Massive German-Hosted Air Exercise Will Feature 220 Aircraft, Simulated Combat

Massive German-Hosted Air Exercise Will Feature 220 Aircraft, Simulated Combat

April 11, 2023 | By Chris Gordon

JOINT BASE ANDREWS, Md.—U.S. and European allies will conduct a massive air exercise in Germany this June on a scale unseen since the end of the Cold War, military officials said.

Some 220 allied aircraft and 10,000 personnel will take part in Air Defender 23, against the backdrop of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 

Around 100 U.S. aircraft, all from the Air National Guard, will come together with allied planes to practice combat, distributed operations, and degraded command and control. U.S. F-35s, F-16s, F-15s, A-10s, KC-135, KC-46s, C-130s, and C-17s will all take part, as well as hundreds of Airmen from 35 states.

The exercise will include mock enemy aircraft, known as Red Air, as allied “Blue” crews train how to fight with each other against a potential foe. 

“Blue will be killing and Red will be killing,” ANG director Lt. Gen. Michael A. Loh told Air & Space Forces Magazine on April 5. “Everyone will see a little bit of Red.”

German-Led, NATO Heavy

Air Defender will mostly take place in Germany, but planes will also operate from forward operation locations in the Czech Republic, Estonia, and Latvia, and airbases across the continent will host participating aircraft.

A German military spokesperson stressed that the exercise was organized by Germany, not NATO headquarters, but it will include support from the alliance, and 22 of 24 participating countries are NATO members, along with prospective NATO member Sweden.

NATO has stepped up its air policing efforts in Eastern Europe since Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Many countries in the alliance, including Germany, have also pledged to strengthen their military posture, including their air forces.

“We have to take responsibility to stand up and say ‘OK, we are ready to defend the alliance,’” Chief of the German Air Force Lt. Gen. Ingo Gerhartz said. 

Gerhartz, who has headed the Luftwaffe since 2018, was the driving force behind Air Defender, taking inspiration from the Defender series of large-scale ground exercises, said retired USAF Gen. Jeffrey L. Harrigian, who led U.S. Air Forces in Europe and NATO Allied Air Command from 2019-2022.

Gerhartz has also pushed to modernize the German air force, which will be boosted by a deal signed last year for 35 F-35 stealth fighters. 

Harrigian said European allies saw a need to modernize their air forces even before Russia’s invasion. The dangers were highlighted at a 2019 NATO meeting in which the alliance deemed Russia a “threat” to security in the region, which enabled regional air forces to gain support for better equipment and training.

“That was a key political decision,” Harrigian told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “Because if we mass legitimate capabilities, it’s going to deter Russia, and they’re not going to want any part of what we could potentially do to them. And everybody got it.”

USAF Goals

While the idea for Air Defender is not wholly American, it will be a large-scale test of some of the U.S. Air Force’s new operating concepts, such as Agile Combat Employment—when Airmen and planes disperse in smaller teams to operate from remote or austere locations.

The six U.S. F-35s set to participate in the exercise are from the Vermont Air National Guard, which deployed to Europe last summer as part of NATO’s enhanced air policing mission. 

The F-35 and its stealth technology are closely guarded secrets, which can make international operations more of a challenge. When two F-35s landed and parked in front of Loh and Gerhartz at Andrews recently, reporters were cautioned not to take pictures of the planes from certain angles. 

“There’s too many people that can say ‘no,’” Loh said. But the ANG’s previous F-35 deployment “broke down those initial barriers,” he added.

Loh said he hopes Air Defender will have “more and more data sharing more and more people working on each other’s aircraft.”

Another skill the USAF plans to work on in Air Defender is the ability of aircrews to operate with some degree of autonomy—in contrast to the top-down campaigns the Air Force has conducted in the Middle East, with missions carefully coordinated by air operations centers in the region. 

“It gets us out of what I would call the legacy mindset of CENTCOM,” Loh said.

Another closely related goal is encouraging quick thinking under fire.

“At some point, we’ve got to train before you can actually do it,” Loh said. “It doesn’t matter what it is, A-10, KC-135, are they going to be able to go ‘OK, I’ve lost our comms, everybody.’ I know what the initial plan was for today. Can I set myself up and do it as an aircraft commander, with a full crew, and take off and go make the next mission?”

Massive Scale

Though NATO and its members’ air forces have been increasing the number of air policing patrols and defensive drills, Air Defender will bring throngs of aircraft to bear in way that is not possible on a day-to-day basis.

“We need to exercise at this larger scale,” retired Gen. Phillip M. Breedlove, the former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “We do not do it often enough.”

Gerhartz, whose nation will have around 60 aircraft participating and will provide logistical and command and control support, agrees.

“We have to be much more capable of defending the lines and it’s not just about talking or showing slides,” Gerhartz said. “We have to prove it, we have to demonstrate it.

“How do you inform Russia? Well, we won’t write them a letter. I think they get the message when we deploy.”

Air Force Flies C-17 as Command and Control Platform in ACE Experiment

Air Force Flies C-17 as Command and Control Platform in ACE Experiment

April 11, 2023 | By David Roza

Airmen took a C-17 from the 62nd Airlift Wing on a new mission earlier this year by using the transport jet as a mobile command-and-control station for coordinating simulated air and ground operations at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev. The experiment could pave the way for field commanders to have more options for controlling a battlespace as the Air Force retires its current fleet of aging command and control (C2) platforms.

“Our work offers some additional alternatives or resiliency” as the E-7 Wedgetail comes online to replace the E-3 AWACS, Air Force Maj. Paden Allen told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “You can only make airplanes so fast, so then the question becomes: while we’re waiting, what are some other things we can do to build the resiliency of our C2 enterprise?”

As the commander of the C2 division of the 422nd Test and Evaluation Squadron, Allen oversaw the experiment at Nellis, which took place in late February during Black Flag 23-1, an operational test for new capabilities and tactics. 

C2 refers to a commander’s ability to maneuver forces to accomplish objectives, Allen explained. Battle management is a tactical subcategory of C2 where battle managers give specific directions to specific warfighters, a bit like a stage manager coordinating a theater production, Allen said.

The Air Force relies on multiple platforms both in the air and on the ground to form a theater air control system. These include ground-based Control and Reporting Centers (CRC) and Air Support Operations Centers, alongside airborne E-3 AWACS and E-8 JSTARS platforms. Much of the technology used in these platforms comes from the 1970s or 1980s and is outdated or bulky, Allen explained, which makes moving ground-based elements like the CRC around a dynamic battle zone a time-intensive prospect.

“Our time frames are about one to three days to get everything packed,” said Staff Sgt. Hannah Fisk, a weapons director with the 422 TES. “And that’s not even the set-up once we get to the location we need to be at.”

Those long time frames hurt the Air Force’s ability to move quickly, Fisk explained. Mobility is a central tenet of the branch’s strategy to disperse operations so that it is more difficult for adversaries to select airfields to target. The good news is that there is plenty of modern technology available that the Air Force can use to perform C2 without the bulk of older equipment, Allen explained.

“We took off-the-shelf equipment, things that the government either already has, or could easily go get today, pieced it all together and with a bit of computer science, bam we were doing more than we could previously and it is a lot lighter, leaner and faster,” he said. 

command and control
United States Air Force and Army service members disassemble the Command and Control Element after Black Flag 23-1 operations at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, Feb. 23, 2023. U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Josey Blades

The lighter footprint was evident at Black Flag, where all the equipment necessary for C2 took up just two jump seats in a C-17 or the trunk of an SUV, Allen said, whereas a bulky CRC may take multiple C-17 trips to move to a new location. The Black Flag experiment left plenty of space for the jet to haul troops and cargo if the mission calls for it, he explained.

Integrating that equipment onto the C-17 required coordination with a Joint Communication Support element from U.S. Transportation Command, as well as maintainers from the 62nd Airlift Wing. It was the first time Senior Airman Anthony Vargas, a COMM/Navigation Systems Journeyman with the 62nd Aircraft Maintenance Squadron, helped turn a C-17 into a battle management platform.

“My hands were full prior to takeoff as I had to ensure all the aircraft’s radio and navigation systems were operational and I assisted the testing personnel with cables and connectivity,” he told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “In flight, I monitored aircraft systems to ensure they were working so the testing could run smoothly.”

During the exercise, Fisk and Tech. Sgt. Megan Wolfe, another weapons director aboard the C-17, worked with Allen and ground-based C2 Airmen, who operated from a Mobile Tactical C2 vehicle, an SUV equipped with radios and computers. Allen oversaw a ground team of Pararescuemen and Tactical Air Control Party Airmen working to recover a simulated downed pilot while Fisk coordinated fighter jets flying overhead both in support of the recovery mission and as part of a larger air-to-air fight. 

Fisk found that she could still do her job despite working with just a laptop and radios, but there were a few bumps along the way. One of the challenges was that the internet connection which she relied on to stay in contact with Allen would sometimes drop out. Those problems are part of what makes exercises like Black Flag important, Allen said.

“It was one of those situations where you ask somebody ‘how strong do you think the internet is going to be? And they’d say ‘well I don’t know, we haven’t really tried it,’” he said. “Just in the course of a couple days we captured a lot of information that goes to Air Mobility Command, Air Combat Command as well as TRANSCOM, so next time we can do it even better and be that much more capable.”

command and control
Maj. Paden Allen, 422 Test and Evaluation Squadron Tactical C2 Division commander (left) and Master Sgt. Jose Mejia, 422 TES Joint Terminal Attack Controler division section chief, provide command and control capabilities on the way to a Black Flag 22-1 mission on the Nevada Test and Training Range at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, May 12, 2022. U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Zachary Rufus.

Both Fisk and the C-17 crews learned from each other how to perform C2 aboard a new aircraft. Fisk learned more about how a C-17 crew works by having to share a radio with them, and the C-17 crew learned from Fisk how to fly in certain ways to ensure better connectivity for battle management. Allen said conventional AWACS flight crews and battle managers know how to coordinate those two missions because they have trained that way, but a transport crew like that of a C-17 does not necessarily have the same experience.

“It’s kind of like doing something in a car and communicating with the driver while you’re doing it,” he said. “When a C-17 or a C-130 was created, this was not something that they had in mind necessarily, so there was a lot of very quick learning that had to happen between Hannah and the rest of the mission team and the C-17 crew.”

On the maintenance side, Vargas said the experience broadened his perspective on the Air Force mission.

“I am tasked to solely work on communication, navigation, electronic warfare, and mission systems,” he said. “Seeing these new capabilities firsthand, I felt much more connected to the mission. Seeing the air battle managers work reminded me to keep being accepting of these changes and upgrades to the C-17.”

Allen said this was the first time he was aware of a C-17 being used as a C2 platform, though the Air Force has a history of using the C-130 in the C2 role. For example, during the Vietnam War, the branch used C-130s as Airborne Battle Command and Control Centers platforms, and EC-130Es carried that mission set into the early 2000s. With the rise of Agile Combat Employment, some of those old capabilities have been rediscovered.

“There is a lot of building upon the shoulders of people who fought in World War II and Vietnam, but now that we have new technologies, new capabilities and a lot of very smart Airmen who can integrate these things quickly, we are seeing a lot of this rapid innovation to bring more capabilities to bear and inform commanders,” Allen said. 

The future of command-and-control may look far different than the Cold War-era AWACs and JSTARs, the major said. In the meantime, you can expect to see C2 Airmen pop up in more unconventional places.

“You can take your phone on an airplane, on a boat, in a car, that’s really what we’re talking about here with the technology we are trying to solidify,” he said. “You take your cell phone anywhere in the world, and we’d like you to take C2 anywhere in the world, anyway you want to get there.”

Space Force CTIO: Let’s ‘Leap Over’ Tech Debt and Start New

Space Force CTIO: Let’s ‘Leap Over’ Tech Debt and Start New

April 11, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

While leaders have touted the Space Force as the U.S.’s first digital service, it still faces plenty of technological shortcomings, Chief Information and Technology Officer Lisa Costa said recently. And instead of trying to update all of its outdated IT, the service might be better served by simply starting fresh and building from scratch, she suggested. 

Such an approach, referred to as “greenfielding” within the IT community, would be similar to how the Space Development Agency has established its own processes for acquiring and launching satellites, Costa said April 5 at the Mitchell Institute’s Spacepower Security Forum. 

“I fundamentally believe that we will get ahead much quicker if we don’t try to dig ourselves out of tech debt, but we just leap over that and move to software-defined everything and modern systems that keep evolving over time,” Costa said when asked about previous comments that the Space Force may need seven years to mature its digital systems. “[SDA director Derek M.] Tournear, that’s exactly what he’s doing, and it’s really a great initiative. And I think that’s the same thing that we need to do in terms of digital infrastructure.” 

Starting fresh instead of building on what has been used “would make monetary sense, return-on-investment sense,” Costa added, before noting that doing so would run counter to the Pentagon’s typical style of doing business. 

As things currently stand, Costa outlined three priorities her office is pursuing to upgrade the Space Force’s digital infrastructure. 

ION 

While much of the Space Force’s first few years have been defined by establishing organizational structures and connections, the service now needs to focus on ensuring those structures can integrate digitally, Costa said. 

“So we have Space Systems Command, right?” said Costa. “We need to help them connect in a high bandwidth … low latency way to, for example, the Space Warfighting Analysis Center. We need to be able to link them to Space Training and Readiness Command, so that they can provide model-based systems engineering models to STARCOM so that training materials can be developed for Guardians, and so that they can then take that training material and have Guardians developing tactics, techniques, and procedures and conceps of operation. And then that gets translated to [Space Operations Command]. So we’re not only doing the vertical, physical piece but also the functional integration piece.” 

That high-bandwidth, low-latency connection will be the Integrated Operations Network, the base IT infrastructure on which the service’s digital efforts will rely. ION will be crucial, Costa noted, especially given the Pentagon’s notoriously slow networks. 

“I can’t emphasize enough—I could implement [artificial intelligence] today,” Costa said. “But I couldn’t even read an MPEG-4 file on my desktop that someone sent me last week. So exactly how are we going to be running AI and deep learning algorithms without enabling the entire force to be able to do this instead of just small enclaves being able to do it?” 

Costa later compared ION to “the foundation and all the plumbing that has to be done” while building a house. 

“That’s kind of the dirty work, and no one really wants to get involved in that,” she said. 

An operational planning team to drive ION came together last November, Costa said, and a request for proposals from industry will go out in late April. 

Enhanced UDL 

For years now, the Space Force has worked to build its Unified Data Library—a single integrated repository of space-related data. 

But while Costa praised the UDL as a “great initiative,” she also said that as currently designed, it is insufficient. 

“It was never designed to take on the at-scale data needed and being provided by commercial entities,” Costa said. “And so we have built a series of requirements for ‘Enhanced UDL’ and that request for proposals I believe is coming out early in 2024. So the focus of that particular RFP will be on allowing us to have discoverability, accessibility, and at-scale processing.” 

The Space Force has requested $56 million for the so-called Enhanced UDL in its 2024 budget, according to news reports.

“Spaceverse” 

Perhaps the most ambitious project Costa’s office is pursuing is the “Spaceverse,” a digital environment connecting Guardians from across commands and units and giving them more immersive training and operational experiences. 

Often compared to the “metaverse” virtual environment, Spaceverse is a needed asset for Guardians, Costa argued. 

“They sit there for 12-hour shifts, and they watch 24 open screens and text messages coming up,” Costa said. “And all of the integration of that information is happening where? It’s happening in their brains. Imagine the exhaustion of walking out of that place after 12 hours. We have got to do this a different way. And one of those ways is meeting our Guardians where they come to us from. Our Guardians have been training for their jobs for their entire lifetime, because they have been gamers.” 

Through the Spaceverse, Guardians will be able to interact with space in a way that they simply can’t right now, Costa said—and the service is working alongside other agencies like NASA to further develop the concept. 

But while Costa noted the allure of Spaceverse, she also sounded a note of caution. 

“We could spend billions of dollars on the concept of Spaceverse, and it wouldn’t run,” Costa said. “None of it would run, because we don’t have the infrastructure to run it on. And that’s why ION is so important.” 

F-15Es Deploy to Kadena as F-22s, F-16s Head Home

F-15Es Deploy to Kadena as F-22s, F-16s Head Home

April 10, 2023 | By Chris Gordon

F-15E Strike Eagles deployed to Kadena Air Base, Japan in April, joining F-35s to bolster the Air Force’s fighter fleet on the strategically important island in the western Pacific.

Meanwhile, the F-16CMs and F-22s that were previously forward deployed to Kadena have returned home, according to their respective home bases. The Air Force is rotating fighters through Kadena as it sends the aging F-15C/D fleet back to the United States after more than 40 years of permanent Eagle operations on the island. Save for the A-10, the Air Force has had every active type of fighter aircraft cycle through Kadena in the last five months: F-15C/Ds, F-15Es, F-16s, F-22s, and F-35s.

“Modernizing capabilities in the Indo-Pacific theater remains a top priority,” Kadena Air Base’s 18th Wing said in a news release. “This reception of advanced fighter aircraft at Kadena ensures the 18th Wing remains postured to deliver lethal and credible airpower to ensure the defense of U.S. allies and a free and open Indo-Pacific.”

On April 8, F-15Es from the 336th Fighter Squadron at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, N.C. touched down in Okinawa, according to the Air Force.

That same day, F-22s Raptors and Airmen from the 525th Fighter Squadron assigned to Kadena headed home to Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska. On April 10, F-16CMs from the 480th Fighter Wing returned to Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany.

Kadena’s two-squadron F-15C/D fleet, 48 strong before the drawdown began, is gradually being sent to the Boneyard or Air National Guard units. The Air Force has promised to put newer and more advanced fighters on Kadena to make up for the lack of a permanent presence.

In November, the Alaskan F-22s were the first new rotational unit deployed to the key southern Japanese island, which lies some 450 miles from Taiwan—the closest U.S. airbase to the self-governing island China claims as its own. F-16CMs later joined the Raptors in January 2023.

In March, F-35s from the 355th Fighter Squadron at Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska deployed to Kadena. After a roughly two-week overlap, the F-16s and F-22s have now departed. F-22s were originally supposed to replace Eagles as the Air Force’s main air-to-air fighter, but further production was cancelled in 2009. Kadena’s F-15s are the last Eagles in service in the Active-Duty force. F-15Es are multi-role fighters, unlike the original F-15.

“The F-15E is a proven combat platform that brings some unique capabilities into our already formidable mix of aircraft here at Kadena,” Col. Henry Schantz, 18th Operations Group commander, said in a news release.

The F-22s had an eventful deployment to the western Pacific, becoming the first fifth-generation fighters to deploy to Tinian and the Philippines. JBER said the aircraft flew 1,100 sorties during their four-plus month deployment. The F-16s stayed around three months and their deployment generated fewer headlines. The deployment of F-15Es and F-35s —along with the remaining F-15C/Ds—ensures Kadena will have a mix of fourth- and fifth-generation aircraft for now.

Boeing: Developmental Flight Testing for the T-7 Expected This Summer

Boeing: Developmental Flight Testing for the T-7 Expected This Summer

April 10, 2023 | By John A. Tirpak

Developmental flight testing of the T-7A Red Hawk advanced trainer will likely begin this summer, as ejection seat issues that delayed the program seem headed for resolution soon, according to Boeing and Air Force sources.

Problems with the ejection seats prompted USAF and Boeing to slow the program down in December, delaying production deliveries until the second half of 2024. The seats did not behave as expected in tests with pilot manikins representing the smallest class of potential pilots.

“We anticipate EMD (engineering, manufacturing and development) flight testing will begin this summer after receiving the military flight release,” a Boeing spokesperson told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “We continue to progress on T-7 escape system testing. Along with the U.S. Air Force, we have compiled a lot of data that shows we are moving in the right direction.”

The spokesperson also highlighted March 29 testimony from Air Force acquisition executive Andrew Hunter, who told the House Armed Services tactical aviation subcommittee that “we did have a substantial achievement in February of getting through performing a sled test dealing with some of the issues of the escape system that we were hung up on.”

Clearing those tests “would allow us to get to a military flight release and begin the developmental testing, so we are now moving forward from areas where the program had gotten stalled,” Hunter added.

Boeing has built five T-7As and continues to fly T1 and T2, which were built before program award, to gather data. But the other aircraft are awaiting clearance to fly, and the Air Force Director of Operational Test and Evaluation has barred any military pilots from flying the T-7A pending resolution of the ejection seat issue, preventing government flight test activities from being initiated.

Although built on “production” tooling, T1 and T2 are not fully representative of the eventual operational aircraft. The three other aircraft are.

The ejection seat issue arose at the same time as separate concerns about flight controls, and the combination prompted the program delay, but the flight control problem was resolved several months ago.

Sources told Air & Space Forces Magazine the Air Force either improperly evaluated data gathered during earlier ejection seat testing, incorrectly instrumented the manikins, or both. A reassessment of the data, combined with the testing Hunter referenced, now show that the seats are compliant, the sources said.

T-7A
A manikin ejects from a Boeing T-7A Red Hawk in June during ongoing qualification tests of the ejection system for the T-7A at the Holloman High Speed Test Track (HHSTT) at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico. U.S. Air Force photo

The Air Force removed T-7 procurement funds from its fiscal year 2024 budget request, thinking it would not be able to start production due to the ejection seat delay. The service could not immediately say if it has any plans to reprogram funds in 2024 to get production underway sooner.

According to its budget justification documents, the Air Force plans to build 94 T-7s over the next five fiscal years at a cost of $2.205 billion. Production begins with 14 aircraft in fiscal 2025, followed by 21, 23, and 36 in 2026-28, respectively.  Funding starts at $330.6 million in 2024 and ramps up to $834.2 million by 2028. To complete the planned buy of 351 aircraft is estimated to cost a total of $7.65 billion, including funds appropriated thus far, and assuming the planned aircraft are purchased.

The T-7A is the first USAF aircraft being designed to accommodate small women, and ensuring the ejection system works for their body types has been flagged as a potential problem for some time.

The Government Accountability Office, in its 2021 Weapon System Annual Assessment, said the T-7’s ejection seat was one of two “primary” risks to the trainer’s development, and in the following year’s report, pegged the ejection seat as a “top” program risk.

The next major programmatic milestone for the T-7A is planned for November, when Pentagon acquisition and sustainment chief William LaPlante will decide whether the aircraft can enter Low-Rate Initial Production, known as Milestone C. Aircraft delivered after that decision point would arrive in late 2024.

In December 2022, a Boeing spokesperson told Air & Space Forces Magazine that the company was working with USAF “to re-baseline the schedule” for flight test and production, which would take into account supply chain issues and labor shortages that have also afflicted the program.

Biden Administration Defends Afghanistan Withdrawal Decisions in New Report

Biden Administration Defends Afghanistan Withdrawal Decisions in New Report

April 6, 2023 | By Chris Gordon

On April 6, the White House issued its account of the decisions that preceded the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, as Congress is moving to investigate President Joe Biden and his administration’s decision-making during the crisis.

The 12-page summary largely blames former President Donald Trump’s administration for putting the U.S. in a weakened position with the Taliban. It also faults the Afghan government and its security forces for allowing the country to rapidly fall into the hands of the enemy in August 2021.

The summary, however, does not discuss the recommendations from top military commanders that the U.S. retain 2,500 troops in the country while trying to negotiate a better agreement. Nor does it note the assessment by the Pentagon’s Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) that the withdrawal of Western contractors hobbled the Afghan air force as it struggled to hold the line against Taliban fighters.

Separately, the Department of Defense sent its long-awaited classified Afghanistan After Action Review to Congress.

The classified after action review has long been completed but had not previously been shared outside the executive branch. National Security Council Strategic Communications Coordinator John Kirby told reporters neither the Pentagon document nor another classified review by the State Department that was also sent to the Congress would be made public.

The 21-year-old Afghan conflict is still the subject of a politically charged debate. A year and a half after the U.S. withdrawal, the Taliban remains in power, women and girls have been barred from schools, and the country is mired in poverty.

The White House summary argues the U.S. accomplished its main objective of defeating al-Qaida and the difficulties in Afghanistan accrued over multiple administrations.

“The president’s decision to end the war in Afghanistan was the right one,” Kirby said. “The United States had long ago accomplished its mission to remove from the battlefield the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11.”

Republicans, however, accused the Biden administration of mishandling the withdrawal and withholding information.

“President Biden made the decision to withdraw and even picked the exact date; he is responsible for the massive failures in planning and execution,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R.-Texas) said in a statement. “It is also unfortunate it took my subpoena threat to prompt the administration to finally provide the classified after-action reports from the Afghanistan withdrawal.”

The White House document was written by Biden’s National Security Council. Kirby said Biden provided his personal input. As vice president, Biden was skeptical of the military’s push to send reinforcements to Afghanistan. But the crux of the White House’s case is that the new administration inherited a difficult situation.

“President Biden’s choices for how to execute a withdrawal from Afghanistan were severely constrained by conditions created by his predecessor,” the White House document states.

The U.S. only had 2,500 troops in the country when Biden took office. The White House also notes the Trump administration had reached an agreement with the Taliban that pledged U.S. troops would leave the country by May 2021—an agreement made without consulting the Afghan government.

Subsequently, when Biden took office “the Taliban were in the strongest military position that they had been in since 2001, controlling or contesting nearly half of the country,” the White House document states.

The White House also argues the Afghan government was to blame for its defeat. “President Biden urged the Afghan government to take steps to harden the resolve of the Afghan forces,” the document states.

But U.S. military experts warned before the withdrawal that a rapid and total withdrawal of U.S. military and contractor support would undermine the Afghan military’s morale and its ability to use airpower against its foe.

“If we don’t provide them some support they certainly will collapse and that is not in our best interest,” Gen. Frank McKenzie, then-head of U.S. Central Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee in April 2021, four months before the withdrawal. “So I am concerned about the ability of the Afghan military to hold on after we leave, the ability of the Afghan Air Force to fly in particular after we remove the support for those aircraft.”

A scathing report from the SIGAR released last month cited the lack of contract maintenance support for the Afghan Air Force as a key blow that led to the Taliban gaining more control as the U.S. committed to heading for the exits.

While the White House did not find fault with its own decision-making, it noted the intelligence community failed to accurately forecast how events would unfold.

“As late as May 2021, the assessment was still that Kabul would probably not come under serious pressure until late 2021 after U.S. troops departed,” the document says.

“Clearly we didn’t get it right,” Kirby said. But “the purpose of it is not accountability,” he added, but “understanding.”

The Air Force Is Offering Enlisted Airmen a $10,000 Bonus to Join the Reserve

The Air Force Is Offering Enlisted Airmen a $10,000 Bonus to Join the Reserve

April 6, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

The Air Force is offering a $10,000 bonus for prior-service enlisted Airmen who join the Reserve and fill an open job in an effort to boost flagging recruiting numbers for the component. 

The bonus will be available to Airmen through Sept. 30, 2023, an Air Force Reserve Command spokesman told Air & Space Forces Magazine, with the potential of it becoming a standardized recruiting incentive.

The Active-Duty Air Force’s troubles meeting its recruiting goals have been well documented, as leaders and recruiters struggle with low unemployment rates, a competitive job market, and declining eligibility and propensity to serve. 

But things are even harder for the Guard and Reserve, which draw a majority of their force from Airmen leaving Active-Duty—the Reserve in particular aims for around 70 percent of its recruits to have prior service. Retention jumped during the COVID-19 pandemic and is still generally high. Fewer Airmen leaving Active-Duty means a smaller pool from which the Guard and Reserve can pull. 

That all added up to the Reserve missing its fiscal year 2022 recruiting goal of 8,400 new members by nearly 2,000—around 24 percent shy, according to an Air Force release. That goal went up to 9,300 accessions for 2023, and an Air Force Reserve Command spokesman said projections have the Reserve coming up 3,500 short, roughly 38 percent, though recent trends have been more positive.

“This bonus is one of many policies and incentive adjustments to help the Air Force Reserve ensure we can recruit the quality Airmen we need to safeguard our combat readiness,” Maj. Gen. Ed Thomas, Air Force Recruiting Service commander, said in a statement. “The move is also important to encourage our Airmen separating from active service to ‘stay blue’ and continue to use their skills and training for the nation as part of the Reserve.” 

In order to qualify for the bonus, Airmen must sign on for three years in the Reserve. That’s slightly shorter than required for the initial enlistment bonuses the Air Force offers for the Active-Duty component, which range from four to six years. 

The Air Force expanded its use of initial enlistment bonuses several times in 2022 as recruiting struggled. Officials added another financial incentive this year by reinstating the Enlisted College Loan Repayment Program, which helps enlisted recruits pay back student debt up to $65,000. 

Moore: ‘It’s Time to Move On’ from Block 20 F-22s, JATM Still on Schedule

Moore: ‘It’s Time to Move On’ from Block 20 F-22s, JATM Still on Schedule

April 6, 2023 | By John A. Tirpak

It would cost a minimum of $7 billion to upgrade and operate the 32 Block 20 F-22s the Air Force is seeking to retire, money the service thinks is better applied to the Next Generation Air Dominance program. Beyond that, though, it would also take a decade to do and peel limited engineering resources away from the F-35 program, Lt. Gen. Richard G. Moore Jr., vice chief of staff for plans and programs, said March 6.

Speaking at a panel hosted by the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, Moore also gave a rare status report on the highly classified AIM-260 Joint Advanced Tactical Missile, saying a surge in future funding for the AIM-120 AMRAAM—which JATM Is supposed to replace—is only an indication that the Air Force is investing more in munitions overall, not a warning sign that JATM is in trouble.

F-22

Just to keep flying the Block 20 F-22s as they are costs the Air Force about $485 million a year, Moore said, for a price of $3.5 billion through the end of the decade. To upgrade those aircraft to Block 35 standards, though—as some in Congress have urged—would cost an additional $3.5 billion.

Such a move would be the wrong investment to make, Moore argued, given that the entire F-22 fleet will be retired in favor of NGAD around 2030. It would cost even more to keep those aircraft on par with the rest of the fleet, but Moore did not provide a specific price for that expense.

On top of price, there is a larger, practical challenge; the effort needed to upgrade the 32 airplanes “would take a decade to get started,” Moore said. “There’s a lot of engineering work that that would take.”

The engineering work is especially troublesome because Lockheed Martin, the prime contractor for the F-22 and F-35, has limited capacity, Moore said.

“Lockheed is not fully staffed for engineers,” Moore said. “So if we were to stand up an effort like this, it would be reasonable to expect they would have to pull some engineering talent off of F-35—probably that means Block 4—in order to get this accomplished. I don’t think that is a [worthwhile] trade to us.”

Moore did not mention it, but Lockheed is also almost certainly one of the companies vying to build the NGAD, which is already well along in prototyping and risk-reduction. That effort would further tax the company’s engineering corps.  

Air Force budget documents show the service already plans to spend more than $9 billion upgrading its remaining F-22s through the end of the decade, equipping them with stealthy external fuel tanks to extend their range; new sensors in underwing pods; improvements to the jet’s stealthy attributes, plus communications, navigation and other upgrades.

The Air Force is also asking for more than $22 billion in its five-year defense plan for NGAD. Moore’s comments indicate the planned F-22 retirements account for about a third of NGAD funding in that time.

In March 29 testimony before the House Armed Services Committee’s tactical aviation panel, Moore said the Block 20s are not “competitive” with the latest Chinese J-20 stealth fighters. And while the aircraft could be used for training, Moore said they are so out of synch with the combat-coded Block 35s that pilots are receiving “negative” training from them, meaning they have to “unlearn” habits developed in the Block 20 before they can become proficient in the Block 35.

“They’re not combat representative,” Moore added during the Mitchell event. “They will never be a part of the combat force. They don’t have the most modern communications. They don’t shoot the most modern weapons. They don’t have the most modern electronic warfare capabilities. They will not become combat representative aircraft, and so we elected to maintain our position from [fiscal year] ‘23 that it’s time to move on from the Block 20.”

Moore also told lawmakers that if USAF is directed to keep flying the Block 20s as an unfunded mandate as it was last year, it will have to “work with” Congress to figure out how it could comply.

“In the event that we are again restricted from divesting those aircraft but … the money has not been appropriated to fly them, there’ll be a half a billion dollars of something that won’t get done,” Moore said. “Perhaps it’ll be NGAD. Perhaps it’ll be munitions. Perhaps we’ll stand down the F-22 fleet. But no matter what, there’ll be a half a billion dollars worth of something that doesn’t get done unless the restriction comes with an accompanying appropriation.”

The Air Force rarely discusses which budget offsets are used to pay to particular investments, but Moore made it clear that in this case, the savings from the F-22 retirements are meant to go to NGAD.

“In order to get into the early-to-mid ‘30s with a force that can win, we have to get to a sixth-gen fighter and that’s NGAD,” Moore said.

Munitions

While the Air Force is looking to divest the F-22, one weapon slated for a funding surge is the AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile funding, after appearing to wind down over several years. Moore was asked if that’s a sign the AIM-260 JATM, which is to succeed the AMRAAM, is having problems, or whether the Air Force simply seeks greater stockpiles.

“We don’t see a delay in JATM,” Moore said. “And we want to get to JATM as quickly as we possibly can.” He said the budget also includes “along with some AMRAAM investment, some facilitization money that will help us get to JATM faster. Once we can start procuring it, we’ll get to quantity as fast as we can,” he added.

Moore added that munitions production has been one of the top questions from members of Congress in this season of budget hearings, given the experience of Ukraine and the heavy drawdowns of U.S. weapons provided in aid to Kyiv.

Lawmakers want to know the Pentagon’s plans to respond to those pressures, and Moore said his reply is that the services are investing in “any munitions line that’s hot and is producing weapons right now.”

That’s not just AMRAAM, he said, “it’s any place where we can buy munitions. Because the reality is, when we tried to surge to go into Ukraine, the surge capacity wasn’t there. And industry is ramping up as quickly as they possibly can.”

To Deter Attacks in Space, US Needs Resilience—and an ‘Offensive Threat,’ Experts Say

To Deter Attacks in Space, US Needs Resilience—and an ‘Offensive Threat,’ Experts Say

April 6, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

Space Force officials have frequently touted the young service’s need for resilience, calling for more satellites in different orbits to deter an adversary’s attack. 

But in the complex calculus of deterrence, the Pentagon cannot only rely on defensive measures like proliferated architectures, experts and military leaders said April 5 at the Mitchell Institute’s Spacepower Security Forum. The U.S. also needs offensive options, they said.

“The whole idea of proliferation, of disaggregation, is the defensive part of deterrence equation,” said retired Gen. Kevin P. Chilton, the former commander of Air Force Space Command and current explorer chair of the Mitchell Institute’s Spacepower Advantage Center of Excellence. “And history teaches that that’s never enough—witness the Maginot Line. So I think it’s part of a deterrence strategy, but that deterrence strategy also needs to have the offensive threat to signal to the adversary, to deter them from attacking.” 

The Space Force’s offensive capabilities are mostly hidden behind a veil of classification—much to the chagrin of some national security observers. However, Maj. Gen. David N. Miller, director of operations, training, and force development for U.S. Space Command, said that the Pentagon is working to ensure it can respond as necessary. 

“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. “We will take, at the time of our choosing, whatever the response that we think appropriate. But it is not something that we’re sitting on our hands waiting for, and I want to assure Gen. Chilton that we’re getting after it. We are in a transition from a permissive force design to a warfighting force design.” 

The issue of a combat-credible force postured to hold adversaries’ assets at risk is one that Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman has highlighted in both his “Lines of Effort” and his “Competitive Endurance” theory. He noted it again during a keynote address. 

“A resilient force can deter attacks and, when necessary, withstand, fight through, and recover rapidly from them,” Saltzman said. “A ready force has the training, tactics, and operational concepts required to accomplish mission across the spectrum of operations—from competition to high-intensity conflict. A combat-credible force has the demonstrated ability to execute and sustain operations in the face of a determined adversary.” 

In particular, Saltzman has advocated for responsible counterspace operations—the U.S. cannot have a “Pyrrhic victory” in space in which it wreaks damage that endangers its own assets. That marks a dramatic change from years past, said retired 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. 

But tangible offensive capabilities are crucial to convincing adversaries an attack is not worth it, Chilton argued. 

“The adversary has got to doubt that they can effectively take out all the capabilities that our joint force relies to conduct operations,” Chilton said. “They have to doubt that they can achieve that, they have to doubt that they can blind our operational level from a tactical level and cut off their communications. And they must also believe that we have the capability and the will, and it would be best if we could demonstrate that, to hold immediately their space architecture at risk that they depend on to maintain control of their forces.” 

What exactly those capabilities are will likely remain unknown to the public for now. At the AFA Warfare Symposium last month, Saltzman told reporters he is “comfortable” with the Space Force’s current level of public disclosure.

“I think we have the ability to deter and show enough capability through resiliency to disincentivize the attacks,” Saltzman said. “The idea of reveal and conceal—that’s almost a way of saying, ‘If an adversary is not paying attention to you, are they deterred by you?’ You can talk yourself into a lot of circles about, ‘If I don’t know there’s a capability, will that deter me from something?’ That’s not how we need to talk about deterrence in space. I think I can set the conditions that make any attack into space impractical, non-mission-impacting, self-defeating to some degree.”