100 USAF Aircraft to Fly in Large-Scale Exercise With South Korea

100 USAF Aircraft to Fly in Large-Scale Exercise With South Korea

Nov. 1, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

Exercise Vigilant Storm, a large joint aerial training event between the U.S. and South Korea, kicked off Oct. 31 with U.S. Air Force fourth-generation fighters flying alongside F-35s from the U.S. Marine Corps and Republic of Korea Air Force.

All told, approximately 240 aircraft and thousands of personnel will participate in the five-day-long exercise, Pentagon Press Secretary Brig. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder told reporters Nov. 1.

“This year’s event, which was long scheduled, will strengthen the operational and tactical capabilities [and] combined air operations and support our strong combined defense posture,” Ryder added.

A Pacific Air Forces spokesperson told Air & Space Forces Magazine that the exercise will include “approximately 100 U.S. aircraft … from bases within and outside of South Korea.” A release from the 7th Air Force (Air Forces Korea) stated that USAF will fly “fourth-generation jets” as part of the exercise.

Both Osan and Kunsan Air Bases in South Korea have F-16 squadrons, with Osan also hosting a squadron of A-10s and units with the U-2 Dragon Lady ISR plane and HH-60G Pave Hawk helicopters.

The exercise comes in a period of increased tensions with North Korea, which has conducted a series of missile tests in the past month, one of which was followed by South Korea and the U.S. flying F-15K Slam Eagles and F-16 Fighting Falcons in a show of force.

This Vigilant Storm exercise, in particular, has drawn a fierce response from North Korean officials, who claimed Nov. 1 that it is preparation for an invasion and issued veiled nuclear threats of a “terrible price,” according to Yonhap news agency.

Asked to respond to those comments, Ryder reiterated that Vigilant Storm has been “long planned” and will focus on “enhancing interoperability of our forces to work together to defend the Republic of Korea and our allies in the region.”

In its release, Air Forces Korea specified that the exercise will challenge the ROK and U.S. air forces to practices missions such as “close air support, defensive counter air, and emergency air operations 24 hours a day.” 

At the same time, “support forces on the ground will also train their base defense procedures and survivability in case of attack,” the release states.

Vigilant Storm is simply the new name for what has previously been dubbed the Combined Flying Training Event, a large annual exercise focused on interoperability that itself was a replacement for the yearly Vigilant Ace exercises, which were suspended as part of diplomatic discussions.

In addition to the U.S. Air Force aircraft that will take part in Vigilant Storm, the exercise will also include F-35As from South Korea’s air force and F-35Bs from the Marines, which arrived at Kunsan Air Base on Oct. 31 from Iwakuni, Japan, according to images shared by the 8th Fighter Wing.

The Royal Australian Air Force, meanwhile, has deployed a KC-30A aerial refueler to take part in the exercise.

Editor’s Note: This story was updated Nov. 2 to correct the name of the exercise, Vigilant Storm.

air force south korea
A U.S. Marine Corps F-35 Lightning II from Marine Fighter Attack Squadron (VMFA) 242, out of Iwakuni, Japan, parks at Kunsan Air Base, Republic of Korea, Oct. 31, 2022. U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Sadie Colbert.
US Officials Explain Biden’s Shift on Nuclear Policy

US Officials Explain Biden’s Shift on Nuclear Policy

Nov. 1, 2022 | By Chris Gordon

Top U.S. officials aimed to explain why a new Nuclear Posture Review departs from long-held views expressed by President Joe Biden. The Biden administration’s nuclear strategy retains the decades-old policy that the U.S. nuclear arsenal could be used to deter or respond to significant attacks on America or its allies. Biden had previously promoted a shift to a policy in which the “sole purpose” of nuclear weapons would be to deter or respond to nuclear attacks.

“Deterrence has not changed that much over the years,” Richard Johnson, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for nuclear and countering weapons of mass destruction policy, said at an event hosted by the Atlantic Council on Nov. 1. The Biden administration’s Nuclear Posture Review dismissed the Trump administration’s position that nuclear weapons existed to “hedge against an uncertain future” but retained a policy that deems nuclear weapons to be a fundamental part of America’s security strategy.

“But we are at a specific moment now, where I think we do see increases in concerns,” Johnson added, referring to Russia’s renewed invasion of Ukraine and nuclear saber-rattling by President Vladimir Putin as well as the growth of China’s nuclear stockpile.

During his tenure as vice president in the Obama administration and the 2020 campaign, Biden said he wanted to adopt a “sole purpose” doctrine stating that the U.S. would use nuclear weapons only to deter or respond to nuclear attacks.

“The next administration will put forward its own policies,” Biden said in a speech in Jan. 11, 2017, less than two weeks before the end of the Obama-Biden administration. “But, seven years after the Nuclear Posture Review charge, the President and I strongly believe we have made enough progress that deterring—and, if necessary, retaliating against—a nuclear attack should be the sole purpose of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.”

Almost six years later, Biden chose not to adopt that action as President. Instead, the document states that while the “fundamental role” of nuclear weapons is to deter nuclear attacks, the U.S. might use nuclear weapons in “extreme circumstances,” borrowing language from the Obama administration’s 2010 Nuclear Posture Review adopted when Biden was vice president.

“We think that the declaratory policy that we’ve selected is stable and sensible and, frankly, stabilizing,” Johnson said. “But it is true that there are—for a narrow range of high consequence, strategic attacks that would have those sorts of strategic effects using non-nuclear means—that potentially there could be nuclear employment.”

Biden was pressured by U.S. allies in Europe and the Indo-Pacific not to shift to a policy of “sole purpose.” Allies have also opposed adopting a policy of “no first use” meaning the U.S. would never be the first to use nuclear weapons in a conflict. Many countries feared that by stating the U.S. would only use nuclear weapons in a nuclear conflict, Russia and China might be encouraged to launch devastating attacks without resorting to nuclear weapons.

U.S. allies “were very vocal with the White House, and State and Defense Departments, about this issue,” said Jon Wolfsthal, who served as senior director for arms control and nonproliferation at the National Security Council from 2014 to 2017 and is now a senior adviser for Global Zero, a group that is advocating the elimination of nuclear weapons. “They are worried about anything that could be seen as a weakening of America’s commitment to their defense. And given the importance Biden gave to rebuilding alliances, those concerns won out over the substantive debate about whether threatening first use was credible or necessary.”

U.S. officials acknowledged that after consulting with American allies and military officials, the administration decided not to shift to a “sole purpose” doctrine, though it remains a long-term ambition.

“We spent many, many months talking to lots of allies in a process that I somewhat inappropriately called nuclear speed dating, where we talked to many, many allies, both in our Euro-Atlantic region and NATO, and in the Indo-Pacific to get their perspective on this,” Johnson said. “The document also makes very clear that we still have as a goal to move towards a sole purpose declaration, but that we’ll have to identify concrete steps to do that and work with our allies and partners to get there, but because of some of these, sort of a narrow range of these high-consequence attacks, that could have strategic effects using non-nuclear means, especially some that we see, particularly affecting our allies and partners, we felt we couldn’t move in that direction at this time.”

The document intentionally did not lay out what attacks might rise to the level of “strategic.”

“The Nuclear Posture Review does not make a definition or provide examples of what we mean by a narrow range of high-consequence strategic attacks,” Johnson said. “What we do say is that we think that they are a very narrow range, and we think that the bar for nuclear employment in such cases is very high.”

The Biden administration reiterates the view that NATO will remain a nuclear alliance. NATO recently conducted its annual Steadfast Noon nuclear exercise, which practices putting U.S. nuclear weapons on allied fighters.

While the New START treaty limits some of Russia’s long-range nuclear weapons until 2026, China is building an arsenal of around 1,000 nuclear weapons it plans to field by the end of the decade, according to the 2022 Nuclear Posture Review.

“No matter what we do, in 2026 that treaty will expire,” said Alexandra Bell, the State Department’s deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance. “We don’t understand where China is going with this.”

China and Russia are not engaged in arms control talks with the U.S.

“We’ll be facing a world in which there are potentially no constraints over the two largest nuclear arsenals in the world for the first time in over 50 years,” Bell added. “It’s not a safer world.”

The Nuclear Posture Review originates from the Department of Defense, but the decision to use nuclear weapons is ultimately up to the President. The Nuclear Posture Review, while considering views from the U.S. military and American allies, is a product of Biden’s thinking, the U.S. officials said.

“We forwarded our options to the President, and the President decided, and this is the decision that he made with this particular approach,” Johnson said.

Kendall: NDS Doesn’t Call For a Larger Air Force; Expect Major Changes as USAF Modernizes

Kendall: NDS Doesn’t Call For a Larger Air Force; Expect Major Changes as USAF Modernizes

Nov. 1, 2022 | By John A. Tirpak

The Air Force won’t get larger anytime soon as a result of the new National Defense Strategy, and competition with China and Russia, though gravely serious, doesn’t constitute a new Cold War, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said at a defense conference.

“I do not expect major changes in force structure,” Kendall said at an Aviation Week defense conference in Washington, D.C. Rather, “What you should expect is major changes in … equipment and modernization.”

Kendall was responding to a question about what force structure changes would be driven by the new NDS, an unclassified version of which became public Oct. 27. The document did not offer any kind of a force-sizing construct that would establish how big any of the armed forces need to be, although the stated goal is for the U.S. to be able to defeat one peer adversary while deterring a second. Defense officials have said the appropriate size of the services will be determined through further analysis and the ongoing development of the Joint Warfighting Concept.

“We have to go through a transformation,” Kendall said. In the space domain, “my analogy is, imagine you have a Merchant Marine, and you woke up one day and discovered you needed a Navy. That’s essentially what the Space Force’s situation is.”

For the Air Force, “it’s really about getting on to the next-generation set of capabilities. It’s about transforming … to what we’re going to need for the future. So that’s kind of where we’re headed.”

There won’t be any “major changes … anytime soon” in numbers of fighter squadrons, Kendall said. The Air Force has dropped its stated requirement for 386 squadrons, unveiled in 2018 by former Secretary Heather Wilson, and service leaders now will not quote a new figure.

“We have a lot of commitments around the world, [and] we need a certain-sized force to meet them,” Kendall said, but he didn’t offer numbers.

“We are doing some divestitures. We’ll do more of those, to free up resources as we transition and modernize,” he said, suggesting the Air Force will actually get smaller in the near term.

However, “If I try to look down the road five, 10, 15 years, it’s possible to imagine a larger force structure.” But he said that will probably be a force in which manning levels are “fairly stable,” but the equipment “has been swapped out for next-generation equipment.” In his earlier remarks, Kendall noted that one of his seven operational imperatives is “uncrewed combat aircraft,” or up to five autonomous aircraft directed by and flying in formation with a single pilot in a fighter.

Future force structure will also depend “on a number of external factors,” Kendall said—a reference to how the U.S. might respond to the way adversaries size and use their own forces.

Kendall was asked if the Cold War is over, and whether a new one is taking its place.

“I think the Cold War is over,” Kendall said, saying the struggle between the Soviet Union and the U.S. was about ideologies—communism versus “democracy and free-market capitalism”—and that the conflict resolved. The Soviet Union “doesn’t exist anymore,” Kendall said.

While modern-day Russia “has influence over some small states, the states that comprised the Soviet Union are pretty much independent now.” The Ukraine war is Russia’s attempt “to reassert control” over some of its former territory.

“But it’s anything but cold” now, Kendall said, with a hot war raging in central Europe.

Unlike the Soviet Union, “Russia doesn’t have the economic clout to be the kind of threat” it once was, he said. “I think the current situation is very, very different … Russia is just not the same scale of threat.”

In the NDS, Russia is referred to as an “acute” threat, Kendall said, because “it still has a formidable military. It’s demonstrating a lot of shortfalls right now, but in the next few years, I would expect it to recover.” Also, “the propensity for aggression has been demonstrated pretty clearly … I don’t expect that to change anytime soon.”

Kendall said “We will see where all this takes us. But it’s not a Cold War situation” or a “continuation” of the Cold War.

Neither does he see the situation with China as a Cold War.

“It could become something like that,” he acknowledged, but the “fundamental reason” why it’s not is because China’s economy has become “intertwined” with that of the rest of the world.

“There is a lot of economic dependency between China, in particular, and its customers in the world and … its sources of raw materials, as well … So I think it would be harder to de-couple, economically, than during the Cold War,” when there were “two distinct spheres” of economic activity.

Also, China doesn’t seem to be pursuing “wars of national liberation” as the Soviet Union did during the Cold War. China’s military objectives, he said, are “more about control of things in their region, to be the hegemon there, if you will.”

He said China is also seeking to expand its influence around the world, such as through the “One Belt, One Road” construct, which, Kendall noted, “is not doing all that well.”

He thinks China sees itself “as the great power … essentially replacing the United States as the largest economy and the country with the greatest influence in the world. But not in the same sense as the Soviets were interested in wars of national liberation. It’s a different model.”

China is trying to export a governance model, though, he said, and it’s one of “state control … One-party, autocratic rule, which they think has led to their improvement in their living conditions” and a stable state.

It’s stable, he said, but “individual freedoms are not respected,” and dissent with the party in power isn’t tolerated. But “that’s their model, and they’re trying to push it.”

It’s “not impossible” that an economic “separation” could come about between the West and China and that it could spur a new Cold War, “but we’re not there now,” Kendall said. “And I think there are some pretty strong forces that, hopefully, will prevent that from happening.”

WATCH: Saltzman Takes Over as Space Force CSO as Raymond Retires

WATCH: Saltzman Takes Over as Space Force CSO as Raymond Retires

Nov. 1, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond, the Space Force’s first member and first Chief of Space Operations, will pass responsibility over to Gen. B. Chance Saltzman in a ceremony officiated by Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall at Joint Base Andrews, Md., on Nov. 2—marking the end of an era for the nation’s youngest military service.

Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley will attend and make remarks at the ceremony, a live stream of which can be viewed below when the ceremony begins at 10:30 a.m. Eastern time.

Raymond, who is retiring after more than three-and-a-half decades in uniform, not only led the Space Force from its founding in December 2019 but also served as the combatant commander of U.S. Space Command upon its re-establishment from August 2019 to August 2020; as well as head of Air Force Space Command since 2016.

Under his leadership, Air Force Space Command became the Space Force and established itself as a new service, gathering space missions, units, and personnel from across the other services. 

As CSO, Raymond set the service’s first priorities with his initial planning guidance and six key focus areas and oversaw the development of doctrine and the foundational “Guardian Ideal” document.

He also led the Space Force as it looked to define a new, innovative structure and culture, highlighted by the establishment of three new field commands, numerous deltas, and the incorporation of entities such as the Space Development Agency (SDA).

Raymond regularly stressed the importance of the Space Force establishing itself as a lean, agile, warfighting service and building out a resilient architecture of satellites in order to combat threats from China and Russia.

Raymond was also a key figure in explaining the Space Force’s existence and purpose to a curious public. He engaged with outlets from the New York Times and Time Magazine to local TV stations to Comedy Central’s satirical news program “The Daily Show” to tout the importance of the service.

Over the course of his career, Raymond received the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, the Distinguished Service Medal, the Defense Superior Service Medal, the Legion of Merit, the Meritorious Service Medal, and the Air Force Commendation Medal.

Now, he’ll make way for Saltzman, who previously served as deputy chief of space operations for operations, cyber, and nuclear. Saltzman has stressed the need for better test and training infrastructure for Guardians and continued investments in resiliency for satellites and ground stations.

He’ll also take charge of the Space Force as it prepares for the first launches of the National Defense Space Architecture, a network of hundreds satellites in low Earth orbit planned by SDA, with still more plans for satellites in medium Earth orbit, geosynchronous orbit, and potentially even cislunar space.

At the same time, the service will be tasked with maintaining awareness in a domain with an ever-growing presence of private and government satellites and projects—not to mention debris caused by a recent Russian anti-satellite test.

Finally, some basic organizational and personnel issues remain for Saltzman to address, such as a “holistic health” program to replace traditional PT tests and the organization of Reserve and part-time elements.

The change of responsibility ceremony at Joint Base Andrews, Md., begins at 10:30 a.m. Eastern time.

AFCENT’s New Task Force 99 Begins Drone Experiments

AFCENT’s New Task Force 99 Begins Drone Experiments

Oct. 31, 2022 | By Chris Gordon

U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) is standing up task forces in hopes of harnessing new technology in innovative ways. The command wants to augment its modest military footprint in the region and to counter potential adversaries. In mid-October, the Air Force’s component, Task Force 99, came online, according to CENTCOM and Air Forces Central (AFCENT). The effort is small for now but is part of a broad effort to boost invention across all U.S. services in the region.

Drones have been a ubiquitous part CENTCOM’s operations in the 21st century. U.S. unmanned aerial systems have been a symbol of America’s Global War on Terror, performing reconnaissance and strikes in support of U.S. military efforts. In recent years, U.S. forces have faced threats from cheaply produced ISIS- and Iranian-made drones targeting U.S. troops and their allies.

“That threat of things coming in from the air, I think, makes the need even more important, and it makes it more urgent,” CENTCOM spokesperson Col. Joe Buccino said.

A small team is carrying out the main Task Force 99 effort at AFCENT’s headquarters at Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar, experimenting with variable payloads on small drones. There is also a two-person “satellite innovation cell” at Ali Al Salem Air Base, Kuwait. Both groups plan to grow their numbers. The service has not identified what the ultimate goal of the program will be.

“I’m trying to give them as much of a blank slate as I can,” Lt. Gen. Alexus G. Grynkewich told reporters in September at AFA’s Air, Space, & Cyber Conference when he announced Task Force 99, originally known as Detachment 99.

The unit is part of a push throughout CENTCOM under Gen. Michael “Erik” Kurilla, who took command in April. CENTCOM says it is a top-down effort to support bottom-up ideas.

An Airman assigned to Task Force 99 solders components at Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar, Oct 28, 2022. U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Cassandra Johnson.

The effort began in 2021 with the Navy’s Task Force 59 under the leadership of Vice Adm. Charles “Brad” Cooper, who is Grynkewich’s Navy counterpart in the region.

Cooper’s U.S. Fifth Fleet has turned to a network of seaborne drones to monitor the waters around the Arabian Peninsula. Task Force 59 made international headlines in early September when two of its Saildrone unmanned vessels were briefly seized by Iranian warships before being returned without their cameras.

With the release of the 2022 National Defense Strategy, the Middle East is now deemed to be a lesser priority than China and Russia. CENTCOM’s forces, however, are still supporting and advising Iraqi and Syrian partners as part of the counter-ISIS campaign, Operation Inherent Resolve. Since the region is no longer the primary focus of American military strategy, it must make the most of its current resources.

“We do have to maximize our manned systems,” Buccino said. “We do have to maximize the infrastructure we’ve got. Innovation will allow us to do that.”

Grynkewich said he hopes cheap drones can help free up some of his manned aircraft in addition to offering new capabilities, though he has not set any firm requirements.

The ultimate plan for Task Force 99 has yet to be spelled out. AFCENT and CENTCOM insist this is by design, and that using small drones in new ways in an active combat zone will lead to advances and failures.

“The region is ripe for experimentation,” Buccino said. “We’ve got actual drones and rockets, targeting our infrastructure, our troops. We’ve got kinetic activity.”

The Task Force 59 and Task Force 99 efforts will eventually be combined in some form, according to CENTCOM. The command declined to provide further details.

The Army has its own Task Force 39 in the “concept phase,” according to Buccino.

“This is a priority of the CENTCOM Commander Gen. Kurilla, innovating using these platforms in a different way,” Cooper told reporters Oct. 12. “It’s not random that Task Force 59 been modeled with Task Force 99, and that we would link together in synchronized efforts.”

An Airman assigned to Task Force 99 solders components at Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar, Oct. 28, 2022. U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Cassandra Johnson.
A-10s Deploy to Guam for PACAF Exercise

A-10s Deploy to Guam for PACAF Exercise

Oct. 31, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

A-10 “Warthogs” from the 23rd Wing at Moody Air Force Base, Ga., deployed to Guam and will take part in a Pacific Air Forces exercise to demonstrate the command’s ability to rapidly generate air power in support of the island chain of Palau by coordinating geographically separated forces in contested environments.

The close air support aircraft began arriving at Andersen Air Force Base on Oct. 23, and 23rd Wing commander Col. Russell P. Cook posted to Facebook on Oct. 30 that the final group of Airmen and equipment had arrived at the base.

Cook also wrote that the A-10s are in the region to “conduct agile combat employment operations,” or ACE, while PACAF stated in a release that the aircraft will be involved in a “routine Dynamic Force Employment Operation.”

Dynamic force employment, a concept first introduced in the 2018 National Defense Strategy, aims to make things more “operationally unpredictable” for adversaries, with units quickly deploying unannounced to operate from unpredictable locations.

For the Air Force, that has included shifting from a continuous bomber presence to bomber task force deployments, as well as a continued shift toward ACE, the operational concept whereby smaller teams of multi-capable Airmen can deploy to and work from remote or austere locations and move quickly—in the Pacific, it may entail working from disparate islands, sometimes thousands of miles apart.

All those concepts will be tested as part of Operation Iron Thunder, one of a series of periodic DFE exercises conducted in the Pacific—a PACAF spokesperson told Air & Space Forces Magazine that the exercise “demonstrates the ability of the Air Force to command and control forces spread out through multiple locations and rapidly deploy airpower to support Palau.”

The Republic of Palau, a tiny island chain in the Pacific, has already partnered with the Air Force earlier this year to host ACE exercises.

Cook wrote on Facebook that the 23rd Expeditionary Wing is helping to lead operations as a designated “lead wing” in the Pacific. Air Combat Command announced the designation of five lead wings in January, with those wings expected to “rapidly generate combat power as a deployed force,” sometimes as the leader of units it normally doesn’t control, the wings training together in anticipation of a large-scale conflict that would require massive deployments.

The deployment of A-10s to the Indo-Pacific region marks a departure from the kinds of missions the aircraft has become legendary for—supporting ground troops in the Middle East for years as part of the counterinsurgency fight.

One squadron of A-10s is stationed in the Indo-Pacific region, the 25th Fighter Squadron at Osan Air Base, South Korea. The 25th Fighter Squadron has deployed to Guam, most recently in August 2020.

Still, there are few recent examples of A-10s landing on the strategically important island, which is several thousand kilometers from both South Korea and China. It also comes as B-1 bombers are flying out of Guam as part of a bomber task force rotation that began just a few days before the A-10s arrived.

Kadena-Based F-15C/Ds Start Retiring; F-15EX Likely Replacement

Kadena-Based F-15C/Ds Start Retiring; F-15EX Likely Replacement

Oct. 31, 2022 | By John A. Tirpak

Starting Nov. 1 and continuing over the next two years, the Air Force will bring home the 48 F-15C/D Eagles now stationed at Kadena Air Base, Japan. A permanent replacement has yet to be determined, but in the meantime, other types of fighters will cycle through deployments to the base, to preserve its battle readiness as the “tip of the spear” in the Indo-Pacific.

Kadena, located on the island of Okinawa, is the Air Force’s closest land-based location to Taiwan, some 450 miles away. In addition to fighters, Kadena hosts tankers, mobility, special operations, and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance platforms.

The F-15C/D model was introduced in 1979, and most examples average nearly 40 years of age. The type was expected to be replaced wholesale by the F-22 starting in the mid-2000s, but the F-22 production line was halted at less than half the planned production number by then-Defense Secretary Bob Gates in 2010. Since then, the Air Force has struggled to maintain the aging F-15C/D, imposing G-loading and speed restrictions as the type became structurally exhausted.

The F-15C/Ds at the base are the last operated by the Active-duty force. The rest are operated by the Air National Guard.  

A statement from Kadena leadership described the retirement of the F-15s as a two-year “phased withdrawal” and said the aircraft will be backfilled temporarily with “newer and more advanced aircraft” to maintain “a steady-state presence” at the base. The only more advanced aircraft available are the F-22 Raptor, the F-35 Lightning II and new F-15EX Eagle IIs, not yet at full production for the Air Force.

Air Force officials said F-22s from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, will be the first to deploy to Kadena to backfill the F-15s, but service deployments are typically not announced in detail.

Until a permanent choice is made, the Pentagon will use the “Global Force Management process to provide backfill solutions that maintain regional deterrence and bolster our ability to uphold our treaty obligations to Japan,” the Kadena leadership said. The Pentagon could not immediately say if those options include Navy and Marine Corps aircraft, but the Global Force Management process apportions forces based on theater commander need, not necessarily the service providing the capability.

The U.S. military commitment to Japan’s security is “ironclad,” the Kadena statement said. Modernizing U.S. capabilities in the Indo-Pacific and enhancing U.S. posture there “remains a top priority,” the base statement added.

In a March streaming event with AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, commander of Pacific Air Forces Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach said the Air Force is eyeing the F-15EX for Kadena.

“What we intend to use it for, there, if we’re so fortunate to get that replacement, is air superiority, and some long-range weapons capabilities that you can conduct on the F-15EX,” Wilsbach said. Unlike the F-15C/D, which is an almost exclusively air-to-air platform, the F-15EX retains all the range and ground-attack weapons-carrying capabilities of the F-15E on which it is based. The EX can carry the stealthy AGM-158 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile, he noted, which will be an important force-multiplier for the units equipped.

Wilsbach said, “you will be able to see some of that as we unveil” plans in upcoming budgets.

The F-15A/B model first arrived at Kadena in 1979, and Eagles have been there ever since, upgrading to the F-15C/D and fielding the most advanced examples of the type in USAF service. The Kadena-based F-15s of the 44th and 67th fighter squadrons were the first operational Eagles to be equipped with an active electronically-scanned array (AESA) radar, the AN/APG-63(V)3, between 2007 and 2010; and in 2020, they were the first to be operational with the Lockheed Martin “Legion Pod,” which is the first infrared search-and-track system compatible with the Eagle.

Retired Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, dean of the Mitchell Institute, said the Kadena news highlights the “consistent underfunding of the Air Force over 30 years.” The lack of an immediate, ready-to-go successor for the aged F-15s at the base shows the “neglect and shortsightedness” of “Presidential, Congressional, and Department of Defense leadership decisions made over the past three decades.” In recent years, to pay for new system development, the Air Force has had to “cut its force structure with no replacements,” he said. Thus, the vacuum left by the retirements “should be not be a surprise.”

In a draft for an op-ed, Deptula said the Air Force has consistently warned that it’s not been sized for the demands and missions placed on it by the various combatant commands, and in a 2018 study, it found “it had about a 25 percent deficit in capacity to meet the needs of the National Defense Strategy.”

The rotational replacements mentioned by the Air Force have downsides, Deptula said.

“It will stress those aircraft, maintenance personnel, the deployed aircrews, and their families, exactly at a time when pilot retention is a serious problem.” It also “deprives other combatant commands of fighter aircraft” when demand for them is very high, he said. The F-22s available for forward deployment are now in Europe to deter Russia, he added.

The Active-duty pilots at Kadena are also at career risk if they have to stay beyond a normal deployment, he noted.

Either the F-22 or F-35 should be replacing the F-15s, but there aren’t enough F-22s to go around, and F-35 haven’t been produced in needed numbers, Deptula noted. Meanwhile, “conceptual aircraft” such as collaborative combat aircraft—unmanned systems that will supplement crewed fighters—are a decade away, he said.

“The bottom line,” he said, is “we need to buy fighter aircraft capacity now at a rate to reverse the decline in fighter force structure, as what is happening at Kadena today is only the tip of the iceberg if we don’t.” Without boosting the fleet, “there will be insufficient capability and capacity to execute the new National Defense Strategy that is so reliant on deterrence.” Absent an increase in force structure, deterrence is “only an aspiration, not a reality.”

Chiefs, Part 4: ‘I Tried to Always Make Things Better’

Chiefs, Part 4: ‘I Tried to Always Make Things Better’

Oct. 31, 2022 | By Tobias Naegele

In its 75-year history, 22 Airmen have led the Air Force as Chief of Staff. Each came to the post shaped by the experiences—and sometimes scar tissue—developed over three decades of service. Each inherited an Air Force formed by the decisions of those who came before, who bequeathed to posterity the results of decisions and compromises made over the course of their time in office. Each left his own unique stamp on the institution. As part of Air Force Magazine’s commemoration of the Air Force’s 75th anniversary, Sept. 18, 2022, we set out to interview all of the living former Chiefs of Staff.

Gen. John P. Jumper, CSAF No. 17 (2001-’05)

Gen. John P. Jumper was holding his first staff meeting in the Air Force Operations Center in the Pentagon’s basement when the first plane hit. It was Tuesday morning, Sept. 11, 2001, and whatever plans he may have had as he began his tenure as Chief, the next four years were going to play out very differently than he could have imagined. The intel briefing was paused and the screens were switched to CNN, which had live video of the burning Pentagon on the screen. That was when the second plane struck the World Trade Center. 

“That was the point of max confusion, of course,” Jumper recalls. “We took off from our command center to go up and warn our people away from the E-ring,” the outer offices of the Pentagon. In the Secretary of the Air Force’s office, Jumper found Secretary Jim Roche “sitting on his phone and sort of physically tucked him away from his phone back toward the middle of the building.” Then the third plane struck, exploding into the West side of the Pentagon.

Jumper was an experienced four-star. He had commanded U.S. Air Forces Europe during the Kosovo War in 1999 and had run Air Combat Command for 18 months after that. He hadn’t expected to be the Chief, an assignment he attributes as much to luck and timing as to talent, but he had a ready list of ideas he’d been “harboring” and was ready to start right in on them when 9/11 reworked his agenda in a flash. 

The first order of business was America’s response, and it began with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “The cooperation was remarkable,” he recalled. When we started the planning … there was no infrastructure to really go after. … We were developing targets, figuring out the logistics. We knew we had to have ground bases over there [but] we had no good history of ground basing in that area. We had a lot of coordination to do. And so I went to Vern Clark, who was the Chief of Naval Operations, and I said, ‘Vern, in order to get this done, we’re going to need aircraft carriers.’ And he put everything that he could generate out there, ready to go and fly sorties.” 

Jumper
Jumper was told the Air Force could afford cutbacks. “We heard … we’re overmatched with air power, with air superiority, that we have too much of it.” he said. “Now we have eroded away our technological advantage.” Air Force photo by Lisa Norman.

The Navy would launch the first aerial strikes on Afghanistan in October 2001, learning in the process to fly six- to eight-hour sorties, longer than the typical Navy deck cycle, and leveraging Air Force tankers to make the journey. It took time to seize ground and open bases in Afghanistan and the vicinity and to bring in Air Force F-15s, F-16s, and A-10s. Bombers were launching out of Guam. 

“Because Afghanistan is landlocked, and we didn’t have a history of basing, it took some development time to get that done,” Jumper said. “The bomber force reacted well, I think: We had the processes and procedures for that kind of deployment worked out, basing and all that, from our time in Kosovo.” Air Force C-17s went to work as tactical airlifters, flying in and out of makeshift airfields. “I think we rose to the occasion,” he said, noting that there are lessons to be applied today, as the Air Force experiments with Agile Combat Employment, that were tested and proven in the months after 9/11.

But Jumper said the Air Force could have been quicker to see the value of its unmanned platforms. “The biggest thing we could have made better use of, more rapidly, is armed UAVs,” he said. “We didn’t have them in great numbers at the time, and the ones we had were extremely effective from a strategic point of view.”

Jumper knew something about UAVs. He’d employed them in Kosovo, seen their potential. But he’d also seen their shortcomings. “This was what we, at that time, called the dialogue of the deaf,” he said. “The Intelligence Community, who owned the Predators and were looking at streaming video through sort of a soda straw, [were] trying to communicate in this very dysfunctional relay system to the A-10 pilot in the cockpit about where the target was.” 

To target a tank behind a building, for example, they would say, “It’s right behind the red roof building.” But as Jumper explained, that made little sense to the A-10 pilot who was looking out over 50 miles of red-roofed buildings. “So then they say, ‘Well, it’s beside the small stream that goes by the red roof building.’ I called it the dialogue of the deaf because nobody was understanding, because there was no common frame of reference.” 

The heart and soul of the Airman embraces the warrior spirit of America, bringing to bear kinetic firepower on the enemy, and all the things that go into that as part of a warrior culture. … And I think we have to take care to make sure that is emphasized in today’s world. 

Gen. John Jumper, CSAF No. 17

Predators had been built to be an ISR asset, to collect, analyze, and report. Jumper and Mike Short, the Air Component Commander operating out of Italy, shared their frustration. “It became evident that if nothing else, we needed to put a laser designator on the Predator,” Jumper said. Within weeks, the Air Force’s 645th Aeronautical Systems Group, better known as Big Safari, “made that happen magically in a couple of weeks,” Jumper recalled, but “by the time we got it over there and ready to use, the conflict was over.” 

The idea, however, remained. Jumper’s next assignment was to head Air Combat Command. When he got there, he discovered, much to his surprise, that ACC’s acquisition and requirements teams had removed the laser designators. “It wasn’t part of the program. And there was no money in the program to do that. “I sort of blew my top about that, and we got ourselves on the road. But it occurred to me that as long as we’re doing that, why don’t we put something on there that can do something about these targets when we find them?” 

Jumper had been a weapons officer in his younger days, and he knew something about armaments. The Hellfire missile wasn’t an Air Force weapon—it was developed by the Army—but it seemed the perfect fit. “It would be the most lethal and light enough to put on something like a Predator—or at least I thought it could be, but we had to check it out.” 

The Air Force got over the technical hurdles in a couple of months, Jumper said. “But the bureaucratic system decided that this Predator with a Hellfire missile would have to be designated a cruise missile under the missile control regime, and it would require us opening up negotiations with the Russians again. Well, I thought that was ridiculous, and [then-Air Force Chief of Staff] Mike Ryan helped.” 

The battles weren’t over. The intel community was worried that their intel asset would now become a weapon instead. “The biggest thing about the Predator is that we brought it into the inventory.” Jumper reached back a little further into his history. In 1996, when he became deputy chief of staff for operations (the A-3) under Gen. Ron Fogleman, the Chief at the time, Jumper was sent to evaluate three systems, Dark Star, Global Hawk, and Predator. “General Fogleman knew we needed the Predator. He was trying to decide on the other two,” Jumper said. “On the Predator side, it was obvious that this was something that would help us find targets precisely and be able to stare at targets over a long period of time, to make the job of those carrying the weapons more certain when they arrived that they were hitting exactly the right thing, exactly the right spot.” 

The problem, he recalled, was that the ground station controls were built as if for a remote pilot. “It was based on the premise that you had to pretend you were at a station flying the Predator like a pilot with stick, rudder, pedals—I mean, like a pilot—that flying the airplane was more important than taking the picture. … In fact, we should have built this thing around the cameras.” Had it been up to Jumper, he’d have changed the entire thing right then. But the rules didn’t allow that. “We couldn’t change anything for two years.” 

In time, Jumper would help organize a Predator 9-1-1 project to speed up the process of getting the weapon into the inventory, with spare parts and operating procedures. “I remember hosting a group from the Pentagon about rapidly putting the Hellfire missile on the Predator,” he said. “And the message to me was clear, that this is going to take tens of millions of dollars and is going to take not months, but years. And I just simply refused to accept that answer. Because I knew that big Safari had had a different answer. So therein lies some of the friction. Big Safari—if we don’t embrace that as an Air Force, even today, if we don’t embrace that kind of rapid prototyping and fielding today,” the Air Force will fail. 

That lesson stayed with Jumper throughout his tenure. “I had a little sign on my desk when I was Chief that said: ‘Never accept no from somebody not empowered to say yes.’ There are way too many people that have the power of the veto, or think they do. We need to be able to challenge and ask the second and third question. … We have to be always ready to challenge the system, and not confuse a responsible challenge to authority with insubordination. We’ve got to be able to cross that line. It’s always a delicate line. But it’s just a responsible leadership point of view.” 

“It took a while to get to the things like the Air Expeditionary Force idea … which needed to be matured,” he said. “And of course, carrying forward with the whole idea of the remotely piloted vehicles—Predator—and how best to integrate that into the force more completely.” 

Another project Jumper had been involved in long before becoming Chief was the development of the Air Expeditionary Force, the Air Force’s 1990s-era deployment model. The Air Force didn’t deploy in the same way as, say, an Army division or brigade, because air power is typically shaped and sized to the mission at hand. The AEF was a system for addressing that, enabling the Air Force to identify ready forces and assemble mission packages on a rotational basis. That meant that units could work through readiness cycles. 

“The original concept was actually four months of a deployment,” Jumper said. “But it was designed to be rapidly deployable. You had nine buckets of capability, fairly similar capability, and depending on the contingency, you could draw capabilities that weren’t in the bucket forward to be able to join that AEF to get the right kind of capability over there. That was based on the assumption that you could pull Airmen that were trained exactly the same way to exactly the same standards by the same checklists and various weapons systems. And and they could join a unit, if they had to, to augment that capability.”

But under Jumper’s watch, in the wake of 9/11, the rotations broke down. “It was designed to use tactical equipment, tactically deploy, for a tactical amount of time—not to become a rotational practice for a 10-year war. It was never designed to do that.” 

In Kosovo, USAFE opened 18 bases for tankers and other operations, and the AEF was employed. “We went over there, got it done, packed up, and went home,” Jumper said. “We loaded up Aviano, put special ops in certain places, put tankers all over the place. It worked just fine. But when we transition into this 10 years of constant combat, then another policy has to be developed to deal with the necessities of experienced commanders staying in place longer, knowing the problems more deeply, and being able to do more than come in and just generate combat power for short periods of time. … [That requires] a more permanent rotational policy.” He notes that the short deployment cycles anticipated for Agile Combat Employment (ACE) by today’s Air Force also has short deployment cycles. Like the original AEF, the focus is on agility. “If ACE transitions into longer engagements like we had in the Middle East, then that process is going to be challenged as well.” 

Jumper was the last Air Force Chief to work alongside an Airman as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. His tenure and that of Gen. Dick Myers as Chairman were almost perfectly aligned. That might have been an advantage for Jumper in the early 2000s, before the occupation of Iraq went sour and the occupation of Afghanistan grew old. Jumper’s success as Chief was built on a cooperative approach; his successor, Gen. T. Michael Moseley, was more aggressive, and perhaps aggrieved, in his dealings with his fellow Chiefs. His bluntness ultimately cost him his job. 

Over the past two decades, the Air Force shrank in size and prowess. Readiness slipped. Political leaders reasoned America had so great an edge in air power after the first Gulf War that the nation could afford to throttle back. “We heard terms like “we’re overmatched with air power, with air superiority—that means we have too much of it,” Jumper said. “We were told we didn’t need as much training, we could have tiered readiness. We were essentially too good. … [Now] we have eroded away our technological advantage, and our training, and our readiness, to the point that it has begun to affect morale. I think the Chief would agree with that, and I think they’re working as hard as they can to resurrect that, but that’s what happened along the way. 

“So how do we re-instill that [confidence]? We have to start internally first, we have to make sure that our force sees themselves as the world’s greatest Air Force, one that is ready to go fight, that is proficient. They have to feel themselves that they’re flying 20 hours a month, that they feel like they’re the dominant power and nobody’s going to be trained any better than I am, in my specialty, no matter what my specialty is. And that I can go anyplace, I can do anything, I can do what I’m going to be asked to do, and nothing—no contingency that arises—is going to surprise me, because I have a training program that … gets me familiar with the part of the world I’m most likely to go to, gets me out there so I can see it and touch it and feel it. I’m flying off and I am proficient: I’m good. I know how to set up a base. I have the right people who know how to run a deployed operation. I have the right security forces that can protect that base, inside and outside the fence. 

That’s the Air Force I had.”    

Open and Advanced Displays for the Next Generation of Air Dominance

Open and Advanced Displays for the Next Generation of Air Dominance

Oct. 31, 2022

Air dominance is the goal of every pilot. Evolving allied fighter jets and trainer aircraft with flexible, modular systems improves the ability to stay ahead of emergent threats at the speed of relevance. Our warfighters can’t wait for typical and infrequent aircraft upgrade cycles based on evolving adversarial capability and scale. Mosarc™ from Collins Aerospace offers an open, scalable and tailorable approach to aircraft upgrades that empowers pilots to achieve air dominance in the next-generation battlespace.

Collins’ Mosarc is designed to field technology faster and allow for third-party integration, including networks, computing, software and displays. For years, Collins has been a leader in delivering advanced display capability. The next generation focuses on enabling pilots to execute increasingly complex mission tasks by minimizing cognitive overload and improving decision-making in the cockpit. Mosarc display technology rapidly depicts new sensor and threat information, positioning pilots with tactical advantage.

Collins’ advanced display offerings that meet the operational demands of future fighter and trainer aircraft are the 8×20” Mosarc Large Area Display (LAD) and the 5×9” Mosarc Adaptive Flight Display (AFD). Both the Collins LAD and AFD are derived from a proven family of commercial off-the-shelf, rugged, lightweight and resistive touchscreen liquid crystal displays with multi-touch gesture support designed to adhere to Modular Open Systems Approach (MOSA) standards. They enable rapid and intelligent sensor and formatting updates, plus tailoring required for operators to remain mission ready as the battle demands.

Mosarc Large Area Display (LAD)

Collins developed the Mosarc LAD for MOSA compliance. Common integration interfaces enable seamless integration of evolving platform sensors to sustain platform flexibility and relevance well into the future. The Mosarc LAD is flexible in terms of user interface, offering improved multi-touch accuracy both with and without the use of flight gloves or night vision goggles. The LAD comes in both bezel and non-bezel options to accommodate pilot and fleet preference. In addition, the full color monolithic LAD can be adapted to three individual 6×8” workstations, optimizing customization and maximizing the pilot’s primary workspace.

Beyond being open and flexible to the platform, mission and operator flight preferences, the Mosarc LAD provides superior reliability and safety to the aircraft operator boasting full electronic redundancy and a high mean-time-between failure (>15,000 hours). This reliability enhancement over previous generations of displays also helps reduce lifecycle costs and sparing needs, making it an ideal display option for both next-generation fighter and trainer operations.

Collins Aerospace Mosarc adaptive flight display
Concept 6th Generation Fighter Mosarc Cockpit. Collins Aerospace illustration.

Mosarc Adaptive Flight Display (AFD)

The Mosarc AFD from Collins is a smart display with local processing built upon a similar MOSA-compliant design as the LAD. The AFD implements the critical isolation between fused display elements, a key to rapid mission capability deployment. Specifically, the AFD enables graphics to be drawn from local display software, as well as remote equipment, to ensure information shown remains flexible, relevant and interchangeable as needed. The Mosarc AFD also removes the need for dedicated control panels and can show customized pages for typical fighter and trainer missions, such as crew alerting and monitoring, various mission pages (i.e. weapons & datalinks), navigation charts, flight management, real-time training metrics and advanced autonomy controls.

The Mosarc AFD also remains flexible in terms of retrofit integration requirements providing various mounting options for legacy panels and disparate avionics architectures. Night-vision compatible, the AFD provides advanced human machine interfaces to the platform allowing the operator to move information from one display to another, like a LAD for example, in both day and night operations. This opens access to mission or flight critical information as needed. Similar to the Mosarc LAD, the AFD is also reliable, rugged and designed to minimize sparing and lifecycle costs for both fighter and trainer fleet owners.

Advanced Displays for Next-Generation Fighter and Trainer Aircraft

To equip pilots of sixth-generation fighters and trainer aircraft to achieve air dominance, the future battlespace demands reliable, flexible, modular open systems like Mosarc advanced displays. Increasing the pace of innovation and technology integration for fighter and trainer aircraft gives pilots tactical advantage over emerging threats. But, most importantly, it shows dedication to mission success for the men and women who serve.

Visit collinsaerospace.com/6thgenfighter to learn more about Mosarc solutions.