Wilma Vaught, Who Shattered USAF Glass Ceilings, Honored With Medal of Freedom

July 8, 2022 | By Tobias Naegele

President Joe Biden awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Wilma Vaught at a July 7 White House ceremony. Vaught is only the eighth distinguished Airman to earn the honor.

Over the course of a 28-year Air Force career, Vaught, 92, was “the first woman to hold every job she ever had,” her medal citation states. Over a 28-year career, she became the first woman to deploy with an Air Force bomber unit, serving in Vietnam, and was among the first women to break into the general officer ranks, retiring as a brigadier general in the Air Force.

After retiring, Vaught spearheaded the creation of the first national memorial honoring the more than 3 million women who served in the U.S. military. The Military Women’s Memorial is the result of that work, located at the gateway to Arlington National Cemetery, where it features a portrait of Vaught as a tribute to her determination to recognize women veterans.

Vaught was among several notable women who received the award at the same ceremony, including former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and two female Olympic champions, gymnast Simone Biles and soccer star Megan Rapinoe. Biden said in his opening remarks that Biles’ and Rapinoe’s leadership and success were built on those of earlier pioneers like Vaught.

“Simone and Megan would be the first to acknowledge that they stand on the shoulders of those who came before them, like Air Force Brigadier General (Retired) Wilma Vaught,” Biden said. “Wilma is one of the most decorated women ever to serve in the United States military,” he said, praising her for “shattering conventions, shaping a new tradition of our military,” and founding the women’s memorial.

Seated in a wheel chair in a bright blue blazer and with her left arm in a sling, Vaught saluted the crowd as President Biden fastened the award around her neck, then repeated the gesture, as the President came around and saluted her, offering a quiet “thank you” before he presented the next award.

The seven previous Air Force leaders to be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom were all men and include three astronauts, a Medal of Honor recipient, and a five-term member of the Senate:

Name	Year	Distinction	President
Buzz Aldrin	1969	Apollo 11 Astronaut	Nixon
Michael Collins	1969	Apollo 11 Astronaut	Nixon
Fred Wallace Haise	1970	Apollo 13 Astronaut	Nixon
Chuck Yeager	1985	Flying Ace, Test Pilot, first to break sonic barrier	Reagan
Barry Goldwater	1986	Five-term Senator and USAFR Brigadier General	Reagan
Jimmy Doolittle	1989	Medal of Honor Recipient and World War II hero	G.H.W.Bush
Richard Myers	2005	Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff	G. W. Bush

Space Force Will Yield ‘Eye-Watering’ Intel Capabilities, Whiting Says

July 7, 2022 | By Amanda Miller

Space Force operators and intelligence specialists will work side by side in the future to deliver the full “TPED” intelligence cycle—“tasking, processing, exploitation, and dissemination”—said Space Force Lt. Gen. Stephen N. Whiting.

Whiting commands the Space Force’s Space Operations Command, or SpOC. In the July 7 episode of the Aerospace Corp’s Space Policy Show, Whiting said intelligence is one of SpOC’s four “core competencies,” alongside cyber, operations, and combat support. Intelligence is an area where he said the service has made the most progress so far.

SpOC’s Space Delta 7—organizationally similar to an Air Force wing—sends intelligence detachments to other deltas around the service. This helps tailor intelligence assets to the given mission, delivering intel “right into their ops floor,” Whiting said. “So if you are at Space Delta 4”—the missile warning delta at Buckley Space Force Base, Colo.—“all of that intel is about missile warning, missile defense, and the threats to those systems.”

The Space Force will add three more intelligence squadrons “over the next couple years,” enabling the command to carry out the full “TPED” cycle, “all focused on space,” Whiting said.

Now that there is a Space Force, intelligence Guardians can be space specialists “instead of bouncing in and out and going and doing other things.” Space operators and cyber specialists will “grow up together” with their counterparts who specialize in intelligence, Whiting said.

“In fact, we talk about a left-seat, right-seat model, where—when our space operators or cyber operators are ‘executing mission’—there’s an intel operator sitting right next to them bringing them that intel that they need,” Whiting said. “And they’re going to figure out new ways of operating that I think are going to be eye watering as we move forward.”

The Space Force in June stood up a second intelligence-focused delta, Space Delta 18, at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, to operate the new National Space Intelligence Center. Its 1st Space Analysis Squadron and 2nd Space Analysis Squadron date back to 2008, originally the Space Analysis Squadron and Counterspace Analysis Squadron of the Air Force’s Space and Missiles Analysis Group.

In an interview with AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies in May, Whiting said governments such as China’s and Russia’s can attack satellites in orbit, but that cyberattacks offer a “lower bar to entry” to lesser powers, such as Iran or North Korea. Space systems’ cyber vulnerabilities represent the “soft underbelly” of the U.S. satellite infrastructure, Whiting said.

“So everything we do has to be relative to the threat,” Whiting said July 7. “In fact, the threat is the reason we have a U.S. Space Force.”

PACAF’s Chess Match With China to Build Pacific Partnerships

July 7, 2022 | By Abraham Mahshie

ANDERSEN AIR FORCE BASE, Guam—A metaphorical chess match is playing out across the Pacific, with both China and the United States offering nations military assistance and training to engender strategic partnerships and gain an edge should a conflict arise.

While China has contributed big-ticket items such as aircraft, ships, and construction of ports, the U.S. posture plan and defense budget call for less expensive, interoperable equipment, the training to use it, and long-term assistance, a Pacific Air Forces air liaison explained to Air Force Magazine.

“It is definitely a chess match on how we end up supporting,” said Lt. Col. Michael Ellis, a PACAF air advisor and commander of the 36th Contingency Response Support Squadron, in an interview at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam.

Ellis described security assistance to partner nations in the U.S. Indo-Pacific area of operation:

“The 36th CRSS is aligned for INDOPACOM AOR, which is a pretty hot and heavy topic right now,” Ellis said. “From our position within air advising, we are asked to provide them with equipment and then train them on it.”

INDOPACOM commander Adm. John C. Aquilino’s theater posture plan outlines the countries to which the United States will provide either training or equipment in the coming fiscal years.

In fiscal 2022, air advisers in the Indo-Pacific helped execute 50 missions with 15 different partner nations, delivering $32 million worth of equipment. Three funding streams provided assistance in theater: the Air Force’s BA04 funding for support to other nations; Aquilino’s Asia-Pacific Regional Initiative funds; and congressionally authorized Title 10, Section 333, funds for building partnership capacity.

By one account, China provided $1.5 billion in development assistance to Pacific island nations between 2013 and 2018, but that assistance is believed to be only a fraction of its military aid.

Ellis said the different U.S. funding streams and types of security assistance provide flexibility for the command.

“It could look like 11 fuel trucks; it could look like backup generators for their airport; it could end up looking like forklifts so they can download cargo,” he said. “We train them in their country on this equipment that they’ve just received.”

Ellis gave recent examples, including Palau, where the Valiant Shield exercise concluded in June, and Timor-Leste as two countries in the theater receiving such assistance. The partnership with Timor-Leste, a nation north of Australia that gained independence from Indonesia in 2002, will deepen in coming years with fiscal 2023 Pacific Deterrence Initiative funds slated for military construction that could benefit future U.S. operations.

“We hope, obviously, that it can end up being used for good in the future,” Ellis added. “And, possibly if America needs to partner with them, they have interoperable equipment now.”

Ellis downplayed competition with China in defense assistance, indicating that many countries of the region have made internal decisions as to whether they want to orient their relations more toward China or the United States.

“When [the] cards are on the table, what we show is, even though there might not necessarily be a hospital, maybe there’s not necessarily a ship, [but] there is a support alliance, regional partnership,” he said, describing the process of building a new relationship that often ends with equipment transfers and training.

U.S. as ‘Partner of Choice’

Michael Collat, a retired Air Force intelligence officer who leads Booz Allen Hamilton’s defense contracting work with INDOPACOM in Honolulu, said that often, countries in the region are forced to split their allegiance between China and the United States.

“China is their back door neighbor,” Collat said by video conference from Hawaii. “A lot of them look for China as economic partner of choice, but the U.S. as kind of the security partner.”

A challenge arises when both China and the United States compete for access to a Pacific country such as the Philippines.

“There have been cycles throughout their history of turning west and east, kind of back and forth, as they try and strike that balance, depending on the administration, the party that’s in charge,” he said of the Philippines.

Newly elected Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. recently stated his desire for closer relations with Beijing, including possible military exchanges.

“China has been on this charm offensive for a relatively short period, but I think there’s a lot of countries already seeing what happens in that,” said Collat, referring to China’s predatory lending practices. “They look very attractive in the short term, but there’s a lot of strings that come attached to the offer.”

Ellis visited the Philippines prior to the May 9 presidential election to guide an ongoing security assistance program.

“The Philippines is one of those that will be receiving equipment in the future to support their airfield ops,” he said prior to Marcos’s comments. “Everything that I’ve seen, at least from a [political-military] standpoint, looks like it is favorable for the U.S. military cooperation with the Philippine government. I think time will tell, to be quite honest.”

In a June 9 interview at PACAF headquarters in Hawaii, commander Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach said countries indicate to him that they prefer working with the United States, which shares their desire for a free and open Indo-Pacific.

“As I go around the region and I talk to air chiefs and other senior military leaders, we’re the partner of choice,” the PACAF commander said.

Wilsbach said countries in the region are worried about China’s aggressive behavior, including by Chinese flagged ships where it has maritime disputes with Vietnam, the Philippines, and Japan. China also exhibits “some very bad behavior” in the skies, the commander said, citing a June 4 example of China ejecting chaff in close proximity to Australian and Canadian aircraft that caused damage to one of the engines.

“This is the environment,” Wilsbach said. “Air chiefs go, ‘Yeah, we want to train with you more. We want to come and train with you in your place. We want you to come to our place and train, etc, etc, etc. So, they are seeking interoperability.”

‘The Business is Growing’

China’s largesse across the Pacific led to a new defense agreement with the Solomon Islands in April, but Ellis said the United States is stepping up, too, with budget increases in coming years.

Some examples include further security cooperation with Mongolia and new partnerships with the Marshall Islands and Papua New Guinea in fiscal 2024.

“The business is growing,” he said.

Defense Department projections for fiscal 2024 use of congressional Section 333 funding have just been finalized, Ellis said, and INDOPACOM is expected to get 37 percent of the $1.16 billion allotted to the geographic combatant commands. Ellis said PACAF will be allowed to divvy up 50 percent of that total, or about $215 million.

“The signal is going up that there needs to be more of an investment when it comes to security cooperation—that building partnership capacity in the Indo-Pacific,” Ellis said.

The air liaison referred again to Palau as a success story. After first receiving security assistance from the Defense Department two years ago, Palau has hosted PACAF exercises Cope North 21, Pacific Iron 21, Cope North 22, and Valiant Shield 22.

“When we talk about getting after a pacing threat,” said Ellis—a reference to DOD’s preferred designation for China—working with the Pacific countries is how “they will end up trusting us.”

“There’s a lot of partnership that’s taking place,” he added. “I don’t think I can intelligently answer whether that’s going to result in actual, tangible results in the future, but what I can say is, it’s working towards the policy that needs to be done within the Indo-Pacific.”

2nd Weather Squadron ‘Listens’ to the Sun as It Approaches Peak of 11-Year Cycle

July 6, 2022 | By Abraham Mahshie

KAENA POINT SPACE FORCE STATION, Oahu, Hawaii—At the rocky edge of a cliff on Hawaii’s Oahu island are poised three antenna dishes that rotate with the sun. Together, they form part of a global network to warn warfighters of solar activity that can disrupt radio signals and potentially send false data to the battlefield, a rising concern as the sun enters a cycle of increased activity.

“We listen to the sun—we don’t look at the sun,” Maj. Matthew Ferguson, commander of Detachment 5, 2nd Weather Squadron, at Kaena Point Space Force Station, Hawaii, told Air Force Magazine during a visit.

The Air Force’s 2nd Weather Squadron, headquartered at Offutt Air Force Base, Neb., provides solar electro-optical network operations through the Radio Solar Telescope Network (RSTN), situated at four global sites. Detachment 5 operates one of the RSTN sites, which has three Space Force-owned antenna dishes that listen to eight potentially dangerous frequencies.

In order to have ears on the sun at all times, the Air Force has three other detachments, in Learmonth, Australia; Sagamore Hill, Mass.; and San Vito, Italy.

“We listen to the sun, and we can pick up whenever the sun is causing radio interference through things like solar flares,” Ferguson said.

As the sun enters the solar maximum, an 11-year cycle of increased solar activity, larger numbers of sunspots are expected to occur and affect radio communications.

“We will see more sunspots and solar activity that will cause additional radio interference,” said Ferguson. Ferguson said the more sunspot areas that are detected, the greater the likelihood of solar flares and more radio frequency interference.

On the battlefield, that means radio communications errors, bad GPS data, and failed communication to and from satellites. Just one way space weather can affect GPS accuracy is when the ionosphere becomes “highly disturbed” and the GPS receiver can’t lock onto the signal, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“If you’re out doing a patrol and your GPS is off, then you could be in the wrong place. Or if their SATCOM is disrupted, they can’t talk back to base,” explained Space Force Maj. Brandon Hammond, commander of the 21st Space Operations Squadron, Detachment 3, at Kaena Point.

To prevent disruptions to missions, Ferguson and the other 2nd Weather Squadron commanders send reports to the Space Weather Operations Center, or Space WOC, at Offutt. There, operators prepare warnings and send them out to the entities with assets that may be affected.

“You can’t fix it—the sun is the sun,” added Hammond. “But that enables our forces to plan around that.”

But Ferguson admits that predicting space weather, specifically solar activity, is even harder than estimating weather patterns on Earth.

“It’s not like the regular weather, but maybe [there’s] a little bit of advance notice,” he said, noting that the solar maximum activity is expected to last for the next two to three years.

With the data the 2nd Weather Squadron collects, units across the joint force could receive as much as 12 to 24 hours of advance notice of a solar event that could impact their assets.

“Or as little as no time at all,” said Ferguson.

The trouble is, with salty conditions in the Pacific Ocean and myriad other threats, the solar monitoring equipment at Kaena Point is old and requires constant maintenance to stay operational.

The downtime of the current systems means sometimes only one antenna monitors the sun at a time or there is potentially a gap in monitoring if multiple systems are down at the same time.

To discuss recent repairs, Ferguson grabbed onto a rusty metal ladder fastened to the side of his detachment headquarters and started climbing to the rooftop. There, with the north and east shores of Oahu behind him, he looked up at the largest antenna he is responsible for at 28 feet.

“A lot of it is obsolete, and it’s overdue for replacements,” he said. He then described mechanical repairs that took the antenna out of operation for two weeks in January.

“That one was ‘Big Bertha.’ She was having some problems last year,” he said with a laugh. “We treat her nice now. She’s been working pretty well for us since the major overhaul.”

PACAF Watches Closely as Philippines Considers Military Ties With China

July 6, 2022 | By Abraham Mahshie

Newly elected Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has indicated he desires warmer relations with Beijing, saying he is even open to military ties with China, a move that would complicate Pacific Air Forces’ efforts to protect U.S. interests with a forward presence in the South Pacific.

“We have our relationship not only on one dimension,” Marcos said July 5, according to media reports. “Let’s add to that: Let’s have cultural exchanges, educational exchanges, even military, if that will be useful.”

Marcos’s comments came ahead of a two-day visit by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi that began July 6 in Manila. Wang will tour Southeast Asia until July 14 and continue China’s effort to enlist new partners across the Pacific who can provide military basing and access.

The boldest statements yet by the new Philippine president are also an unwelcome sign to the Pacific Air Forces, which had begun practicing agile combat employment on the island chain in the South Pacific.

Basing access in the Philippines would give Beijing a footing just 1,500 miles from Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, considered the Defense Department’s “forward edge” for Pacific defense. A multi-layered missile defense system on Guam is years away.

In a June 9 interview at PACAF headquarters, commander Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach told Air Force Magazine he had hoped to deepen Air Force ties with the Philippines under the new administration.

“We’ve done a limited amount, very limited, really, in the Philippines,” Wilsbach said after describing new agile combat employment and other exercises taking place in Palau.

“We have done some ACE operations in the Philippines and certainly hope to do more training with them here and in the future,” he said.

In May, F-16s from the 80th Fighter Squadron, Kunsan Air Base, South Korea, exercised alongside Philippines Air Force F-16s.

“I actually had a chance to visit the Philippines not long ago and got to a couple of their airfields and met with their air chief,” Wilsbach said. “So, it’s a good relationship.”

The U.S. defense relationship with the Philippines soured under the administration of past president Rodrigo Duterte, who also attempted to realign his relations with China despite disputed maritime claims in the South China Sea. In June 2020, Duterte canceled the visiting forces agreement with the United States before reversing his decision four months later.

“I think the Philippines is going to be a tricky one because of Bongbong coming in, but it’s still really important,” American Enterprise Institute Asia-Pacific defense policy expert Zack Cooper told Air Force Magazine in a recent interview, referring to Marcos by his nickname.

“There is stuff that we can probably do with other countries in Southeast Asia, but it’s going to be probably more limited,” he added. “The Pacific islands posture options are critical, and we’re seeing the Chinese making a huge Pacific islands push right now.”

In recent months, Wang visited numerous Pacific islands, and China recently signed a basing agreement with the Solomon Islands, adding an unforeseen challenge to U.S. ally Australia’s defense plans.

In his interview with Air Force Magazine prior to Marcos’s remarks, Wilsbach was confident the U.S. relationship with the Philippines could deepen, but he warned that political uncertainty remained.

“They just obviously had an election, and we’ll see how that transition may change the political environment or not,” he said. “And we’ll go from there.”

New “Atomic Veterans” Medal Honors Those Involved in Nuclear Weapon Tests, Operations

July 6, 2022 | By Amanda Miller

Veterans who performed the secret, often dangerous work of testing nuclear weapons deserve new recognition and may now call themselves “Atomic Veterans,” according to the Defense Department.

The department announced the Atomic Veterans Commemorative Service Medal on July 5 to recognize that “the service and sacrifice of the Atomic Veterans directly contributed to our Nation’s continued freedom and prosperity during the period following World War II.” Their work was “pivotal to our Nation’s defense during the Cold War era,” according to the announcement.

A DOD spokesperson said as many as 500,000 veterans may be eligible for the medal.

Veterans who qualify for the medallion-only award include those who served between July 1945 and October 1992 and, as part of their military duties, took part in a nuclear detonation; or cleaned up radioactive material after a detonation or an accident; or were exposed to ionizing radiation during the “operational use” of nuclear weapons in World War II.

The dates coincide with those of nuclear testing in the U.S., starting with the first detonation in Alamogordo, N.M. The U.S. performed 1,032 tests in all.

Medallion-only medals, given to special groups of veterans, don’t hang from a ribbon and may not be worn on uniforms, the Pentagon said, citing as other examples the Congressional Gold Medal and the Pearl Harbor Commemorative Medal.

The director of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency will manage the program, and expects to have medals available to distribute by the end of this year. Meanwhile, an online application will be set up for eligible veterans, or the next of kin of deceased eligible veterans, to start the process.

“Our Nation’s longstanding nuclear deterrence capability resulted from the service and sacrifice of Service members (now known as Atomic Veterans) who participated in the initial testing and development of our Nation’s atomic and nuclear weapons programs,” according to the announcement.

“Notably, the dangerous and important work these veterans performed was often done in secret due to national security requirements.”

New Generation of Rockets Queue Up to Launch From Florida Facilities in 2022

July 5, 2022 | By Amanda Miller

NASA, SpaceX, and United Launch Alliance are all preparing to launch their next-gen rockets from Florida’s Space Coast, two of them before the year is out.

One is expected to liberate the U.S. launch enterprise from its reliance on Russian-made RD-180 engines, while all three rockets could eventually carry astronaut crews.

Vulcan Centaur’s Engine Delivery Is Imminent

United Launch Alliance expects the first flight of its Vulcan Centaur rocket to take place by the end of 2022, said Gary L. Wentz Jr., ULA’s vice president of government and commercial programs, on a call with reporters ahead of the Space Force’s USSF-12 mission. The Vulcan Centaur will replace ULA’s Atlas 5.

Departing from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, the partially reusable rocket’s inaugural mission, carrying a robotic lunar lander, will also serve as the new rocket’s certification flight, Wentz said.

Delayed since 2020, ULA awaits delivery of BE-4 engines from Blue Origin.

“We’re expecting those here in the summer, and we’re on track to launch Vulcan and be able to support both the national security need as well as our commercial customers,” Wentz said.

He confirmed prior reports that ULA still has enough of the Atlas 5’s Russian-made RD-180 engines on hand to complete that rocket’s manifest. He said Atlas 5 flights will wind down at the same time the Vulcan Centaur’s are spooling up.

“We’ll be flying the Atlas 5 into 2024—the last flight is currently manifested in the latter part of 2024—and we’re working to integrate our operations across Vulcan and Atlas,” Wentz said.

The Space Force’s Col. Erin Gulden confirmed that “from the Space Force’s perspective, we don’t see any issues or concerns at this point with a gap in capability or ability to launch” in the transition from the Atlas 5 to the Vulcan Centaur.

The Space Force’s first launch on a Vulcan Centaur is planned for late 2023, the officials said.

Two crew vehicles may eventually launch on Vulcan Centaurs. Boeing’s Starliner capsule, designed to transport astronauts to and from the International Space Station, is so far lined up to launch on Atlas 5, but ULA is “definitely capable of launching Starliner on Vulcan” and looking forward to “continuing to support the team if that’s what they choose to go forward with.”

Meanwhile, the uncrewed Dream Chaser spaceplane is on the manifest to go to space for the first time on the second Vulcan Centaur en route to deliver supplies to the ISS. Its maker Sierra Space still hasn’t given up on Dream Chaser’s original crewed design.

SLS Moon Rocket Shows Signs of Progress

NASA fueled up its first Space Launch System rocket in June on the fourth try of the wet dress rehearsal required before the rocket’s first flight, which could take place from Launch Complex 39B at Kennedy Space Center as soon as August.

In development since 2011 and now years late and billions over budget, the SLS, made largely by Boeing, “will be the most powerful rocket we’ve ever built,” according to NASA.

The expendable SLS repurposes the space shuttle fleet’s RS-25 engine and, for early flights, incorporates actual refurbished RS-25s from the space shuttle program, a part of the design that was supposed to have made the rocket faster and cheaper to develop.

The SLS’s first mission, Artemis 1, launches a Lockheed Martin-made Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle on its first flight since 2014—the only other time Orion has flown. Artemis 1 calls for an uncrewed circuit of the moon and return flight to Earth by Orion, splashing down in the Pacific.

A crew will make the same trip on Artemis 2. On Artemis 3, NASA expects to land astronauts on the moon as soon as 2025.

Starship Infrastructure Appears on Falcon 9 Launch Pad

Even more powerful than NASA’s SLS for Artemis 1 will be SpaceX’s Starship and Super Heavy Booster. NASA has selected a variant of the Starship vehicle as its first lander to ferry astronauts between the Orion capsule in lunar orbit and the surface of the moon.

SpaceX has said it’s eyeing this month for the first orbital flight of its reusable Starship, launched on the reusable Super Heavy booster, from the company’s Starbase facility in Texas—though the approvals needed to launch from there still weren’t guaranteed.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said in February that the Florida launch site could serve as backup if things don’t work out in Texas, estimating a delay of six to eight months were that the case.

NASA’s independent Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, however, cited “obvious safety concerns” with the new tower’s proximity to SpaceX’s existing Falcon 9 launch tower at Kennedy’s Launch Complex 39A—the towers are only 300 meters apart—and NASA has reportedly said that while it approved SpaceX’s construction of the new tower, it wouldn’t approve an actual launch without an additional safety review.

Concern surrounds the potential for an accident like the 2016 explosion of a Falcon 9. If a Starship exploded and damaged the Falcon 9 infrastructure—the only place where SpaceX launches its Crew Dragon capsules—that could prevent astronauts from getting to the ISS.

Valiant Shield Adds ACE Partners in the Pacific, Tests Dispersion, MQ-9 ‘Drop-In’

July 5, 2022 | By Abraham Mahshie

JOINT REGION MARIANAS, Guam—Laid out across a vast wooden table made in the woodshop of a Navy ship repair facility in Guam in 1967 was a map of the Pacific Ocean island chains of the Northern Marianas, Palau, and Micronesia.

As large as the map was—spread out at the rounded head of the historic table that once hosted a meeting between President Lyndon B. Johnson and South Vietnamese representatives—it showed only the small region of the South Pacific where the exercise Valiant Shield took place June 6-17. Across thousands of miles of Pacific Ocean, the exercise included 15 surface ships, more than 200 aircraft, and about 13,000 personnel from across the services.

Aside from practicing fifth-generation agile combat employment and joint fires integration to sink a decommissioned Navy frigate, the biennial exercise demonstrated the progress the Air Force has made in adding partners in the region while also testing how far is too far to disperse and how to incorporate more platform types.

“This is a pretty … extensive swath of area,” Joint Region Marianas commander Navy Rear Adm. Benjamin Nicholson told Air Force Magazine during a visit to his headquarters office in Guam.

“All throughout Palau, we’ve got a number of different forces operating there,” Nicholson explained before the exercise concluded. “We’ve got assets from our naval construction battalion, the Seabees, that are down there. There’s Marine Corps assets there. There’s Air Force assets. There’s Army assets.”

Nicholson reached across the table to point to the southernmost island of the Palau island chain, Angaur, in the Philippine Sea, to explain the Marine Corps’ role.

“The Marine Corps just recently did a HIMARS launch from Angaur, which was pretty neat down there. It’s the first time we’ve done something like that in a long time,” he said.

Expanding the ACE Portfolio

The Air Force is expanding ACE operations beyond the Northern Mariana Islands, which include the U.S. territories Guam, Tinian, and Saipan. Now, PACAF can count on the Republic of Palau and the Federated States of Micronesia to practice landing, re-equipping, and quickly launching from unfamiliar, austere islands locations.

The result moves the Air Force closer to realizing the ACE operational concept to confound an adversary’s targeting by spreading out.

“We’re constantly trying to operationalize these concepts,” said Col. Jared Paslay, a Valiant Shield planner who spoke to Air Force Magazine by phone from PACAF’s headquarters in Hawaii after the exercise concluded.

“We’re trying to pedal as fast as we can and integrate as quickly as possible,” Paslay said.

He said one operational concept tested and deemed “widely successful across the joint force” involved joint all-domain command and control, known as JADC2.

In the test, with military comms cut, technicians passed encrypted messages over civilian communications infrastructure.

“Imagine the possibilities when you can actually use the local environment, like a cell phone tower or a Starlink terminal, to actually pass messages back and forth and continue to do a crisis response type of operation,” he said. “It was a massive enabler for not just the Air Force, but the entire joint force.”

Another element of the exercise involved F-35s practicing integrated air and missile defense, with the Army firing Patriot missile defense systems from Palau’s Roman Tmetuchl International Airport on the main island of Babeldaob.

“A lot of awesome firsts for a very important regional partner with the Palau piece,” Paslay said.

Another first was participation by MQ-9s from Creech Air Force Base, Nev., in what Paslay described as “expanding the envelope” of the ACE concept beyond fighters to include transport as well as intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) aircraft—”all the other aspects that you would need as an air component and as a joint force to fight forward in a distributed operating environment,” he explained.

The ISR “drop-in,” as Paslay described it, helped the Air Force better understand what the ACE footprint for an MQ-9 should look like.

“How would you take a valuable asset like that and actually drop it in with a small footprint of folks, and launch and recover it forward?” he posed. “Trying to figure that out in a peacetime environment is a pretty big emphasis item for us—and I think there was a lot of goodness that was had by that, the MQ-9s out of Palau.”

Dispersion With Balance

With Valiant Shield, the Air Force learned a little more about how to disperse to multiple operating locations in the Pacific.

“In a contested, distributed operating environment, we’ve got to get light. We’ve got to get lean. We’ve got to cover down. We’ve got to bake resiliency into our support personnel so we can do a lot more from a versatility standpoint, with even less people than before,” he explained.

Paslay said that beyond the exercise’s South Pacific operational area—which included the so-called Second Island Chain of the Island Chain Strategy—Navy surface vessels were situated near the Korean Peninsula, Japan, and the Philippines, which constitute the First Island Chain; and command-and-control took place at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, part of the Third Island Chain.

“So, for a couple of weeks of an exercise, it was a pretty large scope and scale geographically,” he said.

But deciding how much to disperse also requires balance.

“I want to disperse far enough away—that way I can mitigate an adversary’s kinetic attacks,” he said. “We’ll spread out to multiple operating locations that are far enough away to make sure that they’re survivable but they’re not so far away that they’re not sustainable. Otherwise, it is just an idea on paper, and it’s actually not executable.”

Schmidt Succeeds Fick as New F-35 PEO; Two USAF Directors in a Row May Signal JPO Break-Up

July 5, 2022 | By John A. Tirpak

Air Force Lt. Gen. Michael J. Schmidt took command of the F-35 Joint Program Office on July 5, succeeding Air Force Lt. Gen. Eric Fick, who is retiring. The succession of an Air Force PEO by another—breaking more than 25 years of back-and-forth joint leadership—may signal that the JPO is being prepared to split into two entities.

In a Washington, D.C., ceremony presided over by William A. LaPlante, undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, Schmidt accepted command of the JPO remotely, as he had recently tested positive for COVID-19.

Fick had led the JPO since July 2019 and was the deputy PEO for two years before that. He managed it through “significant challenges” such as the COVID pandemic, rising sustainment costs, engine availability headaches, and the expulsion of Turkey from the program, LaPlante said. “His fingerprints are going to be on this airplane forever,” which LaPlante said will amount to “more than 50 years” of future service.

Fick said a continuing challenge for the program is the Tech Refresh 2 and 3 effort, both necessary to prepare the F-35 fleet for the introduction of the Block 4 upgrade and step-change in production. He said, “we can see … light at the end of the tunnel” in getting the F135 engine power modules flowing to the field more rapidly, but it is “one alligator” among many that must be managed. Still, “we got there much, much faster than anyone though that could happen.”

Lt. Gen. Eric Fick speaks prior to transferring authorities and duties of the F-35 Joint Program Office to Lt. Gen. Michael Schmidt during a command change ceremony at Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling, Washington, D.C., July 5, 2022. Photo by Senior Chief Petty Officer Michael ODay.

Repeating a comment he said he has made often with the JPO, Fick said, “time is your only non-renewable resource” and that the F-35 must advance along many fronts simultaneously. His motto has been “readiness, relevance, reality, and ramp,” and he said he is proud that the program has reached an annual software release, despite the original plan for a twice-annual release.

The F-35 is “utterly dominant in the battlespace today,” he said, but must be continuously updated to remain that way. Affordability must be brought “into every conversation we have.”

LaPlante called the selection of Schmidt “the right person for the job at the right time,” noting Schmidt’s holding five PEO jobs during his career, in three of which he succeeded Fick.

Neither Fick nor LaPlante mentioned the Lot 15-17 contract, overdue since November. Negotiations on Lot 15-17 have been held up by the services’ reduction of the number of aircraft they will buy in those lots, as well as sharp increases in inflation since last year.

Also not mentioned was the fact that the program is breaking with its tradition of switching program leadership back and forth between the Navy and Air Force. Since its inception, the PEO has reported to the other-service’s acquisition executive, and the deputy was also from the other service, with each job swapping services when the next PEO came in.

The pattern, established in the Joint Strike Fighter charter, was meant to ensure the program was as joint as possible.

Schmidt, an Air Force general officer, is succeeding Fick, also an Air Force officer. Either the Navy or Marine Corps, by program tradition, would have supplied the new PEO.

When asked for an explanation of why the longstanding pattern is being abandoned, a Pentagon spokesperson said that “as with all previous leadership changes in the JPO, the best candidate for the job was selected.” The JPO charter allows for “flexibility” in choosing PEOs, she said.

The Pentagon did not respond to questions as to why there wasn’t a sufficiently qualified officer in the Navy or Marine Corps ready to accept the job, but Pentagon sources said the timing was such that the Department of the Navy would have exceeded its billets for three-star flag officers if it supplied the new PEO. However, it did say that Schmidt’s appointment “is not temporary” until a Navy or Marine Corps flag officer can take the job.

The deputy program executive officer is also now a civilian—Sean Burke—who took on that assignment in February of this year.

Sources also said Schmidt’s selection may be an indication that the Pentagon is preparing—as Congress has directed—to break up the program office such that each service manages its own fleet of F-35s. The Air Force operates F-35As, which take off and land conventionally and which comprise by far the largest component of the all-variant F-35 inventory, worldwide. The Marine Corps’ F-35Bs have short takeoff/vertical landing capability, while the Navy/Marine Corps F-35Cs can operate from conventional aircraft carriers.

Congress has said it believes F-35 sustainment costs could be sharply reduced if the services were allowed to organize sustainment according to their own needs.

Asked if Schmidt’s appointment has to do with that transition, the spokesperson said, “The Department continues to define executable options to move the F-35 enterprise forward.” Its goal will be to implement congressional direction in the National Defense Authorization Act “with no degradation to the capabilities we collectively develop, deliver, and sustain for our joint and international war fighting customers.” The spokesperson said the Pentagon will provide “updates on the way ahead as available.”

Fick has been resistant to those changes to the JPO’s purview, insisting that a joint approach to program management saves the most money and reduces duplication of effort; but has also said the JPO will do as Congress instructs.

The Air Force is grappling with whether it wants to use one of the Adaptive Engine Transition Program (AETP) powerplants in the Block 4 version of the F-35. The engine would give the jet more range and electricity-generating capability, as well as some improvement in stealth, but Fick has insisted that “you have to pay to be different” from the other users, and the Air Force would have to integrate a new engine into the F-35 at its own cost. Pratt & Whitney has pitched an upgraded version of the F-35’s F135 engine as one way to address the need for more power, but it and GE Aircraft are also pushing for their AETP powerplants.

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall has said he has discussed getting the Navy to bear some of the AETP integration costs on the F-35, but that the discussions are still in early stages.