Guard F-16 Skids Off Runway in South Dakota, Pilot Safe

May 12, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

An F-16 from the South Dakota Air National Guard’s 114th Fighter Wing slid off the runway in Sioux Falls, S.D., on May 11. Images appeared to show the jet’s landing gear collapsed and its nose damaged.

The pilot, however, is safe, the wing said in a statement posted to social media.

The incident occurred at approximately 2:43 p.m. local time as the fighter was returning from a routine training mission at Joe Foss Field, located at the Sioux Falls Regional Airport, the press release says. The cause of the accident was still being investigated.

However, local media outlets including the Argus Leader and Dakota News Now posted images of the F-16 after the crash, with the landing gear crushed and the plane resting on its nose. The canopy is raised.

This marks the second safety incident involving an Air National Guard F-16 in the past three months. On March 23, an Oklahoma Air National Guard fighter crashed in a woodland area near the Louisiana-Texas border. The pilot in that incident was able to eject.

A day prior, an F-22 from Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., had its landing gear collapse on the runway.

From fiscal year 2015 to 2021, there were 42 Class A or Class B mishaps involving Air Force F-16s, including 20 aircraft destroyed. Class A mishaps result in a death or permanent disability, cause more than $2.5 million in damage, or result in the destruction of an aircraft. Class B mishaps cause permanent partial disability; causes damage valued at between $600,000 and just under $2.5 million; or hospitalize three people, not counting those admitted for observation or administrative purposes who are treated and released.

The F-16’s five-year rate of 3.38 Class A and B mishaps every 100,000 flight hours exceeds the A-10 but is lower than the F-15, F-22, and F-35, according to data from the Air Force Safety Center.

A Dozen Senators Introduce Legislation to Establish a Space National Guard

May 12, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

Twelve senators have backed legislation that would create a Space National Guard, reigniting a debate over how the Space Force will organize its part-time components.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) introduced the Space National Guard Establishment Act on May 10, with four Democrats and six Republicans joining them in co-sponsoring the legislation.

“Without a National Guard component for Space Force, we risk losing many talented individuals who want to keep serving their country and their states after they leave active duty, and that is simply unacceptable,” Feinstein said in a statement. “Creating a Space Force National Guard would also save money and ensure a smoother process in the event we need to activate personnel. Not establishing a Space National Guard was a mistake when Space Force was created, and this bill will remedy that.”

The bill has been referred to the Senate Armed Services Committee, where it will face an uncertain future. As part of its 2022 National Defense Authorization Act markup last summer, the committee proposed simply changing the name of the Air National Guard to the Air and Space National Guard, instead of establishing a separate entity.

That approach left advocates for a Space National Guard unsatisfied—they argue that a new entity is needed because members of those Air National Guard units don’t have a direct connection with the Space Force and have essentially been “orphaned” by the Air Force with no corresponding Active-duty units left in the service.

The SASC proposal was “a new idea,” Brig. Gen. Steven J. Butow, commander of the California Air National Guard, said during a recent virtual Schriever Spacepower Forum event hosted by AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. “But what it does is it fails to recognize the way that we operate. We are creatures of doctrine. And doctrine comes from lessons learned in the battlespace. … Unity of command, unity of effort—these are very important concepts. … If you don’t own it, you don’t control it. How can you rely on it? And somebody else is going to have a higher priority for that capability. It is unfair to create the Space Force and then tie the arm behind the Chief of Space Operations’ back because you gave him a less than full complement of capability.”

However, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget also came out against a separate Space Guard, releasing a statement of administration policy saying it “strongly opposes” such a move as it would create unnecessary bureaucracy and increase costs by up to $500 million annually.

Brig. Gen. Michael A. Valle, commander of the Florida Air National Guard, argued that such cost estimates are based off flawed assumptions, such as the need for new infrastructure and the establishment of space units in every state and territory. In actuality, he said during the Mitchell Institute event, the costs would be limited to cosmetic changes such as name tape, unit flags, and signs.

The House Armed Services Committee backed a Space Guard as part of its NDAA markup. But when it came time for the two committees to draft a compromise bill, they pushed the decision off, instead requiring a study and a report on how the Space Force should structure its reserve components, including a look at how much a Space National Guard would cost.

Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. David D. Thompson told a Senate Armed Services subcommittee May 11 that the service hoped to complete that study in time for the 2024 budgeting cycle, starting next year.

At the same time, the Space Force itself has proposed combining its Active-duty and reserve forces into one combined “Space Component.” In an April hearing before the HASC, Chief of Space Operations Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond listed three options for Air National Guard units with space missions—leave them as is, create a separate Space Guard, or fold them into the Space Component.

Feinstein and Rubio’s bill would keep those units separate from the Space Component and establish them as the reserves for the Space Force.

Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) isn’t one of the cosponsors of the bill. But in questioning Thompson during the May 11 hearing, he laid out several arguments for why a Space Guard might be preferable to a single component.

“Many folks who joined the Air National Guard, they did so because of geographic stability that it offers the members of their families, as well as the opportunity sometimes to serve their state,” Kelly said, pointing out that Air National Guard members might choose not to transfer over to the Space Component if that structure is put in place.

Valle, speaking during the Mitchell Institute event, echoed that line of thinking, saying surveys had shown that up to 90 percent of Air National Guard members in space units said they wouldn’t want to transfer over.

“While supporting the federal mission of homeland defense on full-time status, on different occasions I’ve had the opportunity throughout those years to also support my state through multiple disasters—hurricanes, wildfires, pandemic response, and also travel to other states to support,” said Valle. “That … is what space professionals in the Air National Guard do today and can continue to do so if we establish a Space National Guard: We can conduct and do the mission while being available to support our state and our country.”

Thompson, for his part, noted that while estimates vary on how many ANG service members will transfer, the Space Force’s study on the issue is not making any assumptions that “a large number of Guard members would transition.”

Instead, the study is looking at “determining what would be required to replace those members by Space Force members, the numbers it would take, the training time it would take, the training resources that would take, and the corresponding degradation in mission as we bring those units back up to full status.”

Given the pressing threats posed by China and Russia and the increasingly contested nature of space, Valle and Butow said, the Space Force can’t afford any delay caused by the need to train new Guardians. At the same time, they pointed out that adding Guard members to the Space Component could present manning challenges, as the Space Force’s end strength is supposed to stay low, at 8,600 in 2023.

Currently more than 1,000 members of the Air National Guard are involved in space missions, spread across seven states and one territory—Alaska, California, Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, New York, Ohio, and Guam. Senators from Alaska, California, Colorado, Florida, and Ohio are all cosponsors of Feinstein and Rubio’s bill.

What Happens If GPS Goes Dark? The Pentagon Is Working on It, Space Force General Says

May 12, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

An F-35 is flying above the Indo-Pacific at 35,000 feet, when suddenly, the constellation of GPS satellites it relies upon for navigation goes dark. An adversary—either through a cyber or other anti-satellite attack—has taken down the system. What happens next?

That’s the question Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) asked of Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. David D. Thompson during a May 11 hearing of the Senate Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee. And while the issue has been raised for years now, it’s one the Pentagon is increasingly concerned with, Thompson told lawmakers.

As space has become more crowded and more contested, the Space Force has advocated for proliferated, resilient satellite architectures. At the moment, though, the GPS constellation consists of just 33 spacecraft.

There’s no plan to replace GPS with a new program—Thompson emphasized that he expects the system to “remain the world standard for a long time.”

But at the same time, “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,” Thompson said.

In the hypothetical scenario King presented, the F-35 pilot would likely be fine, Thompson said—the Air Force trains its pilots on how to respond in GPS-denied environments, so their ability to keep flying is “generally assured,” Thompson noted, before adding, “Obviously, there’s likely to be a mission impact.”

To mitigate those impacts, the Department of the Air Force is working on projects “to augment [GPS], to supplement it, to provide additional means of being able to navigate and position and conduct missions,” Thompson said.

But it’s not just the Department of the Air Force—indeed, the entire Pentagon has come to see the issue of navigation as important.

“Inside all of the services—especially the Army is probably leading right now; the Navy is not far behind; but the Air Force as well—they’re looking at a host of technologies and methodologies for positioning and navigation,” Thompson said. “I would say probably inside the Department of Defense, I think we finally have enough people who have woken up to the fact that GPS is the world standard, will remain the world standard for a long time, but we have to be prepared for those who wish to deny us GPS and … be able to fight through that and be effective.”

Several years ago, the Navy made headlines when it brought back “celestial navigation” at the U.S. Naval Academy—navigating by the stars.

But while media coverage of that change mainly focused on the idea of returning to centuries-old navigation methods such as the sextant, Thompson indicated that new methods to complement GPS would still be high-tech.

“They’re developing techniques for celestial navigation automatically without a navigator, a human navigator, required—and frankly, to be able to do it in daylight, when the human eye can’t see stars. There’s technology in that regard,” Thompson said.

“Many years ago, onboard navigation, inertial navigation systems, were the way we conducted business in the ’50s and ’60s before GPS was rampant. It’s time to reinvest in those technologies and those capabilities, I think, to advance them. There’s even techniques that allow systems to measure the magnetic field of the Earth and based on the variations in the Earth’s magnetic field, figure out where you are, terrain mapping. There are a lot of ways to solve this problem.”

In 2020, the Army launched a new office and laboratory dedicated to the modernization of position, navigation, and timing. And in 2021, the Air Force’s Strategic Development Planning and Experimentation Office, alongside the Naval Surface Warfare Center, flight-tested new PNT technologies from open software architectures fused together.

Such moves, Thompson and King agreed, are necessary to build on moving forward.

“Somebody’s got to be thinking about this,” King said. “Because in a conflict, if I’m the adversary, the first thing I’m going to do is try to knock out GPS in order to blind us.”

Battlefield Failures by Russia Bolster Congressional Support for Defense Budget

May 12, 2022 | By Abraham Mahshie

House appropriators praised the Defense Department’s efforts to strengthen Ukraine’s fight against Russia and acknowledged that Russia’s battlefield failures highlight the value of investment in U.S. military readiness.

“The war in Ukraine has also made it clear that the foundational task of properly maintaining, training, and equipping a modern military is essential to our success in the 21st century conflicts,” said House Appropriations defense subcommittee chair Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.).

“The poor performance in Russia and their military has highlighted this very fact,” McCollum added.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Mark A. Milley said fully funding the president’s $773 billion fiscal 2023 defense budget was needed at a time when China and Russia both intended to “fundamentally change” the rules-based order.

“We are entering a world that is becoming more unstable, and the potential for significant international conflict between great powers is increasing, not decreasing,” Milley said, citing the presence of 400,000 U.S. troops in 155 countries to protect American interests.

“We are currently witness to the greatest threat to the peace and security of Europe and perhaps the world in my 42, almost 43, years of service in uniform,” Milley added. “The Russian invasion of Ukraine is threatening to undermine not only European peace and stability but global peace and stability.”

Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III said the record $130 billion slated for research, development, testing, and evaluation will maintain the U.S. edge while helping service members at home with a 4.5 percent pay increase and $2 billion for military family housing construction and improvements in the wake of rising rental costs across the nation.

Florida Democrat Charlie Crist, whose district includes both U.S. Central Command and U.S. Special Operations Command, questioned the defense leaders about Russia’s use of advanced hypersonic weapons on the battlefield in Ukraine.

“Other than the speed of the weapon in terms of its effect on a given target, we are not seeing really significant or game-changing effects to date with the delivery of the small number of hypersonics that the Russians have used,” Milley said.

He said each hypersonic shot fired by the Russians has been analyzed by DOD, and he offered to brief the Crist at the classified level. The defense budget includes some $4 billion for the development of hypersonic weapons.

“The Russians have used them several times in this conflict,” Austin said. “Ukrainians are still fighting, and I’ll leave it at that.”

A senior defense official said May 10 that Russia has used between 10 and 12 hypersonic weapons in Ukraine thus far. Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby assessed that the sophisticated new weapon has been used to little effect.

“It’s a bit of a head-scratcher why you would use a hypersonic against a building. But I’ll let the Russians speak for that,” Kirby said. “We do assess that they are running through their precision-guided missiles at a pretty fast clip.”

In evaluating Russia’s battlefield shortcomings at the May 11 hearing, Austin opined that Russian President Vladimir Putin would not attack NATO.

“My view is that Russia doesn’t want to take on the NATO alliance,” Austin said.

The secretary described NATO’s 1.9 million-strong fighting force, with the “most advanced capabilities of any alliance in the world” in terms of aircraft, ships, and weaponry.

“This is a fight that he really doesn’t want to have—and that would very quickly escalate into another type of competition that no one wants to see,” Austin warned. “If Russia decides to attack any nation that’s a NATO member, then that’s a game-changer.”

Pentagon Watchdog: Space Command HQ Selection Process ‘Reasonable’

May 11, 2022 | By Amanda Miller

The Air Force didn’t break the law, nor did it violate Defense Department policy, when it chose Redstone Arsenal, Ala., as the permanent home of U.S. Space Command in 2020, according to DOD’s internal watchdog.

However, the Office of the Inspector General recommended that Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III more firmly solidify the headquarters selection process for a unified combatant command and found other irregularities and concerns.

Overall, the OIG found that the basing process “was reasonable,” according to its report dated May 11.

At the same time, the office recommended that:

Austin review concerns about Space Command’s timeline for reaching full operational capability.
Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall issue a memo reminding personnel of the requirement to “retain all records of basing actions.”
Kendall review three selection criteria—out of a total of 21 criteria—for which the Air Force couldn’t provide sufficient documentation.

Congress’ Government Accountability Office is also investigating the decision, and the OIG report also indicates that the Department of the Air Force is still “finalizing” it.

The DAF twice searched for U.S. Space Command’s permanent home base after it became the military’s 11th unified combatant command in 2019. The administration scrapped one list of finalists before then-Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper decided to go with a different process—one developed by Army Futures Command—in which local communities got to make pitches.

Convinced the command’s headquarters made the most sense at its temporary home of Peterson Space Force Base, Colo., members of Colorado’s congressional delegation have objected to the choice of Redstone Arsenal that they contended was made “for political reasons.” After his presidency ended, Donald Trump took credit for the decision.

Colorado’s members of Congress since raised the issue of Space Command’s timeline for reaching full operational capability. Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) told Air Force Magazine in an April interview that he estimated achieving “FOC” could take years longer if the command had to move to Alabama.

The OIG recommended Austin review “concerns expressed by the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the United States Space Force Chief of Space Operations, and the Commander of United States Space Command” pertaining to the command’s FOC. However, most of the senior leaders’ comments are redacted in the OIG’s report with the exception of a footnote indicating that the commander of U.S. Space Command, Army Gen. James H. Dickinson, “reiterated … [redacted] … could not provide Basing Office personnel evidence that the USSPACECOM HQ would achieve FOC sooner at one candidate location over another.”

Dickinson said in congressional testimony in March that the basing decision was preventing the command from getting to FOC “as quickly as possible” but also estimated that both staying in Colorado and moving to Alabama would put FOC in the range of “a couple/three years.”

In the department’s response, Austin said he would direct Kendall to review the concerns.

In response to the finding that “Basing Office personnel did not fully comply with Air Force records retention requirements,” the Department of the Air Force agreed to “issue a directive emphasizing the requirement … as well as conduct recurring oversight to ensure sustained compliance.”

A member of the Basing Office told OIG investigators that he believed “the Air Force only required retention of the … records that showed the selection of [Redstone Arsenal] as the preferred permanent location”—not other intermediate working documents that would help a third party such as the OIG to validate the process.

The process called for ranking six candidate headquarters locations within each of 21 criteria, but the OIG “could not determine the reasonableness or verify the accuracy” of the rankings for three of those criteria: child care availability, housing affordability, and access to military/veteran support.

DAF agreed that “prior to finalizing this basing decision,” it would “conduct further analysis” of the three criteria.

On the matter of a uniform policy for selecting combatant command headquarters locations, the OIG suggested that the official within a military department who is entrusted with the selection process be required to follow that service’s own—not another service’s—“policies, procedures, and internal controls in future combatant command basing actions.”

DOD’s Pacific Plans Aren’t Scaled Back to Finance Ukraine Aid, Say Austin and Milley

May 11, 2022 | By Abraham Mahshie

A hearing of the House Appropriations defense subcommittee drew attention to perceived funding shortfalls in the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy, but Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley said plans to counter China have not been curtailed by the demands to defend NATO and supply weapons to Ukraine.

“Our leadership matters when it comes to Ukraine,” Austin said in his opening statement, citing $4.5 billion in defense assistance to Ukraine since January 2021.

Austin also cited what he referred as the “Contact Group on Ukrainian Security,” which united more than 40 nations for the first time April 26 at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, to coordinate and deliver defense assistance for Ukraine’s war effort against Russia.

Then the defense Secretary quickly pivoted to the department’s stated priority in the recently released classified version of its National Defense Strategy (NDS).

“The department’s pacing challenge remains countering aggression from China,” Austin said, noting $6 billion in the fiscal 2023 budget for the Pacific Deterrence Initiative (PDI). “We’re going to enhance our force posture, our infrastructure, our presence, and our readiness in the Indo-Pacific, including the missile defense of Guam.”

Still, lawmakers who voted to approve another $40 billion supplemental bill for defense assistance to Ukraine the evening before worried that the Ukraine aid was sapping valuable resources away from America’s Pacific threat.

“In my opinion … the need for military power has not decreased, but we’re choosing to try to plug in some gaps with maybe some nonmilitary capabilities,” said Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.).

The lawmaker worried that the “unanticipated extraordinary costs” of supporting the Ukraine war effort was impacting “what we’re trying to do in this budget for our biggest pacing threat, which is China.”

Some subcommittee members challenged the budget itself. While the NDS calls for air and sea power to confront China, the budget divests 250 aircraft and two dozen vessels.

“I fail to understand how decommissioning 24 Navy ships, divesting hundreds of aircraft, helps us maintain our strategic combat advantage over these threats,” posed ranking member Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.).

Austin countered that the NDS called for significant investments in the capabilities required to compete with China, namely $27 billion in space, $11 billion in cyber, $24 billion in missile defense and $7 billion in long-range weapons, including $4 billion in hypersonic weapons. He also noted modernization of the nuclear triad and $56 billion for airpower platforms and systems.

Womack said the budget called for no permanent force posture increases to the Pacific, and he wondered if “innovation” and “soft power” were meant to supplant the military effort.

“No. 1, I think we have a very sound strategy,” Austin affirmed. “Getting the capabilities of space and cyberspace integrated into our efforts, I think, is really, really key.”

Austin also pointed to efforts to leverage support from allies and partners and again referred to PDI funding, which he said would be used to increase training rotations and infrastructure in the Pacific.

Milley cited a force presence of some 350,000 troops from the U.S. West Coast to west of the international dateline.

“The strategic main effort for the United States military—that is clearly in the Pacific,” the chairman stated. “Even though we are incurring additional capabilities and investments in what we’re doing with Ukraine, it’s not having a significant negative effect on our ability to keep pace with China.”

President Joe Biden has used his presidential drawdown authority to help Ukraine by drawing from U.S. stocks of weapons such as anti-tank Javelin and anti-air Stinger missiles, diminishing U.S. reserves and worrying lawmakers about America’s own self-defense.

In response, Austin said the defense industrial base is meeting DOD “more than halfway” to ramp up production, and weapon stocks were “about right” for U.S. needs.

The Defense Secretary praised lawmakers for passing the president’s $40 billion supplemental defense bill for Ukraine, which now goes to the Senate for approval. He also committed the U.S. to help with Ukraines’ defense for the foreseeable future.

“We’re doing a lot, and, you know, our allies are doing a lot,” Austin said. “And we’re going to continue to do everything that we can for as long as we can to help them defend their sovereign space.”

MDA Hopes to Add Its Own Satellites to Missile Tracking Architecture

May 11, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

As the Space Development Agency moves forward with plans for missile tracking and warning satellites, the Missile Defense Agency hopes to add its own satellites to that architecture, the agency’s director told a congressional panel May 11.

Vice Adm. Jon A. Hill’s comments to the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee came as the Pentagon has placed increasing emphasis on missile tracking and warning from space in response to China and Russia’s rapid development of hypersonic weapons.

Specifically, MDA is developing the Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor, a program intended to work with SDA’s satellites to track hypersonic and ballistic missiles

The HBTSS has “two major roles,” Hill told Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.).

“The first is to pick up the dim targets that cannot be seen by the current architecture today. So, from a ballistic perspective, we’re seeing changes there that make that fight much more challenging,” Hill said. “But when you get to the advanced hypersonic threat, which has a global maneuver capability, we need the ability to see it from space—so global coverage and that very close proximity from space to track those sensors.”

Two prototypes of the HBTSS are scheduled to launch in March 2023, Hill added, and will be placed in orbit so that they can “monitor tests” in the Indo-Pacific region, though he didn’t specify what tests.

“We’ll collect that data as a way to proof out that concept. We did a lot of work on the ground to show that we can extract those hot targets over a warm Earth. Now it’s about getting it into space and pulling that data down,” Hill said.

MDA’s plans for missile tracking are progressing alongside SDA’s work to develop and deploy a “Tracking Layer” as part of its large planned multi-use satellite constellation. SDA has already awarded contracts for the initial batch of satellites, called “Tranche 0,” and the layer could go live in low-Earth orbit as soon as 2025.

Both the Tracking Layer and the HBTSS are intended for low Earth orbit. And as SDA is scheduled to transition into the Space Force in October 2022, the three organizations are working together to advance the larger missile tracking mission.

“We’re staying very close to the Space Force as we make decisions on the overall architecture, and our vision is that the HBTSS will be a part of the overall constellation for dealing with that global maneuvering threat,” Hill said.

Meanwhile, U.S. Space Command is eager for all these systems to come onboard, its deputy commander, Lt. Gen. John E. Shaw, told Congress.

“We’re interested in any capabilities that are going to help us with any of these threats,” said Shaw. “And as MDA has pursued this particular program, HBTSS, the advantage of this is that we have a perspective from space that is invaluable and will allow us to get after a lot of these threats.”

KC-46 Sets AMC Endurance Record With 24.2-Hour Flight

May 11, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

A KC-46 Pegasus crewed by Airmen from the 22nd Air Refueling Wing flew for more than 24 hours, establishing a new Air Mobility Command record and covering more than 9,000 miles, the Air Force announced.

The 24.2-hour, record-breaking flight—which lasted from May 5 to 6—was intended to gather data on the “feasibility, limitations, potential risks as well as unique benefits of the KC-46 for long-duration flights,” according to a service press release.

Six pilots, three boom operators, a photojournalist, and a physician assistant took part in the flight, with two-pilot teams swapping out every four hours while a backup pilot team gathered data and took notes. The physician assistant onboard monitored the aircrew to ensure their safety and the safety of the mission.

“In flight medicine, our goal is to preserve not only the health and safety of the aircrew, but also to preserve the safety of the missions those aircrew perform,” Maj. Cory Henderson, 349th Air Refueling Squadron aeromedical physician assistant, said in the statement. “For this mission, we’ve tried to do that from the start of planning and now through the execution phase.”

During the flight, the KC-46 performed dry contacts with another KC-46, refueled four Marine Corps F-35s, and was itself refueled by another KC-46. The flight path included both the northern and southern borders of the U.S. as well as the East and West Coasts.

On social media, aviation enthusiasts tracked the flight path, which started and ended at McConnell Air Force Base, Kan., passing over roughly three dozen states.

Airborne 24 hours + a little bit. Approximately 10,000 miles flown. Wonder if this is an endurance record for a tanker. https://t.co/ZVVtngMSAM pic.twitter.com/5N0NeiURxO
— MeNMyRC (@MeNMyRC1) May 6, 2022

Planning for the flight took several weeks and required in-the-air adjustments, according to the Air Force, as severe weather in certain areas forced the crew to adjust the route.

“This 24-hour sortie is a critical step in the operational evolution of tankers and the role the KC-46 plays in that,” Col. Nate Vogel, 22nd Air Refueling Wing commander, said in the statement. “This sortie helps mobility forces identify how best to operate on long-duration sorties from human, to machine, to mission aspects. Long-duration flights are inherently full of risk, and conducting this operation now allows us to identify those risks, and then build and apply mitigations in a more controlled environment.”

This new record also marks a positive milestone for the KC-46, which is expected to replace the KC-135 but has been plagued by issues throughout its development. The biggest problem, the troubled Remote Vision System, has cost hundreds of millions, delayed the declaration of full-rate production, and forced the tanker to stop refueling certain planes.

Most recently, though, the Pegasus has been cleared to refuel 85 percent of the fleet and conducted its first refueling of an international aircraft, a Spanish EF-18 Hornet.

While the May 5-6 flight marks a new record for AMC, the Air Force has had previous experience with lengthy flights. In 2001, B-2 bombers flew from Whiteman Air Force Base, Mo., across the Pacific to strike Afghanistan at the start of Operation Enduring Freedom, spending upwards of 40 consecutive hours in the air. Also during Operation Enduring Freedom, a pair of F-15E crews flew a sortie of 15.5 hours, the longest fighter combat sortie ever.

‘FiFi’ is the B-29 Bringing WW2 History to Local Flight Lines

May 11, 2022 | By Amanda Miller

This article was originally published Sept. 1, 2021.

On the eve of the end of one war, a World War II bombardier relived a little of the last day of his own conflict leading up to its anniversary Sept. 2.

Jack Klotz, 96, who served in the U.S. Army Air Forces from 1943 to 1945, was brought out to the flight line at Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport in Broomfield, Colo., near Denver on Aug. 29 by his son to see “FIFI,” a Boeing B-29 Superfortress like the ones Klotz flew in during the war.

Based out of Saipan in the Pacific, the B-29 bombardier with the 73rd Wing, 500th Bomb Group, 28th Squadron didn’t keep track of how many missions he flew seated in the glass nose of the cockpit, taking aim with the aircraft’s famed Norden Bombsight.

He turned down a cockpit tour, satisfied, as the tour manager confirmed is often the case when past crew members turn up, to observe from a short distance the activities of getting the old bomber—the same type as the war-ending Enola Gay—up in the air.

Klotz visited on the last day of the Commemorative Air Force’s AirPower History Tour stop at Rocky Mountain. The B-29/B-24 Squadron is one of numerous CAF groups that sell rides on old military aircraft, large and small, and open them up for tours as static displays.

Salvaged from the “boneyard” at Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, Calif., “FIFI” is one of only two “airworthy” B-29s, according to the CAF’s cockpit tour guides. It was one of the last made and never flew in active service.

Think you’d like to ride in a B-29?

Tickets for an hour’s ride range from $1,595 for the bombardier’s seat in the nose—where Klotz sat—to $570 for seats in the rear fuselage. Passengers are allowed to crawl back and forth along the tube connecting the B-29’s fore and aft crew areas.

“FIFI” costs the CAF $10,000 an hour to operate, tour manager Don Boccaccio said. That’s with tour costs including 400 gallons of gasoline and with an all-volunteer crew of six: a pilot, copilot, and flight engineer plus left, right, and aft scanners to eye the wing flaps and so forth and help ensure everything is running right.

“FIFI” headlines the tour—”the queen of the skies,” as Boccaccio puts it—backed up by the Consolidated Aircraft B-24 Liberator “Diamond Lil.”

Klotz thought “FIFI” was fine, but just like on that last day of World War II, he was happiest to point to a P-51 Mustang.

“The last mission we flew, the P-51s didn’t show up for fighter cover,” Klotz recalled, smiling at the memory.

“Pretty soon, here they came, flying every which way—telling us the war was over,” he said.

“So, I went home.”