AFRL Space Materials Experiment Gathers Data In Flight for the First Time

Aug. 30, 2022 | By Amanda Miller

Scientists from the Air Force Research Laboratory and outside organizations have sent a selection of spacecraft construction materials to the International Space Station, there to be exposed to space weather.

In the making for two years, the MISSE-16 experiment—short for 16 Materials International Space Station Experiment—will help to evaluate how the materials hold up in the harsh space environment of radiation and temperature extremes. At the same time, researchers should get a better sense of how well they simulate the space environment in the lab.

MISSE-16 surpasses past MISSE missions by collecting data about the materials during the flight in addition to before and after.

AFRL’s Space Vehicles Directorate, DuPont, the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), and NASA are part of the test, with DuPont contributing material samples, NASA doing some “pre-flight material characterization,” and GTRI providing “expertise in several areas of high importance to space research,” according to an announcement.

The samples include polymers such as DuPont’s Kapton and Mylar as the “lion’s share” along with composites and ceramics, said Ryan Hoffmann, senior research physicist in the Space Vehicles Directorate, in an email to Air Force Magazine. Some of the materials have been part of satellites before, while others are going to space for the first time.

space materials — Materials International Space Station Experiment, or MISSE, shown in the blue panel on the airlock slide tray at the International Space Station as the Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator grapples it. The MISSE spaceflight experiment is a collaboration among the Air Force Research Laboratory, NASA, Georgia Tech Research Institute, and DuPont to study the effects of space weather on spacecraft materials. NASA photo.

“Heritage” materials such as Kapton HN have “flown on many missions for many decades,” so this new analysis “will help virtually every spacecraft in operation,” Hoffmann said.

With ground-based testing “notoriously difficult and flawed,” MISSE missions started in 2001 to evaluate materials after their flights on the ISS. But even that method was lacking. It involved taking no in-flight measurements, “so the process of degradation could not be observed,” Hoffmann said. Add to that the fact that “space materials will ‘heal’ to some extent within a matter of hours when exposed to atmosphere.”

To gauge the effects of exposure to space on the materials, AFRL and its collaborators first tested samples in their labs, exposing the samples to radiation then analyzing them with processes such as spectroscopy, atomic force microscopy, and electrical conductance.

MISSE-16 includes cameras for the first time to record any visible changes to the materials while they’re on the space station, and AFRL has an identical camera setup in its space simulation chamber to provide another opportunity for comparison. The researchers will repeat the original analysis after the six-month mission, when the samples are back on Earth.

Austin Pledges ‘Relentless Focus’ on Counterterrorism at Afghan Exit Anniversary

Aug. 30, 2022 | By John A. Tirpak

The Pentagon continues a “relentless focus” on counterterrorism, as evidenced by recent successful operations against al-Qaida and ISIS, even as the nation continues to debate the cost and meaning of America’s longest war, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III said on the first anniversary of the end of the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan.

In an Aug. 30 “Message to the Force,” marking a year since what Austin called “the conclusion of the Afghanistan War,” he noted that since 2001, “no enemy has been able to launch an attack on our homeland … from Afghanistan or anywhere around the globe.” He chalked this success up to the efforts of not only the U.S. military but “the entire U.S. government’s efforts to defend our citizens.”

The war was necessary out of self-defense, Austin insisted, saying al-Qaida was able to “plan and execute … the horrific” 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon “because the Taliban had given them safe haven in Afghanistan.” The U.S. presence there over 20 years—and the sacrifice of “2,461 brave heroes [who] never made it home,” as well as all those wounded “in body and soul”—kept the nation safe, Austin said. The fallen and the veterans alike performed “noble service” to the nation and the world, he said, voicing his “profound gratitude” for their sacrifices.

“We know this work is not done,” he asserted, pledging to continue the pursuit of terrorists and noting recent success in delivering “justice to Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden’s deputy at the time of the 9/11 attacks,” who was killed by a U.S. drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Aug. 1.

Austin also noted that “in recent months, our military has successfully carried out operations against key ISIS leaders.” He added that this effort requires “more than military might” and again emphasized the “whole-of-government effort to address the root causes of violent extremism.”

He added that “no one should doubt America’s resolve to keep our people safe.”

Austin’s new National Defense Strategy does not put counterterrorism front and center of the U.S. military’s efforts, though, as it rather echoes the previous NDS that re-oriented America’s military focus toward peer-adversary competition, with counter-extremism as a lesser-included case. In its departure, the U.S. said it would continue to monitor Afghanistan from “over the horizon,” without explaining in detail what that meant, but suggested that the U.S. would intervene or carry out strikes there as necessary to keep terrorism in check. The Taliban, which returned to power a year ago, pledged to deny terrorism a home in Afghanistan, but al-Zawahiri’s open presence in Kabul, where he was killed by a U.S. drone strike, illustrated that it is not living up to its word.

Austin thanked the parents and families of the fallen in the Afghan war, saying “to our Gold Star families: We hold your loved ones in our hearts, and we pledge to you the unwavering commitment of a grateful nation.”

In an Aug. 26 message, Austin marked the anniversary of the terror bombing in the midst of the evacuation of Kabul that killed 13 American servicemembers and 170 Afghans waiting to leave the country.

“The heroes we lost that day gave their lives to defend their teammates and to help save the lives of tens of thousands of innocent Afghan people who sought freedom and the opportunity for a better life,” Austin said in the earlier message. In the Aug. 30 missive, he noted that the U.S., along with its partners and allies, “in the war’s final days … conducted the largest air evacuation of civilians in American history, lifting more than 124,000 people to safety.”

(See our Aug. 30 Daily Report article by James C. Kitfield, “Remembering the Largest Non-Combatant Evacuation Operation in U.S. History”).

Austin voiced pride that so many “military communities—and Americans from all walks of life—have welcomed our Afghan allies as they begin new lives in our country.”

The strength of American democracy can be seen in “the fact that millions of people freely choose, every day, to defend it,” Austin said, adding that those who “step up to serve” in uniform or as civilians do so because they believe in “the rule of law, human dignity, and freedom.” Commitment to these values drives “the important work that American patriots are doing around the world,” such as rushing supplies and assistance to Ukraine “in the face of Russia’s unprovoked and reckless invasion.” The U.S. is “firmly committed” to fighting for “the rules-based international order against autocrats and aggressors everywhere.”

However, Austin acknowledged that after “two decades of combat in Afghanistan … many people have hard questions about the costs of the war and what their sacrifices meant. These are important discussions, and I hope we will keep having them with thoughtfulness and respect.” But he pledged that “our gratitude to those who served” will never end and “this country will never forget what you did and what you gave.”

At SOCOM Change of Command, Nods to Afghanistan, Future in Indo-Pacific

Aug. 30, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

Pentagon leaders sought to balance both the past and future of U.S. Special Operations Command on Aug. 30 as Army Gen. Bryan P. Fenton succeeded Army Gen. Richard D. Clark in a ceremony at MacDill Air Force Base, Fla.

One year to the day since the end of the U.S.’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, the proceedings were marked by reflections on nearly two decades of conflict in the Middle East, conflict that SOCOM often played a key role in.

“It was the quiet professionals of SOCOM who were among the first on the ground in Afghanistan in 2001,” Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III said. “And when I led troops in Afghanistan and Iraq and served as the CENTCOM commander, I relied on special operators and support teams for your skill, for your precision, and for your bold determination to confront any threat anytime.”

Clarke, along with Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley, made particular reference to the ISIS suicide bombing that killed 13 service members Aug. 26, 2021, in Kabul, Afghanistan, during the withdrawal’s final days.

“One year ago last week, Army Staff Sgt. Ryan Knauss, one of our special operators, lost his life in a suicide bombing in Afghanistan. He was the last member of this command to lose their life in combat,” Clarke said. “When I had the honor of officiating the funeral at Arlington for Ryan, his family told me this: ‘Ryan genuinely loved serving this country. He started his service in the 82nd Airborne Division, but he especially wanted to strive to come and loved serving in our special operations forces.’”

At the same time, Clarke, Austin, and Milley all spoke of the department’s ongoing shift in focus toward great power competition and how it will affect the combatant command.

“The way we fought wars for the last 20 years is not the same way we’re going to fight wars in the future,” Milley said. “The special operations maxim of ‘The human is more important than the hardware’ will always be true. But we must arm our operators with the right equipment. We must arm them with the right intelligence. We must arm them with the right sensor fusion and data analytics. We must arm them with the right relationships and partners. And right now we are at an inflection point, a historical inflection point.”

In particular, Austin touted Fenton’s “extensive experience in the Indo-Pacific” as leaders continue to emphasize competition with China as the U.S.’s pacing threat.

Fenton, who previously served as commander of Joint Special Operations Command, was also “the first Special Operations officer to serve as a deputy commander at U.S. Indo-Pacific Command,” Austin noted.

Clarke told Fenton, “With a depth of experience in the Indo-Pacific, you’re already poised for our most pressing security challenges.”

China and the Indo-Pacific won’t be the only areas of concern, however. Fenton noted in his first remarks as SOCOM commander that Russia remains a priority—and over-the-horizon operations to counter terrorist threats in the Middle East will keep the command busy in that part of the world as well.

“Your special operations forces are ever more ready … ready to counter persistent threats from terrorist organizations and other actors like Iran, ready to respond rapidly to crisis when called,” Fenton said.

Air Force Sets New ‘Aspirational’ Goals for Diversity in Officer Applicants

Aug. 30, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

The Department of the Air Force offered up new “aspirational” goals for diversity in its officer applicant pool in August. Now Secretary Frank Kendall has given the department’s commissioning sources until Sept. 30 to develop initiatives to try to meet those goals.

“It is imperative that the composition of our military services better reflect our nation’s highly talented, diverse, and eligible population,” Kendall wrote in a memo dated Aug. 9, adding that the new percentages “will not be used in any manner that undermines our merit-based processes.”

The applicant pool demographic goals, updated for the first time 2014, also include figures that incorporate gender, race, and ethnicity—undersecretary Gina Ortiz Jones has pushed for more consideration of “intersectionality.”

For example, the new goals project 13 percent of the officer applicant pool to be Black—8.5 percent men, 4.5 percent women.

“Our applicant pool goals are intentional, because our investments and outreach to top talent must be intentional,” Jones said in a statement.

Across the board, the new demographic goals represent a notable shift in ambition for the Air Force and Space Force. The previous goals, established in 2014 and broken down across racial categories, were:

80 percent White
10 percent Black
8 percent Asian
1 percent American Indian or Alaskan Native
1 percent Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander
No goal for multi-racial

The new department-wide goals are set at:

67.5 percent White
13 percent Black
10 percent Asian
7.5 percent multi-racial
1.5 percent American Indian or Alaskan Native
1 percent Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander

For ethnicity, the 2014 goal was set at 10 percent Hispanic or Latino. For gender, it was 30 percent female. The new goals are, respectively, 15 percent Hispanic or Latino; and 36 percent female.

According to data provided to Air Force Magazine, two of the main sources of officer commissions, the U.S. Air Force Academy and Air Force ROTC, mostly met the 2014 goals in their enrollment numbers from 2015 to 2021, the most recent year for which data is available.

However, the percentages were substantially short of the new goals for the most part, though less so for smaller racial groups such as American Indian or Alaska Native; and Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander.

In particular, USAFA’s enrollment numbers didn’t meet the new diversity goals for Black, Hispanic or Latino, or female officers in any of the six years covered, while Air Force ROTC’s numbers fell short every year for Black, Asian, and female officers.

Meanwhile, the current Air Force and Space Force officer corps is even more predominantly White and male. While the new officer applicant goals may not directly result in more diversity in the Active-duty officer corps, the most recent data show the breakdown is currently:

USAF

77.3 percent White
6.3 percent Black
5.5 percent Asian
3.4 percent multi-racial
0.5 percent American Indian or Alaskan Native
0.5 percent Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander

USSF

74.2 percent White
8 percent Asian
6 percent Black
4.8 percent multiracial
0.6 percent American Indian or Alaskan Native
0.6 percent Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander

The breakdown of goals across race/ethnicity and gender is available here.

Kendall’s directive to develop diversity and inclusion outreach initiatives is aimed at the department’s main commissioning sources—the U.S. Air Force Academy, Air Force ROTC, Officer Training School, and the Space Force’s direct commissioning program. After developing initiatives, those sources will have to report annually on them.

DAF’s push for more diversity in its officer corps comes as the department responds to a series of independent reviews in recent years that found disparities in recruitment, retention, and promotions among racial and ethnic minorities, as well as women, in the Air Force and Space Force. In particular, the operations field is the least diverse specialty code, and within that career field, the pilot specialty is the least diverse of them all.

At the same time, the department is also dealing with a difficult recruiting environment that has caused leadership to expand its efforts to entice potential Airmen. In particular, the Air Force Academy saw a steep decline in applications this past year of around 28 percent, which officials have blamed on a lack of in-person recruiting caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

This story was updated Sept. 1 to directly compare the new officer applicant pool goals to the 2014 goals and data from two commissioning sources.

Brown: Collaborative Combat Aircraft Not Just for NGAD

Aug. 29, 2022 | By John A. Tirpak

The Air Force doesn’t want its new “collaborative combat aircraft” to be exclusively part of the Next Generation Air Dominance system but is looking at other air- and ground-based platforms to direct such uncrewed airplanes, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. revealed, hinting that the CCAs will be ready for operations before NGAD is.

Brown also gave himself a letter grade of “C” for his first two years of service as the Chief, saying the grade reflects what rank-and-file Airmen have been telling him about conditions in the service. He also commented on developments in the Pacific and Ukraine, combat search and rescue, and the pilot shortage.

Speaking in a virtual interview with the American Enterprise Institute, Brown said the service is putting a “a lot of focus” on CCAs, which can be “a sensor … a shooter … a weapons carrier, and reduce the cost of operations.”

Asked if the CCAs will be ready to fly alongside NGAD when that system is slated to fly circa 2030, Brown said “we’re looking at … not to do it solely with NGAD.” He said the service is considering CCAs being directed from F-35s, “from a seat on the E-7 Wedgetail,” which is set to replace the E-3 AWACS, or from a KC-46 tanker, as well as “ground stations,” Brown said.

“We want to not constrain ourselves and say it’s tied to NGAD,” he said, but “how do we look at it from a broader perspective?” The F-35 and KC-46 are already in service, and the Wedgetail is planned to enter the inventory around 2027.

The Air Force has long planned to make the KC-46 a communications node, and service officials have recently hinted that it could play a role in air battle management as well.

Brown did not directly comment on when CCAs might be available for operational service, but they are among Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall’s “operational imperatives.” Kendall has said the technology is mature enough that CCAs can proceed into a program of record without further concept exploration work.

Asked if the U.S. will be ready to be a “stand-in force” within the next five years, though, Brown said, “we have some work to do.” But he said the Air Force will likely be a “hybrid” of stand-in and stand-off forces in the near future, “and that’s what we’re focused on.”

The allies and partners “are our stand-in force,” he said, and the Air Force “can’t build a strategy based on being a stand-off force … we have to stand with them.”

Although there is not yet a program office for the E-7, Brown insisted that “we’re moving fast” on the acquisition, and USAF has been “engaging on the Hill” about accelerating the buy, particularly with the Oklahoma congressional delegation, the constituency of which includes the Oklahoma Air Logistics Complex, where the E-3 and similar aircraft are overhauled.

Asked to grade his performance after two years as Chief, Brown said, “I’ll give it a solid ‘C.’ In some areas—I’m a C student, if you look at my GPA from college—but it’s not from a lack of trying.” As he engages with Airmen, he said, “they feel … the need to change,” and they agree with him that the service needs to be moving in the direction of agile combat employment and multi-capable Airmen—those who can do more than one specialized job.

“There’s a lot of energy there,” he said, and Airmen approve of doctrinal changes that push more authority to lower levels.

The push to simply state commander’s intent and leave the details to the troops “has really has resonated,” he said. “So there’s been some very positive things.”

Troops are concerned about inflation, despite several pay raises, and Brown said the Air Force is working through cost of living adjustments in various locations but doesn’t want to create a “rollercoaster” of changing compensation so that the service and the troops find it difficult to budget.

He also said he was warned at the outset of his tenure that “some of the things I want to do … will take four years.” He explained that initiatives such as his “accelerate change or lose” idea are “a cultural shift … And that takes time, so you’re not going to be able to flip a switch and make everything move forward.”

Brown said he and Kendall have a “similar mindset” about what path the Air Force needs to take and that they have a constructive partnership.

The Air Force would like to see a lower operating cost for the F-35, Brown said, but he acknowledged that early estimates of what it would cost to fly the jet were “overly optimistic.” The Air Force is shifting its calculation of operating cost from a per-flying-hour basis to “cost per tail per year” model, he said. This will give a better handle on true costs of ownership, he said.

Having recently returned from a tour of the Indo-Pacific, Brown reported that partners and allies are moving to strengthen their defenses and interoperability with the U.S.

China’s bluff charges of aircraft against Taiwan are that country’s way of “pushing the edge,” Brown said, in a “slow, insidious” way of setting a new status quo.

“That’s what we have to pay attention to,” he said. “If we don’t respond or react … then they’ll take another step, take another step, take another step.” There is a “coalescing” of thought among allies and partners, both in the Pacific and Europe, that these provocations must be addressed, Brown said, but he didn’t explain how.

Agile combat employment is one of those cultural shifts Brown said he was referring to, “knowing that threat is a different threat than we’ve been used to for the last 30 years.” The ACE concept emphasizes dispersion of forces, base resiliency, and camouflage, he said.

Asked for the most recent lessons learned from the Ukraine war, Brown cited the “power of information” in getting a “lightning quick” unified NATO response as well as the ability of Ukrainian forces to deny Russia much value from its airpower.

“That’s something we need to think about collectively,” he said. He said Russia’s doctrine of tying airpower to ground forces clearly isn’t working well.

Brown also said the value of allies and partnerships has been proven by the conflict, especially in airpower terms. Exercises and doctrine allowed NATO to “move airpower around rapidly” to address the threat, and NATO has demonstrated its connectivity and interoperability in deterring Russia from moving beyond Ukraine, as well.

Brown said the Air Force is still trying to think through how it will perform combat search and rescue, given the large distances in the Pacific and the vulnerabilities of rotary-wing aircraft such as the HH-60 and CV-22.

“We’re doing combat search and rescue the same way since Vietnam,” he said, arguing that an overhaul of the concept of operations is needed and being worked on. He acknowledged that the Air Force has cut the buy of HH-60Ws and is trying to figure out what standing force of CSAR operators is required.

“The threat is much different today,” he said. “I’m afraid we’re going to lose a bunch of people on a helicopter or CV-22, so we really have to think differently about how we do” the mission. Much of the focus now is on autonomous vehicles to extract downed fliers, he said. If the Air Force loses an unmanned aircraft in an attempt to retrieve personnel, “it’s no big deal,” he said.

The Air Force is employing a variety of approaches to closing its pilot shortage, mainly in the areas of using technology to speed up pilot training and in the creation of “air academies” that offer young people an opportunity to earn a license. Those who do will be offered pilot slots in the Air Force, he said. Brown reported having regular meetings with the airlines to discuss national strategies to increase the number of pilots.

“We’re in this together,” he said.

Officials Hope Newly Approved Novavax Vaccine Will Sway Unvaccinated Service Members

Aug. 29, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

The Pentagon has a new tool in its push to fully vaccinate service members against COVID-19—a vaccine that medical officials hope will alleviate the concerns of those who have previously refused the shot.

The Novavax vaccine is now widely available for service members, the Department of Defense announced Aug. 29, and any locations that don’t have that particular shot can have it delivered within a few days.

Unlike previous vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson, the Novavax vaccine was created using older, more traditional vaccine technology that contains no genetic material.

Officials noted that the same technology is already used in other vaccines such as those for hepatitis B, HPV, and shingles, including some that have been required by the military.

“The Novavax COVID-19 vaccine uses technology that has been around since the 1980s. Not only do we have effectiveness and safety data from the Novavax clinical trials, but we also have decades of experience with this type of vaccine,” Lt. Col. David Sayers, chief of preventive medicine for the Air Force Medical Readiness Agency, said in a statement.

There are still tens of thousands of Airmen, Guardians, Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines who remain unvaccinated against COVID-19 a year after Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III first announced plans to make vaccination mandatory. For the Air Force and Space Force in particular, the most recent numbers indicate that 2.6 percent of the 497,000 or so Airmen and Guardians in the total force are unvaccinated—more than 12,000 individuals.

Service members who have refused the vaccine have cited a variety of reasons. Some have religious objections to vaccines such as Johnson & Johnson’s that were developed using cell lines from aborted fetuses, while others have expressed discomfort with the first-of-its-kind mRNA technology used to create Pfizer’s and Moderna’s shots.

Medical officials hope the Novavax vaccine, which received emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration on July 13, will resolve those concerns. It is a protein subunit vaccine and contains no mRNA or DNA technology, noted USAF Col. Tonya Rans, chief of the Immunization Healthcare Division at the Defense Health Agency.

However, there is skepticism that the Novavax shot will convince unvaccinated individuals to take the leap. A June survey of the general public from Morning Consult found the vast majority of those who were unvaccinated said they wouldn’t get it, and more than a month after the vaccine was approved for emergency use by the FDA, data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicates that fewer than 15,000 of the shots had been administered despite more than 625,000 already being delivered.

Meanwhile, Airmen and other service members have filed a number of lawsuits against the Pentagon’s vaccine mandates, and in July, a federal judge granted a wide-ranging preliminary injunction that temporarily prevents the Air Force from punishing or separating any Airmen who refuse the vaccine.

Remembering the Largest Non-Combatant Evacuation Operation in US History

Aug. 29, 2022 | By James C. Kitfield

Aug. 30 marks the one-year anniversary of the end of Operation Allies Refuge (OAR), the final act in the longest war in U.S. history. Historians will long study the United States’ post-9/11 Global War on Terrorism and, in particular, the failed, two-decade effort to plant sustainable seeds of democracy in Afghanistan. Certainly as a coda to the conflict, OAR reflected the chaos, tragedy, and good-intentions-gone-awry that characterized so much of the Afghan War.

What was accomplished a year ago under the most challenging of conditions and pressures was largely overshadowed by a horrific suicide bombing that killed more than 170 people at Hamid Karzai International Airport, including 13 U.S. service members; an errant U.S. drone strike that killed 10 Afghan civilians, including seven children; and by the dispiriting spectacle of flag-waving Taliban extremists sweeping to victory in Afghanistan 20 years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

On this one-year anniversary, however, the fog of war that enshrouded so much of Operation Allies Refuge has largely lifted. Revealed beneath the chaos and tragedy is the largest non-combatant evacuation operation (NEO) airlift in U.S. history, one that involved round-the-clock operations of nearly 800 military and civilian aircraft from more than 30 nations. In just 17 days, more than 500 U.S. Air Force Active, Reserve, and National Guard aircrews and hundreds of Air Force ground personnel helped evacuate a staggering 124,334 people, the vast majority of them Afghan nationals.

Heroism and great compassion were behind those unprecedented numbers. Airmen helped deliver three babies aboard C-17s during the operation, and dozens more were born shortly after their mothers landed safely at staging bases and temporary safe havens around the world. Air Force Aeromedical Evacuation teams and medics stood up “Operation Stork,” gathering the specialized personnel and equipment required to safely transport the roughly 20 percent of adult female evacuees who were pregnant. U.S. Air Forces in Europe and the 521st Air Mobility Operations Wing created passenger medical augmentation teams to attend to the needs of evacuees who were in many cases wounded and traumatized, and crammed shoulder-to-shoulder in flights of more than 450 passengers per sortie. Their efforts included multiple life-saving resuscitations inflight.

After the suicide bombing at HKIA, three Aeromedical Evacuation missions whisked 35 patients to care, saving the lives of the critically wounded. In all, 28 Aeromedical Evacuation missions conducted during OAR flew 177 patients to badly needed care. One of the C-17s from the 21st Airlift Squadron also carried the 13 fallen U.S. service members killed in the bombing home to Dover Air Force Base, Del.

For the one-year anniversary of Operation Allies Refuge, Air Force Magazine interviewed a number of the many Air Force participants, the better to remember their largely untold stories of bravery and compassion in the face of deadly chaos.

‘Not the Afghanistan We Knew’

Just days after the United States military had officially furled the flag on Operation Resolute Support in Afghanistan, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III issued a vocal order on July 16, 2021, instructing the U.S. Air Force to deploy a personnel recovery task force (PRTF) to Hamid Karzai International Airport. The PRTF’s mission was to provide combat search and rescue in support of a U.S. non-combatant evacuation operation (NEO) for tens of thousands of Afghans who had served as interpreters, drivers, and assistants to U.S. forces and diplomats.

The Pentagon avoided such a move for many months, concerned that a mass exodus would demoralize Afghan allies. The plan at the time was still to leave behind a large U.S. diplomatic presence in Kabul to support the Afghan government and security forces. In July, however, Taliban insurgents intensified an offensive that had already seen them capture more than a third of provincial capitals around the country. A new U.S. intelligence assessment that took note of those negative trends warned that the Afghan government could fall within the next six to 12 months, as opposed to the two- or three-year window that the intelligence community assessed only months earlier. That Afghan institutions might collapse in just weeks had not yet occurred to U.S. intelligence analysts.

The day after Austin’s deployment order, the State Department announced Operation Allies Refuge, and the Air Force was directed to organize relocation flights for Afghan nationals and their families eligible for U.S. Special Immigrant Visas. In the classified briefing at the operations center for the 71st Rescue Squadron at Moody Air Force Base, Ga., the wing commander explained to the deploying Airmen that “the hair on the back of your necks should be standing up: This is not the Afghanistan we knew.”

Lt. Col. Brian Desautels was chosen to command the personnel recovery task force, which included combat search and rescue (CSAR) units and helicopters from Moody as well as Nellis and Davis-Monthan Air Force Bases. Along with many senior officers, Desautels had spent much of his career fighting America’s longest war, but in 20 years of operations in Afghanistan, U.S. Air Force units had become accustomed to operating out of large, secure military bases with abundant ground support such as Bagram and Kandahar airfields. At Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA) in Kabul, the task force would operate out of a facility wedged into the middle of a sprawling capital of nearly 5 million people, with no hardened base support or dedicated security force. The task force would thus need to carry all the food, water, equipment, and expertise it would require in the coming weeks.

The deployment amounted to an unprecedented stress test of the Air Force’s agile combat employment (ACE) concept, with pressures few could imagine at the time.

“I had served in Afghanistan, so I knew what my commander was talking about in terms of the hair standing up on the back of our necks, but we are used to operating out of austere airfields and making the best of it,” Desautels said in an interview. He noted that the roughly 170 multi-mission-capable Airmen of the task force were wheels up in three C-17 “chalks” in less than 72 hours, arriving at HKIA within 96 hours of receiving the deployment order. By mid-August the PRTF had settled into a good battle rhythm, helping to evacuate on average 7,500 civilians each day. “We hit the ground running with a lot of focused energy, committed to giving 100 percent until our mission was complete.”

Then one morning in mid-August, Desautels entered the operations center at HKIA to find that Rear Adm. Peter Vasely, a Navy SEAL and the top U.S. commander in Kabul, was wearing his full “battle rattle” and carrying his M-4 rifle. There was also a new sense of urgency in the orders he barked. Taliban forces were sweeping into Kabul, and the U.S. Embassy had yet to be fully evacuated. As Desautels entered the operations center, an Army captain saluted and requested permission to abandon his post because they were taking so much sniper fire from nearby rooftops. He was given reinforcements from the PRTF team instead.

Desautels worked 27 hours straight and was grabbing a couple of hours sleep when he awoke to the sound of explosions and heavy machine-gun and automatic weapons fire. Jumping out of his rack, he grabbed two bug-eyed majors and headed for the operations center. There was screaming and multiple conversations talking over each other on the radio net. With the Taliban entering the capital virtually unopposed, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled the country and Afghan Security Forces had melted away.

“Then the Taliban opened fire on the airport, and suddenly word came that the whole airfield was being overrun by thousands of desperate Afghan civilians,” recalled Desautels. “The whole perimeter was collapsing around us.”

‘I Couldn’t Help But Think of My Own Daughter’

After U.S. forces abandoned Bagram Airfield in July, chief medical officer and Air Force Col. Bruce Lynch and roughly 50 members of his staff relocated to the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. As the top medical adviser for Adm. Vasely, he felt acutely the tension between a U.S. military command anxious to evacuate the embassy and a U.S. ambassador and embassy staff determined to keep the faith with their allies in the Afghan government.

“At the embassy. it was in the back of everyone’s mind that things weren’t going well for the Afghan government, and by early August when two or three major provincial capitals fell to the Taliban, you could read the tea leaves, but we didn’t want to abandon our Afghan partners and exacerbate their problems by making a hasty exit,” Lynch said in an interview. Working alongside an Afghan doctor he had met at Bagram, Lynch helped treat Afghan soldiers who were wounded defending Kabul, and the two physicians became close.

When Kabul fell to the Taliban on Aug. 15, the embassy staff were finally hustled into helicopters and transported to HKIA. Given the incredible stress of the moment, Lynch was relieved to be greeted at the airport not by surly Turkish soldiers who were previously in charge, but rather by young U.S. Marines in full battle gear.

“On such a hectic day, it was quite a relief to get off the helicopter and be greeted by a bunch of U.S. Marines on the runway. That was calming to me,” said Lynch, who along with his team was ushered to the medical facility at HKIA that would serve both as their workplace and home for the next two weeks. Luckily the medical center was fairly new, with a well-equipped and modern emergency room, two operating rooms and an intensive care unit. Most important, the HKIA medical center was a hardened facility of brick and concrete with no exterior windows. Given the proximity of high-rise buildings surrounding the airport, it was a relief for the medical team not to feel they had a constant target on their backs.

In one of the conversations with the Afghan physician he had worked with at Bagram and the embassy, Lynch learned that the man had a 12-year-old daughter who was nearly the same age as Lynch’s own children.

“We were exchanging stories about our kids, and he told me that his daughter wanted to be a doctor like her father when she grew up,” recalled Lynch, who knew that a whole generation of young Afghan women and girls who had grown up with unprecedented freedoms in a fledgling democracy would soon be subjected to the medieval patriarchy of the Taliban. “In the back of my mind, I remember thinking that the options for his daughter’s future would be pretty grim under Taliban rule, and as a father, I couldn’t help but think of my own daughter in such a situation. It was a horrible thought.”

Later Lynch learned that neither the Afghan doctor nor his daughter were able to escape during the evacuation.

‘Rightly Concerned’

When the emergency call came in mid-August, Col. Colin McClaskey was on a mission in the Horn of Africa. As deputy commander of the Air Force’s 821st Contingency Response Group out of Travis Air Force Base, Calif., he led a unit that specialized in opening, operating, and, if necessary, closing airfields. His team included air traffic controllers, aircraft maintenance personnel, military police, fuel specialists, and logisticians. And the word came that the situation in Kabul was essentially going to hell, and they were needed there yesterday.

With the rest of his team already underway from the United States, McClaskey took a C-130 transport from Djibouti, Africa, to Ramstein Air Force Base, Germany. There he hitched a ride on a C-17 transport that was ferrying U.S. Army troops to Kabul, part of an emergency deployment of some 6,000 U.S. Soldiers and Marines being rushed to HKIA to try to secure the airport. After refueling in Kuwait, the C-17 approached the Kabul airport Aug. 15. Sitting in the cockpit in the right observer seat as the aircraft circled low over HKIA, McClaskey could hardly process what he was seeing. The airport looked like a crowded soccer stadium during a riot, with thousands upon thousands of people outside trying to cram through the various gates and thousands more running onto the tarmac and taxiways like they were a football pitch.

“I was talking to the aircrew and over the radio with members of my team already on the ground at HKIA as we flew low over the airfield,” said McClaskey. “I don’t know that there was anybody in that airspace that wanted to be on the ground with their team more than me at that moment. But as we talked through the situation very frankly, we all agreed that putting the aircraft down would risk both it and those people on the ground. In the end, we had to divert back to Al Udeid, and I can tell you [as we left], my folks on the ground were rightly very concerned about their physical security.”

‘We’re Staying’

“Everyone just calm the f*** down! We’re launching the iron, but we’re not flushing the whole team! We’re staying,” Lt. Col. Desautels shouted into the radio in the operations center, referring to the two HC-130 aircraft that were designated to fly his team to safety in the event of an emergency exfiltration. With the perimeter breached and thousands of Afghan civilians swarming the tarmac, the situation at HKIA was deteriorating by the second, and many people in the operation center and around the world via television footage were unnerved by what they were witnessing.

A C-17 Globemaster that had just landed at the airport to deliver a load of equipment and security forces were swarmed by hundreds of Afghan civilians before it could even offload its cargo. Faced with possibility of losing control of their aircraft and jeopardizing all those onboard, the pilots quickly taxied and took off, with Afghan civilians clinging desperately to the fuselage and wheel wells. The sight of Afghans falling as the C-17 gained altitude would become an iconic image of OAR, recalling photos of U.S. helicopters pulling desperate Americans and South Vietnamese off the roof of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon in 1975.

Just minutes later, Desautels had to make a life-or-death decision. In the event that HKIA was completely overrun not only by Afghan civilians but potentially Taliban fighters, he had promised his team he would get them out or “flush” them on the two HC-130 aircraft designated “Fever 11” and “Fever 12.” Now that the moment had apparently arrived, Desautels also understood that pulling his 170-person team, many providing airport security, would leave a critical gap in the airport’s already crumbling defenses.

“We had intelligence that the Taliban had liberated a nearby prison full of al-Qaida and ISIS fighters, so my team understood how critical we were to the base defense plan. So instead of flushing the team, I got permission from the CFACC [Combined Forces Air Component Commander] to launch the HC-130s from the taxiways, which is risky. Word came back that ‘the airport is not clear, take off at your own risk,’ and within seconds Fever 11 and 12 were airborne flying just 30 feet or so above the heads of the crowd on the runway.”

With the aid of air refueling tankers, the increasingly exhausted pilots of the HC-130s circled overhead for more than 13 hours, waiting to see if the U.S. military could regain control of the airfield. The alternative was to attempt an emergency extraction of the personnel recovery task force from a contested airfield.

‘A Gut Punch to Everyone’

Late in the afternoon Aug. 26, Lynch stepped out of the medical facility at HKIA for a breath of fresh air. The scene that greeted him outside was almost post-Apocalyptic. The shells of abandoned cars were scattered about, and piles of discarded suitcases, bags, mattresses, and the other detritus of lives torn asunder littered the area. A stench escaped from a nearby line of latrines that had not been emptied in days.

Due to intelligence indicating a possible suicide bombing attack on the airport, leadership had put the small hospital on lockdown for much of the day. Most of the doctors and nurses were sleeping at the facility after their shifts anyway, so they really had no place else to go. Then around 6 p.m., word came that there had been a suicide bombing across the airport at Abbey Gate, which U.S. Marines guarded against a swirling mass of as many as 10,000 Afghan civilians desperately hoping to be rescued. The mass of humanity provided an inviting target for the Islamic State-Khorasan terrorist who had packed his suicide vest with ball bearings for maximum lethality.

Lynch immediately activated the mass casualty plan his team had rehearsed many times. Yet no amount of planning could prepare them for the arrival of the first trucks carrying the wounded.

“When the first truck pulled up and we saw all of the Marines injured in the back, that was a game changer. That was a big shock to me personally and a gut punch to everyone. I don’t think any of us had seen so many American casualties from a single incident, and it was clear that four or five of the Marines had passed away already,” said Lynch. “But after stepping back for a moment, we had to jump-start ourselves out of the shock because so many wounded were coming in, and we had to be on our ‘A game’ to take care of all the patients.”

Enlisting the help of a group of Air Force pararescuemen, Lynch quickly established a triage point outside the facility. He walked up and down the lines of wounded, deciding who needed to be rushed into the emergency room, which patients had less severe wounds that could be treated elsewhere in the hospital, and who lacked a pulse and was beyond help.

During one of the longest nights of his life, Lynch realized that the small hospital was in danger of being overwhelmed, doubling up in the emergency room and treating 63 U.S. and Afghan wounded in the small facility. The staff had already confirmed 10 American fatalities, some having died on the operating table. In their mass casualty plan, they had anticipated having to treat patients without dog tags or easy identification, so they created packets for them and gave each one the name of a Hollywood celebrity. They quickly ran out of celebrity names and had to think of others.

By early morning, the last of the Aeromedical Evacuation flights transporting the wounded to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany lifted off. An exhausted Lynch looked around a hospital very much the worse for wear. He knew the team would have to find the energy to clean up and reset the facility in case the airfield was attacked again. After all, they were still in the middle of Kabul; the base was still surrounded by the Taliban; and other Islamic State-Khorasan terrorists were undoubtedly still out there plotting massacres.

Soon, medical corpsmen started showing up with blood donations, and Marines arrived to help clean the hospital, mopping floors, taking out the trash, and disposing of bloody bandages and sheets. That allowed Lynch and his team to get a little rest, but not much. Lynch knew that every day until their scheduled departure Aug. 31 would be more dangerous than the previous one.

‘An Opportunity to Actually Deliver Hope’

After flying four evacuation missions out of HKIA in a matter of days, C-17 pilot Lt. Col. Austin Street was on his first extended crew rest at Al Udied Air Base in Qatar. The ramp of the air base had been expanded to accommodate more than twice the number of C-17s as normal, one of many signs that the Globemaster had become the workhorse of Operation Allies Refuge. Roughly half of the Air Force’s entire fleet of 222 C-17s had been committed to the operation, and they would evacuate more than 79,000 of the more than 124,000 total evacuees, including roughly 6,000 Americans.

Street, commander of the 21st Airlift Squadron out of Travis Air Base, Calif., was asleep when the phone call came from the operations desk at Al Udied. There had been a mass casualty suicide bombing at HKIA, and he was designated to command an Aeromedical Evacuation mission to transport the wounded to Germany. But when Street arrived at the aircraft for the high priority mission, only one maintenance person was on site prepping the aircraft. He also learned that because the heat in Qatar had the effect of expanding jet fuel, he would have to launch without a sufficient fuel load to complete the mission. To make matters worse, some of the generators at HKIA had been targeted by saboteurs, meaning he would have to land at night without runway lights.

The Aeromedical Evacuation flight was so rushed that the two aeromedical transport teams and critical care air transport team onboard had to reconfigure the aircraft to accept wounded patients while underway to Kabul. No midair refueling tankers were in range. Once on the ground at HKIA, Street had to wait two hours on the tarmac with the aircraft engines running because some of the critically wounded passengers were just out of surgery and needed to be stabilized before transport.

Once again, Street took off without enough fuel to complete the mission and reach Ramstein Air Base in Germany. Initially air command-and-control could identify no tankers in range, but they finally located a KC-135 tanker on “strip alert” in the region. Street conducted a tricky midair refueling at night over the Black Sea, while in his cargo bay a critical care team performed emergency surgery on a wounded patient.

“I’ve flown the C-17 for 15 years, and that was not only the most important and significant mission I ever flew, it was also the most challenging,” Street said in an interview. At Air Mobility Command, he noted, their mission mantra is to ‘project power, and deliver hope.’ “Well, I’ve had lots of opportunities to project combat power into war zones, but I’ve rarely had the opportunity to deliver hope. That’s why I’m so proud of my crew for pushing through and overcoming the most challenging conditions I ever witnessed. This entire operation was an opportunity to actually deliver hope, not only to our own wounded, but also to all the Afghans trying to get out of Kabul. That allowed the American military to keep faith with many of those Afghans that we’ve built trust with over the past 20 years.”

‘An Eerie Feeling’

On the final day of Operation Allies Refuge, McClaskey led a skeleton crew from the 821st Contingency Response Group as they launched the final evacuation flights from HKIA. The suicide bombing days earlier had given his team a renewed sense of purpose, and they had worked around the clock to get as many Afghans out of the country as possible in what little time remained. Even in the last 24 hours of operations, they had managed to rescue 1,250 additional evacuees.

McClaskey and his team finally policed up the last remnants of equipment at HKIA, determined to leave nothing of combat usefulness for the Taliban fighters they could see all around the airport’s perimeter, their signature black-and-white flags unfurled. Everything that couldn’t fit into the rear of a C-17 was destroyed.

That evening under the cover of darkness, five C-17s would help the 82nd Airborne Division execute a joint tactical exfiltration, flying the remaining 800 U.S. personnel at HKIA, including the acting U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, to safety. The C-17s were supported by more than 20 orbiting aircraft stacked overhead, to include command-and-control, strike, and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance platforms.

When the ramp closed on his C-17 on Aug. 30, 2021, McClaskey knew his long Afghan War was over.

“At that point, I thought about the first time I flew into Afghanistan right after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and how many subsequent birthdays I had spent flying to this country. I also thought about the thousands and thousands of Americans injured and killed there, some of whom I had flown out of there, and the countless lives and families changed as a result of this war,” said McClaskey. “It was an eerie feeling, and a lot to unpack. I’d spent my entire career fighting in these conflicts, and now it was all over. At that moment, I couldn’t wait to call my wife and tell her we were on our way home.”

James C. Kitfield is a contributing national security correspondent and author, and a three-time recipient of the Gerald R. Ford Award for Distinguished Reporting on National Defense.

General Atomics: A Revolutionary Partnership

Aug. 29, 2022

Early Vision and Sustained Support Enabled the Air Force and General Atomics to Change Warfare Forever

One extraordinary thing about the U.S. Air Force’s unmanned aircraft revolution was that it almost didn’t happen.

True believers couldn’t always make others see the vision, and had to overcome “opposition from many in the service,” as retired Gen. John Jumper, a former chief of staff, told Congress earlier this year. Once the Air Force committed in the mid-1990s to the RQ-1 Predator, there were challenges.

“Introduction into the Air Force was not easy,” Jumper said.

But the service remained committed, and so did the aerospace pioneers at General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc., builder of the aircraft. Together they forged a partnership that went on to change warfare forever.

Initially, Air Force leaders focused on enhanced reconnaissance: With no human crew on board, the Predator could stay on station, orbiting areas of interest for many hours longer than conventional combat aircraft.

Commanders quickly warmed to the quantity and quality of real-time situational awareness these unmanned systems produced, more than had ever before been possible. During the air war over Kosovo in 1999, for example, officers were able to watch a Yugoslav target before, during, and after it was struck by munitions dropped from a B-52, as Air Force Magazine described. Commanders could conduct immediate bomb damage assessments from their op center.

Soon the issues shifted to new questions: How best to use a Predator’s view of a target to cue a strike aircraft quickly; how to operate the aircraft at greater distances via satellite; how to upgrade what the aircraft could do itself with its own sensors and—maybe someday—even its own weapons.

Those problems were solved.

“We were done crawling. We were walking, and we were getting ready to run,” says Dave Alexander, president of GA-ASI, who as a company aerospace engineer at the time was a central part of the process. “We knew then how much more this platform could deliver and we stayed focused in supporting the Air Force in getting it there.”

That phase of the story has passed into lore along with the names of leaders like Jumper; his predecessor as Chief of Staff Gen. Michael Ryan; retired Col. James “Snake” Clark, who later headed intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance innovations as a civilian—and the team at Air Force Materiel Command’s Big Safari office, led by William Grimes. Once they and other Air Force leaders saw the Predator in action in the Balkans, they knew what unmanned systems could do in future applications.

Teeth of the Predator

The Air Force, GA-ASI and its partners began addressing the needs: the Predator got better sensors and a laser designator so that it could spotlight targets for armed aircraft to strike with precision-guided munitions. Then it got weapons of its own: a pair of AGM-114 Hellfire anti-tank missiles. All that work was well underway by Sept. 11, 2001, when the use case for armed UAS stopped being theoretical.

Suddenly American officials needed more, ever more, sustained, high-quality intelligence about activities on the ground in Afghanistan, which sheltered the al Qaeda conspirators of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. And U.S. counterterrorism strategy began to rely heavily on the ability to find, pursue, and eliminate individual terrorists or small groups, knitting together all sources of intelligence available and then relying on the Predator to conclude the operation.

The aircraft, the Air Force and other U.S. government teams that operated it had their rendezvous with destiny. The Predator changed the battlefield in Afghanistan, and later Iraq and elsewhere. It became an icon, nominated as the one of the top 10 aircraft that changed the world. One important early aircraft hangs in the National Air and Space Museum and another Predator is on display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force.

Before long, GA-ASI and the Air Force both recognized that the success of the Predator also revealed its limits. So even as GA-ASI workers were proving out and perfecting the Predator’s capabilities, they also developed a larger, more capable successor: the MQ-9A Reaper.

Enter the Reaper

Nine feet longer than the Predator and with a wingspan 11 feet greater, the Reaper’s take-off weight is 12,000 pounds, more than 4.5 times that of the earlier aircraft. Along with that, its speed, altitude, endurance, and payload are likewise greater, and its a Honeywell-built turboprop engine gives it the voice and power of a modern aircraft.

“Reaper defined what medium-altitude, long-endurance ISR could be, based on what the Air Force and the joint force needed,” Alexander says. “It still does, and it will for a long time.”

Aircraft followed for other services – including the U.S. Army’s Predator cousin, the MQ-1C Gray Eagle. Friendly nations followed the trend, including the United Kingdom, France, Italy and more. The mission envelope, which began as tactical ISR, expanded into border security, humanitarian assistance, disaster response, customs enforcement, infrastructure security, wildlife monitoring and beyond.

Hardware, software and other innovations only have grown as well, company officials say. In partnership with the Air Force, GA-ASI is redrafting the very same UAS handbook they wrote together with new practices that will transform military operations and air dominance again.

The Future Force

One example is with artificial intelligence and autonomy, and a new generation of aircraft that will do much of their work on their own, without constant, real-time attention by human pilots.

“We won’t need stick-and-throttle flying anymore unless we want it, and we won’t need to have human eyeballs watching the sensor feed every minute,” says Patrick Shortsleeve, a retired Air Force colonel who served as a director of intelligence at NATO and director of ISR operations for coalition forces in Afghanistan. Shortsleeve now works as GA-ASI’s vice president for DoD strategic development.

“You’ll push a button,” he says, “the airplane will take off and fly its mission, and if it sees something interesting it’ll tap you on the shoulder and say, ‘Hey, take a look at this.’”

Shortsleeve refers to this as a form of “supervised autonomy” – humans in command, but at a layer above unmanned systems working independently or collectively to perform ISR or support other operations. The aircraft could sortie in autonomous-only flights or team with crewed aircraft. In addition to ISR roles, future uncrewed systems might be the lead element in a fighter sweep, or defend tankers, early warning platforms, or larger surveillance aircraft.

Autonomy promises to reduce personnel costs and eliminate dependence on datalinks that adversaries try to jam and hack. With resilient new networks and other novel capabilities, the aircraft can fly, work, and burst-communicate only when needed.

GA-ASI‘s combat-proven, jet-powered MQ-20A Avenger UAS regularly notches new milestones in integrated autonomous operations when flying in support of Air Force exercises at Nellis AFB, Nev. The Air Force Life Cycle Management Center (AFLCMC) is supporting the Skyborg Vanguard Program, and new, bigger, more sophisticated unmanned jets are in the works, promising more endurance, higher-quality ISR, and increased lethality.

The partnership between the Air Force and GA-ASI will continue to make history, Alexander vows.

“Supporting the women and men of the U.S. Air Force is our honor,” he says. “And we’re just getting started.”

-ISR/24/7/365-

Romania Is a Model for Training Ukraine’s Pilots to Fly F-16s

Aug. 28, 2022 | By Abraham Mahshie

The Ukrainian Air Force has withstood six months of war against a much larger and more sophisticated Russian force, but U.S. lawmakers worry Russia could gain air superiority as the war grinds on unless Ukrainian pilots are equipped and trained to fly modern Western aircraft, such as the F-16.

Romania, a NATO member, offers a case study for how that could go. Its air force is completing a transition from Soviet-era MiG-21s to U.S.-built F-16s, providing a model for training pilots for the switch, according to U.S. Airmen involved with the training. The U.S. Air Force’s Air Education and Training Command even has a course for partner and ally nation pilots that could be tailored for Ukraine.

At Morris Air National Guard Base, Ariz., Eastern European pilots from Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, and Slovakia have been taking the six-month ANG International Initial Qualification Course (Advanced) for more than two decades. In fact, today’s young Romanian pilots have never flown MiGs, which are being phased out of Romania’s Air Force as it seeks to expand its fleet of F-16s and eventually to buy F-35s.

The United States and some 50 international partners are already helping Ukraine to modernize its military force with Western, NATO-standard weaponry. But while Ukraine has repeatedly asked for Western fixed-wing fighter aircraft, that request has thus far gone unheeded.

U.S. lawmakers, including Air Force veteran Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.) have called for the Defense Department to begin training Ukrainian pilots on the F-16s, anticipating that airplanes will eventually be offered. A bill now stalled in Congress would provide $100 million for the training.

Col. Brant A. Putnam, vice commander of the 162nd Wing at Morris, has seen generations of Eastern European fighter pilots such as those from Romania graduate from U.S. training programs, and he believes Ukrainians would excel in the program.

“Based on what I’ve heard, I think that they’d fit right in with what we do here,” he told Air Force Magazine in a July interview.

After two decades of this kind of training, the students from former Warsaw Pact countries such as Poland and Romania have changed. “These young guys … haven’t flown any Russian airplanes,” said Putnam. “Typically, their English is better, and we run them through to the basic course, and they are, for all intents and purposes, just like the U.S. guys who train alongside them.”

Making the transition from Russian to Western aircraft, however, requires a mind shift. “It’s not easy,” he said. “It depends a lot on how long they’ve been trained in the MiGs, because a lot of what comes along with their training is their mindset,” he said. “They’re into the Soviet system that goes along with those aircraft, which is typically a lot of close control. They don’t make a lot of decisions. They’re not used to being super flexible.”

But in the U.S. Air Force program, pilots must learn to be decision makers. “They can’t sit up in the airplane and just drive and wait to be told what to do,” Putnam said. “They have to actively direct their aircraft and think about what it is they’re trying to accomplish.”

Pilots’ Experience

Romanian Air Force pilot Capt. Alexandru Beraczko, 28, is one of two Romanians now in basic combat flight training in Arizona. He previously participated in U.S. Air Force programs at Lackland and Randolph Air Force Bases, Texas, Columbus Air Force Base, Miss., and Vance Air Force Base, Okla.

“I’ve been trained in the mindset to fly the MiG-21 before,” said Beraczko of his Romanian Alpha Jet training, which has the same avionics as the MiG-21. He’s also familiar with the MiG-29 flown by Ukraine.

“Getting [to] the F-16 from the MiG-29—it’s a way different airframe,” Beraczko told Air Force Magazine by phone from Tucson. “The heads-up display, even the missiles they are running, they have different cool times, different intelligence. Bear in mind they need to apply different tactics. Air tactics are different.”

Romania joined the NATO Partnership for Peace in 1994 shortly after independence and became a full NATO member 10 years later. Each step was a shift to the Western way of warfare.

From trained pilots and maintainers to required infrastructure to a boneyard of spare aircraft, Romania has been working on its transition to the F-16 for nearly a decade.

“Even we struggle at this point, and we started enhancing and getting the F-16 like seven or eight years ago, and we’re still not yet there,” Beraczko said. “We are so close; we are wanting and willing to be there as personnel, as maintenance, as even a force.”

A U.S. Air Force spokesperson said foreign countries seeking to train fighter pilots in the United States would typically begin with a few weeks in the T-6 trainer aircraft before spending a few months flying the faster T-38. Once the training is complete, the pilot can enroll in the basic course for combat pilots.

The majority of the course uses the F-16C model, since most pilots will be flying single-seat aircraft when they return home.

Graduating students reach a wingman level and are expected to continue flying with close supervision for 500 hours.

“It still takes what it takes to create an experienced pilot who can go out and employ aircraft, make tactical decisions, and survive,” Putnam said. Graduates, he said, “will be combat ready, in a sense. [But] they will not have the experience to make tactical decisions in the scenarios that they might see.”

In Tucson, Putnam said AETC has created tailored courses to meet the needs of specific countries.

Congress Backs Training Ukrainian Pilots

In June, Rep. Houlahan and fellow Air Force veteran Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) introduced legislation to finance the training of the Ukrainian fighter pilots on the types of American aircraft that could be given to Ukraine.

Support for the bill has not waned, Houlahan told Air Force Magazine, but the administration has refrained from taking a decisive first step on a path that could take many months or years.

“Russia could turn the tide of the war at any moment, which means time is one of our most valuable assets and we must use it wisely to ensure the people of Ukraine are victorious,” she said.

In an Aug. 24 Pentagon press briefing, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Colin H. Kahl said Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III has directed a team from his office, the Joint Staff, and U.S. European Command to work with Ukraine to help design a future Ukrainian Air Force, but he expressed reservations that such a force can be assembled in the short-term.

Still, Houlahan and other lawmakers believe defense officials need to be having conversations about pilot training now.

“I’m frustrated by the lack of progress here on seriously considering this viable option,” she said.