McConnell Air Force Base Evacuates Tankers From Severe Storms

Feb. 27, 2023 | By Christopher Prawdzik

A derecho moving across the central U.S. Feb. 26 forced the 22nd Air Refueling Wing at McConnell Air Force Base, Kan. to move its aircraft out of the severe storm’s path.

“We [relocated] most of our KC-46 and KC-135 fleet this weekend, save for a few aircraft that were undergoing extended maintenance,” John Van Winkle, the 22nd Air Refueling Wing’s chief of public affairs, said in an email. He noted that the remaining aircraft and flight line equipment were protected in hangars.

The storm spawned at least nine tornadoes in Oklahoma and Kansas, and disrupted weather in the Texas panhandle.

In Norman, Okla., about 15 miles south of Tinker Air Force Base, Okla., The Weather Channel and other news outlets reported 12 injuries and storm damage after a tornado touched down there Feb. 26. Oklahoma News 4 reported one death in Roger Mills County near Cheyenne, Okla., in the western part of the state. A spokesperson for Tinker Air Force Base said the base and its aircraft were spared.

In Texas, the storm whipped up 114 mph winds, and by Feb. 27 morning more than 75,000 residences and businesses were without power in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, according to The Weather Channel. By the afternoon of Feb. 27, that number had dropped to a little more than 18,000, according to the power outage tracker poweroutage.us.

Though tornadoes can occur at anytime of year, they are most prevalent in spring, particularly from Texas up through the Midwest. It has been nearly 10 years since a devastating EF-5 tornado ripped through Moore, Okla., close to Tinker AFB in May 2013.

Air Force’s Task Force 99 Conducts First Successful Drone Tests

Feb. 27, 2023 | By Chris Gordon

The Air Force’s Task Force 99, a showcase unit defense officials have cited as a model of how to make the most of existing resources in the Middle East, recently concluded its first operational experiment, a successful test of using small drones for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance roles, Air Forces Central (AFCENT) leaders said.

The task force is designed to help AFCENT to do more with less in the Middle East. After decades as the highest-priority theater, today both the Pacific and Europe are increasingly gaining priority. AFCENT leaders intend to as part of a new drive to experiment throughout U.S. Central Command and adopt a “culture of innovation.”

“Depending on the on the systems we’re bringing in, that will always be an ongoing process,” Col. Robert Smoker, the task force commander, told Air & Space Forces Magazine Feb. 24. “But we are at the point now where we have actually done our first operational evaluation in theater.”

Smoker said the team tested a small commercial drone with a “mapping capability,” and which he called promising. “It performed admirably and as advertised,” Smoker said. “So it looks like it could be good for potential use in the future for folks at AFCENT.”

Speaking at an AFA Warfighters in Action event Feb. 13, Lt. Gen. Alexus G. Grynkewich, the AFCENT commander, said the test was part of a broader effort to “fill some of the gaps that we have as our other more traditional ISR platforms have gone to other regions or other priorities for the Air Force.”

“So we’re trying to solve our own problems,” Grynkewich added. “And we’re trying to do it in a way that’s less expensive and that is, frankly, in many cases more effective than we might have been able to do [before].”

Task Force 99 plans to next test more complex drones and will start joint experiments with Navy Task Force 59 to test long-range unmanned aerial systems in March.

“The Navy problem was maritime domain awareness,” Gynkewich said. “Our problem was air domain awareness, and air domain awareness not just for tracking objects in the air, but maybe finding things on the ground that launch into the air, and how those could be a threat to us.”

Smoker, an Air National Guard Airman whose civilian job is in the defense industry, took command of Task Force 99 Feb. 23, relieving Lt. Col. Erin Brilla at the end of her CENTCOM tour.

Established in October 2022 with a focus on testing products costing from a few hundred dollars up to $75,000, the Task Force includes just nine Airmen, including Smoker.

“The ultimate goal with these operational evaluations is to determine that this thing does work as advertised, and it works in the environment in which we want it to operate,” Smoker said.

Grynkewich said he is giving Task Force 99 a long runway to experiment as “super-empowered” Airmen. CENTCOM envisions all services working together on these experiments, with the goal of increasing awareness of all threats in the region. The Navy already employs a deployed network of surveillance vessels as part of Task Force 59. The Army stood up its Task Force 39 in November 2022, with one of its focuses being counter-UAS solutions.

AFCENT hosted an innovation day at Shaw Air Force Base, S.C., headquarters on Feb. 15, bringing in more than 70 industry partners for an event hosted by Grynkewich.

“It’s a dangerous region, and there are people attacking us every day,” Grynkewich said at the time. Both Iran and ISIS have used drones to attack American assets and partners in the Middle East, and Iran’s drone threat has prompted the U.S. to call in F-22 Raptors to deploy to the region multiple times. U.S. troops in Syria face particularly acute risks from drones, and are using new counter-UAS systems to augment their defenses.

“We’ve got the best operators on the ground intercepting these threats,” Grynkewich said. “But we can’t always rely on that, which is why we need to be able to provide new technologies and new approaches in new ways that increase the length of time we have to engage.”

Ukraine ‘Doesn’t Need’ F-16s, Biden Says, But Others Say ‘It’s Not Off the Table’

Feb. 26, 2023 | By Chris Gordon

President Joe Biden’s position has been clear all along: Ukraine will not get multi-role fighter jets from the U.S. any time soon.

“He doesn’t need F-16s now,” Biden told ABC News in an interview broadcast Feb. 24, referring to requests from Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

But others continue to press the case. Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, met with Zelenskyy on Feb. 21, then said he agreed with the Ukrainian president that Ukraine needs F-16s and ATACM surface-to-surface missiles.

“I don’t think it’s off the table,” McCaul said on ABC’s This Week Feb. 26. “I think with enough pressure from Congress on both sides of the aisle, we can get into Ukraine what they really need to win this fight. Otherwise, what are we doing in Ukraine?”

The Biden administration argues against providing F-16s now because it will take too long to get them there and to get Ukraine’s air force trained to use them.

“There is no basis upon which there is a rationale, according to our military, now, to provide F-16s,” Biden said. “[Zelenskyy] needs tanks. He needs artillery. He needs air defense, including another HIMARS. There are things he needs now that we’re sending him to put him in a position to be able to make gains this spring and this summer going into the fall.”

The Ukrainians have other ways of keeping the Russian Aerospace Forces, or VKS, out of the fight, others argue, including the PATRIOT air defense systems Ukraine has acquired.

In the year since Russia invaded Ukraine, the U.S. has refrained from providing long-range ATACMS surface-to-surface missiles and other systems, seeking to draw a distinction between weapons Ukraine can use to defend itself and any that might have utility in taking the war to Russia. F-16s would complicate that position.

Some former U.S. military officials say Ukraine’s limited airpower is precisely what is hampering its forces from waging a true combined arms fight against Russian forces.

“Our air forces of the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines have afforded battlefield air superiority over our troops in every war since Korea,” said retired Air Force Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, who was NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander when Russia seized Crimea in 2014. He told Air & Space Forces Magazine in early February that air power is crucial to combined arms combat. “It’s important that a nation can allow its troops the freedom to fight under that kind of air cover,” Breedlove said. “The Ukrainian Air Force has a small and limited-sized and older force. They have used them magnificently to thwart the Russians.”

F-16s are not the only option. The West could also provide F-18s, tactical aircraft originally designed to operate from aircraft carriers, which by their very nature as floating runways have limited depots and a small footprint. Sweden’s Saab Gripen is another fighter designed to operate with a limited support crew and under harsh conditions.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said on Feb. 8 that his country would train Ukrainian pilots, though the details remain unclear.

The White House has not ruled out providing F-16s in the future, including after a negotiated settlement, if that should occur. In that case, the West would help Kyiv improve its defense capabilities. Biden’s National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said on Feb. 26 that, for now, the U.S. was attempting to bolster Ukrainian’s existing aircraft as much as possible.

“It’s important for people to understand that Ukrainian pilots are currently flying day in and day out,” Sullivan said. “They are flying their Soviet-era fighters, MiG fighters, Sukhois. And the coalition is providing spare parts for those planes to ensure that they can stay in the sky. So first of all, we are providing a substantial amount of support to the Ukrainian Air Force for the limited kinds of missions that the current war calls for them to undertake.”

Discussions over U.S. manned aircraft, Sullivan added, remain “a question for another day, for another phase.”

In the meantime, the U.S. is providing a growing number of cutting-edge unmanned aircraft to Ukraine in its latest $2 billion round of military aid.

Cutting-Edge Drones Headed to Ukraine in Latest US Aid

Feb. 26, 2023 | By Chris Gordon

The conflict in Ukraine is emerging as a critical test bed for new weapons technology, and while efforts to provide fighter aircraft to Ukraine remain stalled, those constraints do not seem to apply to advanced unmanned aerial systems (UAS).

The latest U.S. aid package for Ukraine, announced Feb. 24, includes an array of new UASs. Valued in total at about $2 billion, the aid comes out of the U.S. Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI), which funds purchases directly from industry rather than taking supplies from American stocks.

Caitlin Lee, senior fellow for UAV and autonomy studies at AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, said the UASs represent a natural evolution of new equipment for Ukraine.

“I think what you’re seeing is the U.S. building on the success of smaller drones in Ukraine and leveraging that as much as possible in the absence of the ability to send a larger aircraft, manned or unmanned, into the battle,” Lee said.

Neither Russia nor Ukraine have been able to achieve air superiority in the conflict, leading both sides to turn to drones to as a lower-risk means to attack ground targets from above. Russia has made extensive use of Iranian-made kamikaze drones to attack Ukrainian infrastructure, providing a novel and cost-effective solution to countering Ukrainian air defenses while still achieving air-to-ground hits.

Ukraine has also employed drones, including Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2s, and quadcopters for artillery spotting in the slugfest now taking place in the eastern part of the country. Ukraine has also used off-the-shelf drones to drop explosives, a tactic ISIS has used against U.S.-backed forces in Iraq and Syria.

The new UASs the U.S. will provide include systems either still in testing or that have only been used sparingly to date by U.S. forces. These include Switchblade 600s, Jump 20s, ALTIUS-600s, and CyberLux K8s. Only the Switchblade has been promised in past aid packages.

Pentagon Press Secretary Brig. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder said in a press briefing Feb. 24 that unmanned systems are now “part of the modern way of warfare.”

“I think it’s become apparent to everyone in the last five to seven years, you know, especially as we saw groups like ISIS starting to use drones and now especially in this conflict, the significant impact that drones have.”

Ryder cautioned, however, that the drones would likely not arrive until late spring or later, well after the fighting is expected to pick up. He declined to specify either precise numbers or timing of deliveries.

Drones to Come

ALTIUS-600 is a small drone that can fly over 270 miles. Its manufacturer Area-I, a subsidiary of defense startup Anduril, promotes the craft as a modular system with a nose cone that can be fitted with an array of sensors or payloads. The drone is tube-launched and recoverable. The U.S. Army has tested the system in multiple forms, including launching them from the ground, from helicopters as air-launched effects (ALE), and even operating together in swarms. ALTIUS has also been tested as an electronic warfare platform. Anduril says the company has recently added a loitering munitions capability to the platform. It is unclear exactly what payloads and launchers Ukraine will receive along with the drones.

An Area-I Air-Launched, Tube-Integrated, Unmanned System, or ALTIUS, sails through the skies at Yuma Proving Ground, Ariz. Photo by Jose Mejia-Betancourth/CCDC AvMC Technology Development Directorate

The AeroVironment Jump 20, is a vertical take-off and landing drone that can perform surveillance missions for over 14 hours with a range of around 115 miles, according to its manufacturer. It has already been fielded for U.S. Special Operations Forces, and the U.S. Army has awarded a $8 million contract to begin to purchase Jump 20s to perform tactical missions for American troops. Its design appears conventional with fixed wings and a propeller at the front. But it also features smaller propellers that are vertically mounted, which eliminates the need for runways and is one of its selling points.

The Switchblade 600 has a longer range and bigger warhead than the tube-launched Switchblade 300 drone already used by Ukraine. Like the Jump 20, it is made by AeroVironment. The Switchblade 600 can carry a 30-pound payload around 25 miles for about 40 minutes, making it well suited for anti-armor missions.

“Patented wave-off and recommit capability allows operators to abort the mission at any time and then re-engage either the same or other targets multiple times based on operator command,” says AeroVironment.

U.S. Marines with 1st Battalion, 3d Marines, train with a Switchblade 300 10C system as part of Service Level Training Exercise 1-22 at Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms, California, Sept. 24, 2021. U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Alexis Moradian

Little public information is available about the CyberLux K8, produced by 23-year-old Cyberlux Corp. Among the company’s products are small quadcopters, a type of drone that Ukraine has already extensively employed.

Lee cautioned against concluding that these new systems signal a new way of waging war for the U.S., saying instead the systems could prove useful in specific situations.

“The threat environment really hasn’t driven us toward some of the smaller commercial solutions. But I think we’re starting to see the value of doing that for allies and partners,” said Lee. “The kinds of technologies that we’re seeing have some success in Ukraine are probably not the same kinds of technologies that the U.S. might need were we to engage directly in a conflict with a peer adversary like China.”

Notably missing from the new-U.S. provided drones is the MQ-9. Ukraine has asked for Reaper drones, and its manufacturer, General Atomics, has pledged to provide them from its own stocks.

“Imagine if Ukraine had access to UAVs that had an order of magnitude more payload, twelve times the range, the ability to fly across the entire county of Ukraine and stay aloft for over a day,” said retired Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, dean of the Mitchell Institute. “I’m talking about the MQ-1 Gray Eagle and MQ-9 Predator, of which the U.S. has dozens sitting in storage crates in the western desert not in use, or planned for use, by any U.S. agency.”

Pratt & Whitney to Resume F-35 Engine Deliveries after 2-Month Hold

Feb. 24, 2023 | By John A. Tirpak

Pratt & Whitney has been cleared to restart deliveries of F135 jet engines—two months after the Pentagon ordered a hold on deliveries following the crash of an F-35B in December. But the F-35 Joint Program Office has not yet allowed delivery of 21 already assembled F-35s that were put on hold after the crash.

Industry officials said F-35 jet deliveries could resume the week of Feb. 27.

Deliveries were halted due to the discovery of “a rare system phenomenon involving harmonic resonance,” the JPO said in an emailed statement, echoing word-for-word what Jen Latka, a Pratt & Whitney vice president had said on Feb. 10.

The JPO said it is working with an industry team “to ensure incorporation of mitigation measures that will fully address/resolve this rare phenomenon in impacted F135 engines.”

The government will “provide instructions to the fleet and to Lockheed Martin to enable safe resumption of flight operations of impacted aircraft and new production aircraft,” the statement said.

Pratt scheduled a press conference for Feb. 28 to explain the engine issues and its path back to a regular pace of deliveries.

A Lockheed Martin spokesperson said, “We continue to work closely with the Joint Program Office to determine next steps for resumption of F-35 flight operations and deliveries.”

F-35 field maintainers will be provided a technical order for reducing the effects of the harmonic resonance issue, and a change on the production line is warranted, the JPO indicated. It is not clear whether those changes will affect the engine or the airframe.

In the Dec. 14 mishap, an F-35B in vertical hover during an acceptance flight suddenly pitched forward and struck the runway at Lockheed’s Fort Worth, Texas, facility. The pilot ejected at zero altitude but survived with minor injury. Deliveries of F-35s were halted shortly thereafter because acceptance flights could not be flown, and deliveries of the F135 engines were stopped on Dec. 27.

“We have developed a near-term remedy that allows the fleet to fly safely, and we expect that F135 engine deliveries could resume before the end of the month,” Latka said Feb. 10.

At that time, Lockheed had accumulated 17 completed F-35s and was waiting to deliver them; it now has 21 completed jets awaiting handover to the government. Lockheed was not able to say how long it will take to process those deliveries once they’re cleared to be “DD250’d,” the formal process of acceptance by the government. Each jet will have to undergo a series of acceptance test flights, and government sources said there is a limited number of pilots who do such testing for the Defense Contract Management Agency. Government officials could not say if the December mishap pilot has been cleared to return to flying duties.

Latka reported that a cracked fuel tube found in the wreck is not a “systemic problem” and that “after thorough review,” there were “no quality issues” with that part, she said.

The Naval Air Systems Command continues to investigate in search of an official root cause for the crash.

An Air Force spokesperson said in mid-February that while there have been “no operational impacts” on USAF’s F-35 fleet, a problem with “the F-35 main fuel throttle valve has only impacted production aircraft and a very small number of fielded F-35s with low-time engines.” At that time, the Air Force was to receive “about a dozen” of the aircraft being held back at Lockheed, and these were headed toward operational bases at Lakenheath in the U.K., Nellis Air Force Base, Nev., Luke Air Force Base, Ariz., and Hill Air Force Base, Utah.

The timing of an engine defect is problematic for Pratt, as the Air Force is expected to decide in its fiscal 2024 budget request whether to accept Pratt’s proposal of an Engine Core Upgrade for the F135 to meet power requirements of the F-35 Block 4, or whether to open a competition for Block 4 propulsion between Pratt and GE Aerospace. Both companies have developed advanced adaptive engines created with an F-35 powerplant upgrade in mind, but which would require significant investment to develop and integrate with the F-35 fleet. Congress has said it would like to see Adaptive Engine Technology Program (AETP) engines in the F-35 as soon as 2027.

Pratt & Whitney is a division of Raytheon Technologies.

Air and Missile Defenses Must Be ‘Integrated By Design,’ Urges Former USAFE Chief

Feb. 24, 2023 | By Christopher Prawdzik

With the Ukraine invasion anniversary as a backdrop and a NATO summit coming up this July in Lithuania, the former commander of U.S. Air Forces in Europe argued for integrating air defense and missile defense systems and network and enhancing the responsiveness of U.S., NATO, and partner defenses.

Speaking at a roundtable discussion of the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, a non-profit organization in Alexandria, Va., retired Air Force Gen. Jeffrey Harrigian said Russia’s war in Ukraine offers important lessons for thinking ahead about integrated missile and air defenses.

“This idea of integrating [these] by design was fundamental to being able to posture ourselves appropriately when the Russians finally invaded,” Harrigian said, recalling the leadup to the start of the war a year ago. “That same type of mentality is what we need to keep driving on as we go from, not just air defense from the air domain perspective … [and] the basics of missile defense to integrated air and missile defense.”

Harrigian said integrating those systems requires modernizing legacy infrastructure and ensuring critical components are upgraded and ready to operate when needed. Integration also depends on different entities agreeing to share information and access.

“I think we need to start with the fundamentals, get those right, and then … you bring in the right commercial entities that are able to work through the NATO process,” he said. “Because as you do this, one of the key challenges is going to be the policy piece of what the nations are willing to share.”

Events like the invasion can act as a “forcing function to drive some of this change,” he said, accelerating with urgent needs.

“It’s challenging,” Harrigian said. “You get a little bit into the bureaucracy of NATO. But my belief is the time to do that is now, and we can’t keep admiring this problem.”

Once partner nations are in general agreement on the need, it’s time to conceptualize the “operational design,” he said. That’s where the players commit to their responsibilities and an organization in which leaders and contributors are clearly defined.

“Some of the northern tier nations have spent a lot of time thinking about this,” Harrigian added. Implementation is largely a policy discussion, which must be implemented through software to enable rapid data sharing with appropriate, pre-defined rules.

Harrigian was joined by retired Navy Rear Adm. Mark Montgomery, former Deputy Director for Plans, Policy, and Strategy at U.S. European Command, who agreed that leaders must draw the right lessons from the Ukraine conflict, including takeaways from how Russia has prosecuted its attack.

“When Russia got in trouble in their ground offensive—when Russia’s ability to conduct large-scale ruble warfare faltered, when their cyberattacks weren’t properly synchronized to have the effect they needed—they turned to the old trusty cruise and ballistic missile [attacks],” Montgomery said. “They’ve stayed on that tune for nine months now. We’ve absolutely got to understand … their heavy reliance on cruise, ballistic, hypersonic missiles and drones is something we have to prepare for—we being NATO and the United States.”

Riki Ellison, the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance’s founder and chairman and the moderator of the discussion picked up on that point: “Because Russia didn’t get air superiority over Ukraine, it drove their missile attacks, it drove their motivation,” he said. “And if you assume that Russia will never get air superiority over NATO, their effective way to come at NATO is going to be missile movements.”

Montgomery agreed, saying that NATO members must prioritize their integration strategy, because policy hang-ups among and allies can slow things down. To succeed, members must commit to “a belief of ‘integrated and interoperable now.’”

Among allies, a diversity of equipment makes that harder, imposing interoperability requirements that add complexity to the challenge. Germany’s supply of Gepard guns to Ukraine, Montgomery said, has proven effective against Russian drones. But when more ammunition was needed last in April, the Swiss supplier was blocked by Switzerland from delivering it. The lesson, Montgomery said: “Make sure your munitions … are being built in NATO countries that are going to contribute them.”

That same theory applies to the weapon systems themselves once allies define a policy and architecture to follow, Montgomery said: “Make sure that when you buy a weapon system it meets that architecture that supports the policy.”

Northrop Grumman Touts New Multimode Sensor As Quicker, Cheaper Upgrade

Feb. 23, 2023 | By John A. Tirpak

Northrop is moving into test and integration with a new software-controlled, multimode, “ultra-wideband” sensor that it said can simultaneously conduct radar operations, communications, and electronic warfare.

The new technology leverages the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s efforts to accelerate sensor upgrades, and could be intended for use on Air Force Collaborative Combat Aircraft or the Next-Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) family of systems.

Called EMRIS, for Electronically-scanned Multifunction Reconfigurable Integrated Sensor, the new device was designed to be “easily scaled and reconfigurable” across a variety of platforms, said Krys Moen, Northrop vice president for advanced mission capabilities. It employs an open architecture, she said, so “we can rapidly add new or improved capabilities to increase performance while avoiding redesign.”

EMRIS builds on DARPA’s Arrays at Commercial Timescales (ACT) program, which set out to break existing patterns in which sensor upgrades to 10 years to develop and remained in use for 20-30 lifespans, requiring costly service life extension programs. DARPA wanted to bring sensor array upgrades more in line with commercial upgrade cycles and narrow the widening performance gap “between the radio frequency (RF) capabilities of military systems and the continuously improving digital electronics surrounding those systems.”

Northrop did not identify any specific platforms for EMRIS, but the technology is compact enough to fit in a small drone. Rather than targeting “any particular program capture,” Moen wrote in an email response to questions, the EMRIS investment is intended “to enable earlier insertion into a variety of future programs.”

The architectures “are easily scaled and reconfigurable for a wide applicability across platforms and domains,” she said, and the sensor can be “either mounted in the nose of an aircraft or integrated within the skin of a platform.”

EMRIS could be retrofitted to existing platforms or designed into future ones, the company said.

An image of the hardware under test in an anechoic chamber indicates a flat, trapezoidal aperture, suggesting the sensor could be flush-mounted on a flat surface or inside an aircraft’s nosecone.

The new technology consolidates “multiple functions into a single sensor, decreasing both the number of apertures needed and the size, weight and power requirements for the advanced capabilities,” Moen said. Those advantages also would lend themselves to reduced cost and complexity in an aircraft and improved stealth.

EMRIS was designed using common building blocks, Northrop said, which was among DARPA’s objectives in its ACT program.

ACT sought to create “a digitally-influenced common module comprising 80-90 percent of an array’s core functionality” that could be used in a “wide range of applications,” DARPA said at the time. Building blocks included “reconfigurable and tunable RF apertures for spanning S-band to X-band frequencies.”

Moen said EMRIS is flexible technology that will have numerous applications.

“We can scale the frequency range based on what a specific customer requires,” she said. “The multiple degrees of freedom allow EMRIS to respond to a wide range of threat systems through software updates.”

As threats evolve, she said, “so too does the software-enabled capabilities in the system.”

Air Force CIO Knausenberger Will Depart in June

Feb. 23, 2023 | By Chris Gordon

The Department of Air Force’s chief information officer Lauren Knausenberger will depart the Air Force in June, the Air Force said Feb. 23. Knausenberger joined the Air Force as Chief Transformation Officer in 2017, and had been CIO since August 2020.

The Air Force aims to identify a successor before Knausenberger leaves, said Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek.

Knausenberger’s departure signals a clean sweep of departing military department CIOs: In January, Army CIO Raj Iyer said he was departing after more than two years, and the Department of the Navy’s CIO Aaron Weis is leaving his post after more than three years next month.

As CIO, Knausenberger oversaw an information technology portfolio valued at around $17 billion.

Since arriving in the department from industry, Knausenberger has been an agent of change and modernization, pushing to update the Department of the Air Force’s IT infrastructure by accelerating a push into the cloud, upgrading cybersecurity, and expanding the use of artificial intelligence. Those efforts mirrored trends throughout the Department of Defense and align with Operational Imperatives like the Advanced Battle Management System, part of a military-wide drive to shortening the “sensor to shooter” loop and gain decision advantage over adversaries through Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2).

The rising use of cyber as a disruptive force to counter U.S. advantages in communications and intelligence raise the stakes for the kind of work Knausenberger pursued for the Air Force.

“I think that most nations want to avoid the attrition that comes from the kinetic in favor of a more quiet cyber war,” Knausenberger said during an event hosted by AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies in November 2022.

Knausenberger did not say what she plans on doing next. Her Air Force roles were her first in government. Before that, she founded Accellint Inc., a consulting firm, and was a Venture Partner with NextGen Angels, investing in commercial technologies that could be applied to government applications. She also held jobs at American Management Systems and CACI, where she oversaw much of the company’s Intelligence Community portfolio.

Heritage: Here’s How to Answer South Korean Worries Over Nuclear Threats

Feb. 23, 2023 | By Christopher Prawdzik

With North Korea increasingly testing long-range missiles and South Korea agitating for its own nuclear deterrent, a new Heritage Foundation report recommends the U.S. work with Seoul to ease its concerns and recommit to the peninsula’s defense.

Bruce Klingner, a Heritage senior research fellow, said in his Feb. 23 report that the South Korean government needs a reassurance. “Seoul is pushing for more tangible signs of U.S. commitment to the defense of South Korea, greater involvement in U.S. planning for potential use of nuclear weapons in Korean contingencies, and a role in nuclear decision-making during a crisis,” Klingner wrote. “Washington seems willing to be more forthcoming in revising the highly sensitive nuclear relationship but retains clear red lines.”

Klingner said Washington and Seoul should establish a “bilateral nuclear planning group,” which might later be expanded to include Australia and Japan in order to more comprehensively address threats in the Indo-Pacific region. He also advocated for joint training parameters and discussions on potential future strategic weapons deployment, including dual-use aircraft and aircraft carrier battle groups.

“It seems that South Korea would perceive anything less than creating a new body … as insufficient,” Klingner wrote. “Increasing South Korean involvement would be consistent with the U.S. Nuclear Posture Review, which pledged ‘stronger extended deterrence consultation emphasizing a cooperative approach between the United States and Allies in decision making related to deterrence policy, strategic messaging, and activities that reinforce collective regional security.’”

If South Korea were to pursue its own nuclear program, it could be highly disruptive, Klingner said. South Korea would have to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and that could upset a host of other dependencies that could destabilize the region, including denuclearization policies that underlie 11 U.N. resolutions that enable sanctions against North Korea for its pursuit of nuclear arms.

“Either action would require the [Nuclear Suppliers Group] to curtail supply of fissile material to South Korea’s civilian nuclear energy program, which accounts for 30 percent of the country’s electricity,” he wrote. “The NSG could also request the return of all previously provided fissile material.”

In addition, the report notes that such a program would violate the Atomic Energy Act and the “nuclear cooperation agreement” between the U.S. and South Korea. And it wouldn’t stop there.

“South Korea developing nuclear weapons could lead to calls in Washington for the withdrawal of U.S. forces, either due to anxiety of being drawn into South Korean escalatory actions of perceptions that Seoul could now go it alone since it no longer trusted the American commitment,” Klingner noted.

The subsequent reaction of China, he adds, would be more devastating than the sanctions China imposed after the deployment of South Korea’s THAAD system in 2016.

Klingner’s report said “deft management” is crucial for the U.S. and South Korea, with the U.S. fostering trust to alleviate South Korea’s concerns and for Seoul to “manage public expectations” at the same time.

“If North Korea continues its provocative actions, [South Korean] President [Suk Yeol] Yoon will face greater pressure to build an independent nuclear deterrent,” he writes. “Dissatisfaction with U.S. efforts to strengthen extended deterrence or any perceived wavering in America’s commitment to defend South Korea would intensify South Korean advocates’ calls for indigenous nuclear options.”