Latest B-1 Bomber Task Force Deployed to Guam Hones Coordination With Allies

June 13, 2022 | By Abraham Mahshie

ANDERSEN AIR FORCE BASE, Guam—U.S. and Japanese pilots exchanged silent high fives from their respective cockpits during the 34th Expeditionary Bomb Squadron’s bomber task force mission to Guam.

“When we’re talking to any ally or partner out there, the procedures are standard—everything’s the same,” said Air Force Lt. Col. Jeffrey Carter, a B-1 pilot deployed to Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, from the 34th EBS at Ellsworth Air Force Base, S.D.

“It doesn’t feel like I’m working with one person or one country versus another. It’s just, we’re all up there,” Carter said on the flight line at Andersen next to one of the four B-1s that deployed recently and have been exercising with the Japan Air Self-Defense Force. Other partners and allies are to follow in the coming weeks.

“When we see each other through the cockpit windows, and we’re just doing our high-fives and fist bumps in the air, it seems like you’re just flying with someone else in your squadron,” he added. “And that’s kind of, I think, the biggest improvement with all this integration.”

In April 2020, the Air Force announced that it would stop its continuous bomber presence outside the continental United States, ending a 16-year run at Andersen. Since then, however, B-1s—with their three weapons bays and supersonic speeds—have made regular return visits on rotating bomber task force missions ranging from one to three months.

Practicing Pacific Skills

On a recent afternoon, two of the weapons bays on a B-1 were equipped with fuel tanks carrying 20,000 pounds each, capable of extending the flight time of the bomber over the vast distances of the Pacific.

bomber task force — Capt. Jack Maliska of the 34th Expeditionary Bomb Squadron, deployed to Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, describes the two 20,000-pound fuel tanks loaded into the weapons bay of a B-1 Lancer. Staff photo by Abraham Mahshie.

Even with the capacity to fly longer distances without refueling, crews typically refuel from a tanker multiple times on the 17-hour flight from Ellsworth to give younger Airmen the opportunity to practice aerial refueling.

Since the 34th EBS arrived, Airmen have also practiced addressing the unique challenges posed by the Pacific theater.

“Each region has its own nuances, where it just takes a different set of skills or processes to get to the right answer more efficiently,” said Carter, noting the different airspace, constructs, and international rules to follow. Other crew members noted how sudden rain showers during the coming typhoon season in Guam can double the stopping distance on the runway.

Carter explained how flying over the Pacific Ocean is not as disconnected from headquarters as it once was.

“Crossing these vast distances doesn’t seem as large or daunting anymore because of the amount of control, the amount of touch points you have,” he said, acknowledging the benefit of satellite communication. “So, you’re not really alone, and not afraid anymore.”

Allies Unite to Deter China

As China continues to rapidly grow its military capacity with a powerful defense manufacturing sector, the U.S.’s Pacific allies are increasingly integrating to keep up. That is especially true for a capability only provided by the U.S. Air Force: manned bombers.

“Countries are interested in doing some bomber missions with us,” Pacific Air Forces commander Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach said during an interview at PACAF headquarters at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii.

“We do a lot of bomber missions with the Japanese,” he said. “We’ve done some bomber missions with other countries in the region, and we’re trying to expand that as we go forward.”

Zack Cooper, research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said in an interview that Guam’s standoff location from China, in the second island chain, makes it an ideal location to host bombers.

“Bombers and fighters need very different runways—they need different support systems,” said Cooper. “As far as the bomber force goes, it means probably more focus for the Air Force on larger facilities that are a little bit further away, so places like Guam make a fair amount of sense.”

Anderson has four total runways. Its two main runways are 10,500 feet and 11,200 feet in length, while the newer northwestern runways, used for practicing austere exercises, are 4,200 feet and 9,000 feet. The B-1 requires about 8,000 feet to land.

Retired Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, dean of AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, helped to establish the continuous bomber presence on Guam in 2004, but he now believes the bomber task force (BTF) concept is proving efficient for the Air Force.

“It was expensive,” he said of maintaining a continuous bomber presence so far from the mainland.

“They figured with these bomber task forces, they can fly in a more random nature,” Deptula added. “It’s also one of the strengths that you can home-base your bombers in the continental United States, but you can forward-deploy them, if necessary, pretty rapidly.”

Wilsbach said that while Guam is the typical site for BTF missions, they can be done from other locations in the Pacific, such as Australia.

“We’ll have some other places that we can do bomber task force missions,” he said. “The bomber missions have been going pretty well in the Pacific.”

Capt. Jack Maliska, also deployed with the 34th EBS, said the Air Force’s concept of agile combat employment, or operating from austere locations, and the BTF concept both serve as a foundation for working with partners and allies.

“Flexibility is always the key to air power,” Maliska said. “Going forward, we’re helping build that foundation. It’s only going to help build that rapport. “

First-Ever F-35 Aggressor Squadron Stands Up at Nellis

June 10, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

More than three years after the Air Force first announced its intention to reactivate the 65th Aggressor Squadron with F-35 fighters, the unit formally stood up at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev., on June 9.

During the reactivation ceremony, the squadron also unveiled the first F-35s assigned to the unit, painted with a unique pattern of dark and light gray.

Images of the fighter quickly circulated on social media.

More Photos of the J-20 representing F-35 aggressor aircraft pic.twitter.com/cNl89IruA8
— Fighterman_FFRC (@Fighterman_FFRC) June 10, 2022

Prior to the ceremony, commander of Air Combat Command Gen. Mark D. Kelly flew an F-15E against the unit’s first assigned F-35, piloted by its new commander, Lt. Col. Brandon Nauta.

“Due to the growing threat posed by [Chinese] fifth and sixth-gen fighter development, we must use a portion of our daily fifth-generation aircraft today at Langley, Elmendorf, Hill, Eielson, and now Nellis, to replicate adversary fifth-generation capabilities,” Kelly said, according to a release. “Precisely because we have this credible threat, when we do replicate a fifth-gen. adversary, it has to be done professionally. That’s the Aggressors.”

The 65th AS will provide USAF with fifth-generation “red air” to replicate the advanced threats posed by other fifth-gen fighters from China and Russia.

“Using the F-35 as an aggressor allows pilots to train against low-observable threats similar to what adversaries are developing,” Col. Scott Mills, 57th Operations Group commander, said in a statement.

The F-35s that will make up the 65th Aggressor Squadron are slated to be non-combat-coded aircraft—original plans called for nine to transfer from Eglin Air Force Base, Fla.

At Nellis, the fifth-gen fighters will help train students at the Air Force Weapons School and also assist in Red Flag exercises, among other exercises and training events. In doing so, they’ll also help train pilots from other services and allies, Mills said.

Officials had previously begun to integrate fifth-generation aggressors at Red Flag 21-3, using F-35s in the exercise alongside F-16s from the 64th Aggressor Squadron, but the 65th AS is the first aggressor squadron equipped with F-35s.

Bunch Says Quick-Reaction Funds Would Help New Tech Cross the ‘Valley of Death’

June 10, 2022 | By John A. Tirpak

Having funds available to opportunistically and swiftly buy and field cutting-edge technology “at scale”—and having someone authorized to make those calls—would help the Air Force get innovative capabilities across the so-called “valley of death,” according to the outgoing head of Air Force Materiel Command. Creating such accounts, however, would require significant changes in acquisition rules, he said.

“We’ve got to have someone making some decisions on what … we push,” said Gen. Arnold W. Bunch Jr., AFMC commander, who is retiring, in an exit interview with Air Force Magazine. Good ideas that come in from industry, or as suggestions from Airmen, need to get swift and high-level consideration as to whether “we really see [it] as something that we want to take to scale … and make those decisions as soon as we can.” He said Airmen should not have to shepherd their own ideas through the process and that if ideas come in from industry, “we owe them a timely answer as to whether we think we’re going to try to go to scale or not.” A quick review would come down to a “‘Nope, that gets off-ramped—[it’s] not ready yet. Go back and do more,’” or a “Yep, we’re going to go do it.”

To make that work, though, “I think we’re going to have to have some money immediately available,” Bunch said. “I believe we’ve got to have some flex in those areas. And that will be a culture change … to all of us that operate” in the acquisition enterprise.

“It’s not just the Air Force, not just [the Office of the Secretary of Defense]. It’s something we would all have to do. We would need to partner with Congress and everyone else to do it.” The idea would be to “put a certain amount of money into our budget … with the expectation that a certain number of things” would be chosen for a quick acquisition at scale, “with the intent to then put it in our POM [program objective memoranda] and carry it forward.”

Right now, he said, “Because money is so tight, and [because of] the way rule sets are placed, you would have to have a very specific reason you would have money there,” and there’s no way to know in advance “how many great innovative ideas, or what’s coming, in that timeframe.” This fund for opportunities “is an area that I believe could make a big difference,” Bunch said.

What he would create is “a certain amount of money, in the year of execution, that wasn’t necessarily [connected to] any specific program at the moment.” The innovation could be “a robotic process that an Airman or a unit has come up with, or … something that some small business has come in with, that we look at and say, ‘we can immediately apply that’ and save manpower, or save man-years of work.” The quicker it comes into being, the sooner the savings or operational improvement would be felt.

Similarly, Bunch thinks cutting-edge technology could be brought to the field faster if “we … lay in money to start programs of record a little bit earlier, before they completely prove themselves. And then we would need the flexibility to pull that money to other Air Force needs if it didn’t develop the way we needed.”

That would require a change to acquisition rules, he said. Such an approach would require Congress to write a certain number of blank checks for programs that don’t exist at the time a defense budget is signed into law. However, the process of fielding a response to even an urgent requirement can take years, and there may be no standing requirement that the new idea addresses.

“The way our budgeting system is set up right now,” he said, if a seemingly good idea didn’t work out, the money could not be applied to a different approach. “Those dollars would be taken away and put on something else,” he said.

A good start would be to “do something small and demonstrate that we can do it and be transparent with everybody involved. And then go from there,” Bunch suggested.

This would not be a way to buy an entire new aircraft or weapon system, he said, but rather for lower-level acquisitions.

The idea is already being put into effect at the OSD, he said, noting that the head of defense research and engineering, Heidi Shyu, is “asking for money to be put into her account … so that innovative ideas can come in, [and] they will fund them for a period of time to see how they work. ”

Bunch would like to be able to quickly produce in quantity “once it works.”

The “valley of death” was a term coined to describe the difficulty in “pushing” valuable new ideas or technologies that emerged from research and development to operational status, since the acquisition system depends on a “pull”—or request—from combatant commanders or field commands to fill a need or gap.

Bunch said Congress’ willingness to let the services use “other transaction authorities” for rapid prototyping of systems has been “another tool in our tool chest,” which has mostly worked out well.

“It’s a good thing to have, and do things a different way,” he said, but “It’s not the be-all, end-all answer to everything. It is a means to do the contract business in a different manner.”

He noted that “some of our more risk-averse folks were a bit reluctant to go down that path,” but now that the acquisition workforce has been trained on OTAs, they are “more comfortable with that as a tool … so I do believe that’s helped us.”

Bunch said he’s supported unconventional approaches to acquisition if they could speed things up or save money.

“The line I’ve used for the past seven years is, if you take educated risk, I’ve got your back.” He defined “educated risk” as soberly “thinking through” the process and deciding that an unconventional approach is worth trying.

“If you’re a contracting officer, and you’ve awarded a bunch of contracts, and think you want to do an OTA because you thought your way through it, and something happens, we’re going to support [you],” Bunch said. “We’re going to make sure you don’t get slammed for taking that risk.” If contracting officers get punished for taking measured risk to speed things up “then all those innovative ideas that the rest of us have been trying to go do” will evaporate.

“We can ruin all that goodwill we built up … We don’t want to go do that,” Bunch said, adding that this is not a policy that will evaporate when he’s gone.

“I believe everybody’s embraced that,” he said.

Kendall: PACAF Has a ‘Ways to Go’ to Prepare for a China Fight

June 10, 2022 | By Abraham Mahshie

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said he returned to government service because of “China, China, China,” but he admitted that the Air Force’s front line defenses in the Pacific have “a ways to go” in the areas of deception, defense, and practicing agile combat employment (ACE).

“When I look at the western Pacific, it’s a very different situation geographically, geopolitically,” he said June 1 during an event at the Heritage Foundation, comparing China to Russia’s threat in Europe, which is deterred in part by the NATO alliance.

America has vital Pacific allies, including Australia, Japan, and South Korea, but the Air Force must overcome logistical challenges for a more resilient Pacific presence and to deter China, Kendall explained.

“We have strong allies out there. That’s pretty important. But it’s a long way away,” Kendall added. “It’s a very difficult area in which to project power.”

The reasons for that difficulty are many, from lack of basing options to inadequate base defense, refueling challenges, and the thousands of miles of Pacific Ocean that aircraft would have to fly over should conflict with China arise.

Pacific Air Forces has nine wings operating out of nine bases located in Hawaii, Guam, Alaska, Japan, and South Korea. An analysis of fiscal 2023 budget requests reveals hundreds of millions of dollars of proposed investment in air bases, base defense, and partner and ally exercises and training in the Pacific theater.

Fighters operate at Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska; Kadena and Misawa Air Bases in Japan; and Kunsan and Osan Air Bases in South Korea. Cargo aircraft and airlift operate from Yokota Air Base, Japan, and Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson (JBER), Alaska. Intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) personnel operate from JBER and Kadena, with special operations at Kadena.

In all, PACAF maintains about 320 fighter and attack aircraft. About 100 more deployed aircraft rotate through Andersen Air Force Base, Guam.

To protect against threats posed by China, Russia, and North Korea, Kendall said he made base resilience one of his seven operational imperatives, the priorities he set out to address while in office.

“There’s a list of things that have to happen to make it totally reality,” Kendall said in response to a question from Air Force Magazine, describing how deception, base defense, and base hardening will require a series of steps.

“We need a degree of defense,” Kendall said … “Then you want to have a defense that isn’t going to be detected as well, and right now, we don’t really have that.

Kendall said he is working with the Army, which is responsible for ground-based air defense.

PACAF also needs logistics facilities to support the major command’s efforts in the theater. The Missile Defense Agency budget may help with investment on that priority.

On Guam, the Missile Defense Agency’s fiscal 2023 budget requests $539 million for design and development of land-based radar systems, weapons system components, and the start of a command and control center that would provide an integrated air picture.

The Pacific Deterrence Initiative (PDI) is the DOD budget initiative funding most of the improvements that would benefit joint operations in the theater.

In 2023, PDI calls for $6.1 billion to strengthen the U.S. military presence and operation in the Pacific theater.

Most of the proposed PDI money, $2.3 billion, would go to exercises and training, while $1.2 billion would improve infrastructure and resiliency, and $1.8 billion would modernize and strengthen the U.S. Pacific presence. Some $500 million would directly benefit the Air Force and PACAF, while the bulk of the money goes to the Navy and Army at $2 billion and $1.3 billion, respectively.

Investing in the Infrastructure for ACE

More than half of the PDI funds slated for the Air Force, $280 million, are directed at military construction, much of which would directly benefit ACE employment in a broader swath of the Pacific.

“The agile combat employment concept which the Air Force has adopted is a very sound concept,” Kendall said.

“It’s essentially the idea that you don’t just stay in one fixed base, you use multiple bases,” he explained. “You can think of it as a hub and spokes around, basically, so that the adversary doesn’t know where you are at any given point in time.”

MILCON funds would help build a hangar at Kadena Air Base, Japan, and design projects at Wake Island, a U.S. territory, and Timor Leste, an island nation situated between Australia and Indonesia. Three other projects slated for Tinian, a U.S. territory in the Mariana Islands north of Guam, would build out fuel tanks and an airfield. The Tinian projects add capacity for airfield operations including refueling, takeoff and landing, and parking where no capacity currently exists.

The investments will support the increased ACE exercises that Kendall said are possible in the near term.

Kendall explained that the ACE concept is linked to the idea of multi-capable Airmen advocated for by Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr.

“Part of it is that you can operate from another airfield with a reduced number of people, because you cross-train your people to multiple disciplines,” Kendall said. “We’ve used some of the alternative bases that could be available in the Pacific.”

Kendall said the Air Force has more options than have been publicly discussed and which are regularly used for exercises.

“We have other options besides the ones we talked about,” he said. “But when you do exercises, you need to go someplace that can accommodate you very well.”

The Secretary said confounding adversary targeting by operating from multiple bases will also require deception.

“We need a degree of deception so that the adversary doesn’t know where to target,” the Secretary said, mentioning “decoys” as one solution.

Kendall admitted that more work needs to be done to advance ACE capabilities in the Pacific.

“We haven’t done enough yet,” he said. “This is a fairly near-term win—we can do some things about that problem pretty quickly.”

The Air Force Secretary said he recently discussed the challenges and progress made with PACAF commander Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach.

“We agreed that we have made a good start and [we are] doing the right thing,” he said. “But we still have a ways to go.”

Lawmakers Want USAF to Help Drone Pilots With Well Being, Resiliency

June 10, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

Troops were “fatigued, worn, and frayed around the edges” in 2013, as the Government Accountability Office put it. That was when U.S. Special Operations Command established its Preservation of the Force and Family program designed to provide extra resources for service members’ holistic well being as SOCOM’s mission set increased.

Now, nearly a decade later, lawmakers on the House Armed Services personnel subcommittee want the Air Force to pursue something similar for its drone pilots.

In its markup of the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, the panel directs the Air Force to work with SOCOM to study its program “to determine applicability to the remotely piloted aircraft aircrew community” as well as to look at the need, feasibility, and cost of establishing such a program.

The results of that analysis would need to be delivered to Congress by April 1, 2023, the mark states.

The mental health and welfare of RPA pilots has been a topic of concern for years now. In 2014, an Air Force study of roughly 1,000 operators found that 4.3 percent experienced moderate to severe post-traumatic stress disorder. That figure was lower than the numbers typically seen in those returning from deployment but was higher than the rates reported in electronic medical records for drone pilots, suggesting the problem was more widespread than previously thought.

Since then, drone operations have only increased, and in 2015, Air Force officials reportedly said the fleet was at a “breaking point” as more and more pilots left the service and those remaining had to sustain a high ops tempo.

Since then, media reports have continued to highlight the stress and trauma that drone pilots can face, resulting in PTSD or “moral injury.” Most recently, the New York Times released a report detailing stories of Airmen grappling with the psychological effects of their work, particularly when it comes to civilian deaths.

In one study included in the report, “the proportion of crew members reporting post-traumatic stress disorder and thoughts of suicide was higher than in traditional aircrews.”

In addition to suggesting that RPA pilots should have “access to a program directly comparable to the U.S. Special Operations Command Preservation of the Force and Family program,” the HASC personnel subcommittee also included a provision in its mark registering concern “about the overall management of remotely piloted aircraft crews, not only long-term career management but increasingly whether they are provided with or have access to respite, mental health, and family support.”

“Considering most of the crews have largely been deployed in place for the last 10 years, the committee believes the Air Force should have addressed the issues of work-life balance in this community, similar to a deploy-to-dwell tempo that is applicable for deployed forces,” the mark states.

As a result, the mark would require the Secretary of the Air Force to submit a separate report, also by April 1, 2023, that would detail the total number of RPA crew members in the Air Force, their retention and promotion rates over the past five years, the number of combat hours they fly, the kinds of mental health resources available to them, and the number of mental health visits or check-ins required.

The report would also need to include details on the combat-related recognitions available to RPA crews as compared to those of traditional aircraft. The committee expressed concern over how the Air Force considers “having been in combat for the purposes of recognition and access to combat-related benefits.”

The full House Armed Services Committee is set to meet and mark up the 2023 NDAA on June 22.

Bunch: Whole Air Force Testing Enterprise Needs Attention and Investment—Not Just Ranges

June 10, 2022 | By John A. Tirpak

The Air Force’s test and evaluation enterprise faces a bow wave of new weapon systems to prove out, meaning that existing range space must be preserved and made more efficient and that ground testing needs more resources, said Gen. Arnold W. Bunch Jr., outgoing head of Air Force Materiel Command.

In an exit interview prior to handing off the AFMC leadership job to Lt. Gen. Duke Z. Richardson, Bunch acknowledged that USAF is entering a time of unusually heavy demand for testing, including new fighters and trainers, a new bomber, a new ICBM, prototype uncrewed aircraft, hypersonic systems, and a host of new tactical missiles and munitions, all on top of existing upgrade and modification testing. He said he’s devoted “a lot of brain bites” to the bow wave in recent months.

Various programs, especially hypersonic projects, have slowed recently because of the limited availability of tightly scheduled, open-air range space at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., and other sites, along with a shortage of wind tunnels and similar ground testing capabilities. Program managers have complained that they have to “get back in line”—sometimes for months—if a key test is aborted due to weather or a problem with the system being tested.

The “No. 1” consideration of the test enterprise is “we can’t give up any more range than we’ve already given,” Bunch insisted. “We need to really protect the range space that we have,” he noted, saying the Air Force is constantly fending off encroachment from “people that want to build or do things” adjacent to or within testing areas.

The Air Force needs to “clearly communicate with everybody how critically important the range space that we have is,” he said, so it can continue to serve its vital function without compromise.

Next, he said, the Air Force is doing all it can to maximize the test capacity it already has by networking people and systems at multiple sites around the country.

“We are continuing to look at how we do distributed or dispersed testing,” he said, “and by that I mean, can I test an asset at White Sands while utilizing members of the team at Eglin and Edwards and wherever else, and link all them together through the networks.” Bunch said the Air Force can now do this and “capitalize on [other] range space that may be available.”

He reported that USAF has taken this approach “where we simultaneously ran control rooms at Eglin and Edwards, conducting tests at either one of those locations, or White Sands. So we know that we can do that. We just have to continue to look for … those opportunities.”

The Air Force is working to put instrumentation on the “over-water range down at Eglin,” in the the Gulf of Mexico, which is USAF’s largest test range, he said. That will add significantly more capability to what USAF can already call upon, he said. The instrumentation will be expanded “down the coastline” to capture more test data and telemetry.

A “really key” initiative is to “get early engagement with programs so we understand what they’re really trying to do,” he said. AFMC’s test enterprise needs to know “What data … do you want to verify and test? When do you need this test? And deconflict some of those things so we know exactly where we’re trying to go,” he said.

Bunch said it won’t eliminate open-air testing, but “as we execute our digital campaign” and do more comparison between real-world testing and digital models, databases will build up, and the Air Force will be able to better gauge expected performance. That “should mean there’s less we have to do in the open air, and that is another area that we are going to continue to look at.”

Bunch said he clearly remembers disappointing claims made for the F-35 suggesting that if real-world evaluations confirmed some representative test points, it could safely be assumed that the test points in between would match up as well, saving time and expense. That didn’t turn out to be the case.

“I’m not ready to say that’s going to be the immediate answer,” he hedged.

“What I am willing to say is … we’ve got programs ongoing that I think will give us more confidence in that and … I feel more confident” in digital prediction “now than I did when the F-35” was beginning testing. He noted that he was the wing commander at Edwards when that effort built up steam, “and I was told that was going to save me all this time, energy and effort … And that didn’t come to fruition, so I’m not pushing the ‘I believe’ button right off the bat.”

Bunch said the Air Force’s ground-based test infrastructure wasn’t included in the service’s installation investment strategy that set new rules for the pace at which structures and capabilities need to be refurbished or replaced.

“We can’t forget our ground test facilities,” Bunch said. While there is an easily understood need for open-air ranges where hypersonic systems, for example, can fly at Mach 5 over hundreds of miles, “we also have to think about … how many arc-jet heaters do I need? What do I need to be able to run it in the wind tunnels?”

He added that “Open-air [testing] is what everybody thinks about. But we’ve got to walk that all the way back into how we are doing that tech development, to make sure we’ve got the ground test infrastructure right, so that that does not become a bottleneck.”

The Air Force needs more investment in that ground test enterprise, he said.

“We’ve got to build that up so that I keep the capacity that I’ve got … and stay linked in with where the technology is going so that we keep the test infrastructure modernized.” Bunch said AFMC, the Air Force Operational Test and Evaluation Center (AFOTEC), and the Air Warfare Center have a “good relationship” and are generally in agreement about “what we need to make our investments in.” Leaders understand the test enterprise, “the demand signal,” and “what our capacity needs to be.”

PACAF Commander Highlights Strong ‘Trilateral’ Response to North Korean Missile Tests

June 10, 2022 | By Abraham Mahshie

JOINT BASE PEARL HARBOR-HICKAM, Hawaii—The recent barrage of ballistic missile tests by North Korea elicited a strong, “trilateral” response from the United States and Pacific allies Japan and South Korea, Pacific Air Forces (PACAF) commander Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach told Air Force Magazine on June 9. The show of force was necessary to retain allied unity against Chinese aggression, America’s principal concern in the theater, experts say.

“We can never look past North Korea with how unpredictable they are,” Wilsbach said during an interview at PACAF headquarters at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii.

“We’ve got to be ready to respond, and we are,” he added. “What was unique about that is how really trilateral it was with the Japanese as well as the Republic of Korea and the U.S.”

The North test-fired eight short-range ballistic missiles June 5, its largest test in a single day, and brought its total tests per year to 31, the largest number ever in a single year.

“They’re doing those to invoke a reaction by the United States, perhaps Japan, perhaps the Republic of Korea,” Wilsbach added.

That response came in the form of missile tests and fighter jet flights.

The United States and South Korea conducted a combined live-fire exercise June 5, firing one U.S. Army missile and seven Korean missiles into the Sea of Japan, northeast of South Korea.

The two allies also flew 20 fighter jets June 7, including South Korean F 35s, F-15s, and F-16s alongside U.S. F-16s. Separately, the United States and Japan conducted a drill with four Japanese F-15s and two American F-16s.

The most recent tests follow a string of ballistic missile launches by North Korea that began with four tests May 24 that included an intercontinental ballistic missile. In response, on May 25, the United States and South Korea test-fired Republic of Korea (ROK) Hyunmu-2 missiles using the U.S. Army’s Tactical Missile System.

Wilsbach said the continued U.S. and allied responses don’t antagonize North Korea but show unity and force.

“I’m sure that they had planned to launch those missiles well ahead of time,” Wilsbach said. “I seriously doubt that it was antagonistic from the standpoint of they saw us fly and then they launched missiles, because it takes so much planning.”

Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) international security fellow John Schaus told Air Force Magazine in an interview that it is hard to get Pacific allies such as South Korea to see eye to eye with the United States on China as a threat. Demonstrating U.S. commitment to the ROK alliance helps.

“South Korea has a very real threat immediately across the border in North Korea,” Schaus said. “Much the same way we see NATO prioritizing Russia rather than China because it’s right next door, South Korea is prioritizing North Korea rather than China efforts.”

Schaus believes it’s an “open question” whether Pacific allies such as South Korea would assist the United States should conflict arise with China, all the more reason why the United States needs to show its commitment to South Korea’s security priorities.

“Korea is more complicated,” the analyst said, comparing South Korea to alliance partners Japan and Australia.

“I’d say that the new president in Korea is more reflexively pro-alliance than perhaps the last president was,” he added.

Wilsbach said the rapid and united show of force by the United States is a show of the U.S. commitment to the Pacific allies most threatened by North Korea’s aggression.

“That definitely is demonstrating resolve to the region,” he said.

Modular Weapons Could Improve Surge Capacity, Bunch Says in Exit Interview

June 9, 2022 | By John A. Tirpak

Breaking weapons up into modular segments for ease of upgrade could also improve defense industrial surge capacity, the outgoing head of Air Force Materiel Command said. Modularity could also help address the issue of intellectual property while keeping more companies in business, with more rapid turnover of weapon segment production and greater responsiveness to threat changes, he said.

Gen. Arnold W. Bunch Jr., who is retiring, told Air Force Magazine in an exit interview that modularity will be “one of the keys” to weapon production in the future.

Lt. Gen. Duke Z. Richardson succeeds Bunch during a ceremony June 13 at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Ohio.

Referring to the future munitions, “I see us going modular, where we have an open architecture and then we can put in different components to do different things,” Bunch said. “We’re going to need to replace parts, changing them out for what the threat drives or as the technology shifts.”

Bunch acknowledged that weapons have frequently been a budgetary “bill payer”—most recently to support a surge in research and development to confront the China threat—but said modularity would reduce the time between competitions and allow USAF to more “rapidly adapt” to threat changes. The same idea will likely apply to uncrewed aircraft, he said.

Being limited to single suppliers for key weapons has contributed to munitions shortages in recent years and most recently has been raised as a problem as the U.S. has provided Ukraine with Javelin anti-tank and Stinger anti-aircraft missiles with no swift means of restocking them. The Air Force relies on individual companies for certain staple weapons—such as Boeing for the Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) and Lockheed Martin for the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM)—and some munitions companies have said they have “maxed out” their production capacity.

As for intellectual property rights, that’s “part of the challenge,” Bunch said, but USAF is now “[putting] those things on contract,” such that the Air Force will own the technical baseline and be more agile in competing and integrating new capabilities.

“You could very easily” hold competitions for a plug-and-play seeker or booster segment of a weapon, he said, noting that the armament directorate is pursuing that idea now.

Creating a completely digital enterprise will open up such options, Bunch said, such as in the Golden Horde Vanguard program in which the Air Force demonstrated Small Diameter Bombs receiving and interpreting new instructions mid-flight and collaborating with each other to strike designated targets.

For Golden Horde, “We created a digital environment so that we can bring in different ideas. And we can look at those to determine how [and] … what do we want want to go out and buy, and what gives us the most return on investment,” Bunch said. This approach will “give us more flexibility than what we’ve had.”

Would the Air Force be the integrator for these systems?

“There are a couple different ways you could do that,” Bunch said. “You could hire an integrator, or you can do it yourself,” but it’s an area where the Air Force would have some flexibility. “You may not need to play that role,” he said.

However, “We want our teams to be more involved” in setting the technical baseline, such as “knowing what the interface is,” he added. That way, “you know the system better and you can make better choices.”

The Air Force is taking an integrator/modular supplier approach to the new Stand-in Attack Weapon (SiAW), which will merge the capabilities of weapons such as JDAM and the High-speed Anti-Radiation Missile (HARM).

Bunch said his crystal ball was murky on whether the return to a Cold War-like security environment would drive a return to multiple competitors vying for a lion’s share of annual production of an entire system, as in the so-called “Great Engine War” of the 1980s.

“If you’ve managed one program … you’ve managed one program,” Bunch said, making the point that every acquisition is unique and that “in every case, we’re going to have to weigh all this out.”

“We’ve got to start with the end in mind,” he said. “We’ve got to understand: What do we really want this system to be, and how are we going to manage it long term, and what are we going to put on contract? Do we need two people producing these? Do I only need one that serves as an integrator? Do I want to serve as the integrator?” Competitions may shift to having an integrator and holding competitions to show that a supplier can surge-produce a certain quantity of qualified items, he said.

“Those are all things that our future program managers are going to need to look at as we build our acquisition strategy.”

Lawmakers Suggest the Space Force Start to Coordinate Space Launches Among Providers

June 9, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

For years, Congress has pushed the Air Force, and the Space Force after it, to increase competition within its space launch enterprise, to move beyond the one or two companies the military has long relied on to send its satellites into orbit.

And now that Space Force leaders have said they’re interested in opening things up in future contracts, lawmakers are recommending that the service bring a partner onboard to help coordinate.

As part of its 2023 National Defense Authorization Act markup, the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee included a provision encouraging the use of a so-called “common launch integrator” and directing the Space Force to prepare a briefing on the idea in the months ahead.

While commending the Department of the Air Force for promoting “robust competition” through the National Security Space Launch program, the committee noted in its markup that it “remains concerned regarding overall efforts to drive down cost, reduce risk, and ensure launch reliability and performance, particularly as the U.S. Space Force, including efforts of the Space Development Agency, plans to increase the total number of projected launches over the Future Years Defense Program.”

Indeed, the Space Force and SDA are planning to launch hundreds of satellites in the coming years, many of which will form a constellation in low-Earth orbit called the National Defense Space Architecture. Already, SDA has awarded contracts for more than 150 satellites in that constellation.

As part of that effort, SDA, which is due to move organizationally from the Office of the Secretary of Defense into the Space Force this year, has purposefully sought to drive competition, splitting contracts between multiple vendors and encouraging losing bidders to try again.

And just a few weeks ago, the agency awarded a deal to General Dynamics Mission Systems to develop the ground operations and integration segment for the NDSA—a contract that an SDA official called the “most critical element” of the effort because General Dynamics will have to build a system capable of taking satellite and ground segments from different vendors and meshing them together.

In a similar way, the congressional panel wants the Space Force to identify a common launch integrator “that works across Department customers, satellite manufacturers, and launch providers, [and] can provide tested space vehicle interaction processes,” according to its markup.

Such an approach would lower costs, reduce launch timelines, and increase competition, the committee argues, presumably by providing a baseline set of standards and reducing logistical challenges.

By Feb. 1, 2023, the committee wants the Chief of Space Operations to provide a briefing “on the benefits, including cost and schedule, of using one consistent launch integration solution across all types of space and launch vehicles,” including any plans the Space Force has to do so.

Commercial Capabilities

In addition to a common launch integrator, the strategic forces subcommittee also wants the Space Force to turn to industry to take advantage of the rapidly developing commercial market in space.

”We must continue to buy the best off-the-shelf technology and partner with the best firms to invent new technology,” said chairman Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.). “We must also demand that the U.S. have capabilities that vastly exceed anything in the private sector.”

Cooper has not been shy in the past about his desire for the Space Force and the broader DOD to rapidly develop and deploy new capabilities, and his committee’s markup includes several provisions meant to aid that.

For one, the committee’s mark notes that commercial satellite radio frequency remote sensing has “the potential to support a variety of Department of Defense missions” and directs the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, along with the combatant commanders, to provide a briefing by Dec. 1 on how the Pentagon plans to use the technology.

For another, the mark encourages the expanded use of commercial synthetic aperture radar, especially for the National Reconnaissance Office, and also asks for a report on any plans to use more commercial SAR.

GPS Backup?

In addition to the strategic forces panel, the subcommittee on cyber, innovative technologies, and information systems also has some concerns touching on the Space Force’s portfolio.

In particular, the committee included a requirement in its 2023 NDAA mark that would require the Secretary of Defense to provide a briefing to lawmakers by Feb. 1, 2023, on the Pentagon’s research into position, navigation, and timing.

PNT has generated some renewed interest in recent years, as observers in and outside the Pentagon have grown concerned about the possibility of a kinetic or non-kinetic attack on the Global Positioning System satellites that form the basis for almost all PNT nowadays.

“While GPS is the world standard, it is perhaps fair to say that we’ve come to rely on it solely and exclusively and too heavily,” Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. David D. Thompson acknowledged during a Congressional hearing in May.

The cyber subcommittee agreed, writing in its mark that there is “a need for assured positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) capabilities in the event that the Global Positioning System (GPS) is denied or disrupted.”