Top Lawmaker: Space Force at Risk of Being ‘Stifled’ by Air Force

May 10, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

For years, Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) has been one of Congress’ leading voices when it comes to space as a warfighting domain and the creation of the Space Force.

Now, with less than a year left before he leaves the House, Cooper warns that the new service is at risk of being “stifled” by bureaucracy, outdated thinking—and the Air Force.

Speaking at a virtual Schriever Spacepower Forum hosted by AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, Cooper offered a candid assessment of the challenges he sees facing the Pentagon and the Space Force as they look to ensure U.S. space superiority. It’s something the veteran lawmaker has done before, pushing for faster, bolder development.

“I kind of view myself as the guardian of the Guardians, because I’m so proud of the Space Force being stood up. I’m so proud of Space Command,” Cooper said. “I think [Chief of Space Operations Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond] and [SPACECOM commander Gen. James H. Dickinson] are doing an awesome job. But it’s still in its infancy. And I’m worried about the Air Force trying to exert too much control and in some cases to stifle the development of the Space Force. Because I think the future is unlimited. We know that the universe is unlimited. And we have to have not only the best capability, but by far the best capability to make sure that we achieve our national goals and really for the benefit of the entire planet.”

As part of the Space Force’s formation, it was organized under the Department of the Air Force and has been closely linked with the Air Force ever since—thousands of Guardians are former Airmen; the Air Force provides support personnel; and leaders have highlighted the two services’ “intertwined” nature. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall has repeated the mantra of “one team, one fight.”

But Cooper, who announced in January that he wasn’t seeking reelection in 2022, sounded a note of caution against the Space Force tying itself too closely to the Air Force, instead advocating for USSF to eventually become “fully independent.”

Such a move would seemingly contradict comments made by Kendall. In a speech at the annual Space Symposium this April, Kendall warned against focusing on space as an “independent warfighting domain” and urged the Space Force to instead direct its attention to providing services such as communications and surveillance to the other armed services.

“They worried me at the time—they worry me now,” Cooper said of Kendall’s comments. “Because it could all be benign and benevolent, but with the history we have with the Air Force and the difficult birthing process of the Space Force, I’m worried. We need to make sure that the mother doesn’t stifle the child here. One day, the Space Force will be fully independent. I look forward to that day. In the meantime, we need to make sure that old Air Force thinking, which was even resistant to drones and certainly wasn’t fond of the Space Force, [doesn’t dominate].”

Cooper is not the first lawmaker to express skepticism toward the Air Force’s relationship with the Space Force. In 2019, Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) claimed that the Air Force had actually posed the biggest obstacle to even establishing the Space Force.

But it’s not just USAF that could potentially hold the Space Force back, Cooper said. In recent months, lawmakers and officials have tangled over the formation of a Space National Guard, a debate that Cooper argued threatens to overshadow the main issue.

“We’ve got to look at value added—what really works,” Cooper said. “And in highly technical areas like space, you know, it’s amazing what new personnel designs we should be able to come up with. Because you might want to have Active-duty people who are part time, because if you’re a smart software engineer out on the West Coast or have other unique skills, you might be able to be a weekend warrior. You might be able to contribute in lots of ways, maybe Guard, maybe Reserve, maybe Active duty. We may need a whole new concept, because while these super-smart people have long hair and tattoos and nose rings and all sorts of crazy stuff that isn’t traditional military, we need the best talent that the nation can offer.”

In at least some regards, the Space Force and Cooper are aligned—the service has proposed a hybrid personnel structure of full- and part-time Guardians called the “Space Component,” an approach that would be unique among the military services.

There are still other challenges to consider, though, not the least of which is the Pentagon’s massive bureaucracy. Cooper noted that one of his biggest concerns is speed of acquisition, a frequent source of frustration for many in Congress and DOD that has persisted for decades now.

Indeed, while the Space Force was intended to centralize and lead the military’s space efforts, the bureaucracy may be no better, Cooper said. In the past, “the Pentagon had 60 naysayers to disapprove of any satellite and hardly anyone who could give approval, even the [Defense Secretary]. So that’s a crazy situation. And it’s actually one that I’m still worried about right now, that we may even have more naysayers today with a Space Force and Space Command than we did before it was stood up.”

Against all these challenges to progress, Cooper insisted that “we can meet and beat this.” But it will require a lot, he warned.

“It’s going to take new thinking, and sometimes we think too much in the old way. It would be a disaster if Space Force becomes TRANSCOM. We’ve got to be much bolder than that. Space is its own warfighting domain,” Cooper said.

Top Intel: China Not Ready to Invade Taiwan; Ukraine War in Stalemate

May 10, 2022 | By John A. Tirpak

China isn’t yet prepared to successfully invade Taiwan and probably won’t try it soon in the belief that the U.S. is “distracted” by the Ukraine war, said Avril Haines, Director of National Intelligence, during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. She also said that while there’s no clear end in sight to Russia’s invasion, the Intelligence Community doubts Russia will quit, but also doubts Russia will resort to nuclear weapons in the near future.

Senators lauded the Intelligence Community for correctly predicting the Ukraine war, but criticized it for its failure to predict Ukraine’s success in resisting the invasion and Russia’s troubles in carrying it out.

“Thus far, the IC does not assess that the Russia-Ukraine crisis is likely to accelerate [China’s] plan vis-a-vis Taiwan,” Haines said on May 10.

China was “surprised by the degree to which the United States and Europe came together to enact sanctions, and that is something they obviously will be looking at in the context of Taiwan,” Haines said. Also, “one of the issues for them is the confidence they have that they are able to take action in Taiwan over our intervention.” This will “play into their decision-making over time.”

Seeing events unfold in Ukraine “may give them less confidence, in some respects, over what is likely to happen” in a Taiwan invasion, Haines said.

Haines and Defense Intelligence Agency chief Lt. Gen. Scott D. Berrier said 2027 is the point at which the U.S. thinks China believes it could prevail over a U.S. intervention to pull off a successful Taiwan invasion, noting China may therefore accelerate that date. They also said Taiwan needs to do more to prepare to defend itself, both in equipment and the structure of its military.

The NCO Effect

“On a day-to-day basis, I don’t see anything that would indicate [China] is trying to take advantage” of the West’s attention to Ukraine in the short term,” Berrier said.

A key lesson from the Ukraine conflict, he said, is that Russia lacks a professional noncommissioned officer corps, which has hobbled its “small unit tactics,” while Ukraine “has it about right” in terms of trained NCOs. Berrier said Russia’s lack of an NCO corps has forced top generals to come to forward areas, where a dozen have been killed so far, in order to press their troops to follow orders. A lack of good NCOs also affects Taiwan and China, he added.

Russia will probably have to broadly mobilize its national forces beyond the “special military operation” to assemble enough firepower to defeat Ukraine’s defenses, Haines said. She also said Russian President Vladimir Putin is “preparing for prolonged conflict,” which will not be satisfied by simply taking the Donbas region. While Putin will likely engage in “sabre rattling” of his nuclear capabilities, he will not likely use nuclear weapons unless he sees an “existential threat” to Russia, she asserted.

Russia’s conduct of the war has revealed “a number of significant internal challenges” with its forces, Haines said. Russia had to give up on its initial military objectives, “fall back from Kiev, and focus on the Donbas.”

“The next month or two of fighting will be significant,” Haines said. Even if Russia is successful in reinvigorating its efforts, “We are not confident that the fighting in the Donbas will effectively end the war,” she added. “We assess that Putin’s strategic goals have probably not changed.” The shift to the Donbas is probably temporary, she said, to “regain the initiative after the Russian military’s failure to capture Kiev.”

The Stalemate

Putin’s immediate goals are to encircle Ukrainian forces from the North and South, capture Donetsk and Luhansk, “in order to crush the most capable and well-equipped Ukrainian forces who are fighting in the East; consolidate the land bridge Russia has established from the Crimea to the Donbas, … control the water source for Crimea, … and … extend the land bridge to Transnistria.” Securing the land bridge to Odessa is another move that will likely require “some form of mobilization” of the larger Russian military, Haines said.

“It is increasingly unlikely” that Russia will be able to take over “both oblasts and the buffer zone they desire in the coming weeks.” Oblasts are roughly the Ukrainian and Russian equivalent to a U.S. state.

Asked the state of the war today, Berrier said, “the Russians aren’t winning, and the Ukrainians aren’t winning. And we’re at a bit of a stalemate, … It’s attrition warfare.” It will continue as long as Ukraine makes smart choices and keeps getting resupply from the west. Ukrainians have “grit” and the advantage of fighting for their own country in their own country, he said. That is formidable motivation that the Russians lack.

“If Russia doesn’t declare war and mobilize, the stalemate is going to continue for a while,” Berrier said. If it does mobilize, “that would bring thousands more soldiers” into the conflict, and although they may be untrained and inexperienced, “that would bring mass and a whole lot more ammunition to the fight.”

He also said that for now, Ukraine probably has the edge because it can generate the most “trained and motivated troops.”

Asked if continued western support would give Ukraine a winning edge, Berrier observed that “well-led forces that have what they need … can do a lot.”

A War of Attrition

Berrier said Putin is unlikely to use a tactical nuclear weapon soon, but the DIA is “intensely” looking for warning that such a thing is planned.

He acknowledged that the IC “overestimated” Russia’s strength and inaccurately predicted it would seize a quick victory against Ukraine.

“We did not see this … hollow force, lack of an NCO corps, a lack of leadership training, a lack of doctrine,” he said.

Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) praised the IC community for correctly predicting Russia’s invasion months in advance, but said it must admit it was “grossly wrong” about how the war would play out.

“The assessment was, Ukraine would be overrun in a matter of weeks,” King said. “We were explicitly told, Kiev would fall in three days … If you don’t think that’s a problem, then we’ve got a problem.”

Berrier responded that the IC was assessing Ukraine’s “capacity to fight” against “the size of the Russian forces massed on their border,” not its “will to fight.” Berrier said “we will take a hard look at this, but in the totality, … I think there were a lot more successes than failures.”

Putin thinks Russia can stick out the challenges of the war “longer than his adversaries, and he is probably counting on U.S. and [European Union] resolve to weaken as food shortages, inflation, energy prices get worse,” Haines said.

Both Ukraine and Russia believe they can continue to make progress, so the IC assesses no “viable … negotiations,” at least in the short term,” Haines said.

The conflict has become a war of attrition, Haines said, and Putin “faces a mismatch between his ambitions and Russia’s current military capabilities.” That means months more of an “unpredictable and potentially escalatory trajectory,” she said, with decisions trending away from a strategic plan and more toward “ad hoc decision-making in Russia,” both militarily and in the domestic decisions needed to sustain the war effort.

As things go poorly for Russia, Haines said it’s likely he’ll impose martial law at home, “reorienting industrial production, or potentially escalatory military actions,” to free up the resources he needs to achieve his goals “as the conflict drags on, or if he perceives he is losing.”

Haines said the “flashpoints” in the near future are if Russia tries to “interdict” western aid to Ukraine, “retaliation for western sanctions,” or “threats to the regime at home.”

If Washington ignores Putin’s nuclear threats, he’s likely to launch “another large nuclear exercise,” mobilizing intercontinental mobile missiles, launching bombers, and deploying strategic submarines.

However, “we continue to believe” that Putin will only order the use of nuclear weapons “if he perceives an existential threat to the Russian state or regime, but we will remain vigilant in monitoring every aspect” of Russia’s strategic arsenal, Haines said.

She warned that “with tensions this high, there is always an enhanced potential for miscalculation [and] unintended escalation.”

Berrier said all this is part of Putin’s goal to regain what he perceives as Russia’s “rightful position on the world stage.”

Sanctions are having a powerful effect, Haines reported, driving 20 percent inflation in Russia as well as a likely drop of at least 10 percent in its Gross Domestic Product this year alone, with more years of severe economic disruption to come no matter the outcome in Ukraine. Despite this, she acknowledged that, because of the difficulty of getting information into Russia, Putin enjoys a 70 percent approval rating from the Russian electorate.

Asked if she is surprised Russia has not made significant cyber attacks against the U.S., Haines said Russia has focused its cyber attacks on Ukraine’s command and control and financial institutions, and has itself been surprised that those attacks have been felt more widely.

“They ended up affecting a much broader set” of networks than they intended, “outside of Ukraine and in Europe,” Haines said.

As for the U.S., “We have not seen the level of attacks we expected,” she reported. One “theory” why not is “we think that they may have determined that the collateral impact … of such attacks would be more challenging for them” in Ukraine, and also, they “might not wish to … sacrifice potential access” to avenues they could use to spy or attack later.

Refraining from cyber attacks on the U.S. may be out of “concern for escalation” with the U.S.

“That doesn’t mean they won’t attack, at some point,” she added.

Russian Sorties Rise, British Defense Minister to Meet Austin as Ukraine Aid Money Runs Low

May 10, 2022 | By Abraham Mahshie

Russia flew more than 300 sorties May 10, firing on targets in the Donbas region of Ukraine and the cities of Mariupol and Odesa as the war moved closer to Russian territory. Meanwhile, British defense minister Ben Wallace prepared to meet Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III at the Pentagon.

Spring rain and mud in the trenches and flatlands of eastern Ukraine had yielded “slow and uneven” gains for Russia in its new eastern offensive in Ukraine, according to a senior defense official. But while artillery fired on the ground, Russia’s air strategy changed in recent days.

“The Russians’ [daily] sortie count is up over 300 now, so that is an increase from what we’ve seen in the past,” the official said, noting the uptick from the range of 200 to 300 in past weeks. “The air strikes are focused on the Donbas, Mariupol, and some standoff strikes on Odesa.”

The official said Russia is also conducting combat air patrols near Snake Island in the Black Sea, a tiny strategic feature some 20 miles off the coast of NATO ally Romania that Russia seized from Ukraine in the opening salvo of the conflict.

Ukraine reportedly fired on Russian positions on Snake Island on May 8, and Russia claims to have expelled an alleged attempt to retake the island. The U.S. has maintained a steady rotation of F-16s conducting NATO air policing from Romania’s Fetesti Air Base near the Black Sea coast, bolstering the effort of British and Italian typhoon jets operating from Mihail Kogălniceanu Air Base.

On April 29, six F-16s from the 510th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron at Aviano Air Base, Italy, arrived in Romania, replacing similar fighters from the 480th EFS, deployed from Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany.

The senior defense official briefing the media said that despite the Russian increase in sorties, the air space over Ukraine remained contested and Russian jets have largely stayed away from Ukrainian air space thanks to Ukraine’s effective air defenses.

The U.S. has provided more than 1,500 short-range air defense Stinger missiles and facilitated the transfer of hundreds more from the Baltics and elsewhere, while Slovakia transferred its S-300 long-range air defense system to Ukraine once it received assurances from NATO allies who temporarily transferred Patriot missile systems to protect Slovakia.

“We know it’s working because we continue to see the Russians weary of venturing into Ukrainian air space at all, and if they do, they don’t stay very long,” the official said.

“Most of their airstrikes are—almost all of them—were launched and recovered inside Russia, and they try to do these standoff strikes so that they don’t have to enter Ukrainian airspace,” the official said. “That speaks volumes as to how contested the air space is over there.”

Defense officials meeting at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, on April 26 as part of a 40-plus-nation Ukraine Contact Group told Air Force Magazine that air defenses were part of the discussion. Austin inaugurated the group to bolster defense aid to Ukraine. However, in recent weeks, battlefield changes have called for artillery, and nearly 90 American howitzers have since entered the fight.

The United States and United Kingdom have been key operators in rallying and channeling defense assistance to Ukraine. British Defense Minister Wallace will meet with Austin at the Pentagon on May 11.

“It goes without saying that Ukraine will be a major topic of discussion,” Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby said in a May 10 press briefing. “The British have been leaders and strong, strong contributors in terms of providing security assistance to Ukraine, and in helping coordinate that assistance as well.”

Kirby added that the next monthly Ukraine Contact Group meeting will likely be held virtually at the end of May.

Congress is currently considering a $40 billion supplemental aid package to Ukraine that would keep a stream of weapons flowing for approximately five months, defense officials have said.

Drawn up at $33 billion, the House added an additional $7 billion in food and weapons, and a vote is expected the evening of May 10.

President Joe Biden has about $100 million left in presidential drawdown authority to turn over American weapon stocks to Ukraine. Strong congressional bipartisan support is expected to pass the new bill before defense assistance funding runs out.

As Space Force Grows, More Airmen May Be Needed for Support

May 10, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

While the Space Force continues to grow, with more inter-service transfers and a substantially larger budget projected in 2023, the new service’s base support functions are still staffed almost entirely by Air Force personnel—and that’s unlikely to change for the foreseeable future, leaders of the Space Force’s Peterson-Schriever Garrison said May 9.

As the commander and command chief master sergeant of the Peterson-Schriever Garrison, respectively, Col. Zachary “Shay” Warakomski and Chief Master Sgt. Sevin Balkuvvar are emblematic of that unique dynamic—Warakomski is a Guardian; Balkuvvar is an Airman.

“Peterson-Schriever Garrison, most people don’t know this, but we are actually 97 percent Airmen,” Balkuvvar said during an AFA Air & Space Warfighters in Action virtual event. “We do provide all the support—most of the support comes from the Airmen with the mission support and medical group and also staff agency backgrounds, so the deltas and our Guardians that are doing the mission can really continue to focus on their mission without having to worry about anything else.”

Col. Zachary “Shay” Warakomski, commander of the Peterson-Schriever Garrison, and Chief Master Sgt. Sevin Balkuvvar, Command Chief Master Sergeant, Peterson-Schriever Garrison, participated in a virtual Air & Space Warfighters in Action event on May 9, 2022.

Just about the only Guardians who are actually part of the garrison, Balkuvvar added, are part of space communications squadrons.

Within the Space Force’s three-tier structure of squadrons, deltas, and field commands, garrisons fill a niche, responsible for all the non-operational things that need to happen for the service to function.

“We have got to have defenders of the gate. We’ve got to have the contracted means in place. We have to have the … IT functions to provide the network and telephony aspects of that because we fight from home,” Warakomski said. “We fight from these power projection platforms. And so our space operators understand that. They get it. They know how critically important it is to have these Airmen in place, and the Guardians in the case of the comm squadrons, to be able to perform all of those functions.”

The Peterson-Schriever Garrison not only serves Peterson and Schriever Space Force Bases in Colorado but also Thule Air Base, Greenland, Cheyenne Mountain Space Force Station, Colo.; Kaena Point Space Force Station, Hawaii; and New Boston Space Force Station, N.H.

It’s an expansive portfolio, and it includes thousands of Airmen assigned to Space Force installations—there are approximately 8,000 such Airmen across every Space Force installation.

And while the Air Force and other services are expected to transfer more personnel into the Space Force soon—building the service’s end strength to 8,600 Guardians in fiscal 2023—the number of Airmen involved with the service may grow as well, Balkuvvar said.

“As the mission growth happens, the numbers for the Airmen may go up, just because, obviously, as we bring on more and more space operations, there’s going to be a need for more and more Airmen to be able to do the support,” said Balkuvvar. “But that is just yet to come.”

Whether that increase in Airmen supporting the Space Force will be matched by a growth in the number of Guardians is also still uncertain, Balkuvvar said—meaning that balance of 97 percent Airmen to 3 percent Guardians at the Peterson-Schriever Garrison could continue.

It’s a balance that Warakomski and others compare to the relationship between the Navy and the Marine Corps, with Marines operating under the Department of the Navy and sometimes sharing manpower.

But while the Marine Corps has its own judge advocates, financial managers, cooks, military police, logistics specialists, and more, the Space Force relies on Airmen to perform almost all of those duties. And that’s not likely to change, Warakomski predicted.

“I think that basically the relationship that the Air Force and the Space Force have established to date in terms of using [Air Force Materiel Command] as that servicing MAJCOM, I quite honestly would envision that going forward into the future,” Warakomski said. “A lot of that has to do with our end strength in the Space Force in terms of being the smallest service, the newest service, and being able to rely upon … the Department of the Air Force. … So from that standpoint, for the foreseeable future, I think that that’s basically where we’re going to probably remain.”

Ukraine Highlights Value, Opportunities for National Guard’s State Partnership Program

May 10, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

For years, the National Guard’s State Partnership Program, whereby individual states partner with other nations’ militaries to provide training and support, flew mostly under the radar. Costing roughly $40 million per year, it represents a tiny fraction of the Pentagon’s budget.

That’s changing as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine stalls amid fierce resistance and the California National Guard’s partnership with Ukrainians is highlighted by local and national media and credited with providing crucial training.

Now, with SPP enjoying a surge in interest, the head of the National Guard Bureau is looking to ensure the program is set for the future.

Speaking at a Heritage Foundation webinar on May 9, Gen. Daniel R. Hokanson said it’s not just California’s National Guard that has helped prepare Ukraine’s armed forces for this moment.

The State Partnership first launched in 1993 following the end of the Cold War, as former Soviet-linked militaries sought American ties. Latvia wanted U.S. help to adopt a citizen-soldier model, similar to the U.S. At the same time, the U.S. government was looking for a way to expand military-to-military cooperation in central and Eastern Europe without threatening the new Russian Federation.

California and Ukraine were matched up that year and have now worked together for nearly three decades. And in that time, service members and leaders have developed tight bonds, something Hokanson argued is only possible with the Guard.

“[Maj. Gen.] Dave Baldwin has been the Adjutant General [of California] for just over 10 years. So because he has been there and because of the National Guard, most of our Soldiers and Airmen stay in that formation or in that state their entire career, the young sergeants that train with Ukrainian sergeants will become command sergeant majors one day, or senior enlisted leaders. And the same with our officers—the captains that trained together eventually become majors, lieutenant colonels, and then in some cases, actually chiefs of defense,” Hokanson said.

“And so if you look at Dave’s span, … because he has been there for almost 10 years, had you picked an Active-duty unit to do that, they would have gone through five or six different commanders. And every three years, the entire unit would have changed out.”

But the benefits of the program aren’t just for the foreign militaries getting to interact with the Guard, Hokanson said.

“One thing it does for the National Guard is it allows our Soldiers and Airmen to really visit a lot of other countries to look at the environment that they operate in, and to really see, in many cases, the same problems, just approached from a different angle. And so we learn a lot in those countries, in those interactions that we bring back to make our organizations better,” Hokanson said.

The program is also good for retention and readiness, Hokanson said, allowing Soldiers and Airmen to travel and gain new experiences. In some cases, he noted, Guardsmen will even visit their state’s partner country in their civilian life because of the bonds and appreciation they have built up.

The way Ukraine’s military is performing during this conflict, defying expectations of a quick Russian victory, is really what’s highlighted the partnership program’s importance. Such a performance, Hokanson said, is “not a surprise to us at all, because we’ve been training them and training with them for almost 29 years.”

That training ratcheted up in intensity after Russia seized Crimea in 2014, with the creation of the Joint Multinational Training Group-Ukraine. Initially, the Army turned to an Active-duty unit to take the lead in training and advising Ukrainian Soldiers.

In 2016, however, the Guard took over. Since then, Hokanson said, “we’ve had eight different Guard states rotate in to do that training, and many of those folks still communicate with folks that they were training with in the Ukrainian army.”

The results speak for themselves.

“We worked very closely with them on small unit tactics, NCO or noncommissioned officer leadership. We worked on joint operations, logistics,” Hokanson said. “And what you’re seeing now is some of the areas that they’re being very successful in, [is] obviously completely attributable to their fact that they’re standing up and they’re fighting for their nation and their sovereignty. But within that, I think we’re also seeing some of that training has been very beneficial to them as well.”

Part of what makes the State Partnership Program so valuable, Hokanson noted, is its affordability. “Our budget is about 1 percent of the DOD budget when it comes to training with allies and partners,” he said. But given the spotlight on Ukraine, the increased emphasis on working with allies and partners in the new National Defense Strategy, and the size of the program, with 87 different partnerships across 93 different countries, there’s also a need to “take advantage of opportunities.”

Specifically, one of the Guard’s top legislative priorities in the coming months “is to ensure that we have consistent stable funding for this program,” Hokanson said.

That’s important, he explained, because other countries and militaries don’t all operate under the same October-to-September fiscal year schedule that the U.S. does. With more predictable, stable funding over time, “we can continue to plan long-term with each of these partners,” Hokanson said.

Innovative Technology Helps Airmen Navigate and Utilize Mental Health Resources

May 10, 2022

The last few years have seen a dramatic increase in mental health conditions for Americans in general, and for military service members, in particular. An annual report from Veterans Affairs found that the suicide rate for Veterans was about 50 percent higher than for non-veterans. In fact, the Air Force loses more Airmen to suicide than any other cause.

Talk therapy, resilience training, and stress management skills can all help Airmen avoid mental health crises. Unfortunately, seeing a therapist often disrupts daily operational activities and the referral process can take more than five weeks, on average. While a number of programs and organizations are devoted to helping Airmen exist, identifying the right resource for an individual is difficult and time consuming. A clear gap exists when it comes to delivering personalized, relevant resources to help our Airmen develop skills to manage stress and build resiliency in the field and back at home.

Fortunately, there is good news. In recent years, the Air Force has taken deliberate steps to encourage mental wellness and provide support for Airmen through innovative digital solutions. Air Force leaders have partnered with NeuroFlow, a Veteran-founded technology company. NeuroFlow connects Airmen and Guardians with on-post and community resources, such as Veteran Service Organizations tailored to meet their individual needs. NeuroFlow tracks health factors like fitness, sleep, loneliness, depression, and alcohol use. It also offers exercises and tools such as guided meditation, journaling, and evidence-based cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) resources. The NeuroFlow platform encrypts individual health data and activity to ensure it is not publicly shared or integrated into official records. Additionally, Airmen can use NeuroFlow confidentially, which is crucial for combating the potential stigma of receiving mental health support.

“From a military perspective, we fly the plane for two hours, and then we spend 12 hours maintaining it. And we should be able to do at least that much for our human weapons systems, in terms of helping them and giving them the tools that they need to maintain their peak performance,” says clinical psychologist John F. Drozd, PhD, ABMP, who uses NeuroFlow with his military and veteran clients.

NeuroFlow aggregates user data and feeds it into a clinical dashboard that unit leaders can review to better understand the behavioral health trends of Airmen over time. The platform’s artificial intelligence algorithm can also flag individuals with declining mental health conditions or those at risk for self harm. To date, NeuroFlow has been supporting thousands of Airmen and has proactively identified over 150 individual users requiring additional support, connecting them to relevant support and crisis resources. Moreover, seventy-five percent of those with mental health conditions who completed a follow up 4-8 months after starting with NeuroFlow achieved a clinically significant improvement based on validated measurements.

Technology solutions like NeuroFlow not only help reframe the military’s conversation about suicide and mental health, but they represent an important evolution of digital health programs with a focus on care navigation and personalized support. Additionally, by practicing coping skills voluntarily and anonymously with NeuroFlow, Airmen are able to build resilience at their own pace, helping them feel more stable, in control, and prepared to meet challenges on and off the battlefield. NeuroFlow is proud to be actively supporting military mental wellness through its partnerships with the U.S. Air Force. For more information, visit the NeuroFlow website.

Biden Signs Ukraine Lend-Lease Bill as Putin Looks to Rally Support for War

May 9, 2022 | By Abraham Mahshie

On the anniversary of the Allied defeat of Nazi Germany, President Joe Biden signed a modern-day Ukraine Lend-Lease bill, while Russian President Vladimir Putin used “bluster” and “falsehoods” in a Red Square speech to rally public support for his war in Ukraine.

Biden called the law an “important tool of reference to support the government [of] Ukraine and the Ukrainian people.”

The bill, which had bipartisan support, will streamline the President’s authority to enter into agreements with Ukraine to lend or lease defense articles to counter the Russian military invasion as the President awaits passage of a $33 billion supplemental funding bill to support Ukraine.

Before signing the lend-lease act, Biden reflected on World War II, noting: “Putin’s war [is] once more bringing wanton destruction in Europe,” while the European Union, which also backs Ukraine, is “reaffirming [an] enduring commitment to the future grounded in democracy, human rights, and peaceful resolution, and disagreements.”

Since the start of the Russia-Ukraine conflict on Feb. 24, the Biden Administration has authorized more than $3.7 billion in defense assistance to Ukraine. On May 6, Biden approved another $150 million from his drawdown authority to pull weapons from U.S. stocks for Ukraine.

But there is only about $100 million remaining in presidential drawdown authority before funding runs dry.

Pentagon spokesman John F. Kirby said May 9 that defense assistance to Ukraine would likely run out by the third week of May. But, the current pace, which include several daily cargo flights of aid to Eastern Europe, will continue at the same clip.

“We’re not slowing it down,” Kirby told defense journalists. “We’ve gotten enough indications out of Congress, and there’s bipartisan support for supporting Ukraine.”

He added: “Everything coming out of the Hill tells us that this supplemental will be acted on and approved.”

The $33 billion supplemental is expected to last five months, and would keep a steady flow of defense assistance to Ukraine while helping to replenish U.S. stocks and those of European allies.

Putin’s Rhetoric

Meanwhile, in Red Square, before the pomp of a strident military parade, Putin claimed his “special operation” in Ukraine was justified to defend the “motherland” from a perceived threat posed by the West. The Russian leader reiterated his claims that the war was necessary to rid Ukraine of the threat posed by modern-day “Nazis.”

To the surprise of many security analysts, Putin did not call for a full-scale war or escalation of the conflict despite his forces’ suffering heavy losses in the first 75 days.

At the Pentagon podium, Kirby rejected Putin’s claims that Ukraine posed a threat to Russia, that the war was justified, and that the invasion was timely.

“We still heard some of the same bluster, some of the same falsehoods, some of the same, quite frankly, just untruth in terms of his rhetoric that we’ve heard from the beginning,” Kirby said. “Every time you think they just can’t fall to a new low, they prove you wrong.”

Earlier in the day, a senior defense official described the progress of Russia’s re-oriented forces in eastern Donbas region as “very limited.”

The Defense Department assessment was that Russian officers were anecdotally disobeying orders, and that battlefield progress had resorted to “single-digit kilometer” gains and a daily exchange of small, rural towns amid trench warfare and artillery exchanges.

Still, Biden said not backing Ukraine, and allowing Putin a victory would further harm democracy and U.S. interests.

“The bill demonstrates the support for Ukraine is pivotal at this moment,” Biden said. “The cost of the fight is not cheap, but caving to aggression is even more costly, that’s why we’re staying in this.”

New Bill Aims to Highlight Pass-Through Funding’s Impact on the Air Force

May 9, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

When the Pentagon released its 2023 budget request on March 28, a graphic was shown to reporters breaking down the $773 billion in spending by department—and the Air Force led the way, with $243.1 billion in its accounts.

But when Air Force officials spoke to journalists later that afternoon, their budget documents showed just $194 billion, with an extra $40.1 billion marked as “non-blue.”

For Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), the larger DOD approach is a perfect example of a budgetary problem that has plagued the Air Force for years. And the department’s approach is in line with how he wants to start addressing that problem.

For several years now, Air Force officials, members of Congress, and defense analysts have raised concerns over so-called “pass-through” funding—billions of dollars that are officially included in the department’s top line but are never actually controlled by the Air Force, instead going to classified or undisclosed programs.

The practice, critics say, distorts public perception, making it seem as though the Air Force has more money than it actually does.

“Taxpayers and policy leaders need to know how their money is being spent and apportioned,” retired Lt. Gen. Bruce Wright, president of the Air & Space Forces Association, said in a recent statement decrying the practice. “The pass-through distorts how the Congress and the American people view and understand Pentagon spending, a practice that hides funding from other agencies in a budget that has, for the past 30 years, been starved of the resources needed to maintain modern and ready Air and Space Forces.”

Now, Bacon, a retired Air Force brigadier general, is taking the latest run at changing the system, introducing the Defense Budget Transparency Act alongside Rep. Kaialiʻi Kahele (D-Hawaii).

It’s not the first time a lawmaker has tried to take on the issue—Bacon himself introduced legislation in the last Congress attempting to end pass-through outright, transferring those funds from the Air Force to the Defense-wide budget.

That bill, however, went nowhere, as it became an issue of jurisdiction between the House Armed Services Committee, on which Bacon and Kahele sit, and the House Appropriations Committee, which doesn’t “want to change their budget or their processes,” Bacon told Air Force Magazine.

With appropriations holding sway over the budget, Bacon is taking a different approach with this new bill.

Instead of ending pass-through, the bill would require a third-party study of the issue, looking back over the last 20 years to determine how much of an effect it has had on the Air Force. It would also require the Defense Department to include a separate line item in its budget materials for any pass-through funding—not shifting it but simply drawing attention to it, like the Air Force did with its own budget documents.

“We’re trying to get the art of the possible,” Bacon said. “The Appropriations Committee is resistant to changing this, which I think is just wrong. But we’re going to try to push it out as far as the envelope will allow.”

“The Defense Budget Transparency Act of 2022 is a critical step toward clarifying our nation’s investment in its Air and Space Forces,” Wright said in a statement. “The resulting report will go far to reveal opportunities to strengthen America’s security in the face of burgeoning Chinese and Russian threats.

Whether the bill will make any more progress than past attempts remains to be seen, but Bacon said he and Kahele are taking a two-pronged approach, introducing it as standalone legislation while also trying to get it included in the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act.

Regardless, Bacon, the former commander of the 55th Wing and director of ISR strategy, plans, doctrine, and force development at Headquarters U.S. Air Force, said he is prepared to keep pushing this issue.

“I think this is going to be one of those multi-year debates,” Bacon said. “I think we’re gonna win this because people like transparency, they like honesty. And I just think this practice cloaks the real budget numbers for the Air Force. And I think it’s misleading. … Most people in the [House Armed Services Committee] don’t even know about it.”

Bacon found out about that last point during a committee hearing in 2021 with Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III. He asked Austin about pass-through funding, and shortly thereafter, “I had like five or six guys come around the table and go, ‘What are you talking about? Explain this to us.’ Even some of the leadership in the committee said they didn’t know about this,” Bacon said.

As more and more lawmakers become aware of the issue, Bacon is optimistic that support will build. At the moment, though, he said the argument he has heard for keeping pass-through as it is boils down to two points: “It’s too complicated to send the money through OSD,” and “We don’t want to give more visibility to all these OSD agencies that are getting the money.”

Bacon waved aside the first issue—“They make it sound like it’s brain surgery or something. We don’t buy it,”—and said the second issue can be addressed in other ways.

“We don’t have to spell out who’s getting it,” Bacon said. “We can just have, instead of it going to the Air Force, send it to the OSD staff, and have the OSD staff take it from there. … Instead of using the Air Force as the middleman, use OSD as the middleman.”

Former USAF Astronaut—Now NASA’s No. 2—on Russia, the Future of the ISS, and the Military on the Moon

May 9, 2022 | By Amanda Miller

Drawn closer by business interests and geopolitical necessity, the military and NASA “would be remiss” not to collaborate more, said the space agency’s No. 2 political appointee Pam Melroy.

Yet as the Defense Department has committed billions in weapons toward a Russian defeat in Ukraine, with both sides trading sanctions, Melroy—NASA’s deputy administrator and a former Air Force astronaut—said the war hadn’t yet hurt relations inside the International Space Station. There, U.S. astronauts and Russian cosmonauts still work side by side.

Melroy touched on NASA’s shared interests with the military in an interview while visiting the aerospace engineering sciences department at the University of Colorado Boulder on May 5.

The ongoing goodwill she described among the space station crew, and continued cooperation with Russia’s space agency, included Russia’s safe return of a U.S. astronaut aboard a Russian Soyuz capsule in March.

But such good relations hadn’t been reflected in the headlines on Earth—or the conditions in orbit—over the past several months, when events surrounding the station served as both a preview and a sideshow to the invasion.

Precarious Scenario

A former test pilot who logged combat and combat support hours along the way, Melroy flew and commanded space shuttle missions, going to space three times, all of which were to construct the ISS.

NASA believes the now two-decades-old station could operate safely through 2031, but anything beyond 2024 would rely on Russia to extend its agreement to cooperate. Russia built and operates the Zvezda Service Module that houses aspects of the station’s operations including flight control and propulsion.

However, even with Russian crew onboard, the ISS became the focal point of news coverage following a Russian military demonstration in the run-up to the invasion, and the station has provided a rhetorical opportunity for the Russian government since.

ISS crew members had to take cover inside their return capsules Nov. 15, 2021, in the immediate aftermath of a Russian missile test that destroyed a defunct Soviet satellite. The collision created a debris field that passed too closely to the ISS in the subsequent orbits right after the hit.

Experts speculated that Russia’s President Vladimir Putin intended the test as a “show of strength” as Russian troops massed on Ukraine’s border. Then a day after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the head of Russia’s Roscosmos space agency, Dimitry Rogozin, began mentioning how the ISS would uncontrollably deorbit without Russia’s participation.

Pointing out that “it’s just important to understand that Rogozin is a politician, and he is operating in a deeply political environment in Russia right now,” Melroy said she hadn’t found anything alarming about a more recent remark.

Rather than saying in early May that Russia was walking away from the ISS when its agreement runs out in 2024, “he said that they will honor their commitment until 2024 and give us a one-year notice before they leave,” Melroy said.

U.S. and European officials have estimated that Russia’s anti-satellite test in November created sufficient debris to double the number of evasive maneuvers that satellites such as the ISS will have to make in low Earth orbit. Meanwhile, concern exists that some spacefaring entity could ultimately weaponize debris.

In a reference to Iran and North Korea testing intercontinental ballistic missiles, a fellow former astronaut of Melroy’s, now-Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), said in a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 8:

“One concern is that ICBMs can be used to create a debris cloud in low Earth orbit, and that could impact U.S. satellites.”

‘Commercial’ in Common

Even with “very different, very distinct missions,” NASA and the military “need to be connected at the top, and we need to be connected at the operational working level,” said Melroy, describing the current scenario in which NASA personnel at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, for example, work closely with military personnel at Patrick Space Force Base to carry out a busy calendar of space launches.

The same holds true for the teams who monitor the trajectory of the ISS to keep it from colliding with other objects in orbit.

At the highest administrative levels, NASA and DOD officials recognize that “what we each do impacts the other,” Melroy said. But “there is this big gap in the field, in the middle, that don’t actually work very closely together.”

However, “I think you see these places where industry is dragging us together,” she said, such as a mutual interest in the services of commercial remote sensing providers.

As DOD entities have begun to stitch together government and commercial space assets into a so-called “hybrid architecture,” NASA has demonstrated overt successes in contracting for things that the government would have otherwise bought and owned the hardware for.

Particularly fruitful over the past decade have been NASA’s public-private partnerships to fund transportation to and from the ISS. SpaceX and Northrop Grumman now resupply cargo—and, in SpaceX’s case, crew. The companies had to partially pay for the development of the space capsules that they could then turn into private fleets.

Melroy reported that companies given contracts more recently, to robotically deliver research payloads to the moon, “have found other customers right away.”

Incorporating commercial constellations is one strategy the Space Force is pursuing to fulfill Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall’s No. 1 “operational imperative” to create a resilient space architecture. Proliferating the numbers and types of surveillance sources, as the thinking goes, will make the U.S.’s overall operation more resilient.

Meanwhile, U.S. Space Command has said it’s investigating what services commercial providers have to offer that could fill capability gaps, though some experts question the legality of intermingling military and civilian property. At least one cyberattack against a U.S. satellite constellation has occurred during the war in Ukraine.

Military on the Moon

Aside from the possibility of a science station, Melroy dismissed the prospect of a future military base on the moon based on the U.S.’s participation in the Outer Space Treaty of 1967.

“I’m happy to report to you that as the deputy administrator of NASA, NASA will follow all treaties and laws, and I support and uphold that,” Melroy said.

The U.S. is “very separated in civil space and national security space,” Melroy said. “That’s not true around the world. What that means is [that] if you’re smart, you understand that other people may think we’re doing stuff together, even when we’re not.

“So actually making sure that we’re talking at the highest policy level [is important] about things like, ‘What are we doing? And what are the implications of that?’”

Military research and “other peaceful purposes” a military might undertake receive an exclusion under the treaty that otherwise prohibits the “establishment of military bases, installations, and fortifications; the testing of any type of weapons; and the conduct of military manuevers on celestial bodies.”

But as reported by Politico in March, the military already has plans for the moon that may amount to militarization, such as interest by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in building large structures there; and by the Air Force Research Laboratory in a surveillance network to cover the space between the Earth and the moon.

The commander of U.S. Space Command, Army Gen. James H. Dickinson, has said the military plans to “be there” for NASA and commercial providers of “critical” space infrastructure as activity picks up on and around the moon.

NASA and the military both have a stake in shaping norms of behavior in space, Melroy said, which along with the development of new technologies, could be another opportunity for NASA and the military to work together.