Watch, Read: ‘Manned-Unmanned Teaming: Myth and Reality’

Oct. 14, 2022

Heather Penney of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies moderated a discussion on “Manned-Unmanned Teaming: Myth and Reality” with Lt. Gen. S. Clinton Hinote, Air Force deputy chief of staff for strategy, integration, and requirements, Mike Benitez of Shield AI, Robert Winkler of Kratos, and Patrick Shortsleeve of General Atomics, Sept. 19, 2022, at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference. Watch the video or read the transcript below. This transcript is made possible through the sponsorship of JobsOhio.

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Lt. Gen. David Deptula (Ret.):

Well that’s good. That’s good. The audience is kind of silenced and we’ll wait for the last few stragglers to come in, and I’ll go ahead and introduce myself. I’m Dave Deptula, Dean of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies and we start this next panel with a very special presentation.

So first let me ask the representatives of the 178th Attack squadron to please come to the stage and surround this magnificent trophy here. Now the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Study is very pleased to announce that the recipient of the General Atomics Remotely Piloted Aircraft trophy of the year for 2021 is the Happy Hooligans of the 178th Attack Squadron. And you can clap again. The Hooligans are based at Fargo National Guard Base North Dakota. And to join me in presenting the award, I’d like to introduce Lt. Gen. Russ Mack, the Vice Commander of Air Combat Command, Maj. Gen. Vinny Mac McDonald, Commander Air National Guard Readiness Center, and Mr. Dave Alexander, President of General Atomics Aeronautic Systems. So Gen. Mack over to you.

Gen. Russ Mack:

Thank you Gen. Deptula. And sir, thank you for your leadership at the Mitchell Institute. This award is presented annually for outstanding performance by RPA squadrons in achieving intelligence, surveillance, and persistent attack and reconnaissance over the preceding calendar year. While I can tell you firsthand what it takes to organize, train, and equip this incredible enterprise, I know that our RPA community is in high demand, and our combatant commanders just can’t get enough of what they provide. So I wanted to say thank you to the Happy Hooligans of the 178th. They have exhibited exemplary performance this past year, and I’d like to offer a hardy well done by the Air Combat Command Commander Gen. Mark Kelly. Thank you.

Maj. Gen. Vinny Mack MacDonald:

In 2021, the 178th Attack Squadron continually stayed on the leading edge of MQ-9 war fighting excellence in innovation. The Happy Hooligans many accomplishments while protecting the American people, our homeland, and the American way of life distinctly identify them as US Air Force most outstanding RPA Squadron. Importantly the 178th is the first National Guard unit to be presented with this prestigious title, and I’m honored to be part of awarding them this trophy today. Air National Guard RPA units contribute to the total force the combat power needed to safeguard our nation’s interests worldwide. And in 2020, the 178th sent the benchmark for this performance. Thank you.

Dave Alexander:

So General Atomics proudly sponsors the Squadron of the Year Award. We honor all the RPA Airmen. But during 2021, Air Force selected the Happy Hooligans as the top rank unit. The Hooligans completed their 14th straight year of 24/7, 365 combat operations. So I’ll say that again. 14th straight year 24/7, 365, every second, every day supporting two combatant commands, an incredible achievement. So congratulations to the 178th, thank you for your service, you’ve made a difference, and most of all, thank you for our freedom.

Lt. Gen. David Deptula (Ret.):

Well thanks Gen. Mack and MacDonald and Dave Alexander and all of General Atomics. Once again, the Mitchell Institute’s proud to present the General Atomics RPA trophy for 2021 to the 178th Attack Squadron, Fargo National Guard Base, North Dakota.

Okay ladies and gentlemen, please join me in one final big round of applause for the Happy Hooligans of the 178th Attack Squadron.

Heather Penney:

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to our panel on autonomous teaming. I hope you’ve had an engaging day and learned a lot. And thank you for being here as we close out day one of the Aerospace and Cyber Conference. I’m excited to announce our latest Mitchell paper, I’m even more excited to announce our panelists. But first let me put a little plug in for a report, Five Imperatives for Autonomous Teaming. We know that the capabilities and capacity of the US Air Force’s current force design falls far short of the requirements to deter and prevail against Chinese aggression, which is DOD’S pacing threat. The service must develop innovative operating concepts and grow its force size, resiliency, and ability to present complex challenges to Chinese forces that conduct large scale systems versus systems of warfare in the Endo Pacific. A family of unmanned collaborative combat aircraft have the potential to achieve these force design objectives.

Developing this family of CCA will require the Air Force to increase its understanding of human machine teaming dynamics that are critical to conducting effective CCA counter air missions, precision strikes, and other operations in contested battle spaces. The Air Force is now at risk though of making potentially irreversible force structure decisions, based on a limited understanding of how CCA can or should team with manned aircraft. We’re looking to divest nearly 500 aircraft in the next five years. CCA can be a key component of achieving the force design that we need, but we need to make sure that we develop them properly.

CCA effectiveness and combat primarily correlates with how well they team with humans, not simply the capabilities they carry like weapons and sensors. Understanding these human machine teaming dynamics will be foundational to the development of CCA algorithms and the software brains, “brains” that drive these CCA behaviors. These software programs cannot be bolted on after we produce and field these aircraft.

So in the report we offer some areas that the Air Force can focus on to ensure that we get this right. Our panelists today will be able to contribute some great insight for military and industry for this critical issue of collaborative combat aircraft. So here to discuss with me our Gen. Clinton Hinote of the Air Force Futures, then we also have Mike Shortsleeve from General Atomics, then Robert Otis Winkler from Kratos, say hi Otis, and finally Mike Paco Benitez from Shield AI. Now Gen. Hinote… Now Gen. Hinote is the Deputy Chief of Staff, strategy, integration, and requirements on the air staff, the Air Force A5. We all know he is the thought leader for the Air Force. In his duties General… All right, let’s give him round applause for that, thought leadership. Woo.

In these duties, Gen. Hinote focuses on developing future strategies and assessments of the operational environment. To that end, the A5 host war games and workshops to focus the development of future force design. And we at the Mitchell Institute are very fortunate to have Gen. Hinote give introductory remarks for our recent CCA workshop. Then we have Mr. Mike Shortsleeve. He’s the Vice President for Strategy and Business Development at General Atomics. He’s been with General Atomics for almost three years, having come from a rich experience that includes Big Safari, chairing the Air Force’s C2 and Global ISR Panel, and as an A2 and other impactful assignments as an Air Force intelligence officer. Otis Winkler is a vice president for national security programs and corporate development for Kratos. His experience in a wide range of national security roles from Air Force fighter leadership and congressional liaison, to DARPA, to the Senate Armed Services Committee staff, to industry, and he has a master’s from War College. At Kratos, he focuses on aligning their strategy with DOD, executive, and legislative strategy.

And Mike Paco Benitez next to me is the product manager for autonomy for Shield AI, focusing his work on a concept he calls AI for maneuver, using AI to increase combat mass and enhance mission outcomes. He’s also the founder of the Merge Defense Technology Newsletter. If you haven’t subscribed, here’s a plug, do it now, it’s great. And he’s a contributing editor to War on the Rocks. His 25 year active duty career included both time in the Air Force and the Marine Corps, where he flew combat missions in both Strike Eagles and Super Hornets.

So with those introductions, we’re just going to dive straight into today’s discussion. Big news just a little over a week ago is that the CCA competition may kick off in 2024, which is really exciting for all of us to hear, even though we won’t hear that much about this highly classified program. But the nearness of this means that it’s time to separate myth from reality. So today we’ll explore among our panelists where the technology is right now, and where it might be in the future and where it needs to be.

So to kick this off, Gen. Hinote, I’d like to direct the beginning of the conversation to you, because this is something I think you’ll have very useful things to say for our audience. Secretary Kendall has stated his very ambitious timeline for fielding combat collaborative aircraft. But those of us who’ve been around the building for a while, this kind of sounds a little bit like a myth. 2027 is already within the [inaudible 00:11:18], right? And the Air Force typically can’t even complete the capabilities gap assessment analysis of all alternatives and finalized requirements within five years. So are we going to have to wait for perfect, or can we buy and fly CCA in timelines that will deliver meaningful capability on an iterative basis?

Lt. Gen. S. Clinton Hinote:

Okay, so thanks Heather for setting me up with that great question.

Heather Penney:

I know. Well, we’re not going to give you the easy ones.

Lt. Gen. S. Clinton Hinote:

First of all. Thank you AFA and Mitchell for sponsoring [inaudible 00:11:53] on the paper and I’m really excited about my fellow panelist and learning from them. So let’s start with this. If we do it the same way, if we try to get the requirements perfect, try to [inaudible 00:12:11] we will fail [inaudible 00:12:18]. That’s not where they’re coming from [inaudible 00:12:30].

Heather Penney:

There you go.

Lt. Gen. S. Clinton Hinote:

Okay. Is that better? Thank you. All right. That was part of the technical training that we did not get to before we walked in. Well first I said thank you to AFA, to Mitchell, and to my fellow panelists. And I said that if we were to do things the same way as we always have, we will not accelerate change, we will not get to solving the imperatives. And so we’re committed to thinking about requirements, thinking about acquisition, thinking about capability development in a different way. Now what’s this going to require? It’s going to require us to have war fighters and acquisition experts and testers and evaluators all together working together for the same goal. I also think it’s going to require working together with our allies to be able to share the load and move forward faster. And I think there’s one part of it that we need to discuss amongst ourselves as Airmen.

Because when we go fast, I’m not going to take credit for this, but I will say, I won’t tell you who said it, he might take credit for it later, but it is important for us to realize that the first one sucks. Right? I mean so let’s go back. I flew the first 89s, some of us did, I wasn’t quite there, but they weren’t all that great, and the first versions of certain weapons systems, they weren’t all that great. It’s important for us to realize the first few that we’ll get will learn, will grow, will make it better.

They’re called min viable products for a reason. We have to think about flying aircraft in the way that we think about developing software as a min viable product. And if we make improvements between today and tomorrow, we’re winning, but we’re not going to get it perfect the first time. In fact, we’re not going to even know very much the first time we fly these things. And we’ve had some great partnerships with some of our great companies about flying, and figuring out what these are all about. But it will be important for us to realize that we will iterate and make improvements over time. The alternative is we wait for perfect, and you won’t get it anytime soon. And that’s not an alternative that I am willing to accept, and it’s certainly not an alternative that we’re hearing Secretary Kendall and Chief Brown talk about.

Patrick Shortsleeve:

Yeah, I just add a couple points to this. I would say that day one of strategic competition isn’t going to be 2027, 2030, 2035, whatever date seems to be floating out there, I would offer that occurred decades ago with the Chinese and the Russians. And in my mindset, it’s not so much about maintaining an advantage, it’s about regaining the advantage. So we have no choice but to move fast on this. I mean it’s simple as that. The chief staff of the Air Force I think said it best when you have to accelerate or you’re going to lose. And so that’s where we’re at today. So from a technical standpoint, certainly companies like Kratos and General Atomics, we can go out and we can build the best unmanned aircraft that are out there. But I would offer that you’ve got to hone those skills well ahead of time before that platform arrives two, three, four years down the road.

Today you just saw you’ve got some Airmen up here who 14 years, 24/7, 365 days. That’s a lot of experience. And I would offer that you could go even faster by leveraging perhaps some of the unmanned capabilities you already have in your inventory as sort of your first mover tech demonstrator for some of this development work. You don’t have to wait for a platform to arrive two, three years down the road, you need to hone those skills today, because in order to meet those timelines that have already passed, you’ve got to use what you have at your disposal right now. Continue with the development process on the other side, but I would tap into what you already have from experience as well as platforms.

Heather Penney:

I saw you leaning forward there. Is there anything you wanted to add about minimum viable products in building them today?

Robert Winkler:

No, I think that honestly is key to where we’re going. If you wait for perfect, as he has already said, right, we’re we’re going to wait for 10, 15 years. We’ll get to something that’s relatively close to perfect, but it won’t be time relevant to either contain China, or be a factor to any fight that might be coming up in the next three to five years. And I think that that mindset has to grip us. I mean it’s been adopted by most of the commercial industry to do a minimal viable product and then build off of that. We have that ingrained in ourselves in the military and specifically in the Air Force. We’ve spent a lot of time doing block upgrades over every single major weapon system. But we need to have the, in my opinion, the attitude that we’re behind and that we need to catch up as Mike said already, that to get after it instead of waiting 10 to 15 years for the next perfect.

Heather Penney:

So Otis, I’m going to follow up on that because one of the concerns that we all have is in order to be able to field these aircraft, they have to be affordable. Affordability is actually one of the objectives to be able to create the mass and the numbers that we need. So how do we begin looking at breaking that cost paradigm? I mean we’ve heard Secretary Kendall throughout a rough estimate that the teammate for the B-21 would be about half of the bomber’s cost, but that would be about hundreds of millions of dollars. And that’s not really attainable if we want to be able to do this in mass. So it’s not a cost equation that works for us. So how do you see making CCA more affordable?

Robert Winkler:

No, I think it’s a great question, and as you said it’s key to the overall program. I mean, I didn’t realize this until I started working with industry and in Congress, but we buy aircraft by the pound, which is, it sounds nuts, but if you go back and look at the analysis, it’s about $2,500 per pound to buy a military aircraft. And it goes back through modern history is it stays relatively constant. AFRL has done a fantastic job and doing some really innovative development, and they’ve brought that down by a quarter. So now we’re talking about 600 pounds for $600 per pound, which is fantastic and honestly revolutionary. But I don’t think that even gets us to where we need to go. If you’re taking let’s say an F-35, which is by far probably the most capable and cost effective airplane that we have out there at $80 million a copy and you do one quarter of that, you’re still going to be in the $20 million range to produce the thing that’s relatively similar to the capability of an F-35, but unmanned.

That is cost effective and that would be wonderful, but I think the real key to getting affordable mass is going to be the disaggregation. So figuring out what subsets of mission systems that you can put on each individual aircraft unmanned teammate, that the whole of the formation is more cost effective and more combat effective than the individuals. And so by doing that, the only way to do that is to fly those mission systems. We’re not going to have enough information and data. We can think about it a lot and there’s a lot of great thinkers in this room, on the air staff, and in OSD and the like that can think about it. But until you’re actually going to go out there and fly these mission sets with real people in combat situations, whether in training or out in the fleet and the field, we’re never going to really know what the maximum effectiveness is by combining those different disaggregated mission systems.

Heather Penney:

And for those that aren’t familiar, the dollars per pound rule of thumb for aircraft is that’s a stand in for the raw materials, for the complexity of the systems, the engines because the heavier the aircraft, the more powerful the engine has to be, and all of the weapon systems that are on board. And what we’ve seen recently is that as we’ve had more capable aircraft, we’ve aggregated. So we’ve brought on board far more complex and advanced systems, which has also then increased the cost of aircraft. So that’s why I think Otis is recommending that we disaggregate these onto unmanned aircraft. So by separating out and having more single function or simple function type aircraft, we can create greater affordability.

We actually wrote about that in our Mosaic Warfare Report, so I think that’s a really important piece. But I’d like to get to the current state of technology and Mike, I’m going to toss this over you and then Paco, I’d really like to hear what you guys are doing at Shield AI, because that’s really interesting. Mike, General Atomics has been a true disruptor in the field of unmanned aircraft. After all you guys were visionary in how you developed the MQ-1 and MQ-9, and these platforms still do a lot of important mission sets, and they have got the potential to continue that in the Pacific like base defense. But let’s talk about the future because you’re still looking to disrupt. So how is GA thinking about collaborative combat aircraft, and can you give us a current state of play for these unmanned systems?

Patrick Shortsleeve:

Yeah, it’d be great to offer you sort of what we are doing, not only today, but what we’re looking at for tomorrow. Most people associate General Atomics with the MQ-9 and rightfully so, it’s a phenomenal platform that I think has not been fully utilized. But I will say that for us it begins with really a far reaching vision. And this is an interconnected framework. So you got this far reaching vision, you do an intelligent design, agile capability development, and then rapid fielding, right? You have to get the capability out there as quickly as possible. So all of our future designs and concepts fall under this umbrella of being sort of collaborative combat aircraft in one form factor or another. One of those particular ones that I would like to just address today is an aircraft we call Gambit.

Gambit actually is a family of aircraft. And we looked at the ability to strike a balance in what I would say is an advanced aircraft that’s durable to do whatever job it needs to do, but not so exquisite and so costly that you wouldn’t want to be aggressive with it. Meaning if the platform, while it’s intended to come home, if it doesn’t, that’s okay. Because obviously the cost issue is a big factor when you talk about these platforms, and what’s going to be needed in mass. So the approach that we’re taking is slightly different. It’s been done before, not maybe necessarily in the airline or air aircraft manufacturing I would say, but imagine if you will, that you’re at an automobile production facility and you see the wheels and the chassis coming down the line, it turns off to the left and becomes a luxury model. The one behind it turns off to the right, becomes a family economy model.

So that same kind of concept is what we’re looking at with Gambit, and that’s why I say family of aircraft. What you’re looking at is a core capability, sort of a core baseline of what we’re roughly estimating about 70% of the cost of the aircraft. This would be common across multiple variants of that aircraft. So the approach here is to have a common baseline that establishes a chassis, landing gear, baseline avionics. And then what you do after that really is left up to the choice of the customer, sort of like the trim line that you would have. What do you want? You want a sport model? Do you want a four by four? So in this case for Gambit, it could be that you want an ISR platform, you want a weapons platform, you want an EW, you want something that’s going to provide adversary air training.

So all those additional pieces and parts are added afterwards. So 70% of the cost up front with the core capability, which allows you to actually to mass produce these things. And then at 30% cost for the airframe comes into the types of wings that you want, the engines that you want, all of that. And again, that’s separate from what I would say is the autonomy that’s going to fly these things. But that approach that we’re taking now is not so much just focusing on really a platform, it’s more about the capability. So you got to figure out how those mission systems are going to be integrated into this. And so for us, obviously open mission systems, open architecture, I could throw out all these different terms to you, those are the ways that you’re going to get after this. So for us, we’re looking at it from a different perspective. Instead of going out and building four separate type of variance or models out there, let’s use a common core chassis, and then let’s start adding on to what it is that you actually need.

Heather Penney:

That kind of modular approach could be very interesting. But Paco, I really want to come back to you because you’ve been working on the agents, the behaviors, the autonomy, really how the system thinks. And this is actually what makes this capability realistic, right? Because we have to have something that has the ability to think, perform, behave, and act within the battle space that isn’t tied to a human in the cockpit half a globe away. So Paco, can you please speak to us about where you are with the autonomy, how you’re approaching it at Shield AI, and where you’re moving forward?

Mike Benitez:

Sure thing, thanks. So I think the three things I pulled apart here was time, platforms, and cost. Okay, so I’ll just kind of run down the line with some somewhat coherent thought, we’ll see what happens. So time. 2027, is it possible? Yes, it is not a technological problem, it’s a bureaucratic problem, and I think everyone recognizes that the path to get there is a min viable product. We are passed to proof of concept, we’ve demonstrated autonomy in a simulated environment. We’ve demonstrated how to build modular systems and subsystems the components, and now it’s about put it together, get it in the air, and get the sets and reps to fly, fix, and fly. And so to that, I would say that that min viable product is not CCAs, it’s CCA Block 1. Define it, do something, snap the chalk line, and we can get the work. Industry is waiting.

For the platform, great discussion from Mike. What I would say is at Shield AI, I don’t care about the platform, I care about the platform model, I don’t care about the sensors, I care about the sensor model. And I don’t care about the weapons, I care about the weapons model, because we need the models to then ingest to build the behaviors, which start to look like what a human would do with tactics. And so that’s the thing that’s the most important as we look at the integration of that. And those models, we have to get over vendor locked when we have this kind of system. We have to be forthcoming with those models, so we can train a behavior for it. If the Air Force wants a behavior to do X, Y, and Z, but the models aren’t available to do that, well you’re not going to get capability X, Y, Z.

And to Otis’ this point about cost, just realized just like when Block 4 F-35 starts feeling the cost is going to go up because it has more capable systems. I don’t think the government is ready quite yet to have a conversation about costing autonomy, but we are, and we’ll be happy. In the next six months we’ll have a lot to talk about as far as cost models, business models, and way we can go forward.

But I will say that software is not cheap, it’s more expensive than you think it is, and I will tell you that even the software today is more expensive than you think it is. To Otis’ point about $2,500 a pound, an operational flight program, one software drop to get it from development, test, and field it to the war fighter for a fourth generation fighter averages $250 million in the Air Force today. So let that sink in, that is not cheap, and we are going to have to adopt new processes and agile means to fly, fix, and fly this autonomy, because that autonomy is never quite fielded. Because once it fields, it is evolving with the operator in the environment. So if the red threat changes, the blue capabilities change, we have to put that back and relearn those tactics and behaviors so we can establish that trust and effective tactical autonomy.

Heather Penney:

Thank you. The fly-fix-fly, would you please unpack that a little bit for the audience because I think that fly-fix-fly is a really important concept for how we think about fielding minimum viable products, and then beginning to iterate them to achieve something that is really combat effective in the battle space?

Mike Benitez:

Sure. So I’ll tell it in three steps. So step one of we call fly-fix-fly happens at the engineer level internal, and that’s in a simulated environment. So not like a fighter sim but an actual engineering sim. So AFSIM, those type of environments. So what we do is we’ll go and we’ll build a behavior, we have objectives, we have a risk, we have commander’s intent, and then we actually break it down by mission tactics, task behaviors, and primitives. And that’s kind of the structure we use. And in that we field these systems internally and then we actually put them through a red team analysis, and we would call team play. So they actually fight each other, play with each other and they’re learning about what to do and what not to do. And we use reinforcement learning for most of it, but that’s how we iterate on a very, very fast scale.

And that is one level of the fly-fix-fly. The second level is when we get the models provided from the systems integration lab so SIL, some of you might have heard of that. So now we’re going to take that out of the simulative models, and we’re going to actually plug it into the actual hardware on a bench in a lab and run the same things. And then the next step of that is taking an airborne. So we have engineers down on the squadrons for this experimentation for min viable products, CCA Block 1, we go fly, I like this, I don’t like that, and we fix it. And how do we fix it is debrief. The most important part of everything we do is not the planning, it’s not the execution, it’s the debrief, and having a way to have explainability of what the autonomy is doing and what it’s not doing, and what we want it to do and not to do is the feedback loop that we need to rapidly iterate to fly-fix-fly and establish trust in the autonomy.

Heather Penney:

Thank you. Gen. Hinote, I’d like to come back to you because again, you are the thought leader for the Air Force. We’re a firm believer that to build effective human CCA teams, we must deliberately compose them to exploit the strengths of both the humans and the CCA. So in your mind I’d like to understand what do you think humans are good at, and what are CCA good at, like what’s autonomy good at? And how do we then begin to compose and build those teams, Moneyball style so that we’ve got the right package going forward?

Lt. Gen. S. Clinton Hinote:

Yeah, it’s a great question, and it’s a question that I don’t think we’ve fully understood or answered yet, but let me give you some thoughts that I think will help us all kind of move forward together in this. The first is that humans are… We’re going to be making the decisions on lethal force, the employment of lethal force. That’s an important principle that our government has placed on these systems, and I think it’s the right one. That doesn’t always mean that it’s the next instant. Somebody says “Yes, I am ready to shoot a weapon,” and the weapon comes off and it hits. There have been times when we’ve used autonomy, and there’s some length of time between when the decision is made and when the outcome is achieved. I think that will happen again with CCAs, but the original decision to employ lethal force is going to be a human decision.

And in many ways the invocation of values into the way we fight is likely to be a human endeavor. And so in many ways when we go fight, we bring our values with us. That might include things like ethics, that might also include things like we’re not going to leave our wingman behind and things like that. And so those types of decisions are likely to remain in the human realm. Machines are really good at executing, and they’re really good at seeing an input and creating an output. So the execution of tactics is likely to be something machines are good at. They will know when they’ve trespassed or when they’ve gotten into a minimum abort range, and they will have the ability to execute off of that, in ways that humans can sometimes be challenged in because of all the information coming into the cockpit. Clearly autonomy in flight is going to revolutionize flight.

That will not only be true for combat, it’s likely to be true for a lot of different areas across our economy and across our country. And I’m really excited about the democratization of flight that happens with autonomous flight. Lots of capabilities out there. We’re seeing it with things like the delivery of logistics and the sensing of crops and such, and we’re going to see a lot more of that. But clearly we do not need to have humans do the flying of these aircraft. There was a concept at one time where somebody thought it was a good idea to have a pilot in a single person cockpit with one hand flying his or own aircraft and the other flying the autonomous vehicle, and that’s not going to work. Any of us who have tried to actually go execute air tactics, no that would be very difficult. We expect that machines are going to be pretty good at execution.

Where I do think there is going to be kind of a gray area is in between that, in between execution and the use of judgment. And we’re going to have a lot of experimentation to do in that area, and I expect that people in this room are going to be leading us in that experimentation. And when we talk about having war fighters in the development of these systems, I think that’s where that happens. And I know that we have started that process. We have brought in war fighters to help in certain areas to help us understand what the human machine teaming might look like, but that’s only begun, there’s a lot more to go. And that’s where it’ll be fascinating to see what we all learn together.

Heather Penney:

So as we’ve been thinking about it at Mitchell, what it comes down to for us, and this is just one small component in addition to the form, fit, and function, right? So we’ve talked about disaggregating autonomous systems so that they can have different capabilities to feed that together, and how that might potentially change those formations. But what are the cognitive benefits, what are the cognitive differences between humans and autonomous agents? So what are humans good at? Thinking through uncertainty, improvisation, applying a cross domain learning, single shot learning. These are all things that humans are good at, and those judgment calls when there’s no clear right answer.

Whereas autonomy seems to be really good at things like mass data processing, pattern recognition, and other things. So how do we begin to understand and create greater fidelity around those particular strengths so we can then field formations in ways that create conundrums, and cause uncertainty for the adversary and confound their ability to target. So with those thoughts from Gen. Hinote and how we’ve been thinking about this, I’d like to pass this back to both Mike and Paco. And Paco, we can start with you for a moment. What implications do you think, or Mike happy to go to you as well, whoever wants to jump in first. How do you think this is going to impact how you build the autonomy?

Mike Benitez:

Great question. Well, that’s a lot to unpack in just a couple minutes remaining. So what I’ll say is that war is a human endeavor, there is always going to be a fog and friction of war. When you look at the concepts of man on man teaming and CCAs, at the end of the day, outside of 10 miles, if you’re flying at F35 that’s outside within visual range, you are relying 100% on your sensing and your ability to sense and make sense of the environment, so your perception. We can do that with autonomy.

Decisions is where it gets the… That’s where rubber meets the road with the conversation, but once the decision is made, that execution is machine speed and optimized to perfection based on the RL. And so what you’re talking about is decisions, not perception, not execution, but making decisions. And that’s where it gets back to the different degrees of autonomy and where we want the operator. Do we want the operator in the loop, on the loop, or off the loop? And I think we already said probably not off the loop, especially not in the CCA Block 1 min viable product, but eventually CCA Block 3, 10 years from now, there’s a lot of things we can do in that decision space, that cognitive, and we’re going to learn so much in the next just 24 months. It’s going to be amazing.

Heather Penney:

Thank you. So while we’ve just got a few moments left, this is going to be the speed round, and so we’ll go from Paco down to Gen. Hinote, because sir, we want to give you the last word. What do you gentlemen believe is sort of the top two or three priorities that the Air Force needs? What actions do we need to take to begin to make these capabilities real in the timeframes that we will need them? Speed round.

Mike Benitez:

Act with a sense of urgency, aligned resources, leadership, and accountability.

Robert Winkler:

Well done. That gives me extra time. I think most important is to get this capability in the hands of the war fighter. Let them go out and execute, gather the data that Paco needs to be able to develop the algorithms to be relevant in a war fight.

Heather Penney:

Buy them and then fly them.

Robert Winkler:

Yeah. Buy them asap to get the data to fly them.

Heather Penney:

Mike.

Patrick Shortsleeve:

I would say prioritization of the mission and roles that you want to start with first.

Heather Penney:

Gen. Hinote, wrap it all up for us.

Lt. Gen. S. Clinton Hinote:

Okay. I 100% agree with what’s been set up here. Paco, that was really good. Can I use that later on? This…

Mike Benitez:

It’s yours.

Lt. Gen. S. Clinton Hinote:

Yeah, we need it. I think the only thing that I would add is that I have had our allies come to me and come to our Air Force, and say how much that they want to be involved in this process of learning and development. And I think that there’s a possibility that it looks different with them than it does just with us and in a good way. I also think that with some of the agreements that have been put into place, AUKUS is an example, it’s not the only one. But there are some incredible opportunities for us, as Airmen across different countries and different nationalities to learn together in ways that increase our ability to actually use this in a deterrent way, and in a way that helps us fight and win in the future.

And what I’d say is, in addition to everything we’ve talked about up here, I can’t wait to be involved with our allies in making this real. Because I think it has the potential to do some really great things, not only in the furtherance of the technology, but also in bringing us together for a common cause in a new world, in a world where we actually do have to stand up against something that feels somewhat evil, and feels quite urgent and we’re not alone.

So I think the thing I’d like to close out with is I’m really excited about the possibility of partnering with these allies, and making this a really interesting journey that we all get to walk.

Heather Penney:

Thank you sir. Well, that’s all the time that we have for today. And gentlemen, thank you again so much for being here on the panel today. Gen. Hinote, thank you for the leadership of everything that you’re doing for our Air Force and for our war fighters. This is how we are finishing out the first day of the conference. We’re excited to see you back tomorrow for our Mitchell panels on long range strike and future force development. And don’t forget to pick up a copy of our new report on CCA teaming imperatives and back. If we run out, swing by our booth and have a great air power kind of day. Thank you.

Watch, Read: ‘The Power of Unmanned Systems’

Oct. 14, 2022

Retired Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies moderated a discussion on “The Power of Unmanned Systems” with Steve Burd of Pratt & Whitney, retired Col. Mark Stiner of Elbit Systems of America, and Matthew George of Merlin Labs, Sept. 19, 2022, at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference. Watch the video or read the transcript below. This transcript is made possible through the sponsorship of JobsOhio.

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Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem (Ret.):

Well, good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to our panel. The Power of Unmanned Systems. As you’ve all heard, our next generation of fighters and bombers are envisioned as families of systems that incorporate autonomous collaborative aircraft or ACPs. ACPs will augment the capabilities of our most modern aircraft. While exactly how these aircraft might look is still not clear, these ACPs will need to have a high level of autonomy and a variety of capabilities to make them work in highly contested environments in that range. We also know that Secretary Kendall has placed a premium on buying large numbers of ACPs at lower costs. Today we have three perfect guests who are at the forefront of unmanned technology that will derive the developments of these systems moving into the future. Joining me today are Dr. Steven Burd, Mark Stiner, and Matthew George. Let me tell you a little bit about the gents here.

Dr. Burd is chief engineer for Pratt & Whitney Advanced Military Engine Programs, otherwise known as GatorWorks. Steve has a 24 year tenure at Pratt & Whitney with leadership roles and applied experience across numerous military engine platforms that extend across the product lifestyle from concepts to sustainment in the middle. Mark Stiner is a senior director of strategic business development at Elbit America. Elbit is a high technology company engaged in a wide range of programs, primarily in defense and homeland security areas. Stiner spent 22 years in the US Army as the retired colonel, and he also retired out of the job as military deputy for the Army’s Communications Electronics Research Development and Engineering Center.

And finally, Mr. George is the CEO of Merlin Labs and a good friend. Merlin Labs is developing autonomous flight technology that works with existing aircraft. Prior to Merlin Labs, Mr. George founded and led Bridge. Now, Bridge is a platform that supports AI-enabled mass transportation. So thank you, all three of you, for joining us today. And I’d like to get started by allowing you to make some introductory remarks from each of you and how your companies fit in to the overall picture for UAS. So we’ll start with Dr. Burd.

Steve Burd:

All right, well, thank you, sir. Yeah. Let me start by saying unmanned systems are playing an important role in terms of how we operate in the sky today. And as alluded to by the introduction, that role and the importance of unmanned systems is just going to continue to grow and carry more relevance. At Pratt & Whitney, we’re proud to be the power and propulsion provider for unmanned systems today. And with that horizon in front of us, we are positioning ourselves to meet some of the challenges that we see facing as we start to deploy more of these systems out there.

At Pratt, there’s a couple of things we’re really focused on at the moment. The first is continuing to support those unmanned systems that are flying today. There’s a sustainment element to them, and as they continue to operate, we are seeing the needs for additional capability and we’re working hard to bring forward new technologies and capability to enhance those platforms. We have established a number of years back a group that we affectionately call the PIG, Platform Integration Group, whose sole purpose is to work with the weapons systems contractors, non-traditional and traditional, to find ways that we can leverage our commercial off the shelf products to best suit those applications. Beyond that, on the technology side, we are using agile development to find the capabilities that provide the most enabling aspects of these future designs and building the new solutions that could be leveraged in these air vehicles in the future.

This includes scalable architectures that will allow for the greatest leverage across platforms and economies of scale. And lastly, many of these systems to really achieve the mission objectives that are out there, they need disruptive capabilities, and that’s a big focus in my area, specifically where we are trying to figure out what game changing capabilities in the integrated power propulsion and thermal side are needed and trying to ready those as quickly as we can going through technology maturation and demonstration. So it’s a pleasure to be here today and certainly I think this is a very relevant topic and looking forward to the discussion.

Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem (Ret.):

Thanks, Dr. Burd. Mark Stiner.

Col. Mark Stiner (Ret.):

Thank you. As a former army aviator, I really appreciate the opportunity to be here at AFA and to be part of this panel. I thought I’d start by just taking a minute to talk about three trends that we see in the unmanned system space and then touch super briefly on where Elbit America is investing to meet those trends. The first is increased lethality. I think armed drones are not new. Drone strikes are not new, but I think what you’re seeing now is a massive proliferation of weaponized unmanned systems. I think everything from first person viewer drones that you buy off the shelf to larger systems that are actually employing anti-tank weaponry. You’re seeing a massive number of lethal unmanned systems. If you just look back at the evolution of unmanned systems, I think predominantly they were ISR systems, right? I mean, we’ve had drone strikes, but now I think there’s a huge investment happening globally in weaponized UAVs.

The second trend is one to many. So I think if you look at what’s happening today, what you primarily see are remotely piloted systems. We talk about unmanned systems, largely, they’re remotely piloted. You tend to see one operator or pilot controlling one platform, maybe in some cases for the larger, more complex systems, you’ll have two operators controlling a single platform. But with the proliferation of increasingly large numbers of lower cost systems, what you’re going to have is one operator controlling multiple platforms. So that’s going to drive the autonomy that we talk about. Everybody agrees that there’s going to be increased autonomy. I think one of the things that’s going to drive that trend is the fact that you have one operator controlling multiple systems. So they need to be able to react many more things without the operator intervention. And then the third trend is controlled from the cockpit or the fighting platform.

I think, again, when you look around today, predominantly the systems are controlled from often far away. But certainly by dedicated operators in a dedicated command shelter and that traces back to their lineages and ISR systems. So you have a dedicated operation cell that’s operating these things and then communicating with the people who are directly engaged in the battle. And I think that paradigm will shift, I think in conflicts of the future, what you’re going to see because of the immediacy, because the systems are lethal, weaponized, and integrated as part of the actual fighting that’s happening, they’re going to be controlled directly from the cockpit, from the land platform across the board. And so, Elbit is investing to meet these trends. We’re making large investments into the sixth gen cockpit and how future pilots will be able to control the aircraft while operating and interacting with a large number of systems. We’re building new platforms and we’re building a number of electronic warfare and other payloads to support those platforms. Thank you.

Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem (Ret.):

Thanks, Mark. Matt George.

Matthew George:

Hey guys. Good afternoon. All right, there we go. We’re still alive after lunch. My name is Matt. I lead up Merlin, unlike some of my colleagues. You guys may not have heard of Merlin. So a little bit about us. We’re a growth-stage aerospace startup, primarily based out of Boston, but we’ve got a big group in Denver, Colorado, Los Angeles, and a flight test facility in Mojave, California. So if you’re ever in the neighborhood, please look us up and we’ll have you out and come see some autonomous aircraft.

And then, we have an incredible group in New Zealand where we’ve partnered with the New Zealand government to deploy the world’s first nation-level autonomous air cargo network. I always joke to folks that I get to live every little kid’s dream, which is being able to go build technology and systems to make giant flying robots. But one of the things I think we should really talk about today, and I think has been a conversation throughout at least sort of the past AFA and this AFA, is being able to take autonomous systems from the future tense and bring them into the present tense.

So instead of saying what we will be doing or what we want to be doing, being able to bring that back to the present tense and saying, what are we doing to make meaningful steps to be able to go get there? At Merlin, we’re now leading the space deploying $150 million to be able to go develop autonomous systems in the future.

First, taking large airplanes and going from two pilots down to one. So we’re developing a system that acts as a co-pilot on a very, very large aircraft. We announced a couple months ago that we were selected to be able to go bring crew reduction to the C130J in partnership with our friends at AFSOC and SOCOM, and then being able to go take that pilot and eventually then power a totally uncrewed flight. So we’re really proud of the work that we’re doing, especially on the civil side where we announce the world’s first certification basis for takeoff to touchdown autonomy, including the only time ever that there’s been a certification basis issued on truly non-deterministic autonomous system as opposed to a rule-based system. So really excited to be here, really excited to be able to go continue the conversation about how to take autonomy from the future tense and bring it back into the present tense.

Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem (Ret.):

Very good. Thanks, Matt. Well, let’s dive a little bit further into this topic. And when we think about near peer competition, what comes to mind in today’s world, a lot of problems, but mass is one of them, and we need capacity of all types of aircraft to be able to compete to fight and win against a peer. So I’d ask you all why is, first of all, why is mass important, and then how might ACPs help with the balance of mass in our favor? And I’ll start with you, Matt.

Matthew George:

Yeah, great. As everybody here knows, we in a near peer competitive environment, we’re not just talking about one aircraft type, we’re talking about multiple aircraft types. So as folks like General Pringle and General White have talked about pretty extensively, being able to go say we only have one type aircraft that’s able to fly autonomously, is not enough to be able to go support the war fighter. One of the things that we’re most excited about is taking a pilot and making an autonomous pilot that can be applied wide variety of aircraft. So as some of you are pretty well aware, we are taking that concept and applying it to a wide variety of missions, starting first with cargo and refueling and then accelerating it from there.

So when we talk about mass, especially in the near peer competitive fight, we’re not just talking about massive aircraft, but we’re talking about massive mission types where we can be able to go deploy autonomy to refuel, to resupply, and free up our very precious human pilots to be able to go perform those high cognition missions that are best performed by a human and taking those missions that can be performed best by autonomous systems, dull, dirty, and dangerous missions, and enabling those to be flown by an autonomous system.

And we’re really excited to have an aircraft diagnostic autonomy platform where we can put it into everything from a very low cost King Air where we’re working in partnership with companies like Dynamic Aviation out of Virginia on their king air platforms, all the way up to highly sort of exquisite new aircraft like the C130J, and then some future platforms as well. So when we think about mass, we’re not just thinking about mass in terms of the number of aircraft. But we’re thinking about mass in terms of the missions and the types of aircraft that can be powered by autonomy.

Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem (Ret.):

Hey, Matt, we’ll circle back on autonomy in a second. It’d be pretty interesting, but Mark over to you for a discussion of mass and how ACPs might help that.

Col. Mark Stiner (Ret.):

I think one of the things about mass is it needs to be affordable. I think one of the things that we’re seeing in Ukraine is the Russians, they had some good equipment, we think, but they didn’t have enough of it, and it wasn’t sustainable to deal with the conflict that they’re in. So I think when you think about mass, it’s got to be producible, it’s got to be affordable, it’s got to be trainable, and it’s got to be sustainable, or it’s not going to be relevant at the end of the day.

Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem (Ret.):

Not very good. Steven?

Steve Burd:

Yeah, I think there’s good points made here. I meant, like you said, ACPs, it’s plural. There will be different levels of autonomy. There will be different mission sets required of these vehicles. So we’re talking large numbers. And I’ll say as a nation, we have to find a way, whether through affordability or whatnot, to find a means to produce these in the quantities that we need within some of the financial constraints we have. Now, with that said, we know our peer adversaries are producing these in large quantities as well, and why do we need them? Well, in a couple respects, defensive. If our peer adversaries have quantities, well, we need to be able to interrupt any attacks that they have on their end. Having large quantities of various systems is a good enabler to help prevent the effectiveness of those attacks. Similarly, on the offensive, it’s all probabilities and effectiveness.

If we have enough of these quantities to perform the right missions with the right capabilities, that will allow us to increase our probabilities and effectiveness on the offensive side. Thirdly, they’re about protecting our pilots. We want our pilots to come home safely. And if you can couple the crewed aircraft with un-crewed aircraft, that’s a big step in the right direction to allowing that capability to happen. In addition, these platforms offer up new opportunities to battle in the war space, including special operations. And just by the mass, just bringing the confusion and the uncertainty, we need to maintain an advantage in the battlefield. It’s a complex situation. There’s a lot of needs out there. We’ll have to find that path. But at least from our perspective, the advantages in going this direction are very clear.

Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem (Ret.):

Very good, doctor. Hey, Matt, I’m going to come back to you here because there’s been a lot of talk about research and just figuring out what ACPs might look like. It’s not real clear. We had a workshop at Mitchell Institute for the audience not too long ago where we talked about ACPs. We had a number of experts and very interesting workshop with some tremendous insights. Well, you, Matt, at Merlin, you were saying you’re building autonomy software to allow larger aircraft to operate independently. What’s the state of autonomy technology? How could it be used for war fighting? Is it close? Far? Where is it at?

Matthew George:

So I’ll be controversial and say far. So I think if we had the ability to be able to go back and look at the last, I don’t know, 15 years of AFA where we talk about what the future of truly autonomous collaborative aircraft could look like. We’ve sort of been putting up the same slides for a really, really long time. I think what I’m most proud of about the work that we’re doing in Merlin, especially in collaboration with our partners at AFSOC and SOCOM, is being able to go take the first baby steps in order to be able to go get there. So for those of you who are pilots in the room, there’s a pretty gradated process to be able to become a pilot. We don’t first start you out and throw you in a dog fight with another fighter aircraft. We start with basic piloting skills.

So what we’re doing at Merlin about building an autonomous co-pilot allows us to be able to go build a pilot and gain tens of thousands of hours of trust in that pilot as the second required crew member aboard in the aircraft with a human pilot sitting by its side, able to be able to go safely take control of the aircraft. If we make this binary step to full autonomy where we’re taking a large amount of aircraft and putting it out into the world and saying it’s got to be perfect, then we’re going to be in a position where it’s never going to be perfect and we’re never going to fly anything, and we’re never going to field anything.

And our near peer competitors are going to continue to accelerate their progress against us. So my opinion, and I know is an opinion that other people may not share, but being able to go bring autonomy into very real steps by putting it into the cockpit of an Air Force aircraft, getting it up in the air, and then starting to build that experience actually on the aircraft as opposed to sitting and showing PowerPoints and renders and videos of what it could look like and actually demonstrating what it can look like, trained and trusted by a human pilot in the left seat.

Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem (Ret.):

Giddy-up, Matt. Thank you. That’s good. Let me segue a little bit here to talk about solving the range and payload issue. And Dr. Burd, you’re familiar with this. Given the premium that’s being placed on lower cost and mass, what’s Pratt & Whitney doing to balance this capability with lower cost? What are the trade-offs?

Steve Burd:

Yeah, without question, affordability is going to be a big part of the equation. We’re going to have to continue to strive to find ways that the air systems and the power and propulsion that are inherent to them find their way through business cases and manifest themselves in the way that we can procure these systems in large quantities. But there’s a but, what I’ll say is engine systems are not always a commodity. Some cases they’re being treated that. But when you look at these systems, as we just mentioned here, these systems will have different capabilities needs. They will have different mission sets.

All these different aspects, these requirements, these ilities that we’re going to be looking for from these systems do provide some differentiation that has to be recognized. Now, with that said, when you do look at these systems, and I’ll just speak from the engine side, is the low cost model maybe does work for some systems. If you’re looking at a low cost decoy where the capabilities are very focused in terms of getting a missile system to a destination over a certain time and distance, there could be opportunity for a low cost paradigm for those types of systems. But as you look at more sophisticated systems, that’s where the cost challenge becomes a little bit more difficult when you’re looking for capability that actually costs some money to develop and to deliver. So we’re very focused, I’ll say, on both ends at this point in time. We look at some of our smaller and mid-size engine platforms that will be prime candidates in the near term for these ACPs.

And we’re working very hard to find ways of continuing to reduce the cost of those systems through different approaches with manufacturing, supply chain, different design features, trying to add value to them to get more capability out of the same systems. And then on the far end, these systems, when you look at the fact that they’re going to be going into contested airspace, require significant power levels to accomplish the missions that they need for the sensors and the other systems. That’s where some large companies like ourselves, we do have some differentiating capabilities, and it’s really the onus on us is to continue to mature those capabilities so that they’re ready and they’re ready in a way that doesn’t break the bank. There’s a value with that. And that’s really our challenge, to make sure that we’re bringing forward the value that the customers are willing to pay for at the end. So again, different systems, different cost models, we recognize that, but you got to play the spectrum here, and that’s some of the challenges that I think we’re facing as a whole.

Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem (Ret.):

Yeah, very good. Let me ask, Mark, you, a question, because you’ve got some experience in this. One way that is envisioned to use UAVs is in a swarming behavior or tactic as you want to call it. There are not too many options to defend against this, and you’re working in that Mark at Elbit. You’re a lead for, I guess, the swarming UAS and encounter UAS initiatives. Can you tell us about that current state of play and are swarms a reality? Can we defend against them?

Col. Mark Stiner (Ret.):

Thanks. Well, swarms are a reality. I mean, I think we’re seeing one of the things people are doing to overwhelm defenses is simply to employ large numbers of systems to defeat countermeasures. Elbit America really got into the counter UAS business as part of our border security program. I know this is AFA, maybe people in this audience don’t know the company that way. But Elbit America’s been involved in security for a number of years as a prime contractor along our border with Mexico, and we’re seeing a large number of commercial low-cost drones being employed by our adversaries in the border. And we’ve got a number of systems deployed down there to defend against those, and they’re highly effective. When you look at low cost drones, or frankly, any remotely piloted drone, right? I said earlier today, today what you’re primarily seeing are remotely piloted vehicles. So remotely piloted vehicles, the easiest way to attack them is to attack the data link.

If you’re remote in control of that, those data links, they’re making emissions. They can be detected, they can be targeted, they can be defeated. That’s being done, that’s an affordable thing to do, and it’s a highly effective defense at the moment. I think what we’ll see, if you look at the trend, I think you’ll see sort of an investment, counter-investment, counter-counter measure. I think that the unmanned systems, this is where you get into the autonomy, right? Because the data links, the remotely pilot aspect is the easiest way to feed them. You’re going to see platforms in the future that operate without that remote piloting, without a data link, and so now your primary method of defeating them is degraded. So now you have to be able to physically detect them.

Probably you’re going to need active sensors to actually detect them, but yet you have to be able to physically detect them without their own emissions, and you have to be able, probably, to kinetically defeat them. So this is where Elbit’s investing, right? We’re looking at high energy lasers to attack the target. We’re making major investments into new active sensors like radars, which can track thousands of targets simultaneously, and provide firing solutions so that they can be targeted and defeated. I think that’s the swarm of the future is going to be large numbers of vehicles that have to be detected, tracked, and defeated all in a very short amount of time. Yeah.

Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem (Ret.):

Yeah, we need that for base defense, so hurry it up if you would. So we see a lot of countries now who want to have this capability. You see an explosion of UAVs. We’ve either talked about Nagorno-Karabakh, Syria, of course, Ukraine, and Russia. We see what’s going on there. Even Taiwan is stepping big into this. So I’d like to ask all three of you your thoughts about if you are a new entrant as a country, as a nation into the world of UAVs, what do you need to be prepared to do? What do you have to have in order to use this technology effectively? I’ll start with you, Matt.

Matthew George:

Yeah, I’ll defer to my two colleagues who work a little bit more closely on that end of the spectrum. But one of the things we’ve talked about is, particularly with some of our partners at the Air Force, is being able to go use the Air Force is existing advantage. So the Air Force that we built to the best air force in the world. So how can we take those assets that we already have and enable those assets to fly with high degrees of autonomy, with structural barriers for a new entrant to be able to come and compete with us one to one for those autonomous capabilities. Whereas, on the smaller end of the spectrum, we have seen throughout the world the ability for state and non-state actors to be able to go match us or get pretty close to matching us one for one in smaller systems.

Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem (Ret.):

Mark, how about it?

Col. Mark Stiner (Ret.):

So a lot of our work is with the smaller systems, that’s where a lot of my comments are. And I guess the alarming answer to your question of what does it take to get in the business of unmanned aircraft is not a lot, right? I think what we’re seeing is that it’s pretty easy to get off the shelf technology, which is very readily available at low cost and put weapons on them. I mean, one of the most effective things that I’m seeing happening is just taking first person viewer racing drones that a lot of people here may operate and putting explosives on them and flying them right into targets. It requires very little technology. It requires very little money, it requires no training. These things are just bought by people and used every day, and they could be done in high numbers. So this is what we’re seeing is one of the reasons that I think we’re going to see a lot of need, investment and counters to those types of low cost systems.

Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem (Ret.):

Yeah, very good. Dr. Burd?

Steve Burd:

Yeah, I think both of you spoke well about the small side. I’ll just go a little bit to the larger side and I’ll bring it a little bit to what I’m seeing here domestically. There’s been a pretty large appetite for new companies, new entrance to try to enter the market. That on one side, it’s been very interesting seeing the innovation that’s coming forward from some of those. But on the flip side, we’re also seeing a lot of mixed results in that. We’re seeing a lot of interesting concepts out there, interesting prototypes and the like.

And I’ll say to your question, maybe the challenge here for us, for the United States and the like, is that when you look at these larger systems, getting that design, that concept design forward, that’s the easy part. To actually get a system out there that can work, that can function, that’s where there’s a lot of important knowhow out there within our industry today to make sure that the subsystems work, that the integration works, that we can deliver a system that can achieve its mission, has the endurance, the durability that can actually be produced at a higher rate with the capability we need.

So I bring this forward that there is a differentiation between the small side and maybe the higher, larger side, higher value type ACPs where I think there’s really a good opportunity to take advantage of what some of the new entrants are doing in getting them married with some of us and the OEMs to take some of those great vision concepts and make them a reality to help fill the void that we see as we look forward to bringing forward a whole family of ACPs.

Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem (Ret.):

Yeah, yeah. Very good. Thank you. Well, let’s go back to ACP technology, and I want to ask all of you, and I’ll start with Matt. Some of this technology is available today. Matt, you said a few minutes ago, some of it’s way out there a bit. But what are some of the major milestones or obstacles we’ll have to overcome to move forward with the technology we need for these notion of ACPs supporting other aircraft and maybe even operating independently? So, in other words, in five to 15 years down the road, where are we going to be with this technology, Matt?

Matthew George:

All of the technology problems for being able to go deploy a large aircraft autonomously, and when I say autonomously, I mean an aircraft, it’s able to go think on its own, not operated by a remote operator in sort of a link list environment. There’s some massive technology barriers that we still have to be able to go get there, but there’s no break-a-glass of physics technology problems in there. The problem, at least in our opinion, and in my opinion that I’ve seen the most, is the willingness of both the defense sector as well as the commercial sector to make small incremental progress along that pathway to be able to go get there. I think we often hang our hats on these huge technology problems of what if, what if, what if. And by doing lots of studies and by doing a lot of talking, we’re not actually out there going and flying, and we’re not actually substantially de-risking the problem.

So if somebody had a magic wand, or if I had a magic wand or actually a dangerous thing, you don’t want me with a magic wand, I promise. But if I had a magic wand, one of the things that I would do in order to be able to go meaningfully move this along is to create 24 month milestones of saying, how can we get autonomy onto an Air Force aircraft? And General Slife at AFSOC has been a really big proponent of this, where he has given us a 24 month time horizon to be able to go start to bring autonomy onto large Air Force aircraft and be able to go meaningfully demonstrate it. So by doing that, we can make so much more progress than if we do what we continue to do, which is really just think about it and delay instead of actually going flying, iterating, and flying again.

Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem (Ret.):

Yeah, Mark. Thanks, Matt.

Col. Mark Stiner (Ret.):

So I think when you talk about ACP, the C is for collaborative, and so collaboratives, it’s two-way. So we’ve really, so far we’ve been talking a lot about the platforms, the unmanned platforms and what they’re going to do and the autonomy that they’re going to have and how they’ll make decisions and what payloads they’ll have. But there’s also the collaboration, which is the actual pilots, right? Pilots aren’t going away by any stretch. I think the future battle space is definitely going to need pilots. I think the airspace is going to be very crowded with large numbers of vehicles. You’re going to have a huge number of friendly manned and unmanned vehicles and a lot of enemy manned and unmanned vehicles.

And so one of the areas that we’re doing a lot of investing, thinking, talking to our partners in the Air Force about is what does the cockpit look like? What kind of sixth gen systems do you need as a pilot to be able to visualize that very crowded battle space, right? How can you understand what large numbers of things are doing at any point in time and then be able to provide direction often, to many of the friendly ones based on your understanding? How do you control those things, employ those things while still fighting the aircraft that you’re in. And so that’s really, I think, one of the challenges that we’ll have to solve before we reach the desired end state.

Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem (Ret.):

Yeah, very good. And how about trust? Trust in these systems by those pilots.

Col. Mark Stiner (Ret.):

Yeah, trust is a big one. I think it’s going to be incremental. I think you were talking about that. I think, in general, progress tends to be more incremental than revolution, revolutionary technology. I think we’ll begin to see things that are autonomous, but maybe not machine learning vehicles that are adapting and making all their own decisions. I think as a pilot and talking to pilots, I think pilots really want systems they can team with that they understand and can predict, right? I think you want systems that have a high degree of capability. But are really operating on some autonomy algorithms that you can understand and predict until you get more comfortable with them as a teammate. This is the way I think it’ll work, and of course it’s going to require some robust cyber protection as well.

Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem (Ret.):

No, I appreciate that. Dr. Burd, back to that question about what obstacles are out there to get to the technology we need?

Steve Burd:

Yeah, I think to a good extent, we’re still trying to figure out what ACPs are and what we can do with them and what we want to do with them. I think there’s some really good dialog, some very good progress out there with a couple of platforms that there’s been company investment in, there’s been government investment in to really show what that capability might offer. But to a good extent, we’re not moving at the speed of relevancy. I know that’s a term that’s been out there. But I think it really applies in this instance in that there are a lot of things we can do, and we’re continuing to contemplate what those things are doing instead of starting to take some action. Right now, the possibilities are pretty large, and we need to get a little bit of focus out there so we can quickly mature platforms and get some of this capability fielded while we continue to figure out what the next generation of those capabilities could be.

So some of the challenges with that, I guess, lead to helping as a community figure out where our focus needs to be, aligning the budgets that are needed so that we can actually make that progress. And the fact that we have uncertainty, we don’t have solidified budgets. You look at someone like myself that’s representing a company, when we look at those two elements, that provides an awful lot of uncertainty in our business cases. So it really doesn’t bode well for us to invest in something that carries a lot of uncertainty. So really looking for those three pieces or four pieces to come together. A little better clarity of where we need to go, roadmaps and plans that are aligned with that so that we as a company in partnership with the government, can align and rally behind those roadmaps to get some parts and vehicles flying.

Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem (Ret.):

Yeah. Very well said. We’ve only got a couple minutes left, but you bring up, all three of you bring up a pretty good insight that the government, Department of the Air Force in particular might be able to do better, telling industry or communicating with industry about clear choices and going in a direction and getting to procurement. Any last minute comments on that from industry?

Matthew George:

Yeah, I think we’re living in a really exciting time. So from our perspective, for the first time, we have all the technology building blocks in order to make this happen. And we look out in the room, right? Selection bias of those of you who chose to spend some time in this room today during this panel, the folks here are going to be the folks that decide what the next 100 years of aviation look like. The previous 100 years are built around a human pilot. Unequivocally, the next 100 years are built around human pilots plus autonomy. We are at a pivotal moment where the technology’s available, and it is our collective choice about what to be able to go do with it.

And if we make small incremental progress towards that incredibly important end goal, to be able to go make our skies safer and to make airplane safer for our pilots, the opportunities are absolutely endless. But if we delay making those hard choices to be able to get to that future, we see the definition of that future to somebody else. And we’re working really, really hard at Merlin to be able to go define what that future is in collaboration with a lot of folks in this room. But that’s the imperative that we all have.

Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem (Ret.):

Well said. I’ll track it at that.

Col. Mark Stiner (Ret.):

Oh, I guess I would just conclude by saying I think the Air Force has done an amazing job of working with industry, our company included. I applaud you for being very open with industry and doing an excellent job of really describing how you see future conflicts playing out and what types of things you’ll need to include the area of unmanned systems and autonomous systems, and how you envision using those. I think to really move forward, the next step is going to be to actually lay out acquisition strategies to acquire those things and timelines, and when will there be competitions and when will there be contract awards, because that’s really what’s going to allow industry to align their investments to have the products ready for the competitions.

Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem (Ret.):

Thanks, Mark. Take them, Steve.

Steve Burd:

Yeah, and I agree with both the other panel members here. I mean, the conversations, the dialog up to this point in time have been really productive in terms of describing what the art of the possible is. It is time at this point in time to translate that into acquisition strategies, roadmaps, and the like. We as a company are making small, medium-sized large bets on, I’d say, our read of the situation. Again, walking into a little cloud of uncertainty. The more we can clarify where we need to go, what those plans will be, what those programs and records will be, that’ll help align where we go. It’ll help pretty much light the fire behind our butts so that we can move more quickly. So those things are needed. Again, you look at the situation, we have to move faster and we have to move now.

Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem (Ret.):

Very good. Well, thanks to Merlin Labs, and Elbit, and Pratt & Whitney for your participation today. Gents, thank you for being on the panel. That concludes our panel. I do want to give… We’re about 20 seconds over. There is another event today on manned teaming, myth and reality. It’ll be here in Potomac C, at 15:45, hosted by Mitchell Zone, Heather Penney, and it extends this in great depth, this conversation into some other areas that I think you all will enjoy. So, thanks for all your service. This concludes the panel.

NATO, Russia to Hold Nuclear Exercises Despite Tensions

Oct. 13, 2022 | By Chris Gordon

Russia and NATO will go ahead with large-scale nuclear exercises in the coming weeks despite concern over Russian President Vladimir Putin’s hints that the Ukraine war might prompt him to turn to his nuclear arsenal, U.S. and NATO officials said.

The NATO exercise, called Steadfast Noon, involves American nuclear-capable B-52 bombers and fighter jets, which will not carry live munitions, White House National Security Council strategic communications coordinator John Kirby told reporters Oct. 13.

The upcoming NATO exercise involving 14 countries has been long planned, and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said delaying or canceling the exercise would send the wrong message about NATO’s resolve in the face of Russian aggression.

“It would send a very wrong signal if we suddenly now canceled a routine, long-time planned exercise because of the war in Ukraine. That would be absolutely the wrong signal to send,” Stoltenberg said. “NATO’s firm, predictable behavior, our military strength, is the best way to prevent escalation.”

The U.S. twice put off routine tests of its Minuteman III missile this year, the first time to avoid inflaming tensions with Russia during the Ukraine crisis and the second time to avoid any miscalculation on China’s part as the Chinese military engaged in a show of force near Taiwan. A Minuteman III test launch eventually took place Aug. 16.

U.S. officials predicted that Russia would soon go ahead with its own large-scale nuclear exercises. The Russian drills would be the second since February 2022. Putin oversaw the February exercise that tested sea, land, and air-based ballistic and cruise missiles and other weapons.

“We expect Russia to conduct its annual strategic nuclear exercise—they call it GROM—as early as this month,” Kirby added.

The Western officials cautioned that the Russian exercise was expected and did not appear to be linked to Putin’s suggestions that Moscow might resort to nuclear weapons in the face of setbacks in Ukraine.

In a national address Sept. 21, Putin warned that “Russia will use all the instruments at its disposal to counter a threat against its territorial integrity.” He added, “This is not a bluff.”

“We will monitor that as we always do,” Stoltenberg said of the upcoming Russian exercise. “And, of course, we will remain vigilant, not least in light of the veiled nuclear threats and the dangerous rhetoric we have seen from the Russian side.”

Some nuclear policy experts expressed concern that Russian and NATO nuclear exercises might heighten apprehensions as each side seeks to determine what options might be tested.

“The events are normal,” said Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists in an interview. “But we don’t know, of course, what’s being exercised, whether that is also normal.”

The Russians, for their part, might portray the NATO exercise as an ominous development and use it as pretext to escalate their activities in the region.

“That is definitely a danger,” Kristensen added.

The Western officials stressed that the NATO exercise will take place more than 600 miles away from Russia and does not involve a Ukraine scenario. “This exercise is not linked to any real-world events or what Russia is doing,” Kirby said.

ACC and USAF HQ are Crafting Collaborative Combat Aircraft Requirements

Oct. 13, 2022 | By John A. Tirpak

While collaborative combat aircraft are among Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall’s “operational imperatives,” Air Combat Command was already working on the idea, the Air Force reported.

Kendall “has been providing direction for Collaborative Combat Aircraft” to ACC through the operational imperatives, but Headquarters, Air Force, and ACC “were already in the process of identifying a path to realize CCA capability” when Kendall set the concept among the list of OIs, a USAF spokesperson said.

Senior USAF leaders at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference in September said they were looking for a swift pace of experimentation, prototyping, and production of CCAs—in as few as two years—but the concept is still far from defined as to what missions the uncrewed aircraft will perform, how sophisticated they need to be, and how they will take direction from and interact with the human pilots in their formations. Kendall has broadly suggested that as many as “four or five” CCAs could accompany a single crewed aircraft. He sees CCAs as an affordable way to expand USAF capacity and to compel an enemy to expend many munitions to disable an attacking USAF formation.

Asked whether the CCA requirement is being handed down to ACC from USAF leaders, or whether there is a “pull” requirement from ACC, Air Force acquisition executive Andrew Hunter said at the conference, “That’s a good question.”

He continued that the requirements community “was an integral part” of creating the OIs: “So I would say that, as far as I can tell, we have very strong buy-in from the requirements community [and] from ACC” as to the need for, and utility of, CCAs. But he could not say exactly how the requirement was generated or where it stood in the requirements process.

The spokesperson said Headquarters, Air Force, and ACC “are now working with industry to further develop requirement documents.”

The issue is not trivial, as USAF leaders have for years lamented that promising new concepts or technologies, developed in the labs and potentially even used in live experiments and exercises, sometimes fail to transition to programs of record without a “pull” requirement from a user command, which may not even know the technology exists. This gap between concept and program of record is often referred to as “the valley of death.”

Hunter, at the AFA conference, said USAF leaders remain “engaged continuously” with user commands.

He noted, too, some “cultural resistance” to the idea of CCAs, saying this is to be expected because “change is hard.” But he also said CCAs have top-down support from Kendall, Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., and ACC commander Gen. Mark D. Kelly.

The Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies formally released a paper Oct. 13, “Five Imperatives for Developing Collaborative Combat Aircraft for Teaming Operations,” which urges the Pentagon to get operators involved with developing the nascent technology, to ensure that it is combat-relevant and user-friendly. The paper had previously been briefed to reporters.

The paper recommends that, before rushing to field CCAs, the Air Force first develop a concept of operations as well as tactics, techniques, and procedures for their use, with heavy pilot and operator input. The technology will have no value unless pilots feel they know what CCAs will do and can trust them to do it, paper author Heather Penney said.

She also noted that the Air Force has work to do to ensure resilient communications with CCAs in contested and denied airspace; and to develop procedures for what CCAs will do in a “comms out” situation. Finally, the Mitchell paper recommends the Air Force ensure that adding CCAs to combat formations doesn’t unduly burden pilots with additional work that might be unmanageable.

“There is a risk … of task saturation” unless this is taken into account early, with the development of software and the human-machine interface, Penney said on a streaming event.

Although Penney warns that the Air Force’s fighter pilot shortage will make it challenging to find ones able to help in CCA development, Maj. Gen. Charles S. Corcoran, assistant deputy chief of staff for operations, said development teams should instead “set up shop … in squadrons” so they can learn the environment pilots operate in firsthand and gradually insert CCAs into exercises, the better to familiarize pilots with what they can do and to tweak those capabilities to be “truly useful.”

Proposed NDAA Amendments Would Block T-1, C-40 Retirements—but Increase A-10 Cuts

Oct. 13, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

The Senate will deliberate over the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act in the coming weeks after leaders of the Senate Armed Services Committee took the annual policy bill to the floor Oct. 11.

And as lawmakers debate the legislation, they’ll also have to contend with more than 900 amendments that had been filed as of Oct. 13. Already, Republican and Democratic leaders have agreed to a block of 75 amendments, Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), chair of the SASC, remarked from the Senate floor.

Of the hundreds more still to be considered, some have little to do with national security, with Senators simply hoping to attach their proposals to a bill that is typically considered must-pass. Others touch on everything from the COVID-19 vaccine mandate to military housing and child care to funding for specific programs.

For the Air Force, in particular, a number of lawmakers have proposed provisions that would affect the service’s fleet of aircraft and its personnel.

In years past, members of Congress have used the NDAA to block the Air Force from divesting or retiring older aircraft. That process could play out again, as Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) introduced an amendment that would prohibit any funds authorized in the NDAA from being used to reduce the size of the T-1 Jayhawk trainer fleet.

The Air Force has been planning to phase out the T-1A in favor of pilot training that relies heavily on simulators, an approach dubbed Undergraduate Pilot Training 2.5. In its 2023 budget request, the service asks to retire 50 of the 178 trainers.

While Hyde-Smith wants to stop that from happening this year, she introduced a separate amendment offering the Air Force a roadmap for what it will take for her to get on board with retiring the T-1. That provision, co-sponsored by Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), would prohibit any T-1 retirements until UPT 2.5 has been implemented across the service and USAF submits a date to Congress by which the T-7A trainer will achieve full operational capability—current estimates put that in 2034.

Both Hyde-Smith and Wicker represent Columbus Air Force Base, Miss., which hosts a squadron of T-1s.

It’s not just the T-1 that could be saved from retirement. Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth from Illinois introduced another amendment that would block any 2023 funds from being used to retire the C-40 Clipper, a transport aircraft that carries senior military commanders, Cabinet officials, and members of Congress.

Their amendment follows on a similar proposal in the House version of the NDAA, also introduced by Illinois lawmakers—much of the small C-40 fleet is based out of Scott Air Force Base, Ill.

Meanwhile, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) proposed legislation that would block the Air Force from reducing the capability or manpower in any B-1 bomber squadron so it can’t meet its current “designed operational capability statement.” The only exception would be for squadrons in the process of replacing B-1s with new B-21 Raiders.

That amendment was one of two Cruz proposed to keep the B-1 relevant for the future fight. The Air Force is planning to move away from it in the coming years. In a second proposal, Cruz, along with Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), calls for an extra $30 million in research money for testing hypersonic weapon systems on the B-1.

And it’s not just aircraft that lawmakers are trying to save. In separate amendments, both Hyde-Smith and Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) proposed prohibiting the divestment of any “Tactical Control Party specialist force structure from the Air National Guard” until the Chief of the National Guard Bureau, along with the Chief of Staff of the Army and the Commandant of the Marine Corps, submit a report detailing the capability gaps such a move would create.

Amid all the moves to block retirements, however, one proposed amendment would do just the opposite. Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) introduced legislation declaring that the Air Force “shall divest 42 A-10 Thunderbolt II aircraft” in 2023.

Such a move would go beyond the Air Force’s own proposal to cut 21 A-10s and would mark a significant reversal from years past, when lawmakers have persistently stopped the service from retiring the beloved close air support jet.

Whether or not the Senate approves Scott’s amendment, Congress does seem poised to finally allow at least some A-10 retirements to happen, with other versions of the NDAA allowing the proposed cut of 21 to stand.

DAF’s New Civilian Career Roadmaps Aim for More Diverse, Functionally Proficient Leaders

Oct. 13, 2022 | By Amanda Miller

The Department of the Air Force hopes to improve both diversity and retention within its 170,000-member civilian workforce by introducing a pair of career roadmaps—one of them tailored to developing “functional leaders” for the first time.

Civilians should look over the two roadmaps—the other a more conventional path for “enterprise leaders”—and decide which one they want to pursue, then communicate with supervisors and career field managers for more details, according to a video by the Air Force Personnel Center that compares the two paths.

A DAF-commissioned study by the RAND Corp. published in 2020 found that women and Black and Hispanic men started at lower civilian pay grades, on average, than White men. Women, in particular, were less likely to “catch up” over the years, in turn limiting their numbers eligible for senior leadership. Women and minority groups generally believed a person’s sex and race affected promotion opportunities, and an analysis of data revealed that women made up about 35 percent of civilians overall but only 21 percent of those in the top two pay grades.

The RAND study also found that a perceived lack of advancement opportunities and the expectation of geographic mobility—the willingness to pack up and move—negatively affected retention.

The DAF’s civilian science and engineering career fields employed the relative fewest racial and ethnic minorities and women, according to a 2021 report on disparities by the department’s inspector general. The IG office confirmed that the DAF’s civilian workforce had “seen improvements in minority and female representation,” possibly attributed to “significant policy changes” adopted in 2015.

The new roadmaps are appropriate for civilian employees “whether they are mobile and aspire to be enterprise leaders or whether they want to be the best functional expert they can be in their given locale,” Glenda Scheiner, director of civilian force management, said.

The roadmap to develop “functional leaders” departs the most from the DAF’s conventional talent management process, according to a news release announcing the change. The functional roadmap emphasizes deeper technical expertise in a single functional area rather than the broader, cross-functional experience encouraged on the enterprise side.

Once a staff member chooses a roadmap, they won’t be locked in.

“Leaders understand that career aspirations and personal circumstances may change,” according to the release, so people may switch “at any given point in time.” To accompany the new functional and enterprise roadmaps, “career field managers will build career-specific versions” of each DAF-level roadmap.

The roadmaps outline the experience, education and training, and leadership roles civilians should pursue for advancement throughout their careers. Both tracks emphasize functional proficiency early in a career and furthering the technical expertise later on.

On the enterprise side, recommended education maxes out at a master’s degree and offers the possibility of a degree in management, with some required professional military education. Functional leaders, on the other hand, should seek master’s or doctoral degrees in a specific discipline, with PME being optional.

RAND’s study recommended formally requiring supervisors and managers to take part in their staff’s career development. The DAF did not immediately reply to n question about whether it will require supervisors to address the new roadmaps with their staffs.

Hybrid Capabilities Propel Industry Partners to ‘Accelerate Change and Win’

Oct. 13, 2022

Emerging threats in space and the rise of commercial satellite technologies are driving the national security space sector in a new, hybrid direction to answer the evolving needs of the Air Force and Space Force.

“Traditional aerospace and defense companies develop their national security space systems based on customer requirements and an acquisition strategy,” said Jason Kim, CEO of Millennium Space Systems, a Boeing Company. “But commercial companies don’t have to abide by those requirements or acquisition cycles.”

Commercial companies continually invest to upgrade their technology, as long as they see a return on that investment.

This private financing model provides a unique opportunity for industry partners to push Air Force and Space Force capabilities ahead of modern-day demands to meet the needs of the future.

“Commercial companies are not designing systems based on a requirements pool, an RFP, or an agency’s acquisition strategy,” Kim said. “They are seeing things in the market based on modern technologies that are commercially available and providing that as a capability. It’s becoming more of a commercial technology push that creates new market demand, while also addressing a government requirement not yet thought of before.”

Founded in 2001, Millennium Space Systems, a small satellite prototype and constellation company, embodies this hybrid nature of leveraging both commercial technologies and traditional aerospace and defense industry capabilities, including secure and tailored systems.

“We started off taking a lot of the commercial dual-use technologies that were available at the time and space-qualified them with the aim of providing systems on rapid timelines and at affordable costs,” Kim said. With its acquisition by the Boeing Company in 2018, Millennium gained the capability to scale its systems and deliver entire constellations of satellites.

“We’re now seeing our systems delivered in missile warning, missile tracking, ISR, and advanced space science missions,” Kim said. To build at that kind of scale, Millennium is continually tech-refreshing. “We invest constantly in research and development and are regularly tech refreshing our components and mission capabilities,” Kim said.

The lessons taken from the first launch of small satellites can be applied to the next launch. “We’re an engineering company, and we operate our spacecraft, so we’re able to get data on all of our spacecraft components on-orbit and feed that back to the design process. We’re able to apply what we’ve learned into how we manufacture our constellations to improve and tech refresh our components every time we deliver them.”

This capability enables the Air Force and Space Force to align with the go-fast message of Chief of Space Operations Gen. John Raymond and his partner in arms, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown, Jr.

“The Air Force has stated that we have to ‘Accelerate Change or Lose’ to respond to the advanced threats challenging our capabilities,” Kim said. Millennium addresses that imperative by taking “the most advanced systems in the commercial world” and “space-qualifying those capabilities and making them secure and interoperable,” he said.

Millennium builds 80 percent of its spacecraft components in-house. “A majority of those components are using dual-use commercial technologies,” Kim said. “For example, we take battery technology from the commercial automotive industry and apply that to national security space missions to gain cost savings and faster timelines for our customers.”

This is what Kim means by “space-qualifying” commercial tech.

“Space qualification entails having the right experts that know how to test these components for radiation, susceptibility to upsets, and latch up,” he said. Requirements vary depending on the deployment model.

“The distinct radiation environments of LEO [low-Earth orbit], MEO [mid-Earth orbit] and GEO [geosynchronous orbit] demand different constraints, requirements and limitations on these technologies,” Kim said.

Space-qualifying these technologies requires a rigorous process of radiation testing, vibe testing, and thermal testing in vacuum chambers similar to conditions experienced during a launch and orbit. “Once we test all these components in piece parts, we’re able to take that data and really select the parts that are able to withstand the harsh environments that our systems are going to operate in.”

As part of Boeing, Millennium can access a host of capabilities with expertise in supply chain management, manufacturing, and so much more. “We’re able to take advantage of a lot of resources that [Boeing] provides in mission domain expertise,” Kim said. “[Boeing] has a lot of senior technical fellows that we’re able to deploy to our different flight programs to help us enhance capabilities and overcome challenges. We also have been able to bring in a lot of expertise in model-based systems engineering and digital engineering, which includes the tools that they’ve invested in and the processes that they’ve developed over the years, as well as a lot of the proof points and lessons learned from other programs in other domains.”

Millennium Space Systems remains an agile, flexible player, providing its customers with the best of all worlds: The nimbleness of a startup and the strength and experience of an aerospace giant.

“Millennium can keep ahead of advanced threats, to really sense the threats, track them, and provide information directly to the warfighters,” Kim said. “Our hybrid nature enables us to do two things: Invest to bring forward future capabilities and to rapidly adapt to changing requirements. That’s what our customers need.”

Air Combat Command Declares IOC for New Rescue Helicopter

Oct. 12, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

Air Combat Command said its new HH-60W Jolly Green II has achieved initial operational capability, a key milestone for the new combat search and rescue helicopter.

Lockheed Martin, whose Sikorsky business unit makes the helicopter, and ACC each announced the achievement in separate press releases Oct. 12.

Achieving IOC means the Air Force now has the Airmen, equipment, and logistics in place to deploy a package of four HH-60Ws to any independent location for up to 30 days.

“It’s an exciting day for combat rescue as we bring a new platform and its upgraded capabilities into operation,” said Maj. Gen. David Lyons, director of operations at ACC, in the release. “Current and future combat environments require us to maneuver further and faster than ever before, and the capabilities provided by the Jolly Green II supports the platform’s viability for our Air Force Personnel Recovery core function for as long as possible.”

Sikorsky has delivered 24 HH-60Ws thus far, with dozens more aircraft still to come. The 23rd Wing at Moody Air Force Base, Ga., and the 58th Special Operations Wing at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M., both have the helicopter, which completed testing at Duke Field, Fla., and Nellis Air Force Base, Nev.

The HH-60W had its first operational deployment from Moody on Sept. 23, to provide rescue services in support of contingency operations. A 23rd Wing spokesperson could not immediately confirm where the helicopters deployed.

“This declaration is a vote of confidence from U.S. Air Force leadership and demonstrates the critical role of and need for the HH-60W,” Nathalie Previte, vice president of Sikorsky Army & Air Force Systems, said in a statement. “Sikorsky is committed to continuing deliveries of the Department of Defense’s only dedicated combat search and rescue (CSAR) helicopter and to provide the most capable platform to rescue crews who depend on this aircraft day-in and day-out to conduct vital life-saving missions.”

ACC said in February in a release that it anticipated full operational capability by now. The Air Force’s 2023 budget request sought to reduce its HH-60W purchase plans from the originally planned 113 to 75. Both the Senate Appropriations Committee and the Senate Armed Services Committee have balked at that plan, with each asking the Air Force to report back on on the future of CSAR in their respective defense bills.

The Jolly Green II is an upgrade over the HH-60G Pave Hawk, which the Air Force has flown since the 1980s. The new helicopter has more range and is more survivable, and it features advanced avionics and other benefits. It is one of two new helicopters the Air Force is bringing into service, with the MH-139 Grey Wolf having recently entered utility testing after a yearlong delay.

US, Allies Pledge Improved Air Defenses for Ukraine

Oct. 12, 2022 | By Chris Gordon

The United States and allies will help Ukraine build a more comprehensive air defense system to protect key targets from Russian attacks by cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, and aircraft, U.S. officials said Oct. 12.

“What Ukraine is asking for and what we think can be provided is an integrated air and missile defense system,” Gen. Mark A. Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said as representatives from about 50 nations met in Brussels. “That doesn’t control all the airspace over Ukraine. But they are designed to control priority targets that Ukraine needs to protect.”

Russia launched a barrage of missiles and air strikes against a variety of civilian targets in Ukrainian cities, including its capital, Kyiv, on Oct. 10 in retaliation for the bombing of a key bridge linking Russia to the occupied Crimean peninsula.

“These attacks killed and injured civilians and destroyed targets with no military purpose,” President Joe Biden said in a statement, calling the Russian strikes “utter brutality.”

Ukraine renewed its plea for better air defense systems to protect the population following the attacks, and the so-called Contact Group countries responded favorably.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III said help will come soon. “The systems will be provided as fast as we can physically get them there,” Austin said at his news conference with Milley. “We’re going to do everything we can, as fast as we can to help the Ukrainian forces get the capability they need to protect the Ukrainian people. That’s very, very important to us.”

The allied officials did not say when such defenses might be put in place and acknowledged connecting different pieces from a myriad of nations would be a technical and logistical challenge and would require training of Ukrainian forces.

“The task will be to bring those together, get them deployed, get them trained because each of these systems is different,” Milley said.

Ukraine would also have to develop a detection and command and control system and link all the components together.

“It’s quite complicated from a technical standpoint,” Milley said. “It is achievable, and that’s what we’re aiming at.”

The U.S. leaders detailed several specific systems they said could help form the basis of Ukraine’s new air defenses, in addition to systems such as Soviet-era S-300 systems already in use that have “been very effective,” according to Milley. Advanced systems, such as the National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System (NASAMS) are already in the pipeline but will take years to be fully deployed.

For example, Milley noted the I-HAWK, a legacy U.S. Army medium-range surface-to-air system which he said the Ukrainian government has specifically asked for. Milley and Austin also mentioned Germany’s InfraRed Imaging System Tail (IRIS-T) system, which is now being delivered. The possibility of U.S.-made Patriot batteries and Israeli defenses was floated by Milley, though he acknowledged such systems were among those that could be used rather than concrete offers from a particular country. Ukraine has repeatedly asked for Patriot systems and Israel’s Iron Dome.

Some experts cautioned that it would be difficult to build an exhaustive air defense system for Ukraine and that an ad-hoc system would have to be adopted in practice.

“It may be something closer to interoperability, or frankly, it may just be instead of integration, aggregation,” Tom Karako of the Center for Strategic and International Studies said. “But it’s the right aspiration. The threat makes it necessary to think imaginatively about these things.”

Neither side has been able to control the skies over Ukraine with their air force, despite Russia’s overwhelming relative advantage as one of the world’s biggest air forces. U.S. leaders have noted that Ukraine’s ability to deny Russia air superiority has prevented Russia from making sweeping gains on the battlefield by taking out the Ukrainian military from the air and allowing Russian ground forces to operate unmolested.

Much of the world’s attention had shifted to the war of attrition occurring in the east and south of the country as Ukraine fights to regain control of its territory using artillery and ground forces.

Russia, however, possesses long-range weapons, primarily air-launched cruise missiles that it can fire from bombers inside Russian airspace, as well as ballistic missiles.

These missiles can make it through to targets inside Ukraine due to the lack of a comprehensive air defense system Ukraine’s allies now say they will work to help provide. Some defenses the U.S. supplied early in the war, such as man-portable Stinger missiles that can be fired at low-flying planes and helicopters, are useless in the face of the standoff weapons Russia is implementing. According to the U.S. and Ukraine, thousands of Iranian-made drones have also been ordered by Russia, though Ukraine has had better success against those weapons due to their slow speed and low attitude.

In the future, Ukraine wants a system that can defend against both planes and missiles at low, medium, and high attitude.

“It’s a mix of all these that deny the airspace,” Milley said. “You’re trying to create a defensive system.”