As Drones Grow More Sophisticated, Export Rules Still Stuck in 1980s, Experts Say

April 19, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

As the Air Force moves forward with plans to use unmanned aircraft systems in new and increasingly powerful ways, the U.S. is still stuck in terms of how much it can share those capabilities with allies and partners—creating a dangerous vacuum that China has moved to fill, analysts say.

For years, the U.S. has followed a non-binding, voluntary, informal agreement to limit the proliferation of missiles and missile technology—the Missile Technology Control Regime formed in 1987 defines unmanned systems as nuclear missiles.

As a result, proposed foreign military sales of drones have frequently been shut down by the State Department. This approach, however, is becoming increasingly untenable as more nations and non-state actors field drones and the systems become more integral to the U.S.’s own planned future force, argued AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies Senior Fellow Heather Penney in a virtual press conference and presentation debuting her new policy paper, “Building Alliances and Competing with China: The Imperative for UAV Export Reforms.”

The Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies rolls out its newest policy paper: Building Alliances and Competing with China: The Imperative for UAV Export Reforms by Heather Penney, Senior Resident Fellow (top left), The Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. Paul Scharre (top right), Vice President and Director of Studies, Center for a New American Security and Mitchell Institute dead retired Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula (bottom) join the discussion.

It’s an issue Penney has raised before, pointing out that because of the U.S.’s continued deference to the MTCR, China has stepped up to become the provider of drone technology for many countries. As a result, the MTCR’s goal of preventing the proliferation of such technology has failed—at least 95 militaries have an active UAS inventory, Penney noted, with at least 32 importing Chinese drones.

This has follow-on effects: less money for the defense industrial base, less influence on how other countries are trained and use their drones, and decreased interoperability. Retired Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, dean of the Mitchell Institute, noted that in the fight against ISIS, the U.S. refused to sell Jordan drones. The result, Penney added, was that Jordan bought CH-4 drones from China.

“We couldn’t integrate with Jordanian CH-4s because we knew that China was gathering intelligence and collecting on those Jordanian operations and therefore would be collecting on us as well,” Penney said. “So it really does drive a wedge in our ability to operate with our partners.”

As long as the MTCR continues to define UAVs as missiles, there will be resistance within the State Department bureaucracy to approve any export sales, said Paul Scharre, director of studies at the Center for a New American Security.

“We’ve seen successive administrations make changes to their U.S. export policies, trying to overcome these hurdles. The Obama administration did. The Trump administration did,” Scharre said. “We haven’t been able to break through this deadlock inside the bureaucracy. And fundamentally, what we’re going to need is a reinterpretation of the MTCR to get us to that point.”

The current war between Russia and Ukraine highlights both the potential benefits and challenges facing drone exports, the experts said.

On one hand, Turkey has sold Ukraine TB2 drones, which “have been very effective enabling the Ukrainian military to be successful against a much larger force,” Penney said.

On the other, the U.S. has touted its own transfer of Switchblades to Ukraine, with officials referring to them as unmanned aircraft systems and media reports frequently referring to them as “kamikaze drones.” In actuality, Penney said, the weapons are loitering munitions—they fly above targets and then hit targets, detonating as they do so. Referring to Switchblades as drones creates confusion, Penney argued, and gives the illusion of progress on the drone export issue.

“I think that it’s important that we understand that aircraft [are] vehicles that are recoverable,” Penney said. “They’re not one way, they’re not weapons, but we can bring them back and reuse them—that we define those as aircraft.”

This will be increasingly important, Penney and Scharre said, as UAVs develop and grow more sophisticated. Already, the Air Force has said it plans to develop unmanned “teammates” to fly alongside manned platforms. Optionally piloted aircraft, which can be manned or unmanned, are becoming more widely available, including the Air Force’s own QF-16. And completely autonomous systems are starting to emerge, too.

As these technologies develop, the U.S. should retain the ability to export them to partners, the analysts said. But that doesn’t mean they should be available to anybody.

“It comes down to being discriminating regarding what the needs of our allies and partners are, how they plan on using it, and what’s in our interest and how we plan on operating and integrating with our partners and allies,” Penney said, comparing the issue to being selective with which nations can buy the F-35 to safeguard its advanced capabilities.

“The simple answer is that we should transfer them when it’s in our interest to do so,” added Scharre. “ … Just like any other technology, when there are advantages to us selling to partners, then we should be willing to do so and not allow ourselves to trip over our own feet in terms of getting stuck in the bureaucracy.”

USMC Hornet Squadron Pivots from Arctic to Poland to Replace USAF in Air Policing

April 19, 2022 | By Abraham Mahshie

LASK AIR BASE, Poland—Marine Corps F/A-18 Hornets had no sooner finished a six-week deployment in the Arctic before a real-world contingency required them to redeploy to NATO’s eastern flank.

The Marine Corps rarely conducts NATO Air Policing. But in the total force muscle flex triggered by Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 312 finished Exercise Cold Response in Norway and flew south to central Poland. They replaced eight U.S. Air Force F-15Es from the 336th Fighter Squadron at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, N.C.

“We were best suited based on our readiness and proximity,” said executive officer Maj. Tyson Griffith, speaking to Air Force Magazine on a windy flight line here as ice crystals circulated in the air.

“We haven’t done it before, but we’ve been trained to these things,” Griffith said of the Air Policing mission. “Guys are excited to do non-training stuff to put into action everything that we’ve been preparing for.”

Lask — Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 312 executive officer Maj. Tyson Griffith discusses the first Marine Corps NATO Air Policing mission to the eastern flank of NATO, April 11, 2022. Staff photo by Abraham Mahshie.

In early February, President Joe Biden quickly ramped up deployments to NATOs eastern flank to reassure allies, moving F-15Es from RAF Lakenheath and Seymour Johnson; F/A-18s from Aviano Air Base, Italy; F-16s from Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany; and F-35s from Lakenheath and Hill Air Force Base, Utah, for a show of air power on borders with Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine.

Poland quickly responded, hosting an array of U.S. fighter aircraft.

American aircraft do not have a dedicated hangar at Lask, instead lining up in two perpendicular rows along the flight line. The adjustment means three-hour crew rotations for maintainers working with bare hands in the whipping wind and freezing temperatures.

The 10 multirole jets and 24 aircrew members fly four sorties a day, two F/A-18s per mission of two to four hours each, with instructions handed down from the NATO Combined Air Operations Center (CAOC) at Uedem, Germany.

The first pair of jets sometimes depart from the tree-shrouded airfield in total darkness as early as 3:30 a.m. The squadron is refueled by its own KC-130J, also deployed to Lask, from USMC Aerial Refueler Training Squadron 252, Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, N.C.

“It’s been pretty seamless,” said Hamilton. “Coming from here and working with the Norwegians, working with the Polish, working with the [U.S.] Air Force, there’s honestly no difference than anything at home.”

“It’s definitely kind of unprecedented, but the Marine Corps, this is what we train to all the time,” said weapons system officer Capt. Heather Hamilton, who sits in the back seat of the F/A-18D.

In combat, the weapons officer provides close air support, while in Air Policing she is using the feed on her screen from the jets’ sensors to identify aircraft in the area of operations.

“Is that a friendly airliner? Is it another NATO aircraft, or is it possibly an adversary aircraft?” she said over the sound of a KC-130J powering up for takeoff in support of an afternoon mission. “That’s my job in the backseat.”

The Marine Corps’ pivot, though unplanned, transitioned smoothly to working with the Polish Air Force, said American service members interviewed.

Unlike U.S. Air Force units commuting three hours from Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany, to various sites on the NATO eastern flank, the F/A-18s flying from Lask Air Base, Poland, stay exclusively in Polish air space, some 60 miles east of the base. That positions them inside 200 miles of Brest, Belarus, an airport near the tri-border of Poland-Belarus-Ukraine that Russia has used to shell Ukraine. Brest also sits some 190 miles north of Lviv, in western Ukraine, which came under attack from the air again April 18.

The Marine Corps mission in Poland requires regular communications with Polish NATO allies and follows the interoperability practiced at Cold Response, where Marines worked with a range of allied nations for the six weeks of preparation and exercises. During that operation March 18, four Marines in a V-22 Osprey died in a crash that is still under investigation.

Operations in cold weather are still a challenge, causing a different set of problems for aircraft.

“Our components aren’t used to the cold weather as much,” said airframes mechanic Sgt. Thomas Garcia, who works on landing gear, hydraulics, and flight control surfaces with his bare hands in the cold Polish springtime.

“It gives us a better chance to understand how the aircraft works in a cold environment so we can prepare ourselves for the future,” Garcia said.

“We’re kind of excited that we’re here right now,” he said, reflecting on NATO’s mission in Poland, so close to the war in Ukraine. “This is one of those moments where we already know what to do, and we have to do it.”

Air Force’s Outgoing 1st Chief Architect Officer Offers 4 Steps for Overcoming Bureaucracy

April 19, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

Preston Dunlap, the Department of the Air Force’s first-ever chief architect officer, is set to leave the Pentagon in the coming weeks, he confirmed in a lengthy LinkedIn post on April 18—and he has a long list of recommendations for those coming after him on how to combat Defense Department bureaucracy.

Dunlap’s departure, first reported by Bloomberg, marks the latest exit by a high-ranking Air Force official tasked with modernizing the department. In September 2021, Nicolas M. Chaillan, the first-ever chief software officer of the Air Force, announced his resignation, also on LinkedIn and also offering a candid assessment of the challenges facing DAF.

Dunlap first came to the Air Force in 2019, primarily to oversee the architecture of both the Air Force and Space Force. In particular, though, he was tasked with helping to jumpstart the development and organization of the Advanced Battle Management System, the Air Force’s contribution to joint all-domain command and control—the so-called military Internet of Things that will connect sensors and shooters into one massive network.

Under Dunlap, progress on ABMS proceeded with numerous experiments and transitioned to a program executive office. Dunlap also helped with the development of an “integrated warfighting network” to allow small teams of Airmen serving in far-flung locations to use their work laptops on deployments.

“It’s been my honor to help our nation get desperately needed technology into the hands of our service members who place their lives on the line every day,” Dunlap wrote on LinkedIn. “Some of that technology was previously unimaginable before we developed new capabilities, and at other times it was previously unattainable—available commercially, yet beyond DOD’s grasp.”

Initially, Dunlap wrote, he signed on for two years in the Pentagon, before agreeing to extend his stay for a third year. Now, as he departs, he is joining Chaillan in pointing out the DOD’s shortcomings when it comes to innovation and pushing the department to revolutionize its approach, especially for adopting new technologies, so that it can, in his words, “defy gravity.”

“Not surprisingly to anyone who has worked for or with the government before, I arrived to find no budget, no authority, no alignment of vision, no people, no computers, no networks, a leaky ceiling, even a broken curtain,” Dunlap wrote.

In looking to break through bureaucracy, Dunlap wrote, he followed four key steps that he urged his successor to follow: shock the system, flip the acquisition script, just deliver already, and slay the valley of death and scale.

In doing so, he said, he sought to operate more like SpaceX, the aerospace company founded by Elon Musk that has earned plaudits for its fast-moving, innovative practices.

“By the time the government manages to produce something, it is too often obsolete; no business would ever survive this way, nor should it. Following a commercial approach, just like SpaceX, allowed me to accomplish a number of ‘firsts’ in DOD in under two years,” Dunlap wrote.

Among those firsts, Dunlap referenced the integration of artificial intelligence into military kill chains, interoperability of data and communications across different satellites and aircraft, the deployment of zero trust architecture, and the promotion of security in software development, known as DevSecOps.

In addition, Dunlap argued for a “reformatting” of the Pentagon’s acquisition enterprise, an oft-criticized process seen by many as out-dated and antiquated. By leveraging commercial technologies, shifting focus to outcomes instead of detailed requirements, putting more investments in outside innovators, and pushing forward with a concerted, rapid pace, the Pentagon can start to “regrow its thinning technological edge,” Dunlap wrote.

In order to help develop innovation and progress, Dunlap also pushed for flexibility—both in how the department works and connects, and in how it develops new systems. In particular, he argued for open systems and open architectures to allow new systems to rapidly adapt to and integrate new capabilities as they are developed, pointing to the B-21 Raider and Next-Generation Air Dominance programs as examples of that approach.

“We should never be satisfied,” Dunlap closed by writing. “We need this kind of progress at scale now, not tomorrow. So let’s be careful to not…

“Lull ourselves into complacency, when we should be running on all cylinders.
“Do things the same way, when we should be doing things better.
“Distract ourselves with process, when we should be focused on delivering product.
“Compete with each other, when we should be competing with China.
“Defend our turf, when we should be defending our country.
“Focus on input metrics, when we should be focused on output metrics.
“Buy the same things, when we should be investing in what we need.
“Be comfortable with the way things are, when we should be fighting for the way things should be.”

Dunlap’s departure comes at a seeming inflection point for the ABMS program he was tasked with overseeing. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall has indicated he wants to take a different approach to the program, focusing more on specific operational impacts delivered quickly and less on experiments showing advanced capabilities.

“We can’t invest in everything, and we shouldn’t invest in improvements that don’t have clear operational benefit,” Kendall said March 3 at the AFA Warfare Symposium in Orlando, Fla.. “We must be more focused on specific things with measurable value and operational impact.”

As part of that approach, Kendall has made it one of his organizational imperatives to more fully define the goals and impacts the ABMS program is going for.

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Last Goblet Turned Over for Dick Cole and His Comrades on 80th Anniversary of Tokyo Raid

April 18, 2022 | By John A. Tirpak

On the 80th anniversary of the Doolittle Raid against Japan, Air Force leaders performed the last “goblet” ceremony, bidding a formal farewell to the last of the Raiders, Lt. Col. Dick Cole, and honoring his fellow aircrew members.

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, at the Mattie Kelly Arts Center on the campus of Northwest Florida State College in Niceville, toasted the Doolittle Raiders, saying, “To those who have gone.” The Raiders trained for their historic mission in the area.

The April 18, 1942, mission, led by then-Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle, launched Army Air Forces B-25 Mitchell bombers from the USS Hornet aircraft carrier toward targets in Japan, mostly in the vicinity of Tokyo. Although the bombing attack inflicted minimal damage on the Japanese government and war industry, it proved a major morale boost to Americans, as it marked the first time the U.S. was able to strike back against the Japanese home islands after the attack on Pearl Harbor. It broke the Japanese military’s confidence that the home islands were impervious to attack and, according to Doolittle’s autobiography, “sowed doubt” in the minds of the Japanese that their military could protect them.

Of the 80 Raiders who took part in the mission, 72 made it home, and 61 survived the war, holding annual reunions from 1946. The Doolittle Tokyo Raiders Association created the “goblet ceremony,” where, at each annual reunion, survivors drank to fallen comrades from silver goblets bearing their names, while the goblets of those Raiders who had died the previous year were turned over and placed in a blue velvet box.

The last surviving Raider was Cole, Doolittle’s co-pilot, who died in 2019 at the age of 103. He raised the last toast to his comrades in 2017, unable to attend further ceremonies due to age and health. Cole built the box that houses the goblets.

The final goblet ceremony was deferred due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the desire to mark it on the 80th anniversary. Kendall drank the final toast to Cole and the other Raiders, along with Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. and other senior leaders as well as members of the Doolittle Raiders’ families.

Cole attended the Air Force Association annual conference in 2016, when the new B-21 bomber was assigned the nickname “Raider” in honor of the members of the Doolittle mission. Upon Cole’s 2019 death, AFA president Lt. Gen. Bruce “Orville” Wright called him an “ambassador for airpower … up until the very last.”

The Raiders trained in secret for several months before the mission, learning how to coax their B-25s into the air with a minimum of takeoff space while carrying twice the B-25’s normal load of fuel. The aircraft were also modified in other ways, with much regular gear—including radios, guns, and Norden bombsights—removed to lighten the aircraft and extend their flight time.

The raid launched 10 hours ahead of schedule because the Navy detected a Japanese vessel that might have raised a warning. To preserve surprise, the mission launched 200 miles farther from Japan than the plan called for.

Doolittle and Cole had the toughest takeoff, as their bomber was first in line, with the shortest amount of deck space. Their technique was to reach the edge of the flight deck as the ship crested a swell, leaving more room to gain airspeed after departing the ship. A total of 16 B-25s departed the Hornet. The original plan called for the aircraft to land in China, but the early takeoff doomed most of them to crashes or water ditches. A sole airplane landed in Russia and was confiscated, its crew imprisoned until later in the war.

Though Doolittle feared a court-martial for losing all the aircraft under his command, the mission was deemed a great success, and Doolittle was advanced two steps, to brigadier general. He finished the war as a three-star general, having commanded the 8th Air Force in Europe, but was advanced by Congress to full four-star general rank in 1985.

U.S. Military Posture Changes Needed in Europe, Pentagon Says

April 18, 2022 | By John A. Tirpak

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has changed the security situation in Europe, and the U.S will have to shift its long-term military posture there as a result—but it’s too soon to say how, according to Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby. Kirby also said Russia seems to be trying to “learn from its mistakes” in Ukraine but still has most of its pre-war combat capability, despite its losses.

“The European security environment has changed and will stay changed as a result of Mr. Putin’s willingness to conduct an unprovoked invasion of a neighboring state,” Kirby said in a press conference. Russia’s military “failures notwithstanding, that war is still ongoing” and is prompting a review of the U.S. posture in Europe, he said. While Kirby had “no answers for you today” about what those will be, discussions are ongoing within the Pentagon and with allies and partners, and no decisions will be made “without full consultation” with them.

Asked if it was true that Russia retains some 85 percent of the conventional combat capability it had before the Feb. 22 invasion, Kirby declined to quote figures.

“I don’t want to get into percentages and specific data here on their combat power,” he said. “I would just say that we still believe that they have the vast majority of their combat power available to them, even with the losses.” For the invasion, Russia assembled a combined-arms team including “aviation, armor, artillery, infantry, special operations, airborne … and they still have a majority of that available to them, even with the losses that they’ve sustained in the last few weeks,” Kirby said.

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. said April 12 that the Ukraine war had not appreciably changed the service’s assessment of forces needed for the European theater, as USAF had been contemplating the European situation since it began withdrawing forces from the Middle East over the last couple of years. The invasion was predicted by intelligence last fall and had largely been accounted for in the fiscal 2023 budget, Brown said. Still, USAF has moved additional fighters, tankers, and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance aircraft into the European theater over the past few months, as well as bombers on a rotational basis, all to reassure NATO allies who feel threatened by the invasion of Ukraine.

Kirby said Russia is “trying to learn from past mistakes” in its invasion and that the appointment of Gen. Alexander Dvornikov as commander of all Ukraine operations is an acknowledgement that the initial operational concept for command and control was flawed, as was the concept for logistics, which Kirby characterized as a failure. It’s “too soon to know” if Russia has effectively learned much from its mistakes so far, he said.

Kirby also reported that some Russian units that launched attacks on Kiev are being withdrawn to Belarus for “refit” and will probably “go back in” when they are re-equipped and resupplied.

The Pentagon has said repeatedly that while the invasion of Ukraine makes Russia an “acute” threat, China remains “the pacing threat” according to summaries provided of the new National Defense Strategy, an unclassified version of which has yet to be made public.

IG Report: USAF, Army Must Do More to Prepare Arctic Bases for Climate Change

April 18, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

The Air Force and Army need to do a better job of preparing installations in the Arctic for the impacts of climate change, according to a new report by the Defense Department inspector general.

The IG report issued April 13 looked at six bases in the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions and found that at all six, officials “did not conduct installation resilience assessments and planning required by DOD directive and public law.”

The six bases studied were:

Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska
Clear Space Force Station, Alaska
Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska
Thule Air Base, Greenland
Fort Greely, Alaska
Fort Wainwright, Alaska

The report states that at many of these installations, leaders were either unaware of those requirements or didn’t have the guidance and resources necessary to meet them.

Instead, leaders’ “day-to-day focus was on reacting to immediate problems or reducing risk to existing hazards, rather than planning for future hazards,” the report states.

Some details about those existing problems were redacted as part of the unclassified report. But the report does list “cracked runways, sunken foundations, and multiple power outages” as effects from the changing climate that have affected the bases.

In particular, the thawing of permafrost, as well as the refreezing that can subsequently occur, have created issues for paved areas, most critically on runways.

“Leaders described and we observed extensive damage to the Thule AB runway shoulders and aircraft hangars from permafrost melt and the freezing and thawing of water that is collecting under the airfield infrastructure,” the report states. At Eielson, a member of a maintenance squadron assigned to the F-35 “described the challenges from the soil freezing and thawing beneath the infrastructure on the base.”

Images included in the report also show damage to facilities at Thule and Eielson caused by water freezing and melting.

Not just changing temperatures are having an effect. The report also details the impact of increasingly severe weather by noting the damage a storm wreaked on a hangar at Eareckson Air Station, located on one of the westernmost islands in the Aleutian chain.

“In addition to the damage to Hangar 7, the pier sustained significant damage from a storm in February 2020, leaving it in critical condition and in need of repair. The pier is critical for the success of the air station’s mission because any disruption in the supply of fuel to the installation would result in catastrophic mission failure,” the report states.

Concerns about how DOD installations are equipped to handle the impacts of climate change have grown over the last several years, particularly as the Air Force has dealt with catastrophic damages to Tyndall Air Force Base, Fla., from a hurricane and Offutt Air Force Base, Neb., from flooding.

In the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act, Congress required major military installations to plan for climate change when drafting their master plans. In response, the Air Force issued a 40-page “Severe Weather and Climate Hazard Screening and Risk Assessment Playbook” to installations. By July 2021, more than 80 installations had completed an initial risk assessment, with plans to finish the changes to master plans at every base within five years, said Jennifer L. Miller then-acting assistant secretary of the Air Force for installations, environment, and energy.

In October 2021, the DOD issued a Climate Adaptation Plan for the department to incorporate climate resiliency into its decision-making.

At the same time, the importance of the Arctic has become increasingly emphasized, especially as melting ice caps have increased shipping lanes and access to the region. In 2019, the DOD released its Arctic strategy, and the Air Force followed with one of its own in 2020. USAF Gen. Glen D. VanHerck, head of U.S. Northern Command, has repeatedly pushed for more funding for the region as well.

Despite all this, “most installation leaders at the six installations we visited in the Arctic and sub-Arctic region were unfamiliar with military installation resilience planning requirements, processes, and tools, and installation leaders did not comply with requirements to identify current and projected climate-related environmental risks, vulnerabilities, and risk reduction measures, or incorporate these considerations into plans and operations,” the IG’s office found.

To address that issue, the report recommends that the Air Force’s installations czar “establish priorities, develop milestones, and identify planning and training resources for the Department of the Air Force” and “establish Department of the Air Force installation orders requiring installation commanders to identify climate risks, conduct assessments, determine climate vulnerabilities, and identify and plan for follow-on climate resilience measures for current and future climate changes in installation master plans.”

In response to those recommendations, Edwin H. Oshiba, the current acting assistant secretary for energy, installations, and environment—a.k.a. czar—told the IG that the Department of the Air Force would complete Installation Climate Resilience Plans for all major installations within 36 months. He also agreed to provide oversight with the Air Force’s major commands and Space Force’s field commands over the installation commanders to ensure they plan for climate change’s effects.

Air Force Fields a New Rifle for Airmen Across Missions

April 18, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

The Air Force is almost finished distributing nearly 1,500 new rifles to security forces, pararescuemen, Guardian Angels, and explosive ordnance disposal Airmen, the service announced April 16.

The Air Force Life Cycle Management Center is in the final phase of delivering the Squad Designated Marksmanship Rifle after procuring approximately 1,464 of the guns.

The SDMR is a semi-automatic, 7.62x51mm-caliber rifle designed by Heckler & Koch, initially developed for the Army to give units the ability to engage targets precisely up to 600 meters away.

For the Air Force, the SDMR will help fulfill multiple missions.

For security forces performing base defense operations, it will replace the M24 Sniper Weapon Systems currently in use.

For pararescuemen and Guardian Angels tasked with personnel recovery, it will replace the M110 Semi-Automatic Sniper Systems rifle. The SDMR will save Airmen five pounds in gear on missions.

For explosive ordnance disposal technicians, the SDMR will be used to “to eliminate small munitions in their standoff munition disruption activities,” according to an Air Force release.

“Being able to field one solution that can effectively achieve multiple missions epitomizes Air Force acquisition strategies and shows [Airmen’s] ability to adapt to any situation,” Matthew Hamer, head of AFLCMC’s Small Arms Program Office, said in a statement.

The Army first began accepting deliveries of the SDMR in 2020 and is scheduled to finish fielding the new rifle by the end of 2023, with some 6,000 rifles being distributed.

By comparison, the Air Force’s smaller order was fielded this year.

The SDMR is the second rifle the Air Force has fielded in recent years. In 2020, the service finished delivery of 2,700 lightweight 7-pound, 5.56 mm rifles to be carried in an Airman’s ejection seat. Assemblable in roughly 30 seconds, that rifle was designed to hit man-sized targets at a distance of 200 meters.

Spangdahlem Delivers F-35 Air Power to the Eastern Flank

April 18, 2022 | By Abraham Mahshie

SPANGDAHLEM AIR BASE, Germany—A Russian cruise missile had just hit Lviv, Ukraine, in late March when a U.S. Air Force F-35 arrived to airspace in nearby Poland. The 34th Fighter Squadron pilot could faintly make out the civilian population and the aftermath of the strike below.

“You could see the smoke from where they said the cruise missile hit at the airport,” said Capt. Alex Harvey, 31, who is part of a squadron deployed from Hill Air Force Base, Utah, to Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany, on a NATO Polish Air Policing mission.

“Since we’re such a defensive posture, and we’re there to just do the policing mission, it can get routine,” added Harvey, the squadron’s chief of weapons and tactics. “That made it real for me.”

Before deploying, Harvey and 20 other pilots had been on alert as an immediate reaction force. Each night he watched the news. Each night, he and his wife wondered if he would be sent to NATO’s eastern flank.

Then, on Feb. 13, the day before Valentine’s Day, the squadron deployed. Another member, Maj. Nolan Sweeney, 34, left a bouquet of flowers on the stairs for his wife.

Russia invaded Ukraine a week after the squadron arrived to Spangdahlem.

Sweeney and Harvey now wear mustaches. They are deployed.

Maj. Nolan Sweeney of the 34th Fighter Squadron, Hill Air Force Base, Utah, is an F-35 pilot deployed to Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany, for a NATO Air Policing mission in Poland. Staff photo by Abraham Mahshie.

In the two months since, the pilots have flown hundreds of sorties, commuting 650 miles each way in their Joint Strike Fighters to eastern Poland. In that time, Russia has launched more than a thousand missiles at Ukraine, populating the skies with its fighters from the Baltics to the Black Sea.

NATO Air Command maintains more than 130 aircraft on alert with 24/7 Air Policing missions up and down the eastern flank of the alliance.

Air Policing missions have scrambled to face Russian jets launched from Crimea, and they have observed Russian aircraft violating international norms in airspace near Poland. Polish Air Force officials say the Russian jets fly without transponders and do not file flight plans. Still, since the invasion was launched, the NATO pilots have made no intercepts, a move to escort an aircraft out of NATO airspace.

“We’re there to defend the West from the East,” said Harvey.

“We’re there just to look around, say, ‘Hey, what’s going on in Ukraine that we can see from this far? What’s going on in Belarus and those areas?’” he added. “But we’re just literally there just to be there.”

Within a week of the deployment, President Joe Biden announced that six F-35s would be forward deployed on rotation to three eastern flank countries: Lithuania, Poland, and Romania. For several days, the F-35s took off and landed from NATO countries strategically located and compatible with American aircraft.

The six have since pulled back to Spangdahlem for a full suite of support personnel and their own hangars. In their place, F-15s, F-16s, and Marine Corps FA-18s have deployed to conduct Baltic and enhanced Air Policing missions along the eastern flank.

Still, these F-35s are flying six-hour-long sorties that require two to three KC-135 tanker refuels from the 92nd Air Refueling Wing, Fairchild Air Force Base, Wash., also deployed to Spangdahlem.

The winter weather and limited capability of eastern flank nations to host fifth-generation aircraft has presented challenges.

From broken refuelers and dangerous icing conditions, to bad weather that can prohibit a safe landing, numerous unknowns have challenged the aviators’ composure and training.

On a recent day, Harvey arrived to his Air Policing zone in eastern Poland with 20 minutes of fuel before he was notified that his tanker had broken and could not refuel him.

“If it goes wrong, it can go wrong in a very poor way,” said Harvey.

“We assume [the tanker] is going to be there. What if they’re not? Or, we assume we can go to this field. What if we can’t because the weather’s bad? That kind of stuff is intense,” he said.

“Now I’m in a tough spot. So, now I’m in an emergency-divert profile to somewhere else,” he speculated. “I go to Slovakia, maybe. Do I limp back to Germany, maybe? Maybe I can’t, or maybe I have to land in really bad weather, which is—that’s pretty tough.”

Harvey was able to land in Lask, Poland, where Marine Corps FA-18s are performing an Air Policing mission. There, he was able to refuel and trade patches with the Polish refueler before firing an afterburner takeoff to ensure he had enough runway space.

Once they’re performing their NATO Air Policing mission, they defend NATO airspace. They deter.

Still, they see a war happening below them.

On their radar, aviators have seen all classes of Russian fighters and Ukrainian platforms in the sky. Other F-35s on Air Policing missions from RAF Lakenheath, U.K., or British or Dutch F-35s, are forming their own radar pictures that are automatically shared.

“I can see the entire Polish border from Slovakia to Kaliningrad,” said Harvey.

“If his radar detects an airplane, that’s, let’s say, approaching NATO, my jet shows that to me as well,” he explained. “We’re still defensive, and whatever could happen with that, we all know about it together. So, there’s less chances of surprises, less chance of miscalculations. It’s still de-escalatory.”

The F-35’s sensors also penetrate deep into Ukraine.

The F-35 has radar, infrared, and other sensors that form a picture hundreds of miles into Ukraine and Belarus, gathering information that is displayed on the cockpit screen, shared with allied F-35s on Air Policing missions nearby, and relayed to NATO command centers.

The U.S. government has publicly said it shares intelligence with Ukraine that is helping the country to produce battlefield successes. The 34th Fighter Squadron pilots would not say if the data their aircraft gather on Air Policing missions contributes to that picture, but U.S. Air Forces in Europe confirmed that information collected through a variety of platforms adds up to a common intelligence picture.

Before the Russia-Ukraine war, American F-35 pilots trained daily on their own and with allies during occasional exercises and joint training in simulators.

Now, day in and day out, Airmen build airmanship and decision-making skills. They communicate with each other and NATO allies, sharing best practices about the platform’s use and learning theater insight from European allies.

Their aircrafts are also “talking” to each other, sharing data and putting into practice all of the combat capabilities in which the fifth-generation aircraft was designed to excel.

“Our aircrafts are talking to one another,” said Sweeney. “You add in more F-35s, now the capability increases exponentially.”

Added Harvey: “The F-35 specifically works better the more F-35s that are talking to each other.”

SUBHED

Russia has repositioned its forces in Ukraine in recent weeks, moving away from Kyiv and refocusing on areas of eastern and southern Ukraine where it has had more success.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s objectives are not known, but his desire for a greater Russia, one that reconstitutes the Soviet Union’s former states and spheres of influence, contradicts the current world order.

The Baltic states are no longer part of the Soviet Union. Poland is not a satellite country. Romania and Bulgaria are free democracies. Nine NATO countries on the eastern flank do not want to be part of Russia’s sphere of influence.

NATO Air Policing is the deterrence measure meant to ensure that boundary in the sky is not crossed.

“When we go up there, it’s not just a Wisconsin dude sitting in a gray aircraft up there,” said Sweeney. “It’s a representative of what NATO’s mission is: to deter, train, and provide readiness.”

Harvey spoke of the “honor” of being the execution arm of the NATO deterrence policy.

“You can see for miles and miles, just with your own eyes up there,” he said.

“You can look out, and you can see Lviv, for example, and it’s just particularly moving, knowing that all is right there,” he added, reflecting on the war and his NATO mission. “It has been, and I pray, will continue to be a purely defensive part.”

Losses in Ukraine Won’t Change Russian Threat or USAF Posture, Brown Says

April 15, 2022 | By John A. Tirpak

Russia’s mounting losses of conventional equipment in the Ukraine war—and its likely inability to replace that hardware anytime soon, due to economic sanctions—won’t substantively change how the U.S. views the threat from that country, according to Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. That’s because the threats posed by Russia’s nuclear, chemical, and biological capabilities remain unchanged.

“You have to look at the threat holistically,” Brown told reporters during an April 12 media roundtable. “We can’t take the threat and separate … conventional and nuclear. … It’s all together.” That fact keeps Russia as an “acute” threat, Brown said, using the word applied in the new National Defense Strategy.

Moreover, “the fact that they’ve struggled, conventionally, may put the risk of nuclear/chemical/bio use at a higher level. So in some cases, it makes it a bit more unpredictable, and it puts the threat in a different context that we need to be concerned about,” he said. Senior Pentagon officials have speculated that continued humiliation of Russia’s army by the lesser-equipped Ukrainian forces, and Russia’s disorganized and overall clumsier operations, may provoke harsher measures from the Russians, such as chemical or nuclear weapons use.

Asked if Russia’s losses affect how the Air Force should invest in its European capabilities, Brown said, “not necessarily.”

“If we look at the 2018 national security strategic guidance … we already focus on [China] as the pacing challenge [and] Russia as an ‘acute’ threat,” Brown said. “Might there be some tweaks? I don’t see a wholesale change. Because these are things we’ve already been thinking about. … We’ve been thinking about it for the past several years as we started coming out of the Middle East,” he said, and conditions have already largely been accounted for in USAF posture.

Brown said the Air Force has been paying close attention to the Russian invasion of Ukraine—as have others—and “we’re all learning,” he said.

“We learned some things, based on what we’re watching and what we’re seeing. We all will. And it may drive some adjustments” in USAF’s long-range plans, “but I don’t see it making a wholesale change.”

Since the Russian invasion began in mid-February, various organizations have counted Russia’s losses at a low of 460 armored vehicles to a high of 2,000 vehicles. Aircraft losses number about 45, according to various international defense-watcher organizations, including eight Su-25 attack fighters, three Su-30s, four Su-34s, and an Su-35, the latter of which is counted as Russia’s top operational fighter. The list also includes an An-26 transport, 16 transport and attack helicopters, and a handful of unmanned drones. Russia has also lost its Black Sea flagship heavy cruiser—the Moskva—and a number of smaller vessels.

Under economic sanctions levied by the U.S. and other nations, Russia is blocked from importing a number of key aerospace materials and technologies, including microprocessors, and is strapped for hard currency, making it difficult for Russia to reconstitute lost equipment in the near future.

Asked whether Russia’s logistical failures in Ukraine—with armored columns outrunning their fuel, food, and ammunition supplies and having to abandon equipment—had prompted USAF to reconsider its own logistics, Brown said it has only underscored that USAF has to “think differently” about how it deploys for war.

“I think we do a pretty good job” on logistics, Brown said, but “I think it’s going to help us as we have a conversation both internal and external to the force.” The focus will be not just on logistics for USAF but “also for the teammates or allies and partners.”

Brown said the Air Force is investing more in pre-positioning of heavy items such as fuel and water, and emphasizing agile combat employment packages that focus on combat aircraft, munitions, parts, and essential maintenance gear. This will also contribute to readiness, he said. Rather than a unit “shut down” and ship all its operating kit to a deployment location, conduct an exercise, and then be unable to resume home-base activities while it waits for the return of that gear, it can instead take only a minimal amount, use pre-positioned materiel, and be ready to resume home-base activities almost right away.

The Air Force will also have to come up with other new logistical ideas unique to the theater.

“It’s going to be more dynamic,” he said, “because the distances are much longer” in the Pacific than in Europe, which has road and rail to take some of the load.