US Exercises with Japan, South Korea in Response to North Korean Missile Test

May 26, 2022 | By Abraham Mahshie

In a show force over the Pacific, the U.S. conducted separate bilateral exercises with South Korea and Japan in response to North Korea’s May 24 ballistic missile test. The North’s test reportedly included an intercontinental ballistic missile, launched while President Joe Biden flew home from the region.

“This exercise was conducted to demonstrate our nation’s rapid reaction capabilities, high levels of force readiness, close coordination, bilateral interoperability, and credible deterrent capacity,” read a statement from U.S. Indo-Pacific command, referring to the exercise with Japan conducted on May 25.

The INDOPACOM statement also said that the U.S. and Japan’s Air Self-Defense force conducted a combined capabilities exercise over the Sea of Japan to “deter and counter regional threats.”

The exercise between the United States and South Korea included the firing of a Republic of Korea (ROK) Hyunmu-2 missile May 25 using the U.S. Army’s Tactical Missile System.

“To demonstrate the ability of the combined ROK-U.S. force to respond quickly to crisis events, the U.S. Eighth Army and Republic of Korea military personnel conducted a combined live-fire exercise,” read a statement from U.S. Forces Korea.

“Missiles were fired from the northeast of South Korea into the East Sea following appropriate notifications for air and maritime safety,” the statement said.

Pentagon spokesman John F. Kirby said May 26 that the U.S. is not afraid to respond with shows of force to North Korea’s violations of UN Security Council resolutions.

“We clearly are willing to do things bilaterally with either ally as well as trilaterally and we’ve already proven that,” he said.

Kirby said Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III is keen on improving trilateral cooperation between the United States, Japan, and South Korea, and there may be more exercises to come.

U.S. Indo-Pacific Command did not immediately respond to questions by Air Force Magazine about the exercises.

In recent days, Austin has called both his Japanese and Korean counterparts to discuss Defense Department analysis regarding the reputed three missiles launched by North Korea. While both South Korea and Japan have released statements describing North Korea’s 17th series of missile tests, including distances traveled, success, and the ICBM threat, the Pentagon has thus far refused to go beyond describing the bout as “multiple ballistic missile launches.”

“We’re still analyzing the data in the intelligence,” Kirby said. “We haven’t come to any final conclusions.”

North Korea’s ballistic missile launch was not the only adversarial activity of the week in the Pacific. On May 24, China and Russia conducted a joint exercise with bombers.

“They flew over the Sea of Japan and continued through the East China Sea and the Philippine Sea,” Kirby said, noting that the complex bomber exercise was likely planned far in advance. “It’s clear that China has and continues to look for ways to prioritize their relationship with Russia versus prioritizing the relationships with other countries in the Indo-Pacific.

Kirby went so far as to say that China was “alienating and isolating themselves” from other Pacific nations due to their tactics of “coercion and intimidation,” which in the past have included both economic and aggressive military action.

China’s foreign minister, however, is currently visiting up to 10 small Pacific island nations to secure a pact that would cover areas ranging from security to fisheries. U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters on May 25 that China “has a pattern of offering shadowy, vague deals with little transparency or regional consultation in areas related to fishing, related to resource management, development, development assistance and more recently even security practices.”

Austin, for his part, hopes to engender goodwill with Asia-Pacific allies with his fourth trip to the region in June. His first stop will be in Singapore to attend the Shangri La Dialogue hosted by the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Austin is scheduled to visit Thailand as well in what is shaping up to be a race with China to court countries in the region.

“He will also have the chance to meet with key Indo-Pacific leaders to again advance some of our defense relationships in the region,” said Kirby. “The Secretary will travel to Bangkok as the United States and Thailand take important steps towards modernizing the U.S.-Thai alliance and expanding the depth and breadth of our military cooperation.”

Boeing Starts Delivering New Round of A-10 Wings

May 26, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

More than two and a half years after the Air Force finished its first round of re-winging efforts for the A-10, Boeing started delivering new wing sets to the service earlier this month, the company announced May 25.

The first wing set was delivered to Hill Air Force Base, Utah, Boeing said in a press release, where the Air Force has started work on replacing the wings on A-10s to keep them flying for longer.

The effort to replace the wings on the Air Force’s A-10 fleet began more than 15 years ago, when the service awarded a $1.1 billion contract to Boeing in 2007. The program temporarily ended in 2016 in part because of cost, but funding resumed a few years later, and USAF officials announced in August 2019 that it had finished work on 173 of the Thunderbolts.

A few weeks after that announcement, however, the Air Force announced it was giving Boeing another contract, this time for up to 112 wing assemblies. However, by that point the production line was “dry,” Boeing said in its release, with “tools and equipment housed in long-term storage.”

Production eventually resumed, and the company, “in partnership with Korean Aerospace Industries,” is working to deliver 50 wing sets to the Air Force.

The wing sets consist of outer wing assemblies, center wing assembly, control surfaces, and the fuselage integration kit, Boeing’s release states, and will extend the A-10’s flying life to 10,000 hours.

“The A-10 serves a critical role for the Air Force and Boeing is proud to extend our legacy of supporting the Thunderbolt and its mission,” Dan Gillian, vice president of U.S. Government Services for Boeing Global Services, said in a statement. “In partnership with the Air Force and our established supply base, we have started full rate production and are actively supporting the customer’s installation schedule.”

The re-winging of the A-10 comes as the Air Force continues its push to retire the attack aircraft, which remains beloved by many, despite Air Force officials’ continual protests that the airframe is not survivable in a contested environment and not relevant in a future fight.

Congress has repeatedly blocked any efforts to sunset the A-10 and instead have funded the wing replacement program, trying to keep the close air support aircraft going through the 2030s.

EUCOM Nominee: European Deterrence Initiative Has Been as Vital as ‘Oxygen’

May 26, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

Over the past several years, the Pentagon has dedicated nearly $30 billion in funding to the European Deterrence Initiative, helping to bolster the U.S. military’s posture and flexibility in the region to respond to Russian aggression.

In that time, the initiative has become “absolutely vital” to U.S. forces in Europe, the potential next boss of U.S. European Command and Supreme Allied Commander Europe told lawmakers on May 26—and he wants to expand its impacts to include an Air Force effort that has fallen off the radar for some.

Army Gen. Christopher G. Cavoli currently serves as commander of U.S. Army Europe-Africa and has a long history in the EUCOM area of responsibility. And in his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Cavoli gave the EDI a strong endorsement, especially as Russia’s war with Ukraine drags on.

“The European Deterrence Initiative has not just been important, it’s kind of been like oxygen to us for several years now,” Cavoli told senators. “It’s the thing that allows us to do all of the exercising, to build all of the infrastructure, to preposition all of the equipment that we’ve been using and that you’ve seen us use in response to this crisis.”

EDI, first called the European Reassurance Initiative, began in 2014 under then-President Barack Obama with $800 million. Over the next several years, funding progressively increased all the way to $6.5 billion in fiscal 2019. That was followed by a multi-year decline, down to $3.8 billion in the fiscal 2022 budget, as Pentagon officials said the initiative had achieved many of its goals, according to U.S. News and World Report.

But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February has sparked a global response, and the Defense Department’s 2023 budget request would increase the EDI funding for the first time in four years, to roughly $4.2 billion.

Cavoli credited past funding for enabling forces to prepare for crises like the current one and he advocated for it to continue.

“Since my first tour as a general officer in Europe, when the original ERI was authorized and appropriated, we’ve been benefiting from it,” Cavoli said. “We’ve slowly but surely used it to put infrastructure into place where we are pre-positioning equipment. And now we exercise that equipment at a large scale with the funding that this committee authorizes. It’s absolutely vital to what we’ve been doing. And I think we’ve seen the benefits of it in our rapid ability to react in the past couple of months.”

Specifically, Cavoli noted that with EDI funds, the Army was able to preposition “very modern equipment—brigade combat team sets”—in Europe and train how to transport troops over to the continent and get the equipment out of storage fast.

So when the call came for thousands of troops to deploy to Europe to respond to Russia’s invasion and bolster NATO’s eastern flank, “we moved all the troops in about four days by aircraft. And those troops, the first of them, were putting rounds downrange in less than a week,” Cavoli said. “And by the end of three weeks, every single screwdriver in the brigade had been issued.”

Cavoli’s enthusiasm for pre-positioning Army equipment has been shared by EUCOM’s current commander Gen. Tod D. Wolters, who testified to its impact in March. But, in his written responses to Advance Policy Questions, Cavoli said he would consider expanding the concept.

“If confirmed, I foresee this strategy continuing in all domains (e.g., Air Force Deployable Air Base Sets (DABS), special operations forces equipment) because it enhances our ability to respond swiftly and decisively to assure our Allies and deter further Russian aggression,” Cavoli wrote.

The Air Force’s Deployable Air Base Set, sometimes referred to as an “air base in a box,” is a package that includes equipment, facilities, vehicles, and health service support that is prepositioned so it can be used to quickly establish base operations and generate sorties without needing to airlift in supplies.

The Air Force was set to begin procurement of DABS, but the Defense Department’s inspector general released a report in January 2019 faulting the effort for a lack of coordination or designated program manager, resulting in delays.

Since then, there hasn’t been much public discussion about DABS, but pre-positioning equipment to support rapid deployments would seem to dovetail with the Air Force’s own efforts in Agile Combat Employment, the operational concept of relying on small teams of multi-capable Airmen to operate in austere locations and move quickly. And work has continued in places like Campia Turzii Air Base, Romania, to build the infrastructure needed for DABS.

Nahom: F-35s Must be the Aggressors at Nellis and JPARC, Contract AdAir Not Enough

May 26, 2022 | By John A. Tirpak

“Adversary Air” companies are no longer able to provide a worthwhile opponent to Air Force fighters at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev., and the Joint Pacific Alaska Range Complex (JPARC) Alaska, so Air Combat Command is letting contracts lapse and working toward creating a permanent F-35 Aggressor capability.

“What we’re finding, now … is these contracts aren’t very effective at Nellis at the high-end training environment,” Lt. Gen. David S. Nahom, deputy chief of staff for plans and programs, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on May 17. “What they provide is not giving us what we need.”

Draken International has the adversary air contract for Nellis. The current contract, let in 2018, is for $280 million. Layoff notices from the company prompted Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) to question Nahom on USAF’s plans, telling him she is “concerned” there will be an AdAir gap while the Air Force establishes an F-35 Aggressor capability, saying that “63 percent” of Aggressor hours are supplied by contractors. Rosen quoted to him his response to a query, received by her staffers, that USAF will perform AdAir “completely organically … while ACC builds an F-35 Aggressor capability. But timing of this growth and capability is yet to be determined.”

Nahom explained that, “five, six years ago,” the Air Force didn’t need a fifth-generation adversary aircraft, but China now fields such fighters, and that has increased the sophistication needed for sparring partners at USAF’s two marquee fighter training ranges.

“As the China threat has stepped up, we have to step up our replication,” Nahom said, “And, what the contractor’s providing there at Nellis … is not what we need … for that high-end piece that we get at the NTTR (Nevada Test and Training Range) … and JPARC in Alaska … [They] are the only two places that you get that high-end training anywhere in the world.”

He said adversary air companies “do wonderful work for the Air Force, especially at our Formal Training Units, or FTUs, where we train basic fighter pilots how to fly.” The work at the FTUs is sufficient—“the contracts are very effective”—and Nahom suggested that this work will continue.

“While the Nellis training range is a national treasure—and it’s very important that we obtain that high-end capability—there’s also a transition that our service is making to more and more virtual training,” Nahom added. “And it’s critical because a lot of things cannot be replicated in ‘real.’” He emphasized that while flying hours in real-world aircraft are critical, so is USAF’s investment “in a virtual simulation environment.” It will “ensure that our aircrews maintain that edge.”

Draken has built a for-hire adversary air force that includes Russian MiG-21s, U.S. A-4 Skyhawks, French Mirage F1s and the derivative South African Atlas Cheetah, as well as Czech Aero L-159A Honey Badgers and MB-339s. Recently, it began acquiring ex-Dutch F-16A/Bs.

Just a year ago, a Draken F1 crashed at Nellis, killing the pilot. Another F1, this one belonging to Airborne Tactical Advantage Company (ATAC), crashed at Luke Air Force in February, but the pilot ejected to safety. Two other contract AdAir accidents have occurred since 2018, but Nahom did not indicate that safety plays any role in USAF’s decision to bring high-end Aggressor work back in-house.

Draken, ATAC, and Tactical Air Support were awarded contracts in July 2020 worth up to $433.6 million to provide 5,418 annual sorties at five ACC bases. ACC envisioned contracting as much as $6.4 billion of adversary air work at 12 bases, including 40,000 hours of air-to-air and 10,000 hours of close air support work. It’s not clear how much of that work will not be awarded given ACC’s decision to make Aggressor work at Nellis and JPARC organic. Other companies authorized to bid on the AdAir work include Air USA, Blue Air Training, Coastal Defense, and Top Aces Corp.

An industry source said Draken was given only 60 days notice of the contract lapse, after the Air Force “led them to believe they would still be in high demand.” There is “no published Air Force vision” for AdAir or electronic warfare aggressors, he said, and the service will “struggle to find” enough training resources as a result of “its choice to drastically cut contract AdAir.”

This story was updated at 8:59 a.m. Eastern time July 5, 2022, to correct the state and party affiliation of Sen. Jacky Rosen.

New Commanders Tapped for Air Force Sustainment Center, 16th Air Force

May 25, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

A pair of Air Force generals are set to receive third stars and take over new commands. The Pentagon announced a new slate of nominations May 25.

President Joe Biden nominated Maj. Gen. Stacey T. Hawkins to become a lieutenant general and the new commander of the Air Force Sustainment Center at Tinker Air Force Base, Okla. The Air Force Sustainment Center oversees most of the service’s maintenance and installation support enterprises and monitors supply chain activities. Weapons system sustainment accounts for tens of millions of dollars every year in the Air Force budget.

Hawkins currently serves as director of logistics, engineering, and force protection at Air Combat Command. With a background in maintenance operations, Hawkins previously served at Tinker in 2012 and 2013 as the deputy commander for maintenance at the Oklahoma City Air Logistics Complex, a unit within the Air Force Sustainment Center.

The Air Force Sustainment Center is currently led by Lt. Gen. Tom D. Miller, who has held the job since August 2021.

Also nominated for a third star May 25 was Maj. Gen. Kevin B. Kennedy, with an appointment as commander of the 16th Air Force at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, Texas.

The 16th Air Force was activated in 2019, the result of an effort within Air Combat Command to merge its intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, cyber, weather, and other units into one “information warfare” numbered Air Force. The digitally-focused NAF has taken the lead in areas such as cyber and spectrum warfare, areas of conflict in the so-called “gray zone” short of kinetic attacks.

Kennedy, if confirmed, would replace Lt. Gen. Timothy D. Haugh, the NAF’s first commander. Kennedy currently serves as director of operations for U.S. Cyber Command and has previously worked in several positions under the Air Force’s chief information officer.

In addition to Hawkins and Kennedy, the Pentagon also announced two nominees for promotions. Brig. Gen. John J. Bartrum and Brig. Gen. Richard L. Kemble are to both receive second stars.

Barnum currently serves as the mobilization assistant to the surgeon general of the Air Force, while Kemble is the director of plans, programs, and requirements for Air Force Reserve Command.

Austin Warns Academy Grads of Adversary Tests; Kendall Says Transformational Change Is Coming

May 25, 2022 | By Abraham Mahshie

Blue skies graced Falcon Stadium in Colorado Springs, Colo., where 973 Air Force Academy cadets graduated May 25 and began careers facing unprecedented challenges and technological advances. There, commencement speaker Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III warned that adversaries are testing America’s values.

“Today, America’s adversaries are testing the very values that you swore to defend,” Austin told the new second lieutenants. “You’re here to defend America’s security and win America’s wars. But we’re also here to safeguard America’s values.”

Austin pointed to two examples: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s aggressive behavior in the Pacific.

The defense Secretary gave five pieces of advice, including the importance of teamwork, which he described in terms of U.S. allies and partners.

“America’s unrivaled network of allies and partners is so important,” Austin reflected. “They’re crucial to what I call integrated deterrence. They extend our strength; they magnify our power; and they deepen our security.”

Austin commended the graduates for withstanding the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, which restricted graduates to their dorm rooms during their sophomore year, and told them that the world they face will require discipline and innovation.

Of the 973 graduates, 16 represent 15 countries, including lesser-known American partners on the African continent such as Cameroon, Madagascar, Rwanda, and Niger; and Central Asian and Indo-Pacific countries including Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Kazakhstan, and Thailand.

Graduates were 73 percent male and 27 percent female, and 31 percent represented minorities. Of the graduates, 461 were rated, including 417 pilots, 11 combat systems officers, nine air battle managers, and 24 remotely piloted aircraft operators. Another 382 graduates were non-rated, and 94 graduates commissioned into the Space Force. Three graduates cross-commissioned into the Army and six into the Marine Corps.

Three cadets received scholarships for advanced degrees in the United Kingdom, including two Marshall scholarships and one Holaday Scholarship, while two more cadets received fellowships at Stanford University.

“I know that you’re ready because I see Academy graduates shine every day,” Austin said. “When I travel the world from Eastern Europe to the Indo-Pacific to remote bases, I see young lieutenants and captains just like yourself.”

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said cadets will face transformational change in their careers.

“You begin your service just as we are entering a new and more dangerous strategic era,” Kendall said.

“You are at an inflection point in history,” he added, noting the shift from counterinsurgency to great power competition in the past two decades. “You must be prepared to do your duty in an environment that features the greatest strategic challenge we’ve seen in a lifetime, my lifetime at least. And some of the most significant technological changes in the history of warfare.”

Kendall said graduates’ Air Force careers will be dominated by the National Defense Strategy‘s pacing threat of China, just as he faced the Soviet threat when he graduated from the Army’s U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., in 1971.

“You, too, will face a strategic, well-resourced threat that is doing all it can to be able to defeat the Air and Space Forces that you joined today,” Kendall said. “I believe that you are ready.”

Air Force Medical Service Reviewing How Teams Can Be ‘Lighter, Leaner’ in Future Conflicts

May 25, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

As the Air Force presses forward with its concept of agile combat employment, relying on small teams of multi-capable Airmen to operate in austere locations and move quickly, the service’s surgeon general is considering ways the Air Force’s medical personnel can also become “increasingly modular, lighter, [and] leaner,” he told lawmakers May 25.

The Air Force Medical Service, led by Lt. Gen. Robert I. Miller, has been repeatedly tested in recent years, first by the COVID-19 pandemic and then by the evacuation of Afghan civilians in the summer of 2021. And in those crises, medical Airmen “played a crucial role in supporting the demands of the Department of Defense and our Nation,” Miller said in his written testimony to the House Appropriations defense subcommittee.

AFMS helped to transport patients critically ill from COVID-19 and established field hospitals at multiple locations to assist Afghan refugees.

But moving forward, Miller wrote, the medical service is “re-imagining the design and future of our readiness capabilities.”

“We must build on past success, but be willing to break the cultural norms that say, ‘things have always been done this way,’” Miller wrote. “We are exploring and challenging our previous decisions about the size and types of clinical teams, and how to best train and sustain their skills. We believe innovation and fresh ideas will enable us to be more resilient and expand these teams’ capacity within the current AFMS end strength total.”

As part of that re-imagining, AFMS is undertaking a pair of reviews on critical medic response capabilities: forward-deployable teams and the Expeditionary Medical Support system.

In the first case, the service is looking to move away from a “one size fits all” approach for its ground deployable medical teams so that they are more adaptable to combatant commanders’ needs, Miller said. As part of the review process, Miller said, AFMS wants to “validate [teams’] size, scope and capabilities relative to the future fight and technological changes.”

On the second front, the Expeditionary Medical Support System (EMEDS) is essentially a tent-based field hospital, equipped with “modular, medical response packages and equipment” for use in humanitarian aid, disaster relief, or in wartime. The Air Force Medical Service has kept the system ready to go for both the COVID-19 pandemic and for assisting Afghan refugees, Miller noted.

Still, “the EMEDS was initially designed two decades ago,” Miller wrote. “It is time for a full review of the capability, exploring needs related to increased modular functions, operations in contested and degraded environments.”

Both review processes will be completed before the end of 2022, Miller wrote, with a goal of providing commanders “with greater flexibility and range of options with advanced care that is highly mobile and ready to operate in the most challenging of environments.”

Operating in contested and degraded environments is precisely what the Air Force has said agile combat employment, or ACE, is aimed at accomplishing—creating so-called “multi-capable Airmen.” AFMS has its own version of multi-capable Airmen as well—the Medic-X program.

Medic-X has been going for several years now, aimed at teaching Airmen in non-patient care career fields “to provide base-level medical support” in events like mass casualty scenarios where traditional medical capabilities are overwhelmed, by taking vital signs, administering IVs, or documenting care.

Such skills could be necessary in future conflicts, Miller argued, when medics may need “to hold and treat patients in deployed settings for longer periods than in the past. We are actively evaluating how our teams can remain agile and leverage technology to provide trusted care.”

INDOPACOM Condemns ‘Destabilizing’ North Korean Missile Test as Biden Returned From the Pacific

May 25, 2022 | By Abraham Mahshie

North Korea conducted it’s 17th round of ballistic missile tests of the year May 24, including a believed intercontinental ballistic missile, in the skies over the Pacific while President Joe Biden was returning to the United States from the region.

U.S. Indo-Pacific Command reported that the tests did not pose an “immediate threat” to the U.S. homeland, while Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III called his South Korean counterpart to reassure the ally.

Biden concluded his five-day Pacific trip to Japan and South Korea May 24 under high alert that North Korean may conduct another ballistic missile test, and the north fired three rockets in violation of UN Security Council resolutions according to press reports. The first was believed to be an ICBM, the second failed in mid-air, and the third was a short-range ballistic missile.

“The missile launches [highlight] the destabilizing impact of the DPRK’s illicit weapons program,” read a May 25 statement by INDOPACOM. “The U.S. commitment to the defense of the Republic of Korea and Japan remains ironclad.”

Likewise, Austin called his South Korean counterpart May 24 to discuss responses to the DPRK ballistic missile launches.

“The two leaders strongly condemned today’s missile launches and pledged to work closely together to address the serious threat the DPRK’s provocative actions pose to the peace and stability of the Korean Peninsula, the region, and the global community more broadly,” the Pentagon said in a statement.

The White House was prepared for the possibility of ballistic missile tests by North Korea, and Biden’s travel itinerary highlighted U.S. and Pacific ally readiness with a May 22 stop by the president to the Air Operations Center’s combat operations floor at Osan Air Base, South Korea, where the threat from North Korean ballistic missiles is tracked.

“The fact is that deterring threats and underwriting stability is as vital today for not only the Peninsula but for the world,” Biden said during the visit.

In a May 21 joint statement with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, Biden emphasized the U.S. commitment to defend the Republic of Korea.

“President Biden affirms the U.S. extended deterrence commitment to the ROK using the full range of U.S. defense capabilities, including nuclear, conventional, and missile defense capabilities,” the statement read.

Three Cadets Receive Degrees—But No Commissions—After COVID-19 Vaccine Refusal

May 25, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

A grand total of 973 Cadets graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy on May 25, with the vast majority commissioning into either the Air Force or the Space Force. But for three in particular, the day was destined to end with a degree but no immediate future in military service.

Those three Cadets have continued to refuse the COVID-19 vaccination, putting them at odds with Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III’s order that all service members get the shot or receive an accommodation.

As a result, the U.S. Air Force Academy Board, made up of Academy leaders, decided during their standard review of the class of 2022 to let those Cadets graduate with a bachelor of science degree but not allow them to commission into the Air Force or Space Force, the Academy confirmed in a statement.

The statement, however, does include the caveat that the Cadets won’t be able to commission “as long as they remain unvaccinated.” Lt. Gen. Richard M. Clark, superintendent of the Academy, has set a deadline of Aug. 1 for Cadets to begin a COVID-19 vaccine regimen or face disenrollment, potentially leaving a small window for the refusers to reverse course.

Originally, the number of seniors refusing the vaccine was reported to be four, but one of the Cadets decided to take the vaccine.

Because of their inability to commission into the Air Force or Space Force, the three remaining Cadets could be on the hook to reimburse the government for their tuition costs, similar to how other Cadets removed from the Academy as juniors or seniors owe either service obligations or tuition repayment.

That decision, however, has yet to be made and will be determined by the Secretary of the Air Force, the Academy said in its statement.

According to the Department of the Air Force’s most recent statistics, the department has separated 399 service members over their vaccine refusals. Thousands more have seen their requests for religious accommodations be denied, leaving them with limited options—get the shot, appeal to the Air Force surgeon general, or start the separation/retirement process. If their appeal is denied by the surgeon general, as more than 2,700 already have been, the service members have five days to start the vaccination process or face separation.

The overwhelming majority of Airmen and Guardians, however, have gotten vaccinated—some 98.6 percent of those on Active duty.

Joining their ranks May 25 will be 937 Cadets commissioning as well as graduating—843 into the Air Force and 94 into the Space Force.

Of those 843:

417 are scheduled to attend pilot training.
11 are scheduled for combat systems operator training.
9 are scheduled for air battle manager training.
24 are scheduled to be remotely piloted aircraft officers.
382 will be in nonrated career fields.

Also included in the graduating class are 16 international Cadets—appointees from foreign countries that have spent four years at USAFA.