With F-16s Gone and New F-35s on Their Way, Alabama Guard Wing Starts Conversion

May 3, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

The F-16s at Dannelly Field, Ala., are almost all gone, save for a few receiving final maintenance for their flights out. The F-35s the 187th Fighter Wing is bringing in won’t start to arrive until December.

But the next seven months will be anything but quiet for the Alabama Air National Guard’s 187th as it transitions to the fifth-generation fighter. The 187th began working on getting F-35s more than a decade ago, vice commander Col. Jay R. Spohn told Air & Space Forces Magazine. In 2017, Dannelly Field was tapped as one of two preferred Guard locations for F-35s, the other being Burlington Air National Guard Base, Vt. The 187th formally began its conversion March 1.

Yet in all that time, Spohn said, the wing kept its eyes on the present, not its future.

“The mantra from the leadership has always been, ‘We still need to do the mission in the F-16. We can’t take our eyes off of what’s really important. The F-35 is nice. We’re very fortunate that we’ve been selected for it … but our job here today is to get ready to go fight in the F-16,’” Spohn said.

That changed in the past few weeks, as the 187th conducted its final local training sorties in the F-16 on March 31, followed by a formal “farewell” ceremony April 21.

“There were people in that hangar two weeks ago saying goodbye to the F-16 that were here in this unit when the F-4s left in 1988, and they’re still in the unit today, when the F-16s are leaving,” Spohn said.

“We’re finally shifting to the mission we’ve been talking about for the last 10 years,” he added. “And it makes it a little simpler, I think, because now we don’t have to talk about two things at once. We can talk about one thing. We’re focused on one thing, one airplane. Your job is to be good at one thing, your job in the F-35.”

For pilots and maintainers, that means learning, including trips to bases already flying F-35s so they can train and get smart on their new aircraft.

The 187th has sent five pilots in recent years to train at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., Hill Air Force Base, Utah, and Burlington to ensure the wing has seasoned Lightning II pilots when the first F-35s arrive. About 20 maintainers also went off for training. And more will soon in in the months ahead, Spohn said. Some nine pilots and 40 maintainers were off-station as he spoke.

“In December when the first three airplanes show up, we’ll have 15 pilots fully qualified in the airplane,” Spohn said. “And we’ll have 40-plus maintainers that will have several months or more time working on the F-35.”

That will still leave some pilots and maintainers who aren’t qualified—the pilots will all eventually have to spend three months with the F-35’s training units at either Eglin or Luke Air Force Base, Ariz., while the maintainers will be able to learn at Dannelly from their qualified counterparts and a field training team the Air Force will send.

But it’s not just the personnel who will work on and fly in the airplane who need several months to prepare for its arrival. The wing’s logistics and civil engineering specialists also have lots to do.

“We need to get all the F-16 stuff off base to make room for the F-35 support equipment,” Spohn said. “That’s everything from wheels and tires, screws, grease, O-rings, you name it. Everything you could think of walking through an auto parts store, there’s kind of the equivalent of that as you walk through our supply area for the F-16 and for the F-35. And it takes up a lot of room and so we need to we need to make room for that.”

New construction complicates that, because storage is in short supply right now.

“Some of it was mandatory—you have to do it to make room for the F-35,” Spohn said. “For example, the simulator requirements, you have to have a simulator facility that is able to hold four F-35 simulators. … That’s a very big, very expensive building to house all of that very expensive, very delicate equipment involved with the simulator. But the F-35 engine is quite a bit bigger than the F-16 engine. F-35 engines to a large extent don’t fit inside current engine repair facilities, so we had to modify our engine shop and things like that. We renovated the big maintenance hangar, we renovated the refueling area to hold an additional refueling truck and things like that.”

Construction started in 2021 and won’t wrap up completely until late 2025, Spohn said. The 187th will have three years, until February 2026, to reach full operational readiness.

The Vermont ANG’s 158th Fighter Wing, the first Guard unit to get F-35s, began its conversion process in April 2019, received its first fighters in November, and was declared operational by early 2022.

“If the aircraft delivery timeline sticks to the schedule, … we will have no problems meeting the timeline and we will likely exceed it,” Spohn said.

But it’s going to be a team effort getting there. “Every single member of the 187th Fighter Wing—whether they’re guarding the gate or whether they’re driving the fuel truck or they’re working on the airplanes, they’re flying the airplanes, or making sure the airfield is good to go or maintaining the pilots’ equipment—every single one of those people is going to have to learn a new aspect of their job,” Spohn said. “It’s very complicated and I know that they’re going to do great, and that’s what I’m excited to see.”

Russian Missile Damaged MQ-9 Over Syria, US Reveals

May 3, 2023 | By Chris Gordon

A Russian surface-to-air missile came close to striking an American MQ-9 Reaper drone over Syria in November, passing and detonating within 40 feet and damaging the aircraft, according to new details disclosed by a U.S. official to Air & Space Forces Magazine.

The U.S. had already revealed the launch of a Russian SA-22 Pantsir surface-to-air missile against the drone but previously did not disclose the damage or how close the missile came to downing the aircraft Nov. 27. The drone was able to return to base and land safely.

The damage resulted when the missile’s warhead exploded in close proximity to the drone, in what remains the only publicly known instance of a Russian surface-to-air missile firing at a U.S. aircraft over Syria. There have been no other similar missile firings at an MQ-9 over the country since then, according to American officials.

Other U.S. officials acknowledged to Air & Space Forces Magazine the missile came close to hitting the drone, missing by only a few dozen feet. The MQ-9 itself is 36 feet long, with a span of 66 feet.

The Pentagon referred questions about the incident to U.S. Central Command, which declined to comment on the new details.

In March, in a separate incident over the Black Sea, an American MQ-9 was struck by a Russian Su-27 when the fighter clipped the drone’s propeller on the last in a series of aggressive fly-by maneuvers. After the propeller was damaged, the Pentagon said, operators had to crash that drone in the water below because it was too damaged to continue operating safely. Prior to making contact, two Su-27s repeatedly dumped fuel on the MQ-9, as shown in declassified video from the drone’s cameras that was later released by the Defense Department.

After the November incident, U.S. military officials contacted Russia via a deconfliction line maintained by the two countries’ militaries.

The disclosure of more details about the November episode comes against the backdrop of increasingly aggressive behavior by Russian pilots in the skies over Syria, according to U.S. officials.

The U.S. still has around 900 troops in eastern Syria supporting local partners in the fight against the remnants of ISIS. Russian forces are also in the country, backing the regime of Bashar Al-Assad against rebel groups.

The U.S. and Russia have established deconfliction protocols to prevent run-ins between their aircraft. But Air Forces Central says Russian warplanes have repeatedly violated that agreement, doing so more than 80 times since March 1, including more than two dozen armed overflights of U.S. troops.

Russian aircraft have also come within 500 feet of American planes during the same period, actions U.S. officials call dangerous. One U.S. official expressed concern that Russia might be trying to “engender an international incident.”

“We’re not seeking to get into a conflict with Russia, nor are we looking to divert attention from why it is that we’re there,” Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Brig. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder said April 27, in regard to the two nations’ operations in Syria.

The U.S. also continues to face deadly resistance from Iranian-backed militants in Syria. An American contractor was killed at a base in northeastern Syria on March 23 in a rocket attack.

Two Air Force F-15E Strike Eagles launched a counterattack on bases linked to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps later that day. Air Forces Central conducts combat air patrols and other operations in support of Operation Inherent Resolve—the anti-ISIS campaign—including with MQ-9s. The command recently received A-10s to fulfill its minimum requirements for fighter aircraft to go with F-16s and F-15Es.

CSAF Adds Books, Podcasts, and More to His Leadership Library

May 2, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

The “Leadership Library” of Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. got a lot bigger April 28, as the Air Force announced seven new additions: three books, three podcasts, and one documentary. Together, they make up the largest addition to Brown’s Leadership Library since he revamped the Chief’s Reading List in March 2021.

“Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence” by Paul Scharre, highlights how AI can be integrated to strengthen organizations and improve efficiency. To underscore how pervasive artificial intelligence is today, Brown’s letter announcing the update was written in part by ChatGPT, the popular AI chatbot that can produce detailed content based on prompts and parameters.

The seven new and what Brown had to say about each:

Through the Glass Ceiling to the Stars: The Story of the First American Woman to Command a Space Mission by Col. Eileen M. Collins USAF (Retired) & Jonathan H. Ward

“This year marks the 75th anniversary of the integration of women into the Armed Services and the 30th anniversary of the lifting of the ban on women’s service in combat aviation,” Brown wrote. “[This book] is both an inspiring tale of the career of Col. Eileen Collins and an acknowledgment of the proud contributions of female Airmen who have performed valiantly in service to America.”

No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention by Reed Hastings

“A must-read to understand the philosophy of mission command,” Brown wrote. “We will continue to enable Airmen and organizations with more freedom to exercise judgment, accept prudent risk, and pioneer novel solutions.”

Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence by Paul Scharre

“It’s not a question of whether militaries should adopt innovative technologies, but rather how to apply them effectively,” Brown wrote. “Airmen must explore and experiment with emerging AI technologies to innovate new organizational efficiencies and gain a competitive advantage in warfighting.”

The Truth of the Matter: Wargaming a Chinese Invasion of Taiwan by Mark Cancian, CSIS

“In [this podcast], CSIS’s Mark Cancian explains some of the challenges the U.S. military would face in a conflict with China, including advanced missile technology and the difficulty of defending Taiwan’s coast,” Brown wrote. “Wargaming lessons are foundational in guiding our future force design through initiatives such as the Air Force Future Operating Concept (AFFOC).”

Revisionist History: A Serious Game with Malcolm Gladwell

“Malcolm Gladwell’s … podcast discusses the history and evolution of military wargaming, and how it has been used by the military to prepare for real-life scenarios,” Brown said.

The Anxious Achiever podcast, presented by LinkedIn with Morra Aarons-Mele

“In order to continue promoting a diverse and inclusive culture within the Air Force, it’s imperative to recognize and support the mental health needs of all Airmen,” Brown wrote. “Our DAF Fortify the Force Initiative Team is leading by example in this regard, by breaking down the stigma associated with seeking help and encouraging Airmen to prioritize their mental health. The Anxious Achiever podcast … amplifies the message that mental health is health and asking for help is a display of strength rather than weakness.”

National Geographic’s Limitless with Chris Hemsworth on Disney+

“National Geographic’s Limitless with Chris Hemsworth complements this mentality by showcasing the remarkable resilience of the human mind and body while emphasizing the importance of cultivating mental fortitude to overcome obstacles and achieve personal milestones,” Brown added.

As USAF Considers a Blended-Wing Body Tanker, New Startup Reveals Its Concept

May 2, 2023 | By David Roza

As the Air Force embarks on what is likely to be a lengthy process of developing the Next Generation Air Refueling System (NGAS) to help recapitalize its aerial refueling fleet, the service is placing what Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall has described as a “premium on survivability” on future tankers.

That could mean shifting away from modified airliners or cargo jets and toward a blended-wing body design. Aerospace engineering company JetZero, partnering with defense giant Northrop Grumman, recently released their concept for just such an aircraft—garnering praise from one aerial refueling expert who said the design shows promise for the Air Force’s future needs to support a long-distance fight against a near-peer adversary.

In the near term, the Air Force is planning on purchasing 179 KC-46 tankers by 2029 to replace its aging KC-135 fleet. After that, the service is considering an additional 75 “bridge” tankers, either a modified KC-46 or another traditional refueler like Lockheed Martin and Airbus’ LMXT offering.

But beyond that, the long range of modern anti-air threats means traditional tankers won’t be able to get as close to the fight as necessary to keep fighter jets fueled, Kendall told the House Armed Services Committee on April 27.

“To have tactical fighters that can operate effectively, you’ve got to tank them within a few hundred miles of where they’re going to operate,” Kendall said. “So we need tankers that can get into ranges where they are now threatened. Current tankers are not very effective at that. And the commercial derivative tanker, which is a traditional route to getting one, is probably not going to be effective either, although that’s not off the table yet.”

That means NGAS, which the Air Force launched in January with the goal of delivering a stealthy tanker by 2040, may need to be purpose-built to operate closer to well-defended targets. Though the shape of the tanker is yet to be determined, the service is considering blended-wing body designs.

A BWB is “a hybrid shape that resembles a flying wing” that also includes features from conventional “tube-and-wing airframes,” according to NASA.

Northrop and JetZero lifted the lid on their BWB concept in late April, referring to the medium-sized aircraft as the Z-5. When configured as a tanker, the Z-5 would be able to carry up to twice the fuel of the KC-46 on a maximum-range mission, Aviation Week reported. It is projected to be half the weight and require half the power of the Boeing 767, the aircraft on which the KC-46 is based, the company wrote in a press release, and will have a range of at least 5,000 nautical miles.

JetZero declined to share more details on the Z-5 with Air & Space Forces Magazine, but more specifics may be available later this year.

Still, Timothy Walton, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, said a design like the Z-5 could provide the long range and endurance the Air Force needs to gas up fighters and other aircraft over the Pacific, while a medium size would allow it to operate from smaller, forward airfields. A BWB design presents a relatively low radar cross section and infrared signature, and with a long flight time, the aircraft could loiter much closer to a contested airspace than the Air Force’s current tankers—and all for a smaller operating cost.

An aircraft with the Z-5’s projected range and endurance “could provide U.S. operational planners with flexible, dynamic options to deploy and employ tankers and impose dilemmas on Chinese planners seeking to counter U.S. air operations,” Walton told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “Moreover, rather than solely relying on incremental improvements in propulsive efficiency, JetZero’s innovative platform generates far greater aerodynamic efficiency.”

JetZero has made the Z-5’s aerodynamic qualities a key focus in promotional materials, and they could be key for the Air Force given how it plans to operate in the future.

The aircraft’s medium-sized design would allow “efficient use of valuable airfield capacity” and maximize the number of tankers and the amount of gas available at forward and intermediate airfields, Walton noted. It could also “enable very long-range operations from distant airfields that are difficult for the People’s Liberation Army to suppress,” he said.

A BWB tanker wouldn’t satisfy every Air Force demand, though, Walton cautioned. The service will likely consider a broad range of refueling tankers—smaller, stealthy tankers to penetrate defended airspace and deliver gas in a contested environment, off-the-shelf tankers optimized for short takeoff and landing could fuel Air Force operations across small, distributed airfields, and highly-efficient BWB tankers like the Z-5 that could loiter at the edge of contested spaces as strike aircraft transit to and from those spaces.

No matter which platform the Air Force chooses for NGAS, it must modernize its command and control and communication systems on current and future tankers, as well as the aircraft’s defensive countermeasures, Walton said.

JetZero is currently competing for a $245 million Air Force BWB demonstration program, which involves developing a full-scale demonstrator aircraft. The company website said the aircraft will launch in 2030.

Kendall: Ratio of Fighters to Bombers May Shift Toward Bombers in the Future

May 2, 2023 | By John A. Tirpak

The Air Force may shift its fighter-to-bomber ratio more toward bombers and longer-range platforms in the future—but not soon, because the B-21 production line is only set up for “modest” production rates, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall told the Senate Armed Services Committee on May 2.

“I’m not sure that the future Air Force will look all that much like the one we have today,” Kendall said in response to a question from Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), who noted that the Air Force’s fighter-to-bomber ratio now hovers around 15-1.

“One of the things that may change is a shift in the balance … between shorter-range tactical air capabilities and longer-range strike capabilities that bombers provide,” Kendall acknowledged.

The Air Force is developing its Agile Combat Employment model, in which it plans to disperse fighters in small groups to a wide variety of operating locations. Bombers, on the other hand, would have the range to prosecute targets without the need for bases close to enemy territory, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III said at the December 2022 roll-out of the new B-21 Raider.

At some point in the future, Kendall predicted, the Air Force will begin discussions on adjusting the ratio of fighters to bombers. At the moment, however, the service doesn’t “have many options to make those changes right now,” and in the meantime, “we’re preserving the bomber fleet pretty much as much as we can,” he said.

Much of those preservation efforts are focused on the B-52, which Kendall described as “so robustly-designed that we can keep it pretty much forever.” The Stratofortress is slated to get new engines, radar and other capabilities in the coming years so it can be used “as a bus” for all manner of weaponry.

The B-1, meanwhile, still has “a lot of capacity,” Kendall said, but the B-2 fleet is “harder to maintain.”

“The B-21 is our option, in the near term, to bring in new capability, and we’re just starting to get it into production,” Kendall said. “The current [planned purchase] is 100. I don’t know what it will end up being. It may be larger than that. I would not be surprised by that.”

However, the B-21 is being built on a production line developed for the development program and which “just will continue to be used for production at a relatively modest rate,” Kendall pointed out. The service has said there are currently about five or six B-21s in some stage of production.

The Air Force has not revealed how rapidly it plans to build and field B-21s, but previous bomber roadmaps—now several years old—have hinted the first 100 B-21s would be bought by about 2023, suggesting a maximum annual rate of 10-12 per year.

“I think if we’re ever going to significantly increase the production, we’d have to go re-look at how we are tooled for manufacturing,” Kendall said, calling that “not a near-term decision.”

However, he agreed with Ernst that building more B-21s than now planned would reduce their unit cost.

“Cost and quantities are always connected, and you do reduce costs by increasing their production rate, definitely,” he said.

Northrop Grumman is building the B-21 at its Palmdale, Calif., facilities, in many of the same spaces that once housed B-2 production. Northrop’s contract covers the first five aircraft—planned for use as test articles, but later convertible to operational assets—on a cost-plus basis, but the first lot of production aircraft will be on a fixed-price basis, with a not-to-exceed unit price of $550 million per copy in base year 2010 dollars, or about $766 million in fiscal 2023 dollars. The Air Force has said the unit cost will come in lower than that.

Kendall briefly pursued the idea of long-range uncrewed aircraft to accompany the B-21 deep into enemy airspace but tabled that notion as unworkable in the near term.

Air Force leaders have said the central, crewed element of the Next-Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) family of systems will likely come in two variants: a shorter-range model adapted for the European theater, and a longer-range version adapted for the long distances of the Pacific theater.

Kendall and Brown: JATM Will Start Production This Year, Equip Collaborative Combat Aircraft

May 2, 2023 | By John A. Tirpak

The secretive AIM-260 Joint Advanced Tactical Missile will “hopefully” enter production this year, at an accelerated rate, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall told the Senate Armed Services Committee on May 2. The JATM will also equip the Collaborative Combat Aircraft when the unmanned autonomous drones enter service, Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. added.

“We’re entering production, hopefully, for JATM, the new air-to-air missile,” Kendall said at the congressional hearing. “And we’re going to be asking for funds to increase the size of that production line [and] increase capacity of our production line from what we originally had planned.”

The Air Force has not specified any production targets for JATM. The missile, which will serve the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps air fleets, was originally expected to have achieved initial operational capability in 2022. The Air Force is leading development on the weapon, which will first be deployed on the F-22 fighter but also has been described as equipping the Next Generation Air Dominance family of systems.

JATM will have significantly longer range than the Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM), the Air Force’s primary air-to-air weapon which is it replacing. It will also likely have a multimode seeker, but details of its capability and performance are closely held.

Brown offered a new detail, however, in noting that JATM will also equip Collaborative Combat Aircraft—the unmanned, autonomous drones that will fly alongside manned platforms.

As the follow-on to AMRAAM, the JATM will be “an important aspect to support the Collaborative Combat Aircraft,” Brown told lawmakers.

The Air Force is still fleshing out what it wants the CCA program to be, but Kendall said he expects the drones to be in service by the end of the decade. However, the service does not have a roadmap for CCAs, just as it does not for several other other key modernization programs.

When asked why that is by Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), Kendall said the nature of the threat—China’s capabilities—is dynamic and changing rapidly. The Air Force Scientific Advisory Board is currently working on the Air Force is structured and “what our future posture might look like,” Kendall said, and the service will likely need to reorganize itself around new capabilities like CCAs and stealth tankers.

The service will also have to change “how we’re structured to do acquisition” to better keep up with a changing threat, as “we are not transitioning science and technologies [as] quickly … or efficiently” as needed into capabilities, Kendall noted.

The push to accelerate JATM production in particular is one of several ways the Air Force is seeking to expand its munitions capacity, Kendall said. The service is also requesting multiyear procurement authority for AMRAAM, the AGM-158 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM), and the Long-Range Anti-Ship Weapon (LRASM).

The boost in AMRAAM procurement isn’t a sign of trouble in the JATM program, deputy chief of staff for plans and programs Lt. Gen. Richard Moore said at a Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies event in early April.

Indeed, the extra funding for munitions procurement—Kendall characterized it as roughly $1.5 billion—“will help facilitize … [and] increase the production rate, not only for AMRAAM” but JATM as well, Brown said May 2.

“We want to get to JATM as quickly as we possibly can,” Moore said in April, emphasizing that “once production gets underway, “we’ll get to quantity as fast as we can.”

The emphasis on increased and faster munitions procurement is driven by lessons from Ukraine, Moore and other officials have said. The rapid drawdown of U.S. weapons to provide to Ukraine—without the ability to swiftly replenish them for U.S. stocks—is driving the Pentagon to seek an increase in production. That means the AMRAAM, and any production line “that’s hot and is producing right now,” is seeing an increase, he said.

‘Lie to Fly’ Is Part of Pilot Culture. An Air Force Doctor Wants to Change That

May 1, 2023 | By David Roza

An Air Force doctor wants to help fix a longstanding problem in aviation culture: the fact that pilots often misrepresent or withhold health information from flight surgeons out of fear that they might lose their flying status.

While the concept of “lie to fly” is well-known across the aviation community, Capt. Billy Hoffman, a neurologist, discovered there is little scientific research on the issue.

“I was just so surprised to find that, while this is a relatively common, known thing that pilots joke about, there really was not much in the medical literature,” Hoffman, a trained pilot himself, told Air & Space Forces Magazine. Hoffman emphasized his views do not necessarily reflect those of the Department of Defense or any other government agency.

“I see this in the clinic: some pilots delay care or they don’t disclose all their health information for fear of what it means professionally for them,” he said. “We need to measure the problem that we hope to fix.”

Hoffman was the lead author for a study on health care avoidance among military pilots which appeared in the Military Medicine journal this March. The study found that out of 264 military pilots, 190 (72 percent) reported a history of health care avoidance, 111 (42.5 percent) misrepresented or withheld information on a written health care questionnaire, 89 (33.7 percent) flew despite experiencing a new physical or psychological symptom that they felt probably should be evaluated by a physician, and 30 (11.4 percent) reported a history of undisclosed prescription medical use.

Continuing to fly without reporting troublesome medical symptoms “is overtly against regulations for U.S. military pilots because of aviation safety concerns and increased health risks to the pilot,” the study authors noted. “These data speak to the risk (both aviation safety and individual health-related) certain military pilots may willingly tolerate to avoid health care because of fear of losing their flying status.”

U.S. Air Force Capt. Kevin Domingue, 74th Fighter Squadron pilot, begins his takeoff from Moody Air Force Base, Georgia, to Davis-Monthan AFB, Arizona, April 5, 2023. . (U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Whitney Gillespie)

The military pilot study was a sub-analysis of a larger study that involved more than 3,500 pilots across the U.S., possibly the largest ever conducted on pilot health care avoidance. The military study marked one of the first attempts to scientifically analyze the widely-held belief that military pilots avoid health care, particularly mental health care, out of fear that certain medical conditions will take them off flight status.

Even so, some members of the Air Force community were unfazed by the results.

“I didn’t click the article … because it’s such an obviously obvious fact,” one commenter wrote on the unofficial Air Force subreddit in response to an Air & Space Forces Magazine article about the study.

“’If you ain’t lying, you ain’t flying,’” said another. “Heard that too many times and I’m only 8 years into it.”

Hoffman is familiar with those reactions and the argument that even with a health care-avoidant culture, aviation in general and military aviation in particular have relatively low rates of mishaps.

“But we all have a vested interest in aviation safety, and this is a barrier to health care where having a fresh set of eyes may help us meet the optimal safety standard in the most efficient way possible,” Hoffman argued.

Indeed, health care avoidance can still have a significant impact—a study showed five percent of fatal aviation accidents in U.S. general aviation in 2015 were estimated to be related to the pilot’s unreported health issues, though study authors said the figure likely underestimated the number of cases.

“We all stand to gain by working on this problem,” Hoffman said. “Everybody stands to win.”

‘Trust and Rapport’

Health care avoidance in pilot culture goes back to the earliest days of aviation. Military pilots in World War I faced unique medical challenges such as hypoxia, centrifugal force, and other environmental exposures. Military and civilian aviation authorities decided there needed to be medical standards to gauge whether pilots were fit to fly, as well as medical professionals who knew how to make that judgment.

As far back as the 1920s, aviation medicine textbooks encouraged flight surgeons to get to know their aviators so they could better identify poor health conditions.

“They had a sense, even in these early textbooks, that pilots would be worried about seeking care for loss of flying status,” Hoffman explained. Flight surgeons represented “a tool to mitigate health care avoidance or, maybe not telling all the information for fear of loss of flying status, and that culturally has really permeated.”

Even today, many flight surgeons wear flight suits and maintain a certain number of flight hours a year partly to help “build this trust and rapport in hopes of allowing pilots to disclose information and get the help they need,” Hoffman said.

A wide range of conditions could possibly require an aviator to undergo an evaluation, including mental health, cardiovascular conditions, or neurological issues.

Still, there is some wiggle room depending on individual circumstances. Different aircraft have different medical requirements, and military or civilian pilots can receive waivers for certain conditions. But it can still be tough to get an aviator to ask for help, partly because they are trained to be self-reliant.

“The type of person that is willing to sit in the front of a wide body airliner with 350 people on board over the North Atlantic at 40,000 feet and be ready at any moment to handle an engine failure, a radio failure, bad weather, and a medical emergency all at the same time … that’s a different skill set than the person who is going to raise their hand and say ‘I need to take a knee because I need help,’” Hoffman said. “There are many brave people who do that, but the type of things that we look for in pilots sometimes can run counter to help-seeking.”

U.S. Air Force Capt. Mason Weston, 26th Expeditionary Rescue Squadron HC-130J Combat King II pilot, flies the aircraft within the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility in preparation for a forward area refueling point mission, Dec. 10, 2022. (U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Daniel Asselta)

‘We need healthy pilots’

Hoffman’s family and friends include both military and civilian pilots, and one of his friends found himself in a dire situation where seeking health care may have jeopardized his flying career. That experience helped motivate Hoffman to keep studying the topic after graduating medical school. The problem is there have not been many rigorous analyses of why aviators avoid health care.

“A lot of people have different opinions, but to my knowledge nobody has ever gone after that question systematically,” he said. “We need healthy pilots, and they will always need to meet standards to fly. So what are the things that we can modify?”

Education, culture, stigma, and understanding of health care processes may lead to better outcomes, but first scientists and policy makers need to better understand the problem, and that will take research. Hoffman is the chairman of a working group at the Aerospace Medical Association working to establish a “wish list” of data needed to better understand the problem of health care avoidance in aviation.

“The hope is that it will be a tool to guide research both in this country and maybe further, because we need all hands on deck,” he said. “It is important that we have a central set of priorities that we are using.”

Some of those priorities include studying how to foster wellness and prevention in an organization; how to effectively screen pilots for mental health conditions; how to monitor pilots in between screenings or exams, especially with regard to mental health; and how to safely return pilots to flying after getting the help they need.

Hoffman has found plenty of interest for better understanding the issue. He has led 16 briefings in three countries with military organizations, U.S. and international airliners, aviation business leaders, and academic aviation institutions.

“We as researchers are just science people, we are not policy people,” he explained. “In my opinion, the hardest part is translating research into a usable product, so the foundation of that is building partnerships with stakeholders and the people who can hopefully use the data.”

A Global Phenomenon

Hoffman and his fellow researchers have several efforts underway to better understand health care avoidance in aviation. One of those is a multinational comparison study of 5,000 pilots across North America. They are starting another in Australia, and there are still others on the way.

“The data is suggesting that health care avoidance is not unique to the U.S.,” he said. “This might be a global phenomenon.”

Indeed, one study found 56 percent of U.S. pilots reported a history of health care avoidance for fear of losing their flight status, alongside 55 percent of Canadian pilots. Another study will interview between 100 and 200 pilots to ask about the factors that encourage or discourage the use of health care.

For example, many U.S. military pilots worry that even if they do seek health care and are temporarily taken off flight status, they may not be able to regain flight status due to a risk-averse waiver bureaucracy they feel does not consider individual circumstances. Hoffman said he has often encountered that fear of bureaucracy, and he hopes the studies he and other researchers are conducting will shed more light on it and other factors affecting health care avoidance.

“There are going to be hundreds of pages of transcripts talking with pilots about this problem,” he said. “We think that pilots probably have the solution: They have a vested interest in safety, so that is the whole premise of this.”

There are already some promising initiatives for pilot health care. Hoffman pointed out that peer support programs have emerged in U.S. and international airlines over the past several years. In the U.S., the Air Line Pilots Association International’s Pilot Peer Support program allows aviators to contact pilot volunteers to confidentially discuss financial problems, professional issues, relationship strains, and other sources of stress.

“The idea is that it is anonymous, so you are not going to get pulled from flying,” Hoffman explained. “That pilot on the other side who is trained and vetted for this type of role can talk them through it, direct them to resources. That is a really successful program, and this is just my opinion, but there may be a space for a formal peer support program across the Air Force.”

With all the enthusiasm and support for his research, Hoffman feels hopeful aviation can become more of a health care-seeking community in the future.

“When I talk to pilots, I try to convey that there are many reasons to feel optimistic,” he said. “In the end, it all comes down to safety. If health care avoidance is occurring, and we feel the data suggests that it does at a very high level, then working on this could only further increase safety. And so we all stand to gain.”

Hoffman advised aviators who may be wondering whether to report a troubling health condition to do so sooner rather than later. Especially given how self-reliant most pilots are trained to be, Hoffman said, a pilot’s condition is likely to be serious if he or she is at a point where they are considering asking for treatment.

“We’re human, it’s OK to need help,” Hoffman said. “In my opinion, the short-term fix is pilots should get care early and partner with their flight medicine clinicians to try to get that care and then get back to flying if that’s what they choose to do.”

Hoffman encouraged readers who are interested in supporting the research effort to reach him at his LinkedIn or Instagram page.

Unintended Escalation Could Lead to War with China, Experts Say

May 1, 2023 | By John A. Tirpak

The risk of war with China is increasing, experts said May 1. The most likely cause: a U.S.-Chinese conflagration in the Taiwan Strait that could spiral out of control.

“The prospects for war are growing,” Bonnie Glaser, director of the Trans-Pacific program of the German Marshall Fund of the U.S. said during a Brookings Institution webinar.

“I don’t think it would start with a Taiwanese declaration of independence,” she said, because the Taiwanese electorate has shown little enthusiasm for such a declaration, knowing that China would probably take military action in response. There’s equally little appetite to sign up for Beijing’s so-called one nation, two systems concept, especially after the People’s Republic stridently reneged on such a promise in Hong Kong.

Rather, Glaser argued, the Strait is “really the only potential trigger of a major war between the United States and China.”

“We have never seen two nuclear powers go to war,” she said, adding she had little confidence “escalation could be controlled, so this is the most worrisome scenario.” Glaser was referring to encounters between U.S. and Chinese aircraft and warships in the South China Sea and other locations in recent months, particularly after the visit of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to Taipei.

Glaser, along with Ryan Haas and Richard Bush of Brookings, were rolling out a new book, “U.S.-Taiwan Relations: Will China’s Challenge Lead to a Crisis?”

Glaser said the U.S. must have an informed debate on what is necessary to prevent war with China—something she and her co-panelists thought was possible.

Haas said China would prefer unification Taiwan, which it views as a breakaway province, to be as bloodless as possible. A war could devastate the Taiwanese economy—especially in the vital semiconductor industry.

“From Beijing’s perspective, their preference would be to try to isolate Taiwan as an issue between Taiwan and China and to just deal with it on their own,” and eventually “impose their will on the people of Taiwan,” he said.

The U.S. has a policy of strategic ambiguity regarding military intervention in a possible Chinese invasion of Taiwan, a position Haas argued the U.S. should maintain. The U.S. argues China should not unilaterally upend the status quo, a policy supported by many Taiwanese.

“What would the United States gain by foreclosing a potential solution to cross-strait differences and what costs or risks would we incur in the process?” Haas said. “The people of Taiwan have no enthusiasm for near-term unification. [They] also are very pragmatic and have shown through repeated elections that they also don’t have a lot of appetite for declarations of independence.”

Haas said the U.S. shouldn’t place Taiwan’s future in America’s hands.

“The goal of US policy and strategy isn’t to solve the Taiwan problem,” he said. “The people of Taiwan, mainland China, they’re not looking for the United States to play a mediating role.”

“This is an artifact of an unfinished Civil War,” Haas added. “The purpose of American strategy and policy is to keep a path open for a resolution to be found by the protagonist themselves.” That could take years, decades, or centuries, he said.

Beijing doesn’t like “this being an annex of US-China competition,” Haas added. “They really don’t like Taiwan being embedded into a broader regional or global framework, because that means that others around the world have a stake in what happens in the Taiwan Strait,” he said. He praised the Biden Administration, saying it’s done “a commendable job” of helping to turn Taiwan into an issue in which countries around the globe have a stake in preserving peace.

China seems willing to stick with its influence campaign to try to win over the Taiwanese electorate, the panelists said, and likely will if the U.S. does not insist on Taiwan becoming an independent country—counter to current U.S. policy. If the U.S. declares otherwise, China would view that as a bid to control Taiwan as a strategic outpost in China’s front yard, and this would almost certainly be met with a military response.

So far, President Biden’s repeated pledge that the U.S. would aid Taiwan if it was invaded has not reassured Taiwan and only irritated Beijing, the authors said.

Glaser noted that the U.S. needs to take a whole-of-government approach to the issue, and not simply a military one. Beijing, she noted, has been waging an information and cyber war, trying to diminish Taiwanese confidence in their own government, and undermining faith in the U.S.

Beijing’s goal is to get the Taiwanese electorate to be accepting of unification as inevitable and a more acceptable option than war, and a strong percentage seem to be swayed by this message, she said.

Asked if reassuring China that the U.S. has no designs on Taiwan as a pro-American outpost and possible military base would be a successful approach, Haas answered that “reassurance is only useful for a party that wants to be reassured, and I think that Beijing finds it more convenient to not accept our expressions of restraint and prefer to just call us liars.”

Haas told the audience that “Taiwan has a say in this. And if, in 2024, they were to elect a president who was more to Beijing’s liking … a lot of emphasis on military issues would disappear, because we would be in a zone of more cooperation than hostility.” However, there’s little evidence that the Taiwanese are headed in that direction, and are heeding U.S. advice to make themselves a military “porcupine,” Glaser said.

Cope Thunder Exercise Is Back in Philippines After 33 Years

May 1, 2023 | By Chris Gordon

The U.S. and Philippines air forces are reviving a combat training exercise after more than 30 years as both nations grapple with China’s growing military might. From May 1-12, American fighters will practice tactics with the Philippine air force in exercise Cope Thunder.

The drills began the same day as Philippines president Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos, Jr., met with President Joe Biden at the White House on the increasingly close defense partnership between the U.S. and the Philippines.

In less than a year since Marcos took office, the two sides have agreed to expand U.S. basing access to four new sites in the Philippines; the U.S. has sent fifth-generation fighters to visit; and the two collaborated on Balikatan, a massive exercise featuring more than 17,000 U.S. and Philippine personnel, along with 100 from Australia.

“I think the advancement of this alliance and this bilateral relationship has really been stunning,” said National Security Council Strategic Communications Coordinator John Kirby in a May 1 media briefing.

Cope Thunder brings back an exercise that was an annual event at Clark Air Base in the Philippines since the mid-1970s, but after the volcanic eruption of Mount Pinatubo devastated the airbase on the northern Philippine island of Luzon in 1991, the exercise was suspended. Shortly after, the U.S. closed the base.

Designed to mimic combat missions, Cope Thunder was moved to Alaska as a northern version of Red Flag, the Air Force’s premier training exercise. But now Cope Thunder is back—albeit in a more limited form. This year’s Cope Thunder includes some 160 Airmen and 12 F-16 fighters from the 35th Fighter Wing at Misawa Air Base, Japan, who will exercise with the Philippine Air Force, according to Pacific Air Forces (PACAF). Clark was eventually reopened as a Philippine base, and the 2023 version of Cope Thunder will occur there.

“Various mobility aircraft will assist with transport and logistics in support of the exercise but are not scheduled to participate in the exercise itself,” a spokesperson for Pacific Air Forces told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “The fighters will participate in various joint operations to exercise combined fighter operations; practice interoperability with tactical units; and bolster the combat capability of participating nations.”

The U.S. and the Philippines have a mutual defense treaty—and a mutual security concern in China.

“On a military level, there’s no doubt that Cope Thunder will send a clear signal that the Philippines will be building up an air force for their own air defense,” said Patrick Cronin, an Asia-Pacific security expert at the Hudson Institute. The U.S. said last month it was “in focused discussions” with the Philippines about selling it F-16s to fill a multirole fighter requirement. The Philippine Air Force’s primary fighter is the South Korean-made FA-50, originally designed as a trainer.

The Biden administration announced this week it is also transferring three C-130s to the Philippines.

China has long-running territorial disputes with the Philippines over islands in the South China Sea. Working with the U.S. on basing access, the Philippines is reasserting its independence as well as its close relationship with Washington. For the U.S., that regional partnership also bolsters U.S. forces’ ability to project power near Taiwan.

Shortly before Marcos met with Biden, the U.S. called out China for a run-in in which the Chinese coast guard harassed Philippine vessels. The U.S. condemned China’s actions and said it would provide the Philippines with more naval assets.

“What we’ve seen recently is a series of continuing provocative acts on the part of China testing and probing into the Philippines’ waters, in areas of deep concern to the Philippines,” a senior administration official told reporters April 30. “They’re looking for reassurance and a strong desire to maintain peace and stability in this complex period.”

“They’re a big growing economy,” Cronin said. “They’re an ally. We need to help them get a proper air force.”

Administration officials said the visit underscored their commitment to a mutually beneficial defense arrangement—as well as broader bilateral cooperation—not just more access for the U.S. military. Some experts said Beijing’s aggressive posture in the region pushed Manilla towards the U.S.

“In some ways, this is getting easier because of China’s own actions,” said Zack Cooper, a China expert at the American Enterprise Institute. “The Filipinos tried reaching out to China over the last five years and were hoping that it would result in China taking a different approach. But the Chinese kept the pressure up. I think that has convinced a lot of people in Manila that the only realistic option is to try and work with the United States to protect Philippine interests.”