T-7 Trainer’s IOC Slips Again, This Time to Spring 2027

T-7 Trainer’s IOC Slips Again, This Time to Spring 2027

The T-7A Red Hawk advanced jet trainer won’t achieve initial operational capability until early 2027, having slipped from its original goal of 2024 and a more recent timeline of 2026, Air Force acquisition executive Andrew Hunter said April 21. The delay stems from postponement of the Milestone C low-rate production decision, resulting from issues discovered in testing related to the ejection seat and more.

In an email transmitted through an Air Force spokesperson, Hunter told Air & Space Forces Magazine that “due to issues discovered in the early development and test phase of the program, the Air Force is delaying its Milestone C decision to initiate the buy of T-7A production aircraft. By extension, this will shift the T-7A program’s initial operational capability (IOC) into the spring of 2027.  We are pursuing risk reduction activities to mitigate some of these schedule challenges.”

The Air Force and Boeing team completed a sled test of the ejection seat in February and are set to conduct a taxi test “within the next several weeks,” Hunter said. Those tests will hopefully provide a path to resolving the ejection seat problems, he added.

The escape system ran into trouble when testing showed that for persons at the low end of the height/weight range, ejection from the T-7 posed a risk of serious injury. Industry sources have said, however, that the manikins used to test ejection forces may have been improperly instrumented.  

The T-7A program used new techniques like digital engineering and digital design to dramatically shorten the traditional time to go from initial drawings to first flight.

“As a result, we have identified and mitigated issues earlier in the development phase, prior to formal flight testing” and before a production decision, Hunter said. “This significantly reduces concurrency on the program and avoids more costly delays from discovery later in development, after a production decision.”

However, the problems discovered—including a “wing rock” issue—have pushed back the Air Force’s ambitious timeline to get the trainer in service.

The Air Force acknowledged last week the T-7A likely won’t get the green light for low-rate initial production until February 2026, but it could not at that time estimate what effect the delay would have on IOC. The production decision marked a 14-month slip from the update to the program schedule in late 2022.

The first production aircraft now will not be delivered until December 2025. Three of the five production-representative aircraft necessary for flight test are complete, and both Boeing and the Air Force anticipate formal flight testing of those airplanes will begin in the coming months.

The T-7A has also been afflicted by supply and labor shortage issues.

Boeing and USAF are “confident improvements and recent testing are yielding a safe and effective escape system,” an Air Force spokesperson said April 14.

The Air Force removed all T-7 production funds from its fiscal year 2024 budget request, saying the slip in the low-rate initial production meant production funds are not needed in the coming fiscal year.

The slip in the T-7A’s IOC date will now almost surely require the Air Force to further extend the service of some of its 60-plus-year-old T-38 advanced jet trainers, which continue to receive structural modifications and cockpit improvements.

The Air Force plans to buy 351 T-7As and has options to buy as many as 475.

In recent days, members of Congress have expressed concerns to the Air Force about trainer shortages causing delays in pilot production and deficits in pilot manning levels, particularly in fighters.   

Latest AMRAAM Cleared for Deployment; Multiyear Buy Bridges the Gap to JATM

Latest AMRAAM Cleared for Deployment; Multiyear Buy Bridges the Gap to JATM

The latest version of the AIM-120 AMRAAM, the Air Force’s primary air-to-air weapon, has been cleared for fleet deployment later this year, according to Raytheon, the missile’s builder.

The Air Force is planning a multiyear procurement of the missile to bridge the gap until its successor, the highly classified AIM-260 Joint Advanced Tactical Missile, is in production at scale, according to service leaders and fiscal 2024 budget request documents.

The AIM-120D-3 has completed the Air Force’s “Functional Configuration Audit” and is “on track toward fielding by both the Air Force and Navy this year,” Raytheon said in a press release. The upgrade program that keeps the AMRAAM capable of dealing with advanced threats is known as the Form, Fit, Function Refresh, or F3R.

The D-3 version of the missile includes 15 upgraded circuit cards and uses the latest software available, the company said.

“The missile brings tremendous capability to counter both current and future threats and is postured to receive continuous agile software enhancements,” the company said. The Functional Configuration Audit included bench testing, captive carry flights, and live fires from multiple USAF and Navy platforms, Raytheon noted. An FCA of an exportable version, the AIM-120 C-8 variant, will be completed later this year.

Air Force 2024 budget documents state the AIM-120D variant “delivers improved performance via Global Positioning System (GPS)-aided navigation; two way datalink capability for enhanced aircrew survivability and improved network compatibility; and incorporates new guidance software that improves kinematic performance and weapon effectiveness.”

The AIM-120 is used on “14 platforms in 42 countries,” Raytheon noted in its release. All future AMRAAM production will consist of D3 or C8 variants.

Production of the missile had been winding down—with 317 units purchased in fiscal 2022 and 271 in 2023—as the Air Force planned to ramp up production of the longer-ranged AIM-260 JATM around 2022 and achieve initial operational capability with the missile that year.

However, in the 2024 budget, the planned AMRAAM buy jumps back up to 457 units, followed by 462 in fiscal 2025 and 664 in 2026, before a sharp downturn to 118 in 2027 and just nine in 2028 and a further 27 missiles expected for the rest of the program.

Speaking at a Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies event April 6, Lt. Gen. Richard G. Moore Jr., vice chief of staff for plans and programs, said the AMRAAM program’s revised trajectory is driven in part by concerns of lawmakers that the industrial base’s ability to surge production of many weapon systems during wartime is very limited. The issue has been highlighted as reports indicate it will take the U.S. years to replenish its stocks with weapons being provided to Ukraine in its fight against Russia.

Now, “any munitions line that’s hot and is producing weapons right now” is getting a boost, Moore said.

It’s not limited to AMRAAM, either, he added.

“It’s any place where we can buy munitions,” Moore said. “Because the reality is, when we tried to surge [for] … Ukraine, the surge capacity wasn’t there. And industry is ramping up as quickly as they possibly can.”

Air Force budget justification documents for AMRAAM say there is an “industrial leadtime of 40 months” between ordering the missiles and taking delivery.

Asked if the reversal of direction on AMRAAM production indicates a problem with JATM, Moore said the service is not seeing a delay at the moment.

The JATM was revealed at a 2019 industry conference by the program executive officer for armaments at that time, Brig. Gen. (now Maj. Gen.) Anthony Genatempo, now the PEO for command, control, communications and networks. The JATM has significantly longer range than AMRAAM and addresses the longer range of threat missiles, like China’s advanced PL-15, which has a longer reach than AMRAAM.

Moore said JATM is still progressing, and some of the facilitization funding requested for AMRAAM in the 2024 budget “will help us to get to JATM faster.”

Once JATM, made by Lockheed Martin, goes into production, he said, “we’ll get to quantity as fast as we can.”

The AMRAAM’s funding decline in the latter part of the decade may suggest the timing of the Air Force’s ramp-up in JATM production, likely with some overlap.

Budget documents say the Air Force is “initiating a Multiyear Procurement (MYP) strategy for AMRAAM; JASSM; LRASM; and Standard Missile-6, under the Large Lot Procurement (LLP) concept.” The JASSM and LRASM are variants of the AGM-158 stealthy cruise missile; the former intended for land targets and the latter for ships. Th SM-6 is a Navy ship-based anti-aircraft missile.

The multiyear procurement strategy across all these systems at once is intended to produce “synergies in production across different but related programs” which can generate efficiencies, the budget documents said, which in turn can “result in greater production capacity, accelerated delivery, and lower unit costs.”

The documents said the LLP concept builds on the existing multiyear construct, leveraging the savings derived from economic order quantities “to procure additional lots of missiles under a buy-to-budget concept, to further improve efficiencies and yields.”

The Air Force buys AMRAAM for itself and the Navy.

As Kadena Hosts a Farewell Ceremony to the F-15, Lawmakers Question Force Size in Pacific

As Kadena Hosts a Farewell Ceremony to the F-15, Lawmakers Question Force Size in Pacific

After more than 40 years of operations, the F-15 Eagles at Kadena Air Base, Japan, are going out with a bash. Last fall, the Air Force announced the two permanent F-15C/D squadrons at the base would wind down operations. On April 17, the top Air Force commander for the Pacific gave the aircraft a personal goodbye, as Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach, the head of Pacific Air Forces, took a ride in an F-15D from the 44th Fighter Squadron.

Wilsbach flew with the 18th Wing to “bid the F-15C/D models farewell,” according to a release. Wilsbach was assigned to Kadena twice in his career and commanded the 18th Wing from 2009-2011. Wilsbach’s flight was part of the larger celebration for those who supported Eagle operations at the base since the first aircraft arrived at the tail end of the 1970s.

The Air Force says it is retiring the F-15s out of necessity as they are too old to keep in service. Lt. Gen. Richard G. Moore, Jr., deputy chief of staff for plans and programs, told Congress in March that there are “three that are grounded forever and four that are only capable of one-time flight to the Boneyard.” Before the wind-down, Kadena had around 48 F-15s.

But the sunset of F-15s at Kadena is raising broader concerns over the Air Force’s capacity in the Pacific.

During a House Armed Services Committee hearing April 18, top Indo-Pacific military and defense officials were grilled on whether the military has enough resources in the Pacific, America’s primary long-term strategic focus.

“We’ve talked about China being the pacing threat, near-peer competitor threat,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) said. “I’ve seen the talk, I’ve seen the strategy documents. I don’t know that we’ve actually seen as much physical movement.”

Bacon, a retired Air Force brigadier general and pilot, specifically expressed concern about the USAF’s fleet size when he asked Adm. John C. Aquilino, head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM), if he had enough forces.

“Overall, the force has gotten smaller,” Aquilino said, referring to the services’ overall size. “There’s no doubt about that.”

Aquilino said that since China is the “pacing challenge” according to the National Defense Strategy, he doesn’t want the number of deployed fighters closest to China to shrink.

“I’m concerned with any removal of combat power from the Indo-Pacific theater,” Aquilino said. “As we align and execute the National Defense Strategy, the positioning of those forces certainly would be beneficial to be maintained. Inside of the first island chain where they’re postured … I have supported those forces to remain in place and/or be replaced by equivalent capability and numbers.”

The first island chain is a strip of islands in the western Pacific that are closest to the east Asia mainland, running from Japan to the Philippines and including Taiwan, the self-governing island the Chinese government claims is a rebel province. Important U.S. air bases are located within the area in South Korea and Japan. Kadena is on Okinawa around 450 miles from Taiwan.

Four different types of fighter aircraft from four different bases have cycled through Kadena since November 2022 to fill out the service’s requirements. The base currently hosts fourth-generation F-15E Strike Eagles and fifth-generation F-35 Lightning IIs, in addition to the remaining Eagles. Kadena’s F-15C/Ds are the last of the type in service with the Active-Duty force. It is unclear what the final footprint at Kadena will look like.

Some experts have said the Eagles’ departure exposes a larger issue in the U.S. military that goes beyond any one aircraft type or base.

Retired Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, dean of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, said the Air Force lacks enough fighters to meet the needs of military commanders—an issue that is only growing, he said, as the Air Force plans to shrink its fleet by around 1,000 manned aircraft by 2027 in its current plans.

“The bottom line is that the Air Force requires more resources to buy more fighters and man them appropriately to meet the demands of the National Defense Strategy,” said Deptula, who in 1979 was part of the initial group of pilots that set up F-15 operations at Kadena. “This isn’t about the Air Force. We will not be able to provide the combatant commander in the Pacific with the numbers of advanced fighter aircraft that they need to successfully execute any contingency war plan in the Pacific. That’s the reality of the path that we’re on today.”

The Air Force has noted more advanced fighters are now deployed to Kadena on a rotational basis, but Deptula warned that plan is a “short-term band-aid that will continue to wear out our overall fighter inventory and crews even faster than they’re scheduled to be used up today.”

The U.S. military is hoping boosted alliances in the Pacific can pick up some of the slack and has forged new defense partnerships with the Philippines and Australia. South Korea and Japan, home to Kadena and two other U.S. Air Force bases, have also stepped up their defense posture.

The Japanese government in particular has responded to China’s growing military might and aggressive actions by announcing plans to dramatically ramp up its defense spending after decades of emphasizing a pacifist approach. The day before his F-15 flight, Wilsbach met with top leaders from the Japanese Air Self-Defense Force, and in a news release, Pacific Air Forces said the commanders discussed joint operations.

“Cooperation among Allies and partners is critical in deterring aggression and enhancing interoperability allowing our forces to counter military aggression by sharing responsibilities for common defense,” the release stated.

Humorous Drawing of 1980s Air Force Life Still Rings True for Many Airmen

Humorous Drawing of 1980s Air Force Life Still Rings True for Many Airmen

On April 3, visitors to the Air Force’s unofficial Reddit page were greeted with a photo of a quirky illustration that, despite being 35 years old, still resonated with many Airmen today.

“I would buy a high-res version of this in an instant,” wrote one commenter. 

“DUDE. Take my money,” wrote another. 

Titled “The Aviator,” the picture is a drawing made with markers on poster board. It depicts a stereotypical pilot wearing aviator sunglasses and a flight jacket recounting a ‘There I was’ story to a skeptical-looking enlisted Airman. The background tells the story, where the pilot flies an F-16 with fuzzy dice hanging from a rearview mirror, winged gremlins mess with the canopy, a satellite bounces off a UFO, and the moon plays a grand piano in the clouds.

Those are just the start of dozens more details awaiting eagle-eyed viewers. Elsewhere in the illustration can be found a box of “Pre-Flite Chex” cereal; an A-10 dragging a water-skier through a lake; and Snoopy flying his doghouse. One Air Force pilot who served from 1981 to 2001 said the illustration was spot-on.

“Simply amazing the level of detail and even more importantly, the thought that went into creating it,” retired Lt. Col. Gregg Montijo, a former A-10 pilot, told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “They must have lived through a good portion of it or been exposed to many of the elements in the picture.”

air force
“The Aviator” includes dozens of hidden, humorous details. Watermarks included for protection of Mike Conrad’s intellectual property. (Courtesy Mike Conrad)

Turns out, the artist who created the illustration never served a day in the Air Force. Mike Conrad is a 1980 West Point graduate who served in the Army Signal Corps. His exposure to Air Force life came from his father, an Air Force veteran, a few months spent at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, and other Airmen he knew. 

“A big phrase I always heard was ‘There I was,’ and then they’d tell you about their whole mission,” Conrad said in an interview with Air & Space Forces Magazine. Conrad’s nephew was the one who originally shared the piece on social media. 

“I thought ‘OK cool, I’ll do that and then I’ll just put everything into it that I can think of that has to do with aviation’: every joke, even stupid puns, and everything else I could throw in there that I thought would be funny,” Conrad said.

Indeed, “The Aviator” was just the latest in a long line of zany creations that Conrad put to paper. The artist grew up drawing and reading comics, and at West Point, he created a series of comics called Peter Parsec: Space Cadet, which poked fun at Academy life and science fiction tropes. After graduating, he received requests for caricatures of sergeants or commanders as farewell gifts when they would retire or move to another base. For each request, Conrad interviewed people who knew the Soldier so that he could fill the piece with personal touches—and a dash of humor, of course. 

“They would frame it and give it to him as a farewell,” he said. “I did it because it was fun and they appreciated it.”

Eventually, Conrad wondered if he could turn a profit selling pieces that poked fun at aspects of military life. He drew inspiration from George Finley, a fellow West Point graduate with a similar satirical style who himself was inspired by the legendary World War II cartoonist Bill Mauldin. Conrad combined those influences with that of caricaturist Mort Drucker, who had a knack for stuffing humorous details into every corner of a piece.

“I would always do that, put as much stuff in there as I could,” Conrad said.

His first work was about military intelligence. “MI” features a Soldier wearing a trench coat over his camouflage uniform, surrounded by an army of other Cold War spy jokes. Conrad was supporting a military intelligence battalion at the time, and his work sold out fast.

The next piece, about the Army’s noncommissioned officer corps, didn’t sell as well, and neither did “The Aviator”—not at Air Force bases, not at Army-Navy stores, and not even at aviation art stores.

“I thought I might have just missed the boat completely because of the weak reception it got,” he said.

Conrad went on to make a career of his art and work with clients ranging from Hollywood to Lockheed Martin to SeaWorld, according to his website. And earlier this month, he discovered the Air Force illustration he made nearly four decades ago was actually right on target.

“It blew me away, because I thought that it was not the thing that Air Force guys liked,” he said. “I’m really glad to see that people are saying ‘This is just the kind of thing we wanted.’”

The artist was particularly happy that commenters enjoyed his characterization of the enlisted Airman. As a former officer himself, Conrad said he knows NCOs run the show in most military units. There are dozens of other details which are open to the viewer’s interpretation. For example, the can of Raid the pilot is carrying could refer to the term “air raid” or it could be a joke about cockpits being infested with bugs. The point of some details is simply to swap out the “right” object, like an F-16 control stick, with something that is not supposed to be there, like the handlebars of a bicycle. 

Viewers may also spot a pair of eyes lurking from the shadows somewhere in the illustration. Those eyes were Conrad’s signature for many years. Other details, like the red balloons floating in front of the F-16, seem to find new life over the years, especially as the Air Force shot down multiple spy balloons over the U.S. earlier this year. And still other details, like the NCO’s bored expression, live forever. That was part of why George Finley’s Vietnam-era illustrations inspired Conrad, and what Conrad strives to include in his own work.

“It’s eternal, it still plays now,” he said. “The uniforms are different, but the rest of it is right there.”

New Pilot Training Delayed by Aging Trainers, Vice Chief Says

New Pilot Training Delayed by Aging Trainers, Vice Chief Says

Problems with aging Air Force trainer aircraft are slowing down pilot production, making a persistent problem worse, according to written and spoken testimony by Vice Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin before the House Armed Services readiness subcommittee.

Allvin’s written statement detailed the that in fiscal 2022 the Air Force: 

  • Suffered a net loss of about 250 pilots 
  • Ended 1,900 pilots short of its goal of 21,000 
  • Produced 1,276 pilots, 105 fewer than 2021 and 224 short of its 1,500 goal 

Making matters worse is the state of the Air Force’s trainer fleet. Its decades-old T-6 and T-38 trainers are in such a state that it now takes up to two years just to get a future pilot from commissioning to the start of pilot training, Allvin said.

Asked by Rep. Jennifer Kiggans (R-Va.) how long it takes to train an Airmen to be a pilot, Allvin said the timeline should be around 18 months for mobility pilots and two years or more for fighter or bomber pilots. But getting newly commissioned officers into the pilot pipeline is taking up to two years longer because there aren’t enough training aircraft available.

“From the time they are commissioned—because of the challenges we’re having with T-6 and T-38—we have a little bit of a backup. It can be as many as four years,” Allvin said. “So almost an 18 month- to 24 month-wait just to get into pilot training.” 

The Air Force is seeking $12.6 million for T-38 safety and sustainment and $11.3 million in T-6 modifications in its fiscal 2024 budget request in an effort to address the problems, Allvin wrote. 

The new T-7A Red Hawk is supposed to replace the T-38, but won’t go into production until 2025, having encountered delays, according to the Air Force’s latest timeline. That raises the pressure to keep the T-38 going. 

Pressure is also rising on the persistent pilot shortage. Asked by Rep. Carlos A. Giménez (R-Fla.) about the problem, Allvin stressed that the Air Force continues to have enough pilots to fill all its cockpits, but it suffers in staff jobs where pilot experience would be beneficial.  

“In order to have a healthy pilot professional force, you need first and foremost the combat cockpits filled,” Allvin said. “Then you need the trainer cockpits filled. Then you need the test cockpits filled. And after you fill out the cockpits, then our next priority is the leadership—you want the leadership positions filled. And then after you have all those filled, then you go to the staff positions. That is where we are currently absorbing our shortage: in the staffs.” 

Only about 70 percent of staff positions typically filled by experienced pilots are manned today, Allvin said. “If this sustains over time, then we will have a sort of misshapen force, where you won’t be able to have professionally developed enough of the rated membership to provide that expertise and leadership at the higher level,” Allvin said. “But for right now, we have not had any of our combat training or test cockpits go empty.” 

Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin testifies before the House Armed Services Committee on Readiness for the Air Force’s fiscal year 2024 budget request, Washington, D.C., April 19, 2023. U.S. Air Force photo by Eric Dietrich

As things stand now, pilots’ professional development is affected by the shortages, Allvin wrote.

The Air Force has struggled to retain more pilots using retention bonuses and, more recently, by making it easier for pilots to transfer from the Active force to the Guard or Reserve

The service has also made changes to the pilot candidate scoring mechanism, reducing emphasis on prior flying experience, by encouraging more diverse applicants, and by developing Undergraduate Pilot Training 2.5, a new curriculum and process for training pilots that makes greater use of simulators and personalized training to help candidates better prepare for actual flying. 

Space Force Recruiting Is Strong, but Army, Navy, USAF Woes Don’t Help

Space Force Recruiting Is Strong, but Army, Navy, USAF Woes Don’t Help

As the Army, Navy, and Air Force suffer recruiting troubles, the Space Force has been an anomaly, turning away thousands of applicants eager to join the new force. But that doesn’t mean the recruiting woes of the other services may not ultimately impact the Space Force anyway, warns Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. David D. Thompson. 

Interservice transfers could be affected by the other services’ recruiting struggles, he said.

“We need about 700 new recruits off the street, but we still need—and will for the next several years need—about 700 interservice transfers from the other services,” Thompson told the House Armed Services readiness subcommittee. “And while we’re doing very well in recruiting off the street, as the other services have challenges in their recruiting, it becomes more difficult for them to release folks for interservice transfer.” 

Pressed by subcommittee chair Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.) on exactly how many transfers could be affected, Thompson said it’s too early to tell. 

“The question will be working with the services, how much can they afford to give us, and we just don’t know that yet,” Thompson said. “We’ll need to wait and negotiate later this year.” 

Most Space Force Guardians started in the Air Force, but many have transferred from the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps. The Space Force took in 720 Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines in fiscal 2022, and announced it was taking in 511 more in fiscal 2023.  

Another interservice transfer board for fiscal 2024 is slated to start accepting applications in the “late spring of 2023,” according to a Space Force release. 

It is unclear whether the 2023 or 2024 transfers—or how many—will be affected by negotiations with the other services. 

However, the other services’ vice chiefs laid out in plain detail how much they’re struggling. Army Gen. Randy A. George said his branch is likely to miss its recruiting goal by 10,000 Soldiers this fiscal year, while Adm. Lisa M. Franchetti said the Navy projects to fall short by 6,000 new Sailors. 

For the Air Force total force, Gen. David W. Allvin said the shortfall will be 10,000. “That’s about 3,400 in the Active-Duty, 3,100 in the Reserves, and over 4,000 in the Guard.” 

When it comes to recruiting entirely new Guardians, the Space Force is still on track to hit its goals, Thompson told lawmakers. And as the service grows and matures, the cohort of Guardians without prior military service will grow too—at the Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colo., Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman noted that roughly one-third of enlisted Guardians and a quarter of officers have only ever served in the Space Force. 

Transfers, however, remain important as the service continues to consolidate space missions from across the Department of Defense. In FY 2022, the Space Force absorbed five Army Wideband Satellite Communications Operations Centers, the Naval Satellite Operations Center and more. Leaders hope to accept the Army’s Joint Tactical Ground Stations in October. 

Russia Ups Its Dangerous Behavior in Syria With ‘Unprofessional‘ Flying, Missile Shot at MQ-9

Russia Ups Its Dangerous Behavior in Syria With ‘Unprofessional‘ Flying, Missile Shot at MQ-9

Russia has stepped up its harassment of U.S. forces in Syria, overflying American positions with armed fighters and closing within a few hundred feet of U.S. fighters, U.S. officials said. Perhaps most alarmingly, a Russian surface-to-air missile system fired at a U.S. drone back in November.

Lt. Gen. Alexus G. Grynkewich, the head of Air Forces Central, expressed alarm at the actions of Russian warplanes, warning in a statement they increase the “risk of miscalculation.”

According to AFCENT, Russia has routinely flown into airspace over Syria that the two countries previously agreed would be controlled by the U.S., and its fighters have come as close as 500 feet to American warplanes in that airspace. Armed Russian warplanes have flown over U.S. ground positions more than two dozen times since the beginning of March.

A Russian surface-to-air missile was even fired at an American drone over Syria. On Nov. 27, an SA-22 site in eastern Syria engaged a U.S. MQ-9, a U.S. official told Air & Space Forces Magazine. The missile missed. The incident was first reported by The Washington Post.

Air Forces Central said the incidents with Russian warplanes demonstrate a “dangerous” pattern by pilots that threatens the roughly 900 U.S. troops in Syria assisting local groups in the battle against ISIS militants, as well as their American partners. Russia is in the country supporting the regime of Bashar Al-Assad.

“This kind of unprofessional and unsafe conduct in Syria is not new but has grown more frequent over the past two months and places our troops in the air and on the ground at risk,” U.S. Central Command spokesman Col. Joe Buccino told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “This kind of behavior is not what we expect from a professional force.”

The most recent incident came April 18, when a Russian warplane flew into U.S. airspace in Syria. Airspace over Syria is subject to an agreement in which U.S. and Russian forces are supposed to stay out of each other’s way, including a 34-mile deconfliction zone around the Al Tanf Garrison. The two countries operate a deconfliction line designed to prevent the two militaries from directly clashing.

“U.S. Air Force fighter aircraft took off from air bases in the region and intercepted the Russian fighter,” Air Forces Central said. “During the intercept, the Russian pilot maneuvered unprofessionally within 2,000 feet of U.S. aircraft, violating standing deconfliction protocols.” The U.S. declassified video of the incident.

Since March 1, there have been “63 total overflights as of 19 April, of which 26 were armed,” AFCENT spokesperson Capt. Lauren T. Linscott told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

Retired Gen. Jeffrey L. Harrigian, who served as AFCENT commander between 2016-2018, said the number of recent Russian overflights was “significant.”

“They know where our guys are because we’ve been there forever,” Harrigian told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “It begs the larger question of what their mission is because you’re just putting yourself in a situation where somebody on either side could make a bad decision and the consequences of that are going to be something that nobody wants.”

According to Linscott, the 63 incidents violated one or more of a number of protocols agreed upon by the two countries: Russian aircraft flew through areas which the U.S. and Russia have agreed to notify each other prior to transiting, violated mutually agreed-upon standoff distances from aircraft and ground forces, and conducted armed overflights of ground forces.

“Over the course of my career, I have not seen this kind of disregard for agreed upon protocols and deconfliction rules,” Grynkewich said.

An April 2 incident was of particular concern to AFCENT. In that encounter, a Russian Su-35 had what AFCENT called an “unsafe and unprofessional” exchange with an American F-16.

“The Russian Su-35 had not been deconflicted when it entered the airspace,” AFCENT said. “These aggressive actions by Russian aircrew demonstrate a lack of competence and could lead to miscalculation and unintended escalation.” The command also released a video of that encounter.

The latest Russian actions come as U.S. personnel already face deadly aerial attacks on bases in the country from Iranian-backed militant groups. The most recent attack against a U.S. site occurred April 10 in northeast Syria when a rocket landed around Mission Support Site Conoco.

Grynkewich previously said there had been off-and-on periods of Russian activity, but things had begun to pick up in late February. Overall, Russia’s activity has gotten increasingly dangerous following its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, he said. The Russian Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment on the latest incidents.

Russian Su-35s have had two known run-ins with U.S. aircraft in just over a month. On March 14, two Su-35s intercepted a U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone surveilling the Black Sea. One of the Russian planes clipped the MQ-9’s propeller, forcing the U.S. to down it due to damage, the Pentagon said.

On April 4, two days after the Su-35 and F-16 incident, Grynkewich flew an F-16 from the 77th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron in a combat mission over Syria out of Prince Sultan Air Base, Saudi Arabia, in support of the campaign against ISIS.

“It is critical to me as the AFCENT commander to have the greatest possible awareness of the challenges our warfighters face in the air,” Grynkewich said of the mission.

The U.S. military has insisted that despite the threat of Iranian-backed militant groups, Russian interference, and Turkey’s attacks on Kurdish groups the U.S. is partnered with, America remains committed to rooting out ISIS. Grynkewich said they are prepared to defend the air with force if necessary—something the U.S. Navy did when an F/A-18 shot down a Syrian Su-22 in 2017, though U.S. and Russian aircraft have never clashed. AFCENT has been strained by limited resources, however, struggling to meet its two and half-squadron requirement. It recently received aging A-10s, based out of Al Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates, to ensure it could meet its minimum capacity requirements.

“We’ve seen Russian aircraft come within 500 feet of our aircraft,” said Grynkewich. “As a professional air force, we will do everything in our power to ensure we maintain safety of flight and engage according to our special instructions. However, if any entity threatens the safety and security of coalition forces in the sky or on the ground, we will take swift action to address the threat.”

Bring Back the Boneheads: Air Force to Reactivate Historic Fighter Squadron With F-35s

Bring Back the Boneheads: Air Force to Reactivate Historic Fighter Squadron With F-35s

It was an unusually humid day in February when Air Force Col. Chris Bergtholdt picked up a shovel at Tyndall Air Force Base, Fla., and went about a peculiar task. He and his deputy, Lt. Col. Alex Goldfein, walked together into a construction area where, at a spot marked by four posts near the intersection of two sidewalks in front of where the old 95th Fighter Squadron building once stood, they began to dig.

It did not take long to find what they were looking for—two coffins made of plywood that had rotted away in the wet, sandy dirt. Inside each coffin was a skeleton: not a real one, but a full-scale, medical school-quality imitation wearing a flight jacket.

The skeletons, both called Mr. Bones, served as mascots for the ‘Boneheads’ of the Air Force’s 95th Fighter Squadron. The first Mr. Bones was buried in 2010 when the squadron, at the time an F-15C/D training unit, was deactivated, Bergtholdt said in an interview with Air & Space Forces Magazine. Airmen bought a new Mr. Bones when the unit was reactivated as an F-22 squadron in 2013, but he too was buried in 2019 when the unit was disbanded again after Hurricane Michael devastated the base.

Four years later, the historic squadron will be reactivated as an F-35 unit this June. It will be the first of three such squadrons to stand up at Tyndall, and Mr. Bones is one of the first squadron members to return.

“There was a whole culture around Mr. Bones, kind of this aura and personality around him even though obviously it’s this inanimate object,” said Bergtholdt, commander of Tyndall’s 325th Operations Group and a former F-15 student at Tyndall’s 1st Fighter Squadron.

The arrival of the F-35 is part of a larger transformation at Tyndall, which is being rebuilt as an Installation of the Future that can stand up to future storms. But Bergtholdt didn’t want the old heritage to end up crushed under construction equipment.

“That whole area is being dug up and all of our new facilities and hangars on the flightline are being constructed at the moment, so we just didn’t want that history to be lost,” he said.

Indeed, digging up the past seems to be one of the first steps in writing a new chapter in the long story of the 95th.

f-35
U.S. Airman First Class Bryan Arancibia, 355th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron crew chief, signals to an F-35A Lightning II pilot assigned to the 354th Fighter Wing, Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska, during Weapons System Evaluation Program 23.05 at Tyndall AFB, Florida, Feb. 22, 2023. U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Anabel Del Valle.

‘We’re the first ones’

The two Mr. Bones now sit on a filing cabinet outside Bergtholdt’s office, where they await their incoming commander, Lt. Col. Michael Powell of Luke Air Force Base, Ariz. Powell has his hands full with not only standing up a new F-35 squadron, but doing it at an installation that has not been built yet.

“We’re the first ones, which is going to be extremely challenging, but also extremely rewarding, because we will set the pace, the cadence, the culture,” he told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “It’s so important for us to set that right.”

Powell is due to arrive at Tyndall in June, about two months before the unit’s first F-35s actually arrive. In an era where the Air Force is preparing to operate from austere locations in the Pacific Ocean, Airmen with the 95th will get an early taste at Tyndall, much of which is still under construction.

“We’re going to show that we can execute, train and be ready in kind of a more austere environment in our own base,” Powell said. “This is going to feel a little bit more like a flying exercise or a deployment where we often are hopping between a couple different buildings and temporary facilities. I think it will feel like that for a couple years, and as long as folks recognize that, then I think we can execute just fine.”

Powell is bringing in an accomplished crew to lay the groundwork. Future Boneheads include F-35 pilots with experience standing up squadrons at Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska, and RAF Lakenheath, United Kingdom; old hands from Tyndall’s F-22 days who will return as Lightning II pilots; and younger pilots who can bring fresh perspectives to the mix. Building a team from scratch is not typical for most new Air Force squadron commanders, but Powell is eager for the challenge.

“That’s what I’m really pumped about, is to build combat capability there,” he said. “Not just the iron or the jets, but building the people, the team, the mission so that we can actually go answer the callings required.”

Those callings could send members of the 95th Fighter Squadron all over the globe, where they may perform defensive counter-air, suppression of enemy air defenses, or other missions as a multirole F-35 squadron.

“We’re really the swing-role fighters here in [the continental United States],” Powell said. “If we’re called to go to the Pacific, we go. If we’re called to go to Europe, we go.”

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The emblem for the ‘Boneheads’ of the 95th Fighter Squadron. The emblem for the reactivated squadron will look very similar.

Fighters to the Bone

When the F-35s arrive, they will be the latest in a long line of aircraft flown by the 95th Fighter Squadron stretching all the way back to Feb. 9, 1942, when the unit was first activated. Equipped with twin-tailed P-38 fighters, the squadron escorted bombers, shot down enemy fighters, and struck ground targets during World War II. In the skies above North Africa and Italy, the squadron tallied “more than 400 victories, including 199 air-to-air enemy kills, with only 19 losses,” according to one unit history. The squadron also picked up its nickname, ‘The Boneheads,’ and in 1954, its emblem of a grinning skull in a top hat was officially approved.

“Emanating from a cloud, a death’s head with an arrogant expression is symbolic of the squadron’s dauntless capability of accomplishing the mission in any weather, day or night; primarily stalking the enemy to destruction,” wrote Peter Coffman, historian for the 325th Fighter Wing. “The lightning is representative of the unit’s rapid striking power. The full dress, particularly the top hat, represents the squadron personnel’s sentiment that the unit is ‘tops.’”

Over the years, the 95th flew a range of fighters including the F-86, the F-102, and the F-106 before taking on the F-15C/D training mission from 1988 to 2010. Though it was unclear when Mr. Bones first joined the unit, the skeleton often attended parties, standing in an open coffin, and temporary duty travel. The F-15C is a single-seat aircraft, but former Bonehead and retired Lt. Col. Mark Hayes said Mr. Bones would fit in a storage bay behind the cockpit.

However, all that travel and social activity left the mascot vulnerable to theft. Hayes recalled other squadrons sending back photos of the captive skeleton enjoying life beyond Tyndall.

“We would try to get him back or pay whatever the ransom was, like a case of beer or something like that,” said Hayes, who is now an F-22 academic and simulator instructor at Tyndall. He looks forward to having his old squadron back.

“Even though it’s a different aircraft, we’ll make sure we welcome them and help them out,” he said.

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Aircraft assigned to the 95th Fighter Squadron line up on a flightline in an undated photo shared by the 325th Fighter Wing for the squadron’s 80th birthday.

‘That squadron’s nailing it’

Powell and the rest of his team will likely welcome help as they craft the framework for F-35 operations at Tyndall. They need to create a system for sharing the airspace over the Gulf of Mexico with three other Air Force bases; procure and set up ground-based targets as Tyndall shifts into a multirole mindset; and build up the right infrastructure and procedures to keep the entire operation ticking.

“I just really hope that we can do a good job of making those right the first time,” Powell said.

If it all works out, the next two F-35 squadrons can hit the ground running and just focus on their culture, manning and training plans, Powell hopes. It will take two years for the 95th to get operational, but the next squadrons should be able to reach that stage within a year. Powell’s goal is simple; Excellence will run bone-deep at the 95th.

“I want others to look and be like ‘that squadron’s nailing it, they’re excellent, they do everything the right way,’” he said. “They understand that’s the standard that comes with us. That’s what I want.”

USAF’s Spectrum Warfare Wing Looks to Build Up Personnel, Facilities, and Institutional Expertise

USAF’s Spectrum Warfare Wing Looks to Build Up Personnel, Facilities, and Institutional Expertise

A shortage of personnel and facilities, as well as a loss of talent as the Air Force divests some of its electronic warfare capabilities, are all challenging the service’s lone spectrum warfare wing’s buildup to full capability, its commander said April 18

Col. Joshua Koslov, commander of the 350th Spectrum Warfare Wing at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., said during an AFA Warfighters in Action event he faces a disconnect between requirements and resources.

“Managing that risk is where I spend most of my time,” Koslov noted. “I don’t have enough people, I don’t have the right facilities,” but “we’re working with the Air Force and [Air Combat Command] to get there.”

The 350th stood up in June 2021, but nearly two years later, Koslov said he has over more than 200 military and civilian vacancies each—“and we’re going to continue to grow.”

Perhaps it’s just as well those vacancies exist, however, because “I only have 50 more seats to give in the facilities that I have today,” Koslov added.

The 350th, in addition to prosecuting electronic attack and electronic warfare, is responsible for programming the threat catalogs for all F-35s worldwide and providing operational capabilities and advice to theater commanders and the Air Force leadership, among many other responsibilities. While it does not “buy widgets,” Koslov said, it sets requirements and standards by which new hardware has to fit in with the EW enterprise.

The people and facilities shortages are just part of the growing pains of developing a new organization, Koslov said, “but we have a team that’s really positive about the effort.”

A major milestone in that effort, the declaration of full operational capability (FOC), is still a little ways off, as Koslov indicated he will wait until the wing stands up a new 950th Spectrum Warfare Group, giving him more ability to deploy units.

In the meantime, one of his main worries is that “sustaining the wing is going to become hard from a personnel perspective … as we divest platforms.”

“We build electronic warfare officers based on platforms, and that’s not the best way to do that,” Koslov said. “As we divest platforms or divest crew members off of platforms, your pool of electronic warfare officers gets a lot smaller.”

The wing is looking to keep people in the field with meaningful work and assignments, but it’s early in that process, he said.

That challenge is compounded by the fact that electronic warfare officers tend to “stay in [their] tribe for a long time,” focusing exclusively on their particular platform. Building crews “that can transcend the Air Force and think Air Force-wide and then Joint Force-wide is a challenge for us,” Koslov said.

Likewise, engineers that work with or for the 350th tend to come in for a specific hardware or software project before moving on. Koslov said he would like to “retain that talent,” once they’re versed in the spectrum warfare trade.

“I think about that a lot,” he added. “It’s worrisome to me” that expertise is being institutionally lost.

The Spectrum Warfare Wing came into being after the Air Force realized that 20 years of focusing on counterterrorism and counterinsurgency, with no peer competitor in the field, had caused the Air Force’s electronic warfare skills to “atrophy,” in the words of Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown.

While he couldn’t get into details, Koslov said the wing is trying to take a more holistic approach to the EW fight, transitioning away from typically kinetic responses to more subtle ones that save on munitions and extract more information.

Traditionally, USAF has “rolled back” an integrated air defense system by striking at emitters, receivers and shooters; the Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses (SEAD) mission, he explained.

“It’s still what we’re trying to do,” Koslov said. “It’s just more modern. The enemy’s going to be more agile, they’re going to move faster, and so we need the systems and the communications capability and the air managers and joint warfighters who can understand what the [Coalition Forces Air Commander’s] objectives are that day and make decisions in order to support … those objectives.”

As an example, Koslov pointed to a Chinese Surface Action Group (SAG).

In that SAG, “there’s probably five to seven boats, but there’s probably 45 EW targets that we need to cover,” and “either exploit, take away, deceive, defeat, in a time and place of our choosing, based on what the mission commander is asking us to do.”

The Air Force has “allowed ourselves to be focused solely on the kinetic aspect of killing targets, but there are a lot of ways to neutralize a target, and the spectrum provides” ways to do that.

Given tight budgets, using fewer weapons or assets to eliminate threats through electronic attack or electronic warfare could be especially important.

Elsewhere, the wing is also heavily involved in exercises and will participate in the upcoming Northern Edge wargame, Koslov said.

However, despite habitual operator demands for more realistic live-fly threats on USAF’s wargame ranges, an increasing number of spectrum warfare wargame elements will take place in the live, virtual, and constructive world. That is due in part to the difficulty in obtaining threat equipment, Koslov said, but also because realistic electronic warfare conducted in the open can be observed by adversaries, and USAF would rather keep its tricks hidden.

Participating in wargames also helps heighten awareness of EW at the Air Warfare Center and 57th Wing, Koslov said, and ensures it is included in “China-based” campaign plans.

Koslov also outlined five things he needs to realize USAF’s Spectrum Warfare vision:

  • Crowd-sourced flight data, where spectrum activities are fed into a single database that can be shared across multiple platforms.
  • Electronic Battle Management, a component of the Air Force’s broader Advanced Battle Management System. “It’s the way we move EW data across platforms in the fight,” Koslov said, to meet the air commanders’ objectives.
  • Cognitive EW, or the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning to analyze and respond to EW threats.
  • Accessible data to ensure the service can work with industry to develop new jamming and response capabilities in a more timely fashion.
  • “Being able to assess all that”—to determine readiness “you have to be able to assess something,” and “this is a big, long readiness discussion with a partnership piece in the middle of it,” Koslov said.