Austin Cites ‘Long Haul’ Support for Ukraine, Growth of Defense Industrial Bases

Sept. 8, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

Senior U.S. officials emphasized the long-term security of Ukraine and other European allies Sept. 8, announcing a new $2.2 billion aid package and plans to bolster their respective defense industrial bases.

The Department of Defense also announced another $675 million drawdown of security assistance for Ukraine, including more artillery, munitions, and High-speed Anti-Radiation Missiles (HARMs) for the fight against Russia.

That drawdown, the 20th authorized by President Joe Biden’s administration, brings the total security assistance authorized since Russia’s invasion began at around $14.5 billion. The full list of equipment and weapons in the package include:

Additional ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS)
Four 105mm Howitzers and 36,000 105mm artillery rounds
Additional High-speed Anti-Radiation Missiles (HARM)
100 Armored High-Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles (HMMWV)
1.5 million rounds of small arms ammunition
More than 5,000 anti-armor systems
1,000 155mm rounds of Remote Anti-Armor Mine (RAAM) Systems
Additional grenade launchers and small arms
50 armored medical treatment vehicles
Night vision devices and other field equipment.

The bigger chunk of funds allocated Sept. 8, however, came when the State Department announced it will make $2.2 billion available for long-term investments under Foreign Military Financing—roughly half for Ukraine and half for 18 other nations in the region.

Those countries—Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Greece, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia—include “many of our NATO Allies, as well as other regional security partners potentially at risk of future Russian aggression,” Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said in a statement.

At the same time, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley traveled to Ramstein Air Base, Germany, where they met with the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, a consortium of about 50 countries. In the group’s fifth meeting, the emphasis was on supporting Ukraine “over the long haul,” Austin said in a press briefing.

Six months after Russia’s full-scale invasion began, many countries “continue to dig deep and provide equipment out of their own military stocks,” Austin noted. In particular, Austin praised the Czech Republic, Poland, and Slovakia for “reinvigorating their industrial bases to meet Ukraine self defense needs.”

But with more than a dozen other countries also slated to get long-term investments and other European nations looking to ramp up their defense spending as well, Austin said planning is underway to coordinate how different countries’ defense industrial bases can work together.

“In the next few weeks in coordination with NATO, the United States will host a special session under the auspices of this contact group to bring together our senior national armaments directors, and they will discuss how our defense industrial bases can best equip Ukraine’s future forces with the capabilities that they need,” he said.

Not only will Ukraine’s future needs be considered, Austin added. Members of the Contact Group want to ensure their own stockpiles remain robust as they support Ukraine. For the U.S., in particular, senior leaders have insisted for months the aid given to Ukraine won’t deplete the Pentagon’s stockpiles. A recent report from the Wall Street Journal, however, indicated there is some concern within DOD about the levels of some munitions.

“We all believe that working together, we can better streamline things—we can shorten acquisition times, perhaps work on supply chain issues, learn from each other,” Austin said of the Contact Group.

And not only will Ukraine benefit from that cooperation and increased investment, Austin argued—“NATO writ large” will benefit if leaders can increase interoperability down to the industrial base level, he said.

While the focus of the contact group meeting was on Ukraine’s long-term future, the conflict continues to grind. Recently, the Ukrainians launched a counter-offensive meant to push Russia out of occupied territory in the east and south of the country, Milley confirmed.

That counter-offensive’s movement has been slow but steady, according to observers, and Milley pushed back when a reporter asked if progress has been modest or moderate.

“I would characterize it as a very deliberate offensive operation that is calibrated to set conditions and then seize their objectives,” Milley said. “We think at this point that their progress—you mentioned the word modest or moderate—their progress is steady, and it’s deliberate.”

AFRL Test Proves New Method of Air Base Defense With NASAMS Canister

Sept. 8, 2022 | By Amanda Miller

An experiment for the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Strategic Development Planning and Experimentation Office resulted in three different missile types being fired from one open-architecture National Advanced Surface to Air Missile System.

The “layered” test showed how the existing NASAMS system could defend air bases against cruise missiles at varying distances. Raytheon Missile & Defense announced the results of the test Sept. 7, when company officials took questions on a call with reporters.

The AFRL wanted to evaluate “low-cost, high technology readiness level capabilities that could provide near-term air base air defense capability,” said Jim Simonds, the lab’s program manager for the experiment, in a statement. The test came together in only 10 months. Simonds concluded that the “layered defense solution could provide immediate defensive capability.”

The test incorporated the AIM-9X Sidewinder as its shortest-range option; the Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM) for the mid range; and the AMRAAM-Extended as the longest-range option.

The contract to completed the test predated the war in Ukraine and was unrelated, the official said. The U.S. had included eight NASAMS systems in its assistance to the country as of Sept. 8, according to a fact sheet.

Raytheon and its partner in building the NASAMS, the Norwegian company Kongsberg Defense & Aerospace, performed the test at Norway’s Andoya Air Station, north of the Arctic Circle.

An “explosion of threat capabilities in that medium-range threat set” has drawn customers to NASAMS to date, including rotary-wing aircraft, fixed-wing aircraft, cruise missiles, and uncrewed aerial systems, said Joe DeAntona, Raytheon’s vice president of requirements and capabilities for land warfare and air defense.

Twelve countries already use NASAMS, and “time and time again, regardless of whether we’re in Europe, the Middle East, or somewhere out there in [the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command area of responsibility], this solution marries itself up very nicely for the threats the those particular customers are facing,” DeAntona said.

Without disclosing the type or types of radars that detected the cruise missiles in the test, John Norman, Raytheon’s vice president of requirements and capabilities for air power, told reporters it proved that forces could “operate globally with a variety of sensors.” The system’s open architecture “allows us to bring in not just the current, existing sensors, but all future sensors and future [command and control].”

Receiving targeting information from Army radars, the two contractors and AFRL “first passed targeting information” to the Air Force’s already fielded Battle Space Command and Control Center—described as a “capability”—then “relayed key data” to a Kongsberg Fire Distribution Center (FDC) “for threat evaluation and weapon assignment,” according to Raytheon’s news release about the test. “The operator in the FDC used that information to close the kill chain by selecting and firing the most effective missile from the NASAMS multi-missile canister launcher.”

Norman described the significance of the test as providing “an operationally relevant example of how you use an open architecture system that exists today … to provide that medium-range defense against the cruise missile.”

Considering the problem from the Air Force’s perspective, it’s “got to be able to protect these airfields,” Norman said. “We can’t pick up and move them. We can disperse forces, and we can play that shell game to a point, but we truly have to have the ability to protect our bases because the supply chain will go through there.”

He framed the test as a modest success.

“It gives them a persistent capability,” Norman said. “I don’t think it’s the ultimate asset they’re going to look for, but I think it’s part of the total solution that they’re going to be looking for.”

AFGSC Launches Second Minuteman III Test in Three Weeks

Sept. 7, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

Air Force Global Strike Command launched an unarmed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile from Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif., on Sept. 7—its second test launch in three weeks.

The ICBM launched at 1:13 a.m. Pacific time with three test re-entry vehicles, according to an AFGSC release. The vehicles traveled some 4,200 miles before landing in the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands.

That’s the same location where the previous test launch, which took place Aug. 16, landed.

This latest launch was overseen by the 576th Flight Test Squadron, stationed at Vandenberg, with support from Airmen from the 341st Missile Wing at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Mont., 90th Missile Wing at F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyo., and 91st Missile Wing at Minot Air Force Base, N.D. Space Force Col. Bryan Titus, vice commander of Space Launch Delta 30, was the launch decision authority.

“We have had a busy test schedule just in the past few months and I am in awe of the way our team has performed during each mission,” Col. Christopher Cruise, 576th Flight Test Squadron commander, said in a statement. “Today’s launch sends a visible message of assurance to our allies, and I couldn’t be more proud of the mission of continued deterrence this launch represents.”

The two tests come more than a year after the last publicly announced test launch in August 2021. Previously scheduled tests were either canceled or postponed by President Joe Biden’s administration in an effort to avoid potential miscommunication and escalation with Russia and China.

The first instance, in March, came in the early days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as Russian President Vladimir Putin raised tensions by putting his nuclear forces on high alert. The second, in early August, came as China launched military exercises around Taiwan in retaliation for Speaker of the House of Representatives, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), leading a Congressional delegation on a visit to the island.

AFGSC has repeatedly emphasized that any test launch “is not the result of current world events.” The command has conducted tests in quick succession before. In May 2019, AFGSC launched two Minuteman IIIs in the span of less tha n two weeks.

Video by Farrah Kaufmann, Space Launch Delta 30 Public Affairs

Outstanding Airmen of the Year: Tech. Sgt. Alexander W. Messinger

Sept. 7, 2022 | By Patrick Reardon

The Air Force’s 12 Outstanding Airmen of the Year for 2022 will be formally recognized at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference from Sept. 19 to 21 in National Harbor, Md. Air Force Magazine is highlighting one each weekday from now until the conference begins. Today, we honor Tech. Sgt. Alexander W. Messinger, the noncommissioned officer in charge of standardization evaluation at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, Texas.

Messinger’s guidance provided security validation in direct support of the President’s humanitarian border mission, ensuring that quick response capabilities (QRCs) and valid procedures were in place before the arrival of more than 1,000 migrant children from the U.S.-Mexico border to Lackland.

“Lackland is a beast because it has so many different mission sets,” said Messinger. “So anytime there’s [one of] these big humanitarian efforts … Lackland [needs to be ready] for it.”

And that’s exactly what Messinger’s responsibility is: ensuring readiness. Security validation and QRCs of this nature are only part of his role as NCO in charge of standardization evaluation at Lackland. He oversees program managers and makes sure their programs are in compliance with functional area inspection standards.

So while the base was preparing to house and relocate the migrants, he and his four-member quality assurance team were also racing to bring all of the programs up to code before a Vertical Inspection and Unit Effective Inspection—a process that usually involves 10 months of prep time before the inspection.

But Messinger’s team prepared the programs in a short two months, ultimately overseeing 396 evaluations and 829 field exercises for 462 military and civilian personnel. His unit passed the UEI while Messinger was managing 33 programs and 65 checklists, earning the squadron two “Highly Effective” ratings with zero discrepancies, five strengths, and 26 Professional Performers awards. He was selected as the unit’s sole Superior Performer and as the Air Force Security Forces Support Staff NCO of the Year.

“We’re lucky to get the team that we had,” Messinger said. “They’re just a bunch of go-getters and super hard workers. I just can’t thank my team enough for doing what they did to help.”

Messinger was also the only NCO selected for a Flight Commander training course, in which his leadership propelled his team to winning seven annual awards at various levels. He credits his section chief for giving him the opportunities along the way to evolve into a leader in his own right.

“One of the qualities I think a great leader has is that they know where to put their people to make them grow,” he said. “[My section chief] would always find ways for me to grow. I just hope that I can pay it forward and just follow him, take his mentorship, and provide it to others.”

Messinger also gave a callout to his wife of four years, a Blue Rope military training instructor who “holds everything together” for him while inspiring him to improve daily.

“I remember meeting her and her just picking me up and motivating me to do my best,” Messinger said. “I couldn’t do it without her.”

Meet the other Outstanding Airmen of the Year in 2022 below:   

DOD Stops Deliveries of New F-35s Over Material Sourced from China

Sept. 7, 2022 | By Amanda Miller

Lockheed Martin said it is “developing mitigation plans” after the F-35 Joint Program Office announced Sept. 7 that it has stopped delivery of new fighters upon learning that a component relies on material from China.

The material in question is an alloy in a magnet in the F-35’s turbomachine. The turbomachine “integrates the functionality of an auxiliary power unit (APU) and an air cycle machine (ACM) into a single piece of equipment,” according to Lockheed Martin. “When the turbomachine acts as an APU (combusted mode), it provides electrical power for ground maintenance, main engine start, and emergency power. It also provides compressed air for the thermal management system during ground maintenance.”

Lockheed Martin said three F-35s are ready for delivery but on hold. Its spokesperson did not name the airplanes’ customers.

Sourcing the Chinese material is “potentially in non-compliance” with the U.S. Defense Federal Acquisition Regulations Supplement, according to a statement by the Defense Department’s F-35 Joint Program Office.

Honeywell, the turbomachine’s maker, notified Lockheed Martin that it had been “informed by their lube pump supplier for the turbomachine that one of their suppliers has been using alloy sourced from China in their magnets,” according to Lockheed Martin.

Lockheed Martin and the JPO said the magnet doesn’t transmit any information. It doesn’t “harm the integrity of the aircraft, and there are no performance, quality, safety, or security risks associated with this issue,” according to the JPO. The F-35s already in service will “continue as normal.”

The JPO said it “temporarily paused acceptance” of new F-35s after learning that the contractors had found a U.S. source to replace the Chinese alloy.

Lockheed Martin said it’s “doing everything possible to gather the facts” on the source of the material, and the JPO said “investigation is underway” into “causal factors … and to establish corrective action.”

The Defense Department’s use of Chinese materials for key technologies and acquisition programs has become an increasing source of concern and legislation in recent years. And in 2019, U.K. media outlets reported that a Chinese-owned company was making circuit boards for the F-35.

AFSOC Commander Explains Why He Ordered CV-22 Osprey Stand Down

Sept. 7, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

Air Force Special Operations Command has known about the issue at the heart of the recent CV-22 Osprey safety stand down for years now, just as the Marine Corps and other stakeholders have.

But after two incidents in quick succession—including one that has left an aircraft stranded in a nature preserve in Norway—AFSOC commander Lt. Gen. James C. “Jim” Slife decided some action had to be taken to “draw attention” to the problem, even as the root cause remains a mystery, he said Sept. 7.

AFSOC first announced the grounding of the fleet Aug. 16, citing incidents of “hard clutch engagement.”

Such instances start with a “slipping sprag clutch inside the input wheels on the engines,” Slife said at an AFA Warfighters in Action event.

The Osprey is designed so that if one of its two engines fails, the other one can take over and power both prop rotors to avoid “enormous asymmetric lift, asymmetric thrust,” Slife said.

“But when a clutch slips, it causes the load to transfer to the other engine, and then when … it just slips momentarily and when it engages again, it brings that load back to the original motor,” Slife said. “And those large transient torque spikes exceed the limitations of the engines and the gearboxes to handle those transient torque loads.”

Such incidents result in “kind of a Christmas tree of lights, caution lights, in the cockpit, and some pretty squirrely flight control inputs,” Slife said. The crew typically lands as quickly as possible.

Air & Space Forces Association President retired Lt. Gen. Bruce Wright speaks with Lt. Gen. James C. Slife, commander of Air Force Special Operations Command, Sept. 7, 2022. Staff photo by Mike Tsukamoto.

After AFSOC announced its stand down, however, the Marine Corps and the Navy both said they would not ground their versions of the V-22, with officials reportedly saying they felt they had appropriate procedures in place to handle such situations.

In the weeks leading up to the stand down, Slife said he was in regular contact with the Marines’ deputy commandant of aviation and the commanders of Naval Air Forces and Naval Air Systems Command. Ultimately, his decision to ground the Air Force fleet came down to his view on how the problem should be addressed.

“My stand down was really an opportunity for us to bring some attention to this in the engineering enterprise and with our industry partners, because the approach up to this point has been: Until we understand the root cause, there’s really nothing we can do about it,” Slife said. “And my view is we may not understand why it’s happening, but we absolutely know what is happening. And so we need to take a closer look at what is happening and maybe remove some of the precursor events to each one of these.”

After a little more than two weeks, the stand down ended Sept. 2. In that time, Slife said, AFSOC drilled down on the data and found that “virtually all of [the hard clutch engagements] occurred in the exact same regime of flight. Virtually all of them occurred with gearboxes with the same amount of flight time.”

It’s still unclear how those discoveries relate to the root cause of the HCEs, but Slife said they were enough for the command to craft new measures meant to reduce the likelihood of such incidents.

“It’s things like how we manage our power settings during takeoff, how frequently we do vertical takeoffs versus short takeoffs—if you’ve got a runway available, use the runway, those types of things,” Slife said. “And so I feel pretty comfortable we put appropriate mitigation measures in place.”

At the same time, the search for the underlying reason for the clutch problem continues.

Stranded in Norway

In its announcement about the end of the stand down, AFSOC officials said the entire fleet of some 50 Ospreys was cleared to start flying again—but there’s actually one CV-22 that’s still grounded.

That would be one of the Ospreys that experienced hard clutch engagement. The crew from RAF Mildenhall, U.K., landed the aircraft on an island in northern Norway, inside the Arctic circle, Slife said, confirming multiple media reports.

“These things never seem to happen at airfields. They always seem to happen in Norwegian nature preserves above the Arctic Circle at the onset of winter,” Slife joked. “So, it’s provided a really great tactical problem for that unit to figure out what to do with that airplane out in the middle of a nature preserve with protected ferns and salamanders and things like that.”

According to a local media report, the Norwegian defense ministry has said the removal process will involve constructing a road, ramp, and jetty on the island, all while doing as little as possible to disturb the nature preserve. Disassembling or airlifting the aircraft have been ruled out.

AFSOC Has a Design for Its Amphibious MC-130J; Aircraft Integration Set for 2023

Sept. 7, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

The schedule appears to have changed a little, but Air Force Special Operations Command is still working on developing an amphibious capability to go on its MC-130J aircraft, AFSOC’s commander said Sept. 7.

It has been roughly a year since Lt. Gen. James C. “Jim” Slife first detailed AFSOC’s plans to take the MC-130J—capable of personnel infiltration and exfiltration, logistics, resupply, and personnel recovery—and find a way for it to land on water. Such a capability was necessary, he said, as the command shifts focus to the Indo-Pacific theater, an area dominated by vast bodies of water.

At the time, Slife said the hope was for a demo flight by late 2022. But speaking at an AFA Warfighters in Action event Sept. 7, Slife said the plan now is to start integrating the capability onto aircraft in 2023.

A final design has been selected, Slife added, and it is currently undergoing “wave tank testing.”

“We’ve got a 100 percent digital design. We started out with a number of digital designs. We ran through a series of testing to figure out, do we want to do a catamaran, a pontoon, a hull applique on the bottom of the aircraft?” Slife said. “I mean, we kind of went through all the iterations of that. And we settled on a design that provides the best tradeoff of drag, weight, sea state performance—all those types of things.”

Slife did not specify what the final design selected was, but he did say the early returns from that testing have been positive, with everything performing “pretty much the way the digital design was predicted to perform.”

But while the design will soon be integrated onto aircraft for the first time, it won’t be a permanent modification, Slife clarified.

“The idea here is it’s an amphibious modification—it’s not a float plane. It will have the ability to land on both land or water. And it’ll be a field-installable modification kit. And so it won’t be every airplane; it won’t be all the time. It’ll be a capability that’s available to the fleet,” Slife said.

The Air Force currently has a little more than 50 MC-130Js, operating out of Cannon and Kirtland Air Force Bases, N.M., as well as Kadena Air Base, Japan, and RAF Mildenhall, U.K.

Slife did not offer an explanation for the delay in the aircraft’s first flight with the amphibious capability. In August, however, an Air Force official at the Life Cycle Industry Days conference in Dayton, Ohio, indicated that the effort had briefly been dropped before being revived.

“It started, then it stopped. And now it looks like it’s getting traction to start moving again,” said Douglas Gregory, a deputy division chief in the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center’s ISR/special operations directorate. “So it was all user required, based on the requirements, and they’re providing that right now.”

AFSOC amphibious MC-130J — A rendering of a twin float amphibious modification to an MC-130J Commando II is shown here. Air Force Special Operations Command and private-sector counterparts are developing a modification to allow the aircraft to take off and land in bodies of water, enabling runway-independent operations. Courtesy photo.

Rolls-Royce’s High-Speed Innovation Stirs an Airman’s Soul

Sept. 7, 2022

Darryl Roberson knows a little bit about flying jets. After flying F-4s, F-15s, F-16s, and F-22s over a 34-year Air Force career—a rarity in a modern, specialized world—he’s now helping to bring a new age of modern engineering and manufacturing to today’s warfighters.

As a senior vice president with storied engine maker Rolls-Royce North America, Roberson is an ambassador for some of the most ground-breaking technologies to emerge in propulsion in recent decades, including digital engineering, alternative fuels, additive manufacturing, and a host of other innovations.

“We apply digital engineering where it adds value,” Roberson says. “We have applied custom digital engineering analysis, leveraging Rolls-Royce digitally enabled rapid prototyping, virtual reality, advanced manufacturing, digital services for sustainment, and DaVinci – ‘design and validate in the computer investment.’ This significantly benefits our US DOD customers and program efforts.

“We have demonstrated that intelligent application of trusted, validated digital engineering capability significantly reduces risk within an engine development program.”

Computer-aided design has existed for decades now, but designing and modeling entire systems digitally is revolutionizing the ability to adapt, improve, and enhance modern systems, and do so at a pace unheard of in the past. “We can reduce costs, we can save time, and we can produce engines in a much more efficient way,” Roberson says.

An aerospace engineer by education, Roberson grew up as a Navy brat and immersed himself in the Air Force directly after high school, enrolling at the U.S. Air Force Academy. Over the next 34 years he rose to lieutenant general, commanding Air Education and Training Command in his final tour. Even now, he has a vested interest in the Air Force, with a son and son-in-law on active duty, and ensuring they are part of the best-equipped, most ready, most effective fighting force fuels his passion for his current role.

Contributing to training and readiness is one way Rolls-Royce fulfills that passion. “Our AE 2100 engine, which powers the C-130J, can now be maintained in a more effective and less costly way,” he says. “We created a virtual reality maintenance training system for the Air Force that maintainers can literally put on and then either train or actually perform maintenance using that. It’s like a digital assistant that can speed up processes, help them understand what needs to be done, verify that the processes are being done in the right way.”

The tool enhances inspections and can reduce wear and tear and potential injuries by reducing the necessity to remove engines from the aircraft.

Rolls-Royce has also invested in its own innovation and development arm, LibertyWorks, an engineering powerhouse created to tackle the most demanding requirements and come up with innovative solutions. “These are phenomenal engineers,” Roberson says. LibertyWorks projects span the range from wringing additional power from existing systems to developing propulsion technology for entirely new kinds of systems.

“When there’s a challenge that warfighters are facing, LibertyWorks is the place to go to solve that problem. They can take a requirement that sounds impossible and make it real.”

Case in point: LibertyWorks is developing engines to power small, attritable unmanned systems, which will have to fly as fast as an F-35 but won’t have to be as maintainable because the aircraft itself won’t be designed to last as long as a Lightning II. The unit is also working on reusable hypersonic engines and on energy initiatives.

“Look, just like the Air Force, Rolls-Royce is absolutely committed to the environment,” Roberson says. “We have publicly stated that we will be net-zero carbon use in our operations by the year of 2030, which is really not that far away. And we are working hard on alternate fuels for propelling flight and producing power—synthetic aviation fuels, bio-aviation fuels, even electricity and hydrogen, which when you burn it, becomes water.”

Rolls-Royce is already the leading producer of all-electric and hybrid-electric aviation systems and set a new world speed record for an electric propulsion aircraft.

The proof-of-concept aircraft—called “Spirit of Innovation” —set a world record for battery powered flight, topping 345 mph. Spirit of Innovation, about the size of a World War II Spitfire, is powered by liquid-cooled lithium-ion batteries. “It’s the start of a journey to make electrification happen,” Roberson says. “We’re propelling the future.”

DOD Plans to Pitch Tech Workforce Solutions in 2023

Sept. 6, 2022 | By Amanda Miller

The Defense Department plans to propose new workforce “solutions” to Congress in 2023, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen H. Hicks said in a virtual address to a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency conference Aug. 31.

“Making sure that we can increase speed of decision—speed and quality of decision and action”—is Hicks’ top aim, an objective that covers “a lot of different organizational innovations and operational concepts that come together.” These include enterprise cloud capability, artificial intelligence, and the effective use of data. But it also includes improving the tech workforce.

In the Air Force, half of all billets requiring advanced academic degrees in science, technology, engineering, or math—STEM—are either vacant or filled by someone lacking the requisite qualifications.

Hicks said she and Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III found it “pretty stunning” that the department lacked any “senior-level-focus set of processes or governance systems on workforce issues.”

The new Deputy’s Workforce Council set up in 2021, which she chairs, works with senior leaders “all across the department to look at workforce issues,” Hicks said. A new Innovation Steering Group, meanwhile, is connecting the “many wonderful flowers blooming on innovation across the department.” And a third group, “an innovation workforce tiger team,” is working on the intersection of the two to help get at “what you might call the innovation workforce—tech talent,” Hicks said.

Needs differ across the department, Hicks said. “Some organizations have a good sense of the tech talent that they need,” highlighting the research and engineering community as an example. “But there are other parts of the department where we don’t, and I’ll point to things like our data and AI work, where we really are starting to build from a much newer base of understanding … It’s going to take us a little time to work through those pieces, but it won’t take years. We’re aiming to … have a number of solutions to bring forward to Congress in their next legislative cycle.”

Tech talent and STEM education also concern the defense industrial base. According to DOD’s 2022 “State of the Space Industrial Base” report, China will outproduce the U.S. in STEM grads by 15 to 1 by 2030. The extent “of workforce issues threaten the viability of space domestically,” the report said, including “the ability to maintain a strong national security space posture.”

Space Force Maj. Gen. John M. Olson, the Department of the Air Force’s chief data and AI officer, was the lead writer on the study. He has assumed a hands-on role in cultivating the department’s tech workforce as a designated “champion” representing the University of Colorado Boulder in the Space Force’s University Partnership Program.

In a visit to the campus in April, he made clear the department’s interest in industrial innovation: “We want to buy commercial services as much as anything,” he said. “It’s a standard make-buy decision that any business would make. And if we can buy it from a rich commercial ecosystem, that’s even more wonderful for us because then we can focus our funding on those inherently governmental things.”

Olson, a reservist for a time, said that after working in the aerospace industry, he “came back to [full-time service] because we need people in government who know what EBITDA is.” The acronym stands for earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, and is a standard measure of corporate financial health. It’s important, he said, for the government to have people “who know what these things are from an industry perspective.”

Olson’s Ph.D. in industrial and systems engineering, coupled with a military background in acquisition, further illustrates one of Hicks’ points—that the talent pool in question isn’t limited to STEM: “People can frame it up under STEM, but it’s beyond STEM talent,” she said. “It also includes how we think about the acquisition workforce—those who are going out and trying to determine what we buy and how we buy it.”

Hicks sees the opportunities in government as being part of the draw, and she seemed to make that pitch to the collegiate attendees at DARPA’s conference.

“Whether you’re interested in the future of autonomous vehicles or powering the next generation of communications technologies or building resilience in the face of a warming planet, at DOD we’ve got something for practically everyone,” she said. “We have some of the most fantastic problems to solve, and our mission is second to none.

“It’s not only a chance to make a difference, it’s a chance to be part of something bigger than yourselves, to change the future for the better, to make the world safer for everyone.”