That’s Not Santa: NORAD Tracks Russian Jets in Alaskan ADIZ

That’s Not Santa: NORAD Tracks Russian Jets in Alaskan ADIZ

Dec. 20, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

Four Russian warplanes entered the Air Defense Identification Zone off the coast of Alaska on Dec. 18, North American Aerospace Defense Command announced—the first such incident in three months. 

The Russian Defense Ministry announced on the social media site Telegram that it had sent two Tu-95 Bear-H bombers, accompanied by fighter escorts, on a 15-hour flight “near the western coast of Alaska.” 

NORAD usually makes headlines this time of year for its annual Santa Tracker. But as tensions around the globe rise, NORAD’s attention right now is on Russian Bears, not Santa and his reindeer. 

The Alaska ADIZ is a “buffer zone” of international airspace where aircraft are expected to readily identify themselves. Both NORAD and Russia noted that the aircraft did not enter U.S. or Canadian airspace.

“This Russian activity in the Alaska ADIZ occurs regularly and is not seen as a threat,” NORAD said in its release.  On a post on the social media site X, the command praised the Alaskan NORAD region’s response, noting the contributions of multiple units, including: 

  • The 611th Air Operations Center 
  • The 176th Air Defense Squadron, which serves as the regional air operations center 
  • The 211th Rescue Squadron, which flies HC-130J aircraft that can refuel other aircraft 
  • The 962nd Airborne Air Control Squadron, which flies the E-3 AWACS for airborne command and control 
  • The 18th Fighter Interceptor Squadron, which flies the F-16 
  • The 168th Wing 
  • The 22nd Air Refueling Wing, which flies the KC-135 and KC-46 
  • The 348th Reconnaissance Squadron, which flies the RQ-4 drone. 

The incursion into the Alaskan ADIZ was the first NORAD has acknowledged since Sept. 23. As it did this time, NORAD’s release noted that such activity occurs regularly and is not considered a threat. But the command revealed days later that it scrambled an F-16 to conduct a routine intercept of the Russian aircraft. During the intercept, a Russian Su-35 fighter cut across the front of the F-16 in what is known as a “headbutt” maneuver. The U.S. military called the encounter “unsafe,” and criticized the Russian aviator’s actions, saying they were “unprofessional and endangered all.” 

The December incident was the 12th instance of 2024 in which NORAD said Russian aircraft entered air defense identification zones around the U.S. and Canada . In July, Russian and Chinese bombers flew together for the first time in the Alaskan ADIZ, raising alarms about the two countries’ growing ties and China’s foothold in the Arctic region. 

Why Do We Need a Space Force? Here’s This Guardian’s Answer

Why Do We Need a Space Force? Here’s This Guardian’s Answer

Dec. 20, 2024 | By Charles Galbreath

The Space Force is now five years old, yet most Americans don’t even know it exists, not to mention what it does or why we need it. That’s an uncomfortable fact and a problem for the entire nation that every Guardian needs to understand and take seriously.  

Every Guardian must be able to clearly convey why the Space Force exists, what the service does, and why it is critical to national security.  

In the lead-up to the fifth anniversary of the founding of the Space Force, Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman detailed “six Space Force truths” that define the service and the Guardian identity. These aren’t meant to be memorized and regurgitated, but rather to be embodied and articulated in each Guardian’s own actions and words.  

Just a few years ago, while I was still on active duty and working at the Pentagon, a young man saw the distinct blue thread spelling “U.S. Space Force” on my uniform and stopped me on the street.  

“Are you really in the Space Force?” he inquired. When I replied that I was, he quickly followed up: “Can you tell me why we need a Space Force?”   

Informed by late-night talk shows and social media, the creation of the newest service seemed to him more a joke than a critical element of our national security. I’m sure many Guardians have experienced something similar.  

To make the discussion as relatable to him as possible, I started by describing the ways he might be using space on a daily basis and how dependent he was on space capabilities without realizing it. We talked about communications satellites transmitting entertainment and news content, navigating local roads with the Global Positioning System (GPS), being able to access money at ATMs because of the timing signals from GPS satellites, and accurate weather forecasts made possible thanks to sensors orbiting the Earth. And as valuable as all those things were to him, I said, “…they’re even more valuable to the military.”  

Space systems guide our ships, aircraft, and many weapons. Space communications connect the Air Force, Army, Navy, and Marine Corps to synchronize operations globally, provides vital intelligence and weather data to plan those operations, and generates warnings when an enemy launches missiles at us or our allies. Space makes the U.S. military more effective and efficient.  

“But there are potential adversaries who want to deny us those benefits,” I explained. Highlighting China and Russia, I talked generally about their ground-based, space-based, and cyber weapons whose sole purpose was to take away our space advantage. To make matters worse, both are also fielding their own space capabilities so they can threaten our Airmen, Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines.  

The threats and consequences are so severe, I told him, we need a military service whose only job is to preserve America’s access to space and, if necessary, deny those advantages to our adversaries. This cannot be a part-time job for another military service. It needs to be the dedicated job of one military branch.  

“That’s why we need a Space Force,” I concluded.  

The whole conversation lasted less than two minutes. Then the young man asked one more question that struck me with its clarity: “Why don’t you guys just say that?”  

Fast-forward to today. The Space Force is now five years old, and that question still lingers.  

Guardians and the Space Force must tell their story every day, to everyone who doesn’t know it. The six Space Force Truths offer a template, but each of us must be willing and able to explain it in our own words.  

The Space Force’s recent initiative to instill operational experience into every new Space Force officer is crucial. Just as “Every Marine is a rifleman,” so too must every Guardian be a space operator. Similarly, just as every Marine can explain why the Marine Corps exists and why it is critical to national defense, every Guardian should be able to do the same for the Space Force. In a sense, every Guardian is a spokesman.  

Whether to friendly audiences or skeptics and critics, the Space Force must engage the public to convey how central space is to everyday life, and how essential it is to have a military branch dedicated to ensuring the freedom to navigate, communicate, and operate in, from, and through space.  

Having a United States Space Force requires a significant national investment. The taxpaying public is right to wonder what value they will derive from such sacrifice. Guardians, whether military or civilian, have a civic duty to help them understand what that value is.  

Late-night comedians and social media trolls love to mock what they don’t understand. Rather than politely smiling, the Space Force should instead meet the challenge head-on and tell their story.  

Every American taxpayer should understand that the Space Force makes our way of life possible—every bit as much, if not even more directly, than each and every other military service.  

At least that’s one Guardian’s perspective. 

A birthday cake for the Space Force’s 5th birthday awaits cutting during a ceremony at Patch Barracks, Stuttgart, Germany, Dec. 17, 2024. U.S. Air Force photo by Master Sgt. Michael Mason
Experts: US Not Organized or Equipped for the Coming Electromagnetic Wars in Space 

Experts: US Not Organized or Equipped for the Coming Electromagnetic Wars in Space 

Dec. 20, 2024 | By Shaun Waterman

Space-based capabilities like GPS and satellite communications are vital to modern warfighting—and they are also most easily attackable via the electromagnetic spectrum via jamming or spoofing the radio transmissions that provide their command and control. But the Department of Defense’s electromagnetic warfare efforts in space are hamstrung by poor coordination and a lack of communication between stakeholders, experts said.

David Zurn, chief of test engineering at the Georgia Tech Research Institute, has worked on electromagnetic warfare (EW) programs for a decade or more. During a panel discussion at the Association of Old Crows’ symposium this month, he warned of the Pentagon’s vulnerability when it comes to what he calls “EW counter-space.”

“A day without space is really a day without 21st century warfighting,” said Zurn. “Space, however, is completely dependent on reliable data in its [Telemetry, Tracking and Command] links,” the radio transmissions that enable ground stations to communicate with and control satellites in orbit. 

Satellites generally aren’t capable of autonomous operation, Zurn noted. “We’ve got to have the TT&C links to operate those vehicles, and the data we get from them [for surveillance or communications] is critical. If those data links are cut off, we’re not going to get that info and we’re not going to be able to communicate across the force,” he said. But they can easily be jammed.

The conflict in Ukraine “is obviously the poster child for this. We’ve seen significant use of jamming, both against commercial and military [space] assets in Ukraine. So we’ve seen that EW counter-space is going to become normal … in future conflicts,” he added. 

The problem is made doubly urgent because the barriers to entry for EW attack in space are comparatively low: “Pandora’s box is open there, and I don’t think it’s going to close,” he said. 

“Resilience to space EW should be a critical DOD priority. I don’t think it is based on what I’ve seen from an investment perspective and an acquisition perspective,” Zurn concluded. 

Another issue holding resilience back is communication breakdowns between stakeholders, according to Jared Duckworth, a former Navy EW officer who now works on Joint Electro-Magnetic Spectrum Operations (JEMSO) as a contractor for the MITRE Corp. JEMSO encompasses both jamming (offensive EW), counter-jamming (defensive EW), and spectrum management activities. 

“When we start talking JEMSO, especially EMS operations in space, it is so diverse, so complex, so enormous, that each one of us is going to have a different perspective,” he said during the panel discussion, “It doesn’t mean that anyone is wrong, but we have to understand the big picture.” 

In that regard, Duckworth compared space EW to the elephant in the parable of the three blind men, each of whom is touching a different part of the animal. “Each one of them comes up with a different perspective of what the elephant is,” he noted.

In a subsequent interview with Air & Space Forces Magazine, Duckworth noted that the organizational picture in DOD is “a little bit confusing” when it comes to EW in space:

  • U.S. Strategic Command is the executive agent responsible for JEMSO and is the requirements owner and the user representative for tools being developed.
  • The other combatant commands actually execute JEMSO operations
  • In space specifically, U.S. Space Command executes JEMSO ops, while the Space Force and its acquisition elements like Space Systems Command and the Space Development Agency buy the tools.

“In any large organization like DOD, it is always very difficult to make sure everyone has the whole picture of what’s going on,” Duckworth said. 

As an example, he pointed out that combatting EW attacks on satellite communication downlinks is the responsibility of the end user—whichever combatant command is at the bottom of the downlink being jammed. But attacks against the uplinks generated by those end users are the responsibility of SPACECOM, which also had ownership of any attacks against TT&C links in either direction. 

“So you always have this push and pull of these huge organizations going in different directions and having different resources, and there’s a lot of overlap between them,” he said. “Figuring out who has what responsibility, what the process is, and what information everyone needs … is where everyone is starting to come to the table to work together.”

Add to that the fact that all these organizations and concepts are still in the infancy, and it is a challenging recipe, he said. The Space Force came online nearly five years ago, and U.S European command’s JEMSO unit reached initial operating capability in March 2019. 

“All these communities just stood up within the last five or six years. … So we’re still learning roles and responsibilities,” Duckworth pointed out. “Operationally speaking, I would say the communication is impressive. There’s a lot of dialog that takes place.”

But the development/acquisition side is less impressive. “Getting a lot of the acquisition technical people to speak, define roles, responsibilities, processes, and get at who really should be responsible for what part is the critical point,” he said. 

Part of the problem is the cross-cutting character of spectrum operations, Maj. Gen. Steve “Bucky” Butow, head of the space portfolio at the Defense Innovation Unit, told Air & Space Forces Magazine.  

“I’m fortunate,” he said, explaining that “space is a well-defined vertical in the Department of Defense. There’s a Space Force that operates in the space domain and so my portfolio is well-aligned with that.” 

By contrast, he said, technology portfolios can cut across verticals across all the domains and “require a lot more hand-holding and a lot more engagement.” 

“Electronic warfare is very much one of these horizontals, and it always has been,” he added. “One of the areas we need to innovate on is policy.” 

The policy challenges are especially grave, Duckworth added, because of the relatively low barriers to entry for EW, even in space. GPS signals can be jammed and civilian ones spoofed with cheap, easily available hardware.  

“You don’t need any kind of space launch capability to do EW [in space], and you don’t need very good space domain awareness, because of the proliferation of [commercial off-the-shelf] equipment,” he said. 

As a result, smaller countries that aren’t typically considered space powers or even non-state actors could wield EW in a “‘David and Goliath’ kind of situation,” Duckworth said.

As Space Force Turns 5, Here’s What You Need to Know About the Military Service

As Space Force Turns 5, Here’s What You Need to Know About the Military Service

Dec. 19, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

The Space Force turns five years old on Dec. 20, with Guardians everywhere preparing to celebrate. 

Yet public awareness of the Space Force remains low, acknowledged Katharine Kelley, Deputy Chief of Space Operations for Human Capital. 

“If you look at that data, less than 8 percent [of the public] even know we exist, and a smaller subset of the national population can describe what we do,” Kelley said this week at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. 

So, on the occasion of this milestone, here are five things to know about the Space Force and why it matters for the rest of the military and all Americans. 

Getting Bigger and Bigger 

Back on Dec. 20, 2019, the Space Force had just one member: Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond. In the five years since, it has expanded at an astonishing rate. 

“We have tripled in size every year for the last five years in personnel,” said Gen. B. Chance Saltzman, Raymond’s successor as the service chief. 

Now, the Space Force boasts almost 15,000 military and civilian personnel, Saltzman said, including approximately 9,400 Active-Duty Guardians. It’s still the smallest military branch by number of service members, but those Guardians are responsible for a budget of roughly $29 billion and missions around the world and in orbit. 

Developing counterspace capabilities and strategies are among the top priorities for Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman. Critics say the Space Force must do more to articulate clear policies on how and when counterspace solutions might be used. Mike Tsukamoto/ staff

Everyday Services 

When it comes to explaining what exactly it is the Space Force does, leaders often start by asking people if they use their phones to navigate to work, stop at an ATM, or fly on a plane. All of them rely on the Global Position System, a collection of satellites operated by the Space Force. Indeed, GPS is used for everything from agriculture to financial markets to scientific research. 

According to some estimates, if GPS were to go down for 15 minutes, it would cost the U.S. economy around $1 billion. 

On top of GPS, the Space Force is also responsible for tracking tens of thousands of objects in space, using a combination of satellites, telescopes, and antennae to do so. That’s critically important for making sure objects don’t collide and create more debris. Debris lingers in space and can threaten government or private satellites that provide internet access, communications, and imagery. 

Missile Warning 

The Space Force doesn’t just provide navigation, timing and collision avoidance services. It’s also responsible for protecting U.S. service members around the globe. That’s the focus of its missile warning satellites and radars. 

Guardians operate overhead persistent infrared satellites like the Defense Support Program and Space-Based Infrared System that can detect heat from missile and booster plumes and share that data with Joint Tactical Ground Stations to give troops advance warning of an incoming attack. 

Radars like the Upgraded Early Warning Radar, Perimeter Acquisition Radar Attack Characterization System, and Long Range Discrimination Radar track those missiles and help guide interceptors to take them out—an incredibly difficult technical task that officials sometimes describe as “hitting a bullet with a bullet.” 

The Space Force alerted troops to incoming attacks in the Middle East in 2020, and more recently alerted U.S. forces of pending attacks on Israel, enabling a coalition of forces to intercept hundreds of incoming missiles.  

A Joint Tactical Ground Stations (JTAGS) initial qualification course instructor with U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command and a JTAGS IQC student at the JTAGS antenna enclosure at the Dr. Peter G. Pappas Training Facility in Colorado Springs, Colo., March 29, 2021. US Army photo by Sgt. 1st Class Aaron Rognstad

Assured Communications 

Through its satellites, the Space Force provides communications for supporting some of the military’s most vital missions. For example, the Advanced Extremely High Frequency Satellite System provides the secure communications necessary for nuclear command and control. The Pentagon’s essential mission of nuclear deterrence depends on having assured comms, so the service has to make sure those satellites stay secure and operational at all times. 

Threats in Space 

Not only does the Space Force help protect people and essential services on Earth, it is also responsible for defending U.S. assets in space—and that task is getting harder all the time as countries like China and Russia test out ways to destroy or disrupt satellites.  

Knowing that the U.S. military uses space for navigation, missile warning, communications, and more, adversaries are experimenting with missiles that can shoot up from Earth to take out orbiting satellites, arm their own satellites with the means to grab and move another satellite, and put in orbit weapons that can fire projectiles to damage other satellites. Russia has even floated putting a nuclear weapon in space. 

The Space Force not only monitors those threats, it is working on what it calls “orbital warfare” to make sure it can counter anything adversaries try to hurt the U.S. in space. Developing the means to hold others at risk—that is, to field its own offensive weapons in space—is increasingly a capability the Space Force says it needs. That is something the infant USSF is likely to develop in the coming years.

Supporting Spaceflight 

When most of the public thinks of space, they think of NASA and its human spaceflight program—or perhaps the growing trend of commercial firms sending humans to space. 

The Space Force doesn’t typically put Guardians in orbit—though one Guardian, Col. Nick Hague, is currently on the International Space Station as a NASA astronaut. The service does, however, play a key role. It operates multiple launch complexes at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Fla., and Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif., and it provides situational awareness and collision avoidance warning for the International Space Station and rockets carrying humans into orbit. 

Kendall Sees Progress on CCA Drones as His Legacy; F-35 ‘Not Going Away’

Kendall Sees Progress on CCA Drones as His Legacy; F-35 ‘Not Going Away’

Dec. 19, 2024 | By John A. Tirpak

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, poised to leave office next month, thinks his push to advance autonomous drones that accompany manned aircraft—the Collaborative Combat Aircraft program—will be the most revolutionary of the many programs he launched and organizational changes he’s made in the job.

At the same time, Kendall said Dec. 19, the F-35 fighter will be a crucial platform for many years to come and likely won’t be supplanted by CCA drones, which he said have a long way to go before they can match the human-piloted F-35’s performance.

Looking ahead, Kendall also said at AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies that an analysis on the future of the Next-Generation Air Dominance fighter is largely finished, but he wants the incoming administration led by President-elect Donald Trump to make the final choice and “own” decisions made about air superiority.

CCA

During his tenure, Kendall has launched his signature seven “Operational Imperatives” to modernize the force and sweeping “re-optimization for Great Power Competition.”

Asked by Air & Space Forces Magazine to identify his most impactful effort, though, Kendall said the CCA program.

“The thing that I accelerated by quite a bit that I think is going to be, ultimately, the most transformative is the CCAs. They’re going to change air warfare in some very fundamental ways,” Kendall said. Once Increment 1 of the program is in production—and Kendall said he still thinks “hundreds” will be in service before the end of the decade—the program will become “evolutionary,” he said, with many iterations.

“I think making that first step and hopefully continuing it to the next iterations is the thing that I think will have, ultimately, the most lasting impact,” he added.

Other initiatives like the Operational Imperatives were things that probably “would have happened” whether he’d been in the job or not, he said.

Within the CCA program the Air Force has sought to do several things under Kendall. It has awarded contracts to Anduril Industries and General Atomics to develop aircraft, with the goal of getting to “a meaningful inventory as quickly as possible.” The service has also worked to develop and mature the underlying autonomy software that will fly the CCAs as “wingmen” for the manned fighters.

“Then there’s the part about how to structure organizations, and how to integrate [CCAs] into organizations, what kind of basing to set up, maintenance concepts, things like that,” Kendall said. Organizations exist now to “do all of that. … We’re going to learn from that.”

It was vital, however, to make quick progress on that first first increment, Kendall said, so that the force can experiment with and learn from the new drones.

“At the end of the day, our operators are going to figure out how they want to integrate CCAs into the force,” he said. “The threat is moving in this direction too, and it’s a very close race right now. So we’ve got to figure this out. We’ve got to get it right.”

Kendall said his concerns that the Air Force culture would resist CCAs have been unfounded. Pilots have told him CCAs and autonomous platforms are going to “‘keep us alive. … Without these, we can’t do the things we need to do to be successful, operationally.'”

Asked about comments from Elon Musk—the tech billionaire who will co-lead the unofficial “Department of Government Efficiency” to advise President Donald Trump—deriding the F-35 and calling for the Pentagon to buy autonomous drones instead of manned fighters, Kendall advised caution.

“I have a lot of respect for Elon Musk as an engineer,” Kendall said. “He’s not a warfighter, and he needs to learn a little bit more about the business, I think, before he makes such grand announcements as he did.”

Removing humans from combat aircraft is still a long way off, Kendall said.

“I think it’s more like decades” before autonomous aircraft fully displace pilots, he said. “We’re not there. It’s going to be a little while before we get there.”

F-35

Despite the revolutionary nature of the CCA, the F-35 “isn’t going away,” Kendall observed.

“It’s a state-of-the-art system that’s continuously being upgraded,” he said. “There’s a reason so many countries are buying the F-35. It is dominant over fourth generation fighters, period, in a very, very serious way. It’s not even close. And there is no alternative to that in the near term.”

In the meantime, “we should continue to buy and operate” the F-35,” Kendall insisted.

A U.S. Air Force F-35A Lightning II participating in NATO exercise Ramstein Flag 24 flies over the west coast of Greece, Oct. 4, 2024. U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Emili Koonce

He did say, however, that the government needs better performance from Lockheed Martin, the F-35 prime contractor, because, “quite honestly, they’ve not been delivering what they’ve been promising, and they’re not doing that as fast as they could, by a wide margin.”

Kendall also noted that an agreement on Lots 18 and 19 of the F-35 has just been reached, and they will be more expensive for several reasons, including more complexity, capability, and inflation.

But the F-35 is “a world-class fighter,” Kendall said. The Air Force has stuck with its 20-year-old objective of acquiring 1,763 F-35s, and while “it’s impossible to predict” whether that figure will stand, “we’re going to be buying more for some period,” he added, noting that future decisions about NGAD and CCAs could change things down the road.

Kendall said that if the Air Force proceeds with the Next-Generation Air Dominance program, “it’s going to be several years before we can field them in quantity” and its cost will be “very expensive compared to the F-35.”

NGAD

The future of NGAD is very much up in the air after Kendall decided to punt decisions about it to his successor under Trump. Two weeks later, he stood by that call.

“I don’t want to make a decision that’s going to be disrupted and reversed, potentially, by the new team,” he said. “Whatever we decide to do about that mix of programs, the new team is going to want to be able to support it and take it forward for the next four years.” He felt it was “really smart, in this case, to delay a decision. The analysis is mostly done. The new team may want some additional analysis, but I want them to own this decision, and I don’t want us to start industry down a specific course and then have to abruptly reverse that few months from now.”

He put the NGAD under review this summer, delaying a development contract and putting the unnamed finalists under an extended Technical Maturation and Risk Reduction, or TMRR contract.  

There was an “affordability concern” with NGAD, which Kendall has at times characterized as potentially costing hundreds of millions of dollars per aircraft.

“It’s very expensive airplane that we could only afford in small quantities, and it has a relatively narrow mission profile, designed around certain operations and threats,” Kendall said.

Those cost concerns led to a broader reckoning, though, about the fundamental requirements for NGAD and its usefulness with changing technology. That analysis was led by a blue-ribbon panel of general and experts and is “generally done,” Kendall said. It looked at how the NGAD fighter would “operate in a mix that included uncrewed platforms” and in an Agile Combat Employment environment, in which the Air Force expects to operate from a multitude of austere locations to complicate an opponent’s targeting of air bases.

“I think the right thing to do to kick the final decision on this into the next administration,” he said, but “they’re going to need to move fast. The ‘25 budget is already on the Hill. It probably won’t be passed for a few more months. And the ‘26 budget is going to need to be submitted. So those are going to be the drivers on getting final decisions on what mix of capabilities is pursued.”

From Golf to Whiskey: Aviano Becomes the Latest Base to Swap Out HH-60 Models

From Golf to Whiskey: Aviano Becomes the Latest Base to Swap Out HH-60 Models

Dec. 19, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

Airmen from the 31st Fighter Wing at Aviano Air Base, Italy, flew their last mission in an HH-60G Pave Hawk helicopter on Dec. 18, becoming the latest unit across the Air Force to transition to the new HH-60W Jolly Green II. 

U.S. Air Forces in Europe announced the final flight in a press release and noted that the wing’s first HH-60W, often called “Whiskey,” arrived Dec. 13. Aviano is the only USAF base in Europe or Africa to host combat search-and-rescue helicopters. 

“Today marks the end of an iconic chapter in our Air Force history with the final active-duty HH-60G flight,” 31st Fighter Wing deputy commander Col. Beau Diers said in a release. “Through its tour of duty, the HH-60G provided countless lifesaving rescue operations around the globe. As we transition to the HH-60W, we remember the G’s proud history while looking forward to an even brighter future with increased combat capabilities.” 

The Air Force has moved to retire most of its G models, often referred to as “Golf,” in recent years, with 37 aircraft heading to the Boneyard in fiscal 2024 and another 12 going in fiscal 2025. 

In addition to Aviano, Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico bid farewell to its last HH-60G this month, with a final retirement ceremony on Dec. 3. The 106th Rescue Wing at Gabreski Air National Guard Base in New York retired its first HH-60G in June and finished its conversion by October. And Kadena Air Base in Japan welcomed its first HH-60W in January and retired its last G model by August. 

An HH-60W Jolly Green II search and rescue helicopter assigned to the 106th Rescue Wing conducts a flyover during an HH-60W conversion ceremony at the 106th Rescue Wing based at Francis S. Gabreski Air National Guard Base, Westhampton Beach, N.Y., October 25, 2024. U.S. Air National Guard photo by Senior Airman Sarah McKernan

The Pave Hawk fleet is ripe for replacement after nearly 30 years of hard flying both in peacetime rescues and the Global War on Terror. Besides fresh metal, the brand-new Jolly Green II offers advanced avionics and communications, longer range, better self-defense systems, more room onboard, and more life-saving capabilities for pararescuemen. 

As the Air Force prepares for a potential fight with China, service officials fear short-ranged, slow moving rescue helicopters will be easy targets in a contested airspace over the vast Pacific Ocean. Air Force leaders moved to cap the fleet size for the W model at 75 aircraft a few years ago, down from their original plan of 113. 

Rescue experts disagreed, citing the rescue community’s history of performing in contested environments, the 60W’s impressive capabilities, and the lack of a viable alternative to do the job. In the 2024 budget, Congress added money for 10 extra combat rescue helicopters, boosting the HH-60W fleet to 85. Draft versions of the 2025 budget released by the House and Senate suggest they may add between two and five more. 

Space Force, Air Force Need More Money, Kendall Says

Space Force, Air Force Need More Money, Kendall Says

Dec. 19, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

The Space Force needs more money to tackle its growing mission and support the joint force—but the Pentagon can’t raid the Air Force’s budget to pay that bill, Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall said Dec. 19. 

With one month left in his tenure before President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration, Kendall repeatedly pressed for more resources for both services during an appearance at AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. 

“We’ve made reasonable progress on getting the funding we need, but more is needed, I’ll be blunt about that,” Kendall said. 

Top Air Force and Space Force officials have increasingly warned in recent months that they cannot deliver capabilities vital to the nation’s security without a plus-up to their budgets. Republicans are poised to take Congress and the White House in 2025, raising the prospects for increased defense spending—and the open-ended question of how much the Air Force or Space Force will get out of any potential increase. 

“How much money is the new administration going to allocate to DOD, and how much of that is going to get allocated to the Air Force and Space Force? Those are unknowns right now,” Kendall said. “We’re trying to position the next administration to be able to address all those questions, make a sound decision, and then move it forward consistent with the constraints they have.” 

Back in March, Kendall and other leaders warned that the department’s 2025 budget request would be “unsatisfying” to many as they were limited by budget caps. By June, Kendall was warning that the lack of resources was his biggest concern for the 2026 budget. And in November, he said that absent an increase in funding, the Air Force would not be able to afford three of its signature modernization efforts all at once: the Next-Generation Air Dominance fighter, the Next-Generation Aerial-refueling System tanker, and Collaborative Combat Aircraft drones. 

The Space Force is in no less dire straits—after explosive growth in its first few years of existence, the service saw its first ever cuts proposed in the 2025 budget. Some of that, Kendall said Dec. 19, was driven by the ebb and flow of developing new systems while devoting less resources to old ones. 

But Congress has proposed even bigger cuts to USSF on top of what the Pentagon requested. 

“What the Hill has done, as they work on [the ’25 budget] is, to fund their priorities, they have taken a lot of cuts out of the [research and development] accounts,” Kendall said. “Space Force is 65 percent, roughly, R&D. The Air Force is about 25 percent. So when they’ve gone and taken a few percent out of every R&D program, the Space Force suffers more from that.” 

Kendall made “space order of battle” the first of his seven Operational Imperatives, and much of the service’s R&D funding is to develop new proliferated constellations of satellites, as well as new missions shifting to space like targeting and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. On top of that, Space Force leaders have said the service needs to invest in counter-space capabilities—weapons that can hold adversaries’ space capabilities at risk should they be used to target U.S. forces. 

“The new administration will have to take a look at this,” Kendall said. “We’re leaving behind a draft budget for them to start with, which I think is in pretty good shape. And then they’ll have to figure out how much are they going to put in the defense and how are we going to allocate it? There’s no question in my mind that one of our highest priorities should be increasing Space Force funding and accelerating the fielding of some of those capabilities.” 

But while Kendall is confident that “there’s almost a consensus within the DOD that we’re going to need to ramp up funding for space,” he also used one of his final public appearances as secretary to argue the Air Force shouldn’t be the bill-payer. 

“The Air Force can’t pay for the Space Force. So within the Department of the Air Force, I can’t solve the Space Force problem by moving tens of millions of dollars over into the Space Force,” Kendall said. “The rest of the joint force and DOD as a whole—people appreciate that and understand it. I have made some moves there in the margins, but not dramatic ones. That needs to be considered in the context of the overall DOD budget.” 

Indeed, the Air Force faces a funding crunch of its own. As the service in charge of two legs of the nuclear triad, its budget includes the new B-21 bomber and Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile. Sentinel in particular is over-budget and behind schedule, with a price tag now projected at around $140 billion. 

(ILLUSTRATION) An artist’s concept of the LGM-35A Sentinel ICBM launched at twilight. Northrop Grumman

No matter the cost, Kendall said funding for nuclear modernization is a “given.” But as those programs grow, they threaten to siphon money away from all the other Air Force priorities. 

“We have to have a secure, reliable, and effective nuclear deterrent,” Kendall said. “We also have to have an effective conventional force for our most pacing challenges. We have to do both.” 

While some advocates have called for a dedicated separate fund for Sentinel and the nuclear enterprise, Kendall said he is “neutral” on the idea. At the end of the day, he argued, it all comes down to the size of the budget. 

“There are only two ways to do all that we need to do: you add money to the DOD budget and you put to the relevant services, or you take it away from somebody else within the DOD budget,” he said. “Those are the only choices, and we’re going to have to figure out which one of those to do.” 

Funds for nuclear modernization will be there, he added, but any cuts elsewhere raise existential concerns. 

“There are choices to be made about investments in conventional capability. But if we don’t act and fund the Space Force and the Air Force, it’s only a matter of time until China achieves superiority,” he warned. 

Could This Program at Cannon Be a Model for Health Care at Remote Air Force Bases?

Could This Program at Cannon Be a Model for Health Care at Remote Air Force Bases?

Dec. 18, 2024 | By David Roza

An effort at Cannon Air Force Base, N.M., to bring in medical specialists from afar seems to be paying off, with families driving less and requesting fewer travel vouchers to access care. Three other Air Force bases around the country have expressed interest in the program, suggesting that it could serve as a template in remote areas.

Launched in October 2023, the Circuit Rider program is aimed at addressing the lack of access to specialty care to Cannon, a challenge throughout rural New Mexico.

“We don’t have enough doctors anywhere in New Mexico, but especially in rural New Mexico,” one doctor told New Mexico in Depth in 2023.

A medical support summit held at Cannon last year found shortfalls in specialties such as behavioral health, applied behavior analysis, neurology, and endocrinology, with families traveling an average of 147 miles for consultations and treatment.

Circuit Rider sought to mitigate the problem by bringing in military health care providers from out of state. As long as they have an unrestricted active state medical license, those military providers are not bound by the same state licensure restrictions as their civilian colleagues.

Fourteen months later, 160 patients and about 130 families have used the program for help with endocrinology, developmental pediatrics, psychiatric care for children and adolescents, and other specialties, according to a Dec. 11 press release.

Circuit Rider has saved $200,000 in travel voucher expenditures and 1,400 man-hours (about 58 days) that would have otherwise been spent traveling for care. The program is also making it easier for military family members with special needs to move to Cannon. The release said the Exceptional Family Member Program denial rate dropped from 38 percent in 2023 to 10 percent this year.

Col. Danielle Cermak, commander of the 27th Special Operations Medical Group, called the program “a huge win.”

“The program has allowed us to increase accessibility to specialty providers, continue to support the needs of our patients and maximize the readiness required for Cannon’s high-tempo mission,” Cermak said in the press release.

After a successful first year, the program is set to expand with more specialty services in 2025. That could include rheumatology and tele-audiology. Lt. Col. Rene Hinton, chief of medical staff at the 27th SOMDG, said a partnership with the Colorado Military Health System may yield weekly virtual neurology appointments and dermatology consultations, while the Naval Medical Center of San Diego could provide telehealth options for child psychology.

Cannon isn’t alone in facing challenges. Access to medical care is a problem throughout the military due to staff shortages, limited providers at small military treatment facilities, and a lack of providers willing to accept TRICARE, according to a 2023 Defense Department Inspector General report.

Budget cuts mean some contracts for base medical personnel go unrenewed, leaving many locations in the continental U.S. short of providers, the report found.

Other bases are interested in Cannon’s success: a spokesperson for the Defense Health Agency, which coordinates Circuit Rider, told Air & Space Forces Magazine that representatives from three bases have discussed the program with Cannon, though it remains to be seen what will come out of those discussions. DHA declined to identify the exact bases.

Defense Health Agency connects military treatment facilities around the world: it helped Cannon work with Army and Air Force dermatology experts in Colorado and rheumatology providers all the way from the 88th Medical Group at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. Earlier providers came from as far as Alaska.

“We are continuing to strengthen partnerships to provide even more care options,” Hinton said in the release.

Pentagon Says Chinese Air Force Nipping at USAF’s Heels, but Not Yet a Match

Pentagon Says Chinese Air Force Nipping at USAF’s Heels, but Not Yet a Match

Dec. 18, 2024 | By John A. Tirpak

China’s air force is very good and improving quickly, but has not yet matched the air combat capabilities of the U.S. Air Force, according to the Pentagon’s annual report on Chinese military power and officials who helped prepare it.

The 2024 edition of the report particularly emphasized how the People’s Liberation Army Air Force has expanded the capabilities of its unmanned aerial systems, saying they are now comparable to USAF systems. It also noted strides the Chinese have made with air-to-air missiles, electronic warfare, bombers, and fifth-generation fighters.

The PLAAF “with respect to its modernization and indigenization of its unmanned aerial systems, is quickly approaching U.S. standards,” a senior Pentagon official told reporters in a background briefing ahead of the report’s release.

The report specifically notes “the routine appearance of increasingly sophisticated systems across theater and echelon levels.” Within the last three years, the Chinese have shown off the Xianglong jet-powered UAS, the supersonic WZ-8 drone, and a redesigned version of the GJ-11 stealth unmanned combat air vehicle at airshows.

“Advanced small UASs are increasingly appearing in military and civilian applications, with PRC industry remaining a key exporter of UASs and components of all sizes,” the Pentagon report states. The PRC is “maturing and … signaling its efforts in next-generation capabilities,” with a greater airshow presence, displaying counterparts to most advanced western designs, including stealth flying wing aircraft.

These new concepts may include a counterpart to the Air Force’s nascent Collaborative Combat Aircraft program, as “PRC developers are demonstrating an interest in additional growth beyond [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] and [electronic warfare] into air-to-air and air-to-ground combat, with substantial development efforts to produce swarming capability for operational applications.”

On the manned side, the Pentagon assessed that China is swiftly building up and improving its fleet of J-20 Mighty Dragon stealth fighters. The official said China is increasing production capacity with a new facility. Various think tanks have pegged the J-20 fleet at nearing 200 airframes—versus 184 F-22s in the U.S. Air Force inventory—and China is said to be relying increasingly on an indigenous engine for the fighter, after years of having to import powerplants from Russia.

“They’ve begun to switch to domestically produced engines, although some Russian engines may remain in use,” the official said, adding that “the PLA Air Force is also still working on upgrading the J-20.”

He declined to provide any details about China’s other fifth-generation fighter, the twin-engined J-35, which closely resembles the U.S. single-engine F-35 and is expected to equip China’s aircraft carriers.

The Pentagon report notes that the PLAAF has embarked on “a set of major institutional reforms aimed at creating a modern, professional fighting force,” training under what the service called “actual combat conditions,” understood to mean readiness to engage and win against “highly capable military competitors.”

As part of this training, pilots now have the freedom to create their own flight plans and engage in intercepts that are “not completely pre-scripted,” the report states.

The report also noted the PLAAF has “increased its use of confrontation training,” a likely reference to the growing number of bluff-charge attacks at Taiwan. The PLAAF also is increasing the number of joint exercises it conducts with other regional air forces, including those of Pakistan, Russia and Thailand.

Together with the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), China fields the largest aviation force in the Indo-Pacific region and the third largest in the world, with over 3,150 total crewed aircraft—not including trainers or drones. More than 2,400 of those tails are combat aircraft, and the majority of those—around 1,300—are now fourth-generation. Nearly all fighters will be fourth generation or better “in the next several years,” the official said.

According to China’s 2019 defense white paper, its forces are shifting from territorial air defense to “offensive and defensive operations,” which the Pentagon construes as power-projection capabilities far afield from the mainland.

The PLAAF is “rapidly approaching technology typical of U.S. standards,” the Pentagon said, with “aviation, airborne, air defense, radar, electronic countermeasure, and communications forces organized into five Theater Command Air Forces.”

Among the aircraft on which the Pentagon provided specific comments:

  • Shenyang J-16: a “fourth-plus-generation“ fighter, based originally on Russia’s Su-27, which will be able to carry the “very long range air-to-air missile, the PL-17,” the appearance of which may have driven the Air Force to accelerate the retirements of aircraft like the E-8 JSTARS and E-3 AWACS. In 2023, more than 225 J-16s were in PLAAF service, and more are coming.
  • Chengdu J-20: Upgrades in the works include increasing the J-20’s internal missile loadout to preserve its stealth while increasing its magazine, “installing thrust-vectoring engine nozzles, and adding super cruise capability by installing higher-thrust indigenous WS-15 engines.”
  • Shenyang J-35/FC-31/J-31: The Pentagon offered little commentary on this stealthy F-35 lookalike, except to say that it will likely equip Chinese aircraft carriers and will be offered for export.
  • Xi’an H-6N: The report notes that the PLAAF has “operationally fielded the H-6N bomber,” a highly upgraded version of the old Russian Tu-16 “Badger.” The H-6N has air-to-air refueling capability, longer range than previous variants, and can externally carry a nuclear-capable air-launched ballistic missile with a maneuvering re-entry vehicle, representing the air leg of China’s nuclear triad.
  • Xi’an H-20: “The PRC probably is developing a strategic stealth bomber, according to PRC state media,” the report states, although in previous editions, the Pentagon has more definitively noted work on a Chinese flying wing bomber potentially modeled on the Air Force B-2 Spirit.  The new bomber will be subsonic and have “a nuclear mission in addition to filling conventional roles,” much like the American B-2 and B-21. Chinese media have released images of a flying-wing-type aircraft under a tarp, highly reminiscent of Northrop Grumman’s advertising for its new B-21bomber before that aircraft was publicly revealed two years ago. Lifting language from previous editions, the Pentagon acknowledged that work started on the H-20 in 2016, and “it may take more than a decade to develop this type of advanced bomber.” However, that suggests the aircraft could appear as soon as 2026 or 2027.
  • Shaanxi Y-9: The Y-9, rolled out in 2019, is billed as a jamming/electronic warfare aircraft, able to “disrupt an adversary’s battlespace awareness at long ranges.”
  • Xi’an Y-20: China’s lookalike to the American C-17 transport is being developed into an aerial tanker.