Chinese Balloon Means NORAD Now Getting Proper Attention, VanHerck Says

March 7, 2023 | By Chris Gordon

AURORA, Colo.—After a Chinese high-altitude spy balloon traversed the United States in late January and early February, much of the public spotlight focused on Gen. Glen D. VanHerck, the head of U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) and the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD).

And the question at the top of most minds: How did this happen?

VanHerck has had to answer tough questions from Congress and from the media about why NORAD could not better track the object.

But for VanHerck, the incident has now become a call to arms. The man in charge of America’s homeland defense is finally in the spotlight as the Pentagon talks of an increasingly assertive China and a Russia that is lashing out against its foes.

“Actually, that high-altitude balloon was a great opportunity for NORAD and United States Northern Command to get some attention that I think we deserved,” VanHerck said during a panel at the AFA Warfare Symposium on March 6.

VanHerck, who has been in his job since 2020, has long clamored for better capabilities to see the threats America faces.

“Domain Awareness: Hey, you can’t deter, you can’t defeat something if you can’t detect it,” VanHerck said, highlighting his top focus for the command.

On top of that, VanHerck said, he also needs “information dominance” in order to provide decision-makers more time to consider their options.

“That’s about getting more time,” VanHerck explained. “The only thing I can’t get the President and the Secretary of Defense enough of is time.”

In the case of the Chinese balloon, it wasn’t displaying “hostile intent,” so VanHerck didn’t have the authority to act right away. Information had to run up the chain of command. President Biden didn’t learn of the balloon’s existence until days after it first entered U.S. airspace on Jan. 28, administration officials have said.

VanHerck himself knew the Chinese balloon program existed since August 2022, he said. The balloons had been detected by the intelligence community in incidents dating back to the Trump administration. The U.S. is now working to exploit the Chinese balloon’s debris for information

“Going forward, we know a lot more now,” VanHerck said.

VanHerck wants to eventually be able to use artificial intelligence and machine learning to improve his threat detection capabilities, alluding to some of the capabilities the Pentagon’s Joint All-Domain Command and Control concept promises. But in VanHerck’s case, he doesn’t want an AI-assisted automated balloon-killing device. When the ultimate backstop to protect the U.S. is its nuclear arsenal, what NORAD needs is information.

“I think the services are focused too much on ‘sensor to shooter,'” VanHerck said. “We need more sensor to decision-maker.”

Added VanHerck: “I think we’ve been too focused on deterrence by punishment and that doesn’t give our most senior leaders many options. What we have to do is give options to our senior leaders to create and fill that space. Those options are what I would say are deterrence by denial.”

Ultimately, the balloon incident was a wake-up call to the whole nation, perhaps for the better, VanHerck said.

The Chinese balloon drew intense scrutiny of NORAD’s mission from the top brass at the Pentagon and the West Wing of the White House. When the U.S. adjusted its radar settings so it would no longer filter out slow-moving objects such as balloons, NORTHCOM ended up shooting down three objects that were likely harmless on President Joe Biden’s orders.

But VanHerck has long pointed out that cruise missiles are the most acute threat to the American homeland, along with ballistic missiles, and Russia has already proven it can launch long-range cruise missiles from inside its own airspace and target another country in its attacks on Ukraine. NORAD’s North Warning System radar network is an antiquated relic of the Cold War that was designed for Soviet bombers. VanHerck has previously warned that Russian air-launched cruise missiles could be a possible threat to the homeland. He also sees an increased risk from ballistic missile submarines in the Atlantic and Pacific.

Meanwhile, NORAD is moving to update the North Warning System and has next-generation missile interceptors coming online—eventually.

“We’re pretty much stuck with what we have in the near term, VanHerck said. “I think the future of homeland defense looks vastly different than it does today. It’s autonomous unmanned platforms that can loiter for long times. That can create domain awareness. We can do kinetic and non-kinetic effectors.”

Whatever the future holds for America’s homeland defense, it will likely be better resourced than in the past.

“It’s great to have that opportunity to tell our story about the challenges we face—the domain awareness challenges we have in the homeland,” VanHerck said. “Magically, the appropriators want to talk to me.”

US Policy Is Prolonging the War in Ukraine

March 6, 2023 | By Brian J. Morra

The following commentary is written by Brian J. Morra, a former Air Force Intelligence officer and retired senior aerospace executive. His most recent article for Air & Space Forces Magazine was “The Near Nuclear War of 1983.” His novel about the 1983 incident, titled The Able Archers, was released in March 2022.

The United States is pursuing a ‘gradualist’ policy in Ukraine, ratcheting up the pressure on the Russian invaders by progressively arming the Ukrainian military. Gradualism didn’t work in Vietnam, and it may not work in Ukraine.

In the 1960s, President Lyndon Johnson feared that the war in Southeast Asia might escalate out of control. He worried Moscow would threaten Berlin and that the People’s Republic of China might enter Vietnam with massive ground formations like it did in Korea.

Johnson tried to calibrate the American use of force in Vietnam to send nuanced “messages” of American resolve to the leaders in Beijing and Moscow. The White House increased pressure on Hanoi through its air campaign, gradually increasing airstrikes and then backing off to see the impact. Johnson viewed airpower as the key component of this messaging exercise. Johnson’s gradualism and failure to use airpower decisively prolonged the war and led to additional years of death and destruction.

It wasn’t until President Richard Nixon discarded that policy and instead decided to use airpower appropriately that Hanoi finally agreed to get serious about the Paris peace talks.

Today, despite repeated pleas from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for combat aircraft, U.S. President Biden insists that Zelenskyy “doesn’t need” F-16s. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan has reinforced the president’s position, indicating that the Biden Administration is carefully measuring Ukraine’s tactical needs on a case-by-case basis. In a classic example of gradualism, Sullivan did not rule out providing Ukraine with F-16s at some later date.

Absent a coherent strategic framework for resolving the conflict, it’s tempting for the Biden Administration to focus on Ukraine’s needs on a week-to-week or a month-to-month basis. That tactical, short-term focus is prolonging the war.

Like Johnson in Vietnam, the Biden administration seeks to orchestrate a carefully calibrated policy in Ukraine. The problem is that wars are messy and unpredictable, calibration is not a precise science, and the enemy may interpret gradualism as weakness.

The Biden administration’s concerns about escalation are legitimate. Russian President Vladimir Putin and other senior Russian officials have trotted out threats of nuclear escalation since early in the current conflict—and to great effect. Those threats have limited NATO’s freedom of action and are the root cause of Biden’s incrementalist, gradualist approach. President Biden is managing the risk of escalation by not providing Ukraine what it needs to win decisively.

A long war is not in Ukraine’s interest. Zelenskyy is telling us that time is not on his side and that he needs to achieve a military victory sooner, rather than later. A longer war also increases the potential for Iran and China to arm Russia in earnest. CIA Director William J. Burns has issued public warnings that Beijing may soon expand its role as an arms supplier to Moscow, raising the stakes in the conflict and increasing the risk of escalation.

The Biden administration’s gradualism has taken Washington from providing Ukraine with Javelins and Stingers to sending HIMARS and promising Abrams tanks. Stepping up support over time is not a strategy toward a satisfactory end game, however.

Gradualism in Vietnam led to a disastrous outcome. Let’s not make the same mistake in Ukraine.

Lessons from Vietnam: ‘I Shall Always Be Grateful’

March 6, 2023 | By Patrick Reardon

The AFA Warfare Symposium kicked off March 6 with three storied heroes of the Vietnam War. This is the first in a three-part series on their talks.

Lt. Col. Gene Smith (Ret.). Smith joined the 333rd Tactical Fighter Squadron at Takhli Royal Thai Air Base, Thailand, in August 1967. For the next two months, Smith flew 33 combat missions in his F-105 Thunderchief over North Vietnam. His 33rd mission, Oct. 25, 1967, struck Phúc Yên Air Base, just north of Hanoi. It was his last.

Maj. Gene Smith in front of his F-105 in October 1967, the month he was taken as a POW in North Vietnam. Courtesy photo.

“We took off that day, a beautiful afternoon,” Smith recalled. As the flight lead, he had carefully briefed his team to drop their bombs at 9,000 feet, no higher. “Guess who exceeded the 9,000 feet? Me. And when I pulled off the target my airplane got hit. Instantly, the airplane tumbled.”

Pitching uncontrollably, Smith bailed out awkwardly, sustaining a deep flesh wound in his right leg as he exited the cockpit. His parachute opened and he descended; as soon as his feet touched the earth, he was surrounded. Vietnamese soldiers armed with AK-47s fired, sending two bullets ripping through his left leg.

“They undressed me with a machete and off we went to the Hilton,” Smith said, referring to the notorious Hoa Lo prison known eupemistically as the Hanoi Hilton. It would be his home for the next 1,967 days, where he and hundreds of other Airmen prisoners endured interrogation and torture.

“We spent five and a half years,” Smith said. “That’s the hardest part to understand about our conditions, is how long it was. The horrible indefiniteness of it all.”

Smith returned as part of Operation Homecoming on March 14, 1973; in all, 591 Americans came home as part of the operation between Feb. 12 and April 4 of that year.

Surviving was the true test of the their endurance.

“You can’t teach resiliency,” Smith said. “You can teach some of the factors in the equation. But you learn resiliency as a child. You learn resiliency when you’re in high school or college. You learn resiliency in your first days in the military, I hope. But the way we got through that was faith. Faith in God. Faith in your country. Faith in your family, that they would always be there for you. Faith in your fellow POWs.”

The faith that helped Smith withstand the darkest years of his life did not lead him to a lifetime of resentment or despair, but to a lifetime of service and repayment to his nation and his Air Force.

“The most beautiful flag I’ve ever seen in my life was on the tail of a C-141 that pulled up into Gia Lam and took me, Lee Ellis, John McCain, Chuck Rice, and a whole list of others that were in that group,” Smith said. “I shall always be grateful. I shall always be grateful to my nation. I shall always be grateful to the Air Force for the wonderful life I’ve had.”

Space Force to Take on the Army’s Missile Warning Ground Stations in October

March 6, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

AURORA, Colo.—Space Delta 4, the Space Force unit responsible for missile tracking and warning, will take over responsibility for the Joint Tactical Ground Stations from the Army in October, its commander said March 6.

The Army was originally slated to keep the JTAGS mission, even as the Space Force took over other services’ space missions, but last September 2022 it became clear that could change. At the time, Maj. Gen. Doug Schiess, vice commander of Space Operations Command, indicated the two services were in early discussions about transferring JTAGS. The transfer was confirmed in a January release about the Buckley Space Force Base.

Space Delta 4 commander Col. Miguel A. Cruz, speaking at the AFA Warfare Symposium, said the transition is slated for October, expanding Delta 4’s broad portfolio.

“By the time all this coalesces, Delta 4 is going to have orbital sensors, ground-based sensors doing the strategic mission, ground-based sensors doing tactical missions and of course, all the array of antennas around the world that ensure that data transfer goes from one place to another,” Cruz said.

The transfer will also create logistical responsibilities for Space Base Delta 2, the mission support unit also headquartered at Buckley.

“When we look at the JTAGS sites, there’s a level of installation support—what type of infrastructure and, more importantly, parts and being able to sustain that,” said Col. Marcus D. Jackson, commander of Space Base Delta 2. “And so when we look at what’s being transferred over from the Army to the Space Force, … we will establish [memorandums of understanding] with the Army on the requirements for supporting JTAGS representatives on site, being able if you need to store equipment, if you have to store parts, having that as part of the interrelationship with Space Force and the Army. We’re in the process of working and doing that now.”

That work is all part of the operational nitty-gritty of transferring missions across services.

“It’s not like you can flip a switch and say ‘Here you go. Here’s the keys to the new mission and off you go,’” he said. “There’s a lot of planning that goes into transferring a mission into another service, to include the number of people that are going to transfer, how you’re going to train them, the training pipeline, the sustainment activities that goes with that because now money and sustainment responsibility go from one service to another.”

In order for the transfer to proceed smoothly, Cruz added, the Space Force will lean on the “resident expertise” of the Soldiers in the Army. Some will become inter-service transfers, while others will filter out over time rather than leaving all at once.

“It’s not like we’re going to be all Guardians on day one. Actually on day one, we’ll have a number of Guardians—we already have about 14 of them among the various JTAGS detachments—and then gradually transition those Soldiers as their normal PCS cycle ensues. That allows us the opportunity to hit the ground running, but also kind of go with the training wheels as we take that over.”

Further developments at Buckley could follow. Col. Robert J. Schreiner, commander of the Aerospace Data Facility-Colorado at the base, said he “would not be surprised to see some evolution of the mission as we evolve to diverse and proliferated architectures, as we evolve to new and emerging mission sets for our mission partners.”

ADF-Colorado is controlled by the National Reconnaissance Office and doubles as Space Delta 20, working with industry, other services, other government agencies, and allies—highlighting the vast number of organizations that have a presence at Buckley.

“We have 110 other mission partners on site that we care for day in and day out,” Jackson noted.

Another of those mission partners is the Colorado Air National Guard, which is also undergoing changes. The Colorado ANG has had both air and space missions for years now, but two of its units are at a crossroads, said Col. Chris J. Southard, commander of the 140th Wing.

The 140th flies F-16s but is hoping to gain new aircraft like the F-35 or F-15EX before its current fighters are retired around the end of the decade, Southard said. Meanwhile, the 137th Space Warning Squadron operates the Mobile Ground Systems trucks that communicate with the Defense Support Program (DSP) constellation. But with those DSP satellites past their anticipated service life, the squadron is also in need of a new mission.

USAF Shakes Up Its Plan for Tankers: Fewer ‘Traditional’ Refuelers, Focus on Stealth Future

March 6, 2023 | By John A. Tirpak

AURORA, Colo.—The Air Force is dumping its decade-old strategy of a three-phase tanker recapitalization plan, replacing it with a strategy that will yield about 75 traditional tankers beyond the current run of the KC-46 and then focus on a future, survivable tanker, Air Force acquisition executive Andrew Hunter said March 6.

“We have come to the determination that the kind of KC-X, -Y, -Z strategy that was established in the 2009-2010 timeframe is no longer fit for … meeting the air refueling needs of the joint force in the 2030s and beyond,” Hunter told reporters at the AFA Warfare Symposium.

The new Next Generation Air-refueling System, or NGAS, is “focused on ensuring” that USAF tankers in the mid-2030s and later “will be able to survive and operate in a much more contested environment than the tankers of the past or the tankers that are in our current fleet,” which include the KC-46, Hunter said.

Through analysis done as part of Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall’s operational imperatives, Hunter said there are too many “threats that are posed by potential adversaries to high-value aircraft, including tankers,” and USAF needs an approach that addresses those threats while still meeting its obligations to refuel the joint force “in all of the critical operations that are required for high intensity conflict.”

Hunter said the Air Force consulted with Boeing and Lockheed Martin on when they could deliver new tankers after Boeing finishes its current contract for 179 KC-46s. Boeing could produce an uprated KC-46 by 2032 and Lockheed could provide an “LMXT” tanker, based on the Airbus A330, by 2034. By that time, USAF doesn’t want to be buying traditional tankers anymore, Hunter said.

Buying 75 further “traditional” tankers beyond the 179 KC-46s, USAF can stick to its schedule of retiring the KC-135 and KC-10, Hunter explained. After that, it will pursue a competitive program for a new airplane, but he indicated the KC-46 offers the best opportunity to “dovetail” with current production and not have a break in tanker recapitalization. The Air Force will decide on how to approach the purchase of the 75 aircraft—whether it will be sole source or competitive—in the next few months, he said. Either choice would require negotiations, but a sole source award to Boeing could move the program faster. He noted that if the KC-46 is chosen, it will likely cost more; not only because of new capabilities that will be added, but because USAF got “a very good deal” on the KC-46.

The KC-46 has been a fixed-price contract that Boeing knowingly underbid. So far, the company has taken more than $6 billion in losses on the program, costs that USAF might have had to bear otherwise.

“We do expect,” based on the information provided by Boeing and Lockheed, that “that that may lead us towards KC-46 as the answer … to that ‘five-year KC-135 recapitalization effort,’ is what we’re calling it,” Hunter noted. “But we do need to hear from industry before we make any final determinations.”

The plan for KC-Y had been to buy about 150 more traditional tankers, Hunter said, but the new plan will “accelerate” the purchase of more advanced aircraft for the mission.

Kendall has for the last year cautioned that the Air Force would probably forego a competition for a so-called “bridge tanker,” preferring to save the money and time of a competition and put those resources toward a more advanced aircraft. A second tranche of KC-46s would have new capabilities in communications and possibly control of uncrewed air vehicles, Kendall has said, but Hunter said those extra capabilities will be scaled back in the new scheme.

“We will go on contract for the last of those [179 KC-46s] in FY 2027 and take deliveries of those aircraft in 2029. So we were looking at a gap of … tanker production, under a competitive approach,” Hunter said.

“The last stage of the business case analysis will be giving industry information about our revised path forward and getting their responses about what they can provide and then make a sourcing determination … by the middle of this … calendar year,” he said.

An analysis of alternatives will get underway this year for the NGAS, and Hunter said that process could take 18 months “to a couple of years.” He also said the Air Force is looking toward an “increment one” of NGAS, and that the aircraft might be iterated in several variants, in order to get a stealthy tanker as soon as possible.

The Air Force wants to work with “a wide variety of potential industry partners, in order to inform our efforts and make sure that the capabilities that are being considered in the AOA is the best, the most innovative and effective options that are out there. … We will look at a clean sheet of paper approach not constrained to commercial derivative aircraft,” Hunter said.

The NGAS will have to have “the ability to go deeper into contested airspace … more advanced self-protection-type capabilities, more advanced networking capabilities,” Hunter said.

The Air Force revealed the NGAS name and idea in a Jan. 31 solicitation to industry. In that request for information, it said it seeks a new tanker to be in service circa 2040.

Asked if the NGAS strategy is an attempt to end-run or wait out Congress—some members of which are unhappy with Boeing’s KC-46 performance and want to see more tanker competition—Hunter said “there’s not a way around Congress.” If Capitol Hill “doesn’t like the plan that I’ve just described to you, they will have something to say about it” and this will “have an impact on our plans. I think we’re very aware of that.”

He said the Air Force will “make our best case that this is the right plan, the right path going forward … And we’ll get feedback. We’ll see what comes out in the … draft legislation and will respond accordingly.”

Ukraine Has Lost 60 Aircraft, Taken Down 70 in Russian Invasion, Hecker Says

March 6, 2023 | By Chris Gordon

AURORA, Colo.—Ukraine has lost roughly 60 aircraft so far since Russia’s renewed invasion of the country in February 2022, while the Russians have lost more than 70, according to the top U.S. Air Force commander for Europe. After Russia’s larger air force failed to establish air superiority in the early days of the war, the air picture has turned into a mutually denied environment, Gen. James B. Hecker said March 6 at the AFA Warfare Symposium.

“Russian, as well as the Ukrainian, success in integrated air and missile defense have made much of those aircraft worthless,” according to Hecker, who serves as the commander of U.S. Air Forces in Europe-Air Forces Africa and NATO’s Allied Air Command.

“[Russia has] downed over 60 Ukrainian aircraft,” he added. “Ukraine’s downed over 70 Russian aircraft. So both of their integrated air and missile defense, especially when you’re talking about going against aircraft, they’ve been very effective. And that’s why they’re not flying over one another’s country.”

Russian air defenses are located in Russia, Belarus, and parts of occupied Ukraine—and have the ability to move around. That has made it difficult for Ukraine to use airpower in the combined arms counteroffensive the Ukrainians are planning for the spring and summer.

“They’re not doing a whole lot,” Hecker said. “They can’t go over and do close air support.”

The U.S. has attempted to bolster Ukraine’s air force with AGM-88 HARM anti-radiation missiles, which have been jerry-rigged to work with the country’s Soviet-designed fighters.

“Obviously, they’re not as integrated with the airplane as it would be if they’re on the U.S. aircraft, so they do have limitations,” Hecker said of Ukraine’s employment of HARMs. “But they’re doing a pretty good job.”

The U.S. has also recently provided Ukraine’s air force with JDAM precision-guided bombs that have extended the Ukrainians’ strike capability. Hecker said that allows them to hit targets slightly beyond the current range of the GMRLS rockets fired by HIMARS launchers. The GMLRS rockets the U.S. has provided Ukraine have a range of nearly 50 miles. The U.S. has declined to provide Ukraine with long-range ATACMS missiles which have a range of nearly 200 miles.

“Recently, we’ve just got them some precision munitions that had some extended range and can go a little bit further than a gravity drop bomb,” Hecker said. “And it has precision. That’s a recent capability that we were able to give them probably in the last three weeks.”

But Ukraine still must fly low to terrain mask its aircraft against Russian surface-to-air missiles. Ukraine has asked for U.S. fighters such as F-16s, but the Biden administration has declined to provide them despite objections from some U.S. lawmakers.

Lockheed Martin Clears Crucial Hurdle to Restarting F-35 Deliveries

March 6, 2023 | By John A. Tirpak

Lockheed Martin restarted flying operations at its Fort Worth, Texas, facilities March 6, paving the way for deliveries of F-35s to resume after a nearly three-month hiatus. It’s not yet clear when the first new F-35 of 2023 will be delivered.

“We resumed F-35 production flight operations today following an F135 engine mitigation action,” the company said in a press statement. The move follows action by Pratt & Whitney to resume deliveries of F135 engines with the issuance of a technical order to address issues of harmonic resonance in the powerplants.

Lockheed has completed but not delivered 26 F-35s since the hold on flying operations was put in place after a mid-December crash of an F-35B at Fort Worth. Acceptance flights by Lockheed and Defense Contract Management Agency test pilots are needed to ensure the aircraft work properly and that any deficiencies can be documented.

“Safety remains our top priority; we will deliver the aircraft as quickly as possible after undertaking the multiple checks and test flights needed,” a Lockheed spokesperson told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

Flying was halted Dec. 14 as precautionary measure after the crash; the hold on flying meant acceptance tests could not proceed. Pratt stopped delivering F135 engines at the end of December.

Although Pratt and the F-35 Joint Program Office had said the harmonic resonance problem only affected a small number of aircraft, the entire worldwide fleet of F-35s will get a retrofit to fix the issue, which Pratt said only showed up after more than 600,000 hours of F135 engine operations. Officials from the engine maker told reporters early last week they had identified a fix and resumed deliveries of the engine March 2.

A time compliance technical directive (TCTD) was then issued by the JPO; aircraft that were not affected by the harmonic resonance issue will not have any flight restrictions placed on them while they wait for the fix, while the small number of aircraft that were grounded will be cleared to fly once they get the retrofit, which takes between four and eight hours, a JPO spokesperson said.

A Lockheed Martin spokesperson said all 26 undelivered F-35s will either get the retrofit before flying or receive an already modified engine. There are no changes required for aircraft production to incorporate the retrofit, the spokesperson added.

Maintaining What Matters: An Engine Fit for the F-35

March 6, 2023 | By Patrick Reardon

The looming decision on the future of the F-35’s engine—Pratt & Whitney’s F135—has fostered plenty of debate, with some suggesting the F135 should be completely replaced with a new engine through the Adaptive Engine Transition Program (AETP), while others say integrating a new adaptive engine into the F-35 would be wasteful and unnecessary.

Even Pratt & Whitney—which is developing its own adaptive engine, the XA101, through AETP—insists that the F-35’s continued aerial dominance as a joint strike fighter depends on incremental upgrades to the existing technology powering it.

“Adaptive engines are sixth-gen technology,” said Jen Latka, Vice President of Pratt & Whitney’s F135 program. “That technology is what keeps us at the forefront in terms of the U.S.’s national advantage, so we are very thankful for the adaptive engine program—but while it’s critical to develop sixth-generation propulsion technologies, the AETP engines aren’t optimized for the F-35 program.”

The solution proposed by Pratt & Whitney, a Raytheon Technologies company, is an engine core upgrade (ECU) that can meet DOD imperatives for the F-35 that adaptive engines can’t, particularly maintaining tri-variant commonality—adaptive engines won’t fit in the F-35B and likely won’t be retrofitted into already fielded F-35s, and will not deliver a meaningful quantity of Block 4-enabled F-35s by 2028, when the warfighter needs them.

The ECU is a limited scope upgrade—the product looks very similar to the existing motor in the F-35 but incorporates the latest design tools into the same supply base. The upgrade wouldn’t require any of the F-35’s interfaces to change and is limited to what Latka calls “the power module,” which is just the core of the engine.

“What that means is you can come into depot for your regularly-scheduled overhaul with the current configuration and then leave depot with the upgraded core,” Latka said. Because the upgraded engine is retrofittable, the upgrade could be dropped in F-35s in the depot in addition to on the assembly line—greatly accelerating the pace at which Block 4-enabled F-35s will reach the operational fleet.

Pratt & Whitney estimates that the ECU can save the DOD a total of $40 billion over the life of the program, but in near-term savings alone it has a clear advantage over a new engine. Latka reports that development will cost around $2.4 billion for the entire Engineering and Manufacturing Development phase over the five-year Future Years Defense Program (FYDP). That’s just a fraction of the price tag on fully developing an AETP alternative, which Secretary Frank Kendall has said will cost nearly $7 billion and result in reduced procurement volumes.

“In the next five years, there’s billions of dollars that could be saved,” Latka said. “And it’s not only the cost of a new engine—it would be that plus the core upgrade, because the core upgrade will need to be done regardless, to support the international customers and the STOVL variant.”

“And in comparing production costs, the core upgrade remains the financially prudent option. An upgraded F135 would be production cost neutral,” she said, “while the initial cost of a brand-new adaptive engine would be about two and half times that of current the F135 and would add about $4 billion in production costs across the life of the program.”

“We’ve already come down the learning curve and taken out 50 percent of the cost of the engine,” she added. Even accounting for an AETP learning curve, Latka said AETP “would still be more expensive than the current motor because it’s significantly heavier.”

While the savings offered by Pratt & Whitney’s single development program are impressive, they’re marginal compared to lifecycle savings. Sustainment is a crucial piece of the debate over F-35 engines, but its implications extend beyond just the cost. Pratt & Whitney’s solution can potentially save the Pentagon tens of billions of dollars over the F135’s (and the F-35’s) lifecycle because it retains an infrastructure that has already been built and invested in—and when sustainment efforts are disrupted, disruption soon follows.

“With a new adaptive engine, you are going out there and having to create a second infrastructure,” Latka said. “So, you would need all new tooling, all new support equipment, and all new depots. You have to fund two sustaining engineering teams, two configuration management teams … you have two of everything because you’re maintaining two totally different products.”

Bifurcation threatens the interoperability of the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program, which depends on a common engine and global spares pool among American and international F-35 operators. The maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) network devoted to the F135, for instance, already has multiple locations around the globe that will be able to support ECU sustainment as well—with more planned in the future. But F-35As powered by AETP engines wouldn’t be able to utilize that extensive sustainment network and would need to stand up a parallel AETP sustainment network at a significant cost.

“The drive right now has got to be around maximizing interoperability among the partners,” Latka said. “Another issue is whether the adaptive engine is exportable; it’s sixth-gen technology. Perhaps it could be exportable one day, but it doesn’t appear to be right now.”

And with global tensions on the rise, Latka said, there’s a strict timeline on not only improving the F-35’s operating capabilities but also growing the fleet before a potential conflict happens. That’s harder to do while trying to fit brand new, unproven engine technology into an existing jet.

“When we think about the timeline and the pacing threats, cutting tails hurts that fight,” Latka said. “But secondly, we need to field an engine upgrade as fast as we can.”

While adaptive engine technology boasts improved range over the existing F135, Latka said that these enhancements could distract from what really matters to the combatant commanders: getting as many Block 4-enabled jets fielded as quickly as possible. Block 4 quantity and readiness equals relevant capability.

Pratt & Whitney has said its upgraded engine will be ready to enter service by 2028, facilitating SECAF’s readiness imperative while offering performance improvements and significant cost avoidance that allows increased investment in the Secretary’s other operational imperatives. But Latka reiterated that these improvements are ancillary to ensuring operational readiness—it’s quantity and Block 4 capabilities that truly matter, and Pratt & Whitney’s Engine Core Upgrade would deliver both while saving billions of dollars and ensuring commonality across the fleet of F-35s operated by the DOD and allied partners around the globe.

Watch, Read: ‘Lessons from Vietnam: 50 Years Later’

March 6, 2023

Col. John Gallemore, Director SECAF-CSAF Strategic Execution Group, moderated a session on “Lessons from Vietnam: 50 Years Later” to kick off the AFA Warfare Symposium on March 6, 2023. The panel featured three heroes from the Vietnam War: Col. Charles B. DeBellevue, USAF (Ret.), the highest scoring ACE of Vietnam War and last American ACE; Col. Lee Ellis, USAF (Ret.), Vietnam War POW (1967-1973); and Lt. Col. Gene Smith, USAF (Ret.), Vietnam War POW (1967-1973). Watch the video or read the transcript below.

Ken Goss:

Good afternoon.

For 40 years, it has been my privilege to speak to you at AFA events most often as the voice of AFA. When I say Airmen, Guardians, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the 2023 Air and Space Forces Association Warfare Symposium. Usually you hear me from the production table on the side with my colleagues from GPI, but today I’m privileged to be on the stage to introduce a panel who will talk about Vietnam, 50 years later.

These legendary Airmen will share with you about their experiences and their memories. Before I turn it over to the moderator, however, I want to take a point of personal privilege to talk about one of the panelists. Back when I was AFA Director of Government Relations, Lieutenant Colonel Gene Smith, in the first chair here, was the president and chairman of the Air Force Association at that time. During his tenure, he accompanied me to Capitol Hill many times where we worked much legislation of importance to our air force, our Airmen, and our families. Gene was a dynamic spokesperson for all of you. He delivered results through his personal contacts and his passionate case statements for support. Thank you, Gene.

Now please give a warm welcome to your panel moderator, Colonel John Gallemore.

Col. John Gallemore:

I don’t know why they clapped for me. They should be clapping for you.

Lt. Col. Gene Smith, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Col. John Gallemore:

So General Allvin, CMSAF, General Wright, General Raaberg, General Skoch, thank you so much for allowing me the opportunity to share the stage with really what I’ll call and I think you’ll all agree, three true American heroes. Now before we move into the formalities, sir, I’m not sure who signed and approved the flight schedule, but I’m going to point out the fact that you have a University of Georgia Bulldog, a Mississippi State Bulldog, a raging Cajun from southwestern Louisiana and a Aggie all on the stage with microphones at the same time with clearance to engage. So I’m fairly certain we have busted our acceptable level of risk. So with that being said to my left are two former prisoners of war and the last serving American ace in our active duty military.

The scheme of maneuver for today is fairly simple. Each of these fine gentlemen will talk about eight to 10 minutes. They’ll tell you their experiences and their stories and then from there we’ll try to get through a few questions realizing that we don’t have a whole lot of time. We’ve got about 40 minutes. I know that most of y’all are familiar with these three gentlemen, but let me just fill you in on a few quick facts. So Lieutenant Colonel Gene Smith. Immediately to my left, he grew up in Mark Mississippi. As I alluded to, he attended Mississippi State University where my daughter’s going to go this fall. He said he is going to take good care of her. He currently lives in West Point, Mississippi there at the old Waverly Golf Course and for those who’ve ever been there, it’s a fantastic place to play golf. And his beautiful wife Lynn is up here in the front row just as stage left in a tennis today,

Colonel Smith started his flying career as a radar intercept officer in the F-101 Voodoo. He subsequently attended UPT and was off to fly the F-102 Delta Dagger and then the 105 Thunder chief, aka the thud. On his 33rd combat mission, and as he’ll say his 32nd and a half combat mission, he was shot down, captured, and then remained in the infamous Hanoi Hilton for five and a half years. He was repatriated alongside Lee Smith who was just to his left on the 14th of March 1973.

So we’re closing in on 50 years on both of their repatriations and he continued his distinguished Air Force career along the way, earning two silver stars, a distinguished flying cross with Valor, a bronze star with Valor, a Purple Heart as well as a POW medal and a whole host of other awards along the way. He finished his career at 14th flying training wing there at Columbus Air Force Base, Mississippi and also served and has already been referenced as both the president and then the chairman of the board for the Airspace Forces Association.

Colonel Gene Smith. Sir, hold on one second. I got one more. I got two more intros to do.

Lt. Col. Gene Smith, USAF (Ret.):

You’re cutting into my time.

Col. John Gallemore:

We’re good. We still got 36 and a half minutes. To Colonel Smith’s left is Colonel Chuck DeBellevue. Excuse me… At the end is Colonel Chuck DeBellevue. So Colonel DeBellevue grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana. As I referenced earlier, he went to the artist formally known as Southwestern Louisiana. Now the University of Louisiana Lafayette as a raging Cajun. He currently lives in Edmond, Oklahoma and is married to his wife Sally, who is also in attendance there right next to Lynn in the front row. Colonel DeBellevue started his career as a weapon systems officer in the mighty F-4 Phantom. Following a quick stint at Seymour Johnson, he was off to Udorn Royal Thai Air Base in November of 1971.

During his combat deployment to Southeast Asia, he flew 220 combat missions and is credited with six air-to-air victories. Colonel DeBellevue came back, continued his distinguished career, retiring with 30 years of service and again retired as the last American ace to serve on active duty. Along the way here into Air Force Cross three silver stars, six distinguished flying crosses and 18 air metals. He continues to volunteer and speak around the world and was honored with earning the congressional medal gold medal in 2015. Colonel Chuck DeBellevue.

Bracketed by Colonel DeBellevue and Colonel Smith is Colonel Lee Ellis. Colonel Ellis grew up in Commerce, Georgia, university of Georgia Bulldog lives in Atlanta and is married to his wife Mary. Colonel Ellis started his flying career in the F-4 Phantom and was shortly thereafter deployed to Da Nang Air Base. He was shot down on his sixty-eighth mission, captured and remained in captivity for over five and a half years and was repatriated alongside Colonel Smith on 14th March 1973 and continued his illustrious career with 25 years of service back where it all began, at his alma mater, the University of Georgia. He earned two silver stars, the Bronze Star with Valor, the Purple Heart and the prisoner of war medal. Colonel Ellis is a nationally recognized speaker and publicist. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you three true American heroes. Colonel Smith, the clock’s counting.

Lt. Col. Gene Smith, USAF (Ret.):

Clock’s on.

Is this thing on? Good. I think it is. Well one, let me tell you how good it makes me feel to look out here and see all you Airmen and Guardians and just people that believe in the United States and support our military and support our Air force. Orville, you and your staff have done a wonderful job. I’ve got 10 minutes to tell you what it was like to fly combat in Southeast Asia in 105 and be a POW that I was for five and a half years.

I was flying deuces in Germany in late 1966, having a great time. I had my own wine Keller down on a muzzle where I could buy Trenton Heimer Rosenberg Spate laser for a dollar and 15 cents and it was good as any sauvignon blanc I can get in the United States today. When I came back from a ski trip with my family and this friend of mine walked up to me and says, you better hold on you and I have got a 105 assignment to Southeast Asia. And I absolutely didn’t want to fly that airplane, but we very rapidly got out of USAF, Europe and on en route.

Fortunately I got Nellis and not McConnell and I started my checkout in a 105. I very quickly found out that airplane was really not what I thought it was. It was one of the fastest airplanes, if not the fastest airplane below 10,000 feet in the world. I learned that and how stable it was. One day early on in my checkout, I was coming back from the Indian Springs gunnery range where we did when I was looking around and learning to fly the airplane and I was four and the flight lead had us probably at 200 feet and we were smoking down into the Vegas Valley. And I noticed shock waves bending upon the wings of their airplanes and I said, “Holy smokes, how fast are we going?” And I took a glance at the air speed indicator 0.95 and it was just like sitting in that chair right there.

Plus I had about an inch of throttle left and I thought to myself, if I’m going to war, this is the airplane I want to do it in. Well, we quickly checked out, learned no tactics that they were doing in Southeast Asia. We ask and ask and ask, said they’ll teach them to you when you get over there. And I got to Southeast Asia in July of 1967. I didn’t even get my bags set down Takhli Lee before I was taken up on a familiarization ride and three other guys were along, too, in their airplanes and we were shown the pod formation that we would fly going north. That’s how quick it happened and we didn’t even know what the pod formation was. I flew five missions in the lower root pack and then I went north on my first mission. I could spend 30 minutes telling you about that mission.

But quickly it refueled out over the Gulf of Tonkin was my flight of four and three other flights of four and we were the third flight. Our target was the Bach Gang bridge on the Northeast railroad going out of Hanoi. Three minutes before we got to the target,, still a long ways down, 30 miles plus the sky turned black with flack. Now I says, “Oh shucks,” really loudly. And about that time the Weasels had not made a call of Sam’s, but about that time a SA-2 two went by me so close I could read the Russian writing on it and it scared the snot out of me among other things.

And then we got the call to get an echelon to roll in and a guy right in front of me got hit and it was just a big torch in my windscreen as I’m following my flight lead down and stuff going by me.” And I said, that guy never got out of that airplane. We didn’t hear a beeper or see a shoot or anything.” He came out on the same airplane I did after being captured by the Chinese.

Well, things went pretty rapidly after that. I made flight lead. They made me a flight lead. I don’t know whether I made it or not. After about the 10th mission or so and we started flying missions north. Every mission was 16 airplanes with a flight of four Weasel. From the first part of September up until the middle of October, not very many of the targets we hit were worth hitting. We lost some airplanes on those. In fact, in my class, the first guy we lost was on his third mission in the southern part of North Vietnam where he ran into the ground on a third strayfen pass on a suspected truck park.

And we all asked ourselves the question, is life worth that? And the answer is no. Things went along pretty good and in the middle of October things started heating up with some better targets. On the afternoon of October the 24th, 1967, we walked… I was scheduled that afternoon and we walked in and we’d had a target change from the one we had planned for. And it was the target was Fu Kin Air Base, which was the last MiG base other than Giam downtown Hanoi that we had not hit. Man, you’re talking about the heartbeat going up and getting excited. We were excited. I was supposed to lead the first bomb flight, but a young friend of mine he’s still around, he actually followed me to Columbus when we went there. He said he wanted that flight and I flew the wing commander’s wing. We absolutely obliterated Fu Kin. But another wing, two Navy wings hit it right after I did and then another 105 wing.

And we just were really excited because we felt like we had finally accomplished something in the war. The next morning the wing was scheduled to hit it again. That’s when we lost the second guy in my class. Ray Renning was shut shot down and he came out on the same airplane I did. He was a POW and we were scheduled to hit it that afternoon, but they changed it and we did not. We were scheduled to hit it the next morning. We did not. We were scheduled to hit it the afternoon of October the 25th and the target was changed and I was to lead the last flight that day, Wildcat flight. And the target was changed to the Doma Bridge. In fact, I was a soft in the tower when my number three man called me. He said, “Gene, we’ve had a target change”.

I said, “Well go ahead and plan it and I’ll be over there as soon as I get loose.” He said, “Man, you probably want to be over there.” So he said, “Do you know what the number of the target was this morning?” I said, “Yep.” He said, “Double it. JCS 1200, the Doma Bridge.” We were pretty well jacked up after the mission briefing and we went up to have lunch and my number four man looked at us and shook his head and says, “You guys aren’t going to make it through a hundred.” And I said, “Oh yeah, we will do that.” We took off that day and beautiful afternoon, shot a few SAMs after us, but I rolled in as the fourth flight. I had carefully briefed the guys. I said, “I don’t give a damn where your pipper is, but you pickled at 9,000 feet. Don’t try to do any maneuvering at all.”

Guess who exceeded the 9,000 feet? Me. And when I pulled off the target, my airplane got hit. I felt it, hit it, and then instantly the airplane tumbled and I later find out it just pitched up and then went into an uncontrollable tumble. My thought in the airplane was, I’m not going to die in this son of a bitch. And I could not… I had a hard time getting my hands to the ejection seat handle, but finally I did squeeze the trigger and everything worked automatically and now I’m floating down over Hanoi. Hit the ground. There were a million people, no, it probably was only about a thousand around me and they instantly were on me, Vietnamese with an AK 47, ripped a burst through me and two bullets went through my left leg, came out the inside, didn’t hit the artery or the femur or I wouldn’t be here talking to you today.

Had a big hole in my right leg where I could see the shin bone that I got must have gotten getting out of the airplane. And then they undressed me with a machete and off we went to the Hilton. You have all read about all of the things that they did to you. And I said, “I can get through this, I can get through this.” And after about an hour of being left in the Knobby room, I think it was later called, these three Vietnamese officers with a big dude came in and I got up and stood up and saluted them and they pointed to a low stool in front of a table and I went over and started my interrogations. You’ve all read about those. But the first you could… The code of conduct says name, rank, serial number, date of birth and nothing else but that.

Well, I gave them that and the next question, what kind of an airplane? I said, “I can’t tell you that.” And then I got tied up in the ball so small, I looked at spots on my body I had never seen before and finally they left the room and I said, “I’ll pass out.” Well, I didn’t. It was the most intense pain I’ve ever received. When they came back in, they asked me that question again and I refused again. And I said, “This is the most stupid thing you’re ever doing, Smitty, is to not tell them what kind of airplane you have. 16 of them just rolled in right down the street.” So when they came back asked for the third time, I told them. Then how many? Well, I didn’t answer. This just went on for a long time.

And finally I said, “I have got to figure out a way to get this.” So I started up making up stuff but answering questions. I spent about five to seven days… I never knew exactly how long and this question and answer period. And the hardest thing for me to get over when I got out was realizing that I had broken the code of conduct and that I would be forever ashamed. And I found out later that there was an awful lot of guys that did the same thing and they started doing it. The code of conduct has since been changed.

We spent five and a half years and that’s the hardest part to understand about our conditions is how long it was, the horrible indefiniteness of it all. Lee says, “Gene, you got to talk about resiliency.” That’s a buzzword I think in the air force now is resiliency. Well, let me tell you something about resiliency. You can’t teach resiliency. I don’t think you can teach some of the factors in the equation, but you learn resiliency. You learn resiliency as a child. You learn resiliency when you’re in high school, in college, you learn resiliency in your first days in the military, I hope.

But the way we got through that was faith to me, faith in God, faith in your country, faith in your family that they would always be there for you. Faith in your fellow POWs. That’s how we got through there. That was a resilience that got through there. And finally in December of 1972, we finally, our country finally figured out air power. Air power is the equation that brings it to the knees. I know I probably only got 10 seconds left but I’m going to tell their story.

During Linebacker II, Ross Perot, who’s been such an integral part, was such an integral part of our POWs for years. He kept a guy that was a PhD at Florida State in Paris to monitor the talks. The name was Harris. Dr. Jack Harris I think was his first name. And he told someone that one of the significant negotiators told him during Linebacker II says, we have two choices as a country. We can either negotiate seriously or we can commit national suicide.

That is our air power. And that got us out of North Vietnam. The most beautiful flag I’ve ever seen, I’ve ever seen in my life was on the tail of a C-141 that pulled up in Giam and took me, Lee Ellis, John McCain, Chuck Rice, and a whole list of others that were in that group. I shall always be grateful. I shall always be grateful to my nation. I shall always be grateful to the Air Force for the wonderful life I’ve headed.

And one of the things I made a commitment to when I was in North Vietnam is I will never stand on the sidelines again. I would be involved in the fight and since then I have, I’m getting in my elder years, but I still got a little kick in me. So I will try to do that. God bless to each one of you and don’t ever forget that you are a citizen of the United States of America and you are a part of the United States of America’s Air Force. Thank you.

Col. John Gallemore:

I’m glad I don’t have to follow that speech. But I will hand it over to the last serving American ace on active duty. Colonel DeBellevue, floor is yours. You could sit, take the podium, your world.

Col. Charles B. DeBellevue, USAF (Ret.):

You know, as a former nav. We did okay.

Lt. Col. Gene Smith, USAF (Ret.):

We did.

Col. Charles B. DeBellevue, USAF (Ret.):

The Phantom in the MiG 21 sounds like a nice movie. It would’ve been better had we been better trained, but we weren’t allowed to fly against anything else but an F-4. You don’t learn much doing that. Next slide. Flew with the triple nickel squadron in the five 55th Tack Fighter squadron. That’s all? We had 39 MiG kills. 20 from Rolling Thunder, another 19 from Linebacker. That’s over three squadrons of enemy airplanes. That’s quite a score. Next… French Indochina… The French didn’t… Nobody liked the French over there, but that’s where the target, where Vietnam was. Hanoi was 285 miles from Udorn as the crow flies. Never flew that way, but that’s how far it was. So every time you went into Hanoi, you had to have enough gas left to fly almost 300 miles. That sets your thinking about how you’re going to fight. Next slide.

The Phantom and the MiG 21. What allowed me to go into Hanoi every day? You had to have the right mindset, the focus. It was discipline. Of course we were a military organization and discipline what it was all about. It was integrity. Your word is your bond. If you tell somebody you’re going to do something, do it. If you can’t do it, tell them because otherwise somebody may die. Could be you. Teamwork, it is a team sport. It’s not just you. It is all of us together that make the force what it is. Training, the old adage that you’re going to fight like you trained is true. So make sure the training is good. Next slide.

The team, we had two guys in the F-4. We were married up. We flew with the same eight guys for about eight to 10 weeks. It was amazing what we didn’t have to say in the air. Everybody knew which way we were going. We were always going in. We were always close with the enemy. But the team was more than that. Steve and I have Reggie Taylor between us, Staff Sergeant. He could do amazing things with 463, the airplane with all the stars on it. He got the engines heated up. They would detune the engines to make them last longer. Well on the D model F-4, the engines were screwdriver controlled. He had the screwdriver. It took us about four rides to get to where the bur engines were burning at max CGT. You could not catch the airplane. Tech Sargent Ames and his weapons load crew, they kept the missiles picked up. The Ames seven had a bad rep, they got rid of that. We used to fire two missiles to get one kill. We quit wasting a missile. They made it happen. Next slide.

This is my map that I drew. 50 something years ago, 50 years ago, it’s a bullseye map of Hanoi. It’s got asmet and DME rings on it. That’s how we navigated up there. The Mickey Mouse ears you see, that’s the SAM rings. If you’re inside those rings at a medium altitude, 12 to 14,000 feet, the SAM radar surface steering, missile radars can see you. So you’re in harm’s way. Somebody asked me, “How much time did you spend inside the cockpit?” About 85% of the time. How much time did you spend outside the cockpit? About 85% of the time. I’m not sure what I did with the other 15%, but I’m sure I used that up, too. On the 8th of July, we were the egress cap. We were the rear guard. As the strikes are coming out of Hanoi, we’re going in to make sure nobody follows them out.

Two strikers call out with fire lights. In our squadron, in our flights, if you, your airplane is falling apart, all you had to say is lead RTB. RTB, return to base. We didn’t care what was wrong with the airplane, we couldn’t fix it anyway. We would head out. These two guys, I hate to say it, but they were from Ubon, I think, were making a lot of noise. Get the saw ready, got a firelight, get the… North Vietnamese had more radios that monitor our freaks than we did. So we started heading east. The MiGS were northeast of Hanoi, then east, then southeast. We ended up in a valley southwest of Hanoi. When disco, our version of AWAC, the controller called out Paula, which was our call sign, you’re merged. Which meant on his scope everybody was in the same radar bin. He was now useless and we didn’t see anybody.

The F-4 leaves a telltale smoke trail unless you’re in burner. So we were heading northeast, we were weaving to make sure nobody got behind us. And after two minutes we hadn’t seen anybody. We turned southwest and as soon as we rolled out southwest, I picked up a black fly speck on a white cloud, 11 o’clock. Fights on. Our signal to the flight that we were getting ready to fight was when we blew the tanks off the airplane, went to full after burner and catch me if you can.

We ended up line abreast with the MiG 21 going opposite directions from us. It was a brand new shiny MiG 21. He turned away from us in a level turn. If an American ended flying that airplane, he turned into us. But he turned away. He was the bait. That tactic only works if you haven’t read his book, which we had. The F-4 is not an F-16. It is not a 9G airplane. If you read the F-4 book, it’s an eight and a half G airplane. If you don’t read the book, it’s a 12G airplane.

And the way to get the airplane turned around is to roll it up to 135 degrees a bank, full after burner, 500 knots, put the stick in your lap and 17 seconds later you come through at 500 knots. So we did that. Well, we started it. We rolled up and waited and here comes the number two MiG. The shooter turns away from us to follow his buddy. The MiG 21 is a delta wing airplane. It bleeds air speed in the level hard turn. So instead of having to go all the way around the turn, we cut the turn. Ended up 6,000 feet in trail with the MiG. Locked onto the mig. It’s an analog radar and analog missiles. It takes two seconds for the radar to have good data. Another two seconds for the missiles to be programmed. Four seconds. That’s 12 eternities I guarantee you.

Launched the first missile, immediately committed the second missile to follow. That first missile went through the airplane, cut it in two, burned both ends. The second missile went through the fireball. At that point we unloaded to get our air speed back. Tommy Feesel, our number four called out that he’s on him, came back into the fight. We’re now 4,000 feet from the other MiG, half missile. First time I saw the missile was an exited wing tip area. I think the missile motor was still burning when it hit him. Cut him in two and burned both ends.

We found out later that this was a green bandit. Green bandit was an ace. We color coded everything. Red, white and blue. 17, 19, 21. They wouldn’t commit, the other MiGS that were up there. Next, go back two slides. This is Fu Kin Air Base. MiG 21 is on final. We’ve just slowed down from 650. Who in the hell would… They told us to go orbit Fu Kin. Nobody in his right mind would do that. Yet, there we were. That MiG died. Our element lead got him. We had no gun on the airplane. And 10 minutes later we got two MiG 18s that were pruned to defense for Hanoi. So the flight got three kills. The most dangerous part of all of our missions was the air show. And if you’ve seen the Thunderbirds, they put on a great show. They practice. We would talk about it on the tanker.

The next war we fight. It’ll be you people prosecuting the war. It’s attitude, it’s love of country, love of family, love of God, knowing that you’re the very best at what you do and freedom is in your hands. I appreciate everything you’re doing. You’re wearing the cloth of this country. It means an awful lot. May God bless you and God bless the United States to the earth.

Col. John Gallemore:

Colonel Ellis, take us home. The floor is yours.

Col. Lee Ellis, USAF (Ret.):

Great. My wife will tell you I never mind talking. So I have to learn to listen a lot at home though. Well, it’s great to be with you all. We’re all honored to be here and to be able to share these stories with you. I’ve known Gene for a long time. As a matter of fact, I lived in the same cell with Gene for more than a year and a half. So I saw him 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and we know each other well. That was an amazing experience in those cells, and I’m going to tell you about that in a minute, but I had a couple slides. Yeah, thank you.

I wanted to show you a couple of pictures and let me back up. Here we go. Okay. This was me, a kid who always wanted to fly. I grew up plowing mules on a farm in Georgia, but I would look at… This was during the Korean War and I’d look up and see those airplanes overhead and I said, that’s me following this mule at his six o’clock is not me. And so three days after I graduated from… I finished University of Georgia, I went straight to Valdosta. 53 weeks later I got my wings and the assignment said F-4 Phantom Pipeline, Southeast Asia. 50% of the class, 67A, which we graduated in ’66, got the same assignment. F-4 Phantom Pipeline, Southeast Asia. Well, we went to Georgia Air Force Base and got some training. But on the way we went through Survival School and it was like the second or third group out at Fairchild.

And out there I met this guy right here, a guy named Lance Sijan. And we got to be buddies and well, we circulated the ladies quite a bit. And we played golf together as we got down to George and we had a lot of fun together. Part of the time we roomed together. We went to war together. When we got to the Philippines and we’re going to Jungle Survival School, they said everybody going to eighth Fighter wing at Ubon stand up. Sijan and Ellis, you’re going to Da Nang. Your orders have been changed. We both went. I went down on the 7th of November. Lance went down two days after me. I put this slide in here because I want you all to hear about him. You know Who he is. He’s only Air Force Academy guy to receive the medal of honor. But Lance Sijan was an incredible person.

He was athletic. He was good-looking. He was tough and he was kind. I believe that if Lance hadn’t been shot down, he probably could have been chief of staff of the Air Force. He was a great leader, a great person, a healthy person. And I just always like to think about Lance as a great example of the person that we all want to be as we wear our uniform. Well, in that cell in the Hanoi Hilton, when I first got there a couple of weeks after I was captured, it was six and a half by seven feet. Okay, that’s like a bathroom and a gas station down in Texas or Georgia or somewhere. Three other guys in there. There are four of us in there. And this photo is from Hill Air Force Space Museum. Right outside the gate, if you go there, it’s exactly the same size as our cells were in the Hanoi Hilton, the ones in the heartbreaks, you got well… Las Little Vegas section where we first went.

And I was in there with three other guys for the first eight months. The headline there says, stay positive. Sometimes it’s hard to stay positive, but you got to bounce back. You’ve got to believe that a better day is coming. You got to believe you’re going to get through this. And that’s so important. And resilience, it’s important everywhere. And the good thing was we had some cellmates that one day if one person’s down, the other person can say, man, we’re going to make it. Someday we’re going to walk out of here. Encouragement by your teammates is very, very important.

Well, we had some great leaders up there and these three guys were all O5’s, two lady commanders and one lieutenant colonel. The one on the right over here, Commander Stockdale, the Medal of Honor, courageous, reserved, quiet, tough guy. A results throw in guy, a mission focused guy. On the left you got Commander Denton, a more outgoing political who ran for senator in one and after he came home. A relationship, people, okay? In the middle, Colonel Reisner, some of both 40% of the population wired to be like the right side results mission focused, 40% wired to be like the left side, people focused. So think of General Brown over here on the right and General Robin Ran on the left. Okay?

And they’re both great. You can be a general, you can be an animal, you can be a CEO no matter which way you’re wired, but you have to learn to adapt and do some of that other side, too. Well these guys did and they were so… Their character was so great, their commitment, their courage as they set a great example for us. They got there two years before Gene and I got there and they had been through hell.

They spent more than four years in solitary confinement and they bounced back and bounced back. And when you feel like you are having a tough time, and you can look across the room and see a guy like Smitty Harris who… Guy’s been there was a total there of eight years. But Smitty got there before these guys did who’s been through hell and somebody’s been through tougher than you have. It makes it a lot easier to stay positive and bounce back and be resilient.

They had great confidence and great humility. But one thing they did was they clarified, took the code of conduct and clarified it for our situation. And here’s what they said, I’m in charge. Roger said, and here’s what I want you to do. Be a good American, resist up to the point of mental and physical damage. Go ahead and give in. Of course, first of all, follow the code of conduct. Do your best. Resist and be ready to bounce back because they can make you give in and they won’t let you die. They will torture you to the point where you will have to give in and they won’t let you die. So you got to be smart enough to be able to offset what they want. Don’t give them what they want.

And that’s what we did. Bounce back to resist again. Stay united through communications. And of course they told us we couldn’t communicate with anybody, but we did. Pray every day. Go home proud would turn with honor. So simple but so powerful for our culture. As a leader, you need to build your culture, clarify your culture over and over again. So everybody knows the culture. Joe Brown is doing a great job of trying to push that culture perspective all the way to the lowest levels in today’s Air Force. I think that’s really wise. Well, we did stay connected. We tapped on the walls. Those walls are about 16 inches thick. We’re trying to communicate. We’re going to stay connected because you’ve got to stay connected. The key to resilience is don’t be alone.

We had to collaborate. We had to come up with ways to defeat the enemy and offset them. We had to support each other. You can’t let somebody who’s alone be alone. You got to get to them. We would risk our lives to get to somebody in solitary confinement and say, man, we’re proud of you. We’re not going home without you. Hang in there, one more day. And so we did.

Well, the women back home, the wives especially and families, but the women, the wives, they were told to keep quiet. The military didn’t know what to do with MIA wives. They were told to keep quiet. And they did for a couple years and then they said, “No more. You got to do something for our men because they’re not following the Geneva conventions on treatment of POWs.”

Well, you see that civil Stockdale on the left. She started the group in San Diego, the group of wives and Phyllis Skelani on the right, she had the group in Virginia. But they were all across the country. And these wives stood up and changed the policy of the US government and changed the policy of the communist government by putting pressure on them internationally so that when Ho Chi Minh died in September 1969, as quick as they could decide who the next leaders were going to be and they got in power, they stopped the torture day to day. Occasionally there was a little bit, but for the most part, the torture stopped and we changed to a live and let live policy. And that’s why we were able to come home so healthy. The women changed our lives. It’s amazing what they did. Well, we bounce back and bounce back. Hallelujah. Yes.

I’m going to tell you a little bit more about that as I close out here in a minute. We bounce back, we bounce back, we bounce back. And this is my day, March 14th. And Gene Smith is just in a group right in front of me. He’s right in front of us. And that’s Tom Kirk who mentioned. Tom’s 94, he still goes to the gym. And that’s me back there on the right. It was a great day. We came home, spent two days in Clark Air Base. We got a physical, got a uniform, called home. We flew back and I landed at Maxwell Air Force Base because you went to the nearest regional hospital to your family and we refueled in Honolulu or in Hickum on the way home.

I’ve had a great life. But at many reunions I kept hearing the wives of the POWs talk about their romance and their love and all. And so a couple years ago I said, “Somebody’s got to write a book about this ’cause Hollywood couldn’t write a movie with this wild stories.” So I put together with a romance writer. We put together 20 stories of POWs who were there five to eight years. Two of them were married and stayed there eight years as POWs. And they came home and they’re still married. One of the wives passed away last year, but many of them were married more than 60 years. I was a single guy and I date a lot of girls. When I came home and finally I met Mary the right one. And we’ve been married 48 years. So those stories here and there, you can go to your online to powromance.com and see the book. It’ll be out in May. Go check it out. Thanks so much. Glad to be with you all. God bless.

Col. John Gallemore:

I have 40 seconds to ensure this is not a no stepper and I pass my first moderator mission. So I think it’s going to be a no stepper. Colonel Smith, colonel DeBellevue, colonel Ellis, thank you for your true dedication and your service to your country. I can’t think of three individuals who truly epitomize, duty, honor, and country. I don’t think anybody in this room can relate to the experiences that each of you endured during your remarkable careers. If there’s four things that I could take away from this would be discipline, resilience, perseverance, and teamwork. Because you can’t do it alone. Thank you for your perspectives and thank you for your sacrifices and I am glad that good Americans like you did and will continue to swear to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, both foreign and domestic. Thank you very much. God bless.

Ken Goss:

Ladies and gentlemen, the next session will begin momentarily. Please remain in your seats.