Brown: Need to Consider Allies When Analyzing Air Force’s Capacity

Sept. 20, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

The Air Force’s internal analysis has left Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. confident in the capacity of the service’s combat aircraft fleet—especially when considering what the United States’ partners and allies can bring to the fight.

Speaking with reporters at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference, Brown also reaffirmed his vision of a “4+1” fleet of fighters and explained why the Air Force has shelved plans for an F-16 replacement for the time being.

Combat Capacity

With the Air Force’s fleet of planes getting older and smaller over time, a recent analysis from the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies laid out the case that the service “lacks the force capacity, lethality, and survivability needed to fight a major war with China, plus deter nuclear threats and meet its other national defense requirements.”

In particular, retired Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula and retired Col. Mark A. Gunzinger, both USAF, focused their analysis on combat aircraft and concluded that the service’s focus on “capability over capacity” has resulted in a critical shortfall.

Asked about the Mitchell Institute paper, Brown pointed to the Air Force’s internal work analyzing its needs.

“The analysis we did in our own internal attack air study took a look at what the numbers would be. I understand Mitchell, and I haven’t talked to them—they are strong advocates that probably push it a bit harder,” Brown said. “But we’ve done a lot of analysis associated with this and understand … we can have some trade space between fourth-gen, fifth-gen, and overall capacity.”

And while the Mitchell Institute paper broke down the Air Force’s declining force size, it didn’t count the fighters and aircraft from allied nations, presenting an incomplete picture, Brown said.

“We do a lot of our own analysis as if we’re doing this by ourselves. … We cannot do this alone. And our partners have a lot of capacity and capability,” Brown said. “I would highlight the aspect of, I was with the Swiss attache today and he mentioned they just signed for the F-35. And so what we’re seeing is a lot of our partners actually have a lot of capabilities as well, more so than we have in the past, which for those concerned about capacity, you got to account for all the capacity within our allies and partners.”

Switzerland is just the one of the latest countries to move toward buying the F-35—the Czech Republic, Greece, Germany, and Canada have all taken steps to purchase the fifth-generation fighter in recent months, while Belgium, Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, the U.K., Finland, Japan, South Korea, and Singapore have either accepted F-35s into their fleets or are in line to do so.

In March, Air Force Gen. Tod D. Wolters, then the head of U.S. European Command, predicted there would be 550 F-35s spread across Europe by 2030—that estimate marked an increase of 100 jets from his previous guess in June 2021, and it may already be outdated.

4+1

Brown also told reporters that he is “still committed” to his plan of reducing the Air Force’s fighter fleet to four main types—the F-35, the F-22, to be replaced by the Next Generation Air Dominance platform, the F-16, and the F-15 E/F-15EX.

The “plus one” in the “4+1” plan is the A-10, the beloved but aging close air support aircraft that leaders have frequently tried to divest, only to be blocked by Congress. Brown’s focus on that platform has been “less,” he said, “as we’ve been able to really start to focus on … the four fighters.”

That commitment to the four comes even as the Air Force revealed plans to accelerate its purchase of F-15EX fighters in the 2023 budget but then reduce the overall planned size of the fleet from 144 to 80.

“One of the things as we move forward is also looking at how the F-15EX [will] have a healthy fleet, and it’s a conversation we’re having not only in FY 23 but as we look forward and build the budget for 2024,” Brown said.

F-16 Replacement

The F-16 also remains a part of the Air Force’s plan for the foreseeable future, Brown said—officials indicated recently that the service will keep the fighter into the 2040s and that it is not necessary to launch its successor yet.

That successor, referred to as “MR-F” or “MR-X,” first showed up in planning documents in 2021 that indicated the Air Force was looking to an F-16 successor in the mid-2030s—but plans changed under Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, Brown indicated.

“We didn’t have the secretary we have today. So it’s been a good dialogue between myself and Secretary Kendall as we work, and even when we talked about that capacity, that was not a decision we needed to make now,” Brown said. “My focus area right now is to ensure that we continue to modernize the fleet. And so as I look at some of the earlier block F-16s and go through various budget cycles, I don’t necessarily want to buy back a lot of capacity that we want to retire. I actually would like to buy new capability to replace that.

“And so that’s where my focus is as a chief right now. And then at some point, there may be potential to start talking about what might come after the F-16. Right now, it’s the F-35 we’re putting all of our energy into bringing online.”

Brown’s 5 Big Steps to Transforming His Air Force

Sept. 20, 2022 | By John A. Tirpak

Aggressive competitors, limited resources, and accelerating technological advances compel the Air Force to rapidly transform, as it has during other inflection points in its 75-year history, Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. said.

“We’ve done this before … we can do it again,” Brown said in his keynote address to AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference.

Two years into his term, Brown said the Air Force can no longer assume it has dominant capabilities and must be willing to constantly rethink its technology and processes and to “collaborate within and throughout” to achieve its goals.

“We must change … if we want to preserve our way of life,” Brown said, invoking his “accelerate change or lose” mantra.

“We already know how to accelerate,” he said.

The nation finds itself “in a pivotal period … one that is fundamentally reshaping the international security landscape,” he noted. While the U.S. focused on “violent extremists” for two decades, “our competitors focused on matching” the Air Force’s dominant capabilities.

The challenges are “not new … but the complexity and combination” are greater, he said. While “Our tactical skills are sharp … we need to reframe our thinking to meet the challenges we will face in the future.”

Brown said, “If we don’t get this right, together—if we fail to adapt—we risk our national security, our ideals, and the current rules-based international order.”

The Air Force’s cultural change will be in five areas, Brown said:

Mission Command. “We rewrote Air Force Doctrine Publication One,” Brown said, which requires “mutual trust, shared understanding, and clear commander’s intent.” It directs leaders to spell out their objectives for their Airmen and “then get out of their way,” he added. “We might think this is intuitive; I assure you, it is not.”
Force Generation. “We are transforming the way we deploy,” Brown said. The Air Force new Force Generation Concept, or AFFORGEN, will be operational Oct. 1, defining four stages of operational readiness: “Prepare, Ready, Available to Commit, and Reset.” Each stage runs six months in an overall two-year cycle for every unit. The goal of this system is to establish “discipline” in parsing airpower in sustainable ways, so commanders better understand the implications for downstream readiness when selecting units to deploy.
Agile Combat Employment. The old model of operating from large forward bases “will not work” because adversaries can focus their attacks on those few operational locations. ACE will increase survivability by distributing forces over a wide and shifting area. It “requires us to be lighter, leaner, and more agile,” Brown said, and he’s seen “great progress being made” in this area. Enabling capabilities and concepts will include “command and control, logistics under attack, and missile defense, to name a few.” Helping Airman to become more flexible and less narrow in their scope is a key to ACE. Multi-capable Airmen are a key to making ACE work, Brown said. The shift to multi-capable Airmen is “not a checklist,” he said, but a mindset.
Multi-capable Airmen. Brown said he wants to “crush bureaucratic hurdles” that hold Airmen back from accomplishing tasks outside their core specialties, creating a “more agile and lethal force.”
Applying the A-staff Construct at the Wing Level. In this model, A-1 is personnel, A-2 is intelligence, A-3 is operations, and so on. Using the model, Airmen and USAF units will more intuitively “plug into” the joint force when they deploy. This allows USAF to “train like we fight,” providing wings with “more rapid decision-making” and better responsiveness and aligning them in a way that mirrors that of USAF Headquarters and the other joint forces.

In the lead-up to USAF’s founding in 1947, service pioneers “pushed the limits, challenged the status quo,” and proved the value of airpower and the credibility of a separate air-oriented military branch, he said. “Giants” in airpower history such as Hap Arnold and Billy Mitchell “risked their reputations and their careers because they knew what was at stake.”

In the decades that followed, the Air Force continued to innovate, he said. From the Berlin Airlift to the creation of supersonic aircraft and rapid development of intercontinental ballistic missiles, the Air Force met the nation’s security challenges, Brown said, and will do so again now. The Air Force, industry, and academia pooled their talents to develop ICBMs in just two years, he noted.

To overcome greater numbers of Soviet forces, the Air Force invested in and rapidly fielded stealth aircraft and precision weapons, leading to its dominant performance in the 1991 Gulf War and across the ensuing 20 years, Brown said. In the Balkans, the Air Force used the B-2 stealth bomber for the first time and fielded an armed version of the Predator remotely piloted aircraft “in just 39 days,” he said.

Today, the Air Force is again confronted with challenges to its ability to control the skies, defend the homeland, and penetrate to any target it must hold at risk, he said. It must not be daunted.

“We’ve done this before,” he said. “We can do it again. … We must not rest on our laurels.”

While still “the most respected Air Force and Space Force” in the world, Brown said that status must be earned. The path to do that is through ever-greater collaboration among the services and with industry—and by empowering Airmen at every level to figure out solutions that achieve their commanders’ intent.

Brown said he will forgive mistakes made in pursuit of true innovations, “pushing through failure until finding success.”

“This has always been in our DNA,” he added. “With every new trial, no matter how difficult, we proved we could rise above any challenge … if we were willing to take risk.” Airmen must feel free to “challenge the status quo.”

Calling for experimentation, risk-taking, and “creating disruption at all levels,” he directed Airmen to pursue faster and better ways to accomplish the mission.

“We have done this no matter how seemingly impossible” the challenges, he said.

Brown cited several examples of Airmen who have risen to this challenge, including Senior Master Sgt. Brent Kenney of the 52nd Fighter Wing, who came up with a way to create potable water at a remote location using solar fabric and “an environmental water harvester,” saving USAF from having to dedicate “precious” cargo missions to delivering bottled water and saving on diesel generators.

Adaptation today requires “collective effort” and collaboration—both within the Air Force and with its partners and allies worldwide—to “understand the environment,” define the threat, share information, and “employ airpower.”

Toward that end, Brown is working toward a future force he calls “Integrated by Design,” which will “start with allies and partners in mind, versus … adapting to include partners and allies later.”

The Air Force “can’t do this alone,” he said. ”We must accelerate. Our window of opportunity is closing. … We have to … get beyond talking about what we want to do … and go do.”

AFRL and Air Force Test Center to Meet for Joint Summit on Autonomy

Sept. 20, 2022 | By Chris Gordon

The Air Force Research Laboratory and the Air Force Test Center will host their first summit on autonomy, a weeklong session this fall to dive into the concept that is key to the service’s future strategy. The virtual meeting will include close to 100 AFRL, AFTC, and Department of Defense acquisitions officials, Maj. Gen. Heather L. Pringle, commander of AFRL, and Maj. Gen. Evan C. Dertien, commander of AFTC, told reporters Sept. 20 at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference.

“We haven’t taken a whole week to really roll up our sleeves and look at autonomy,” Pringle said.

DOD is accelerating its push for autonomous systems. In a contested environment, autonomous systems can lower the risk to Airmen while increasing the force brought to bear against an adversary. The AFRL and AFTC have expanded their partnership in recent years as part of the Air Force’s “Accelerate Change or Lose” concept.

While the two groups have worked together on distinct autonomous aircraft, the upcoming summit will be the first focused exchange on autonomy as a concept. The Air Force must separate the idea of autonomy, which should be “platform agnostic,” from work on individual programs, Pringle said. Past discussions have focused on specifics such as AFRL’s Skyborg program, the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) family of systems, and collaborative combat aircraft (CCA).

“In the past, it’s been a potpourri of topics,” Pringle said. “This coming one in the fall is one week dedicated all in on autonomy: autonomy testing, autonomy development, [and] how are we going to continue to do this at scale. I’m really excited about it.”

The summit aims to facilitate exchanges between AFRL developers and AFTC testers who can help field their ideas.

“It’s really a working-level summit of all the experts that will be involved,” Dertien said. “What are the roadblocks we have to testing autonomy right now and getting it fielded. We’ll list eight or nine of those different roadblocks that we have or things that are slowing us down, and bring the people together to discuss it and figure out what we need to do to accelerate it.”

The AFTC has equipment to test new programs, such as the X-62A Variable Stability In-flight Simulator Test Aircraft (VISTA), an F-16 that simulates the flight characteristics of different aircraft. In 2021, the X-62 added a new system, the System for Autonomous Control of Simulation (SACS), to assist the AFRL in developing autonomous systems. It has over 30 test sites across the country working on different aspects of development.

The AFTC has test flown every aircraft in the Air Force’s inventory in the service’s 75-year history. If future autonomous systems are to see action, the AFRL and ATFC must collaborate, the officials said.

“It’s really important to have a strong relationship and a close handoff for everything,” Pringle said.

Space Force Launches Official Song, ‘Semper Supra’

Sept. 20, 2022 | By Amanda Miller

The Singing Sergeants of the Air Force joined the Space Force’s Chief of Space Operations Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond on stage at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference on Sept. 20 for the world premier of the Space Force’s official song, “Semper Supra.”

Wearing the black and gray of the new Space Force uniform, his voice cracking periodically with the emotion of his last major address as CSO before the AFA audience, Raymond cited the unique “opportunity to start with a relatively clean sheet of paper” and the need to mesh with the other services’ songs in describing the collaboration that created the song, whose lyrics and melody were written by a former Airman with the musical arrangement by a member of the Coast Guard Band. The words:

“Semper Supra”

We’re the mighty watchful eye

Guardians beyond the blue

The invisible front line

Warfighters brave and true

Boldly reaching into space

There’s no limit to our sky

Standing guard both night day

We’re the Space Force from on high

Beyond the blue

The U.S. Space Force

In a video screened during Raymond’s keynote speech, James Teachenor, a former member of the U.S. Air Force Band, said he gathered ideas for the lyrics by reading white papers and speaking with Raymond and Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force James Teachenor.

Composing the words “was quite a long work in progress for a while because I wanted to make sure that everything that was in the song would adequately represent all the capabilities that our space Force is involved with and make sure I didn’t mess up on the mission or the vision of what the Space Force does.”

With the words complete, the musical score came next. The Coast Guard’s Sean Nelson “worked a masterful arrangement to this song,” Raymond said in the video, “and it all comes together into something that I hope Guardians will really love.”

The Singing Sergeants of the Air Force perform the Space Force’s official song “Semper Supra.” Staff photo by Mike Tsukamoto.

Kendall: ABMS Doomed Without New C3 Czar; Looks to Potential Munitions Competition

Sept. 19, 2022 | By John A. Tirpak

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said the Air Force’s Advanced Battle Management System will likely fail without a single integrator, and he has selected Brig. Gen. Luke C.G. Cropsey to do that job. Cropsey will report to Air Force acquisition executive Andrew Hunter and Assistant Secretary for Space Integration Frank Calvelli.

“It’s the hardest acquisition job I’ve ever given anybody,” Kendall told reporters at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference in suburban Washington, D.C.

Kendall also discussed areas of capability that need more attention, such as electronic warfare, mobility, and munitions; and said the ability to launch the E-7 AWACS replacement is his greatest concern in the event of a continuing resolution. He also said the KC-46 will overcome its problems and will be a good tanker for the Air Force.

Joint command, control, and communications programs are “the most unsuccessful programs in the history of DOD” because they’re “broad; they require interface across the department” from organizations that don’t want to change to accommodate them; and “they’re very complicated,” Kendall said. Such programs start with “visionary” ideas that don’t include a practical plan of execution, he noted. Inevitably, they suffer from schedule, cost, and performance problems, “and then the program dies.”

The solution is to put someone in charge who will be a “centralized authority” over program executive officers and program managers in the C3 battle management area. “Luke will be that authority … the glue that ties it all together,” Kendall said. Cropsey will also be the interface with the other services and the Office of the Secretary of Defense, so that the Air Force’s systems will be compatible with those of other services and agencies.

“It’s complicated; there are a lot of players in the game; and getting everybody in line is going to be tough,” Kendall said. With top-down support, Cropsey will be able to “enforce the decisions he wants to make and get everybody aligned.”

In his keynote ASC speech, Kendall said there are areas beyond his seven operational imperatives that aren’t on that list but will get high-level attention because they cut across all the others. They include electronic warfare, munitions, and mobility/aerial refueling.

“They are problems we’ve got to solve, and we haven’t solved them yet,” Kendall said. “We have plans to address all of them, and we’re trying to get resources to address all of them as quickly as possible.”

Electronic warfare didn’t get enough attention over the last 20 years because the enemy didn’t have such capability, but China and Russia are well versed in it, Kendall noted.

Munitions is “another area that traditionally doesn’t fare as well in budgets as it should” but has come into high relief because of the rapid exhaustion of weapons stocks in the fight against ISIS and in the supply of weapons to Ukraine, he noted.

Kendall said that while he is aware of moves to modularize weapons—which could reduce costs by increasing volume and introducing new entrants in competition for seekers, warheads, motors, etc.—he doesn’t see that approach taking over the munitions industry, even though there’s “some potential, there.”

“In my experience … most missiles are very highly tailored to what you’re trying to do. So, the ability to have modularity can be limited in practice.”

The potential for competition is interesting to Kendall, though. He said the leader-follower arrangements during the Cold War, in which two suppliers would compete on price and capability for the lion’s share of annual production lots, “really did drive down cost a lot.”

“I’m a big believer in competition. But the volume has to be there to justify it,” he said.

Munitions production is “getting a lot of attention” on Capitol Hill right now, Kendall said, and he has advised those members of Congress pushing for it that “you need to be thinking about wartime capabilities, not just peacetime” production.

Mobility and tanking also need scrutiny, Kendall said, because until recently, it was thought that such assets—usually big-wing aircraft—could be kept at a safe distance from the enemy. But China and other competitors are fielding long-range weapons that can put those capabilities at risk.

“As the threats extend the range at which they can engage our platforms, we’ve got to re-think that. So this is a longer-term look at available technologies” in the area of mobility.

These three “non-”operational imperatives will not get “the same level of attention” as the imperatives, but “it’s not too early to put some effort” into planning the next steps in these areas. The first characteristic needed of new mobility aircraft will be that they are “more resilient and survivable.”

In the event of a continuing resolution in lieu of a defense authorization bill, Kendall said he’s most concerned about the E-7 Wedgetail airplane the Air Force plans to buy to replace the aging E-3 AWACS. A CR will generally prevent a “new start,” but Kendall said he is working with Congress on reprogramming funds to get the E-7 beyond that point so it can be a continuing program instead.

“I’m urging Congress to get it done,” he said of the defense bill. “Time is an unrecoverable asset.”

Kendall said of the KC-46 that 97 percent of its requirements have been met and “we will get it to work.” That program wound up being more complex than anyone—even Kendall—expected, he said, and Boeing, which signed on to build it at a fixed price, “lost a lot of money” on it.

But “we’ll get there,” he said, though “I won’t promise it won’t have more problems.”

ACEing the China Challenge

Sept. 19, 2022 | By James C. Kitfield

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

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

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

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

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

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

China, China, China

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sept. 19, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sept. 19, 2022 | By Chris Gordon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AMC Clears KC-46 for All Deployments and Taskings

Sept. 19, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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