In Time for Fire Season, Meet TAK, the US Govt.’s Suite of Free Situational Awareness Apps

In Time for Fire Season, Meet TAK, the US Govt.’s Suite of Free Situational Awareness Apps

May 3, 2022 | By Amanda Miller

A U.S. government-built app for situational awareness is bringing wildland firefighting into the internet age.

Originating as a product of the Air Force Research Laboratory aimed at improving the precision of close air support, Air Force units have adopted the military’s version of TAK—Tactical Assault Kit—for improving the precision of other activities, such as parachute jumps.

Meanwhile, the free downloads and plugin architecture of TAK’s civilian version—Team Awareness Kit—are giving firefighters, among others, the ability to layer real-time information over satellite images. They can track the locations of team members, vehicles, fires, and a potentially unlimited array of factors to help guide first responders in an emergency.

AFRL still has an office supporting TAK along with a practical reason for wanting more civilian first responders to adopt the app: “Because we want to have everybody on the same page,” said Ralph Kohler, an AFRL principal engineer who promotes TAK to agencies and departments inside and outside the federal government.

Released for Apple iOS earlier in April, the TAK smartphone apps were already running on Android and Microsoft mobile platforms before going live on the Apple App Store. 

TAK grew out of the problem of fratricide in close air support, which became apparent in Afghanistan in 2001 when a U.S. service member called in an air strike on his own location—a mistake that occurred after he changed the batteries in his GPS device.

“The number that came up was his position, when he replaced the batteries, not the position he had worked up where he wanted the bomb to be,” Kohler said.

The explosion killed three U.S. troops and five Afghan fighters and injured then-transitional Afghan government leader Hamid Karzai, among dozens of others.

The mistake came down to having “insufficient technology to plot coordinates on a map,” explained Ryan McLean, director of the TAK Product Center at Fort Belvoir, Va. 

“So a lot of efforts kicked off out of that,” McLean said. “One of the things that shook out of those problem-solving efforts was through the Air Force Research Laboratory—something called Android Map—which became TAK, which has now become this family of products.”

Locations of interagency resources tracked on the Tamarack Fire in California and Nevada in 2001, viewed in the iTAK app, which is the iOS version of TAK (Team Awareness Kit). Department of Homeland Security illustration.

Akin to one of the Air Force’s software factories, McLean described the TAK Product Center as “a unique organization in the U.S. government” that isn’t funded by any one department but collectively by multiple federal agencies. TAK merged with other apps along the way, and the TAK Product Center has incrementally improved TAK and aspires to achieve “TAK continuous delivery.” 

TAK works for fighting wildfires for the same reason it works for close air support, McLean said. Both call for “friendly force identification and target correlation.” 

“If you can do those two things, you can do close air support in the military. If you can do those two things, you can also do a lot of other things. 

“We can add all these great features—plugins, radios, some pretty novel stuff with geospatial data, open interfaces, open source, all that—but at the end of the day, it’s a capability for friendly force identification and target correlation.”

TAK’s 250,000 users work for local, state, and federal agencies, including 18 DOD and other federal programs of record, with some foreign military sales. 

“We’ve all been just absolutely amazed by the combination of friendly force identification/target correlation, with open source [code], with a usable interface. Those three things came together at the right time, and now we’ve seen TAK proliferate and become this massive ecosystem that it is,” McLean said.

The Air Force could find that TAK benefits its part-time Airmen in addition to their Active-duty counterparts. Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen H. Hicks said in remarks at the Worldwide Logistics Symposium 2022 that the number of personnel days the National Guard spends firefighting has gone up from just 14,000 to more than 176,000.

Firefighting

Back at the fire station, with good internet, firefighters can call up information on wildfires burning all around the U.S.

“We can see perimeters. We can see satellite heat detections. We have this wealth of knowledge,” said Brad Schmidt of the Colorado Center of Excellence in Advanced Technology Aerial Firefighting. Schmidt is the center’s wildland fire project manager. 

“The part that’s kind of unbelievable in the year 2022 is that when you actually get out onto the fire line … all that intelligence really goes out the window, and we end up relying solely on our walkie-talkie voice radios to communicate with each other and figure out where people are,” Schmidt said.

TAK, on the other hand, can import the shape of a fire, mapped by airplane, and display it along with the positions of the personnel. An example of a plugin add-on, which is in development by Schmidt’s center and the U.S. Forest Service, maps the shape of a smaller fire as a firefighter circles the perimeter, potentially on foot, with a smartphone.

The Corona Fire Department in the city of Corona, in Southern California, borders the Cleveland National Forest. Through mutual aid with the U.S. Forest Service, the local department may be the first to respond to a fire within the U.S. jurisdiction, said Fire Chief Andreas “AJ” Johansson.

“That initial assay of ‘where’s that fire’—that incident commander, that’s what they want to know. ‘How far over the ridge is it?’ If we don’t have an aircraft or a sensor to give us that from a UAS, it’s boots on the ground that will be doing it, so that plugin—we’re getting ready to train our folks on it here pretty soon,” Johansson said. “They are very excited about just the simplicity that Brad has built into this plugin. It really makes it like two clicks to start mapping.”

As a local leader, Johansson appreciates the freedom to freely download TAK, and even to inexpensively add a new feature, without having “to go to a board of a directors for a product that you subscribe to or pay for and say, ‘I need this.’” Because TAK’s code is open source, any department could hire a developer to build a new plugin.

The familiar platforms keep development costs low, said AFRL’s Kohler. “That model has really helped us get a common baseline and get everybody on the same page.”

Getting everyone in sync has included users overseas. 

“We’ve integrated with radios in Europe recently to help our European partners, and those integrations are very small efforts,” McLean said. “It doesn’t take a program office budgeting two or three years for that to happen. We can do that very quickly.”

The Future

Colorado’s center for high-tech aerial firefighting envisions a version of TAK to run on augmented reality headsets for aircraft crews who supervise firefighting from above, Schmidt said.

“They kind of have a two-fold job,” he said. “One is to coordinate the whole firefight—get on the radio with dispatch, order resources, talk to the firefighters on the ground, make sure they’re safe, and help them do their job.

“And their other function is to coordinate all the other aircraft that are coming in to actually attack the fire. So all the bigger planes that are dropping fire retardants, all the helicopters that are dropping water, they coordinate that—they do it all—with voice radios.”

Augmented reality goggles, on the other hand, could allow someone “to look out the cockpit with these goggles and see annotated, in their field of view, where people are on the ground,” Schmidt said.

That new degree of awareness—simply on a screen, for now—sums up TAK’s value proposition. As AFRL’s Kohler put it:

“When you know where everybody is, you can figure out what to do.”

Tyndall and Offutt Rebuilds Need More Funds; Projected End Date in 2027-’28

Tyndall and Offutt Rebuilds Need More Funds; Projected End Date in 2027-’28

May 2, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

It has been more than three years since Tyndall and Offutt Air Force Bases were devastated by natural disasters just a few months apart—and the rebuilding process will still take years to come, lasting most of the 2020s, a top Air Force official told Congress.

And while the Air Force has already received $5.3 billion in 2020 to rebuild the bases, the service will need more funds in fiscal 2023 and 2024, Brig. Gen. William H. Kale III, the Air Force director of civil engineers, told the House Appropriations military construction and veterans affairs subcommittee April 28.

Kale’s update on the rebuilding process came in response to questions from Rep. John Carter (R-Texas), the subcommittee’s ranking member, who noted that as part of its 2023 unfunded priority list, the Air Force included $286 million for natural disaster recovery at Tyndall, Offutt, and Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Va. 

“Yes, we do need more funding in [fiscal year] ’23. That amount is included in our unfunded priority list. … And as of right now, the way the market is working and how things are going, I suspect that we will also need some money in FY ’24 for that,” Kale told Carter. “I can’t give you an exact amount right now on that.”

Carter also asked Kale for an updated timeline on when all projects related to the recovery at the two bases would be finished, “so we all can have a party.” Kale put that projected end date in the “FY ’27- ’28 timeframe as when everything will be done program-wise.”

Lengthy timelines and rising costs are not new to the process, given the widespread destruction caused by Hurricane Michael at Tyndall and flooding at Offutt. Initial estimates for rebuilding Tyndall jumped from $3 billion to $3.6 billion, with a projected timeline of up to a decade. Meanwhile, Offutt’s cost estimates started at $650 million and are now topping $1.1 billion, with the projected end date slipping from 2024 to 2027.

Kale’s timeline is largely in line with the latest estimates, which could mean a decade-long recovery process for both bases.

However, the need for more funds to be appropriated by Congress is also running up against a military construction budget that is slated to shrink in 2023, as evidenced by the natural disaster recovery money getting pushed to the unfunded priorities list. 

On top of that, what money is in the $2.26 billion MILCON budget request is mostly dedicated to the beddown or support of new weapon systems. The biggest chunk of that is for the LGM-35A Sentinel, or as it was called until recently, the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent. 

All told, the Air Force is seeking $444 million in military construction for the Sentinel in 2023, and up to $2 billion in the next five years, Carter said. Acting Assistant Secretary for Installations, Environment, and Energy Edwin H. Oshiba acknowledged that it “is a big, humongous project.”

However, Oshiba said the MILCON projects for Sentinel are on track and proceeding in lockstep with the development of the weapon system itself. Still, even with the focus on the new system in the budget, there is potential for delays, Kale warned. 

“The two things I’m most worried about [are] No. 1, you know, when we have delays with [continuing resolutions], that can have a huge impact to this program, in particular, and we would ask to work with the committee here for help on that,” Kale said. “And then No. 2, this is a very highly technical and complex program, and there will be times where we are going to have potential cost implications, and with the reprogramming limits at $2 million and such a low percentage, that can add a significant time increase to that program.”

Such reprogramming limits have caused issues in the past, including for the natural disaster recovery efforts that are still ongoing, Kale noted.

F-16s From Aviano and Spangdahlem Swap Places in Romania to Support NATO

F-16s From Aviano and Spangdahlem Swap Places in Romania to Support NATO

May 2, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

Half a dozen F-16s from the 510th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron at Aviano Air Base, Italy, arrived in Romania on April 29, replacing similar fighters from the 480th EFS that had rapidly deployed to support NATO’s enhanced air policing mission and to deter Russian aggression.

The Aviano jets replace the F-16 Fighting Falcons from Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany, in the enhanced air policing mission. Spangdahlem’s jets first arrived at Fetesti Air Base, Romania, three months ago as Russia built up its forces around Ukraine and tensions escalated along NATO’s eastern flank.

“The continued presence of U.S. F-16s in the south-east region ensures critical capability for the Air Policing mission and strengthens NATO’s collective readiness,” Gen. Jeffrey L. Harrigian, U.S. Air Forces in Europe commander, said in a statement. “Our ability to operate shoulder-to-shoulder with our regional Allies bolsters our collective defense and interoperability across the Eastern flank.”

While in Romania, the Aviano F-16s and crew will work closely with their Romanian counterparts as well as with Italian Typhoons that have been flying in the area since December 2021, according to a USAFE press release.

In addition to Romania, the U.S. has also deployed F-15s and F-35s to Poland in recent months. As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has unfolded, Russian fighter jets have increasingly tested NATO air space, causing NATO aircraft to scramble in response.

Kendall: USAF to Discard 386-Squadrons Goal, Skip Demo Phase for New Autonomous Aircraft

Kendall: USAF to Discard 386-Squadrons Goal, Skip Demo Phase for New Autonomous Aircraft

May 2, 2022 | By John A. Tirpak

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said he is more interested in quality systems that are able to deter an adversary than the size of the force structure, signaling an end to USAF’s pursuit of 386 squadrons as a force-sizing goal.

Speaking during a May 2 Brookings Institution webcast, Kendall said he’s “not focused on” the 386 squadrons goal, officially unveiled in 2018.

“I’m not focused on counting endstrength or squadrons or airplanes,” Kendall said, but rather on “the capability to carry out the operations we might have to support [toward] … defeating aggression. If you can’t … deter or defeat the initial act of aggression, then you’re in a situation like we’re seeing in Ukraine: a protracted conflict.”

Kendall said “nobody knows” how long Russia and Ukraine will “grind away at each other,” but “we don’t want to be in that mode.” Having a large force is aimed at such a prolonged conflict, but USAF “really needs, first and foremost, to deter that act of aggression, and if necessary, defeat it, and so I am more focused on that than I am on quantity right now.”

Kendall voiced high respect for former Defense Secretary James Mattis, but said he disagreed with Mattis’ emphasis on lethality of existing forces, saying it’s more important that forces be capable and resilient and be able to survive long enough to “get to the fight” and get home. “I put that very high on my list” of priorities.

He acknowledged that USAF is asking to spend a record amount on research and development this year, and reiterated that while he’s “comfortable” with the fiscal 2023 budget request, “I’m warning Congress … that hard choices are ahead” in 2024, in the form of more equipment retirements in favor of new development or production.

The future Air Force is also not far off, he said, noting that B-21 production money is in the FY’23 budget and that the Next-Generation Air Dominance aircraft and its family of supporting systems are “not far out,” as are programs like the Joint Advanced Tactical Missile, or JATM, which will equip USAF’s fighters mid-decade. These systems will “phase in” over “the next few years.”

As an example of the new approach, Kendall said the E-7 Wedgetail USAF will buy to replace the E-3 AWACS “is going to dramatically lower the cost of sustainment. So I’d rather have that platform, which also gives us a lot more capability … than the current fleet, even though the current fleet might be larger. So size isn’t … important to me. It’s quality and getting as much quality into the force as I can as fast as I can.”

Kendall noted that “an awful lot of the equipment that we have is old,” saying the average age of USAF aircraft is 30 years and rising.

The 386 squadrons goal—up from 312—was promoted by former Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson and former Chief of Staff Gen. David L. Goldfein. However, the goal was couched as an aspirational one and was not programmed with budget dollars.  

Kendall’s also has little interest in technology demonstrations that don’t lead to “meaningful operational capability in the hands of operators as quickly as possible.”

Getting in the Game

Among Kendall’s seven operational imperatives are uncrewed aircraft that will escort manned aircraft. “I want to go directly to EMD [engineering and manufacturing development] on that,” he said. “The technology is mature enough that we can gamble on that, take some risks there, and move out quickly. So we’re not going to wait for a round of risk reduction experiments. We will conduct them in parallel with the work we need to do to get a platform moving forward.”

The Air Force will try to “synchronize efforts on things like mission systems—that can be upgraded over time—and software, that can be upgraded very easily over time, with hardware, which basically forms the basis by which you can then move forward and incrementally improve.”

Kendall said he wants to “get in the game, with something that makes a difference operationally, and then build on that.”

He said he envisions a three-year process between getting funded for a new capability and having something operationally usable. It’s riskier, though, because “the more aggressive you are with the risk you’re taking on design, the harder it is to be sure you have a stable design.” That’s needed, though, because China is moving out aggressively in fielding new systems, he said.

China’s timetable for fielding new equipment is “not better than ours. It’s probably not as good as ours. But they started earlier and they’ve been working aggressively on a larger number of things,” Kendall said.

He also said China is “not waiting to see what we do. They are basically figuring out what they need and what technology might offer them to meet their needs, and they’re moving forward.”

In Kendall’s experience with the old Soviet Union, Russia would not pursue a system if the U.S. was not already doing so, “because they figured we were so much ahead of them intellectually on weapon systems.”

The Chinese, however, “aren’t doing that. If they think something’s going to be operationally effective, they’re going to have it whether we’re doing it or not. So we have a tougher problem today than we had during the first 20 years of my career, unfortunately.”

Kendall believes China “has ambitions to be the great power on the face of the Earth,” and to do it, they must “displace the United States.” China’s ambitions have changed with its capability, he said, shifting from being a regional power to a global superpower. While not, perhaps, as interested as much in “territorial expansion,” China wants “as much influence as possible,” evidenced by their One Belt, One Road initiative.

“They want to set the rules for the economy, as much as anything.”

Kendall said his job is to provide the capability to deter and if necessary defeat “what a potential adversary might do.” And while the immediate threat might seem to be against Taiwan, “there are other places, like the Senkaku [Islands] in the South China Sea, where … aggression is possible also. So those are certainly within their near abroad.”

China has “articulated … pretty clearly … where they want to be my mid-century,” Kendall noted.

“I think we have to take them at face value. I made the mistake a few times during the Cold War, not believing what the Soviets were saying. Turns out that they meant what they were saying.”

Asked what technologies “excite” him as having the greatest potential, Kendall said, ”autonomous behaviors.” Artificial Intelligence is both a near-term capability and one that must be introduced as quickly as possible as a “decision-making” enhancement, he said.

Autonomous systems will “open up a whole range” of new tactical capabilities, he said, “and I don’t think we need to wait for more development on that.”

However, the technology “does invoke some really interesting questions about human control, and the degree of autonomy you’re really going to tolerate operationally.” If the U.S. doesn’t pursue this, “we’re going to lose” and “some of our competitors are not going to be as constrained as we are by those things.” The Air Force needs to “work those problems as we mature the capabilities.”

Kendall noted that he has worked as a human rights attorney and, “I am absolutely committed to the law of war and the assurance that we follow those rules. But we’re going to have to figure out how to vet that capability and hold people accountable for what they do … even though a machine may be acting as a proxy for the humans to some degree.” He added, “There’s work to be done there.”

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‘Challenge the Status Quo’: Top Airman Calls for More Diversity in Aviation While Visiting HBCU

‘Challenge the Status Quo’: Top Airman Calls for More Diversity in Aviation While Visiting HBCU

May 2, 2022 | By Hope Hodge Seck

From an auditorium lectern at Washington, D.C.’s Howard University, 1st Lt. Dontae Bell invoked a scene from Richard Wright’s 1940 novel “Native Son.” In it, two young Black men look up to see a skywriting plane.

“Them white boys sure can fly,” one says.

It’s 2022, and Bell, an Air Force helicopter pilot, is moderating a discussion with four other Black pilots representing nearly every platform the service flies. But a troubling reality underlies the conversation:

Only about 2 percent of Air Force pilots are Black, and that proportion hasn’t increased much in the past three decades. In fighter aviation, the imbalance is even more stark: Just 60 fighter pilots in the entire Air Force are Black, and one is the service’s top officer, Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr.

The challenge of changing that ratio was a key theme of “We Fly Too” on April 30, a half-day event at the historically Black Howard University that was co-organized by Bell, a distinguished alumnus. With about 100 attendees, mostly from Civil Air Patrol and ROTC programs, it kicked off with a town hall conversation between Brown and Dr. Wayne A.I. Frederick, Howard’s president.

Days before his Senate confirmation, Brown set the tone for his tenure by releasing a passionate and personal video discussing the killing of George Floyd. Brown has made equity a priority. He’s created working groups to develop more equitable policies for Airmen in matters ranging from hair regulations to promotion packages, and he’s overseen servicewide studies and surveys on racial disparity.

Brown said on April 30 that he was considering other changes within the aviation community to level the playing field between those with the resources to accumulate private pilot hours before coming to the Air Force and those who don’t. And for those who can’t get private pilot time, he said, the service wants to evaluate other options, such as simulator and synthetic training, that might help to better prepare prospective pilots for success.

“We want to take a look at, do some of the programs we have [that] prevent or discourage diverse backgrounds,” he said.

From his personal experience as an F-16 pilot, Brown also exhorted his audience to be bold and push for change.

“When you’re one of only one or two African-American pilots out of 70-100 pilots in a fighter wing, that’s a lot of pressure,” he said. “But I think there’s so many opportunities to open the door for yourself or for others … you’ve got to challenge the status quo. You’ve got to push a little bit.”

Panelists at Howard also understood that the timeline for steering young minority students toward Air Force careers is short; most of the teens and college students in the room were there because they had found the path already.

For 16-year-old Caleb Smith, an event attendee who made headlines last year when he became the nation’s youngest glider pilot, there was another point of indecision: whether to attend the Air Force Academy or the Naval Academy. When he put the question to the panel of four Air Force pilots, all but one of them academy grads, they chuckled.

“Is this thing on?” said Maj. Saj El-Amin, a C-37 Gulfstream VIP special air mission pilot with 89th Airlift Wing at Joint Base Andrews, Md., tapping his microphone with a wry look. But later, he added some advice: Start early in pursuing the academies, and check out “summer seminar” programs that offer students a taste of life at the schools.

“Seek those activities out—seek some of us out,” he said. “Allow them to put you in contact with a mentor, someone to be able to invest in you so you can really see which of the service academies that you want to be a part of.”

1st Lt. Darian Haynes, an MQ-9 Reaper pilot and Howard alumna, spoke in a panel focused on increasing diversity in aviation about the need to reach young people in underrepresented communities earlier in their education.

“I had zero opportunities to fly. It wasn’t that I didn’t have the means to, I just didn’t know anything about them,” she said. “By going and talking to people in middle school and elementary school, you’re planting the seed a lot earlier. So that way, it can help out with the future of aviation.”

Bold and fearless mentorship is another piece of the equation, said co-panelist Col. Alison Gonzalez, chief of the Strategy Division for Space Force.

“I’ve mentored anyone that approaches me … and I do it out in the open,” Gonzalez said. “Another way to eradicate that stigma is having open, frank, honest conversations in public. So it’s going to make people uncomfortable, but you have to be able to do that and hold those conversations.”

The most emotional moment of the day at Howard came at the conclusion of a panel on women in Air Force aviation headlined by Maj. Gen. Jeannie Leavitt, the Air Force’s very first female fighter pilot.

“Are you going to pilot training?” Leavitt asked the moderator, 21-year-old Isabella Mollison, commander of Air Force ROTC Detachment 130 at Howard.

“I want to be a C-17 pilot,” Mollison responded. “But … “

“As it turns out, I know something that you don’t know,” Leavitt said. She rose and presented Mollison with a certificate she’d signed marking the cadet’s place in Air Force pilot training. Mollison hadn’t known if she’d be permitted to go due to imperfect eyesight requiring a LASIK procedure.

She did her best to direct attendees to the next session while beaming through her tears.

Observing the entire event from the front row was retired Col. Ron McGee, son of Col. Charles McGee, one of the legendary Tuskegee Airmen of World War II. Like his father, McGee served in the Air Force, flying the F-4 Phantom in Vietnam. McGee said he felt an underlying belief that Black people were not as capable as their white counterparts still presented an obstacle to equality.

“I’ve met people today who have never ever heard of the Tuskegee Airmen at all,” he said.

McGee said he was encouraged by the day’s event and the candid discussion about the need for more diversity, but emphasized that it would take a broader effort to solve the problem of equal representation.

“This is a pretty small group with a bigger outreach, and you can feel in this auditorium an attempt to really get the story out and get more and more people involved,” he said. “But most people here already have a desire and interest. We need to be reaching those who don’t know that that interest or that desire even exists.”

In addition to discussion panels, the event included mentoring opportunities and an impressive wrap-up, with aircraft from 1st Helicopter Squadron out of Joint Base Andrews landing on the football field at Howard’s Greene Stadium.

Air Force Academy Gets Its First Space Force Permanent Professor

Air Force Academy Gets Its First Space Force Permanent Professor

May 2, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

The U.S. Air Force Academy got its first Space Force permanent professor on April 29, as Col. Luke Sauter transferred over to the new service.

Sauter, the Academy’s astronautics department head, joined the Space Force in a transfer ceremony presided over by Brig. Gen. Linell A. Letendre, dean of the faculty, according to a USAFA press release.

“It has been an incredible point of pride for our entire Astronautics Department to play a role in developing space-focused officers for decades here at the Academy,” Sauter said in a statement. “It is certainly a historic day to have our first Space Force permanent professor assigned; I hope there will be many more to follow. To say I’m incredibly honored would be an understatement.”

“It’s important that our cadets see Guardians across our academy and that they have the opportunity to speak with Colonel Sauter and other leaders about the Space Force as they consider which branch of military service they would like to join,” Letendre said in a statement. ”As our first Space Force permanent professor, Colonel Sauter will bridge the gap between the needs of the Space Force and our curriculum as we build future leaders of character.”

Sauter’s transfer marks the latest milestone as the Space Force continues to integrate into the Air Force Academy. Incoming freshmen participate in a space introduction day that teaches them about opportunities in the Space Force. A Space Force detachment has stood up to help educate and interact with Cadets. And a new summer program called “Azimuth” is intended to recruit and evaluate Cadets in a similar way to how the Marine Corps’ “Leatherneck” program evaluates Naval Academy midshipmen who may become Marines.

In 2020, the academy graduated its first cohort of 86 Cadets into the Space Force, expanding that to 115 in 2021. Roughly 10 percent of every graduating class moving forward is expected to commission into the Space Force.

While Sauter is the Space Force’s first permanent professor at the Academy, he isn’t the first faculty member to be a part of the new service—as of November 2021, roughly 20 Space Force officers are authorized at USAFA, including Maj. Jamil Brown, a fellow in the Institute for Future Conflict who works as instructor in the political science department. 

Col. Jeffrey Greenwood isn’t an instructor but serves as Space Force liaison to the Academy and commands the detachment that will one day include “academy military leaders and faculty members within the cadet wing, athletic department, Center for Character and Leadership Development, and prep school,” he said in a statement.

The Latest Adaptive Cycle Engine Testing is A Significant Step Forward

The Latest Adaptive Cycle Engine Testing is A Significant Step Forward

May 2, 2022

On March 26, 2007, the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) publicly announced an effort to develop a new type of jet engine “that will enable pilots to switch from high speed combat maneuvers to long-range persistence mode as effortlessly as a bird in flight.”

That program was dubbed Adaptive Versatile Engine Technology, or ADVENT, and it was aimed squarely at pioneering the next generation of combat jet engines. Unlike the fixed, two-stream turbofan engines that had powered (and continue to power) the Air Force’s fighter fleets since the 1970s, ADVENT would seek to develop the technology necessary for a revolutionary three-stream adaptive cycle engine.

ADVENT proved the concept was feasible, leading the Air Force to move forward with industry on two more programs to further mature three-stream adaptive cycle engines. Almost exactly 15 years to the day after that first AFRL announcement, a flight-weight, adaptive cycle engine fired up for the first time in an Air Force test cell.

Engine manufacturer GE and the Air Force achieved the milestone on March 25 at Arnold Engineering Development Complex in Tennessee with GE’s XA100 engine. Ongoing tests there will be the most significant to date, with the goal of capturing engine performance data across the full flight envelope.

“It’s difficult to overstate just how important our collaboration with the Air Force has been throughout multiple adaptive engine programs,” says David Tweedie, GE’s general manager of Advanced Combat Engines. “It’s a joint success. The Air Force has been a true partner with GE the entire time.”

Tweedie says that the start of testing in an Air Force test cell is meaningful for several reasons.

  1. “A significant amount of taxpayer dollars have been invested in this program. We don’t take that responsibility lightly and are demonstrating a tangible return on that investment.” More than $4 billion has been invested across industry since 2007 to mature this next generation of engines. Following ADVENT, the Air Force also initiated the Adaptive Engine Technology Development (AETD) program and is now administering the ongoing Adaptive Engine Transition Program (AETP). GE has been part of each of these programs.
  2. “This testing also allows GE to build on our success to date and continue maturing the technology that separates this engine from anything that comes before it.” In December 2020, GE became the first engine manufacturer in the world to bring a flight-weight, three-stream adaptive cycle engine to test. Testing on a second example of this engine began in August of 2021. Both campaigns demonstrated engine performance that met the Air Force’s lofty goals of 25% better fuel efficiency, 10% more thrust and double the thermal management capacity of existing engines.
  3. “Finally, we’re delivering what the Air Force challenged industry to do: build and test a product-relevant engine that can provide game-changing performance for the F-35.”

GE’s XA100 engine translates to 30% more range for the Air Force’s F-35A, 20-40% faster acceleration, and double the power and thermal management capacity versus existing engines. GE’s engine is also designed to bring these performance impacts to the carrier-based F-35C with no structural modifications to the aircraft.

That performance Tweedie says, “simply cannot be matched by legacy propulsion systems,” and preserves the asymmetric advantage the U.S. has held in propulsion over its adversaries—a critical strategic advantage in an increasingly competitive global environment.

An F-35A Lightning II from the 354th Fighter Wing, Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska, receives fuel from a KC-135 Stratotanker assigned to the 117th Air Refueling Squadron, Forbes Field Air National Guard Base, Kansas, over the Indo-Pacific, March 10, 2022. Aircrews routinely fly missions aimed at sharpening the necessary skills needed to respond to emerging situations at a moment’s notice. (U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Yosselin Perla)

So, what’s next? Testing will continue in the coming months in the Air Force’s test cell as they work to gather performance data throughout the flight envelope, Tweedie says. Once the testing in completed there, GE is “ready to transition” to a low-risk Engineering and Manufacturing Development (EMD) program—the last step before a fielded product. With a Fiscal Year 2024 EMD start, production engines would be available in Fiscal Year 2028.

“There are no shortcuts in this business,” Tweedie adds. “The Air Force had the foresight 15 years ago to begin the process of fielding the next generation of jet engine. GE was all-in to help achieve that reality in 2007, and we’re here today, still all-in. We’re ready to get this engine into the hands of the Warfighter, and now is the time to make the decisions to provide this operational capability.”

Air Force Ending Program for Career Airmen to Apply for Preferred Bases

Air Force Ending Program for Career Airmen to Apply for Preferred Bases

April 29, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

Four years after first announcing a program meant to help career Airmen have a chance to move to their preferred base in the U.S., the Air Force is suspending the program starting June 1, citing budgetary constraints and a low rate of Airmen actually getting to where they wanted to go.

The end of the Base of Preference program was first detailed in a memo from Chief Master Sgt. Claudia Carcamo, the Air Force’s chief enlisted manager, leaked on the unofficial Air Force amn/nco/snco page. An Air Force spokesperson subsequently confirmed the memo’s authenticity to Air Force Magazine.

Base of Preference was first introduced in April 2018 as a pilot program—Airmen with certain Air Force Speciality Codes could see openings available at other bases before they requested moves within the U.S., theoretically upping their chances of getting their preferred base by matching it to where a need was. Prior to that, Air Force Times reported, they submitted their preferred locations with no idea of whether there would be any job for them to fill.

In December 2018, the program was extended to all career fields. Airmen not in their first term of service needed at least 41 months on station before they could apply; and a full 48 months before they could PCS. 

But according to Carcamo’s memo, the program failed more often than not in terms of actually getting Airmen to their preferred location.

“The BOP program has historically matched less than 30% of applicants to their desired location,” the memo states.

In response to a query from Air Force Magazine as to why that rate was so low, Air Force spokesperson Laurel Tingley cited several reasons why Airmen’s preferred bases aren’t always granted. For example, there may be no need for the Airman’s grade or AFSC at the new base; a move might cause manning issues at the old or new base; or the service member could be ineligible to PCS or already selected for another assignment.

There can also be too many Airmen applying for too few spots. Florida is especially popular as a requested locale—MacDill Air Force Base, Eglin Air Force Base, and Hurlburt Field were all among the top five requested BOP locations.

The memo gives no other reason for the program’s suspension, but when asked by Air Force Magazine, Tingley said that doing so will save the Air Force $8 million, “which will allow us to operate within the projected FY23 budget.”

Until May 31, career Airmen will still be able to submit Base of Preference applications to the Air Force Personnel Center. And Tingley noted that Airmen will still have a chance to voluntarily move after that by utilizing programs such as the EQUAL Plus Advertisements and Developmental Special Duty.

But while BOP is going away for career Airmen, it is still in place for first-term Airmen—they must complete eight months on station before applying and 12 months on station before moving; have satisfied certain time-in-service requirements based on their enlistment term; have a Career Job Reservation; and must reenlist within 30 days of being approved.

While career Airmen will have one less path to potentially move to a new location, top officials have said that they are looking to increase stability and limit PCS moves in hopes of retaining more talent. 

Lt. Gen. Brian T. Kelly, deputy chief of staff for manpower, personnel, and services, told Congress in February that the Air Force is emphasizing permanent change of assignment, in which Airmen change jobs without changing location, and its new remote work and telework policies.

Nearly All Airmen Discharged Over COVID-19 Vaccine Get General Discharges

Nearly All Airmen Discharged Over COVID-19 Vaccine Get General Discharges

April 29, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

The Air Force has now separated 287 Airmen for refusing to get the COVID-19 vaccine, and nearly all of them have received general discharges.

Of those booted from service, 281 received general discharges under honorable conditions—just shy of 98 percent. Five others received honorable discharges, and one got an entry-level discharge, acting deputy chief of staff for manpower, personnel, and services Gwendolyn R. Defilippi told the Senate Armed Services personnel subcommittee April 27.

The Space Force, meanwhile, has yet to discharge a single Guardian for vaccine refusal, USSF Chief Human Capital Officer Patricia Mulcahy told the congressional panel.

Every other service has kicked out more service members over the vaccine than the Air Force. The Marine Corps has separated 1,968 Marines; the Navy has discharged 798 Sailors; and the Army has booted 345 Soldiers.

The 287 Airmen separated represent roughly 0.05 percent of all Active-duty, Reserve, and Guard Airmen. 

Under the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act, service members who refuse the COVID-19 vaccine cannot receive anything less than a general discharge under honorable conditions. 

The services, however, have taken very different approaches beyond that. The Marine Corps has given 78 percent of those it separated a general discharge, while the Navy has given all honorable discharges. The Air Force has granted the fewest honorable discharges.

The differences between an honorable discharge and a general discharge under honorable conditions carry implications for the kinds of benefits the separated Airmen can take advantage of. While those with a general discharge can usually still receive medical benefits and home loans from the VA, they do not have access to the educational benefits from the GI Bill.

Normally, those with a general discharge are also prevented from being able to re-enlist in the service. However, Defilippi told Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) that “we … are interested in making sure that those who separate solely for the reason of a vaccine are able to re-enlist if they are able to comply with our vaccination requirements.”

According to the Department of the Air Force’s most recent statistics released April 25, 96.9 percent of the Total Force—including the Air Force and Space Force; Active-duty, Guard, and Reserve—are at least partially vaccinated against COVID-19. 

That still leaves roughly 15,500 Airmen and Guardians unvaccinated. More than 1,000 of those individuals have received a medical exemption, and more than 1,200 have an administrative exemption. The department has approved 46 religious accommodation requests while denying more than 5,500. Another 3,500 or so are still pending or under appeal.