The Air Force Changed Its Mind on Some Cuts to the F-15EX Buy—But Won’t Go Any Farther, Kendall Says

March 16, 2023 | By Chris Gordon

The Air Force upped its buy of F-15EX Eagle IIs in part to fulfill the homeland defense mission and ensure the Air Force reached a goal of 72 new fighters a year, top Air Force leaders said March 15. But the service does not plan to buy any more of the Boeing-made jets in the future, leaving it with a final fleet of 104 F-15EXs.

“There’s no intention to do that right now,” Kendall said when asked if the Air Force planned further F-15EX purchases at the annual McAleese and Associates defense conference.

The service originally planned to stop buying the refreshed version venerable fourth-generation fighter by now. But Congress budgeted for 24 F-15EXs in fiscal 2023 and Air Force matched that number in its request for fiscal 2024. The Air Force wants to purchase 48 F-35s in fiscal 2024 along with the 24 F-15EXs, which makes up the 72 fighter figure.

“It’s not just the 72 a year, it’s the mixture of capability and capacity that goes with that fighter capability,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. said.

The Air Force has not detailed exactly where the new airframes will go, but Kendall indicated some of the F-15EXs would replace aging F-15C/D Eagles in the Air National Guard fleet.

“The reason we do that in part because of the cruise missile defense mission,” Kendall said of the F-15EX and F-35 buys.

The Air Force’s plan F-15EX buy would not fully replace F-15C/Ds in the fleet, however, and some Air National Guard F-15C/Ds are being replaced with F-35s. The Air Force has around 200 F-15C/Ds that it will eventually retire, and the service wants to divest 57 in fiscal 2024. The Air Force made the decision to pull its 48 F-15C/Ds from Kadena Air Base, Japan in late 2022, with some of those aircraft destined for the Air National Guard.

“We’re going to continue to draw that fleet down until there’s none left,” the director of the Air National Guard Lt. Gen. Michael A. Loh told reporters March 8 at AFA’s Warfare Symposium. “So the recapitalization is occurring. … The two things on the production line right now are F-35 and F-15EX.”

But the Air Force says it will not be increasing its long-term commitment to F-15EX at the expense of stealthy F-35s, which it sees as the future backbone of the fighter fleet.

The additional batch of F-15EX will give the Air Force 104 F-15EXs, up from the 80 F-15EX fleet it detailed in last year’s budget request. The Air Force originally planned to buy 144 F-15EXs and has now changed that position several times. But a final inventory of 104 jets will remain the Air Force’s position—at least for now.

“23 came out a lot bigger than they had asked for, and so 24 is an increase on that,” Kendall said. “So basically, we have the capability to buy more, and so we did—same thing with F-35.”

The Department of Defense has been waiting on committing to buy more F-35s until the updated Block 4 and Technology Refresh 3 capabilities come online.

“We’d like to start climbing up the ramp a bit when we are pretty confident we’re going to get Block 4 aircraft,” DOD comptroller Michael A. McCord told reporters.

“This was probably the least debate about JSFs that I’ve seen inside the building process in the times I’ve done this,” said McCord, referring to the Joint Strike Fighter, the original name for the F-35 program. McCord previously served as the comptroller from 2014 to 2017, when the F-35 was first introduced into the Air Force fleet.

McCord said the services had more conversations inside the DOD to make sure F-35s didn’t show up on unfunded priorities lists. The Department of the Navy wants a mix of 35 F-35B and F-35C variants in its fiscal 2024 budget for the Marines and Navy, giving the Pentagon a wish list of 83 Lockheed Martin-made F-35s.

“We’ve kind of had a little bit better clarity in our internal process early on,” McCord said. “This is the comfort spot for the Department of Navy and the Department of Air Force and we didn’t really move off of that a lot or have a big discussion about it.”

On ABMS, Air Force Steers Between Status Quo and ‘Boiling the Ocean’

March 16, 2023 | By James C. Kitfield

Since 2018—when the Pentagon began its strategic pivot toward competition with near-peer powers Russia and China—the Air Force has worked to restructure and advance its Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS) program.

Originally envisioned as a replacement for the E-3 AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System), ABMS was reimagined as a holistic “system of systems” designed to seamlessly and securely share data across multiple weapons systems, the service’s contribution to the Defense Department’s broader Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2) effort to connect sensors and shooters around the globe.

“What exactly is ABMS? Is it software? Hardware? Infrastructure? Policy?” Gen. David W. Allvin, Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force, wrote in May 2021. “The answer is yes to all.”

Five years from the start of that reimagining, Air Force and industry experts made clear at the AFA Warfare Symposium last week that the precise parameters and definition of the ABMS program remain a work in progress.

“Within the broad construct of what the Air Force is doing with [command-and control and battle management], I would say there is a ditch on both sides of the road we’re traveling that we’re trying to avoid,” said Brig. Gen, Luke C.G. Cropsey, the Air Force’s program executive officer for command, control, communications, and battle management (C3BM).

On one side is the ditch called “status quo,” he said, and there is general agreement in the Air Force that continuing on that legacy path is unsustainable giving the escalating threat.

“The problem is, if we overcorrect we hit the ditch on the other side of the road, which is trying to connect everything, everywhere, all of the time,” said Cropsey, who characterized that approach as trying to “boil the ocean.”

“That’s not going to work either … because there’s a long list of acquisition programs that adopted that ‘Big Bang’ theory [of connectivity], and they ended poorly as a result,” Cropsey said during a panel discussion.

The Air Force’s lodestar for avoiding those ditches is to always keep in mind the needs of the warfighter in any future great power conflict.

“The way we stay in the middle of the road is to be ruthlessly, laser-focused on the operational problems that need to be solved in order for us to win the next fight,” said Cropsey. “We need to stay grounded in the fundamental belief that if we identify and clearly articulate the operational problem we’re trying to solve, and do that in a way that allows us all to share the same vision of the challenge, then we can work our way back through the mission threads and the kill chain and arrive at a solution. That’s what we mean by staying operationally focused.”

Retired Air Force Lt. Col. Ron Fehlen, general manager of Air and Space Force programs for L3Harris, likened the importance of staying operationally focused to the evolution of the cell phone.

“Frankly, deciding what you want [ABMS] to do from a data perspective is no different from the cell phones we use every day,” Fehlen said during the panel discussion. “I suspect not many of us are using the old ‘flip phones’ anymore, and that’s because we demanded more data and processing power out of those phones, and then we wanted teenagers to be able to stream Netflix on their phones, so we demanded full-motion video.”

That kind of demand-driven process drove cell phone manufacturers towards different bandwidth and security requirements, he noted.

“Similarly, [ABMS] boils down to going through a process of identifying what the warfighter needs, when they need it, and where that data needs to flow” said Fehlen. “Then industry can help take the technology to that next level.”

Achieving a more holistic command-and-control and battle management “system of systems,” will likely require the individual services to conduct more upfront operational analysis to reach a common understanding of the future battlespace and their roles within it.

“Many times when we speak to our military customers, we hear ‘Well, we didn’t actually know that the other services were doing it this way,’” said Elaine Bitonti, general manager at Collins Aerospace for connected battlespace and emerging capabilities. “But if the communications system standards for the Air Force are different than for the Army and Navy, and there may be operational reasons for that, it still has an impact.”

In the case of Collins Aerospace’s work on the largest global command-and-control network for commercial airlines, for instance, the airlines first came together to create a common infrastructure. “They knew that had to have a common infrastructure to run all the data they wanted,” Bitonti noted.

Dan Markham, director of Joint All Domain Operations at Lockheed Martin, agreed on the need for the armed services to come together early and establish common interfaces and standards.

“It’s important to ensure active participation by the other services early on, so industry doesn’t show up and try and integrate something only to find the interfaces between the Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, and Army are different,” he said. “That’s not effective or efficient.”

WATCH: Video of Russian Fighter Crashing Into US MQ-9 Released

March 16, 2023 | By Chris Gordon

The Pentagon released video of a March 14 incident involving a Russian Su-27 fighter and a U.S. Air Force MQ-9, which resulted in the American plane crashing into the Black Sea. The MQ-9 Reaper was conducting a surveillance mission when two Su-27 Flankers intercepted it. The Su-27s harassed the U.S. drone by making close passes and dumping fuel on it. Eventually, one Russian fighter clipped the MQ-9’s propeller.

In the short video, which DOD said was edited for length, an Su-27 Flanker makes a close pass over the U.S. surveillance drone. At first, a Russian jet comes up behind the MQ-9 while dumping fuel on the American plane. In a second pass, a Russian jet hits the American plane and the video cuts out. When the picture reappears, the American drone’s propeller is visibly damaged.

The U.S. drone became unflyable, and the American operators brought the drone down in the Black Sea, according to the U.S.

The U.S. says it hasn’t concluded whether the Russian pilots intended to crash into the drone or were trying to disable it with their tactics. Either way, the Russians could not be said to have kept a safe distance from the American plane.

“This was unsafe, it was unprofessional,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said on CNN March 15, describing the video. “It was also tinged with a great deal of incompetence.”

U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley made calls to their Russian counterparts.

“We take any potential for escalation very seriously and that’s why I believe it’s important to keep the lines of communication open,” Austin said at a joint press conference with Milley on March 13. “I think it’s really key that we’re able to pick up the phone and engage each other. And I think that that will help to prevent miscalculations going forward.”

The MQ-9’s wreckage lies almost a mile down at the bottom of the Black Sea after it “probably broke up,” Milley said. The U.S. is aware of where the drone landed.

“We know where it landed in the Black Sea,” Milley added. “It’s probably about maybe 4,000 or 5,000 feet of water, something like that. So any recovery operation is very difficult at that depth by anyone.”

The graphic below depicts approximations of the locations and times of the @usairforce MQ-9 Reaper collision and crash into the Black Sea. The video released earlier today by @US_EUCOM occurs at the middle plot point on the timeline. pic.twitter.com/nz8fTzL4ZG
— USAFE-AFAFRICA (@HQUSAFEAFAF) March 16, 2023

Milley indicated the U.S. took steps to prevent any unwanted material from getting into the wrong hands.

“There’s probably not a lot to recover, frankly,” Milley said. “We did take mitigating measures, so we are quite confident that whatever was of value is no longer of value.”

Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Brig. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder said the U.S. believes Russia is attempting to recover parts of the MQ-9, but added that deep water would make that mission difficult.

“We do have indications Russia is likely making an effort to recover MQ-9 debris,” Ryder said during a briefing at the Pentagon on March 16. “We assess it is very unlikely they would be able to recover anything useful.”

However, the U.S. objects to any Russian exploitation of the wreckage.

“The key point here is this is U.S. property and it’s an intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance asset,” Ryder said. “We have capabilities and means at our disposal to protect and safeguard the information which we have taken.”

The U.S. has experienced several near collisions between Russian and Chinese jets and American surveillance planes over the past year. U.S. officials say they are within rights to conduct operations in international airspace, regardless of protests and adversarial harassment.

“The United States will continue to fly and to operate wherever international law allows,” Austin said.

This article was updated with comments from Pentagon Press Secretary Brig. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder.

How Do You Train for a War in Space? Saltzman Says USSF Is Working on the Details

March 15, 2023 | By Chris Gordon

The Space Force increasingly views space as a contested environment it might have to battle through due to China’s increasing capabilities. But that does not mean the service is unprepared if it had to fight tonight, according to Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman.

“That’s why we have the Space Force,” Saltzman said March 15 at the annual defense conference hosted by McAleese and Associates. “In terms of China, we are not lagging behind. If you were conducting a wargame, and you were picking which space force in the world you want on your side, you would pick the United States Space Force. We have the greatest capabilities, we have the most capable force—the envy of the world.”

While China may not have a space force, the People’s Liberation Army stood up the Strategic Support Force (SSF) in 2015. This newest part of China’s armed forces focuses on the “strategic frontiers” of space and cyber, including electromagnetic and information warfare—as well as disrupting adversaries’ capabilities in the same domains.

In light of new threats, most acutely from China, the USSF has moved with urgency. Its fiscal 2024 budget request proposes growing the budget by 15 percent to $30 billion and expanding to 9,400 Active Guardians. The service wants to rapidly put new satellites in orbit, with some going from development to orbit in two or three years. The Space Force also wants to rely more on commercial capabilities, which may be preexisting and can provide a layer of redundancy.

In the 2024 budget, the service hopes to invest in its missile warning systems, update the global positioning system, and launch new vehicles. It would also spend over half its budget, $16.6 billion, on research, development, test, and evaluation. Exactly what that money is for is largely unknown to the general public.

“I struggle a little bit with how to describe the space budget because so much of it is classified,” DOD comptroller Michael J. McCord said. “We have progress on a number of fronts there.”

But Saltzman said the Space Force’s push for readiness is not just a race to acquire more kit to put in orbit.

“When we talk about a gap, what I’m worried about is we’re out in front of the race,” Saltzman said. “But how fast is the competition closing on? How fast do they want to close the gap that they see? And it’s that pace, and it’s the mix of the weapon systems that they’re pursuing. That’s what’s got us concerned. So we’re looking back and saying, what do we need to do next to make sure that we can counter our competition.”

Saltzman’s answer is one typically offered by service chiefs: the U.S. has the best people. In particular, Saltzman highlighted unique aspects of the Space Force’s “flat” organization that streamline command and the ability to commission industry professionals as officers in the service.

But to get as much as possible out of Guardians, the Space Force needs to up its training—Saltzman has noted that there has never been a war in space, and how the Space Force would train for one is still up in the air.

“We’re still working through all the details,” Saltzman said. “It wasn’t prioritized to the same degree about thinking about a contested domain. Now, we are prioritizing that, obviously. But I don’t have the training facilities and infrastructure that allows us to do the kinds of simulations and training that I need.”

The Air Force can fly training missions and drop live ordinance and other services can practice on Earth. But the Space Force must create virtual environments in lieu of traditional exercises. Saltzman said current simulators at the USSF’s disposal are focused on ensuring service members are proficient with systems.

“It’s about how fast we can shift and pivot to resilient architectures that we think will support deterrence and how fast I can provide the tools to our Guardians to do the kind of training they need to be ready to deal with a dynamic thinking adversary,” Saltzman said.

While much of its focus on protecting its satellites, USSF won’t be doing its own live-fire exercises to test our their resilience—though it is concerned about other nations’ anti-satellite weapons tests.

“We’re expanding our capabilities to do constructive virtual training and ranges so that we can conduct those kinds of events,” Saltzman said.

Overall, a Space Force prepared for a fight with China will allow it to deliver better capabilities in peacetime or during a grey zone conflict, according to Saltzman.

“There’s not some day in the future, where X, Y, and Z are accomplished and I will say, we are now ready,” Saltzman said. “If something goes down, the Space Force is going to be there.”

Brown: Air Force Subtracting A-10 from ‘4+1’ Fighter Plan

March 15, 2023 | By John A. Tirpak

With Congress starting to go along with the Air Force’s wish to retire its aging A-10 fleet, Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr.’s “4+1” fighter plan of two years ago is “probably just ‘4’ now,” he said March 15.

“We’re retiring A-10s faster than we originally thought”, Brown said at the annual McAleese defense forum in Washington, D.C. “I think that’s probably the right answer.”

The A-10’s close air support mission can be carried out by a variety of other platforms, Brown said, and the Air Force must move on to cutting-edge capabilities that can survive in contested airspace and will keep the service ahead of China, the pacing threat.

The four fighters in USAF’s plan will be the the:

F-35

F-16

F-15E/F-15EX

F-22 before it transitions to the Next-Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) fighter around 2030

At the moment, the F-35 is “right behind” the F-16 in overall numbers, Brown said, and “in the not so distant future,” it will become the majority fighter in the combat air forces, presuming the Air Force continues to buy them at a rate of 48 per year.

The F-15E and F-15EX will have a “similar capability” to each other, Brown noted. The service will focus its investments on its newest F-22s and is seeking to retire 32 of the oldest airframes, a move which Congress declined to allow in the fiscal 2023 budget. But the F-22 Block 30/35s will continue to be updated and kept in service until NGAD replaces them, Brown said.

Despite retiring A-10s to find the savings needed to afford new systems, Brown said he has forbidden his staff from using the phrase “divest to invest.” Instead, “we are transitioning to the future,” Brown said.

He also said he engages frequently with staffers on Capitol Hill, where the first element of the discussion is the threat, and after that, the relative contribution of aircraft “in their district that they want to hold onto.” Brown said the Air Force is making headway getting Capitol Hill to see the need to transition to new systems.

Brown noted press coverage of Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall’s announcement at last week’s AFA Warfare Symposium that the service is pursuing a notional fleet of 1,000 Collaborative Combat Aircraft.

“I don’t know if that will be the actual number,” Brown said, but the effort has three elements.

“There’s the platform itself. There’s the autonomy. And then there’s the … organize, train and equip; the standing up units,” he said. These elements will be conducted “in parallel versus in serial” fashion, he said.

Just as important, Brown said the Air Force is investing in the munitions that will go with NGAD and CCA aircraft, and he noted emphasis on the AGM-158 JASSM-ER, the Stand-in Attack Weapon (SiAW), and AARGM-ER, the AIM-260 Joint Advanced Tactical Missile and more upgraded versions of the AIM-120 AMRAAM.

Research and Development

While the broader Pentagon focused its fiscal 2024 budget on buying things, Brown said the Air Force has put significant new funding into research, development, test, and evaluation. That’s being done to “give us options,” he said. As the threat evolves and advances, the Air Force needs to be able to shift gears to keep up with it, Brown said, and “you can’t produce what you haven’t started.” But not all technology initiatives will go forward.

Brown said there are no “gaping holes” in the Air Force budget, and the service is moving forward in virtually all areas where it needs to. He cited $26 billion focused on Kendall’s Operational Imperatives. The remainder of the $185.1 billion USAF “blue” budget—meaning what’s left after Space Force and ‘pass through’ funds are subtracted—is focused balancing the “fight tonight” readiness needs of the service versus “what we need for the long term,” Brown said.

Asked what Congress can do in terms of adding funds or emphasis, Brown said what USAF needs most is “a budget on time.”

Bridge Tanker

Addressing the Air Force’s recent decision to abandon its KC-X, Y, and Z plan to recapitalize the tanker fleet, Brown said the move was due to the fact that “the threat is completely different now” than when that plan was crafted more than 10 years ago.

“We will … shorten the bridge tanker” plan which was the KC-Y, and move as rapidly as possible toward what used to be the KC-Z, now known as the Next-Generation Air refueling System (NGAS), Brown said. The old method of relying on derivatives of commercial aircraft such as airliners and freighters for tankers won’t work, Brown said. Instead, NGAS will be a stealthy and more survivable aircraft, and the service is trying to move its development “to the left,” he said.

Air Guardsmen Have Plenty of ‘Multi-Capable’ Skills. Now the Air Force Needs to Track Them

March 15, 2023 | By David Roza

As the Air Force pushes forward with the concept of multi-capable Airmen, where troops perform roles outside their usual specialty, the top Air National Guardsman says his command is particularly well-suited to respond, since most members of the Air National Guard bring skills from their civilian careers that can help accomplish Air Force missions.

Other military leaders are starting to realize that as well, director of the Air National Guard Lt. Gen. Michael Loh told reporters at the AFA Warfare Symposium, recounting a conversation with U.S. Cyber Command boss Gen. Paul Nakasone.

“‘They’re developing their own skill sets that I don’t train in the military,’” Loh recalled Nakasone telling him about cybersecurity experts in the ANG. “Then when they come back on mission two years later, it’s unbelievable what you all can do.’”

The problem is that while individual units or commanders may be aware of the multi-capable skills their Airmen bring to the fight, the larger force is not—there is no system for tracking those skills throughout the Guard, Loh said.

“At the unit level, they know their people and they actually see it,” Loh said. “At the organizational level, I don’t have the visibility that I would like.”

For example, if Loh needed a temporary program manager, he would have to contact each unit in his command to find out who does program management. It is a cumbersome process, and Loh wants a human resources system to make it less difficult to find qualified Air Guardsmen.

“Eventually if we get the right human resources system, where I can actually start plugging some of these attributes and capabilities in, then we’ll have a much better [system],” he said.

michael loh — U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Michael Loh, director, Air National Guard, laughs while aboard an U.S. Army UH-60 Blackhawk assigned to 1st Battalion, 183rd Aviation Regiment, Idaho National Guard, at Mountain Home Air Force Base, Aug. 20, 2022. U.S. Air National Guard photo by Master Sgt. Becky Vanshur.

Under the current system, Air Guardsmen volunteer their unique skills on an ad hoc basis. Loh recalled during a recent visit to western Africa how one Guard member who is an electrical engineer in his civilian job stepped up to fix a transformer problem on his base.

At the same location, a security forces Airman who was born in Côte d’Ivoire volunteered for air advisor training and used his skills as a civilian police officer to build partnerships with local militaries in their own language.

Those kinds of unique skills may play a vital role in a possible conflict with China. The Air Force has doubled down on the operational concept of Agile Combat Employment, where U.S. and allied air bases are dispersed throughout the Indo-Pacific in a way that makes it more difficult for China to target those bases with ballistic missiles. ACE hinges on the use of small air bases that have much less infrastructure and personnel than the established ones Airmen have become accustomed to. That emphasis on a light footprint requires Airmen to perform more tasks with fewer people, hence the concept of multi-capable Airmen.

“Every unit is doing something for Agile Combat Employment,” Loh said. “How do I take a small team and deliver combat airpower?”

Commanders may be able to build those small teams more quickly if they have a system for tracking the skills of Airmen in greater detail.

“I’m trying to get the infrastructures,” said Loh, who mentioned the Air Force Integrated Personnel and Pay System as a possible starting point. “There are some capabilities there. Can we actually add some of these other identifiers and make it easy for us to find those individuals?”

The general said it was not an issue of resources or authority to establish such an infrastructure, just a matter of how to go about executing it. He imagined either building a new system like one similar to LinkedIn, where users can list specific skills, or bolting similar capabilities onto an existing system.

Loh said the National Guard is sometimes called “the most flexible force”—and a better talent tracking system might help commanders take full advantage of that flexibility.

Air Force Promotes Most New Senior Master Sergeants Since 2012

March 14, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

The Air Force selected than 1,629 master sergeants for promotion to senior master sergeant—the most new E-8s in a single cycle in 11 years.

All told, 10.18 percent of 16,031 eligible tech sergeants made the grade, the Air Force Personnel Center announced—the highest promotion rate for E-7s in four years. Average time in grade was 4.4 years, and average time in service was 17.88 years.

Not since 2012, when more than 1,700 master sergeants were selected, have so many made the cut in a single year. Indeed, this was the first time since 2019 that the promotion rate broke double digits.

High retention and enlisted grade structure reviews depressed promotions last year to the lowest rates in years, and leaders have warned rates could stay low for years, as the Air Force rebalances the noncommissioned officer corps, especially staff, tech, and master sergeant.

But the squeeze seems to be easing at senior master sergeant, where promotions increased slightly in 2022 after two years of rates below 8 percent. In the past dozen years, the promotion rate has topped 10 percent seven times.

The full list of master sergeants selected for promotion in 2023 is available here.

Air Force E-8 Promotion Statistics

Year	Selected	Eligible	Promotion Rate
2023	1,629	16,031	10.16%
2022	1,443	17,419	8.28%
2021	1,194	17,107	6.98%
2020	1,184	15,544	7.62%
2019	1,434	13,316	10.77%
2018	1,549	13,054	11.87%
2017	1,391	11,788	11.80%
2016	1,467	11,904	12.32%
2015	1,257	14,362	8.75%
2014	999	14,823	6.74%
2013	1,367	12,834	10.65%
2012	1,702	12,351	13.78%
2011	1,274	12,378	10.29%
2010	1,269	13,741	9.24%

Deliveries of New F-35s Resume After Three Months

March 14, 2023 | By John A. Tirpak

Lockheed Martin has resumed delivering F-35s to the U.S. government, the Joint Program Office announced March 14, three months to the day after they were halted in the wake of a Dec. 14, 2022 F-35B crash. The first aircraft delivered was an F-35A headed for Air Force duty.

The delivery comes eight days after Lockheed was cleared to resume F-35 flight operations, following Pratt & Whitney’s development of a technical fix to address harmonic resonance issues with its F135 engines, discovered in the aftermath of the December crash.

The JPO has not said how many aircraft or engines were affected by the issue, but Lockheed and Pratt have said changes were made in production to prevent the problem. A fleetwide technical order was issued for all F-35s to be inspected and have a correction applied. Pratt resumed F135 engine deliveries March 2.

Pratt has asserted that the harmonic resonance issue is a well-understood phenomenon and only manifested after more than 600,000 flight hours on the F135 fleet.

Naval Air Systems Command’s investigation into the root cause of the December crash is not yet complete. Neither NAVAIR nor the JPO have indicated that the harmonic resonance issue was the cause of the accident, which occurred when the F-35B, in vertical flight mode, nosed down into Lockheed’s Fort Worth, Texas, runway from an altitude of less than 50 feet.

“The Defense Contract Management Agency and the F-35 Joint Program Office resumed acceptance … of F-35 aircraft today from Lockheed Martin and are currently working with U.S. services, partner nations, and foreign military sales customers on the movement of aircraft to their operational units,” the JPO said in a press release.

“Prior to acceptance, the aircraft passed extensive technical and flight worthy checks ensuring their readiness for operational use,” the JPO said.

Lockheed Martin had completed but not delivered 26 aircraft during the time the delivery hold was in place. Those aircraft have been cleared to fly since March 6, and have been going through the DD250 process, which entails a number of flight test checks to ensure the aircraft are safe to fly and to document any deficiencies.

The company was not able to say how long it will take to clear the backlog of deliveries.

“Resuming acceptance and flight operations was the culmination of two and a half months of exceptionally strong partnerships with the JPO and industry teams,” said Col. Joe Wimmer, Commander of DCMA’s Lockheed Martin Fort Worth operations, in a statement released by the JPO.

“That work allowed us to confidently resume operations safely, and deliver quality jets to our warfighter customers,” he said.

Lt. Gen. Michael J. Schmidt, F-35 Program Executive Officer, said the government-industry F-35 team “worked tirelessly on this effort and their work demonstrates true professionalism and a devotion to accomplish complex missions with stringent ingenuity.”

Meet The Airmen Trained To Repair Massive Aircraft Battle Damage In The Next Big Fight

March 14, 2023 | By David Roza

AURORA, Colo.—At the AFA Warfare Symposium on March 7, the head of Air Force Materiel Command, Gen. Duke Richardson, was asked how the Air Force would respond if it were “punched in the face” during a conflict with a peer adversary like China. The general said his troops had a range of tools to fix the damage of such a punch, including rapid airfield repair and supply surges.

But one of the most important tools Richardson mentioned is a group of maintenance experts who can be dispatched around the world to perform heavy-duty repairs on aircraft that have sustained massive battle damage.

There are only about 150 of them in the entire Air Force, but Aircraft Battle Damage Repair (ABDR) Airmen could mean the difference between victory or defeat in a future conflict.

“We’ve got a batch of these ninjas that are ready to go off” and repair aircraft, Richardson said. “So if we get punched in the face, we will be ready to turn that team and move them out smartly.”

ABDR Airmen are masters of their trade. Many of them have already achieved 7-level, also known as “craftsman,” in their specific maintenance field before applying for a spot in the ABDR course.

“They are multi-capable Airmen already,” said Richardson, himself a former enlisted avionics technician. “They’re crew chiefs, they’re fuels experts, they’re sheet metal, they’re [electrical and environmental], all these different career fields.”

‘Light and lethal’

The training course to become an ABDR Airman takes place at one of Air Force Materiel Command’s three air logistics complexes across the country: one at Tinker Air Force Base, Okla., one at Robins Air Force Base, Ga., and the third at Hill Air Force Base, Utah. Each of these complexes perform “depot-level” maintenance and repair on aircraft—the kind of work that can’t be performed at an aircraft’s operational location.

Air Force depots have resurrected a large number of partially-destroyed aircraft over the years. But what happens in the middle of a conflict, when planners may not be able to send a damaged aircraft from Guam or Okinawa all the way back to Utah or Georgia? The answer: Bring the depot to the area of operations. ABDR Airmen stand ready to ship out to a conflict zone at a moment’s notice in order to patch up aircraft. They also pre-position ‘war wagons:’ two pallet positions’ worth of tools and raw materials at far-flung air bases to respond even more quickly to a crisis.

“We try to pre-stage as much as we can so whenever an incident does happen we have those materials on hand, we just need to get our bodies there to install the repairs,” Master Sgt. Kyle Sommerfeldt, one of three ABDR Airmen who Richardson highlighted March 7, told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

Sommerfeldt said the war wagon is a retrofitted ammunition trailer from the 1970s that now has toolboxes mounted onto it for storing tools and raw materials, making it essentially “just a rolling toolbox,” he said. The Air Force can pre-position them or move them easily aboard a cargo aircraft.

“We like to use the term ‘light and lethal,’” said Tech Sgt. William Kesler, another of the three ABDR Airmen. “Gen. Richardson mentioned us being like a ninja: the lighter we are, the better equipped we are to move quickly throughout the theater and get these aircraft back in the fight.”

Tools and materials are not the only things ABDR Airmen bring with them. They also travel with a commissioned aircraft structures engineer—typically a lieutenant or a captain—who can plan out and authorize depot-level repairs in the field.

“As you can imagine, with battle damage repair it’s hard to write exactly what it’s going to look like, so a lot of the times there’s no repair data for it,” Sommerfeldt said. “So you need an actual engineer to say, ‘Here’s what we need to do to fix this kind of damage.’”

That kind of authority helps ABDR crews be prepared for anything, even an A-10 Thunderbolt II coming in with a wing shot off.

“That’s exactly what we’re in there for,” Kesler said. “For those incidents just like that.”

‘Be there in theater’

The Air Force formed ABDR teams after the Vietnam War, where “rapid area maintenance teams” repaired or modified more than 1,000 aircraft under conditions ranging “from normal industrial facilities to flight lines at operating bases under direct enemy fire,” Air Force Maj. Darrell Holcomb wrotein a 1994 paper on the ABDR program.

Holcomb pointed out it is far more likely for an aircraft to be damaged in a conflict rather than completely destroyed, according to historical data. As an example, he noted that as many as 70 of the 144 A-10s deployed to the Gulf War were damaged, but only five were destroyed. Likewise, the damage to destroyed ratio for the F-4 Phantom II fighter in Vietnam was about four to one, Holcomb said. With such ratios, it helps to have highly-mobile, highly-skilled teams of experts who can get damaged aircraft back in the air.

“Our overall goal is to be there in theater and get the most expeditious repair on this thing,” said Sommerfeldt. “Now it can go back and fly an operational mission instead of us losing aircraft, attriting out of the fight.”

The Vietnam-era RAM teams were composed mostly of civilians, and while they helped repair many aircraft, the repair times for many incidents of combat damage were still “painfully long,” Holcomb wrote. While the Air Force repaired 59 percent of the aircraft damaged in Vietnam in 48 hours or less, the Israeli Air Force repaired about 72 percent of their combat damaged aircraft in 24 hours or less during the Yom Kippur War in 1973.

The U.S. Air Force wanted to fix its aircraft faster, and the development of the A-10, an aircraft designed to take a beating and keep fighting, also helped spur the creation of the first ABDR teams in the 1980s. Since then, ABDR teams have helped keep U.S. aircraft running in combat theaters around the world.

ABDR teams returned about 30 aircraft to service during the Gulf War, and in Afghanistan an ABDR team patched up a C-130 that had 85 holes in its fuselage from enemy mortar fire. A C-5 Galaxy’s cargo door had also been damaged, “so the team split in half to accomplish both repairs at the same time,” Master Sgt. Gian Santos, flight chief for the 402nd Expeditionary Depot Maintenance Flight at Robins Air Force Base, said in a 2022 press release.

“That is how versatile the ABDR teams are and how important this mission is to the Air Force,” Santos said.

Peacetime Pros

While ABDR teams can perform repairs in the field during a conflict, during peacetime they work in air logistics complexes just like any other depot-level maintainer. Sommerfeldt said the 150 or so ABDR Airmen save the Department of Defense more than $10 million and tens of thousands of man-hours a year, not to mention delivering about 150 aircraft a year back to field-level commanders.

With their years of experience in the aircraft repair business, ABDR Airmen often think of innovative ways to make the repair process more efficient. At the Department of Defense Maintenance Symposium last year, a group of ABDR Airmen won the People’s Choice Award for the DOD Maintenance Innovation Challenge, for their work with the Air Force Research Laboratory to dramatically reduce the amount of time needed to repair fiber optic cables aboard Air Force aircraft.

“Any time where the whole joint force is kind of voting on it and you win something at the DOD level, that was pretty special,” said Sommerfeldt.

Wherever the next conflict unfolds, the ABDR crews can use their expertise to keep Air Force jets and planes running.

“We have a chip on our shoulder, like no matter what’s broken on an aircraft, we can fix it,” Sommerfeldt said. “Nose to tail, no matter how big or how small. Like how Gen. Richardson put it: What happens if we get punched in the face? We have a counter-punch when it comes to the war of attrition. We’re the counter-punch—providing aircraft availability.”