Space Force Is an ‘Equal Partner’ in CENTCOM, Commander Says

Space Force Is an ‘Equal Partner’ in CENTCOM, Commander Says

March 27, 2023 | By Chris Gordon

The Space Force’s top commander for the Middle East faces a two-fold resource problem, he said March 27. But with the support of U.S. Central Command and the Space Force, Col. Christopher Putman hopes to grow his team to confront the myriad challenges facing the U.S. in the region. 

“As we stand up a new organization and do all the things it takes to create a new organization, we can’t drop the ball on the current fight 24/7,” Putman, the head of U.S. Space Forces Central (SPACECENT), said at an AFA Warfighters in Action event. “It’s daunting, but it’s achievable.”

U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) is not the Department of Defense’s primary strategic focus. Still, it may be one of the toughest regions for commanders, who face the challenges of fighting ISIS, confronting the persistent threat of Iran, and being prepared for potential run-ins with Russia—all with limited resources.

In addition to Central Command’s finite resources, SPACECENT faces the manpower challenges of the Space Force as well, with fewer than 10,000 Guardians. Putman’s team at CENTCOM’s headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla. is just three people, including him. When something happens in the region that requires his response, he is just a phone call or meeting away from Gen. Michael “Erik” Kurilla, the CENTCOM commander. However, Putman has limited depth—around 30 Guardians who are mostly deployed to CENTCOM’s forward headquarters at Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar.

“It’s definitely a challenge with how few people we actually have in the space organization because after me, you’ve got my deputy, and then it starts getting real thin and it drops off precipitously,” Putman said.

Putman expects his team in Tampa to grow to around 10 Guardians as the overall SPACECENT organization expands. The command also relies on Air Force resources.

“There’s just not enough to go around and we’re working on that and we’re continuing to get bigger,” he said. “I think we are definitely getting the support of the Space Force.”

As Putman advocates for SPACECENT inside the Space Force, he also must articulate what he can provide to CENTCOM. That requires some effort: Putman’s service is relatively new, and due to the Space Force’s small size he holds a lower rank than his counterparts in other services. The Space Force has a dearth of generals, and the only Space Force geographic component command to have a general officer is in the Indo-Pacific, the DOD’s primary focus. However, Putnam said Kurilla and fellow service component commanders have accepted him in his four months in the seat since SPACECENT was activated Dec. 2.

“Despite the rank, despite the size, CENTCOM has been great,” Putman said. “We have been fully embraced as an equal partner.”

Putman had a similar job as Air Forces Central’s director of space forces before standing up the new Space Force command. But he is trying to make SPACECENT more than a rebrand of his old outfit.

“It’s a little bit of a different angle than before,” Putman said. “We had a lot of buffer between us and the combatant commander and checks and balances. But now it’s a very direct line between my very small organization straight back to the commander, providing him options. Same thing on the service side. As a component, we’ve got a direct line right back to the [Chief of Space Operations].”

Kurilla has championed innovation and autonomous solutions in CENTCOM to fill gaps that may have previously required more resource-intensive assets—whether surveilling the sea or the air through the Navy’s Task Force 59 and the Air Force’s Task Force 99, as well as a new Army Task Force 39.

The Space Force component is itself novel and small in CENTCOM. While Putman hopes to collaborate with the task forces, his command is not remotely big enough to experiment with its own dedicated unit. Instead, SPACECENT itself hopes to invent a new way of doing business through day-to-day operations.

“The fact that we have space capabilities resident in theater that belong to the CENTCOM gives us quite a bit of flexibility to create innovative [tactics, techniques, and procedures],” Putman said. “We’re learning and we’re going forward.”

Military Pilots Avoid Health Care to Keep Flying, New Study Suggests

Military Pilots Avoid Health Care to Keep Flying, New Study Suggests

March 27, 2023 | By David Roza

U.S. military pilots avoid health care or misrepresent and withhold health information from their flight surgeon at greater rates than civilian pilots out of fear they might lose their flying status, according to a new study conducted by Air Force and civilian medical experts.

Though the population size of 264 military pilots surveyed was relatively small, the study marks one of the first attempts to scientifically analyze the widely-held belief that military pilots avoid health care, particularly mental health care, out of fear that certain medical conditions will take them off flight status.

“To our knowledge, the current effort appears among the largest studying U.S. military pilot health care avoidance behavior because of fear for loss of flying status,” the authors of the study, a mix of Air Force and civilian doctors, wrote. The study, funded by the Air Force, was first published in October and was included in the March-April 2023 issue of the journal Military Medicine.

The study found that out of 264 military pilots, 190 (72 percent) reported a history of health care avoidance, 111 (42.5 percent) misrepresented or withheld information on a written health care questionnaire, 89 (33.7 percent) flew despite experiencing a new physical or psychological symptom that they felt probably should be evaluated by a physician, and 30 (11.4 percent) reported a history of undisclosed prescription medical use. 

Continuing to fly without reporting concerning medical symptoms “is overtly against regulations for U.S. military pilots because of aviation safety concerns and increased health risks to the pilot,” the study authors noted. “These data speak to the risk (both aviation safety and individual health-related) certain military pilots may willingly tolerate to avoid health care because of fear of losing their flying status.”

Military pilots in particular appear to fear losing their flight status more than their civilian counterparts. More than 4,000 civilian pilots were also surveyed as part of the study—66 percent of paid civilian pilots reported at least one type of health care avoidance behavior, and that figure dropped to just 44 percent for non-paid civilian pilots, who might fly only recreationally.

About 15 percent of civilian pilots reported flying despite experiencing a new physical or psychological symptom they felt should be evaluated by a doctor, about half the rate at which military pilots reported such behavior. 

The study authors suggested the difference in reported behaviors between military and civilian pilots could be due to factors unique to the military aeromedical system or military aviation, or because of a higher representation of younger pilots in the military who are just starting their careers.

The study builds on previous academic work suggesting that pilots avoid health care. A 2019 study of 613 U.S. airline, recreational and military pilots found 78.6 percent of participants were worried about seeking medical care because of how it would impact their ability to fly. Another study in the same year of 173 Active Duty and Reserve Air Force pilots showed only 44.1 percent of pilots felt comfortable discussing a major medical concern with a flight surgeon, and 74 percent felt the need to withhold major, potentially disqualifying, medical information from flight surgeons.

Withholding medical information is not exclusive to military or civilian pilots. A 2019 study of 843 adults found that participants avoided disclosing personal health risk information significantly more “when they believed that a powerful audience (an employer or insurance company) might learn their results from a health risk test than when they believed a non-powerful audience (health researchers) might learn their results,” the authors wrote.

And service members in general may also avoid seeking health care, and mental health care in particular, out of fear it might impact their career, studies have found.

In response to this most recent study, Army medical provider Albert Lee wrote an essay calling for greater trust between military pilots and flight surgeons.

“Being grounded impacts one’s career progression, unit and personal morale, and possibly one’s financial situation,” Lee wrote. “For such reasons, the anxiety associated with annual physicals is somewhat understandable.”

To bridge the gap, Lee suggested that flight surgeons should fly with pilots more or spend more time in general with them in order to build trusting relationships.

“When you fly regularly with the pilots, they will start recognizing you as part of the flying team, not an adversary who is looking to medically ground them,” he said. “You can have some shared occupational identity with them, which can enhance the trust relationship.”

Flight surgeons can urge pilots to treat their bodies the same way they would an aircraft, Lee suggested: If there is a serious issue that could put lives at risk or end the mission, don’t fly with it. Providing more information about the necessity of the medical process and the nature and treatment timeline of a possible medical condition could also help lower pilots’ stress and anxiety.

Though the new study marks one of the broadest efforts yet to understand the issue, the authors wrote that more data could lead to more fine-grained analyses of the problem. The authors also noted the survey responses were collected anonymously online, and thus are unverifiable, and the survey did not ask participants to disclose their branch of service or whether they have sought informal medical care outside the military health care system.

There may also be differences in the rate of health care avoidance based on age, gender, or type of aircraft, but the sample size may have been too small to study those differences, the authors noted, and the study also did not include pilots of unmanned aerial vehicles or other flight crew such as navigators.

Part-Time Wingmen: CCAs Won’t Always Be ‘Tethered’ to Crewed Platforms

Part-Time Wingmen: CCAs Won’t Always Be ‘Tethered’ to Crewed Platforms

March 27, 2023 | By John A. Tirpak

Collaborative Combat Aircraft will be able to carry out missions without direction from crewed aircraft and may not always fly as their “wingmen,” in order to maximize employment flexibility, Air Force leaders developing and testing the new platforms said March 27.

In a panel discussion presented by Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, the four generals charged with bringing the CCA concept to fruition said the service has embarked on on a modeling and simulation campaign to figure out how to make CCAs as useful and cost-imposing on an enemy as possible, while making progress on developmental, operational and testing fronts simultaneously. They would not, however, divulge expected program milestones.

Asked whether CCAs will be “tethered” to crewed platforms or carry out their own missions without such pairings, Maj. Gen. R. Scott Jobe, Air Combat Command’s director of plans, programs. and requirements, replied “Yes.”

In many cases, he said, “we will tether, in terms of range and speed and payloads and capabilities. And in other areas, we will untether in terms of geographic location [and] mission generation” to complicate an enemy’s targeting scheme.

“And then we will be able to congeal our forces [in the] time and place of our choosing,” Jobe added.

The capability to act either as a manned aircraft partner, an independently-operating platform, or as part of a group of CCAs without direct human supervision will be basic to the new systems, Jobe said.

“We’re going to have the ability to perform maneuvers in close concert with a fighter-type aircraft or an [Next-Generation Air Dominance] platform itself, and then there are other cases where we will have swarms doing things on a platform to platform—CCA to CCA—or weapon-to-weapon collaboration level,” he said.

Brig. Gen. (Maj. Gen. select) Dale R. White, program executive officer for fighters and advanced aircraft, said he and Jobe have had discussions of whether “these assets … show up in the same place at the same time” as crewed aircraft, or whether they take off and land as a unit, but there are no hard rules yet about how this will work.

“First and foremost is recognizing we’re going to have to do some real growth on the autonomy piece,” White said, “Because the foundation of autonomy … is trusting.”

On the issue of trust, White noted ACC commander Gen. Mark Kelly’s public comments that his pilots need to become comfortable both operating in the same space as CCAs and trusting them to carry out their assigned tasks. White agreed with Kelly that “we have to put these things in the hands of the captains” and let them take the lead in developing tactics and concepts of operations.

The ultimate concept of operations will depend on the results of modeling and simulation now being done, Air Force Research Laboratory commander Maj. Gen. Heather Pringle said.

The question of tethering is “one we can test out” and, in conjunction with both operators, technologists, acquirers, and testers, “look at modeling and sim and analyses [as to] how can we push the state of the art,” Pringle said.

Modeling and simulation is “risk-free, it’s affordable, and it allows you to explore … examples or scenarios where it’s tethered, where it’s not tethered, where you have mass or not,” Pringle said, adding that she wants Air Combat Command be “uncomfortable … so that it pushes the boundaries of where we are today. And … get further down the road faster, like we need to.”

All four panelists agreed on the need to get a CCA digital model into the Joint Simulation Environment, a simulation/wargaming engine that determines the relative value of platforms with certain characteristics, which in turn helps define those attributes and the optimum numbers to have on hand.

White added that the flexibility of CCAs can’t be “limited by the design” of the material solution.

“The flexibility has to be introduced at the mission planning level, which means the material solution has to be very open in terms of what it’s capable of doing,” he said.

Pringle said the Skyborg autonomous flight program, which will underwrite most CCAs, will never be “done” and “handed over” to the acquisition community. It will be an iterative system which will continue to be refined in concert with operators, testers, and industry, with the goal being that the operators trust it.

Another area that is getting a hard look is how runway independent CCAs will be. Jobe said “there’s varying scales of that … and we’re going to [look at] lots of different technology concepts.”

Initially, “we’re going to do what we know works today, and we’re going to try to give ourselves maximum flexibility in terms of where we can base things out of, and mission-generate, to complicate intermediate tracking of our scheme of maneuver.” He described it as “a math problem,” and there are “expert …captains and majors” working it now.

Pringle said she doesn’t think it’s too early to close in on “what the design solution” should be relative to whether CCAs need to operate from runways.

“We’ve looked at varying degrees of this, and as we … start to dissect the problem,” it’s clear that the answer lies in rapid iteration of designs with a feedback loop from operators, Pringle said, adding that the service is working with industry “to build the propulsion systems that are really needed.”

Maj. Gen. Evan C. Dertien, commander of the Air Force Test Center, said “there’s tons of room for innovation” about the method of launching and recovering CCAs, but he thinks the method of recovery should drive the debate.

“I’m actually more concerned about the landing problem. Because once you land it, you have to refuel it, you have to reload weapons or re-update the sensor. And that’s really what’s going to drive” the concept of operations, he said.

Dertien also highlighted questions that need to be answered for the landing problem, including: “What kind of crew do you need there? How quickly can you turn it? … If you recover it via parachute, that’s probably [going to take] a lot longer than if it lands on landing gear,” he said. “So to me, it’s all about the combat turn. And we need to figure out … the right takeoff and landing environment that allows us to rapidly turn these back into the fight.”

Because the Air Force’s planned Next-Generation Air Dominance fighter will rely so heavily on CCAs to accomplish its air superiority mission, Dertien added, CCAs are the more pressing problem and their concept of operations should be nailed down as quickly as possible.

How quickly that will happen remains uncertain, as panelists declined to offer planned timetables of CCA progress, but Jobe said there are “100 mini-milestones this year.”

CyberPatriot XV Crowns New National Champions

CyberPatriot XV Crowns New National Champions

March 27, 2023 | By Patrick Reardon

CyberPatriot XV launched last fall with 5,266 teams from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Canada, U.S. overseas territories, and military dependent schools in Europe and the Pacific. Just 28 earned a ticket to the National Finals in Bethesda, Md., and just one team from each of three divisions earned the coveted title of “champion.” 

CyberPatriot crowned its national champions March 20:  

  • “CyberAegis Tempest” ​from Del Norte High School in San Diego, Calif., took the honors in the Open Division; 
  • “Runtime Terror” representing Troy High School’s Navy JROTC in Fullerton, Calif., won the All Service Division; and
  • “CyberAegis Vitalis” from Design 39 Campus in San Diego, won the Middle School Division. 

CyberPatriot is the nation’s largest youth cyber education program and the Air & Space Forces Association’s flagship STEM program for advancing youth cyber skills. The annual National Youth Cyber Defense Competition involves more than 5,000 teams from middle and high schools annually. 

The finals competition included a variety of challenges over three days. Teams competed to maintain servers and repair system vulnerabilities while defending against simulated cyberattacks.  

“You are truly America’s future and what you are doing in cyber is not only remarkable, but needed,” said AFA President & CEO Lt. Gen. Bruce “Orville” Wright, USAF (Ret.), as the teams gathered to begin the competition. “I want to emphasize that point. We need you. We need your creativity, your ideas, your willingness to share, and your boldness. You are already CyberPatriots, and the name says it all: a dedication to not only cyber, but to something bigger than yourselves.” 

John-Michael Linares, coach of “Runtime Terror” commended all the competitors, including his own championship team. “The students worked really hard for this win,” he said. “They spent countless hours researching and applying cybersecurity trends, attack vectors, and mitigations. Each year, I’m awestruck by the level of technical expertise the students are able to achieve. This year is no exception.” 

Winners take home more than bragging rights. They also won $51,000 in scholarships from Diamond Sponsor Cisco, the network technology giant. It was the fourth year that Cisco awarded scholarships to the Cisco NetAcad Challenge, bringing its total scholarships awarded to CyberPatriot winners to over $200,000. 

The top three winners in the Open and All Service Divisions also were awarded four-year undergraduate scholarships to Silver Sponsor Gannon University; first-place team members received full scholarships, while second-place team members received $4,000 each, and third-place team members received $3,000 each.

Maj. Gen. Gregory J. Gagnon, deputy chief of space operations for intelligence, commended both the teams and the sponsors at the National Finals banquet.  

“America talks a lot about staying strong and staying safe,” he said. “In order to do that, it takes corporate citizens like this that, regardless of the bottom line, say that we need to give back. Because, when we need to build skills in the young generation … we need to reward what we want to see. That’s how we motivate, and that’s how we incentivize.” 

Other notable Space Force, Air Force, and industry figures joining in the ceremonies included Lauren Barrett Knausenberger, Chief Information Officer for the Department of the Air Force; Aaron Copeland, vice president of engineering for Northrop Grumman’s Mission Systems sector; Cindy DeCarlo, director of global government and national security for Cisco; and Veronica Daigle, director of acquisition and innovation policy at Boeing.  

CyberPatriot announced six new Cyber All-American Awards, given to senior-class CyberPatriot competitors who qualified for the National Finals in four consecutive seasons: 

  • Chan Chung from Troy High School 
  • Akhil Guntur from Del Norte High School 
  • Johnathan Lin from Del Norte High School 
  • Brian Ni from Troy High School 
  • Akshay Rohatgi from Del Norte High School 
  • Alvin Zheng from Del Norte High School 

“The end of each season is bittersweet,” said Paul Johnson, coach of CyberAegis, which has fielded 11 Championship teams in eight years. “I’ve been with most of the seniors for 6 or 7 years. I try to convince [them] to repeat their senior year so they can stay with the team, but for some reason they all insist on going off to college and taking on challenging careers.” 

Applications to compete in CyberPatriot’s 16th season open April 1. To learn more about CyberPatriot and register your team, visit www.uscyberpatriot.org. 

CYBERPATRIOT XV NATIONAL FINALS AWARDS 

OPEN DIVISION 

National Champion: CyberAegis Tempest ​from Del Norte High School (San Diego, Calif.) 

Runner-Up: Half Dome from Franklin High School (Elk Grove, Calif.) 

Third Place: CyberAegis Drift ​from Del Norte High School (San Diego, Calif.)​ 

ALL SERVICE DIVISION 

National Champion: Runtime Terror from Troy High School Navy JROTC (Fullerton, Calif.) 

Runner-Up: Terabyte Falcons ​from Scripps Ranch High School Air Force JROTC (San Diego, Calif.)​​ 

Third Place: TXPatriot | baits 64==​ from Roosevelt High School Army JROTC (San Antonio, Texas) 

MIDDLE SCHOOL DIVISION  

National Champion: CyberAegis Vitalis from Design 39 Campus (San Diego, Calif.) 

Runner-Up:  CyberAegis Aeris from Oak Valley Middle School (San Diego, Calif.) 

Third Place: The Other Half from Toby Johnson Middle School (Elk Grove, Calif.​) 

INDIVIDUAL CHALLENGE AWARD​ WINNERS​​ 

Boeing Cyber-Physical Systems Challenge: 

c¥b3rh0u#d5 from Carmel High School (Carmel, Ind.) 

Open Division Cisco Networking Challenge: 

1st Place: CyberAegis Drift ​from Del Norte High School (San Diego, Calif.) 

2nd Place: Half Dome from Franklin High School (Elk Grove, Calif.) 

3rd Place: CyberAegis Tempest ​from Del Norte High School (San Diego, Calif.) 

All Service Division Cisco Networking Challenge: 

1st Place: TXPatriot | baits 64==​ from Roosevelt High School Army JROTC (San Antonio, Texas) 

2nd Place: Entropy from Fullerton Composite Squadron – CAP (Fullerton, Calif.) 

3rd Place: Terabyte Falcons ​ from Scripps Ranch High School Air Force JROTC (San Diego, Calif.) 

Middle School Division Cisco Networking Challenge Winner: 

CyberAegis Aeris from Oak Valley Middle School (San Diego, Calif.) 

PHOTOS: Tinker Practices ‘Weather Flush,’ Conducts E-3 Elephant Walk

PHOTOS: Tinker Practices ‘Weather Flush,’ Conducts E-3 Elephant Walk

March 27, 2023 | By Chris Gordon

More than a dozen E-3 Sentry airborne warning and control, or AWACS, aircraft lined up on the runways at Tinker Air Force Base, Okla., on March 21. The crews of the distinctive E-3, with rotating radar domes perched above the fuselage, were practicing one of their more perilous missions: the weather flush.

“The weather flush gives aircrews, support squadrons, and maintainers a chance to practice generating the E-3G Sentry to evacuate the area quickly in the event of a weather emergency,” a Tinker Air Force Base release said of the exercise.

Before severe weather hits, Air Force bases across the U.S. often fly their planes of harm’s way. Usually, evacuations occur because of a hurricane or a similar large, predictable weather event. Some bases, however, are subject to unpredictable weather and have aircraft that cannot easily be replaced—Tinker Air Force Base is in the heart of tornado alley in central Oklahoma and houses most of the Air Force’s AWACS fleet.

“Weather flush exercises are somewhat unique in that we are usually focusing on maximizing aircraft generation and updating airfield dispersal plans in a very rapid timeline,” an official from the 552nd Air Control Wing told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

Tinker is the only base in the continental U.S. with E-3s, and the majority of the Air Force’s fleet of the aircraft—27 of 31—are assigned there. E-3 aircraft are needed for battle management and command control missions, so they could not all participate in the weather flush exercise, the official said. However, 552nd Air Control Wing said they tried to make the exercise as realistic as possible.

“For this exercise, no jet was off limits,” the wing official said. “There were other mission requirements that constrained being able to walk all of our available aircraft so for this exercise, 14 were rapidly generated.”

The 552nd Air Control Wing is well aware of its unique location and aircraft, the official noted, and has weather forecasters that give the base around 48 hours notice on whether or not they should fly their aircraft out of harm’s way or protect them in their hangers.

In the weather flush mission, five aircraft departed Tinker, though the exercise simulated scrambling aircrews and ground personnel for the additional planes.

The E-3s are an aging part of the Air Force’s command and control fleet, and the Air Force plans to replace the aircraft with the E-7 Wedgetail as soon as possible. E-3s in the fleet have an average age of over 40 years and a mission capable rate of around 60 percent.

With the aircraft’s retirement looming, the 552nd Air Control Wing took the exercise as opportunity to stage an elephant walk—aircraft taxiing in a close formation in a show of airpower—on one of the base’s runways.

“For this one, and to preserve a little history, the aircraft weren’t allowed to take off immediately when they were ready, we held them so we could capture the elephant walk picture, then we flew some of them off station and dispersed others,” the 552nd Air Control Wing official said.

Details Murky as ARRW Falls Short in Second Test

Details Murky as ARRW Falls Short in Second Test

March 24, 2023 | By John A. Tirpak

The second all-up flight of the AGM-183A Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon on March 13 fell short of a fully successful test, but the Air Force isn’t saying what went wrong with the Lockheed Martin-built hypersonic missile. The defense giant’s Missiles and Fire Control division recently said the ARRW is “ready to go” into production at scale.

A B-52H bomber of the 412th Test Wing launched the ARRW on its second “All-Up-Round” test off the southern California coast, the Air Force said March 24. The goal was to assess its “end-to-end performance” from captive carry through launch, booster ignition, shroud separation, and hypersonic body glide to impact. “Hypersonic” describes a vehicle that can fly at more than five times the speed of sound.

“The test met several of the objectives,” the Air Force said, “and ARRW team engineers and testers are collecting data for further analysis.” The Air Force declined to provide further details, citing operational security.

The ARRW flew what was described as a successful test on Dec. 9, 2022, the third in a row after a series of failures. The December test was “the first launch of a full prototype operational missile” in the program, the 86th Test Wing at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla. said in announcing the event. That missile completed the test and “detonated in the target area.”

In its fiscal 2024 budget request, the Air Force said it would “complete rapid prototyping and flight testing” of ARRW this year and asked for $150.3 million for the effort. The fiscal 2022 and fiscal 2023 amounts were $308.08 million and $114.98 million, respectively.

Several more all-up tests are planned. The additional shots will allow the Air Force to “collect valuable data, build capacity and capability, allow hypersonics programs to leverage and build upon each other, and project the overall technology forward,” the service said in its budget request. Other activities planned in 2024 include “complete contract closeout, finalize documentation and analysis, and activities to support the leave-behind capability.”

The “leave-behind” capability comprises an undisclosed number of production-representative weapons that could be used for further research or in combat.

Congress cut $161 million from ARRW in 2022, citing program delays and test failures.

Jay Pitman, Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control vice president for air dominance and strike weapons, told reporters at the AFA Warfare Symposium on March 7 that “we believe we are ready to go … and to support production should that decision be made.” Pitman said Lockheed has demonstrated to the Air Force that it can produce the ARRW “at scale” with the “potential to do dozens upon dozens of these on a yearly basis.” Lockheed has established a hypersonics product production facility in Courtland, Ala and is working on several hypersonic programs for the Air Force, Army, and Navy.

“Behind the scenes, we’re doing what any development program would do,” Pitman said. “We’re going through qualification testing of our subsystems. We’re going through formal Production Readiness Reviews with the US government team.” Pitman added 26 of 27 of those reviews are complete.

Pitman asserted that his team is “on the cusp of delivery of an operational capability that can be rapidly deployed to the men and women in uniform.”

The air-to-ground AGM-183 ARRW is meant to “enable the U.S. to hold fixed, high-value, time-sensitive targets at risk in contested environments,” the Air Force said.

Get Weapons to Warfighters Faster, Lawmakers Tell DOD Acquisition Czar

Get Weapons to Warfighters Faster, Lawmakers Tell DOD Acquisition Czar

March 24, 2023 | By Christopher Prawdzik

Challenged by House lawmakers over the slow pace of weapons development, the Defense Department’s top weapons buyer acknowledged the Pentagon’s faults, as well as Congress’ past failures to deliver budgets on time.

“We know that it doesn’t matter how beautiful the prototype is,” said William LaPlante, undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment. “It has to get to the warfighter.”

Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), chairman of the House Armed Services Cyber, Information Technologies, and Innovation subcommittee, opened the panel’s March 23 hearing with a stinging critique of the Pentagon’s acquisition of commercial technology already proven in battle against improvised explosive devices in Iraq in 2007. Despite that, Gallagher noted, it took DOD six years to define a requirement for the system, then five more push it through programming, planning, and budgeting.

“We downplayed production and peace dividends after the Cold War, and a focus on counterinsurgency operations, necessarily so after 9/11, led us to prioritize other things in the industrial base and not prioritize production,” LaPlante said in the Pentagon’s defense. “If you do not do production, no matter how brilliant your innovation is, it’s not going to get to a warfighter.”

LaPlante said one systemic problem in delays is funding uncertainty. Short-term budget extensions known as continuing resolutions that drag on for weeks or months at a time delay new starts and distract energy from other work. If Congress is going to operate that way, the Pentagon needs more flexibility, he said.

“We have to continue to have more flexible authorities, and then we must be able to provide and buy things in advance, procure things in advance, and we must also get the budget passed on time,” LaPlante said. “I know it’s unfair because all of you support the budget. But I think … four years we have not had a budget out of the last 10, 11 years. It’s not funny to think that if the Chinese have done the same thing, we’d be in a better place.”

Gallagher’s complaint set the tone for the hearing. “To put it simply, it took the Department of Defense 11 years to translate warfighter demand into a funded marketplace demand and five more to deliver a product that saves American service member lives,” he said. “It’s the norm, not the exception, too often in this world.”

LaPlante said the Defense Innovation Unit created the prototype in two years in that instance, doing what it was supposed to do, but other holdups in the cumbersome acquisition process were probably at fault.

Heidi Shyu, undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, said the National Defense Science and Technology Strategy now in the works aims to address acquisition speed. It will focus on joint service goals, quickly fielding capabilities, and cultivating the talent.

“Last year, we identified 14 critical technologies that underpin our advantage” in conflict with adversaries, she said. “The budget makes investment in each of these areas.”

She promised that working with LaPlante’s office DOD will “accelerate innovations to the field.”

LaPlante said there were also cultural issues, not just processes, that the Pentagon needed to change. The desire to change things, whether requirements or performance or other parameters, is among the biggest drivers for slowing down programs.

“One thing humans like to do, particularly the government, is they like to tweak,” LaPlante said. Piling on requirements changes the nature of the original product in question. “What was a commercial item [to start with], maybe still technically is a commercial item, [but becomes] anything but commercial.”

After Long Wait, Guam’s Missile and Air Defense Is About to Get A Whole Lot Better

After Long Wait, Guam’s Missile and Air Defense Is About to Get A Whole Lot Better

March 24, 2023 | By Chris Gordon

The Department of Defense is getting ready to overhaul its air and missile defenses on Guam, perhaps the most critical U.S. military hub in striking distance of China. DOD plans to invest $1.5 billion in a new missile and air shield for Guam in fiscal 2024, part of a long-awaited effort to better defend the territory.

“Current forces are capable of defending Guam against today’s North Korean ballistic missile threats,” Michelle C. Atkinson, the director of operations for the Missile Defense Agency, told reporters March 13. “However, the regional threat to Guam, including those from [the People’s Republic of China] continues to rapidly evolve.”

The new systems headed for the U.S. territory will include radars, launchers, interceptors, and command and control systems to counter the increasing capabilities of the Chinese cruise and ballistic missiles and other threats.

“Guam has the perfect air and missile defense problem,” said Tom Karako, an air and missile defense expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “It’s wicked hard because we have to integrate all these different defenses because the potential adversary, China, is going to have a complex and integrated attack of everything from drones to cruise missiles to ballistics to gliders, etcetera. We have to put those things together so that they can’t attack the gaps and the seams of those several systems.”

Guam, the Westernmost U.S. territory, is a critical staging location for American forces in the Pacific, providing airfields and ports for nuclear submarines, aircraft carriers, and strategic bombers, as well as jungle warfare training for the Marine Corps. The Pentagon is investing heavily now in dispersing its forces, leveraging new basing agreements with allies that will allow U.S. submarines to forward deploy to Australia, for example, and Air Force jets to drop in and operate from remote air bases throughout the western Pacific under the Air Force’s Agile Combat Employment (ACE) concept. Regardless of how many “spokes” U.S. forces operate from in the region, Guam will remain a large and critical hub.

Yet there is still a long way to go to comprehensively defend Guam against aerial threats.

“The fundamental criteria are schedule and capability,” Karako said.

The island is currently protected by the Army’s Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) ballistic missile defense system and the Navy’s Aegis system off the coast, which will continue to be supported by the Missile Defense Agency. The MDA plans to invest $801 million for Guam’s defense in fiscal 2024.

“We’re on a very short timetable on Guam,” Vice Adm. Jon A. Hill, the director of the Missile Defense Agency said at a CSIS event March 24. “We’re doing it because of location, location, location. … It deserves to be defended.”

Most of the MDA’s money would not go directly to any one piece of kit, but toward working out an overall integrated air and missile defense architecture for the island through research, development, test, and evaluation.

“It is not simple—it is hard, hard work.” Hill said. “We’re running lots of studies right now to see which is best.”

The Army and Navy will continue to play a large role. Army plans provide Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensors (LTAMDS), the high-end PATRIOT system, and Indirect Fires Protection Capability (IFPC).

“There is no end state,” Hill told reporters at the McAleese and Associates defense conference March 15. “We’re going to deliver capability as it’s ready and we’re going to continue to build it out.”

The Navy’s Aegis system already exists, and it has been placed on land before in Poland and Romania as the so-called Aegis Ashore system. But while roughly one-third of Guam is controlled by the U.S. military, the island is a tourist attraction. China may clear islands to create militarized fortresses, but the MDA must consider Guam’s difficult Pacific island terrain and its natural beauty. Therefore, the Aegis Guam System will be tailored to the island, including the integration of new AN/TPY-6 radars as part of an effort to create a 360-degree ability to see and engage all threats to the island, a much desired but often difficult prospect in the air defense world. The plan is for Aegis to work alongside the Army’s Integrated Air and Missile Defense Battle Command System (IBCS).

“It really is combined, at the simple level, Aegis and IBCS working together on the island,” Hill said March 13. “We have a mix of launchers on the island.”

All these systems will then have to have a linked command and control network to see and shoot the right targets with the right interceptor at the right time—on architecture that will be evolving.

“It’s important to get that out there as quickly as possible while we simultaneously ascertain the best way to integrate or interoperate the several command and control systems for all of these elements,” Karako said. “That last piece, the command and control, is going to be a vexing challenge.”

US Air Strikes Hit Back at Iran’s Proxy Forces in Syria After Deadly Drone Attack

US Air Strikes Hit Back at Iran’s Proxy Forces in Syria After Deadly Drone Attack

March 24, 2023 | By Chris Gordon

The U.S. Air Force stuck two Iranian-backed militia sites in Syria early on the morning of March 24 local time, responding to a drone attack that killed a U.S. contractor in northeastern Syria the previous day, the Pentagon said. The militia attacks are the latest in an escalating series of drone and missile strikes the U.S. blames on Iran-backed groups in Iraq and Syria. Iranian-backed forces have attacked U.S. troops in Syria around 80 times since the start of 2021, according to American accounts.

“We don’t seek conflict or war with Iran,” Pentagon Press Secretary Patrick S. Ryder told reporters. “Our focus in Syria is on the enduring defeat of ISIS. Unfortunately, what you see in this situation are these Iranian-backed groups—not only in Syria but conducting operations in the Strait of Hormuz, in the Gulf, in Iraq—conducting destabilizing operations that are meant to export terror and instability.”

The March 23 militia attack that killed a U.S. contractor also wounded five U.S. service members and another U.S. contractor. The one-way drone strike hit a facility in Hasakah, Syria at 1:38 p.m. local time, according to the Pentagon. U.S. intelligence officials said the drone was made in Iran and launched by a group sponsored by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

President Joe Biden was briefed on the attack on U.S. personnel while aboard Air Force One on his way to Canada, U.S. officials said. Biden ordered the air strikes, which the Pentagon called a “proportionate” response.

More than 12 hours after the attack, two F-15E Strike Eagles assigned to Air Forces Central (AFCENT) launched a nighttime strike against two “IRGC-affiliated facilities” in eastern Syria at around 2:40 am, which Biden later described as sites used for munitions storage and command and control. The Pentagon said the F-15s took off from a base in the CENTCOM region but did not specify exactly which one.

“Be prepared for us to act forcefully to protect our people,” Biden said in Ottawa March 24.

The U.S. launched the airstrikes not only because of the casualties suffered March 23, but because that incident was part of a “series of recent attacks against coalition forces in Syria by groups affiliated with the IRGC,” Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III said in a statement. Around 900 U.S. forces are in Syria assisting local groups in the battle against ISIS militants.

“These precision strikes are intended to protect and defend U.S. personnel,” Austin said. “The United States took proportionate and deliberate action intended to limit the risk of escalation and minimize casualties.”

That did not end matters. Iranian-backed groups retaliated with four attacks on U.S. sites in Syria after the U.S. air stirkes.

The first of those four took place at Green Village, in northeastern Syria at 8:05 am local time March 24, the U.S. military said. According to CENTCOM, the rockets missed Green Village by around 5 kilometers and caused “significant damage” to a local house and injured four civilians, including two children.

U.S. military officials said there were three more attacks. At 10:39 pm local time on March 24, rockets hit Mission Support Site Conoco, injuring one U.S. service member, who was described as in stable condition. Less than an hour later at 11:23 pm local time, three drones targetted Green Village. Two of the drones were taken down by the sites air defenses, but one got through. It struck a building but did not cause significant damage or injure personnel. At 2:19 am local March 25 another drone targeted and struck Green Village, but did not cause any injuries.

Gen. Michael “Erik” Kurilla, the commander of CENTCOM, told the House Armed Services Committee March 23 that Iranian-backed forces have attacked American troops 78 times since the beginning of 2021. That testimony came before the most recent attacks came to light. U.S. personnel are typically not physically harmed by those attacks, as the rockets, missiles, and drones are usually shot down, miss, or only do minor damage.

However, U.S. defenses were unable to stop the deadly attack near Hasakah.

“My understanding is that there was a complete sight picture in terms of radar,” Ryder said. He said CENTCOM will review the incident to determine “what, if any, other type of mitigating actions need to be taken.”

AFCENT commander Lt. Gen. Alexus G. Grynkewich has said the Iranian threat is a vast and complex one, posing serious dilemmas for U.S. forces in the region with potential for “thousands of ballistic missiles” and other aerial threats that AFCENT and U.S. partners are working to combat.

Kurilla said during his Congressional testimony that “Iran of today is exponentially more militarily capable than it was even five years ago,” fielding the region’s largest drone and missile force.

“What Iran does to hide its hand is they use Iranian proxies … to be able to attack our forces in Iraq or Syria,” Kurilla said.

John Kirby, the strategic communications coordinator for the National Security Council, did not say whether there would be more U.S. air strikes in response to the additional militia attacks.

“We’re going to see where this goes,” Kirby said on CBS’s Face the Nation March 26. “I’m certainly not going to rule out additional U.S. action if the president deems it appropriate.”

This article was updated March 26 after U.S. officials provided details of additional attacks on U.S. forces.