C-17 Tests Magnetic Navigation System That Works When GPS Doesn’t

June 7, 2023 | By David Roza

An Air Force C-17 transport jet recently tested a new technology that could help aviators stay on course even if the satellite-based Global Positioning System (GPS) that much of modern-day aviation relies on is compromised.

The successful demonstration held last month is a promising development at a time when many national security experts worry that GPS navigation could be disrupted by signal jamming, cyberattacks, or even kinetic anti-satellite weapons.

Currently, many military and civilian aviators rely on a combination of GPS and inertial navigation, Air Force C-17 pilot Maj. Kyle McAlpin told Air & Space Forces Magazine. McAlpin is the Air Force liaison for the Magnetic Navigation (MagNav) project being pursued by the Artificial Intelligence Accelerator, a research pipeline managed by the Air Force and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Inertial navigation systems take an aircraft’s initial position and uses velocity, acceleration, and the laws of physics to determine where the aircraft is at any point in time, McAlpin explained. The advantage of such systems is that they do not depend on external signals, so they cannot be jammed. But the disadvantage is that the system grows less accurate over time, which can be a problem over long flights.

Many aviators today use GPS to update the inertial navigation system and stay on course. Without GPS, aviators must rely on other ways to update the inertial navigation system, and some of those methods go back centuries.

One of those methods is the magnetic compass, but anomalies in the Earth’s crust could tell aviators more than just the general direction of north. When mapped, the different levels of magnetization generated by each anomaly can help navigators figure out where they are. The trouble is that performing magnetic navigation in real-time is very difficult, especially when modern aircraft are filled with lights, transmitters, computers, and other devices that generate electromagnetic noise and disrupt calculations. One of the central challenges of magnetic navigation is sorting a clean signal through that noise to get an accurate read of the Earth’s magnetic field.

Artificial intelligence may have finally made that possible. The MagNav project created an open-source Magnetic Navigation Open Challenge to build a machine learning model for removing aircraft electromagnetic noise from the total magnetic field. Developing algorithms to sort out that noise was challenging, McAlpin said—and so was figuring out a way to run those algorithms not on a supercomputer in a lab, but on a laptop aboard a moving aircraft.

The MagNav team worked with MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory, the Air Force Research Laboratory Sensors Directorate, the Air Force Institute of Technology Autonomy and Navigation Center, and the Software-as-a-service company SandboxAQ to develop a quantum magnetic sensor that could be flown aboard a C-17. The chance to demonstrate the system came along with Exercise Golden Phoenix, a nearly two-week exercise where Airmen, Marines, and Sailors practiced moving people and cargo to locations in California and Nevada to hone the mobility operations that might be required in a war against China or Russia.

McAlpin flew aboard the C-17 during the test sorties from Travis Air Force Base in northern California to Edwards Air Force Base farther south. The flights, held from May 11 to May 15, marked the first time a Department of Defense aircraft flew with that kind of navigation technology on board. The system worked thanks to previous flights that had been used to collect data for training its artificial intelligence.

Though the test was successful, it could be a long way to go before military aviators fly with MagNav systems in their cockpits. The current process for creating the magnetic maps that MagNav depends on is often time- and resource-intensive, said McAlpin, so there could be an opportunity to crowdsource future efforts at magnetic mapping.

Besides mapping, another challenge is integrating the MagNav system onto an aircraft, especially since magnetic navigation may not be the only alternative PNT system coming to aviators. McAlpin envisioned a system where MagNav complements other methods such as celestial navigation, signals of opportunity, or terrain-relative navigation.

Integrating these methods together may result in a diversified navigation system that has no single point of failure. And aircraft could be just the beginning, as an Air Force press release noted future MagNav experiments could take place aboard submarines, hypersonic glide vehicles, and drones.

“The next fight demands unassailable positioning and navigation,” McAlpin said in the release. “We can achieve that by augmenting GPS with alternatives. … This week, we took an important step towards making one of those modalities a reality by transitioning MagNav from the minds of MIT and MIT Lincoln Laboratory onto an operational aircraft, blazing the trail for our sister services and expansion to new platforms.”

Air Force Reconsidering Whether Some Staff Jobs Need Pilots Amid Shortage

June 7, 2023 | By John A. Tirpak

As the Air Force struggles to ease its pilot shortage, it can still fill all its cockpits, Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. said June 7. But that has come at the expense of staff jobs normally assigned to pilots, leading the service to reconsider whether those staff jobs actually need to be filled by rated officers, he said.

Speaking at a Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies event, Brown said the Air Force is looking “across the entire ecosystem” of recruiting, training, and retaining pilots to find ways to close the gap in flyers, which has hovered around 1,800-2,000 for the past eight years.

“What I’ll tell you is that we are 100 percent manned in the cockpit,” Brown said. “Where we take our cuts are on the staff. So, we’re probably 70 percent manned on the staff.”

Brown said deputy chief of staff for operations Lt. Gen. James C. Slife is leading a review of staff positions, looking at those that have become designated as pilot billets to see if they actually have to be filled by rated officers.

In some cases, the position may simply require “someone who has operational experience,” Brown said.

This scrub “won’t knock this shortage to zero,” but in the Air Force, “we probably always have more requirement than we have capacity to field,” and fixing the requirement can help fix the pilot shortage, he added.

Tied to that approach, Brown said he has tried over the last two years to “ensure that all of our Airmen, to the best of our ability, have a little operational acumen.” That will make it easier to fill staff jobs with non-rated officers, he said.

In the same vein, Brown said when a staff job does require a pilot, the service is reassessing whether that pilot needs to consume flying hours while working a desk job. Normally, “you still get to fly” to retain proficiency, but “some of those you need to do, and some of those have been nice to do,” Brown noted.

More broadly, the Air Force is taking a “diverse” approach to addressing the pilot shortfall, Brown said, and is emphasizing data-driven efforts.

One such effort is the aviation bonus, which just recently was increased to $50,000 per year. Another element is streamlining and quickening the pilot training process and ensuring those accepted for pilot training don’t have to wait years to report for duty.

Other approaches focus on offering more stability and support for pilots’ families, Brown said. As an example, he cited several first-tour instructor pilots at Laughlin Air Force Base, Texas. By the usual career playbook, they would progress to another base and a major weapons platform, but they asked to stay at Laughlin because their spouses had local jobs. Brown said making those kinds of accommodations should help.

In recent years, the Air Force has also pushed to attract a more diverse swath of pilots—broadening the population from which it can draw.

“We’ve got to look at how we break some of these paradigms that we’ve had in the past, and don’t don’t do a ‘one-size-fits-all’” approach anymore, Brown said. “Each one of those helps. You’re not going to get it to zero, but it will help.”

Brown also pointed out the whole of the military is struggling with a pilot shortage, as is the commercial airline and cargo industry, and noted he has been in talks with other flying organizations to best address what he called “a national problem.”

Recruiting overall is also a struggle, as Brown acknowledged the service is likely to not achieve its goals this year. And while retention rates are high, that can lead to an unbalanced force down the road.

Brown said he has urged his commanders to open up their bases, get people out in their communities, and increase the exposure of Airmen to the general public, because the people USAF wants to attract may not know there are careers available to them in the Air Force. They cannot aspire “to something they’ve never seen,” he said.

The competition for eligible youth is “keen,” Brown noted. “They get bombarded with information.”

To stand out, the Air Force has to make personal connections, he said—digital and social media contacts are fine, but there “has to be a person on the other end” ready to answer questions and talk to recruits.

Brown also said the Air Force will experiment with different career paths, particularly in the cyber area, wherein people could be recruited to do a job and not compelled to take a leadership path after a certain period of time. As with pilots, he also said USAF has to accelerate the timeline between getting someone to agree to serve and actually getting them into uniform. A prolonged wait increases the chances of that recruit taking up another opportunity, he said.

“We have to eliminate those ‘barriers to entry,’” Brown said. “People get tired of waiting.”

What Does Brown Offer Biden as Chairman? ‘Holistic’ View on Deterrence, Deployments

June 7, 2023 | By Chris Gordon

When President Joe Biden announced his selection of Gen. Charles Q. Brown, Jr. to be Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the commander-in-chief said the Air Force Chief of Staff was “unafraid to speak his mind as someone who will deliver an honest message that needs to be heard.” In his first public appearance since appearing with Biden at the White House two weeks ago, Brown provided an overview of what the president and the American people should expect.

“I am who I am,” Brown said June 7 during a Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies event. “I think about joint operations. I think about combat capability—how we will continue to push ourselves to ensure we have the capabilities to provide the nation what it asks us to do.”

Brown cautioned that the U.S. must align its strategic goals with how it deploys military assets and prevent unnecessary strain on America’s hardware and personnel.

“You can make a decision in a moment not realizing what the impact is going to be further down that line,” Brown said.

There is tension between the finite resources military services can provide and what combatant commanders want, Brown noted. The Air Force, as a service that can deploy assets across the world in hours, is at the forefront of that balancing act, as commanders weigh day-to-day demands against the practicalities of limited budgets and aging platforms.

“I’ve seen both sides of the coin,” Brown said, referring to his time as a “consumer” of resources.

Brown has experience being asked to provide airpower as the Air Force’s top general, as well asking for it, particularly during his time as the deputy commander of U.S. Central Command from 2016-2018 at a time America was engaged in an air campaign against ISIS, and as the leader of the air component for U.S. Indo-Pacific Command during his time as boss of Pacific Air Forces.

“I’ve also been thoughtful and pragmatic, particularly now that I’ve come in as the Chief,” Brown said.

Under Brown’s leadership, the Air Force has put together a new force generation concept. Brown and other Air Force leaders have said the service was particularly strained during America’s wars in the Middle East. Over two decades of nearly non-stop combat operations, aircraft and Airmen were worn down.

Brown said the force generation model has been able to “help us better articulate internally and externally” the Air Force’s capabilities and limits.

For the U.S., recognizing and balancing those capabilities and limits could prevent the military from overtasking itself. But Brown suggested it is also important for ensuring the Pentagon does not unnecessarily “ramp up and decrease deterrence” under the premise that any deployment is beneficial.

Routine American deployments have come under an increased spotlight lately, especially in the South China Sea, and led to close calls between American and Chinese assets, both at sea and in the air. While Brown did not directly address those interactions, recriminations over previously unremarkable movements have highlighted that countries may have pointed reactions U.S. military planners must consider.

“That is something that we’ve got to continue to work on and be strategic in how we execute,” Brown said. “As we look at deterrence, I do think about all our operations, activity, and investments, and how we do those a bit more holistically. To be able to say, just do more bomber missions into the Indo-Pacific, and that’s going to send the right message. Do we really understand that?”

Common sense can go a long way in forming military strategy, Brown noted.

“If you’re going to deter, you need to understand who you are deterring and what message you’re sending,” Brown said.

New Leader Takes Over Air Force Recruiting as Challenges Persist

June 7, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

Brig. Gen. Christopher R. Amrhein, an experienced tanker and trainer pilot who helped oversee the Air Force’s flying training enterprise, took command of the Air Force Recruiting Service on June 2, taking on the service’s persistent problems in finding qualified candidates interested in joining the military.

Amrhein succeeds Maj. Gen. Ed Thomas, who led AFRS from June 2020 through May 2023. That tenure encompassed the COVID-19 pandemic, low unemployment, and declining eligibility and propensity to serve among American youth, the Air Force and the military writ large struggled to meet their recruiting goals in fiscal 2022 and are faring no better in 2023.

Indeed, Amrhein takes command of AFRS just four months before the end of the fiscal year, fully expecting all three Air Force components—Active-Duty, Guard, and Reserve—to miss their recruiting goals.

Things are improving. Early this year, Air Force leaders predicted the Active Duty recruiting would miss goal by 10 percent, while the Guard and Reserve would miss by even larger margins. But on June 7, Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. said at a Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies event that it might not be that bad after all.

“We’ll probably be something less than 10 percent short, particularly on the Active-Duty,” Brown said. “It’s a little higher on the Guard and Reserve. Part of that is based on retention. Our retention rates are really high right now.”

While some recruiting roadblocks have eased—recruiters are now more able to conduct in-person visits to high schools with the end of the pandemic—others will be more difficult to overcome.

According to Pentagon data, just 23 percent of Americans 17 to 24 years old are eligible to join without being granted a waiver, and only 9 percent express an interest in doing so. Both figures have been trending downward for years, and lack of familiarity with the military may be the greatest cause.

“This has been a slow-moving train that’s been coming at us for decades, frankly,” Thomas said in March at the AFA Warfare Symposium. “There are less veterans, less service members, less bases, less opportunity to be exposed to what it means to serve in uniform today.… The longer-term challenge of lack of familiarity is one that we’re going to have to come to grips with as a nation.”

To combat that problem, Thomas and Brown advocated for “reintroducing” the Air Force to America by increasing community engagement and opening up military bases in a way not seen since before 9/11.

“After 9/11, all of our bases became fortresses because we made it very difficult to get on base,” Brown said June 7. “And so I sent out a letter to all our Wing Commanders back in January and basically instructed them to ‘Open your base and get into the community.’ People only aspire to be what they see.”

In the change-of-command ceremony at Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph, Texas, both Amrhein and Air Education and Training Command boss Lt. Gen. Brian S. Robinson acknowledged the difficult task Amrhein now faces.

“We are eager to join this team of professionals in a challenging time,” Amrhein said of himself and his new command chief, Chief Master Sgt. Rebecca Arbona. “With challenges come opportunities and I look forward to rolling up my sleeves and working with all as we continue the great work being done daily, while exploring those new opportunities.”

Amrhein can look forward to high-level help confronting his recruiting challenges. Vice Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin—widely presumed to be nominated to replace Brown as CSAF once he becomes Chairman of the Joint Chiefs—recently championed a Barriers to Service Cross-Functional Team focused on cutting through red tape and changing Air Force policies seen as barriers to recruiters.

Prior to taking command of AFRS, Amrhein was the 19th Air Force’s vice commander and briefly its interim commander after Maj. Gen. Phillip A. Stewart was relieved May 10 for loss of confidence in his ability to command.

Amrhein also previously served as inspector general for Air Mobility Command and commander of the 100th Air Refueling Wing at RAF Mildenhall, U.K. A KC-135 pilot out of training, he also spent time as an instructor pilot on the T-37 and T-6.

With New Responsibilities, TRANSCOM Wargames How to Support Air Force in Pacific

June 6, 2023 | By Chris Gordon

Gas is king in the vast expanse of the Pacific. And as the Pentagon has sought to build up its capability to deter China, the Department of Defense has undergone a major rethink about how to get fuel to the region.

At the heart of the effort is U.S. Transportation Command (TRANSCOM), which recently assumed responsibility for the global management of the U.S. military’s bulk fuel.

“We need to make sure we can assuredly move that fuel and get it to where it needs to go,” Air Force Gen. Jacqueline Van Ovost, the commander of TRANSCOM, said June 6 during a Brookings Institution event.

Under the previous arrangement, the responsibility rested with the Defense Logistics Agency’s Energy office, which traces its history back to the Army-Navy Petroleum Board set up in World War II. The decision to transfer the mission to TRANSCOM was directed by the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act and officially authorized by President Joe Biden in April.

TRANSCOM’s new responsibility, Van Ovost explained, “allows us to put our TRANSCOM expertise of command and control and planning and posture to ensure that we can actually deliver that fuel wherever and whenever we need it.”

Van Ovost said her command has already conducted wargames with the Air Force and other services to make sure the U.S. military can be properly supplied.

“We also need to relook where our fuel posture is to meet the requirements,” she added.

The Air Force is seeking to dramatically expand its overseas infrastructure spending in its fiscal 2024 budget, including for fuel. The service’s doctrine of Agile Combat Employment, or ACE, is based on a “hub and spoke” presence of logistics, and fuel for aircraft will have to come from somewhere.

“The whole big picture purpose of ACE is to disperse your forces, so that’s exactly what we’re going to do during a conflict, which is we’re going to have jets spread out,” Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach, the commander of Pacific Air Forces, said in March. “To sustain that force for periods of time does take additional logistics.”

Much of the fuel will need to be sent by sea. Van Ovost noted the Pentagon has stood up a maritime tanker security program under which the U.S. military will be able to access medium-range Merchant Mariner vessels during a conflict. Arrangements to use 10 of those ships have already been nailed down, she said.

But that’s just part of the puzzle. To get to the far-flung islands the Air Force and other services may be operating out of, the U.S. military will also need access to different types of ships.

“We’re working on the next 10 as well to be able to assuredly move fuel inside the first and second island chain—more shallow draft vessels that we didn’t have before,” Van Ovost said.

TRANSCOM, which normally operates behind the scenes, has been thrust into prominence as it has moved massive amounts of military materiel to Europe as part of America’s aid to Ukraine and the repositioning of the U.S. personnel and equipment on the continent to reinforce NATO.

However, TRANSCOM’s longer-term focus remains to modernize to deter China and support service efforts such as new Air Force concepts developed under Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown, Jr.

“Our competitors are on a trajectory that will provide really persistent threats across all domains, and that’s why the services are changing their service concepts and you’re seeing more maneuver in their concepts,” Van Ovost said. “As I think about the maneuver concepts, I have to be able to integrate into Gen. Brown’s Agile Combat Employment.”

Across other services, the Marines want to refashion themselves as an island-hopping force with advanced anti-ship weapons. The Army, meanwhile, is planning to deliver a punch with long-range fires. But it is TRANSCOM that will coordinate the massive logistical undertaking to sustain America’s military, whether by sea, land, or air—military or civilian-owned.

Prior the assumption of her current role, Van Ovost led Air Mobility Command. That force, which comprises around 500 tankers and 500 airlifters, will be called upon to help build out bases and move American forces around in the Pacific.

Van Ovost highlighted the age of America’s roll-on, roll-off transport ships and Air Force tanker fleet, based largely around KC-135s that date back to the 1950s, as requirements that will require a continued overhaul.

“We need to recapitalize out into the future with things that are going to be able to withstand contested environments,” Van Ovost said. “Those are just some areas that I’m concerned about, but we’re getting after it or we’re mitigating the risks, and we’re doing a lot of exercises and making sure that our people are ready.”

Lockheed Pitches LMXT as ‘Mothership’ for Future Stealthy Tankers

June 6, 2023 | By John A. Tirpak

Lockheed Martin is pitching its Airbus A330-based LMXT tanker as a “mothership” for the Air Force’s planned fleet of small, stealthy tankers—a rationale company officials hope will overcome the service’s reticence to open its so-called “bridge tanker” buy to competition.

Lockheed officials detailed their argument June 6 during a press briefing to announce they have selected the GE Aerospace CF6-80E1 engine to power the LMXT tanker. The company is marketing the LMXT for the Air Force’s bridge tanker program, expected to consist of at least 75 tankers between the conclusion of the current KC-46 program around 2030 and the future Next Generation Air refueling System in the mid-2030s, according to service leaders.

Larry Gallogly, LMXT campaign lead, noted the Air Force doesn’t want a gap in tanker production and expects to buy the bridge tanker until the NGAS is ready—and 2035 “we feel … is a very, very aggressive target,” he said. Lockheed officials believe a 2040 timeline, which the program originally had, is more likely.

“If you believe NGAS will really take a little longer before it’s operational,” the number of bridge tankers required “actually grows quite substantially; somewhere between 75 and I’d say, 150 aircraft, if they continue to buy 15 aircraft a year, which has always been [the Air Force’s] plan,” Gallogly said. That increase would boost the business case for LMXT, he argued.

While the Air Force has yet to rule out a competition for the bridge tanker and service Secretary Frank has said he is reserving final judgement until more analysis can be done, officials have said they are skeptical a tanker competition would be worth the cost, given the expected small size of the buy and the need to create an all-new logistics train for the aircraft. Instead, the service may simply buy an upgraded version of the KC-46.

However, Gallogly argued the LMXT would offer the service several advantages. Because it is based on the A330, it will have a worldwide maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) enterprise, similar to the KC-10, which was also derived from a commercial airliner. The LMXT would also be a hedge against a “single point failure” if the KC-46 develops a fleet-grounding problem like a wing crack, Gallogly said.

“Competition drives value,” Gallogly added, noting that Lockheed did not automatically select the A330’s usual engine, which happens to be the CF6.

Finally, Gallogly said the aircraft would fulfill a need in the Air Force’s future tanker fleet.

An analysis of alternatives for the NGAS program is slated for later this year, but it’s expected to be a small, stealthy tanker able to operate in contested airspace, feeding fuel to fighters and autonomous Collaborative Combat Aircraft operating at the end of a long supply line.

Assuming that comes to pass, NGAS is going to need “a mothership, in our view,” Gallogly said—an aircraft that can fuel NGAS and other stealthy aircraft before they enter contested airspace, and connectivity and real-time analysis while they’re there.

Gallogly said Lockheed has heard the overall tanker requirement is moving through the Pentagon’s processes now and the requirements for the Bridge Tanker will solidify next month, with a Request for Information to industry issued soon after. The Air Force is expected to complete its acquisition strategy by the end of the calendar year, he said.

“When we see those final requirements, that will give us a much better idea of how well the LMXT is aligned with the priorities of the Air Force,” Gallogly said. “And of course, we’ve been getting consistent and constant feedback from the service during our over four years now of pursuing this business. So we think we’ve got a pretty good idea of what those requirements are going to be, but like you, we’re looking forward to actually seeing those requirements in writing.”

The LMXT is a much larger aircraft than the KC-46, and the A330 Multi-Role Tanker Transport on which it is based was the competitor to what became the KC-46—it won one Air Force competition but lost the contract after a protest from Boeing, and lost the subsequent second competition. One of the Air Force’s discriminators in choosing the KC-46 was its ability to operate from a greater number of airfields, which will be a key factor under the service’s Agile Combat Employment model.

Gallogly said Lockheed doesn’t expect “a requirement for short field landings, but in operations in the Pacific, airfield access is getting more and more important. And we did look at our ability to have the LMXT operate in various airfields in that theater. This engine had a great impact on that. And really, our airfield access numbers are very impressive, and we’ve been sharing those with the Air Force.”

He added that in the Pacific, there will be an “insatiable need for gas,” and the Air Force will need an aircraft that can rapidly fill up its smaller NGAS aircraft to head on into contested airspace.

The CF6-80E1 equips the A330 Multi-Role Tanker-Transport (MRTTs) operated by Australia and Saudi Arabia, and GE said at 72,000 pounds, it’s “the highest-thrust CF6 engine to date.” Gallogly noted that the CF6 was designed for the A330 and powers the C-5 Galaxy, E-4B, and VC-25 Air Force One in the USAF inventory. There are some 8,500 CF6s flying. The latest version offers lower emissions and longer time on wing, with 15 percent improved fuel efficiency over earlier versions of the CF6, GE said.

In addition to refueling capacity, the Air Force has said it sees the bridge tanker as performing additional roles as an airborne internet provider, communications hub, and possibly an ersatz air battle management platform.

Those are roles for which Lockheed officials claim the LMXT is well-suited.

“When I look at what’s compelling about our offering—that will sway the Secretary and [Air Force acquisition executive Andrew Hunter] to see the value of a competition—is exactly that future of aerial refueling,” Gallogly said. “This aircraft has the space, it has the electrical power … again, thanks to our new GE engine selection. We’ve got a lot of electrical power on the aircraft to grow with the mission.”

The LMXT will also offer automatic air refueling, saving crew members and freeing up space within the aircraft for communications personnel or CCA operators or some other function, Gallogly said. Lockheed is also working on its Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) capabilities which would be hosted on the LMXT, he said.

Guard C-130s Start Landing in Germany for Historic Air Defender Exercise

June 6, 2023 | By David Roza

C-130 transport aircraft from Air National Guard units in Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Nevada, New Mexico, Minnesota and Wyoming began arriving at Wunstorf Air Base, Germany, this week in preparation for Air Defender 23—a massive exercise in which 220 aircraft and 10,000 personnel from 25 countries will practice large-scale air warfare and hone new tactics.

The C-130s are the first of about 100 Air National Guard aircraft that will head to Europe to participate in the exercise. All told, Guard units from 35 states will fly F-35s, F-16s, F-15s, A-10s, KC-135s, KC-46s, C-130s, and C-17s. Active-Duty F-16s from the 52nd Fighter Wing at Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany, will also participate.

The exercise, which the German military described as “the largest air force deployment exercise in NATO’s history,” and has been in the making since 2018 and will last from June 12 to 23. The German Air Force will test its ability to command and control and provide logistics support to an international armada of aircraft.

“We have to be much more capable of defending the lines and it’s not just about talking or showing slides,” Chief of the German Air Force Lt. Gen. Ingo Gerhartz said about the exercise during a visit to Joint Base Andrews, Md., in April. “We have to prove it, we have to demonstrate it. How do you inform Russia? Well, we won’t write them a letter. I think they get the message when we deploy.”

The exercise will take place mainly in three areas over Germany, though there will also be forward operating locations in the Czech Republic, Estonia, and Latvia. Like many air warfare exercises, mock enemy ‘Red’ aircraft will take to the skies and fight with friendly ‘Blue’ aircraft.

“Blue will be killing and Red will be killing,” Air National Guard director Lt. Gen. Michael A. Loh told Air & Space Forces Magazine in April. “Everyone will see a little bit of Red.”

air defender — A F-35A Lightning II assigned to the 158th Fighter Wing, Vermont National Guard, taxis by a German Air Force Airbus A400M-180 painted with Air Defender 2023 decals during a media event highlighting Air Defender 2023 on the flight line at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, April 5, 2023. U.S. Air National Guard photo by Tech. Sgt. Sarah M. McClanahan

Though Germany will lead the exercise, U.S. Airmen hope to practice new operating concepts like Agile Combat Employment, where small teams of Airmen and planes disperse to remote or austere locations in an effort to complicate an enemy’s targeting process. Operating from smaller locations forces Airmen to work with a greater autonomy—a far cry from the top-down air wars fought from sprawling air bases in the Middle East during the Global War on Terror.

“It gets us out of what I would call the legacy mindset of CENTCOM,” Loh said in April. “It doesn’t matter what it is, A-10, KC-135, are they going to be able to go ‘OK, I’ve lost our comms, everybody.’ I know what the initial plan was for today. Can I set myself up and do it as an aircraft commander, with a full crew, and take off and go make the next mission?”

As NATO forces begin a simulated air war, Russia and Ukraine are locked in an actual conflict on the same continent. Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine has sparked increased investment and efforts by many European militaries to strengthen their air defenses.

“We have to take responsibility to stand up and say ‘OK, we are ready to defend the alliance,’” Gerhartz said in April.

Retired USAF Gen. Jeffrey L. Harrigian, who led U.S. Air Forces in Europe and NATO Allied Air Command from 2019 to 2022, told Air & Space Forces Magazine in April that NATO’s efforts to modernize member air forces could make a big impact.

“If we mass legitimate capabilities, it’s going to deter Russia, and they’re not going to want any part of what we could potentially do to them,” he said.

Getting Promoted to Lieutenant Colonel Gets Harder for Operators

June 6, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

The selection rate for majors in zone for promoted to lieutenant colonel dropped slightly this year, while “above the zone” promotions continue to rise.

The Air Force unveiled an overhaul to its selection system in 2019, and instituted those changes in 2020, creating six competitive categories rather than have officers compete for promotion in a single group. The new system was supposed to make it easier for non-rated officers in logistics or intelligence, for example, to compete for advancement against rated officers, such as pilots and navigators.

The selection rate for Line of the Air Force majors promoted “in the zone,” which ranged from 76 percent to 77 percent since the change, dropped this year to 75.1 percent. Above-zone promotions, those for officers getting their second look by the promotion board, rose to 13 percent, the highest level since the change.

Early, or “below-the-zone” promotions, were eliminated in 2020.

Driving the shift is the air operations and special warfare category. Majors in this category, the largest in the Air Force, accounting for nearly half of those considered, were selected at a 74.4 percent rate, down nearly five percentage points from 2021.

“Above the zone” selections for operators were just 8.2 percent, the lowest in any category.

Selections also fell for information warfare officers, the second largest category. In-zone selections fell to 74 percent, down from 78.2 percent in 2021. However, the above-zone selection rate for information warfare officers tripled from 2021, rising from 6.4 percent then to 19.3 percent this year.

Combat support—the third largest category—which has seen fluctuating in-zone selections in recent years, saw an increase in “above the zone” selection.

When the Air Force announced its categories, the intent was to ensure officers competed to advance against peers with similar skills, career progression, and experience. Officials have since argued the system has also improved diversity, because women and racial minorities make up a greater portion of the non-rated officer community.

On the whole, more than 1,500 majors were in zone for consideration by the board, the largest cohort in at least four years. The group was likely larger because retention ticked up, related to the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic, potentially creating a slightly larger cohort.

This year’s promotion cycle also marks the first time promotions boards have been able to see if potential lieutenant colonels have advanced academic degrees since 2014. The Air Force started “masking” those degrees because Airmen had come to see such degrees as a prerequisite for promotion—even if they had little to do with their career field.

In reversing that policy, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall emphasized that advanced degrees are “neither a requirement for promotion to major or lieutenant colonel nor a guarantor of promotion.”

“The DAF will continue to value both operationally and educationally derived experience and expertise and will always value high levels of performance,” he added.

CATEGORY	“In the Zone” Considered	“In the Zone” Selected	“In the Zone” Rate	“Above the Zone” Considered	“Above the Zone” Selected	“Above the Zone” Rate
Air Operations & Special Warfare	750	558	74.4	511	42	8.2
Nuclear & Missile Operations	35	25	71.4	35	5	14.3
Information Warfare	311	230	74.0	181	35	19.3
Force Modernization	158	122	77.2	137	13	9.5
Combat Support	265	201	75.8	162	38	23.5
Cross Functional Operations	57	47	82.5	16	5	31.3
TOTAL	1576	1183	75.1	1042	138	13.2

Data courtesy of Air Force Personnel Center

Pentagon Awards $2 Billion Contract for New Lot of F-35 Engines

June 5, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

The Pentagon awarded a contract worth over $2 billion for the next batch of F-35 engines to Pratt & Whitney on June 5.

The deal for Lot 17 F135 engines, totaling $2.02 billion, is expected to be completed by December 2025, the Pentagon said in its announcement.

The new contract does not specify how many engines will be included in the lot, but it does come three months after Pratt & Whitney announced it had struck a deal with the F-35 Joint Program Office for Lots 15 and 16 of the engine, with an option for Lot 17. The company said at the time Lot 17 could include 140 or more engines.

Those engines would presumably not be included in Pratt & Whitney’s planned F135 Engine Core Upgrade—needed to meet the F-35’s growing power and cooling needs—as the contractor has said it is targeting 2028 to start delivering those enhanced engines.

The contract announcement said a large portion of the money for Lot 17 will come from non-U.S. F-35 partners and foreign military sales funds—some $817 million. Air Force funds cover another $557 million, and the Department of the Navy contribution is around $646 million.

Last month, the Pentagon exercised a $7.8 billion contract option for Lot 17 of the F-35 aircraft—126 airframes in total—with contractor Lockheed Martin. Work is expected to be finished by mid-2026.

The contracts for Lot 17 of both the engine and aircraft come after negotiations on Lots 15-17 of the aircraft dragged on for months longer than anticipated.

Not long after a “handshake” deal was announced, a December 2022 crash of an F-35B halted deliveries of both F-35s and F135 engines. A Defense Department investigation uncovered a “harmonic resonance” issue, and Pratt & Whitney was able to develop a field fix that allowed deliveries to resume after several months.

Moving forward, the F-35 is likely to have increased power needs, as Tech Refresh 3 and Block 4 upgrades increase demand from the engine and the Power and Thermal Management System (PTMS), which provides cooling for avionics, radar, and other equipment, as well as emergency power, cockpit conditioning, some electrical power, and more.

Pratt’s solution to that issue is the Engine Core Upgrade, a modest upgrade to the system. After considering an entirely new engine from its Adaptive Engine Transition Program (AETP), the Air Force opted to go with the Engine Core Upgrade due to cost and integration concerns with the AETP engines.

A recent report from the Government Accountability Office recommended the Congress direct the Pentagon to break out the F-35’s propulsion upgrade from the rest of the program better to track its scope, schedule, and cost. The GAO also recommended the DOD set its long-term propulsion requirements, a move Pratt, a division of Raytheon Technologies, also endorsed.