different time periods, risk assessment, and things that factor into this.”

When embarking on the study, the study team conducted initial site visits to active ICBM bases in late February and early March. The visits flagged some acute issues, such as signage denoting the presence of polychlorinated biphenyls, a banned hazardous chemical that was supposedly removed. But the purpose of the visit was to orient the medical personnel with ICBM operations. Officials said visits helped the study team realize their examination, both environmental and epidemiological, should not be confined to the missileers in underground bunkers in 24-48 hour shifts, but also include a wide array of people that work on the bases, which stretch out over silos fields in five states anchored at three bases—Malmstrom, F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyo., and Minot Air Force Base, N.D.

“We certainly changed our thought process on some of the hazards and things that were there,” Woodard said. “We also expanded our population of interest based on interviewing and seeing” the layout of the ICBM bases.

That population, comprising both current and former service members, includes those who work in underground launch control centers and top-side missile alert facilities, but also maintainers, food service personnel, and security forces, among others. The Air Force often does not own the land around launch facilities, and unknown exposure to agricultural chemicals has been cited as a possible issue by service officials.

“We wanted to assess the base environment as a whole,” Woodard said. “We learned and this was just simply because we were a part of that environment.”

The expanding study population presents a challenge: not putting those at highest risk into a large pool that artificially dilutes concerning data.

“We really developed two populations that we are studying in parallel,” Woodard said. “The first is just the missileers. The missileers were the ones who lived down below ground, they pulled the 24-hour shifts down in the [Launch Control Centers]. Then the other is the associated personnel. We will look at those two groups separately, so we get the cancer rate within the missileers and the cancer rate within the missile-associated career fields.”

However, the Air Force has investigated the issue before and found nothing of concern, to the skepticism of some current and former service members and their families.

Concerns are most prominent at Malmstrom, which was subject to an initial study of the increased rates of cancer in 2001 and another review in 2005, as well as the recent presentation that spurred the current study.

“The study previously was on a much smaller scale and did not have the support that it does now—Air Force Global Strike, the Air Force Surgeon General’s office, Air Force leadership is fully invested,” Woodard said.

The issue has drawn the scrutiny of Congress, with Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) raising the issue with the Air Force and Veterans Administration, according to his office. In April, Tester visited Malmstrom with Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall.

“The Air Force has been transparent with the public about their findings through the Global Strike Command website,” Eli Cousin, a spokesperson for Tester, told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

However, Cousin said Tester would continue to “press to make sure every potentially impacted individual is made aware of this situation, receives the appropriate health assessment, and is offered the appropriate care he or she needs.”

Air Force Global Strike Command and the U.S. Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine, while not finding any specific faults with earlier studies, say there are better positioned than prior medical teams to draw accurate conclusions.

“It would be unfair for me to really answer questions about how it was done 20 years ago, except to assess that the environment is different now—our knowledge of the disease, our knowledge of occupational hazards is much different,” Woodard said. “We have access to databases and we have technology that we didn’t have then.”

Woodard also credited AFGSC with giving medical officials better access to facilities and clearing personnel and equipment.

It is “easier and quicker for us to bring a larger range of environmental sampling equipment into the restricted areas, which will allow us to better assess the current—and future—environment,” Woodard said.

However, while different commands are involved, ultimately the Air Force is investigating itself.

“We do not set our own standards,” Woodard said when asked whether the Air Force has less stringent standards for hazardous material than other entities.

“Things that we knew about occupational hazards and occupational exposures and have certainly progressed,” Woodard said. “That has significantly changed the way that our population and the way that our individuals manage their occupational hazards and the way that we inform our military people.”

USAFSAM has done large-scale studies before, such as a review of cancer cases among pilots, which found an elevated risk. Woodard said USAFSAM’s position inside the Air Force was helpful in getting access to and collecting data, which is being mined from military and state cancer registries among other sources.

“We already have pre-existing relationships with some of the DOD and other entities that allow us the data pull,” Woodard said. “If an outside entity tried to come in and do this study, they would have significant delays.”

But USAFSAM officials acknowledged the Air Force needed some outside input.

“We’re in continued and early collaboration with the VA and the National Cancer Institute,” Woodard said.

There are some gaps in the population the Air Force is studying. The service has cited better access to medical electronic medical records, but as the medical officials have acknowledged, the USAF did not consider certain elements hazardous in the past or had higher tolerances for hazardous material. Some former missileers and their family members have expressed concern that the Air Force will never fully account for hazards that existed further back into the 1960s and 1970s, as complete records may not have been kept or may no longer exist. Officials said the planned environmental monitoring is extensive—roughly 2,000 samples per base, according to Woodard—but only the three active facilities are covered.

“We’re also involved with Global Strike historians and researchers in trying to develop the backstory to help us provide the data to do this study,” Woodard said. “Really our focus right now is let’s focus on the epidemiologic study so we know what the cancer risks may be so that we can address those. The exposures that were done in the past, we will evaluate those when the time comes, but I want to protect today’s people.”

The team recently started environmental sampling at Malmstrom.

Woodard said the service wants to ensure that if there are any problems with the current environment or equipment, they’re resolved before the aging Minuteman III missiles are soon replaced with the new Sentinel ICBMs.

“We want to make sure that we don’t make the same mistakes or any potential mistakes,” with the Sentinel, Woodard said.

Top officials at USAFSAM, AFGSC, and the Space Force, which counts over 400 former missleers among its ranks, have engaged in town halls to address the issue, and the running updates online reflect a desire to inform the community, they say.

“As we get information, we will publicize that information,” Woodard said. “We’re not just going to say call us in 14 months and we’ll let you know what happened.”

As the Air Force Prepares for Austere Ops, Who Will Watch the Weather?

June 28, 2023 | By David Roza

OFFUTT AIR FORCE BASE, Neb.— For decades, when Air Force weather specialists have deployed downrange, they’ve relied on the Tactical Meteorological Observing System (TMOS), a device that can measure temperature, wind speed, dew point, and a range of other phenomena that pilots rely on for takeoff and landing. The TMOS is rugged and reliable, but it is also heavy, weighing almost 200 pounds with all its modules attached.

USAF weather specialists may have some heavy lifting in their future, as the service prepares for a possible conflict against a near-peer adversary. In such a conflict, the Air Force plans to use Agile Combat Employment—a concept whereby Airmen operate from small, austere airfields and move out again at a moment’s notice.

For the Airmen responsible for providing crucial weather data, such moves are part of the job sometimes.

“You hear stories all the time about dudes having to jump TOC (tactical operations center) and move like a mile and a half away, so they have to pack it all up, attach cord to all these little handles, strap them to their belt and just drag this thing to the new location,” Tech Sgt. Kyle Chambers, of the 2nd Weather Squadron at Offutt Air Force Base, Neb., told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “They stop, set it all up and then an hour later they have to jump TOC and do it all over again.”

Though a difficult task, hauling a TMOS to a new location speaks to the commitment Air Force weather specialists have for their profession, since local commanders rely on the data they provide to make life-or-death decisions.

“Nine times out of 10 it will be an Airman First Class or a Senior Airman answering the phone call from the major or the colonel and they have to explain what’s going on with the weather,” Chambers said. “They may have been in for just 2.5 years but they have to give them an answer. ‘I don’t know’ does not work.”

Many weather specialists already have experience working in bare-bones environments. For example, Air Force combat weather squadrons routinely send Airmen to deploy with Army units in places accessible only by helicopter.

“Anywhere we can sit up and brief anybody that needs to be briefed, we’re right there with them,” Chambers said. “It can be out at the National Training Center [at Fort Irwin, Calif.], where it’s 30 days of wiping yourself off with baby wipes and water bottle showers. That’s about as gritty and grimy as it gets.”

Chambers once found himself camping out on a glacier in an isolated mountain pass in Alaska as part of Colony Glacier, the annual operation to recover the remains and wreckage of 52 crew and passengers killed aboard an Air Force transport plane that crashed there in 1952. It was up to him and a few other weather specialists to take daily weather observations and relay those back to nearby bases so that helicopter pilots knew whether to expect fog, high-winds or other weather conditions on their way into the pass.

Though there are fewer amenities in an austere location compared to an Air Force base, forecasting the weather is largely the same in both, Chambers said, as long as the weather specialist knows what they are doing. Usually that experience comes from serving in a base’s weather flight, where weather specialists get to know how pilots and decision-makers use weather information in an operational setting.

“Having that competency, knowing what to do next, is the most important part of ACE,” he said.

It also helps that Air Force weather specialists will become more mobile over the next few years as the sturdy TMOS is decommissioned to make way for the Integrated Weather Observation System (IWOS). The IWOS weighs about only 40 pounds, which “makes it a whole lot easier to get around,” said Michael Thompson, a retired master sergeant with decades of experience in meteorology and who is now a civilian cyber support technician for the 2nd Weather Support Squadron at Offutt.

Thompson played a leading role in designing the TMOS, and he said the IWOS has the capabilities that weather specialists need but with a smaller footprint. The device is solar-powered, which also reduces the demand for hauling power.

Commanders “need things to be small but also able to handle any environment,” which is why the IWOS is appealing, he said.

Still, neither the TMOS or the IWOS is a panacea. In Europe or the continental United States, Air Force weather specialists enjoy a wealth of data collected by civilian weather balloons, permanent radar sites, and other robust tools. But those facilities may not be present in deployed areas such as the Middle East or the western Pacific, which prompts weather specialists to use “limited data forecasting techniques,” said Tech Sgt. Faith Glas-Miller, of Offutt’s 2nd Systems Operations Squadron.

“You might not have traditional radar sides at these locations, so you have to rely on our tactical equipment: stuff we can actually pick up and take with us,” she said.

Air Force weather specialists aim to do their best even if all they have is a handheld Kestrel weather sensor and a pen, but even their best efforts may not do any good without communications, Chambers warned.

“You have to be there, but you have to have comms,” he said.

Weather specialists are not the only ones concerned about communications in a near-peer fight. The Air Force writ large is grappling with how to fight if long distance communications via satellite or undersea cables are jammed or severed. If those links are interrupted, commanders may have to resort to older methods, like sending ferry couriers through the air or overland or using aircraft as datalink or radio relays, RAND wrote in 2019, though these may be slower or more limited than the usual methods.

The military cannot guarantee all of its usual communication systems would survive a fight, so the Air Force is trying to encourage junior leaders to take the initiative if cut off from higher command.

“By empowering subordinates at the lowest capable level to make decisions and take decisive action at their level, mission command provides the flexibility and agility required to seize opportunities despite enemy denial or degradation of communications,” the service wrote in a 2021 explainer on the doctrine of ACE.

Those leaders will likely rely on an Air Force weather specialist nearby to help them out.

“You have all the excuses in the world: ‘I didn’t have this or that [equipment],’ but you have to try,” Chambers said. “You don’t want to be bad at your job in these situations, so you have to refine your skills, you have to try.”

T-7 Makes Its First Official Test Flight with an Air Force Pilot

June 28, 2023 | By John A. Tirpak

Air Force flight testing for the T-7A Red Hawk kicked off June 28, with a USAF pilot flying the advanced trainer from contractor Boeing’s St. Louis, Mo., facilities. The event, announced by Boeing, marks the first official test flight conducted by an Air Force pilot and the beginning of the T-7’s engineering and manufacturing development phase.

Maj. Bryce Turner of the 416th Test Squadron and director of the T-7 Integrated Test Force and Boeing T-7 chief test pilot Steve Schmidt took the tandem-seat jet aloft for 63 minutes, checking the aircraft’s basic flying qualities, according to a Boeing release. In a statement, Turner reported the aircraft was stable in flight and “performs like a fighter.”

The first flight was in aircraft 21-7005, the first of five airplanes Boeing is providing to support the Air Force’s T-7A test program. Saab of Sweden is Boeing’s partner on the program and builds much of the mid-plane and tail of the trainer.

Boeing flew its pre-production prototype T-7As—called T-1 and T-2—during the T-X competition, which it won in 2019, and has since accumulated hundreds of hours on the two aircraft, verifying aspects of the design. Although retired Gen. Mike Holmes, then-head of Air Combat Command, flew one the two prototypes, the ride was not an official test flight. The aircraft that flew June 28 was the first of the production configuration, which differs from that of the prototypes.

The first flight with an Air Force pilot represents Boeing’s “commitment to delivering a new level of safety and training for fighter and bomber pilots,” said Evelyn Moore, vice president and T-7 program manager for Boeing. “We remain focused on engineering ways to better prepare warfighters for changing mission demands and emerging threats.”

The official start of testing was delayed several months as the Air Force and Boeing refined the escape system of the trainer, after ejection testing with manikins indicated unacceptable head and neck stress on pilots at the smaller end of the expected range of student pilot physiques. The trainer is the first USAF aircraft to be designed to accommodate a broad range of body sizes, with the specific intent of making USAF flying slots available to more women. The T-7 program is also grappling with some software and flight control issues.

The Air Force expects to buy 351 T-7As to replace its T-38 Talons, many of which are over 60 years old and will need further life extension due to delays in the T-7 program. The Government Accountability Office said in May the program will likely slip beyond the two years of delay already incurred.

Air Force acquisition executive Andrew Hunter told Congress in April that initial operational capability of the T-7A will not be achieved until 2027, compared to its original target of 2024 and a second benchmark of 2026 set in December 2022.

The Air Force zeroed its 2024 funding request for T-7A production on the assumption that it would not be able to begin production on time due to the ejection seat issue. The service has not said whether it may request a reprogramming of funds for that purpose. The fiscal 2024 request did include a forecast of 94 T-7As to be bought over the next five years, at a cost of $2.205 billion.

The next program milestone will be the Low Rate Initial Production (LRIP) decision, currently expected to be made by Pentagon acquisition and sustainment chief William LaPlante in November. However, the GAO questioned whether the Air Force can move ahead with LRIP, as testing will still be in its early stages by then and details of the production contract and program requirements may not be ironed out. The GAO also questioned whether the Air Force can accept jets ordered before ultimate specifications are set.

Boeing has said some of the program delay has been due to supply chain, labor issues, and inflation. It is developing the T-7 under a fixed-price contract. If fully exercised, the T-7 development and production contract is valued at about $9.2 billion.