27 Great Unit Patches from AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference

Sept. 22, 2024 | By David Roza

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.—More than 22,000 Airmen, Guardians, joint service members, partners, allies, and civilian stakeholders registered for this year’s AFA Air, Space & Cyber Conference, from Sept. 16-18 to share the latest news and ideas about some of the most challenging security issues of our time.

Besides the serious discussions, there were a rainbow of shoulder patches worn by service members from around the world celebrating the mission and heritage of their home units. Air & Space Forces Magazine photographed 27 shoulder patches compiled in the list below. It is by no means a comprehensive list of all the unit insignias on display at this year’s conference.

Though it sounds like a gas planet in Star Wars, BESPIN actually stands for Business and Enterprise Systems Product INovation, an Air Force software factory that is meant to help the service churn out easy-to-use mobile apps for education, mission scheduling, childcare, and everything in between. (Air & Space Forces Magazine photo by David Roza)

Though it dates back to World War I, today the 89th Attack Squadron flies MQ-9 Reaper drones from Ellsworth Air Force Base, S.D. The patch design represents the winged helmet of the ancient Greek god Hermes, a symbol of great speed. (Air & Space Forces Magazine photo by David Roza)

Based at Royal Air Force Lakenheath, United Kingdom, the “Valkyries” of the 495th Fighter Squadron was the first overseas Air Force squadron to operate the F-35 Lightning II. The unit’s motto, “Mala Ipsa Nova,” is Latin for “Bad News Itself.” (Air & Space Forces Magazine photo by David Roza)

National Intelligence University offers classes in the strategy and technology of intelligence gathering, leadership, management, and more to students across the civilian and military lanes of the intelligence community. (Air & Space Forces Magazine photo by David Roza)

space force patch — Space Force Guardians wear this patch when they work with the National Reconnaissance Office, the agency that operates the U.S. government’s spy satellites, though the NRO and USSF work together closely on the mission. The Latin numerals mark 1961, the year NRO was established. (Air & Space Forces Magazine photo by David Roza)

A student designed this patch for the Space Force’s 533rd Training Squadron’s Detachment 1, an intelligence tech school at Goodfellow Air Force Base, Texas. The sheep skull represents the nearby city of San Angelo, nicknamed the wool capital of the world for its robust wool industry. The line of stars represents Aries, a constellation frequently used to help gauge the orbits of satellites overhead, while the Polaris or North Star symbol in the corner represents the Space Force core values. (Air & Space Forces Magazine photo by David Roza)

The grinning space helmeted skull of the Space Force’s 533rd Training Squadron is a space-age twist on the squadron’s historic emblem, where a skull wore an ancient or Medieval helmet. “Cannes Blue” is a common color for units assigned to Space Training and Readiness Command. (Air & Space Forces Magazine photo by David Roza)

The Space Force official song starts with “We’re the mighty watchful eye,” and few units take that more seriously than the Space Sensing directorate within Space Systems Command responsible for missile warning, tracking and defense, space-based environmental monitoring, and other sensing missions. (Air & Space Forces Magazine photo by Greg Hadley)

Assigned to Travis Air Force Base, Calif., the 6th Air Refueling Squadron flew the KC-10 tanker since 1989 but is switching over to the newer KC-46 Pegasus as the KC-10 is due to retire later this month. The new jet matches the mascot, a common symbol in mobility squadrons. Vis Extensa is Latin for Strength Extended, according to the Air Force. (Air & Space Forces Magazine photo by David Roza)

Also at Travis Air Force Base, Calif., the 9th Air Refueling Squadron is also switching from the KC-10 to the KC-46. The logo Universal “is truly a suitable single-word summary that conveys the extensiveness and depth of the herculean efforts that fill the squadron’s rich history,” according to the base website. (Air & Space Forces Magazine photo by David Roza)

Though the symbolism of its patch was not immediately clear, the 344th Recruiting Squadron is made up of recruiters across Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. Thanks to them and other squadrons across the service, the Air Force met its 2024 recruiting goals and aims to expand them in 2025. (Air & Space Forces Magazine photo by David Roza)

Marylanders love their flag, so the patch for the Maryland Air National Guard’s 175th Force Support Squadron would not be complete without it. (Air & Space Forces Magazine photo by David Roza)

space patch — Headquartered at Schriever Space Force Base, Colo., the 1st Space Operations Squadron performs space-based space domain awareness. (Air & Space Forces Magazine photo by David Roza)

Though the Pittsburgh Steelers football team made it famous, the Steelmark is a symbol of the U.S. steel industry. The three diamond shapes represent the three materials used to produce steel: yellow for coal, orange/red for iron ore, and blue for steel scrap. The 171st Air Refueling Wing, a unit of the Pennsylvania Air National Guard, has its own twist on the symbol: a KC-135 refueling tanker on the left side. (Air & Space Forces Magazine photo by David Roza)

This unofficial patch represents an Air Force Experimental Ops unit dedicated to developing the branch’s use of collaborative combat aircraft (CCAs), the robotic wingmen meant to help build up the Air Force’s combat capacity. The 0s and 1s in the background represent binary code. (Air & Space Forces Magazine photo by David Roza)

This morale patch for the CCA Systems Management Office at Air Combat Command Headquarters is a throwback to the 1984 Capcom video game 1942, where players fly the P-38 Lightning and unlock smaller buddy fighters to help protect them, just like how CCAs are meant to help U.S. fighter pilots in future conflicts. (Air & Space Forces Magazine photo by David Roza)

The 8s are everywhere in this patch for the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s J-8 Directorate, which evaluates and develops force structure requirements. The eight-tentacled octopus is purple, the color of joint operations. It sits on an 8-ball and touches aircraft, tanks, submarines, and everything in between. (Air & Space Forces Magazine photo by David Roza)

Located at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., the Air Force Operational Test & Evaluation Center Detachment 2 determines “how well systems perform when operated and maintained by military personnel in operational environments,” according to the base website. Those systems include electronic warfare, air armament, and other systems. (Air & Space Forces Magazine photo by David Roza)

Today the 9th Airlift Squadron flies the C-5 Galaxy, the U.S. military’s largest air transport, but the squadron has flown troops into battle since World War II. The squadron’s mascot, the pelican, carries a mouth full of soldiers on the unit’s patch. (Air & Space Forces Magazine photo by David Roza)

The 160th Attack Squadron has a long history as a fighter squadron dating back to the dawn of the Cold War, when it was assigned to the Alabama Air National Guard. The unit has since become a formal training unit for MQ-9 pilots and sensor operators at the California Air National Guard’s 163rd Attack Wing. (Air & Space Forces Magazine photo by David Roza)

The largest diamond discovered in the U.S. was found in Arkansas, which picked diamonds as the state gemstone. Now a diamond is the centerpiece for the patch of the 19th Communications Squadron, assigned to Little Rock Air Force Base, Ark. (Air & Space Forces Magazine photo by David Roza)

Often translated as “come and take ‘em,” the phrase Molon labe is attributed to the Spartan King Leonidas when the Persian King Xerxes told his warriors to surrender their weapons before the Battle of Thermopylae. The Spartan spirit is alive and well at the 350th Special Warfare Training Squadron, which conducts initial training, assessment, and selection for all enlisted and commissioned Air Force special warfare recruits. (Air & Space Forces Magazine photo by David Roza)

Activated in 2023, the “Grim Reapers” of the 493rd Fighter Generation Squadron maintain F-35 Lighting IIs, as illustrated by the two lightning bolts in the background. “Simul invicta” roughly translates to “at the same time invincible,” and the trail of the airplane makes a nice scythe shape with the lightning bolt. (Air & Space Forces Magazine photo by David Roza)

Bats use echolocation to find prey, which makes them a perfect mascot for the 43rd Electronic Combat Squadron, an electronic warfare unit assigned to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz. The squadron has flown EC-130 Compass Calls since 1992, but in August it received the first EA-37B, marking an exciting new chapter for Air Force EW. (Air & Space Forces Magazine photo by David Roza)

The newest unit on this list, the 17th Electronic Warfare squadron activated administratively in August and will activate formally next month. An assessment squadron, its job is to evaluate EW performance at large exercises and make sure no EW friendly fire is happening. The patch, borrowed from the inactivated 17th Defense Systems Evaluation Squadron, features a crow hurling a lightning bolt at a radar station. Crows are a common symbol in EW, and Crebain was a type of spy crow used by the wizard Saruman in the Lord of the Rings fantasy book series. (Air & Space Forces Magazine photo by David Roza)

What the Wars in Gaza and Ukraine Are Teaching the US About Logistics

Sept. 21, 2024 | By Rachel S. Cohen

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.—Hamas’ deadly attack on Israel nearly one year ago caught the world by surprise—including Gen. Jacqueline D. Van Ovost, the U.S. military’s top logistics officer.

But the Oct. 7 crisis, which spiraled into a war now on the cusp of its second year, illuminated fresh lessons in emergency response and threat avoidance as U.S. Transportation Command scrambled to protect American troops in the Middle East, initiate aid airdrops, and keep ships moving through the region’s waterways, Van Ovost told reporters Sept. 17 at AFA’s Air, Space and Cyber Conference here.

“With any crisis, the three things I look at [are], what’s my posture, what’s my capacity to respond, and how do I command and control and integrate into the joint force commander’s needs?” she said. “I think we did a really good job.”

The time crunch forced TRANSCOM to prioritize what mattered most—in this case, loading Patriot air defense missile systems onto several C-17 Globemaster III airlifters and getting them “up and radiating,” Van Ovost said.

While the U.S. military needed about a dozen C-17s to rush troops and equipment to the region, logistics planners soon learned that shipping the most critical piece—air defenses—would only require about seven jets. So TRANSCOM revamped its plans to instead put the basics into theater first and worry about sending extra generators and other equipment later, Van Ovost said.

That scramble came as the U.S. rushed extra military aid to Israel, including ammunition and Iron Dome interceptors, while American combat units deployed across U.S. Central Command to prepare for the possibility of a wider war.

“We learned that we could actually repackage something on the fly and get capabilities sooner,” Van Ovost said. “I’ve turned to the services and said, ‘That’s an example of how to ‘deploy to employ’ in a very short period of time. I promise you I’ll come back and get the rest.’”

That approach could become a cornerstone of the U.S. military’s effort to inject more flexibility into its deployments and use limited resources more judiciously, known as “agile combat employment.” Those plans, which span ideas from training troops to handle multiple jobs at once to launching operations away from large centralized bases, aim to make American forces harder to target and more resilient under attack.

Months of unrelenting attacks by Houthi rebels in Yemen on commercial shipping vessels and U.S. military assets—namely, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier—also forced the U.S. to get creative to ensure commercial goods and military materiel could reach their destinations.

Gen. Jacqueline Van Ovost, commander U.S. Transportation Command, said the Air Force needs look for successors to the current fleet of airlifters, while also remaining fit to fight. **Mike Tsukamoto Air & Space Forces Magazine**

TRANSCOM “immediately” began meeting with its commercial sealift partners and sent a team of tactical advisors to the Navy’s Middle East headquarters in Bahrain, Van Ovost said.

“They set up a crisis node for all of our commercial partners to give them information: Should they come in through the Suez Canal? Should they go around the Cape [of Good Hope]? Are they coming out of the Persian Gulf? … What’s the threat?” she said.

Then the U.S. began orchestrating convoys and meeting up with commercial vessels to protect them as they passed. That built on years of training commercial companies to zigzag at sea to become more difficult to target, among other force protection measures, Van Ovost said.

Iran-backed Houthi rebels had targeted more than 70 vessels with missiles and drones between October 2023 and mid-July 2024, seizing one vessel and sinking two, the AP reported.

Adding tactical advisers and communications equipment to commercial shipping let crews speak to U.S. destroyers more easily without the typical maritime signaling.

That assistance underscored a difficult point: “We learned that choke point, as small as it is, if you have a persistent threat, it can take a lot of resources to move stuff through,” Van Ovost said.

Those lessons on flexibility and situational awareness echo what TRANSCOM has learned in the first two years of Russia’s war in Ukraine as well.

Asked what she believes is the most difficult piece of equipment the U.S. has shipped to Ukraine, Van Ovost pointed to ammunition. The State Department said Sept. 6 the U.S. has sent nearly 100,000 rounds of long-range artillery and nearly 250,000 anti-tank munitions to Ukraine so far, among more than $25 billion in other weapons, aircraft, tanks, and other materiel.

“We did move a lot of hazardous [material], from a depot on a road, to an airport, or a seaport, to a port, to a train, to a new way to get into Ukraine,” Van Ovost said. “I think the hardest thing was linking all those pieces together, because nobody wanted to stockpile anywhere.”

That reflects a key concern of agile combat employment, which aims to preposition equipment in and around potential war zones without leaving it vulnerable to attack. Van Ovost said the U.S. is learning from Ukraine’s ability to adapt and move military shipments across the country while under fire every day.

Toting large quantities of explosives across the U.S. and Europe has posed another unique challenge, the four-star said. Ports limit how many explosives can travel through at a given time to lessen the risk of a deadly accident, forcing Ukraine’s benefactors to rush aid swiftly but methodically.

“If a train slowed down somewhere, we knew about it: ‘Should we go to another seaport instead of this seaport?’” Van Ovost said. “We’re constantly looking at those things.”

The Pentagon needs to boost its investment in data-crunching and communications tools that can give commanders real-time insights into where people and equipment are at any given time, fuel levels, and other critical aspects of the supply chain.

Air Mobility Command has laid the groundwork for broad adoption of comms kits on transport and tanker jets with its “25 in ’25” initiative, meant to add those kits to 25 percent of the mobility fleet by 2025. It will fall short of that goal, however.

“That’s not where I wanted it to be,” Van Ovost said of funding for modern communications tools. “We’ll continue to request that, if we’re going to fight … in a contested environment, I’ve got to have the connectivity to do that.”

Clearing the Air on Yelling in Air Force BMT Chow Hall

Sept. 20, 2024 | By David Roza

A recent social media post alleged that military training instructors at Basic Military Training, the 7.5-week course through which all civilians must pass before becoming Airmen or Guardians, are no longer allowed to yell at trainees during meals, but that is not the case, according to the 37th Training Wing.

While yelling is subjective, “MTIs still put pressure on trainees/Guardians in a tone and tenor that indicates the seriousness of what they are trying to communicate. We call this making corrections,” Vanessa Adame, the wing’s chief of media relations, told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

For the past two years, the standard operating procedure at the dining facility (DFAC) has been to keep such corrections to a minimum and, when necessary, to tone down the intensity at which those corrections are given, so that trainees have 10 full minutes to down the food and fluids they need to stay fueled until the next chow hall.

“When in the dining facility, those corrections are limited to minimal uniform wear corrections, dining hall procedures and safety considerations,” Adame explained. “All other corrections will be accomplished upon exiting the dining facilities. Again, the focus is ensuring trainees/Guardians have a full 10 minutes to eat their meal in order to replenish vital nutrients necessary for mental and physical performance.”

Meanwhile, the “chow runners,” the trainees who lead flights of their colleagues into the DFAC, must still brave the “Snake Pit,” where MTIs readily correct them on their technique.

“Reporting procedures still occur in front of MTIs or as many call it, the ‘Snake Pit.’” Adame said.

An Air Force MTI corrects a chow runner before a meal at a dining facility at Basic Military Training at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, Texas. (Screenshot via YouTube/U.S. Air Force Recruiting)

On Sept. 18, a post on the popular unofficial Facebook page Air Force amn/nco/snco alleged that Col. Billy Wilson Jr., commander of the 737th Training Group, which oversees BMT at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, Texas, issued guidance forbidding yelling in the DFAC except for emergencies or safety issues.

“We are still to make corrections at a normal volume,” the post said, adding that the group commander’s intent “is that the meal times are a ‘mental break.’”

Adame said Wilson recently reiterated the DFAC policy to squadron commanders in a verbal conversation, but there have been no changes to the standard operating procedures.

The DFAC experience at BMT is well-documented: a 2021 YouTube series by the Air Force Recruiting Service shows flights of shaven-headed trainees filing into the DFAC for breakfast. The atmosphere is not exactly festive, but it’s the “chow runners,” the trainees who lead the flights into and out of the DFAC, who bear most of the unpleasantness.

To prevent overcrowding in the DFAC, the chow runners request entrance and exit permission from MTIs seated at a long table known as the Snake Pit. But the chow runners have to follow specific procedures and are swiftly corrected for any shortcomings.

“Don’t be chow runner, they get yelled at for everything,” Trainee Garcia said in the video. “I don’t want to laugh but … seeing them panic like that, it’s like ‘oh my gosh that sounds awful.’”

A few minutes later, the video shows a chow runner trying to announce his flight is ready to enter the DFAC. While technically not the snake pit, since the interaction occurs outside the DFAC, it shows the exacting standards chow runners must achieve.

Chow runner: Flight 065, prepare to enter the dining facility. Flight! Attention!

MTI: It’s not flight attention! It’s flight. Tensh. Hut. Flight. Tensh. Hut. Understand?

Chow runner: Yes sergeant. Flight 065, prepare to enter the dining facility. Flight, a-tensh hut.

MTI: If you put an A in front of that again, I am going to lose my mind. Flight. Tensh. Hut. Nothing that I just said, said flight atensh-hut. Flight! Tensh! Hut!

Chow runner: Yes, sergeant. Flight 065, prepare to enter the dining facility. Flight, tensh hut! All key personnel fall out, fall in, followed by the fourth element.

Flight 065: Proceeding sir!

One trainee tried to look on the bright side.

“Everything that they’re yelling at you, it’s just so you can correct yourself and be better,” said Trainee Lollar. “Whenever they’re yelling at you, they’re yelling loud enough for the person in the back to hear. I don’t know if that’s true, but they may not be trying to blow out your ear drums, they might just be trying to make sure that everybody else hears so that they don’t make the exact same mistake. So … yeah it’s been difficult.”

A chow runner prepares to sit down for a meal at a dining facility at Basic Military Training at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland. Trainees have 10 minutes to eat at each meal. (Screenshot via YouTube/U.S. Air Force Recruiting)

While there have been no recent changes to yelling in the DFAC, BMT has introduced several other changes in recent years to better prepare trainees for stress and for possible conflict with a peer adversary such as China or Russia. Earlier this summer, trainees began carrying inert M4 carbines throughout BMT to make them more familiar with weapons should they need to use them in combat.

Another change is Zero Week: five days before BMT officially starts where trainees learn basic sleep hygiene, stress management, and nutrition, as well as classic skills such as basic drill, physical training, and keeping the recruit living area tidy. A third change is PACER FORGE, a 36-hour exercise where trainees split into small teams to work through physically demanding scenarios that are meant to emulate real-world operations.

Some of the changes are designed for near-peer conflict, while others are meant to help a new generation get the skills they need for long careers in the service.

“I would not say that the generation that we’re receiving into our ranks now is not as tough whether mentally or physically or whatever, I would argue that they are different,” Chief Master Sgt. Daniel Anderson, then senior enlisted leader for the 737th Training Group, said in 2023.

“They didn’t grow up outside throwing rocks at the neighbor kids back and forth,” he added. “They are digital natives. They think differently, they respond to stressors differently. And the approach to be able to effectively train them must be different, because it will be something different that is expected from them during their time in service.”

air force rifle — U.S. Air Force Basic Military Training trainees carry weapons at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland on August 2, 2024. (U.S. Air Force photo by Ava Leone)

AFSOC Boss Sees New Uses for Light Armed Overwatch Planes

Sept. 20, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

Air Force Special Operations Command will find ways to use the OA-1K Armed Overwatch plane, said AFSOC Commander Lt. Gen. Michael E. Conley, setting aside questions about the fleet’s size and utility in a changing strategic environment.

The first operational aircraft will be delivered to AFSOC within months, but the world into which the command will welcome its militarized propeller-driven Air Tractors is markedly different from that of even a few years back, when the Air Force and U.S. Special Operations Command developed the requirements for a manned, lightweight, low-cost combat scout craft to do light attack, close air support, and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance for counterinsurgency missions, replacing the U-28 Draco and the MC-12W Liberty.

SOCOM selected Sky Warden—an Air Tractor AT-802U cropduster modified for military use by L3Harris —in August 2022 with plans to buy 75 aircraft, but that plan was cut back to 62 aircraft earlier this year.

Delays followed. The first production aircraft was supposed to be delivered in October 2023, but Conley said Sept. 18 that he is now anticipating delivery in “the first quarter of [calendar year] ’25.”

“I think all new technology, new airframes, there’s always a little bit of a delay, they learn as they go,” Conley told reporters. He added that he’s seen “nothing that has me concerned with cost or delays,” beyond the lack of operational aircraft. “Once I have that, I’ll be more comfortable,” he said.

Pilots are familiarizing themselves now with a pair of standard issue Air Tractor 802Us at Will Rogers Air National Guard Base, Okla., Conley said. Those aircraft have none of the modifications L3Harris is installing on the Air Force planes, AFSOC confirmed.

As the Air Force gears up for peer competition in the Pacific, some have questioned the need for Armed Overwatch in that part of the world, but Conley suggested AFSOC will be inventive in applying the asset to all manner of scenarios.

“Once we get the aircraft and we start flying it, our crew members and our maintainers will figure out novel ways that it will be relevant in the future fight as well as the current one,” Conley said. “I tell my team every day, the Pacific is incredibly important to us for all the reasons [Secretary Frank Kendall] has said: China, China, China. We get it. But we’ve also got the rest-of-the-world mission that I’m responsible for, as well, and I want to have all the cards I can play to fight wherever they need us to.”

Just as AFSOC injected new applicability into the venerable C-130 by converting the cargo carriers into gunships like the AC-130, Conley sees an adaptable future ahead for the Air Tractors.

“I think it still provides a cost-effective close air support platform, which is one of the missions that it was designed for,” he said. “It’s still going to provide an ISR capability. But as we move forward, I think there’s opportunity to look at it against novel mission sets.”

That could include signals and electronic intelligence, Conley suggested, as well as crisis response, provided AFSOC can find a way to rapidly dismantle, transport, and reassemble the aircraft.

“What I’m telling industry right now is I need them to give me operational aircraft on time and on cost, and then the pathfinding mindset of folks at AFSOC will figure out what to do with it moving forward again,” he said.

Conley faces renewed scrutiny of the program after the General Accountability Office issued a new, mostly classified report Sept. 5 reiterating concerns first expressed in December 2023 that SOCOM failed to justify the need for 75 planes and urged the Pentagon to slow down purchases until the command completed a comprehensive analysis.

SOCOM’s decision to cut the buy to 62 aircraft was disclosed in the president’s 2025 budget request, the result of “resource constraints” rather than a broader change in plans, the command said at the time. Conley said this month that he still supports a fleet of 75 OA-1K aircraft, justified by the intended mission set and unstated potential future uses.

“It is possible that we don’t buy those 75 in the same time frame that we wanted to,” he said. “But that’s still our requirement.”

Lockheed Quietly Delivered 1,000th F-35 in July; Clearing Full Backlog May Take 18 Months

Sept. 19, 2024 | By John A. Tirpak

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.—It will take up to 18 months to clear the full backlog of F-35s that went directly from the production line into storage, company aeronautics president Greg Ulmer told Air & Space Forces Magazine. The company did reach one noticeable milestone in July, though, delivering its 1,000th Lightning II fighter with little fanfare.

Ulmer, speaking with Air & Space Forces Magazine at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference, said he couldn’t provide the specific rate at which Lockheed is delivering its stored F-35s, but said “it’s going well. It’s going to take us 12-18 months to get those aircraft and [the] backlog out.”

Eighteen months is longer than the Government Accountability Office estimated in May. The sequence of delivery has been approved by the users, Ulmer said.

Lockheed has declined to say exactly how many F-35s went into storage during the delivery pause, but it is likely 100 or so. One of them had the distinction of becoming the 1,000th delivery when it was sent to the 115th Fighter Wing of the Air National Guard at Truax Field, Wisc., in July.

Unlike previous milestones like the 100th F-35 produced or the 100th F-35 delivered to the Air Force, there was no public announcement or ceremony at the time. Lockheed Martin’s Director of Operations Frank A. St. John noted that 1,000 fighters had been delivered in an interview with CNBC, but did not say where it had gone.

The 1,000th airframe delivered was not necessarily the 1,000th produced. The fighters are not being delivered in the order that they were built, Ulmer said, but are being mixed with deliveries of fresh-off-the-line airplanes. This approach causes “less disruption” to the factory routine of building, testing, and delivering the jets.

“We don’t want to disrupt the flow,” he said.

When they went to storage, the jets weren’t sealed up and simply parked, Ulmer said. Typically, each jet receives four checks when it rolls out of the factory; two each by Lockheed and two each by the customer. When the stored jets were completed, they got one check each from the company and the customer, and only need one more check each, Ulmer said.

“They were in warm storage” with occasional power-ons, he said. “It’s not like we weren’t taking care of those airplanes.”

The Joint Program Office “asked us to help inform them of what the most efficient unwind” would be, he said, and then the JPO worked with the services and foreign customers to set the sequence of deliveries.

“There are, you can imagine, milestones out there of significance for different customers,” Ulmer said. Some countries are getting their initial jets, such as Poland and Belgium, while “Australia is pursuing full operational capability, and they needed their full complement of aircraft. … So these are the kinds of priorities that define who got what capability, when.”

He added that he’s heard no complaints from customers about the sequence of deliveries.

All the jets that go out the door—or deliver from the storage area—are loaded with the Tech Refresh 3 hardware, “and they’ll all get the TR-3 software inserted before they deliver,” he said.

The yearlong hold on deliveries was due to the fact that jets were built with TR-3—faster processors, a new display and other improvements—but the TR-3 package had not yet been fully tested, and the government declined to accept the jets with it. The JPO now expects that full TR-3 testing will be finished in 2025.

Ulmer declined to be more specific as to when in 2025 that will happen because “there are still things you could find in discovery” during testing.

As a stopgap—because both U.S. and partner countries needed to receive new airplanes to conduct training and have combat capability—JPO director Lt. Gen. Michael Schmidt in July approved deliveries with a “truncated” version of the TR-3 software, so handovers could resume and pilots could train with the new version of the aircraft. The truncated version allows training with many of the systems and weapons that will be in future jets.

Ulmer said he disliked the term “truncated” and prefers “full combat-capable training software release.”

Schmidt took his time approving the release, as he was waiting for a version that was more stable in flight and needed fewer reboots per sortie. Several new versions of the software have been issued since July, giving the aircraft what the JPO calls a “more robust training capability.”

In a May report, the GAO estimated it would take a year to deliver the stored F-35s alongside the new ones, for while Lockheed told the government it could deliver 20 per month—one every business day, roughly—the GAO noted that the company had never done better than 13 per month.

“Even at this faster rate, delivering the parked aircraft will take about a year once the TR-3 software has been completed and certified,” the GAO said. The watchdog agency reported, though, that the Defense Contract Management Agency deemed the 20 per month figure “feasible,” though it also said that rate would stress the workforce needed to accomplish the deliveries and lead to “coordination challenges” with the government.

Each aircraft being delivered is “a full-up-round,” Ulmer said, with all the TR-3 enhancements, including the updated Digital Aperture System hardware, which provides 360-degree all-weather and night visibility on the pilot’s helmet visor.

The version being delivered has “90-95 percent of the full capability in it,” he asserted. “It has much of the weapons capability in it. … We just need to get through the flight test and the certification air worthiness associated with those capabilities out of flight test and then into our customers hands.”

Ulmer predicted that the delivery total for F-35s in calendar 2024 will be 75-110 jets—as planned, and then “next year, I’ll say, 156-plus.” That’s the number predicted by the company three years ago.

“I told you, we didn’t slow the production system down. International demand is very strong,” he said, noting the latest buy of 32 airplanes from Romania.

“And I think you’ll see a lot of international, existing customers, increasing their program of record. So I see us running at 156-plus. Because we have a backlog.”

He cautioned that all of these estimates are subject to “external factors and things you don’t have control over,” like bad weather, which could delay the TR-3 test program. But “we’re not going to cut a corner. I call it ‘build slow to go fast.’ We have to have certified pilots. We have to have chase aircraft. You have to have the weather until you get IFR clearance. So we’ll follow all the rules and go as fast and as safely as we can.”

PACAF Looks to Australia, Japan for Battle Management Help as It Waits for Wedgetail

Sept. 19, 2024 | By Unshin Lee Harpley and Chris Gordon

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.—The Air Force inked a contract with Boeing last month to start manufacturing the E-7 Wedgetail early warning and battle management aircraft, but with the service’s aging E-3 Sentry fleet close to the end of its service life, questions persist as to how the service can manage gaps until the new E-7s are operational late this decade.

“I continue to articulate my requirements back to the Air Force headquarters to build out more resilient command and control, battle management capability, more forward in the theater,” Gen. Kevin B. Schneider, the commander of Pacific Air Forces, told Air & Space Forces Magazine in an interview at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference.

Gen. Kevin B. Schneider, commander of the Pacific Air Force, speaks at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference on Sept 17.

The Air Force’s first order of two “operationally representative prototype” E-7A aircraft, for $2.56 billion, is slated for delivery in 2028. The contract comes after months of delay as Boeing and the Air Force haggled over pricing. The service plans to buy 24 more by 2032, bringing the fleet to 26, to replace the E-3, which has an increasingly obsolete radar and 1950s-era airframe.

While Schneider did not address a question regarding whether the planned number of E-7s will be enough, he added that he is “encouraged” by the state of negotiations between the service and the aerospace giant.

“I’ve had a number of rides on the E-7 over the years, and it is a fantastic capability,” Schneider told reporters at a media roundtable. “I would, as would other commanders, like to see the E-7 fielded in the United States Air Force sooner rather than later, in number, so that we can continue to deal with the challenges that we face in a growing, more highly contested environment in the western Pacific.”

In the meantime, regional allies are among the key stopgap solutions for the service’s smooth transition to the E-7 in future operations.

“The Australians have the E-7s, the Japanese have capabilities with their E-2s and their version of AWACS, and (there are) others in the region,” said Schneider. “Some of our command and control is based on sensing and forward-based radars, and we’re able to do more and more in terms of air domain awareness, information-sharing agreements, to tap into to others’ equipment and sensing capability to help build out this picture.”

U.S. Air Force Maj. Oliver Ngayan, 2 Squadron E-7A Wedgetail air battle manager, performs a system check at Royal Australian Air Force Base Darwin, Australia, July 18, 2024. The Military Personnel Exchange Program underscores the U.S. Air Force’s priority of working with Allies and partners to enhance interoperability. U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Jimmie D. Pike

The Japan Air Self-Defense Force fields 13 E-2C Hawkeyes and four E-767s for its airborne early warning and control missions. The Royal Australian Air Force operates six E-7s. The Air Force began working alongside Australian crews on the platform in 2022 through a Military Personnel Exchange program.

Last month, two of the three B-2 bombers deployed to RAAF Amberley Base teamed up with a Wedgetail for operations in southeastern Australia, working alongside other Australian assets like the F-35A and EA-18G Growler. In July, U.S. Airmen assisted in operating E-7 during Exercise Pitch Black to coordinate training with F-22 Raptors.

“I see a layered solution to how we develop air domain awareness, and I see ground-based capabilities as part of this,” added Schneider. “I’m optimistic about a multilayered, resilient approach to sense and sense-making when it comes to that.”

‘Sensing Has Become Ubiquitous’: Satellite Imagery in Ukraine Offers View of Future Warfare

Sept. 19, 2024 | By Chris Gordon

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.—The proliferation of commercial satellites is changing the character of war, a panel of military experts said at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference on Sept. 18.

In Ukraine, Russia has been able to use its own satellite capabilities and has been bolstered by readily available commercial imagery.

“I think both Ukrainians and the Russians on the ground are learning some painful lessons about what I’m going to call the ubiquity of sensing and targeting,” said David A. Ochmanek, a researcher at the RAND Corporation and a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for force development.

“Now, there are ways to counter space-based sensors,” Ochmanek added. “There are ways to counter airborne sensors at all levels. But it seems to me, on this battlefield at least, that if you want to survive, you’ve got to be dispersed, you’ve got to be mobile, you’ve got to be hidden.”

While commercial satellite imagery was once the domain of a few nations with high-end space capabilities, journalists, open-source intelligence trackers on social media, and adversaries can now all access it.

“One of the issues that was raised by the senior officials in the Ministry of Defense and Air Force back when I visited Kyiv was, ‘Can you help us please figure out a way to deny commercial satellite coverage that the Russians are using to see what we’re doing here in Ukraine?’ So, yeah, sensing has become ubiquitous,” said retired Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, dean of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies and a former deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance in the Air Force. “We see that today unfolding in that battle space, and it’s going to be with us everywhere else.”

Coupled with the proliferation of guided munitions—and the ability to use unguided munitions more accurately—that imagery is putting more and more targets at risk.

“Bottom line, if there’s anything bigger than a bread box that you’re interested in, it’s going to be targeted,” Deptula added.

Air Marshal Allan Marshall, Air & Space Commander (ASC), Royal Air Force; Lt. Gen. Dave A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.), Dean of AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies; Gen. Jeffrey Harrigian, USAF (Ret.), Former commander, U.S. Air Forces in Europe-Air Forces Africa; Maj. Gen. Charles Corcoran, USAF (Ret.), Former Assistant Deputy Chief of Staff, Operations; David A. Ochmanek, Senior International/Defense Researcher, RAND, during a panel discussion on “Ukraine, Russia War: A Prelude to Future Conflict” at the Air, Space & Cyber Conference on Sept. 18, 2024. Photo by Mike Tsukamoto/Air & Space Forces Magazine

The war in Ukraine has also featured the use of drones—including quadcopters, first-person view one-way attack drones, and Iranian-designed Shaheds—throughout the battlefield. Some of the most high-profile uses have seen Ukraine and Russia carry out deep strikes with unmanned aerial vehicles. But there are other uses as well, such as loitering over infantry units and for artillery spotting.

The U.S. military has long been the world’s foremost operator of ISR drones, but it is also turning to commercial satellite imagery to augment those aircraft.

The Space Force has used its Tactical Surveillance, Reconnaissance, and Tracking (TacSRT) program, which gets tactical information from commercial providers, to support combatant commanders. Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman said the U.S. has been able to use such capabilities to provide “overwatch” of U.S. troops withdrawing from Niger over the past few months.

“That used to be done by an MQ-9 or something like that, and they were able to take this commercial satellite imagery and then put some intelligence behind it and get it down to the operators on the ground in an hour and a half,” added Gen. James B. Hecker, commander of U.S. Air Forces in Europe-Air Forces Africa (USAFE-AFA), during a roundtable with reporters. “That’s not as good as real-time as with an MQ-9 you would have, but it’s better than nothing.”

The proliferation of satellite imagery has not only been employed as a military tool but as a diplomatic one. In the run-up to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the U.S. government declassified intelligence that Russia was planning an invasion—the most striking example in the prelude to the war was imagery showing Russian troops near the border, a sight hard for the Kremlin to brush off.

“I could step back to the couple months prior and then the initial invasion … don’t forget the importance of information sharing and what we did at the beginning to bring together the team that was able to facilitate at least the deterrence on the Eastern flank for NATO,” said retired Gen. Jeffrey L. Harrigian, the commander of USAFE-AFA at the time of the Russian invasion and Hecker’s predecessor. “The way we were able to share information at speed to the right people from the strategic to the tactical level, build trust and confidence across the force—and without that, you’re never going to be able to win.”

Air Force Will Take Lead in Joint Prototype Battle Management Tech

Sept. 18, 2024 | By Shaun Waterman

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.—The Department of the Air Force will be taking over the Pentagon’s prototype Joint Fires Network, or JFN, as it transitions to a fully fledged program of record, program executive officer for command, control, communications, and battle management Maj. Gen. Luke C.G. Cropsey told reporters Sept. 18.

“I will have the budget and acquisition authority to actually execute the program,” he told a media roundtable on the sidelines of AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber conference.

JFN is currently a technology demonstration under U.S. Indo-Pacific Command—an IT platform linking warfighters on land, sea, and in the air with surveillance assets and weapons systems across the region, providing a common situational picture of enemy threats and allowing them to be remotely targeted.

Cropsey’s remarks followed an announcement earlier in the week from Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, who said the Pentagon has designated the Air Force as the “executive agent” on the program. This move “recognizes both the progress we have made to date, and the value of achieving integration of JFN and the [DAF Battle Network],” he said.

The DAF Battle Network is the latest iteration of the Air Force’s long-developing, ambitious attempt to create a network of systems and capabilities connecting sensors and shooters around the world. It’s also the service’s contribution to Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control, or CJDAC2, the Pentagon’s vision of future wars fought seamlessly across all five domains of conflict—land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace.

Cropsey’s office is responsible for procuring the systems that will go into the DAF Battle Network. Now he’ll be responsible for folding JFN into the mix. JFN is effectively a prototype of the kind of capability that will be ubiquitously available to U.S. warfighters once CJADC2 becomes reality.

JFN is currently run by the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, Cropsey said, but involves “a large number of players,” including the Defense Information Systems Agency, the DOD’s chief data and artificial intelligence officer, the Defense Innovation Unit, the Navy, and INDOPACOM.

“We’ve been designated as the lead … that will bring those other pieces together and turn that [JFN] into a sustainable capability over time,” he said.

The problem set, he added, is figuring out “what would it look like for us to do a hot handoff of what they’re doing … currently, and make sure that that effort works at speed and at scale,” he said.

“We’re working [with the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering] on a transition plan now.”

Initially, the fully fledged JFN program would be deployed in the INDOPACOM area of responsibility, he said, but eventually “we’re creating a capability that we can then build off of and expand to the other [combatant commands].”

Cropsey also touted progress his office was making with other elements of battle management, saying the Cloud-Based Command and Control, or CBC2, system he promised last year to deploy had been rolled out earlier in the year, along with a hardware component, the Tactical Operations Center-Light, or TOC-L, that will enable frontline units to use it.

“It’s out. It’s running. They’re using it. It’s active,” he said of CBC2, acknowledging that work was ongoing. “These software-defined, hardware-enabled kinds of programs are never really done, right? You’re in continuous integration, continuous development all the time.”

As for TOC-L, he said 16 had been delivered and “the teams are operationally beating the snot out of them right now. And they’re doing that intentionally so that we can understand better … what works and what doesn’t work. And then we’re going to fold that immediately into the next iteration of those [TOC-L] kits.”

Next year, Cropsey added, “we’re going to get busy starting to push them [TOC-L kits] out at scale.”

U.S. Air Force Senior Airman Joshua Omernik, 752nd Operations Support Squadron, assembles hardware for the Tactical Operations Center – Light during a training collaboration with the 134th Air Control Squadron at McConnell Air Force Base, Kansas, Jan. 29, 2024. Members of the 134th ACS observed the setup of the TOC-L to learn how to employ it in future operations. U.S. Air National Guard photo by Master Sgt. Matt McCoy

Here’s How a Continuing Resolution Could Hurt the Air Force in 2025

Sept. 18, 2024 | By Rachel S. Cohen

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.—The Air Force on Sept. 18 warned that a failure to pass a new budget for the federal government for part or all of fiscal 2025 could degrade military readiness and slow the arrival of critical equipment as Congress ticks toward a shutdown in less than two weeks.

Continuing resolutions have become the norm each year as Congress repeatedly fails to approve appropriations bills on time. CRs keep spending levels frozen at the previous year’s marks and prevents new programs from being started.

A continuing resolution would hamper promised pay increases for troops, hinder nuclear modernization, and pause purchases of weapons and aircraft the Air Force sees as key in a future war with China, among other impacts outlined in a fact sheet the Department of the Air Force provided to Air & Space Forces Magazine.

“Any length of CR impacts readiness, hinders acceleration of the Space Force, delays military construction projects, reduces aircraft availability, and curbs modernization in the race for technological superiority,” the department argued. “These impacts get dramatically more perilous as sequestration is imposed under the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023.”

Fresh details on a stopgap bill’s possible impact on the Air Force and Space Force came hours before the House failed to pass a six-month CR proposed by Republicans that would keep the federal government running on the fumes of fiscal 2024 funding until March 28, 2025.

Lawmakers have until Sept. 30 to approve a spending bill to avoid a government shutdown starting Oct. 1.

The Pentagon routinely opposes stopgap spending legislation, arguing the measures erode military readiness by jeopardizing acquisition and training and injecting uncertainty into the defense industry.

The Air Force seeks a budget of $188.1 billion in fiscal 2025; the Space Force requested $29.4 billion.

Under a three-month CR, the Department of the Air Force said, space launch and testing modernization would fall short and technologies that protect space-based communications could not enter production. Such a bill would also hit routine maintenance of aircraft and other equipment, the Air Force’s flight training budget, facilities upkeep, and upcoming contract awards.

A six-month CR could stop the Air Force from buying greater numbers of high-end munitions like the extended-range Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile, Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile, and Stand-In Attack Weapon. That could trigger a $400 million fine for failing to meet contract obligations, the Air Force said, and hurt Air Force and Navy stockpiles.

Such a bill would delay production of the first seven T-7A Red Hawk training jets by a year and keep flat the number of MH-139 Grey Wolf patrol helicopters in production at Boeing, the service said. Fighter programs are also at risk; a CR may restrict future F-35 Lightning II contracts and delay further production of the new F-15EX Eagle II, “potentially leading to [a] production line break and [delaying] support for fielded active and ANG aircraft,” the Air Force said.

After six months, the Air Force may also struggle to cover increases in military pay or dole out bonuses designed to keep Airmen in critical and undermanned career fields. A CR could delay Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve training and affect funding for “must-pay” housing and subsistence stipends, the service said.

And while less likely, a yearlong CR may postpone progress toward the department’s strategic goals, stall the Space Force’s advancement, and prevent dozens of major construction projects from getting underway.

Work on Collaborative Combat Aircraft, the Air Force’s top priority effort to field a fleet of drone wingmen, would also see delays under a yearlong CR, the service said.

If a CR is still in place on April 30, 2025, federal discretionary spending would automatically be slashed to meet caps imposed by the 2023 Fiscal Responsibility Act.

“These actions not only stifle modernization, but inalterably give ground to our adversaries by reducing [Department of the Air Force] buying power by $15 [billion],” the department said.

CRs also prevent the services from launching new programs, slowing research and development, and pausing projects to restore or replace neglected buildings on base.

The Department of the Air Force flagged 33 new construction projects totaling $2.1 billion, from aircraft simulator facilities to a child care center, that would be put on hold under a CR. At least $1.3 billion more in research, procurement and maintenance initiatives—not including classified programs—would also face delays.

Military officials are asking for an exception to the restriction on new starts for at least five efforts. Those include a Space Force program to develop secure tactical communications satellites, “bunker-buster” bombs designed to penetrate targets deep underground, and nuclear weapons security.

Service leaders fear potential budgetary woes could hit programs of all sizes and across all missions.

Speaking to reporters at AFA’s Air, Space and Cyber Conference here Sept. 16, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin said a sweeping new training exercise, slated for next summer to practice for a prospective war with China, could be pared back without adequate funding in place. Space Force Brig. Gen. Kristin L. Panzenhagen, the top officer overseeing launch facilities at Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, said the service may have trouble awarding the next National Security Space Launch contract—which hires commercial firms to take military satellites and payloads to orbit—if they don’t get a new budget.

Air Force Undersecretary Melissa G. Dalton predicted that a CR could delay bringing on the service’s secretive new B-21 Raider stealth bomber as well as postpone development of a new land-based nuclear missile and efforts to maintain the current arsenal.

“The stakes are pretty high,” Dalton said Sept. 18. “We need resources aligned and on time.”

As a last-ditch effort to support top priorities that would be neglected by a CR, service leaders can ask lawmakers to repurpose existing funds away from other programs. It’s unclear whether the Department of the Air Force will lean on that option in the absence of stable funding.

“We’re going to be doing as much as we can to continue our momentum on moving things forward,” Allvin said. “If that requires reprogramming, then we’ll … pursue those as necessary. But I really can’t give you a very precise answer on that now, until we see … how long that continuing resolution would be.”

News Editor Greg Hadley and Pentagon Editor Chris Gordon contributed to this story.