Chiefs, Part 1: Discordant Visionary

Aug. 26, 2022 | By Tobias Naegele

In its 75-year history, 22 Airmen have led the Air Force as Chief of Staff. Each came to the post shaped by the experiences—and sometimes scar tissue—developed over three decades of service. Each inherited an Air Force formed by the decisions of those who came before, who bequeathed to posterity the results of decisions and compromises made over the course of their time in office. Each left his own unique stamp on the institution. As part of Air Force Magazine’s commemoration of the Air Force’s 75th anniversary, Sept. 18, 2022, we set out to interview all of the living former Chiefs of Staff, ultimately interviewing Chiefs from 1990 to the present. In this first in the series, we share the story of the first of those Chiefs: No. 14 Gen. Merrill A. McPeak (1990-1994). This period begins the pinnacle of American air power, the planning and execution of 1991’s Operation Desert Storm, in which the fruits of a decade of modernization were put on display to devastating effect: This was the first time the world saw how stealth could evade enemy air defenses and how the dream of precision bombing that motivated the Bomber Mafia in the interwar period leading up to World War II was actualized five decades hence.

Gen. Merrill A. McPeak, CSAF No. 14 (1990-’94)

Every Chief is unique, shaped by his time and the world as he rose through the ranks and the events and personalities defining the national security landscape when he takes office. To these circumstances each Chief adds his unique personality, style, and attributes.

When Gen. Merrill “Tony” McPeak arrived as Chief in October 1990, Iraq had, only months before, invaded and occupied Kuwait. The United States was assembling an enormous coalition against Iraq, and the Air Force would soon demonstrate a new era of American air power: Stealth aircraft that could evade enemy detection; precision weapons that could strike with pinpoint accuracy; and dominance like no air force had ever demonstrated before.

Yet McPeak’s job was not to fight that war, but to organize, train, and equip the Air Force for what would follow. By the time he became Chief, the Cold War that had defined his entire adult life was over. Born in 1936 in the midst of the Great Depression, McPeak had reached adulthood in the immediate aftermath of World War II. The Soviet Union was suddenly no longer America’s archrival. In fact, the Soviet Union no longer existed.

“Desert Storm began a couple of months after my swearing in,” McPeak recalled in July. We’re on a video call and he’s in workout gear from his home in Oregon. A photo taken in the Oval Office in December 1990 of the Joint Chiefs meeting with President George H.W. Bush and Defense Secretary Dick Cheney rests on the credenza behind him. McPeak wears a beard, and sounds very much like he did as Chief, still ramrod straight, still intense, still able to laugh at and with himself. “You would think that I spent a lot of time worrying about how to support [Gen.] Chuck Horner out in the sandbox, and I did. But I was also talking to the Secretary [of the Air Force] from Day One about how we were going to reorganize the Air Force. … [Secretary] Don Rice and I had agreed before the end of January ’91 on how we wanted to reconfigure the Air Force.”

The Air Force had 535,233 Airmen on Active duty when McPeak came to Washington. It had 426,327 when he left four years later. The drawdown was a dramatic reworking of a force that had been locked in a strategic competition for more than four decades and was anticipating President Bush’s “New World Order,” a unipolar world in which the U.S. was the sole superpower remaining. McPeak thought the entire military was ready to be reset at a much smaller scale than what the nation had been used to.

“My idea was to simplify the structure of the Air Force,” McPeak recalls. “Complexity is the enemy of success in combat. You’ve got to keep it simple. And that starts with a simple organization.” As Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Army Gen. Colin Powell had already developed the “Base Force,” defining the scale of the coming drawdown. The aim was to avoid creating a hollow force that would retain structure devoid of capacity, but instead outline a force that could fight two wars on the scale of Operation Desert Storm simultaneously.

McPeak did away with Strategic Air Command, Tactical Air Command, and Military Airlift Command. Instead of three of these Major Commands, the Air Force would have two: Air Combat Command and Air Mobility Command. The change in acronyms was intended to help drive home the changes, which were driven by the notion that the distinction between tactical and strategic forces was anachronistic.

“I think how we organize to fight is the most important thing a leader can do,” McPeak says. “Then of course you’ve got to turn them loose to fight. And if they’re well trained, they’ll do well. But first, it’s how you organize to go to battle. That had been very important in my thinking for a long time, certainly before I became Chief. … And remember: the way you organize something is, first, you organize it, and then, second, you’re reorganizing.”

Gen. Merrill McPeak. **USAF via National Archives**.

First moves aren’t always right, and McPeak is quick to own his mistakes (at least where he sees decisions as wrong). “I put the ICBM force into Combat Command—that was a mistake,” he says. He changed his mind, altering people’s lives in the process, and moved it to Space Command. Later, it would be moved again, combined with bombers into Air Force Global Strike Command. McPeak was passionate about getting organization right, and achieving a viable structure that made logical sense. “When, I took over the Air Force it had 200 things called ‘wings,’” he says. “When I left, we had 100 things called wings. They were real wings.”

Organizational upheaval created turmoil. “Any organization that wants to stay at a high level of performance is in virtual reorganization all the time,” McPeak says. For example, there were two wings at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., south of Washington, D.C., and when asked why, McPeak was told it was too much for one colonel to manage. “I said, ’Well, let’s make it a one-star and put the whole wing under him and get rid of a headquarters and a staff car and a secretary.’ Man, if one person can’t run Andrews then what am I doing trying to run the whole Air Force?”

McPeak’s structural remaking of the force was, he recalls, about one-third drawdown and Base Force, “but two-thirds of it was closing superfluous wings.”

Cutting the force was an opportunity, if it meant the service could be more efficient. But getting the message across was difficult. McPeak saw the Base Force not as an objective floor below which the Air Force and other services would not go, but as a ceiling: the biggest it could possibly be when the cutting was finally done. That proved prescient. Service budgets that peaked before the end of President Reagan’s eight years in office continued to decline through most of the 1990s. At the same time, demand for Air Force operations remained constant. While the services returned to a massive homecoming celebration in Washington, D.C., in 1991, the Air Force found itself adapting to a new way of life, rotating forces and aircraft through the Middle East to enforce no-fly zones in the south and north of Iraq, protecting Iraqis from their own military.

None of that was clear when McPeak was still in charge. He was remaking the Air Force in his own image, and he was a different kind of Airman. He remains today a different sort of former Chief, still marching to the beat of his own drummer, still intimately familiar with the Air Force but from a greater level of remove than other former Chiefs. He is a Chief who sweated details others would ignore. He had the Air Force Band create a string quartet to play chamber music because he felt the Strolling Strings were outsized for his quarters at the Air House. He took part personally in the auditions.

He introduced a new uniform. If there’s anything most Chiefs won’t do, it’s work on uniforms. Everyone has an opinion, and everyone is an expert. The uniform McPeak introduced was derided both for being cut for McPeak’s wiry physique and for looking too much like a commercial airline pilot’s uniform. Yet while the decorations on that uniform would change, the basic suit remains the same.

“No guts, no glory,” he says of Chiefs who shy away from uniform controversy. “If you don’t want to take on big challenges, then you shouldn’t be in the Chief’s office. [The uniform] didn’t take up much of my time. It was easy. And by the way, that uniform is being worn today. That’s my uniform, except it’s been glitzed up. … My idea that simplicity is what works in combat? Well, it also works in uniforms. The blue suit with three Arnold patch buttons on the front is …. the uniform I helped to redesign.”

Others knocked McPeak as symbolizing the “fighter mafia” and favoring combat aviators. A former Thunderbird, McPeak had flown more than 200 sorties in Vietnam and 199 as a Thunderbird, surviving the team’s first-ever crash in front of a public audience when the wings of his F-100 sheared off on a maneuver in Del Rio, Texas, in October 1967. Pulling his jet heavenward at 6.5 Gs, he heard a loud bang as the wings came off, releasing fuel that turned into a fireball. That he survived the accident is a testament as much to skill as luck.

McPeak questions the fairness of the fighter mafia label. “I made Billy Boles a four star and sent him to run Training and Education Command. Not only was he not a fighter pilot, he wasn’t any kind of pilot. He wasn’t a navigator. He had a slick uniform right here where here you put your wings. First guy ever sent to Air Education and Training Command who was nonrated. I sent up to the Air Force Academy Paul Stein. First Air Force Academy Superintendent who was not a rated officer, not a pilot. I brought in a guy to be Vice Chief who was a space guy, he wasn’t a pilot. But he was a warrior. Billy Boles was a warrior. Paul Stein—go find me a warrior better than Paul Stein. I wasn’t so much interested in who’s a fighter pilot as I was in who’s a warrior. Turns out a lot of fighter pilots are in that category. Thank goodness!”

McPeak was no dictator when it came to selling his vision of the force. “I spent about one-third of my time in front of audiences, working on consensus,” he recalls. “No organization that I know of goes anywhere based on what Mussolini tells them to do. We all operate on consensus. And that’s true in the military. I never thought I could just come in and turn on the light switch and expect everybody to have all the lamps in the building go on. So I worked hard to build consensus, [but] I was only about 51 percent successful. Change is hard to do. It’s hard to lead.”

The reason it was so hard, he says, is that he wanted to do more than incremental change. “Look, you know how to create the best dictionary in the world?” he asks, pausing for effect. “Start with the existing best dictionary and then fix one mistake, one word. That’s what some people have as an idea of leadership. But that wasn’t my idea. I wanted to start building a new dictionary. That’s pretty ambitious.”

That would not work if every Chief wanted to do that, he acknowledges. “We can’t have an Air Force that every four years gets turned on its head and shaken hard. But every once in a while, it’s not a bad idea.”

McPeak blew up thousands of pages of regulations, calling in his functional Chiefs and asking them to boil down those regulations to four or five pages, double-spaced. He recalls it took multiple iterations to boil these down to their essence. “The idea was we should have instructions that say what is important to us. And if 100 things are important, it’s like saying nothing’s important.”

By going to the functional Chiefs—“the head cop, the head chaplain, the surgeon general”—McPeak sought to build consensus around a singular idea: “What is it that we’re in business to do here? What is the Air Force all about? With the central idea being that it’s about excellence,” he says. That vision is too often lost, he said, in other pursuits. “I hear way too much today about diversity. It is not the mission of the Air Force to solve society’s diversity problems. I’m not against diversity, but I am for winning in aerial combat. That comes first.”

When McPeak took office he had a four-by-six card in his desk on which he had written five simple, declarative sentences, five things he wanted to accomplish in that office. “Every day I was inundated by other things that other people wanted me to do,” he said. “People would come in and say, “Hey, boss, I’ve got a horrible problem. You’ve got to help me. I’d listen to them and say, go fix it. Come back and tell me how you fixed it. Then I’d open that top drawer and look at the little card to tell me about the things I wanted to do. …. Never got them done, by the way. Never accomplished those five things.”

What were they? McPeak won’t say. “Because I failed,” he says. “I’m not in the confession mode here, and you’re not my priest. I’m not willing to admit the depth and breadth of my failure.” But was it failure to be ambitious, to strive for things that remained out of reach? For an 85-year-old former Chief, the frustration is not that, but the reality of the constraints of time, which, like the constraints of gravity, limit most people to live life inside the lines. McPeak spent his life trying to break free of those constraints.

“You only have four years,” he continues. “To do the things that I had in mind would have required eight or maybe 10 years. Therefore I was too ambitious. You have to decide what mistakes you want to make in life. You don’t ever get it right. So the mistake I want to make is to be too much of X and too little of Y. … My five things were things I couldn’t get done in four years. And, so part of my problem as Chief was I tried to get them done in four years.”

Nuclear Advances by China Raise Questions on Command and Control, Structure

Aug. 25, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

Pentagon and Air Force officials have repeatedly warned in recent months that China is making rapid progress in building up its arsenal of nuclear weapons. But as that growth continues, key questions are still unanswered about how the Chinese will structure their strategic forces, according to a new report.

The China Aerospace Studies Institute (CASI) at Air University issued the third edition of its PLA Aerospace Power Primer on Aug. 19, three years after its previous update. And in that time, the People’s Liberation Army’s nuclear capabilities have changed dramatically.

Then-commander of Air Force Global Strike Command Gen. Timothy M. Ray called the growth “breathtaking.” U.S. Strategic Command boss Adm. Charles “Chas” A. Richard termed it a “strategic breakout.” And the Pentagon had to revise its estimates of how many nuclear warheads the Chinese will possess by the end of the decade.

The People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force, which controls China’s nuclear and conventional missiles, “has evolved from a small, unsophisticated force of short-ranged and vulnerable ballistic missiles to an increasingly large, modern, and formidable force with a wide array of both nuclear and conventional weapons platforms,” notes the new CASI primer.

But while much has been made about the increase in silos and warheads, the grand totals still lag far behind the U.S. and Russia, noted Dr. Brendan S. Mulvaney, director of CASI and one of the primer’s authors. China’s new nuclear triad, however, deserves more attention, he said.

“You can say, ‘Oh, my God, they’re tripling their force. It’s a 300 percent increase,’ which is absolutely true,” Mulvaney told Air Force Magazine. “But it’s always been in the Rocket Force, so as you create a submarine force and an air force that are now nuclear capable, of course you’re going to have to increase the number of warheads.

“… But it is very telling that they’re spending that much time and effort in the nuclear forces, and diversifying, right? That’s the part that really makes people, or should make people, pay some attention to that.”

In particular, the beginning stages of China’s nuclear triad raise all sorts of questions for the PLA Air Force and Navy, the report suggests, as neither branch has dealt much with nuclear weapons.

“The open question, which China doesn’t talk much about, is as you build a triad, what are the roles and capabilities that you’re going to have in the air arm?” Mulvaney said. “Because for them, the PLARF have all the ICBMs, right. So traditionally, the PLARF has had control over essentially all the weapons in China for these last couple of decades, for a long time. And so as that changes, what role does the air force … play?”

For now, the report states, the “current role of the PLAAF … is nascent at best due to technical limitations and the relatively small size of its nuclear capable bomber fleet.”

But that may change in the future, particularly if the PLAAF develops its own nuclear command and control procedures and infrastructure, separate from the PLARF, Mulvaney said.

The Chinese could “simply cordon off within the air force and within the navy the nuclear [weapons]-capable portions … and have them create their own direct links, like the PLARF has, but just duplicating one for each service,” Mulvaney said. “So that’s possible, and all that would feed up to the Joint Operations Command Center for the Central Military Commision.”

Such an arrangement would create redundancy and flexibility but might also raise the possibility of poor communication and misunderstandings.

Alternatively, “it’s conceivable that they would come up with something akin to our Strategic Command, in which case, they would start to lump all the nuclear weapons or the nuclear release authorities,” Mulvaney said.

Such an arrangement wouldn’t be perfectly analogous to STRATCOM—“they’re organized differently, their command and control is different, so it’s not a one-to-one ratio,” Mulvaney said—but it would fit with a broader trend he noted in how the Chinese have reformed their military over time.

“Because China doesn’t have any real-world experience, they do a lot of studying other militaries, specifically the United States and our allies and partners,” Mulvaney said. “ … A lot of the changes that they made in 2015 and 2016 were basically to craft a new model kind of like the United States.”

While those questions remain unanswered, Mulvaney said the goal of the primer is to give personnel across the Air Force a basic understanding of China’s military aerospace capabilities, in line with Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr.’s Action Order C, which pushes for Airmen “to understand their role in the long-term strategic competitions between the U.S., Russia, and China.”

A digital copy of the primer is available online, and hard copies will be distributed at the U.S. Air Force Academy, Air Command and Staff College, and Air War College, Mulvaney said.

DOD Denies Escalation With Iran-Backed Militants After Volley of Attacks

Aug. 25, 2022 | By Abraham Mahshie

The Pentagon said Aug. 25 that a battle with Iran-affiliated militants in northeastern Syria was over and that U.S. Central Command had taken measures to avoid escalation.

One U.S. service member was treated for a minor injury and returned to duty, and two others were under evaluation for minor injuries after a coordinated attack Aug. 24 in which several rockets landed inside the perimeter of Mission Support Site Conoco and in the vicinity of Mission Support Site Green Village, both in northeastern Syria.

U.S. Central Command reported Aug. 25 that it retaliated against that latest attack with AH-64 Apache attack helicopters, AC-130 gunships, and M777 artillery, killing four militants and destroying rocket launchers.

The exchange of attacks began when militants attempted to attack U.S. facilities in Syria on Aug. 15 with unmanned aerial vehicles possibly supplied by Iran.

The United States responded Aug. 23 when four F-15Es and four F-16s launched from bases in the region to fire at nine militant bunkers, avoiding militant casualties. Two additional strikes were removed from the target list when human movement was detected.

DOD denied that it had waited nearly 10 days to respond to the attack while the United States and Iran hashed out final details for Iran to rejoin the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), better known as the Iran nuclear deal. Instead, some 400 hours of intelligence was collected at the target sites.

“Separate from the JCPOA, we will defend our people no matter where they’re attacked or when they’re attacked,” said DOD Press Secretary Air Force Brig. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder.

“The two really are not interrelated in that regard,” Ryder said. “Our forces were threatened. We took appropriate and proportionate response and will do so anywhere and anytime that we receive that threat.”

The battle with Iranian-backed and supplied forces came as the United States and Iran are close to bringing Iran back into compliance with the JCPOA and lifting U.S. sanctions that were reimposed when President Donald J. Trump withdrew from the deal in 2018. The JCPOA is intended to limit Iran’s ability to produce a nuclear weapon. Since breaking away from the agreement, Iran has enriched uranium to levels consistent with the construction of a nuclear weapon.

Ryder declined to discuss the operational planning that led to the delay that occurred while JCPOA negotiations were ongoing. Ryder said Air Force intelligence, surveillance, and radar assets helped assure no militants were killed as a result of those American strikes.

“In terms of our objectives and the message we were trying to send, which was a proportional response to the [UAV] attacks against U.S. forces, none of our forces were killed,” Ryder said in response to a question from Air Force Magazine.

Ryder also drew a distinction between the decision not to target militants and the Pentagon’s Aug. 25 release of its Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan, a wide-ranging effort to reform military doctrine and operational planning to mitigate civilian casualties.

“In this context, no, I wouldn’t conflate the two,” Ryder said. “This was a concerted decision not to strike individuals, suspected militants, because, again, we were aiming to do a proportional strike.”

UAVs Traced to Tehran

Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Colin H. Kahl said at an Aug. 24 Pentagon briefing that UAV pieces collected at the Aug. 15 attack sites were “traced directly back to Tehran.”

“We don’t want Iran to draw the wrong conclusion that they can continue just doing this and get away with it,” Kahl said at the briefing. “Our concern was that this might be an indication that Iran intends to do more of this, and we wanted to disabuse them of any sense that that was a good idea.”

The DOD policy chief said the United States has communicated through multiple channels with Iran against supporting the militants.

After the Aug. 24 rocket attacks and deadly retaliation by the U.S., Army Gen. Michael E. Kurilla, commander of U.S. Central Command, said the U.S. “will respond appropriately and proportionally to attacks on our servicemembers,” according to a press release. “No group will strike at our troops with impunity. We will take all necessary measures to defend our people.”

Ryder said the aerial response did not indicate that the battle with Iranian-backed forces was heating up.

“That does not necessarily indicate that things are escalating,” he said. “We maintain a variety of platforms in the region to provide whatever types of support we may need, and, of course, the AC-130 gunship is one of those capabilities.”

National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said at an Aug. 24 press briefing that Iran has made concessions and that a deal to bring Iran back into compliance with the JCPOA is close.

“We are closer now than we were just even a couple of weeks ago because Iran made the decision to make some concessions,” Kirby said. “So that’s a positive step forward, but I would add very quickly … gaps remain. We’re not there.”

Drawing a distinction between the ongoing JCPOA negotiations, Ryder said the message of deterrence was conveyed in Syria.

“In terms of the strikes in Syria, again what I would say was our focus was on sending a message loud and clear to these Iran-backed militants in terms of what is not acceptable behavior, and that’s targeting U.S. forces,” he said.

B-2 Crew Successfully Tested Long-Range Cruise Missile, Northrop Grumman Says

Aug. 25, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

A B-2 bomber successfully released a long-range cruise missile during a weapons test in December 2021, contractor Northrop Grumman revealed Aug. 25, potentially giving the stealth bomber the ability to strike even deeper into contested areas.

The Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile-Extended Range, or JASSM-ER, has a range of more than 500 miles and has been integrated onto the B-1B and B-52 bombers and F-15E and F-16 fighters, according to Pentagon budget documents.

The December test on the B-2, however, marks the first publicly known instance of the Air Force testing the JASSM-ER on a stealth aircraft—there are plans to integrate the missile onto the F-35A as well.

The B-2 has already completed testing with the missile’s shorter-range variant, the JASSM.

“The JASSM-ER further enhances the B-2’s ability to hit any target, anywhere,” Northrop Grumman’s press release states. “The integration of JASSM-ER enables the delivery of a low observable asset capable of traveling greater distances than its predecessor.”

The baseline version of JASSM has a range of roughly 200 miles. Not only can JASSM-ER fly more than twice that far, future versions will allow it to re-target midflight.

Northrop Grumman provided no other details as to where the test occurred or why it took so long to publicly announce it, and the Air Force did not immediately respond to queries from Air Force Magazine.

The successful JASSM-ER test was just one of three modernization efforts Northrop Grumman announced. The contractor also said it has integrated the new Radar Aided Targeting System onto the bomber.

The Air Force had previously announced a successful test of the system, which improves weapon guidance accuracy in a GPS-denied environment, in July. Northrop Grumman noted that the system allows the B-2 to fully use the B61 Mod 12, the latest version of the thermonuclear bomb.

Northrop Grumman also announced that it has installed modern cryptology on the B-2, giving the bomber more secure communications at “various high frequency transmissions.” The new cryptology was tested “earlier this year” in a flight from the contractor’s Oklahoma City facility.

How an Enterprise Approach Solves USAF’s Training Needs

Aug. 25, 2022 | By Scott King

Since 1999, the USAF has developed and evolved the most advanced and prolific high fidelity distributed training capability for aircrews (or “the warfighter”). USAF leadership is urging us all to “accelerate the transition from the force we have to the force required for a future high-end fight.” This will require rethinking our training approach as we look to integrate 5^th Gen platforms and merge test and training approaches.

In partnership with the Navy, HII developed and enhanced the resulting Navy Continuous Training Environment (NCTE) which was built on open standards and nonproprietary software, reducing costs and clearing away concerns about vendor-lock-in.

HII has been leveraging these proven methodologies to answer emerging Air Force training requirements on our growing USAF portfolio and range programs to prepare warfighters for joint all-domain operations.

Live, virtual, and constructive training allows warfighters to train as they fight in a distributed environment. Here’s how.

“The NCTE architecture integrates tools, standards, and a collaborative workforce to [create] a simulation network that enables the warfighter to train as they fight in a distributed environment,” said John Bell, technical director at HII’s Mission Technologies LVC Solutions Group. “It’s fully scalable, so we can train at every level, from single ships and small groups of aircraft to carrier strike groups with air wings and combatant commands. We bring live, virtual, and constructive simulation training systems together into a single integrated organization.”

Airmen might hear such a statement and imagine that ships and aircraft carriers aren’t their problem, but Bell says when it comes to simulation, it’s all computers and software. In the digital realm, the difference between a ship and a fighter jet is just ones and zeros. The cloud-enabled network hubs HII built for the Navy in Norfolk, San Diego, and Japan facilitate training in every domain, with every service, and even with coalition partners.

“Using our open standards approach, we can interoperate training systems in the same way that go-to-war systems operate. We can even connect to our coalition partners wherever their training systems are located,” Bell said.

That concept translates directly to Air Force requirements that aim to tie together the many different simulation and training systems owned and operated by Air Force major commands. Because HII’s enterprise approach is technology agnostic, it effectively bridges seemingly incompatible systems using multiple protocols. HII integrates systems by developing advanced Government-owned tools such as the Joint Simulation Bus (JBUS), which supports simulation and tactical protocols used by DoD training and tactical systems.

“JBUS is a gateway and protocol translation service,” Bell said. “It allows us to adapt different protocols, simulations and tactical systems to the same standards. The beauty of open standards is that everybody that implements to an open standard is capable of interoperating.”

Coding individual software solutions for every system would be prohibitive in cost and time. But with JBUS,” Bell said, “We allow these systems to connect to the NCTE easily so they can start training today.”

That kind of universal interface is exactly what the Air Force seems to be looking for, Bell said.

“The U.S. Air Force has many training platforms that are each built by their own vendor, which means they are not initially built to interoperate,” said Bell, who has spent more than two decades working these issues. “Our approach is a vendor neutral open system standard that any vendor can adapt to by using common tools and processes, so they can easily plug their systems into this common architecture. This open standards enterprise approach is the way of the future.”

HII proved the concept in the Navy’s Fleet Synthetic Training-Aviation exercises.

“Fleet Synthetic Training is the Navy’s premier training program—it is equivalent to the Air Force’s Distributed Mission Operations Training Program,” Bell said. “We integrate high-fidelity tactical trainers for aviation into the NCTE within a scalable training architecture.”

NCTE can support small-scale operations like one or two pilots and planes conducting maneuver drills, or massive exercises in which multiple airwings and carrier strike groups train with joint and coalition partners.

“Integrating live training systems with those high-fidelity tactical trainers gives us a lot of insights into how a fully-blended LVC environment would work for the Air Force,” Bell said. “Fifth Generation fighters require a lot more sophistication of tactics and capability,” he said. “We’re looking at the different ways we can integrate high-fidelity simulations for the Joint Strike Fighter for testing and training in a common synthetic environment, using some of the lessons learned in developing the NCTE.”

HII has experience working with the Air National Guard’s Distributed Training Operations Center, having integrated that support nationwide. “The insight we get from conducting [ANG’s] location-wide training missions on a single network and their network connectivity and interoperability with other USAF DMO networks including DMON and MAF DMO, gives us a lot of insight into how Air Force Distributed Mission Operations works,” Bell said. “So we understand what the Air Force’s challenges are in running large training networks and how the techniques and approaches we’ve developed for the Navy can be applied to the Air Force’s training needs.”

That understanding includes a commitment to continuous modernization and advancement.

“We’re investigating how we can use Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to analyze training event data,” Bell said. The technology can help improve both after-action reporting and understanding, he added: “When were the targets detected? When did the bomb get dropped? How close was the bomb hit to the target? Why didn’t we detect the enemy at the appropriate range? From there, we can start comparing trends from one event to the next.”

HII is also using digital twin technology to help improve its digital models.

“For LVC training, digital twin technology allows us to build high-fidelity representations of weapon systems, which is critical because our modern weapons systems depend on communications with each other in a fused-sensor-centric environment. Injecting a digital twin into that environment allows us to train at a much higher degree of fidelity that we can do with traditional simulation technology today.”

HII, Bell said, is developing the training capabilities of the future today to better prepare warfighters to join the joint force fight.

“Joint all domain training capabilities are a major challenge for the Department of Defense today,” Bell said. But HII has been supporting joint training for years. “We built the Navy Continuous Training Environment alongside the government with the intent of supporting joint warfare,” he added. “Our enterprise approach, with its tools, open architecture, and standards, is very applicable to the Air Force for conducting their joint all domain training with the other services.”

Guard F-35 Unit Completes First Overseas Deployment to Europe

Aug. 25, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

After three months in Europe, Airmen from the Vermont Air National Guard and their F-35s returned home in early August, completing the first overseas deployment of the Guard’s first F-35 unit.

Eight F-35 fighters and more than 200 Airmen first deployed in late April and early May and operated out of Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany.

Their presence in the region was needed to relieve F-35s from the 34th Fighter Squadron at Hill Air Force Base, Utah, that had arrived in Europe in February in response to Russia’s increasing aggression toward Ukraine and NATO’s eastern flank.

“We’re here … because they needed us,” Lt. Col. John MacRae, commander of the 134th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron, said in a statement. “Hill was out here on their immediate response force, and they were at the end of their window, and we were available and ready to go.”

While in Europe, the Vermont ANG fighters flew more than 450 sorties and conducted missions and training over Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Bulgaria, and North Macedonia, among other countries, integrating with NATO allies as part of enhanced air policing and air shielding missions and practicing concepts such as agile combat employment.

The deployment came only a few months after the 158th Fighter Wing had been declared a fully operational F-35 unit.

The fighters and Airmen began returning to Vermont in early August, with their fifth-generation capabilities being succeeded by F-22s arriving in Europe from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska.

All in all, leaders termed the Guard’s first overseas deployment of F-35s a success.

“We volunteered to give up our summer in Vermont to generate and fly sorties to defend NATO’s Eastern Flank,” McRae said. “It was a rewarding three months and our small wing had a big strategic impact.”

Supply Chain, Workforce Worries Pose Risks to Modernization of Triad’s Sea Leg

Aug. 24, 2022 | By Amanda Miller

The Navy’s program executive officer for strategic submarines said his service’s leg of the nuclear triad is facing workforce and supply chain shortages like much of the rest of the defense industry.

Rear Adm. Scott W. Pappano spoke with the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies’ director of research retired Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem in a webinar Aug. 24.

Pappano is overseeing the procurement and sustainment of the Navy’s strategic submarines as the service transitions from Ohio-class to Columbia-class submarines at a time when the Navy will have ramped up shipbuilding fivefold in five years.

The upcoming Columbia class is “the biggest, and it’s the quietest and most capable nuclear submarine our nation will have ever produced,” Pappano said. “It’s really a fantastic machine. It brings the same stealth and survivability at a more advanced level than the Ohio brings.”

Disruptions to the manufacturing supply chain are “the biggest risk right now … on the ‘new’ side of the house” as well as “across a couple of different fronts,” Pappano said.

Likewise, attracting a skilled workforce continues to be a challenge, which Pappano attributed in part to the 1990s’ and 2000s’ emphasis on going to college over learning a trade.

“We need skilled trades feeding our industrial base right now,” Pappano said, arguing that the defense industrial base “is actually part of that integrated deterrence picture. … It ought to drive our ability to deter our peer adversaries.”

He hopes a whole-of-government effort to build regional training pipelines in “core concentration areas” will help to bolster the workforce and said a new additive manufacturing center of excellence will bring together experts from industry, academia, and national labs to try to “lower the barrier to entry” to making parts.

Nationally the U.S. needs to refocus on \skilled trades and engineering, Pappano said—“everything that we need to build back the manufacturing in the nation.”

Collaborative Combat Aircraft May Still Help Bombers, Experts Say

Aug. 24, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall has backed off the idea of an unmanned bomber to pair with the B-21 Raider—but there could still be value in building low-cost, less sophisticated drones to accompany the B-21.

That was the key takeaway from a recent three-day workshop conducted by the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies that gathered Air Force leaders, planners, and operators, along with industry partners, to study potential uses for what the Air Force is now calling “collaborative combat aircraft.”

In particular, the workshop focused on the long-range penetrating strike mission of the B-21—another session will be devoted to Next Generation Air Dominance later this year—and tasked three teams with designing unmanned aircraft to aid the bomber in strikes against an air base, a maritime threat, and a transporter erector launcher in a hypothetical conflict with China in 2030.

Adding an unmanned escort for the B-21 was one of seven operational imperatives Kendall introduced in late 2021, but this past July, he seemed to abandon the concept, telling Breaking Defense “the idea of a similar-range collaborative combat aircraft is not turning out to be cost-effective.”

But parsing out Kendall’s comments, there are still potential uses for shorter-range unmanned aircraft to work with the B-21, argued retired Col. Mark Gunzinger, the Mitchell Institute’s director of future concepts and capability assessments and one of the workshop leaders.

“Secretary Kendall did not impeach the idea of a long-range strike family of systems. The B-21 was designed from its outset as part of a family of systems that include unmanned systems, possibly some manned … weapons and sensors and so forth,” Gunzinger said. “So it really does need the rest of that family of systems to achieve the kind of long-range strike effects we need in highly contested threat environments.”

Indeed, while none of the teams in the workshop was prohibited from proposing a long-range escort, none did, said Caitlin Lee, senior fellow for the Mitchell Institute’s Center for Unmanned and Autonomous Systems and another workshop leader.

“Holding costs aside, the teams still preferred to build large numbers of UAVs with disaggregated capabilities,” Lee said. “And that was because they wanted mass, and there were a few different reasons for that.”

One of the key reasons was cost imposition—forcing an adversary to expend more rounds to take down separate platforms.

“If you can cause an enemy to run out of his best weapons, that increases your survivability, your effectiveness, attacking targets and doing other things significantly,” noted Gunzinger.

Other factors included increased complexity for adversaries and increased options for commanders, Lee and Gunzinger said.

Without the advantages of those large numbers of collaborative combat aircraft, or CCAs, several teams said they didn’t think a mission commander would order their mission to go forward because of the risk involved. Even when the workshop leaders imposed cost restrictions, two of the teams were willing to sacrifice capabilities on their unmanned aircraft to buy larger numbers, Lee said.

And while Kendall has described a vision of five or so CCAs to pair with a fighter like NGAD, the workshop teams envisioned numbers in the “10s or 20s,” Lee said, depending on the functions of the drones.

Functions such as counter-air and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance were particularly important for teams.

“ISR is a huge gap in a China fight, and it appears that UAVs may be able to at least partially close that gap,” Lee said. “Another [takeaway] was counter-air UAVs may be able to at least partially close that gap. And another one was that, particularly for penetrating strike missions over the mainland of China, fifth-generation fighters probably don’t have the range required to support those penetrating strike missions. And UAVs may be an option to provide that escort.”

But rather than trying to have that escort fly with the B-21 for the entire mission, workshop participants chose to have their drones be “untethered” from the bomber, taking off from closer in and capable of linking up with—and peeling off from—the manned platform.

“I think we need to open our minds a little bit to think about how the CCAs can be optimized to support the mission, but not necessarily mirror image what the manned aircraft is doing,” Lee said.

In order for such a concept to work, though, the CCAs will likely have to have a level of autonomy—and that was one of the workshop’s most crucial takeaways, Lee said.

“Autonomy is really the long pole in the tent,” Lee said. “Specifically, if you wanted mass, then that mass is just a random herd of cats if it’s not all coordinated and optimized toward a single mission.”

Because of that, workshop participants largely agreed that investing in autonomy and artificial intelligence should take priority, a finding Lee said was “fascinating” given that it came from “a group of engineers who are all about designing airplanes.”

“They stepped back from this, and operators who want new capabilities to build quickly, they all sort of stepped back and said, ‘As much as we want these CCAs on the flight line tomorrow, they won’t be much good if we don’t know how we’re going to control them and optimize them to achieve the specific mission we want them to do,’” Lee said.

Beyond the specific takeaways for long-range strike, Gunzinger said the workshop also demonstrated vital collaboration as the Air Force considers how it wants to proceed with unmanned systems.

“Something I was thrilled to see … is how thrilled our players were,” Gunzinger said. “The operators who came from across the different Air Force communities, including AFRL, with industry, different industry [partners], they all worked together, and they were just pleased as hell that ‘Hey, we never do this. We got war fighters and the planners and the guys who make these aircraft together, thinking about different attributes, doing tradeoffs and costing and so forth.’ There was real value in doing that.”

Biden Directs $2.98 Billion Ukraine Defense Package to Build Future Force

Aug. 24, 2022 | By Abraham Mahshie

President Joe Biden is making a bet on Ukraine’s ability to withstand war and deter Russia for years to come, announcing on Ukraine’s independence day, Aug. 24, a $2.98 billion defense package that builds out a future force with high-end air defenses, radar, and counter-unmanned aerial systems that may take years to deliver. A defense official also said combat jets “remain on the table” but are not part of the new package.

The largest defense assistance package yet relies on a lengthier contracting process that buys targeted new weapons for Ukraine instead of drawing down existing U.S. stocks. It also refrains from the longer-range weapons Ukraine seeks to reach Russian supply lines as they adjust to greater stand-off distances.

The Pentagon said the new package will include six additional National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS) with munitions to add to the two NASAMS promised by Biden in a July 1 announcement that have yet to be delivered.

The package also includes 24 counter-artillery radars; Puma unmanned aerial systems (UAS); support equipment for Scan Eagle UAS systems; the VAMPIRE counter-UAS that can shoot down UAS threats; laser-guided rocket systems; and hundreds of thousands of additional rounds of 155 mm artillery and 120 mm mortar ammunition. The package now pushes U.S. defense assistance to Ukraine to more than $13.5 billion since January 2021 and $15.5 billion since Russia invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea in 2014.

“Vladimir Putin has not given up on his overall strategic objectives of seizing most of Ukraine, toppling the regime, reclaiming Ukraine as part of a new Russian Empire,” Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Colin H. Kahl said at an Aug. 24 Pentagon briefing.

“What he has done is lengthened his timeline in recognition [that] he’s off plan,” he added. The new package is not for the current fight. “It’s not relevant to the fight today, tomorrow, next week. It is relevant to the ability of Ukraine to defend itself and to deter further aggression a year from now, two years from now.

The assistance package is expected to arrive to the battlefield within one to two years, demonstrating the bureaucratic hurdles that are required for the contracting and delivery process versus presidential drawdowns. The NASAMS Biden promised in July are expected to arrive in September.

Ukraine ‘Reassured’ as Air Raid Sirens Ring Out

A Ukrainian defense official told Air Force Magazine by phone from Kyiv that the defense package is welcome news but that assistance is needed urgently to defend territory and retake lost ground.

“Everybody is grateful, excited, and reassured—reassured that the military aid to Ukraine from the U.S. will continue,” said Yuriy Sak, adviser to Ukraine’s minister of defense. “It is equipping the Ukrainian army with the means that we need to, first of all, protect our land; and second of all, to begin planning the de-occupation counter-offensives.”

On Ukraine’s Independence day, Sak said air raid sirens rang all day in the capital, with Russian missile strikes detected at civilian targets across the country, including in the regions of Dnipro, Mykolaiv, Poltava, Kharkiv, and Zaporizhzhia.

“We are having too many air raid sirens today. I mean, they keep ringing out. There is one right now in Kyiv,” Sak said at approximately 7:45 p.m. local time Aug. 24. “It’s independence day, but everybody’s on high alert.”

In several areas, Ukrainian air defense systems were able to shoot down Russian missiles or drones, he said. The NASAMS, the same system used to defend Washington, D.C., would help protect civilian populations and vital military assets, once delivered.

Sak also said that while the new aid package helps Ukraine’s transformation to Western, NATO-standard weaponry, some key battlefield needs remain unanswered.

“We have reached the stage of this war where we need a longer firing range of these weapon systems,” he said, noting that High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) given by the United States include precision artillery Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (GMLRS) with a range of 80 km or about 50 miles.

“Even with this firing range, we were able to destroy the ammunition depots of our enemy, to destroy the so-called command and control systems of the enemy, but they are also learning from the battlefield experience,” he said.

Russia has begun to move its supply chains and logistical hubs beyond 80 km.

“Which means right now we need more sophisticated weaponry to be more efficient,” Sak said, describing a Ukrainian request for the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS), which can fire surface-to-surface missiles up to 300 km, or 190 miles.

“ATACM missiles are something that are very firmly on our wish list, and we will continue to speak to our partners, to the U.S., with a view to getting them,” he said.

Asked by Air Force Magazine why the Pentagon did not include ATACMS missiles in the package, Kahl said DOD had assessed that they were not needed.

“It’s our assessment that they don’t currently require ATACMS to service targets that are directly relevant to the current fight,” he said.

Kahl said DOD has provided hundreds of precision Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (GMLRS) for use with High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS).

“We consulted very closely with Ukrainians about the types of targets they need to prosecute inside Ukrainian territory,” he explained. “The vast majority of those targets were rangeable by HIMARS using GMLRS as opposed to the much-longer-range ATACMS.”

Kahl did not respond to a question about Russia moving back its forces beyond the reach of the HIMARS.

‘Fighter Aircraft Remain on the Table’

As to the lengthy timeframe for delivery of the new systems, Sak pointed to a $775 million presidential drawdown package Aug. 19 that includes additional high-precision HIMARS ammunition.

Sak also said the introduction of AGM-88 High Speed Anti Radiation missiles (HARM), which can be mounted on Ukrainian Air Force MiG 29s, has helped to suppress enemy air defenses.

“Well, they’ve been used very efficiently … to suppress their defense systems in those areas where the intense fighting is going on,” he said.

Sak, however, lamented that the U.S. government has yet to make the political decision to provide Western aircraft or pilot training to better contest advanced Russian fighters and bombers.

“We understand that the political decisions to provide Ukraine with combat aircraft is still in the making, and it’s not an easy one,” he said.

Kahl said DOD’s current aviation priority is assuring that Ukraine can use its Air Force effectively in the current conflict, such as adapting HARM missiles to fire from MiG-29s.

“Fighter aircraft remain on the table, just no final decisions have been made about that,” he said.

Kahl said as it relates to future aircraft, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III tasked his staff to work with the Joint Staff and U.S. European Command on a “future forces picture” for Ukraine’s force for the mid- to long term in consultation with Ukraine.

Kahl said that even if fourth-generation aircraft were promised now, they would not arrive for years, and it is unclear whether Ukraine would be able to sustain the force without international assistance.

Still, news of the new package is reverberating to other partner nations, Sak said. United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson, in Kyiv for Independence Day, announced a 54 million British pound, or $63.7 million, defense package to Ukraine.

“The U.S. is taking the lead in assisting the Ukraine militarily,” Sak said. “It kind of encourages other countries to as well come forward and follow suit and provide Ukraine with more military assistance.”