Space ‘Underpins All Instruments of National Power,’ Raymond Says

June 17, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

Calling space the “critical doorway to war” for all the other armed forces, Chief of Space Operations Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond addressed 300 Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, and Guardians graduating from the Naval Postgraduate School on June 17.

“Whether you’re in the Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marines, all of your force structure assumes that you have access to space,” Raymond said. “And if we don’t have access to space, we don’t have enough ships, airplanes, tanks, Airmen, soldiers, sailors, Marines, to do what our nation is asking you to do.”

Space Force leaders have said they want to build their focus on fighting and operational impact this year, the service was established. One way USSF is doing so is forming new components to embed within geographic combatant commands, like U.S. Central Command, U.S. European Command, and U.S. Indo-Pacific Command.

“Space underpins all instruments of our national power, and space has become vital to our national security—from global missile warning to precision navigation and timing to global communications and, increasingly, global intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance,” Raymond said. “Space is a huge force multiplier for all of our services.”

Debate over whether the Space Force should provide support functions to other services or project power in space, as a distinct warfighting domain continues, but Raymond said the new National Defense Strategy clearly recognizes “the character of war has changed,” requiring a multi-faceted approach to Space.

“It’s global, it’s multi-domain, it’s conducted at great speeds and across vast distances—global distances,” Raymond said. “Autonomy, artificial intelligence, machine learning, [and] commercial capabilities will be at the forefront.”

Space shares similarities with the maritime domain, he said, noting that both are “global, … rich in resources, and they’re both critical to our prosperity and to our security.”

While the Space Force was largely formed from the former Air Force Space Command, it has begun to identify Sailors and Marines for transfer into the Space Force. Just recently, the Naval Satellite Operations Center became the 10th Space Operations Squadron. Having a unique space identity, however, does not preclude relying on established educational programs like the Naval Postgraduate School.

“The Naval Postgraduate School educates you on how to think, how to analyze a problem, and this provides profound value to our entire Joint Force and to the Space Force in particular,” Raymond said. “It allows cutting edge advancement in research and development. It creates leaders who can think their way out of problems, like how does one stand up a lean new high-tech service?”

KC-46 Tanker Refuels a CV-22 Tiltrotor for 1st Time

June 17, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

A KC-46 Pegasus passed fuel to a CV-22 Osprey tiltrotor midair over Cannon Air Force Base, N.M., in June, a further expansion of the tanker’s ability to refuel USAF aircraft, according to an Air Force release.

The KC-46, from the 349th Air Refueling Squadron, refueled a CV-22 Osprey from the 20th Special Operations Squadron, using the centerline hose and drogue system used for helicopters, Navy/Marine Corps aircraft and foreign types. Most USAF aircraft use the boom-type refueling system.

Air Mobility Command recently announced that the new tanker is certified for about 88 percent of all the aircraft types it needs to be able to refuel.

The CV-22’s tiltrotor design allows it to take off and land vertically, but pivot its engines forward for higher-speed and longer-ranged horizontal flight.

The KC-46 is uniquely suited to the CV-22’s needs, said Maj. Anthony Belviso, CV-22 aircraft commander.

“Normally, an MC-130J aircraft would have to go up to a tanker to get fuel, then fly to us and give us that fuel, and would have to repeat that process several times,” Belviso said. “Because KC-46s can refuel us directly, we can go straight to them and get everything done much more quickly.”

As an AFSOC aircraft, meanwhile, the CV-22 often has to operate in contested and austere environments, places where the KC-46 is more suited to go than older tankers.

“The 22nd [Air Refueling Wing] has showcased the capability of the KC-46 to operate out of austere locations in recent exercises,” Maj. Benjamin Chase, KC-46 aircraft commander, said in a statement. “This is unique among tanker aircraft and replicates the types of environments the KC-46 to operate out of when refueling the Osprey in real-world missions.”

The CV-22 is one of the last five aircraft the KC-46 is still not operationally certified to refuel, along with the A-10 attack jet; B-2 bomber; E-4 flying command post; and MC-130H special operations tanker.

However, while the Pegasus hasn’t been cleared to refuel the Osprey for U.S. Transportation Command taskings as part of AMC’s Interim Capability Releases, the Air Force is still conducting tests like the one over Cannon Air Force Base to eventually certify it. And in the case of a national emergency, a KC-46 would be cleared to refuel a CV-22.

Still, the KC-46 continues to not be declared “operational” because of continuing deficiencies with the existing Remote Vision System used by the boom operator—a revised RVS 2.0 is still months away from being installed and certified.

ACE Is Now ‘Normal Ops’ in Pacific, but Utility in Conflict Requires More Partners

June 17, 2022 | By Abraham Mahshie

JOINT BASE PEARL HARBOR-HICKAM, Hawaii – Six years ago, agile combat employment was a PowerPoint presentation backed by Pacific Air Forces leadership; today, ACE is a proven operating concept and the Air Force is spreading it to share with new partners, according to PACAF commander Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach.

“ACE was a new thing a while back, and now it’s just normal ops,” Wilsbach said in an interview at his headquarters at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Oahu, Hawaii. “We had to convince the rest of the Air Force that we needed to go in this direction.”

Fifth-generation aircraft are now practicing ACE during exercise Valiant Shield in the island nation of Palau in the Pacific, but Wilsbach said PACAF no longer waits for a major exercise to practice the concept. “Really, all the bases in the Pacific are doing ACE as a component of their day-to-day training,” he said.

PACAF practices ACE on austere island chains like the Marianas, which include American territories Guam, Tinian, and Saipan, and extends to other Pacific partners, including Japan and Korea.

Retired Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, dean of AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, said practicing ACE beyond the Northern Marianas island chain is critical in case of conflict.

“ACE is a means to complicate an adversary’s targeting,” he said. “It’s great that you can operate at Andersen [Air Force Base, Guam], at Tinian, in Saipan. Those are all within the same geographical area. [But] where else are you planning to exercise from that involves dispersed bases?”

At the 19th Shangri-La Dialogue with Indo-Pacific leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) June 10 to 12, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III sought to deepen ties with allies and partners amidst fierce competition with China.

Zack Cooper, research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said the challenges are different across the region. A new government in the Philippines, for example, leaves uncertain the state of relations there. Other security partnerships in Southeast Asia are limited, he said.

“We’re seeing the Chinese making a huge Pacific islands push right now,” he said. “One side is posture, another side is actual capability development with those allies and partners.”

Wilsbach said mainland Japan air bases Yokota, Kadena, and Misawa all practice ACE, as does the Japanese Air Self-Defense Force, known as “Kōkū Jieitai” in Japanese.

“We’ve actually been doing quite a bit of ACE in Japan,” Wilsbach said. “Even the Japanese have been doing ACE, the Kōkū Jieitai have been really starting to get their ACE game on as well.”

In South Korea, where the threat from North Korea outweighs the challenge posed by China, ACE is catching on more gradually. “In Korea, our forces are practicing ACE, not in the full spectrum like you’ve seen around the Marianas Islands, but at least part task trainers,” said Wilsbach said. “Perhaps taking off out of Osan [Air Base], and landing at another base, getting a quick turn and getting airborne again.”

Multi-capable Airmen skill sets are regularly rehearsed in both Korea and Japan, he said, such as pilots refueling their own aircraft, practicing landing away from their home base, and turning the aircraft with limited support. “That’s all happening as the normal course of business,” Wilsbach said. “We’ve also had some ACE-like operations even in Australia … in the Philippines and … Palau.”

Getting to IOC

Wilsbach helped usher in the inception of ACE as commander of the 11th Air Force at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, between 2016 and 2018. Now as PACAF commander, he will likely see ACE achieve initial operating capability in the Pacific. “ACE for the entire Air Force started [in] Alaska,” he said. “Our forces in Alaska have been doing ACE now for coming up on five years.”

In Hawaii, the island chain enables hub and spoke operations, starting in Hickam and focusing on landings, maintenance, and austere air base in the surrounding islands. “The F-22 squadron here will … take off, and then they’ll land at one of the other islands or maybe even at Kaneohe Bay [Marine Corps Air Station], they’ll get a quick turn, and then they’ll get airborne again.”

To describe the next challenge for ACE, Wilsbach offered the Hawaiian island chain as a complex command-and-control problem. “It’s pretty easy to know what’s going on with your jets if they take off from say, Hickam Air Force Base, and they launch and they do a mission, and they come back to Hickam,” Wilsbach began. “But imagine if Hickam is a hub, and you’ve got every one of the other Hawaiian Islands as a spoke. Now they go airborne, and now you’ve got somebody on the Big Island, you’ve got somebody in Maui, you got somebody at Kauai. Now it gets a little more difficult knowing what’s going on.”

Maintenance, parts delivery, munitions, fuel, and more suddenly get more complicated. “It’s a constant, constant movement,” he said. “And then maybe they don’t even land, maybe there’s a tanker and they hit the tanker, and they just keep going.”

An aircraft that needs maintenance might need to return to the hub, rapidly replaced with a ready aircraft at the spoke. Wilsbach said wings across the Pacific must test and reheard the command-and-control requirements to make ACE operational. “All the wings in PACAF are working through it, finding out what the challenges are, and tackling those challenges with new innovations and new communication kit,” he said.

Wilsbach said he is “very confident” his wings can do ACE now if the need arises. “We’re in a good spot. We’re working, we’re continuing to expand that ACE envelope every single day. We’ve been working pretty aggressively over the last few years providing every single wing some foundation of ACE capability, and every wing is a little bit different as to where they go, how they disperse, how much multi-capable Airmen capability they actually have,” he said. “Every wing … is slightly different, but everybody’s got a foundation.”

Wilsbach Chides China for ‘Nefarious’ Exercise with Russian Bombers

June 17, 2022 | By Abraham Mahshie

JOINT BASE PEARL HARBOR-HICKAM, Hawaii – Combined bomber exercises between China and Russia in May demonstrated a degree of interoperability and a continued Russian operational presence in the theater, but quick intercepts by U.S. allies showed just how united the U.S. is with its allies, said Pacific Air Forces Commander Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach.

More than 100 days after Russia’s grinding assault in Ukraine, four Chinese H-6 bombers and two Russian Tu-95 bombers exercised together May 24 near Japan and the Republic of Korea. The U.S., Japan, and South Korea responded promptly, scrambling jets to intercept the formation.

“While they are pretty well preoccupied with what’s happening in Ukraine, [Russia] hasn’t stopped operating in this theater,” Wilsbach said in an interview in his PACAF headquarters at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii.

Wilsbach chided China for its willingness to cooperate with the Russian military. “It just doesn’t play well, I don’t think, in the international community,” Wilsbach said.

The United States and China continue to compete fiercely he said, seeking to strengthen regional partnerships and secure basing and access rights. “There probably should have been a lot more outrage than there was that China’s kind of helping Russia,” he added. “Russia should not be helped by anyone given some of the atrocities and the like that have been happening in the Ukraine.”

Wilsbach suggested China furthered a false narrative prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “Xi said they’re not going to attack, and of course, they did attack right after the Olympics,” Wilsbach said, noting that Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese premier Xi Jinping met during the Olympics in Beijing. A day after the Olympics ended, Russia moved its Army into the occupied Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine, launching a full-scale invasion Feb. 24.

“Why did Xi say that? Was he wrong? Was he duped by Putin? Was he a part of the information warfare to deceive the world?” Wilsbach asked. “No matter how you answer that, it’s not good.”

Now China is exercising jointly with Russia, he said. “Joint operations with Russia … is tantamount to supporting the Russian military,” Wilsbach said. “I don’t understand why they would partner up with Russia in these times. But clearly, we see that two nefarious nations are working together.”

Wilsbach told Air Force Magazine that he did not perceive the Russia-China joint exercise as a threat to U.S. interests, but rather as an indication of coordination between the two potential adversaries. “The Russians and the Chinese had to do some measure of sharing there,” he said.

On the flip side, the Russia-China exercise gave the United States and its Pacific allies an opportunity to demonstrate their own ability to respond with a coordinated, rapid reaction.

“You saw the Japanese come out and intercept their formation, and you saw the Republic of Korea intercept their formation, you saw the United States come out and intercept their formation,” Wilsbach said.

“The Japanese, the Republic of Korea, and the United States [showed a] very highly coordinated response, tons of sharing,” he said of the trilateral relationship. “The sharing that occurred there between those three countries was pretty awesome.”

Top Pentagon Aide, Former Tech Executive Nominated as No. 2 Weapons Buyer

June 16, 2022 | By John A. Tirpak

The White House has nominated Radha Iyengar Plumb to be deputy to William LaPlante, undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment. She has been serving as chief of staff to Kathleen H. Hicks, deputy secretary of defense, for the last 17 months.

Plumb’s experience includes leadership positions at Google and Facebook, economics work at the RAND Corp., stints at the Departments of Defense, Energy and the National Security Council, and academic research in health policy.

As director of research and insights for trust and safety at Google, Plumb “led the company’s cross-functional teams on business analytics, data science, and technical research,” the White House said in a press release.

“She previously served as the Global Head of Policy Analysis at Facebook where she focused on high risk/high harm safety and critical international security issues,” the release added. According to her Linked-in page, Plumb described her work at Facebook as leading “the teams that research content, social, and economic policy issues. This includes work on Facebook’s product policies as well as research on economic value and social impact.”

She held “senior staff positions on national security issues” at Defense, Energy and the NSC. At the Pentagon, she was chief of staff and policy advisor to the assistant secretary in the office of special operations/low-intensity conflict. For the NSC, she was director of defense personnel, readiness and partnerships.

Plumb taught at the London School of Economics and did postgraduate work at Harvard. She holds a Masters and Ph.D. in economics from Princeton and a B.S. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

If confirmed, Plumb will join LaPlante not long after he arrived on the job—LaPlante, the former top acquisition executive for the Air Force from 2014-2017, was confirmed to his position by the Senate in April. Already, he has promised to take “deep dives” into efforts to modernize each leg of the nuclear triad.

Space Force Accepting Transfer Applications, Plans to Add 243 Guardians

June 16, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

Airmen, Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines who want to make the jump to the Space Force have their chance: USSF is accepting applications for its interservice transfer program from June 15 to 30. There won’t be very many slots available, though.

Chief of Space Operations Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond, in a message posted to social media and confirmed by a Space Force spokesman, said Space Force will be only be choosing 243 service members for transfer—29 officers and 214 enlisted.

By comparison, the service selected 720 Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines for transfer in 2021, announced in two batches. Some of those transfers were members of units that were transitioning wholesale to the Space Force.

The competition to get into the newest military service has been tough, with thousands of service members applying for transfer last year.

In order to apply, service members must meet the eligibility criteria laid out in AFMAN 36-2032, which establishes the requirements for eligibility to serve in the Department of the Air Force. Those eligible have until June 30 to put together a package including a transfer request letter, an endorsement form from their unit commander, a service career brief, their last five signed performance reports, and a candidate data form.

The Space Force will then convene an interservice transfer board in July, according to public documents shared by the service. Raymond’s message specifies that the board will meet July 20-21.

A list of those selected for transfer will be publicly released in September, with transfers taking place throughout fiscal year 2023, which begins in October.

All specialty codes can apply, the Space Force said, but transfers will have to be able to fill one of the Space Force’s specialty codes, of which there are 14 for enlisted and five for officers.

The Space Force’s end strength has risen significantly lately, from some 6,500 in fiscal 2021 to 8,400 this year. In its budget request for 2023, the Pentagon asked to increase that number to 8,600 uniformed personnel.

Senate Panel Allows A-10 Cuts, But Not F-22s

June 16, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

After years of blocking the Air Force from retiring A-10 attack aircraft, the Senate Armed Services Committee will allow the service to proceed, but not with a new initiative to retire older F-22 Raptor air superiority jets. It also agreed to add seven more jets to USAF’s request for F-35 fighters, and overruled the service on its plan to trim the HH-60 Combat Search and Rescue Helicopter buy.

In its version of the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, passed June 16, the SASC didn’t challenge USAF’s request to retire 21 A-10s from the Air National Guard and replace them with F-16s. The number is smaller than the Air Force has asked to trim in earlier years. The close air support airplane has enjoyed fierce support in Congress and lawmakers have frequently included provisions in the NDAA to prevent any A-10s from being retired.

The panel was not willing to let the Air Force take down its inventory of F-22s. The Air Force had wanted to retire the oldest 33 F-22s, which are used for training only. The service has said they are expensive to maintain and produce negative learning because they are of an older configuration of the Raptor, and that it’s too costly to bring them up to par. The Air Force wanted to use the savings to improve the remaining jets and invest in the replacement Next Generation Air Dominance system.

In its version of the NDAA, the SASC said no F-22s can be retired “until submission of a detailed written plan for training F-22 aircrew while avoiding any degradation in readiness or reduction in combat capability,” according to a committee news release.

All of the F-22s USAF had slated for retirement are assigned to Tyndall Air Force Base, Fla., which is represented by Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Tyndall was largely destroyed by Hurricane Michael in 2018 and those F-22s the Air Force wants to retain have been redistributed among other F-22 bases.

The Air Force only requested 33 F-35s in its fiscal 2023 budget submission, but in its unfunded priorities list, it noted seven more that got squeezed out. The Senate obliged by adding seven more F-35s to USAF’s ask, for a total of 40. That is still lower than USAF’s request for 48 per year in the last few years, raised in most of those years to 60 by Congress. The Air Force has said it prefers delaying purchases now to wait for the Block 4 model of the jet.

The committee also fulfilled the Air Force’s unfunded priority request of four extra EC-37B Compass Call aircraft, as well as its No. 1 request, of $579 million for additional weapon system sustainment money.

The Air Force had planned to reduce its buy of HH-60W Combat Search and Rescue Helicopters from 113 to 75, on the argument, voiced by Air Combat Command Chief Gen. Mark D. Kelly, that the aircraft can’t get to downed airmen behind the lines in Asia. USAF planned to halt the program with the 10 helicopters requested in the FY’23 budget, but the SASC doubled the planned buy to 20. It also included a provision requiring a briefing on “plans to satisfy the combat rescue requirement with United States assets should the Air Force’s program of record be truncated short of the inventory objective.”

That requirement mirrors one included in the House Armed Services tactical air and land forces subcommittee mark of the NDAA, which directs a “study on the requirements for the Air Force combat search and rescue mission to meet the objectives of the most recent National Defense Strategy and the development of an acquisition strategy to meet the requirements identified.”

The NDAA authorizes money and sets policies and priorities for the Pentagon. While the SASC conducted its markup of the 2023 bill behind closed doors and approved its version with a bipartisan 23-3 vote–with a summary released shortly thereafter–the House Armed Services Committee will have an open session to consider its version on June 22.

Space

As the Space Force continues to grow and develop, the SASC version of the NDAA includes several provisions addressing the service’s structure.

For one, the NDAA would allow the Secretary of the Air Force to vary end strength more than the other services in order to build up and establish the Space Force. For another, the bill would require a federally-funded research center to conduct a study on the Space Force’s proposal to combine its full-time and part-time Guardians into one hybrid Space Component.

The Senate also wants a report on the five-year cost of “the transfer and operations of the fleet of narrowband communications satellites from the Navy to the Space Force,” a process that has already begun.

The bill would also direct the Secretary of Defense to make a recommendation as to whether the Space Development Agency should be exempted from the Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System. SDA, which is scheduled to transition into the Space Force in the coming months, was established to accelerate innovation, acquire commercial technologies, and generally move quicker than more traditional Pentagon organizations. JCIDS, meanwhile, is tasked with documenting, reviewing, and validating capability requirements for programs across DOD, but for years now, critics have faulted it for being too slow and cumbersome.

Finally, the SASC version of the NDAA would designate the Chief of Space Operations as the “force design architect” for space systems of the Armed Forces.

New Commander of Space Force Electromagnetic Warfare Squadron Highlights Interservice Culture

June 16, 2022 | By Amanda Miller

A single “hooah” filled the atrium of the Electromagnetic Warfare Facility at Peterson Space Force Base, Colo., on June 15, where a former Army officer received his first salute as commander of the USSF’s 4th Electromagnetic Warfare Squadron.

Lt. Col. Nicholas R. Shaw became the first transferring officer from a prior service besides the Air Force to assume command of a Space Force unit. (When the Naval Satellite Operations Center became the 10th Space Operations Squadron on June 6, Navy Capt. Jason Parish ceded command to Space Force Lt. Col. Jason Sanders.)

The 4th EWS operates the Space Force’s only overtly offensive weapon, the Counter Communications System, or CCS, which interferes with enemy satellites. Col. Christopher A. Fernengel, commander of Space Delta 3—roughly equivalent to a wing commander in the Air Force—presided over the change of command June 15. He said electromagnetic warfare is “the decisive advantage” in war and characterized the squadron’s role as being “to ensure … threats are crushed” that would try to destroy U.S. space-based command and control.

A Guardian for only six months Shaw assumed command from a prior Air Force officer, USSF Lt. Col. Kara L. Sartori. She goes on to become the operations officer for the Space Force component of U.S. European Command.

But even while still in the Army, Shaw had a hand in shaping the Space Force from the start, and the interservice aspects of the unit’s people and its mission provided a theme for the ceremony.

A graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., Shaw served 15-and-a-half years in the Army, including three years deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. He was assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency in Washington, D.C., when—with a background in electronic warfare and signals intelligence—he heard the brand-new Space Force needed people from other services to help stand it up from its headquarters in the Pentagon.

“My hand went right up in the air,” Shaw recalled in an interview after the 4th EWS change of command ceremony. He had recognized “an incredible opportunity” to start a new service “from the ground up” and worked in a few different divisions as the headquarters took shape. That blank slate “really lets you see the impact of the things you do,” he said.

The foresight on the part of the Space Force to bring Army, Navy, and Marine Corps troops into the fold has paid off, Shaw said. Now it’s “become more combat-focused than it used to be” and “able to integrate with these services better.”

A few Air Force name tapes distinguished the Airmen from the Guardians delivering Sartori’s final salute and Shaw’s first, and one of Shaw’s fellow former Soldiers issued the “hooah.” Uniquely among Space Force units, the 4th EWS is likely to interact with as many services as its members came from. Proximity plays a role in operating the CCS, so 4th EWS members forward-deploy with the equipment. The unit also interacts with international partner militaries to provide training.

Aside from “being ready to respond when any of these combatant commands needs us,” Shaw anticipated that the unit will try to take advantage of opportunities from the Space Force such as the “Supra Coders” program to teach software development. In that case, the squadron would need to “align that with the need,” he said.

Hawaiian Space Force Antennas Collect Vital Data with ‘Antiquated’ Equipment

June 16, 2022 | By Abraham Mahshie

KAENA POINT SPACE FORCE STATION, Oahu, Hawaii—Atop a ridge 1,500 feet above the waters of Yokohama Bay on Oahu island are six giant white globes concealing antennas for the collection of space data. The intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance data collected from satellites as they orbit over the Pacific is vital to the Space Force and Joint Force. But all too often, the aging antennas are down and deferring their tasks to other sites at island locations also operating with near-obsolete hardware at risk of failure.

The Space Force’s 21st Space Operations Squadron (SOPS), commanded by a single Guardian with the help of more than three dozen civilians and contractors, ensures the data flow in spite of the offline periods, switching from one antenna to another when possible. Together, the two Detachment 3 antennas under Space Force control form a pipeline to stream instructions to satellites and downlink data for the Defense Department, National Reconnaissance Office, other government agencies, and allies.

“Without us, space doesn’t happen,” Space Force Maj. Brandon Hammond, commander of the 21st SOPS Detachment 3 told Air Force Magazine. “Without the … operators identifying issues and fixing them, and making sure that the site is up and running, nobody would get to talk to the satellites.”

The slight elevation, up a single access road an hour north of Honolulu, is enough to give the 21st SOPS antennas visibility across thousands of miles of Pacific Ocean and capture data from satellites that pass between Satellite Control Network (SCN) sites at Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, on Guam, and at Vandenberg Space Force Station, Calif.

It is not uncommon for instructions from Schriever Space Force Base, Colo., to send coordinates for matching a satellite that are a few degrees off, or for the antennas to follow noise emanating from a different direction and lose a satellite’s vital data download. Contract operators under Hammond are closely monitoring dozens of tasks sent 24 hours a day to reposition antennas to maximize the data capture in passes that last as little as a few minutes.

“We provide on-demand command and control for 192 users around the world,” Hammond said.

The 21st SOPS’s two antennas are referred to as hula alpha and hula bravo. Hula alpha is a newer Remote Tracking Station Block Change (RBC) antenna with updated electronics, and hula bravo is considered a hybrid because it uses an older Automated Remote Tracking Station (ARTS) dish that dates to 1968 with upgraded electronics.

Dozens of times throughout the day, sirens buzz and red lights flash inside the building that houses hula bravo, alerting staff to stand clear as the 60-foot-wide dish rotates to the direction of the distant satellite as far away as geosynchronous orbit.

At a control station a few hundred yards away, one contractor is on each antenna station overseeing the instructions on four screens sent from Schriever or Space Operations Command at Peterson Space Force Base, Colo., crosschecking that the antennas are lining up to the satellite correctly and making adjustments. There is regular communication back to make sure objectives are met.

“We’re protecting and defending our assets, which underpins everything that we do day-to-day,” Hammond said.

But sometimes high-power amplifiers that transmit the instructions fail, requiring the operators to reset the system or shut it down entirely and replace components. When the station’s second antenna cannot pick up the task, it is re-rerouted to satellite control networks on the islands of Guam or Diego Garcia before the data download is missed.

Hammond, who took command in July 2021, will not see the upgrades to more reliable systems that are years away.

“Some of the electronics are old, dated, but it’s being upgraded slowly,” he said. “This is a years-long effort to get to the upgrade.”

The fiscal year 2023 defense budget calls for $51 million to move to an interim phase called the Modular Transitional Remote tracking station, and warns of significant increases in sustainment costs and decreases in operational capability if not fully funded. In the budget justification, ARTS is deemed obsolete and RBC is nearing end of life.

“Without it, the SCN will experience increased failure rates and lost contacts over time with the potential to impact or lose operational capability of on orbit payloads that rely on the SCN for command and control,” the FY23 Air Force budget reads. “The antiquated SCN system is already operating at the very edge of its capacity supporting over 170 satellites.”

Meanwhile, Guardians like Hammond are leveraging the creativity and know-how of contractors with decades of experience to squeeze additional life from the ARTS and RBC antennas before they can ultimately be replaced by phased array radars.

“With the increase of space traffic, the needs to be able to track more is getting greater and greater,” he said. “Phased array radars are electronically steered as opposed to mechanically steered like these are, and also it enables you to track more than one satellite at a time.”

Thousands of miles away from the U.S. mainland, where acquisitions decisions are made, Hammond feels the impact.

“Being out here, even though we’re separated from the warfront, I’m a user now, and the things that the program officers do directly affect my day-to-day life,” he said. “Test assets, operational assets, nobody talks to those without places like us. So, as we’re up there doing ISR on China or on whoever, we are the people that allow that to happen.”