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.”

Chiefs, Part 3: Like Father, Like Son

Chiefs, Part 3: Like Father, Like Son

Oct. 27, 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, ultimately interviewing Chiefs from 1990 to the present.

Gen. Michael E. Ryan, CSAF No. 16 (1997-2001)

As America rolled toward the end of the second millennium and the year 2000—Y2K, as it was dubbed—President Bill Clinton was in his second four-year term as President, Rep. Newt Gingrich was in his second two-year term as Speaker of the House, and the Defense Department was in trouble. Eight years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Americans were more interested in the new “dot-com” boom than national defense. The post-Cold War drawdown that began in 1991 had twisted military personnel policy such that it seemed the armed forces were more focused on getting people out of uniform than in recruiting members to join or stay in. 

The Air Force suffered a 20 percent cut in the six years from 1991 to 1997, a loss of $18.3 billion a year. The fighter force shed 1,800 jets in that time, a 40 percent reduction since 1987. The missions, however, continued: Somalia in 1992, Haiti in 1994, Bosnia in 1995, not to mention Operations Northern and Southern Watch, no-fly-zone enforcement over northern and southern Iraq, which demanded continuous U.S. Air Force presence. 

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Ronald R. Fogleman, nearly three years into his own four-year tour, was in a bind. He believed the cuts to the Air Force were dangerous to U.S. national security, but couldn’t seem to convince the people who mattered—in particular, Defense Secretary William S. Cohen—that he was not some Chicken Little warning that the sky was falling. Worse, he was also butting heads with Cohen over personnel matters in the aftermath of the terrorist attack on Khobar Towers, a military housing complex in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, where a truck bombing in 1996 had killed 19 U.S. Airmen and wounded 400 American and allied military and civilian personnel. 

Congress and the public wanted accountability, and Cohen, a former Republican senator from Maine who had crossed party lines to join the Clinton administration, was willing to pin the blame on the one-star commander on the scene, Brig. Gen. Terryl Schwalier. Fogleman was not. In July 1997, Fogleman elected to retire early. “My stock in trade after 34 years of service is my military judgment and advice,” Fogleman wrote to Airmen that July 30. Now, he wrote, “I may be out of step with the times and some of the thinking of the establishment.” 

Enter Gen. Michael E. Ryan. While not a stranger to Washington—Ryan had been a military assistant to Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Larry Welch (CSAF No. 12) and for two Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Generals Colin Powell and John Shalikashvili—but he was returning after three and a half years in Europe, during which he had led the U.S. air campaign that forced an end to the Bosnian civil war and led to the Dayton Peace Accords. 

In Bosnia, Ryan had been left largely to his own devices. “No one told me what to do. No one told me to put a work plan together called [Operation] Deliberate Force,” he said. “I just did that on my own. No one tasked me to do that. And I picked every … aimpoint that we used in that war to avoid civilian casualties because we couldn’t be seen as being as bloodthirsty and as committing atrocities, as the participants in that war had been [doing] to each other. In Srebrenica, they killed maybe 6,000 Muslims. There was a horrible war. And how do you stop a war? How do you end a war? We were able to do it by taking away the Bosnian Serbs’ capability to fight.” 

Bosnia, Ryan said, was his greatest legacy. But he himself had descended from a unique Air Force legacy, having spent his entire life within the bubble of the Air Force as the son of a decorated bomber pilot, Gen. John D. Ryan (CSAF No. 7). The elder Ryan became Chief in 1969 when Mike was a young captain flying F-4s at Holloman Air Force Base, N.M. 

Now for the first and only time in the history of the U.S. armed forces, the son of a former service chief had advanced to reach the same position. What he inherited, though, was an Air Force in crisis. 

“I found my Air Force in free fall,” Ryan said in a recent interview. “There was no safety net. We didn’t have a stopgap. There was nothing that was going to keep it from continuing to fall. We had become victims of our own success, in a way: We had gone and done the Gulf War, we had done Bosnia, touted as the war that was won by air alone.” 

In the wake of those conflicts, American air power was so overwhelmingly powerful and effective, its technology so obviously superior, the nation was taking that capability for granted. 

“We were faced with, ‘where’s the peace dividend here?’ And ‘where’s the threat for the future?’” 

That future looked busy to Ryan. Southern Europe, where the former Yugoslavian states were still jockeying for control of border lands and where ethnic tensions that had been held in check for decades under decades of communist rule, continued to unravel in violence. The Middle East, where Operations Northern and Southern Watch continued unabated, with no end in sight, and where Iran continued to pose a meddlesome threat requiring continuous U.S. military presence in the region. 

Ryan
Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Michael Ryan is briefed by Lt. Col. Steve Rainey before take off in an F-16 Fighting Falcon at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., in January 2000. The two flew chase during an F-22 Raptor test mission. Building enough Raptors was a vexing challenge for Ryan and the Chiefs who followed him. Air Force photo by Tom Reynolds.

Many also saw another potential threat rising on the far side of the world. While Britain had turned Hong Kong into an elite island city-state, an international economic powerhouse, time was running out on a 99-year agreement that allowed British rule. On July 1, 1997, weeks before Fogleman retired and just months before Ryan took over as CSAF, the United Kingdom completed the ceremonial transfer of power in Hong Kong, returning sovereignty to China after a century and a half of British rule.  Now, just eight years removed from the Tiananmen Square massacre where China’s People’s Liberation Army had brutally crushed a civilian protest, China was taking possession of a vital connection to world financial markets. Hong Kong’s  ticket to modernize its economy, and it pledged to uphold a “One Country, Two Systems” policy that would protect Hong Kong’s independence. 

But China was not Ryan’s worry. His eyes were set firmly closer to home. 

“I was terribly worried about how to protect the Air Force,” Ryan recalls now. “How do we stabilize this thing so it can’t just keep being eaten away?” 

Every element of the Air Force was under attack. “Pieces grabbed. Every piece of your force structure questioned,” Ryan recalled. Questions flew: “Why do you need that?” The entire service was on the defensive, Ryan described. “It was—it was awful.” 

From the outside, the Air Force seemed not to have any difficulty. There were plenty of planes—even if those planes weren’t all interchangeable. The Air Force lacked a simple force structure that could be explained in building block form, like the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps. The Army had divisions, which were not all equivalent, but at least sounded as if they could be somewhat interchangeable. The Navy had carrier battle groups and a rotational model that resulted in predictable deployment and maintenance cycles. The Marine Corps had Marine Expeditionary Forces, which worked similarly to the Navy model. 

But the Air Force had been built around its bases, its forces tailorable to mission needs. So as demand rose and the service shrank, cracks were beginning to show. Readiness and morale began to slide, right along with the declining budget. 

Ryan noted how the Air Force built stand-in forces for those times when the Navy could not provide aircraft carrier presence in the Persian Gulf. This was the Air Force being expeditionary in its own right, as it had been in World War I, in south Asia in World War II, and in the Middle East since Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. 

“I said, ‘What if we took our Air Force and cut it up in a way that we could form these AEFs—Air Expeditionary Forces?’” Ryan said. If that concept were applied not just for gap-fillers, but for all operations, he thought, it would benefit the Air Force in myriad ways. “We could put some stability into our operations, we could say this is what the Air Force is made of—10 AEFs—and that’s something we can build a force structure against.” 

Brig. Gen. Charles F. Wald was Ryan’s special assistant for the upcoming quarterly defense review, and he asked Wald to work out how to make the concept work. The model Wald’s team built meant the AEF could be used to size the force, Ryan said. “We used it as a force structuring tool, too, not just a tool to put stability into the rotations, but as a tool to say, ‘This is how many F-22 squadrons we need.’” 

When then Air Force was ordered to cut the original F-22 planned purchase from 750, Ryan said, the Air Force used its 10 AEF model to rationalize a new figure: Every AEF needed at least one squadron of F-22s, and every squadron needed 24 planes; add in 25 percent more for training, a percentage for attrition, testing, and so on, and the requirement came out to 381. 

The AEFs did not exist in a vacuum. The National Defense Strategy required a force able to fight two major regional contingencies at approximately the same time. The Navy drew the line at 11 carrier battle groups “and anyone who ever questioned that, they’d say, ‘No, we have to have 11 carrier battle groups,’ and no one would take that on.” 

Ryan believed the AEF construct “would have legs” and survive because “it was designed to be able to handle an op tempo that was constant, because you could put two AEFs online at any one time, and that was plenty for what was going on. And if you had the big one, we’d go back to mobilize, just like for every other war we’d ever had.” 

Defining an AEF for outsiders was never as simple as defining a carrier battle group, however. A carrier battle group could be seen in a photograph, and that image could be held in the mind’s eye. When the Air Force laid out its AEFs, however, it lacked that visual element. Instead, it was a complicated list: combat, mobility, and “low-density/high-demand” forces, delineated as wings, air groups, and squadrons, drawn from the Active, Reserve, and Guard components, and organized by date ranges. A separate list included support forces, organized by duty location. To show all the pieces of all 10 AEFs required two-and-a-half printed magazine pages in Air Force Magazine’s Almanac; even then, one needed to view all three pages to understand the contents of a single AEF. 

Ryan’s AEF settled on deployment rotations of 90 to 120 days, another element that outsiders found difficult to fathom. The Navy and Marine Corps used six-month rotations. But the Air Force had set out to ensure units maintained proficiency in the full range of missions each one might face. That drove the decision for short rotations. “We thought we could keep proficiencies up if we had shorter deployments,” Ryan insisted. “You have readiness requirements you lose when you’re deployed. You don’t do certain things because of the kind of missions you’re force into when deployed, so you can lose your proficiency after 120 days if you haven’t shot a missile, or refueled, or any number of kinds of things you’re required to [be able] to do.”

But short cycles became unsustainable after 9/11, with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, especially when the Army found itself forced to extend some deployments to 15 months, and to impose stop-loss orders that kept deployed Soldiers on Active duty beyond their enlistment dates. Would Ryan do things differently if he could go back and get a do-over? He’s not sure. He sees the argument for six-month deployments, as well as the benefits of 120. “What kinds of deployments are you going on? What kind of a beast are we feeding?” 

The AEF construct survived the transition to Ryan’s successor as CSAF, Gen. John P. Jumper, but began to come apart under his successor, Gen. Norton A. Schwartz. Today, the Air Force is trying to establish a new means of presenting forces. The “force generation” model introduced late last year by CSAF No. 22 Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. establishes four six-month stages—commit, reset, prepare, and ready—for every unit, underscoring that the requirement Ryan identified for stabilizing the force in the late 1990s endures, even if the solution has remained elusive over the quarter century since he became Chief. 

The undoing of the AEF may have been its flexibility, Ryan suggests. “Flexibility is the enemy of stability,” he said. “And unfortunately, air power is very flexible.” 

Protecting the People

Ryan had more on his plate than combat rotations and deployments. The situation in the former Yugoslavia was still troubling, and the Air Force was on continuous duty there, as well as in the Middle East. Meanwhile, the military was facing other problems. 

The Clinton administration had capped military pay growth below wage inflation in 1993. By 1997, the caps had opened up a 9 percent gap between military and civilian pay, according to RAND Corp. estimates at the time. This came on top of an estimated 12 percent gap that had grown since the 1980s. RAND and others questioned whether that gap really applied to the full force, or only to certain service members, but there was no escaping that military pay had fallen behind—and that recruiting and retention were beginning to demonstrate that fact. Another change Congress made in the 1980s was also coming into focus. Lawmakers had changed the formula for military retirement in 1987, but many in the military did not begin to recognize the difference until the late 1990s. 

“Recruitment and retention were a big issue when I came on board,” Ryan said. “We had never advertised before that.” 

Pilot retention was also a problem. “During the drawdown we had made a huge mistake: We had tried to throttle up and down the number of pilots that we would put out in a year. … But we had no way of predicting the run on our force that came from the airlines. Or how much our young force would decide after X amount of time they wanted out. Or what kind of payback we’d get from any of our” incentive programs. “But never pull it back,” Ryan said. “Because when you pull it back, you lose the instructor pilots, you lose range capability, you lose airplanes.” 

But then, Ryan added a wrinkle. Those who agreed to let the Air Force train them to be pilots also agreed to stay in the service for 10 years. “My personnel guys said, ‘No—we can’t do that!’ But I said, ‘Yes, 10 years, you go to pilot training, you give us 10 years back.’” 

The increased commitment had no impact on the take rate, Ryan said. But 15 years later, the Air Force is still struggling to retain enough mid-career pilots. Why? “That goes back to that stability issue,” Ryan said. “If the family is unhappy because they don’t have that stability, then it’s very hard to keep the member.”

Having tried advertising for new recruits, Ryan was now interested in leveraging that kind of marketing power for retention. “I looked around and I said, ‘We don’t have a rallying symbol in the Air Force, we don’t have a symbol.’ I mean, the Marines have their eagle, globe, and anchor, and the Army has their star, and the Navy’s got a lot of anchors. Well, we don’t have anything.”

Ryan hired some “Fifth Avenue guys” from New York and took their renderings to a Corona meeting of the Air Force’s four-star leadership. “There was one that stood out above the others,” Ryan said. “And that’s the one we have today.” But it wasn’t really that simple. He launched the symbol in a guerilla marketing campaign, using it as an unofficial logo in Air Force ads and waiting to see if it caught on organically. “I said go put it on a couple of water towers, put in on the front gate in a couple of places, but don’t force it. … And it caught on big time.” 

Ryan said on issues of style, rather than substance, it’s better to let people buy in than to force change. In the end, it was Ryan’s successor, Jumper, who made it the Air Force’s official logo. But by then it was already widely recognized and accepted.

Not taking credit and letting things percolate is also reflected in Ryan’s approach to Corona meetings. All Chiefs have experience in Coronas before they are running them. When they finally are in charge, they have a very good idea of what they think is going to work. “First thing is: You’re not the smartest person in the room, and if you think you are, you’re not going to learn anything.” 

“Make sure you include everybody’s opinion, and listen to them because someone in there has got a better idea than you do—or can take your idea and make it even better,” Ryan said. “When you go into executive session at Corona, that’s an important meeting. People can say what they need to say and give their honest opinions without fear of being chastised. I had some wonderful, cooperative four-stars that were my guys. They helped me a lot. … I didn’t have a maverick in the group in the sense of a guy who was fighting where we wanted to go. And we had some that had a lot of opinions and a few that had a bit of an ego, but everyone of them in the end were on the team. Everyone of them was an Airman. A team player.” 

Ryan had a lot to live up to as the second Ryan to become Air Force Chief. His father had been a highly decorated bomber pilot in World War II, with two Silver Stars and a Purple Heart for being wounded on an antiaircraft fire on a bomber mission. “He was a hero in my eyes, not just because he was my dad, but because of his background. He took me up in a B-26 when I was about 10 years old, and he was a commander at Carswell Air Force Base, Texas. And from then on, I wanted to fly airplanes.” 

The elder Ryan impressed his son with his “ethical quality that was unquestionable … and I vowed that I would try and live up to that too. Integrity ought to be your watchword, because if you don’t have integrity, you have nothing. You’ve got to admit when you’re wrong, and you’ve got to stand up and say so when something is your fault.” 

When Air Force Capt. Scott O’Grady was shot down in Bosnia, Ryan said, it was his fault. “I put them in a position where they were vulnerable,” he said. “So Scott got shot down because of me.”

A few years later, another Airman was shot down, this time in Serbia. The pilot, then-Lt. Col. David L. Goldfein, had been an aide to Ryan earlier in his career, and Goldfein’s brother Col. Stephen Goldfein was Ryan’s aide at the time. Ryan said the day “Fingers” Goldfein was shot down was his worst day as Chief. When he finally got word that Goldfein had been rescued, he called Stephen. “I’ve got some good news and some bad news,” Ryan told his executive aide. “The good news is we got your brother back. The bad news is the Goldfein family owes the Air Force one F-16.”      

DOD Aims to Improve Missile Defense, Modernize Nuclear Weapons as ‘Backstop’ of Deterrence

DOD Aims to Improve Missile Defense, Modernize Nuclear Weapons as ‘Backstop’ of Deterrence

Oct. 27, 2022 | By Chris Gordon

The Department of Defense unveiled updated defense, nuclear, and missile defense strategies Oct. 27 that outline a fundamental shift in the world’s nuclear weapons threat. DOD states that nuclear weapons underpin U.S. strategic defenses and that America will continue to invest in its nuclear forces.

According to the 2022 National Defense Strategy, Nuclear Posture Review, and Missile Defense Review, China is the biggest long-term threat to U.S. security, or the “pacing threat,” while Russia poses significant challenges in the near term as the “acute threat.”

During the 2020 presidential campaign, President Joe Biden said he would work toward a policy in which the U.S. nuclear arsenal’s “sole purpose” would be to deter or respond to a nuclear attack. However, following concerns from U.S. allies, the new Nuclear Posture Review, or NPR, continues the policy that the U.S. could use nuclear weapons to deter or respond to enemy non-nuclear attacks by conventional, biological, chemical, or even cyber weapons.

“The NPR affirms the following roles for nuclear weapons: deter strategic attacks; assure allies and partners; and achieve U.S. objectives if deterrence fails,” the document states. It does not define a “strategic attack.”

According to DOD’s new strategies, the U.S. must retain a strong nuclear arsenal and improve its missile defenses.

“Our nuclear weapons remain the ultimate backstop for our strategic deterrence,” Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III told reporters.

The documents warn that China’s and Russia’s nuclear forces and missiles present unprecedented dangers.

“By the 2030s the United States will, for the first time in its history, face two major nuclear powers as strategic competitors and potential adversaries,” the NPR states. “This will create new stresses on stability and new challenges for deterrence, assurance, arms control, and risk reduction.”

The Nuclear Posture Review represents a significant departure from Biden’s original “sole purpose” goal.

“As long as nuclear weapons exist, the fundamental role of U.S. nuclear weapons is to deter nuclear attack on the United States, our allies, and partners,” the new U.S. nuclear declaratory policy states. “The U.S. would only consider the use of nuclear weapons in extreme circumstances to defend the vital interests of the United States or its allies and partners.”

The Nuclear Posture Review says the U.S. will modernize its nuclear forces. The DOD will “fully fund” and field the Long-Range Standoff weapon, B-21 Raider nuclear-capable stealth bomber, and Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile. The stealth F-35A Lightning II will become a “dual-capable” aircraft that can carry nuclear or conventional weapons.

“We concluded that nuclear weapons are required to deter not only nuclear attack, but also a narrow range of other high consequence, strategic-level attacks,” the NPR states. “This is a prudent approach given the current security environment and how it could further evolve.”

The documents answer some lingering questions regarding the DOD’s plans for future weapons systems.

The Long-Range Standoff weapon (LRSO) will be introduced and be able to be deployed from F-35s. The LRSO will replace the AGM-86 air-launched cruise missile.

The LGM-35A Sentinel, formerly known as the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD), will replace the current Minuteman III ICBM “one-for-one” to “maintain 400 ICBMs on alert.”

The B-21 Raider stealth bomber will replace the B-2 Spirit. The Air Force will acquire a minimum of 100 B-21s. It will also upgrade the existing B-52 Stratofortress.

The U.S. will field the updated B61-12 nuclear gravity bomb.

“Although the U.S. nuclear arsenal remains safe, secure, and effective today, most systems are operating beyond their original design life, risking system effectiveness, reliability, and availability,” the Defense Department said in a fact sheet accompanying the release. “Today, much of the U.S. nuclear stockpile has aged without comprehensive refurbishment even as the geopolitical environment has deteriorated.”

Some nuclear programs are due to be canceled. The DOD plans to end the development of the nuclear-armed Sea-Launched Cruise Missile-Nuclear (SLCM-N) program.

The U.S. also plans to retire the B83 nuclear gravity bomb along with the B-2.

Trump administration’s 2018 NPR embraced the SLCM-N and B83 programs, but a senior defense official told reporters Oct. 27 that the SLCM-N was “unnecessary” and the B83 was “obsolete.”

“Our inventory of nuclear weapons is significant,” Austin said when pressed on the moves. “We have a lot of capability in our nuclear inventory.”

One of the first steps the Biden administration took when entering office was extending the New START treaty that limits U.S. and Russian long-range nuclear arms by five years until 2026. The administration has said it wants to reduce nuclear weapons’ role in U.S. defense policy. However, the NPR says “peacetime dialogue” is necessary and that NATO must retain its nuclear capability.

The document says Russia has up to 1,550 “accountable deployed warheads on strategic delivery vehicles,” in line with the New START treaty’s prohibitions, “as well as nuclear forces that are not numerically constrained by any arms control treaty.” The NPR points to Russia’s stockpile of “up to 2,000 non-strategic nuclear warheads” and Moscow’s pursuit of “several novel nuclear-capable systems designed to hold the U.S. homeland or allies and partners at risk, some of which are also not accountable under New START.”

The Biden administration’s decision not to shift to a “sole purpose” doctrine for the U.S. weapons comes in the wake of Russia’s renewed invasion of Ukraine and Moscow’s bellicose attitude toward Europe. The NPR’s language suggests that if Russia’s goal was to weaken NATO with its aggression, Moscow’s aims have backfired.

“Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the occupation of Crimea in 2014, NATO has taken steps to ensure a modern, ready, and credible NATO nuclear deterrent,” the NPR states.

China has also been rapidly building up its nuclear arsenal and increasing its threats toward Taiwan since Biden first suggested the U.S. might change its nuclear policy. The U.S. nuclear policy says China, also known as the PRC, “likely intends to possess at least 1,000 deliverable warheads by the end of the decade.”

The overall trend is clear, according to the review.

“While the end state resulting from the PRC’s specific choices with respect to its nuclear forces strategy is uncertain, the trajectory of these efforts points to a large, diverse nuclear arsenal with a high degree of survivability, reliability, and effectiveness,” the NPR says. “This could provide the PRC with new options before and during a crisis or conflict to leverage nuclear weapons for coercive purposes, including military provocations against U.S. allies and partners in the region.”

North Korea, which possesses nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, is also a danger that the United States would respond forcefully to if necessary.

“Any nuclear attack by North Korea against the United States or its Allies and partners is unacceptable and will result in the end of that regime,” the NPR says. “There is no scenario in which the Kim regime could employ nuclear weapons and survive.”

The new nuclear policy strikes the Trump administration’s view that the role of nuclear weapons was to “hedge against an uncertain future.”

The Biden administration’s NPR says the U.S. will “ensure a safe, secure, and effective deterrent.” While nuclear weapons could be used in a non-nuclear conflict, the document is clear the U.S. does not take the use of nuclear weapons lightly.

The NPR says the U.S. will “adopt a strategy and declaratory policy that maintain a very high bar for nuclear employment while assuring allies and partners and complicating adversary decision calculus.” In addition, the strategy outlines some non-nuclear threats to the U.S. and its allies.

China and Russia are “working to augment their growing nuclear forces with a broader set of kinetic and non-kinetic capabilities, including cyber, space, information, and advanced conventional strike.”

The Defense Department sees nuclear weapons threats from China and Russia as problematic, given their substantial missile capabilities. Since the DOD last issued a Missile Defense Review, also known as the MDR, in 2019, “threats have rapidly expanded in quantity, diversity, and sophistication.”

DOD says ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, hypersonic weapons, and uncrewed aircraft systems represent a significant threat to America’s security interests. China and Russia, and to a smaller extent North Korea, represent a risk to the U.S. homeland.

The Missile Defense Review says any attack on the U.S. territories would not be distinguished from strikes on American states. The U.S. island of Guam is a major military hub in the Western Pacific that may be within range of Chinese missiles.

“Within the context of homeland defense, an attack on Guam or any other U.S. territory by any adversary will be considered a direct attack on the United States, and will be met with an appropriate response,” the document says.

The DOD acknowledges that its current missile defense is not comprehensive enough and that the U.S. must develop improved integrated air and missile defense systems. The threat from cruise missiles is particularly acute, the MDR says.

“Gone is the primary focus on rogue state ballistic missiles that defined the 2010 review and programs and budgets for years following,” Tom Karako of the Center for Strategic and International Studies said in an interview.

The document, however, lacks unclassified details on specific defenses DOD hopes to add.

“Although the public version of the review leaves several things to be desired, it nevertheless advances several critical mission areas,” Karako added, referring to the MDR’s focus on a more comprehensive view of missile defense, the inclusion of UAS threats, the increased focus on the U.S. homeland and Guam, and the push for more distributed operations.

The new policies state that the U.S. cannot rely on defenses alone to protect itself and its allies. Ultimately, America will fall back on its nuclear arsenal if necessary.

“In such a circumstance, the United States would seek to end any conflict at the lowest level of damage possible on the best achievable terms for the United States and its allies and partners,” the 2022 NPR states.

B-1s Carry Naval Mines for Bomber Task Force Mission

B-1s Carry Naval Mines for Bomber Task Force Mission

Oct. 27, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

B-1B Lancers deployed to Guam for a bomber task force joint training mission with the Navy, with Airmen and Sailors practicing loading and releasing naval mines from the B-1s.

The naval mine exercise, or MineX, took place Oct. 24, staged out of Andersen Air Force Base, according to a release from Pacific Air Forces.

As part of the exercise, Sailors from Navy Munitions Command’s Pacific Unit built and delivered the Mark-62 Quickstrike mines, then worked with Airmen from the 28th Munitions Squadron to load them onto the B-1s.

All told, an undisclosed number of B-1s were loaded with 21 mines total, each mine weighing about 500 pounds. A B-1 can carry up to 84 of the mines.

“MineX missions require close coordination and integration between the Navy and the Air Force,” Col. Chris McConnell, 37th Bomb Squadron commander, said in a statement. “As one of the aircraft capable of releasing mines, we have to work with our Navy partners to understand where those munitions need to be placed to meet the desired objectives.”

McConnell also stated that as part of the mission, the B-1s flew alongside “Navy partners and allies,” though PACAF did not specify what other aircraft or partner nations were included in the mission.

The exercise marks a quick start for the B-1s’ bomber task force deployment on Guam. An undisclosed number of the bombers from Ellsworth Air Force Base, N.D., arrived there Oct. 18. It marks the second time this year that B-1s have been deployed to Guam and the first BTF mission in the Indo-Pacific this fall.

The Ellsworth B-1s are no strangers to naval mine exercises, though. Just this past August, a B-1 from the 28th Bomb Wing was loaded with a Mark-65 Quickstrike mine and flew from Ellsworth to off the coast of California, where it dropped the munition. A similar exercise took place in 2014.

B-1s from Dyess Air Force Base, Texas, also dropped Mark-62 Quickstrike mines as part of  Exercise Baltic Operations in 2018.

None of those B-1 exercises, however, took place in the Indo-Pacific, where the Pentagon has placed an increased emphasis as of late as part of its strategic competition with China—the Air Force and Navy did work together during Exercise Valiant Shield in 2018 and in 2019 to load and drop naval mines.

The B-1B is capable of carrying up to eight Mark-65 Quickstrike mines, which weigh 2,000 pounds each.

New National Defense Strategy Mum on Force Structure

New National Defense Strategy Mum on Force Structure

Oct. 27, 2022 | By John A. Tirpak

The new, public version of the National Defense Strategy, unveiled by Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III on Oct. 27, calls out China as the U.S. military’s “pacing threat” but offers no force-sizing construct nor any specifics about numbers of forces the U.S. needs to carry out its goal of deterring China, Russia, and other potential adversaries.

One of the biggest differences between the 2022 National Defense Strategy and the 2018 version put out by the Trump administration is that the new document specifically names China as the main threat against which U.S. forces must prepare, Austin said, with Russia a secondary but “dangerous” concern. The previous NDS referred to engaging in “great power competition” with near-peer nations.

The People’s Republic of China “is the only competitor out there with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the power to do so,” Austin told reporters Oct. 27 at the Pentagon. Russia is labeled an “acute” threat, a word Austin said was chosen carefully to explain that while “Russia can’t systemically challenge the United States over the long term,” its “reckless war of choice” against Ukraine “does pose an immediate and sharp threat to our interests and values.”

Austin characterized the Ukraine war as “the worst threat to European security since the end of World War II,” which has made the danger posed by Russia “very clear for the whole world.”

Unlike previous strategies, the NDS rolled out by Austin doesn’t offer a pithy force-sizing construct summary such as “win-hold-win” or the ability to fight two major regional theater wars, and it sets no goals for numbers of Navy ships or other benchmarks of military capability. Defense officials, however, said there are “strong linkages” between the strategy and the fiscal 2023 defense budget request and future investments.

A senior defense official briefing the press ahead of the rollout said the department continues to wrestle with how deterrence will work in a world with three major nuclear and conventional powers. The old models of deterrence in a bi-polar world were developed over decades of study involving academia, he said, so the new model will take some time to develop.

“This is new territory for us,” he said.

As for a force structure model, the official would only say the strategy seeks to answer the question: “How do you successfully fight one adversary while having enough reserve to hold the other at bay?”

Another official said force sizing is being shaped by the Joint Warfighting Concept activities. She said the Marine Corps’ “Force Design 2030” study is a good example of the “creative” work being done in the Pentagon to envision the capabilities needed in the future.

Austin said “we went through a force posture review very early on,” and there are “incremental adjustments from time to time to that force posture.” He said “we have the ability to rapidly deploy capability to Europe—and you saw that exercise at the very beginning of this conflict, as we deployed … heavy forces from the United States to Europe very, very quickly.” This was possible because of the work done in the European Defense Initiative, he added.

“We’re confident that we’ll have … the force to be able to execute our strategy,” he said, adding that “we continue to focus” on recruiting.

The long delay between the “interim” NDS released in 2021, the classified version sent to Congress in March, and the unclassified version released Oct. 27 was attributed to “assessing the calculus” of how things have changed due to the Ukraine conflict, senior defense officials told reporters on background. However, they also said that analysis “validated” the assumptions and concepts developed before the Ukraine war started, and that the NDS has remained largely intact despite it.  

The text of the NDS also says that while the U.S. is structuring for deterring China and Russia, it will also be able to undertake smaller military actions without degrading overall deterrence capability.

Austin said the classified version of the NDS “has been our North Star” since it was delivered to Congress and that it provided the foundation for the fiscal 2023 budget. The Pentagon has been “laser focused” on the China threat “since Day 1,” and Austin noted that he set a China Task Force early in his tenure to “produce a range of recommendations to focus the entire department on the China challenge.”

The NDS is also “very clear-eyed about other serious threats,” Austin said.

“That includes North Korea’s expanding nuclear and missile capabilities. And meanwhile, Iran is moving ahead on its nuclear program, supporting dangerous armed proxies and even exporting drones that Russia is using to terrorize Ukrainian civilians.”

The Pentagon also remains “vigilant against the ongoing threat from global terrorist networks as well as from climate change, pandemics, and other dangers that don’t respect borders,” Austin said.

Broadly, the strategy aims, in order, to defend the U.S. homeland; deter strategic attacks against the U.S. and its allies; “prepare to prevail in conflict when necessary”; and “build a resilient joint force and defense ecosystem,” Austin explained.

In service of those goals, the NDS touts “integrated deterrence,” referring to integration among the services, with other parts of government, and with allies and partners.

The strategy calls for investments in capabilities and technologies that “strengthen the 21st century combat-credible U.S. military” by making it “ready to tackle the full range of threats,” Austin said.

Austin also said the NDS “emphasizes the day-to-day work of ‘campaigning,’” which he defined as “conducting and sequencing military activities that, over time, shift the security environment in our favor.” Such activities include U.S. exercises, deployments, and wargames held with allies and partners to cement relationships with them and to develop joint strategies.

The “seamless integration” of U.S. capabilities “across all domains … and theaters … [and] the full spectrum of conflict  should make it “crystal clear to any potential foe” that “the costs of aggression against the United States, our allies, and partners far outweigh any conceivable gains,” Austin said.

The new strategy is “nested” within the National Security Strategy released in mid-October and “for the first time” was developed in full integration with those preparing the Nuclear Posture Review and the Missile Defense Review, Austin said.

Much of the NDS is oriented around the world as it will look in 2030. In the introduction, Austin echoes President Joe Biden’s National Security Strategy comment that this is a “decisive decade.” Asked how the NDS is gauged to react to nearer-term threats—particularly the threat of an invasion of Taiwan by 2027, or even next year—a senior defense official said, “we really tried to look across time periods” and to develop a strategy across three successive future years defense plans, which are five years long.

The NDS sets a framework for “evolving” forces and capabilities with new investments, the official said.

“We’ve really tried to balance our approach to risk across all of those and across the entire joint force,” he asserted. “And I think if you look through the … President’s budget submission from last March, I think you’ll see this is pretty nicely done, right? You see a really big emphasis on building a combat-credible force. You also see an emphasis on readiness, for example,” with $135 billion earmarked for readiness accounts.

That shows that the Pentagon is mindful of the need to “manage risk in the near term, as well.”

The fiscal 2023 budget request “included more than $56 billion for air power platforms and systems,” Austin said, “and more than $40 billion to maintain our dominance at sea, and almost $13 billion to support and modernize our forces on land,” with another $34 billion “to sustain and modernize our nuclear forces.”

He also touted that the request includes $130 billion for research and development, “the largest R&D budget number in DOD history.”

The strategy outlines that the Pentagon is also “working in new ways with our industry partners, including by strengthening our supply chains in our defense industrial base,” Austin said.

LaPlante on Why Weapon Production Constitutes Deterrence

LaPlante on Why Weapon Production Constitutes Deterrence

Oct. 26, 2022 | By John A. Tirpak

One of the biggest lessons to emerge from the war in Ukraine is that weapons that are in production constitute a credible threat to adversaries, whereas weapons that are merely experimental—or are not actually being made in numbers—are not, according to William LaPlante, the Pentagon’s head of acquisition and sustainment. He said those lessons “amplify” the priorities his organization is pursuing.

“Production is deterrence,” LaPlante asserted at an acquisition seminar sponsored by the Potomac Officers Club in Tysons, Va., on Oct. 26.

Guiding his decisions during his term as the No. 3 executive at the Pentagon, he said, is the urgency of the China threat and providing equipment that’s useful in “a real, high-end fight” such that the U.S. can back up its rhetoric with relevant hardware in the hands of operators.

LaPlante said China has been gaining on the U.S. for 20 years in military technology and that the situation is “bad in space, bad in cyber, bad in EW [electronic warfare].” Ukraine has driven home the reality that “we can’t just think of [high-end warfare] as something that might happen five or 10 years from now,” but potentially in the “next year, or next month … That’s the takeaway.”

China is “really good” at modern warfare, he said. “They can do the kill chain. They’ve figured that out.” He said that “anybody who says … ’it’s not as bad as you think’—you’re wrong.”

For LaPlante, “All that matters is getting [equipment] to warfighters at scale,” he said. “If you don’t get into production, it really doesn’t matter. That’s one thing that’s hit home” as a result of the Ukraine war.

Deterrence is based on “the three C’s,” he said: “communication, capability and credibility.” It’s essential that “the other side”—whoever that is in a given situation—“understands what you mean and intend,” he said.

“If you say, ‘we’re going to hold them at risk,’” it has to be backed up with the goods, LaPlante asserted. He later added that “deterrence does work. It’s working right now with NATO and Ukraine. NATO is not at war. Hopefully it will not be at war. But I think part of deterrence is also production lines.”

In space, for example, “if the adversary can see that you can produce smallsats off the line in a couple of days, so that if they take out a hundred of them, you can put up another hundred of them in three weeks, that’s deterrence.”

With Ukraine, the conversation has turned to “how many more precision weapons do the Russians have? How many more do we have? Once you realize that a country can keep going into its magazine, and has production, that’s deterrence.”

The war has also illustrated that “You can’t predict ahead of time what you’re going to need. You can try, but you’ll be wrong half the time.” He said, “Who’d have thought in 2022 that we’d need Stingers, right? That production line stopped in 2008.” Similarly, the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) was last in production from 2014 to 2017, and the U.S. is drawing down its stocks rapidly in providing the weapon to Ukraine. After the war against ISIS, the perceived need for AGM-114 Hellfire missiles was also deemed to have fallen.

“So be humble about predicting what you think you’re going to need. What you have to do is hedge your bets,” LaPlante said.

That means the U.S. is going to have to keep production of some systems going even when stockpiles are solid, and “we’re going to have to pay for it,” he said.

LaPLante noted that “we’ve gone to this just-in-time delivery [scheme] like Wal-Mart … Don’t have any inventory; ‘inventory is waste.’ Cut out redundancy, tooth to tail. Remember all this? Well, what could go wrong there? Nothing … until we have Ukraine.” In that fight, “if you can’t get something in three years, nobody cares.”

The Pentagon needs to remind itself “that the resiliency of the industrial base means you have to pay for it; you have to plan for it, and you have to be willing to put in place measures that you might not even be able to prove” will ever result in being used.

However, regardless of the theater, he said, integrated air and missile defenses are going to be key. Ukraine, with the help of its partners, has “MacGyvered” several kinds of sensors with weapons to produce functional air defenses, he said. But it needs more.

Regarding new weapons, LaPlante called himself “a nerd. I love prototypes. [They’re] interesting. They’re fun for all of us in Nerdville. But it doesn’t really help the warfighter … So I’ve really been focused on delivering … capabilities.”

He said he’s glad to see the Pentagon doing more prototyping and experimentation, as “we were not doing very much of that back in 2014-15 when I last served. Now, to everyone’s credit, there’s so much going on.” But he added that there’s “an excess of it, really.”

Regarding hypersonics, for example, he said, “the ugly truth is … we’ve never been in production with hypersonics in this country, ever. Hypersonics have been in the [science and technology] world for forever—60 years. It’s been the ‘weapon of the future’ for 60 years. Whereas the Russians and Chinese are in production.”

He admitted that “I’m going to be tuning out when you talk about doing a test” of a hypersonic system by the Air Force Research Laboratory, DARPA, etc. “When you get into production, then I’m going to start paying attention.”

His second priority is delivering capabilities “in a way that’s sustainable and cost-effective.” He said it’s “well known” that 70 percent of a weapon’s lifecycle costs are in sustainment, and the support system has to be there if they are to work.

And, “it doesn’t matter if you can’t train to it,” LaPLante said.

He emphasized that it no longer makes sense to think of the defense industrial base as separate from that of the rest of U.S. industrial base. They are one and the same, he said, and the Pentagon must use all the sources it can to achieve its goals.

Finally, he said he’s been concentrating on “workforce, tools, and education,” but acknowledged that the Ukraine situation has consumed “about half” his time since taking up the post in April.

Referring to the weapons provided to Ukraine, LaPlante also pointed out, “The stuff works. For all the criticism we give ourselves, the stuff works, and it works really very well.” The world has seen that, and there is also deterrence in that fact, he said.

With HIMARS, “it takes three 18- to 20-year-olds, not trained very much, to use it, and it’s very powerful.”

Armagno: ‘Call-Up Structure’ for Commercial Satellites Could Mirror Civil Reserve Air Fleet

Armagno: ‘Call-Up Structure’ for Commercial Satellites Could Mirror Civil Reserve Air Fleet

Oct. 26, 2022 | By Amanda Miller

The commercial space industry has proven its potential value to the military since Russia invaded Ukraine—and not just in the fighting. But the Defense Department won’t be able to subscribe to every commercial imagery or communication service and may instead benefit from “some kind of a call-up structure” for satellites, said a top Space Force general.

USSF Director of Staff Lt. Gen. Nina M. Armagno suggested the idea Oct. 24 at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’ ASCEND Conference in Las Vegas, joining a panel of experts to talk about the government’s use of commercial space assets or services in a conflict.

Not only has the commercial space industry—and its satellite imagery, in particular—informed decisions on the ground in Ukraine, it’s delivered a new degree of transparency that David Gauthier of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency said factors into countries’ “deterrence calculus.”

“It forces a bad actor to realize that with the transparency commercial remote sensing provides, they cannot hide their actions anymore from the world,” Gauthier said. “Satellite imagery can deter entire nations from harming us at a nation level.”

The best way to ensure a strong, competitive commercial market, said Steve “Bucky” Butow, space portfolio director at the DOD’s Defense Innovation Unit, will be to “make sure that we’re using these tools every day in an appropriate way as a complement to our tactical and strategic capabilities.”

Recognizing, however, that the department may not be able to “afford to put every good idea on contract as soon as the good idea comes out,” Armagno said—“or maybe we don’t recognize that it’s a good idea that we’re going to need in two to five years”—she cited as an example the arrangements with commercial airlines to call up the Civil Reserve Air Fleet for military transport.

“It’s actually so essential to how our nation fights. Maybe we need some kind of a structure for space,” Armagno said. “Some kind of a call-up structure would be very interesting to explore.”

Amid concern that commercial satellites could become military targets, Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen H. Hicks has said the department is considering how to compensate the companies for potential losses.

Boeing Posts $2.8B Quarterly Loss in Defense Business Attributed to KC-46, New Air Force One

Boeing Posts $2.8B Quarterly Loss in Defense Business Attributed to KC-46, New Air Force One

Oct. 26, 2022 | By Chris Gordon

Boeing reported a $3.3 billion loss in the third quarter of 2022, driven by deepening woes in its defense business, the company announced Oct. 26. Boeing’s defense, space, and security sector lost $2.8 billion in cost overruns on fixed-price development contracts.

The aerospace giant’s financial difficulties were highlighted by a $1.2 billion hit to the KC-46 Pegasus tanker and a $766 million loss on the VC-25B, better known as the new “Air Force One,” according to Boeing’s chief financial officer Brian West. Boeing also recorded losses on its USAF T-7A Red Hawk trainer, the Navy’s MQ-25 Stingray, and NASA’s Commercial Crew program.

“We’re not embarrassed by them,” Boeing CEO David L. Calhoun said of the cost overruns on an earnings call. “They are what they are, and we intend to deliver against these contracts and satisfy our customers.”

For years, Boeing pursued a strategy of offering aggressive bids for fixed-price development contracts. Those contracts put Boeing on the hook for extra costs associated with developing the programs. Calhoun conceded that was largely a mistake for the company.

“Eight-five percent of the business is doing pretty well,” Calhoun said of the defense side of the Arlington, Va.-based company. “It’s these fixed-price development programs that, unfortunately, we’re working our way through. We had to account for recent performance, including a reassessment of our forecast cost to complete. There’s no doubt about it.”

Losses on the KC-46 have now run up to over $6 billion. The Air Force’s initial contract for the aircraft was $4.9 billion.

West said the defense business’s issues were “primarily due to higher estimated manufacturing and supply chain costs as well as technical challenges.”

The KC-46 program encountered a substantial setback when Boeing and the Air Force announced that the Remote Vision System (RVS) 2.0 update would be delayed until 2025, 19 months more than previously planned. RVS 2.0 will be required for all KC-46s to fix problems with the current system used to operate the main refueling boom. Because the fix to the RVS also includes upgrades to display resolution and cameras, Boeing is on not on the hook for all costs. Instead, some will fall on the Air Force, though the company and the service have declined to get into further detail. The company said the KC-46’s issues stem from parts shortages and labor instability.

The new Air Force One jet ran into more trouble after the company signaled the program was getting on the right track earlier in the year. Boeing said the new costs stem from a tight labor market and supply chain issues. Security clearance issues for workers on the highly classified project make the labor issues particularly acute. Boeing agreed to a $3.9 billion contract for the new Air Force One after pressure from former President Donald Trump, who thought the price was too high.

The T-7 contract award followed a bid by Boeing of $9.2 billion to produce the Air Force’s new trainer that will replace the stalwart T-38 Talon. That deal, however, has cost Boeing more than anticipated and run into delays.

Trump got personally involved in the Air Force One contract cost, and Boeing agreed to produce the two VC-25B aircraft at a lower cost than initially planned.

“Well, it turns out our critics were right,” Calhoun said in an interview with CNBC. “We didn’t get enough price. That’s fairly obvious to all of us. In the meantime, we haven’t taken any of these fixed-price development contracts, and it’s not our intention to ever do so.”

Boeing recently made changes in the executive team of its defense division, also known as BDS. The company had a falling out with regulators and the general public following deadly crashes of its 737 Max commercial airliner, which was temporarily grounded. Boeing reported strong demand for the 737 Max, its marquee civilian airliner, in the third quarter of 2022. It has resumed deliveries of its 787 Dreamliner wide-body jet that had been halted after manufacturing defects.

While Boeing cited inflation as one factor driving its losses, the company did not try to blame the issue for all its troubles. The Department of Defense has signaled it may be willing to make adjustments for inflation to companies with fixed-price contracts such as Boeing. However, Calhoun or West did not raise the issue on the call with financial analysts despite repeatedly being pressed on Boeing’s defense losses.

After years of instability, safety, and quality concerns, Boeing’s main focus now is delivering what airliners and the Air Force have already ordered.

“I think that the thing we have to keep in mind is that our mandate is to stabilize and now deliver very important products to our customers who need them,” Calhoun said.

SDA Working on ‘Translators’ to Connect Transport Layer to Other Networks

SDA Working on ‘Translators’ to Connect Transport Layer to Other Networks

Oct. 26, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

Some of the satellites that will form the planned “backbone” of joint all-domain command and control may include “translation” payloads to let other satellites feed their data into the Pentagon’s massive mesh network, the head of the Space Development Agency said Oct. 25.

SDA is still committed to establishing common standards for networking and communications on the planned National Defense Space Architecture, director Derek M. Tournear said at the Mitchell Institute’s Spacepower Security Forum. Of particular importance will be the Transport Layer, which will be responsible for providing data and connectivity to countless platforms across the U.S. military.

That ability to link sensors and shooters across the globe is what will make the Transport Layer a key component of joint all-domain command and control, the Pentagon’s ambitious effort to create a military Internet of Things, Tournear said.

But while common standards will be crucial to avoiding “vendor lock” and allowing different contractors to compete for Transport Layer contracts, Tournear suggested that SDA will also look to incorporate other satellite systems, both government and industry, into the data network via “translator sats.”

“A translator sat is a satellite that will be able to basically talk to the SDA Transport Layer and talk to either the commercial or other government agency providers’ layer so we can do that translation to move data from one network onto the other,” Tournear said. “And there’s a lot of reasons you may need to do that. … While not the preferred, that’s another option that we have available to be able to use the SDA Transport layer to tie this whole mission together. The whole mission, in a nutshell, is to get the right sensor data to the right shooter at the right time. And that’s how we enable that.”

Tournear later clarified that such a “translator” likely wouldn’t be a dedicated satellite, but instead a payload, either on a satellite launched as part of the NDSA, or as part of another satellite architecture.

SDA is already “working with our partners” on the translator concept, Tournear added.

Such a capability may be necessary even as SDA has looked to establish common standards. For networking, it is asking contractors to follow standards established by the Naval Research Laboratory’s Space Research Group called Nebula—which stands for “networking beyond the upper limits of the atmosphere.” It also has adopted optical communications standards, “to make sure that my walkie talkie talks to their walkie talkie,” Tournear said.

“We actually have with [the Naval Research Lab], we have developed a test lab so that folks can bring their optical terminals to NRL to demonstrate that they can plug and play with our optical standard, as well as other vendors’ optical communication terminals, to make sure there is no vendor lock situation and it’s all interoperable,” Tournear added.

Yet even with those standards, satellite constellations are already in orbit that may not have the necessary equipment. And there are other reasons why a contractor or agency might not meet the standards.

“You have some of the commercial networks up there and some of the commercial ISR data providers, they may not have either the capability or the ability to put an optical comms terminal that matches the SDA Transport Layer, or, frankly, they may not be able to meet the Nebula standards because of crypto requirements and things like that, which is not an easy thing to solve,” Tournear said.

That’s where the translation payloads come in, but three technical challenges have to be addressed, Tournear said.

First, the vendor running the satellite architecture would need to launch at least one satellite with an optical communications terminal to link up with SDA’s Transport Layer. Then, “what you need is a Nebulizer and a de-Nebulizer,” Tournear said—a way to take networking protocols and put them into SDA’s Nebula standard format so that data can be shared.

“We’re developing generic … software development toolkits for the Nebulizer and the De-Nebulizer that then third-party vendors could take, and they can use that as a starting point and to integrate that in with their system,” Tournear said. 

Finally, the vendor and SDA will need to work out cybersecurity issues to ensure that the data being passed is safe, but “that’s something that has a lot of different types of solutions,” Tournear said.

As SDA works on those problems, “translator sats” won’t be part of the agency’s very first launches, scheduled for the coming months. But Tournear hinted that they could be in orbit in the coming years, starting with the planned Tranche 2 Demonstration and Experimentation Satellites, or T2DES.

“This isn’t set in stone, but likely some of those satellites would be demonstrators of different translator sats for different constellations,” Tournear said. “So those would be in your [2026] timeframe.”