Air Force: B-2 Operators Not ‘Sitting On Their Hands’ as Safety Pause Continues

May 12, 2023 | By Chris Gordon

Air Force leaders in charge of the nation’s B-2 Spirit stealth bomber fleet say they have been working behind the scenes to keep the aircraft ready—even as a “safety pause” on flying approaches six months in length.

A quarter-century after its introduction, the B-2 program is still shrouded in secrecy. But officials shed light on the steps they are taking to keep the aircraft, aircrews, maintainers, and weapons personnel up to speed as the service works to fix the problem that has led to a suspension of flight operations.

“We are ensuring that we are getting after readiness and that when the fleet safety pause is over, that we’re able to bring this bird back in the air in a manner commensurate with what the American public would expect from us,” Col. Daniel Diehl, 509th Bomb Wing commander at Whiteman Air Force Base, Mo., told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

The pause began in December on the order of Gen. Thomas A. Bussiere, the commander of Air Force Global Strike Command, after a B-2 was damaged after an emergency landing at Whiteman—the only base to host combat B-2s, which are assigned to the 509th Bomb Wing and its Air National Guard associate, the 131st Bomb Wing.

That incident, which temporarily shut down the lone runway at the base, was the second B-2 mishap in a little over a year.

In September 2021, a B-2 at Whiteman had a runway excursion after a part in its landing gear failed. The aircraft was sent for repairs to Northrop Grumman’s Plant 42 in Palmdale, Calif., where it was manufactured. Air Force officials have not publicly disclosed what caused the most recent incident or the extent of the damage to the B-2.

The pause in flight operations left one B-2 parked at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, which shares runways with Daniel K. Inouye International Airport in Honolulu. An AFGSC spokesman said the remaining 19 B-2s are currently at Whiteman, one of which is a test aircraft normally based at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.

Leaders say the aircraft are still flyable should the bomber be called upon to meet an urgent need. And the B-2’s main mission is an existential one: nuclear deterrence. But Bussiere’s goal is to find out what caused the incident with one of the military’s priciest platforms and ensure it does not happen again. Bussiere, a B-2 pilot and a former 509th Bomb Wing commander, took over AFGSC just days before the December mishap.

In the meantime, the Air Force is getting after readiness while aircrews are working to maintain their proficiency.

With aircraft not flying, the ground crew has had more time to spend with the airframe and perform checks, including of their low-observable stealth coating. Some B-2s have already had parts replaced as a result of the checks that are not directly related to the reasons for the safety pause.

“All military aircraft have a list of discrepancies—maintenance items that we typically don’t have the capacity to take care of,” said Col. Bruce T. Guest, commander of the 509th Maintenance Group. ”The B-2 is no exception, and so we’ve been able to deliberately address and whittle down our list of discrepancies. It’s no small feat that improves things like reliability.”

B-2 aircrews, for their part, have been flying in T-38 trainers and spending more time in simulators. Even before the pause, pilots kept up their flying chops in T-38 trainers and used simulators. But the number of repetitions on both have increased.

“We’re fortunate here at Whiteman to have very realistic simulators, which allow us to replicate the flight environment very well,” said Col. Geoffrey M. Steeves, commander of the 509th Operations Group.

“We’ve got a synthetic environment that we’re able to train in, and that allows us to actually put an air refueling tanker in front of a B-2 and go do our air refueling in a very realistic setting,” Steeves added. “These simulators are all wired together across the country, so it’s not uncommon for us to be able to be working with a synthetic AWACS, for example, or synthetic fighters that are elsewhere.”

Simulated B-2 missions have extended to some of the Air Force’s most important exercises such as Red Flag, used for combat training, and the U.S. Strategic Command’s annual Global Thunder nuclear readiness exercise.

“Even though we didn’t see airplanes flying at the end of that you normally would see, we still participated fully in that exercise—everything every other base was accomplishing,” Diehl said of Global Thunder. He added that Whiteman was involved in other exercises.

Since the first B-2 was unveiled in 1988, 21 aircraft have been produced. One was destroyed in a crash at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam in 2008, and the service has gone to great lengths to repair previously damaged B-2s. It is unclear what will happen to the B-2 damaged in December.

With only 20 B-2s in the fleet and a smaller number available to fly at a given time, the operational tempo of the fleet was demanding. Now officials say they have more time to attend to maintenance and readiness issues. But they still would like to get back in the air.

“Readiness for us is really twofold: the ability of the pilots to conduct the mission and the ability of the airplane to conduct the mission,” Diehl said. “It’s not that the pilots have been sitting on their hands.”

Eventually, the B-2 fleet will return to skies, officials said—conducting all of its missions from flyovers of the Rose Bowl to nuclear deterrence. But Diehl acknowledged the pause, even if it will ultimately lead to a safer fleet, was not a risk-free endeavor.

“There’s a subjective piece,” Diehl said. “I would argue we are just as ready, if not more ready than normal, to conduct the nation’s business. But there’s still risk associated with returning to fly. I think you would be surprised if I said there was no risk with putting pilots back in an airplane that they haven’t flown for five months.”

Report: Hypersonics Supply Chain Not Ready for Large-Scale Production

May 11, 2023 | By John A. Tirpak

The supply chain to build hypersonic weapons in large numbers—from the raw metals all the way to the factories—is not yet in place, mainly because the Pentagon’s on-again, off-again signals to industry about whether it’s serious about acquiring such missiles, according to experts and a new paper from the National Defense Industrial Association’s Emerging Technologies Institute.

“We assess that the current hypersonics supply chains—including the manufacturing base, supply of critical materials, testing infrastructure, and workforce—are incapable of supporting deployment of hypersonic weapons at scale,” said Rebecca Wostenberg, a research fellow at NDIA. She led the effort to produce the new report.

Working groups with representatives from industry, government and academia consistently said there has been no “consistent demand signal from the US government for hypersonics,” Wostenberg said.

As a result, there’s a very small hypersonics manufacturing capability, with limited suppliers and limited production capability.

“Companies need to know they will receive a return on investment,” Wostenberg said. “The business case must exist for companies to invest in the necessary infrastructure and personnel.”

Charles Ormsby, the Air Force Research Laboratory’s chief of manufacturing and industrial technologies division, said in an NDIA panel discussion that the manufacturing base for hypersonics is scarcely more than a number of PhDs “doing it all by hand.”

Mark Lewis, former director of defense research and engineering and now head of Purdue University’s Applied Research Institute, said it’s critical the Pentagon not produce hypersonic systems “in onesies and twoesies” but in large numbers and at low cost, which will come from high-rate production.

Although the Pentagon has spent billions of dollars on hypersonics in recent years, the high cost of such weapons has not yet led to any high-rate production contracts. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall has said that while important, hypersonic weapons are better suited to China’s needs than those of the Air Force, and he has warned about trying to match China’s capability.

Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.), in a keynote speech at the NDIA event, said hypersonics “is a technology that was born in America, but is being perfected by China and Russia. This is all because we made a bad decision 20 years ago to abandon what we had first started. Now we are witnessing the consequences from the sidelines.”

Lamborn, who heads the hypersonics caucus, said when work resumes on the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, it will reflect Congress’ intent to promote hypersonics capabilities, with funding to accelerate development and testing of hypersonic systems.

He also said Congress will push the Pentagon to not completely give up on programs like the AGM-183 Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon, which the Air Force has said it is closing out.

“There’s discussion now over ARRW, specifically, which I would like to see continue in some form so that we can leverage the technology investments we have made,” Lamborn said, with other panelists agreeing. “Even if this program moves in another direction, we can harvest the gains.”

China dominates the mining and processing of many rare earth elements needed for hypersonic technologies, while necessary gases like neon are primarily supplied by Ukraine—so there is a “plethora of vulnerabilities” in the supply chain, Wostenberg noted.

Other elements key to hypersonics include carbon-carbon, a material used for heat shields, thermal protection, rocket components, and leading edges. But there are only three suppliers for this material in the U.S., Wostenberg said. Meanwhile, the number of suppliers for ammonium perchlorate, used in solid rocket propellant, is just two after Northrop Grumman recently established a production line.

Competition usually spurs innovation and reduces prices, but there’s very little of it in the hypersonics supply chain, Wostenberg noted.

The NDIA report offered several recommendations to address the issue:

First, Congress and DOD need to work together “reinforce” the national defense stockpile of strategic minerals, which have dwindled since the end of the Cold War, thus increasing U.S. dependence on China.

Second, the Pentagon needs to “send a clear demand signal” to private industry to “increase investment in additional carbon fiber suppliers.”

Finally, the U.S. government should “set the regulatory environment to permit and incentivize more domestic rare earth elements mining and processing to lessen our reliance on China.”

The study detailed inadequacy in the manufacturing base and workforce as well. There are only two suppliers of solid rocket motors used in missile propulsion, and there are shortages in certain kinds of high-temperature bolts, thermal blankets, and other items. There’s no commercial market for these materials, so the “industrial base remains small and the market fragile due to inconsistent demand.”

The lack of demand has also meant that lead times have grown “exponentially” for these and other hypersonic elements.

The testing infrastructure is also a shadow of what it needs to be to rapidly advance hypersonic technologies and warrants a whole study of its own, Wostenberg said. Hypersonics programs have to compete for test range time against other high-priority programs like missile defense and nuclear deterrence, but the ranges are few, their technology is old, and lack modern data acquisition tools. Government and industry must work together to fund improvements, Wosternberg said.

Meanwhile, all the problems the aerospace industry has with finding and retaining workers goes double for hypersonics, Wostenberg said. The industry is seeing high turnover, and “the current hypersonics-specific talent is also unbalanced and misaligned to current needs.” Industry, government, and academia need to work together to address these shortages, she said.

But overall, “the most important immediate step that the Department of Defense can take to strengthen hypersonics supply chains is to send a consistent demand signal to industry by treating certain hypersonic programs as traditional programs of record, and utilizing multi-year contracts to send an extended demand signal,” Wostenberg said.

In particular, the office of the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering “should continue to pursue an air-breathing hypersonic vehicle system as a key element of its development plan,” she said.

The report also urges the Pentagon and industry to tighten up its vulnerabilities to cyber attack, counterintelligence, and intellectual property theft. There have been cyber attacks on mining operations and lower levels of the supply chain in recent years, against companies that lack the wherewithal to defend against them.

“Recent reports also indicate that China has recruited several former scientist from the Los Alamos National Lab to work on their hypersonics programs,” Wostenberg said. The FBI should step in and assess all levels of security pertaining to hypersonics, but panel participants said it must be done thoughtfully, so as not to classify too much basic research and inhibit discussions about it. Panelists also insisted that the U.S. must freely share and collaborate with partner countries like Australia and Norway, who have leading capabilities in hypersonics.

Top Pentagon Leaders: Threat of Default Risks ‘Emboldening’ China

May 11, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

With the clock ticking on negotiations over the U.S. debt ceiling, Pentagon and Air Force leaders warned that a default on the national debt would “embolden” China, devastate the Pentagon budget, and put troops’ pay at risk.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has said lawmakers have until June 1 to raise the maximum the Treasury is allowed to borrow or it will begin to default on some of its debt obligations.

Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III laid out the consequences as he sees them to the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee on May 11: “We are known for being very dependable, paying our bills on time, and a source of stability globally,” Austin said. “What it would mean, realistically, for us is that we won’t be in some cases able to pay our troops with any degree of predictability and that predictability is really, really important for us. This would have a real impact on the pockets of our troops and our civilians.”

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said the implications of default would play out over a long period of time. Cautioning that he is not an economist, he said this much is clear: “It’s more expensive for you to get money. Your creditors aren’t as willing to lend money.”

Like the global financial crisis in 2008, he said, which sent shudders through international markets and stock prices plunging, a debt default would similarly be a shock to the financial system. But as a pragmatist, Kendall noted the size of the debt and its future cost.

“Going forward, one of the biggest parts of our federal budget is the interest on the debt,” Kendall said. “If those interest rates go up, which is what happens to you when you default—if you can borrow money at all—then that expense becomes much greater. And the interest on the debt is already roughly at the level of the defense budget.”

According to February projections by the Congressional Budget Office, the U.S. government will spend some $640 billion on interest payments in fiscal 2023 and $739 billion in 2024. With fiscal 2023 defense appropriations at $816 billion, the interest burden is growing faster and will surpass defense spending within just a few years. The Pentagon’s budget request for 2024 is $842 billion.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley said a default would play into the hands of China, America’s “pacing challenge,” as the National Defense Strategy calls it, giving the U.S. rival increased confidence in its ability to challenge American leadership and policies.

“China, right now, describes us in their open speeches, etc., as a declining power,” Milley said. “Defaulting on the debt will only reinforce that thought and embolden China, and increase risk to the United States.”

Milley’s point was echoed by Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“[A debt default] would, I think, give China a chance to exploit this dramatically,” Reed said.

Austin made similar points in 2021, just a few weeks before the last debt ceiling deadline. “It would also seriously harm our service members and their families because, as Secretary, I would have no authority or ability to ensure that our service members, civilians, or contractors would be paid in full or on time,” he said.

Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), did offer some optimism that lawmakers will be able to avoid a default as they have done in the past.

“All bets are off if we don’t reach a bipartisan agreement on the debt soon,” Tester said. “We have got to deal with the debt in a responsible and in a common sense way. I am hopeful that bipartisan talks can get going in earnest and the cooler heads will prevail before we come to a default.”

Austin, Kendall, and Milley have also spoken out about the risk of failing to pass the Pentagon’s budget on time and the harm delays continue to have on national security. Milley said delay would reduce flying hours and threaten training, such as Air Force Red Flag exercises.

“And then for future readiness, future modernization, … you’d also probably see some delays in some of the nuclear recapitalization,” Milley said. “The Columbia[-class submarine] could be at risk a little bit, I think. You could see that B-21 that was just rolled out in California not too long ago, things like that would be stretched out long term.”

A New Robot Blacksmith May Help the Air Force Churn Out Aircraft Spare Parts

May 11, 2023 | By David Roza

Blacksmiths have produced weapons and armor for thousands of years, and the Air Force still relies on them today to shape metal into aircraft parts. But emerging technology could introduce a new form of blacksmithing where artificial intelligence makes the fine-tuned decisions involved in bending metal into specific shapes that can help military aircraft stay ready for action.

A robot prototype, nicknamed AI-FORGE, arrived at the Warner Robins Air Logistics Complex (WR-ALC) at Robins Air Force Base, Ga., in late January and successfully conducted its first field test, according to a recent Air Force press release.

Developed at The Ohio State University in partnership with the Air Force Research Laboratory, the Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing (ARM) Institute, CapSen Robotics, and Yaskawa Motoman, AI-FORGE was tasked with forging relatively simple parts for six hours in conditions like those seen at WR-ALC and other depots.

“We picked a relatively simple part as the demonstration unit because, first, we had to see if it is even possible to do this type of work in a depot environment, and we determined that it absolutely is,” Shane Groves, the lead automation engineer at WR-ALC, said in the Air Force press release. “That’s why I think this was one of the most successful ARM demonstrations we have ever seen here at WR-ALC because we established that yes, the system was able to operate autonomously and complete the task in a very taxing environment.”

artificial intelligence — A multidisciplinary development team, comprised of Air Force Research Laboratory, or AFRL, depot, industry and academia representatives, observes the successful first demonstration of an autonomous robotic incremental metal forming prototype, nicknamed AI-FORGE, at Warner-Robins Air Logistics Complex, Georgia, in late January 2023. Air Force photo by Gail Forbes.

Moving forward, Air Force officials and experts say the sky may be the limit for what the system could manufacture.

“In the near future, this system will allow us to acquire the specific auxiliary components and tools that are required to successfully support DAF missions,” Dr. Sean Donegan, digital manufacturing research team lead for AFRL’s Materials and Manufacturing Directorate, said in a statement. “But in the far term, we want to be able to make almost anything.”

For the Air Force, that could mean reproducing even the most complicated aircraft parts.

“We want to make shapes but also control how we get there, in order to produce repeatable results,” Dr. Michael Groeber, associate professor of the Integrated Systems Engineering and Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering departments at Ohio State, said. “Then we can start to get into some really clever designs that will ensure performance [in aircraft or other systems].”

Having a robot capable of producing complex aircraft parts could be crucial for the Air Force, which frequently struggles to find replacement parts for its aging airframes, the production lines for some of which have been closed for years. In fact, maintainers often have to cannibalize replacement parts from other aircraft to cut down on the wait time to get those platforms back up and running.

Combat metals Airmen have a reputation for manufacturing such parts both at home and in deployed environments, but with a labor shortage in trade skills such as metal fabrication, robot blacksmiths may be able to help close the gap. Groves told Bloomberg in February that parts made with robot blacksmiths from the company Machina are shaped better, stronger, and faster than those made by humans.

“The main problem we have right now is that companies have plenty of work, and when I ask them for one or two parts, they don’t see the return in tooling everything up for a small order,” he told Bloomberg. “We’re getting quotes for four-year delivery times to get some of the right parts.”

Getting the AI to the point where it can match the work of Airmen is no small feat, though.

“When a human blacksmith forges a piece of metal into a specific shape, they have to make all kinds of decisions on the fly,” Donegan said in a release.

Some of those decisions include how to orient the component, where to apply force, how much heat to use, and when to put it back into the furnace.

“A skilled artisan blacksmith can make decisions like these without even thinking about them, and our research team is especially interested in how to replicate that kind of decision-making process [with artificial intelligence],” he explained.

89 ‘Critical’ Department of Air Force General Promotions Held Up in Senate

May 11, 2023 | By Chris Gordon

The Department of the Air Force makes up a significant portion of senior military promotions currently on hold in the Senate due to a blockade by Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), according to data shared with Air & Space Forces Magazine.

Democratic lawmakers said there are 196 pending nominations as of May 10. The Department of Air Force makes up 89 of the pending general officer nominations, the department said. Tuberville is protesting the Pentagon’s new reproductive health policies—which provide paid leave and travel expenses for service members who must travel to receive an abortion—by stopping general and flag officer promotions, which are subject to Senate confirmation.

A DAF spokesperson said the hold has wide-ranging impacts.

“These are critical positions overseeing the management of the Nation’s nuclear triad operations and deterrence; joint coalition air campaigns; reinforcement plans for defense of critical areas of responsibility; research, development, and modernization efforts; cyberspace operations; and sensitive elements of our Nation’s intelligence enterprise,” the spokesperson said.

The hold also extends to some of the Air Force’s top jobs.

“As of May 10, the U.S. Air Force has nine three- and four-star total force nominations pending confirmation,” the spokesperson said. “Of the nine positions, five are Major Command commanders and four are headquarters directors. These positions are critical to the pursuit of global, regional, and functional objectives, providing offensive, defensive and support elements for the Indo-Pacific, European, Southwest Asia, and Homeland theaters.”

Roles awaiting confirmation include the commanders of Air Combat Command and Pacific Air Forces, as well as new heads of Air Force Futures and director of staff at Headquarters Air Force.

In a recent letter sent to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the chair of the Senate Armed Services subcommittee on personnel, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III warned that Tuberville’s hold “harms America’s national security and hinders the Pentagon’s normal operations.”

Senior leaders, including Austin and Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, have also noted the move puts many officers’ families, as well as those who are set to retire or move to different roles, in an uncertain position.

“The impacts extend beyond the nominees themselves to their families and the incumbents being replaced by those nominated,” the DAF spokesperson said.

The Senate normally confirms thousands of military nominations a year, almost all through unanimous consent. While it is not uncommon to have some political nominations held up, Austin said Tuberville’s move was “unprecedented in its scale and scope.” The DOD projects it will have 650 general officer and flag officer nominations by the end of the year—which cannot go ahead if Tuberville does not shift his position. Tuberville wants the upper chamber to have to vote on military nominations one at a time, but that would suck up the Senate’s limited floor time, and Senate Democrats note the officers are uncontroversial uniformed nominees who do not control the DOD’s civilian policies. Tuberville’s move is also drawing criticism from the top Republican in the Senate, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

“I don’t support putting a hold on military nominations,” McConnell told reporters May 10. “I don’t support that. As to why, you need to ask Sen. Tuberville.”

‘Kill Chain’ Fails Without More 5th, 6th-Gen Platforms, Experts Warn

May 10, 2023 | By John A. Tirpak

The Air Force—along with the entire Pentagon—must make all the links of its “kill chain” more robust and resilient. But it all hinges on producing modern air platforms and weapons—specifically, fifth- and sixth-generation fighters and bombers—in sufficient numbers, according to retired Lt. Gen. Joseph Guastella, the former deputy chief of staff for operations.

Speaking on a Mitchell Institute webinar, Guastella said the “number one thing is, we need the fifth-gen fighters, in the sufficient volume, to get after the threat.”

Right now, the Air Force is “flying around with a huge portion of our force that is fourth-gen fighters,” which are “not survivable in the high-end fight,” said Guastella, who retired in 2022 and is now a Mitchell Institute senior fellow. And those fourth-gen fighters are largely equipped with third-generation munitions, he noted.

Brig. Gen. Richard Goodman, commander of the 57th Wing at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev., agreed with Guastella’s assessment, saying he sees the service as having “a foot … in two places right now” between its large contingent of fourth-generation aircraft and efforts to develop and field fifth- and sixth-gen capabilities. Investing in larger numbers of those more advanced platforms would “close that capability gap,” he said.

Goodman, whose wing forms a key part of the Air Force Warfare Center, also said training will be a “cross-cutting enabler” for winning the kill chain competition. He urged more investment in training ranges and argued that it should all be connected to the Joint Synthetic Environment, the Pentagon’s modeling and simulation system that weighs the relative values of different systems, in varying quantities, against plausible threats.

The fifth- and sixth-generation platforms Guastella and Goodman referenced—namely the F-35 fighter and B-21 bomber, respectively—are the only ones that can “close the kill chain” on their own, given their extensive and exquisite combination of stealth, sensor fusion, and networking capabilities, Mitchell Institute senior resident fellow Heather Penney said, summarizing a recent report she authored.

The ”kill chain” is the sequence of events that must take place in order to identify and strike a target in a timely fashion.

Platforms like the F-35 and B-21 act as pathfinders for the rest of the force, and in the report, Penney recommends building them at scale. She also urges the development of resilient networks, new space-based sensing and communications systems, and a new class of weaponry.

Building those platforms—and the planned Next Generation Air Dominance fighter—“has to be the top priority in winning the kill chain competition,” Guastella said, “because those aircraft will ensure that the delivery platform is survivable, that a huge part of the sensor/shooter [network] is right there and available. And they’re coming off the line now, but they’ve got to come off in sufficient quantities,” he said.

Similarly, Penney said it is crucial the U.S. doesn’t repeat the “fatal” mistake it made with the B-2 and the F-22—both aircraft were leap-ahead capabilities, but after a huge investment in their development, they were only built in small quantities, especially insufficient given the tens of thousands of possible targets in a Pacific air campaign, she said.

Instead, Penney urged the Air Force to maximize production of the F-35 and B-21, especially as they are coming off hot manufacturing lines now.

“We can’t delay what we need to do,” she said, saying expanded production is an essential step to “mitigate risk in the near-to-mid-term,” given the possibility of conflict with China within the next decade.

In her report, Penney notes that China will attempt to disrupt the kill chain at various stages of the process, increasing the need to make it more resilient and acquire systems that can complete the whole chain on their own.

Winning the kill chain competition means “success or failure for our nation,” Guastella said.

“The ratio between fixed targets—that we classically would hit with a strategic bombing campaign—and mobile … moving or dynamic targets, or emerging targets, is shifting every day in the direction of dynamic targets,” Guastella said.

Every adversary has studied the Air Force way of war and has learned that USAF can hit any fixed target, no matter how well defended, he continued.

“If you want to stay alive … just make it a mobile target. And it’ll be a lot harder for us and more survivable and more effective for the adversary,” Guastella said.

Austin: Senator’s Hold on General Promotions ‘Harms America’s National Security’

May 10, 2023 | By Chris Gordon

Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III issued a lengthy warning over the ongoing hold on senior military promotions led by a Republican senator, warning that the effort is “unprecedented in its scale and scope” and poses a “clear risk” to the U.S. military’s ability to function properly.

“This indefinite hold harms America’s national security and hinders the Pentagon’s normal operations,” Austin wrote in a four-page letter dated May 5 in response to a request from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), chair of the Senate Armed Services subcommittee on personnel. “The longer that this hold persists, the greater the risk the U.S. military runs in every theater, every domain, and every service.”

For months now, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), has spearheaded an effort to block general and flag officer promotions to protest the Pentagon’s new reproductive health policies, which provide paid leave and travel expenses for service members who must travel to receive an abortion. There are currently 196 military nominations pending in the Senate, Democratic lawmakers said.

The hold has created a looming void at the top of U.S. uniformed leadership, and is already having negative effects across the DOD, Austin said. The Defense Secretary added the move could cause “acute, self-inflicted problems.”

According to Austin, Tuberville’s hold will affect 64 three- and four-star positions due to rotate in the next 120 days, including the top officers of the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps, as well as the heads of U.S. Northern Command and U.S. Cyber Command, the latter of whom also serves as the director of the National Security Agency.

“Without these leaders in place, the U.S. military will incur an unnecessary and unprecedented degree of risk at a moment when our adversaries may seek to test our resolve,” Austin wrote.

The Senate normally confirms thousands of military nominations a year, almost all through uncontroversial, unanimous consent. But Tuberville, who has garnered support for his effort from some other Republican lawmakers, wants the upper chamber to have to vote on military nominations one at a time. Senate floor time is scarce, meaning the Senate would be put off of other work to conduct the time-consuming votes. Tuberville claims the DOD’s new abortion leave policy violates the Hyde Amendment, which blocks federal funds from being used for most abortions. The Department of Justice has said the DOD’s new policies are lawful.

“This blockade is recklessly harming U.S. military readiness and derailing the apolitical, merit-based promotions of some of our nation’s best and brightest officers for purely partisan reasons,” Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement.

Austin warned the list of affected officers will significantly swell in the next nine months, with 80 three- and four-star rotations projected across the DOD, including the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force.

News reports indicate President Joe Biden plans to select Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. to replace Army Gen. Mark A. Milley as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, a move subject to Senate confirmation. That would also create a vacancy for the Air Force’s top job.

Austin said the impact extends beyond the very top officers, with a cascading effect through the U.S. military.

“In total, between now and the end of the year, the Department projects that approximately 650 general and flag officers will require Senate confirmation,” Austin wrote. There are large number of one- and two-star promotions on hold for jobs that may not be high-profile but help ensure the military functions, he said.

“The department relies on these experienced leaders to execute tactical actions every day and extend our strategic advantages for the long term …. their importance cannot be overstated,” wrote Austin, who added that some leaders might have to take on the responsibilities of two positions at once because other leaders’ confirmations are stalled or have “less experienced decision-makers in charge.”

Austin, a retired Army general, also noted some officers’ personal and family lives are in limbo, a concern shared by Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. Even if the promotions eventually go through, Kendall told lawmakers earlier this month, family members will have still faced costs.

“They have to plan to get their children into schools, where they’re going to be established, and in their new homes, so there’s a very personal toll this takes as well,” Kendall said. “One of the things that motivates our people in terms of retention or not, is how they feel that their families are being treated. …. We ask our military families to move multiple times during their career. It’s something that they accept, but when their planning for that is disrupted, it has a very negative impact and it definitely impacts on retention as well.”

Kendall, who also served in the military, argued that even if competent officers fill soon-to-be vacant positions in the interim, their ability to lead would be hampered.

“Generally people, if they’re going to retire, they’re still going to retire,” Kendall said. “So a junior person will step up and be acting for a period of time. Those people are limited in what they can do. They generally are not going to make any major initiatives or make any major changes because they know they’re not going to be there very long. They expect that they’ll be replaced very shortly. So they’ll keep the trains running, but they’re not going to move the organization forward as much as they might be otherwise.”

NORAD Boss: Over the Horizon Radar ‘Not the End-All, Be-All’ For Defending Homeland

May 10, 2023 | By David Roza

The head of North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) told lawmakers that over-the-horizon radar (OTHR) will help his troops detect threats from farther away, but they also need other surveillance systems—and to be able to communicate quickly in order to neutralize those threats.

OTHR “is not the end-all, be-all,” Air Force Gen. Glen D. VanHerck, who also leads U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM), told the Senate Armed Services’ subcommittee on strategic forces on May 9. “There has to be domain awareness between the over-the-horizon radars that link the data from there to an end-game effector. … We need to look more broadly at the rest of the infrastructures, the radar as well, and ensure the data from those systems is incorporated in an integrated air and missile defense system that can lead to effectors.”

Those effectors may take the form of kinetic weapons such as missiles or non-kinetic effects such as electronic warfare, VanHerck said. The NORTHCOM boss noted that the Department of the Air Force has invested several billion dollars in the information technology networks that allow his troops to share information internally and with the rest of the military and foreign allies, but the cyber aspect of the network still troubles him.

“Candidly, my most concerning domain awareness problem is … the limited knowledge of cyber vulnerabilities for the critical infrastructure that we rely on to project power from our homeland, to defend our homeland, to do command and control within our homeland,” VanHerck said. “So I continue to advocate for that to the department.”

NORAD found itself in the spotlight earlier this year after the revelation that Chinese surveillance balloons and other unidentified objects slipped into U.S. airspace undetected by the Pentagon. VanHerck has used the opportunity to advocate for over-the-horizon radars; integrating space-based and undersea surveillance to form a more comprehensive defense picture; and accelerating the development process to put those capabilities in the field more quickly.

“I have concerns, as I have articulated for three years, about my ability to provide threat warning and attack assessment with the threats to our homeland,” VanHerck said during a hearing with the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 23. “That increases the risk of escalation and strategic deterrence failure. Those are significant challenges for me.”

OTHR is a “proven, affordable technology“ that will “significantly improve” NORTHCOM and NORAD’s ability to detect threats all the way to outer space, VanHerck said in written testimony, but it is only one piece of the surveillance puzzle.

Another piece is the North Warning System, a chain of radar stations that monitors northern aerospace approaches into Canada and the U.S. The problem is that NWS was built between 1986 and 1992, and its radar capabilities may not be able to keep pace with modern cruise missiles and hypersonic weapons, according to the Canadian government. VanHerck said the Air Force has to decide how to solve that problem.

“The department hasn’t made a decision on modernization of the North Warning System or further replacement of the radars associated with the North Warning System, but that has to be a discussion,” he said. “Like I said, over-the-horizon radar is not the be-all, end-all.”

The discussions on over-the-horizon radar, information networks, and the North Warning System are all part of a fundamental reevaluation of homeland defense that VanHerck said is currently underway. The general is also developing what he calls Homeland Defense Design 2035, which may present a paradigm shift for the mission. The design proposes “a new way of defending the homeland that’s vastly different from the way we do it today with fighters, tankers, AWACs, those kinds of things,” VanHerck said.

Though VanHerck did not provide specifics on what that vision may entail, he did mention later in his remarks that autonomous or unmanned platforms could generate domain awareness or defense in the electromagnetic spectrum both on the sea and in the sky. Those platforms would then need a fast information network to detect and communicate about fast-moving threats such as hypersonic missiles.

In past remarks, VanHerck said the data generated by such platforms would need to be fused into “a globally integrated picture that allows us to see threats globally before they become threats here in the homeland.”

Even more than over-the-horizon radar, cybersecurity, or hypersonic missiles, VanHerck said he was most dismayed by the pace at which the U.S. develops and deploys systems to defend against new technologies being produced by adversaries.

“I believe that the greatest strategic risk for the United States stems from our own inability to adapt at a pace required by the changing strategic environment,” he wrote. “In an era of incredible innovation and technological achievement, inflexible, outdated processes are a greater impediment to success than many of our competitors’ capability advancements.”

Space Force Developing New Training Capabilities for Guardians

May 10, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

Whether it’s adding on-orbit capabilities or new forms of simulation, the Space Force wants to get its training beyond the classrooms and PowerPoint slides, its chief trainer said May 10.

How the Space Force goes about preparing Guardians has changed significantly even within the past few years, said Maj. Gen. Shawn N. Bratton, head of Space Training and Readiness Command (STARCOM). His plan to upgrade USSF’s test and training infrastructure closely mirrors priorities laid out by Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman, who has emphasized that need since before he became CSO.

“We’re shifting back a little bit more to live training,” Bratton said during an appearance with AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. “As I came up in the classroom, we had some simulation capability, but there was really a lot of education. It wasn’t as much as what today I would call training activities. We learned about the space domain, we learned how to operate, but most of it was classroom discussion, seminar style, PowerPoint slides, all the standard things.”

Not anymore. “Now the discussion is, ‘Why aren’t we flying a spacecraft in training? Why aren’t we getting some sort of reps and sets, some sorties in, in the training environment?’” Bratton said. “And that alleviates some of the training burden that we placed on the operational units. If we can move that back into the training pipeline, I think there’ll be value added.”

For example, he cited the U.S. Air Force Academy’s FalconSat program, in which Cadets build, launch, and operate small satellites in orbit. Bratton said that experience teaches “all these fundamental concepts that apply regardless of what spacecraft you end up flying in your career.”

“We think we can bring that back into training through simulation, but also with some live activity,” he added.

Live Training

The Space Force’s emphasis on live activity is not without complications—unlike the other military services, it cannot establish a defined area of space solely for testing and training.

“There’s no sovereignty in space, and so we had to think about that a little bit different on how do we do these activities that we need to do to build the credibility of the force, to increase readiness, but also be safe and professional in our operations in the space domain,” Bratton said.

USSF’s overarching answer has been the National Space Test and Training Complex (NSTTC), a collection of sensors and assets on the ground and in orbit. Bratton credited Brig. Gen. Todd R. Moore, his deputy, for this description: “It’s the gym where we go to work out the force,” Bratton said. “We’re building that right now. And there are already pieces that exist. We’ve done some live activities, both on orbit as well as in the electromagnetic spectrum.”

The Space Force has executed two “Black Skies” exercises, the most recent one completed in March. Black Skies are part of a series of exercises designed to mimic the Air Force’s “Flag” exercises. The next iteration, “Red Skies,” focusing on orbital warfare, will take place late this summer, Bratton said.

To exercise command and control, the Space Force conducted “Polaris Hammer” in February, which focused in particular on the new Space Forces Indo-Pacific command.

STARCOM. meanwhile, continues to build out NSTTC, Bratton said, including “on-orbit capabilities, the ground sensors, and then the infrastructure that ties it all together for command and control and gathering the data, which is particularly important for the test enterprise.”

Virtual Training

Digital twins—highly accurate models that can be used for simulation and training—are a part of STARCOM’s training plan, enabling the Space Force to practice skills without creating real-world problems in space. But Bratton said his command is also working on “How we bring in existing spacecraft that don’t have a digital model.”

For those situations, collecting high-fidelity data must be gathered to generate realistic simulation models, leveraging Space Force intelligence to assist with developing realistic threats.

“Some of that exists today,” Bratton said. “I wouldn’t presume to say that we’re all the way there [though]. We’re getting a lot of help from industry in this area. But there’s a lot of work to do.”