LaPlante: DOD Won’t ‘Kick the Can’ on F-35 New Engine Decision; Won’t Break Up JPO

LaPlante: DOD Won’t ‘Kick the Can’ on F-35 New Engine Decision; Won’t Break Up JPO

Oct. 25, 2022 | By John A. Tirpak

The Pentagon will soon decide whether to move ahead with a new engine for the F-35, and officials won’t simply table the issue indefinitely, Defense Department acquisition and sustainment chief William LaPlante said at an acquisition conference. He also said calls to break up the F-35 Joint Program Office and distribute its development functions to the services are premature but that he supports the services taking over sustainment of their own F-35 fleets.

“It’s predecisional. We’re in the middle of lots of meetings” on the Adaptive Engine Transition Program, or AETP, LaPlante said at an Oct. 25 acquisition conference sponsored by the Potomac Officers Club. But, he pledged, “We are not going to kick the can. We are going to make a decision,” he said, suggesting that the choice will appear in the fiscal 2024 budget request. “And that’s what’s going on right now.”

The Pentagon has been debating for more than a year whether some or all of the F-35 fleet should be refitted with new engines, after some members of Congress urged the Pentagon to pursue such a program. General Electric has prototyped the XA-100 and Pratt & Whitney the XA-101, both of which can fit the F-35A, but which are less easy to fit to the F-35B and C models.

The Joint Program Office has said that if the Air Force wants an AETP engine in its F-35As, it will have to pay for the development and integration itself, because the rules of the international F-35 partnership are, “you have to pay to be different,” former JPO director retired Lt. Gen. Eric Fick said in 2021.

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said at the fiscal 2023 budget rollout that he’s been talking to the Navy about going in on the AETP together but has not commented recently on the progress of those discussions.

GE Aviation has been pressing for the AETP to be fitted to the F-35 fleet in the Block 4 version of the F-35, saying it can have the engine ready by 2027. GE has been locked out of the F-35 engine market since Congress voted to terminate GE’s alternate F136 engine for the fighter in 2011. Pratt & Whitney—part of Raytheon Technologies—has said it can also provide its AETP engine, but has been pushing for an upgrade of the existing F135 powerplant, which it alone makes. The AETP was originally envisioned as not only exploring more powerful and efficient engines, but potentially setting up an annual engine procurement competition between the two companies.

Some members of Congress have also come out against refitting the F-35 with an AETP powerplant, saying it would be cost-prohibitive for the Air Force to do it alone and that it would undercut the commonality of aircraft among the various users that the program has painstakingly preserved.

LaPlante said the AETP initiative has “in my view … done everything it was advertised to do, in terms of getting efficiencies both in power and potential for range and fuel savings.” The only thing standing in the way of a production program, he said, is “just money.”

It’s a matter of “whether we take it and go to the next phase—which is going to some of degree of serious engineering and manufacturing development—and then cut that in” to the production line, “or do another option.” The F135 update is the other option.

However, “Doing nothing on the F-35 engine is not an option … We have to do life extension” on the engine, and “We have to do something about its ability to generate power. And, we may have to do something—or want to do something—on performance. Which gets you to AETP,” he said.

“All of those factors are under consideration right now,” LaPlante added.

He dismissed the idea of disbanding the F-35 JPO in the near future as “pretty stupid.”

The F-35, he said, is “still in development” with the Block 4 version. “You don’t break up a program office that’s doing development … We need the JPO to finish development,” something he predicted would happen in about five years. “Then,” he said, “we can revisit it.”

The Pentagon is, though, trying to “get the sustainment back to the services … to make sure the services own the sustainment … So that’s where I see that moving.”

An important consideration, he added, is the F-35 international partners, eight of which are “plank holders” who have been part of the program since its inception.

“This is not FMS,” he said, referring to Foreign Military Sales. The international partners are “part of the governance” of the F-35, and “They love the JPO.”

They view the JPO as “an honest broker … trying to balance the equities between the partners, and maybe even our services in this country,” and they would likely object to the JPO’s being undercut. This fact “doesn’t get much attention in Washington.”

“The fact of the matter is, the JPO does incredible work” keeping the partners informed and involved on the program’s progress, LaPlante said.

“The partners trust the JPO, and it’s one of the most successful programs, I think, ever in the history of DOD.” For now, he said, “in the sense of moving to the next phase,” it will only be about moving the sustainment of the F-35 “back to the services.”

Lockheed Martin Says LMXT Still a Possibility for KC-Y Program

Lockheed Martin Says LMXT Still a Possibility for KC-Y Program

Oct. 25, 2022 | By Chris Gordon

Lockheed Martin says it is still pitching its LMXT tanker to the Air Force amid a looming requirements announcement for the KC-Y tanker program. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall has cast doubt on whether a KC-Y program would field a wholly new aircraft and has said the program may end up being an upgraded KC-46 Pegasus.

However, the KC-46 and its manufacturer Boeing face growing disquiet over numerous delays and problems with the aircraft. The KC-Y is the so-called “bridge tanker” envisioned for production between the current KC-46A and a next-generation KC-Z family of aerial refueling systems.

While the company does not yet know what the requirements of the KC-Y will be, Lockheed Martin said the Air Force has expressed possible interest in a “KC-Y plus,” which the company says could be its LMXT.

“We see this airplane as already being in that KC-Y plus scenario—it is already embodying next-generation technologies,” Lockheed Martin’s LMXT director Larry Gallogly told reporters Oct. 25. “I would certainly say that that’s a potential outcome.”

The Air Force recently announced that necessary updates to the KC-46’s problematic Remote Vision System (RVS) will not be complete until 2025. Lockheed Martin says its offering, which is based on the Airbus A330 Multi-Role Tanker Transport—in service or on order by over a dozen countries—already has the many kinks worked out.

“This is kind of backwards for the U.S. government,” Gallogly said of the LMXT’s development process. “Normally, the U.S. government invests in a weapons system, and we go through all of these growing pains with their weapons system. We get that weapon system up to speed, and our friends and allies get to take advantage of all of that development that we’ve done on that … But our friends and allies have made all of that investment. Now we’re going to get to take advantage of that.”

Lockheed Martin highlighted the fact that the Airbus-designed refueling system for LMXT has undergone numerous improvements over the past decade. Like the KC-46’s RVS, the LMXT uses a screen-based system for operating the main refueling boom.

Lockheed Martin makes the case that the LMXT, a derivative of the commercial Airbus A330 wide-body jet, can also help the Air Force shift toward the Pacific, which it says presents a “tyranny of distance.” Aircraft will need more pit stops to refuel to cover the large area. The Air Force wants to develop the concept of agile combat employment, which means having dispersed operations. Lockheed Martin claims the larger LMXT would support that. With a 271,000-pound fuel capacity, the larger LMXT would carry about 60,000 more pounds of fuel than the KC-46, land at the airbases, and then could operate as a ground refueling station. It could also refuel KC-46s and free them up for other missions. Kendall has repeatedly reiterated his focus on improving the U.S.’s ability to counter China.

“This aircraft does that, I believe, more than any other of the assets that we have,” Gallogly said. “Gas is going to be king.”

As part of the Air Force’s push for flexibility, it plans to use KC-46 as a communications node. Lockheed Martin says the LMXT will have its own dedicated communications hub set up for joint all-domain command and control (JADC2) operations. It will also have a permanent aeromedical suite. This would limit time on the ground needed to configure a plane during which a lumbering tanker could be subject to attack. Airbus’s automatic air-to-air refueling system, which the LMXT would retain, could help reduce the number of crew, or at least their workload. Under Gen. Mike Minihan, Air Mobility Command is pushing for longer sorties with smaller crews.

“Our answer was we’ve designed the configuration so that in 90 percent of the situations, you won’t have to reconfigure this airplane ever,” Gallogly said. “It has all of that all of the time, so it makes it much, much more effective in a combat environment where that time on the ground is critical.”

Still, Lockheed Martin faces a challenging environment if it hopes to sell the LMXT to the U.S. government. The Air Force hopes to push up the timeline on the KC-Z program, which will feature a family of systems for aerial refueling, with some work on the program beginning as soon as 2023. However, if dissatisfaction with Boeing grows over KC-46 delays, Congress could compel the Air Force to have a competition for the KC-Y to prevent the service from relying on a sole source that is already plagued with issues. If not, Lockheed Martin says the LMXT would not die.

“If the competition doesn’t go forward [on the KC-Y], I’m not convinced that the next competition would be for a Z,” Gallogly said. “They may just say, ‘Hey, we’re going to have a competition for the next-generation tanker, and here’s what we want it to do.’ And then we’ll evaluate those requirements and see, does this airplane fit that criteria?”

Ultimately, Lockheed Martin and Boeing are awaiting decisions from the Air Force on what will happen with its future tanker programs.

“Only they know for sure,” Gallogly said.

Officials: US Nuclear Posture Unchanged Despite Russian ‘Dirty Bomb’ Claims

Officials: US Nuclear Posture Unchanged Despite Russian ‘Dirty Bomb’ Claims

Oct. 24, 2022 | By Chris Gordon

The U.S. and its Western allies expressed concern that fresh Russian allegations against Ukraine—that it plans to use a radioactive so-called “dirty bomb”—may be a pretext for a major escalation in Moscow’s war with its neighbor.

But U.S. officials said they had detected no signs that Russia is planning to use nuclear arms and therefore had no reason to raise the alert level of U.S. nuclear forces.

“We see no reason to change our strategic nuclear posture,” White House National Security Council strategic communications coordinator John Kirby said Oct. 24.

Apprehensions about Russia’s strategy emerged Oct. 23 when Russia’s Defense Minister, Sergey Shoygu, called Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and three other NATO defense chiefs and charged that Kyiv was preparing to use a dirty bomb, which combines radioactive material and conventional explosives.

Russia’s foreign affairs ministry echoed the allegation the next day, as did Gen. Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the Russian General Staff, in calls with Gen. Mark A. Milley, the U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Adm. Tony Radskin, Britain’s Chief of Defense Staff.

The governments of the U.K., France, and the U.S., all nuclear powers, issued a joint statement that said the allegation against Ukraine was false and warned Russia not to “use this allegation as a pretext for escalation.” Russia’s forces were in an increasingly precarious position as they pushed back against a Ukrainian counteroffensive in the east and south of the country.

U.S. officials said they were unsure about Russia’s motivations for making the charge. The allegations, they said, could be an attempt to pressure the West to curtail its military support for Ukraine, might be a propaganda exercise, or could be an indication that Russia might be preparing to use a dirty bomb of its own or other weapons of mass destruction.

“We have seen in the past that the Russians have, on occasion, blamed others for things that they were planning to do,” Kirby said. “We don’t have any indication that that’s the case, but it is a play that we have seen before.”

State Department spokesperson Ned Price reinforced that message. “It would certainly be another example of President Putin’s brutality were he to use a so-called dirty bomb,” Price said Oct. 24. “There would be consequences for Russia, whether it uses a dirty bomb or a nuclear bomb.”

Ukraine also rejected the allegations and invited the International Atomic Energy Agency to Ukraine to inspect any claims. Concerned about the Russian statements, top Western defense and military officials began a flurry of consultations, including with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.

“You can expect to see a series of phone calls with allies and partners in the days ahead as well,” a U.S. military official told reporters.

Top U.S. and Russian defense officials had not talked since May until Shoygu and Austin spoke on Oct. 21 at the request of the U.S. On Oct. 23, Shoygu initiated a series of calls to the defense ministers of the United Kingdom, France, and Turkey, as well as Austin.

The latest flare-up between Moscow and the West comes as NATO is in the middle of its Steadfast Noon tactical nuclear exercise. The exercise is held annually, and NATO and U.S. officials announced some details in advance, such as the presence of American B-52 bombers from Minot Air Force Base, N.D. U.S. and NATO officials said the exercise was unrelated to real-world situations and have also said Russia will soon conduct its annual Grom nuclear exercise.

Kirby said the U.S. has not seen “physical preparations” for the use of a nuclear weapon by Russia.

“We have been nothing but honest with all of you that we take that rhetoric seriously,” Kirby said. “We have to. It would be irresponsible if we didn’t.”

Nearly 100 Airmen to Get Distinguished Flying Crosses for Afghanistan Evacuation

Nearly 100 Airmen to Get Distinguished Flying Crosses for Afghanistan Evacuation

Oct. 24, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

Nearly 100 Airmen will receive Distinguished Flying Crosses and a dozen more will get Bronze Star Medals for their actions in Operation Allies Refuge, the noncombatant evacuation out of Kabul, Afghanistan, in the summer of 2021 that garnered worldwide attention.

Additionally, the 621st Contingency Response Group, from Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, N.J., will receive the Gallant Unit Citation.

The announcement, made by Air Mobility Command on Oct. 21, marks the largest batch of medals—96 DFCs and 12 BSMs—yet approved for the operation.

AMC will release more details and citations for individual awards in the weeks to come, a spokesperson told Air & Space Forces Magazine, but a major command release specifically cited the 621st CRG for how it was able to “rapidly repair and run airfield operations at Hamid Karzai International Airport while surrounded by hostile forces.”

In August 2021, some members of the 621st Contingency Response Wing had recently returned home from Afghanistan after closing down bases across the country before they were recalled to assist with evacuating U.S. civilians and allies from Afghanistan, fleeing from the advancing Taliban.

As the Taliban seized territory and pushed Afghan national government forces back, the situation in Kabul became increasingly desperate, 621st CRG commander Col. Gregory Cyrus recalled in March at the AFA Warfare Symposium.

“HKIA was the only airfield and only runway in Afghanistan at the time. So [it was] very important that we maintain that hub, that spoke, whatever you want to call it, in order to ensure that the airlock remained open to get those evacuees out of Afghanistan,” Cyrus said.

On Aug. 15, the Taliban entered Kabul, and chaotic scenes unfolded at the airport as Afghan citizens breached the airfield, with some attempting to climb on U.S. Air Force C-17s.

The 621st CRG, led by Cyrus on the ground, helped restore order and secure the airfield, and began directing air traffic with the help of other units to allow evacuations to resume.

“You need to get out there and keep that airfield open. You need to assume senior forward authority and we need to take those [aerial porters] and those Marines and make sure that they can do multi-capable ops,” Cyrus said of the mission that commanders charged his unit with. “We had aerial porters expediting aircraft, marshaling aircraft. We had the Marine air traffic controllers, obviously providing security of the ramp, at the same time landing aircraft and taking off aircraft. It was a pretty amazing thing to watch on the ground, being a leader there for the [contingency response] forces and for the operation that happened.”

Over the course of about the next two weeks, mobility Airmen helped to evacuate 124,334 people from Kabul, including U.S. citizens, Afghan nationals, and other allies and partners. Especially in the early phases of the evacuations, some Air Force aircraft faced small arms fire from the ground.

Already, the Air Force has awarded a handful of medals for the operation. An Oklahoma Air National Guard Member received the DFC in December 2021, followed by four more Airmen in April and another in June.

Those Airmen are not part of the group of 96 Distinguished Flying Cross recipients announced by AMC on Oct. 21, a spokesman clarified. The DFC, the nation’s fourth-highest award for heroism, is given for heroism or extraordinary achievement while participating in aerial flight.

Of the 96, seven will be awarded with the “V” device for valor, given for acts of heroism “above what is normally expected while engaged in direct combat.” Another 74 will be awarded with the “C” device for combat. Two of the 12 Bronze Star medals will be given with the “V” device.

“The world witnessed history during that airlift, borne on the shoulders of mobility heroes,” Gen. Mike Minihan, commander of AMC, said in a statement. “This recognition is long overdue for what our heroes did during those historic 17 days.”

The wait of more than a year for those awards was due in part to a backlog that required Air Forces Central, the reviewing authority, to get a waiver, AFCENT commander Lt. Gen. Alexus G. Grynkewich told reporters at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber conference in September.

“In the process of how long AFCENT had the authorities to process awards, the authority that has been delegated to us expired, so we were at a bit of a stop,” Grynkewich said.

At the time, Grynkewich pledged to “go full court press” on processing award submissions, saying “we owe it to those service members to get those processed as quickly as we can.”

That led to a September awards board led by AFCENT. The board approved more than 350 individual awards, AMC noted in its release. And more still could come, Grynkewich said in September.

“If [the board] were to disapprove, we give feedback on why it was, which can sometimes result in resubmissions,” Grynkewich said. “The only reason I highlight that is even though my intent is to get this done very quickly, I would suspect that we’ll have some additional awards packages that come in, so resubmissions potentially in the future.”

The awards that have been announced will be officially given in the coming weeks, with Minihan scheduled to award both Distinguished Flying Crosses and Bronze Star medals at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in November.

B-1s Land in Guam to Start Bomber Task Force in Indo-Pacific

B-1s Land in Guam to Start Bomber Task Force in Indo-Pacific

Oct. 21, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

An undisclosed number of B-1B Lancers arrived at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, on Oct. 18 tfor a bomber task force mission in the Indo-Pacific, Pacific Air Forces announced.

The B-1B crews from the 28th Bomb Wing at Ellsworth Air Force Base, S.D., will take part in “several” training missions during their deployment, integrating with allies while doing so, PACAF said in a statement.

Airmen from the 28th Bomb Wing began arriving in Guam several days earlier, according to images posted by PACAF.

This marks the second time in 2022 that B-1s have landed on Guam. In June, the 28th Bomb Wing sent four B-1s on a bomber task force rotation that included training exercises with the Japanese and Australians. That rotation ended in early July.

“Bomber Task Force deployments and missions provide key assurances and cooperation with joint and partner Allies in the region,” Lt. Col. Daniel Mount, 37th Bomb Squadron director of operations, said in a statement. “The B-1 is an especially capable platform in this region, being able to travel large distances and bear significant firepower with precision and standoff munitions.”

Almost exactly a year ago, B-1s from Ellsworth deployed to Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia for the first time in 15 years. 

But the B-1 isn’t the only bomber that has been deployed to the Indo-Pacific lately—the Air Force sent four B-2s to Australia in July. Those B-2s stayed in the region until August, conducting multiple training exercises.

Air Force leaders have stressed in the past that bomber task force deployments are planned in advance. But the B-1s’ arrival in Guam comes amid increasing tension in the region, especially between the U.S. and North Korea, which has conducted a barrage of missile tests recently and flown warplanes near the border with South Korea.

China’s ruling Communist Party, meanwhile, is in the midst of its congress, which takes place every five years, and leader Xi Jingping has called for faster military development and “reunification” with Taiwan, leading some, including Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, to express concerns that the Chinese may be speeding up their timeline to seize the island.

New Mitchell Institute Paper Argues Space Force Must Take Lead Role in JADC2

New Mitchell Institute Paper Argues Space Force Must Take Lead Role in JADC2

Oct. 21, 2022 | By Chris Gordon

The Space Force must be given leadership over disparate elements of the U.S. military’s joint all-domain command and control (JADC2) effort, according to a new policy paper from AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.

JADC2 is an effort by the Department of Defense to improve command and control by collecting more data and sharing that information across the services down to the tactical level. This joint effort, however, is being developed separately by the individual services, each coming up with its own concept of how JADC2 could work. What JADC2 will become in practice is still somewhat amorphous.

In the paper, the Mitchell Institute’s Senior Fellow for Spacepower Studies Tim Ryan suggests these efforts be consolidated under the Chief of Space Operations, with the power to define key authorities and standards of JADC2 efforts. In Ryan’s view, the CSO should be given “the primary responsibility of overseeing the integration of the entire JADC2 system.” Without better coordination among the services’ efforts, JADC2 programs risk being neither joint nor all-domain.

Because the Space Force’s satellites will be part of the “transport layer” of JADC2 that the U.S. military says will underpin its future operations, the service needs more precise strategic guidance about its mission, more responsibility, better training, and increased funding, according to Ryan. The goal would be to empower the Space Force to help make JADC2 a reality and to fulfill its vital role as a facilitator of U.S. operations by giving it the means to protect its assets.

“This sounds very expensive,” Ryan said during a roundtable with reporters to preview the paper. “It sounds very complex. I understand that. And I agree that it is.”

America’s adversaries, primarily China, have their own military space components. The People’s Liberation Army’s Strategic Support Force wants to be able to disrupt an enemy’s command and control networks in space.

“It is much, much cheaper to do it right the first time because, quite frankly, I don’t think we’re going to get a second chance on this,” said Ryan. “The second chance is we lose.”

U.S. military leaders, inside and outside of the Space Force, have begun voicing concern that America’s space assets, which include capabilities as fundamental as GPS, could be disrupted by an attack. The Biden administration is pursuing improved global norms in space, such as a ban on testing most anti-satellite weapons and stricter rules requiring operators to deorbit their defunct satellites. States such as China, however, often ignore international agreements, even if they are enacted, especially the current non-binding efforts the U.S. is pursuing.

Ryan’s paper argues that the DOD must articulate the need for, and Congress must approve, funding for the defense of space assets critical to JADC2. American military and civilian officials publicly acknowledge that space will become contested in future conflicts. Senior Space Force leaders have begun to float concept of “space superiority.”

“What that really means is the ability to take a punch and to continue to fight,” said Lt. Gen. Nina M. Armagno, the director of staff of the Space Force, at AFA’s Air, Space, & Cyber Conference in September.

Missing from that statement is an explicit ability for America to fight back directly when it is attacked in space, as it does in other domains.

Ryan, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who served in a variety of space roles and also worked as a civilian on the Space Force staff at the Pentagon, recommends in his paper that the Space Force receive authorization and funding to “develop space-based weapons systems that are specifically designed to defend the JADC2 space transport layer against kinetic and non-kinetic acts of aggression.”

While the Biden administration’s efforts to improve the safety of space operations through international norms are laudable, the U.S. still needs a clear space deterrent as America’s adversaries may be willing to ignore international norms, according to Mitchell Institute experts.

“Where’s the hard power in the current construct? It really doesn’t exist,” said Douglas A. Birkey, the executive director of the think tank. “Otherwise, we’re actually risking an increased likelihood of conflict in space because there are no real consequences they’re going to care about.”

Established in 2019, the Space Force is mainly made up of systems and personnel from other services. The President’s budget request for fiscal 2023, which Congress has not yet passed, allocates $24.5 billion for the Space Force, a $7 billion increase over 2022. These budget increases, however, do not necessarily reflect new capabilities, as other services have shifted the burden and the cost of space assets to the Space Force.

According to Ryan, a larger budget is required. However, he acknowledged that putting that into legislation would be challenging.

“Any current increase in the current Space Force budget [has] been primarily done through stand-up actions and being able to integrate the other services’ capabilities into the Space Force,” Ryan said. “At the end of the day, quite frankly, the money has not been equal to the demands that are being placed on the Space Force and the increased demands that it will have with JADC2.”

In the view of Birkey, space cannot be seen as devoid of consequences on Earth if U.S. space assets are attacked and systems go down.

“We have got to get real because everything else is going to fall offline fast and lives will be on the line,” he said.

Air Force Acquisition Report Shows Savings on Space Launch, Cost Increase for F-15 EPAWSS

Air Force Acquisition Report Shows Savings on Space Launch, Cost Increase for F-15 EPAWSS

Oct. 21, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

The Department of the Air Force’s biggest acquisition accounts generally kept costs down in fiscal 2021 compared to the year before, even as the programs’ projected timelines continued to lengthen, a new DAF report found.

The department’s annual acquisition report, released Oct. 14, showed how current and future estimated costs and schedules for major programs have changed from both original projections and more recent estimates. In particular, the report showed significant cost savings in the National Security Space Launch and GPS III Follow-on programs while not cutting quantities. NSSL cut its long-term estimate for the program by $1.6 billion, 29 percent below its original baseline; while GPS IIIF saw a decrease of $612 million, roughly 9 percent less than its estimate in last year’s acquisition report.

“These two programs were more than enough to offset other program cost increases,” the report states, noting that the DAF’s overall portfolio of DOD Acquisition Category I, or ACAT I, programs—each of which involve at least $480 million in research, development, testing, and evaluation or $2.79 billion in procurement—decreased costs about $920 million, or 0.3 percent.

Of 35 ACAT I programs, 11 increased their estimates over their original baselines.

Leading the way, the F-15 Eagle Passive Active Warning Survivability System, or EPAWSS, remained significantly over cost and behind its original schedule, though the schedule baseline was recently reset.

Compared to its original baselines, EPAWSS—an electronic warfare system designed to significantly upgrade the fourth-generation fighter’s capabilities—is 24 percent over budget by unit cost. That marks a nearly six percent increase over the prior cost estimate.

For schedule, last year’s acquisition report recorded EPAWSS as being 33 months behind. That baseline was reset in fiscal 2021.

EPAWSS’s acquisition troubles have been documented before—the program was originally to cover all F-15Cs and F-15Es, but the Air Force cut the F-15C from the planned upgrade in 2017. The program was also on hold for several years as the Air Force wrestled with how long to keep the F-15.

That has led to major program cost and schedule fluctuations—as have shifting requirements for the program, changing its scope.

Eventually, the Air Force split some decision points for the program, hoping for fewer reviews looking at more manageable chunks. The program reached Low-Rate Initial-Production phase in December 2020, and the first units were installed on operational fighters in September 2022. The acquisition report estimates that the program will complete its Engineering and Manufacturing Development phase in fiscal 2024.

The service won’t say much about the capabilities of EPAWSS, but the system will likely give F-15 pilots the means to detect, locate, and jam enemy radar while also deceiving the adversary about the fighter’s exact position and heading. 

The only other ACAT I program now projected to cost more than 10 percent over its original baseline is the Intercontinental Ballistic Missile Fuze Modernization program, which actually cut its cost estimate from 2020 to 2021, from 16 percent growth to 15 percent.

The only program that saw its cost increase by more than 10 percent from last year was the Military GPS User Equipment (MGUE) program, which actually went from being under cost a year ago to six percent over cost as of September 2021. The program also rebaselined its schedule in 2021.

A number of other programs also reset their current schedule baselines, as their timelines continue to slip from original estimates.

“The aggregate schedule grew by 2.2 percent in FY21, which is a bit better than the 3 percent average rate of growth over the last five years,” the report states. “Scheduled growth in FY21 was driven primarily by nine programs experiencing schedule growth. … No programs shortened their overall schedule length.”

One of the primary drivers of that schedule growth was the VC-25B, the planned replacement for the Air Force One aircraft. The program has been plagued by delays for some time now, with the most recent estimates being that aircraft will not be delivered until September 2026 at least, a delay of two years.

All in all, however, DAF Assistant Secretary for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics Andrew Hunter framed the 2021 report as showing a “tremendous” year for the Air Force acquisition enterprise.

“This report provides data showing we are executing and meeting requirements, while increasing our focus on meeting the pacing challenges and persistent and acute threats,” Hunter said in a statement.

Service Member Suicides Drop in 2021; Air Force Posts Significant Decline

Service Member Suicides Drop in 2021; Air Force Posts Significant Decline

Oct. 20, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

The total number and rate of suicides among service members, particularly among Active-duty troops, declined from 2020 to 2021, the Pentagon announced in its annual suicide report released Oct. 20—a small sign of progress amid a general upward trend over the past decade.

In particular, the Air Force—including the Space Force—recorded a sizable drop, going from 82 suicides among Active-duty Airmen and Guardians in 2020 to 51 this past year; and posting the lowest rate among the services.

Still, officials pledged to move forward with a “comprehensive and integrated” suicide prevention strategy, as more than 500 troops died by suicide for the fifth consecutive year.

“While we are cautiously encouraged by the drop in these numbers, one year is not enough time to assess real change,” Beth Foster, the executive director of the Pentagon’s office for force resiliency, told reporters in a briefing accompanying the report’s release. “The year-to-year trend provides helpful preliminary insight, but there is still a gradual increasing trend for suicide in the military over a 10-year period. And we need to see a sustained long-term reduction in suicide rates to know if we are making progress.”

All told, 519 service members died by suicide in 2021 compared to 582 reported a year ago. Similarly, the rate of suicides per 100,000 individuals declined across all three components—Active, Guard, and Reserve. Most strikingly, the Active-duty component rate fell from 28.7 in 2020 to 24.3 in 2021.

However, those declines didn’t change the overall trend of increasing rates dating back to 2011, which the report found to be statistically significant.

Both the general trend upward over time and the decline in the past year were largely driven by the rate of suicides among Active-duty troops, officials said—the Guard and Reserve components have fluctuated over time but shown no statistically significant trend.

Every service showed an increase in the suicide rate among Active-duty troops from 2011 to 2021, but only the Air Force had a statistically significant drop from 2020 to 2021, going from 24.6 suicides per 100,000 individuals to 15.3. 

The Navy and Marine Corps had declines as well, though they were not deemed statistically significant, meaning “we have a low confidence that it is a true change and could be due to chance or natural variation in the data year-to-year,” Dr. Liz Clark, director of the Defense Suicide Prevention Office, told reporters.

Across all branches, the report continued to find a few common trends. Young, enlisted men remain most at risk, and firearms, usually personally owned, are still the most common method.

The report also studied suicides among military families, albeit from 2020 due to lags in data from the CDC’s National Death Index.

In 2020, 202 military dependents died by suicide, including 133 spouses and 69 other dependents. That’s the same figure as in 2019, and more than 2018 and 2017, the first years when military families were included in the report.

Initiatives

In a statement accompanying the release of the report, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III pledged that “we will not stop working to address the root causes of this issue. We also continue efforts to improve the quality of life for service members and their families, address stigma as a barrier to seeking help, and expand our safety efforts for our service members and their families.”

In particular, officials said their efforts over the past year have focused on creating supportive environments.

“Historically, we’ve really taken a one-to-one approach to suicide prevention,” Foster said. “So we focus on an individual’s particular risk factors and reducing those factors, and that’s still a critical part of suicide prevention, to be clear, but what we’re also focused on and what we’re moving towards in this space is focusing on common community risks and protective factors.” 

As part of that focus, DOD is looking to hire 2,000 “prevention personnel” to station around the globe, Foster noted. The hope is to have the first 400 hired within the next few months.

Those personnel will be tasked with “building healthy climates that lead to a reduction in these behaviors,” Foster said, adding that personnel will also try to get “to the left of this—so how do we reach those service members before they get to that point of crisis?”

Some of those efforts can be broad. “How do we make life worth living for the service members?” Clark said. As an example, Foster pointed to recent policies implemented by Austin across the DOD aimed at ensuring economic security for troops.

“We really want to emphasize that quality of life is a critical part of suicide prevention and it’s really important that we consider this in our approach. … These are really critical elements to building an environment where service members and families can thrive,” Foster said.

Leaders are also working on a communications push to both destigmatize getting help for mental health and to highlight the resources available. Clark noted that there are many “misperceptions and misconceptions” about how seeking mental health treatment will affect service members’ career opportunities.

That push will include a review of DOD policies, both to get rid of what officials called “stigmatizing” language and to ensure that getting help for mental health won’t have adverse effects on someone’s career.

“We are in the process of reviewing all DOD policies, regulations, and procedures, but language that would be stigmatized and could be—such  as ‘commit suicide’ would be one, ‘mental retardation’—and taking some stigmatizing language out of the policy and really being able to look at, if you were to have a mental health appointment, if you were to have suicide ideation or suicide-related behavior, what is then that limitation of any type of waiver or a denial of a position or assignment; and having an opportunity to examine each one of those,” Foster said.

Service members and veterans who are in crisis or having thoughts of suicide, and those who know a service member or veteran in crisis, can call the Veterans/Military Crisis Line for confidential support available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Call 988 and press 1; text 988; or chat online at VeteransCrisisLine.net/Chat. 

First B-21 Bomber to Roll Out of Northrop Grumman’s Palmdale, Calif., Plant on Dec. 2

First B-21 Bomber to Roll Out of Northrop Grumman’s Palmdale, Calif., Plant on Dec. 2

Oct. 20, 2022 | By John A. Tirpak

The Air Force and Northrop Grumman will roll out the B-21 Raider from Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, Calif., on Dec. 2, the company announced via Twitter. The rollout is the first for a new Air Force bomber since 1988, when the B-2 Spirit emerged from the same facility.

The invitation-only event will include Air Force and political dignitaries and a limited number of media representatives, according to Pentagon and industry sources. Photography will be permitted, but the Air Force will restrict the size of lenses photographers can use, and viewing of the aircraft will be limited to one section of the facility. No new photographs or artwork are planned to be released in conjunction with B-21 rollout.

Air Force acquisition executive Andrew Hunter teased the announcement at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference in September, saying the event would happen the “first week of December,” meeting previous service statements that the event would happen by the end of calendar 2022.

The first B-21 needs to emerge from the high-security production facility to begin outside engine runs and taxi tests in preparation for its first flight. The outside activity will mean the aircraft will be visible from outside the plant in the coming months.

First flight, now expected in mid-2023, will happen roughly a year after the Air Force first predicted the new bomber would fly. The service has not said what caused the delay but specifically ruled out supply chain issues stemming from the COVID pandemic.

The Air Force has said six B-21s are in various stages of construction.

When the Air Force awarded the contract for the program—then known as the Long-Range Bomber—in 2015, the service said it would have at least one article ready for operational use in “the mid-2020s.” It has not wavered from that prediction since. Air Force Global Strike Command has voiced a requirement for as many as 150 B-21s, but officially, the Air Force’s requirement is for “at least 100” of the aircraft.