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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Data storage onboard the vehicle
  • Data processing onboard the vehicle
  • Multi-pass ability to get data back to the cloud

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

US, South Korea Begin New Round of Air Exercises

US, South Korea Begin New Round of Air Exercises

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

After Intel Leak, Pentagon Launches ‘Comprehensive’ Review of Security Programs

After Intel Leak, Pentagon Launches ‘Comprehensive’ Review of Security Programs

Four days after a member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard was arrested in connection to a massive leak of secret and sensitive information online, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III has directed a “comprehensive” review of the military’s security programs, policies, and procedures, deputy Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters April 17.

The initial findings of the review are due in 45 days, along with any recommendations to improve Pentagon policies and procedures related to the protection of classified information. The effort is being led by undersecretary of Defense for intelligence and security Ronald S. Moultrie, in coordination with Chief Information Officer John Sherman and Director of Administration and Management Michael Donley.

Singh also said she was not aware of any investigation of the unit or supervisor for Airman 1st Class Jack Teixeira, the cyber transport systems journeyman who was arrested last week. Teixeira is a member of the 102nd Intelligence Wing.

The recent leak has raised questions and concerns about how the military can better protect itself from insider threats—individuals with authorized access to an organization’s assets who use that access to either maliciously or unintentionally hurt the organization. Asked if the Pentagon was reviewing its vetting process for individuals requesting a security clearance, Singh defended the system in place as “very robust,” noting that it includes an FBI background check and a review of family, friends, former coworkers, social media posts, and finances.

“I think we are pretty confident in how the FBI does conduct its background checks when it comes to somebody being able to obtain a security clearance,” Singh said. “That is why we are doing this process. If there is something that we feel that needs to be added to the background check process, I think that’s what this review will certainly lend itself to.”

Teixeira allegedly released a trove of classified details on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, along with sensitive briefing materials and analysis on the Indo-Pacific and Middle East theaters, on Discord, an online social media platform popular with video gamers. Government agencies with access to classified computer networks are supposed to have insider threat detection and prevention programs, but no program is 100 percent airtight.

“There’s an inherent risk that comes along with doing business,” Daniel Costa, technical manager of enterprise threat and vulnerability management at The National Insider Threat Center at Carnegie Mellon’s Software Engineering Institute, previously told Air & Spaces Forces Magazine.

“What we’re talking about is human nature, and thinking about insider threats as an inherent risk to organizations requires real careful planning and organization-wide participation to reduce that risk to acceptable levels,” Costa said.

Part of what makes insider threat prevention programs so difficult is that they require a “whole-of-enterprise” approach to be effective, Costa said. That can include involving management and human resources to monitor for warning signs such as policy violations, disruptive behavior, personal financial difficulty, or changes in working patterns.

“This is not a technology problem, it’s a people problem,” Costa said. “We use technology to help us manage those risks, but at the end of the day—especially in terms of making the organization less mistake-prone—that largely comes down to management-related and HR-related activities.”

It may also take “right-sizing” who has access to sensitive assets, which is a challenging task in organizations as large as the Department of Defense, Costa said.

The military security clearance system is a frequent topic of study among national security experts, since it is often difficult to screen applicants for risk factors.

“Federal government security officers responsible for personnel vetting and insider threat detection may need to pay even closer attention to the answers to the questions of ‘associations’ now to assess the trustworthiness of current cleared employees and contractors who are continuously vetted as well as prospective clearance holders,” RAND researchers David Stebbins and Sina Beaghley wrote in a commentary piece after the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riots, where several rioters were also members of the military and police.

At the press briefing, Singh said the purpose of the new review is to identify better security practices.

“This is exactly what this effort internally here in the building is designed to look at,” she said. “Is there something else that we need to do to add on to a process when it comes to a background check and obtaining a security clearance?”

USAF Seeks to Almost Double Foreign Infrastructure Investment in ’24

USAF Seeks to Almost Double Foreign Infrastructure Investment in ’24

From Norway to Australia, and Guam to the United Kingdom, the Air Force wants to invest more money in overseas infrastructure, according to budget documents

The Air Force is seeking $1.24 billion in appropriations, a 93 percent increase over the prior year, and $872.5 million, a 44 percent jump, in new authorizations for military construction outside the U.S. The plans mark the largest such requests since 2000. 

For 2023, the Air Force asked for $637.7 million in appropriations and $605.7 million in authorizations last year.

Pacific 

The biggest investment would be at Andersen Air Force Base on the U.S. territory of Guam. Air Force budget documents show it wants $411 million to fund a North Aircraft Parking Ramp, large enough to park up to 14 bombers under normal operational conditions. 

Although the Air Force ended its continuous bomber presence at Andersen in 2020, it has continued to rotate heavy bombers to the base on Bomber Task Force missions. BTFs usually include just a few aircraft, so enabling a deployment of 14 would mark a significant expansion. 

Without the new apron, Andersen “will be unable to adequately support the bomber aircraft operations during contingencies, significantly impacting readiness and degrading operational capability and may increase the potential for a serious mishap,” the Air Force budget documents state. 

Air Force leaders emphasize Agile Combat Employment—dispersing aircraft and Airmen from bigger central bases to numerous remote locations in a “hub-and-spoke” model, and expanding Andersen points would enable it to become a key hub in that scheme. 

“This project will also support large force exercises with service components and international partners,” the budget documents state. 

But it’s not just Guam that will see extra investment. Pacific Air Forces commander Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach noted at the AFA Warfare Symposium in March that making ACE work entails “additional logistics” and infrastructure investment across the entire region. 

“There are a significant amount of dollars that are associated with prepositioning at our hubs and spokes, mainly our spokes so that you have sustainment materiel at those places,” Wilsbach said. “So what I’m talking about is fuel parts, support equipment, water, and food mainly. And we’re starting to purchase those and put them out at the spokes.”  

The 2024 budget ask includes $78 million for Tinian, another island in the Marianas near Guam, which the Pentagon has tapped for upgrades since returning to the airfield there in 2012. The $78 million would enable the airfield to support cargo and tanker aircraft, with a new jet fuel system, and a new parking apron to accommodate up to a dozen KC-46 or KC-135 tankers. 

Another potential “spoke” in the Air Force’s ACE concept could be Basa Air Base in the Philippines, one of a growing number of potential operating bases in the Philippines. The Air Force is asking for $35 million to build a parking apron for USAF and DOD aircraft, separate from those used by the Philippine Air Force. 

“Without this apron the United States will not have the facilities needed to train and work alongside the Philippines Air Force to accomplish the bilateral training necessary to build the capability of the Philippine Air Force and modernize the Alliance as a whole,” the budget documents state. 

The U.S. Air Force wants to spend some $156.5 million at RAAF Darwin and RAAF Tindal in Australia, to build operations and maintenance support facilities, and a bomber apron at Tindal to accommodate up to six B-52s. Plans to upgrade Tindal’s facilities for up to a half-dozen B-52s were first reported in Australia last fall but not previously confirmed by the U.S. Air Force.  

B-52s have previously deployed to RAAF Darwin, but the construction project there is for an expeditionary squadron operations facility that was planned based on design guides from Air Mobility Command. 

The Air Force has studied “every single piece of concrete” across the Indo-Pacific in planning for ACE airfields across the region, Wilsbach has said. 

Europe 

In Europe, Air Force investment plans are more modest, but still expansive. In Norway, the service is seeking $119 million to build storage facilities at Rygge Air Station, south of Oslo, that can hold up to 3 million pounds of munitions and facilities to provide storage and support for the Deployable Air Base Systems kits, sometimes referred to as “bases in a box” that would allow the service to rapidly deploy and operate from more locations. 

In the U.K., the Air Force wants to build new facilities at RAF Lakenheath and RAF Fairford to store Rapid Airfield Damage Recovery kits, used to quickly get airfields back into service after an attack. Those RADR facilities would cost a combined $75 million. Also at RAF Lakenheath, the service is planning a new $50 million dormitory for up to 144 beds for a “surety” mission. And at Moron Air Base, Spain, the Air Force seeks to spend $26 million on a new munitions storage facility.  

Photos: Airmen and Aircraft Take Part in a Unique, Massive Elephant Walk at Sheppard

Photos: Airmen and Aircraft Take Part in a Unique, Massive Elephant Walk at Sheppard

Air Force leaders often promote the skill of America’s Airmen as the U.S. military’s most powerful, if intangible, advantage. Officials at Sheppard Air Force Base, Texas, found a way to highlight the human element of airpower recently: an elephant walk with its aircraft and Airmen.

Elephant walks are used as a show of force, with fighters, bombers, and other aircraft coming together on the same runway to send the message that the USAF has plenty of powerful hardware at its disposal.

On April 7, Sheppard lined up 4,000 Airmen and 80 trainer aircraft on a runway to showcase the power of its people as well as its planes. The base said it was possibly the largest elephant walk in Air Force history—nearly 70 F-15Es took part in an elephant walk in 2012. Sheppard hosts technical and flying training, allowing for a unique display of man and machine. The base trains pilots in partnership with U.S. allies, many of whom were in their jets during the elephant walk, giving it an international aspect, a base spokesperson told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

“This elephant walk really illustrates the scope and magnitude of what we do here,” Brig. Gen. Lyle K. Drew, commander of the 82nd Training Wing, said in a news release. “The key to airpower is exceptional Airmen, and the key to exceptional Airmen is exceptional training. That’s what we do here at Sheppard, and this elephant walk was our message to the world that the U.S. and its international partners remain committed to delivering the best-trained Airmen in the world.”

Around 65,000 Airmen pass through Sheppard annually, and roughly 150,000 of the USAF’s Active-Duty Airmen were trained at Sheppard, the spokesperson said. The 82nd Training Wing is the Air Force’s largest technical training wing.

Airmen from the wing lined the runway in front of the horde of aircraft from the 80th Flying Training Wing, which brought out 40 T-6 Texan and 40 T-38 Talon trainers. The 80th Flying Training Wing hosts the Euro-NATO Joint Jet Pilot Training Program—known as ENJJPT—which teaches foreign combat pilots through a partnership between the U.S. and its allies.

“The fundamental technical and pilot training missions that happen here every day affect literally every base and every combat sortie in the Air Force–not to mention the impact on our global partners,” Col. Brad Orgeron, the commander of the 80th Flying Training Wing, said. The base trains Airmen in 52 specialties, with a contingent of international students passing through at any given time as well. The 80th trains pilots in a partnership with 14 countries, with around 200 new pilots earning their wings there. Five NATO members—Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, and Denmark—only train new fighter pilots at Sheppard, the base spokesperson added.

“We want our allies to know that we are committed to and value our shared training experience with them, and we want our potential adversaries to know that we are bound together with our friends and partners from the very beginning of our military careers as we train side by side to defend our way of life,” Orgeron said.

How to Detect Insider Threats: Stopping Leaks in the Digital Age

How to Detect Insider Threats: Stopping Leaks in the Digital Age

The arrest and arraignment of Airman 1st Class Jack Teixeira, 21, of the Massachusetts Air National Guard exposes the fragility of intelligence and security in the digital age. Teixeira, a cyber transport systems journeyman with the 102nd Intelligence Wing was accused by the FBI of leaking a trove of secret and sensitive information in court proceedings April 14.

Threats from trusted, cleared professionals pose the greatest risks and deepest challenges, because insiders like Teixeira already have security clearances and are therefore inherently trusted. The National Insider Threat Center at Carnegie Mellon’s Software Engineering Institute, a federally funded research and development center, was created to study and combat such threats.

“If there were a perfect solution for this, I’d be out of a job,” said SEI’s Daniel Costa, technical manager of enterprise threat and vulnerability management, in an April 14 interview with Air & Space Forces Magazine. 

In what Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Brig. Gen Pat Ryder described as “a deliberate criminal act,” Teixeira allegedly released a trove of classified details on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, along with sensitive briefing materials and analysis on the Indo-Pacific and Middle East theaters, on Discord, an online platform popular with video gamers. As in past incidents, such as that of Chelsea Manning, a soldier, and Edward Snowden, a technology contractor, both of whom used their clearances to gain access to classified documents, this case involves a trusted individual who allegedly ignored the inherent promise attached to a security clearance.

“Each of us signs a nondisclosure agreement—anybody that has a security clearance,” Ryder said April 13. “And so all indications are, again, this was a criminal act, a willful violation of those, and again, another reason why we’re continuing to investigate and support [the Department of Justice’s] investigation.”

In the wake of the Snowden and Manning leaks, President Barack Obama’s Executive Order 13587, signed in 2011, required government agencies with access to classified computer networks to implement formal insider threat detection and prevention programs. But no program is 100 percent airtight.

“There’s an inherent risk that comes along with doing business,” said Costa. “What we’re talking about is human nature, and thinking about insider threats as an inherent risk to organizations requires real careful planning and organization-wide participation to reduce that risk to acceptable levels.”

The Insider Threat Detection Center at SEI maintains a database of more than 3,000 incidents where individuals with authorized access to an organization’s documents or other assets used trusted access to either maliciously or unintentionally affect the organization in a serious, negative way. Reducing risk within an organization starts with identifying the most critical assets, which is a challenge in institutions as large as the Department of Defense, Costa said. Once those assets are identified, the organization must strategized to protect and limit access to those crown jewels.

“One of the unique things about insider threat programs is that the threat actors that we’re talking about are our colleagues, our co-workers, our contractors and other trusted business partners,” Costa explained. “The challenges lie within the fact that this is not a risk that you can buy down to zero, by the nature of that trust relationship you entered into by bringing an individual into your organization.”

For security professionals, the key to protecting those trusted relationships and at the same time reduce risk is monitoring that can help identify warning signs and enable leaders to intervene before individuals actually violate access rules, he said. Malicious insiders may use access for personal gain, such as financial fraud, intellectual property theft, cyber sabotage, espionage, or even notoriety. Unintentional insider incidents are also possible, where individuals can become victims of cyber phishing or other social engineering attacks, or where simple mistakes lead to substantial losses of data, funds, equipment, or information. 

Monitoring for warning signs is the central function of an insider threat program, with indicators ranging from repeated policy violations, to disruptive behavior, personal financial difficulty, changes in working patterns, such as when and where individuals access files, or job performance problems, according to SEI research. Unintentional incidents are best prevented through training. Securing against insiders takes a “whole-of-enterprise” approach to be effective, Costa said.

“This is not a technology problem, it’s a people problem,” he said. “We use technology to help us manage those risks, but at the end of the day—especially in terms of making the organization less mistake-prone—that largely comes down to management-related and HR-related activities.”

About one in three insider incidents involve malicious intent, Costa said. What exactly Teixeira’s intent may have been remains unclear. Reporting by the Washington Post and others indicates he seemed to crave attention and recognition for knowing national secrets. Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) told Politico, “This really is an issue that sort of seems to be a Gen Z issue where you get some of our youngest members of the military who feel particularly self important and entitled and therefore the rules don’t apply to them.”

The military and the intelligence community routinely trusts young people with significant responsibilities, Ryder said, and they are often capable of handling it.

“Think about a young combat platoon sergeant and the responsibility and trust that we put into those individuals to lead troops into combat,” he said. “That’s just one example across the board. So you receive training and you will receive an understanding of the rules and requirements that come along with those responsibilities, and you’re expected to abide by those rules, regulations and responsibility.”

Security clearances require background checks and include some level of continuous monitoring, but that process is limited and does not unearth every possible motive or notion buried in individuals’ subconscious. As with other crimes, relative inexperience can often be a factor in insider threats. In a 2012 study on fraud, SEI found crimes involving personally identifiable information “tend to be committed by younger, less experienced, non-managers.”

On the other side of the coin, crimes involving non-personally identifying information tended to be committed by older employees, and can be far more harmful to organizations, SEI wrote.

Malicious insiders may join organizations with malintent; such individuals tend to act early in their tenure, Costa said. Older employees may feel more comfortable with those policies and procedures, but personal, professional or financial stressors might motivate them to carry out an attack.

SEI recommends organization “right-size” who has access to valuable or sensitive assets and when, a means to reduce the opportunity and temptations, Costa said. Those with greater access may fall under greater scrutiny. But simply establishing rules is not enough; they must be enforced to be effective.

“Some of the challenges we see with really large organizations, is just maintaining complete situational awareness of their current risk posture,” Costa said. “It’s easy to say that these are the rules that govern what authorized access looks like. But to ensure a complete coverage across, you know, really complex organizations with lots of different moving parts and independent security operations can be a real challenge.”

Independent security operations might include smaller organizations within the larger enterprise, just like a multinational corporation may have operations within individual countries equipped with their own information technology and information security departments. The military, with its large number of commands and bases, has plenty of such operations.

“It’s a challenging problem for organizations at DoD scale to have the granularity that is needed to effectively right-size permissions,” Costa said. “In really large organizations, all it takes is one slip-up. One blind spot with too much access, and those soft spots are the things that insiders inevitably take advantage of.”

Like aviation safety, sexual assault and harassment prevention, and suicide prevention, insider threats are another thorny problem the Air Force and the military write large is dealing with that is not easily solved but which may be reduced with greater analysis. SEI publishes its best practices to help those in both the government and the private sector reduce the risk of insider threats.

Why USAF’s New T-7 Trainer Won’t Start Production for 2 More Years

Why USAF’s New T-7 Trainer Won’t Start Production for 2 More Years

The Boeing T-7 Red Hawk advanced trainer won’t be ready for a low-rate initial production decision until February 2025—six and a half years after Boeing won the initial contract in 2018.

The new date for the “Milestone C” initial production decision is as much as 14 months later than was anticipated as recently as late 2022, caused in part by concerns over the safety of ejection seats. Those and other issues are now or will soon be resolved, the Air Force said.

The first production aircraft will not be delivered until December 2025 at the earliest, USAF said. It is not clear how much the delays will push back initial operational capability (IOC), which was originally scheduled for 2024 and had more recently been promised for 2026.

Regardless, the ripple effect of T-7 delays could force the Air Force to invest in further life-extensions for its 60-year-old T-38 trainers, which the T-7 is supposed to replace. The Air Force continues to fund Pacer Classic III structural modifications for the aircraft, along with avionics upgrades, to the tune of $125.3 million in FY ’24.  

The Air Force plans to buy at least 351 T-7A Red Hawks and 46 high-fidelity simulators. USAF’s new “Reforge” fighter pilot training plan could increase that total. Boeing’s contract provides for up to 475 aircraft.

The Air Force and Boeing “are confident improvements and recent testing are yielding a safe and effective escape system” for the T-7, a service spokesperson said.

Last year’s planning documents showed the service spending $321 million on T-7 production in fiscal 2024, but USAF zeroed-out T-7 production funding for fiscal 2024 in its recent budget request.

“Milestone C has moved to February 2025,” so procurement funding “for Low-Rate Initial Production is not needed in FY24,” she said. At Milestone C, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment decides if a program has met its exit criteria from EMD and is ready for production.

Ejection Seat Concerns

A principal cause of delay were concerns noted across more than a dozen ejection seat tests. Air Force officials have said that tests showed Boeing’s escape system exhibiting unsafe deceleration at parachute opening, potentially causing pilots to suffer concussions as their visors tore off. Industry sources suggest, however, that USAF’s crash dummies were improperly instrumented, suggesting inaccurate results. The sources said USAF is revisiting some of those data.

Under the initial 2018 contract, Boeing was to have delivered the first five production aircraft in 2023. Most of those are now complete, but developmental flight testing has been held up by the seat issue and is now anticipated to start in September, the Air Force spokesperson said. Boeing said last week that it expected developmental testing to start “this summer.”

Boeing ran into problems with the seats last year when they didn’t function as expected with pilots at the smallest and lightest end of the range. The T-7 is the first USAF aircraft to be designed from the outset to accommodate pilots in a wide variety of physical sizes. Ejection systems on previous trainers and fighter aircraft could accommodate only a narrow range of physiques and excluded too many potential student pilots, particularly small women.

Air Force acquisition executive Andrew Hunter said in March budget testimony that recent sled tests with the seats have given confidence that the ejection problems are on the mend.

“Minor changes to seat logic” have “already reduced system risk and increased pilot safety,” the spokesperson explained. Additionally, “the USAF and Boeing are studying the ejection seat performance throughout 2023 to identify additional enhancements, and Boeing will use the results of testing to inform changes needed to qualify the seat as safe for production.”

Supply chain issues have also contributed to T-7 delays, the Air Force said.

“Prior to the FY ’23 President’s Budget,” the Air Force and Boeing “recognized schedule impact to the T-7A ‘Red Hawk’ program partially attributable to developmental discovery and the COVID-19 global pandemic,” the USAF spokesperson said.

In June 2022, USAF and Boeing “began a schedule re-baseline effort to assess the collective impacts of all schedule delays to date, to include…ground [testing], pre-flight testing and hardware qualification challenges; contractor inability to rapidly correct deficiencies; subcontractor initial design delays; three aerodynamic instability discoveries; escape system qualification delays; and supplier critical parts shortages,” she explained.

After an “exhaustive” schedule risk assessment, “the T-7 office program office recommended a new [Milestone C] date of February 2025 and is awaiting final coordination of this change,” the spokesperson said.

The Air Force does not plan to accelerate testing to gain back lost time. The Air Force and Boeing “do not believe the delays can be overcome by more aggressive flight test,” the spokesperson said. The planned flight test schedule “is already success-based and aggressive.”

Boeing has been flying its first two T-7s—”T1” and “T2,” which the Air Force refers to as “production relevant”—at the company’s St. Louis, Mo., facilities, but Air Force pilots are not permitted to fly the pre-EMD jets for testing purposes until the seat and other issues have been resolved.

The first three engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) examples of the T-7 are complete and two further aircraft are in the final stages of construction, USAF said. These five jets “will be enough for flight testing.”

Air Force leaders have pointed to the T-7A as a pathfinder for how major systems will be bought in the future. Boeing and its partner Saab of Sweden managed to go from digital design of the T-7 prototypes to first flight in three years, and the mating of fuselage and wing sections was done with no shimming. The $9 billion T-7 contract was deemed to be about $10 billion below the Air Force’s estimates for the program, and far below Boeing’s competitors in the T-X contest. Company officials said the digital approach made their bid realistic and not a low-ball.

After Years of Trying, Air Force Retires First A-10 to the Boneyard

After Years of Trying, Air Force Retires First A-10 to the Boneyard

It’s finally happening—the Air Force has begun to retire its A-10 Thunderbolt IIs. An A-10 from the 74th Fighter Squadron at Moody Air Force Base, Ga., arrived at the Boneyard at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz. on April 5, the service said. The aircraft is the first of 21 A-10s that will be leaving service by the end of September.

“Air Combat Command is prioritizing the A-10s with the least combat effectiveness for retirement first to ensure the most combat capable airframes remain in service,” the Air Force said in a news release. The remaining 20 aircraft “will retire from various bases” by the end of the fiscal year.

The Air Force has sought to retire some of the close air support aircraft for years but was blocked by Congress. The service finally got its way in the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act and was OK’d to divest 21 A-10s this year. The service is seeking to retire another 42 A-10s as part of its fiscal 2024 budget. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. has said the service wants to rid itself of the A-10 entirely by the end of the decade.

While the aircraft that arrived at the Boneyard left the 74th Fighter Squadron after 43 years of service in the Air Force, the Active-Duty unit is not winding down its A-10 operations. Instead, the retired A-10 sent to the Boneyard is being replaced by an Indiana Air National Guard A-10. The Indiana ANG A-10 unit, the 122nd Fighter Wing, also known as the Blacksnakes, is transitioning to F-16s. The unit’s nickname has led their A-10s to sport unique nose art, even by A-10 standards.

Aircraft at the Boneyard are preserved in the dry desert of Arizona and often cannibalized for parts. The A-10 that landed Davis-Monthan on April 5, tail number 80-149, is now in the hands of 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Squadron, which will “get to work preserving as much of it as possible while removing parts that can be used for replacements in other A-10s,” the Air Force said.

The Air Force’s planned divesture of 21 A-10s in the fiscal year 2023 will leave the service with around 260 aircraft by September. Brown said the service is ditching its 4+1 fighter model—with the A-10 as the outlier—and plans to sunset all A-10s by 2029.

“We’re retiring A-10s faster than we originally thought”, Brown said at the annual McAleese defense conference March 15. “I think that’s probably the right answer.”

But in the near-term, concerns over capacity have led to high-profile A-10 deployments. While the Air Force argues that the four-decade-old A-10s—which have been upgraded over the years—are not survivable against an advanced adversary, U.S. Central Command is using them to fill out its fighter squadron requirements in the Middle East.

A planned deployment of A-10s to CENTCOM was accelerated in the wake of attacks from Iranian-backed militias on U.S. bases in Syria. The command produced a slick video noting their arrival at the end of March and has continued to publicize recent A-10 operations in the region.

“The A-10s remain the most effective close air support platform in the world today even after 45 years,” Capt. Kevin Domingue, the pilot from the 74th Fighter Squadron who flew the now-retired A-10 to the Boneyard, said in the news release. “As long as the Air Force allows the aircraft to fly and be properly maintained, this community is ready to provide that expertise anywhere in the world against any adversary.”