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.

Air Force Reveals New Jolly Green IIs Made First Combat Saves

Jan. 12, 2023 | By John A. Tirpak

An HH-60W Jolly Green II—the Air Force’s new combat rescue helicopter—and its crew has been credited with the type’s first “saves” in hostile conditions overseas and on its first operational deployment, the service said, but details of the rescues are being withheld because of operational sensitivity.

Guardian Angels of the 347th Rescue Group, operating with HH-60Ws and HC-130Js, rescued two U.S. service members from a “battlefield” in the Horn of Africa in late December, the Air Force said in a release.

The aircraft made its first overseas deployment to the Horn of Africa region in mid-September 2022, shortly after declaring initial operational capability, but the Air Force has declined to say where they went or where specifically they were operating at the time of the saves, other than East Africa. The Air Force is known to operate remotely piloted aircraft like the MQ-9 Reaper and other assets out of a base in Djibouti.

“Even in the vast expanses of Africa, this combined team was able to pull a critical patient from the battlefield with the Air Force’s newest rescue vehicle and place them in the hands of skilled trauma surgeons, ultimately saving two lives,” Lt. Col Thaddeus Ronnau, commander of the Personnel Recovery Task Force and regional director of the Joint Personnel Recovery Center, said in a statement.

The Air Force said alert crews were “activated during the pre-dawn hours and responded quicker than the required theater response times. The initial pickup of the injured was quick, and the team was in and out of the area without incident. They then immediately made for the nearest medical facility for trauma surgery while the pararescuemen performed their own stabilizing emergency care in the aircraft’s cabin. The HC-130J were then called to swiftly move the most seriously wounded member to another location for further treatment. Both lives were saved.”

Ronnau said that by “continuously working to ensure that ‘Jack’s worst day won’t be his last,’ these members of the rescue family upheld the highest virtues of the Code of the Air Rescueman and demonstrated ‘these things we do that others may live.’”

The PRTF is manned, trained ,and equipped to rapidly respond to battlefield situations “to return American, allied and partner forces to friendly control,” Ronnau said. The team is equipped to “travel great distances and fight their way in and out if necessary.”

The Air Force would only say the incident took place “outside the wire in the Horn of Africa.” The action represents the HH-60W’s “first real-world casualty evacuation operation in the African area of responsibility.” The aircraft and personnel were operating under the 449th Air Expeditionary Group.

The Air Force has recently released images of the HH-60Ws performing rescue training exercises in undisclosed locations in Africa. One showed a Jolly Green II of the 41st Rescue Squadron, out of Moody Air Force Base, Ga., in exercises with crew from the USS Hershel Williams, an expeditionary sea base operating in the region. The Dec. 31, 2022 image was labeled as being taken in the Indian Ocean.

Aviation Boatswain’s Mate (Handling) 2nd Class Kieara Dexter, from Opelika, Ala., directs an HH-60W helicopter, assigned to the 41st Rescue Squadron, from Moody Air Force Base, as it approaches the flight deck of the Lewis B. Puller-class expeditionary sea base U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Conner D. Blake/Released

U.S. Navy Sailors depart the landing zone of an HH-60W helicopter, assigned to the 41st Rescue Squadron, from Moody Air Force Base, during flight operations on the flight deck of the Lewis B. Puller-class expeditionary sea base USS Hershel “Woody” Williams (ESB 4), Dec. 31, 2022. U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Conner D. Blake/Released

The Air Force said the ability to recover “isolated and/or injured persons is a force multiplier that transcends the tactical to the operational and strategic levels,” by preserving “critical resources” and “sustaining the morale, cohesion, and fighting capability of joint and friendly forces.”

However, the Air Force has moved to reduce its buy of the HH-60W from a planned force of 119 aircraft to only 75 aircraft, saying it will have to devise new ways of conducting combat search and rescue in the future, when downed or injured service members are likely to be beyond the practical range of the aircraft and protective force elements.

Gen. Mark D. Kelly, head of Air Combat Command, has said that ACC is studying its future CSAR requirements and is looking at new options beyond the HH-60W.

These could include acquiring more CV-22 Ospreys or a more developed version of Agility Prime, a service prototyping program looking at autonomous, uncrewed, electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft that could pick up a downed aircrew member. Kelly has said the HH-60W would likely be inadequate for operations in the far east of the Pacific theater under contested conditions.

The Jolly Green II, an upgraded version of the MH-60 Pave Hawk, has a larger cabin, more sensors, improved communications, more weapons and more armor than its predecessor, with nearly double the range.

Saltzman Keeps His Focus on Developing Operational Concepts and Tactics

Jan. 12, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

With the Space Force now in its fourth year of existence, Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman wants to develop the service’s essential warfighting processes—and make sure Guardians can perfect them through practice.

In a pre-recorded interview with the Space Force Association streamed Jan. 12, Saltzman listed fielding “resilient, ready, combat-credible forces” as his top priority.

“We have to build the infrastructure and the processes and procedures to make sure [Guardians have] got what they need,” he said. “Whether it’s the test and training infrastructure, simulators that can replicate adversary threats and the interactions you would get, multiple units working together to solve operational challenges—all of that needs to take place before we get into an actual conflict, so that our operators are fully ready. That’s really the priority that I’m going after.”

Watching Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which bogged down despite Russia’s superior forces and technology, reinforced the importance of high-quality training and tactics, Saltzman said. “The side that practices the best will have an advantage early in the conflict,” Saltzman said. “So that’s what I want to do, make sure we have the skills and the experience on day one of the conflict.”

Systems and technology count a lot, but if that’s the sole focus, he added, “you only [have] half the equation.”

The Space Force needs to develop and validate its approach to combat and dominating in the heavens. “It starts with operational concepts,” Saltzman said. “You say, how is it that we will control the space domain so that we can do what we want to do with space assets, achieve the effects that we want to achieve, while denying the adversary the ability to use their space capabilities to target ground forces and maritime forces and air forces? That’s the classic definition of control of the domain.”

The Space Force has a capstone doctrinal document, “Spacepower,” and a commander’s strategic plan for Space Operations Command. But the service is still in the process of fleshing out and codifying its operational concepts. And while control of the domain remains the goal, much like the Air Force seeks air superiority, there are specifics that need to be considered in space, Saltzman said.

“What’s the plan? And we have to test those [concepts] to make sure we don’t create debris fields,” Saltzman said. “We’re trying to be responsible users in space, but we still have to be able to disrupt an adversary. So how do you do that?”

Once those core concepts are finalized, he added, “you start to look at the systems you have and build the tactics, techniques, and procedures that the operators will need to employ.”

TTPs, as those considerations are often called, cover such basic considerations as “How do I move satellite communications beams? How do I detect a rendezvous proximity opposite to what an adversary is trying to do? How do I do that in real time?” Saltzman said.

And while those tactics can be developed in theory, they also need to be rigorously tested in a way that proves they work, Saltzman said. That’s why investing in test and training infrastructure is so essential.

“You have to practice it on a range where you can control all the inputs,” Saltzman explained. “You have to practice it against what we would call an opposition force—aggressors—to use the vernacular, because it’s a thinking adversary, and [the fight] is going to be dynamic. How do your operators respond in that dynamic adversarial set of conditions?”

Building the range of skills and experience necessary to optimize the Space Force will take time. Saltzman is eager for Guardians to test and train their skills inside the Space Force, but he also wants them to capture experience outside the service’s bounds.

“I want to make sure that when you come into the Space Force, your skills and your knowledge of technology, for example, doesn’t atrophy simply because you’re part of the military now,” Saltzman said. One way to do that is to forge deeper partnerships with industry and academia to help ensure Guardians stay “current on what the state of the world is, the state of the art is in terms of technology and leading edge capabilities.”

That might entail short tours of duty in industry, where they can be exposed to what the commercial sector is doing. “And tjhen they come back in and bring that knowledge with them,” Saltzman said. “So we keep things fresh inside the Space Force.”

New Rules for Vaccine Refusers After DOD Lifts Its COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate

Jan. 12, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

Thousands of Airmen and Guardians who remain unvaccinated against COVID-19 no longer have to get the shots—and those who faced disciplinary action for failing to get vaccinated will have their records wiped clean.

Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III formally rescinded the Pentagon’s vaccination requirement Jan. 10, as required by the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act passed late last year. The change ends more than 16 months of angst since the policy was first announced in August 2021. Active-duty Airmen were given less than two months and reservists less than four to get the vaccines.

More than 95 percent of Airmen and Guardians met the deadlines, and according to the Department of the Air Force’s most recent data, 97.6 percent of the total force, or more than 478,000 members, are fully vaccinated.

Still, that leaves more than 11,000 Airmen and Guardians not fully vaccinated. While thousands of service members applied for medical, religious, or administrative accommodations to the requirement, only 1,069 members won approvals.

Under Austin’s orders, all waiver requests still pending will be dropped.

Vaccine refusers whose accommodation requests were denied were given five days to start the vaccination process, file an appeal, or request to separate or retire. For those whose appeals were denied, the five-day clock restarted. Ultimately, 834 were booted for refusing the vaccine, according to Air Force figures.

Commanders also “retained the full range of disciplinary options available to them,” Air Force spokeswoman Rose Riley told Air & Space Forces Magazine, including issuing administrative paperwork, nonjudicial punishment, or referral of court-martial charges.

Exactly how many Airmen and Guardians received such punishments is unclear—Riley said the department does not track that data at a DAF level.

Any Airman or Guardian negative paperwork filed against those seeking special accommodations will now be removed. In his memo, Austin instructed the military departments to “update the records of such individuals to remove any adverse actions solely associated with denials of such [accommodation] requests, including letters of reprimand.”

The Air Force stopped imposing such punishments months ago. In July, a federal judge in Ohio blocked the DAF from taking disciplinary action against Airmen and Guardians seeking a religious accommodation, and a panel of judges upheld that ruling in November.

By law, all of those kicked out received at least a general discharge under honorable conditions, with some receiving an honorable discharge. The difference between the two carries implications for the kinds of benefits separated Airmen can take advantage of. While those with a general discharge can usually still receive medical benefits and home loans from the VA, they do not have access to the educational benefits from the GI Bill. And those with a general discharge may also be prevented from being able to reenlist.

The Airmen and Guardians booted from service for refusing the vaccine will be allowed to “petition their Military Department’s Discharge Review Boards and Boards for Correction of Military or Naval Records to individually request a correction to their personnel records, including records regarding the characterization of their discharge,” Austin wrote in his memo. Such changes, however, are not guaranteed.

For those still in the service, being unvaccinated will no longer result in punishment—but could still carry implications for their careers. Austin specified in his memo that commanders will still be able to consider the “immunization status of personnel in making deployment, assignment, and other operational decisions.”

“We have a responsibility for the health and welfare of our forces. And so … depending on the situation and the circumstances, it’s incumbent on commanders to to ensure that they’re doing what they need to do,” Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder told reporters Jan. 12.