Russia Ups Its Dangerous Behavior in Syria With ‘Unprofessional‘ Flying, Missile Shot at MQ-9

April 20, 2023 | By Chris Gordon

Russia has stepped up its harassment of U.S. forces in Syria, overflying American positions with armed fighters and closing within a few hundred feet of U.S. fighters, U.S. officials said. Perhaps most alarmingly, a Russian surface-to-air missile system fired at a U.S. drone back in November.

Lt. Gen. Alexus G. Grynkewich, the head of Air Forces Central, expressed alarm at the actions of Russian warplanes, warning in a statement they increase the “risk of miscalculation.”

According to AFCENT, Russia has routinely flown into airspace over Syria that the two countries previously agreed would be controlled by the U.S., and its fighters have come as close as 500 feet to American warplanes in that airspace. Armed Russian warplanes have flown over U.S. ground positions more than two dozen times since the beginning of March.

A Russian surface-to-air missile was even fired at an American drone over Syria. On Nov. 27, an SA-22 site in eastern Syria engaged a U.S. MQ-9, a U.S. official told Air & Space Forces Magazine. The missile missed. The incident was first reported by The Washington Post.

Air Forces Central said the incidents with Russian warplanes demonstrate a “dangerous” pattern by pilots that threatens the roughly 900 U.S. troops in Syria assisting local groups in the battle against ISIS militants, as well as their American partners. Russia is in the country supporting the regime of Bashar Al-Assad.

“This kind of unprofessional and unsafe conduct in Syria is not new but has grown more frequent over the past two months and places our troops in the air and on the ground at risk,” U.S. Central Command spokesman Col. Joe Buccino told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “This kind of behavior is not what we expect from a professional force.”

The most recent incident came April 18, when a Russian warplane flew into U.S. airspace in Syria. Airspace over Syria is subject to an agreement in which U.S. and Russian forces are supposed to stay out of each other’s way, including a 34-mile deconfliction zone around the Al Tanf Garrison. The two countries operate a deconfliction line designed to prevent the two militaries from directly clashing.

“U.S. Air Force fighter aircraft took off from air bases in the region and intercepted the Russian fighter,” Air Forces Central said. “During the intercept, the Russian pilot maneuvered unprofessionally within 2,000 feet of U.S. aircraft, violating standing deconfliction protocols.” The U.S. declassified video of the incident.

Since March 1, there have been “63 total overflights as of 19 April, of which 26 were armed,” AFCENT spokesperson Capt. Lauren T. Linscott told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

Retired Gen. Jeffrey L. Harrigian, who served as AFCENT commander between 2016-2018, said the number of recent Russian overflights was “significant.”

“They know where our guys are because we’ve been there forever,” Harrigian told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “It begs the larger question of what their mission is because you’re just putting yourself in a situation where somebody on either side could make a bad decision and the consequences of that are going to be something that nobody wants.”

According to Linscott, the 63 incidents violated one or more of a number of protocols agreed upon by the two countries: Russian aircraft flew through areas which the U.S. and Russia have agreed to notify each other prior to transiting, violated mutually agreed-upon standoff distances from aircraft and ground forces, and conducted armed overflights of ground forces.

“Over the course of my career, I have not seen this kind of disregard for agreed upon protocols and deconfliction rules,” Grynkewich said.

An April 2 incident was of particular concern to AFCENT. In that encounter, a Russian Su-35 had what AFCENT called an “unsafe and unprofessional” exchange with an American F-16.

“The Russian Su-35 had not been deconflicted when it entered the airspace,” AFCENT said. “These aggressive actions by Russian aircrew demonstrate a lack of competence and could lead to miscalculation and unintended escalation.” The command also released a video of that encounter.

The latest Russian actions come as U.S. personnel already face deadly aerial attacks on bases in the country from Iranian-backed militant groups. The most recent attack against a U.S. site occurred April 10 in northeast Syria when a rocket landed around Mission Support Site Conoco.

Grynkewich previously said there had been off-and-on periods of Russian activity, but things had begun to pick up in late February. Overall, Russia’s activity has gotten increasingly dangerous following its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, he said. The Russian Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment on the latest incidents.

Russian Su-35s have had two known run-ins with U.S. aircraft in just over a month. On March 14, two Su-35s intercepted a U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone surveilling the Black Sea. One of the Russian planes clipped the MQ-9’s propeller, forcing the U.S. to down it due to damage, the Pentagon said.

On April 4, two days after the Su-35 and F-16 incident, Grynkewich flew an F-16 from the 77th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron in a combat mission over Syria out of Prince Sultan Air Base, Saudi Arabia, in support of the campaign against ISIS.

“It is critical to me as the AFCENT commander to have the greatest possible awareness of the challenges our warfighters face in the air,” Grynkewich said of the mission.

The U.S. military has insisted that despite the threat of Iranian-backed militant groups, Russian interference, and Turkey’s attacks on Kurdish groups the U.S. is partnered with, America remains committed to rooting out ISIS. Grynkewich said they are prepared to defend the air with force if necessary—something the U.S. Navy did when an F/A-18 shot down a Syrian Su-22 in 2017, though U.S. and Russian aircraft have never clashed. AFCENT has been strained by limited resources, however, struggling to meet its two and half-squadron requirement. It recently received aging A-10s, based out of Al Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates, to ensure it could meet its minimum capacity requirements.

“We’ve seen Russian aircraft come within 500 feet of our aircraft,” said Grynkewich. “As a professional air force, we will do everything in our power to ensure we maintain safety of flight and engage according to our special instructions. However, if any entity threatens the safety and security of coalition forces in the sky or on the ground, we will take swift action to address the threat.”

Bring Back the Boneheads: Air Force to Reactivate Historic Fighter Squadron With F-35s

April 20, 2023 | By David Roza

It was an unusually humid day in February when Air Force Col. Chris Bergtholdt picked up a shovel at Tyndall Air Force Base, Fla., and went about a peculiar task. He and his deputy, Lt. Col. Alex Goldfein, walked together into a construction area where, at a spot marked by four posts near the intersection of two sidewalks in front of where the old 95th Fighter Squadron building once stood, they began to dig.

It did not take long to find what they were looking for—two coffins made of plywood that had rotted away in the wet, sandy dirt. Inside each coffin was a skeleton: not a real one, but a full-scale, medical school-quality imitation wearing a flight jacket.

The skeletons, both called Mr. Bones, served as mascots for the ‘Boneheads’ of the Air Force’s 95th Fighter Squadron. The first Mr. Bones was buried in 2010 when the squadron, at the time an F-15C/D training unit, was deactivated, Bergtholdt said in an interview with Air & Space Forces Magazine. Airmen bought a new Mr. Bones when the unit was reactivated as an F-22 squadron in 2013, but he too was buried in 2019 when the unit was disbanded again after Hurricane Michael devastated the base.

Four years later, the historic squadron will be reactivated as an F-35 unit this June. It will be the first of three such squadrons to stand up at Tyndall, and Mr. Bones is one of the first squadron members to return.

“There was a whole culture around Mr. Bones, kind of this aura and personality around him even though obviously it’s this inanimate object,” said Bergtholdt, commander of Tyndall’s 325th Operations Group and a former F-15 student at Tyndall’s 1st Fighter Squadron.

The arrival of the F-35 is part of a larger transformation at Tyndall, which is being rebuilt as an Installation of the Future that can stand up to future storms. But Bergtholdt didn’t want the old heritage to end up crushed under construction equipment.

“That whole area is being dug up and all of our new facilities and hangars on the flightline are being constructed at the moment, so we just didn’t want that history to be lost,” he said.

Indeed, digging up the past seems to be one of the first steps in writing a new chapter in the long story of the 95th.

f-35 — U.S. Airman First Class Bryan Arancibia, 355th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron crew chief, signals to an F-35A Lightning II pilot assigned to the 354th Fighter Wing, Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska, during Weapons System Evaluation Program 23.05 at Tyndall AFB, Florida, Feb. 22, 2023. U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Anabel Del Valle.

‘We’re the first ones’

The two Mr. Bones now sit on a filing cabinet outside Bergtholdt’s office, where they await their incoming commander, Lt. Col. Michael Powell of Luke Air Force Base, Ariz. Powell has his hands full with not only standing up a new F-35 squadron, but doing it at an installation that has not been built yet.

“We’re the first ones, which is going to be extremely challenging, but also extremely rewarding, because we will set the pace, the cadence, the culture,” he told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “It’s so important for us to set that right.”

Powell is due to arrive at Tyndall in June, about two months before the unit’s first F-35s actually arrive. In an era where the Air Force is preparing to operate from austere locations in the Pacific Ocean, Airmen with the 95th will get an early taste at Tyndall, much of which is still under construction.

“We’re going to show that we can execute, train and be ready in kind of a more austere environment in our own base,” Powell said. “This is going to feel a little bit more like a flying exercise or a deployment where we often are hopping between a couple different buildings and temporary facilities. I think it will feel like that for a couple years, and as long as folks recognize that, then I think we can execute just fine.”

Powell is bringing in an accomplished crew to lay the groundwork. Future Boneheads include F-35 pilots with experience standing up squadrons at Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska, and RAF Lakenheath, United Kingdom; old hands from Tyndall’s F-22 days who will return as Lightning II pilots; and younger pilots who can bring fresh perspectives to the mix. Building a team from scratch is not typical for most new Air Force squadron commanders, but Powell is eager for the challenge.

“That’s what I’m really pumped about, is to build combat capability there,” he said. “Not just the iron or the jets, but building the people, the team, the mission so that we can actually go answer the callings required.”

Those callings could send members of the 95th Fighter Squadron all over the globe, where they may perform defensive counter-air, suppression of enemy air defenses, or other missions as a multirole F-35 squadron.

“We’re really the swing-role fighters here in [the continental United States],” Powell said. “If we’re called to go to the Pacific, we go. If we’re called to go to Europe, we go.”

bonehead — The emblem for the ‘Boneheads’ of the 95th Fighter Squadron. The emblem for the reactivated squadron will look very similar.

Fighters to the Bone

When the F-35s arrive, they will be the latest in a long line of aircraft flown by the 95th Fighter Squadron stretching all the way back to Feb. 9, 1942, when the unit was first activated. Equipped with twin-tailed P-38 fighters, the squadron escorted bombers, shot down enemy fighters, and struck ground targets during World War II. In the skies above North Africa and Italy, the squadron tallied “more than 400 victories, including 199 air-to-air enemy kills, with only 19 losses,” according to one unit history. The squadron also picked up its nickname, ‘The Boneheads,’ and in 1954, its emblem of a grinning skull in a top hat was officially approved.

“Emanating from a cloud, a death’s head with an arrogant expression is symbolic of the squadron’s dauntless capability of accomplishing the mission in any weather, day or night; primarily stalking the enemy to destruction,” wrote Peter Coffman, historian for the 325th Fighter Wing. “The lightning is representative of the unit’s rapid striking power. The full dress, particularly the top hat, represents the squadron personnel’s sentiment that the unit is ‘tops.’”

Over the years, the 95th flew a range of fighters including the F-86, the F-102, and the F-106 before taking on the F-15C/D training mission from 1988 to 2010. Though it was unclear when Mr. Bones first joined the unit, the skeleton often attended parties, standing in an open coffin, and temporary duty travel. The F-15C is a single-seat aircraft, but former Bonehead and retired Lt. Col. Mark Hayes said Mr. Bones would fit in a storage bay behind the cockpit.

However, all that travel and social activity left the mascot vulnerable to theft. Hayes recalled other squadrons sending back photos of the captive skeleton enjoying life beyond Tyndall.

“We would try to get him back or pay whatever the ransom was, like a case of beer or something like that,” said Hayes, who is now an F-22 academic and simulator instructor at Tyndall. He looks forward to having his old squadron back.

“Even though it’s a different aircraft, we’ll make sure we welcome them and help them out,” he said.

boneheads — Aircraft assigned to the 95th Fighter Squadron line up on a flightline in an undated photo shared by the 325th Fighter Wing for the squadron’s 80th birthday.

‘That squadron’s nailing it’

Powell and the rest of his team will likely welcome help as they craft the framework for F-35 operations at Tyndall. They need to create a system for sharing the airspace over the Gulf of Mexico with three other Air Force bases; procure and set up ground-based targets as Tyndall shifts into a multirole mindset; and build up the right infrastructure and procedures to keep the entire operation ticking.

“I just really hope that we can do a good job of making those right the first time,” Powell said.

If it all works out, the next two F-35 squadrons can hit the ground running and just focus on their culture, manning and training plans, Powell hopes. It will take two years for the 95th to get operational, but the next squadrons should be able to reach that stage within a year. Powell’s goal is simple; Excellence will run bone-deep at the 95th.

“I want others to look and be like ‘that squadron’s nailing it, they’re excellent, they do everything the right way,’” he said. “They understand that’s the standard that comes with us. That’s what I want.”

USAF’s Spectrum Warfare Wing Looks to Build Up Personnel, Facilities, and Institutional Expertise

April 20, 2023 | By John A. Tirpak

A shortage of personnel and facilities, as well as a loss of talent as the Air Force divests some of its electronic warfare capabilities, are all challenging the service’s lone spectrum warfare wing’s buildup to full capability, its commander said April 18

Col. Joshua Koslov, commander of the 350th Spectrum Warfare Wing at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., said during an AFA Warfighters in Action event he faces a disconnect between requirements and resources.

“Managing that risk is where I spend most of my time,” Koslov noted. “I don’t have enough people, I don’t have the right facilities,” but “we’re working with the Air Force and [Air Combat Command] to get there.”

The 350th stood up in June 2021, but nearly two years later, Koslov said he has over more than 200 military and civilian vacancies each—“and we’re going to continue to grow.”

Perhaps it’s just as well those vacancies exist, however, because “I only have 50 more seats to give in the facilities that I have today,” Koslov added.

The 350th, in addition to prosecuting electronic attack and electronic warfare, is responsible for programming the threat catalogs for all F-35s worldwide and providing operational capabilities and advice to theater commanders and the Air Force leadership, among many other responsibilities. While it does not “buy widgets,” Koslov said, it sets requirements and standards by which new hardware has to fit in with the EW enterprise.

The people and facilities shortages are just part of the growing pains of developing a new organization, Koslov said, “but we have a team that’s really positive about the effort.”

A major milestone in that effort, the declaration of full operational capability (FOC), is still a little ways off, as Koslov indicated he will wait until the wing stands up a new 950th Spectrum Warfare Group, giving him more ability to deploy units.

In the meantime, one of his main worries is that “sustaining the wing is going to become hard from a personnel perspective … as we divest platforms.”

“We build electronic warfare officers based on platforms, and that’s not the best way to do that,” Koslov said. “As we divest platforms or divest crew members off of platforms, your pool of electronic warfare officers gets a lot smaller.”

The wing is looking to keep people in the field with meaningful work and assignments, but it’s early in that process, he said.

That challenge is compounded by the fact that electronic warfare officers tend to “stay in [their] tribe for a long time,” focusing exclusively on their particular platform. Building crews “that can transcend the Air Force and think Air Force-wide and then Joint Force-wide is a challenge for us,” Koslov said.

Likewise, engineers that work with or for the 350th tend to come in for a specific hardware or software project before moving on. Koslov said he would like to “retain that talent,” once they’re versed in the spectrum warfare trade.

“I think about that a lot,” he added. “It’s worrisome to me” that expertise is being institutionally lost.

The Spectrum Warfare Wing came into being after the Air Force realized that 20 years of focusing on counterterrorism and counterinsurgency, with no peer competitor in the field, had caused the Air Force’s electronic warfare skills to “atrophy,” in the words of Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown.

While he couldn’t get into details, Koslov said the wing is trying to take a more holistic approach to the EW fight, transitioning away from typically kinetic responses to more subtle ones that save on munitions and extract more information.

Traditionally, USAF has “rolled back” an integrated air defense system by striking at emitters, receivers and shooters; the Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses (SEAD) mission, he explained.

“It’s still what we’re trying to do,” Koslov said. “It’s just more modern. The enemy’s going to be more agile, they’re going to move faster, and so we need the systems and the communications capability and the air managers and joint warfighters who can understand what the [Coalition Forces Air Commander’s] objectives are that day and make decisions in order to support … those objectives.”

As an example, Koslov pointed to a Chinese Surface Action Group (SAG).

In that SAG, “there’s probably five to seven boats, but there’s probably 45 EW targets that we need to cover,” and “either exploit, take away, deceive, defeat, in a time and place of our choosing, based on what the mission commander is asking us to do.”

The Air Force has “allowed ourselves to be focused solely on the kinetic aspect of killing targets, but there are a lot of ways to neutralize a target, and the spectrum provides” ways to do that.

Given tight budgets, using fewer weapons or assets to eliminate threats through electronic attack or electronic warfare could be especially important.

Elsewhere, the wing is also heavily involved in exercises and will participate in the upcoming Northern Edge wargame, Koslov said.

However, despite habitual operator demands for more realistic live-fly threats on USAF’s wargame ranges, an increasing number of spectrum warfare wargame elements will take place in the live, virtual, and constructive world. That is due in part to the difficulty in obtaining threat equipment, Koslov said, but also because realistic electronic warfare conducted in the open can be observed by adversaries, and USAF would rather keep its tricks hidden.

Participating in wargames also helps heighten awareness of EW at the Air Warfare Center and 57th Wing, Koslov said, and ensures it is included in “China-based” campaign plans.

Koslov also outlined five things he needs to realize USAF’s Spectrum Warfare vision:

Crowd-sourced flight data, where spectrum activities are fed into a single database that can be shared across multiple platforms.

Electronic Battle Management, a component of the Air Force’s broader Advanced Battle Management System. “It’s the way we move EW data across platforms in the fight,” Koslov said, to meet the air commanders’ objectives.

Cognitive EW, or the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning to analyze and respond to EW threats.

Accessible data to ensure the service can work with industry to develop new jamming and response capabilities in a more timely fashion.

“Being able to assess all that”—to determine readiness “you have to be able to assess something,” and “this is a big, long readiness discussion with a partnership piece in the middle of it,” Koslov said.

Space Force Will Get New Capability for ‘Full Spectrum Operations’ by 2026, Saltzman Says

April 19, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

Within a few years, the Space Force be able to conduct “full spectrum operations” in orbit, Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman said this week—hinting at a new space weapon that could be used offensively while offering scant details.

Testifying before the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee, Saltzman highlighted the new capability as an example of how the Space Force has used the extra funding Congress provided the service’s classified budget in fiscal 2023.

“I’m happy to say that by the end of my tenure, if I make it all the way to [2026], that you’re going to see a substantial on-orbit capability that allows us to compete in full spectrum operations,” Saltzman told lawmakers. “I’m not sure I could have said that two years ago, but the fact that we’ve accelerated the programs and we’ve built a program that delivers and capability in terms of three, four, or five years, I’m very comfortable that we have a program in place that will do just that.”

In its unfunded priorities list for the 2023 budget, the Space Force asked for $327 million for classified programs and Congress obliged.

What exact capability or system the Space Force has been able to accelerate the development of remains a secret, like many of the Pentagon’s space activities. Saltzman’s mention of “full spectrum operations” suggests the ability to conduct both offensive and defensive operations. The Space Force rarely discusses its offensive capabilities, and officials are often reluctant even to mention offensive operations in space.

However, that reluctance is starting to dissipate. When Saltzman unveiled his “Competitive Endurance” theory at the AFA Warfare Symposium in March, he included an entire section on the need for responsible counterspace campaigning—the ability to hold an adversary’s assets at risk.

During a media briefing at the Space Symposium conference on April 19, Saltzman confirmed that the new capability he mentioned to Congress would enable full spectrum operations—a spectrum that could include both offense and defense.

“I think that all the service chiefs would tell you our job is to make sure that the services are organized, trained, and equipped in order to provide the President and the Secretary of Defense full spectrum decision-making capability, right?” Saltzman said. “Meaning given a particular problem, what are the options that the military can bring to the table, a full spectrum set of options? And so really, we don’t think in terms of offense or defense. Those are operations, not systems.

“And so when I say I’m bringing on a capability, I’m bringing on a capability to support a range of operations. We don’t think about an F-35 as being offensive or defensive. We don’t think about an aircraft carrier, is that offensive or defensive? We just know it provides a capability that in an operation will give the President and the Secretary of Defense options to pursue military objectives.”

Saltzman isn’t alone in emphasizing the need to be able to conduct a broad range of activities in space. Discussing deterrence at the Mitchell Institute Spacepower Security Forum earlier this month, Maj. Gen. David N. Miller, director of operations, training, and force development for U.S. Space Command, said SPACECOM is pivoting to a “warfighting force design.”

“If we can’t fight through that initial salvo or whatever [an adversary’s] demonstration is, and demonstrate some level of resilience—that we’re going to be able to not just take it, but respond, then it’s not credible,” Miller said.

Such comments reflect a broader shift in the U.S. military’s approach to space, said retired Air Force Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, dean of the Mitchell Institute.

“It wasn’t that long ago that you couldn’t say space and offense in the same sentence together,” Deptula said at the Spacepower Security Forum.

The domain is changing rapidly, though. In his keynote speech at the Space Symposium, Saltzman reeled off statistics about the increases in satellites, debris in orbit, and launches over the last 15 years.

“What we must recognize is that the rate of change across these variables is accelerating,” Saltzman said. “We are now in the exponential part of the curve in many different areas related to our business.”

Given that rapid growth, Saltzman warned against complacency and said both the military and industry need to be ready to rethink the fundamentals.

“To enable the Space Force to be successful in this new era, we must aggressively dismantle old processes and procedures,” Saltzman said. “For those of you in blue tapes or those that interact with the Space Force offices, if you haven’t challenged your assumptions, your timelines, how you assess mission assurance, how you do verification and validation, I’m sorry to tell you, but you’re a part of the frozen middle.”

Pentagon Wants ‘Rapid Response’ Authority for New Starts Without Budget

April 19, 2023 | By Chris Gordon

The Department of Defense is pushing Congress to give it the authority to start new developmental programs before a budget is approved—a change the Pentagon argues would make critical new programs less vulnerable to Washington gridlock.

“Time is going by, and all those things that we worked hard to understand and formulate good solutions to, we’re not able to act on them yet,” Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall told reporters at the Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colo. April 19. “That’s a lot to give away to an adversary when it’s totally unnecessary.”

The legislative proposal, sent to Capitol Hill by the Pentagon on April 12, is called “Rapid Response to Emergent Technology Advancement or Threats.” The DOD wants up to $300 million per year in development funds that could be used “in response to urgent operational need”—creating a discretionary pool of money and the Congressional authority to get started on vital projects.

Kendall has set an ambitious program of modernization for the Air Force and Space Force to ensure the U.S. stays ahead of China, a main concern for the Biden administration, the U.S. military, and lawmakers. In its 2024 budget alone, the Air Force has 12 brand new programs, sometimes called new starts.

But there’s a problem: the services can’t begin many efforts. New starts require authorization from Congress through the budgeting cycle for a new fiscal year, creating what the DOD sees as a needless two-year delay to get started on new tech. The fresh authority, if created, would shave at least a year off of development time for some new starts, Kendall estimated.

“Our pacing challenge, China, is moving aggressively to field systems designed to defeat the U.S. and our standard practices are not responsive to this threat,” the DOD wrote in its legislative proposal to Congress. “If we want to be competitive with China, we can’t cede two years of schedule to them.”

The DOD proposal noted that America’s advanced military technology underpins its strength. The Pentagon doesn’t want to wait for Congress while other countries come up with breakthroughs. Under its proposal, the DOD could “initiate new start development activities” to “leverage an emergent technological advancement of value to the national defense” or “provide a rapid response to an emerging threat.”

Asked what he would consider his top priority if granted such authority, Kendall cited Collaborative Combat Aircraft, the future unmanned aircraft that will fly alongside the Air Force’s manned platforms. CCAs are already a large part of the Air Force’s future fleet plans, but the service is currently not allowed to start working on the program, Kendall noted.

“This is a limited authority,” Kendall said. “It would allow us to go through the preliminary design review phase.” He stressed that the Pentagon is not trying to take away Congress’s authority to ultimately decide what the DOD spends its money on.

Congress is currently divided, with the House held by Republicans and Democrats in narrow control of the Senate. While the Biden administration has submitted its fiscal 2024 budget, work on the Hill is already behind schedule before the new fiscal year begins at the end of September. For the past two decades, the government has spent considerable time operating under continuing resolutions—stopgap spending bills that fund the government at current levels but don’t allow new programs. While there is bipartisan consensus that CRs have a negative impact on the military, a fight over the looming debt ceiling and the Biden administration’s broader spending aims will likely leave the Pentagon hanging on past the current budget’s sell-by date.

“I am now waiting, and we’ll be waiting for quite some time to go forward,” Kendall said.

Kendall testified on Capitol Hill about his budget April 18 and pitched the proposal to lawmakers. Twenty-four hours later, on the drive over to the conference in Colorado, Kendall realized he needed to flag the administration’s proposal more publicly, he said.

“We’ve been in a position for some time to move forward on those things that we decided we need to do, but now we’re waiting for the budget process,” Kendall said. “That’s what I’m more conscious of now, that I’m in a phase where we’re trying to persuade the Congress to give us the money, and then Congress, of course, has to pass laws before we can do this work.”

During a separate hearing that occurred while Kendall was on the Hill, the House Armed Services Committee grilled DOD and military leaders in charge of the Pacific, with lawmakers expressing bipartisan concern the U.S. was lagging behind China in crucial technology. Kendall, who formerly served as the Pentagon’s top acquisition official, and the DOD said that is exactly the issue they want to address with the new proposal.

“In prior decades, United States military advantage was built on technological advantage driven primarily by DOD investment,” the Defense Department said. “DOD was able to plan, develop, and field technology years before adversaries. Today DOD investment totals less than 3 percent of all dollars spent globally on research. Therefore, emerging technology is not always predictable and is not confined to the United States. Peer adversaries are able to take advantage of emerging technology at the same time as, or faster than, the United States.”

Kendall hopes his warnings will get through to Congress, arguing the services are “trying to go as fast as they can.” But the issue is how fast the legislature will let them go.

“There’s one aspect of this that I find particularly troubling right now, and we’ve done something about it,” Kendall said of the proposal. “I think there is a willingness to discuss this kind of initiative that might not have been there in the past.”

Air Force Launches First ICBM Test Since Russia ‘Suspended’ New START

April 19, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

Air Force Global Strike Command test-launched a Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile April 19 from Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif. The launch, at 5:11 a.m. Pacific time, had been planned for months in advance.

It was the first such test since Russia’s Vladimir Putin said he was “suspending” his country’s participation in the New START treaty and since Russia and the U.S. said they stopped sharing data on their nuclear arsenals.

The U.S. has canceled or postponed ICBM tests in the past to avoid the risk of escalation or miscommunication at times of heightened tensions. A March 2022 test was canceled after Russia invaded Ukraine and Putin raised to high the alert status of Russian nuclear forces. Another test was postponed in August, as China conducted military exercises around Taiwan in response to then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s visit there.

The Biden’s administration said it would no longer share “high-level” details on its deployed nuclear weapons with Russia in March, a response to Russia Putin’s “suspension” of New START in February.

The U.S. continues to share notifications of the movement of strategic bombers, missiles, and submarines with Russia, however, along with operational status, as required under New START, officials said. Under the Ballistic Missile Launch Notification Agreement signed in 1988, the U.S. and Russia agreed to give each other 24 hours notice before testing ICBMs.

The April 19 launch also tested the Airborne Launch Control System, used to control ICBM launches from the air. Airmen from the 625th Strategic Operations Squadron at Offutt Air Force Base, Neb., launched the unarmed missile from aboard an airborne Navy E-6 Mercury, supported by Airmen from the 341st Missile Wing at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Mont.

The last prior Air Force ICBM test came in February, shortly before Russia’s announcement regarding New START. Air Force Global Strike Command last tested the Airborne Launch Control System in August 2022.

The April 19 test concluded when the re-entry vehicle splashed down at Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands after traveling some 4,200 miles.

The Next Intel Leak May Not Resemble the Most Recent One, Expert Warns

April 19, 2023 | By David Roza

As the Department of Defense begins a review of its policies and practices for handling classified information in the wake of a massive intelligence leak, a national security expert cautions that the next intel leak may not resemble the one that just happened—and so officials must try to be proactive in considering next steps.

“You don’t protect against just the last threat,” Sina Beaghley, a senior international and defense policy researcher at RAND, said in an interview with Air & Space Forces Magazine. “You have to address that, you have to close the gaps. But you also have to think about where technology, culture, all of those things are leading and then posture the government to be able to react to it, both in the recruiting world and in terms of trust, vetting, and mitigation.”

The question of how the military handles security clearances and classified information has been hotly debated ever since a trove of classified information on the war in Ukraine, the Indo-Pacific and Middle East military theaters, and other sensitive subjects were leaked in an online group chat. Airman 1st Class Jack Teixeira was arrested April 13 in connection with the leak, and, in the days since, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin III and Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall directed separate reviews of their departments’ security practices.

On the Air Force side, the corrective action includes a review of the Massachusetts Air National Guard’s 102nd Intelligence Wing, Teixeira’s unit; a headquarters-level appraisal of Air Force policies; and a stand-down within the next 30 days for all Air Force and Space Force units to review their security practices and conduct training as necessary.

Approximately 700,000 people in the Department of the Air Force have security clearances, an Air Force spokesperson told Air & Space Forces Magazine. While the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency does not break down the average timelines to obtain a security clearance by military branch, it takes an average of 57 days to secure an initial secret clearance and 51 days to undergo a secret periodic reinvestigation. It takes an average of 94 days to obtain an initial top secret clearance and 115 days to undergo a top secret periodic reinvestigation.

At a Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee hearing and in a memo sent to the entire department, Kendall, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., and Chief of Space Operations B. Chance Saltzman stressed the importance of setting and following standards for who “needs to know” certain sensitive information.

“Enforcing the need-to-know requirement is a chain of command responsibility—these are important, conscious choices leaders must make at every level,” the three officials wrote.

But enforcing “need-to-know” may be easier said than done.

“Who makes that judgment?” Beaghley asked. “Need-to-know is partly a self-policed activity: I shouldn’t be searching something totally beyond what my mission is. But who knows exactly what my mission is? How do you determine what my permissions should be? Especially when job functions and tasks can be fluid in a national security environment.”

The U.S. government began sharing classified information more widely among authorized individuals after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, after criticism that national security agencies did not share information and coordination enough. Even now, officials call for even more info-sharing and cooperation across organizations.

The challenge in placing limits on that sharing would be deciding what information individuals need to do their job within the complex national security bureaucracy.

Access is one of several areas where the military and the government as a whole has to strike a balance between trusting individuals and protecting sensitive information.

Starting in 2018, the government launched Trusted Workforce 2.0, a multiyear effort intended to make the vetting process faster by implementing a single system. Instead of reviewing individuals with security clearances every five to 10 years, the new system continuously vets individuals via automated record checks of criminal, terrorism, and financial databases and public records. All Air Force and Space Force personnel with security clearances are subject to continuous security vetting, an Air Force spokesperson said.

But while Trusted Workforce 2.0 does improve the time it takes officials to get important information on security clearance holders, there are still instances when individuals don’t set off any triggers but still present a threat.

“When you have an individual who’s been cleared and been determined to by the government to be trustworthy at a certain level which, in this case, as I understand, is the highest level, what do you do when that person decides to not do what they said they would do as far as non-disclosure?” Beaghley asked. “How do you mitigate that?”

One commonly-suggested solution is to monitor a security clearance holder’s social media presence. There is policy for how government agencies can seek out information about a candidate’s public social media presence at the beginning of a security clearance investigation, and some agencies do so, Beaghley said. There have also been a few test programs that have gathered and analyzed information about individuals’ public activity on social media after they receive their security clearance, but reporting is mixed on how productive those programs were for the resources invested.

Even if there was a successful program that included public social media monitoring as part of a continuous vetting process, monitors are not currently allowed to access a private chat room like the one in which Teixeira allegedly leaked classified information, at least as part of a normal background investigation. It also may not be knowable under which social media profiles or handles a security clearance holder posts.

Beyond social media, the government has also directed employees to report on coworkers exhibiting suspicious behavior. Various federal government agencies also have insider threat programs that monitor employees’ computer activity for anomalous behavior.

Though all these systems complement each other, there are still possible blind spots that could allow for misuse of access. For example, if individuals with security clearances print out a classified document, they generally would not be inspected when they leave a classified facility, Beaghley said.

“In most cases, no one’s patting you down, looking through your bags. So here is the possibility that a trusted individual with access can print out classified material and quite literally walk out the door,” she explained.

While some have called for systems to monitor the printing of classified materials, there are still other ways to create and share classified information—all of those ways is part of what is straining the government’s current information security system.

PowerPoints, PDFs, Word documents, emails, video teleconferences, and chat messages can all be forms of secret or top secret records that must be marked with the appropriate classification level. Each new form of digital record also presents a challenge for how to protect it.

“We live in a world where technology has allowed for sharing of information in a much more robust way,” Beaghley said. “Technology has enabled a lot more national security secret-making and secret-sharing.”

All of these factors mean that even when the Air Force and the Department of Defense complete their current reviews of information security practices, they should continue to reevaluate their practices as technologies change, Beaghley said.

“There’s no silver bullet,” said Beaghley. “The next leak likely won’t look like this particular situation. … The government is evaluating options, learning from prior scenarios, but it’s really important to think about future scenarios and try to plan for and mitigate against the things that have not yet happened but could potentially in the future.”

China Shows ‘Concerning Lack of Interest’ in Talks, DOD Says

April 18, 2023 | By Chris Gordon

U.S. officials expressed growing concern April 18 about the lack of communication between the Chinese and American militaries in light of increasingly aggressive actions by Beijing. It has now been nearly five months since Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III last spoke to his Chinese counterpart, despite a number of high-profile incidents involving the countries’ forces.

In written testimony to the House Armed Services Committee, principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs Jedidiah P. Royal said China had “a concerning lack of interest in the important lines of communication that underpin a stable defense relationship between our countries.”

In addition to Austin’s lack of communication with his Chinese counterpart, Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s planned trip to China—originally set for February—has been postponed indefinitely.

“There is clearly a high level of frustration with the lack of engagement from Beijing,” Zack Cooper, a China expert at the American Enterprise Institute, told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

In a November meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, President Joe Biden underscored the importance of avoiding conflict and maintaining open lines of communication. And later that month, Austin met China’s then-Minister of National Defense Wei Fenghe in Cambodia.

But since then, attempts to contact high-level officials from the Chinese military after a Chinese intercept of U.S. Air Force RC-135 over the South China Sea and the U.S. shoot-down of a Chinese spy balloon have been rebuffed, U.S. officials said.

“The Department of Defense believes strongly in maintaining open lines of communication between Washington and Beijing to ensure competition does not veer into conflict,” Royal said. “Immediately after downing the [People’s Republic of China] high-altitude balloon in February, the Department submitted a request for a call between Secretary Austin and the PRC Minister of National Defense because we wanted to ensure there was no misunderstanding or miscalculation in Beijing about our actions. Unfortunately, the PRC declined our request. This was not far from the first time that the PRC has declined invitations to communicate from the Secretary, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or other Department officials.”

China’s military, officially called the People’s Liberation Army or PLA, has also declined longstanding, lower-level requests from top regional U.S. military commanders to meet their military counterparts—requests that predate the latest incidents, officials said.

“I’ve had a standing ask to meet with the Eastern Theater commander and the Southern Theater commander from the PLA for my entire time in his job, and they have yet to accept it,” Adm. John C. Aquilino, the head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM) since 2021, told lawmakers. ”The theme here is we continue to try to engage with our partner, but there’s a different opinion there.”

Experts noted that China views communications, or the lack thereof, between officials as strategic. China’s current unwillingness to engage in talks comes as it claims America is seeking to upend the status quo in Taiwan through arms sales to the island, Congressional engagements with Taiwanese leaders, and the Biden administration’s trade policy towards China.

The PLA has been more forceful in its activities around Taiwan since then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) visited the self-governing island in August 2022. After Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen met with current House Speaker Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R.-Calif.) and other lawmakers during an unofficial visit to the U.S. earlier this month, China staged aircraft carrier operations and live-fire military drills that practiced a blockade of Taiwan, which the Chinese government claims as a rebel province. U.S. officials have said the increased Chinese military activity around the island is the “new normal.”

In addition to China’s public actions, not talking to high-level American officials sends an implicit message of displeasure to Washington, experts said.

“I think that the Chinese are withholding dialogue from us in the hope that they will have some impact on our policies,” said Bonnie Glaser, a China expert at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. “I think they’re trying to get our attention. They’re going to have to decide at some point whether or not they want to engage.”

The U.S. says its interest in open military-to-military channels stems not from a desire to ligate policy but to avoid disaster. In late December, the U.S. claimed a PLA fighter came within 20 feet of a U.S. Air Force RC-135 in an “unsafe” maneuver. China has intercepted other U.S. military flights and allegedly harassed a vessel from the Philippines, a U.S. ally, with a high-powered laser.

“In just the past 12 months, PLA aircraft and maritime vessels have continued to conduct inherently risky intercepts against U.S., ally, and partner assets in the air and at sea, increasing the unacceptable danger of an accident,” Royal said in his testimony.

U.S. officials said it is ultimately in China’s interest to be on speaking terms with the U.S. if a serious incident occurs—a position echoed by regional security experts.

“They’re treating us like communications channels are only a favor to us, when in fact, it’s of mutual benefit,” said Patrick Cronin of the Hudson Institute. “There will be other surprises. When they precipitate a crisis, they better answer the phone, because the escalation will put the entire region at risk.”

Air Force Picks New Guard Locations for F-35, F-15EX Fighters

April 18, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

The Air Force announced locations for two new F-15EX squadrons and a new F-35 unit on April 18, all within the Air National Guard.

The preferred location for the new F-35A squadron is Barnes Air National Guard Base, Mass., while the F-15EXs are slated for Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base New Orleans, La., and Fresno Air National Guard Base, Calif.

All three bases currently operate older F-15C/D model fighters which the Air Force wants to retire in the coming years.

At Barnes, the 104th Fighter Wing would gain 18 new F-35s. At NAS Joint Reserve Base New Orleans and Fresno, the 159th Fighter Wing and the 144th Fighter Wing would each get 18 F-15EXs.

The selection of all three bases is contingent on an environmental impact analysis, which will be completed by the spring of 2024 before a final selection, the Air Force said. The service did not say when the new aircraft might arrive.

Air National Guard officials have said they want to assign F-35s or F-15EXs to every ANG unit that currently flies the F-15. In 2020, the Air Force announced that Jacksonville Air National Guard Base, Fla., will get the fifth-generation F-35, while Kingsley Field and Portland Air National Guard Base, both in Oregon, will get the fourth-gen F-15EX, a heavily-upgraded version of the F-15E.

The ANG already has one location with the F-35, the 158th Fighter Wing at Burlington Air National Guard Base, Vt. Guard units at Truax Field, Wisc., and Dannelly Field, Ala., are slated to start receiving the F-35 later this year, which will replace their F-16s.

Those locations and units are in addition to the F-35’s Active-Duty units and locations, including:

Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska

Hill Air Force Base, Utah

Luke Air Force Base, Ariz.

Nellis Air Force Base, Nev.

RAF Lakenheath, U.K.

Tyndall Air Force Base, Fla. (planned)

Air Force Reserve is also slated to get F-35s at Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth, Texas.

The F-15EX, meanwhile, is still undergoing testing at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla. The Air Force has yet to announce any Active-Duty locations for the fighter.