NATO Fighters Intercept Russian Jets Over Black Sea, Highlighting Threat to the Alliance

April 8, 2022 | By Abraham Mahshie

MIHAIL KOGALNICEANU AIR BASE, Romania — NATO jets scrambled from this Romanian base four times in the last 20 days to intercept Russian fighters that launched from Crimea, flying toward NATO territory along the Black Sea coast. Each time, the Russian jets turned away without incident, but the flights represent a growing threat to the alliance.

The intent of the Russian practice was not immediately clear to the NATO air policing commanders and Combined Air Operations Centre in Torrejon, Spain. But, it underscored the importance of the mission to protect the skies over what defense officials say is the NATO front line in the Russian war with Ukraine.

“You have more Russian aircraft flying around the Black Sea,” Spanish Lt. Gen. Fernando De La Cruz Caravaca, commander of the NATO Combined Air Operations Center, told Air Force Magazine.

“We react to them anytime any Russian aircraft flies in the Black Sea,” he added. “We need to be sure that we are there, ready, in front of them, just in case.”

The CAOC commander was on hand alongside Romanian, American, and other NATO officials for a ceremony at MK marking the handover of the NATO enhanced Air Policing duties in Romania from Italy to the United Kingdom.

A Romanian Air Force member standing in formation salutes NATO officials during the RAF NATO certification ceremony April 8, 2022, at Mihail Kogalniceanu (MK) Air Base, Romania. U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Maeson L. Elleman.

The UK adds six Eurofighter Typhoons to the eight Italian Typhoons that exercise the mission along with Romanian MiG-21 Lancers and F-16s, and six American F-16s from the 480th Fighter Squadron at Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany.

The ceremony exercised a “tango scramble,” unique to NATO, whereby four combat jets are airborne in formation within 15 minutes. The jets raced overhead in a diamond formation with the UK typhoon in the lead, an Italian Eurofighter in the back, and a Romanian F-16 joined by a U.S. F-16 from nearby Fetesti Air Base on the wings.

Chief of Staff of the Italian Air Force Lt. Gen. Luca Goretti publicly disclosed the four scrambles in response to a question by Air Force Magazine.

“When they take off from Crimea protecting their vessels on the Black Sea, they [Russian jets] might … fly over us,” he said. “They might fly next to the boundaries and then turn back when they see us in the air. That gives a good indication that they can no longer move everywhere they want.”

U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. William Parks, 480th Fighter Squadron detachment commander, said the exercise also is a symbol of NATO’s readiness to defend the skies even with a variety of platforms of different sizes and capabilities.

“We’re executing 24/7 CAPs with all the NATO partners across the entire eastern front,” he told Air Force Magazine on the sidelines of the event. “It gives a chance for us to show that we are integrated completely with our NATO partners, and that includes in tight formations.”

Italian and British Air Force officers said Moscow is watching what NATO is doing in NATO airspace on the Black Sea coast.

“Our Air Force is on NATO’s front line,” said UK Air Chief Marshal Sir Michael Wigston.

“We are the first line of defense,” he added. “And I have no doubt that Russia is watching very carefully all the way from Norway all the way down into the Mediterranean.”

Stigma, ‘Institutional Policies’ Discouraging Troops from Getting Mental Health Help

April 8, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

While the Defense Department is looking to expand opportunities for service members to seek professional help for mental health issues, the DOD is still struggling with institutional policies and norms that wind up hurting those who do get help and discouraging others, lawmakers and advocates say.

These struggles come even as the department has ramped up its mental health and suicide prevention efforts in recent years—and as the rate of suicides among service members has remained stubbornly high.

From 2015 to 2020, the total number and the rate of suicides among Active-duty service members has increased by a statistically significant amount, while the rates for the Reserve and National Guard stayed roughly the same, according to the Pentagon’s latest report.

In a hearing before the Senate Armed Services personnel subcommittee, Pentagon leaders acknowledged a lack of progress on the issue.

“Our rates of suicide are not going in the desired direction. Every death by suicide is a tragedy and weighs heavily on the military community,” Dr. Richard Mooney, acting deputy assistant secretary of defense for health services policy and oversight, told the panel. “The DOD believes that suicide rates among our service members and military families are too high.”

Mooney, along with Dr. Karen Orvis, director of the Defense Suicide Prevention Office, touted the DOD’s initiatives to identify vulnerable service members and provide them with resources to better cope with and manage problems that can lead to suicidial behavior such as relationship issues or financial concerns.

But Dr. Craig Bryan, director of the Recovery and Resilience and Suicide Prevention Program at The Ohio State University College of Medicine, argued that there are too many programs looking to screen for problems and not enough attention focused on the stigmas codified into rules that discourage service members or recruits from seeking help when needed.

To illustrate his point, Bryan told the committee about a situation in which a young Soldier was forced into a psychiatric evaluation and mental health program and denied leave to help his family as a matter of policy after he made a reference to suicide. Instead of helping the Soldier, those actions created a greater problem, Bryan said.

“I suspect the policy cited to justify the coercive transport for involuntary mental health care was not a formal policy per se, but rather was an unwritten rule or an organizational norm that had emerged over time due to growing fear and anxiety about liability,” Bryan said. “‘Better safe than sorry’ rules, though well-intentioned, can paradoxically make things worse. These rules fail because they prioritize liability management at the expense of individual service members’ well-being.”

Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) echoed Bryan’s point, citing examples he has heard from constituents who have wanted to join the military or pursue a certain career path within the force, only to be denied after disclosing that they at one point had taken prescribed medicine for depression.

“So … we’re telling young Americans right now, if your dream is to be an Air Force pilot, and you have depression as a 16 year old girl, you either need to not go get help, or if you did go get help and were prescribed drugs and then you apply to be an Air Force pilot, you gotta lie,” Sullivan said. “I think that is so wrong. That’s happening right now.”

For years, the Air Force took pilots and navigators diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder off flight status and didn’t allow those on flying status to take common antidepressants. That policy was modified in 2013 to allow Airmen to keep flying while on certain kinds of medication, but they still must apply for a waiver, and any diagnoses that last more than 60 days result in the Airman being taken off flight status.

Sullivan’s example demonstrates “another sort of policy institutional barrier to the intended outcome and goal,” Bryan said. “We want, on the one hand, for people to seek out help and at the same time, we, in essence, punish them when they do so.

“There’s no amount of therapy and medication that’s going to solve that problem. This is where, looking at systemic change and reform, institutional policies and practice, that’s where we would need to be able to target in order to open up the pathway for these other ideal, potentially life-saving interventions.”

Dr. P. Murali Doraiswamy, a professor of psychiatry at Duke University’s school of medicine, added that the military is one of the few remaining institutions that punishes those who seek help in that way.

“We have more than three decades of experience now with antidepressants,” said Doraiswamy. “There’s no evidence whatsoever to indicate that it impairs performance. … If anything, it’s the reverse.”

Sullivan, who represents a state with one of the highest rates of depression, said his office is working to address some of these institutional policies in the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act. Such moves, Bryan said, will do more to help service members’ lives than other suicide prevention efforts.

“We do not need more awareness curriculum, more resilience trainings, more suicide prevention briefings, more suicide risk screening,” Bryan said. “We need to eliminate or remove policies, procedures, and unwritten rules of thumb that degrade quality of life, that strain the mental health care system, and increase the use of coercive and potentially harmful practices. Suicide prevention doesn’t mean that everyone needs to be conducting suicide risk screenings and repeatedly imploring service members to go get mental health care. Rather, it means we should be working everyday to create lives that are worth living.”

GBSD Using Digital Twinning at Every Stage of The Program Lifecycle

April 8, 2022 | By Shaun Waterman

The Air Force-managed modernization of America’s ground-based nuclear missiles has emerged as a test-bed for the use of digital twins—virtual models of real weapons systems—at every stage of the program lifecycle, its chief told the Space Symposium April 7.

“I have a front row seat right now,” USAF Col. Jason E. Bartolomei, the system program manager for the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent program, told a panel titled Digital Engineering and Digital Twins. GBSD is employing digital twins at every stage of the program lifecycle from “an early conceptual design frame [at the start of a program] to currently right now in the middle of the [Engineering and Manufacturing Development, or] EMD phase [in which prototypes are built] … getting ready for first flight. I have another program going into production, and then I get to see how the Minuteman III is [using digital twinning as it is] transitioning into the sustainment arena.”

Using digital twinning in each of these phases “has its own unique challenges that really need to be taken on front and center,” said Bartolomei.

He said that the digital tools the program used for the new Sentinel ICBM enabled it to scan and asses “six billion [potential] different system designs,” looking for the one that best balanced capabilities with cost.

As part of Space Force’s commitment to being a digital first service, “We are really focused on [using] digital engineering and digital twins in the entire ecosystem,” said Lisa Costa, the chief technology and innovation officer for the U.S. Space Force. “Not just for acquisition, but we’re really looking at how we embed digital engineering and digital twins into our training, our doctrine, our red teaming, our force design.”

Digital twinning uses software models of real components or systems to help guide designers as they develop plans for a prototype and later, as they work out how to manufacture the real thing. Once a system is in service, digital twins can also be used to work out how often parts need to be replaced, or how to minimize fuel consumption and conduct maintenance more efficiently. But the models need to answer very different questions at each stage, panelists said.

“Digital engineering and digital twinning can mean a million things to to a million people, but it can also mean a million different things within a single program or a single program office, depending on the lifecycle, depending on the use case,” said moderator Sian Griffiths, a partner at McKinsey and Company.

She noted that Bartolomei was, “At the program pointy end of making this [digital twinning] actually work and actually deriving program value from it.”

The GBSD program had been using digital twinning for eight years, Bartolomei said, joking that was “only a few heartbeats here.” Their ambitions has expanded with each success.

Early on in the program, there was “a lot of concern” that design choices made to maximize capabilities might introduce “cost and schedule risk,” he explained.

“What the digital environment allowed us to do was to bring our multi disciplinary engineering models in with our cost models, to examine a trade space” where different capabilities and different ways to achieve them could be costed against each other, he said.

Decisions made early in the acquisition process could have huge implications downstream, and digital engineering tools made it possible to predict how choices would cost out, panelists said.

“Once you start building the wrong thing,” observed Rob Wavra, a Mckinsey partner and panelist, “recovering that is challenging.” Early choices could be helped by models that “might be lower fidelity, … but support decisions that are incredibly important at the initiation of a program to shape what it is.”

And digital twinning also opened the aperture for acquisition teams, said Bartolomei.

“Industry showed us nine booster designs. And we challenged our team to look at 1,000 booster designs. And lo and behold, our government team found many, many designs that were more affordable and better performing than the ones industry was showing us,” he said. Flush with that success, Bartolomei said, “We got greedy. And we went and looked at not just the booster design, but the total system design.” The team developed “some pretty sophisticated algorithms” that enabled it to examine cost trade offs in “a trade space of six billion different system designs.”

LaPlante Confirmed to Head Pentagon Acquisition and Sustainment

April 7, 2022 | By John A. Tirpak

The Senate confirmed William LaPlante to be Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment on April 7 by voice vote, filling the most senior vacancy in the Pentagon.

LaPlante, the former top acquisition executive for the Air Force from 2014-2017, fills the position last held by Ellen M. Lord, who left with the arrival of the Biden Administration in January 2021. President Joe Biden’s first pick for the USD/A&S position, Michael Brown, withdrew his nomination due to allegations that he circumvented hiring regulations at the Defense Innovation Unit. LaPlante was nominated by Biden on Nov. 30, 2021.

LaPlante was instrumental in managing the requirement and competition for what became the B-21 bomber program, working to ensure that it had an open architecture that could adapt to new technologies. The B-21 is credited by the Pentagon and Capitol Hill as being one of the best-run big-ticket defense programs, thanks to a good contract.

After leaving the Air Force job, LaPlante served as a senior executive with the MITRE Corp. and then chief executive officer of Draper Laboratories. He also served on the Section 809 panel, which recommended a number of changes to defense acquisition policies and organization.

In his March 22 confirmation hearing, LaPlante said the U.S. industrial base needs to have more “hot production lines” of platforms, munitions, and components, saying these are, in and of themselves, a deterrent to adversary powers. He also pledged to bridge the “Valley of Death”—a term he coined—between promising prototypes and programs of record. LaPlante said he would work to “inject” new technology into all defense platforms, and make defense an attractive place for small businesses to bring their new ideas and technologies.

LaPlante warned that consolidation in the defense industry sets the stage for top primes to overcharge for their products, and ushering in a new supply of contractors will offset this vulnerability.

Air Force May Divest 1,468 Aircraft over Five Years

April 7, 2022 | By John A. Tirpak

The Air Force may be planning to divest 1,468 aircraft over its future years defense plan while buying just 467, for net reduction of more than 1,000 aircraft, Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) said during an April 7 Senate Armed Services Committee budget hearing.

Questioning Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III on the fiscal 2023 budget request, Fischer said, “Under this budget, the Air Force is divesting 369 aircraft this year and buying 87, which is a net loss of 282. The five-year plan projects buying 467 aircraft, and divesting 1,468, a loss of 1,001.”

Fischer’s numbers for fiscal year 2023 don’t match the ones the Air Force disclosed as part of its topline budget rollout, in which it said it would retire 150 aircraft, hand over 100 MQ-9 remotely piloted aircraft to another agency, and buy 82 new airplanes, for a net reduction of 170 aircraft. In the fiscal 2022 enacted budget, USAF was permitted to divest 159 airplanes.

The Air Force declined to comment on the discrepancy, saying only that the more detailed “J-books,” which provide programmatic line items, will be released later this month. Traditionally, the J-Books have been provided at the time of the budget rollout, but they were not provided with the budget last year or this year.

During the hearing, Fischer asked Austin if he expects operational demands to fall commensurate with those reductions.

Austin replied that the DOD is “investing in those capabilities that will enable us to be decisive in the future fight. And those capabilities that are not survivable in that fight, I think we have to divest of them.” He added that the platforms slated for retirement are “very expensive to maintain. We can use those resources to invest in future capabilities, the kind that we need for the next fight. And so, that’s our strategy.”

Gen. Mark A. Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said the majority of divestitures affect the Air Force and Navy, and “the cost benefit analysis to sustain them over time doesn’t add up … We are trying to modernize the force for the future operating environment, 2030 and beyond.”

The Pentagon is “investing to be decisive in a future fight,” Austin said.

That figure of 1,000 aircraft divested would be consistent with the roughly 200 a year the Air Force has asked to retire in the last several budgets.

Neither Austin nor Milley indicated any reduction in the need for U.S. forces, however, and acknowledged there will be “some risk” in the near-term of gapping those capabilities.

Fischer said that while she’s “open to divesting legacy platforms,” she said it is creating undue stresses on the remaining forces.

Fischer complained to Austin that the Pentagon’s top strategy documents—the National Security Strategy, National Defense Strategy, Nuclear Posture Review, and Missile Defense Review—were all only submitted to Congress last week, and in classified form, leaving little time for Congress to study them and develop meaningful “opportunity for debate.” She also complained that the J-Books will not be provided until mid-April.

“I think having this hearing without any detailed information about the budget, when we are unable to discuss any of the Administration’s strategy documents, directly undermines the committee’s ability to conduct its oversight work,” Fischer said.

Austin replied that unclassified versions of the strategy documents will come out soon, saying the strategy will closely follow the interim NDS released last year.

“Resources are matched to strategy, matched to policy, matched to the will of the people,” Austin said.

Fischer also said she’s determined to reduce secrecy, saying the amount of defense information that is secret has increased markedly, and “we are going backwards in terms of classifying these documents.” This is “contrary to the spirit of transparency,” she said.

Buying Modernization

Austin pointed out that the budget contains “$56 billion for airborne platforms and systems” and pays for ongoing modernization of the strategic nuclear deterrent.

Although a sea-launched tactical nuclear missile was deleted from the budget, Milley said he disagreed with that action, noting his preference is to “present as many options as possible” to the national command authority.

Undersecretary of Defense Michael J. McCord said that $20 billion of this year’s budget is “catch up” to account for inflation, which rose steeply last year, “so we wouldn’t be behind” in the current fiscal year.

Austin and Milley said they are re-evaluating U.S. European posture, both indicating that in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a greater U.S. presence is needed, although neither indicated how many additional forces would be required. Some of this will involve a greater presence in the vicinity of the Black Sea, Austin said.

“We will change our footprint” in the area, Austin said. “We’ll need more going forward … How much remains to be seen.”

Austin said the latest developments in Ukraine indicate that Russia has encountered greater resistance than expected.

“Putin has given up on his efforts to capture the capital city” of Kiev, and “he is now focused on the South and East of the country. And our goal is to get the Ukrainians everything they need, that we can possibly get to them, as fast as we can get it to them, … so that they can be successful in that fight … And that will be our focus going forward.”

Asked what “winning” looks like for the U.S. in Ukraine, Milley said, “Winning is: Ukraine remains a free and independent nation … as it has been since 1991, with their territorial integrity intact. That’s going to be very difficult and it’s going to be a long slog; this is not an easy fight that they’re involved in.”

The Ukrainians have “defeated that first Russian onslaught” around Kiev, “but there is a significant battle ahead, down in the Southeast,” Milley said. It’s a part of the country more flat and open, where armored vehicles are likely to play a larger role, and Milley and Austin said discussions are underway with allies and partners to provide Ukraine with more of such vehicles.

LEO Constellations’ Connectivity Offers Risks, And Rewards, Execs Warn

April 7, 2022 | By Shaun Waterman

Many of the more remarkable capabilities of the coming generation of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite constellations come from their extraordinary connectivity—they’re networked not just with receivers on the ground, but with each other, as well. But this connectivity also means an increased cyber attack surface, panelists told the Space Symposium April 6.

“Every time you connect an additional node, you add an additional piece to a constellation, you add an additional ground station, you’re adding links, and … every link you add, that’s going to add risk,” said Stacy Kubicek, vice president and general manager of Lockheed Martin Missions Solutions.

Separately, at a media briefing on the sidelines of the symposium, Lt. Gen. Stephen N. Whiting, commander of the Space Force’s Space Operations Command, acknowledged the real danger that such vulnerabilities pose for space-based capabilities on which the whole joint force depends so completely.

“We have to be cyber secure because cyber is our soft underbelly of these global networks. And then we have to do that across our space and our combat support missions,” he said.

New LEO constellations can make that harder, because of the additional connectivity they require. Traditional Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) satellite communications operate on a simple “bent pipe” principle, where the user terminal points up at a single satellite, at a fixed position in the sky, which then sends its signal straight back down to a ground station connected to the network. But in a LEO constellation, because the satellites are so numerous and move so swiftly across the sky relative to users on the ground, the whole constellation needs to orchestrate its connectivity—satellites, user terminals, and ground control stations all need to be networked and controlled so that the terminal knows which satellite it is communicating with and the satellite knows where to send the data it receives.

For example, many of the new constellations use optical communications via laser to transmit data. But lasers don’t work if there’s cloud cover over the ground station, so to maintain connectivity, the constellation must be able to instantaneously reroute data in space, passing it from satellite to satellite until it reaches one over a ground station where the skies are clear.

This multiplex connectivity is the source of the remarkable capabilities of the new LEO constellations, but it also means their attack surface is much broader, because there are so many more entry points into the network for an attacker.

Connectivity was essential to the function of the constellation, Kubicek said, so the additional risk it brought couldn’t be eliminated, it had to be mitigated and managed. “It really does come down to balancing the risk that we’re going to take on, as part of bringing on more things into the constellation … [against] what is the effect we’re trying to get? What are the things that we’re going to have to offset with the risk that we’re going to take on as a result?” she said.

One mitigation, she added, was “to cyber harden our data,” but the use of sophisticated encryption had implications. “Obviously, that’s going to come with a cost, we have got to be careful, because if we say we’re hardening everything, there’s going to be a lot of cost with that. And also, there’s going to be a lot of latency.”

Again, Kubicek said, it was a matter of risk management. “Where do we want to cyber harden, versus where do we want to potentially take a little bit more risk to get data quicker? In some areas, we might be more amenable to taking risk. In [Nuclear Command, Control, and Communications, or] NC3? Probably not,” but maybe in other areas, she said.

In cyber terms, the new LEO constellations could be thought of as virgin soil for security, much like the internet in its early days, suggested Richard Aves, executive vice president for mission solutions at Parsons Corp.

“We almost have to approach proliferated [LEO] space, like the early days of the Internet,” he said, noting that it took several years for the first worms and malicious software to appear, but predicting that the cycle would operate much faster this time around.

“It’s going to be probably two days, once the proliferated LEO constellations are fully up and operational [before they’re attacked],” Aves joked. Satellite operators needed to have the capability to update the software that runs them “to be able to address morphing cyber threats to the network.”

Space Force Woos Industry as Ukraine Highlights Commercial Partnerships

April 7, 2022 | By Hope Hodge Seck

As commercial satellites feed images from Ukraine to U.S. space and intelligence agencies in a historically collaborative effort, Space Force leaders are eager to learn how else they can put the commercial sector to work for the service.

In an April 6 hearing before the House Armed Services Committee’s subcommittee on strategic forces, National Geospatial Intelligence Agency Deputy Director Tonya P. Wilkerson alluded to the role the private sector is playing in monitoring Russia’s war on Ukraine.

“[Geospatial Intelligence] has been a central element of our nation’s understanding of the Russia-Ukraine crisis,” she said. “NGA is closely monitoring events in Ukraine while we provide partners across the globe access to numerous sources of intelligence, including commercial space-based imagery.”

While the hearing was taking place, officials at the Space Symposium in Colorado Springs offered more details: some 200 commercial satellites fed imagery into NGA’s pipeline, allowing the agency to anticipate Russia’s moves, David Gauthier, the agency’s deputy director of commercial and business operations, reportedly told an audience there.

This government dependence on commercial space infrastructure illustrates the complexity of the domain. And it’s informing how military leaders are thinking about building up space capabilities.

Lt. Gen. Michael A. Guetlein, commander of U.S. Space Systems Command, said Space Force was planning a “reverse industry day,” an opportunity for space-focused companies to share what they could offer the service in the realm of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR). A traditional industry day, by comparison, features a specific solicitation or needs statement and invites businesses to show how they could meet the predetermined requirements.

The current conflict highlights unfamiliar territory for the Defense Department: operating in a domain where commercial and civil enterprises have more resources, more infrastructure, and sometimes more experience.

In opening remarks, Guetlein described Space Force’s acquisitions strategy: “Buy what we can, build only what we must.” This partnership-heavy approach will make the space enterprise more resilient, he said, and result in a deterrent network “that transcends national borders and bolsters American security and prosperity.”

On the heels of investing $135 million in space domain awareness, $2.3 billion on satellite communications, and $22 million on commercial SATCOM command and control, Guetlein said the next major investment area for Space Force would be ISR.

“We’re just starting to do studies to determine how much ISR we can buy from space,” he said.

Space Systems Command also recently rolled out a new initiative to grease the skids for collaboration between Space Force and the commercial sector: SSC Front Door. Guetlein described the effort as a “one-stop shop” for would-be commercial partners of all sizes, offering them a single site to access and a single email address through which to communicate with the service.

“We will paint the path to opportunities depending on what they’re offering to bring to the table,” Guetlein said.

Jon Ludwigson, director for contracting and national security acquisitions at the Government Accountability Office, did sound a note of caution. He said the increased number of satellites on orbit as the commercial space industry expands requires greater levels of tracking and risk mitigation, particularly in low-earth orbit, where the Defense Department also hopes to expand operations.

“However, the burgeoning commercial industry provides more options for DOD to procure commercial data and services to complement DOD’s, or in place of DOD developing its own systems,” he said. “We’re examining the opportunities and challenges DOD faces on this front.”

Romania Calls for Permanent US Presence, Air Policing to Deter Russia

April 7, 2022 | By Abraham Mahshie

OTOPENI AIR BASE, Romania—NATO Air Command pivoted quickly when Russia invaded Ukraine, deploying U.S. assets to conduct enhanced Air Policing in the Black Sea region, where years of investment are now bearing fruit. But Romanian defense officials say that the deterrence mission must change to a permanent defense mission to prevent future Russian aggression.

“We are living a new normal,” Romanian Air Chief Lt. Gen. Viorel Pana told Air Force Magazine during an interview at Otopeni Air Base in Bucharest.

“Even the plans that we have for a confrontation against a peer competitor need to be adapted,” he said while walking the flight line of Romania’s air lift base. “The key word is flexibility.”

To flex muscle in the weeks and days preceding and immediately following Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. repositioned F-15s, F-16s, and F-35s to conduct enhanced Air Policing missions along the eastern flank of NATO, reaching from the Baltics to the Black Sea.

It did not deter Russia in Ukraine, but it has, thus far, kept Russia from striking the former Soviet and Warsaw Pact nations that in December Russian President Vladimir Putin called on to withdraw NATO firepower.

Romanian defense officials who spoke to Air Force Magazine in Bucharest applauded Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark A. Milley’s remarks to Congress proposing rotational troops at permanent Eastern European bases to deter Russia. They argue Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could have been prevented, and with Russia closer than ever to NATO’s southeastern border, only a permanent presence will deter future aggression.

In Romania, the United States, NATO, and Romania have invested tens of millions of dollars in air base infrastructure, training, and exercises to prepare for the type of contingency now playing out. Russia now occupies Ukraine’s Snake Island, located in the Black Sea at the mouth of the Danube River, some 22 miles from Romania’s coast.

Pana said years of close cooperation with the U.S. Air Force has built wing-to-wing trust between American and Romanian aviators.

“The results can be seen in how we are doing things together,” said Pana, reflecting on the quick repositioning of American F-16s, which are flying from multiple air bases across Romania. “They can operate together, do missions together, plan together.”

Pana explained that the U.S. regularly operates from Romania’s air bases, rotating units and doing missions and training. But Romania wants a permanent American presence in order to stop Russia.

“The aim is to translate from forward presence to forward defense,” said State Secretary for Defense Planning Simona Cojocaru, the equivalent of Romania’s deputy minister of defense. “It’s such a leap. And this cannot be done without U.S. support, without the permanent presence.”

In recent weeks, NATO announced the creation of a new battle group to be hosted in Romania, which already hosts command and control centers and the NATO Headquarters Multinational Corps South-East. The Black Sea country is situated just 200 miles from occupied Crimea, home to Russia’s anti-access, area-denial bubble.

Cojocaru said that at the June NATO summit in Madrid, Romania plans to make its case for a brigade-sized NATO presence. An increase in Romanian defense spending to 2.5 percent of GDP, or $1 billion more per year, is proof that Romania is doing its share, she says.

“We are the front runners here on the eastern flank,” Cojocaru said at an interview conducted at Romania’s Ministry of Defense. “The Black Sea today is the focal point for deterrence and defense.”

Local defense experts agree that it is not enough for the U.S. and NATO partners to show their presence in a crisis and then recede.

“If you continue to come like a fireman, only when the fires are rising, you will come back after five years or 10 years because Russia will not change their behavior,” said George Scutaru, a former Romanian parliamentarian who now heads the think tank New Strategy Center, which hosted a defense discussion April 7 in Bucharest with the Washington-based Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA).

Scutaru pointed to Russian aggression in Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014, prior to the current crisis, as evidence Russia will strike again if not adequately deterred.

“What is necessary? To have another war in Georgia or to [have fighting in] Moldova to come back?” he posed when asked why the U.S. should maintain a permanent presence in Romania. “It’s necessary to be here.”

AFA Changes Name to the Air & Space Forces Association

April 7, 2022 | By Amy Hudson

After 76 years, the Air Force Association is changing its name to the Air & Space Forces Association to better match its mission supporting and advocating for both Airmen and Guardians.

AFA was incorporated on Feb. 4, 1946—more than a year before the Air Force broke away from the Army and became an independent service under the National Security Act of 1947. The Space Force was established on Dec. 20, 2019, creating a new military service for the first time in more than seven decades, and marking one of the most significant changes in the history of the Air Force.

The Air Force Association changed its name to the Air & Space Forces Association, revealing a new logo on April 7 that better reflects its its advocacy and support for both the Space Force and the Air Force.

“Today, both military services are represented by the Department of the Air Force, and thus, both are fully represented by our Association,” said AFA Chairman Gerald Murray, former Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force. “This change makes clear to everyone that space is integral to our mission.”

Although the association will retain the AFA acronym, which it has used since its inception, it also unveiled a new Star-Delta logo intended to “redefine what those letters stand for,” according to an AFA release. The logo merges a modernized blue star on the left, derived from the original “Hap Arnold” Army Air Corps Star, with the Space Force’s black Delta and Polaris.

“These elements have been combined to present a unique visual identity that reflects the dynamism and permanent bonds between these two services and their respective warfighting domains,” said Murray. “The Polaris in particular is of note, as it represents the Space Force’s unique role as a guiding light and enabler for the whole of the joint force.”

The rebranding is intended to capture the association’s full mission:

To educate the public about air and space power
To advocate for the most capable, lethal, and effective Air and Space Forces
To support Airmen, Guardians, and their families.

“AFA has always been fully committed to supporting both the Air Force and Space Force as the most indispensable elements of our joint force,” said AFA President Lt. Gen. Bruce Wright, USAF (Ret.). “Even now, as the Space Force grows, expands, and builds its own, unique warfighting culture, air and space remain inextricably linked. The Airmen and Guardians who are the masters of those domains nevertheless remain tightly integrated within a single Department of the Air Force. So it is with our Association.”