ACEing the China Challenge

Sept. 19, 2022 | By James C. Kitfield

China fired an unprecedented fusillade of ballistic missiles and launched military maneuvers in the waters surrounding Taiwan in August, closing sea lanes and forcing the cancellation of scores of airline flights in a show of pique at the recent visit to the island by U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). Nowhere was that dangerous provocation watched more closely than at U.S. Indo-Pacific Command in Hawaii, which is responsible for defending the rules-based international order in a region where it is increasingly under assault.

Just weeks earlier, for instance, Beijing had unilaterally declared that the roughly 100-mile Taiwan Strait was no longer “international waters.” That came after it repeatedly flaunted international maritime law in recent years by constructing and militarizing a string of small islands to back its discredited claim of sovereignty over virtually the entire South China Sea. For wary U.S. military commanders, last month’s show of Chinese military force around Taiwan was just the latest evidence of Beijing’s hegemonic goals.

China’s militaristic response to Pelosi’s visit was a case in point. “That was just a politician going to talk to another politician, which happens all over the world, but China chose to overreact, including by launching missiles over the top of Taiwan,” said Air Force Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach, commander of Pacific Air Forces and air component commander at U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, speaking Sept. 19 at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference. “We’ve also heard [Chinese President Xi Jinping] tell his military commanders to be ready to take Taiwan by force by 2027.”

After escalating the Pelosi visit into the worst security crisis in the Taiwan Strait in over 20 years, Beijing released a little-noted white paper to legitimize its threats titled “The Taiwan Question and China’s Reunification in the New Era.” The new era refers to an upcoming party conference that is expected to “elect” Xi to an unprecedented third term. The paper details Beijing’s determination in “resolving the Taiwan question and realizing China’s complete reunification,” by force if necessary.

“That paper claims that China is a country that produces stability in the region, even as it launches missiles over Taiwan, as if that’s supposed to be stabilizing. It’s not,” said Wilsbach. “That paper includes a number of statements like that that are just so hypocritical, but it shows you how the Chinese think. They think just saying something enough times makes it true. That’s what happens in totalitarian regimes where no one challenges what you say.”

Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach speaks at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference in Maryland, on Sept. 19, 2022. Staff photo by Mike Tsukamoto.

China, China, China

In the “Preparing for Global Competition” panel at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference, senior Air Force officials revealed just how profoundly the potential for conflict with an increasingly aggressive China has come to dominate internal counsels and the service’s strategic plans.

“When we talk about ‘global competition,’ we’re talking about China, China, China,” said Gina Ortiz Jones, undersecretary of the Air Force. “If you don’t wake up thinking about the pacing challenge, you’re doing it wrong.””

The fundamental challenge is that for over a decade China has pursued a focused “anti-access/area denial” military strategy, primarily by holding a relative handful of major U.S. bases in the Indo-Pacific at risk with its massive arsenal of theater ballistic missiles. A series of annual, classified Air Force war games over that period has shown the U.S. military struggling to project power and come to the defense of Taiwan under those circumstances.

The Air Force has to transition to the agile combat employment (ACE) doctrine “because traditionally we had only a handful of very large bases in a theater, and adversaries developed the capability to lob missiles into those bases and shut them down, depriving us of our air power,” Wilsbach said. “We essentially had all of our eggs in one basket.”

The Air Force’s chief answer is ACE to enable rapid deployments across a far more dispersed and far-flung theater footprint, greatly complicating an adversary’s targeting challenge. Shifting Air Force combat operations from major air bases to dispersed, bare-bones airfields, however, represents a fundamental change requiring a reimagining of every level of operations, from command-and-control and logistics to air base security and repair.

“We have to get at the ‘agility’ part of ACE, which will require that the Air Force exercise that agility and not [be] afraid to try new ways to solve the gaps in that more agile force,” said Gen. Jacqueline D. Van Ovost, commander of U.S. Transportation Command. “I also think some of the lessons we learned from Afghanistan are pertinent, because we were faulted for our ability to ‘scale quickly’ and eventually had to abandon some of our processes [slowing down operations]. We also could not have accomplished that mission without allies granting us overflight rights, which we will need in spades in the Indo-Pacific.”

Preparing for Global Competition. Speakers: Hon. Gina Ortiz-Jones, USECAF; Gen. Jacqueline Van Ovost, Commander, U.S. Transportation Command; Gen. Ken Wilsbach, Commander, Pacific Air Forces, Moderator: AFA President Lt. Gen. Bruce Wright, USAF, (Ret) at the 2022 Air, Space & Cyber Conference at the Gaylord Hotel in Maryland, September 19, 2022. Photo: Air & Space Forces Magazine

Such a fundamental reimagining of air operations has touched on virtually all aspect of operations, starting with command and control. This summer Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. met with his fellow service chiefs to discuss the way forward in continuing development of joint all-domain command and control (JADC2), which will become even more important in connecting platforms and sensors in a widely dispersed battlespace.

“In exercising ACE we are expanding the number of hubs and spokes we use, which creates extremely complex command-and-control challenges, especially in the midst of dynamic exercises that create a contested environment in terms of jamming and chemical/biological/radiological threats,” Wilsbach said. Because adversaries will also target logistics and resupply nodes, the Pacific Air Forces has received funding to significantly increase its levels of prepositioned equipment, fuel, ammo, and supplies in the Indo-Pacific region. “Another important piece we are working is rapid airfield damage assessment and repair, so that if an airfield takes a hit ,we can fill those holes and get it running again very quickly.”

To facilitate a much wider dispersal of air operations, Pacific Air Forces is already negotiating new basing and overflight rights in the region and expanding airfield facilities for added fuel and weapons storage. “In the next three to five years we’ll also see the extension of runways in small islands in the Pacific, including around the Guam cluster. This is all being done to counter China’s capability to put missiles in places we’d like to operate.”

After achieving initial operating capability of the ACE doctrine in 2021, PACAF is working to achieve full operational capability. Already its focus on dispersed operations and the flexibility of “multi-capable Airmen” is becoming second nature in the theater.

“Last year ACE was new and sort of episodic, but wings in Pacific Air Forces are conducting some kind of ACE event almost every day now,” Wilsbach said. “Just recently we had an F-35 pilot land in Elmendorf in Alaska and get out of the cockpit and refuel his own jet. I never had to do that!” With ACE, he said future pilots will land on small islands in the Pacific, pull up to a gas pump, and be airborne again before getting the tasking for their next mission while in the air. “That’s why I’m really confident we could respond successfully to a Chinese attack on Taiwan,” Wilsbach said.

AFCENT Stands Up Group to Look at Cutting-Edge Tech, Small Drones

Sept. 19, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

Air Forces Central is standing up a new organization of “super empowered Airmen” who will have the freedom to experiment with cutting-edge technology in the “quite literal sandbox that we have in the Middle East,” AFCENT commander Lt. Gen. Alexus G. Grynkewich announced Sept. 19.

One of their first projects? Looking at buying or building a fleet of small, cheap drones for missions such as short-range intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, medium-range strike, or even over-the-horizon counterterrorism efforts.

Detachment 99, as the organization is called, will get resources to “rapidly innovate and experiment” in an “austere and sometimes dangerous environment,” Grynkewich told reporters at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber conference.

Among the technologies Detachment 99 will focus on, Grynkewich said, are “digital, unmanned, artificial intelligence, machine learning algorithms.” In particular, he said he wanted the group to build on the experience of the U.S. Naval Forces Central’s Task Force 59.

Task Force 59, stood up in September 2021, was established to “integrate unmanned systems and artificial intelligence with maritime operations,” according to a NAVCENT release. It has already resulted in a number of naval drones deployed in the Red Sea.

“What that did for them, and what we’re hoping to do and intend to do with Detachment 99, is expand the collaborative space with our partners in the region,” Grynkewich said. “So whereas before I might have needed a squadron of F-16s to have a really tight partnership, now I can have a layering of capabilities under Detachment 99 where they can come and collaborate with us.”

It’s not just regional partners, though—Grynkewich said he wants Detachment 99 to “tie into the innovation ecosystem” across the Pentagon, including at the U.S. Air Force Academy. Already, he said, AFCENT has given the Academy funds for Cadets who are looking to build a small unmanned aerial system.

The value of small drones could be especially crucial for missions such as domain awareness, in which AFCENT has a capability gap, Grynkewich said. Troops could use them when they need information on an adversary’s battle plan in addition to over-the-horizon operations in Afghanistan.

“If I can build a small platform and it doesn’t need to go very far because we know that piece of the order of battle is close, then a small … unmanned ISR platform that I can send out to go 20, 30, 100 miles and come back is really useful,” Grynkewich said.

More broadly, Grynkewich said, drones might “find things that are of interest to me in … the littorals of where we would be operating.”

And while the Air Force has put an increasing emphasis on countering swarms of cheap drones in recent years, Grynkewich also expressed interest in “large numbers of medium-range, attritable platforms that I can send out to cause dilemmas for other people.”

Grynkewich is not the first Air Force leader to entertain the possibility of low-cost, attritable aircraft. But while officials have offered varying definitions of what low-cost actually entails, the ones Detachment 99 might build or procure would likely be on the lower end of that spectrum.

“I’m certainly not thinking of an airplane that costs millions of dollars. I’m thinking of things in the thousands of dollars, somewhere below the million dollar price point … where I can buy in volume over time,” Grynkewich said.

With so many different potential uses, Grynkewich added that his “vision” is of a modular system on which different capabilities can be loaded on as needed. More likely, he acknowledged, are several different platforms and payloads.

Ultimately, however, Detachment 99 will have free rein to develop the concept.

“I’m trying to give them as much of a blank slate as I can. I think it could be anything from, if you replicate Task Force 59, that is a series of maritime drones that are networked and feeding maritime domain awareness—I can see the same sort of thing from a network of airborne layers,” Grynkewich said. “I could see us using space capabilities. We could launch a series of cubesats or nanosats that might be able to pull that. So I’m trying to leave things as wide open as possible and let the imagination of our Airmen really drive the way.”

Russia’s Woes in Ukraine Bolster Need for US to Maintain Air Superiority, Generals Say

Sept. 19, 2022 | By Chris Gordon

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has failed in its strategic objectives and led to tremendous loss of life, and a counteroffensive by Ukrainian troops is now routing Russian forces.

Russia’s failures are due to its ineffective use of air power, according to top U.S. Air Force generals. As a result, the Russians have not been able to control the skies.

Russia arrived in Ukrainian air space with non-stealth aircraft, and Ukrainian surface-to-air missiles have since taken out 55 Russian aircraft, the majority in the first few weeks of the war, said Gen. James B. Hecker, commander of U.S. Air Forces in Europe-Air Forces Africa, during AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference on Sept. 19. Now a grinding war of attrition has led to about 80,000 Russian troops being killed or wounded, according to Department of Defense officials.

“That’s what you get if you don’t have air superiority,” Hecker said of Russia’s losses. “We, as Western countries, won’t stand for that. We won’t stand for those casualties. We need to make sure, as we move forward, that we’re able to gain and maintain air superiority.”

Russia’s bungled invasion showed the need for robust U.S. air power, said Hecker and others, echoing comments made by Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr.

To do that, the Air Force is developing programs such as Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) and the B-21 stealth bomber. Still, its inventories of fighters and bombers have declined for years. The U.S. currently fields 2,176 fighters and 113 bombers, according to AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. Just 20 percent of those aircraft are stealthy. The proposed fiscal 2023 Air Force budget would keep the service’s number of fifth-generation fighters flat, buying 33 F-35As while simultaneously cutting 33 F-22s. While Congress may alter the numbers, the service is facing a difficult choice of cutting now to plan for a future force.

Fewer aircraft means the Air Force will have to rely on allies, who are increasingly motivated by Russian and Chinese belligerence, to fill the gap and achieve control of the skies.

“It’s a difficult decision on quantity,” Hecker told reporters when quizzed on the Air Force’s inventory. “We’re even going to go down more. The cost of airplanes [has] gone up quite a bit. We now have a lot of allies and partners that have some of these aircraft. So can we depend on them a little bit more? The defense budget is pretty high. You can get more airplanes, but you’ve got to make it higher.”

Russian tactics such as indiscriminate missile attacks and unsupported infantry advances show moves that an expansionist power may resort to when its air force is missing in action.

“There was no integration between an air campaign in the way that Airmen think of it and ground maneuver,” said Lt. Gen. Alexus G. Grynkewich during a panel. For example, he pointed out that Russia’s Air Force began the invasion of Ukraine in the same way it operated against irregular forces in Syria, despite the vastly different nature of the conflicts.

“They took the wrong lessons from the last war,” Grynkewich said. “That’s the danger all of us face every time.”

While Ukraine fought off initial Russian sorties, it, too, has been unable to gain control of the skies in the months since. According to a rough estimate by Hecker, Ukraine still has 80 percent of its pre-invasion aircraft, but it must employ its aircraft diligently, as the Russians, using many of the same Soviet-era systems as Ukraine’s, make sorties risky. U.S.-provided HARM anti-radiation missiles have allowed the Ukrainian Air Force to maintain temporary, small-scale air superiority for missions such as close air support and to target critical objectives. The Russians have been relegated to firing long-range cruise missiles from bombers, Hecker said, and the U.S. offers “time sensitive” warnings about those strikes.

The war in Ukraine has made air power conspicuous in its absence. Generals argued that if the U.S. is to wage a successful military campaign while protecting the joint force, the Air Force must keep the tenet of air superiority at the forefront.

“It’s something that we have to master, something that we have to be able to do, so that we can make sure that we don’t have our Soldiers and our Marines die from enemy aircraft,” Hecker said. “A lot of times you’ll hear in the press, on some of the lessons learned about this war, [that] we need to bolster our Army. We need more weapons. We need more artillery and those kinds of things. To an extent, a lot of that’s true, but you can’t forget the fact that if you had air superiority, a lot of this war that you’re seeing right now wouldn’t be happening.”

AMC Clears KC-46 for All Deployments and Taskings

Sept. 19, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

Air Mobility Command has cleared the KC-46 Pegasus tanker for worldwide deployments and combatant commander taskings, including in combat, Gen. Mike Minihan announced Sept. 19 at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference.

The announcement brings to a close AMC’s approach of interim capability releases for the tanker, which is still years away from a completed fix for its troubled Remote Vision System.

“I’m 100 percent confident in its ability,” said Minihan, AMC’s commander. “The people that fly, fix, and support it, love it. The people that refuel off of it, love it. The combatant commands … are big fans of it. And I’m happy that we’ve closed that [interim capability release] chapter out.”

Over the past several months, Minihan noted, AMC has deployed the KC-46 to various combatant commands for “employment capability exercises,” including U.S. European Command, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, and U.S. Central Command.

During those deployments, AMC was able to validate capabilities—and KC-46 crews’ ability to work around problems that have kept it from refueling certain kinds of aircraft. In April, a KC-46 refueled an international aircraft for the first time. In August, the tanker completed its first operationally tasked combat sortie, refueling F-15Es in CENTCOM.

During the latter flight, the KC-46 also had its first successful combat use of the Military Data Network, a communications system that allows the jet to serve as a secure interface between an Air Operations Center and airborne aircraft operating nearby.

Now, the Air Force’s entire fleet of 60-plus KC-46s is cleared of all restrictions, Miniham confirmed—even as Boeing, the manufacturer, works on the Remote Vision System upgrade RVS 2.0, which isn’t scheduled to be installed until 2024.

With the current system, boom operators sometimes have to deal with blackouts and washouts on the tanker’s video displays during refueling, caused by shadows or direct sunlight. This has been a particular issue for stealth aircraft such as the F-35 and B-2, as the boom could scrape off part of their stealth coating.

Certain angles and weather phenomena “challenge the RVS,” Minihan noted. “So when we know that’s going to occur, we line up the angles differently. That would be an example of what the crews are dealing with.”

Despite those problems, Minihan strongly defended the decision to clear the tanker, saying it wasn’t letting Boeing off the hook for the jet’s deficiencies.

“My job is to win tomorrow. Nobody’s going to care about my plans for the KC-46 or my fleet in 10 years if I lose tomorrow. I need it now,” Minihan said. “I am extremely straightforward with Boeing with my concerns about quality, timelines, and cost. But if I can put an incredibly capable tanker in the fight then, then why wouldn’t I?”

At the same time, Minihan said he would not drop the push to fix RVS and pledged to be “hypersensitive” to implementing fixes on a fast timeline to limit their operational impact.

“I think the concern would be that we’re saying that those limitations are OK. And they’re not,” Minihan said. “The command’s efforts are going to … be focused now on the integration of those fixes so that we can get out of the business of the [tactics, techniques, and procedures] adjusting for the shortcomings, and then really realize the full capability of the jet.”

While RVS has been the most high-profile issue affecting the KC-46, the airframe has had other issues as well. Among them, AMC noted multiple incidents in which cargo restraint devices broke open during flight, leading the command to restrict the plane from carrying cargo and passengers.

But Minihan indicated that Airmen have developed solutions to that problem as well.

“There are issues as it relates to the software on the aircraft and where you place the cargo,: Minihan said. “There are workarounds so yes, it can carry cargo. We just have to do it more manually than automatically than we’d like to.”

L3Harris, Embraer Pitch ‘Agile Tanker’ Based on KC-390 for Air Force

Sept. 19, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

Brazilian aircraft maker Embraer is teaming with L3Harris Technologies to further develop its KC-390 Millennium platform as an “Agile Tanker” for the Air Force’s agile combat employment concept, the companies announced Sept. 19.

In a press release at the beginning of AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference, the two companies said they have signed an agreement to expand the KC-390’s capabilities, including advanced boom operations and mission systems along with resilient communications.

The KC-390 currently has a “probe and drogue” refueling system and is flown by the Brazilian Air Force. Hungary and Portugal have both ordered tankers as well.

The new “Agile Tanker” will address Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall’s operational imperatives and support the Air Force’s plans for ACE and Joint all-domain command and control, executives said.

“U.S. Air Force strategic planners have stated agile combat employment will require refueling platforms optimized to support a disaggregated approach to air dominance in contested logistics environments,” Christopher E. Kubasik, CEO of L3Harris, said in a release. “Collaborating with Embraer to develop and integrate new capabilities to the multi-mission KC-390 provides a cost-effective, fast-to-field solution that embodies our trusted disruptor approach.”

The concept of ACE relies on small teams of multi-capable Airmen who can operate in austere locations and move quickly. The KC-390 can take off and land from short and improvised runways and can carry more than 70,000 pounds of fuel.

By comparison, the KC-46 Pegasus has a fuel capacity of 212,299 pounds, and the KC-135 Stratotanker can carry up to 200,000 pounds. Both are bigger aircraft than the KC-390.

Embraer previously tried to partner with Boeing to market the KC-390 internationally, but that deal collapsed in 2020.

The U.S. Air Force, meanwhile, has begun the process of developing an Advanced Aerial Refueling Family of Systems (AAR FoS) program. Still in its early phases, that program is aimed at bringing in new capabilities to the service’s existing fleet of tankers, while developing requirements for a next-generation tanker. Among the capabilities the Air Force wants is greater connectivity, enhanced survivability, open architectures, and on-board electronic warfare/electronic attack systems.

At the same time, USAF leaders have yet to officially decide whether they will pursue a so-called “bridge tanker” to follow on the KC-46 — requirements for the program are expected this fall, but Kendall has said several times now that the likelihood of a competition has gone down as the service considers simply buying more KC-46s.

Kendall Cancels Cuts to Air Force Special Duty Pay

Sept. 19, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

The Department of the Air Force will not cut Special Duty Assignment Pay for hundreds of Airmen and Guardians as previously planned.

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall announced Sept. 19 at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference that he was cancelling the order that would have reduced the incomes of Airmen in more than 30 communities across the department at a time when inflation is already reducing buying power. The cuts would have gone into effect Oct. 1.

“The past several months of inflation have put unique pressures on the finances of some of our Airmen and Guardians in critical specialties,” Kendall said. “Our system for … special duty pay was out of sync with the rapid changes to our economy brought on by COVID and the invasion of Ukraine.”

Concern about inflation has been one of the top issues raised by rank-and-file service members, Kendall added.

“The DAF leadership knows we can’t expect Airmen and Guardians to give their all to the mission when they are worried about paying for gas to get to work, finding child care, and providing their family a safe place to live. That starts with compensation,” Kendall said.

Special duty pay, which ranges from $75 to $450 per month, is given to service members with extremely difficult duties that may involve an unusual degree of responsibility or military skill.

The 2023 budget, released in March, was set to reduce special duty pay for 22 groups, while that of another 11 would have been cut entirely. Most prominently, recruiters would have seen a reduction in pay, even as the Air Force battles a historically difficult recruiting environment.

Budget documents seemingly put the overall reduction in the program at around $1.5 million. The 2022 estimates covered $91.6 million spread across 31,334 Airmen and Guardians, while the 2023 budget called for $90.2 million spread across 30,845 service members.

That decision generated headlines recently when Vice Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin and Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force JoAnne S. Bass addressed it in a “Coffee Talk” Facebook livestream.

“It’s tough to look at the Airmen and say, ‘Yes, we have tough economic times, but I’m going to cut your pay anyway.’ It is true that in the context of building the budget, sometimes you do lose touch, you lose some connection,” Allvin said. “And when we look at that, sometimes it’s framed, unfortunately, in terms of, ‘Well, do we want to be able to have the force we need in the future?’ And so we carve out little bits of money here and there to afford that next F-35 or to be able to do that development and testing. But that doesn’t resonate very well.”

In his speech, Kendall did not clarify where the money to restore the cuts would come from.

The communities that will no longer see cuts to SDAP include:

Human Intelligence
Combat Controller
724th Special Tactics Group
Joint Special Operations Command
Aircraft Battle Damage Repair/Expeditionary Depot Maintenance
White House Communications Agency
Parachuting Instructor
Cyber Warfare
Recruiter
Weapons Directors
Army Support Weather Operators
White House Shelter Complex
Cyber Intelligence Analysis
Sensor Operator
844th Communications Squadron, Executive Communications Flight
Command and Control (C2) Operations
Nuclear Aircraft Maintenance
Security Forces Nuclear Support
Contracting
Cyberspace Mission Forces
Special Operations Surgical Team
Modular Airborne Fire Fighting System
Cryptologic Language Analyst
Enlisted Professional Military Education Instructors
Defense Threat Reduction Agency
Flying Crew Chiefs for the C-146
Defense Courier
Flight Attendant
National Airborne Ops Support
Airborne Mission Operators
Presidential Logistics Squadron
NAOC-Super High Frequency Operators
Diagnostic Medical Sonography

Sikorsky: Better Tech, Range Mean Jolly Green II Is Still Relevant in the Pacific

Sept. 18, 2022 | By Amanda Miller

As the Air Force prepares to declare initial operating capability for the HH-60W Jolly Green II, the service’s new combat search and rescue helicopter, the manufacturer is pushing back against the idea that its helicopter isn’t suited to combat in the Pacific—and against planned cuts to USAF’s purchase.

Sikorsky Aircraft, a Lockheed Martin subsidiary, has delivered 23 of 65 HH-60Ws on order. The Air Force’s fiscal 2023 budget request would fund 10 more, but that would close out the service’s planned purchases, well short of the 113 Jolly Green IIs originally planned.

David Morgan, a former HH-60G Pave Hawk pilot who is now the Air Force business development manager at Sikorsky, said the Jolly Green II, while still carrying the HH-60 designator, is not just a spiffed up Pave Hawk.

“A lot of people think it’s just more of the same, but it is a completely new generation of aircraft,” Morgan said. Among the changes: A bigger internal main fuel tank that holds almost 300 more gallons, eliminating auxiliary tanks from from inside the cabin; seats for pararescue jumpers that fold up into the ceiling; and “all kinds of sensors and communications” that enable survivors’ signals to go “right to the aircraft, digitally.”

Those features will keep it relevant in the Pacific, he argued. And without an alternative in hand, cutting the purchase now may not make sense.

Congress could still increase the Jolly Green II purchase. Both the Senate Armed Services and Appropriations committees support taking the total to 85 aircraft in the 2023 National Defense Authorization bill. The Senate Appropriations Committee markup questioned “the strategic underpinning of these and other acquisition decisions,” and both the House and Senate Armed Services committees have called for a review.

Military planners say the transition from a focus on counter-insurgency to peer power competition, particularly in the Pacific where distances are far greater, changes requirements. They question the value of a helicopter to conduct long-range rescues in case of combat with China. Air Combat Command boss Gen. Mark D. Kelly has said he does not see how the Jolly Green II would be able to recover survivors behind enemy lines in Asia.

Reducing the fleet to 75 helicopters “is really going to put a strain on this fleet for the Air Force,” Morgan contended. With a fleet of 112, the Pave Hawk “has always been considered a low density, high demand aircraft. They’re always over deployed, with very little time to reset and train.”

He thinks the Air Force’s worries about survivability in the Pacific could be soothed as the Jolly Green II enters service.

“I think the concern is, with the Air Force, about survivability and some of the speed and the range in the near-peer fight,” Morgan said. “But, you know, this aircraft does have a refueling probe, air refueling, so it should have unlimited range. They can preposition the aircraft in support of any anticipated operations.” He suspects it won’t fly “single-aircraft, alone, unafraid, into some of these fights” but instead “go with packages. … They’re going to provide air superiority. They’re going to provide … support for the aircraft. So it’s not going to be the only aircraft on the search and rescue.”

And for now, “it’s still being tested, and we don’t understand the full capabilities of this aircraft. So I think making assumptions before all that’s figured out could be premature.”

Edward Stanhouse, deputy program executive officer for intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and special operations forces, has said that in terms of an alternative, a team “is looking at a variety of technologies, in that exploration mode right now, from … [amphibious to] potential applications of some of those unmanned applications. A lot of work, a lot of conceptual work, I think, has to be done in that area to do the proof of concepts.”

So far Sikorsky has trained about 200 pilots and crew members on the Jolly Green II. The HH-60W program director for Sikorsky, Steven Hill, said he’d recently met and flown with some of the crews, “and what you hear is they just love the aircraft,” he said. “It just gives them a lot more capability than they’ve ever had before. They’re just excited about getting it into their hands and getting out and getting deployed eventually.”

The U.S. may not have the only military with the Jolly Green II in the long run.

“We’ve had international interest for the last several years,” Morgan confirmed. “We’ve had several countries following the development and asking for pricing and availability. We’ve provided that as best we can, based on the development stage. We’ve got a couple countries right now that are very interested, so we’re working through options and potential with the Air Force for export.”

Outstanding Airmen of the Year: Senior Airman Christopher T. Thao

Sept. 16, 2022 | By Patrick Reardon

The Air Force’s 12 Outstanding Airmen of the Year for 2022 will be formally recognized at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference from Sept. 19 to 21 in National Harbor, Md. Air & Space Forces Magazine has highlighted one each weekday through today, when we honor Senior Airman Christopher T. Thao, a network operations technician for the 65th Air Base Squadron at Lajes Field, Portugal.

Thao’s parents were refugees during the Vietnam War. He grew up hearing stories about their time in American refugee camps and how they still remembered the service members who supported and guided them into their new life. So when Operation Allies Welcome first began, Thao considered the mission a providential opportunity to return the favor.

“I actually volunteered to [go],” he said. “I was like, hey, it’d be awesome if I could pay it forward and help these people. Maybe one day they will remember that, and then they can help other people in that same situation.”

To support the operation, Thao deployed to Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in N.J. His initial assignment was on an eight-person team that operated as a community support task force. The team directly supported 70,000 Afghan evacuees in simple community aspects such as helping them with directions, giving them food and basic medical attention, and keeping the children entertained. After a month and a half, the team shifted to become security forces augmentees.

Thao considers unforeseen changes in his assignment as opportunities for personal growth, which he, in turn, transforms into communal growth. While he was stationed at Schriever Space Force Base, Colo., he revived the Airmen’s Council and began organizing mock below-the-zone boards. The mock boards helped A1Cs prepare for BTZ (or six-month-early) promotions—Thao researched the real boards by interviewing senior NCOs and teaching classes that explored how they would be tested.

“I was able to combine all that into the actual mock boards. Our first mock BTZ board [was] super successful because we had eight Airmen go to it,” Thao said. “Three of those, including myself, had the actual board the next month. [The three of us] were the only ones who got the BTZ. So technically it was a 100 percent success rate the first time—which is pretty insane.”

Two more Airmen received BTZ promotions after participating in Thao’s mock boards.

Because of his background in cyber systems operations, Thao was also selected to lead a $1.2 million desktop infrastructure overhaul at Schriever—with only a week of lead time. He was familiar with the systems, but not an expert. That didn’t stop him from giving it all he had, though.

“I would get there at 6:30 a.m., and I wouldn’t leave til like 7 p.m. because … we’ve got to meet deadlines,” he said. “I just tried to do what I can. [It was] really a lot of researching and trial and error of getting it 100 percent within a week.”

His hard work paid off. Thao spearheaded the team that rebuilt nine servers and 480 workstations in a week. His efforts eliminated weekly network outages and propelled systems’ availability rate to 99 percent for 2,000 personnel, enabling the $71 billion mission for 14 geographically separated units and 15 Special Access Programs in the Peterson-Schriever area.

“It’s just hard work,” Thao said about what drives him, mentioning how his parents worked their way out of poverty to build a successful life in America. “Their story is what inspires me. If I’m having difficulty trying to do something … I just think hey, my parents did it. And they said, ‘Just put the work in and see what happens.’ And so that’s what I do.”

Thao hopes his recognition among the Outstanding Airmen of the Year for 2022 can inspire others the way his parents inspired him.

“If I could become [an OAY], then anybody else can,” he said. “You just have to be very intentional of what you want to do with your growth. Don’t be afraid to fail. Just throw 110 percent in and see what happens.”

Meet the other Outstanding Airmen of the Year for 2022 below:          

Russia’s Troubled Invasion of Ukraine Shows ‘Value of Air Power,’ Brown Says

Sept. 16, 2022 | By Chris Gordon

The ability to achieve air superiority and control airspace over a war zone is a key U.S. military strategy, and in some cases has been the primary means of achieving military objectives, such as when NATO intervened to stop Serbia’s war in Kosovo and the counter-ISIS campaign in Syria. But in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s failure to control the skies has provided a back-to-the-future moment highlighting the critical value of air power.

Russia’s air force is the second largest in the world, but has proven incapable of achieving air superiority against a much smaller foe. Ukraine has cleverly deployed air defenses, including shoot-and-scoot S-300 mobile systems and using man-portable Stinger missiles to attack low-flying aircraft seeking to evade air defense radar. Now, with the battle shifted to the vast expanse of eastern and southern Ukraine, it has become an artillery and infantry war.

“Neither side has air superiority,” said Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. at the International Air Chiefs Conference in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 16. “It’s turning into a complete land war, including with artillery. You can almost harken back to [a] World War I type of warfare, where it’s just moving things back and forth.”

The role of air power continues to be the subject of debate. Advanced, large air forces have rarely interacted, even in war. In Syria, where the U.S. and Russians are engaged in missions in support of different sides of the conflict, the two air forces operate a deconfliction line which is used daily, Ninth Air Force commander Lt. Gen. Alexus G. Grynkewich confirmed to Air & Space Forces Magazine.

In Ukraine, Ukraine is employing Turkish-made Bayraktar and off-the-shelf commercial drones to combat Russian armor, but not to police the sky. They are better suited to the kinds of roles aircraft were used for in WWI, such as reconnaissance and artillery spotting.

Russia’s inability to establish its will over a smaller nation has sparked some to question the conventional air superiority arguments, raising questions of how the U.S. would engage in a conflict against China, which like the United States, sees achieving air superiority as key to its military doctrine. Some commentators have even raised the heretical notion that air denial, rather than superiority, should be the objective.

“Typically, we think of superiority as a duality,” Lt. Gen. S. Clinton Hinote, deputy chief of staff for strategy, integration, and requirements, said Sept 6. “We are going to use the space, and we’re going to deny its use to others. The barriers to entry for denial, for denying the use of airspace, are much, much lower these days than the barriers to entry for extending control and keeping control of the airspace.”

Hinote said the U.S. Air Force must prepare for a conflict in which denial, not control, is the objective.

Brown’s take on the topic: “You’ve also got to think about the doctrine and how our Western air forces are operating,” Brown said. “We have freedom on how we operate as part of the planning team.”

Instead of demonstrating the need for fundamental rethinking, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has shown “the value of air power [and] what it could and can do,” Brown said. Experts argue Russia’s failures in Ukraine are more directly tied to its failure to employ airpower effectively than to its smaller rival’s prowess.

Editor’s note: This story was updated at 11:55 a.m. Eastern time Sept. 19 to clarify Brown’s remarks on denial of air superiority.