The US Thinks China Is a ‘Near-Peer’ Threat. Does China Agree?

March 22, 2023 | By David Roza

The U.S. military wants to reinvent itself to prepare for a possible conflict with China, a country which many experts believe poses the greatest threat to U.S. national security. But how do Chinese leaders assess the strength of the People’s Liberation Army relative to the U.S. military? Researchers sought to answer that question in a recent report.

The RAND Corporation report is one of the first analyses to study how the PLA understands and assesses military balance, in contrast to previous research that focused on quantitative aspects, such as how many pieces of equipment the PLA has and how its capabilities compare to those of the U.S.

Specifically, the report focused on how the PLA views itself in four areas Chinese president Xi Jinping is worried about: political reliability, mobilization, fighting and winning wars, and leadership and command.

“Ours is a much more qualitative look at the PLA and a look at the way the PLA sees themselves, but it really gets to those core issues that I think are absolutely critical for these ideas the Chinese have about systems warfare,” Mark Cozad, senior international defense researcher at RAND and the lead author of the study, told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “You can have an infrastructure, you can have an architecture, but the system actually depends on those four areas that Xi was so concerned about.”

In the report, Cozad and his coauthors wrote that, despite the PLA’s increasing progress and technological sophistication in recent years, Xi’s concerns “reflect many of the worst elements of China’s political system—corruption, unwillingness to show initiative, poor cultivation of talent, and bureaucratism, among others.” And changing such an institutional culture takes time.

It was beyond the scope of RAND’s project to determine whether Chinese perceptions of the PLA’s strengths and weaknesses are correct or incorrect. Even so, the fact that Xi “does not have great confidence in the PLA’s ability to ‘fight and win’ the informatized wars that it may face in the future” may affect Chinese calculations on whether or not to use armed force against the U.S. in a future conflict, the report notes. But that does not mean the PLA would never fight.

Chinese President Xi Jinping presented the first Friendship Medal of the People’s Republic of China to Russian President Vladimir Putin, calling him his “best friend” and “confidant.” CGTN

Reliability and Leadership

Having studied the PLA for years, Cozad was aware of many of the concerns Chinese leaders feel about the PLA’s capabilities. But even for him, it was a significant moment when Xi Jinping laid out his doubts in a 2017 speech.

“What I think about most is that when the Party and the people need it, will our armed forces always adhere to the Party’s absolute leadership, will our armed forces be able to mobilize and fight winning battles, and will leaders at all levels in our armed forces be able to lead their people into battle and command in battle,” Xi said at the time.

Those doubts were “really telling” coming from Xi himself, and served to highlight deep, persistent concerns about the PLA within high-level Chinese leadership, Cozad said. That worry about political reliability is one U.S. leaders have not had to deal with since the creation of the all-volunteer force, he said.

By contrast, the largely conscript-based Chinese military is struggling to develop the same level of motivation and competence, RAND found. In particular, Xi has criticized PLA training for falling into a peacetime practice of “formalities for formalities’ sake and bureaucratism” that gets in the way of more effective, realistic training styles, according to PLA news reports.

In communist China, the question of political reliability takes on the added dimension of whether the PLA will always adhere to the “absolute leadership” of the Chinese Communist Party, to use Xi’s term. Xi feels the PLA has drifted from party objectives, so since 2014 he has repeatedly directed the military “to return to long-standing PLA political work practices by upholding CCP ideology, providing officers and soldiers with substantial political education,” and other measures, the RAND researchers wrote.

However, as top Chinese officials try to foster greater adherence to party thinking, it could interfere with their efforts to encourage greater flexibility in the ranks to respond to a dynamic battlefield. Many analysts have pointed out that the Russian military’s lack of an effective noncommissioned officer corps has hampered its invasion of Ukraine. Historically, the PLA leadership model has been similar to Russia’s.

“Things that a fairly junior NCO can do in the U.S. military are done by officers in the PLA, and sometimes fairly senior officers,” Cozad explained. “That can clog up a system, make it more inefficient and sap the creativity you need for a dynamic environment.”

In modern-day warfare, PLA leaders want to push decision-making ability down lower than it has been before, which can be difficult to square with the push for greater party orthodoxy.

“You’re telling a PLA officer to be more innovative, be more willing to stick your neck out, make decisions, be more creative,'” Cozad explained. “At the same time you’re saying ‘there is a certain way of thinking in the PLA and you need to conform to that way of thinking.’ You’re sending competing messages there.”

RAND’s observations also help remind U.S. military leaders of unquantifiable advantages they might have in an armed conflict with the PLA.

“That’s one way that I hope this report gets looked at and interpreted: trying to find out what this tells us about areas of advantage that we may not always think about,” Cozad said. “I do see a lot of discussions in the United States where we focus on numbers and systems, which are all extremely important, but we focus less on those intangibles that really tie all those things together into an effective warfighting system.”

china pla — A boarding team from the People’s Liberation Army (Navy) Haikou (DD 171) board the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Waesche (WMSL 751) July, 16, 2014, during a Maritime Interdiction Operations Exercise (MIOEX) as part of Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) Exercise 2014. U.S Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Manda M. Emery.

Mobilizing and Fighting

Training is another intangible area that is vital for an effective military—Cozad said the PLA has attempted to emulate the large-scale training programs the U.S. military enjoys, like the Air Force’s Red Flag series of exercises, but without as much success.

Indeed, one of the chief criticisms cited in official PLA press is the problem of “lax and untruthful styles of training and preparation for war,” the RAND report notes. While new training regulations implemented in 2018 were meant to increase discipline and use inspection teams to check for compliance to standards, the problem persists today.

“Ultimately, Xi assessed that one of the most significant factors holding back PLA training was the lack of competence among Party committees and commanders in carrying out this strategically important and critical task” for fighting modern war, the report authors wrote.

One of the advantages of the U.S. military’s large-scale exercises is that they can help foster joint cohesion between U.S. service branches and their foreign allies. Joint warfare is still a weak spot in the PLA’s preparation to fight a modern conflict.

“Most notably, the criticism from PLA sources regarding current PLA training is that there are shortcomings in the effective integration of joint functions, including planning, firepower, and reconnaissance capabilities,” the report states.

The Chinese Central Military Commission sought to promote jointness “in large part by reducing the PLA Army’s long-held preeminence and elevating” the PLA Air Force and Navy, the RAND authors wrote, but the development of a joint culture has been slow to take hold. Another area not progressing as fast as Chinese leaders would like is mobilization, which officials believe involves not just military units but also protecting civilian populations and infrastructure.

Perhaps the most critical issue hampering Chinese mobilization programs “is the lack of clear authorities and specification for responsibilities” in its National Defense Mobilization system, the report notes, thanks to both organizational and technological challenges.

“[T]he contradiction between the constantly evolving demand for mobilization and the imbalance in mobilization preparation is still outstanding,” the report quoted one PLA observer saying.

On top of all that, the PLA also has persistent insecurity over not having fought any wars recently.

“This lack of experience has led to warnings from some PRC observers that the PLA must be ‘soberly aware’ that because it has not been engaged in combat for over 40 years … and lags behind some other military powers in terms of the quality and combat realism of its training,’” the report authors wrote.

Cozad pointed out that while some tend to downplay U.S. military experience in Iraq and Afghanistan since it was not against a peer or near-peer military, it is more useful for training purposes than no combat at all.

“The comment that I hear is ‘Oh, we fought the JV team,’” he said. “The PLA hasn’t even fought the JV team.”

All of these issues could limit the PLA’s success in a war with the United States. Still, Cozad cautioned against underestimating the PLA in a future fight.

“We tried to be extremely cautious, because we didn’t want to write a paper that was interpreted as ‘the PLA’s no good, they’re not making any progress,’” he said.

After all, U.S. military leaders share some of the same concerns about U.S. warfighting capabilities, such as needing better joint cohesion, faster mobilization, less bureaucracy, a refreshed industrial base, and better mechanisms for attracting and retaining talent. And even if Chinese officials feel they are on the back foot in some ways, they still have a very capable military machine for U.S. planners to prepare for.

“The PLA still has a lot of stuff: a lot of bombs, a lot of planes, a lot of missiles,” Cozad said. “When they get into a situation where the elegant doesn’t work, there are a lot of ways that they can still fight. And in some cases I think those might be even more dangerous, more damaging, more devastating than the more elegant approaches that they hope to be able to enact.”

The intent of the RAND report, then, was to focus on perceptions of military strength and how those perceptions inform political calculations and deterrence.

“The Chinese have been very heavily focused on us and the way we fight, and the report highlights that they’ve taken away some very important lessons,” Cozad said. “But I hope the report highlights for our leaders those areas that we have significant advantages that we need to make sure we protect and maintain.”

USAF Wants $5.8 Billion for CCAs Over Five Years. First Up: A Spectral Warfare Platform

March 22, 2023 | By John A. Tirpak

The Air Force has mapped out spending requests totaling $5.8 billion for research and development of Collaborative Combat Aircraft through fiscal 2028—$6 billion counting other experimentation tied to the program. And budget documents released by the service also suggest a “spectral warfare” platform will be one of the first variants of the autonomous drones.

The funding is contained within the broader Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program, and consolidates previous research, development, test, and evaluation line items for Autonomous Collaborative Platforms and Autonomous Collaborative Technologies. The NGAD effort overall—including CCAs—is projected for $16.23 billion over the future years defense program.

The CCA figure is in line with Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall’s assertion at the AFA Warfare Symposium in early March that “very, very significant” funding is being requested for the program, which will produce robotic wingmen to crewed fighters. They are meant to build USAF combat capacity without exacerbating the fighter pilot shortage, and do so at what Kendall has called an “affordable” price.

Kendall announced at AWS that he has set 1,000 CCAs as a “planning figure” around which service planners can develop CCA operational concepts, but he subsequently has said the actual number of aircraft could be far greater than that figure, which was derived from a notional two CCAs each to escort 200 NGAD manned fighters and 300 F-35s.

Kendall has also said the ultimate number of CCAs could be as high as five for every crewed fighter. He said the program will be competitive, but at the McAleese defense conference last week, suggested the Air Force will choose a single platform which can accept a variety of modular mission payloads.

The budget justifications suggest CCAs will be introduced operationally around 2030.

The CCA spending plan begins with $392.2 million in fiscal year 2024. It rises to $513.8 million in FY 2025, but takes an unexplained dip to $245.9 million in 2026. After that, though, it more than sextuples to $1.64 billion in 2027, then nearly doubles again to $3.03 billion in 2028.

The NGAD budget documents noted a particular emphasis on a “spectral dominance platform” CCA, which sounds like a programmatic descendent of the mid-2010s “Penetrating Electronic Attack” program, also associated with what has become NGAD.

During a March 22 Mitchell Institute event, Gen. Mark D. Kelly, head of Air Combat Command, said the the operational concept of the spectral dominance platform is still being determined.

“I think those are discovery items that will come out when we do our first developmental tests and operational tests and see what’s in the art of the possible going forward,” said Kelly. He added that whether the platform is a pure jammer versus an electronic attack aircraft that can also fire anti-radiation missiles is “all … in the discussion,” and that the developmental testing will reveal “the solution we’re looking for.”

At AWS, Kelly said electronic warfare was likely the most “urgent” mission for CCAs, listing sensing, jamming, and “signals intelligence” as his top needs for the platform. Size, weight and power requirements will also have a lot to do with whether a CCA can perform the mission, Kelly added.

“I think we’ll iterate from there,” he said at the conference.

Kendall said at AWS that the FY 2024 budget would contain money for experimentation using existing aircraft as stand-ins for the CCAs, in order to explore operational concepts and further refine requirements. Toward that end, there’s $50 million in the 2024 request for a new start called “Viper Experimentation and Next-Gen Operations Model (VENOM),” which will conduct “early risk reduction” on CCAs using autonomous technology aboard crewed F-16 aircraft as surrogates for CCAs.

Another $72 million funds an “Experimental Operations Unit” which will test-fly CCA concepts and flesh out the manpower footprint, doctrine, training and facilities needed to implement CCA technologies.

Yet another $51.7 million involves transition of the Air Force’s Skyborg autonomous flight technology to CCA platforms.

In budget justification documents, the Air Force said CCA activities “will include the employment of digital acquisitions through the application of digital engineering, agile software development, and open system architectures.” The requested funds would invest in “information technology/test/training infrastructure” as well as “operational concept exploration, technology studies, multi-domain integration, operational assessments, architecture development, and multi-level prototyping,” along with program management support.

All of this will go toward reducing risk and maturing CCA concepts “and air superiority-related technologies in support of the NGAD family of systems.”

Lack of Airpower in Ukraine Proves Value of Air Superiority, NATO Air Boss Says

March 22, 2023 | By Chris Gordon

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has proven that air superiority is vital to success in conflict, Gen. James B. Hecker, the top U.S. Air Force commander in Europe, said March 22.

“One of the things that we see is the lack of either side, whether it be the Russian or Ukrainians, the ability to get air superiority, has really changed this into a different fight that we haven’t seen in quite a while,” Hecker said during an event held by AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.

Hecker laid out a sobering argument: if Russia had gained air superiority early in the conflict, Ukraine would have been finished off militarily long ago.

Instead, Russia was stymied by Ukraine’s air defenses and its own poor tactics, buying valuable time for Ukraine to gather international support. Since 2022, the U.S. has pledged over $40 billion to Ukraine. Air Force Gen. Jacqueline Van Ovost, the head of U.S. Transportation Command, said recently there had been 1,000 airlift sorties and an additional 65 shiploads of aid sent to neighboring countries, which then entered Ukraine via its land borders. Regardless of the will of Ukraine’s allies, the West would not have been able to come to Ukraine’s aid in that way if Russia had control of the skies, Hecker said.

“Let’s say the Russians had air superiority,” he said. “If they were able to, all the equipment … wouldn’t have gotten there because there would have been Russian close air support sitting over those lines of communication coming in from the other countries, and as soon as it got into Ukraine, it would have been demolished.”

Conversely, Ukraine has struggled to put its small air force up against Russian air defenses. Hecker said a more powerful air force on the Ukrainian side could have blunted Russia’s invasion in its initial phases.

Instead, a brutal conflict has slogged on for over a year. Both sides have suffered tens of thousands of casualties in the battle now taking place with 155mm howitzers and HIMARS rockets, two systems that the U.S. has been able to send over the border into Ukraine. Russia has resorted to Iranian-provided one-way attack drones and stand-off cruise missiles to pummel Ukraine from the air.

“At least from the Russian side, they don’t care if you hit hospitals, they don’t care if you hit schools, they don’t care if you hit malls,” Hecker said. “Massive destruction, massive casualties—just something that we’re not used to.”

Hecker’s determination about the importance of airpower carriers broad implications, given his position as commander of both U.S. Air Forces in Europe (USAFE) and NATO Allied Air Command—making him the airpower point person for 30 countries. Since the conflict began, NATO has expanded from air policing missions, in which fighters fly combat air patrols, to exercises that approximate what NATO would do if Russia expanded its war to the West, triggering Article V, the alliance’s mutual self-defense clause.

“What we’re looking at and concentrating on at USAFE is what can we do to ensure that we get air superiority should we have to invoke Article V, and then what can we do to make sure that our enemy doesn’t get air superiority,” Hecker said.

Hecker’s focus is on ensuring that NATO can quickly suppress enemy integrated air defense systems (IADS).

“The number one priority to make sure that we’re able to get air superiority is to make sure that we can do the counter-IADS mission,” Hecker said. “What we’ve seen on both sides, both Russia and Ukraine, is their integrated air and missile defense is working pretty well, to the point where they’re shooting down the other’s aircraft and the aircraft aren’t as visible as they should if they’d concentrated more on air superiority.”

Ukraine has lost around 60 aircraft and Russia has lost over 70 aircraft, Hecker revealed at the AFA Warfare Symposium in early March.

NATO, in turn, must bolster its own air defenses, Hecker said. The Air Force must also increase information sharing among allies and focus on Agile Combat Employment (ACE) to disperse its targets, he said.

In Hecker’s role as commander of USAFE, he is helping the U.S. provide Ukraine with information to assist its targeting. The U.S. has also been providing hardware, including AGM-88 HARM anti-radiation missiles to attack Russian surface-to-air missile sites, and 500-pound JDAM extended-range guided bombs.

America has declined to provide long-range ATACMS missiles for HIMARS and has prohibited U.S.-origin weapons from being used against Russian territory. Ukraine’s air force will also be aided by the donation of 17 Soviet-era MiG-29s from eastern European NATO allies. But Russia’s air defense is largely located in Belarus and Russia, posing an additional challenge for the MiGs, Hecker said.

“Any more quantity is going to help,” Hecker said. “This will allow them to come at different axes, which will complicate the problem Russia has.”

There is one aspect of the war that Hecker thinks must remain the same.

“In the short term, we just need to make sure that Russia does not get air superiority,” he said.

DOD Press Chief, Fighter PEO, and 21 More Selected for 2-Star General

March 22, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

Nearly two dozen Air Force brigadier generals have been selected for a second star, the Department of Defense announced March 22—including Pentagon Press Secretary Brig. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder and Brig. Gen. Dale R. White, who oversees Air Force acquisition of fighters and advanced aircraft. The selections must be confirmed by the Senate to become official.

Ryder follows in the footsteps of the last—and only other—uniformed Pentagon press secretary, Rear Adm. John F. Kirby, who pinned on his second star shortly after taking on the job in late 2013.

Kirby later returned to the Pentagon as a civilian, and it was Ryder who succeeded him in August 2022. Ryder previously served as the Air Force’s director of public affairs. His predecessor in that role, Maj. Gen. Ed Thomas, also a public affairs officer, also earned a second star, but it is rare for PAOs to attain two-star status.

White, the program executive officer and director of fighters and advanced aircraft for Air Force Materiel Command, played a key role in developing the Next Generation Air Dominance family of systems, which will include a sixth-generation fighter, and Collaborative Combat Aircraft, autonomous drones that will team with manned fighters.

Other notable selections include Brig. Gen. Paul D. Moga, commandant of Cadets at the U.S. Air Force Academy, and Brig. Gen. Michael T. Rawls, commander of the Air Force Operational Test and Evaluation Center—both men are slated to receive their second star.

Brig. Gen. Curtis R. Bass, vice commander of the U.S. Warfare Center, Air Combat Command, Nellis Air Force Base, Nev.

Brig. Gen. Kenyon K. Bell, director of logistics and engineering, Headquarters Air Force Global Strike Command, Barksdale Air Force Base, La.

Brig. Gen. Charles D. Bolton, chief of the Global Operations Center, Headquarters U.S. Transportation Command, Scott Air Force Base, Ill.

Brig. Gen. Larry R. Broadwell Jr., deputy director of operations, Operations Team-5, National Joint Operations and Intelligence Center, J-3, Joint Staff, Pentagon, Washington, D.C.

Brig. Gen. Scott A. Cain, director of Air, Space and Cyberspace Operations, Headquarters Air Force Materiel Command, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio.

Brig. Gen. Sean M. Choquette, vice commander of the 12th Air Force, Air Combat Command, Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz.

Brig. Gen. Roy W. Collins, director of security forces, Deputy Chief of Staff, Logistics, Engineering and Force Protection, Headquarters U.S. Air Force, Pentagon, Washington, D.C.

Brig. Gen. John R. Edwards, director of strategic capabilities policy for the National Security Council, Washington, D.C.

Brig. Gen. Jason T. Hinds, director of plans, programs, and analyses, Headquarters U.S. Air Forces Europe—Air Forces Africa, Ramstein Air Base, Germany.

Brig. Gen. Justin R. Hoffman, director of strategic plans, programs, and requirements, Headquarters Air Force Special Operations Command, Hurlburt Field, Fla.

Brig. Gen. Stacy J. Huser, principal assistant deputy administrator for military application, National Nuclear Security Administration, Department of Energy, Washington, D.C.

Brig. Gen. Matteo G. Martemucci, director of intelligence, J2, U.S. Cyber Command, Fort George G. Meade, Md.

Brig. Gen. David A. Mineau, vice commander of the 15th Air Force, Air Combat Command, Shaw Air Force Base, S.C.

Brig. Gen. Paul D. Moga, commandants of Cadets, U.S. Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, Colo.

Brig. Gen. Ty W. Neuman, director of concepts and strategy, Deputy Chief of Staff, Strategy, Integration, and Requirements, Headquarters U.S. Air Force, Pentagon, Washington, D.C.

Brig. Gen. Christopher J. Niemi, director of strategic plans, requirements, and programs, Headquarters Pacific Air Forces, Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii.

Brig. Gen. Brandon D. Parker, chief of staff for Headquarters Pacific Air Forces, Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii.

Brig. Gen. Michael T. Rawls, commander of the Air Force Operational Test and Evaluation Center, Headquarters U.S. Air Force, Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M.

Brig. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder, press secretary, Department of Defense, Office of the Secretary of Defense, Pentagon, Washington, D.C.

Brig. Gen. David G. Shoemaker, deputy director of operations, J-3, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, Camp H.M. Smith, Hawaii.

Brig. Gen. Rebecca J. Sonkiss, commander of the 618th Air Operations Center, Air Mobility Command, Scott Air Force Base, Ill.

Brig. Gen. Claude K. Tudor Jr., commanding general of the Special Operations Joint Task Force—Levant, U.S. Special Operations Command, Xiphos, Jordan.

Brig. Gen. Dale R. White, program executive officer and director of fighters and advanced aircraft, Headquarters Air Force Materiel Command, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio.

More B-21s Would Help America Field a Two-War Military, New Mitchell Paper Says

March 21, 2023 | By Chris Gordon

The future U.S. bomber force could provide a way for the Pentagon to simultaneously deter conflict with peer adversaries in two geographically disparate theaters, said Mark Gunzinger, the director of future concepts and capability assessments at AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, during a March 21 event. But doing so will require expanding the procurement of the B-21 and extending the life of the strategic bombers already in the Air Force’s inventory, he added.

“At the very least our bomber force should be sized for two theater conflicts because it will be the lead force, the foundation of any campaign to defeat a Chinese or Russian invasion, and we’re behind the curve already,” Gunzinger said in a virtual event.

The challenge the U.S. faces is outlined in the current National Defense Strategy, which states that the U.S. must be able to prevail in a conflict and “deter opportunistic aggression elsewhere.” Even with a defense budget of over $800 billion, there is a limit on what a stretched military could do to deter parallel conflicts with China and Russia.

But Gunzinger maintains that the strategic bomber is well suited for that mission if deployed in sufficient numbers. Doing that, he said, will require some major adjustments.

With much fanfare, the U.S. is slated to start fielding a new stealth bomber soon: B-21 Raider. Those aircraft will eventually replace the approximately 45 B-1s and about 20 B-2s in the U.S. arsenal. The B-52 fleet, which currently numbers around 75 aircraft, would remain in the inventory after it is re-engined and undergoes other modernization programs. Its main role would be to fire stand-off munitions.

But Gunzinger cautions that the Air Force’s plan to retire B-1s and B-2s would be imprudent, especially as B-52s must be taken out of service to be upgraded.

“The near-term outlook for increasing the size of the U.S. bomber force is not good—in fact, it could become even smaller before B-21 production increases the number of tails on the ramp,” Gunzinger wrote in a recent paper.

An alternative approach, Gunzinger said, would be to keep older bombers flying while rapidly increasing B-21 production.

However, the B-1 has been flown hard during its service life and has a poor mission-capable rate of around 40 percent. Only around half of B-2s are available for missions at a given time, and the fleet has been on a safety stand-down since late 2022.

Burdensome, costly, and time-consuming maintenance, along with the personnel required to do that work, is the main reason the Air Force wants to retire the B-1 and B-2. In 2018, the Air Force said keeping the B-1 and B-2 around after the B-21 came online was “neither fiscally realistic nor desirable.” However, the service has said the B-52 should be kept in the air because of its large and flexible size payload.

The U.S. has committed to buying at least 100 B-21s. Gunzinger argues the number should more than double to 225. There is hardly a conflict imaginable where bombers would not play a role, especially in a high-end campaign, he noted. And implementing his plan would produce a force in which a greater portion of the U.S. bomber force would be stealthy aircraft as well.

“The future bomber force must be sized to deter and decisively respond to Chinese aggression, a second threat in another theater, and deter nuclear attacks—simultaneously,” he wrote.

Appearing during the event with Gunzinger, Maj. Gen. Jason R. Armagost, director of strategic plans, programs, and requirements for Air Force Global Strike Command, did not speak to the higher B-21 figure. However, Armagost noted that the Air Force needs a nuanced approach to determining what its fleet should look like going forward.

“It’s easy from a budget perspective to talk about one war, two war because we know the numbers, but when we’re talking about competition that drives an intensity into the force, that drives a requirement into the force that is on the spectrum actually of deterrence because the intent of competition is to demonstrate and show that it is not worth coming at us right now,” said Armagost. “That competition level of force requirement almost doesn’t get captured when you look at the binary requirements of war or peace, and so I think that’s also part of the conversation that has to happen.”

As the U.S. military gears up toward the Pacific, it still has an array of commitments, such as bolstering NATO against potential Russian threats, defending South Korea against an aggressive North Korea, and conducting raids against ISIS militants in Iraq and Syria. Having a capable bomber force that could respond to multiple crises could allow other services to focus on where they are most effective.

“The Army’s big fight is in Europe and the Navy’s is in the Pacific and they should size accordingly,” Gunzinger said. “We also shouldn’t assume another aggressor wouldn’t take advantage of our engagement in a major flight in the Pacific to make a move that we can’t deter and defeat because we size our military for one war. And that’s why we should size our bomber force for two conflicts, not just one.”

Supply Chain, Long Lead Times, Bureaucracy Challenge Nuclear Sustainment

March 21, 2023 | By John A. Tirpak

The Air Force’s nuclear forces continue to struggle with supply chain problems, both those lingering from the pandemic and the inevitable challenges of operating equipment that’s decades old, Global Strike Command’s director of logistics and engineering said March 21.

Additive manufacturing could be the solution, noted Brig. Gen. Kenyon K. Bell, but bureaucracy has to be swept aside to make it work.

Speaking in a webinar presented by Defense One, Bell said “long lead times” in getting parts is his number one issue in maintaining USAF’s nuclear forces, which in the case of systems like the B-52 and Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile, go back decades.

The same issues that affected the nation in getting consumer goods during the height of the COVID pandemic—backlogs in shipping, shortages of materials—affected military sustainment, but to a greater degree, Bell said.

Exacerbating the problem now is getting resupply of parts and gear for platforms out of production for decades, he noted.

When there were 750 B-52s in service, an industrial base to supply parts and equipment wasn’t an issue, Bell said, because there were plenty of vendors who would compete for that business. But with only 76 Stratofortresses left, it’s hard to interest companies in making the investment needed to be a supplier.

“It’s a different business proposition,” he said, adding that AFGSC has to get “creative” without the luxury of simply retiring old systems like Minuteman in anticipation of the new Sentinel missile, because the old nuclear systems must be fully functional right up until the second of the handover to the new equipment.

One answer is to work with Air Force Materiel Command—and particularly with the Rapid Sustainment Office—to find other systems that need similar or common parts and making a bulk buy, which can attract industrial interest.

“If I only need three or four of an item … that might not be lucrative enough” to justify a business making a bid,” Bell said. “Remember … it is still a profit-driven business.” But with an order of “10 or 25, now someone is willing to come to the table and meet my national security need. So we have to figure out, creatively,” how to meet the government’s requirements while still having it “make sense for business return on investment, for the company to bring tooling and people to bear.”

But tooling up to make a new part requires lead times “not in days, but in years,” Bell said and the need is urgent.

In some cases, the need can even arise when a part that has never broken before finally snaps. AFGSC can do assessments, prescribe systems, figure out the technology and finalize designs. But at the end of the day, “we’ve never ordered this” before, Bell said. “Now what do you do?”

Moreover, “you’re not going to be able to wait. Sometimes you can cannibalize … another aircraft.” But in cases when that’s not possible, the service must “look at the technology that we have available to us.”

In such situations, additive manufacturing—or 3-D printing—shows great promise, Bell said, but it’s not as simple as just printing new parts.

“Additive manufacturing, 3-D printing, reverse engineering—all of those technologies are going to be key and critical to maintaining legacy or aged weapons systems,” he said.

“But there are lots of critical certifications that are required … what I have frequently talked to our team and our enterprise about, is, let’s not hide behind nuclear certification as a roadblock, but let’s work with and through the nuclear certification process to utilize some of these new technologies. Yes, it will be challenging, but it does not make it impossible to do,” he said.

The aerospace industry has only recently begun to move from 3-D printed parts that have similar strength and performance to original components in structural roles—think brackets and stiffeners—to those that can be used in “flight critical” functions, such as within engines. Nuclear certifications are that much more demanding, with zero tolerance for failure.

Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. “has been very vocal” about breaking down bureaucracy, Bell said. “He’s been frustrated with the bureaucracy … so we have a significant advocate to make sure that we can get to where we need to be and get there fast.”

But the industrial base “doesn’t know whether or not we can make good on our promise that we’re going to go and buy this particular part, because we don’t know if we’ll have a budget to fund it,” Bell said. Particularly on legacy weapon systems, “it makes it even more challenging.” This problem “certainly hamstrings us quite a bit when it comes to” clearing bureaucracy, he noted.

What’s more, the issue is not going to go away, Bell said, noting that the B-52 will be in the inventory “through 2050 and beyond.”

Purses, Parkas, and Patches—Air Force Uniform Board Unveils New Changes, But No Beards

March 21, 2023 | By David Roza

The Air Force Uniform Board unveiled changes to Air Force and Space Force dress and appearance regulations March 21, including updates to cold weather gear, purses and handbags, and “heritage-like” morale patches.

One area of appearance regulations that went unchanged was facial hair policy. Over the past several years, there has been a steady stream of calls from Airmen on social media to allow beards without a special waiver. As part of a statement on facial hair policy, an Air Force spokesperson said the branch coordinates with the other services.

“We are a part of a joint force that represents our nation and also considers the policies and procedures of our sister-services,” the spokesperson said.

On the same day the uniform changes were announced, Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force JoAnne S. Bass released a memo saying that facial hair policy, and the stigma that many shaving waiver holders report facing, is on her mind. Earlier this month, the military’s top enlisted service member, Senior Enlisted Advisor to the Joint Chiefs of Staff Ramón Colón-López, was criticized by some on social media for dismissing the push for lifting the beard ban as an attempt “to look cute.”

“With each change we make to expand opportunity to serve and reduce artificial barriers, I am keenly aware the authorization of beards across the Total Force is at the forefront for many,” Bass wrote in her memo. “I am writing you to make it clear that as we continue to look at this and other issues, we can and must act now to remove any stigma, or personal bias, toward those Airmen authorized to maintain facial hair, either for medical or religious reasons.”

The new changes to Department of the Air Force Instruction 36-2903 go into effect April 1. The request for changes had been submitted via the Guardians and Airmen Innovation Network, which allows Airmen and Guardians to submit and vote on ideas for change. They include:

Child Development Centers: New language in Air Force regulations will allow installation commanders to designate CDCs as a no-hat, no-salute zone. Salutes also will not be required when Airmen or Guardians are carrying children outside of CDCs.

Cold weather headbands: Airmen and Guardians can now wear a headband in cold weather in addition to scarves, earmuffs, a watch cap, and gloves.

Four badges above the service tape: The new language ups the maximum number of badges that Airmen and Guardians can wear on the front of their occupational camouflage pattern (OCP) uniforms above the U.S. Air Force or U.S. Space Force tape from two to four.

New headgear with flight duty uniform: Airmen authorized to wear flight duty uniforms will now be able to wear the OCP patrol cap or tactical OCP gap with those uniforms, as well as the blue flight cap they have traditionally worn.

Small logo on purses and handbags: Before this change, it was difficult for Airmen and Guardians to carry purses or handbags to work with them due to restrictions on showing corporate logos in uniform. Now Airmen and Guardians can carry purses and handbags to work with them, so long as the logo does not exceed one inch in diameter. There are no color or logo restrictions for Guardians holding a backpack by hand.

Olive drab green backpacks: Airmen and Guardians can now wear olive drab green backpacks. Before this change they could wear only black, brown, grey or dark blue backpacks.

Any size logo on gym bags: No more “small” logo in Air Force regulations on gym bags.

Certain commercial parkas are now allowed: New language expands the current regulations to allow cold weather parks to be purchased commercially. However, the Parkas must be OCP pattern or Coyote Brown and have name tapes, service tape, rank, and patches worn in the same authorized configuration.

Friday morale shirts with logos: On Fridays, Airmen and Guardians can now wear morale shirts with logos on both the back and the left side of the chest. However, the logo on the chest can not exceed five inches in diameter, though the one on the back can be a larger diameter. The shirt also must be coyote brown regardless of the logo.

“Heritage-like” morale patches: This change removes language from Air Force regulations “limiting current or past official organizational emblem or any variations for the [flight duty uniform], like the OCPs and two-piece flight duty uniform.”

Space Force Invests in System for Building and Modifying Satellites—in Orbit

March 20, 2023 | By David Roza

Building satellites is hard enough on Earth, but a group of companies just received a contract from the U.S. Space Force that could pave the way to building satellites in orbit.

Announced March 20, the goal of the $1.6 million award is to demonstrate building a standalone satellite on Earth using a module the companies hope to one day use to build new satellites or modify existing ones in orbit.

“This award opens up a unique methodology to support on-orbit flexibility, mission change in flight, high fidelity manipulation, and assembly of complex objects,” Dave Barnhart, CEO and cofounder of Arkisys Inc., one of the companies, said in a statement.

The other companies are Qediq Inc, NovaWurks, Motive Space Systems, iBoss, and a state research agency, the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES). According to a statement released by Arkisys, the contractors will work together to demonstrate “the building of a standalone 3-axis stabilized satellite on the Port Module.”

Three-axis satellites use small thrusters or electronically-powered reaction wheels to maintain stability in orbit, according to NASA. The Port is a hexagonal platform built by Arkisys which the company hopes to someday launch into space and serve as a sort of seaport for satellites. Once docked with the Port, spacecraft could be repaired, upgraded, or even put together using the platform’s robot arm, the company proposes. Customers could also lease bays for research or manufacturing purposes.

“In many countries, ports act as a nexus for goods, materials, services, and business, to the point that significant percentages of a country’s GDP flows through them,” Arkisys wrote in a paper for the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. “’The Port’ is not just an outpost destination in orbit, but a business mechanism to unlock new sources of actions and activities in space and capitalize on existing and ‘undiscovered’ markets.”

The concept of satellite ports in orbit dovetails with the Space Force’s effort to make U.S. satellite networks more resilient. Last month, Col. Meredith Beg, the deputy director of operations for space mobility and logistics, said Space Systems Command is exploring how it could use commercial capabilities to “maneuver and service its constellation of satellites in GEO, including adjusting satellites’ inclination, changing orbital slots, refueling satellites that are low on fuel, and tugging assets to a graveyard orbit after they have used all their on-board reserves,” according to a Space Force press release.

“There’s on the order of more than 50 start-ups and various companies that are investing in these capabilities from small-scale robotic arms with little pincers to grab things to big-blow-up nets [for space debris],” Beg said. “The venture capital world is very excited about these possibilities.”

Being able to upgrade, inspect, refuel, and reorbit satellites in space makes space operations much more flexible and less expensive, wrote Air Force Capt. Joshua Garretson in a 2021 essay on satellite servicing. The need for such a capability is particularly acute because technology develops so fast that most telecom satellites are out of date by the time they reach orbit, Garretson said.

“The logistics behind it is complex and requires effort, but the rewards of increased space superiority, solar system exploration, lower costs, and [the] possibility of the largest economic market in recent history speak for themselves,” wrote Garretson.

The contract announced March 20 could move that concept closer to reality. The Small Business Innovation Research contract was awarded by SpaceWERX, an entity within Space Force that helps industry, academia, and the government develop space security technologies. SpaceNews reported that the satellite to be built in the ground demonstration will be made up of at least three modules made by NovaWurks. If all goes well, building satellites in space build could have implications beyond Earth’s orbit.

“The ability to assemble a functional satellite off of another platform is something that will open up not just Earth orbit markets and on-the-fly changes to existing satellites, but to on-demand satellites for lunar or Martian exploration,” Dr. Robert Ambrose, director of space and robotics initiatives at TEES, said in the Arkisys announcement. “This is incredibly exciting for us as we are developing platforms to validate and demonstrate higher fidelity robotics on orbit, to build, assemble, repair, and operate.”

PACAF Commander: Air Superiority Is the Focus in Indo-Pacific

March 20, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

Give Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach, commander of Pacific Air Forces, one extra dollar, and he would spend it bolstering U.S. air superiority in the region.

Speaking at an Aerospace Nation event hosted by AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, Wilsbach said March 20 that air superiority is a joint endeavor of the U.S. and its allies in the region, and includes everything from combat jets to tankers, airlifters, and intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and command and control assets like the E-7 Wedgetail.

“It starts with the E-7,” Wilsbach said. “Having domain awareness is important. [The reason] why we need the E-7 so badly is because our current fleet of E-3s are challenged remarkably, just getting them in the air.”

The E-3s now average more than 42 years old and are based on a Boeing 707 airframe that is hardly in use anywhere any longer.

“Our maintainers are doing great work to keep those things in flying order, but [the aircraft] are old and they take a lot of maintenance to keep them in optimal condition,” Wilbach said. “And then the other fact is “Even when they’re perfectly in order and they get airborne, they don’t necessarily see what they need to see in the 21st century modern warfare. The E-7 does … and so the E-7 is absolutely critical.”

The Air Force is contracted with Boeing to supply the E-7 and anticipates getting the first aircraft in 2027. To prepare its first E-7 crews, USAF is working with the Royal Australian Air Force, which already flies the airframe, Wilsbach said, giving U.S. Airmen a “sneak peak” at the Wedgetail now and over the next several years.

“This sharing of tactics, techniques and procedures between the allies and partners only makes them stronger,” Wilsbach said. “Exercising on a very frequent basis helps us to be interoperable.”

USAF is also working with the Australians on developing Collaborative Combat Aircraft, the semi-autonomous drones that will fly alongside crewed fighters in the future, adding combat mass and new capabilities. The Royal Australian Air Force worked with Boeing to develop its MQ-28 Ghost Bat, which is similar to the U.S. CCA concept.

“We really look forward to what they’re doing with the MQ-28 Ghost Bat there,” Wilsbach said. “They are doing some great work figuring out exactly how to use this aircraft and we look forward to seeing what they learned and then perhaps applying that to our CCA program ourselves.”

U.S. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said two weeks ago the service envisions a notional fleet of 1,000 CCAs—or even as many as 2,000—to help deter, and if necessary, fight the substantial forces of China in the Pacific. Wilsbach acknowledged that in a peer fight like that, the Air Force must anticipate significant losses, so mass will make a difference.

“The ability to create dilemmas and mass up those dilemmas on your adversary causes them to make mistakes, it causes them to use weapons, and it eventually will cause them to lose their assets versus us,” Wilsbach said.

CCAs will notionally supplement both the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) family of systems and the existing F-35A Lightning II. Yet achieving air superiority will require far more than platforms, Wilsbach said.

“One thing that people often don’t think about with respect to air superiority is weapons to be able to kill ships” that will seek to keep U.S. air forces far off shore, Wilsbach said. “They’re going to put ships out probably to the east of Taiwan,” he added. The radars and missile systems on those ships will seek to impose China’s anti-access/area denial strategy, “and when they take away that airspace, it takes away our ability to have freedom of maneuver, and to create effects via airpower—until you can attrite those ships.”

Also critical is access to resilient, dispersed basing, which lessens reliance on major bases and increases complexity for adversary missile strikes. USAF’s adoption of Agile Combat Employment, in which small teams of Airmen deploy and operate from remote locales, often performing duties outside their usual specialties, “is becoming more of a theme for more and more of our allies and partners,” Wilsbach said.

Developing the ACE concept further, the Air Force is building up small airfields throughout the Pacific, working with the State Department and Pentagon to negotiate access to more airfields, and even develop and share new technologies to make airfield repair faster.

“This quick-drying concrete that we have, you pour it and it’s the consistency of a milkshake when it goes in the hole,” he said. “And 45 minutes later, you can walk on it. Three hours later, you can land a C-17 on it.”

Every Airman in PACAF practices the concept in some form or fashion, Wilsbach said, and now they’re also helping to spread the word to allies.

“Japan and Australia are fantastic Agile Combat Employment partners, because they realize that they need to get good at Agile Combat Employment as well,” Wilsbach said. “There’s a great partnership between those two countries.”