Modernized ‘BEAST’ B-1 Bomber Makes First Flight

Oct. 6, 2023 | By David Roza

The 7th Bomb Wing at Dyess Air Force Base, Texas, launched a B-1B Lancer on Sept. 8 that received a slew of technology upgrades through a new program designed to modernize the aging bomber fleet much faster than usual.

Aboard the B-1 was a modernized Identification Friend or Foe system, Link 16 tactical data communications capability, upgraded secure communications systems, an updated defensive avionics system, and updated mass data storage to handle the large amounts of information flowing through modern battlefields, according to a press release published Oct. 4.

The upgrades are part of the B-1 Embracing Agile Scheduling Team (BEAST) program, which Col. Dan Alford, commander of the 7th Operations Group, said should make the aircrew’s job a little easier.

“BEAST significantly enhances the lethality of the B-1B, surpassing its current capabilities,” he said in the release. “Our aircrew are excited to get their hands on this new technology that will reduce their workload and allow them to focus on combat employment of the weapon system itself.”

Under BEAST, technicians at Dyess work with a contract field team hired specifically to perform the modification. The program also involves Air Force Global Strike Command and the 76th Aircraft Maintenance Group at Tinker Air Force Base, Okla., where B-1s receive depot-level maintenance. It is intended to get new systems into the field faster.

“BEAST packages several different upgrades together in a software suite, streamlining the upgrade process and better equipping the team to meet the demanding operational tempo,” Col. Joshua Pope, commander of the 7th Maintenance Group at Dyess, told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

b-1b lancer — Technicians work on a B-1 Lancer bomber at the Oklahoma City Air Logistics Complex at Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma, Aug. 4, 2022. U.S. Air Force photo/Gina Anderson

BEAST shaves two years off the upgrade process, Pope said. Specifically, the upgrades take an average of 22 days to complete, he said. Over the next two years, 22 more B-1s at Dyess will be modernized one at a time.

“This method allows for the shortest completion time while giving each bomb wing flexibility to schedule their aircraft for modification according to their aircraft availability requirements,” Pope said in the press release. “It is the best for all organizations and ensures the B-1B is ready to fight from here.”

The upgrades at Dyess are one of several efforts to keep the B-1 flying until the stealthy B-21 Raider, which is yet to take its first test flight, comes online. The Air Force Life Cycle Management Center has a multi-pronged approach that includes investing in spare parts manufacturers and studying whether the bomber can be used as a test platform for hypersonic weapons.

AFLMC is also working around measures that were taken to render the B-1’s external hardpoints inoperative under the START treaty, which precluded the B-1 from carrying nuclear weapons like the AGM-86B Air-Launched Cruise Missile externally.

Beyond new weapons, a B-1 fuselage and wing are also undergoing full-scale structural fatigue testing at manufacturer Boeing’s facility in Washington state to identify potential risk areas. The Air Force is creating digital twins of the bomber, which should help predict structural issues and serve as a baseline for upgrades.

“We’re keeping the fleet safe until the B-21 shows up,” Brig. Gen. William Rogers, program executive officer for bombers at AFLCMC, told reporters in July. “… We can keep that plane flying. It is just hard work.”

Meanwhile, the BEAST modifications should give the B-1 “life and lethality out to 2040 and beyond,” Pope said.

Lockheed CEO: Pentagon Must Adopt New Acquisition System for Digital

Oct. 5, 2023 | By John A. Tirpak

The Defense Department needs to set up a “parallel” acquisition system built around digital methods and speeds, alongside the current system set up to manage “Newtonian” weapons development, in order to achieve deterrence, Lockheed Martin CEO Jim Taiclet said this week.

Speaking at the Hudson Institute on Oct. 4, Taiclet said the pace of technology development—particularly software and data distribution—continues to accelerate, and the Pentagon needs an acquisition system that can keep up with “a clock speed that is much closer to the digital technology development clock speed” compared to the world of ships, jets, and satellites that operate physically, rather than digitally.

“I think that the U.S. defense enterprise is still the most effective in the world. I think we can deter conflict effectively today,” Taiclet said. However, a separate system for working with digital is “one thing I do think we need to do to stay ahead of the evolving threat.”

The Pentagon needs to shift toward a more commercial-like pace of development measured not in years, but weeks and months, Taiclet said, asserting the answer likely lies in buying digital services, something the Pentagon and Congress are ill-configured to do and are taking too long to accept in his mind.

Simply put, the “general procurement system” is not well matched to digital products, Taiclet said.

“The digital technology cycle is, again, months or weeks instead of years and years. So we’re suggesting to our government customers to think about the procurement and acquisition process differently for digital technology insertion versus Newtonian platform production,” Taiclet said. “That hasn’t caught on yet. And I think it’s something we really need to advocate for.”

The existing acquisition system involves setting requirements, requests for information and proposals, and competitions that can years, if not decades.

“It’s fine on the bigger physical technology items. It does work. It’s been successful,” Taiclet said.

But with digital systems—particularly large data-sharing networks, technology moves too fast so that by the time Pentagon buys software now, it is outdated.

“So that’s the notion of the parallel path, which is, we’ve got to be able to deal with these companies that generally work off of a subscription model,” Taiclet said. “ … Just your cell phone service for example, you pay every month for it. They continually upgrade the network, you’re getting new features. Another app comes on your phone, the app gets upgraded every night, and this is continuously happening.”

The Defense Department doesn’t have an effective way to acquire services like that, he said, and the longer that takes to appear, the more behind it will get.

Taiclet suggested the Defense Department might also buy mission capability as a service, “by the month, by the year. We have to figure out how to translate the DoD form DD 250” which is the process by which the Pentagon accepts final-version goods, “into a subscription service, so I can use Verizon 5G algorithms.”

Lockheed, he said, has teamed with Verizon, INVIDIA, and IBM Red Hat “on managing [artificial intelligence] digitization through a network. We’re partnered with Intel on … chip design to make sure that we can get our requirements into the next venture production line.”

“We have to collaborate with these companies, which our industry isn’t typically used to doing, and the government is not used to paying for,” he said. The Pentagon also has to make defense contracting attractive, with adequate margin so those firms and small startups don’t simply focus on the far more profitable commercial market.

The commercial market also bears lessons for the Pentagon—the telecommunications industry, for example, when through a period with three sets of standards, developed by Nextel, Quaalcom, and GSM. The resulting networks were “expensive, inefficient and incompatible,” said Taiclet, who previously served as CEO of American Tower, a telecommunications infrastructure company.

Taiclet said he’s like “to skip that stage and go right to the single standard, which is what we have now. It’s called LTE: Long-Term Evolution for 4G.”

Along with with a parallel procurement process, Taiclet said, the defense enterprise should “also establish a standards body like we have in telecom … to basically get commercial industry, aerospace industry, government customer and the investor and startup and new entrants together to create a standard that we’ll all compete on and all develop together.”

Accelerating the pace of change in the Pentagon is critical, Taiclet suggested, to deterring a potential adversary like China.

Citing the principles of Sun Tsu, Taiclet said China is biding its time, waiting for “90 percent certainty or expectation of your success.” To deter that, the U.S. and its allies have to constantly “move that 90 percent goalpost” he said.

Therefore, the Pentagon, along with its allies and industry partners, needs to constant move that goalpost—“not every 10 years when we can build a new airplane or a new Aegis radar,” Taiclet said, “but every three to six months; how do we help DOD and our allies move those deterrence goalposts every three to six months?”

F-16 Downs Turkish Drone Over Syria After It Comes Within Half Kilometer of US Troops

Oct. 5, 2023 | By Chris Gordon

A U.S. Air Force F-16 shot down a Turkish government drone on Oct. 5 after it flew within half a kilometer of U.S. troops in Syria.

The incident was an extremely rare military engagement between two NATO allies, who were already at odds over a range of security issues.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. called their Turkish counterparts to try to defuse the situation.

The incident played out the morning of Oct. 5 over the skies of northeastern Syria.

Turkey has been conducting airstrikes on Kurdish groups in Syria and Iraq it claims were linked to an Oct. 1 bombing outside the Turkish Interior Ministry in the capital of Ankara.

There are around 900 U.S. troops in Syria, who work with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to combat the Islamic State group. That SDF insists it had no involvement in the bombing in the Turkish capital.

At around 7:30 a.m. Syria time on Oct. 5, U.S. forces observed drones conducting airstrikes in Hasakah, Syria, including inside a “declared U.S. restricted operating zone,” Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Brig. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder told reporters.

Some of the Turkish strikes on Oct. 5 were around one kilometer from U.S. forces, prompting Americans to take cover in bunkers, according to the Pentagon.

At around 11:30 a.m., a Turkish drone reentered the area and was headed in the direction of U.S. forces, according to the U.S. officials. When the drone got around half a kilometer away from U.S. forces, a U.S. F-16 fired an air-to-air missile that downed the drone.

“We did communicate with Turkey our inherent right to self-defense in the face of a potential threat,” Ryder said. “Commanders on the ground did assess that there was a potential threat, and so they took prudent action.”

In a call with Turkish Minister of National Defense Yasar Guler after the incident, Austin “urged de-escalation in northern Syria and the importance of maintaining strict adherence to deconfliction protocols and communication through established military-to-military channels,” the Pentagon said in a readout of the call.

“It’s a regrettable incident,” Ryder said. “No U.S. forces were harmed. We took appropriate action based on the situation on the ground.”

U.S. officials say they do not believe Turkey was trying to deliberately target American troops.

The Turkish Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.

“We will continue to keep those lines of communication open to hopefully prevent these types of incidents,” said Ryder.

In Brown’s call with Chief of the General Staff of the Turkish Armed Forces Gen. Metin Gürak, the generals “discussed our shared objective of defeating ISIS and the need to follow common deconfliction protocols to ensure the safety of our personnel in Syria following today’s incident,” according to the Pentagon.

The episode happened at a sensitive moment, as the U.S. is seeking Turkey’s support to secure Sweden’s entry into NATO, pursue diplomacy over Ukraine, and deal with terrorist dangers.

The bombing in Ankara was ascribed to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which Turkey and the U.S. consider a terrorist group. Turkey considers the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces to be linked to PKK, which the SDF denies.

Turkey’s foreign minister said Oct. 4 that Kurdish militants’ facilities in Syria and Iraq were “legitimate targets,” including energy infrastructure.

Turkey claims the perpetrators of the bombing crossed through SDF-controlled territory, which it denies.

“The perpetrators of the Ankara attack did not pass through our region as Turkish officials claimed,” Mazloum Abdi, the head of the SDF, said in a statement. “We are not a party to the civil conflict in Turkey and we do not encourage the escalation of this conflict.”

Space Force Takes Over JTAGS Mission from the Army

Oct. 5, 2023 | By Unshin Lee Harpley

The Space Force assumed official control of the Joint Tactical Ground Station (JTAGS) missile warning system from the Army on Oct. 1, one of the final milestones in the Space Force’s consolidation of many space missions across the services.

JTAGS are ground-based systems that deliver timely warnings and cueing information regarding ballistic missile launches. The systems are strategically positioned to receive, process, and distribute data obtained from overhead sensors. Its four forward-station detachments are based in Italy, Qatar, South Korea, and Japan.

For decades, these satellite ground stations have been operated by the Army’s 1st Space Brigade, headquartered in Colorado Springs, Colo. Now, they will be overseen by Space Delta 4, stationed at Buckley Space Force Base, Colo., until Space Operations Command sets up the 5th Space Warning Squadron.

The move from the Army to the Space Force has been in the works for months now—it was first announced in January 2023.

From personnel transition to financial responsibilities, the transfer required careful planning. It began with a core group of Guardians, with Army personnel gradually transitioning out as their regular Permanent Change of Station (PCS) cycles dictated. Some individuals underwent inter-service transfers. This phased approach enabled the Space Force to maintain operational continuity while adapting Guardians to their new responsibilities.

Lt. Gen. Stephen Whiting, head of Space Operations Command, expressed gratitude to the Army’s Space and Missile Defense Command for their teamwork during this mission handover.

“Now, it is our responsibility to uphold the same level of mission accomplishment with JTAGS as a fully integrated component of our broader missile warning mission,” Whiting said via an official statement.

Space Delta 4 is responsible for operating and supporting satellites and radar systems that provide critical missile warning capabilities. Delta 4 helps guide missile defense efforts, provides information and supports technical intelligence analysis.

The Army was originally slated to keep the JTAGS mission, even as the Space Force took over other services’ space missions. Now, it is one of the last missions to officially transfer over, after the Navy transferred over its Naval Satellite Operations Center and 13 satellites in June 2022, and Army transferred its satellite communications mission to the new service in August 2022. Those moves put all military SATCOM capabilities under the Space Force.

LOOK: New Apple TV+ Series Coming in January About ‘Mighty Eighth’ Air Force in WWII

Oct. 5, 2023 | By David Roza

The producers of acclaimed television shows that focused on U.S. Army and Marine Corps units during World War II are turning their focus to the U.S. Army Air Forces.

“Masters of the Air,” which will focus on the 8th Air Force during its bombing campaign over Nazi Germany, is set to premiere on Apple TV+ on Jan. 26, 2024, the streaming service announced Oct. 5.

The producing team of Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, and Gary Goetzman previously created ‘Band of Brothers,’ about paratroopers from the 101st Airborne Division in their campaign through Europe, and ‘The Pacific,’ about the 1st Marine Division’s fight against Japan. Both shows were praised for their visceral, realistic portrayals of combat.

“Masters of the Air” will highlight the intense aerial combat of the war. More than 26,000 members of the ‘Mighty Eighth’ Air Force were killed during the bombing campaign, about 30 percent more than the number of Marines killed in the entirety of World War II.

The show is based on the book of the same name written by Donald L. Miller, a history professor at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania. According to Apple press release, the show “follows the men of the 100th Bomb Group (the “Bloody Hundredth”) as they conduct perilous bombing raids over Nazi Germany and grapple with the frigid conditions, lack of oxygen, and sheer terror of combat conducted at 25,000 feet in the air.”

The psychological and emotional toll is at the heart of the series, the release added. Locations include the southeast English fields and villages where bomber crews lived and worked and the German prisoner of war camps where many service members ended up.

The 100th Bomb Group lives on today in the form of the 100th Air Refueling Wing, a KC-135 aerial refueling tanker unit at Royal Air Force Mildenhall in the United Kingdom. The unit still sports the iconic ‘Square D’ badge first used on B-17 bombers during World War II.

“‘Masters of the Air’ is a salute to the brave men of the 8th Air Force, who, through their courage and brotherhood, helped defeat Nazi Germany in World War II,” Goetzman said in the press release. “Tom and Steven have always wanted to visualize cinematically what our author Don Miller has called, this ‘singular event in the history of warfare.’”

Two episodes will premiere on Jan. 26, with a new episode every Friday through March 15, 2024, a total of nine episodes for the limited series. The cast includes Austin Butler, who was nominated for an Academy Award for his portrayal of musician Elvis Presley in the 2022 film ‘Elvis,’ Barry Keoghan, nominated for an Academy Award for his role in the 2022 film ‘The Banshees of Inisherin,’ Callum Turner, Anthony Boyle, Nate Mann, Rafferty Law, Josiah Cross, Branden Cook, and Ncuti Gatwa.

The Oct. 5 announcement comes four years after news first broke that the show was being developed. According to entertainment news website IGN, the show was originally bound for HBO, where “Band of Brothers” and “The Pacific” also premiered, “before Apple swooped in and made a deal with Spielberg’s and Hanks’ respective production companies to stream the miniseries exclusively on its Apple TV+ platform.”

Goetzman also produced ‘Greyhound,’ a 2020 film distributed by Apple TV+ in which Hanks starred as a WWII U.S. Navy destroyer commander escorting a convoy across the Atlantic.

Below are promotional images of the show released by Apple, alongside images of the actual 8th Air Force during WWII.

Space Force Awards Contract to SpaceX for Starshield, Its New Satellite Network

Oct. 4, 2023 | By Unshin Lee Harpley

The Space Force is bolstering its satellite network—and its ties to SpaceX—with a $70 million contract for the company’s new Starshield service.

The partnership is part of the service’s ongoing effort to leverage private-sector involvement in space operations. The Space Force is moving away from long acquisition cycles and pivoting to more commercial capabilities in different mission areas, an official at Space Systems Command told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

Starshield, often described as a government equivalent to SpaceX’s Starlink network, is made up of satellites in low-Earth orbit (LEO) and will provide several capabilities, the official added, including but not limited to high-speed broadband, space domain awareness, and alternative positioning, navigation, and timing. Starshield’s primary focus areas include earth observation, communications, and hosted payloads, as detailed on its website.

The Space Force’s contract will cover a global subscription for various land, maritime, stationary, and mobility platforms and users

While the task order for Starshield services is provided by the Starlink satellite constellation, it differs from the commercial Starlink service due to unique Department of Defense terms and conditions not typically found in commercial service contracts.

While Starlink serves consumer and commercial purposes and boasts the world’s largest satellite constellation, Starshield is intended to support national security efforts.

SpaceX has not responded to queries from Air & Space Force Magazine on further technical distinctions between the military-focused constellation and commercial communication.

While SpaceX’s contract with the Space Force is the first of its kind, the company has a history of partnering with the U.S. military and government agencies. That has included a host of launches through the National Security Space Launch program, building satellites for the Space Development Agency, and collaboration on a project for NASA.

However, the company’s involvement in defense activities has not been without controversy.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s recently released biography, written by Walter Isaacson, alleged that Musk declined to let the Ukrainian government use the Starlink satellite network to coordinate an attack on Russian warships.

Musk himself has emphasized the civilian nature of Starlink, saying it “needs to be a civilian network, not a participant in combat,” via X, formerly known as Twitter. Starshield is meant to separate out the civilian and military applications.

In response to queries about Musk’s decisions on Ukraine at last month’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference, Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman declined to comment, stating he wasn’t aware of the decision-making process behind Musk’s choice. Saltzman also noted that the matter is now “old news,” given that the Space Force has a contract in place.

Still, the revelation has triggered a congressional investigation into Musk’s actions. Sen. Jack Reed, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the panel is “aggressively probing this issue from every angle” in a statement released on Sept. 14.

Asked whether the results of the inquiry could have repercussions for the Starshield contract, the Space Systems Command official said that the Space Force will not speculate on the findings and that SpaceX will continue to execute ongoing contracts with the Space Force.

The Space Force’s contract with SpaceX is effective from Sept. 1, 2023, to Sept. 30, 2024, with an option for an additional year.

Guard F-15s Arrive in Kadena As Active-Duty Eagles Phase Out

Oct. 4, 2023 | By David Roza

Kadena Air Base, Japan, saw the return of a familiar aircraft type on Oct. 3 when F-15C Eagles from the California Air National Guard’s 144th Fighter Wing and the Louisiana Air National Guard’s 159th Fighter Wing arrived to help keep up the continuous fighter presence in the region.

The new arrivals are the latest in a series of fighters rotating through Kadena as the base’s local F-15C/D fleet phases out due to old age. Since the rotational force plan was announced in October, the Kadena-based 18th Wing has hosted F-22 Raptors and F-35s Lightning IIs from Alaska, U.S. F-16s from Germany, and F-15E Strike Eagles from North Carolina and Idaho.

Kadena has operated F-15C/Ds since 1979. Before the drawdown, about 48 of them were permanently based there in two squadrons, and at least 18 of them have returned to the U.S. so far. Air & Space Forces Magazine previously reported that all the local Eagles were due to be sent back to Air National Guard units or the Boneyard in Arizona by September, though it was unclear based on a press release if that deadline was met.

“Due to operational security reasons, we cannot provide specific timelines for departures or aircraft counts,” a Pacific Air Forces spokesperson told Air & Space Forces Magazine in a statement when asked if any local F-15C/Ds remained at Kadena.

“Fighter deployments will continue until a new fighter aircraft is selected by the U.S. government and becomes fully operational at Kadena Air Base,” the statement continued. “This is to ensure that there will be zero-gap in U.S. Air Force fighter presence at this strategically vital location through this transitory phase.”

f-15c — An F-15C Eagle assigned to the 159th Fighter Wing, Louisiana Air National Guard, arrives at Kadena Air Base, Japan, Oct. 3, 2023. U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Catherine Daniel

Located on Okinawa, a southern Japanese island only about 400 miles east of Taiwan, Kadena could be a vital staging ground for the U.S. response if the People’s Republic of China were to invade Taiwan. Also known as the “Keystone of the Pacific,” the base hosts not only fighters, but also aerial refueling tankers, command and control aircraft, and rescue helicopters. The new arrivals from California and Louisiana will work with those other aircraft as well as sister services and international partners in the region.

“Our squadron’s excited to train and integrate with Team Kadena and our bilateral partners,” Lt. Col. Jon Vanbragt, who took command of the 144th Operations Group in September, said in the press release. “Operating in the Indo-Pacific offers immense opportunities for our Airmen and allies to strengthen our partnerships and continue to refine our tactics.”

A spokesperson for the 144th Fighter Wing, Capt. Jason Sanchez, said that sharing the theater support package between two Guard units allows some of each unit to train at home while their colleagues support operations overseas.

“It’s unusual and exciting that we’re collaborating with an Air National Guard unit across the country to provide airpower,” he told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

Lockheed Boss: F-35 Tech Refresh-3 Coming in Mid-2024, Will Be ‘Worth The Wait’

Oct. 4, 2023 | By John A. Tirpak

Lockheed Martin believes it is “manageable” to complete testing of the F-35 Technology Refresh-3 and start delivering new jets with the system by mid-2024, company chairman and CEO Jim Taiclet said Oct. 4—and he promised the resulting product will be “worth the wait.”

“We and the Joint Program Office, which manages the F-35 program, we do feel that it’s a manageable risk to get to second quarter of next year deliveries with the TR-3 program, [with] test flights completed,” Taiclet said in a discussion hosted by the Hudson Institute.

The JPO agrees that mid-2024 is a possibility, but there are risks, the program director has said.

Taiclet explained that the TR-3 is “a cutting-edge technology insertion, on a very complex platform that has to do … anti-spoofing, formation flying, counter-jamming” in a “serious” electronic warfare environment, he said.

The upgrade will be worth the wait, he said, because the F-35 will do edge computing, a complex technical capability “very similar” to autonomous drones or driverless cars, he said.

“We want to make sure this works, and the reason this is important is because the F-35 TR-2 version has the best attributes of the three areas you need to have effective edge computing node: that’s data storage [of the] size that you need; data processing capability and a robust server, how robust is your cloud; and multi-path connection to the cloud,” Taiclet said.

The capability resident in TR-3 will be an order of magnitude greater than in TR-2, he said, and with it, the F-35 will have a digital capability “unlike any other” in the world.

Lt. Gen. Michael Schmidt, the program executive officer for the F-35 JPO, told Air & Space Forces Magazine last month that he still sees risk in Lockheed getting TR-3 flight testing accomplished in the first half of 2024. The original estimate for delivery was by the end of 2023.

Schmidt said the TR-3 delays generally had to do with supply chain disruptions, behind-schedule software, and a late start of flight testing.

Many assumptions about getting TR-3 tested and delivered were too optimistic, Schmidt said, adding there still may be insufficient manpower and software laboratory capacity to hit the upgrade program’s timeline. The number of flight test aircraft available is also too small for the program’s needs, and the flight test infrastructure generally is “really old,” he said.

Schmidt said the TR-3—and the F-35 Block 4 upgrade, which requires the TR-3—suffered from insufficient planning and workarounds in case of delays.

“The consequences of it not being ready on time” weren’t sufficiently appreciated when the Block 4 was laid out, Schmidt said, explaining there was “no backup plan.” However, Schmidt did say the hardware “is doing pretty well right now.”

The centerpiece of TR-3 is a super-high-power computer/processor/memory upgrade, which will run the 85 or so improvements in Block 4, including new data fusion, new sensor suites, additional long-range precision weapons, upgraded electronic warfare capabilities, and interoperability with more platforms.

Task Force 99 Exploring ‘One-Way Kinetic Attack’ Drones, AFCENT Boss Says

Oct. 4, 2023 | By Chris Gordon

An Air Force task force charged with advancing new technologies is considering fielding one-way attack drones in the Middle East, the top USAF commander for the region told reporters Oct. 4.

Task Force 99, a small detachment in Air Forces Central (AFCENT), is exploring kinetic and electronic warfare options for unmanned aerial systems, AFCENT commander Lt. Gen. Alexus G. Grynkewich said at a Defense Writers Group event.

AFCENT’s future drones “could include being used for one-way kinetic attack—the kamikaze drones that have been used against us,” Grynkewich said. “That is certainly something that we’re looking at.”

U.S. personnel in the Middle East have been targeted by drone attacks launched by Iranian-backed militias. In March, a drone that the U.S. said came from an Iranian-backed militia killed a U.S. contractor and injured numerous U.S. military and civilian personnel in eastern Syria.

Iranian-supplied one-way attack drones have also been used extensively by Russian forces in their invasion of Ukraine.

Task Force 99 was established a year ago to develop unmanned and digital technologies and explore their application in an operational environment. It is comprised of a small team of about 15 Airmen that operates out of Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar, and is largely unfettered by traditional service bureaucracy.

“They just happen to be the right people with the right skills that we discovered—knew how to code or knew how to 3D-print,” Grynkewich said.

The task force’s current fleet is made up of 98 drones either in its inventory or on order, with ranges that vary from fewer than 15 miles to 900 miles.

Some of its drones have already been used for operational intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions. Unlike MQ-9s, the Task Force 99 drones can fly below cloud cover to gather information with high fidelity.

“They’ve proven capable,” Grynkewich said of the systems. “Using smaller, more bespoke capabilities that fly lower and under the weather, we’ve been able to use high-resolution cameras and get information on things that might be a threat to us. So that’s one use case that we’ve really started to flesh out.”

Grynkewich declined to definitively say Task Force 99 will field one-way attack or electronic warfare drones. But he said such capabilities might be useful.

“I call it imposing dilemmas on the adversary,” Grynkewich said. “In a way these are just low, slow cruise missiles with different payloads. So we’re looking at that as options. But it also could include something that can do spectrum warfare, something that just harasses the adversary, etc.”

A U.S. Air Force Academy cadet wears a Task Force 99 patch at Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar, June 22, 2023. U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Jennifer Zima

Grynkewich said that the Pentagon’s Replicator Initiative, which was recently announced by Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks, could provide an important boost for the task force. That effort aims to field thousands of new drones in the next 18-24 months, which could help Task Force 99 field drones at a greater scale.

Task Force 99 “does a really good job of surveying the innovative space for technologies, bringing them into a realistic combat environment, austere environment, a hot environment, a humid environment, and testing them,” Grynkewich said. “We can come up with concepts of operation to use them. But getting them from that next step where we need to scale is a little bit difficult.”

“I think what Replicator will do is help us make that shift,” he added.

While Grynkewich did not name commercial drones Task Force 99 has used, he did give an example of “adaptability” when asked how AFCENT might create an attack drone. Task Force 99 has 3D-printed a system it calls “Kestrel” for around $2,500 per drone with a range of about 100 kilometers.

Kestrel is “something that can be relevant on the battlefield,” he said. “$2,500, that includes all the avionics. What it doesn’t include is a payload. It can carry about a three-kilogram payload, plus or minus. That payload could be any number of things that you put in it.”