Air Force Risks Sub-Optimizing Fighter Engines—Again 

Air Force Risks Sub-Optimizing Fighter Engines—Again 

June 27, 2023 | By Col. Leonard “Lucky” Ekman, USAF (Ret.) 

The F-35 is the most advanced fighter yet built, but decisions and compromises imposed on it more than a decade ago continue to push up its cost, decrease its reliability, limit its performance, and constrain its ability to exploit new technologies. For fighter pilots of my generation who lived through similar challenges, it’s a current reminder that we ignore the lessons of the past at our peril. The U.S. Air Force has long held a qualitative advantage over potential and likely future adversaries. It achieved that through hard work, hard fought wars, and sobering Cold War experiences.

What are those lessons? 

  • Ongoing competition is essential, especially in fighter engines. 
  • Requirements must be defined by warfighters and should not be budget-constrained. 
  • In air dominance, “there are no points for second best,” as the old Grumman Corporation used to say about its F-14. That lesson holds today. 
  • Commonality across service and partner fleets adds cost and invariably leads to performance compromises and disappointing suboptimizations. 

Last week’s Paris Air Show contretemps between Lockheed Martin, maker of the F-35, and Pratt & Whitney, maker of its F135 engines, is a case in point. Lockheed called short-sighted the recent Air Force decision to shelve for now the promising Adaptive Engine Technology Program (AETP) in favor of an engine core upgrade (ECU) and Power Thermal Management System (PTMS) enhancement to the existing F135 engine. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall had previously expressed his own reservations about the decision. 

At issue is whether the F135 will ever produce the power and thermal management capabilities required by the ill-defined Technology Refresh 3 (TR-3) and Block 4 avionics enhancements. Pratt’s solution, which it admits offers limited potential upside but is theoretically least costly, is the ECU and improved PTMS. Pratt won the budget argument for inclusion of its answer in the Air Force’s 2024 budget submission. 

At Paris, Pratt’s over-the-top reaction accused Lockheed of putting its wishes ahead of its customers, even as Pratt appeared to be doing precisely the same thing in protecting its perpetual lock on F-35 propulsion over acquiescing to an ongoing and open competition between Pratt and GE entries in the AETP. 

Here, a historic review is instructive: 

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Air Force launched its fourth-generation fighters with a flawed sole-sourced engine. We bet the fleets on Pratt’s F100-PW-100 engine, only to find it not ready for prime time. Our provisioning plans were likewise inadequate. The result: USAF lagged requirements by 1.5 million turbine blades. Whole forming F-15 squadrons sat on the Langley Air Force Base ramp with empty holes where engines should have been. Meanwhile, F-16s risked stall-stagnations in fighter maneuvering, a problem that could only be cleared by inflight shutdown, if afterburner was selected below 250 knots and above 25,000 feet. 

In Saudi Arabia, which had over-provisioned its F-15 engine spares against the day when the USAF might have to come from over the horizon to counter an existential threat to the Kingdom as in Desert Shield/Desert Storm, the initial provisioning of turbine modules was exhausted in 18 months, the result of turbine blade distress from the magnesium dust-laden air of desert operations. The “turkey feather” design of the F-15 nozzle fairings turned out to be a mistake, which resulted in the Eagles operating throughout their life without nozzle fairings. 

Eventually, the consequences of sole-sourcing of our fleet’s engines to a single manufacturer were solved, of course, by competition. The F110-GE-100 and the common engine bays in later F-15s and F-16s made it possible to accommodate either Pratt or GE engines; continuing competition, in turn, met the evolving Air Force requirements for greater thrust and operational utility in the F100 with its -200, -220, and -229 variants. The GE Improved Performance Engine (IPE) -129 and -132 variants further pushed available thrust out from the F100-PW-100’s 24,000 pounds afterburning thrust to 32,000 pounds for the F110-GE-132.

These days, thanks to competitive engine and avionics upgrades, the F-16 is expected to remain in the fleet well past the 50th anniversary of its initial operational capability (IOC). Competition lesson learned—again—for Generation Four, the hard way. 

Even so, that lesson was subsequently disregarded when it came to funding or even supporting an alternative engine for the F-35. GE developed and offered its F136 alternative, but the Pentagon cancelled the program, saving $5 billion in what is now ruefully accepted as a false economy. With hindsight, it’s clear that was a consequential mistake with implications for fifth- and sixth-generation fighters. The Government Accountability Office recently noted the suboptimization of the planned fixes to the originally “under-specced” F135 engine, pointing out that its lack of inherent bleed air and electrical power capacity and growth potential is resulting in overheating at such a rate as to consume spares at substantially greater rates than can be logistically supported. 

Pratt’s ECU and vendor Honeywell’s PTMS enhancement solutions were originally touted as readily available and preserving commonality among the consortium partners’ variants. But it turns out that neither is now likely to be suitable in a single form even for the U.S. variants, and not currently “specced” or available before the early 2030s. 

So much for commonality. 

Collins, an affiliate of Pratt’s under RTX, senses a free-for-all; it is challenging Honeywell’s PTMS vendor lock. Meanwhile, the brilliant Adaptive Engine Technology Program (AETP) has been deferred as unaffordable now, its assets likely transferred to the Next Generation Advanced Propulsion (NGAP) program for the secretive gray world Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) system of systems, which reportedly has prototype(s) already flying.

AETP itself has been redesignated a ‘demonstration’, not a program, with its $4 billion in cumulative funding squeezed off beginning in fiscal 2024. This current status of the AETP is reminiscent of Bill Clements’ (and John Boyd’s) YF-16 and YF-17 lightweight fighter ‘demonstrators’ which, while not originally intended for production, morphed into the successful and ubiquitous F-16 and F-18 programs. 

Similarly, the XA100 (GE) and XA101 (Pratt) ‘demonstrators’ would seem, given funding, to offer a major leap forward in fighter engine technology. The numbers projected for the AETP are mind-boggling in terms of extra thrust, extra bleed air and utility output, and hugely reduced specific fuel consumption on the order of 30 percent over current fan technologies. We should all beware of engine manufacturers’ projections, which can only be kept honest through test and head-to-head competition, but it’s clear the potential for these new engines is tremendous. 

GE XA100
A newly released photo of GE’s XA100 adaptive cycle engine in a U.S. Air Force test cell at Arnold Engineering Development Complex in Tullahoma, Tenn.

It is not clear from the open sources whether the essential, more art-than-science engine/inlet matching to the F-35 was part of the AETP demonstration and those projections. (The initial fitment of the GE110 to the F-16 with its original inlet was mismatched and required enlargement of the F-16 engine inlet to capture the extra airflow needed by the GE110.) Our fighter engines’ performance and reliability have long been the strength of our fleets, while the Chinese continue to struggle with their indigenous WS-15 engine development for the J-20, and the Russians still produce fighter engines with times-between-overhauls measured in hundreds, rather than thousands of hours as USAF’s are.

We should be funding our strengths in the 2024 budgets and beyond, and vigorously protecting our secrets. 

Secretary Kendall has focused on the unavailability of sufficient resources within the Air Force budget share to fund both the ECU and PTMS upgrades to the F135 and the AETP. Here, our Navy friends have reverted to their decades-old playbook of letting the Air Force pay the cost of engine improvements and were unwilling to help fund the exploitation of the AETP. (It took the USAF-provided GE110 option to turn the F-14B/D into the dogfighter the Navy wanted when it bailed from the F-111 program—but didn’t get because it initially used the off-the-shelf F-111 engine with its thermal cycle limitations.) 

Rep. Rob Whitman, chair of the House Armed Services Committee tactical air and land forces subcommittee, managed to insert into the draft 2024 National Defense Authorization Act the continuation of the AETP. It’s unknowable how the issue will fare in Appropriations and in conference, and whether the DOD would reconsider its decision and spend any appropriations for AETP if so prodded by the Congress. 

All the above are facts the Fighter Mafia in the bowels of the Pentagon have doubtless argued with greater specificity and accuracy than I have here. It’s time for the leadership to listen one more time, and to reconsider. The resolution of this debate should be based on service-written requirements and strategic imperatives, not political or budgetary considerations, or even profit driven contractor intramurals. 

Why now? Because the burgeoning threat to our remaining an Indo-Pacific and, therefore a global, power is China and the Chinese Communist Part. 

Western Pacific deterrence, or the outcome of the potential fight over Taiwan should deterrence fail, will turn heavily on our present and future ability to seize, project, and sustain air dominance. 

We must fund adaptive engine technology through tough trades—AETP vs. interim and stealth tanker/multimission platform force sizing, for example—and externally from rebalanced land force’s budget shares to field quickly this breakout Adaptive Engine technology. Doing so will ensure the U.S. retains air dominance capability and capacity over the vast reaches of the Pacific and contains China from pursuing by force the CCP’s ambitions.

In the words of Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., it is time to “accelerate change” and revisit and revise our current second-best course of action. 

The Joint Requirements Oversight Council (JROC) would be a good place to start for a tough-minded scrub focused on the weapons and capabilities most needed to contain China. It’s a budget battle no one wants, but one which our Air Force must fight.

Col. Leonard “Lucky” Ekman, USAF (Ret.) was a fighter and Wild Weasel pilot who flew three tours in Vietnam, including 1,066 combat hours in the F-105. In between Vietnam tours, he was an Olmsted Scholar in Geneva from 1969-71. He spent his last decade in uniform as a pol-mil officer. 

Large-Scale Tanker Flyovers Celebrate 100th Anniversary of First Air Refueling

Large-Scale Tanker Flyovers Celebrate 100th Anniversary of First Air Refueling

June 27, 2023 | By Chris Gordon

While U.S. Air Force’s jets and bombers are the nation’s fight-tonight force, aerial refueling before and after those forces go into the fight is often the key to those missions.

On the 100th anniversary of the first aerial refueling mission, the Air Force sought to highlight the behind-the-scenes efforts of some of its most essential planes with Operation Centennial Contact. More than 150 tankers from 26 installations were involved in large-scale flyovers across the country.

All 50 states were originally slated to have flyovers, but weather conditions forced some units to adjust their flight paths and schedules.

Air Mobility Command’s tankers allow sorties to go on at length with limited interruption—from fighter combat air patrols and intercontinental bomber missions to keeping the E-4B “Doomsday Plane” in the skies.

“Today’s U.S. Air Force air refueling capabilities deliver unrivaled rapid global reach for U.S. forces and our Allies and partners throughout the globe,” Air Mobility Command said in a news release. “Aerial refueling serves as a force multiplier, increasing the speed, range, lethality, flexibility, and versatility of combat aircraft.”

According to the Air Force, the first aerial refueling occurred on June 27, 1923, with aviators from the Army Air Service, the Air Force’s predecessor.

“On that day, 1st Lt. Virgil Hine and 1st Lt. Frank W. Seifert, flying a DH-4B, passed gasoline through a gravity hose to another DH-4B piloted by Capt. Lowell H. Smith and 1st Lt. John P. Richter, accomplishing the first aerial refueling,” the AMC release stated.

To highlight what has turned from an experiment into something that is now a “critical capability” to the Department of Defense’s operations, Air Mobility Command had its fleet of tankers—from the 1950s-era KC-135 Stratotankers to KC-10 Extenders and the newest KC-46 Pegasus showcase their mission. The participating units were extensive, according to an AMC spokesperson:

  • 97th Air Mobility Wing (Altus Air Force Base, Okla)
  • 459th Air Refueling Wing (Joint Base Andrews, Md.)
  • 101st Air Refueling Wing (Bangor Air National Guard Base, Maine.)
  • 117th Air Refueling Wing (Sumpter Smith Joint National Guard Base, Birmingham, Ala.)
  • 168th Wing (Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska)
  • 92nd Air Refueling Wing (Fairchild Air Force Base, Wash.)
  • 190th Air Refueling Wing (Forbes Air National Guard Base, Kan.)
  • 434th Air Refueling Wing (Grissom Air Reserve Base, Ind.)
  • 154th Air Refueling Wing (Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii)
  • 155th Air Refueling Wing (Lincoln Air National Guard Base, Neb.)
  • 189 Air Refueling Wing (Little Rock Air Force Base, Ark.)
  • 6th Air Refueling Wing (MacDill Air Force Base, Fla.)
  • 452nd Air Mobility Wing (March Air Reserve Base, Calif.) 
  • 22nd Air Refueling Wing (McConnell Air Force Base, Kan)
  • 134th Air Refueling Wing (McGhee Tyson Air National Guard Base, Tenn.)
  • 305 Air Mobility Wing (Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, N.J.)
  • 60th Air Mobility Wing (Travis Air Force Base, Texas)
  • 186th Air Refueling Wing (Key Field, Miss.)
  • 128 Air Refueling Wing (General Mitchell Air National Guard Base, Wis.)
  • 151th Air Refueling Wing (Roland R. Wright Air National Guard Base, Utah.)

“Air refueling propels our Nation’s air power across the skies, unleashing its full potential,“ Air Mobility Command boss Gen. Mike Minihan said in a news release. “It connects our strategic vision with operational reality, ensuring we can reach any corner of the globe with unwavering speed and precision.”

The Air Force is hoping to rethink aerial refueling yet again, with a next-generation air refueling system (NGAS) and more KC-46s replacing KC-135s that entered the fleet closer to that first aerial refueling than today. While flying some of the Air Force’s aging refueling aircraft over the skies of the U.S., the AMC also wanted to show why it needs to plan for the future and recapitalize the tanker fleet to “remain relevant in the current and future security environments,” the command said.

Northrop Tests Navigation System for Contested Airspace That Will Go on F-22

Northrop Tests Navigation System for Contested Airspace That Will Go on F-22

June 27, 2023 | By John A. Tirpak

Northrop Grumman revealed June 27 that it has successfully tested an advanced air navigation system to allow aircraft to operate in contested, GPS-jammed or -denied airspace. The system will be deployed on Air Force F-22 fighters and Navy E-2D Hawkeye airborne warning and control aircraft, with other platforms to follow.

The system, called EGI-M for Embedded GPS Inertial Navigation System Modernization, was tested in May aboard a Cessna Citation 560 test aircraft. The flight marked the first time the system has been tested with an M-code-capable receiver.

M-code is a jam-resistant GPS signal that can be beamed at target areas from GPS Block III satellites using their high-gain directional antennae. The signals are more powerfully focused, and thus less susceptible to jamming, than general GPS signals, which broadcast over a wide geographical area. M-Code also allows blue force tracking systems to continue to follow U.S. military signals even when general GPS is being jammed in an area. The M-code signals are also encrypted to further reduce the chance of spoofing.

When fully operational, the EGI-M system “will feature a modular platform interface, designed to easily integrate with current platform navigation systems, supporting advanced software and hardware technology updates now and in the future,” a release from Northrop stated.

Precise navigation is critical both for avoiding known threats and putting ordnance on target at a specific time. Adversary airspace is expected to be GPS-jammed, so advanced navigation systems rely on several methods—GPS, inertial navigation, timing, and other, classified techniques, to ascertain precise location.

Northrop’s EGI-M prototype, dubbed the LN-351 system, uses GPS/INS with fiber optic gyro technology and performed at the same level of the LN-251, Northrop’s current GPS navigation system, but with the added M-code capability. Northrop began engineering and manufacturing development of EGI-M in 2018, and critical design review was completed in September 2020.  The system has been selected for use with “additional fixed-wing and rotary-wing platforms” across the U.S. military services and allied forces, Northrop said.

The EGI-M is an open-architecture system, which will allow insertion of third-party technology without compromising the system’s cyber security and airworthiness, according to Northrop’s website.

“This flight test is a major step forward in developing our next generation airborne navigation system,” Ryan Arrington, vice president of navigation and cockpit systems at Northrop, said in a statement.

New Study: US Needs Counterspace Weapons for Space Superiority

New Study: US Needs Counterspace Weapons for Space Superiority

June 27, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

The Space Force and U.S. Space Command should field counterspace weapons and related capabilities to ensure space superiority in the future, according to a senior Space Force operator and also a new paper from the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. 

Fielding such weapons will require a shift in mindset and major changes in policy, classification, force structure, and personnel, said Maj. Gen. David N. Miller, director of operations, training, and force development for U.S. Space Command. 

“I think we’re past the point of ‘Is space of warfighting domain?’ I think we’re past the point of ‘Has space been weaponized?’” Miller said June 27 at a rollout event for the new Mitchell Institute paper. He cited China’s demonstration of a fractional orbital bombardment system and Russia’s test of a direct ascent anti-satellite missile. 

Retired Col. Charles S. Galbreath, senior resident fellow for space studies at the Mitchell Institute, argues in a new research paper that the U.S. needs its own counterspace capabilities to counter those threats and deter China and Russia from putting such weapons to use.

“Recognizing space as a warfighting domain means any serious effort to achieve space security must include space weapons,” Galbreath wrote. “It’s oxymoronic to establish a new military service charged with protecting interests in space without arming it with the weapons it must have to accomplish its mission.” 

Space is just like any other warfighting domain, said retired Gen. Kevin P. Chilton, Explorer Chair of the Mitchell Institute’s Spacepower Advantage Center of Excellence. “If you are a Soldier talking about the land domain, a Sailor talking about the maritime domain, or an Airman talking about the air domain, you’d be demanding those capabilities: situational awareness and the ability to find, fix, target, track and if necessary, kill an adversary in their domain.”

Space is no different, he said. But because space was for so long a peaceful, permissive environment and because destructive actions there can create dangerous debris fields that last for decades and threaten every satellite in that orbit, counterspace weapons have long been considered taboo.

Those hurdles continue, Miller said. “There was an almost equating of space superiority with protect and defend,” Miller said. “And we began to see, while that may have been useful in some circles … that ultimately undermined the discussion of where we needed to be in our operating concepts as the service the nation expects to provide space superiority.” 

The very fact of China’s and Russia’s counterspace capabilities makes clear the need to “stop debating if it’s a warfighting domain, stop debating whether there are weapons and get to the point of how do we responsibly, as part of the joint and combined force, deter conflict that nobody wants to see,” Miller added. “But if we do see [conflict, the U.S. must] demonstrate our capability to win as a part of a joint combined team.” 

Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman has pushed that capability part of his “Competitive Endurance” theory. In particular, Miller highlighted the importance of an expanded intelligence enterprise giving SPACECOM more awareness and information to conduct a full range of operations in space. 

“[It’s] making sure we have both the intelligence capability and capacity, as well as the day-to-day surveillance and where needed, the focused reconnaissance capability, to provide precision tracking, custody, and, if necessary, targeting information in order to disrupt space-enabled threats,” Miller said. 

Miller called for a “a culture of campaigning” that goes beyond posturing and focuses on tailored operations that demonstrate to adversaries that the U.S. is prepared to act. That means not just weapons, but extensive training.

“That’s a pipeline that doesn’t exist right now,” Galbreath noted. “All of the operators, all of the Guardians, need to be aware of what threats are out there and how they might present to the systems they operate or are fielding.” 

Investing in test and training infrastructure has been a top priority for Saltzman in his early tenure as CSO, and Miller indicated that the entire service is shifting how it develops personnel through both education, training, and leadership opportunities. 

The Space Force will also need help from industry, which will also need to shift its approach to the domain, said Robert Atkin, vice president of special space systems at General Atomics. 

“In the beginning, the primary thing that we focused on when building spacecraft was, will it survive launch and will it survive the radiation environment?” Atkin said. “We didn’t pay any attention to the fact that someone may be trying to shoot us down or kill us in some other way. And I think the adversaries have accelerated that and we have kind of underestimated how fast they were doing that and how fast they were capable of doing that.” 

Among the recommendations in his research paper, Galbreath called for the Space Force and industry to work together to develop defensive and offensive capabilities—quickly. He also argued for: 

  • Clear guidance from senior military and civilian leaders on the need for counterspace weapons 
  • A counterspace force design developed by the Space Warfighting Analysis Center 
  • Improvements from the Space Force in space situational awareness; telemetry, tracking, and control of satellites; and test and training infrastructure 
  • Additional funding for the Space Force from Congress 
Moody Will Get F-35s to Replace its A-10s, Air Force Says

Moody Will Get F-35s to Replace its A-10s, Air Force Says

June 26, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

From Thunderbolts to Lightnings, Moody Air Force Base is slated for a big change in the coming years. 

The Department of the Air Force announced plans June 26 for the Georgia base to host the F-35A Lightning II starting in fiscal 2029, replacing its A-10 Thunderbolt IIs that are slated to be retired.

Moody isn’t the only base set to get a new mission to replace departing A-10s—the Air Force also announced that Gowen Field Air National Guard Base, Idaho, will transition to F-16s in spring 2027. 

The selections of Moody and Gowen Field will not be finalized until environmental impact analyses are complete, the former in the fall of 2025 and the latter in the spring of 2025. 

The 23rd Fighter Group arrived at Moody with its A-10Cs in 2007, and Air Force Reserve Command’s 476th Fighter Group, which also flies the A-10, stood up in 2009. In April, the base bid farewell to its first A-10 in years, sending it to the Boneyard at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz. 

But while that A-10 was replaced by one from the Indiana Air National Guard, the Air Force now plans to end operations of the aging close air support aircraft at the base. According to a release, the plan is to retire six of Moody’s A-10s in fiscal 2024 if Congress approves the service’s request to cut 42 across the fleet. 

From there, the other 48 A-10s at Moody would be retired through fiscal 2028 and replaced over time by two squadrons of F-35s.

The Idaho Air National Guard’s A-10s are slated to start retiring in the fall of 2026. 

The decision to base F-35s at Moody adds to the growing number of locations the Air Force has charted out for its newest fighter. Already, there are F-35s stationed at: 

  • Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska  
  • Hill Air Force Base, Utah  
  • Luke Air Force Base, Ariz.  
  • Nellis Air Force Base, Nev.  
  • RAF Lakenheath, U.K. 
  • Burlington Air National Guard Base, Vt. 
  • Truax Field, Wisc.

There are another five planned locations, with aircraft projected to arrive anywhere from this fall to several years from now: 

  • Tyndall Air Force Base, Fla. 
  • Dannelly Field, Ala. 
  • Jacksonville Air National Guard Base, Fla. 
  • Barnes Air National Guard Base, Mass. 
  • Kingsley Field, Ore. 

Editor’s Note: This story was updated June 28 after the Air Force updated its release to change the expected arrival of F-35s at Moody Air Force Base and the number of personnel associated with the change.

As Lockheed and Pratt Trade Barbs, F-35 JPO Insists Engine Upgrade Is Best Option

As Lockheed and Pratt Trade Barbs, F-35 JPO Insists Engine Upgrade Is Best Option

June 26, 2023 | By John A. Tirpak

The F-35 Joint Program Office is sticking by its endorsement of Pratt & Whitney’s Engine Core Upgrade (ECU) for the F135 powerplant, saying the improvement will meet all the fighter’s future needs for power. But it declined to weigh in on the increasingly combative war of words between F-35 prime Lockheed Martin and engine supplier Pratt & Whitney over whether the ECU—and a separate Power and Thermal Management System (PTMS) upgrade—will be sufficient to support expected upgrades for decades to come.

In a statement to Air & Space Forces Magazine, the JPO said it “stands behind our in-depth business case analysis, conducted in partnership with industry, that helped inform DOD’s decision to move forward” with the two upgrades. The PTMS “is required by any engine option.”

The combination of the two “restores engine life and will meet the service’s and international partners’ budgetary, cooling, and power requirements,” the JPO said. “This will ensure the F-35’s propulsion system is prepared for future demands that will be necessary to stay ahead of our near-peer adversaries.”

The Government Accountability Office last month questioned whether the JPO had been sufficiently thorough in its analysis of the business case for the F-35 propulsion upgrade, but concurred that the ECU is the less-risky and less-costly option compared to the all-new AETP engine.

Lockheed Aeronautics Executive Vice President Greg Ulmer said for the first time publicly last week that his company backs the Adaptive Engine Transition Program (AETP) engines. Lockheed had previously refrained from taking a position on the re-engining.

In statements at the Paris Air Show, he predicted future block upgrades between now and 2070, saying they will require greater power and range than can be supplied by the ECU solution. Ulmer argued that the threat, not cost, should drive the choice of an F-35 powerplant. Lockheed said in a statement to Air & Space Forces Magazine that to stay ahead of the threat, “the F-35 will need even greater capability, readiness, range and thrust, which will require an upgraded engine.”

Lockheed expressed no preference for the two AETP options, the XA100 engine developed by GE Aerospace, or the XA101 engine developed by Pratt & Whitney, a division of Raytheon. Both promise significant improvements over the current F135, with double the cooling power, about 30 percent more range, and 20 percent more thrust on demand.

Pratt argued that the ECU is the only option that will fit all variants of the F-35. The new AETP engines can only fit in the F-35A and C versions. Ulmer countered that F-35B users can adopt the ECU, but that A and C operators should go for the AETP.

In a statement sent to Air & Space Forces Magazine, Raytheon’s Jeff Shockey, senior vice president for global government relations, upbraided Ulmer for “undermining” the government’s decision to go with the ECU rather than the AETP, charging Lockheed with trying to “market the F-35 as a sixth-generation fighter,” thus seeking to “negate the need for a sixth-generation fighter competition” in “an attempt to extend the life and longevity of their contract.” Ulmer’s comments are an attempt to “pull a fast one on Congress,” Shockey asserted.

The ECU, however, would extend Pratt’s monopoly on F-35 propulsion, prospectively for the remainder of the program; the same kind of result Pratt criticizes Lockheed for attempting to secure.

Asked if there is peril to the F-35 program from its two biggest contractors clearly being at odds and engaging in hostile public comments toward each other, JPO director Lt. Gen. Michael J. Schmidt said through a spokesperson that “we expect all our industry partners to work together to achieve the requirements that are set by the DOD to ensure our warfighters have what they need to accomplish their missions.”

When the JPO was asked if Schmidt has directly communicated with the two companies to cool things down and restore a public face of cooperation and collaboration, the JPO said “we communicate with our industry partners routinely” and repeated the comment that it is confident they will work together to achieve F-35 requirements.

Pratt conducts its own negotiations with the JPO for F135 engine acquisition, and the engine is provided to Lockheed as government-furnished equipment. However, Lockheed and Pratt must collaborate on engine installations and connectivity between the F-35 airframe and its powerplant. The rate at which Lockheed delivers completed F-35s is dependent on Pratt’s deliveries of the F135 engine; deliveries were halted for several months earlier this year after a December 2022 crash in which an F135 engine part was implicated.

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said in budget briefings earlier this year that the ECU was the right decision for all the F-35 users, but that if he could have “another shot,” he might make a different choice. The cost of developing an AETP engine would have fallen on Air Force’s alone, because JPO rules specify that any user wanting a unique capability must bear the cost itself. The goal of the program has been to preserve as much commonality as possible between the aircraft in order to keep costs low by keeping commonality high.  

The JPO also told Air & Space Forces Magazine it’s starting to look at how it would break out the ECU and the F-35 Block 4 upgrade from the overall F-35 program if Congress so orders. The GAO urged Congress to direct the Pentagon to take such action in a June report, saying doing so would add visibility and accountability to the two programs, which are so costly that they would count as Major Defense Acquisition Programs (MDAPs) in their own right.   

“We will follow the [National Defense Authorization Act] for FY24 once it has been signed by the President,” the JPO said. “We are already considering various options for how we will structure the programs.”

F-16 Pilot Overcomes Cancer, Red Tape to Return to the Skies

F-16 Pilot Overcomes Cancer, Red Tape to Return to the Skies

June 26, 2023 | By David Roza

Pilot callsigns can take the form of good-natured jokes, obscure references, or easy-to-recall nicknames. But for Capt. Charles Boynton, an F-16 pilot at Shaw Air Force Base, S.C., it’s a reminder of everything he’s gone through to get back in the cockpit

Dubbed “Atlas” after the figure in Greek mythology tasked with carrying the sky on his shoulders, Boynton has spent the past five years or so battling first cancer, then bureaucratic red tape.

“There’s a sense of respect about a call sign that equalizes everyone and usually addresses something you’ve done in the past, good or bad,” Boynton said in a press release about his new callsign.

The 20th Fighter Wing, to which Boynton is assigned, provided additional details on Boynton’s experience to Air & Space Forces Magazine.

f-16 pilot
Capt. Charles Boynton, an F-16 pilot with the 55th Fighter Squadron, Shaw Air Force Base, South Carolina, prepares for take-off during Weapons System Evaluation Program-East 23.08 at Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida, May 24, 2023. (U.S. Air Force photo by Jennifer Jensen)

Boynton’s Air Force journey began as an F-16 maintainer in the Air Force Reserve in 2012, while also a member of the ROTC program at the University of South Florida. Years later, after commissioning as an officer and completing Initial Flight Training in the fall of 2017, he joined the selective 55-week Euro-NATO Joint Jet Pilot Training Program (ENJJPT) at Sheppard Air Force Base, Texas. 

“I never thought I would be a fighter pilot, because everyone talks about how hard it is. You have to be top of the top of the pilot selects and I didn’t think I was top of the top by any means,” he said in a 2020 press release. “I checked the box anyway. It was almost a shot in the dark because I never thought I’d be picked up by ENJJPT.”

But after he was selected, something was wrong. According to the release, Boynton began to experience extreme fatigue. It was a battle just to stay focused, and he even questioned if he wanted to complete the program. Mental or physical illness is a sensitive topic for military aviators, whose careers depend on being medically cleared to fly. But Boynton knew he had to talk with a doctor after feeling physical pain in one of his testicles.

“I knew for sure something was up when she told me we should get an ultrasound right now,” he said.

In July 2018, Boynton was diagnosed with testicular cancer. Most of each testicle had become a tumor, forcing doctors to remove them in a major surgery. Afterwards, Boynton’s medical team discovered abnormalities in his stomach, leading to a second major surgery. Despite the hardship, the pilot’s fellow patients at Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Fla., gave him a sense of perspective.

“Even though I was going through a lot, when you walk through the halls of a cancer center and see children suffering, it’s humbling,” he said in a release. “Ever since I got diagnosed, all the doctors would tell me it’s a 98 percent survival rate, so even though I was in pain, I always knew it could be worse.”

Boynton was declared to be in remission by September 2018, and Air Force doctors gave him a clean bill of health. The 2020 release indicated it would take him just a few months to acquire a medical waiver and get back to flying.

Instead, he faced two and a half of years of frustration and uncertainty.

Applying for medical waivers in the military can often be a time and labor-intensive process, and it can be even more so for aviators. One Air Force neurologist, Dr. Billy Hoffman, told Air & Space Forces Magazine in May that he often encounters a fear of bureaucracy in his work with pilots. Hoffman and other researchers hope pilots can say more about it in future studies on healthcare avoidance among aviators, which they hope could someday help inform better policies and possibly fix the ‘lie to fly’ element of pilot culture.

Boynton in particular had to face medical boards, push for an exception to policy, and stay on track despite suggestions he switch his career field.

He finally returned to flight status in the fall of 2020—and had to restart pilot training in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I’ve been very frustrated for the past two and half years, but I didn’t give up, the struggle is what I live for,” he said in 2020.

Over the next few years, the struggle started paying off. Boynton completed undergraduate pilot training in May 2021, became a qualified F-16 pilot in July 2022 and finally achieved fully-mission capable status in February 2023, a few months before heading to Tyndall Air Force Base, Fla., for the large training exercise Checkered Flag 23-2. So was it worth it?

“Flying an F-16 is the most difficult yet coolest thing I’ve ever done,” he said in a release. “It’s mentally and physically rigorous and there’s always something to learn or improve upon every flight. It’s honoring to be given the opportunity to even set foot inside the cockpit, let alone be taken on a massive flag exercise like Checkered Flag or Red Flag.”

f-16
A U.S. Air Force F-16C Fighting Falcon assigned to the U.S. Air Force 55th Fighter Squadron “Shooters” takes off from the flightline at Shaw Air Force Base, S.C., Nov. 10, 2022. (U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Steven Cardo)

Americans’ Support for Ukraine Aid Stays High After F-16 Decision

Americans’ Support for Ukraine Aid Stays High After F-16 Decision

June 26, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

Support for sending military aid to Ukraine remains high among the American public, according to a new poll, but many want European allies to do more. 

The survey, released June 25 by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute, was conducted between May 31 and June 6—shortly after President Joe Biden announced the U.S. would support allies who provide fourth-generation fighters such as F-16s to Ukraine. 

Of 1,254 American adults surveyed, 59 percent said they support military aid to Ukraine, nearly double the 30 percent opposed. That is virtually unchanged from a the Reagan Insitute’s prior poll last November, which recorded 57 percent in favor of aid and 33 percent opposed. The questions were phrased differently. 

“The polling does not indicate that there’s Ukraine fatigue or aid fatigue,” said Rachel Hoff, policy director at the Reagan Institute. “There’s not decreasing levels of support for sending military aid to Ukraine. That’s remained consistent.” 

The poll did not ask specifically about F-16s or fighter aircraft. Hoff told Air & Space Forces Magazine that the Institute chose not to ask questions about specific kinds of military aid to avoid the risk of making the survey too long for respondents. 

However, the survey did ask respondents for their opinions on whether U.S. aid to Ukraine has been worth the cost. Here, support was somewhat less emphatic: 50 percent of respondents said the cost has been worth it, while 33 percent said it had not. When offered additional information on the cost of that aid and the results, however, support jumped to 64 percent. 

Specifically, pollsters told respondents that “the U.S. has spent roughly $24 billion on military aid to Ukraine, which is roughly 3 percent of the U.S. military’s own budget. Ukraine remains in control of roughly 83 percent of its territory, and U.S. intelligence believes the war has severely degraded Russia’s military power and its ability to threaten NATO allies.” 

The exact cost of Ukraine aid remains in flux. Last week, the Pentagon announced it had previously overestimated the value of some weapons sent to the Ukrainians by $6.2 billion.  

The cost of sending F-16 to Ukraine would be substantial, as much as $1 billion for the first 10 aircraft, and the same amount to sustain them, according to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley. Others say that overstates the cost, especially if the aircraft are surplus hand-me-downs.

The Netherlands and Denmark are leading a cohort of allied nations who will train Ukrainian pilots on fourth-generation aircraft, with plans to start that training in the next month or so, officials previously told Air & Space Forces Magazine. 

On June 26, Danish Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen told broadcaster DR that Denmark’s F-16s will be retired in 2025, two years ahead of schedule, paving the way to transfer those aircraft to Ukraine. And earlier this month, Dutch State Secretary of Defense Christophe van der Maat scaled-back plans to sell Dutch F-16s to private contractor Draken, potentially making them available to Ukraine. 

Such developments should be encouraging to Americans. The Reagan Institute poll, which took place before those facts surfaced, found 56 percent of Americans critical of Europe, saying European allies are not “doing their fair share” in support of Ukraine; exactly half as many said Europe is doing its part.  

The poll also found that among those who support military aid to Ukraine, 17 percent believe the most important reason for supporting aid is becaue Ukrainian success on the battlefield “sends a message to others considering wars of aggression—like China invading Taiwan.” 

Elsewhere in the poll, 52 percent of respondents said they supported increased arms sales to Taiwan to deter China, a slight decline from seven months ago. 

Airmen Compete For ‘Top TACP’ Title, as Air Force Plans Deep Cuts to Career Field

Airmen Compete For ‘Top TACP’ Title, as Air Force Plans Deep Cuts to Career Field

June 23, 2023 | By David Roza

If there were an Olympics for special warfare Airmen, it would probably look like the Dragon Challenge, a three-day competition at Fort Campbell, Ky., where 33 Airmen performed feats of physical strength and technical wizardry for the chance to be named the best in their career field in the 18th Air Support Operations Group (ASOG).

The Airmen came from three career fields: Tactical Air Control Party (TACP), intelligence, and special warfare mission support (SWMS). TACPs are experts in air-to-ground communication who embed with ground troops to call in air strikes and other forms of air support. The intelligence Airmen assigned to the 18th ASOG help paint the situational awareness picture for TACPs by performing surveillance and reconnaissance duties and data analysis. 

Meanwhile, SWMS Airmen provide logistics, radio, cyber, supply, life support, and vehicle management to “sustain the TACP weapon system,” Capt. Katie Tamesis, public affairs officer for the 93rd Air-Ground Operations Wing, told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

The annual Dragon Challenge includes teams from each of the four squadrons of the 18th ASOG (which features a dragon on its emblem). Over the three-day contest, participants pushed through physical fitness events, a job knowledge exam, shooting challenges, and a 17-hour simulated special operations mission. The Airmen vie for the title of top team in the TACP, SWMS, and Intel categories, and the top TACP team gets to represent the group in the Lightning Challenge, where teams from the entire Air Force and Air National Guard will compete to be the best TACPs in the service later this year.

The Dragon Challenge pushed participants “to their physical and mental limits,” said Tamesis. That makes the challenge feel realistic, since performing complicated tasks under the strain of physical and mental fatigue is essentially part of the job description, said Capt. Tyler Johnson, operations flight commander for the 19th Air Support Operations Squadron (ASOS).

“Potentially having to infill 20 kilometers to your objective before the mission even starts, you’re going to be tired,” he said. “Carrying all of the equipment you need to accomplish the mission over a long period of time, you have to have that endurance and that physical fitness built into your training plan.” 

Practice makes perfect, and while Dragon Challenge is a competition, lives may depend on the skills it tests.

“A lot of the skills that TACP operators are trained to are perishable skills, so if you’re not constantly honing those skill sets, you’ll lose them,” Johnson said in a press release about the contest. “In order to have the advantage in the next fight, in the next major combat operation that we’re involved in, it’s important that TACPs maintain those skills.”

The simulated mission began with a helicopter infiltration to the mission site, where the competing teams dismounted and walked through simulated enemy terrain to the objective area, where Airmen gathered intelligence both with their own eyes and the help of Army Black Hawk helicopters serving as eyes-in-the-sky.

To make things more interesting, the Black Hawks later acted as enemy aircraft, which the Airmen had to avoid without being spotted. A few of the Airmen created “concealed communication notes” for relaying targeting data up the chain of command in order to develop strike packages and back down again to help with command and control. After a long night at the objective area, the teams moved to an exfiltration site, where they provided medical care for simulated combat casualties before heading home aboard the Black Hawks.

“The entire mission demonstrated the versatile command and control capabilities TACPs bring to decision makers, combatant commanders, and joint partners in a near-peer conflict and contested environments beyond close air support,” Tamesis said.

The focus on skills beyond close air support comes as the broader Air Force prepares for a near-peer conflict—and may drastically reshape the TACP career field. As first reported by Air Force Times, the service plans to cut its TACP workforce (including enlisted, officers, and civilians) from 3,700 slots to 2,130 by 2025, a 44 percent drop. 

The drop in TACP personnel coincides with the gradual retirement of A-10 Warthog close air support jets, which Air Force officials say would not survive sophisticated air defenses in a potential conflict with a near-peer adversary such as Russia and China.

Still, the uncertain future did not seem to affect the effort the TACPs put into Dragon Challenge. 

“I get chills, I honestly do,” Col. Richard Kovsky, commander of the 18th ASOG, said in the press release. “These guys are taking it really seriously, you look around and you see them, you know, a little bit nervous, and then they’re out there, they’re on showcase … everybody’s watching.”

At the end of the contest, the 19th ASOS took the title of best overall team, best TACP team and best SWMS team. The 14th ASOS won best intel team, and Staff Sgt. Daniel Edgar of the 15th ASOS took the title of top performer.