How the Air Force Flew a 1,000-Mile Open Ocean Rescue: Part 2

Nov. 21, 2024 | By David Roza

This is the second in a two-part series based on exclusive interviews with five Airmen who helped save a patient’s life in a long-range rescue mission Oct. 9. Read Part 1 here.

On the afternoon of Oct. 9, about 20 Airmen were somewhere over the Pacific, aboard two HH-60G helicopters and two HC-130J fixed-wing aircraft, flying to pick up a patient in life-threatening condition aboard a bulk carrier about 500 miles off the coast of San Francisco.

Flying helicopters far from shore is a high-risk mission few other organizations on Earth can do, but the California Air National Guard’s 129th Rescue Wing pulls it off on a regular basis, in part because they can refuel the HH-60s mid-flight via hoses trailing from the HC-130Js.

While the helicopter crews took fuel from an HC-130J visiting from Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz., the other HC-130J, flown by mission commander Lt. Col. Christopher Nance, raced ahead to make contact with the bulk carrier, Port Kyushu.

One of the Airmen onboard, aircrew flight equipment specialist Staff Sgt. Mike Scheglov was a native Russian speaker and had been brought onto the mission that morning to talk with the ship captain, who the wing believed spoke Russian. Now it was time to find out.

“Initially it was just one of the crew members and I said, ‘do you speak Russian?’ And this guy went into a full-blown conversation in Romanian,” Scheglov recalled. “I don’t speak Romanian, it’s a totally different language. I’m like, ‘oh good Lord I just made this whole flight for nothing.’”

An Air Force HH-60G helicopter and HC-130J fly over the Pacific Ocean to pick up a patient on a bulk carrier 500 miles off the coast of San Francisco, Oct. 9, 2024. (Photo courtesy 129th Rescue Wing)

But the crew member eventually got the captain on the radio and yes, he spoke Russian. Scheglov told the captain how to prepare for the rescue, which saved precious time when the HH-60s arrived 45 minutes later.

“The ship was positioned and ready to go, the patient was packaged and ready,” Nance said. “We went from what potentially could have been an hour on scene to, like, under 30 minutes.”

The seas were calm that day, but it would be a long hoist ride down to the Kyushu for the two Pararescue Jumpers (PJs) aboard the pickup helicopter. The HH-60 hovered about 100 feet above the ship to avoid the cranes on either side of the helipad, which was too small for an HH-60 to land on.

Hoist work is a delicate balance for the special missions aviators (SMAs) who work in the back of the helicopter, explained Senior Airman Reese Williamse, a SMA on the other HH-60 that day. SMAs have to keep an eye on the person being hoisted, on the steel cable connecting them to the helicopter, and on their surroundings.

Hoist too fast and you might hurt the person being hoisted, but going too slow extends the vulnerability period. Too much slack can weaken the cable or get it wrapped around a body part or an obstacle. Too little makes it tough for the person to unhook, and if the helicopter moves then it could throw them into the ship’s rail and over the side.

“You keep that fine line of cable slack while also scanning around the aircraft, staying calm, and talking to your pilots,” he said. “I like to say you’re Bob Ross in the back, painting a picture.”

air force rescue — Tech Sgt. Pablo Rios, an HH-60G special missions aviator with the California Air National Guard’s 129th Rescue Wing, hoists pararescuemen onto the bulk carrier Port Kyushu to rescue a patient about 500 miles off the coast of San Francisco, Oct. 9, 2024. (Photo courtesy 129th Rescue Wing)

The crew of the Port Kyushu were fascinated; after all, two helicopters had just appeared over the middle of the Pacific and dropped two men in bright red anti-exposure suits on their deck.

“You could see them just kind of stunned at what was going on,” said one of the PJs, Senior Airman Connor, whose full name was withheld for security reasons.

Once on the deck, Connor and his fellow PJ, Tech Sgt. Sean, met the captain, assessed the unconscious patient, then packaged him onto a litter. With no easy way of carrying him onto the helipad, the Airmen pantomimed instructions for the crew to form a kind of train.

“That was one of the coolest moments, working with this crew that didn’t speak English to get their friend and crewmate where he needed to go,” Connor said. “There was no translation, but everybody understood. You could see from their body language that they were appreciative and super willing to help.”

Once the patient was on the helipad, the PJs radioed the helicopters for a pickup.

“This is where you see the skill of the 129th, because everybody is working together here,” Connor said. “The pilots are dealing with a small area to get the hook in place: they are dealing with the ship cranes, so they can’t just come in from any angle. They are dealing with the movement of the ship. But they come in and drop the hook basically right in our hand. That just comes from practice.”

The PJs did forget one thing: a Port Kyushu life buoy to commemorate the rescue. The halls of the 129th Rescue Wing’s squadron buildings near San Jose are lined with buoys given by the crews of dozens of ships from which they’ve rescued patients since 1975.

“We were so focused that that slipped our mind,” Connor said. “The PJs watching us from the other helicopter saw us coming up and they were like ‘they didn’t get the life ring.’ They realized it before we did.”

The Way Back

The first hour of the flight back was an intense one for the PJs, who had to reassess the patient, hook him up to their monitors, put him on oxygen, and get an IV in: a tough task with a cold, severely dehydrated patient on a loud, moving helicopter. The PJs kept an eye on his vitals, but he remained stable and unconscious throughout the flight. It just wasn’t clear what had endangered his life in the first place.

“It could have been many different things, but there was no definitive sign telling us what exactly was wrong,” Connor said.

Throughout the flight, the medics were in close contact with doctors back home, but they too were stumped. Day turned to night as the helicopters flew about 300 feet off the water for much of the way back, staying low to give the patient as much oxygen as possible. It wasn’t until about halfway through the return flight that Connor had a chance to think about anything else.

“That’s a big moment, when you have five minutes to sit back and take care of yourself,” he said.

This was Connor’s first rescue as a fully mission-qualified PJ after shadowing a few previous ones and graduating the 2.5-year training pipeline just five months earlier. But the Kyushu job felt like any other practice run.

“At no point did I feel like I was doing anything that I had never done before or that was out of the norm,” he said. “It all felt very calm.”

The helicopter crews wore airtight anti-exposure suits to keep them warm if they had to bail into the cold Pacific, but they grew pungent in the night air, especially when the PJs asked the pilots to turn up the heat to keep the patient warm. Still, at least the PJs could move around a little, while the helicopter pilots were bound to their seats throughout the journey.

“The biggest surprise for me was that my a– didn’t hurt,” said Capt. Parker Imrie, the pilot on the lead helicopter. “I’ve flown three, four, five-hour training sorties where I can barely walk afterwards. And then this was the longest continuous flight I’ve ever done, nine and a half hours, and I was definitely ready to not be sitting any more, but it was fine.”

Back in the cabin, Williamse’s knees and lower back grew sore from spending all day crouched or hunched over.

“I was doing all sorts of stretches,” he said. “That is one plus-side of being in the back.”

Pararescuemen with the California Air National Guard’s 129th Rescue Wing move a patient from an HH-60G helicopter to a waiting ambulance at Moffett Field, Calif. after a long-range open water rescue mission, Oct. 9, 2024. (Photo courtesy Master Sgt. Ray Aquino)

Nance’s C-130 landed back at Moffett Field a little after 9 p.m., about 10 hours after it had first taken off, while the HH-60s followed about 15 minutes behind. The helicopters could have flown to Stanford Hospital, but the wing decided it would not be worth the additional risk after such a long flight. Instead, Connor and Sean hopped into an ambulance for the 25-minute drive.

“We wanted to be able to give a handoff at the hospital,” Connor said. “We walked into the ER in our dry suits with 30 people waiting for us.”

Back at base, the aircrews debriefed, then the helicopter crews reconvened at their squadron heritage room, a lounge adorned with thank-you notes from old rescues, photos of past deployments, and totemic depictions of the jolly green giant, a symbol of Air Force search and rescue dating back to the Vietnam War.

“Even though you’ve been flying for hours, when you finally get back you can’t just go home and go to sleep, because you still have a sense of adrenaline,” Williamse explained. “So we usually come in here, chill out, drink a beer or two, and relax until you start getting tired.”

About two weeks after he got picked up, the patient was on the mend from what doctors diagnosed was a neurological problem. The 129th Rescue Wing asked not to share specific details out of concern for his privacy.

“When I heard that the patient was talking again, was back to normal, it made everything that I’d gone through to get to that point feel very worth it,” Connor said. “I’m fully confident that any one of the new PJs that I just graduated with could have done that exact mission. But I’m grateful that I’m on this team and was given that opportunity.”

And Scheglov? He ended the day with a keepsake of his own, though it requires explanation. The shoulder patch for the 130th Rescue Squadron, the unit which flies the HC-130J, depicts a shark biting into an aerial refueling hose–a twist on the emblem of the San Jose Sharks, the nearby professional hockey team.

Airmen at the 130th wear a version of the patch with a baby shark on it until their first rescue mission or deployment, after which they wear the grown-up shark version. Thanks to his vital translation work, Scheglov got the grown-up shark, making him an honorary 130th member.

“I’ll wear it with pride,” he said.

A month later, the wing was back at it, rescuing a 79-year-old fisherman with stroke-like symptoms about 400 miles off the coast of San Diego. This time they got the life buoy.

From right to left, the emblems of the 130th Rescue Squadron, which flies the HC-130J; the 129th Rescue Squadron, which flies the HH-60G; the 131st Rescue Squadron, made up of pararescuemen, combat rescue officers, and support personnel; and the 129th Logistics Readiness Squadron, which provides logistics support for the 129th Rescue Wing. (Photo courtesy Master Sgt. Ray Aquino)

Learn to Accelerate Software Delivery at Prodacity 2025

Nov. 21, 2024 | By Juanita Henry

In a modern, connected military, software is crucial to every step of every operation, from planning to coordination and logistics to target engagement. But as threats and requirements change, software needs to change too. If requirements change faster than developers can deploy new code, the entire system can break down.

Rise8, a Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB), was founded to change that paradigm.

Founder and CEO Bryon Kroger, a U.S. Air Force Veteran, is spearheading initiatives to deliver software solutions up to 25 times faster than traditional methods. Rise8’s approach aims to overcome the bureaucratic delays and cumbersome process hurdles that hamper conventional software development contracts.

“We’re really focused on the mission first,” said Kroger at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference in September. “What are these Airmen and Guardians actually trying to do? Then we work backwards from that.”

Continuously delivering software updates enables Airmen and Guardians to provide real-time feedback to developers, allowing a continuous conversation that Kroger says is key to creating software that genuinely serves the needs of the Service Members employing those tools in the field.

Rise8 achieves faster delivery by establishing a continuous path between the developers and the production environment—regardless of classification levels. Software is developed, tested, and deployed into operational use continuously and without delay, achieving Continuous Authority to Operate (cATO) after obtaining the initial Authorization to Operate (ATO). As an output of the Risk Management Framework, an ATO is a formal declaration that a system meets the necessary security and privacy standards for deployment on a network.

Under legacy approaches, the exercise repeats for major updates or when the authorization expires, adding weeks, months, or even years between the time a requirement is established, and a software solution obtains an ATO to deploy. By integrating development, security, testing, and operations, however, Rise8 can “ship” new code into production in hours or even minutes, enabling continuous, rapid improvement through a direct feedback loop with users.

“That gives you the feedback that you need to create beautifully designed software for Airmen and Guardians,” Kroger said.

Modernizing software is only part of the solution. To make rapid modernization possible, Kroger said, one must take the time to understand the bureaucracy and processes that slow software development.

“Just like computer systems, you can’t hack a system you don’t understand,” Kroger explained. “Take the time to understand the bureaucracy … It’s really figuring out how to navigate that.”

Just as an “ethical hacker” must understand a system’s flaws to identify and eliminate them, Kroger has found that learning the software acquisition system inside and out has proven invaluable in seeing how to use it to deliver effective software more quickly.

David Anderson, author of The Flywheel Effect, speaks about a “serverless-first” mindset and its flywheel effect on modernization at Rise8’s Prodacity event at the Hamilton Hotel in Washington, D.C. in November 2023. CREDIT: Alyssa Schukar for Rise8

Rise8’s agile software development approach is like the processes used by modern commercial software developers but adapted to provide the assurance needed for secure, sensitive government applications. Yet overcoming entrenched approaches is never easy, especially for users who have been told in the past that rapid development is not possible in the government context.

To help potential customers understand how that can be achieved, Kroger created Prodacity for the GovTech community where air, space, and other military and government professionals can learn from tested playbooks, real-world solutions, and a relentless commitment to action inside cautious, slow-moving organizations—without sales pitches and related theatrics.

Prodacity will bring together program managers, contracting specialists, CTOs, and CIOs from the Air Force, Space Force, and other Federal agencies, along with established systems integrators, to learn the modern alternative techniques to accelerating software development—without compromising security, reliability, or anything else.

Prodacity will expose participants to the secrets of rapid and continuous software development, deployment, and improvement in high-stakes environments, according to Rise8.

“Our purpose is to make the world work better,” Kroger said. “We envision a future where fewer bad things happen because of bad software.” And where good things happen continuously because users who know their field best are tightly integrated into the process of making software more efficient, useful, and effective every day.

View the agenda and learn more about Prodacity here.

Northrop Grumman Delivers First SiAW Missile for Air Force Testing

Nov. 20, 2024 | By John A. Tirpak

Northrop Grumman has delivered its first Stand-in Attack Weapon, which will be used for captive carry and separation testing, to the Air Force. The SiAW is expected to be produced in high numbers and be carried by most Air Force strike platforms, with initial operational capability planned in 2026.

The company received a $705 million contract for SiAW in September 2023, and is on an aggressive timetable to develop, flight test, and integrate the missile. The company has said it can make the 2026 target because the SiAW draws heavily on the technology in its Advanced Anti-Radar Guided Missile-Extended Range (AARGM-ER), which is taking over the anti-radar/defense suppression role previously performed by the AGM-88 High speed Anti-Radiation Missile (HARM).

The AARGM-ER has been integrated with the F-35 fighter, which will also be the initial platform for the SiAW; the fighter can carry two SiAWs internally. Other platforms expected to receive early versions of the weapon include the B-21 bomber and the F-15E.

The SiAW will also, in part, succeed the Joint Direct Attack Munition, and is intended to provide stand-off capability against surface defenses and rapidly relocatable targets.

With the missile now in “Phase 2” of development, the Air Force and Northrop will look to conduct captive carry/separation tests, followed by a guided flight test. After that, Phase 2.2 will conclude with “three additional flight tests and the delivery of SiAW leave-behind prototype missiles and test assets,” Northrop said.

Air Force leaders have said they expect SiAW to be a large-scale acquisition program involving thousands of units with frequent technology updates, and will probably be available for export to close allies as soon as production reaches scale. The similar AARGM-ER is being supplied to Australia, the Netherlands, and Poland. Australia’s initial purchase was for 63 AARGM-ERs, which it will deploy on its F/A-18 fighters.

Northrop beat out L3Harris for the development contract; Lockheed Martin withdrew from the competition.

The munition is being developed using digital engineering, agile software development, and an open systems architecture to facilitate rapid upgrades. Northrop has said it will be the Air Force’s first all-digital weapons development and acquisition program.

The open architecture will allow contractors other than Northrop to propose updates for the missile.

Northrop describes the SiAW as addressing “capability gaps created by 2025+ threats.” Although branded a “stand-in” weapon, Northrop said the weapon can be delivered “from sanctuary,” meaning at distances outside the engagement zones of some anti-aircraft systems. Its actual range and speed have not been divulged, but the AARGM-ER is believed to be a Mach 4 missile with a range of 180 miles, and the SiAW may have better performance.

The SiAW has tail-control vanes and other means of being stealthy, according to Northrop, and has multiple sensors and an inertial navigation system that can take over if Global Positioning System satellite location signals are jammed. It can also communicate with other platforms and weapons and attack target coordinates supplied by another platform.

The company is developing and building the SiAW at its Northridge, Calif., facilities, and integrating it at the Allegany Ballistics Laboratory in West Virginia.

The HARM was an extremely effective weapon in Operation Desert Storm in 1991. Iraqi ground-based search and track radar operators were deterred from turning on their radars because a HARM usually arrived a few seconds after activation and before the radar could be moved. The AARGM and SiAW are faster than HARM, but it’s unclear as to whether the weapon can achieve hypersonic speeds.

In addition to surface defenses, Northrop has said the SiAW will be a primary weapon for use against command-and-control sites; ballistic and cruise missile launchers; GPS jamming systems; anti-satellite systems and other high-value or “fleeting” targets.

How the Air Force Flew a 1,000-Mile Open Ocean Rescue: Part 1

Nov. 20, 2024 | By David Roza

This is the first in a two-part series based on exclusive interviews with five Airmen who helped save a patient’s life in a long-range rescue mission Oct. 9. Part 2 will publish Thursday, Nov. 21.

The bulk carrier Port Kyushu stretches the length of two football fields, but it looked like a toy against the vast, dark tablecloth of the Pacific Ocean. Peering down from the window of a C-130, Staff Sgt. Mike Scheglov offered up a simple prayer.

“I really hope that they speak Russian.”

About five hours earlier, Scheglov had been working at Moffett Field, home of the California Air National Guard’s 129th Rescue Wing. It was the morning of Oct. 9, and Airmen were preparing to pick up a patient from a ship 500 miles off the coast of San Francisco. As an aircrew flight equipment specialist, Scheglov was prepositioning their gear when his supervisor asked an unusual question.

“Did you bring your lunch today?” Scheglov recalled.

The rescuers needed a Russian speaker to communicate with the ship captain. A native speaker, Scheglov was a perfect fit. He grabbed his lunch.

The 129th Rescue Wing is one of few organizations on Earth that can rescue patients hundreds of miles offshore, thanks to its fleet of HC-130J command and control planes and HH-60G helicopters. The HC-130Js refuel the helicopters via long hoses that trail behind the wings mid-flight, where an HH-60G plugs in with a long probe sticking out the front of its fuselage.

Air refueling gives extra range to the helicopters, letting them hoist patients out of anything from a fishing boat to a cruise ship and bring them back to a hospital. But it’s a high-risk job, said Lt. Col. Christopher Nance, who commanded the Port Kyushu mission.

“There are a lot of moving parts in a helicopter,” said the HC-130J pilot. “If you’re flying over land, helicopters can find a field to put down or C-130s can find an airfield, but there are no options over water. And the further out you go, the longer it takes to get back.”

Once the aircraft reach the target vessel, they hoist down a Pararescue Jumper (PJ) to pick up the patient. A blend of commando and expert medic, PJs are trained to save lives under fire anywhere on Earth, but dangling from a helicopter over a moving vessel in the open ocean is dangerous for anyone.

“Anytime you put a human being out the back of your aircraft, that is immediately high risk,” Nance explained. “There’s just so many complexities to the mission.”

There’s also the fatigue of flying for hours at a time, often in darkness, sometimes low to the water, and usually in airtight anti-exposure suits.

The suits are designed to keep the Airmen alive if they have to bail into the frigid Pacific, but they can get pungent and uncomfortable after a 10 or 11-hour sortie, said Senior Airman Reese Williamse, a special missions aviator who works in the back of the HH-60. That’s led to a colorful nickname: “Poopy suits.”

Such challenges are nothing new for the 129th RQW, which has been flying open ocean rescues since 1975. The halls of the Moffett squadron buildings are lined with orange lifebuoys given to them by the crews of the dozens of ships from which they’ve rescued patients. The Port Kyushu mission would mark the wing’s 1,165th life saved, though that number includes deployments and non-ocean rescues.

“We’ve done it so often here that, to be honest, we’re really good at it,” Nance said. “So our comfort level is quite high compared to other units that may not have accepted a mission like this because it was too high-risk.”

Orange lifebuoys from past ocean rescues line the staircase of one of the 129th Wing’s squadron buildings at Moffett Air National Guard Base, Calif., Oct. 24, 2024. (Air & Space Forces Magazine photo by David Roza)

The Crew

The call for a rescue came in from the U.S. Coast Guard on Tuesday, Oct. 8. A middle-aged man on the Port Kyushu was having what would later be diagnosed as an urgent neurological problem. The wing asked not to print exact details out of concern for his privacy, but at the time, the patient was generally unresponsive and not accepting food or water, so his crewmates worried he would not survive the rest of the voyage.

A rescue would risk four aircraft and more than 20 lives to save one, but medical experts and wing leadership deemed the gravity of the situation outweighed the risk. There was no issue finding volunteers.

“Sometimes we get guys out of state that are like, ‘hey, I’ll fly in,’” Nance said. “You get guys who will definitely take a day off of work to come out and support one of these.”

But there was a problem: the wing needed two HC-130Js to cut down on risk and haul all the gas necessary for the long flight, but due to maintenance issues only one was ready to fly. The next closest HC-130J unit is the Active-Duty 79th Rescue Squadron at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz., which had just spent the past two weeks on the East Coast responding to Hurricanes Helene and Milton. But they answered the call, sending two C-130s just in case, while the co-located 55th Rescue Squadron sent two HH-60Ws if needed.

“When you’re dealing with long-range over water, you want to have spares,” Nance said. “It’s a testament to the joint force that one, they were willing to respond after everything they’d just gotten back from, and two, how seamlessly they integrated with us.”

At around 11 a.m. Oct. 9, the aircraft took off for the Port Kyushu, which would be about 500 miles off shore by the time they rendezvoused. Both HH-60Gs and one of the HC-130Js came from Moffett, while the other HC-130J came from Davis-Monthan.

“I wasn’t nervous or stressed because I knew all the guys in the other planes, and they’re all professionals,” Nance said. “They know what they’re doing.”

The Gear

A rescue package does not travel light. Besides the anti-exposure suits, the helicopter crews and PJs also wore orange inflatable life preservers, which sometimes called “water wings” or “Cheetos.” They also carried tiny bottles of compressed air to breathe from while escaping a sinking helicopter.

On top of that, the PJs brought IV fluids, drugs, oxygen, blood pressure cuffs, monitors, a litter, and enough other medical supplies to fill the bed of a pickup truck, all squeezed into a helicopter cabin not much bigger than a hot tub. It gets even more cramped with a patient aboard.

One of the PJs, Senior Airman Connor, whose full name was withheld for security reasons said he had “probably like a three-by-two foot space I was in for five hours.”

Airmen with the 129th Rescue Wing, California Air National Guard mobilizes for an overwater rescue operation at Moffett Air National Guard Base, Calif., Oct. 9, 2024. (U.S. Air Force photo by Master Sgt. Ray Aquino)

But there’s still room for a keepsake or two, which for some Airmen play as vital a role as their helmets and exposure suits. Nance carried a medallion his uncle gave him when he first got his flight wings—and a pencil-shaped tire pressure gauge tucked into the sleeve of his flight suit.

“When I was a brand new lieutenant, a bunch of guys talked me into buying a Harley, and they convinced me that I had to be checking the tire pressure all the time,” he said. “They were messing with me, but in 2009 I was deployed, and we almost had a midair [collision] with a Marine CH-53 [helicopter]. Our aircraft commander saved our lives, but my tire pressure gauge disappeared. After that I never flew without it.”

Flying the lead helicopter, Capt. Parker Imrie carried a challenge coin from the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, the unit his late brother served with in Afghanistan. In the back of the helicopter, Williamse, the SMA, carried a fish keychain his wife gave him years ago.

Airmen with the 129th Rescue Wing, California Air National Guard mobilize for an overwater rescue operation at Moffett Air National Guard Base, Calif., Oct. 9, 2024. (U.S. Air Force photo by Master Sgt. Ray Aquino)

Into the Blue

The rescue package flew over the Pacific at about 5,000 feet, with broken clouds ahead and the marine layer, a low expanse of cloud and fog, below.

“The question is, does this marine layer go 10 miles out or 1,000 miles out,” Imrie said. “You don’t know until you fly out there.”

Early in the flight, the helicopters and C-130s tested out the refueling systems, a delicate operation where the helicopter pilot has to match the C-130’s speed and altitude while the gas flows, then back out slowly without yanking off the hose.

“If all the conditions are right, it’s not that hard. It’s just kind of a little video game: line up and plug in,” Imrie said. “But as you add weather, turbulence, fatigue, poor visibility, or having to plug on the right side of the aircraft, where you get a lot more turbulence coming off the wing, that difficulty ticks up very quickly. But it’s just a matter of practice.”

An HH-60G Pave Hawk pilot with the 129th Rescue Wing looks on as another HH-60G flies off the wing of a HC-130J during a open ocean rescue off the coast of San Francisco, Oct. 9, 2024. (Photo courtesy 129th Rescue Wing)

Staying calm is also key: the pilot might wiggle his or her fingers to avoid white-knuckling the stick, while the crew keeps their voices steady, almost a monotone.

“If one person starts getting tense and has an elevated voice, then everybody hears it, pilots will start gripping it tighter,” Williamse said. “Even for me in the back when I’m doing a hoist, if my voice is super fast and loud, you can feel it in the hover.”

“There’s a psychology to flying a helicopter with four people,” Imrie added.

Indeed, much like how the pilots routinely check their instruments to see how the aircraft is doing, the crew keeps up a low level of conversation during the long hours over water.

“There definitely were periods where everyone was silent for a while, which is OK,” Imrie said. “But you don’t want to let that go on for too long, because you don’t know: is this guy just silent because he doesn’t have anything to say, or did he fall asleep, or is he having a medical emergency?”

On the other helicopter, Connor the PJ enjoyed listening to the banter, but he and Tech Sgt. Sean, the more experienced PJ on board, had to save their mental strength for later.

“We just tried to relax, knowing that the next six, seven hours were going to be pretty exhausting,” Connor said.

Part 2 will publish Thursday, Nov. 21.

STRATCOM Boss: AI Useful, But Don’t Expect ‘WarGames’

Nov. 20, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

The head of U.S. Strategic Command has no interest in replicating the plot of the 1983 film “WarGames.”

Put another way, Gen. Anthony J. Cotton wants to use artificial intelligence to more efficiently process vast amounts of data related to America’s nuclear weapons. But what to do with those weapons will remain a human-made decision, he said Nov. 19 at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

In “WarGames,” an artificial intelligence program called WOPR—pronounced “Whopper”—located at Cheyenne Mountain Complex, Colo., controls U.S. nuclear weapons.

“WarGames, it has this machine called the WOPR,” Cotton said. “So the WOPR actually was that AI machine that everyone is scared about. And guess what? We do not have a WOPR in STRATCOM headquarters. Nor would we ever have a WOPR in STRATCOM headquarters.”

Cotton’s comments come just a few days after U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese president Xi Jinping met in Peru and agreed on “the need to maintain human control over the decision to use nuclear weapons,” according to a White House readout.

Last month, Cotton said at the 2024 Department of Defense Intelligence Information System Conference that “AI will enhance our decision-making capabilities. … But we must never allow artificial intelligence to make those decisions for us.”

Those remarks generated headlines and drew some pushback on social media, but Cotton said he was misinterpreted.

“When I spoke last month, that got some feedback like, ‘Oh my god … Cotton just wants AI to make the decision to go nuclear.’ That’s absolutely not what I said,” he said.

In fact, Cotton emphasized at the time that “advanced systems can inform us faster and more efficiently, but we must always maintain a human decision in the loop to maximize the adoption of these capabilities.”

At the CSIS event, he once again argued that AI can play a role for Strategic Command, by helping humans sort through the “terabytes of data that would otherwise hit the floor.” One example is intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) information.

“How do I get and become efficient on ISR products?” Cotton asked. “How do I get efficient on understanding what’s the status of my forces? … AI and machine learning can absolutely help us with those things and really shave a lot of time off.”

Ultimately, Cotton wants to use AI so that he can provide the president with options in a matter of minutes, not hours—something that might not be possible without AI as more data streams become available.

Still, he noted that extra caution is warranted when it comes to AI in STRATCOM.

“I do not take it lightly that what I’m responsible for is a little different than what other combatant commanders are responsible for,” he said. “I absolutely take it incredibly seriously, and so do the men and women of my team, understanding that we’re responsible for crown jewels of this nation.”

Before There Are Part-Time Guardians, USSF Needs to Figure Out Promotions, HR, and More

Nov. 20, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

Scores of different HR systems, a new model for how to handle promotions, and protections against conflicts of interest are all challenges the Space Force will have to resolve as it tries to bring part-time Guardians into the fold instead of a traditional Reserve component.

And until the service has a complete construct for how to make all that happen, it can’t offer a definitive timeline for eager service members, personnel chief Katharine Kelley said Nov. 20.

The Space Force Personnel Management Act passed by Congress last December gave the service five years to implement its new hybrid part-time/full-time construct. USSF spent the first year of that timeline laying groundwork and setting up the process for Air Force Reservists with space missions to join the Space Force full time, Kelley said during an event hosted by AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.

“We’re excited on how that’s gone. We’ve got a huge amount of interest, and maybe more interest than we have space at the moment, but we will get there,” said Kelley, who serves as Deputy Chief of Space Operations for Human Capital. “And I think these next four years of the execution window are going to be focused on, how do we create the ecosystem in the IT world to support the HR that is now fundamentally different than what the Air Force has in place today.”

Officials have noted in the past that they will need to think through how to do pay, benefits, retirement calculations, and more in a combined component. Another question is how Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) benefits would work for part-timers. Kelley highlighted the scale of the technical challenge.

“We think there’s easily over 300 systems in play today that somehow touch on the ecosystem of managing talent in DOD. And I’m emphasizing DOD here, and that’s not even discussing really where we go with external touch points that really matter for military,” Kelley said. “How your data flows to the VA matters. So think about all the external touch points as well as we go through this.”

These systems must either be adjusted to co-mingle part-time and full-time Guardians, or be replaced. That process is made all the more complicated by the fact that the Space Force relies on the Air Force for support functions, including much of its HR.

“The Space Force has to leverage the HR ecosystem that the Air Force has in place, by and large, and that ecosystem is pretty antiquated,” Kelley said. “The Air Force is doing unbelievable things right now to break free of some of the legacy models and really modernize the architectures. But all of those endeavors were preceding the Space Force Personnel Management Act. So a lot of what our limiting factors are to the execution side of our new legislation have to do with how we can manage and influence the system architectures to support these new talent models.”

Katharine Kelley, Deputy Chief of Space Operations for Human Capital, at the Air, Space & Cyber Conference on September 18, 2024. Photo by Mike Tsukamoto/Air & Space Forces Magazine

Besides pay and benefits, the Space Force will also have to adjust how it assesses Guardians for promotions—always a sensitive topic—so that part-timers can be evaluated next to full-time troops.

“We envision one promotion ecosystem, whether you have served in a full- or part-time capacity,” Kelley said. “The idea is that we’re going to highly value credentialing, certifications, qualifications and training, and those can be garnered whether you’re in full- or part-time work roles. And so the idea that the team is fleshing out for us right now is, how do we build a promotion ecosystem that values both types of work roles simultaneously?”

On top of that, there are ethical concerns about part-time Guardians with jobs in the space industry. It’s an issue the Reserve and Guard already deal with today, and Kelley noted that they have measures in place the Space Force will likely copy. Yet given that the Space Force wants Guardians to be able to flex between part-time and full-time work more easily, the service may have to do more.

“We’re going to have to be a little more mindful of what that person is doing in their personal capacity, and what the work role is that they may be performing in the Space Force,” Kelley said. “So we’ve got more work to do to really define what that looks like.”

Officials have made some progress in defining the kinds of jobs part-time Guardians will have in the new construct—test and evaluation, training, teaching, or planning—and what they won’t do—employed-in-place operations, i.e., operational roles that don’t require deploying, such as flying satellites or defending cyber networks.

But much remains unsettled. And until the service has a clearer picture on how it will all work, Kelley was reluctant to offer a timeline, even as she acknowledged intense interest in the topic.

“It’s a construct that has to be fully fleshed out before we can actually say, this date and this is how,” Kelley said.

There is urgency to make progress, though, given the demand the Space Force is seeing from combatant commanders.

“The size of our service today, coupled with what’s at stake for national security, we need to take advantage of every force multiplication option we have, and this is one of them,” Kelley said.

The Data-Centric Interdependencies that Make Battle Management Happen

Nov. 20, 2024

Joshua Conine, SAIC’s Director of Space Command and Control (C2) Growth, identifies the key elements in large C2 systems in the U.S. Air Force and Space Force, and how SAIC creates resilient and distributed architectures that support Battle Management.

INDOPACOM Boss Not Worried About China ‘Playing Chicken’ in Pacific

Nov. 19, 2024 | By John A. Tirpak

The head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command doesn’t see 2027 as a definitive date for China to invade Taiwan, nor is he concerned that the increasing frequency of provocative Chinese naval maneuvers will lead to war with the U.S. But he is concerned about U.S. readiness in the region, especially after supplying Ukraine and Israel with billions of dollars in munitions.

Adm. Samuel Paparo, speaking Nov. 19 at the Brookings Institution, said “the closer we get to 2027, the less relevant the date becomes.” At that point, China will declare itself ready” to take Taiwan by force, Paparo said—but only if certain set conditions are in place.

China’s 2005 anti-secession law, aimed at Taiwan, says it will invade only if:

Taiwan declares its independence from China

A third power intervenes in the dispute

Beijing determies that “unification was irrevocably beyond its reach by any other means.”

None of those conditions are in play, Paparo said. U.S. policy is to preserve Taiwan’s “right to self-determination” he said, not necessarily to shape its governance. Moreover, Paparo argued China prefers to achieve its goals through coercion by other means instead of military conquest.

The real significance of the 2027 date was the shift in timeline for when the Chinese military had to be ready for a possible invasion, up from 2035, Paparo said.

“It was never a ‘sell-by’ date. It was never a date where the PRC had declared, ‘we’re going on this date,’” Paparo said.

Nevertheless, “I think it was a worthy benchmark to say … we had better pay close attention to this,” Paparo said. The INDOPACOM commander noted that he has to prepare his combatant command to be ready to respond every single day.

“The closer we get to it, the less relevant that date is, and the more we must be ready today, tomorrow, next month, next year, and onward,” he said.

Paparo also said he is not worried about a sudden escalation if China performs provocative maneuvers by bringing its ships and aircraft into extremely close proximity with U.S. aircraft and vessels.

“The way one controls for unintended escalation is by enhancing one’s understanding of the strategic environment or of the tactical environment,” he said. Observers have expressed concern about a scenario where “there are two vessels in close proximity to one another. They’re playing chicken on the high seas, and there is a collision. That collision results in some bravado … passions are inflamed, and this results in a conflagration with a big war.”

That scenario “does not keep me up at night,” he said, because U.S. units “are trained to be safe, to be within the rules.”

“They’re trained when making choices, to choose to be safe, because we’re a dignity culture and not an honor culture,” he said. “Nobody’s going to be out there counting coup over playing chicken. You don’t play chicken with a $2 billion warship over some transitory point of honor on the high seas. And if there were to be a collision … they’ll maneuver to a position of advantage where we’ll be in a safe position, and cooler heads can prevail. And I have that confidence in that.”

“That doesn’t mean that there’s zero chance of it,” Paparo added of a potential collision leading to greater conflict. “But I … view a very, very low probability of such a situation. I think this is the stuff of fiction.”

Other Concerns

Outside of China, Paparo was asked if North Korea—which recently tested intercontinental ballistic missiles with the range to reach the continental U.S.—has also equipped those rockets with multiple precision-guided, independently targeted reentry vehicles.

“Not yet,” he said, adding that he expects aggressive ICBM testing by North Korea to continue.

He called North Korea’s supply of weapons and now soldiers to Russia’s war on Ukraine as “dangerous and transactional.” In return, he expects North Korea will get “submarine technology and propulsion technology.”

Paparo said he is encouraged that China has voiced support for denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula, but North Korea’s rhetoric and actions “adds complexity to an already dangerous situation” and the relationship with Russia “imparts more risk on the allies”

Paparo is also worried about general readiness due to low weapon stocks, he said. The U.S. has drawn from its own supplies to arm Ukraine and Israel in recent months and deployed troops and systems amid tensions in the Middle East.

“Now with some of the Patriots that have been employed, some of the air-to-air missiles that have been employed, it’s now eating into stocks,” he said. “To say otherwise would be dishonest.”

Weapons can be “moved with alacrity to any theater—none are reserved for any theater” but “inherently it imposes costs on the readiness of America to respond in the Indo-Pacific region, which is the most stressing theater for the quantity and quality of munitions, because the [People’s Republic of China] is the most capable” potential threat.

“We should replenish those stocks and then some. I was already dissatisfied with the magazine depth” before the two conflicts erupted, and “I’m a little more dissatisfied with the magazine depth. You know, it’s a time for straight talk.”

Cyber Guardians Get Some Friendly Competition While Training to Defend NRO

Nov. 19, 2024 | By Shaun Waterman

When Delta 26, the Space Force unit that defends the National Reconnaissance Office from cyberattacks and online espionage, wanted to stage competitive training exercises this year, they used a private sector cyber range for part of the contests and run them at an unclassified level, its commander said this week.

Space Training and Readiness Command is “still working to build out their cyber range, so we had to go commercial,” Col. Erica Mitchell told Air and Space Forces Magazine on Nov. 18 on the sidelines of CyberSat, the cybersecurity conference for the space and satellite sector.

At the unclassified level, “It had to be a more generic exercise” in defending an enterprise network, as opposed to one that specifically gamed out a cyber attack on the NRO, the secretive spy satellite agency, Mitchell said. Five teams, each drawn from one of the five squadrons in Delta 26, competed over the course of four days.

The exercises, dubbed Cyber Spartan 24-1 and 24-2, were staged in January and August and represented the “crawl” phase in a crawl/walk/run progression, she said. STARCOM issued a release with a few details of the first one in March, but the second has not been previously reported.

The exercises were “a great success,” she said, despite “a few technical difficulties with the range,” which she declined to elaborate on. Her big takeaway as commander was that “we really have to move towards getting ready for multiple attack vectors in multiple places, not all looking for the same attack in the same place.”

Both exercises included a so-called Capture-the-Flag, or CTF, component, staged by a private sector provider Hack The Box. CTFs are a long-standing cyber tradition in the private sector—hacking contests where teams compete to use knowledge of IT networks and their vulnerabilities to locate and gather pieces of computer code known as flags. In a CTF like the one in Cyber Spartan, the teams compete to collect the most flags but don’t directly attack each others’ systems.

Despite the gamelike elements, CTFs are a proven method of assessing cyber skills, said exercise director Maj. Ryan Galaz. “A capture-the-flag event, to me, is a really fun way to determine the knowledge and proficiency levels of our operators,” he said.

Both exercises also included a “blue team” element, Galaz said, in which each team was responsible for a network under attack, competing to see which could most quickly understand and report on the attack they were facing.

Each team went through six attacks in which they were given just 30 minutes to figure out what had happened.

“What we wanted to do,” explained Galaz, “was not only test the ability of an operator to assess correctly what’s going on, but really test their timeliness, because, in the midst of a contested, integrated environment … we need to know how quickly you can identify, detect and report in an accurate manner.”

Again, the teams didn’t compete directly, Galaz said: “They were just up against the clock and against themselves, really.”

“It was what I call parallel play,” said Mitchell, “where you have your toddlers playing side by side” rather than directly engaging with each other.

Cyber Spartan 24-2 also included a third element, another simulated attack, said Galaz, where “we put all the teams together so they could practice working as a team, because we’re all geographically separated, to then respond to an adversary.”

Rather than the one-off attacks of the blue team exercise, he added, this third element tested the teams’ ability to work together effectively to fight off a concerted campaign by a determined attacker.

“The aim was to really force them into a corner where they’re going to have to talk [to each other]. We started disabling machines, leaving some traces [of what we’d done] on one of the team’s assets, and then leaving others on another team’s. So they would have to then communicate,” he said.

Galaz said the objective was to create a more realistic analogue of the chaotic and confusing conditions that would transpire in a real conflict. “No plan survives first contact with the enemy. So their mission plan went out the window 15 minutes into the action,” he said, “They have to continue to evolve, to stay ahead of the curve.”

The eventual objective would be to fuse the various elements of the exercise together into a more realistic war simulation, said Mitchell, “where the squadrons may start each with their own individual fights, but then it’s all going to be aggregated up, and then we’re going to direct [things] the way we would in an actual war scenario,” she said.

Both competitions were won by the Delta’s 661st Cyber Operations Squadron.

“They did a fantastic job,” Mitchell said.

In 24-1, the blue team contest was close but 661 came out ahead. In the CTF, “they destroyed the competition,” said Galaz. The second time around, though, things were much tighter. “It was razor close on both” the CTF and the blue team simulated attack events, he said.

Planners are currently working on the next iteration of Cyber Spartan, to be staged next year, Galaz said: “Now we’re looking at what type of craziness can we do for 25-1 that still keeps the operators enjoying themselves, because that’s the best way [to get them] to pay the most attention or learn the most—and get all the training value we want from it. So we’re excited about that.”