Rolls-Royce Tests New B-52 Engines, Nacelles Before Early 2024 Critical Design Review

May 17, 2023 | By John A. Tirpak

INDIANAPOLIS—Rolls-Royce is in the last few months of testing its F130-200 engines before a critical design review of the powerplants, which will equip the re-engined and upgraded B-52J, a company official said.

“We’re about one-third through” engine runs with F130-200 Nos. 1 and 2, F130 program manager Scott Ames said in a briefing at the company’s Indianapolis facilities where the powerplants will be assembled. The F130-200 critical design review is expected in January 2024, and Ames said Rolls-Royce sees no threat to passing the review.

Boeing, which built the B-52, is the overall integrator for the re-engining and upgrades, such as the radar, that will turn the Air Force’s 75 B-52Hs into B-52Js. Boeing and Rolls-Royce provided travel, lodging, and meals for reporters visiting the companies’ B-52 upgrade facilities.

The tests of the Rolls-Royce engines mark the first time two engines have been operated simultaneously on the same test stand, Ames said. The B-52 is unique in having two engines each in four pods under its wings, for a total of eight engines per aircraft.

The engines are being tested at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi on a specialized test stand that allows a complete, two-engine pod to be operated under a variety of conditions. A giant wind fan tests the engines in simulated crosswinds of up to 50 knots from various directions, and a platform on a scissor lift in front of the engines can simulate operations at various heights above a runway.

Ames said Rolls-Royce is now on its seventh iteration of the pod design, in search of the best configuration under most conditions—as well as looking for unexpected interactions between the engines. So far, there have been no harmonic issues between the powerplants, nor has there been unexpected ingestion of gases from one to the other, Ames said.

What’s being explored is “how does the air coming into the engine nacelles … behave?” Ames said. “You don’t really see a lot of dual-pod configurations like this. So we want to make sure all our modeling matches … the physics of the situation.”

Three months into the tests with three more to go, Ames said “we’ve been able to operate both engines up to full power and all of the test data we’ve gotten back has been in line with what our models predicted. … It’s proven that we’ve got it right. And by the way, it matches what Boeing predicted as well. So that’s good, but it’s always good to do a physical test to back that up.”

To that point, Ames said, both Rolls-Royce and Boeing are “happy” with this latest pod design but are testing to “make double sure” it’s the right one.

After that, “we will run [a] similar test to this in a couple of years” on the final version, with all the equipment and auxiliary systems the aircraft and pod will have, he noted.

“We wanted to get the front end right now,” Ames said. “It was something we proposed to de-risk the overall program, because if you find that you’ve got to make some big change you want to know now and not three years from now.”

The F130-200 is a derivative of Rolls-Royce’s commercial BR725 engine, and will be manufactured from parts sourced from the same suppliers. It differs from the commercial version in the digital engine controls and connection of hydraulic and fuel lines, all of which are unique to the B-52 application, Ames said. The F130-200 factory will be patterned on the main BR725 production line in Germany but with improvements geared to the F130-200’s unique features.

Ames also noted the F130-200s are not “handed,” meaning they are not hard-wired to be on the left or right side of the nacelle, unlike the TF-33 engines now flying on the B-52. This will give the Air Force improved flexibility both at home and on deployments, he said.

With the TF33, due to its left- or right-side orientation, “you have to take extra spares on deployments,” he said. “With our engine, you don’t have to worry about that. So with the kit, you can change it from a left hand or right hand in about 90 minutes.”

Rolls-Royce tested that timeline with two veteran mechanics who did not have specific experience with the F130.

“We gave them a set of instructions and the kit of parts and said ‘Go convert this from one to the other,’” Ames said. “We videotaped it, and provided that to the Air Force. In about 90 minutes they were able to convert it over. We think it gives the Air Force a ton of flexibility.”

21 AMC Jets Line Up, Take Off from Travis to Cap Two-Week Exercise

May 17, 2023 | By David Roza

A line of 21 C-5s, C-17s, and KC-10s rolled down the runway and into the skies over Travis Air Force Base, Calif. on May 12 in a “maximum aircraft generation event.”

The impressive display of airpower came on the final day of a nearly two-week exercise that saw Airmen, Marines, and Sailors practice moving people and cargo to locations in California and Nevada. Between the exercise and the large takeoff, nearly all of the aircraft at Travis were off the ground May 12, leaving the base, known as the “Gateway to the Pacific,” nearly empty.

“It was interesting to see our ramp pretty bare,” Capt. Ryan Huber, the chief of plans at the 60th Air Mobility Wing, told Air & Space Forces Magazine. Huber and his team had been working since the end of January to put together the exercise, which under other circumstances might take the better part of a year to plan out.

“Caffeine was definitely a big help, a lot of long days,” he said. “But to be a part of the process from the beginning, where this was just an idea, all the way through execution was a pretty cool experience.”

Air Mobility Command, which oversees the tanker and transport jets such as the ones at Travis, is preparing to move troops and supplies over vast distances in a short amount of time should a conflict break out with a near-peer adversary such as China or Russia.

“AMC is the meaningful maneuver. There is too much water and too much distance for anyone else to do it relevantly at pace, at speed, at scale,” AMC boss Gen. Mike Minihan said last year. “Everybody’s role is critical, but Air Mobility Command is the maneuver for the joint force. If we don’t have our act together, nobody wins. Nobody’s lethal. Nobody’s in position.”

The exercise at Travis—which was really three separate but interconnected exercises—aimed to prepare Airmen for exactly that responsibility. Dubbed Exercise Golden Phoenix, it saw transport crews depart Travis and head south to Camp Pendleton, Calif., where they picked up more than 340 Marines and Sailors and their equipment, then distributed them to three smaller locations in California and Nevada as part of the 1 Marine Expeditionary Force’s Readiness Exercise (REDEX).

One of those locations was Fort Hunter-Liggett, situated about halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles, where Airmen from the 921st Contingency Response Support Squadron (CRSS) and the 621st Contingency Response Wing had arrived earlier to prepare the dirt airstrip for large numbers of aircraft coming through as part of Exercise Storm Crow. Contingency response Airmen specialize in quickly turning austere airfields into thriving airpower hubs, a skill which may come in handy in the Pacific.

“Our largest success was demonstrating the ability to assess, open, and operate airfields in a contested environment with the help of our joint force partners,” Lt. Col. Timothy Kniefel, 921st CRSS commander, said in a press release. “This capability will be absolutely critical to the future fight, and we couldn’t have done it without the Marines, the 60th AMW, and the unwavering dedication of every single multi-capable CR member on the team.”

By ‘multi-capable,’ Knifel was referring to the Air Force concept of Airmen picking up skills outside of their usual job specialty, which could help the service set up operations without as many people or supplies. During the exercise, Huber said he saw civil engineering Airmen pull security, cyber communication Airmen help fix HVAC systems, and non-cargo-moving Airmen help transport supplies around the airfield. It was rewarding to see people step out of their normal job description and work together to accomplish the mission, he said.

After the contingency response Airmen set up initial operations at the dispersed airfields, Airmen from the 60th Air Mobility Wing moved in to practice taking over the long-term operation.

“The expeditionary air base was tasked with taking over the base from contingency response (CR) forces in order to allow them to project the cluster farther forward,” Maj. Cal San Filippo, the expeditionary air base detachment commander, said in the press release. “We immediately integrated into the CR’s operating schedule and began manning shifts. The team wasted no time.”

Meanwhile, Airmen with the 60th Medical Group and the 60th Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron practiced transporting simulated casualties from deployed locations, and Airmen from the 60th Maintenance Group (MXG) made sure the aircraft could sustain moving 1.53 million pounds of cargo and more than 700 passengers over 12 days.

“They’ve been working 24 hours around the clock to produce the airlift needed for this exercise,” Lt. Col. Tom Reynolds, 60th MXG deputy commander, said in the press release. “They’ve done an incredible job and we’re incredibly proud.”

The final day was the maximum generation event, where 21 aircraft took off in rapid succession—a helpful tactic if an airfield must be evacuated quickly. It was the second-largest launch in Travis history, with the largest involving 22 aircraft in 2013.

As big and complicated as Exercise Golden Phoenix was, there will be an even larger Air Mobility Command training operation later this summer. Operation Mobility Guardian will take place over an area of more than 3,000 miles under U.S. Indo-Pacific Command’s jurisdiction and will involve at least 7 countries plus nearly every branch of the U.S. military. Minihan said in March the exercise will be a chance for his troops to “understand intimately what the tyranny of distance is and what the tyranny of water is.”

Part of the idea behind Exercise Golden Phoenix was to help prepare the 60th Air Mobility Wing for Mobility Guardian, Huber said.

“The whole machine is working that power projection: being able to move out our partners to go do their missions,” Huber explained.

Key Lawmaker Is ‘Hugely Supportive’ of This Pentagon Proposal. Now He Has to Convince Skeptics in Congress

May 16, 2023 | By Chris Gordon

The House Armed Services Committee’s top Democrat endorsed a new Pentagon legislative proposal designed to work around Congressional gridlock and field new technologies faster.

Spearheaded by Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, the DOD is seeking a “rapid response” authority that would allow initial work to begin on critical new technologies to meet “urgent” needs.

“I’m hugely supportive of it,” Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) said at a discussion at the Council on Foreign Relations on May 16. But Smith warned many of his colleagues had less favorable views of the idea.

The legislative proposal is called “Rapid Response to Emergent Technology Advancement or Threats.” The Pentagon wants up to $300 million per year in development funds that could be used “in response to urgent operational need”—creating a discretionary pool of money and the Congressional authority to get started on vital projects.

Kendall, who formerly served as Pentagon’s top acquisition official, has noted that Congress is reluctant to give up any authority when it comes to what the DOD can buy, but he argues the proposal is limited in scope. With Smith’s support, the proposal does have some influential supporters on the Hill. Smith said he has pitched the idea to his colleagues, but members of the powerful Appropriations Committee remain wary.

“I understand where the appropriators are coming from,” Smith said. The HASC’s ranking member said he discussed the issue at a recent dinner with some of his fellow representatives, who argued “‘We can’t give DOD that much money without exercising aggressive oversight,'” according to Smith.

“I get that, but I just disagree, because innovation is so crucial right now,” Smith said.

Smith said he agrees with the Pentagon’s view that the current process costs at least a year in wasted time as promising new systems go through the arduous budgeting and authorization cycle—which is almost certain to be delayed this year due to congressional gridlock.

With Congress unlikely to pass a 2024 budget by the start of the new fiscal year in October, the government will probably have to operate on a continuing resolution, known as a CR, which doesn’t allow the Pentagon to start new programs. Frustrated not only by the normal budgeting cycle, Kendall said CRs are an unnecessary “gift” to America’s adversaries that the Pentagon’s rapid response idea would help counter.

“This is a limited authority,” Kendall said in April when he first pitched the proposal. “It would allow us to go through the preliminary design review phase.”

Smith agreed it is a cheap process that would save valuable time.

“If you’re out there, and you got an innovative idea on a drone or counter drone or missile or any number of different things, you got a decent shot of getting [Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation] funded,” Smith said. “We’re not good is buying it once we decide that it works, and that’s a challenge. That’s something that’s really, really limiting our ability to take advantage of innovative technologies,” such as artificial intelligence or hypersonic weapons.

Smith outlined a disheartening outlook for some companies whose products the Pentagon wants but is not allowed to acquire.

“You do all this work, you spend all this money to develop it, you go to the Pentagon, the Pentagon says ‘I love that, I want to buy that,’ and we’ll get back to you in like two years on whether or not we can do it,” Smith said of the current process.

The Pentagon has taken steps to more rapidly develop key technologies, such as standing up the Defense Innovation Unit, which recently gained elevated status with its new director, former Apple executive Doug Beck, reporting directly to the Secretary of Defense. Even with organizations like the DIU, the Pentagon’s current culture and authority to field new systems is still antiquated, some former officials say.

“It’s mechanized to go to war the way that we did in past decades, but it’s surely not mechanized for innovation,” Will Roper, the Air Force’s former top acquisition official, said at the Ash Carter Exchange defense conference May 9.

Nevertheless, Congress remains skeptical of Kendall’s plan.

“I have not been able to convince a single solitary appropriator because they are very reluctant,” Smith said. “I think we need to work on that discussion because it’s really hampering our ability to innovate in DOD.”

F-15 Skids Off the Runway into Canal in Oregon; Pilot OK

May 16, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

An Oregon Air National Guard F-15D slid off the runway and into an irrigation canal at Kingsley Field, Ore., on May 15. But the pilot was able to walk away from the mishap with only minor injuries and was quickly released from the hospital, the 173rd Fighter Wing announced.

The accident took place at approximately 3:15 p.m. local time after a routine training mission, according to press releases from the wing. Despite being a two-seat F-15D, the aircraft had only one crew member on board at the time—an instructor pilot—according to a release.

“We are so grateful that our pilot was able to walk away from this mishap,” Col. Micah Lambert, 173rd Fighter Wing vice commander, said in a statement. “Our Team Kingsley responders acted quickly and with professionalism thanks to the extensive training and safety mindset of our team.”

No cause for the mishap was given, but the wing said that a board of officers has been assigned to investigate.

In a release, Lambert also noted that the wing did not believe the aircraft was leaking any fuel into the water.

“Minimizing the environmental impact is one of our main priorities; we have taken precautionary measures and placed absorbent booms around the aircraft to prevent the flow of fuel, or other substances, downstream in the event there is a leakage,” Lambert said.

A spokeswoman for the 173rd Fighter Wing said there is no timeline yet for the aircraft to be removed from the water, nor has any determination of the severity of the water damage to the plane been made.

The Air Force has only a few F-15Ds left in its inventory—18 as of September 2022. Most of those are in the Air National Guard, and they are on average more than 30 years old.

In 2020, the Air Force announced it was replacing its F-15C/Ds at Kingsley with its F-15EX schoolhouse. However, the 173rd announced in February that the department is reconsidering that decision.

Will myEval 2.0 Improve on the Air Force’s Rocky First Attempt?

May 16, 2023 | By David Roza

The Air Force launched a revamped version of the personnel evaluation web application myEval earlier this year in an effort to improve on last year’s 1.0 version, which was so difficult to use that the service stopped using it in November.

“Our initial attempt at the system was overly reliant on custom code and failed to leverage the new software as a service in the way it was designed,” Air Force spokesperson Tech Sgt. Deana Heitzman told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “When the team collectively understood the implications of the initial design, we realized the best path forward was to start over with a completely new design, leveraging lessons learned from myEval 1.0, as well as those from other organizations’ implementation of this type of capability.”

An Air Force official said myEval 2.0 launched March 13 and has fewer pop-up windows and other hoops to jump through, such as having to download and re-upload PDFs in order to input personal data. For now, only chief master sergeants and officers can access myEval 2.0, but access will expand to other ranks in the coming months, the official said. Air Force Times first reported the news on May 9.

When it was first introduced in January 2022, myEval 1.0 was meant to be a “21st century application” that would integrate personnel information from other applications and be easy for all stakeholders to use. Talent management systems like myEval are important for submitting promotion or award packages.

“The myEval application reduces administrative burdens, enhances the user experience, and provides leaders with performance data to assist in making informed talent management decisions,” said Lt. Gen. Brian Kelly, then-Deputy Chief of Staff for Manpower, Personnel, and Services, in a statement shortly before the platform came out.

Instead, users reviled myEval, saying the system was confusing, buggy, and frequently failed. Many said it often took several tries to perform a single step before forms or changes were recorded; data that was pulled was incorrect and hard to change; character limits and spacing created appearance issues on performance reviews; and other problems. Airmen expressed concern on social media that the problems could potentially cost promotions, assignments, or awards, not to mention the day-to-day stress of dealing with a dysfunctional program.

“The system is not able to seamlessly process reports into a member’s official records,” Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force JoAnne S. Bass acknowledged in a November Facebook post about myEval when the system was put on hold.

Heitzman said there is no direct tie between myEval and retention, which has ranged from 89.5 percent to 91 percent for enlisted Airmen and from 93.1 percent to 94 percent for officers over the past five years. But hopefully the digital transformation and modernization of the Air Force talent management network will make day-to-day life in the service easier.

“We understand the key role our Talent Management Systems play in the Airmen experience—and by extension, the choices they make, to include retention—and we are committed to remaining agile while developing customer-centric solutions,” Heitzman said.

There still may be some kinks to work through, and Heitzman said the Air Force will “continue to evolve this product as we continue our agile approach.”

Senators Maneuver for Edge in Stalemate Over Abortion and General Promotions

May 16, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) and Senate Democrats remain locked in a struggle in which the Alabama Republican refuses to relinquish his hold on general and flag officer promotions as long as a Biden administration policy to reimburse troops who travel out-of-state to obtain an abortion remains in place.

Yet while both sides agree the 2024 National Defense Authorization bill is the likely mechanism for resolving the dispute, that leaves a growing list of nearly 200 nominations in limbo until Congress takes up the measure. Last year’s bill wasn’t signed until Dec. 28.

Among the 197 pending nominations, 89 belong to the Department of the Air Force, and dozens more are stacked up in the Pentagon.

Any senator can put a hold on nominations, and historically, the power has been used to address particular issues related to a specific nominee. But when Tuberville placed his hold on all general and flag officer nominations March 8, preventing the Senate from confirming them by unanimous consent, he created an unprecedented backlog.

Tuberville opposes the Pentagon’s new reproductive health policy, created in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson, the case that overturned Roe v. Wade. In response, the Department of Defense said it would provide paid leave and travel expenses for service members located in states where abortion services were not available.

Tuberville maintains the Senate can vote on nominees one at a time, instead of relying on unanimous consent to quickly clear all of them at once. But Senate Democrats and administration officials have criticized the hold.

In a letter to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) last week, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin III, in a letter said the delay in action on nominations harms national security and military readiness by threatening the Pentagon’s ability to function.

Tuberville countered in a speech on the Senate floor on May 11 that Austin’s letter was “long on opinion, short on facts,” and asserted the DOD policy violates the Hyde Amendment, a law that prohibits federal funding for abortions.

“The United States Senate has had more than 30 days off already this year,” Tuberville said. “If we want to pass this, let’s vote. But we’ve had 30 days off. That’s not including weekends. The rhetoric just doesn’t match the reality. This is more than enough time for us to have confirmed literally all of the nominations we’ve been talking about. We could’ve already done this.”

The problem is that such votes are procedurally burdensome under Senate rules, which require at least 16 Senators to sign a cloture motion to end debate on each pending nomination. After that, the motion must “ripen” for two days, then a vote is required to end debate, followed by two more hours of consideration before a final vote to approve or reject the nomination.

Cloture motions can be “stacked” so the two-day waiting period does not constantly restart. But the two hours of consideration cannot be skipped without unanimous consent, and every roll call vote in the Senate takes time. Roughly speaking, it would take around three hours to get through the necessary cloture vote, final consideration, and nomination vote for each of the 197 nominees. That adds up to around 590 hours, or more than 24 days of non-stop exclusive Senate action.

Stretched out over a more regular schedule, it would take months to work through all the nominations individually, according to a Senate Democratic aide said.

Alternatively, the Senate could select which nominations to take up. For example, if as expected Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. is eventually nominated to be Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, lawmakers could take up that nomination alone.

The Senate aide said, however that there are no plans to do that so far. Senate Majority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder—whose own promotion to major general is among those pending—declined to comment on the possibility of individual votes.

Contact between the Pentagon and Tuberville’s office has been minimal. An official in the senator’s office confirmed that there has been one contact at the staff level in the past month.

Pressure to push the nominations through is growing as the summer moving season and planned retirements and rotations get caught up in the delay. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark A. Milley’s term as Chairman ends Sept. 30, and his successor will have to go through the normal vetting process with hearings and meetings with Senators. Work on the annual defense bill is behind, both because the Pentagon was late in delivering its budget to Congress and because Congress has been delayed as lawmakers negotiate over the looming debt ceiling.

When Congress does turn its attention to the NDAA, there are still hurdles to overcome.

Democrats want Tuberville to try to overturn the Pentagon’s policy by offering an amendment to the NDAA prohibiting the Pentagon from providing travel expenses and time off for troops seeking abortions out of state. They say lawmakers have agreed in the past to drop holds or other procedural maneuvers in exchange for a public vote on an issue of concern.

But Tuberville and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) argue that the Pentagon should first suspend its policy, then ask Congress to approve such spending. Tuberville’s office confirmed that he would drop his holds if the administration followed that process.

Either way, resolution on the abortion matter would remain in limbo for months. Only once in the past decade has Congress passed an NDAA before Nov. 25.

In a release, Tuberville’s office noted that “holds” by Senators on nominations are not uncommon. Indeed, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who has been one of the leading critics of Tuberville’s hold, placed a hold on the nomination of Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall in 2021 until he agreed to extend his industry recusal from two to four years.

Beyond the sheer number of nominations Tuberville has on hold, another issue at play is whether or not the selection of Huntsville, Ala., survives as the future home of U.S. Space Command. The Air Force identified Redstone Arsenal, Ala., as its preferred location in 2018, but accusations of political favoritism instantly followed and a final decision is still pending years later.

Tuberville wants the Air Force to finalize its choice and proceed with Redstone, while Colorado’s Sen. Michael Bennet, a Democrat, is fighting to keep the command headquartered at Peterson Space Force Base, where SPACECOM is today. Tying the two together is Bennet’s argument that Alabama’s restrictive abortion laws would negatively affect female service members, a factor he says should be counted against Redstone as a suitable location.

NBC News reported on May 15 that the Biden administration might backtrack on plans for SPACECOM at Redstone, quoting anonymous officials saying the reason was in part due to Alabama’s restrictive abortion laws. But that doesn’t mean Redstone holds the key to resolving the issue.

In fact, it seems there is one issue on which Tuberville and the White House see eye to eye: that there is no connection between the SPACECOM headquarters decision and the promotion hold. According to NBC News, White House officials said did not see the two as related. As for Tuberville, his office said that even if the White House agrees to move the SPACECOM headquarters to Alabama, he’s not ready to drop his promotion holds.

Meet the X-65: DARPA’s New Plane Has No External Control Surfaces

May 16, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

A groundbreaking aircraft being designed for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency now has an experimental designation—the X-65.

DARPA announced the “X” designation on its social media accounts May 15, a little less than five months after announcing its selection of Boeing subsidiary Aurora Flight Sciences to produce a detailed design for DARPA’s Control of Revolutionary Aircraft with Novel Effectors (CRANE) program.

The X-65, shown by DARPA in an artist’s rendering, seeks to enable active flow control using bursts of air rather than moving flight surfaces on the exterior of the wings and tail to control its flight.

Introducing the X-65! The #xplane we're developing to fly without traditional, exterior-moving flight controls received its official designation. CRANE aims to build an experimental uncrewed aircraft that maneuvers by controlling the air flow around it. https://t.co/mQRZ9Um7wX pic.twitter.com/lPI3vETHUp
— DARPA (@DARPA) May 15, 2023

By “removing jointed surfaces,” such a design could improve flight and reduce cost and wear and tear, and also theoretically enhance the aircraft’s stealth characteristics.

The X-65 will include “modular wing configurations that enable future integration of advanced technologies for flight testing,” DARPA noted in a January release.

CRANE has been in the works for several years now, and the contract with Aurora Flight Sciences marked the beginning of the program’s Phase 2, which will include the development of flight software and controls and a critical design review of an X-plane demonstrator.

The contract includes an option for a Phase 3, which would involve flying the 7,000-pound X-65.

The new X-65 is the first “X” aircraft since the Air Force redesignated the NF-16D Variable In-flight Simulator Aircraft as the X-62A in August 2021. That puts it in an exclusive club that has helped shape cutting-edge aeronautical research for decades, including the Bell X-1, the first airplane to break the sound barrier, and the hypersonic X-15. Other more recent examples include the X-37 space plane, the hypersonic X-51 Waverider, and the X-61 Gremlins.

DARPA is working on several other “X-plane” programs, including the “Liberty Lifter,” a long-range cargo seaplane, and the Speed and Runway Independent Technologies (SPRINT) program, for U.S. Special Operations Command.

F-22 Raptors Deploy to Estonia to Bolster Baltic Air Defense

May 15, 2023 | By David Roza

Air Force F-22 Raptors flew to Ämari Air Base, Estonia, earlier this month to demonstrate NATO’s integrated air defenses along the alliance’s eastern flank, according to a May 14 press release.

The 12 fifth-generation stealth fighters are assigned to Joint Base Langley-Eustis’ 94th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron and deployed to Powidz Air Base in Poland starting in early April before flying to Ämari on May 8, the release stated. Though it was not clear how much time the fighters spent in Estonia, the release said the deployment was meant “to deter aggression in the Baltic Sea region.”

Though much attention is still focused on Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine a few hundred miles southeast of the Baltic states, national security experts warn the region is a significant strategic and economic area where Russia may attempt to undermine NATO.

“Gray zone operations are underway, and the United States, NATO, and their partners need to be ready to act in unity against an increasingly hostile Russia that is now trying to distract attention from its military shortcomings in Ukraine,” wrote security experts Courtney Herdt and Matthew Zublic in November for a Center for Strategic & International Studies report on Russian operations in the Baltics.

“In this effort, Russia’s playbook will test the limits and try to exploit the seams of the alliance,” they continued. “An exacting response is needed to deny Russia control and ensure full conflict is avoided.”

Indeed, late last month, German and British Eurofighters intercepted two Russian Sukhoi Su-27 fighters and one Ilyushin Il-20 while the Russian aircraft were flying without transponder signals in international airspace over the Baltic Sea, according to Reuters. The NATO fighters were part of the alliance’s Baltic air policing mission, one of several efforts to defend the region against Russian air attack.

“The Baltic nations—Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania—are situated on a critical air, land, and sea corridor, which requires a coordinated approach between allies to maintain and sustain international freedom of maneuver throughout the region,” the Air Force release stated.

Another effort is a Spanish National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System (NASAMS) deployed to Latvia and coordinating with the Latvian Control and Reporting Center. The arrival of the Raptors makes the region’s air defenses even more secure.

The fifth-generation F-22, with its low observability, advanced sensors, and maneuverability, would make an attack on the Baltics a much more daunting prospect for Russian war planners. The Air Force release said the Raptor movement to Estonia was “an Agile Combat Employment deployment,” referring to the Air Force’s plan to complicate an enemy’s targeting process by moving air assets quickly between small air bases throughout an area of operations.

By “rapidly fielding” the F-22s in Estonia, the service emphasized “the operational readiness of the coalition forces throughout the European theater and their ability to respond to defend NATO territory,” the release said.

CSO to Guardians: Space Force Needs a Better Mission Statement

May 15, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

Quick: What’s the Space Force’s Mission Statement?

Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman challenged Guardians in his latest force-wide “C-note” to come up with a clearer, better mission statement. In the message, distributed May 15 and provided to Air & Space Forces Magazine by a source, Saltzman called a service’s mission statement “one of the most important expressions of service ethos.”

“How many Guardians can recite the current mission statement of the Space Force? My guess is very few,” Saltzman said. That means it’s not doing it’s job.

Today’s Space Force mission statement is 36 words long: “The USSF is responsible for organizing, training, and equipping Guardians to conduct global space operations that enhance the way our joint and coalition forces fight, while also offering decision makers military options to achieve national objectives.”

Saltzman argued a successful mission statement should be:

Informative

Memorable

Inclusive

Earn buy-in

The current mission statement falls short because organizing, training, and equipping only covers functions performed by headquarters staffs, Saltzman said. But “Guardians deliver capability. Guardians operate some of the most technologically advanced systems in the world. In doing so, they deter aggression and, should deterrence fail, protect U.S. interests with military force.”

Nor is the existing statement memorable, so it doesn’t generate buy-in from Guardians. Instead, he said, it’s “long and cumbersome.” Indeed, it’s four times longer than the Air Force’s mission statement: “To fly, fight, and win … Airpower anytime, anywhere.”

“We can do better,” Saltzman said. Staff is already developing alternatives but Guardians can join the fight now. Saltzman asked for feedback and suggestions.

The CSO did not offer a timeline for when a new mission statement might be unveiled.