Space Force Launches 6th New GPS III Satellite into Orbit

Jan. 18, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

The U.S. Space Force and SpaceX successfully launched the sixth GPS III satellite into orbit Jan. 18, bolstering the crucial position, navigation, and timing constellation.

Launching from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex-40 at 7:24 a.m. Eastern, the satellite rode a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket into space. The Falcon 9’s first-stage booster was successfully recovered and will be refurbished for another launch, continuing a reuse process the Space Force started using with the launch of the fifth GPS III satellite in June 2021.

“With the GPS III [Space Vehicle] 06 launch, GPS has accomplished another step towards Positioning, Navigation, and Timing’s overall mission of modernizing capabilities for our civilian and military users while maintaining the performance and resiliency of our existing architecture,” said Cordell DeLaPena Jr., program executive officer for military communications and PNT, in a statement. “I am extremely proud of the work GPS’s teams and collaborators have done to bring our satellite infrastructure closer to a new age of robust and highly accurate signals.”

Lockheed Martin built the satellite, which will ultimately be part of a 10-satellite series. Lockheed said the new satellites are three times more accruate and up to eight times harder to jam compared to second-generation GPS satellites.

Flying in mid-Earth orbit, the new satellite, which was named after famed aviator Amelia Earhart, will go through about two weeks of tests and a few months of monitoring before beginning operational use, joining the constellation of 31 satellites that currently make up the Global Positioning System. The overall GPS system consists of GPS IIR, IIR-M, IIF, and GPS III space vehicles, and this sixth GPS III satellite will replace an aging IIR unit.

“This was a textbook launch, reflecting a highly professional, experienced team executing well-honed procedures and the results speak for themselves,” Maj. Gen. Stephen Purdy Jr., program executive officer for SSC’s Assured Access to Space effort and commander of Space Launch Delta 45, said in a statement. “Working side-by-side with our launch service provider and space vehicle partner to meet the mission need on-time and with precision is our normal ops. And today’s mission supports not only our global warfighters but people all over the world in every facet of life.”

SpaceX Space Force GPS III launch — GPS III-6 separates from the Falcon 9 upper stage approximately 89 minutes after launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, at 7:24 a.m. EST, Jan. 18. Screen shot from SpaceX launch livestream

The Jan. 18 launch comes almost exactly 19 months after the launch of the fifth GPS III satellite—the longest gap between GPS launches since the current Block III satellites started heading to space in 2018. It also came just days after a Jan. 15 mission, where a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket carried the USSF-67 mission into orbit. That launch included two Space Force satellites—the Continuous Broadcast Augmenting SATCOM (CBAS)-2 satellite and the Long-Duration Propulsive ESPA (LDPE)-3A satellite, which included five different Space Force payloads.

Dozens more launches from Space Force facilities are planned in the coming year, but it will be a while before the seventh GPS III satellite heads to space—Space Systems Command announced in May 2022 that it was targeting 2024 for that launch.

As of August 2022, the seventh, eighth, and ninth GPS III satellites have all been declared “Available for Launch,” with the last of those space vehicles scheduled for launch in late 2025.

Report: Air Force Must Invest in Resilient Basing. Here Are Some Cost-Effective Ways

Jan. 17, 2023 | By Christopher Prawdzik

Passive defenses—including hardened aircraft shelters, asset dispersal, prepositioned munitions and the ability to rapidly repair runways—are the most cost-effective air base defense investments, according to a new RAND Corporation report. However, the Air Force should invest in a multifaceted combination of active and passive defenses to fend off future threats from China and Russia, the report’s authors argue.

“Increasingly aggressive actions by China and Russia toward their neighbors have shifted the attitudes of defense policy makers about both aggressors over the past two decades,” the report states. “Not only is there a growing consensus that China and Russia represent significant threats to U.S. interests, but there are also growing calls for actions to counter the threats.”

The report notes that among Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall’s list of seven operational imperatives unveiled in 2022 is a call for “resilient basing.” That effort is closely tied to the service’s Agile Combat Employment concept, in which small teams of Airmen and aircraft disperse to remote, austere, or small locations and can move or operate quickly.

RAND explored many ACE alternatives and their cost-effectiveness alongside differing analyses of threats unique to China and Russia, using four input categories that included a variety of vectors, options, and available data. That data was fed through seven exclusive RAND models to generate four output categories.

One model noted in the report is the Theater Air Base Vulnerability Assessment Model (TAB-VAM), which analyzes the impact of an air base attack. This includes critical asset damage to structures, personnel, and equipment, but it also considers uncertainty, as the attack vector is up to the adversary.

“This approach hedges against assessing the attack strategy incorrectly and becomes critical when predicting the impacts of threat mitigations because an adaptive adversary can shift to a new attack vector using new investments made by the defender,” the report states.

RAND’S Theater Air Base Resiliency Optimization Model (TAB-ROM) then analyzes the cost-effectiveness of mitigation options, focusing on the most promising choices.

“To avoid having to calculate the effects of billions of possibilities (which might take years for TAB-ROM to compute), the model uses a genetic algorithm—a search method inspired by Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection—to find the fittest … investments,” the report states. “The most viable options yield the highest sortie rates—or numbers of sorties per day—at the lowest costs.”

Air base resilience is also dependent on a keen understanding of individual threats and having a well-structured and continuous protection investment. These can differ based on the analysis of the threat.

For example, the report notes that China’s strategy would likely center on preemptive surprise, with their formidable medium-range DF-21 and intermediate range DF-26 ballistic missiles, along with their long-range CJ-20 bomber-launched arsenal.

“Early in a conflict, China could strike U.S. and partner-nation air bases, air and missile defense systems, and command centers with large ballistic and cruise missile raids,” the report states. “The missiles and their submunitions could be optimized for attacking runways or destroying aircraft on parking ramps.”

On the other hand, the report notes that the Russian threat to European U.S. bases and NATO allies is a bit different—Russia, the authors theorize, would likely use a combination of missiles and manned aircraft, along with possible nuclear weapons.

“Although the Russian missile force is smaller and less advanced than its Chinese counterpart, the Russian force still represents a threat to NATO air operations,” the report states, noting Russia’s efforts to destroy Ukrainian airfields during its ongoing invasion. “Also, while Russia has expended a considerable portion of its missile inventory in the Ukraine conflict, Russia’s potential long-range attack capability—including KH-101 cruise missiles, RS-26 ballistic missiles, and Kinzhal air-launched ballistic missiles—could threaten NATO bases throughout the region.”

Still, the report notes advantages held by the United States and NATO allies. These include the large number of hardened and very accessible western European airfields and facilities.

“The primary problem for NATO,” the report suggests, “is that larger U.S. and allied aircraft—such as tankers; bombers; and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance platforms—would need to operate from more-remote bases to avoid the worst of the Russian threats.”

Such inputs, and many more, are crucial to the calculations generated by RAND’s multiple models and determining the cost-effectiveness of those responses.

“If the budget is $100 million, $500 million, or any specified level, TAB-ROM estimates the sortie rates that can be generated, complete with breakdowns of what mitigations to buy and where to put them,” the report states. “This toolkit of models has been invaluable in providing a structured and capable approach for addressing the complex problem of air base resiliency against future threats.”

The report notes, however, that ACE should not be the lone resilient basing investment, and shifting to a more agile and dispersed force can present its own set of challenges—two in particular.

“First, to generate sorties, an air base must bring together multiple assets, including maintenance personnel, functional aircraft, sufficient fuel, and an operational runway,” the report states, emphasizing that the loss of a single such asset could critically hinder a response. “Second, although the dispersal of aircraft across bases might be key to complicating adversary attacks and improving theater-wide resilience, how widely the Air Force can disperse can be limited by support asset requirements.”

CENTCOM Sees Success with Integrated Anti-Drone and Missile Defenses

Jan. 17, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

U.S. Central Command is making progress tying together air, missile, and drone defenses—but there’s still more to be done to achieve “single-pane-of-glass” integration, officials say.

Fully integrating sensors and defenses will demand further innovations, both in integrating new technologies and repurposing existing ones, said CENTCOM Deputy Commander Lt. Gen. Gregory M. Guillot in a virtual discussion Jan. 17 hosted by the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance.

“What I focus on … is advocating for a layered, integrated air and missile defense capability, from the upper tier all the way down to counter-small UAS—a quadcopter flying 50 to 100 feet off the ground at 10 or 20 miles an hour—and everything in between,” Guillot said.

Air Forces Central commander Lt. Gen. Alexus G. Grynkewich is responsible for ballistic missile defense and manned air defense in the CENTCOM region, Guillot noted. Individual base commanders are responsible for smaller drones, and Grynkewich and base commanders share responsibility for larger drones.

With so many commanders tasked with tracking airborne threats, the goal has been to unite and share data, Guillot said.

“The way we look to that … is to bring all these different systems that give a commander situational awareness in the missile defense area onto a single pane of glass,” Guillot explained. “And we’re not there yet. We used to be in three or four, maybe five or more buildings on a base with different systems separated. We now have all of the systems in one room—now sometimes it’s on five or six different screens—but all the feeds are at least coming into one room so that the commander can make timely decisions.

“We’re working to innovate to get it all into one pane of glass [on which] everybody can share all their information.”

Innovation has become a focus for CENTCOM leaders, driven by commander Gen. Michael “Erik” Kurilla and a need to do more with less, given that U.S. military strategy and resources have shifted away from the region. And while that push has included experimentation with low-cost drones through the Air Force’s Task Force 99, it’s also required responses to counter Iranian-backed militias, which have launched attacks using explosives strapped to low-cost commercial drones.

“If you’ve got an Amazon card and access to a hand grenade, you’ve now got an over-the-horizon weapon capability,” said Rear Adm. Curt Renshaw, director of operations for CENTCOM.

Guillot said such weapons pose a “daily threat.” In September, a USAF F-15 shot down an Iranian drone believed to be a threat to U.S. forces in Iraq.

Moving forward, Guillot said, the goal is to ensure commanders have the time and options needed to match their response to the threat.

“I think I would always want more sensing—not necessarily better sensing, and I wouldn’t say that it’s a vulnerability in any way. We have a lot a lot of good sensors,” Guillot said. “But the earlier and the further out you can sense anything gives you more time and more decision space to find the right asset to shoot it down, whether it’s an air-to-air fighter, all the way down to a kinetic or a non-kinetic capability at a base.”

Specifically for the counter-UAS mission, officials are trying to increase sensing by using systems already in the region.

“We’re looking at how do you tune radars to see smaller, slower? And how do you tune these systems to get after the smaller radar cross section type of capabilities at further distances?” said Army Maj. Gen. Sean A. Gainey, director of the Joint C-UAS Office.

More sensing will also come from tying more sensors together to present a unified view to commanders, Guillot said.

“We’re doing a really good job of tying everything from AWACS radars to ground-based radars to very small systems that are designed only for the counter-UAS roles, tying them all into that single pane of glass that I mentioned,” Guillot said.

CENTCOM has experimental technologies like microwave and directed energy weapons to counter UAS threats, and they are repurposing existing systems, such as the Counter-Rocket, Artillery, Mortar (C-RAM) Intercept.

With the push to innovate and expand capabilities, CENTCOM is helping to lead the way on a new approach to counter-UAS, Gainey said.

“You can’t look at this fight as a counter-UAS fight and as an integrated air and missile defense fight,” Gainey said. “You’ve got to look at it holistically as an integrated air and missile defense fight.”

US Asks China for Dialogue After ‘Unsafe’ RC-135 Intercept—But No Talks Set

Jan. 17, 2023 | By Chris Gordon

Despite a public plea by Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III to open up lines of communication following a dangerous near-miss between American and Chinese jets last month, the U.S. and China have not held top-level military conversations recently, and there are no set plans for any.

Austin’s appeal came Jan. 11, a few weeks after a Dec. 21 episode in which a Chinese plane flew within 20 feet of a U.S. Air Force RC-135 Rivet Joint. Both the American and Chinese militaries said the encounter was risky, and the Pentagon said the Chinese jet engaged in an “unsafe maneuver.”

“You see us continuing to try to ensure that we keep those lines open, and I would invite my colleagues in China to meet us halfway there and work hard to keep those lines of communication open,” Austin said at a press conference. “That is the primary and best way to avoid that miscalculation.”

But Austin has not spoken to his Chinese counterpart since November, the Pentagon said, while noting the U.S. is willing to hold talks with the Chinese on what it views as increasingly aggressive behavior towards U.S. and allied aircraft.

“The Department remains open to appropriate engagement at multiple levels and across multiple mechanisms with the [People’s Liberation Army] about the behavior we’re seeing,” DOD spokesperson Lt. Col. Marty Meiners told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “We will continue to voice our concerns about this dangerous PLA operational behavior, and we welcome opportunities to do so directly with the PLA.”

The most recent episode took place over the South China Sea, when a U.S. Air Force RC-135 was intercepted by a People’s Liberation Army-Navy J-11. The U.S. took the unusual step of releasing a video of the incident, calling out what it said was unsafe Chinese behavior. The Chinese released their own video, blaming the Americans. Video from both sides shows the Chinese fighter maneuvering alongside and getting very close to the U.S. reconnaissance plane. A similar incident with an RC-135 occurred in 2015.

Since 2022, Chinese aircraft have gotten increasingly close to American and allied aircraft operating near China, including intercepts of Canadian and Australian aircraft. Those encounters have occurred as China has increased the number of flights and military exercises near Taiwan.

The U.S. has sought military-to-military talks with China to diffuse tensions.

Austin raised his concerns about increased Chinese military activity—which Austin called “provocative” during his recent press conference—with Defense Minister Wei Fenghe during a meeting in November. However, little progress was made in Austin and Wei’s meeting in November.

During a press briefing Jan. 17, Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder reiterated the U.S. desire for more communication between the two countries to prevent an incident that could spiral out of control.

Ryder said the U.S. understood it was natural for the Chinese military to operate in the Indo-Pacific, but the U.S. had a right to conduct lawful operations. China claims most of the South China Sea and has insisted that U.S. military aircraft, as well as other countries’ planes and ships, are intruding. The U.S. does not recognize China’s expansive territorial claims. The Department of Defense said the RC-135 was operating in international airspace.

“We want to do everything we can to reduce potential miscalculation,” Ryder said. “From a United States standpoint, from a DOD standpoint, we certainly will continue to be available to communicate with our Chinese counterparts at multiple levels.”

President Biden underscored the importance of avoiding conflict and maintaining open lines of communication during a Nov. 14 meeting in Bali, Indonesia, with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken is due to visit China in February.

A previous encounter between U.S. and Chinese aircraft has led to a diplomatic crisis. A Chinese plane and a U.S. Navy EP-3 reconnaissance plane collided in 2001, resulting in the temporary detention of U.S. personnel after they were forced to make an emergency landing in China. The Chinese pilot was killed. The Chinese dismantled the EP-3 but allowed it to be flown out.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington and China’s Ministry of National Defense did not respond to questions from Air & Space Forces Magazine about whether they were willing to have conversations with the Americans about the RC-135 incident or whether China planned to hold any military-to-military talks with the U.S.

“In addition to sharing our concerns publicly, the Department has communicated directly with the PLA about this issue,” Meiners said.

Kendall: Beijing Totally Restructured Its Military to Beat the US

Jan. 17, 2023 | By John A. Tirpak

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall has shifted the service’s focus so heavily toward China because leaders in Beijing have thoroughly restructured their military to beat the U.S. in war, he said in a Jan. 11 webinar hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations.

Kendall explained his “China, China, China” focus as a reaction to Beijing having “shifted dramatically the force that they had at one time to the force they have today,” which is keyed almost exclusively to defeating U.S. and allied capabilities.

“The first thing” China did to even the odds with the U.S. was to make its army much smaller, Kendall said, and “that freed up a lot of resources to do other things.”

The next step was the creation of China’s Strategic Rocket Forces, which developed precision, long-ranged weapons “that could target the high-value assets the United States depends upon,” such as forward bases in the Pacific and aircraft carriers, as well as “command and control nodes … and satellites.”

Kill those assets, Kendall said, and “you basically defeated our ability to protect” the U.S. and its allies. China also created a “strategic workforce,” Kendall said, enlarging their space and cyber capabilities.

“So they have done something that reorganizes and postures their military for the purpose of being able to defeat the United States, in particular, and our allies,” he said. In doing so, China also enjoyed the advantage of not having to undo longstanding “stovepipes” of organization, making its forces more agile and effective.

Being “unconstrained by culture … they’ve done some very creative things” both strategically and tactically, integrating their forces “so they work well together,” Kendall said.

Nevertheless, “all of this is unproven,” he said. None of China’s organizations or capabilities have been tested in real-world operations, and its military generally “hasn’t been in a conflict in a very long time.”

China also has uncertainty about America’s secret weapons, Kendall added.

“We have a lot of capabilities we don’t advertise,” he said, and China would do well to be cautious.

As to lessons China may be learning from the war in Ukraine, Kendall reiterated points he’s made previously: Beijing’s takeaways should be that an expected short war may last a long time; that Chinese forces may not perform as well as Chinese leaders are led to believe they will, and that any war may bring economic retribution that may be extremely damaging to China.

China’s nuclear weapons should also be “taken into account,” Kendall said, but “I’m not terribly troubled by that. I do think we need to think carefully about our nuclear posture, and I think the [Biden] administration has done that.”

B-1B Bomber Flies to Pacific and Back, Integrates with Japan’s F-15s

Jan. 16, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

A B-1B Lancer from Ellsworth Air Force Base flew from South Dakota to the Pacific and back earlier this week, integrating with Japanese F-15s and linking up with a KC-135 tanker along the way.

The long-duration, CONUS-to-CONUS mission, used a single B-1 bomber from the 37th Bomb Squadron to showcase the Air Force’s ability “to operate anywhere in the world at any time in support of the National Defense Strategy,” the squadron stated in a release.

The release did not detail exactly where the B-1 flew, and the 28th Bomb Wing did not immediately respond to queries. However, in a Facebook post, U.S. Strategic Command referred to the flight as a Bomber Task Force mission, noting that the bomber flew alongside F-15s from the Japan Air Self-Defense Force. Images released by the 18th Wing at Kadena Air Base, Japan, showed a KC-135 Stratotanker from the 909th Air Refueling Squadron refueling the BONE “over the Pacific Ocean.”

B-1s lately have become a regular presence in the Indo-Pacific. The 34th Bomb Squadron, also from Ellsworth, deployed Lancers to Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, in June 2022, training with the Japanese and landing in Australia for a hot-pit refueling exercise. Shortly after that, the 37th Bomb Squadron sent some of its B-1s to Guam for about six weeks, during which the jets carried naval mines, practiced Agile Combat Employment, and flew over the Korean Peninsula in a show of force in response to North Korean missile tests—the first such flight in five years.

B-1s have conducted other CONUS-to-CONUS missions recently, as well. Two of the bombers from Dyess Air Force Base, Texas, flew to the U.S. Southern Command area of responsibility in September, integrating with partner nations Ecuador and Panama, and countering “illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing operations off the coast of Ecuador in the vicinity of the Galapagos Islands,” according to a 7th Bomb Wing press release.

Saltzman: China’s ASAT Test Was ‘Pivot Point’ in Space Operations

Jan. 13, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

Then-Lt. Col. B. Chance Saltzman was the commander of the 614th Space Operations Squadron, working at what was then called the Joint Space Operations Center at today’s Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif.

The JSpOC was less than two years old, still “a nascent capability,” recalled Saltzman, now the Chief of Space Operations. “We were in a very small room, in the third floor of the 14th Air Force headquarters … and our job was to collect statuses, mostly the space domain awareness—we called it space situational awareness back then—about what’s going on in orbit.”

On Jan. 11, 2007, as the command was monitor a Chinese anti-satellite test—“To be honest, I think there was this feeling that, you know, it was just going to be a test”— and then in happened. “I remember very clearly, the radar operator who’s looking at his chat rooms connected to the ground radars spread around the world, and he looked back over his shoulder and he said, ‘We have multiple headcount.’ And that’s space domain awareness talk for ‘One object in space just became many objects in space.’”

Instead of a test, it had been a demonstration of capability: “a destructive test that created a debris field,” Saltzman recalled during a pre-recorded conversation shared by the Space Force Association.

China’s destruction of one of its own weather satellites by means of a modified ballistic missile created the largest-ever debris field in space, with more than 3,000 trackable pieces. More than 15 years later, the International Space Station was forced to maneuver to avoid some of that debris last year, a reminder of its lasting impact.

“I just remember vividly the feeling that this is a pivot point in the space community and in space operations, and that we’re going have to look differently about how we operate space from that day on,” Saltzman recalled. “And for those of us that are neck deep in the business, we did have to think differently from that day on.”

That “pivot point,” as Saltzman called it, eventually led to the creation of the Space Force, as the Pentagon, Congress, and presidential administrations came to understand that “the threats are bad enough, our dependencies on space are strong enough, that we’re going to have to focus differently and it made sense to build the service,” Saltzman said.

Now, a little over three years after the USSF’s creation, the service is still evolving, both in how it deals with China and with such anti-satellite tests.

The Pentagon has grown increasingly concerned about China’s ambitious military space program, and concerns about a new “space race” are growing. China hasn’t carried out a publicly reported destructive ASAT test since 2007, but it has experimented with other offensive capabilities, moving close to other satellites and employing a robotic arm designed to grab and disrupt other satellites.

Russia demonstrated its destructive ASAT capability in November 2021, creating another large debris field of more than 1,500 trackable pieces. And since its invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, Russia has voiced threats against Western satellites aiding Ukraine’s war effort, potentially making commercial satellites into targets as well.

“It’s a dynamic security environment,” Saltzman said. “So you can never just sit back and say, ‘OK, we got this figured out.’ We’ve got to continually monitor how we respond, what the threats are, how space is being used, from the tactical level and at the strategic level.”

And just as the Chinese test in 2007 proved to be a critical moment in space history, Saltzman hinted that the Russian war on Ukraine could also prove hugely consequential for the future.

“What we’re observing is the criticality of space in modern warfare,” Saltzman said. “ … The ability to deny single satellite capabilities became very obvious, very early in this conflict. The ability to cyberattack ground networks that facilitate space capabilities became very obvious. Those vulnerabilities became obvious early in the conflict. And then the commercial augmentation of space capabilities showed its merits. And we all know about Starlink’s capabilities and the fact that it’s disaggregated, more than 1,000 satellites, creating this layer of satellite communications is much tougher to target. And so it’s proven out to be a more resilient architecture.

“And so we’ve got to take all that in,” Saltzman said. “Space is critical. Adversaries are going to attack space. It’s critical on the ground as well as in space, and a disaggregated architecture becomes more resilient and that matters in terms of creating combat capability.”

Kendall Says China’s Long Reach is Pushing Air Force Toward New Stealth Tankers

Jan. 13, 2023 | By John A. Tirpak

China’s growing reach with precision missiles means the Air Force must shift away from traditional tankers and cargo aircraft towards stealthy ones, Secretary Frank Kendall said Jan. 11.

Speaking in a webinar with the Council on Foreign Relations, Kendall said “the traditional route” of turning a commercial aircraft like the DC-10 or 767 into a tanker or cargo plane, or even designing a custom aircraft like the C-17 without a “high premium on survivability” will no longer meet USAF’s needs.

“The threat’s taking that freedom away from us,” he said. Adversaries like China are able to track and shoot U.S. aircraft from increasingly long ranges, so mobility aircraft must be designed with survivability in mind, he said.

Kendall also said the forthcoming 2024 budget submission will build new roadmaps for mobility, as well as for electronic warfare—which he said has been long “neglected” by the service—and new munitions, of which he said there are many concepts being explored. The munitions roadmap “includes the production capacity we need, as well as the right suite of systems for the targets we’re going to have to deal with. And the way we’re going to have to deal with them is important.”

The Air Force is taking an early look at blended wing body aircraft concepts for cargo and transport roles, but “that doesn’t exist in the commercial world yet,” so there’re no civil aircraft the Air Force can adapt to future mobility needs, Kendall noted.

“It may [exist] at some point,” he said, “but it doesn’t yet, so we are doing some early design work on that, possibly moving towards a prototype as a DOD program. But there’s more to come on that; that’s a work in progress.”

Although the Air Force will continue to recapitalize its aging tankers by continuing “core tanker modernization,” Kendall said the service will “have to move beyond that to the next generation. And it’s going to have to survive in an environment the current fleet hasn’t had to work [in].”

In October, the Air Force said it would investigate blended wing body aircraft as part of an effort to develop more efficient and environmentally-friendly aircraft, including tankers. The service’s Climate Action Plan, released Oct. 5, said USAF plans to conduct a full-scale test of a BWB aircraft by 2027, in collaboration with the Defense Innovation Unit. The DIU put out a request for information to industry on BWB concepts in July 2022.

The climate plan said such designs could be “transformative” of the Air Force’s fleet, reducing fuel usage by 30 percent. BWBs—essentially flying wings like the Air Force’s B-2 and B-21 bombers—also offer the advantage of having a slim profile and an inherently smaller radar cross section than traditional cylinder-and-wing aircraft, particularly if designers eliminate vertical control surfaces.

It’s not clear if the Air Force will simply skip the so-called “bridge tanker” program following its KC-46 buy of 179 aircraft, and Kendall did not say USAF would abandon that program. However, he has on multiple occasions warned that the Air Force may not see a business case to opening up the next buy of conventional tankers to competition. Lockheed Martin has partnered with Airbus to offer the LMXT tanker for the bridge tanker, based on the KC-30 Multi-Role Tanker Transport.

Report: Air Force Makes Progress on ABMS with Plans for Two Lines of Effort

Jan. 13, 2023 | By Chris Gordon

The Department of the Air Force is making strides on its contribution to the Department of Defense’s ambitious joint all-domain command and control effort, according to a report from the top government watchdog released Jan. 13.

However, questions remain about whether the Air Force will properly make use of its new capabilities, the study from the Government Accountability Office stated.

As part of the DOD’s JADC2 effort to connect sensors, battle managers, and shooters across the globe, the Air Force is developing the Advanced Battle Management System—ABMS was initially planned as the successor to the E-8 JSTARS aircraft but is now envisioned as a network of sensors and connected technologies intended to promote rapid data sharing among a plethora of weapon systems.

In this latest report, the GAO praised the Air Force for its progress on ABMS and JADC2 since 2020, when the agency charged the service with needing to decide what it wanted AMBS to do and then develop the technology and estimate the cost accordingly.

The watchdog was less positive about the broader Department of Defense, though, charging that its vision of JADC2 was still too vague and effort lacked uniformity among the services.

So far, the Air Force has defined two ABMS efforts. The first, known as Capability Release 1, is aimed at enabling the new F-35 Lightning II fighter to connect with command and control centers, including by turning airborne platforms such as the KC-46 Pegasus tanker into a data link.

CR-1 was originally intended to include the F-22 Raptor as well, allowing the F-35 and F-22 to share data, which they currently cannot do because of differences in their communication systems.

But plans to integrate the F-22 were scrapped, the GAO report noted, in part because of the Air Force’s plans to move on from the fighter in favor of the still-in-development Next Generation Air Dominance platform. Now, the Air Force hopes to deliver two prototypes to be installed on KC-46s in 2024, the report noted.

The Air Force also plans to field a new Could-Based Command and Control network, known as CBC2, to integrate air defense data to support homeland defense. Previously dubbed Capability Release 2, the system will aggregate and feed data to North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), including from commercial sources, and replace older and disparate systems.

“Fielding CBC2 will help transform how we share data across the joint force,” Gen. Glen D. VanHerck, the head of NORAD and U.S. Northern Command, said in a recent news release.

The department took a significant step forward in that effort Jan. 9, awarding contractor SAIC a $112 million deal for “microservice applications and digital engineering tools for tactical C2 kill chains” as part of CBC2.

“The program is using modern agile software methodologies to revolutionize how the DAF approaches battle management in the future,” Brig. Gen. Luke Cropsey, the Department of the Air Force’s program executive officer for command, control, communications, and battle management, said in a statement. “ABMS will continue to partner with defense contractors, commercial companies and cloud service providers to leverage the best technology for cloud computing, data analytics, and communications.”

The GAO report noted that the Air Force plans to develop initial capabilities for CBC2 in late 2023, but is still in the process of identifying those capabilities—highlighting just some of the work the Air Force still has to do.

“In April 2020, GAO recommended the Air Force develop a plan to mature technologies, develop a cost estimate, and conduct an affordability analysis for ABMS. DOD concurred. The Air Force is taking steps to address the recommendations—through acquisition and planning documents—but needs to do more to fully address them,” the GAO concluded.

However, the report presented a more critical view of the Defense Department’s collective JADC2 effort, arguing that the Pentagon still needs to figure out how to turn an amorphous concept into something more tangible.

“While DOD has made progress in JADC2 planning, it has not yet identified which existing systems will contribute to JADC2 goals or what future capabilities need to be developed,” the report said.

According to the GAO, the lack of an overarching vision has created additional problems by allowing services to work on solving their own connectivity and data issues under the guise of JADC2 instead of developing a military-wide approach.

“The military departments started prioritizing which JADC2-related capabilities to develop based on their own needs, which do not necessarily align with DOD’s highest priorities,” the report said.