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.

Report: New Intelligence Offices Could Benefit US in ‘Techno-Economic Competition’

Report: New Intelligence Offices Could Benefit US in ‘Techno-Economic Competition’

Oct. 30, 2022 | By Amanda Miller

A new report suggests that the U.S. military’s “technological edge” could erode—the Defense Department no longer able to fulfill its commitments or to project power in the customary way—if the U.S. doesn’t become a better-informed player in the global “techno-economic competition.”

To that end, a one-year-old think tank with its origins in a federal commission proposes the creation of two new intelligence organizations to help “fuse more diverse sources of information across all domains” through artificial intelligence.

Founded by the former top executive at Google, Eric Schmidt, the Special Competitive Studies Project says it will help “strengthen America’s long-term competitiveness where artificial intelligence (AI) and other emerging technologies” are reshaping society, including in national security. 

The group’s Intelligence Panel published a 42-page “interim report” Oct. 20 proposing a National Techno-Economic Intelligence Center; along with another organization focusing on open-source intelligence that the report says could be a fit within the Defense Department.

The U.S. government’s 18-agency Intelligence Community led in AI as well as in “new efforts to capture data outside government channels,” according to the report. The IC now needs to expand on those activities to turn it all into a “competitive advantage.”

“In a rivalry with a technological and economic near-peer and with technology as a key battleground of the competition, providing insight into our adversaries’ emerging technologies and the organizations that field them is as important as understanding the traditional political and military institutions of a state,” according to the authors.

Citing the Biden administration’s new National Security Strategy, which says “economic security is national security,” the report says a new National Techno-Economic Intelligence Center could “improve the picture of adversaries’ economic, financial, and technological capabilities.” An organization specializing in open-source intelligence could help the IC “maximize its use of open sources throughout the intelligence enterprise.”

The report lays out options for where the new entities could reside organizationally:

A National Techno-Economic Intelligence Center could range from an independent agency; to a part of the Intelligence Community within the Commerce Department; to a part of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI); to expanding the scope of the CIA’s Transnational Technology and Mission Center.

Options for “leveraging open source capabilities” similarly include an independent agency outside the IC; one within the IC; an office within the ODNI to coordinate contracting; and simply normalizing the use of open-source data across the IC with a set of standards.

State Department Issues New Plan to Track Weapons to Ukraine

State Department Issues New Plan to Track Weapons to Ukraine

Oct. 28, 2022 | By Chris Gordon

The State Department announced a new plan Oct. 27 to track weapons the United States has provided to Ukraine. The plan addresses concerns that the nearly $18 billion in military aid America has provided since Russia’s renewed invasion could fall into the wrong hands. If Russia acquires American weapons, it could “develop countermeasures, propaganda, or … conduct false-flag operations,” according to the State Department.

The U.S. government has an existing process to track American weapons that are provided through security assistance or foreign military sales. But the high-intensity war in Ukraine and the presence of U.S. aid required a more comprehensive and public approach, according to the State Department.

“This plan does not represent the start of an effort. We have taken concrete steps to address this issue since Russia’s renewed invasion of Ukraine began, and even before then,” a State Department spokesperson told Air & Space Forces Magazine on Oct. 28. “The United States has long maintained a variety of tools to mitigate diversion risks of U.S.-origin defense equipment.”

According to the U.S., Ukraine has responsibly handled its donated equipment and the plan was not a result of any known cases of American weapons ending up in the wrong hands.

“The United States has not seen credible evidence of the diversion of U.S.-provided weapons,” the spokesperson added.

Ukraine often reiterates that it needs more arms to defend itself against Russia’s invasion. America announces the types of weapons it sends to Ukraine and their monetary value. So far, most of the materiel has come directly from U.S. stocks. Other governments have also provided significant military aid.

Ukraine’s security service, the SSU, has conducted raids to seize weapons, explosives, body armor, and other military equipment that it says was in the possession of arms dealers, imported illegally, or otherwise misused.

The State Department said weapons provided for Ukraine’s defense from Russian aggression meant that Moscow was ultimately to blame should any weapons fall into the wrong hands.

“By starting this war, Russia bears responsibility for any resulting diversion,” State Department chief spokesperson Ned Price said Oct. 27.

Before Russia’s full-scale military invasion of Ukraine, the Russian government was implicated in providing weapons to separatist forces in eastern Ukraine, including a surface-to-air missile system that shot down a civilian airliner.

The State Department’s plan, which will be coordinated with the Department of Defense, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, and other government agencies, focuses on advanced U.S. weapons systems. Man-portable air defenses (MANPADS) and anti-tank-guided missiles (ATGM) are given particular importance. Small arms, such as rifles and ammunition, are harder to track. The U.S. has provided thousands of Stinger surface-to-air systems and Javelin anti-tank weapons since Moscow began its full-scale invasion in February. American aid has also come with stipulations on how it can be used. When the U.S. started providing High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), the U.S. government insisted they could not be used to strike targets across the border in Russia, even if those targets threatened Ukraine. Ukraine publicly agreed to those conditions. Russia has launched rocket and missile attacks from inside its territory to avoid Ukrainian defenses.

“The Ukrainian government has committed to appropriately safeguard and account for transferred U.S.-origin defense equipment, although we recognize that the chaotic nature of combat can make this difficult,” according to the plan, formally known as the “U.S. Plan to Counter Illicit Diversion of Certain Advanced Conventional Weapons in Eastern Europe.”

The State Department says Ukraine’s need for weapons to fight Russia has so far stopped any widespread illicit trade.

“Thus far, intense internal demand for use on the battlefield by Ukrainian military and security forces within Ukraine is assessed to be impeding black-market proliferation of small arms and guided infantry weapons such as MANPADS and ATGMs from Ukraine,” the plan states.

In response to Russian drone and missile attacks, some of which have targeted civilians, the U.S. has pledged to help Ukraine build an integrated air defense network. As the war continues, the U.S. has provided increasingly sophisticated systems. Hours after the State Department announced its arms plan, the Defense Department announced an additional aid package that included U.S. military communications antennas for the first time.

The plan says the U.S. government will rely on non-traditional methods, such as tracking social media. The Ukraine war has increased the visibility of open-source intelligence, with many professional military analysts and hobbyists taking to platforms such as Twitter to post photos and videos of Russian and Ukrainian military actions and specific weapons systems both sides are using. Because Ukraine is an active war zone, U.S. officials cannot conduct the same inspections or tracking, or what the American government calls end-use monitoring (EUM), that it would in peacetime.

An active war zone such as Ukraine “requires different approaches, as the conflict makes it impractical to request the return of equipment from the front lines to depots or other locations where U.S. government personnel can inspect them in a safer environment,” the plan states.

U.S. weapons transfers to Ukraine have gone through neighboring countries that have friendly relations with America, making tracking easier. After the fall of the Soviet Union and conflicts in the Balkans in the late 20th century, weapons proliferation in Europe became an increased concern. America’s work to limit the proliferation of weapons in the region is an asset in preventing the misuse of weapons, the State Department said. In Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. weapons fell into the hands of ISIS and the Taliban after America’s withdrawal from the countries.

“We are benefitting from a favorable geography that is building on and expanding partnerships with Ukraine and many of its neighbors dating back to the 1990s working to address threats of illicit arms diversion,” the spokesperson said.

The U.S. also wants to make the areas safe for civilians when Ukraine recaptures territory by assisting with explosive ordinance disposal, weapons removal, and mine clearing.

Recently, some members of Congress have pushed back against the Biden administration’s strategy of providing tens of billions of dollars in weapons. But there is still strong support for weapons transfer to Ukraine from elected officials and the general public.

Ukraine has maintained that its most important safeguard is more existential than any international agreement.

“We need to survive,” Ukraine’s Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov told the Financial Times in July. “We have no reason to smuggle arms out of Ukraine.”

KC-46 Flies Without Co-Pilot as AMC Explores Limited Aircrew Operations

KC-46 Flies Without Co-Pilot as AMC Explores Limited Aircrew Operations

Oct. 28, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

A KC-46 tanker from McConnell Air Force Base, Kan., flew without a co-pilot Oct. 25, part of Air Mobility Command’s push to study limited aircrew operations.

Two flights took place with just a pilot and a boom operator, the 22nd Air Refueling Wing announced in a release. The first sortie flew a pattern only, while the second accomplished a “full mission profile,” including “takeoff, aerial refueling rendezvous, air refueling on-load, and offload, [and] landing.” 

When not engaged in boom operations, the boom operator was in the cockpit with the pilot.

A second instructor pilot was on board during the flights to act as a safety observer, and a second KC-46 with a full crew flew alongside the tanker to provide assistance if needed.

“This mission was practiced extensively in flight simulators,” 22nd ARW commander Col. Nate Vogel said in a statement. “Each phase of evaluation has been carefully considered, taking into account crew safety, aircraft capabilities, and existing federal aviation standards. That allowed us to make a deliberate and thorough analysis of what risks and hurdles are present, how to mitigate those, and allowed us to recommend training requirements to familiarize crews with the basic functions and critical controls of unfamiliar crew positions.”

The move to take a co-pilot out of the cockpit was one of several initiatives outlined by Air Mobility Command boss Gen. Mike Minihan at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference this past September. Reports of such a move first came to light in July, sparking pushback from some who felt it would strain an already undermanned force, but Minihan strongly defended it as necessary.

“You’ll have to forgive me. I don’t think fighter pilots are the only ones that have a birthright to fly an airplane solo,” Minihan said. “And as much as I admire and trust that crowd, I admire and trust mine in exactly the same way. 

“There’s a real operational need for it. In order to generate the tempo required to win, it’s not hard to imagine a pilot and a boom on the bunk sleeping with a pilot and a boom in seats, getting the mission done. And I’d rather test that out now than try to figure it out when the shooting is going on.”

The KC-46 might not be the only mobility aircraft to fly with a smaller crew. Minihan has said he also wants to explore limited aircrew operations for other major weapons platforms.

Minihan has pushed forward with several initiatives for the KC-46 in particular, though. In May, a Pegasus from the 22nd ARW set an AMC endurance record with a 24.2-hour flight, and in September, he cleared it for worldwide deployments and combatant commander taskings, including in combat, after months of interim capability releases due to the tanker’s troubled Remote Vision System.

No Space War College: USSF Partners With Johns Hopkins for PME Program

No Space War College: USSF Partners With Johns Hopkins for PME Program

Oct. 28, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

Some of the Space Force’s top officers will have a new option for intermediate- and senior-level developmental education starting in 2023.

The Space Force announced a new partnership with Johns Hopkins University on Oct. 26. The plan is to provide service-specific, in-residence programs at its School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C.—part of what the service is touting as a new “independent” approach to professional military education.

Other services, including the Air Force, typically run most of their PME through military educational institutes such as Air University. Only a select few officers are tapped for graduate programs or fellowships at civilian institutions, and those who are also have to complete distance learning programs at military institutions such as Air Command and Staff College, National Defense University, or the Army War College in order to receive Joint Professional Military Education credit for their development.

By contrast, the Space Force’s partnership with Johns Hopkins will go deeper, with 62 slots in the first year growing to 85 in time. Some of those spots will go to civilians and service members from other services as well as international students. Space Force faculty will transfer from Air University to Johns Hopkins, the service noted in a release.

As a result, the plan is to have the program receive JPME accreditation, meaning Guardians won’t need to complete distance learning courses to receive credit, Maj. Gen. Shawn N. Bratton, head of Space Training and Readiness Command, told Air & Space Forces Magazine in an exclusive interview.

All in all, it’s an approach that Bratton called “unique” within the military, and it’s based off very early direction from Chief of Space Operations Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond, who stressed the need for independent PME, Bratton said.

“Early on, before there was a STARCOM, Gen. Raymond had written in his planning guidance for the service that we’ll develop independent PME by 2023,” Bratton said. “When I came in to stand up STARCOM, it’s one of the few things that was very kind of [a] directive and a specified task, like ‘You will go do this.’”

Working on that directive, Bratton said, his staff considered the possibility of establishing a Space War College to mirror institutions from the other services.

“But we’re so small compared to the other services, it just seemed like that would be a lot of bureaucratic growth to develop an independent program,” Bratton said. “And so early on, we started to talk about partnerships and how we think about that.”

That led to a request for proposals and an application process for schools. And early in the process, Bratton said, the service began targeting universities around the Washington, D.C., region.

“In many cases, about 60 percent of the cases, people will come out of school, and they go to work in the Pentagon. That is a pretty common career path when you come out of both intermediate and senior developmental education,” Bratton said. “Not always, but in a lot of cases. So if we can … avoid those moves for kids in school, spouse careers, and [get] a little bit of cost savings for the government in the PCS moves, we thought there was benefit there.”

Bratton cited his own experience moving his family from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., to attend the Navy War College in Rhode Island, then moving again after 10 months. In some cases, he noted, families may not even move with the service member and instead treat the PME like a deployment.

“We wanted to reduce the burden on the family in that instance,” Bratton noted.

PME location is an issue the Air Force has to contend with. A 2021 study by RAND’s Project Air Force found that many officers and families “voiced concerns about the location at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama,” particularly with regard to the quality of local public schools and employment options for spouses.

At Johns Hopkins, Guardians will obtain a master’s in International Public Policy. Foreign Policy ranked Johns Hopkins’ master’s program for international relations third in the world, and U.S. News & World Report placed the program in a tie for fourth nationally among Global Policy and Administration Programs.

The students will also have access to other Johns Hopkins courses for electives.

“As long as you meet the prerequisites, we think there’ll be an opportunity for some Guardians who are pursuing STEM electives, that perhaps they can go up to the Applied Physics Lab and do some work there,” Bratton said. “And so, for sure, we have a huge elective catalog to choose from. It really gives a lot of opportunities for Guardians that wouldn’t be available, certainly, if we had tried to stand up our own school. We just wouldn’t be able to support that with faculty.”

Intermediate developmental education (IDE) and senior developmental education (SDE) mark the top two rungs of the Department of the Air Force’s developmental education program, above primary DE, and include graduate programs, internships, and fellowships. IDE is typically for majors, while SDE is for lieutenant colonels and colonels. The first Guardians to enter the new program will start school in the summer of 2023.

“We’ve made a good choice here in avoiding creating a big bureaucratic institution [like] if we had tried to create the Space Force University,” Bratton said. The Space Force has instead been “smart about, ‘Hey, we’re a small service. Because of that, we’re able to do things differently than the Army, Navy, and Air Force.’ … We’re pretty excited about it. We still have a lot of work to do between now and next summer, but looking forward to kicking it off.”