Space Force Lacks a ‘Credible’ Five-Year Budget, Congressional Report Says

June 21, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

The Space Force is running the risk of starting more programs than it can afford, at least according to its five-year budget plan that isn’t “credible,” according to a key congressional panel.

The House Appropriations defense subcommittee offered that stark warning as part of the report it submitted alongside its 2023 appropriations bill, which will be considered by the full committee June 22.

Looking to address those financial concerns, House appropriators included a provision in their bill that would require the Secretary of the Air Force, through the assistant secretary for space acquisition and integration, to conduct a risk assessment analysis of the “projected cost, affordability, and executability” of the entire Space Force portfolio of programs and activities and to present the results to lawmakers by Oct. 1.

The bill would also trim the Space Force budget request for military personnel; operations and maintenance; and research, development, testing, and evaluation, with the biggest difference being to the RDT&E budget—nearly $358 million less than what the service asked for.

Such changes would modestly change the overall top line of $24.5 billion in the 2023 Space Force budget request—that total was a substantial $6.5 billion increase over the $18 billion enacted by Congress for fiscal 2022. House appropriators noted that a chunk of that increase is a result of the Space Development Agency integrating into the service as well as more inter-service troop transfers. Still, even after adjusting for those changes, the committee report pegged the growth at roughly 20 percent.

Another increase is projected for fiscal 2024, according to the Pentagon’s Future Years Defense Program, which projects spending five years in advance. After that, however, the top line is projected to decrease—and lawmakers are concerned.

“The Space Force’s ambitious plans for new architectures, programs, and mission areas, do not appear to be backed up with credible budget projections in the outyears to actually deliver these capabilities,” the HAC-D committee report states.

With smaller budgets supposedly coming, the Space Force may be overextending itself, the report adds.

“The Committee cautions the Space Force against starting more programs than it can afford,” the report says. “The lack of a credible five-year budget raises fundamental questions about whether any serious analysis or long-term planning has been done to assess the realism and affordability of the entire portfolio of programs—not just individual programs—or to set priorities among programs, including deciding not to start programs if they are not affordable within projected budgets.”

The chair of the defense subcommittee, Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.), questioned Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall on this topic when he appeared before lawmakers in May. Kendall indicated that he thought the FYDP would wind up changing over time, saying he did not believe future budgets “will remain flat or go down for the Space Force—quite the opposite.”

But Kendall’s answers were seemingly not enough to satisfy lawmakers’ concerns, with the report stating that the Space Force’s budget fails to meet the committee’s expectation that its “plans and programs must be based on rigorous technical analysis matched with executable plans resourced by realistic budgets.”

In particular, the committee report takes aim at the Space Force’s plans to significantly boost spending on its missile warning enterprise.

All told, the service wants more than $4.5 billion for missile warning in 2023, including billions of dollars for Next-Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared geosynchronous satellites, hundreds of millions of dollars for the Tracking Layer of SDA’s National Defense Space Architecture in low Earth orbit, and more than a billion dollars for a “Resilient Missile Warning/Missile Tracking” program.

While applauding the Space Force for trying to build a more resilient architecture spread across different orbits, the committee report warned that the service “has not provided sufficient information on the expected life-cycle cost of the new architecture, the cost to recapitalize a proliferated architecture every 3–5 years, potential risks and challenges in the supply chain, the ability of the Space Force to scale up capabilities to command and control a much larger number of satellites, the applicability and ability to meet stringent requirements for missile warning certification, cybersecurity, and resilience against reversible and irreversible kinetic and non-kinetic attacks.”

Looking to address that, the committee is asking for a life-cycle cost estimate for the proposed Resilient Missile Warning/Missile Tracking program by January 2023, as well as quarterly updates on that program and Next-Gen OPIR.

USAF Doesn’t Expect New Aggressor F-35s’ Camo to Interfere With Stealth

June 21, 2022 | By John A. Tirpak

Editor’s note: This story was updated at 6:59 p.m. Eastern time June 21 with additional information from the Air Force.

The new “Splinter” camouflage on aggressor F-35s at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev., shouldn’t negate or interfere with their low observability, meaning they can truly play the role of a stealthy sparring partner for USAF fighters, according to a Nellis spokesperson.

The first two F-35s to appear in camouflage were revealed June 9 at a Nellis ceremony to reactivate the 65th Aggressor Squadron, wearing a paint scheme reminiscent of both the Russian Su-57 Felon and Chinese J-20 fighters.

“Nellis maintenance personnel applied alternate paint to create the unique camouflage scheme after coordination with the F-35 Joint Program Office,” the Nellis spokesperson said in an emailed response to a query.

“While the application of the alternate paint is a first, we do not anticipate it will have any adverse impacts on the F-35’s low-observable properties,” the spokesperson said. “The alternate paint can be removed at any time to return our aircraft to the original configuration.”

However, he later added, “Further testing will be required to discern if there is a difference in the
low-observable properties. A standard Air Force aircraft paint was used for
the paint scheme, and [Lockheed Martin] engineers approved the use and process
of paint application.”

F-35 aggressors — Lt. Col. Brandon Nauta, new commander of the 65th Aggressor Squadron at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev., speaks at the reactivation of the unit June 9, 2022. Pictured at left of the F-35’s vertical tail is a radar cross section enhancement device used to prevent adversaries from assessing the F-35’s true stealthiness in normal training operations. Air Force photo.

A Lockheed Martin spokesperson said the company was “not involved in selecting or applying the paint.”

Since the first F-35s began coming off the production line, with the exception of national insignia, all F-35 aircraft have had the same finish, although a production line change from a few years ago replaced the light-gray raised material over some panel lines with material of a darker color. Lockheed Martin has explained that the gray-on-gray finish results from the special materials, paint, and coatings required to achieve a low-observable effect. Some of these coatings have a dull, flat appearance, while others are somewhat more glossy. The finish around panel lines is different, for example, from finishes on dielectric surfaces, such as the radome and leading edges. Under certain lighting conditions and from some angles, the underlying silver metallic sheen of the F-35 shines through.

However, the camouflage on the 65th’s aggressor F-35s is limited and does not cover the entire aircraft. No camouflage has been applied to the underside of the jets.

The exact function of the F-35’s paint and coatings is classified but is known to help reflect radar energy from some directions while absorbing, attenuating, or altering it in others, to reduce the aircraft’s radar return. The dull gray color also makes the F-35 harder to see at night.

The F-22—also a fifth-generation stealth fighter—has a different camouflage, which sources have said plays a role in confusing adversary imaging infrared systems. The application of the darker F-22 camouflage shapes, known within Lockheed Martin as “the amoebas,” is an extremely precise process requiring robots to ensure that the paint has no high or low spots that would affect the aircraft’s radar reflectivity.

Unexplained is why, in some air-to-air images, one of the aggressor F-35s is fitted with radar reflection enhancers, positioned on the fuselage near the trailing edge of the wings, and the other is not.

The 65th has used F-5s, F-16s, and F-15s to simulate adversary aircraft in the past but was disbanded in 2014 due to financial restrictions imposed by the Budget Control Act. In 2019, the Air Force said it was planning to reactivate the unit and that it would have some F-35s.

The two F-35s painted in the new scheme are of an older batch and will not be upgraded to the Block 4 configuration, an Air Force official said. Their degree of stealth makes them a good stand-in for China’s J-20 or FC-31, he said.

The Air Force has also recently changed course regarding the use of commercial aggressor platforms. Several companies have been fulfilling ADAIR (short for “adversary air”) contracts for the Air Force, but the service recently decided that third- and fourth-generation types such as the Mirage F-1 and even F-16s are no longer sufficient for Air Force pilots to train against.

“What we’re finding, now … is these contracts aren’t very effective at Nellis at the high-end training”, said Lt. Gen. David S. Nahom, deputy chief of staff for plans and programs, in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on May 17. The older aircraft “are not providing us what we need,” he said, and USAF doesn’t plan to renew all such contracts when they expire.

China, Nahom said, has “stepped up” the capability of its combat air forces, so “we have to step up our replication” at the two “high end” threat-simulation exercises that run at Nellis and the Joint Pacific Alaska Range Complex in Alaska. The contract ADAIR companies may continue work at fighter training units, where they are “very effective,” he said.

Aggressor pilots study and employ the tactics used by potential adversaries, with the goal of giving USAF fighter pilots multiple experiences at realistic air combat before the students ever go into actual battles. The “Red Baron” studies of the 1970s determined that the survival rate of fighter and attack pilots went up dramatically after 10 missions, and the aggressor program was intended to give pilots those 10 missions in a safe but stressful environment. USAF fighter pilots have reported that real-world combat has been less taxing than the tough encounters they had at Red Flag and other high-end, live-fly wargames.

Nahom also said USAF is stepping up its investment in live, virtual, and constructive (LVC) exercises because it can’t reveal all its fifth-generation tactics in an open-air, live-fly setting.

Space Force Set to Establish New Delta to Run Intel Hub

June 21, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

The Space Force will stand up its newest delta with the formation of Space Delta 18, which will operate the National Space Intelligence Center.

The new organization will be tasked with helping the Space Force to identify and track threats in orbit, both kinetic and non-kinetic. It will be formally established June 24 at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio.

The new center’s formation date was made public in a social media post by its new deputy director, John Gass, who will serve as No. 2 for director Col. Marqus Randall. A Space Force spokesperson confirmed the details to Air Force Magazine.

The formation of the NSIC has been a part of the Space Force’s plan for some time. Chief of Space Operations Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond released a planning document in November 2020 calling for it to work in concert with the rest of the service’s intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance enterprise to grow “space intelligence at foundational, tactical, operational, and strategic levels.”

The Space Analysis Squadron and Counter-Space Analysis Squadron of the National Air and Space Intelligence Center, the Air Force’s own intelligence hub, will form the basis of the National Space Intelligence Center.

In January 2021, the Space Force officially became the 18th member of the U.S. Intelligence Community, a move that Raymond later said allowed the service to “really begin to work on this thing called the National Space Intelligence Center.”

In April 2021, the Space Force’s director of ISR, Maj. Gen. Leah Lauderback, told Signal Magazine that the intelligence center would include roughly 350 personnel, with a goal of reaching initial operating capability by January 2022. Lauderback later confirmed that the plan was to co-locate the center alongside the NASIC at Wright-Patterson.

Gass made reference to the delay in the center’s establishment in his social media post, describing years of “trials and tribulations.” He also shared the unit’s emblem, which seemingly pays tribute to the National Air and Space Intelligence Center’s emblem that prominently features a Sphinx.

Space Delta 18 will become the Space Force’s second ISR-focused Delta, joining Space Delta 7, headquartered at Peterson Space Force Base, Colo.

Wilsbach: Army Must ‘Step Up’ to Protect Guam, Pacific Air Bases Against New Threats

June 21, 2022 | By Abraham Mahshie

JOINT REGION MARIANAS HEADQUARTERS, Guam—New missile threats from China coupled with the strategic importance of Guam are heightening the urgency for new defensive systems to protect the island, said Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach, commander of Pacific Air Forces.

Guam is just a speck in the vast Pacific Ocean, 30 miles long by 12 miles at its widest point, but its location in Micronesia in the South Pacific makes Andersen Air Force Base a crucial hub for fighter and bomber aircraft. The Army’s base defense mission is, therefore, paramount to protecting it as a forward position for re-arming and repairing strike aircraft.

Joint Region Marianas commander Navy Rear Adm. Benjamin Nicholson said “the potential for a Guam defense system” is now the big news on the island. Such a defense would answer the call by commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command Adm. John C. Aquilino for 360-degree radar and missile defenses to protect the island from ballistic, cruise, and hypersonic missile threats.

Today, the base depends on the Army’s Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, which has been in Guam since 2014, when it was deployed in response to North Korean threats.

The THAAD battery “gives us protection from ballistic missiles, and some of the other missiles as well, but it is somewhat limited in scope,” Nicholson said. “The new system will provide a more comprehensive ability to defend the island from all threat axes and a larger group of missiles. That’s in the works. There’s still a lot of work to be done on where those parts and pieces will go.”

360-Degree Defense

Guam is shaped like a tilted hourglass with high plateaus in the north and a mountain range in the south. The Department of Defense controls 27 percent of the island, but most of that property is in the flatter northern plateau, including Andersen and Marine Corps Camp Blaz. It has very little land in the mountainous south or east of Naval Base Guam.

U.S. national defense competes as a priority with tourism and environmental concerns. That means missile systems will most likely “have to be in multiple different locations throughout the island to provide the proper radar coverage, the proper interceptor coverage,” Nicholson said.

U.S. Army Maj. Kyle J. Hermanson, Task Force Talon commander here, said “THAAD is the most capable surface-to-air missile system the Army has ever fielded” against theater ballistic missile threats. “Unlike Patriot … THAAD defends a large area and not just a specific asset, such as an airfield. THAAD is the cornerstone for the defense of Guam mission.”

In 2021, the Army tested the Iron Dome missile defense system on Guam, but its high humidity proved a challenge. Now the Missile Defense Agency is proposing a multi-layer defense system, seeking $539 million in fiscal 2023 to begin building a multi-layer defense system for Guam that could be fielded by 2026. For now, Nicholson said the Army is modifying how THAAD is used to provide better defense.

“The Army … is always incorporating and fielding new capabilities in order to create additional problems for our adversaries,” Hermanson said.

In March, a THAAD unit deployed to Rota, a nearby island, to test remote launch capability. Hermanson said the test proved the Army could use the system to better protect Air Force units during agile combat employment events, in which small numbers of aircraft operate from dispersed and often austere locations, such as small Pacific islands, rather than large concentrated bases.

Guam defense — Signal Soldiers from 307th Expeditionary Signal Battalion-Enhanced set up a satellite terminal to enable communications between the remote launcher and Tactical Fire Control Center. Army photo.

New Defenses Not Coming ‘Soon Enough’

Still, PACAF commander Wilsbach said the Army needs to “step up” development of missile defenses. “When you start getting out to some of these island locations … nations, they obviously don’t have defenses,” he said in an interview at PACAF’s headquarters at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii. Defending U.S. bases “is a U.S. Army mission set.”

Wilsbach said allies play an important role in base defense in Japan and Korea, along with the Army’s THAAD and Patriot missile systems. Similarly, the Navy shares in the defense of Guam with Aegis-equipped ships. The Air Force is responsible for defending against air threats, including cruise missiles.

“I’m really counting on the Army to step up and advance their capabilities to get after some of the newer threats we’re seeing,” such as hypersonic and maneuvering reentry vehicles and new stealthy cruise missiles, Wilsbach said. “These are all tough targets to hit.”

“They are working on it,” he said. “I can’t get it soon enough. So, I need them to push it up—hurry up and field those capabilities for them and for us.”

Former Test Pilot, Astronaut Candidate Selected to Sculpt Chappie James Memorial

June 21, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

This story was originally published Sept. 17, 2021.

One trailblazer will commemorate another as former Air Force test pilot, astronaut candidate, and sculptor Ed Dwight has been selected to create a statue of the Air Force’s first Black four-star general, Gen. Daniel “Chappie” James Jr.

The statue will be installed at the landing of the new bridge in Pensacola, Fla., that was named in James’ honor in July 2020, the General Daniel “Chappie” James, Jr. Memorial Foundation announced Sept. 17. It will form part of a memorial plaza that will include an F-4 Phantom in flight and an 80-foot flag pole, with a scheduled dedication of Sept. 18, 2022, the 75th birthday of the Air Force.

The city of Pensacola has already agreed to contribute $250,000 in funds for the project, and further fundraising efforts will begin in October, the memorial foundation said in a press release. Pensacola, less than 50 miles from Eglin Air Force Base, is James’ hometown—his childhood home is being transformed into a museum and is currently under construction.

James, a Tuskegee Airman, served in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, seeing combat in the latter two conflicts. He was promoted to the rank of four-star general in 1975, becoming the first African American to reach the grade of O-10 across the entire U.S. military. He was placed in charge of the North American Aerospace Defense Command, becoming the eighth-ever commander of NORAD, and held that position for more than two years.

Dwight, for his part, is a trailblazer as well. As a captain and a test pilot at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., in the 1960s, he trained in the Aerospace Research Pilot School run by the legendary Chuck Yeager, with the hope of being selected as a NASA astronaut, according to Smithsonian Magazine.

Dwight was part of a select group to make it through to the second phase of training and was recommended by the Air Force when he applied to become an astronaut, but he was controversially not selected.

After leaving the Air Force, Dwight embarked on a second career as an artist and has sculpted dozens of memorials and statues on display throughout the country. In particular, he has sculpted Black trailblazers such as Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Jesse Owens, and George Washington Carver, among others.

House Moves to Upgrade, Not Retire, Oldest F-22s

June 20, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

The Air Force’s plans to divest its oldest 33 F-22 Raptor fighters met with a sharp rebuke from the House Armed Services Committee, which moved instead to mandate the Air Force maintain the full Raptor fleet and upgrade the older planes to the newest configuration in its version of the 2023 National Defense Authorization bill.

USAF sought to retire the early F-22s, currently rated for training use only because they are expensive to maintain and are increasingly mismatched to the combat-coded versions, reducing their value as training platforms. The roughly $1 billion cost to upgrade those jets was not affordable, Air Force officials said.

But the HASC chairman’s mark, released June 20, would not only block plans to retire the aircraft, but would also direct the service to upgrade all its F-22s to at least “Block 30/35 mission systems, sensors, and weapon employment capabilities.”

The House committee draft goes further than what the Senate Armed Services Committee included in its version of the NDAA, calling in that bill for no F-22 retirements without “a detailed written plan for training F-22 aircrew while avoiding any degradation in readiness or reduction in combat capability.”

In a background briefing, a HASC staff member told reporters last week that ensuring every F-22 in the inventory is combat capable is the bipartisan, consensus view of the committee. A second staff member called preserving the jets “risk mitigation.”

“When we let the Air Force curtail the program back in 2010 at 187 airplanes at the time, they told us that the training capacity would always be available to meet contingency requirements, if and when needed, along with the 234 F-15Cs,” the staff member said. “Now that the Air Force is retiring all their F-15Cs, they’ve cut the buy in half for F-15EX, [the Next Generation Air Dominance program] has slid further to the right than what they originally told us, and now they want to reduce their F-22 capacity. We think there’s significant risk in meeting future air superiority requirements. And so we’re holding the Air Force accountable to their commitment to have the training-coded jets combat capable.”

The bill includes exceptions allowing the Secretary of the Air Force to retire F-22s and go below the minimum of 186 fighters if any given aircraft is deemed “no longer mission capable and uneconomical to repair,” such as after an accident.

The Air & Space Forces Association praised the move in a statement, noting that building fighter capacity is a priority for building up effective combat air power. “AFA is gratified that lawmakers see the need to protect these world’s greatest fighter jets from being retired prematurely,” the statement said. “The Air & Space Forces Association could not agree more that modernizing them to the most advanced configurations is one of the most cost-effective means of rapidly adding to USAF combat capability.”

The House committee will meet on June 22 to mark up its version of the NDAA. Once the measures clear their respective committees, they must be approved by the full chambers, and then reconciled in a conference committee.

AWACS

House lawmakers also challenged Air Force plan to retire 15 E-3 AWACS Sentries, roughly half the fleet. The committee’s bill allow just 10 E-3s to be retired until the Air Force reports back on its future airborne warning and control plans, and on developing air moving target indication, battle management, and command and control capabilities; the impact of retiring 15 AWACS planes; and a detailed comparison between the E-3s and the Air Force’s planned replacement, the E-7 Wedgetail.

A-10

The House Armed Services Committee markup accepted Air Force plans to start cutting its A-10 “Warthog” fleet, and took the additional step of reducing the minimum number of A-10s the Air Fore must maintain from 171 to 153. That move appears to support the service’s plans to replace 21 Indiana Air National Guard A-10s with F-16s. Congress has long protected the beloved close air support Warthogs from any plan to retire the jets, but this year both House and Senate committees appear poised to allow some retirements, a major victory for Air Force leaders who note that the Warthog is ill-suited to missions against sophisticated enemies.

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.”