USAFA to Double Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Staff After Rise in Incidents

USAFA to Double Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Staff After Rise in Incidents

March 31, 2023 | By David Roza

Three weeks after a new study revealed rising reports of unwanted sexual contact at the military service academies, an Air Force official said the U.S. Air Force Academy is doubling its sexual assault prevention and response (SAPR) workforce from 12 to 24 employees.

“This increase will improve data-driven prevention, evaluation, and outcomes,” Lt. Gen. Caroline M. Miller, deputy chief of staff for manpower, personnel, and services wrote in a statement delivered to the House Armed Services Committee at a personnel posture hearing March 29.

On March 10, the Department of Defense released its annual report on sexual harassment and violence at the military service academies, showing a steady increase in the total number of incidents of sexual harassment and violence across the academies. In the 2021-22 academic year, there were 206 reports of sexual assault across the academies, a near-sixfold increase over the 35 reported in the 2007-08 academic year.

At the Air Force Academy, the DOD study found that 22.3 percent of women indicated experiencing unwanted sexual contact in the 2021-2022 academic year, compared to 15.4 percent in 2018. Meanwhile, 4.3 percent of Air Force Academy men said they experienced unwanted sexual contact in the 2021-2022 academic year, compared to 1.8 percent in 2018.

The study found a similar trend for sexual harassment. The number of female Air Force Academy cadets who experienced sexual harassment rose from 46 percent in 2018 to 60 percent in 2022, and the percentage for male cadets rose from 13 to 19 percent.

An infographic summarizes the key results of the Department of Defense’s most recent Annual Report on Sexual Harassment and Violence at the Military Service Academies. (Department of Defense infographic).

Sexual harassment and assault is also a problem at civilian colleges and universities. A 2019 study by the Association of American Universities of more than 108,000 undergraduate students across 33 schools found that the estimated prevalence rate of nonconsensual sexual contact for female undergraduates was 25.9 percent and 6.8 percent for male undergraduates.

The problem persists at the Air Force Academy despite programs to prevent sexual assault and harassment, which has prompted a comprehensive review of the issue, Miller said.

“Although individual program metrics indicate positive outcomes, holistically our current programs are not driving prevalence down,” Miller wrote in her statement. “An Academy Superintendent-directed review of current programs, leveraging input from cadets, subject-matter experts, alumni, permanent party, and leadership is ongoing.“

Key themes

The Pentagon report on sexual assault and harassment at the service academies identified five main themes:

  • Though the number of incidents increased, the characteristics of unwanted sexual contact incidents were consistent: Alleged offenders were usually fellow Cadets and Midshipmen in the same class year as the alleged victim, and offenses usually occurred after duty hours on a weekend or holiday both on and off academy grounds.
  • 60 percent of unwanted sexual contact events across the academies involved alcohol use by the victim and/or the alleged offender. Reducing excessive alcohol use should be combined with education in skills such as building healthy relationships for a more effective approach, the report authors recommended.
  • Rates of unwanted sexual contact were highest for Cadets and Midshipmen in the second and third years of study, and women who indicated experiencing unwanted sexual contact prior to entering an academy were nearly twice as likely to indicate victimization during the 2021-2022 school year. Men in the same situation were four times more likely to be victimized.
  • In 2021, 66 to 74 percent of Cadets and Midshipmen experienced unwanted sexual contact, a higher rate than 95 percent of military units that took climate surveys. Service academy men and women also experienced unwanted sexual contact at slightly higher rates than Active-Duty men and women in the same age group.
  • Lesbian, gay, and bisexual Cadets and Midshipmen were “significantly more likely” to experience unwanted sexual contact than their heterosexual counterparts. This tracks with prior studies of the general public and of the Active-Duty military, the report noted. Hispanic women and non-White men were also more at risk for unwanted sexual contact.

The report also found that most Cadets and Midshipmen who indicated unwanted sexual contact never officially reported it. Of the approximately 1,136 who experienced unwanted sexual contact from 2021 to 2022, only 155 reported it to a DOD authority, a reporting rate of about 14 percent at each academy. 

The reasons for not reporting allegations included the victim not wanting people to talk or gossip about them; feeling shame or embarrassment; thinking it would take too much time or effort; or because they dealt with it by avoiding the alleged perpetrator and tried to move on, the report said.

Swearing In Class of 2024
Basic Cadets from the U.S. Air Force Academy’s Class of 2024 follow social-distancing precautions during a swearing-in ceremony held on the school’s Stillman Field on July 11, 2020. Air Force photo by Trevor Cokley.

Fixing it

Despite the report’s troubling findings, it found the services had taken foundational steps towards preventing future incidents. These included providing onboarding training to staff and student leaders, better coordinating prevention efforts, and developing comprehensive plans to prevent sexual assault and harassment. 

For the 2022-23 academic year, the academies must develop an implementation plan for stronger prevention, along with a plan for providing officers and noncommissioned officers the skills “to act on climate factors impacting Cadet/Midshipman units,” the report wrote.

“We’re in an unacceptable place and we need a culture reset,” Air Force Academy Superintendent Lt. Gen. Richard Clark said in a statement earlier this month. “I look at this as a campaign where there is no silver bullet and it will take a variety of approaches to reach our goal. But the most important thing is a commitment from every one of us to change our culture.”

Beyond better prevention, the Department of Defense also wants service academies to encourage greater reporting of sexual assault so that the academies can help victims recover from the incident and/or pursue accountability. Both the Naval Academy and the Air Force Academy are due to implement a “Return to Health” policy modeled off of the one issued by West Point, which sets down a process to help students recover from a sexual assault and balance their academic goals with that process.

One initiative specific to the Air Force is the Teal Rope program, where Cadets who have been trained in sexual violence prevention and response support survivors and help drive culture change at the academy.

“People like to go to their equals,” Air Force Academy SAPR office manager Sonja Strickland said in a 2019 Air Force article. “It’s that Cadet-to-Cadet piece.”

21 Tankers Line Up for Record-Breaking Launch as McConnell Practices ACE

21 Tankers Line Up for Record-Breaking Launch as McConnell Practices ACE

March 30, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

More than 20 tankers lined the runway at McConnell Air Force Base, Kan., on March 27 for the base’s largest mass launch of aircraft ever.

“The premise was essentially a threat was inbound,” Col. George N. “Nate” Vogel, commander of the 22nd Air Refueling Wing, told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “That was the scenario we gave ourselves, and we had limited amount of time to get folks off the ground. So the team generated those jets over the course of about 48 hours, the maintainers did, simulating that we had indicators and warnings that situations in the world were kind of ramping up from a crisis standpoint. And so then we did a crew brief at 7 a.m. for all the crews, they stepped out to the aircraft and then the first thing we did was we just wanted to get a picture of of all the aircraft generated, and then we did the formation launch immediately after that.”

Sixteen KC-46s and five KC-135s participated in the flush, with aircraft and Airmen from the 22nd Air Refueling Wing and the 931st Air Refueling Wing participating. The launch was part of the base’s Exercise Lethal Pride, a weeklong effort to simulate the Air Force’s plan for dispersing aircraft and crews to operate from smaller bases.

As part of that effort, roughly 100 Airmen from McConnell have spent the last week living in a tent city on base with limited contact with the outside world—simulating what life would be like at the kind of austere forward operating base the Air Force envisions as critical to its concept of Agile Combat Employment, wherein small teams of cross-trained Airmen disperse from central “hubs” and operate from smaller “spokes” to complicate an adversary’s targeting. 

The Airmen in the tent city are part of command and control and force generation elements, Vogel said, and have spent the past week doing just that, but with somewhat degraded communications and limited contact with the outside world to simulate what might unfold during a conflict.

In the exercise, McConnell is also treating other bases as the “spokes” in that hub-and-spoke arrangement, including Fairchild Air Force Base, Wash., MacDill Air Force Base, Fla., and Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, N.J. 

“We’ve been to nine different spoke locations from our deployed tent city environment that has sent them out to these places,” Vogel said.

To force Airmen to make their own decisions based on commander’s intent, Vogel said his team has taken away communication options over time and forced the command-and-control element in the tent city to rely on solar power rather than existing infrastructure. They’re not always able to stay in touch with tankers depending on where they fly, but the aircrews ”know what authorities they have, and we expect them to make decisions and execute,” he said.

Lethal Pride is McConnell’s first large-scale base exercise. Beyond the mass launch of aircraft and the tent city, Airmen have also conducted an aeromedical evacuation mission, several air refueling missions over land and sea, and night missions. 

On top of that, the exercise has included two endurance missions. One involved a KC-46 flying for 24 hours straight, while the other had another KC-46 fly for roughly 20 hours before landing and taking off again without turning off the engines.

“We’ve been doing these things for while,” Vogel said. “We’ve studied to get the best Circadian rhythms and to see how the jet performs and nutrition and all that kind of stuff. We just see that as a part of how conflict could likely go in the future, as far as what would be required of us.”

Boundary-pushing flights have become increasingly common for the Air Force’s tanker fleet. In May 2022, a 22nd Air Refueling Wing crew flew for 24.2 hours in a KC-46, setting an Air Mobility Command record and covering more than 9,000 miles. In October, another McConnell KC-46 flew without a co-pilot as part of a study of limited aircrew operations. And in November, a KC-46 from Pease Air National Guard Base, N.H., flew more than 16,000 miles over 36 nonstop hours.

On the other hand, gathering 21 tankers for an elephant walk is incredibly rare. In September 2021, Fairchild Air Force Base, Wash., set a base record by launching 20 KC-135s in a row. McConnell lined up 14 Stratotankers as part of a simulated alert call in 2016, and more recently, conducted an elephant walk with one KC-135 and seven KC-46s in 2020. Seven KC-46s lined up at Pease in September 2021.

F-35s Arrive at Kadena as F-15 Withdrawl Continues

F-35s Arrive at Kadena as F-15 Withdrawl Continues

March 30, 2023 | By Chris Gordon

F-35 Lightning II fighters arrived on Okinawa this month as the Air Force continues to swap out its permanently deployed F-15 Eagles at Kadena Air Base, Japan.

The 18th Wing at Kadena said the 355th Fighter Squadron from Eielson Air Base, Alaska began the deployment on March 28. It is unclear how many F-35s are now operating there. Air Force officials declined to provide the exact number of F-35s at Kadena or say when more F-15s would depart, citing operational security. However, officials said the F-35 deployment was temporary as part of the DOD’s plan to place more advanced fighters at Kadena on a rotational basis as the old F-15s head out.

“The next batch of F-15s will depart Kadena in phased movements over the coming months,” a spokesperson for Pacific Air Forces told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “Departures will occur once sufficient deployed forces are in place and operational to ensure no gap in steady-state fighter presence.”

Kadena is a strategic location for the Air Force, around 450 miles from Taiwan. The base bills itself as the “Keystone of the Pacific.”

After more than 40 years of Eagle operations, Kadena has had nearly every aircraft type in the Air Force’s fighter fleet cycle through the island in recent months: F-35s, F-22s, F-16s, and the original F-15s.

The Air Force promised to replace the old Eagles with newer and more capable aircraft, starting with F-22 Raptors from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska and F-16CMs from Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany. The F-35s of the 355th FS mark the third squadron to head to Kadena as part of the F-15 replacement plan. The F-22s and F-16s remain deployed at Kadena.

F-15s leaving Kadena are destined for the Boneyard or Air National Guard service. Air National Guard director Lt. Gen. Michael A. Loh told reporters at the AFA Warfare Symposium March 8 the ANG had some F-15s from Kadena undergoing extensive depot tear-downs.

F-35s from the 355th Fighter Squadron deployed to Kadena as early as March 4, according to photo captions of F-35 operations in the Pacific released by the Air Force. It is unclear if the aircraft in those photos returned to Alaska or stayed at Kadena. The spokesperson for Pacific Air Forces said all of Kadena’s F-35s “scheduled to arrive have done so.” A spokesperson for the 354th Fighter Wing, the parent unit of the 355th, noted the arrival of the aircraft March 28 but added, “to protect operational security, exact details on flight and arrival times cannot be provided.”

U.S. Air Force F-35A Lightning IIs taxi on the flightline after arriving at Kadena Air Base, Japan, March 28, 2023. U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Tylir Meyer

Despite the island’s strategic importance and proximity to the possible flashpoint of Taiwan, the Air Force must remove the permanently deployed F-15s from Kadena because they are simply too old, service officials say.

“F-15Cs: last year when we were here, there were two aircraft at Kadena that were grounded and would never fly again, and two more that could only fly a one-time flight to the Boneyard,” Lt. Gen. Richard G. Moore, Jr., deputy chief of staff for plans and programs, told a House Armed Service subcommittee March 29. “Now it’s three that are grounded forever and four that can only that are only capable of one-time flight to the Boneyard. Of every 10 aircraft in the F-15C fleet that we put into depot, only two of them come out.”

The Air Force has used its newer fighter aircraft at Kadena to hop around the Pacific for various Agile Combat Employment exercises, including deployments of F-22s to Tinian and the Philippines—the first time fifth-generation fighters deployed to those locations. The Pentagon wants to invest $88 million in upgrades to Kadena as part of its fiscal 2024 budget request.

The F-35s look set to continue the trend of Kadena’s fifth-generation aircraft being used as a flexible force. The 18th Wing said in a news release that “the F-35 squadron plans to rotate personnel and equipment to multiple operating locations in order to support the Theater Joint Force Air Component Commander and the 18th Wing while maintaining readiness for the high-end fight.”

It’s Official: ARRW Is Done When All-Up Tests Conclude. What’s Next?

It’s Official: ARRW Is Done When All-Up Tests Conclude. What’s Next?

March 30, 2023 | By John A. Tirpak

The AGM-183 Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW) program will end after test flights of the last two developmental missiles, Air Force acquisition executive Andrew Hunter told the House Armed Services Committee on March 29.

Hunter’s declaration came just a day after Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said the service has shifted its hypersonic weapon focus from ARRW to the Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile.

The Air Force “does not currently intend to pursue follow-on procurement” of ARRW, Hunter wrote in testimony prepared for his appearance before the HASC tactical aviation panel. The missile, built by Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, was not discussed during the actual hearing.

Even so, “there is inherent benefit to completing All-Up Round (AUR) test flights … to garner the learning and test data that will help inform future hypersonic programs and potential leave-behind capability,” Hunter wrote.

The fiscal year 2024 Air Force budget request includes $150.3 million in research, development, test, and evaluation funding to “complete” the ARRW program, Hunter noted.

Mark Lewis, head of the National Defense Industrial Association’s Emerging Technologies Institute and a national expert in hypersonics, told Air & Space Forces Magazine the service shouldn’t abandon the ARRW’s boost-glide hypersonic technology but perhaps should shift these efforts back to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in hopes of developing a future capability.

“We are going to finish ARRW testing, then we are going to make a procurement decision, but right now we do not have any money planned in the five0year budget for ARRW,” an Air Force spokesperson said.

Neither Hunter nor the spokesperson offered a specific reason as to why the ARRW will not be pursued.

Asked for comment, a Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control spokesperson said the company “remains committed to developing hypersonic technology on an accelerated timeline to meet this critical national security need. Through flight test discoveries, and with our applied learning, we will continue to further hypersonic capabilities.”

In its budget justification documents, the Air Force said 2024 activities on the ARRW program include “contract closeout,” finalization of documentation and analysis, “and activities to support the leave-behind capability.”

Appearing before the House Appropriations Committee on March 28, Kendall said “we’re more committed to the HACM at this point in time than we are to ARRW.”

Kendall’s remarks were framed by a discussion of the latest ARRW test—the second of the operationally configured system—which he characterized as “not a success” because data from the event was lost or not collected. Kendall said program engineers are “trying to understand what happened.” There are two more missiles available for testing, and “there may be some leave-behind capability,” Kendall said.

The ARRW managed a successful all-up test Dec. 9, which Kendall called “a very successful flight, which was a big step forward,” but the missile has struggled with spotty performance in testing. There were three failed tests in 2021 before a success in 2022.

ARRW was launched as a quick-and-dirty response to hypersonic missiles already fielded by China and Russia, under “mid-tier acquisition” authorizations from Congress by which some of the normal bureaucratic prototyping steps can be skipped or streamlined. The missile is a boost-glide weapon which is accelerated to hypersonic speed by a rocket, at which point the hypersonic vehicle separates and glides to its target.

The HACM, meanwhile, is an air-breathing cruise missile. Raytheon won the contest to build the HACM last year, using an engine built by Northrop Grumman, based on technology explored under the Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept (HAWC) program led by the Air Force and theDefense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Kendall said the Air Force has money in its five-year plan “to move HACM forward,” as the technology underwriting it “has been reasonably successful.” Because the HACM is smaller than ARRW, it can be carried on more kinds of aircraft “and give us more combat capability, overall,” Kendall said. The ARRW would only have been employable from bombers due to its size.

The Air Force is requesting $382 million for HACM in 2024, Hunter wrote in his prepared testimony. That money would fund “critical design” and maturing of the “digital ecosystem” needed to verify the design, as well as flight test hardware in preparation for a flight test in fiscal 2025, he wrote. All this would enable procurement by fiscal 2027, he added.

Kendall left the door slightly open to further work on ARRW, telling lawmakers that if the final test flights are successful, “then we’ll revisit it … as we build the [2025] budget and see what will be done in the future.”

Lewis, former head of defense research and engineering and former Chief Scientist of the Air Force, said he was disappointed by the Air Force’s decision to terminate ARRW.

While the Air Force’s “strong focus” on HACM is “absolutely correct” because of its applicability across a wider portion of the force, the ARRW would have given the Air Force a longer-range and heavier striking option, Lewis said, adding that a boost-glide weapon is harder for enemy air defenses to stop.

“I’ve always likened it to the F-15/F-16 high-low mix,” he said, with a great number of HACM-like “air breathers” playing the F-16 role—“they’re less expensive, you can launch a lot of them”—but still having some of the heavier, more expensive ARRW-like boost-glide weapons for particularly hard targets.

“I’d like to have both, but if you put a gun to my head and told me to choose, I’d choose the HACM,” he said. “Depth of magazine really matters.”

Lewis added that he wasn’t surprised ARRW has had test problems because “I think people underestimate how hard it is to actually build a tactical-scale rocket/boost-glide system.” A boost-glide system is extremely difficult to sort out and something DARPA should potentially re-engage with, Lewis said.

“It’s exactly the sort of problem DARPA was designed to solve,” he added.  

While Lewis said he is not privy to the reasons why the most recent ARRW test failed, he noted that in development programs, there are “noble failures, when things don’t work because you genuinely didn’t understand the physics; you made a mistake in the engineering, but it’s all good because you needed to learn more,” and then there are “stupid failures, where the fin falls off or the booster doesn’t light or whatever.”

“I hope we wouldn’t cancel something because of a stupid failure,” he said.

The demise of ARRW also worries Lewis because it may send an awkward message to industry and development programs generally.

“One of the things I worry about are the overall signals that we give to the community,” he said. “On the one hand, we say, ‘You’ve got to be allowed to fail. You’ve got to fail early and fail often.’  But as soon as someone fails, we cancel their program.”

‘The Arctic is Trying To Kill You’: What It Looks Like When Airmen Train Far North

‘The Arctic is Trying To Kill You’: What It Looks Like When Airmen Train Far North

March 30, 2023 | By David Roza

How’s this for an early-February getaway: Spend five days and four nights on a frozen island in the Arctic Ocean, where the temperature ranges from a balmy negative 25 degrees Fahrenheit to a windchill of negative 65 degrees.

Two Minnesota Air National Guardsmen had the pleasure of such a trip recently, thanks to the Canadian military. The Air Operations Survival course is hosted twice a year at Resolute Bay, Nunavut, during the daylong darkness of the winter, in an attempt to simulate “as close as possible the conditions associated with an Arctic bailout,” according to the Canadian government.

Chief Master Sgt. Jeremiah Wickenhauser and Master Sgt. Cody Hallas, both members of the 133rd Contingency Response Team, trained at Resolute Bay with instructors from the British and Canadian militaries, alongside other service members from France, Germany, and New Zealand, Wickenhauser confirmed to Air & Space Forces Magazine.

“The Arctic environment is constantly trying to kill you; every task is harder in the cold,” Hallas said in a recent release written by Wickenhauser. “Every task takes longer, and the risk of serious injury is always present. Moisture management and the inability to dry gear is a huge issue. Cold, wet gear is miserable to wear and work in and extremely dangerous in the Arctic.”

Students learned to cut snow blocks, build shelters, cook food, melt water, and stay warm, the release noted. Some of the instructors were Canadian Rangers, a sub-component of the Canadian Army Reserve whose members “live and work in remote, isolated, and coastal regions of Canada,” according to the Canadian government.

The Canadian Rangers shared a freshly-killed seal with the students and showed them how to build an igloo, which the students “spent one cold night trying to sleep in,” Wickenhauser wrote.

Though difficult, Wickenhauser and Hallas’ training at Resolute Bay could prove vital at a time when interest—and tensions—in the Arctice are growing. Though the U.S. military has plenty of mountain, sub-Arctic, and extreme cold weather training, those environments are not the same as the Arctic, which is generally frozen and dark in the winter and impassable and light in the summer.

“Even the most qualified mountain team in the Special Forces Regiment would not be considered Arctic-capable,” three Green Berets in October wrote in an October 2022 paper on Arctic security for the Air Force’s Journal of Indo-Pacific Affairs. “Becoming Arctic-capable requires immersion in the actual conditions throughout the entire training and validation pathway, as our Scandinavian partners do.”

Some units in the Minnesota Air National Guard and the New York Air National Guard frequently undergo Arctic training. For example, Wickenhauser, Hallas and fellow guardsmen from Minnesota and New York spent most of May 2022 on an ice cap in Kangerlussuaq, Greenland, learning how to set up a base camp, conduct Arctic first aid and groom a ‘ski-way’ for ski-equipped aircraft like the New York ANG’s LC-130 to land on.

Arctic powers such as Russia, the U.S. and, increasingly, China, are flexing their military might in the region as melting sea ice opens up new trade routes and natural resources—but national security experts worry that the U.S. is still underprepared for such a fight.

“While the military services’ respective Arctic strategies acknowledge the importance of the Arctic and the need to develop the capabilities needed to operate and compete in the region, direct investment in Arctic-capable platforms, training, and infrastructure continues to lag,” Air Force Gen. Glen D. VanHerck, head of North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM), wrote in a March 23 statement for the Senate Armed Services Committee. 

“It is necessary that the joint force has the ability to compete, fight, and win in the Arctic in the coming years,” VanHerck added, “and the time for the services to invest in the required equipment, infrastructure, and training is now.”

Airmen from the New York Air National Guard’s 105th Airlift Wing experienced that lack of infrastructure when they flew six C-17 transport jets carrying hundreds of Canadian Army reservists and more than 90 tons of cargo out of Quebec and landed at the Resolute Bay Airport earlier this winter. The airport does not have radar, and the runway is made up of frozen gravel and ice, according to an Air Force press release.

“We flew 2,000 miles … unloaded and loaded cargo and people and flew another 2,000 miles back, basically all on our own,” one of the C-17 pilots, Lt. Col. Andrew Townsend, said in the press release.

The austere conditions also challenged the loadmasters taking cargo on and off the C-17s. They had to do weight and balance calculations using pencil and paper, since the cold caused computer malfunctions, according to the press release. They also had to knock chunks of ice and snow off of cargo pallets.

The journey did not end at Resolute Bay for 37 Canadian and American Soldiers, who were flown another 60 miles north via LC-130. The ‘Skibird’ landed on a ‘ski-way’ that had just been groomed onto the sea ice by Airmen from the 109th and members of the Royal Canadian Air Force’s 440th Transport Squadron. 

The Canadian Rangers and other indigenous Arctic people could play a vital role in supporting U.S. and allied military operations in the far north. The October 2022 paper on Arctic security noted that during World War II, the U.S. relied on more than 6,000 Native Alaskans who volunteered to conduct surveillance activities along remote coastlines. Though that unit shut down after the war, the Canadian Rangers play a similar role in Canada today.

However, relationships are a two-way street, and many Alaskan communities lack access to running water, broadband internet, and affordable household goods. Living standards deteriorate further when supply chains become stressed and food, sanitation, and medical equipment stop arriving, Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski wrote in 2022.

If the U.S. does not devote more resources to these communities, other countries like Russia or China may do so in an attempt to win influence there, the authors of the Arctic security paper argued.

“Investing in Indigenous Alaskan communities is a chance to deny competitor influence, rebuild trust with Native Alaskan communities while establishing multi-use infrastructure with multi-domain effects, and increase our military’s Arctic readiness,” they wrote.

Collaborative Combat Aircraft Will Join the Air Force Before NGAD

Collaborative Combat Aircraft Will Join the Air Force Before NGAD

March 29, 2023 | By John A. Tirpak

The first iterations of Collaborative Combat Aircraft, the drones that will pair with manned platforms, will join the Air Force’s fighter fleet in “the later 2020s,” several years before the Next-Generation Air Dominance fighter, service acquisition chief Andrew Hunter told the House Armed Services tactical aviation panel on March 29.

Hunter also emphasized that CCAs will augment all types of tactical aircraft, not just the NGAD system.

Lt. Gen. Richard G. Moore Jr., deputy chief of staff for plans and programs, also set the top three missions of the CCAs, in order, as:

  • shooters
  • electronic warfare platforms
  • sensor-carrying aircraft

The NGAD and CCAs are “on different timelines,” Hunter said, although they are “obviously closely related to one another as part of a family of systems.”

NGAD, he said, is a “very high-end capability” geared to the threat environment of the 2030s, and “we are working very hard to deliver [it] …in the early 2030s.” CCAs, meanwhile, are slated to join the force later this decade. Hunter also said the notional number of CCAs will be between 1,000 and 1,500 aircraft.

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall told the House Appropriations defense panel on March 28 that CCAs could cost between one-half and one-quarter as much as an F-35. Lt. Gen. Michael J. Schmidt, F-35 program executive officer, quoted the price of an F-35A as $82.5 million in the March 29 hearing, which would put CCAs between $41.3 million and $20.6 million.

For the CCA program, “we are very much focused on speed-to-ramp, so we are looking to field that capability as rapidly as possible,” Hunter said. The Air Force’s approach in seeking proposals from industry for the autonomous, uncrewed aircraft will put a priority on contractors’ ability to “perform as quickly as possible,” Hunter said.

Moore, echoing previous Air Force officials, emphasized that CCAs are intended to build up the Air Force’s fleet of combat aircraft at an affordable price, providing the “amount of iron that needs to be in the air to confront an adversary like China.”

“The way that we can do that affordably is by buying CCAs, and by creating mass with CCAs,” he said.

The task now will be to define the tactics, techniques, and procedures needed to employ this new kind of weapon, and answer questions like whether CCAs will be part of manned fighter squadrons or “a separate entity,” and whether they will fly alongside crewed aircraft or “come together on the battlefield” from different places.

“Ordinarily we provide a requirement to industry, they come back with what we’ve asked for, and we know that it does exactly what we asked. In this case, we’ve asked a question to industry to see what’s possible rather than tell them exactly what we want,” Moore said.

The 2024 budget includes a request to create an experimental operations squadron which will explore and answer these questions, Moore said.

Asked what the CCAs will be counted on most to do, Moore laid out three basic mission sets.

First and foremost, he said, is “the ability to augment the combat force as shooters.” Second is “the ability to conduct electronic warfare” and the third is “the ability to be sensors in the battlespace.”

Pressed by lawmakers as to whether the Air Force needs seven additional fighter squadrons, as the service stated in the 2018 white paper, “The Force We Need,” Moore said it will depend on the success of the CCA concept.

“But certainly, capacity is an issue and the mass that it takes to confront an adversary like China is intense,” Moore said.

Both Hunter and Moore emphasized that CCAs are being procured in addition to all the crewed fighters the Air Force plans to acquire, not in lieu of any of them. They will “augment” the manned fighter force, not replace it, Hunter said.

SDA to Launch First Satellites of Tranche 0 from Vandenberg

SDA to Launch First Satellites of Tranche 0 from Vandenberg

March 29, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

Editor’s Note: The March 30 launch of SDA’s Tranche 0 satellites was aborted at T-minus 3 seconds from liftoff. SpaceX’s livestream offered no reason for the abort but indicated both the Falcon 9 rocket and payload were “healthy.” The next launch window begins at 7:29 a.m. Pacific time on March 31.

Two and a half years after the Space Development Agency awarded contracts for “Tranche 0” of what is now called the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture—and after a few months’ delay—the agency is ready for its first big launch. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuiBsre2m64

While SDA has put a few experimental satellites in orbit before as part of a “rideshare” launch, this will mark the first milestone for the PWSA. Under the plan, the Space Force will have hundreds of small satellites, with new ones launched every few years to increase resilience and capabilities in orbit. 

“We’re pretty excited to show that the model actually does work, to be able to do that proliferation to get the capabilities to the warfighter at speed,” SDA director Derek M. Tournear told reporters on a March 29 teleconference. 

The SpaceX rocket will carry 10 satellites—eight for transporting and relaying data and two for missile tracking. A second batch is set to follow in June. The entire tranche consists of 28 satellites—20 for data transport and eight for missile tracking. 

Tranche 0 is intended to demonstrate capabilities that later tranches, starting with Tranche 1, will operationalize. Tournear described this first batch of satellites as the “warfighter immersion tranche,” giving service members the opportunity to work with the systems and understand their capabilities. 

Those demonstrations will start soon after the March 30 launch, Tournear said. 

“It will take single-digit weeks to get through test and check out of the satellites, initialization, and initial calibration, and that’s when we can start to actually do the warfighter immersion to participate in exercises and things like that,” Tournear said. 

The missile tracking satellites will “look for targets of opportunity for any kind of launches that we’re able to detect and track to help get calibration data,” Tournear said. SDA will then transition to formal assessments that track U.S. test objects in the spring of 2024. 

The data transport satellites’ biggest trials will be related to their ability to relay data to the ground using Link 16, the military’s tactical data network. Doing so will require FAA approval, Tournear noted, which will likely preclude the satellites from being integrated into the large Northern Edge exercise as previously planned.

“We have a lot of lower-level exercises that the warfighters are going to participate in to test everything out,” Tournear said. “Most of those on the Link 16 side, we’ll start out with tests at Eglin Test and Training facility to demonstrate that and really iron out all the bugs and figure out exactly how to do this connectivity with terrestrial Link 16 radios in space. And then we’ll start to participate in some other exercises then in the INDOPACOM region after that, primarily working with the Marines and some of their planned exercises.” 

Unlike future tranches, this initial batch of satellites will be operated from the Naval Research Laboratory, using refurbished ground antennas and existing ground station software. 

“The Naval Research Laboratory, they have flown and operated a number of other satellites in the past,” Tranche 0 program director Mike Eppolito said. “So they bring that legacy to bear here, to be able to buy down some of the risks and some of the timelines associated with developing [ground systems].” 

Each of the satellites going into orbit costs roughly $15 million. Tournear estimated the entire cost of Tranche 0 is around $980 million, which includes the cost of launch, ground segments, and operations and maintenance.

“Ours is intended to be the demonstration tranche that allows warfighters to sort of get their feet wet and start using the capabilities that we’re putting on orbit,” Eppolito said. 

Proven Higher Cancer Risk for Pilots and Ground Crew Sparks Search for Causes

Proven Higher Cancer Risk for Pilots and Ground Crew Sparks Search for Causes

March 29, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

Lawmakers pledged more study and action now that a Pentagon study has shown elevated cancer risks for military aviators and aviation ground personnel. Completed in January, the study is among the most comprehensive analyses of military aviator cancer yet.

The Defense Department examined health records for 156,050 aviators and 737,891 ground crew for the period 1992 to 2007, concluding that aviators were 24 percent more likely to be diagnosed with cancers of all kinds than members of the general population, when adjusting for age, sex, and race. Ground crew personnel were 3 percent more likely to be diagnosed with cancer.

Congress ordered the study in the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act in response to growing concern among retired pilots concerned about an apparent rising incidence of cancer. 

The new study found even higher rates with specific types of cancer. For example, aircrew were 87 percent more likely to suffer melanoma, 39 percent more likely to have thyroid cancer, and 16 percent more likely to contract prostate cancer. For ground crew, the most elevated rates were for brain and nervous system cancers (19 percent increased risk), thyroid cancer (15 percent higher risk), melanoma (9 percent higher risk), and kidney and renal pelvis cancers (also 9 percent higher risk). 

Actual rates are probably higher, researchers acknowledged, as “data from VA and civilian cancer registries were not included.” 

The Associated Press first reported the study’s findings earlier this month. A copy obtained by Air & Space Forces Magazine build upon a 2021 study from the Air Force’s School of Aerospace Medicine, part of the Air Force Research Laboratory, which studied the health histories of fighter pilots and backseat aircrew from 1970 to 2004. Among nearly 35,000 aviators studied, results also showed double-digit elevated risks for melanoma and prostate cancer. 

“We have two, arguably, bellwether studies,” said retired Air Force Col. Vince Alcazar, head of the Red River Valley Fighter Pilots Association’s aviator medical issues committee, in an interview with Air & Space Forces Magazine. “Their exact conclusions are not the same, but they align on the basic themes of elevated aviator cancer, which as a headline seems to continue to surprise people in government, both lawmakers and leaders inside the Pentagon.” 

At a House Appropriations Committee hearing on March 28, Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.) challenged both Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall and Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. to get to the bottom of these risks. 

“Let’s get our arms around this. Let’s work together,” McCollum said. “We have a big military health budget … and I know that members are concerned about this. So what can we do to help you? There might be specific things you need to have us look at and direct the money to go there.” 

Brown emphasized the need for more study to continue to better understand the issues. 

“We will learn more and more as we collect more and more data and start asking more and more questions about particularly those that are flying in fighter cockpits,” Brown said. It’s important to understand what factors drive the cancers in order to design protection into aircraft to guard against future exposure. “Because you’re exposed to the sun more,” he said, but “you also have a radar in the airplane. [We’ll] try to understand what the causes may be associated with those and then how we may take some mitigation.” 

Both studies focused on cancer rates, not causes. A range of possible factors, including galactic cosmic radiation, ultraviolet radiation, radar radiation, exposure to jet fuel and fumes, and non-ionizing radiation from radars and jamming equipment all pose potential risks. These hypotheses must be studied, however, to reach more advanced conclusions. Advocates say even more work can be done to capture all the necessary data.  

“Databases that track diagnosis of cancer and death from cancer, those databases aren’t as old as we would like them to be, nor probably as we need them to be in a more ultimate sense,” Alcazar said. 

Work on both fronts is set to unfold in the months ahead. Having found elevated cancer rates, the 2021 NDAA now requires the Pentagon to perform a Phase 2 study to identify what hazardous or carcinogenic materials, environments, or duties might be contributing to that elevated risk, and to examine time frames, dates and locations of service, and specific types of aircraft that might further indicate trends.  

In addition, the DOD is looking at a follow-up to the original study to include more data from other databases. 

On top of that, Alcazar said advocates are working with members of Congress to introduce legislation directing so-called “nexus” studies to determine if there is scientific evidence tying any particular exposure or carcinogen to a risk of cancer diagnosis or death. 

Alcazar and the Red River Valley Pilots worked with Rep. August Pfluger (R-Texas), a former Air Force F-15 and F-22 pilot, and others to introduce legislation in the last session of Congress; now they intend to reintroduce a bill, Alcazar said. 

“I’m optimistic in a guarded way that the aviator cancer study adds to not only the conversation but accelerates it in Congress,” said Alcazar, pointing to the successful passage of the PACT Act last year, which offered expanded benefits for veterans exposed to toxins during their service. 

“One of the things that [the PACT Act] did was it took the phrase ‘toxic exposure’ and injected it into conversation and stripped away the sort of skepticism and mythological elements, I think, that were present in a lot of people’s minds,” Alcazar said. “And I think this study kind of stands on that a little bit.” 

Determining toxic exposures matters for both the Pentagon and Air Force, that can then take action to mitigate those exposures for those currently serving, and for veterans’ advocates, who want to ensure those who become sick from their service get the care they need. 

“We may not know how big this problem is,” Alcazar said. “And the size of the problem matters because we have to deploy resources that are solutions to match it. So particularly on the veterans side, it’s important that we get to an a well-designed nexus study … and that multi-year study, we now transform that into law and policy, so that we can help the flyers that are sick today. We can’t bring back the ones that have succumbed. What we can do is create tracking and treatment that is more in-time oriented, so that we improve outcomes.” 

Pentagon Leaders Still Say ‘No’ to F-16s, MQ-9s for Ukraine

Pentagon Leaders Still Say ‘No’ to F-16s, MQ-9s for Ukraine

March 29, 2023 | By Chris Gordon

Top U.S. defense officials dismissed the notion that the U.S. would provide aircraft—manned or unmanned—anytime soon to Ukraine in Congressional hearings March 28 and 29.

While Kyiv has repeatedly asked for F-16 fighters and MQ-9 drones, the Biden administration has refrained from providing them and argued the systems would be of limited use to Ukraine in the current phase of its fight against Russia’s invasion.

Instead, U.S. officials argue Ukraine has more pressing needs such as air defense, armor, and artillery. They also contend that Russia’s own capable air defense systems would limit the utility and employment of manned aircraft.

“That air domain is a very hostile airspace because of the capability that the Russians have for air defense,” Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III told the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 28.

Much of the debate has focused on manned fourth-generation fighters, such as F-16s. Pentagon and White House officials have not ruled out providing them to the Ukrainians, but have suggested that such a move may only come after the war is over.

“That won’t help them in this current fight,” Austin said. “And will they have a capability at some point down the road? We all believe that they will, and what that looks like, it could look like F-16s, it could look like some other fourth-generation aircraft.”

Poland and Slovakia have recently said they are providing 17 Soviet-era MiG fighters to Ukraine. The top U.S. Air Force leader in Europe, Gen. James B. Hecker, said those aircraft would mark a helpful capacity boost to Ukraine, which has already lost about 60 planes, but they will not significantly change battlefield dynamics. The U.S. is also providing an unspecified number of JDAM extended-range guided bombs for Ukraine’s air force.

Still, while members of Congress have expressed a willingness to send aircraft, Biden administration officials are holding out even as Ukraine prepares for a spring counteroffensive against the Russians.

Colin Kahl, the undersecretary of defense for policy, told Congress in late February that providing F-16s to Ukraine would be costly and time-consuming—older F-16s would cost at least $2 billion, he estimated. At least two Ukrainian pilots have traveled to the U.S. to evaluate their skills in simulators, U.S. officials have said.

“If you’re talking to F-16s, whenever you make that decision, in order to put together what needs to be put together to provide that capability is going to be 18 months or so in the making,” Austin said. “We will continue to work with our allies and partners to make sure that Ukraine has what it needs.” 

Another system the U.S. has declined to provide is the unmanned MQ-9 Reaper drone. MQ-9s have been a hallmark of U.S. counterterrorism operations in the Middle East, most notably firing Hellfire missiles at targets. They have the ability to loiter for over 20 hours and gather intelligence.

They also appear to be available. The Air Force wants to divest 48 older MQ-9s in fiscal 2024, and the manufacturer of the aircraft, General Atomics, has pledged to provide its company-owned drones to Ukraine. 

But the U.S. has instead opted to give Ukraine smaller tactical drones for ISR and strike missions, and both Austin and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said it would not be feasible for Ukraine to use MQ-9s.

“It is not a survivable platform if they try to use that in that environment,” Austin said.

A U.S. MQ-9 on a surveillance mission was downed recently over the Black Sea when a Russian fighter jet clipped its propeller while harassing the American drone, leading the USAF to crash it into the water.

“It’s big and slow,” Milley said of the MQ-9, which has a 20-meter wingspan and a cruising speed of about 230 miles per hour. “It’s going to get nailed by the Russian air defense systems. And in terms of its capabilities, I’m not sure what it’ll get you beyond the smaller, faster, more nimble UAV systems that we are providing, as well as some other countries are providing.”

Critics of the administration’s policy say MQ-9s would not have to go directly into Russian integrated air defense systems (IADS) to be useful to Kyiv.

“The proposed use of the MQ-9 is as a long-range sensing and targeting aircraft at a stand-off range—not to fly into the teeth of a fully robust and operational IADS,” retired Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, dean of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

Moreover, Deptula argued, if the U.S. donated MQ-9s it planned to get rid of anyway, the aircraft could provide value to Ukraine even if they were shot down. For example, the drones could force Russia to expend air defenses of its own and could also highlight Russian radars so Ukrainian forces could attack them with air-to-surface missiles or surface-to-surface missiles, especially if the U.S. opted to provide Army ATACMS missiles to Kyiv.

Deptula—who planned the air campaign for Operation Desert Storm and the opening attacks of Operation Enduring Freedom—said that the administration appears to be “deterred by the concern of escalation” with Russia and is not “making choices that provide the best military advice for the Ukrainians.”