480th Fighter Squadron Rapidly Deploys to Deter Russia on the Black Sea

April 11, 2022 | By Abraham Mahshie

FETESTI AIR BASE, Romania—As Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened Ukraine in early February, amassing some 150,000 troops along its border, worrying NATO allies, the U.S. Air Force needed to reassure eastern flank Allies, and fast.

The 480th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron at Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany, answered the call. They had one week to deploy to Romania with eight F-16Cs, 150 service members, and a million pounds of equipment. Seven days later, they were flying.

“Usually these things takes months to plan,” said 1st Lt. Jayce Webster, project manager for the mission support group

“We had to plan airlift, plan ground movements, we had to plan the layout of everything within a week,” he said. “So, when you talk about that agile combat, we were able to do that before the jets landed, and we started running.”

The 86th Air Base, as Fetesti is also known, also received a rotation of two F-35s as part of the air policing mission in mid-February.

Romania is rapidly building up this base with new construction, but it’s not yet ready for new tenants. There are only hangers to accommodate the Romanian F-16s, so scheduling maintenance is hard.

Still, the Black Sea ally was eager to welcome the added air power. Romania cleared out a building, initially provided all the aircraft fuel, and shared the few spare parts that coincided with their own earlier model F-16 Block 15s.

The 30-year-old U.S. aircraft require regular maintenance on wiring and computer systems to stay fully operational. To limit downtime during the five-day wait for spare parts, an aircraft is designated to be “cannibalized” for parts.

“It’s just the avionics side, it breaks more often,” said Master Sgt. Christopher Paden, maintenance production superintendent. “The targeting systems, the digital flight control computer is a common part we change.”

Now, close to 200 U.S. service members are helping to fly four daily NATO enhanced Air Policing sorties with Allies, protecting NATO’s skies alongside Romanian F-16s and MiG-21s, and British and Italian Eurofighters at nearby Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base.

“It’s a daily integration with a partner nation,” said U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. William Parks, 480th Fighter Squadron detachment commander, who uses a building where Romanian Airmen live and work.

The Romanian Air Force is looking to build its fleet of approximately two dozen MiG-21 Lancers with 49 second-hand F-16s in coming years. It’s already taken possession of 17 F-16s.

NATO began enhanced Air Policing over the skies and Black Sea coast of Romania and Bulgaria in 2014 when Russia invaded Ukraine. The mission differs from Baltic Air Policing, which began in 2004, and protects the Baltic nations of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, which do not have their own combat jets.

“We’re here just on the enhanced part of that air patrol, an extra visible and forward symbol to show U.S., Romanian, and NATO unity,” Parks said.

The mission includes training and exercising with Romanian pilots, what’s known as “enhanced vigilance.”

“Because of the info exchange, the experience exchange,” with USAF pilots, “… our troops get kind of like a second wind going towards progress,” said Romanian Lt. Alex Nasturel.

Fetesti Air Base is just over 50 miles from the coast of the Black Sea, which is now threatened by a heavy Russian air- and sea-presence. Non-Black Sea NATO ships are forbidden from entering during wartime due to the Montreux Convention, and U.S. intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance flights over international air space on the Black Sea are believed to have ceased.

Russian fighter jets in recent weeks have tested NATO air space, causing NATO aircraft to scramble in response.

With Putin repositioning his troops in the east and south of Ukraine, Romania has also begun to move armored vehicles and land forces to its border with Ukraine.

Small villages dot the expansive green fields near the Romanian 86th Air Base. Its symbol, the prickly-leafed pink thistle flower, protrudes through the grass in and around the base in the chilly spring.

Despite living at a hotel an hour away in Constanta, along a strip of beach crowded with bars and clubs, the Spangdahlem Airmen avoid the nightlife. Their focus is on mission.

Early the morning of April 9, before the 480th even began making its trademark jalapeno popcorn, Maj. Jared “Roam” Aschenbrenner and Capt. Sean “Sega” Sheldon were in a dark room watching slides and getting their “step brief” from Parks, who identified the Combat Air Patrol (CAP) zone in eastern Romania butting up against the border of Ukraine for the pilots to patrol. They would keep an undisclosed buffer distance from the border in accordance with NATO standards. Just across the Ukrainian border is the region of Odesa, thought to be a prime target in Putin’s quest to cut Ukraine off from the sea and grab a prized port.

The total time for the CAP was four hours, meaning the pilots would make a 10-minute commute to the center of the country to hit a tanker over the Carpathian Mountains before finishing their sortie and high fiving their replacement enhanced Air Policing pair before returning to Fetesti.

On their F-16C Block 50s were AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missiles, should they be needed. While air encounters have occurred between Russians and other NATO partners, Parks assured the Americans are trained to de-escalate. So far, the Russians have diverted after each intercept without incident.

“We’re here, we’re present, we’re showing that NATO’s borders are secure,” said Parks, who also flies patrols. “If an intercept has to occur, our primary job is to be de-escalatory. Let’s go out, let’s identify this person. Let’s make sure he gets turned around and back to whatever nation or host country that aircraft is out of.”

With the sun just over the horizon as the hour neared the 0815 departure, 17 maintainers stood back from the two aircraft. Their job was done.

The aircraft’s GE engine had been roaring for some 40 minutes as all the checks were run. The chalks were pulled, and the two jets began to taxi, one behind the other. In minutes, they were airborne, launching in quick succession, then banking slightly left and rising almost vertically into the orange-hued clouds.

Air Force Sends $4.6B Unfunded Priorities List to Congress; Space Force Requests Additional $600M

April 8, 2022 | By Amy Hudson

The Air Force’s unfunded priorities list—things it wants but couldn’t squeeze into its fiscal 2023 budget request—would leave it to Congress to boost the F-35 fighter buy, as part of a list of things it would acquire if it had another $4.6 billion to spend.

The Air Force only asked Congress for 33 F-35s in its 2023 budget proposal, 15 fewer than it bought in 2022 and 27 fewer than 2021. USAF said it prefers to spend that money on other needed modernization programs and wait until the Block 4 version of the jet is ready. The unfunded priorities list looks to close that gap slightly, asking for $921 million for seven more strike fighters, bringing the service’s total 2023 buy to 40 F-35As—still eight fewer than what it bought in 2022.

The UPL, which was obtained by Air Force Magazine but not released by the department, lists eight priorities the service wants but couldn’t afford in its 2023 budget request, released last month. The F-35 is fifth on that list.

“The Air Force unfunded list would add just seven F-35 jets, less than half of what’s needed to match the 48 requested in each of the past three years,” said Air & Space Forces Association president retired Lt. Gen. Bruce Wright. “Indeed, in 2020 and 2021, Congress increased the Air Force request from 48 to 60 and we would urge lawmakers to do the same in 2023.”

In fiscal 2022, the Air Force asked for another dozen F-15EXs as part of that year’s $4.2 billion unfunded priorities list, but it did not ask for any additional F-35A strike fighters—a departure from previous years.

The Space Force offered Congress its own $6 million unfunded priorities list. More than half that request ($327 million) would go to classified programs, while the rest would be split between more resilient missile warning and missile tracking ($200 million) and weapons systems sustainment ($112 million).

Weapons system sustainment is the Air Force’s No. 1 unfunded priority. The service requested $579 million, which it said would support its “highest priority” depot programs, including the B-52, F-16, T-38, C-17, Battle Management System, C-5, and the Distributed Common Ground System.

Listed as its second-highest wish—though the biggest ask financially—is a request for $978.5 million to procure four more EC-37B Compass Call electronic warfare aircraft, which would bring the total fleet to 10 aircraft.

Other requests, listed in order of priority, include:

$397 million to repair, replace, or restore “facilities damaged by inadequate sustainment, excessive age, natural disaster, fire, accident, or other causes, or to alter or replace facilities to implement new or higher standards, accommodate new functions, or replace building components that typically last more than 50 years.” The UPL did not list specific locations.
$276 million for additional Small Diameter Bomb IIs, which the service says suffers from diminishing manufacturing sources and material shortages for weapon procurement. Standoff munitions, such as the AGM-158 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile series took priority in the Air Force’s 2023 budget request, which looks to buy 550 extended range JASSMs and 28 Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile variants. Meanwhile, the 2023 budget request asked to procure 761 SDB II bombs, also known as the StormBreaker, down from 985 units in 2022.
The F-35 request of $921 million would restore some of the aircraft subtracted from the yet-to-be-awarded Lot 17, which will have Block 4 capability. In an interview with Air Force Magazine shortly after the budget release, USAF Deputy Chief of Staff for Plans and Programs, Lt. Gen. David S. Nahom, said the Air Force would buy more F-35s if resources allowed, but given the delay with Block 4, the Air Force opted to speed up the F-15EX buy, while also freeing up some money to help pay the multi-billion nuclear modernization bill.
$749 million for at least 26 military construction projects across the globe, ranging from new child development centers to simulators to a military working dog kennel. The biggest portion of that ask ($286 million) would fund ongoing natural disaster recovery at Tyndall Air Force Base, Fla., Offutt Air Force Base, Neb., and Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Va. Another large chunk, $114 million, would fund a KC-46A bay in the depot corrosion control hangar at Tinker Air Force Base, Okla.
$197 million for hypersonic testing with B-52s, F-15s, F-16s, and “tanker ops” at two locations, adding contractor capacity and absorbing the mounting workload. Specifically, the UPL asks for $55 million to enable “open-air hypersonic testing,” which “expands high fidelity coverage for extreme velocities beyond 350 [nautical miles] allowing for more shots of longer distance and duration.” The funds also would help “close capability gaps for hypersonics intercept, reusable vehicles, boost glide, and stores separation,” according to the document.
$516 million to restore readiness spares packages, which the service says are “critically below required readiness levels” after 20 years of Middle East contingency operations. RSP kits are tailored to specific aircraft variants and are intended to provide support for 30 consecutive days. However, according to the UPL, “if conflict with near peer adversary were to kick off today, only 15 days of support would be immediately available to support these platforms in a contested environment.”

The Space Force unfunded priorities list, on the other hand, looks to procure two additional launches in 2023 to accelerate initial launch capability of the mission warning/mission tracking layer to fiscal 2025.

The new service’s weapons system sustainment request would go toward improving missile warning and defense, space domain awareness, integrated tactical warning/attach assessment, launch range, military satellite communications, satellite control network, global positioning system, and space-based infrared systems shortfalls.

“The Department of the Air Force has been underfunded for nearly three decades, delaying modernization and leading to a perpetually shrinking force that is now too small to meet the nation’s expectations,” Wright said. “Congress should not only approve every single unfunded priority on the Air Force and Space force lists, it should go one better and increase those investments.”

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.”