Space Force Will Get New Capability for ‘Full Spectrum Operations’ by 2026, Saltzman Says

April 19, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

Within a few years, the Space Force be able to conduct “full spectrum operations” in orbit, Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman said this week—hinting at a new space weapon that could be used offensively while offering scant details.

Testifying before the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee, Saltzman highlighted the new capability as an example of how the Space Force has used the extra funding Congress provided the service’s classified budget in fiscal 2023.

“I’m happy to say that by the end of my tenure, if I make it all the way to [2026], that you’re going to see a substantial on-orbit capability that allows us to compete in full spectrum operations,” Saltzman told lawmakers. “I’m not sure I could have said that two years ago, but the fact that we’ve accelerated the programs and we’ve built a program that delivers and capability in terms of three, four, or five years, I’m very comfortable that we have a program in place that will do just that.”

In its unfunded priorities list for the 2023 budget, the Space Force asked for $327 million for classified programs and Congress obliged.

What exact capability or system the Space Force has been able to accelerate the development of remains a secret, like many of the Pentagon’s space activities. Saltzman’s mention of “full spectrum operations” suggests the ability to conduct both offensive and defensive operations. The Space Force rarely discusses its offensive capabilities, and officials are often reluctant even to mention offensive operations in space.

However, that reluctance is starting to dissipate. When Saltzman unveiled his “Competitive Endurance” theory at the AFA Warfare Symposium in March, he included an entire section on the need for responsible counterspace campaigning—the ability to hold an adversary’s assets at risk.

During a media briefing at the Space Symposium conference on April 19, Saltzman confirmed that the new capability he mentioned to Congress would enable full spectrum operations—a spectrum that could include both offense and defense.

“I think that all the service chiefs would tell you our job is to make sure that the services are organized, trained, and equipped in order to provide the President and the Secretary of Defense full spectrum decision-making capability, right?” Saltzman said. “Meaning given a particular problem, what are the options that the military can bring to the table, a full spectrum set of options? And so really, we don’t think in terms of offense or defense. Those are operations, not systems.

“And so when I say I’m bringing on a capability, I’m bringing on a capability to support a range of operations. We don’t think about an F-35 as being offensive or defensive. We don’t think about an aircraft carrier, is that offensive or defensive? We just know it provides a capability that in an operation will give the President and the Secretary of Defense options to pursue military objectives.”

Saltzman isn’t alone in emphasizing the need to be able to conduct a broad range of activities in space. Discussing deterrence at the Mitchell Institute Spacepower Security Forum earlier this month, Maj. Gen. David N. Miller, director of operations, training, and force development for U.S. Space Command, said SPACECOM is pivoting to a “warfighting force design.”

“If we can’t fight through that initial salvo or whatever [an adversary’s] demonstration is, and demonstrate some level of resilience—that we’re going to be able to not just take it, but respond, then it’s not credible,” Miller said.

Such comments reflect a broader shift in the U.S. military’s approach to space, said retired Air Force Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, dean of the Mitchell Institute.

“It wasn’t that long ago that you couldn’t say space and offense in the same sentence together,” Deptula said at the Spacepower Security Forum.

The domain is changing rapidly, though. In his keynote speech at the Space Symposium, Saltzman reeled off statistics about the increases in satellites, debris in orbit, and launches over the last 15 years.

“What we must recognize is that the rate of change across these variables is accelerating,” Saltzman said. “We are now in the exponential part of the curve in many different areas related to our business.”

Given that rapid growth, Saltzman warned against complacency and said both the military and industry need to be ready to rethink the fundamentals.

“To enable the Space Force to be successful in this new era, we must aggressively dismantle old processes and procedures,” Saltzman said. “For those of you in blue tapes or those that interact with the Space Force offices, if you haven’t challenged your assumptions, your timelines, how you assess mission assurance, how you do verification and validation, I’m sorry to tell you, but you’re a part of the frozen middle.”

Pentagon Wants ‘Rapid Response’ Authority for New Starts Without Budget

April 19, 2023 | By Chris Gordon

The Department of Defense is pushing Congress to give it the authority to start new developmental programs before a budget is approved—a change the Pentagon argues would make critical new programs less vulnerable to Washington gridlock.

“Time is going by, and all those things that we worked hard to understand and formulate good solutions to, we’re not able to act on them yet,” Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall told reporters at the Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colo. April 19. “That’s a lot to give away to an adversary when it’s totally unnecessary.”

The legislative proposal, sent to Capitol Hill by the Pentagon on April 12, is called “Rapid Response to Emergent Technology Advancement or Threats.” The DOD wants up to $300 million per year in development funds that could be used “in response to urgent operational need”—creating a discretionary pool of money and the Congressional authority to get started on vital projects.

Kendall has set an ambitious program of modernization for the Air Force and Space Force to ensure the U.S. stays ahead of China, a main concern for the Biden administration, the U.S. military, and lawmakers. In its 2024 budget alone, the Air Force has 12 brand new programs, sometimes called new starts.

But there’s a problem: the services can’t begin many efforts. New starts require authorization from Congress through the budgeting cycle for a new fiscal year, creating what the DOD sees as a needless two-year delay to get started on new tech. The fresh authority, if created, would shave at least a year off of development time for some new starts, Kendall estimated.

“Our pacing challenge, China, is moving aggressively to field systems designed to defeat the U.S. and our standard practices are not responsive to this threat,” the DOD wrote in its legislative proposal to Congress. “If we want to be competitive with China, we can’t cede two years of schedule to them.”

The DOD proposal noted that America’s advanced military technology underpins its strength. The Pentagon doesn’t want to wait for Congress while other countries come up with breakthroughs. Under its proposal, the DOD could “initiate new start development activities” to “leverage an emergent technological advancement of value to the national defense” or “provide a rapid response to an emerging threat.”

Asked what he would consider his top priority if granted such authority, Kendall cited Collaborative Combat Aircraft, the future unmanned aircraft that will fly alongside the Air Force’s manned platforms. CCAs are already a large part of the Air Force’s future fleet plans, but the service is currently not allowed to start working on the program, Kendall noted.

“This is a limited authority,” Kendall said. “It would allow us to go through the preliminary design review phase.” He stressed that the Pentagon is not trying to take away Congress’s authority to ultimately decide what the DOD spends its money on.

Congress is currently divided, with the House held by Republicans and Democrats in narrow control of the Senate. While the Biden administration has submitted its fiscal 2024 budget, work on the Hill is already behind schedule before the new fiscal year begins at the end of September. For the past two decades, the government has spent considerable time operating under continuing resolutions—stopgap spending bills that fund the government at current levels but don’t allow new programs. While there is bipartisan consensus that CRs have a negative impact on the military, a fight over the looming debt ceiling and the Biden administration’s broader spending aims will likely leave the Pentagon hanging on past the current budget’s sell-by date.

“I am now waiting, and we’ll be waiting for quite some time to go forward,” Kendall said.

Kendall testified on Capitol Hill about his budget April 18 and pitched the proposal to lawmakers. Twenty-four hours later, on the drive over to the conference in Colorado, Kendall realized he needed to flag the administration’s proposal more publicly, he said.

“We’ve been in a position for some time to move forward on those things that we decided we need to do, but now we’re waiting for the budget process,” Kendall said. “That’s what I’m more conscious of now, that I’m in a phase where we’re trying to persuade the Congress to give us the money, and then Congress, of course, has to pass laws before we can do this work.”

During a separate hearing that occurred while Kendall was on the Hill, the House Armed Services Committee grilled DOD and military leaders in charge of the Pacific, with lawmakers expressing bipartisan concern the U.S. was lagging behind China in crucial technology. Kendall, who formerly served as the Pentagon’s top acquisition official, and the DOD said that is exactly the issue they want to address with the new proposal.

“In prior decades, United States military advantage was built on technological advantage driven primarily by DOD investment,” the Defense Department said. “DOD was able to plan, develop, and field technology years before adversaries. Today DOD investment totals less than 3 percent of all dollars spent globally on research. Therefore, emerging technology is not always predictable and is not confined to the United States. Peer adversaries are able to take advantage of emerging technology at the same time as, or faster than, the United States.”

Kendall hopes his warnings will get through to Congress, arguing the services are “trying to go as fast as they can.” But the issue is how fast the legislature will let them go.

“There’s one aspect of this that I find particularly troubling right now, and we’ve done something about it,” Kendall said of the proposal. “I think there is a willingness to discuss this kind of initiative that might not have been there in the past.”

Air Force Launches First ICBM Test Since Russia ‘Suspended’ New START

April 19, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

Air Force Global Strike Command test-launched a Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile April 19 from Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif. The launch, at 5:11 a.m. Pacific time, had been planned for months in advance.

It was the first such test since Russia’s Vladimir Putin said he was “suspending” his country’s participation in the New START treaty and since Russia and the U.S. said they stopped sharing data on their nuclear arsenals.

The U.S. has canceled or postponed ICBM tests in the past to avoid the risk of escalation or miscommunication at times of heightened tensions. A March 2022 test was canceled after Russia invaded Ukraine and Putin raised to high the alert status of Russian nuclear forces. Another test was postponed in August, as China conducted military exercises around Taiwan in response to then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s visit there.

The Biden’s administration said it would no longer share “high-level” details on its deployed nuclear weapons with Russia in March, a response to Russia Putin’s “suspension” of New START in February.

The U.S. continues to share notifications of the movement of strategic bombers, missiles, and submarines with Russia, however, along with operational status, as required under New START, officials said. Under the Ballistic Missile Launch Notification Agreement signed in 1988, the U.S. and Russia agreed to give each other 24 hours notice before testing ICBMs.

The April 19 launch also tested the Airborne Launch Control System, used to control ICBM launches from the air. Airmen from the 625th Strategic Operations Squadron at Offutt Air Force Base, Neb., launched the unarmed missile from aboard an airborne Navy E-6 Mercury, supported by Airmen from the 341st Missile Wing at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Mont.

The last prior Air Force ICBM test came in February, shortly before Russia’s announcement regarding New START. Air Force Global Strike Command last tested the Airborne Launch Control System in August 2022.

The April 19 test concluded when the re-entry vehicle splashed down at Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands after traveling some 4,200 miles.

The Next Intel Leak May Not Resemble the Most Recent One, Expert Warns

April 19, 2023 | By David Roza

As the Department of Defense begins a review of its policies and practices for handling classified information in the wake of a massive intelligence leak, a national security expert cautions that the next intel leak may not resemble the one that just happened—and so officials must try to be proactive in considering next steps.

“You don’t protect against just the last threat,” Sina Beaghley, a senior international and defense policy researcher at RAND, said in an interview with Air & Space Forces Magazine. “You have to address that, you have to close the gaps. But you also have to think about where technology, culture, all of those things are leading and then posture the government to be able to react to it, both in the recruiting world and in terms of trust, vetting, and mitigation.”

The question of how the military handles security clearances and classified information has been hotly debated ever since a trove of classified information on the war in Ukraine, the Indo-Pacific and Middle East military theaters, and other sensitive subjects were leaked in an online group chat. Airman 1st Class Jack Teixeira was arrested April 13 in connection with the leak, and, in the days since, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin III and Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall directed separate reviews of their departments’ security practices.

On the Air Force side, the corrective action includes a review of the Massachusetts Air National Guard’s 102nd Intelligence Wing, Teixeira’s unit; a headquarters-level appraisal of Air Force policies; and a stand-down within the next 30 days for all Air Force and Space Force units to review their security practices and conduct training as necessary.

Approximately 700,000 people in the Department of the Air Force have security clearances, an Air Force spokesperson told Air & Space Forces Magazine. While the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency does not break down the average timelines to obtain a security clearance by military branch, it takes an average of 57 days to secure an initial secret clearance and 51 days to undergo a secret periodic reinvestigation. It takes an average of 94 days to obtain an initial top secret clearance and 115 days to undergo a top secret periodic reinvestigation.

At a Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee hearing and in a memo sent to the entire department, Kendall, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., and Chief of Space Operations B. Chance Saltzman stressed the importance of setting and following standards for who “needs to know” certain sensitive information.

“Enforcing the need-to-know requirement is a chain of command responsibility—these are important, conscious choices leaders must make at every level,” the three officials wrote.

But enforcing “need-to-know” may be easier said than done.

“Who makes that judgment?” Beaghley asked. “Need-to-know is partly a self-policed activity: I shouldn’t be searching something totally beyond what my mission is. But who knows exactly what my mission is? How do you determine what my permissions should be? Especially when job functions and tasks can be fluid in a national security environment.”

The U.S. government began sharing classified information more widely among authorized individuals after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, after criticism that national security agencies did not share information and coordination enough. Even now, officials call for even more info-sharing and cooperation across organizations.

The challenge in placing limits on that sharing would be deciding what information individuals need to do their job within the complex national security bureaucracy.

Access is one of several areas where the military and the government as a whole has to strike a balance between trusting individuals and protecting sensitive information.

Starting in 2018, the government launched Trusted Workforce 2.0, a multiyear effort intended to make the vetting process faster by implementing a single system. Instead of reviewing individuals with security clearances every five to 10 years, the new system continuously vets individuals via automated record checks of criminal, terrorism, and financial databases and public records. All Air Force and Space Force personnel with security clearances are subject to continuous security vetting, an Air Force spokesperson said.

But while Trusted Workforce 2.0 does improve the time it takes officials to get important information on security clearance holders, there are still instances when individuals don’t set off any triggers but still present a threat.

“When you have an individual who’s been cleared and been determined to by the government to be trustworthy at a certain level which, in this case, as I understand, is the highest level, what do you do when that person decides to not do what they said they would do as far as non-disclosure?” Beaghley asked. “How do you mitigate that?”

One commonly-suggested solution is to monitor a security clearance holder’s social media presence. There is policy for how government agencies can seek out information about a candidate’s public social media presence at the beginning of a security clearance investigation, and some agencies do so, Beaghley said. There have also been a few test programs that have gathered and analyzed information about individuals’ public activity on social media after they receive their security clearance, but reporting is mixed on how productive those programs were for the resources invested.

Even if there was a successful program that included public social media monitoring as part of a continuous vetting process, monitors are not currently allowed to access a private chat room like the one in which Teixeira allegedly leaked classified information, at least as part of a normal background investigation. It also may not be knowable under which social media profiles or handles a security clearance holder posts.

Beyond social media, the government has also directed employees to report on coworkers exhibiting suspicious behavior. Various federal government agencies also have insider threat programs that monitor employees’ computer activity for anomalous behavior.

Though all these systems complement each other, there are still possible blind spots that could allow for misuse of access. For example, if individuals with security clearances print out a classified document, they generally would not be inspected when they leave a classified facility, Beaghley said.

“In most cases, no one’s patting you down, looking through your bags. So here is the possibility that a trusted individual with access can print out classified material and quite literally walk out the door,” she explained.

While some have called for systems to monitor the printing of classified materials, there are still other ways to create and share classified information—all of those ways is part of what is straining the government’s current information security system.

PowerPoints, PDFs, Word documents, emails, video teleconferences, and chat messages can all be forms of secret or top secret records that must be marked with the appropriate classification level. Each new form of digital record also presents a challenge for how to protect it.

“We live in a world where technology has allowed for sharing of information in a much more robust way,” Beaghley said. “Technology has enabled a lot more national security secret-making and secret-sharing.”

All of these factors mean that even when the Air Force and the Department of Defense complete their current reviews of information security practices, they should continue to reevaluate their practices as technologies change, Beaghley said.

“There’s no silver bullet,” said Beaghley. “The next leak likely won’t look like this particular situation. … The government is evaluating options, learning from prior scenarios, but it’s really important to think about future scenarios and try to plan for and mitigate against the things that have not yet happened but could potentially in the future.”

China Shows ‘Concerning Lack of Interest’ in Talks, DOD Says

April 18, 2023 | By Chris Gordon

U.S. officials expressed growing concern April 18 about the lack of communication between the Chinese and American militaries in light of increasingly aggressive actions by Beijing. It has now been nearly five months since Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III last spoke to his Chinese counterpart, despite a number of high-profile incidents involving the countries’ forces.

In written testimony to the House Armed Services Committee, principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs Jedidiah P. Royal said China had “a concerning lack of interest in the important lines of communication that underpin a stable defense relationship between our countries.”

In addition to Austin’s lack of communication with his Chinese counterpart, Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s planned trip to China—originally set for February—has been postponed indefinitely.

“There is clearly a high level of frustration with the lack of engagement from Beijing,” Zack Cooper, a China expert at the American Enterprise Institute, told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

In a November meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, President Joe Biden underscored the importance of avoiding conflict and maintaining open lines of communication. And later that month, Austin met China’s then-Minister of National Defense Wei Fenghe in Cambodia.

But since then, attempts to contact high-level officials from the Chinese military after a Chinese intercept of U.S. Air Force RC-135 over the South China Sea and the U.S. shoot-down of a Chinese spy balloon have been rebuffed, U.S. officials said.

“The Department of Defense believes strongly in maintaining open lines of communication between Washington and Beijing to ensure competition does not veer into conflict,” Royal said. “Immediately after downing the [People’s Republic of China] high-altitude balloon in February, the Department submitted a request for a call between Secretary Austin and the PRC Minister of National Defense because we wanted to ensure there was no misunderstanding or miscalculation in Beijing about our actions. Unfortunately, the PRC declined our request. This was not far from the first time that the PRC has declined invitations to communicate from the Secretary, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or other Department officials.”

China’s military, officially called the People’s Liberation Army or PLA, has also declined longstanding, lower-level requests from top regional U.S. military commanders to meet their military counterparts—requests that predate the latest incidents, officials said.

“I’ve had a standing ask to meet with the Eastern Theater commander and the Southern Theater commander from the PLA for my entire time in his job, and they have yet to accept it,” Adm. John C. Aquilino, the head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM) since 2021, told lawmakers. ”The theme here is we continue to try to engage with our partner, but there’s a different opinion there.”

Experts noted that China views communications, or the lack thereof, between officials as strategic. China’s current unwillingness to engage in talks comes as it claims America is seeking to upend the status quo in Taiwan through arms sales to the island, Congressional engagements with Taiwanese leaders, and the Biden administration’s trade policy towards China.

The PLA has been more forceful in its activities around Taiwan since then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) visited the self-governing island in August 2022. After Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen met with current House Speaker Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R.-Calif.) and other lawmakers during an unofficial visit to the U.S. earlier this month, China staged aircraft carrier operations and live-fire military drills that practiced a blockade of Taiwan, which the Chinese government claims as a rebel province. U.S. officials have said the increased Chinese military activity around the island is the “new normal.”

In addition to China’s public actions, not talking to high-level American officials sends an implicit message of displeasure to Washington, experts said.

“I think that the Chinese are withholding dialogue from us in the hope that they will have some impact on our policies,” said Bonnie Glaser, a China expert at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. “I think they’re trying to get our attention. They’re going to have to decide at some point whether or not they want to engage.”

The U.S. says its interest in open military-to-military channels stems not from a desire to ligate policy but to avoid disaster. In late December, the U.S. claimed a PLA fighter came within 20 feet of a U.S. Air Force RC-135 in an “unsafe” maneuver. China has intercepted other U.S. military flights and allegedly harassed a vessel from the Philippines, a U.S. ally, with a high-powered laser.

“In just the past 12 months, PLA aircraft and maritime vessels have continued to conduct inherently risky intercepts against U.S., ally, and partner assets in the air and at sea, increasing the unacceptable danger of an accident,” Royal said in his testimony.

U.S. officials said it is ultimately in China’s interest to be on speaking terms with the U.S. if a serious incident occurs—a position echoed by regional security experts.

“They’re treating us like communications channels are only a favor to us, when in fact, it’s of mutual benefit,” said Patrick Cronin of the Hudson Institute. “There will be other surprises. When they precipitate a crisis, they better answer the phone, because the escalation will put the entire region at risk.”

Air Force Picks New Guard Locations for F-35, F-15EX Fighters

April 18, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

The Air Force announced locations for two new F-15EX squadrons and a new F-35 unit on April 18, all within the Air National Guard.

The preferred location for the new F-35A squadron is Barnes Air National Guard Base, Mass., while the F-15EXs are slated for Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base New Orleans, La., and Fresno Air National Guard Base, Calif.

All three bases currently operate older F-15C/D model fighters which the Air Force wants to retire in the coming years.

At Barnes, the 104th Fighter Wing would gain 18 new F-35s. At NAS Joint Reserve Base New Orleans and Fresno, the 159th Fighter Wing and the 144th Fighter Wing would each get 18 F-15EXs.

The selection of all three bases is contingent on an environmental impact analysis, which will be completed by the spring of 2024 before a final selection, the Air Force said. The service did not say when the new aircraft might arrive.

Air National Guard officials have said they want to assign F-35s or F-15EXs to every ANG unit that currently flies the F-15. In 2020, the Air Force announced that Jacksonville Air National Guard Base, Fla., will get the fifth-generation F-35, while Kingsley Field and Portland Air National Guard Base, both in Oregon, will get the fourth-gen F-15EX, a heavily-upgraded version of the F-15E.

The ANG already has one location with the F-35, the 158th Fighter Wing at Burlington Air National Guard Base, Vt. Guard units at Truax Field, Wisc., and Dannelly Field, Ala., are slated to start receiving the F-35 later this year, which will replace their F-16s.

Those locations and units are in addition to the F-35’s Active-Duty units and locations, including:

Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska

Hill Air Force Base, Utah

Luke Air Force Base, Ariz.

Nellis Air Force Base, Nev.

RAF Lakenheath, U.K.

Tyndall Air Force Base, Fla. (planned)

Air Force Reserve is also slated to get F-35s at Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth, Texas.

The F-15EX, meanwhile, is still undergoing testing at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla. The Air Force has yet to announce any Active-Duty locations for the fighter.

Lockheed Will Miss Its Goal for F-35 Deliveries in 2023

April 18, 2023 | By John A. Tirpak

Lockheed Martin will deliver fewer F-35s than expected in 2023 due to delays with the Tech Refresh 3 update, as well as the three-month pause in engine deliveries, but Chief Executive Officer Jim Taiclet expects the government will sign an F-35 Performance Based Logistics contract by the end of the year.

Speaking on a first-quarter earnings call with financial reporters April 18, Taiclet said “we do expect a fraction of total expected 2023 deliveries to be impacted later this year, due to both software maturation related to Technology Refresh 3 and hardware delivery timing.”

He did not specify how many aircraft the company would be short, but the goal for delivery in 2023 was 156 airplanes.

Part of the delay is also due to the three-month halt in F135 engine deliveries from Raytheon’s Pratt & Whitney to Lockheed, which Tacilet noted are provided as government-furnished equipment. Lockheed was prevented from conducting delivery test flights—and hence, deliveries—of F-35s for three months while Pratt investigated a harmonic vibration problem discovered after the crash of an F-35B at Lockheed’s Fort Worth, Texas plant in December 2022.

Company chief financial officer Jay Malave added later that the smaller number of deliveries were also due to Tech Refresh 3 (TR-3) “hardware delivery timing.” Taiclet noted that TR-3 is in flight testing now.

The TR-3 includes new computers, processors, and software that provide the basis of the F-35’s Block 4 upgrade, which in turn will feature new sensors, expanded electronic warfare, and information gathering and dissemination capabilities.

“We’re in the … very late innings of fully implementing” TR-3, Taiclet said. The upgrade “gives us much greater capability to really make the F-35 a true ‘edge compute’ node, and an open architecture ‘Internet of Things’ construct system.”

Taiclet outlined the three elements of an edge-computing node in a 5G system as

Data storage onboard the vehicle

Data processing onboard the vehicle

Multi-pass ability to get data back to the cloud

All of that is “coming together” in the form of many subcomponents, he added—it’s a “leading edge” accomplishment for the aerospace industry, he said.

“There have been some delays in some of the hardware and software,” Taiclet acknowledged. “But we’re really in the in the very late innings of getting this all together. We’re literally in flight test right now. And we will…wrap all that up by October or December.”

After that, “we’ve got to see what the test results are, and work with the government to define exactly when everybody’s ready to go and implement in our production system … those software loads, and that’s where we’re at now.”

Taiclet also stressed the project’s high degree of difficulty and said the firm is “going to make sure that it’s done right.”

Given the planned increases in U.S. purchases of F-35s in fiscal year 2024—83 airplanes—and future budgets, as well as international orders for F-35s, the program is in good shape, Taiclet said, noting Canada’s decision to buy 88 of the jets and Germany’s recent order.

He did not, however, discuss the Air Force’s decision not to proceed with a new engine for the F-35.

Kendall Promises ‘Full-Court Press’ Security Review After Intel Leak

April 18, 2023 | By David Roza

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall told lawmakers his department is committed to a complete review of its security practices after an Airman allegedly shared a trove of classified documents on the war in Ukraine, the Indo-Pacific and Middle East military theaters, and other sensitive subjects on an online group chat.

In the meantime, the Air National Guard unit to which the accused Airman was assigned has been temporarily relieved of its intelligence mission while a second, more focused review unfolds, an Air Force spokeswoman told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

“There is a full-court press going on about this,” Kendall told the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee on April 18. “We are all disturbed about it and we are working very very hard to get to the bottom of it and take corrective action.”

Besides the ongoing criminal investigation of Airman 1st Class Jack Teixeira, the Air National Guardsman accused of leaking the documents, Kendall said the DAF has initiated three efforts to get a better handle on its policies for protecting classified information:

First, the Air Force Inspector General is reviewing the Massachusetts Air National Guard’s 102nd Intelligence Wing, Teixeira’s unit, to see if anything went wrong in terms of following Air Force security policies. In the meantime, the 102nd Intelligence Wing “is not currently performing its assigned intelligence mission,” Air Forces spokeswoman Ann Stefanek said. The 102nd’s mission has been temporarily reassigned to other Air Force organizations, she said.

Second, the department is conducting a “complete review of our policies themselves within the staff to make sure our policies are adequate,” Kendall said.

Third, units across the entire Air Force and Space Force will conduct a stand-down for Airmen and Guardians to review their security practices and conduct training as necessary. The stand-down is to be conducted in the next 30 days.

“Obviously we have got to tighten up our policies and our practices to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” the secretary added.

Kendall’s announcement comes the day after Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III asked the entire military to review its information security programs, policies, and procedures. The initial findings of the review are due in 45 days, along with any recommendation to improve those systems.

“Adverse security incidents are a stark reminder that adherence to required security procedures underpin all aspects of the Department of Defense mission, and we must continually reinforce these requirements to keep pace with evolving threats,” Austin wrote in an April 17 memo about the review. “It is therefore essential to carefully examine the sufficiency of, and compliance with, all security policies and procedures.”

Kendall said one of the key points of the Air Force-wide review is to emphasize the principle of ‘need to know.’ Earlier in the hearing, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. said that Teixeira, a cyber transport systems journeyman, had access to sensitive information but did not necessary have a need to know some of that information.

“We need to enforce [need to know] much more rigorously than it appears to have been in this case,” Kendall said.

In a memo sent to Airmen and Guardians on April 18 and provided to Air & Space Forces Magazine, Kendall, Brown, and Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman made the point even more finely.

“Safeguarding national security information is not limited to ensuring personnel possess the appropriate clearance and training, they must also have the need to know,” they wrote. “All of us are responsible for obeying and enforcing the rules that protect classified information.”

The department leaders said Airmen and Guardians should be “continually alert” for personnel accessing classified information without the need to know.

The advice echoes analyses made by the National Insider Threat Center at Carnegie Mellon’s Software Engineering Institute, which studies insider threats—instances where individuals with authorized access to an organization’s assets misuse that access to the detriment of the organization.

“This is not a technology problem, it’s a people problem,” Daniel Costa, technical manager of enterprise threat and vulnerability management at SEI, previously told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “We use technology to help us manage those risks, but at the end of the day—especially in terms of making the organization less mistake-prone—that largely comes down to management-related and HR-related activities.”

US, South Korea Begin New Round of Air Exercises

April 17, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

The U.S. and South Korea began another round of air drills April 17—days after U.S. Air Force B-52 bombers flew over the Korean Peninsula as the two countries follow through on their pledge to conduct more joint air exercises.

The latest exercise, dubbed Korea Flying Training, kicked off at Gwangju Air Base, according to the South Korean Ministry of Defense. Japanese and Korean news agencies reported approximately 110 aircraft will be participating in the drills, which will last until April 28.

Images released by the 8th Fighter Wing at Kunsan Air Base, South Korea, show U.S. Air Force F-16s and U.S. Marine Corps F-35s and F/A-18s arriving at the base on April 13 and 14.

Also on April 14, a pair of USAF B-52s flew alongside American F-16s and South Korean F-35s over the Republic of Korea.

“The training offered the alliance its latest opportunity to further strengthen its interoperability by demonstrating a combined defense capability and providing extended deterrence in the defense of the Korean Peninsula,” Pacific Air Forces said in a statement.

B-52s are in the region as part of a Bomber Task Force deployment to Andersen Air Force Base, Guam that began a few weeks ago.

Korea Flying Training comes a little more than five months after the joint air exercise Vigilant Storm, which mostly took place in November 2022. Those drills included about 1,600 sorties and 240 aircraft—roughly 100 of them USAF planes.

In early January, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III said during a visit the U.S. would step up its military exercises with South Korea to include expanded use of air assets such as fifth-generation fighters and strategic bombers.

Since then, B-1s have flown with South Korean fighters four times, and B-52s have now done so twice.

The step-up in exercises and training has drawn a sharp response from North Korea, which has tested a range of missiles, including ICBMs, in recent months. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has embarked on an ambitious missile program that saw a record number of tests in 2022. Tensions have continued to build on the Korean Peninsula, leading some South Korean politicians to publicly speculate about developing or hosting nuclear weapons in the country, something that hasn’t happened since 1991. In addition to the air drills, South Korea, Japan, and the U.S. held joint missile defense exercises on April 17.