SDA Lays Out Timeline for Buying Nearly 200 More Satellites in 2025

SDA Lays Out Timeline for Buying Nearly 200 More Satellites in 2025

Oct. 9, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

The Space Development Agency isn’t slowing down anytime soon.

On Oct. 2, the organization released a notice to industry outlining its plans for an acquisition push in 2025. The SDA is seeking to procure around 200 satellites from different solicitations for Tranche 3 of its low-Earth orbit megaconstellation. 

The Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture, as SDA calls their constellation, is envisioned as the “backbone” for the Pentagon’s joint all-domain command and control (JADC2) efforts, providing both data transport and missile warning/tracking satellites that can connect sensors and shooters around the globe.  

In the first quarter of fiscal 2025—the last three months of calendar 2024—SDA plans to release solicitations for integration work on Tranche 3. General Dynamics has already received contracts worth up to $887 million for ground operations and integration for Tranches 1 and 2. 

After that will come a series of draft and final solicitations for the satellites themselves. Last month at a conference hosted by Defense News, SDA director Derek Tournear said the whole of Tranche 3 will likely include around 140 Transport satellites and 54 Tracking birds, though those figures are not final. 

In its announcement, SDA confirmed that it will continue to take a three-pronged approach to its Transport satellites, with different groups having different levels of capabilities. While the Tranche 2 Transport Layer had Alpha, Beta, and Gamma segments, Tranche 3 will have Upsilon, Sigma, and Lambda groups. 

  • T3TL Upsilon: A draft solicitation will come out early in the second fiscal quarter of 2025—the first few months of the calendar year—followed by a final one early in the third fiscal quarter, around April or May. Up to two vendors will be selected. 
  • T3TL Sigma: A draft solicitation will come out late in the second fiscal quarter of 2025—the first three months of the calendar year—followed by a final one late in the third fiscal quarter, around May or June. Up to two vendors will be selected.
  • T3TL Lambda: A draft solicitation will come out late in the third quarter of fiscal 2025—around May or June—followed by a final one toward the end of the fiscal year, in August or September. Up to two vendors will be selected. 

A draft solicitation for the Tranche 3 Tracking Layer is expected early in the second quarter of fiscal 2025—the first few months of the calendar year—and a final one will come late in the third quarter—around May or June. 

“Additionally, SDA is contemplating a PWSA Enterprise Ground effort which will be competed but details, including timeline, are still under development. SDA intends to update this announcement with that information when available and appropriate,” the announcement notes. 

Details including a description of the overall architecture and payload configurations for each segment are not being released publicly as “controlled unclassified information,” but Tournear did offer some details during the Defense News Conference. 

Tranche 3, scheduled to start launching in late 2028, will mark a turning point for the PWSA. After the “demonstration” Tranche 0, Tranche 1 is meant to provide an initial operational capability and Tranche 2 will add more spacecraft on orbit to provide global persistent coverage. Tranche 3 will be the first to replace earlier PWSA satellites with refreshed, improved capabilities—a model SDA officials refer to as “spiral development.” 

“Keep in mind, all of our satellites have five year design lives,” Tournear said. “And so the idea is, at the end of Tranche 3, we will start and have already decommissioned our Tranche 1 satellites. At the beginning of Tranche 3, Tranche 1 will be up and operational. But towards the end of Tranche 3 … our Tranche 1 satellites are going to be decommissioned.” 

The requirements for Tranche 3 were approved ahead of schedule by the SDA’s Warfighter Council in late August, Tournear noted, giving the agency more time to meet its launch deadlines. 

“The Tranche 3 satellites have to do a few things,” Tournear added. “They have to replenish the capabilities the Tranche 1 was providing. Primarily on transport, that means you have to maintain that Link 16 constellation. And then add additional capabilities. The new capabilities in Tranche 3 will be advances in things like phased arrays to allow us to go down to more users at a time, primarily that’ll be in our S-band terminals, to be able to go down to more what we call the tactical SATCOM, which is a special user community that’s using those S-band signals. And then advances in in Link 16 encryption are going to be fielded.” 

For the Tracking Layer satellites, Tournear said Tranche 3 will push the constellation forward toward missile defense—going beyond sensing launches and tracking flight patterns toward providing all the data needed to deploy interceptors against missiles. Some missile defense satellites were included in the procurement for Tranche 1 and Tranche 2, but Tournear could not say exactly how many of the 54 satellites in the Tranche 3 Tracking Layer would be capable of that. 

Why Russia Shot Down Its Own S-70 Drone Over Ukraine

Why Russia Shot Down Its Own S-70 Drone Over Ukraine

Oct. 8, 2024 | By John A. Tirpak

The wreckage of one of Russia’s newest stealth drones is now in the hands of the Ukrainian forces—a potential intelligence windfall for that country and its partners—after a Russian fighter chased, then shot it down over Ukrainian territory Oct. 5.

A series of videos posted to social media show a Russian fighter—likely an Su-57 Felon—shooting down the S-70 Okhotnik (Hunter-B) north of Donetsk with a short-range air-to-air missile. Further footage showed the flying-wing-type aircraft spiraling to the ground, where the wreckage was claimed by Ukrainian forces.

Although much of the aircraft was destroyed, the outer wing of the S-70 landed largely intact, and the engine, though crushed on impact, was also mostly in one piece. Portions of a Russian glide bomb were found among the wreckage.

A former Pentagon official told Air & Space Forces Magazine the wreckage could provide “tremendous insight” into the state of Russian drone and stealth technology, as the S-70 is believed not to have entered series production. The official, after reviewing imagery of the wreckage, said the drone doesn’t “obviously show us” any advanced low-observable technology. Lab analysis will be required to assess the materials used in its construction.

He speculated that the wreckage might confirm whether any technology recovered after a U.S. Air Force RQ-170 drone crashed in Iran in 2011 had been reverse-engineered by Iran and/or Russia, which have collaborated on drone projects. Iran has been supplying Russia with drones for both reconnaissance and attack since the Ukraine campaign began.

It isn’t clear why Russia shot down the drone, but it’s possible operators lost control of the aircraft during a test over Russia. It’s also possible the aircraft was conducting a live operational test to see how it performed against Ukrainian air defenses.

The Su-57 and the S-70 were observed flying together, and the Russian defense ministry has previously published photos of the duo in flight, saying they could form a manned-unmanned team for air defense and attack. Russian officials have said that the Okhotnik can “extend” the reach of the Su-57’s radar.

However, a former senior Air Force official said the S-70 clearly “was not escorting” the Su-57, and they were not conducting a manned-unmanned teaming mission. He also discounted the idea that the S-70 was testing out the same kinds of capabilities eyed for the U.S. Air Force’s nascent Collaborative Combat Aircraft program.

“I would not say this was a ‘CCA’ at all… more likely it was a UCAV [Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle] that lost control and the Russians sent a Su-57 to shoot it down,” he said.

A military aerospace analyst familiar with Russia’s drone program said “China is pursuing CCA—that we know. Russia, not so much.”

The S-70 is a large aircraft, with a 65-foot wingspan. It was developed over the past 12-14 years, and underwent flight tests between 2019 and 2023. It has been speculated that limited series production was to begin in the second half of calendar 2024, so it’s possible the mission was a developmental or operational test prior to production commencing.

The former Pentagon official said it is also surprising that the Russians exposed their Su-57 to Ukrainian air defenses, since Russia only has about 30 Felons, of which a dozen are test-configured and the rest operational.

“They must have had a good reason,” he said.

It is also possible, if unlikely, that the entire incident was staged. In that case, Russia may have intentionally put an obsolete or deliberately-misleading airframe in western hands to get Ukrainian and NATO air defenses to waste effort hunting for a drone “that isn’t coming,” the official suggested.

To Make ABMS Work, Air Force Hires a Digital Integrator

To Make ABMS Work, Air Force Hires a Digital Integrator

Oct. 8, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

The Air Force chose Leidos, the defense IT giant, to help oversee the digital infrastructure for its Advanced Battle Management System—the department’s key contribution to the Pentagon’s Joint All-Domain Command and Control initiative. 

Under a new $303 million contract announced Oct. 7, Leidos is tasked with “planning, analysis, and operations” for ABMS’ digital infrastructure, intended to connect sensors to battle managers and shooters around the globe. 

“As previously realized, the data was pretty much locked into different capabilities or different tools or different platforms that the Department of the Air Force operates,” said Chad Haferbier, division manager for multi-domain solutions at Leidos, in an interview with Air & Space Forces Magazine. “The idea … is to expose that data for better proliferation, sharing, better decision advantage and ingest [it] through that new ecosystem that they’re looking to field.” 

The Air Force, under command, control, and communication/battle management czar Maj. Gen. Luke C.G. Cropsey, is developing an information architecture and Leidos will “support them in the proliferation of what the network looks like, and to manage it and to sustain it and keep it cyber-secure and keep it operational.” 

To make that happen will require a combination of hardware and software, Haferbier added—everything from digital clouds to fiberoptic cables to servers to computer programs to handle the flow of data. 

“We’ll have modern platforms, we have legacy platforms, that’ll never change,” Haferbier said. “So how do we field a more flexible compute ecosystem and networking ecosystem to move the data around and amalgamate and share?” 

Cropsey and his team have been considering how to solve the nitty-gritty problems of a better network for some time now. 

“Regardless of where you’re going to fight, what you want to communicate, the data and the information that you need to flow through that system, if you don’t have a digital infrastructure to do it on, it’s a pipe dream,” Cropsey said last year, pledging that his office would start fielding that infrastructure within the year. 

Many details about the architecture for ABMS and the Department of the Air Force’s larger planned DAF Battle Network remain classified. But officials want an open architectures that enables different contractors and agencies to easily share data with the larger ecosystem. 

The Air Force has created vendor pools empowering dozens of companies to contribute to ABMS, and Haferbier said Leidos will work with the entire industry to integrate those varied solutions into the network. ABMS will not be delivered as a fully formed capability, but instead will follow an iterative approach, adding pieces over time.  

“I think the Air Force is making smart decisions about tackling one level of the [tech] stack here with the network, tackling the compute level of the stack and not trying to field a JADC2 box that will solve everything,” said Haferbier. 

Cropsey is eager to get beyond tests, experiments, and demonstrations, and Haferbier said Leidos intends to progress quickly toward fielding some initial digital infrastructure. 

“I hope to see real progress in the next 12 months for sure,” he said. “The true details of deliveries are going to be at a classified level, but I know that we have a three-year base period and two option years after that for this contract, so I’m fully committed to providing the talent and the expertise and the manpower to help the Air Force realize its vision as rapidly as possible.” 

How a New ‘Taskrabbit’-Like App Could Help Win Wars, Transform Public Service

How a New ‘Taskrabbit’-Like App Could Help Win Wars, Transform Public Service

Oct. 8, 2024 | By David Roza

Imagine the conflict with China that U.S. military officials have warned about for years is on the verge of breaking out. An Air Force intelligence specialist must scan satellite images for signs of a military build-up along the Taiwan Strait, but the artificial intelligence program needed to parse through all the images needs an improvement, fast.

A new mobile app developed by a team of joint service members may be the solution. GigEagle is like a military version of the civilian app Taskrabbit, where users can find individuals to help put together an IKEA cabinet, move a mattress, or other temporary handy jobs. But instead of finding help for one-time tasks around the house, GigEagle finds talent who can tweak an AI algorithm, operate a small drone, translate documents, or other short- or long-term projects (anywhere from 4 hours to a year) that help accomplish military missions.

The key factor is speed. Today it can take hours to write a proposal and months to hire the right talent. With GigEagle, users can search for the skills they’re looking for or enter the problem they need to solve, and the app’s AI matches them with ideal candidates in seconds. 

“What our team is trying to do is really optimize the use of talent: how we identify and then employ talent at a speed we’ve never before been able to achieve,” Air Force Brig. Gen. Michael T. McGinley, director of GigEagle, told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

Another key feature of the app: it lets candidates list skills outside their main military job specialty, which is hard to track in existing military talent management systems.

“Whether you’re Active-Duty, Guard, or Reserve, your record is only going to show a small subset of what you’ve actually done,” McGinley said. “So why aren’t we capturing the full person?”

That could be particularly helpful for Reservists or National Guardsmen, who pick up program management, data science, user experience, or a wide range of other skills in their civilian jobs. GigEagle lets service members create profiles similar to LinkedIn where they can describe their skills, experience, and endorsements.

McGinley first started working on the GigEagle project in 2018, with initial tests starting in 2022. The app’s six-month prototype phase is due to end in October, followed by a production phase. More than 3,000 service members have signed up and are already solving real-world problems. For example, the Air Force Research Laboratory needed urgent help with a generative AI task, and within five minutes McGinley used GigEagle to find two Army Reservists with the data analysis and AI skills the lab needed.

“They were shocked, because otherwise how would you get that,” McGinley said. The Air Force’s newly-established provisional Integrated Capabilities Command is already listing gigs on the app, he added.

gigeagle
U.S. Air Force Brigadier General Michael McGinley, Director, GigEagle Agile Talent Ecosystem Initiative, presents at TEDxDAU 2024: Taking Point on June 5, 2024 at the Defense Acquisition University, Ft. Belvoir, Va. (DOD Photo by Nicole Brate).

Today, members of the National Guard and Reserve from across the services can become gig workers or gig managers, meaning they could post requirements or gigs, while Active-Duty members or civilian military employees can be only gig managers. But under new pilot programs due to start soon, Active-Duty service members, military civilian employees, and military spouses in certain organizations and functional communities will have a chance to be gig workers too.

Thinking Big

In 2023, Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said advances in sensors, robotics, and artificial intelligence will cause a “fundamental change in the character of war” by making the observe, orient, decide, and act (OODA) decision-making loop faster than ever.

That change requires a fundamental change in military talent, McGinley said, toward quickly finding and engaging people with the skills to solve a rapidly evolving series of problems. 

GigEagle is one way of supporting what the general describes as an agile talent ecosystem, where, for example, “instead of just one Airman having to do many things, what we’re able to do now is support that Airman with a network of informed expertise,” the general said.

That network may one day include the entire military, the entire government, industry, academia, and even partner nations.

“Even in a non-conflict situation, if I would like to reach out to a radar expert at Caltech or MIT, I should be able to do that,” he said. “We’re exploring different ways and legal authorities to pull those individuals in.”

That includes military spouses, who often have trouble finding work amid the frequent moves of military life. The GigEagle team is working with the Office of the Secretary of Defense on a SOAR (spouse opportunity access and recognition) version of the app that could help find employment for spouses across both commercial and government job sectors. Team members say they expect the first of three efforts to explore that route will start sometime in fiscal 2025.

Besides matching organizations with talent, GigEagle could also help officials at the headquarters level track trends in talent supply and demand.

“Now I can see who’s calling for that talent, and what types of skills are they calling for?” the general said. For example, “I can show that the Army’s supplying some of this analyst support. Why is that?”

Making an Impact

There may also be other benefits to a capability like GigEagle. In an essay published in War On the Rocks this August, McGinley and his GigEagle partner, Army Maj. Jim Perkins warned that some service members may not always feel as if they are serving in a meaningful way or contributing their most important skills.

GigEagle may scratch that itch, first by identifying service members’ skills, and second by letting them use those skills to directly help their colleagues solve urgent challenges.

“If you as an Airman feel like you are making an operational impact on the mission, I’m going to bet our retention will improve,” McGinley said. “We’re all wearing the uniform because we believe in the mission. Give people a chance to better engage, more directly engage that mission, and I think magic happens.”

At a time where very few Americans know someone in uniform, the app may also help bridge the civilian-military divide by giving civilians with important skills a chance to serve that was not possible before.

“On a strategic level, that means when you make policy changes, you now have a more educated, engaged population,” the general said. “Those people in academia or industry who come in and provide support feel like they are a member of the team. It is not ‘us and them,’ it is ‘we,’ so we win great power competition together.”

Challenges

While GigEagle shows promise, there are several obstacles to scaling up. The first is making sure all the services can use it easily.

“To be an agile talent ecosystem, you need to be able to think jointly, you need to make sure your language is the same,” McGinley said. “That’s tough, that’s a challenge, because what the Air Force cares about is different from what the Army or the Navy or the Marines care about.”

Then comes the tricky topic of who pays for gigs sourced through GigEagle. The expectation is that the organization seeking the talent will pay for it, but the process can get complicated when the exchange happens between services or components, particularly when the talent is in the Guard or Reserves, which have their own complicated pay and benefit structures. The GigEagle team is working with the Office of the Secretary of Defense to expand funding authorities to improve cross-service gig payments.

“For example, if I have Air Force appropriations to bring on an Air Force Reservist, but the most qualified candidate for my gig/need is matched to an Army Guardsmen, I need additional authority to transfer those Air Force funds to pay for the expert I need—who happens to be in the Army,” explained Col. Beth Horine, GigEagle Policy Team Lead.

The team will also have to figure out guardrails so that gigs won’t get in the way of service members’ primary duties. Service members will need a supervisor’s approval to do a gig, McGinley said, but each service may have different rules and requirements for how members spend their time.

Detachment 24 student pilots train on a virtual reality flight simulator as part of the Pilot Training Next program March 5, 2020, at Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph, Texas. (U.S. Air Force photo by Sarayuth Pinthong)

Excitement

Despite the challenges, enthusiasm for the new app is high. Lt. Col. Chuck Kubik, GigEagle Product Team Lead, said the team is already seeing widespread adoption by the combatant commands.

“These folks are coming to the platform because instead of posting a role in six different systems, they can come to a single place and hunt for the best talent,” he explained. “Across all the combatant commands, the gigs are pouring in.”

The U.S. Special Operations Command joint leadership team was particularly excited after Kubik briefed them recently.

“They were blown out of the water, like ‘Oh my gosh, where have you been, this is exactly what we need to find the best talent,’” he recalled.

Kubik believes the widespread interest indicates that he and his team are working on something special.

“With very little marketing, the word and the groundswell of what GigEagle is is growing rapidly,” he said. “When people see it, they’re like, ‘yeah, I can’t wait to go build my profile.’ There’s nothing holding them back as soon as they see that. That’s been really exciting.”

Two B-1 Bombers Fly Close Air Support Exercise in South Korea

Two B-1 Bombers Fly Close Air Support Exercise in South Korea

Oct. 7, 2024 | By Unshin Lee Harpley

Two B-1 Lancers from Dyess Air Force Base, Texas, led a simulated close air support exercise with South Korean fighters to maintain “defensive readiness” for both nations last week.

The long-range bombers flew to Korea and back for the one-day training event on Oct. 1 and have returned to Texas, a spokesperson for the Air Force Global Strike Command told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

The Lancers trained with two Republic of Korea F-15Ks, with support from U.S. Airmen from the 607th Air Support Operations Group at Pilsung Range, located about 160 miles east of Osan Air Base.

Following the exercise, one of the bombers joined a flyover with two ROK F-15Ks as part of the nation’s “Armed Forces Day” celebration over Seoul Air Base, located just outside the capital city of Seoul. The event reinforced the U.S.’s commitment to the two countries’ alliance, and “further enhanced the ability of ROK fighters to integrate with U.S. bombers,” Indo-Pacific Command stated in a release.

south korea B-1b lancers
The Republic of Korea and U.S. conduct a combined aerial exercise in conjunction with the deployment of U.S. B-1B strategic bombers over the Republic of Korea, March 19, 2023. U.S. Air Force photo by 1st Lt. Cameron Silver

The Boeing F-15K Slam Eagle, primarily built and operated by the ROK Air Force, is an advanced variant of the F-15E.

Close Air Support (CAS) provides essential airborne attacks against hostile targets that are close to friendly forces. Last week’s exercise marked the second time the long-range bombers have partnered with ROK fighters for CAS training this year. In June, a B-1 bomber conducted its first live munitions drop over the country in seven years, collaborating with two ROK F-15Ks to release 500-pound GBU-38 Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM). Earlier this year, the Air Force also engaged the Lancers in CAS training alongside Swedish JAS 39 Gripen fighters, aimed at strengthening partnerships and boosting operational readiness.

As the mission hinges on accuracy, traditionally, low-flying aircraft like the A-10s have been used for CAS training, utilizing the attack aircraft’s 30mm cannons. Although bombers are not primarily built for this role, all three USAF types—B-1, B-2, and B-52—can conduct CAS missions.

CAS has been a primary mission of the B-1 in support of combatant commanders for more than two decades. In previous demonstrations, B-1 Lancers showcased their ability to perform a low-level, high-speed pass as a non-lethal “show of force,” signaling readiness to engage the enemy if necessary. The training emphasizes this type of support to protect ground troops in real-world combat situations. The Lancers carry the largest conventional payload of weapons in the U.S. military, including general-purpose bombs, cluster munitions, and laser-guided missiles.

NRO Joins Pentagon Exercises, ‘Making Progress’ on New Targeting Satellites

NRO Joins Pentagon Exercises, ‘Making Progress’ on New Targeting Satellites

Oct. 7, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

The National Reconnaissance Office is participating in Pentagon exercises and launching dozens of satellites as it prepares to work with the Space Force on tracking targets from orbit, its director said last week. 

NRO Director Christopher Scolese also noted during an Oct. 3 event at the Center for International and Strategic Studies that a key challenge in the effort will be the speed and clarity with which his agency can deliver data to warfighters—acknowledging a common concern about the joint military-intelligence effort. 

The Department of the Air Force has wanted to get its Ground Moving Target Indication from space, instead of relying on airborne platforms, because anti-air systems pose growing challenges to those aircraft.  

Satellites belonging to the NRO and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency have long provided the intelligence community with intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, but have not provided real-time targeting data for moving targets. Critics charge the IC cannot deliver targeting data at tactically relevant speeds; they argue that military commanders should control their own satellites in order to prioritize operationally relevant data collection. 

But more recently officials have indicated progress in military-IC collaboration, and Scolese made clear he wants to overcome whatever roadblocks there are that slow down getting data to the warfighter. 

“We have to deliver the data at the speed and with the characteristics that the user—and it can be any user—needs,” Scolese said. “So GMTI is obviously going to go off and need information on where an object is and where it is going in real time. We need to deliver that data. Others will also be delivering data. That data has to be fused into a product.” 

From a technical standpoint, “there’s still work to be done,” Scolese said, but he believes the NRO is making “good progress.” 

Exercises are helping to expose where improvement is needed. 

“We put prototypes of the various satellites up there that allowed us to see what they can do,” Scolese said. “It’s also allowed us to participate exercises, where we can go off and test those various things. We’re also doing tabletop exercises and gaming to allow us to go off and test things at the edges…. That’s helping us to identify policy areas or gaps that we need to go off and address.” 

The volume of data available is growing rapidly. In the span of just 18 months, from June 2023 to December 2024—the NRO will have launched around 100 new satellites, many of those making up its new proliferated low-Earth orbit constellation, Scolese said. The long-secretive NRO remains tight-lipped about precise numbers, but the agency has had three launches for its new constellation this year alone. 

Soon, the real payoffs will be apparent. “We are going from the demo phase to the operational phase, where we’re really going to be able to start testing all of this stuff out in a more operational way,” he said. 

Days After Returning, KC-135s Evacuate MacDill Again for Hurricane

Days After Returning, KC-135s Evacuate MacDill Again for Hurricane

Oct. 7, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

The Air Force evacuated aircraft ahead of another hurricane Oct. 6, just days after trying to get things back to normal. Hurricane Milton, a Category 5 storm, is now forecast to sweep across central Florida on Oct. 9, with MacDill Air Force Base and Patrick Space Force Base directly in its path.

The “large and powerful” storm is expected to carry gale-force winds and a damaging coastal storm surge.  

MacDill Air Force Base, in Tampa, evacuated the 6th Air Refueling Wing’s KC-135 tankers just two days after they got home following a prior evacuation for Hurricane Helene. Wing commander Col. Ed Szczepanik ordered the evacuation effective Oct. 7 at 12:30 p.m. In a video update on Facebook, Szczepanik said the base would only retain mission-essential personnel. 

Helene flooded MacDill’s low-lying areas, leaving masses of debris on roads and and causing widespread power outages, and many base services were closed for up to five days. 

The KC-135 tankers remained mission ready at alternate locations and mission-essential personnel maintained operations at U.S. Central Command headquarters, located on the base.

Milton is on a path to strike MacDill on Florida’s Gulf Coast, then cross the peninsula and hit Florida’s Space Coast, home to Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and Patrick Space Force Base.

Space Launch Delta 45, which oversees both installations, raised its alert level to HURCON 4, which officials said mean anticipated winds in excess of 58 miles per hour could occur within 72 hours. Both bases remain open and no evacuations have been ordered. 

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral Oct. 7 carrying a payload for the European Space Agency. But a planned Oct. 10 launch of a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket for NASA from the Kennedy Space Center has been postponed.  

Indeed, SpaceX had been scheduled to launch several Falcon 9s from Cape Canaveral early next week, but the rocket is grounded while officials investigate an anomaly late last month. SpaceX got FAA clearance for the Oct. 7 launch, but no other launches have been cleared so far, according to media reports. 

A spokesperson for Space Launch Delta 45 told Air & Space Forces Magazine there are no currently no rockets on pads or launches scheduled for the rest of the week at Cape Canaveral. The National Hurricane Center is projecting up to 12 inches of rain in the area and a flood warning has been issued. 

Practical Applications for AI in Military Operations

Practical Applications for AI in Military Operations

Oct. 7, 2024 | By Adam Stone

Everyone is talking about artificial intelligence, but actual no-kidding military applications can be hard to identify. 

“If you have a data problem, or if you can make a problem into a data problem, it’s probably a good fit for AI,” says Angela Sheffield, an internationally recognized expert in nuclear nonproliferation and applications of AI for national security. 

Sheffield has been cited for “transforming” the National Nuclear Security Agency’s Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation with innovative AI research and development. There, as Senior Program Manager for AI and Data Science, Sheffield developed next-generation tools for detecting early indicators of illicit nuclear weapons development. 

Now Sheffield has a new role as director of AI programs at SAIC, a leading systems integrator and solutions provider for federal and defense applications. A former Air Force intelligence officer, she sees numerous opportunities to bring AI to a host of defense requirements and says getting started is often the hardest part, because it means getting past all the reasons not to move forward. 

“We will forever have legacy systems,” Sheffield says. “We will always have fragmented and siloed data repositories. Those aren’t things that we can wish away.” 

But they also don’t need to be barriers to automation. Whether one is tackling a complex problem like Combined Joint All Domain Command and Control, major initiatives to modernize weapon systems, or efforts to automate Tasking, Collection, Processing, Exploitation, and Dissemination (TCPED), mundane tasks that involve routine work can be automated to to reduce the human cognitive load. 

“There are a lot of other applications ripe for opportunity, for modernization and innovation and AI,” Sheffield said. And it doesn’t have to be the hard, super complex use cases: Business operations and other routine operational tasks “are really great opportunities for us to leverage AI. Automation can free up our Airmen and our other service members and civilians … to tackle the challenges DOD faces today.”

In some ways, that is beginning to happen. Enterprise IT is gaining a foothold with AI-driven capabilities integrated into email and other collaboration activities. 

“We’re beginning to expect that as the part of the services that we get from our enterprise IT,” Sheffield said. AI can also support efficiencies, she added, in business operations and mission execution “to fulfill requirements in computing, in managing disparate data sources.” 

This is where an integrator can be especially valuable. “SAIC is part of bringing those solutions to the Air Force and the rest of the joint force, with concepts like data layers that interconnect stove-piped or fragmented data systems,” she said. 

Once data can be shared across systems, everyone benefits: “You can get a single-site picture or a single understanding of all of your resources captured in those different repositories,” she said, enabling AI-supported process automation, enhanced analytics, and informed, accelerated decision-making.

Users will not necessarily buy into automation easily, she said. Trust must be earned—and built—over time to ensure users gain confidence in intelligent systems. They need to see that the software works, Sheffield said, and “to understand how it is working, if it’s performing within the intended envelope.” And they need to be confident that the AI is not generating erroneous “hallucinations,” she said. 

AI must be a primary driver for enabling CJADC2 because without it the data sets are too large, the problems too demanding, to maintain an information advantage at the speed of modern warfare. CJADC2 demands real-time sharing of data across service, national, and digital boundaries. 

That means overcoming legacy IT roadblocks and information systems that can’t talk to each other. Interoperable databases and AI-driven automation are part of the solution. “CJADC2 will happen as a result of that modernization in a way that’s even more powerful than what we’re beginning to see in pilot demonstrations,” Sheffield predicts.

For example, Indo-Pacific Command’s Joint Fires Network, a Battle Management System delivers real-time actionable threat data to joint, partner, and allied forces. SAIC is involved in that pilot, and Sheffield foresees more AI-driven implementations like it, “where we’re closing kill chains faster and achieving those successes.”

Disparate systems and technologies, often purpose-built with proprietary technology, must be integrated to make them work. “That’s where an integrator like SAIC can help,” she said.

As a federal program manager, she recalled, “I often relied on my contractors or performers to provide that visibility — lessons learned from one agency to another,” she said. Commercial partners “helped me have that visibility of what’s happening across the interagency.”

That’s exactly the value Sheffield says she brings to her work at SAIC. “Looking across our multi-mission portfolio and bringing the best solutions for DOD’s missions is something they can rely on us to do,” she said.

At This Air Force Depot, Advanced Manufacturing Is Cutting Edge No Longer

At This Air Force Depot, Advanced Manufacturing Is Cutting Edge No Longer

Oct. 7, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

TINKER AIR FORCE BASE, Okla.—Air Force leaders and industry officials have long extolled the benefits of additive manufacturing, promising a future where maintainers use 3D printing technology to manufacture replacement parts faster than they can be shipped across the world. 

Now, a small group of engineers, technicians, and machinists here are moving that additive manufacturing technology out of the future and into the present. 

It’s “not because we’re just saying, ‘Hey, this has potential in the future,’” Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center technical director Eric Bartlow told Air & Space Forces Magazine during an August visit. “We grow with our customer need in that area. And so is it bleeding edge? We’ve been doing 3D-printing since the ’70s. I think the rest of the world is kind of catching up, and you’ll continue to see that scale.” 

Across more than 8 million square feet of industrial floor and office space, more than 9,000 personnel work at the OC-ALC, where welding and wrench-turning are still the norm. But an increasing number of programs—collectively dubbed an “innovation ecosystem”—are now applying these techniques to breathe new life into aging aircraft.  

“We use the term ‘tired iron’ a lot out here,” said Clay Jordan, chief engineer for a program called PROACT. “We have some really old ‘tired iron’ that we are trying to bring back to life.” 

Coming into Its Own 

Brig. Gen. Brian R. Moore, commander of the OC-ALC, says this shift is the result of years of work. 

“Mr. Bartlow and the team have been thinking about digital transformation and what that means for an industrial complex, probably before I came over in 2018 and 2019,” Moore said. “But really you can see the manifestation of it in the last six years.”  

Case in point: The Reverse Engineering and Critical Tooling (REACT) program, which started several years ago to produce parts that aren’t commercially available anymore. REACT started small but now comprises a team of 50 that has become the Air Force Center of Excellence for advanced manufacturing. 

REACT offices display examples of that transformation: Scanners that map and model the shapes of products ranging from small parts to entire aircraft; digital design tools used to process and refine scans; and more than a dozen additive production systems, high-end 3D printers that can “print” using materials ranging from resin to cobalt chrome.

Paul Greenway, with the 76th Commodities Maintenance Group’s R.E.A.C.T Cell, made and provided the CAD drawings for the mechanics to cut and form the keel beam.

The B-1 bomber is among REACT’s greatest success stories. A plastic panel in the crew compartment might have taken five years to replace using conventional contracting processes; REACT reverse- engineered the panel produced test products, and now produces replacements for the entire fleet, said flight chief Kyle Taylor. Now REACT is now producing other parts for the BONE cockpit, replacing honeycomb composite materials that degraded over time. 

“They’ve leaned forward a lot with additive,” Taylor said of the B-1 program office. “And because of that, they’ve kind of pulled the whole Air Force along with them. Others [system program offices] come over here and they see all these B-1 panels that we’re printing, and they say, ‘Oh, we have little switches and knobs and things, and we haven’t really implemented additive as much as B-1 has.’ So because B-1 has kind of led the way, other weapon systems can get the benefits of the testing they’ve done, and the approval processes they’ve gone through.” 

The results are stark: 12,000 parts in back orders. 

REACT’s bank of polymer 3D printers are “just churning out parts consistently,” said Taylor, operating at a continuous, dull whine. 

Said Moore: “Every jet that comes to Tinker for depot maintenance is getting around 200 polymer parts put on it.” 

Going Upscale 

Additive repair is another area of emphasis: PROACT, the Process, Repair, Operations, and Critical Tooling program, employs 40 specialists for engine repair. 

“We’ve been doing additive for repair for decades now, through things like thermal spray and weld repairs, where you build up material on wear surfaces,” said Blake Grimwood, the engineering section chief for PROACT. “We’re just using the newer technologies that people think of as additive manufacturing, as opposed to the legacy ones.” 

One new technology is directed energy deposition, in which a laser melts a metal or metal powder and deposits the material onto a surface for precise welding, and cold spray, in which metal powder is applied without heat.  

“We’re able to look at the problem and say, ‘this is the wear condition we’re seeing, these are the types of repairs we do for this wear condition. OK, what’s the right approach?’ And if we can’t figure out a right approach, then that gives us an opportunity to say, ‘Let’s go find a new technology to solve this,’” he said. 

TINKER AIR FORCE BASE, Okla. — Blake Grimwood, the Process, Repair, Operations and Critical Tooling section chief at the Oklahoma City Air Logistic Complex, briefs members of the Leadership Moore program on PROACT’s capabilities during their tour of Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma, Jan. 11. Leadership Moore is a program organized by the Moore Chamber of Commerce that offers opportunities for leaders from the business, government, and not-for-profit sectors to discover the inner workings of their community and challenges facing the region. (U.S. Air Force Photo by Carter Denton)

The goal, he added, is not just to find the most advanced possible tech, but rather the most sustainable and useful over time. 

“Just because we develop a new repair doesn’t mean we don’t have the old repair as well, if that’s needed for capacity,” he noted. “But a lot of these repairs are faster and more consistent, so we can fit more into a timeframe if needed.” PROACT also has a team of tool designers who create tooling needed to facilitate each particular repair. 

REACT is also expanding into metal 3D printing and is even casting its own parts—a necessity in an era when commercial sourcing for small volumes of unique products is prohibitive or even impossible.

“Right now, we can pour 120 pounds of aluminum. So what we can do is take our knowledge in reverse engineering and modeling, you can bring us a part, we reverse engineer the whole thing,” Taylor said. “We’ll come up with three or four different designs that we think will work, print all of them, pour all the hot metal into them and see which one came out best. We can work with the materials lab here on base. We can give them parts. They can chop up all the parts and say, this one has the lowest porosity, this is your best pour. And then we can just 3D print however many molds we need.” 

Hurdles 

REACT and PROACT leaders say excitement over additive manufacturing does not make it the right solution for every need. “We have an additive expert … and I joke that about half of his job is saying no to additive parts,” Taylor said. “Sometimes it’s going to take you longer, it’s going to be more expensive. Additive is just another tool in your toolbox,” not the answer for every problem. 

Bureaucratic hurdles are another issue. Approval processes and procedures haven’t all caught up to new manufacturing methods. “Airworthiness certification right now is definitely a challenge the whole Air Force is seeing,” said Taylor. “Leadership knows that’s a barrier we have.” 

Standardizing new “inspection criteria on those metal parts, think about them in terms of risk and safety factors” is still a work in process. The Air Force, Moore said, needs “to be able to close that gap and bring the future faster.”  

In some cases, new repair technology not only meets an existing specification, Taylor said, but it can also be a better solution for the long-term integrity of the part. “For instance, if I could weld repair something in the past with the gold gas tungsten arc welding, I can also do the [directed energy deposition] repair, but now I’m putting less heat, I’m not warping parts.” 

Each new advance opens up new possibilities, experts say. Just having the tools in place opens the aperture on future applications.

“We’ve got the stuff,” Barlow said. “More importantly, we’ve got the people. We have the intellectual capability to do anything. If a human can think it through, we can do it.”