US Nuclear Posture Unchanged Despite ‘Concerning’ Russian Threats, Officials Say

Oct. 3, 2022 | By Chris Gordon

The U.S. has not seen anything that indicates it should adjust its nuclear posture, a senior U.S. military official told reporters Oct. 3. The official’s remarks came as the Biden administration has sought to calm tensions following Russian President Vladimir Putin’s hints that the country might consider the use of nuclear weapons.

After announcing the illegal annexation of four Ukrainian regions, Putin said he would use “all available means” to defend the territories, which Russia does not fully control. In comments that caused anxiety in the West, the Russian leader also said the U.S. had created a “precedent” for the use of nuclear weapons in warfare during World War II.

The senior military official declined to say whether the U.S. has detected any movement of Russia’s nuclear forces, citing the need to protect American intelligence. But the official’s overall assessment reinforced recent comments by Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III.

“To be clear, the guy who makes that decision, I mean, it’s one man,” Austin said in an interview with CNN that aired Oct. 2. “There are no checks on Mr. Putin. Just as he made the irresponsible decision to invade Ukraine, you know, he could make another decision. But I don’t see anything right now that would lead me to believe that he has made such a decision.”

Putin is reportedly in an increasingly precarious situation in Ukraine, with his forces in disarray as a result of Ukraine’s counteroffensive in the east and south of the country. In response, Russia announced a partial mobilization of around 300,000 troops, leading to some displays of unrest across the country.

Some of Putin’s most prominent and vocal supporters have blasted the country’s military leadership and have demanded tougher action, including the potential use of nuclear weapons.

Russia has around 2,000 short-range tactical nuclear weapons that analysts worry it could use on a battlefield or as a show of force.

Though the two sides are not currently engaged in arms control talks, Russia has adhered to the New START treaty, which limits the U.S. and Russian long-range nuclear arsenals, U.S. officials say. The treaty has been extended until 2026.

Another senior Defense Department official criticized Russia’s loose talk of nuclear weapons.

“Russia is a major nuclear power,” Celeste Wallander, assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, said at an event Oct. 3 hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “It sets the tone for the global community along with other major nuclear powers in responsible stewardship of a nuclear capability. And that does not include saber-rattling and threatening small, weaker, non-nuclear countries on his border, specifically Ukraine.”

“This facile reliance on nuclear threats is really concerning,” she added.

Watch, Read: CSO Raymond, Google Cloud’s Kurian on ‘Digital Transformation—Unlocking the Cloud’

Oct. 3, 2022

Air & Space Forces Association President retired Lt. Gen. Bruce Wright led Chief of Space Operations Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond and Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian in a discussion of “Digital Transformation—Unlocking the Cloud” on Sept. 20, 2022, at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference. Watch the video or read the transcript below. This transcript is made possible through the sponsorship of JobsOhio.

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Voiceover:

Airmen and Guardians. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the stage the President of the Air & Space Forces Association, Lieutenant General Bruce Wright.

Lt. Gen. Bruce “Orville” Wright, USAF (Ret.):

Well, good afternoon, Guardians and Airmen. What an honor it is to be here today. And I would offer that in the front row. Secretary Kendall, Mr. Calvelli, Chief Brown, among others, thank you for your leadership. And now it truly is an honor to be here today with two digital giants to talk about innovation, leadership, and the lessons the defense industry and our new Space Force can learn from each other. As the first Chief of Space Operations, General Jay Raymond, has the monumental task of standing up a brand new service for the first time in 72 years. And what a magnificent job you’ve done.

Of course, with that responsibility comes enduring opportunities and General Raymond has set out to create the first ever digital service built to accelerate innovation. The new services, digital vision, highlights the need for cultural and technical transformation, to keep advantage over peer and near peer competitors in the increasingly contested digital domain. We’re also pleased and honored to have Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian here today and in the spaces here with all of us to talk about his own experience. Thomas took the reign as the Google Cloud CEO in November, 2018. And over the past quarter century, he has built enterprise software and deep ties with government customers, not only at Google Cloud, but also at Oracle. At Google Cloud, Thomas is now focused on helping to accelerate digital transformations. So welcome to both of you and let’s get started. General Raymond, please, can you tell us about standing up a new service from scratch and what kind of rapid transformation did that necessitate?

CSO Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond:

Oh, well thank you. And it’s a privilege to be back on stage. I’ve never been called a digital giant before, so that’s a good one. In fact, I would say a digital dinosaur is probably a better description for me. I largely tell a story about, when you’re in college, I didn’t see a computer with a mouse until I was a senior in college. And cyber attack back then was, when your college roommate mixed up your punch cards when you typed up. And so, to say I’m a digital giant is an overstatement, but I did recognize that if you look at the space domain, the way you experience that domain is through data. Unless you’re one of the lucky 600 or 700 ish or so folks that have had the opportunity to be in space, you experience that domain through data.

And I knew that if what was pacing us to innovate was not the standup of a service, it was the threat and the competition with both China and Russia. And so we had to move fast. And one of the things that I have long thought of is that we were too hardware focused rather than software focused. And that we needed to have the agility that we needed. And to be able to experience that, to harness that data, apply some analytical tools on top of that data, to solve some of our tough problems, this transformation was going to have to take place.

Lt. Gen. Bruce “Orville” Wright, USAF (Ret.):

Well, thank you sir. And if we could, Thomas, you’ve been at Google Cloud for over three years and after spending decades in leadership roles at Oracle, you’re overseeing the creation of thousands of new products and features across the digital domain. And could you please talk about how you balance innovation and growth? What has been the biggest challenge and what advice do you have for others?

Thomas Kurian:

We’ve been through a period of extraordinary change since I joined Google. When I joined Google, no one told us in 2018 there was this thing called the pandemic that would happen in 2019. At one point, more than 60% of our employees were new to the company and had never met their colleagues. They never met their clients and they were brand new. And so we were creating a digital organization through necessity, because it was our digital platforms that was letting us get all of our people to work together. It was our digital platforms that were helping us serve customers in what they were trying to do. And we translated everything that we were facing through three simple lenses. Challenge creates opportunity. It’s the fact that we were facing this challenge of having to make people work in a totally different way that created the opportunity for us to bring digital technology to make our people productive.

Innovation drives growth. We had to come up with new ways to solve technology challenges. Every one of those helped us grow and find new ways to serve customers. And lastly, we created a culture in our organization where people could work on missions that they cared about. And our view was, our mission was to bring technology to provide lasting transformation and lasting growth to organizations around the world. And so it’s been an incredibly fast paced three years, but all of these lessons that we take in many ways, speaking to General Raymond, and so many service men and women, we’ve learned that there are many commonalities that we share, in the kinds of problems we’re solving and the kinds of problems you’re all solving for.

Lt. Gen. Bruce “Orville” Wright, USAF (Ret.):

Thank you, sir. Well, General Raymond, you’ve already alluded to this, but you’re now leading an organization that is making a push to be the first fully digital service. What does that mean, again, in your own words and how are you going about working towards that goal?

CSO Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond:

Yeah, first of all, I don’t think it’s a goal. I would steal a word that Secretary Kendall use. It’s an imperative, if you have a service that has 16,000 folks and if you have a headquarter staff that has 600 folks, you cannot afford to do business the same way we’ve done business. We just don’t have the manpower to be able to make that happen well. So the way we have defined a digital service, and I’m not saying we have the patent on this, we looked at it in three ways. First of all, we wanted to raise the digital fluency of the entire force. And so we’ve partnered with digital university to give licenses to every single Guardian in the Space Force to be able to take classes and raise their digital literacy. I think that’s really, really important. The second thing that we wanted to do, the second line of effort on that, we wanted to have a digital headquarters that was data driven.

Our secretary talks about it all the time. I think he has a sign, bring data, over top of his office. We want to be a data driven, we want to be able to harness that data. And so we wanted to have a digital headquarters. And then the third thing, and I talked a little bit about this in my speech this morning, was we wanted to embrace digital engineering. And in our force design work that we did, we’ve actually done that all digitally and using model based systems, engineering came up with the digital models, both of the threat that we see and of the architecture design that we want to move to.

And then rather than just print out documents, we actually did the computer models and we handed that to industry and said, Here’s what we think. Let’s have this earlier conversation. If we do this right, then we can take everything from the force design, to then requirements, to then acquisition, acquiring the capabilities, then testing those capabilities, and then training our Guardians on those systems, all using that same digital thread. That’s nirvana. We’re not close to that, but we’ve taken a good step, we’ve taken a good first step. We’ve done the digital design work, we’re figuring out what a digital requirements process is, and I think it’s going to pay significant dividends for us as we move forward.

Lt. Gen. Bruce “Orville” Wright, USAF (Ret.):

Well thanks sir. And back to Mr. Kurian, I love your notion that challenges create opportunities. We thought 14,000 people were going to show up this week and somehow it’s 16,000, so we’ll build on that opportunity. So connecting to the challenges and the opportunities that General Raymond is going through, how do you align with what you hear from other national security counterparts, customers, across a wide range of customers? And what similarities and differences do you see?

Thomas Kurian:

Now, what General Raymond said struck me, we all experience the world today through digital tools. And Space Force is unique in the sense that, the entire domain that it faces the average person doesn’t experience it except through digital technology. When we look at the lessons we’ve learned as Google over the last many years, digitizing the entire world. And when I say digitizing the world, all the information in the world is indexed and served up every day through a search mechanism. Many of you probably use our maps, which is a digital representation of the whole world. There are large infrastructures, networks, computers in data centers in many, many different parts of the world that we deploy in order to support it. But our average person never sees or touches those machines. They’re seen as digital tools that we manage, secure and operate remotely. So when we look at what’s the experience we’ve had and how listening to General Raymond’s comments that, what’s the commonality?

I would say three things that are really important for lasting change. One is the tools and capabilities, whether that is protection with cyber machine learning and artificial intelligence to understand the large quantities of data, or third capability to build software that deals with large scale systems. That’s a common purpose we’ve had and we share with Space Force. Second, to help attract talent because eventually all these tools and technologies only work if it can attract the best people. And attracting the best people, the best people in the world are always attracted for the purpose of a mission. And what you have sir is a real purposeful mission in protecting the next frontier.

And the third is, making it possible for people culturally to learn from digitization. Digitization is a journey. If we all look at years ago, we would all go to a retail store not remembering or knowing if the product that we are looking for really was available in the store. We just drive down and say. Hopefully it’s there. Digitalization through Ecommerce made it possible to actually know the product was there before we got there. But all of that came through a process of learning and experimentation. And I think what we all conceive digital could be, is only the start of a journey. And so being open to experimenting and learning is the other thing that we’ve learned a lot from these past many years.

Lt. Gen. Bruce “Orville” Wright, USAF (Ret.):

Thanks sir. Well, General Raymond, shifting gears a bit, the defense department has always been innovative in its big ideas, but going from an idea to product can be a challenge, lots of ideas have died in what is called the Valley of Death. What are you doing and your team doing in your transformation efforts to bridge that technology Valley of Death or advanced technology Valley of Death? And how would you describe your relationship with industry to do so?

CSO Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond:

I think I feel very fortunate in that… There is a, and I jokingly say this all the time, a big explosion of commercial activity taking place in the space domain. And there’s lots of folks that are investing dollars to develop capabilities, because it’s a cool place to, cool mission to be focused on. We want to be able to leverage that and harness that. We want to expand the industrial base, so it’s not just the big primes, it’s others as well. And if you look at what we’ve tried to do, we’ve stood up a couple of significant efforts at Space Systems Command out in Los Angeles to be able to harness this and develop these partners. So the first thing that we did, we stood up a commercial front door at Space Systems Command. And for all the new companies that have come in, that might not have had the experience of working with a department, we provide them with a sponsor, if you will. Somebody that’s there, that can help them walk through the process and help us work better together.

We have leveraged AFT works and stood up a Space Works initiative as well, to get after the bridging the gulf, if you will, from having an idea, that capability. We have something called SpEC OT at SSC and we put a significant, there’s a significant amount of new companies that are involved in that initiative and provides us a way to get those capabilities onto contract faster. So we’re putting a lot of work on this. We think, if you come up with a new force design, we think there’s two big opportunities. We think there’s a big opportunity in our relationship with commercial industry and we think there’s a big opportunity with our relationship with our allies and our partners. And we’ve got to work together to be able to capitalize on this and harness the good things that are coming out of our industry. I would bet, as I say every time, I would bet on US industry every single day. We just need to make sure that, one, we all are kind of rowing in the same direction.

Two, that we all understand how to work together. And three, that we can develop capabilities and get them in the hands of our war fighters on a tactical timeline, that is important. I’ll tell you a quick story, and this is honest, honest against truth. It happened back in 2011 when I was stationed in Japan and there was a earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear reactor disaster. And we were having trouble coming up with a common operating picture for radiation. We were flying aircraft, Air Force was flying aircraft over Japan to measure radiation. There was sensors around Japan to detect radiation, but we didn’t have a way to display it, and it was really causing issues. And so I reached, I called Google and I said, “How would you do this?” And they said, “If you go up to Google Tokyo, they’ll be able to help you.” So I got a helicopter, flew to Google Tokyo, and in this little conference room, walked two engineers with a laptop. And I explained the issue and they… About 15 minutes later, less than that, here’s how we’d do it.

And I said, “Well, how would I do that?”

And they said, “Well, if you know somebody that knows the computer language, Python…” They didn’t even say that. “If you have anybody that knows Python, we can teach them.”

I said, “What’s Python?”

And they said, “That’s a computer language.”

I said, “Well, I don’t know if we have anybody.” But I got back on the helicopter, flew back to Yokota, and I put an all call out across Fifth Air Force. “Anybody know Python?” Our first lieutenant at Yokota and a brand new Airman, literally been in the Air Force for less than a month, Ed Kadina, we send a C12 down to pick that young Airman up and funny story, funny story, they can’t find him. I said, “What you mean you can’t find him?” Well, he showed up at the airport with 36 pounds of bags and the Air Force had a rule that you’re on space…

Or On that airplane you’re only allowed to have 35 pounds of bags and we sent him home. I said, “Listen, this Airman is the most strategically important Airman in the entire United States Air Force. He can PCS up here on this plane, just whatever he owns, get on the plane.” And literally that lieutenant and that Airman got on the helicopter next day, flew down to Google, and I think, don’t quote me on this, but within a couple days, we were up and running. I thought to myself at that time, man, we’d be lucky to get the TMT Tasker done by that time. And here we are with the capability. We’ve got to figure out how to harness this, if we’re going to get after the challenges that we face.

Lt. Gen. Bruce “Orville” Wright, USAF (Ret.):

What a compelling story. That really leads to the next question for Thomas. Just listening to that example, could you and your extensive experience across the IT world, talk a little bit about how we can build on such communications, responsive communications, with the technology industry that can move at a faster clip than the military acquisition cycle sometimes can traditionally keep up with. Your thoughts and advice building on that great story would be terrific.

Thomas Kurian:

First of all, I think many of the problems that the United States government, defense, Air Force and Space Force face have analogies or equivalent problems that the commercial industry has solved. Having, for instance, a global representation of cyberspace and being able to keep it secure is something that we as a company have to solve every day, because if it was compromised, people would not feel comfortable or trusting in searching, sending email, accessing maps and other services that we offer. So the first thing I would say is, there’s a lot more commonality in the kinds of problems that the commercial industry has solved and that the Air Force and Space Force needs to solve. The second is, in working together through partnerships, you can actually lower the cost to do many things, both in terms of physical infrastructure, computerized software, et cetera. And to some extent, because you learn from experience in technology, you can stand on shoulders of problems that have already been solved before, you don’t have to reinvent and resolve problems that have been solved many, many times before in other contexts.

The third is, the pace of technology is moving extremely quickly. And if somebody told you that today you have in your pocket a smartphone that has more than five times the power of the fastest computer in 1995, you’d have a hard time believing it. And it’s available for a few hundred dollars. The best thing that we can see is in helping the government, is to have procurement and standards adoption processes be able to use the pace of technology. The faster you can ride the technology curve, obviously with the appropriate procurement standards, certification processes, et cetera, the better. But when you are competing with adversaries, China, Russia, who are investing lots of money in equivalent programs, you want to be able to leverage the great capability that the technology industry in the United States brings to the government and the defense department.

Lt. Gen. Bruce “Orville” Wright, USAF (Ret.):

Thanks sir. General Raymond, back to building on your Japan story a bit. How can military services including the Space Force and companies such as Google Cloud, take advantage of their similarities and their differences to advance their respective goals and priorities? And I would add on, I thought your example really as a model for younger, mid-career, if you will, NCOs, officers and program managers and younger engineers to get together. So, I’d ask you to share your perspective in that context.

CSO Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond:

We’re trying. We’re working really hard to develop, again, digitally affluent Guardians and to not just be able to use apps, but to do more coding. We want to have more people than two that can do Python. And so, one of the things that we’re working on is, we have a program that we call Super Coders and we’re trying to build indigenous software experts inside of our service. I think today, we’ve got just shy of a hundred that have gone through this program, and we’ve got more being developed all the time. And then as we develop these super coders, we’re looking what’s the best place to put them? And so we’re putting them in software factories, for example, Kobayashi Maru out at Space Systems Command. We’re putting them in innovation cells in our deltas to be able to give them the tough challenges to work on, and see if they can write code to be able to help us.

And there’s been some really good examples of where we have made some progress embedding those folks with our operators. We’ve developed some apps that have been on our command and control systems. We had a young Guardian at one of our units build a digital representation of some equipment that we used to have to take offline to train on. Now you can train. It was all done in house. And so we, as I went a couple years ago to that software factory that I mentioned, Kobayashi Maru, what I saw was a lot of great folks really working hard in trying to get after some really hard problems, but it was all an additional duty.

It was like, “Hey, anybody out there know software? We’ll give you a little bit of training, you come work here and then you’ll go back home.” We’re trying to build a more… We’re not to the level yet where we can stand up a separate AFSC, if you will. It would collapse under its own weight. But we’ve got some identifiers out that we’ve put on their AFSCs to say that they’re a super coder, and then we’re purposefully assigning those folks at critical positions to help us harness the innovation that we think is out there, by becoming more digitally fluent.

Lt. Gen. Bruce “Orville” Wright, USAF (Ret.):

Thanks sir. Well, Thomas, listening to General Raymond, day to day, somewhat different missions and infact in some ways very different missions, but at the same time, again listening to General Raymond and some of his examples, what are some things that industry could learn insight, internal to industry, to make your own processes better? And could you provide some examples of, again internal challenges that you face and solutions that you work, that could give us some more insight, again in sharing information. And I would kind of cap that question with, could you just talk a little bit about the national security focus, internal to the broadly defined IT industry? So please.

Thomas Kurian:

So just listening to what General Raymond was saying, in the long term, the capability that Space Force needs to be a digital force is very similar to the capabilities that we’ve had to build in our own organization. The first one is, what are the key technology components you really need to be world class at? Software development, making sure as you develop software, you keep systems secure. Cyber, being able to process large quantities of data, being able to use algorithmic expertise. When we were talking about Python for example, being able to program in artificial intelligence, those are capabilities that are going to be critical to maintaining an enduring organization. The second is to attract people. We always think about at our organization, there are, every year from universities across the United States, there are young men and women graduating with great ideas and they are the people over the next five to eight years who are going to transform the technology industry, or the next five to 30 years transform the technology industry.

So the second thing we always look at is the best people work not just for money, but because they have a mission. And the mission is, needs to be a key factor in attracting people. And to retain them, you need to give them digital tools and culturally a rewards and recognition process that rewards them for what they’re doing. At Google for example, we have two examples of things we run internally, a process called OKRs, objectives and key results. One of the things we’ve had explicitly with our managers is to say, you can get to only 80% of the OKRs. You can define 20% to be aspirational that you may not attain and we’re not going to hold you accountable if you don’t attain them. So it recognizes that people want to stretch and you’re not going to penalize them for it. Similarly, when things go wrong, because in many cases we’re working on technology that’s really at the frontier, and you cannot be perfect in predicting how that technology will go.

So we have a process where when things fail, we recognize it as what do we want to learn from it, as opposed to who do we hold accountable for the failure? And so we run a process called Blameless Postmortem, to understand why did something go wrong, what could we have learned from it, and how do we get better because of it? So the second big piece is making sure culturally and enabling the young people who want to come to serve in Space Force, for example, to come knowing that they’ll have the right tools and the right culture, that will make them successful with their mission.

Lastly, we are at Google investing heavily in bringing, not just developing technology but bringing it to the government. We know that part of bridging the private sector and public sector is having people who specialize in understanding the needs of the government and how they use technology. How the Air Force, how Space Force will use technology? And we have specialists that we’ve hired to really understand deeply not just your needs, but how you apply technology to solve some of them. All these in our view, are part of finding a common purpose in bringing technology now as a key differentiator in the work all of you are doing.

Lt. Gen. Bruce “Orville” Wright, USAF (Ret.):

Thanks for both of you. And you’ve addressed this somewhat already, but in an opportunity to sort of reinforce your really the message of your leadership. General Raymond, some 30 years in the Air Force and now building a new service, a proven leader. And Thomas, very similarly a proven leader across the demanding corporate world information technology. As you continue to work on establishing a culture of growth, a culture committed to innovation and growth, can you both talk a bit more again about approaches you’re taking to continue to encourage a culture of innovation? You talked about blameless innovation in your own organizations, and I would just add onto that, my guess is, you see your organizations, it’s being flatter and flatter, more communications, sideways, up and down and less hierarchical, so General Raymond, please.

CSO Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond:

So we really felt when we stood up this service that we wanted to design us, for speed, innovation, and bold action. If you look at the domain that we operate in, it’s vast, things that operate in the domain are traveling at 17,500 miles an hour just to stay in the domain. And we thought that a hierarchical structure and a very large structure was not going to be what we needed. So we worked very hard to flatten the organization. We got rid of two layers of command to be able to reduce the distance, if you will, between the experts that are doing the work, largely the folks that are sitting out here, and the decision makers. And so that was one of the key tenants that we put in place to limit the bureaucracy. The second thing… Well I’d say first of all on the limiting bureaucracy, I think we’ve done that pretty well.

I think we’ve again completely flattened the structure. We’ve got our headquarters down to, as I mentioned up front, about 600 people. It’s requiring us to think through how do we develop people differently? How do we develop squadron commanders differently, that don’t have a group commander on top of them? How do you develop Delta commanders that don’t have the second layer of O-6 command? And so we’ve had to think through that. One of the things that we’ve thought about on culture is, we want to be a war fighting culture. We want to be innovative, we want to be bold. And as we started to orchestrate that, we’ve been waiting for people from other services to come in, so we could blend the culture from all the different services and build our culture of our own. One of the things that we’re going to do here in a couple weeks, when we go out about a month from now, when we go out to the Air Force Academy to host Corona, we’re going to actually do a session on culture.

And what we’re going to do is figure out, rather than just see where the wind blows us when we meld these cultures together, we’re going to look at how do we purposefully engineer the culture? What do we have to do? Things like flattening the bureaucracy, what are those other things that we should do to engineer, to get the culture that we want spitting out the other side. We’ve got work to do on that. And, it’s not something… People ask me all the time, “When are you going to get your culture?” Well, it’s not like you can order this online and get it delivered overnight. It’s going to take some time, but rather than just let it evolve and emerge, we’re going to work to figure out how best to engineer from where we are today to where we want to go. And that’s the work that the entire Space Force leadership team will be doing for pretty much most of half a day here at Corona to make sure that we’re moving in the right direction.

Lt. Gen. Bruce “Orville” Wright, USAF (Ret.):

Thomas, please continue on growth, innovation, a culture of growth and innovation.

Thomas Kurian:

Just a couple of examples to illustrate, the first thing when I listen to having a flatter organization, our view is one of the core elements of our organization is trusting those who are closer to the situation and closer to the data, to identify not just the problem but also the solution. We have, one of our core beliefs is that, if you really are hiring world class engineers, you have to trust that they will find a pattern in the data and they often will find a solution that senior management may not have thought about, and you need to trust them. One example, we’d run every time one of you uses our services, is being powered by computers in different parts of the world. And the computers take power in order to kind of run. And you need power also to cool the computers. So it’s something that we pay a lot of attention to, both because of cost reasons, but also because of our commitments to more sustainable environment.

One of the things that, a few years ago, one of the engineers was looking at the problem, he was a fairly junior engineer, he said, “Hey, I noticed that we’re spending more money cooling the coolant that’s used to cool the computer. And that just sounds crazy. Why don’t we just run the computers hot?” Now for 30 years it had been the theory in all of IT, that you ran computers at a certain high degree of temperature would cause damage to it. You had to run it in a certain level of… In a certain air condition, temperature controlled environment. He stood the theory on his head. We said, “He’s probably right, let’s experiment with it.” But the first thing I would say is, in order to empower a culture of change and a culture of innovation, you have to trust those who are recommending the change and we empowered him.

He was right. The data showed he was right and we gave him a shot to prove it. The second thing I would say is, we find that the best ideas come from collaboration. One example of something we did within Google, when you have a network of computation as wide as we do, almost every day we are pushing the boundary on something that has not been done before. So you can’t solve it purely based on past history. One of the things we did was build simulation, and we did large scale simulations. For instance, what happens if there’s an earthquake in the Western United States and we lose all of California, which means we wouldn’t have a management team, there would be no buildings. How would you handle a situation like that? And what systems and processes do you need to ensure that we would continue being operational?

All those principles, and not just the principles, but the technology behind it, now we bring to clients around the world. And so one of the things that we see a lot is, collaboration between our teams, helped us think through some of the solutions we encountered. And we always have asked our teams, because we serve a mission to keep all the people in the world who are accessing information safe and secure, we have to have them dream big because they will need to solve problems every day that we may not have encountered before.

Lt. Gen. Bruce “Orville” Wright, USAF (Ret.):

Thanks sir. And General Raymond, if you might just wind up. Recruiting STEM talent, recruiting engineers, certainly for the department of the Air Force, for industry, is a national security imperative. And even we constantly talk about our own STEM programs at AFA, Cyber Patriot, Stellar Explorers, being again a national security imperative. And by the way, our vice chAirman for aerospace education is an MIT graduate, Stephen Gurley. So we’re all in on the national security imperative, again for STEM education. And then, how do you go about recruiting? How can we help you go about recruiting?

CSO Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond:

One of the things that we’re doing, and I… Sir, I don’t know if you would agree with this, but when I go out and talk to universities, and I remember specifically talking to the Air Force Academy about a year and a half or so ago, and the entire class was there, and I started talking about software and how we were going to build… Heading towards an AFSC, but some first steps towards building organic software capability. There was a ton of excitement about that. I mean, cadets were turned around talking to another cadet, that’s what I’m doing. I think, it’s a little bit of what you said earlier, sir, that’s what attracts talent, this new cutting edge ability. So what we’ve done is we’ve gone out and partnered with, we’ve developed a university partnership program with 14 different universities from around the country focused on two things.

One, recruiting and developing the talent that we need, and two, doing research and providing some of our tough problems to those students. To help them think through it and get them excited when they get there. So that’s one thing that we’re doing to really attract that talent. It’s already paying dividends, as I mentioned in my speech, we’re getting a lot of good talent coming in off the street. But I listened with great interest, what you were talking about. That’s what attracts talent, these cutting edge tools and that’s what we’re trying to get after.

Lt. Gen. Bruce “Orville” Wright, USAF (Ret.):

Thanks sir. Well, let me again, thank both of you. You certainly have given us much to think about in a fascinating discussion. Such opportunities abound I think for an ever stronger department of the Air Force, Airmen and Guardian, and across our industry partners, a team to defend this nation. So please, thank you again. And if you would join me in a round of applause…

C-130Hs With Older Propellers Grounded Due to Cracked Parts

Oct. 3, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

Air Mobility Command and Air Combat Command confirmed that they have grounded their C-130H variants with older propeller systems after discovering cracked parts—and AMC is considering accelerating the production and installation of new propellers to replace them.

All told, up to 116 C-130Hs could be affected as AMC waits for field-level inspections of the aircraft to assess the scope of the problem, spokesperson Maj. Beau Downey told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

A “post-depot operation engine run check” at Warner Robins Air Logistics Center, Ga., first revealed the issue when a maintenance crew discovered a leak from one of the propellers, Downey said.

A further inspection found a crack in the propeller barrel assembly, and the same issue was subsequently discovered in two more propeller assemblies.

No safety incidents or issues have been reported as a result of the cracked propeller barrels, Downey said, but Air Mobility Command issued a safety time compliance technical order (TCTO) for all C-130Hs with 54H60 propellers.

After more analysis, AMC issued an immediate action TCTO on Sept. 27 “directing replacement of a variety of specific suspect propellers,” Downey said.

A timeline for when the aircraft could be back in the air hasn’t been established yet, with Downey saying AMC is working on a “multi-faceted recovery plan to resume safe aircraft operations as soon as possible.” That recovery plan will be an “incremental process,” he added.

In the meantime, “the Air Force has been able to mitigate operational impacts with other aircraft,” Downey said.

The TCTO does not cover C-130Hs that have already been upgraded to new NP2000 propellers, or any C-130Js.

The Air Force has been in the process of replacing the propellers on its C-130H variants for years now, seeking to swap out older propellers built before 1971. In 2019, USAF officials noted in a congressional hearing that some of those propellers were prone to cracking. Collins Aerospace, which produces the eight-bladed NP2000, noted in a 2021 release that the Air Force has ordered upgrades for 83 C-130Hs.

“Accelerating NP2000 production and installation is one of multiple avenues we are pursuing to resume operations as soon as possible,” Downey said.

The Air Force’s C-130H cargo aircraft are entirely in its Guard and Reserve fleets, according to the most recent inventory numbers. Some variants, however, are in the Active-duty component, including the MC-130H Combat Talon II and the EC-130H Compass Call.

A post last week on the popular unofficial Air Force amn/nco/snco Facebook page reportedly showed that several MC-130Hs and EC-130Hs were also affected by the propeller issue.

“Air Mobility Command, as the lead command, is working closely with affected units and technical experts across the mobility air forces to complete this action, while prioritizing available assets based on requirements,” Downey said in response to a query from Air & Space Forces Magazine as to whether AMC is working with other major commands that operate C-130H variants.

Air Combat Command spokesperson Capt. Lauren Gao said the command grounded its fleet of seven EC-130Hs and one trainer TC-130H and has completed inspections. ACC is currently complying with the TCTO and working with Air Mobility Command and Air Force Materiel Command’s C-130 System Program Office to “prioritize serviceable propellers based on requirements as quickly as possible while ensuring the safety of our aircrews,” Gao said.

Air Force Special Operations Command, which operates the MC-130H, did not immediately respond to a query.

Guardians Can Now Get the Good Conduct Medal and Other Awards

Oct. 3, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

Guardians in the Space Force are now officially eligible to receive honors such as the Good Conduct Medal, the Air Medal, the Bronze Star Award, and more, after President Joe Biden issued an executive order Oct. 3.

The order amends previous ones establishing various military awards by adding the Space Force to the list of services eligible to receive them. The full list of awards, many given for actions in a combat zone, that members of the Space Force can now receive include the:

Air Medal
Air Force Cross
Good Conduct Medal
Bronze Star Award
Silver Star Award
Presidential Unit Citation
Air Force Distinguished Service Medal
Defense Distinguished Service Medal

The change comes nearly three years after the Space Force was established in December 2019, and the executive order includes language for the Good Conduct Medal and Presidential Unit Citation specifically covering all actions and time since then.

That puts many Guardians in line for the Good Conduct Medal, which typically requires three consecutive years without disciplinary action, in the near future.

The Space Force has already finalized a design for its Good Conduct Medal, which leaked online in February and was confirmed by Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force Roger A. Towberman. At the time, however, Towberman noted that the medal couldn’t be awarded until the President amended the existing executive order.

On the front, the medal shows a modified version of the Space Force seal, with the service’s trademark Delta in front of a Globe, encircled by an Elliptical Orbit and with the Polaris Star to its upper left. The seal is surrounded by “United States Space Force” and the motto “Semper Supra.”

The back has the same three words in a ring—Efficiency, Honor, Fidelity—that are on the Army and Air Force’s versions of the medal. It also contains the phrase “For Good Conduct.”

The ribbon is tan on its outer edges, with parallel stripes of black, dark blue, and light blue around a single white stripe in the middle.

“The expansion of military awards and medals eligibility to the U.S. Space Force and its Guardians is a big step toward legitimizing the essential role the service plays in National Defense and the hard work Guardians put into executing their missions each day,” Department of the Air Force spokesperson Capt. Tanya N. Downsworth told Air & Space Forces Magazine in a statement.

The introduction of the first service-specific award comes as the Space Force builds out its identity and culture on several fronts. The service’s dress uniforms continue to progress toward a rollout; Chief of Space Operations Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond recently unveiled the new Space Force song; and transfers from other services continue to migrate into USSF.

Guardians can also still wear ribbons they’ve earned while serving in other services.

To Speed Up Acquisition, Space Force Wants More Honesty From Industry

Oct. 3, 2022 | By Amanda Miller

Companies can help speed up space acquisition by being more upfront about what they can do and then delivering on their promises, said three officials in space acquisition in the Department of the Air Force.

Frank Calvelli, the DAF’s first-ever assistant secretary of the Air Force for space acquisition and integration, said the industry has a role in the overall strategy to get faster.

“We have got to stop the traditional way of doing satellites—these sort of large, seven-year, cost-plus contracts—and go to smaller systems, more proliferated … and stop redesigning everything,” Calvelli said. His message to the space industry as part of that:

“Please bid on programs with realistic costs, realistic schedules. And please bid on programs that you’ll be successful at. And then when you win that contract, execute.”

Calvelli along with Kelly Hammett, director of the Space Rapid Capabilities Office, and Space Force Brig. Gen. Stephen J. Purdy, program executive officer for assured access to space, all brought up the subject of honesty during their panel conversation on speeding up space acquisition at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference.

With systems becoming “hyper more technical,” Purdy, who also serves as commander of the Space Force’s Space Launch Delta 45 and director of the Eastern Range, said he wants to work with contractors who will have a frank conversation. The Senate unanimously confirmed Purdy’s promotion to major general Sept. 29.

“Especially the Space Force is getting into a deep world of cloud, and DevSecOps, and cyber, and a lot of technical stuff that a lot of us may or may not have grown up in,” Purdy said. “So when you get an industry pitch that says they can go solve the world in 60 days or less and do it for $20 million, you know, there’s just a bit of a credibility discussion that you’ve got to have.”

What he wants, on the other hand, “is for industry to understand where our systems are and what our needs are and how you can plug into those needs in a non-proprietary way so that we can continue to move along—and not try to sell me on something that I’m going to have to go buy and license from here to eternity, etc.”

Hammett pointed out that the acquisitions community needs to “stay closer” to the science and technology community “and be smart buyers” of systems with high technology readiness levels.

“If they’re not realistic, and they’re risky, or it hadn’t been done before, we need to know that, and we need to be making source selection decisions appropriately,” Hammett said.

Calvelli outlined three more strategies he’s outlined to speed up space acquisition:

Building smaller: “Building smaller spacecraft can be done faster. It’s just a matter of physics—so going smaller with space and going smaller, and going more manageable and bite-sized chunks of ground, are key enablers to see a second key enabler to speed.”

Reducing non-recurring engineering: “If we have smaller systems using existing designs, reducing non-recurring engineering, we can go faster.”

Executing: This includes “delivering on our programs on schedule and on cost.” One things he noticed while prepping for his confirmation hearings “was that there’s a track record of being late on programs. We have to turn that track record around and actually execute.”

Veterans Continue the Mission at King Aerospace

Oct. 3, 2022

For veterans of the U.S. Air Force and other military branches, it’s been easy to find a home at King Aerospace, a provider of contractor logistics support and other services. The mission, after all, is similar.

“The Air Force Core Values are Integrity First, Service Before Self, and Excellence in All We Do. That’s the same way King Aerospace operates,” says Mike Riley, the company’s contracts manager, a 22-year veteran and an Air Force Academy graduate. “We ask what we all can do collectively to help our customer achieve their goal as quickly, efficiently and cost-effectively as possible. That’s our goal in everything we do.”

About one-third of the company’s 450 employees are veterans. Kay Roby-Bragg, a 25-year employee, is one. She found it a smooth transition from Air Force service as an avionics technician to becoming an airborne radar operator with King Aerospace.

“Jerry is very passionate about God, family and country. It’s easy to work at King Aerospace when you know his heart is in the right place,” Roby-Bragg, now special projects manager, says of Jerry King, chairman and founder.

All of King Aerospace’s operations draw upon core principles including quality in everything (no excuses) and mutual respect. They foster a culture of accountability based in servant leadership.

“For veterans, it’s a way for them to extend the values and things they learned in the military into the commercial world,” King says.

“I don’t know anyone at King Aerospace who doesn’t believe in the cornerstone principles on which this company was founded,” Riley says. “And that’s framed by In God We Trust. It distinguishes us as a company. It truly makes us better.”

Agile, responsive and cost-effective

Veterans found another key difference at the family-owned company led by King and his son, Jarid, its president.

“In the military, you had a very structured environment,” says Gene Miller, a 20-year Air Force veteran who spent 15 years at King Aerospace and recently came out of retirement to help launch its Arkansas facility. “When you get to King, it’s a proactive approach. You are allowed to make the product better. They promote that. That’s what I like.”

“You don’t have the red tape, and it’s more efficient. You’re not just a number, but you’re held accountable,” says Roby-Bragg, who like Miller worked for the company in the E-9A surveillance program at Tyndall Air Force Base.

“Part of why we’re so successful is we’re flexible and responsive to execute the mission,” Riley says. “We have the best people in our functional groups. And when a challenge presents itself, we jump on it.”

Having served with the Defense Contracts Management Agency, Riley is familiar with big defense contractors. “We are more agile and responsive than those big, bureaucratic companies. We can execute in the same day what takes those companies three to four weeks. The warfighter, the Department of Energy, the Coast Guard, any customer, King supports them in good faith.”

“Others see a government contract as just taxpayer money, but Jerry watches it like it’s his own money,” Roby-Bragg says. “Getting the most bang for the buck, that’s our biggest differentiator. It’s about wanting to make a difference instead of a dollar.”

And it’s about enjoying work.

“In the Navy, we always said, if you’re not having fun, you’re not doing something right,” says Greg Mitchell, vice president of government services and a former U.S. Navy captain. “It’s the same at King Aerospace. We do serious work but find joy doing it. Our customers appreciate our open-and-honest process – and our can-do attitude.”

Serving the military and government

King Aerospace offers contractor logistics support (CLS) as a prime contractor or subcontractor. It has extensive experience supporting the Air Force, Army and Navy/Marine Corps and agencies including the Departments of Energy, Homeland Security and Justice.

It offers maintenance and logistics support for special-mission aircraft, primarily military derivatives of Boeing, De Havilland and Textron-Beech aircraft. The work occurs at bases worldwide and at facilities in Ardmore, Oklahoma, and Bentonville, Arkansas. The company’s Air Force work has included supporting the E-9A surveillance program at Tyndall Air Force Base, painting VIP aircraft that transport dignitaries worldwide, and performing modifications to special mission aircraft.

Accolades include being named U.S. Air Force Contractor of the Year (twice), U.S. Army Contractor of the Year and Small Business Administration Regional Outstanding Prime Contractor. Its Albuquerque, New Mexico-based Department of Energy team was honored again this year for outstanding performance.

The awards are nice but Jerry King, who grew up in a military family, is humbled by a more personal recognition: an Air Force member presenting their unit badge after their aircraft received work. “They ripped their patch off their arm and said, ‘Mr. King, would you take this from me?’ That’s about as good as it gets in the military. That is the greatest compliment you can have.”

An approach that’s, pleasantly, ‘not normal’

Robert “Woody” Nolan, president of Denmar Technical Services, finds King Aerospace’s quality, value and culture distinctive.

“Their business arrangements and practices are simple and understandable. King gives you what you contracted for, and that’s what I love about them,” said Nolan, a retired brigadier general and Air Force Academy graduate. “Their leadership team is easy to contact. They answer the phone. They have integrity, and the relationship is important to them.”

“Before we went under contract, we went and visited them. During that process, we got to meet Jerry and Jarid King. These guys want to know exactly what you want done, and they want to make you happy,” says Nolan, whose company supports the aviation industry.

“I’ve recommended King to others in the business. I tell them, ‘They’ll give you the best product for the money.’ I’m very comfortable staking the reputation of my company on their company. That is not normal,” Nolan says.

Watch, Read: ‘America Under Attack: Defending the Homeland’

Oct. 2, 2022

Retired Gen. C. Robert “Bob” Kehler led the discussion “America Under Attack: Defending the Homeland” with Gen. Glen D. VanHerck of U.S. Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command; Gen. James H. Dickinson of U.S. Space Command; and Adm. Charles A. “Chas” Richard of U.S. Strategic Command on Sept. 21, 2022, at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference. Watch the video or read the transcript below. This transcript is made possible through the sponsorship of JobsOhio.

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Voiceover:

Good morning, please welcome to the stage General Bob Kehler.

Retired Gen. C. Robert “Bob” Kehler:

Good morning everyone. I know we’re still in a bit of a transition here, but it’s a real pleasure to be with you this morning. Welcome to our panel discussion on Defending the Homeland. We have three distinguished warriors with us this morning. I know you’re as anxious as I am to hear their views on this most important subject Today, the United States has 11 combatant commands. Each of those commands contributes to deterrence and each plays an important role in Homeland Defense. To help set the scene for this panel, here’s a bit of personal perspective I gained during my time as a combatant commander. First, modern conflict with a near peer adversary will span global distances, include all five operational domains, and will extend from below the waves to the reaches of space. Second, the scope, scale, and complexity of modern combat means no command can fight alone. To be successful today, 11 combatant commands must act together. Third, mission command, flexible command relationships, and a joint all-domain command and control concept will be the means by which the United States plans, commands, and controls the fight.

And finally, partnerships are critical and unity of effort is essential. Now, Homeland Defense sounds like a very straightforward mission, but in reality, defending our homeland is a very complex endeavor. I can’t think of a group of senior leaders more qualified to address this subject than the three highly regarded commanders on this panel. General Glen VanHerck, the commander of United States Northern Command, General James Dickinson, the commander of US Space Command, and Admiral Chas Richard, Commander of the United States Strategic Command and the people they lead, play critical roles in keeping our nation safe and secure. Gentlemen, we’re honored to have you with us this morning and we’re looking forward to your remarks. Now, in the interest of time, we won’t be taking questions from the audience, so following some opening remarks here, I’m going to pose some questions on behalf of the audience. But as a teaser, before you get started, let me lay one question in front of you now so you can think about it as we proceed. Which command will be the first engaged into conflict with Russia or China? General VanHerck, the floor is yours.

Gen. Glen D. VanHerck:

Thanks very much, General Kehler, it’s great to see you again. Thanks for your service and you continue to serve. I think you teed up the environment very well. It’s an honor to be here with two of my fellow combatant commanders who actually enable Homeland Defense. I would tell you that Admiral Richard is the foundation of Homeland Defense. The nuclear deterrent, strategic deterrence is the foundation of what we do each and every day for defending our homeland. We must have a triad and we must fund it 100% and execute it. I’m also here with General Dickinson who provides my domain awareness for defending the homeland, crucial for threat warning, attack assessment, ballistic missile defense as well. It’s an honor to be up here with you. In my more than three and a half decades, as General Kehler talked about, I’ve never seen a strategic environment more dynamic and complex than the one that we have today.

That environment demands global solutions, all-domain solutions, the mission command that General Kehler alluded to. And to the question that he posed. I would argue that today Cyber Command is engaged each and every day in defending our homeland. We’re under attack in the cyber domain. We’re under attack in the information arena as well each and every day. And so that demands that we think different. I would argue that right after CyberCom, if they’re not the first, that probably SpaceCom is the first place that we would likely see potentially kinetic effects or offensive effects that happen. And simultaneously, I might be supported getting the majority of the force out of the homeland to fight a forward fight, at the same time, Admiral Richard is providing strategic deterrence to enable safety, security of our homeland.

Having one supported combatant commander I think is a thing in the past I think it will change and you’re likely to have multiple supported combatant commanders. I think the conversation today will go down three paths. One of the threat to the homeland and how it’s changed. I think it’ll go down to deterrence and looking at deterrence differently. I think the National Defense Strategy has it right, integrated deterrence and hopefully we’ll talk a little bit more about that. But if deterrence does fail, what does defending our homeland look like today? And hopefully we’ll get a chance to talk about that. General Kehler I look forward to the discussion. Thanks.

Gen. C. Robert “Bob” Kehler:

Thank you. General Dickinson, you command the newest of the three commands represented here on the stage and, Sir, the floor is yours.

Gen. James H. Dickinson:

Well, thank you very much, General Kehler, for moderating this group up here on the stage this morning. It’s no easy task to keep three combatant commanders in line for 40 minutes, so thanks for what you’re doing and I think this is our second time together and thanks to AFA for having me here today. It’s always good to be a Soldier on the stage with a Submariner as well as an Airman. It is an honor to be here. Thanks for the invite. And then to my two colleagues here on the stage, we both smile, we spend a lot of time together, and I’ll talk about that just in a minute. It’s an honor to be with Glen and Chas today on the stage. Let me just touch on the strategic environment for a minute. It is absolutely changing in the space domain. When I categorize it in terms of a congested, competitive, and contested areas or buckets, if you will, it’s pretty amazing how it’s just changed in the three years since US Space Command has stood up.

And so we just turned three and I wanted to congratulate the Air Force in terms of their 75th birthday. We’re not quite that old. We’re three, but just in those three years, if I were to tell you how congested it is now, you would be quite surprised that when we stood up it was about 25,000 pieces of debris, objects, old satellites, new satellites that we track each and every day by some great Guardians out at Vandenberg Space Force Base. But in three years, that number has gone from 25,000 to over 47,000, just in three years. That gives you a feeling for how congested it is becoming. And of course I can talk more in depth later during the Q&A about how we’re getting after being able to manage that.

The second category is competitive. In my mind, a good news story when you look at the absolute expansion of the commercial industry into the space domain and what that means to all of us in this room and all of those that are on the camera in terms of how that’s improving our quality of life, whether it’s quality of life at home, business, entertainment, all of those things together. It is amazing to see how that is in fact maturing and growing each and every day. Then the third category would be contested. And so I know this week there’s been several panels where they’ve talked about what the space threat is today and what our competitors are doing in the space domain, but I think it’s very important that we remember that we’ve just seen a couple of demonstrations just recently by both the Russians and the Chinese in terms of their capabilities that they’re building and testing to hold our assets at risk. Most notably we saw back in November where the Russians destroyed one of their own satellites in orbit producing more than 1500 pieces of debris.

That adds to that 47,000 that I just mentioned earlier. And you have the Chinese as well with the SJ-21 a couple of months ago, which was in our eyes, a dual-purpose capability that’s able to secure satellites and move them around in orbit. And so they used it to move one of their defunct satellites out past Geo and then came back in, but did it in a very interesting way. Just those two examples right there show you that it is becoming more contested in the domain. When I look at the NDS, I think we’ve got it about, I think it’s about right for us in terms of combatant commanders. This integrated deterrence concept that we’re operationalizing now every day I think is a very important piece to our national security strategy and how we’re doing that each and every day. And these two gentlemen on my left and right, we work together along with our other eight combatant commanders, joint staff, and partners in order to make sure that we’re doing that each and every day.

And when you look at integrated deterrence, US Space Command looks through it through the lens of our operational approach, which is partnering with our joint force, our allies, as well as our partners in the commercial domain as well as the IC. We’re working very hard at that each and every day. What’s new with US Space Command from the old space command, we’ll talk a little bit more in the Q&A as how we’re in a supporting and supported relationship at this point. My support to these two gentlemen on my left and right and the other combatant commanders in terms of providing space enabling capabilities is not new and we’ve been doing that for many years. What is new is that these two gentlemen on my left and right now have the ability to support me in what I do in the space domain each and every day. The supporting supported relationships are critical to what US Space Command does today and in the future. And with that, I think I’ll pause. Thank you.

Gen. C. Robert “Bob” Kehler:

Thank you. Admiral Richard, StratCom. What more can I say? The floor is yours.

Adm. Charles A. “Chas” Richard:

Hey, so General Kehler one, I do want to assure you that we’re taking very good care of your command. You’d be happy with what the kids are doing. I do want to thank AFA for giving us this opportunity the whole week in addition to this opportunity to talk about Homeland Defense with two of my distinguished peers. Let me state up front that I just am not going to be able to get into much of a current operations discussion about what’s going on in the Russia Ukraine crisis. I think you would understand that, but that does point to something that I think is foundational here, which is all of us in this room are back in the business of contemplating competition through crisis and possible direct armed conflict with a nuclear capable peer. We have not had to do that in over 30 years. The implications of that are profound. They’re profound for homeland defense, they’re profound for strategic deterrence, as well as us achieving national objectives.

And this is no longer theoretical. I will point out that I can’t get through a week without a reminder that this is a very real threat that we face. I’m going to concentrate on the strategic and nuclear dimensions of this. I absolutely agree with General VanHerck that it is foundational to homeland defense what my command and my forces do, but it’s foundational to everything else. And a way to think about that is every O plan in the Department of Defense, every one of our plans and every one of our other capabilities rest on an assumption that strategic deterrence and in particular nuclear deterrence is holding. And if that assumption isn’t met, nothing else in the department in the joint force is going to work the way that it was designed. And I don’t think we fully understand that. Russia and China can escalate to any level of violence that they choose in any domain with any instrument of power worldwide. We just haven’t faced competitors and opponents like that in a long time.

And it changes everything about the way we have to go do business. We will have to deter across that spectrum immediately. Contests between nuclear cable great powers are quickly less about the region. They are less about the order of battle comparison, whose kill chain’s going to close and whose skill chain’s not. And they quickly become strategic issues. Who judges greater stake? Who’s willing to take greater risk, including possibility of nuclear risk to achieve that stake? That means our traditional approaches don’t work anymore. I want to highlight what General VanHerck just said. The days of whatever your problem is, throw a JOA around it, put a commander in charge of it, shovel resources and tell everybody else they’re supporting they’ll go solve your problem, those days are over. We will have multiple supported simultaneous commanders simultaneously defending the homeland, maintaining strategic deterrence, achieving our objectives against the opponent in the region, maintaining freedom of maneuver in space and in cyber space. We have to just think radically differently.

I could keep going, but I won’t in the interest of time. Our concepts of escalation control are flawed. Maybe we can get to that in the questions. The final thing I want to add is we absolutely think integrated deterrence as both of my fellow CoComs just mentioned, that is the right answer. I’m the third or fourth StratCom commander that has called for this. But the point I want to make there is how foundational nuclear deterrence is to integrated deterrence. If you back up integrated deterrence and use every other capability we have to influence the opponent’s perceptions and decisions, of course it’s a great idea. Of course, it’s exactly what we have to do. But if you don’t underpin it with nuclear because there is no other capability or combination of capabilities demonstrated to date that gets anywhere close to the demonstrated destructive potential of nuclear, if you don’t underpin integrated deterrence with your strategic forces, the whole concept doesn’t work. Sir, I’ll stop there. I look forward to the discussion.

Gen. C. Robert “Bob” Kehler:

Thanks. Gentlemen, I’m going to pull on a thread that each of you has touched on and I think that it bears some expansion to set the stage for how you’re approaching some of your requirements for capabilities that you need. There was a time when strategic and nuclear were used synonymously and where the threat to the homeland was really defined by nuclear threat to the homeland. That’s vastly different today. Can you say a word about the threats that you’re facing today?

Gen. Glen D. VanHerck:

Absolutely. Let me approach this from the two hats I wear and the missions that I’m assigned. As a NORAD commander, my first mission is to provide aerospace warning for North America, things that fly in air, things that come from space, pretty simple. As NORAD stood up, it was pretty simple. Bombers flying over the pole, delivering gravity weapons on our homeland. ICBMs that come from nations to the homeland. We’ve been there for many decades. Today, the aerospace warning challenge is dramatically different. Cruise missiles with very low radar cross sections that can be fired from vast differences, including over Russia and far out into our oceans that are a domain awareness challenge for me. Fractional orbital bombardment vehicles with hypersonics that can evade our radar detection capabilities, which are crucial for strategic stability and the responsibility I have for providing awareness for continuity of government, for force posturing of nuclear forces.

All those are dramatic implications on strategic stability. That’s just aerospace warning. Couple that with submarines sailing around, now in both the Atlantic and the Pacific capable of firing nuclear or conventional cruise missiles, including hypersonic missiles, at the homeland, creates another unique challenge for aerospace warning as well. Under aerospace control, my second mission in the NORAD command hat is if it is a threat to the homeland, specifically in the air domain, is to render that threat incapable of rendering effects on our homeland. That’s a significant challenge for domain awareness to be able to provide forces that can get after those cruise missiles, whether they come from submarines, surface vessels such as caliber capable shooters, ground land attack capable right across the strait from Russia, or from vehicles on space orbit. You name it there, there’re significant challenges and having access to forces on a day to day basis.

The way we’re set up to provide me forces is through a request for forces mechanism, which assumes that there’s no threat to the homeland and we’ll have time to be able to request those forces and get them in place to set the AOR. I would argue that I’m the achilles heel to enabling either the commander of EUCOM or the commander of INDOPACOM to execute their plans because if I’m not ready to defend the homeland from the threat, it’s a significant challenge for me. Maritime warning is another mission I have in my NORAD hat. Right now, we just got within the last couple days, Sev-class submarine in the Pacific for the Russian fleet. They’re on their way to building nine, which means that we’ll have persistent proximate threat in both the Atlantic and the Pacific fleet for the Russians here in the near future and China’s about five to 10 years behind.

That threat is dramatic. I’ll shift over to my NORTHCOM hat in Homeland Defense. Primarily what you think of there is ballistic missile defense. I’m pretty confident in my capability today against the North Koreans. I’m not tasked to defend against China or Russia from a ballistic missile threat. That’s this gentleman’s job right down here. But it’s a significant challenge when you don’t have the domain awareness against those hypersonics to provide the threat assessment. Other things, homeland defense. In my cyber role, I’m the DSCA synchronizer to provide support by DOD to either CISA or other entities. And so I work very closely with CyberCom, General Nakasone, to do that. I’m candidly worried about the cyber threat. I think it’s the most likely threat and the one where I have likely the least domain awareness today. General Nakasone only defends the DODIN.

Jen Easterly is the director of CISA, defends other federal entities. Everything else which could be critical infrastructure in our United States, which we rely on to project power forward for command and control capabilities is a “play if you want.” There’s a lot of work to be done there as well. On my DSCA role, I just talked about it a little bit, environmental change will continue to challenge us. That is a threat. I think that my DSCA role is part of Homeland Defense. It’s part of demonstrating readiness, responsiveness, capability, and resiliency each and every day. I think that’s crucial. The most significant thing about environmental change is what it’s doing in the Arctic and what Russia and China and others are doing in the Arctic to hold our homeland at risk to change international norms, rules, and laws so that they can get access to minerals and those kinds of things.

That’s a great area for competition today. And the final thing I’ll tell you for the threat is the threat of transnational criminal organizations just south of our border and in the western hemisphere. What you see in the news is the symptom of those. Those are law enforcement challenges for the most part, counter-narcotics, human trafficking, human migration. What I’m most concerned about from a national security imperative is the instability that transnational criminal organizations create right here in our own hemisphere that China, Russia, and others are taking advantage of to gain access and influence here. Very dynamic environment.

Gen. C. Robert “Bob” Kehler:

General Dickinson, can you expand a little bit? You had mentioned the words competitive and congested and contested. Can you say a word about contested? You spoke a little bit about that, but there seems to be a pretty significant change in the contested aspects of the space domain.

Gen. James H. Dickinson:

Absolutely. First of all, we’re talking about homeland defense and NORTHCOM. From a US SpaceCom perspective, our AOR starts at 100 kilometers and then goes out to the edge of the universe. And so when we talk about support to other combatant commands, we really have a global responsibility. And so assets that may not geographically be over the NORTHCOM homeland defense area could be elsewhere in orbit providing those same capabilities. We have a responsibility to provide global capabilities to each of the combatant commands. And as such, we’re watching very closely as our competitors are expanding their capability and capacity to hold at risk those capabilities that I require to provide to, in this example, Glen VanHerck, whether it’s satellite communications, missile warning, or GPS.

And so I would characterize it as aggressively growing in capability and capacity by China in terms of how they are developing their capabilities to do things that we’ve been doing for quite some time in terms of global type of capabilities over the horizon, for example, or joint kill chain. We’re watching that growing in both capability capacity and I would characterize Russia as not proliferating at quite the rate that the Chinese are, but that is something that we watch each and every day. I gave you an example of the SJ-21. Really those are capabilities that we watch very closely because they would hold at risk some of our assets not only from a military perspective, but also from a commercial perspective. That’s how I would characterize it without going into too much more detail.

Gen. C. Robert “Bob” Kehler:

Admiral Richard, same question for you, but I’m going to add something because we’ll come back this way for the second part of this, which gets into the capabilities that you need given these threats that have advanced and are now much broader than the nuclear threat that we face. Say a word about the threat and then say something about the capabilities.

Adm. Charles “Chas” Richard:

Well, General, and for the audience, I hope you all can see from our answers up here between us three CoComs this is not the first time we’ve talked about this between each other and it gives you evidence of how, and it’s not just the three that are here, we’ve been thinking about this a lot. You may have noticed when I made my opening statement, I drew a distinction between strategic deterrence and nuclear deterrence. Those are two different things. My colleagues up here have given you some examples of threats that have strategic implications. To your point, General Kehler, earlier back in the Cold War, it was pretty much only nuclear. That’s not true anymore. And that gets into, we have to think through how we’re going to deter that. And my forces aren’t always the answer. It isn’t always cost imposition. General VanHerck has talked about this, that nowadays sometimes it’s denial of benefit through resilience, through defense.

Sometimes it is cost imposition. We need to rethink, get much more fluent at how we do deterrence. And our operational level expertise in deterrence has really atrophied. We have few enough people that can write the paper, particularly when you’re trying to deter two peers at the same time. We have even fewer people that know who needs to get ordered to do what in order to accomplish it. And so many things we need to rethink. Avoiding provocation is not deterrence. Restraint in regional operations alone will not maintain strategic deterrence nor will it defend the homeland. There’re going to have to be other actions, postures, and effects to achieve those goals. Capabilities, I’m in the fortunate position that the Nuclear Posture Review that was recently delivered laid out an excellent strategy.

In terms of base capabilities, it was an endorsement of the need to recapitalize the triad for the base capabilities along with nuclear command and control in our weapons infrastructure. We’re going to need to look at that as the absolute minimum stack of capabilities that we need and much more frequently ask ourselves as a nation, what is the capability, capacity, and posture we need to execute this very good strategy as the threat from China continues to increase, we don’t know where that’s going to end, as the threat from Russia continues to increase, along with the other challenges that we face. Triad is the absolute minimum. Got to ask ourselves that question much more frequently.

Gen. C. Robert “Bob” Kehler:

And General Dickinson capabilities that you are going to rely on to meet the threats that you laid out.

Gen. James H. Dickinson:

Capabilities, well I tell you. We approach it from a perspective of how do we use the ground link and the spacecraft in order to look at how we’re both defending as well as looking at our adversaries and our competitors. How do we look at that system gives us the capabilities when we talk about integrated deterrence to have both in this example, cyber, SOF, and space coming together in order to provide effects and capabilities that we need to do when we look at both defensive as well as offensive type of operations.

Gen. C. Robert “Bob” Kehler:

You defined your AOR as reaching to the edge of the universe. That’s pretty broad. Do you have the surveillance capabilities that you need?

Gen. James H. Dickinson:

One of the challenges that we work on each and every day at US Space Command is how do we improve our domain awareness? I think Glen VanHerck talked about it in detail and one of the priorities within the command right now is how do we improve our ability to see into space? How do we understand where those 47,000 pieces of objects, whether it’s an old, new spacecraft, debris, whatever the case may be, commercial assets, how do we improve that? And so we’re looking at how do you improve that today? Because I know we’ve got things that are coming in the future and I’m very optimistic about that, very eager as an impatient combatant commander to get new capabilities. But what do we do today with what we have?

And so we’ve really over the last couple of years, looked at how we leverage assets and sensors that weren’t traditionally part of the space domain awareness architecture. We’re leveraging, for example, TPY-2s, ships, other sensors that are part of other architectures, if you will, within the department. How do we bring those capabilities to bear in an integrated, the objective is to be integrated, at least interoperable at this point, or at least to have them as part of the architecture so we can understand better what’s going on in the space domain. It’s absolutely critical. Just like in any other domains, you have to absolutely understand the domain and what the activities in order to do what? Characterize and then present those types of options, decisions, informations to the National Command Authority so that they can make informed decisions.

That’s really what we’re working on. That’s one of the top priorities within the command. Again, I said we’re looking forward to the new assets, new capabilities that are coming forward here in the future, but we’re working today to make sure we’re leveraging to the maximum extent possible, the capabilities that exist today, and quite frankly, we’ve paid for. How do we do that is the challenge and we’re working on that every day. Great support that is not only within the Department of Defense. We’re also looking at commercial capabilities and how they can contribute to that same awareness situation that we’re looking to improve.

Gen. C. Robert “Bob” Kehler:

General VanHerck, how about capabilities from your perspective? And let me add one other thing to that. Each of you has mentioned cyber security. Would you say a word about cyber security and your command and homeland defense?

Gen. Glen D. VanHerck:

Yeah, absolutely, General Kehler, thanks. Well, domain awareness has been talked about multiple times. For me, that’s been the top priority and consistent for the 25 months that I’ve been in command. You certainly can’t deter something and you absolutely cannot defeat something if you cannot detect it. When I talk domain awareness, I’m talking undersea, on sea, land, air, space, and cyberspace and having more awareness of what’s going on. I’m encouraged the department directed the Air Force to go fund over-the-horizon radar, four over-the-horizon radars for me, which will give me significant domain awareness for standoff from both maritime, air, and space capabilities. The domain awareness from undersea, I think, needs some additional work, especially in the Pacific. The days of laying cable on the bottom of the sea are something that in the future I don’t think we can do as well in the Pacific.

And it demands us to think differently about that using space capabilities, more mobile capabilities to give us domain awareness as well. But I would tell you that, Gerald Kehler, today all too often we have the domain awareness we need. It’s just not shared and it’s in stovepipes, so it’s left on the cutting room floor. The days of building single stove pipe systems for ballistic missile defense, for example, should be over. We should develop a system capable of providing domain awareness all the way from small UAS to space capabilities and then sharing that domain awareness. I talk about domain awareness as my top strategic priority. The second thing would be information dominance. What do you do with that domain awareness and how do you process it and do you process it in timely manner? What I’ve seen is about 98% of our domain awareness is left on the cutting room floor today and not even analyzed.

I think that we need as a department to move quicker in fielding JADC2 capabilities. We’ve demonstrated the capability exists today to do that. The strategy we have, you’ve heard us all talk about global, all-domain, demands that we go down this path. We can’t take and analyze things for days and hours. We need to have near-real-time, on-orbit analysis that shares and provides information with machine learning and artificial intelligence. That’s how we gain decision space. The one thing that I can never have enough of is time. And I need time to give to the President, the Secretary, the Prime Minister in Canada, the Minister [of Defence] as well. And we have to go down the path now, not only sensor to shooter, which is primarily where the services are focused. I’m talking about sensor to decision maker, domain awareness capability so that we can stay out of conflict and actually deescalate in crisis and compete day to day.

But where everybody’s going is sensor to shooter and we are too focused on conflict. We need to be ready for conflict, but we also need to be focused on the sensor to decision maker and executing the national defense strategy. Sorry, but I’m going to take a little bit more time while you give me the bully pulpit here. We’re too risk averse folks, especially in the development of capabilities. China fails and they get back on the horse and they ride. We have a two year congressional investigation when we have a failure. That’s not going to create capability in the timely manner that we need it. The department is an Industrial Age focused department in the development of capability. We’re great at building ships, building planes, tanks, those kinds of things. We’re not great at the digital environment that we operate in today. And we need to think differently about how we field capabilities.

A five year FYDP with a budget where colors of money can’t cross, probably needs to be reconsidered. For example, I update my software every 14 days. If I want to do things in the year of execution, I have to go ask Congress. That is not getting us to field capabilities in a timely manner. I think there’s much more that we can do there. And we need to be organized, trained, and equipped to operate throughout my whole AOR. I’m from the North Pole to Central America, from the Central Atlantic Ocean out into Pacific. I can’t get forces to operate in the Arctic because they’re not available to me because we’re not organized, trained, and equipped. And if I do, oftentimes they’re incapable of operating in that environment. We should not cede that space to Russia or China. Those are capabilities that we have to look out for in the future.

Gen. C. Robert “Bob” Kehler:

I’m going to stay with you for another second. All three of you made some comments about the complex network of partners that you have to have and that you’re relying on today. You have an audience here with many of your partners in it. What can you say about partnerships, and in particular, what can you say about the role that commercial providers are playing today for your kinds of operations? It applies to all three of you of course, but let me start with you, General VanHerck.

Gen. Glen D. VanHerck:

Well first of all, I think our asymmetric advantage is our network of allies and partners around the globe, something that Russia and China don’t enjoy. That’s something that we have to take advantage of. I would tell you that my Homeland Defense Design does not start in the homeland. It starts with allies and partners forward. I want to generate effects forward before the threat becomes a threat here in the homeland. Shooting down cruise missiles over Washington DC or over Ottawa in Canada is failure in my mind. We need to generate those effects forward. Same thing with my fellow combatant commanders. Their relationships there need to generate effects forward. My layered defense design is to focus on where we’re going in day-to-day campaigning as well.

And that includes our allies and partners. Most importantly for me, what I would tell you on the relationships and the partnerships is for me in the homeland, the interagency partnerships that I have are crucial. They’re crucial not only for my defense support of civil authorities mission, but more and more day-to-day for campaigning and the ability to demonstrate readiness, responsiveness, capability, and resiliency across all agencies of the interagency, our government with our allies and partners is crucial to integrated deterrence. My goal is to get in the gray matter of anybody that would ever think about attacking our homeland and make them believe that they could never bring us to our knees and be successful with that. That’s just not a DOD problem—that’s a whole-nation problem.

That takes beyond the federal government as well as it takes all of us to understand and approach that problem that way. You asked me about cyber and I failed to answer that question earlier. My relationship is crucial. They’re partners with me in CyberCom. We’re in the process of right now of figuring out defense critical infrastructure and where we must defend. And that’s not only inside the department. There are second and third order effects outside the department, municipality, states, key industry partners that we have to partner with that create vulnerabilities in the homeland. That goes back to the relationships you just discussed.

Gen. C. Robert “Bob” Kehler:

General Dickinson, your partners, I know that the Space Force and your other uniform partners are stressing the importance of commercial providers these days for space related things. Can you say a word about them and your relationship and the importance of that partnership?

Gen. James H. Dickinson:

Absolutely. That is an absolute key element of my triad of joint, combined, and partnered approach to what we’re doing each and every day. The commercial piece is absolutely integral and huge in terms of what we do each and every day. It’s not new to US Space Command and Space Force for that matter. We’ve had a good relationship out at Vandenberg Space Force Base for years in terms of having our commercial integration cell out there and commercial partners partnering with this out there. But we have expanded that. We’ve expanded that now to where we’re using commercial capabilities to help me with the problem that I told you about earlier, which is space domain awareness. Our commercial partners that are able to actually have telescopes and capabilities and sensors that can look up and report out to us is critical in what we do. They can be in parts of the world that we need them.

Because in the space business, it is all about location, location, location in terms of making sure that we have capabilities worldwide that are able to help us determine and monitor what’s going on in the space domain. We continue to improve that. There is a lot of energy right now within the command to bring more commercial partners onto the team so that we can expand not only space domain awareness, satellite communications, as well as some of the other things that we’re doing. It’s a very optimistic view in terms of what we’re seeing in the commercial industry today. I think we can all agree to that when you see some of the capabilities that have been demonstrated just since the 24th of February over Ukraine in terms of what the commercial market can provide. Those are the capabilities that we absolutely need to continue to leverage and incorporate into what we’re doing each and every day.

Gen. C. Robert “Bob” Kehler:

Gentlemen, I have a lot more questions that we could spend the next couple of hours here discussing, but we’re running out of time. Admiral Richard, let me start with you. Is there anything else that you’d like to mention to this audience as we wrap this up?

Adm. Charles “Chas” Richard:

Yeah, the final thing I’d offer for, this session has been a fabulous session, is I want to emphasize something General VanHerck was just talking about the need to go faster in our capability acquisition. And the way we have to go about doing that is to quit asking how we’re going to mitigate our assumed failure in anything and turn the question around to what’s it going to take for us to be successful? General Kehler, those partnerships you talked about, particularly with commercial, that’s where your innovation comes from. Go look up the Hound Dog AGM-28. This nation’s SAC went from zero to an 800 mile Mach 2 capable cruise missile with a one Megaton nuclear warhead and really good accuracy for the day in 33 months. Go look at how we used to go approach these things. That’s the model on what we’re going to have to do in the future.

Gen. C. Robert “Bob” Kehler:

General Dickinson, some closing remarks.

Gen. James H. Dickinson:

Well first of all, thanks again to AFA, General Kehler for doing the moderating today and to my two esteemed colleagues on my left and right, so it’s good to be in the middle here. But I would just tell you that US Space Command continues to build capacity and capability. Declared initial operational capability a year ago, and we’re certainly on the path to full operational capability. The command is prepared and delivering strategic effects today to the national level of leadership and we continue to work very closely with our allies and partners in building that capability worldwide.

I would just remark on the allies and partners’ incredible energy, motivation, and willingness to come and be part of the space team and really have seen a remarkable growth in just some of our allies and partners establishing their own US space commands or their own space commands in their respective countries and their willingness to be part of the team. Not new, we’ve done that for years, but it is continuing to grow. That is really, in my mind, the secret sauce by how we’re going to get after the space domain is having our allies and partners and our commercial partners alongside us. Thank you.

Gen. C. Robert “Bob” Kehler:

General VanHerck. We’ve saved the last words for you.

Gen. Glen D. VanHerck:

Well thanks General Kehler, and thanks to AFA. Really appreciate the opportunity to be here. First, I would tell you that I read the chief of staff of the Air Force’s comments, the five priorities, I forgot what he called them yesterday, 100% in line guaranteed we need to go down that direction. Those are crucial. And so I thank Chief Brown for doing that. We need to move out with a sense of urgency every single day. The challenges are growing, especially with our homeland and a sense of urgency is required to get to where we need to be to ensure we’re ready for potential threats. That threat could be today.

I would tell you that ask yourself before you ever think about committing forces in the future in the environment that we are in. What is the risk to the homeland? What is the risk of strategic deterrence failure? Those discussions don’t happen all too often and we need them to happen. And you need to educate yourself and understand that the days that we’ve had for the last two to three decades are over. That’s a discussion we have to have. And I would tell you we have to think global in all domain as well. And finally, I get up every day with the most noble mission on the planet, defending your homeland. It’s an honor to do that. It’s an honor to serve with each and every one of you. Thanks for the opportunity.

Gen. C. Robert “Bob” Kehler:

Gentlemen, one thing that I’m still able to do in retirement is read a countdown clock and that one says zero. I’m not sure exactly what it means anymore, but I know it says zero. We’ll go to that. On behalf of the Air and Space Forces Association, thanks very much for a very fascinating discussion. On a personal note, Admiral Richard, thanks for your tireless service and good luck to you in all of your future endeavors. Please join me in a round of applause for the panel.

Editor’s note: This story was updated Oct. 4 to correct a video link.

US and Partners Now Moving Toward Interchangeable—Not Just Interoperable—Weapons

Sept. 30, 2022 | By John A. Tirpak

Fresh off a meeting of the national armaments directors of NATO and the European Union, Pentagon acquisition and logistics chief William A. LaPlante said the allies and partners are moving toward not simply interoperable munitions, but “interchangeable” as well, with production in numerous locations to meet the needs of a new security environment.

The 45 directors met to discuss how they will provide military aid to Ukraine and also how to structure their defense industrial bases for a new normal driven by Russia’s invasion and other factors, LaPlante told reporters on a Zoom call Sept. 30.

“Besides comparing notes about how you’re helping Ukraine,” LaPlante said of the meeting, the group discussed “what is the right NATO force in the future that will continue to deter, in this case, Russia.”

The conversation rapidly turned to setting standards so that, for example, 155mm rounds manufactured in one partner country will work with the tubes of any other.

“That’s where we need to go” in terms of being “interchangeable,” LaPlante said.

There was also discussion of how to continue to evolve Ukraine’s weapons portfolio toward “NATO standard,” LaPlante said.

To get to affordable scale and interchangeability, LaPlante forecast “multi-country procurements” of weapons produced in a number of locations, both for deterrence but also to rapidly increase production in situations like the present one in Ukraine, where munitions are being consumed rapidly and threaten to empty alliance stocks. This will be done “not for everything, but where it makes sense,” he said.

There may need to be some “socialization” with Congress and other interests, but LaPlante said the need is clear for joint procurements and “even development” of new weapons, with multiple production lines.

These moves will help address “some of the supply chain issues” that NATO and the EU are coping with.

The 45 participants agreed to break up into smaller working groups to address specific areas of concern. The industrial base today does not offer enough suppliers and capacity in the fields of microprocessors, ball bearings, and solid rocket motors, LaPlante said.

Regarding assistance to Ukraine, Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Sasha Baker said that “what you’re seeing is a recognition amongst the partners and allies that we’ve made a commitment, now, for the long haul” and to sustain Ukraine’s military capabilities “over the long term.”

“We have to start that now because we know that some of the contracting timelines and the production timelines … for some of the equipment that the Ukrainians will need, it’s going to take six to 12 to 18 months.” LaPlante agreed that the long lead times for some components demand longer-term planning.

The Russian invasion has focused the group, and the conversation will “drive actionable progress,” he noted.

LaPlante also said the group hopes to give industry members the “demand signal” it says it is always looking for to decide if whether it should invest in munitions-building capabilities at scale.

“We discussed exactly what … that really means,” he said.

“The industry, both in our country and around the world, want to know is there a sustainable longer-range plan for … production, so that they can invest [in] … production lines that will be enduring, and not the typical “feast or famine” of nations buying in “panic mode,” returning to “minimal production when the crisis is over,” LaPlante said.

NATO and the EU plan to move toward “more stable” buying arrangements, he said, “looking at the world ahead.”

Baker said the Biden administration “at every level” is committed to helping Ukraine in its “fight for sovereignty and in their fight to regain their territorial integrity. So I’m really delighted that our meetings were able to advance the ball in strengthening the position of this collective group of allies and partners who’ve all made the same commitments.”

Florida Bases Begin Recovery, Reopening From Hurricane Ian

Sept. 30, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

MacDill Air Force Base, Patrick Space Force Base, and other installations across Florida had begun recovering and reopening after Hurricane Ian swept through the state while Joint Base Charleston and other installations farther up the East Coast dealt with heavy rain and winds Sept. 30.

While aircraft from half a dozen bases evacuated in advance of the storm and MacDill ordered all non-mission-essential personnel to evacuate as well, it appeared no bases in Florida suffered major damage from the Category 4 storm. Much of the hurricane’s damage was focused in southwest Florida, leaving hundreds of thousands without power.

In separate Facebook posts, MacDill and Patrick leaders said they anticipated reopening all facilities by Monday, Oct. 3. Patrick leaders preliminarily reported “minimal damage” to the base and its facilities, while MacDill officials lifted its evacuation order and cleared mission essential personnel, housing residents, and dorm residents to return to the base on Sept. 29.

However, both bases are warning personnel to take caution and report issues as they clean up, and some facilities and gates at both bases remain closed.

Elsewhere across the state, some aircraft have begun to return to their bases after flying out before the storm. The 1st Special Operations Wing at Hurlburt Field had evacuated AC-130Js, MC-130Js, MC-130Hs, U-28s, CV-22s, and A-29s in advance of the storm, but commander Col. Allison Black announced Sept. 29 that they had started returning.

Eglin Air Force Base and Tyndall Air Force Base had moved out of Hurricane Condition Level 5, giving personnel the all clear after a state of heightened alert.

It is unclear when the KC-135s that evacuated from MacDill or the C-130s and HH-60s evacuated from Patrick will return.

In South Carolina, meanwhile, bases were hit as the storm once more strengthened to become a hurricane. Joint Base Charleston relocated its C-17s on Sept. 29, and while no evacuation order had been mandated, officials had urged personnel to stay in place and closed some facilities.

The South Carolina Air National Guard, meanwhile, evacuated its F-16s from Columbia, S.C., on Sept. 29.