On NATO’s Eastern Flank, Navy Growlers Highlight Air Force’s Electronic Warfare Gap

May 13, 2022 | By Abraham Mahshie

Navy E/A-18 Growlers are conducting NATO enhanced air policing in Eastern Europe near Ukraine to show Russia that the U.S. stands ready with electronic warfare capabilities. But what the Navy is doing also highlights what the Air Force can’t.

Pilots from Navy Electronic Attack Squadron 134, or VAQ-134—nicknamed “Garudas”—who spoke to Air Force Magazine at Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany, said they were practicing integration with Air Force F-16s and flying NATO missions with EW pods turned off.

But soon, Navy divestment will eliminate that joint force capability before the Air Force replaces it.

“We can employ air to air, but we can also collect [electronic support measures] data and employ in the electromagnetic spectrum, both offensively and defensively,” said Navy Lt. Cmdr. Andrew Mays while showing off an E/A-18 Growler deployed to Spangdahlem from Naval Air Station Whidbey Island, Wash.

“We have a unique set of skills that mix fourth-gen fighters with an [EW] platform,” added Mays, wearing the Garudas’ characteristic maroon-accented green flight suit. “We maintain that capability, but we’re not using those currently.”

Lt. Cmdr. James Corrin, also a Growler pilot deployed to Spangdahlem, explained that the aircraft are postured defensively in a transparent way meant to demonstrate to adversaries the U.S. joint force capabilities positioned on NATO’s eastern flank.

“There’s no confusion about what we’re doing here,” he said. “Those all have capabilities that could be used. But at this point, we’re just maintaining our air policing and that defensive posture.”

The Navy pilots are, however, preparing for local flights and discussing with local F-16 squadrons how to better integrate their capabilities into the joint force. They also stand ready to use EW, if needed.

“We’re just giving more options to NATO,” Corrin said.

VAQ-134 is an expeditionary squadron divided evenly between carriers and joint force support. The Growler is a modified F/A-18 with foldable wings for use on a carrier, and it carries EW pods in place of most munitions. For the NATO mission, the platform is armed with AIM-120 advanced medium-range air-to-air missiles.

The unit had been readying for deployment to Japan on a regular force rotation when they were directed in March to support the Russia deterrence effort on NATO’s borders.

When the Growlers’ deployment was announced, a senior defense official insisted that the aircraft would not assist Ukraine by suppression of enemy air defenses or jamming Russian cruise missiles within their range.

“They are not there to engage Russian assets. That is not the goal,” the official told journalists in a March 28 telephone briefing. “They are there, as all of the other aircraft that we have devoted to this mission, … to reinforce our deterrence posture on the eastern flank.”

The USS Harry S. Truman‘s carrier air wing, including squadrons of Marine Corps F/A-18E/F Super Hornets and Navy EA-18 Growlers, also included electronic warfare capabilities, the defense official said. The Air Force does not have assets with dedicated electronic warfare capabilities on the eastern flank.

An Air Force Capability Gap

Retired Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, dean of AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, said the deployments highlight a gap in Air Force capabilities ever since the retirement of the F-4G Phantom in 1996 and the EF-111 Raven in 1998.

“Part of the impact of decommissioning the EF-111 force was that a very experienced electronic warfare crew force or personnel were scattered to the four winds,” said Deptula, who as commander of Operation Northern Watch in Iraq in 1998-99 regularly employed the Growler’s predecessor, the EA-6B Prowler, to jam Iraqi acquisition radars of its surface-to-air missile systems.

“The Air Force tried to make the case that stealth was a form of electronic warfare, and it really is not,” Deptula explained.

“A key characteristic of electronic warfare is to be able to move and counter move,” he added. “There are other elements of electronic warfare that we want to be able to conduct from platforms designed solely to do that.”

In recent years, Air Combat Command head Gen. Mark D. Kelly has said China’s and Russia’s EW gains keep him up at night. Air Force leaders have also voiced concerns that development of new electronic warfare and electromagnetic spectrum operations are moving too slowly. In June 2021, ACC stood up the 350th Spectrum Warfare Wing at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., to pursue dominance in the electromagnetic spectrum.

Fifth-generation F-22 and F-35 fighters have inherent electronic warfare capabilities. In February, the Air Force said that it had achieved initial operating capability of the Legion Pod, an infrared search-and-track sensor designed for integration with the F-15C Eagle. All F-16s can carry self-defense jamming pods, while F-16CJs have upgraded EW sensors for suppression of enemy air defenses (SEAD) with AGM-88 High-speed Anti-Radiation Missiles (HARM).

A Department of the Air Force spokesperson told Air Force Magazine that the Air Force relies on a memorandum with the Navy to maintain five expeditionary VAQ squadrons for use in joint missions that require offensive EW operations.

“Air Force EW efforts are still primarily focused on maintaining and updating platform-specific self-protection capabilities,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

Deptula said that’s not enough.

“Less than 25 percent of our combat force are made up of those advanced technology platforms,” he said. “You don’t have sufficient electronic warfare capability.”

L3 Technologies is helping the Air Force to develop the EC-37B Compass Call electronic warfare aircraft to provide improved electronic attack capabilities, but ACC does not plan to field the first five platforms until 2023. Still, the Air Force described the EC-37B attack capability as “limited.”

“The Air Force’s Electromagnetic Warfare (EW) focus is primarily centered on defensive capabilities to limit detection and increase aircraft survivability with an effort to conduct limited Electromagnetic Attack (EA) via the EC-130H/EC-37B,” the Air Force said in a statement.

The Air Force is planning a range of new systems, including the F-15’s Eagle Passive Active Warning Survivability System (EPAWSS), but most are defensive.

Deptula believes the Air Force decision not to develop EW comes from an empty promise from the other services.

“Part of what drove the elimination of the EF-111, and the reduction in focus on electronic warfare, was the belief that joint warfare, our joint brothers and sisters, would pick up the load,” Deptula said. “The other services have not.”

And the Navy Growlers now integrating with the Air Force on the eastern flank will soon go away.

The fiscal 2023 defense budget plans for the Navy to divest all of its non-carrier-based Growlers by fiscal 2025. The Air Force did not say how its memorandum with the Navy would be honored if the joint force Growlers are divested.

Ukraine does not have EW aircraft of its own, and nearby U.S. Growlers lack the authority to engage their pods in support of Ukraine. DOD has, however, included in recent aid packages to Ukraine nondescript “electronic jamming equipment.”

Deptula said the war waged by Russia in Ukraine highlights the need for aircraft with SEAD capabilities “across a spectrum of conflict” to fight peer adversaries.

“This is the kind of capability that we need to be able to prepare for the future contingencies that we might have to face,” he said.

“[Are] all you need … these new modern fighters? No, you need more than that,” he said. “Even though these aircraft are not survivable in the highest demanding fight, they can be used in other contingencies where electronic warfare is so important.”

Kendall Sees Room to Change Space Force FYDP—But Not F-35 Plan

May 13, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

The Space Force’s budget got a big bump in the Pentagon’s 2023 budget request, with a topline of $24.5 billion—36 percent more than fiscal 2022’s enacted level.

And even more money in the years ahead is likely, according to Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall.

“I do not anticipate the future budgets will remain flat or go down for the Space Force—quite the opposite,” Kendall told the House Appropriations defense subcommittee May 13.

If Kendall’s prediction is accurate, it would contradict the numbers laid out in the Pentagon’s Future Years Defense Plan, which projects spending five years in advance. Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.), chair of the panel, noted in questioning Kendall that the overall FYDP for the Space Force is “basically flat, rising a bit in 2024 before falling below the 2023 proposed budget level.”

While McCollum expressed concern that the FYDP projections don’t “reflect what it will actually take to deliver successful acquisitions and programs,” Kendall indicated that the numbers are subject to change as the Space Force matures and leaders get a better sense of what they need.

“We still have to define our requirements. We have to make sure that the programs we put in place … are structured for success so that we don’t have massive schedule and cost overruns. We all want to avoid that,” Kendall said. “There are opportunities through emerging technologies and commercial best practices that I think will make that possible. But we’re going to still have to be disciplined, and we’re going to have to be smart about how we invest in space. I think that’s the picture that we see coming. At this point, I think the [2023] budget is a good start toward those types of architectures and gives us the resources we need to decide what next steps we need to take.”

The FYDP is primarily a “planning tool,” according to the Congressional Research Service, that “allows DOD and the military services to plan for anticipated changes to programs or priorities.” But it can be changed, and former Pentagon and Air Force comptroller Robert F. Hale, in a report on the DOD budgeting process for Brookings, found that FYDPs “do not always capture changes beyond the budget year, especially increases associated with newer and more sophisticated weapons.”

The Space Force, meanwhile, is in the process of absorbing the Space Development Agency, a move that accounts for a sizable chunk of the increase in the 2023 budget. There are also one-time costs associated with interservice transfers expected to come onboard in the next year or so.

Even still, the service and SDA are dedicated to building out a constellation of hundreds of satellites in low-Earth orbit, called the National Defense Space Architecture, for missile warning, communications, data coverage and sharing, and other capabilities. While these spacecraft will be smaller and less expensive than previous military satellites, there will be far more to create a distributed, resilient architecture.

The SDA is also planning to follow a two-year cycle in rolling out new capabilities, a rapid pace that will require steady funding as well.

But while the Space Force’s budget is likely to change from the FYDP, one aspect of the future plan that likely won’t, Kendall told lawmakers, is the Air Force’s reduced buy of F-35s in 2024.

The Air Force surprised some when it cut its requested purchase of F-35s in 2023 from 48 planes in previous years all the way down to 33. In 2024, though, the FYDP shows that request going even lower, to 29, before rising again.

As he has done before, Kendall insisted that these reductions don’t mean the Air Force is backing away from the F-35, predicting that the service will be buying the fifth-generation fighter for 15 years to come.

But he also indicated that the FYDP is unlikely to change.

“The reduction we took this year, and we will probably extend that to next year, was based on a number of factors,” Kendall said. “There were a number of things we need to do in the TacAir portfolio. One of them was to buy out the remaining number of inventory of F-15EXs that we need, for the capabilities that the F-15EX will provide. We want to increase the funding for the Next Generation Air Dominance [platform] which will be the follow on to the F-22. We’ve got some other programs we need to move forward as well.

“We also are very interested—we’re insistent on getting the Block 4 capabilities for F-35, and the contractor has been late in delivering them so far. So we want to see evidence that they will be able to accomplish that before we increase the production, so that was a major factor as well.”

The Block 4 update to the F-35, which would include the latest hardware and software modernizations, needs the Technical Refresh 3 upgrade to “unlock” its updates. However, that has taken Lockheed Martin longer than expected to develop.

Early on in his tenure, Kendall noted that he had dealt with issues in the Joint Strike Fighter program before, when he was undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology, and logistics. His solution then was to cap purchases for several years to put pressure on Lockheed Martin and to avoid buying jets that would later need to be modernized.

Three Vanguards to Become Programs of Record in 2023, Air Force S&T Boss Says

May 13, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

Three of the Air Force’s four Vanguard programs—high-profile ventures chosen for extra investment and accelerated development—are slated to become programs of record by the end of 2023, the deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force for science, technology, and engineering told Congress on May 12. The statement seemed to affirm the department’s approach to rapidly turning key technologies into acquisition programs.

The Vanguard programs “have succeeded in representing a new model for accelerating the pace of transitioning solutions,” Kristen J. Baldwin said in her written testimony to the House Armed Services subcommittee on cyber, innovative technologies, and information systems.

Golden Horde, Skyborg, and National Technology Satellite-3 were all selected as initial Vanguard programs in September 2020, with the Air Force seeking some $157.6 million for them in fiscal 2021. Then, in June 2021, the service announced it was adding Rocket Cargo as a fourth line of effort.

The first three programs are all set to transition to acquisition in 2023, Baldwin told lawmakers. She did not offer a timeline for Rocket Cargo, instead stating that a “small [science and technology] investment today influences early commercial design efforts and leverages $5-10 billion ongoing industry and NASA investments.”

Still, the transition of the initial three in 2023 would ensure those programs remain mostly on time from their initial estimates.

NTS-3, an experimental satellite meant to complement GPS and increase the resilience of satellite navigation for the military, was initially scheduled for launch in late 2022, but the Air Force Research Laboratory had said in April 2021 that that date had slipped to 2023.

In August 2021, Brig. Gen. Dale R. White, the program executive officer for Skyborg, an artificial intelligence-enabled system to control unmanned aircraft in a future manned/unmanned aircraft teaming concept, hedged his bets on transitioning in 2023, saying, “I won’t say it is not achievable” but warning that budgetary pressures could change that.

Golden Horde, meanwhile, is intended to develop “networked, collaborative, and autonomous,” or NCA, weapons—munitions that can set up their own network, change their targets in flight, and synchronize their strikes. Officials had not previously assigned a timeline to that program but had transitioned it to a new phase of development in September 2021 called “Colosseum,” with virtual environments, digital engineering, and “surrogate UAVs” to allow scientists and engineers to rapidly try out new ideas and innovations.

Speaking to lawmakers, Baldwin seemed to endorse using the “Colosseum” approach for other programs.

“We’re all looking at digital technology, digital modeling, simulation, agile software practices,” Baldwin said. “So the continued interest in allowing us to utilize advanced technologies in transforming our processes through digital tools is also going to have a significant benefit, because … the knowledge gaining and learning process, the recovery, can be quicker when we are training things in models and simulations versus expensive hardware prototyping.”

Baldwin also noted that the Department of the Air Force remains committed to dedicating 20 percent of its science and technology budget to “transformational technologies.” And as the Vanguards are set to transition to acquisition programs, she offered a small hint as to where her next priorities would lie.

“You may … be familiar with the Secretary of the Air Force’s operational imperatives in order to keep pace with the China threat,” Baldwin said. “We are actively identifying what capabilities are needed and using this transformational S&T component to align with those capability gaps.”

Four USAF Generals Tapped for Third Star, and Guillot to CENTCOM, in New Nominations

May 13, 2022 | By Amanda Miller

An Air Force three-star general has been tapped to become deputy commander of U.S. Central Command, and the Air Force would get four more lieutenant generals, in a slate of nominations announced May 13.

Lt. Gen. Gregory M. Guillot has been nominated to the CENTCOM post at MacDill Air Force Base, Fla. He currently commands U.S. Air Forces Central Command (Ninth Air Force) and Air Combat Command’s Ninth Air Expeditionary Task Force, and is CENTCOM’s combined forces air component commander at Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar.

If confirmed, Guillot would serve as the deputy to Army Gen. Michael “Erik” Kurilla, who assumed command of CENTCOM in April.

The following major generals have been nominated to the rank of lieutenant general:

Maj. Gen. Alexus G. Grynkewich, assigned to replace Guillot as commander, U.S. Air Forces Central Command; commander, Ninth Air Expeditionary Task Force, Air Combat Command; and combined forces air component commander, U.S. Central Command.
Maj. Gen. Richard G. Moore Jr., assigned as the Air Force’s deputy chief of staff, Plans and Programs, replacing Lt. Gen. David S. Nahom, who has been nominated to take command of U.S. Northern Command’s Alaskan Command and the Eleventh Air Force.
Maj. Gen. Charles L. Plummer, assigned as the judge advocate general of the Air Force.
Maj. Gen. Michael J. Schmidt, assigned as director, Joint Strike Fighter Program Office, Office of the Secretary of Defense, replacing Lt. Gen. Eric T. Fick.

Guard F-16 Skids Off Runway in South Dakota, Pilot Safe

May 12, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

An F-16 from the South Dakota Air National Guard’s 114th Fighter Wing slid off the runway in Sioux Falls, S.D., on May 11. Images appeared to show the jet’s landing gear collapsed and its nose damaged.

The pilot, however, is safe, the wing said in a statement posted to social media.

The incident occurred at approximately 2:43 p.m. local time as the fighter was returning from a routine training mission at Joe Foss Field, located at the Sioux Falls Regional Airport, the press release says. The cause of the accident was still being investigated.

However, local media outlets including the Argus Leader and Dakota News Now posted images of the F-16 after the crash, with the landing gear crushed and the plane resting on its nose. The canopy is raised.

This marks the second safety incident involving an Air National Guard F-16 in the past three months. On March 23, an Oklahoma Air National Guard fighter crashed in a woodland area near the Louisiana-Texas border. The pilot in that incident was able to eject.

A day prior, an F-22 from Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., had its landing gear collapse on the runway.

From fiscal year 2015 to 2021, there were 42 Class A or Class B mishaps involving Air Force F-16s, including 20 aircraft destroyed. Class A mishaps result in a death or permanent disability, cause more than $2.5 million in damage, or result in the destruction of an aircraft. Class B mishaps cause permanent partial disability; causes damage valued at between $600,000 and just under $2.5 million; or hospitalize three people, not counting those admitted for observation or administrative purposes who are treated and released.

The F-16’s five-year rate of 3.38 Class A and B mishaps every 100,000 flight hours exceeds the A-10 but is lower than the F-15, F-22, and F-35, according to data from the Air Force Safety Center.

A Dozen Senators Introduce Legislation to Establish a Space National Guard

May 12, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

Twelve senators have backed legislation that would create a Space National Guard, reigniting a debate over how the Space Force will organize its part-time components.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) introduced the Space National Guard Establishment Act on May 10, with four Democrats and six Republicans joining them in co-sponsoring the legislation.

“Without a National Guard component for Space Force, we risk losing many talented individuals who want to keep serving their country and their states after they leave active duty, and that is simply unacceptable,” Feinstein said in a statement. “Creating a Space Force National Guard would also save money and ensure a smoother process in the event we need to activate personnel. Not establishing a Space National Guard was a mistake when Space Force was created, and this bill will remedy that.”

The bill has been referred to the Senate Armed Services Committee, where it will face an uncertain future. As part of its 2022 National Defense Authorization Act markup last summer, the committee proposed simply changing the name of the Air National Guard to the Air and Space National Guard, instead of establishing a separate entity.

That approach left advocates for a Space National Guard unsatisfied—they argue that a new entity is needed because members of those Air National Guard units don’t have a direct connection with the Space Force and have essentially been “orphaned” by the Air Force with no corresponding Active-duty units left in the service.

The SASC proposal was “a new idea,” Brig. Gen. Steven J. Butow, commander of the California Air National Guard, said during a recent virtual Schriever Spacepower Forum event hosted by AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. “But what it does is it fails to recognize the way that we operate. We are creatures of doctrine. And doctrine comes from lessons learned in the battlespace. … Unity of command, unity of effort—these are very important concepts. … If you don’t own it, you don’t control it. How can you rely on it? And somebody else is going to have a higher priority for that capability. It is unfair to create the Space Force and then tie the arm behind the Chief of Space Operations’ back because you gave him a less than full complement of capability.”

However, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget also came out against a separate Space Guard, releasing a statement of administration policy saying it “strongly opposes” such a move as it would create unnecessary bureaucracy and increase costs by up to $500 million annually.

Brig. Gen. Michael A. Valle, commander of the Florida Air National Guard, argued that such cost estimates are based off flawed assumptions, such as the need for new infrastructure and the establishment of space units in every state and territory. In actuality, he said during the Mitchell Institute event, the costs would be limited to cosmetic changes such as name tape, unit flags, and signs.

The House Armed Services Committee backed a Space Guard as part of its NDAA markup. But when it came time for the two committees to draft a compromise bill, they pushed the decision off, instead requiring a study and a report on how the Space Force should structure its reserve components, including a look at how much a Space National Guard would cost.

Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. David D. Thompson told a Senate Armed Services subcommittee May 11 that the service hoped to complete that study in time for the 2024 budgeting cycle, starting next year.

At the same time, the Space Force itself has proposed combining its Active-duty and reserve forces into one combined “Space Component.” In an April hearing before the HASC, Chief of Space Operations Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond listed three options for Air National Guard units with space missions—leave them as is, create a separate Space Guard, or fold them into the Space Component.

Feinstein and Rubio’s bill would keep those units separate from the Space Component and establish them as the reserves for the Space Force.

Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) isn’t one of the cosponsors of the bill. But in questioning Thompson during the May 11 hearing, he laid out several arguments for why a Space Guard might be preferable to a single component.

“Many folks who joined the Air National Guard, they did so because of geographic stability that it offers the members of their families, as well as the opportunity sometimes to serve their state,” Kelly said, pointing out that Air National Guard members might choose not to transfer over to the Space Component if that structure is put in place.

Valle, speaking during the Mitchell Institute event, echoed that line of thinking, saying surveys had shown that up to 90 percent of Air National Guard members in space units said they wouldn’t want to transfer over.

“While supporting the federal mission of homeland defense on full-time status, on different occasions I’ve had the opportunity throughout those years to also support my state through multiple disasters—hurricanes, wildfires, pandemic response, and also travel to other states to support,” said Valle. “That … is what space professionals in the Air National Guard do today and can continue to do so if we establish a Space National Guard: We can conduct and do the mission while being available to support our state and our country.”

Thompson, for his part, noted that while estimates vary on how many ANG service members will transfer, the Space Force’s study on the issue is not making any assumptions that “a large number of Guard members would transition.”

Instead, the study is looking at “determining what would be required to replace those members by Space Force members, the numbers it would take, the training time it would take, the training resources that would take, and the corresponding degradation in mission as we bring those units back up to full status.”

Given the pressing threats posed by China and Russia and the increasingly contested nature of space, Valle and Butow said, the Space Force can’t afford any delay caused by the need to train new Guardians. At the same time, they pointed out that adding Guard members to the Space Component could present manning challenges, as the Space Force’s end strength is supposed to stay low, at 8,600 in 2023.

Currently more than 1,000 members of the Air National Guard are involved in space missions, spread across seven states and one territory—Alaska, California, Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, New York, Ohio, and Guam. Senators from Alaska, California, Colorado, Florida, and Ohio are all cosponsors of Feinstein and Rubio’s bill.

What Happens If GPS Goes Dark? The Pentagon Is Working on It, Space Force General Says

May 12, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

An F-35 is flying above the Indo-Pacific at 35,000 feet, when suddenly, the constellation of GPS satellites it relies upon for navigation goes dark. An adversary—either through a cyber or other anti-satellite attack—has taken down the system. What happens next?

That’s the question Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) asked of Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. David D. Thompson during a May 11 hearing of the Senate Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee. And while the issue has been raised for years now, it’s one the Pentagon is increasingly concerned with, Thompson told lawmakers.

As space has become more crowded and more contested, the Space Force has advocated for proliferated, resilient satellite architectures. At the moment, though, the GPS constellation consists of just 33 spacecraft.

There’s no plan to replace GPS with a new program—Thompson emphasized that he expects the system to “remain the world standard for a long time.”

But at the same time, “while GPS is the world standard, it is perhaps fair to say that we’ve come to rely on it solely and exclusively and too heavily,” Thompson said.

In the hypothetical scenario King presented, the F-35 pilot would likely be fine, Thompson said—the Air Force trains its pilots on how to respond in GPS-denied environments, so their ability to keep flying is “generally assured,” Thompson noted, before adding, “Obviously, there’s likely to be a mission impact.”

To mitigate those impacts, the Department of the Air Force is working on projects “to augment [GPS], to supplement it, to provide additional means of being able to navigate and position and conduct missions,” Thompson said.

But it’s not just the Department of the Air Force—indeed, the entire Pentagon has come to see the issue of navigation as important.

“Inside all of the services—especially the Army is probably leading right now; the Navy is not far behind; but the Air Force as well—they’re looking at a host of technologies and methodologies for positioning and navigation,” Thompson said. “I would say probably inside the Department of Defense, I think we finally have enough people who have woken up to the fact that GPS is the world standard, will remain the world standard for a long time, but we have to be prepared for those who wish to deny us GPS and … be able to fight through that and be effective.”

Several years ago, the Navy made headlines when it brought back “celestial navigation” at the U.S. Naval Academy—navigating by the stars.

But while media coverage of that change mainly focused on the idea of returning to centuries-old navigation methods such as the sextant, Thompson indicated that new methods to complement GPS would still be high-tech.

“They’re developing techniques for celestial navigation automatically without a navigator, a human navigator, required—and frankly, to be able to do it in daylight, when the human eye can’t see stars. There’s technology in that regard,” Thompson said.

“Many years ago, onboard navigation, inertial navigation systems, were the way we conducted business in the ’50s and ’60s before GPS was rampant. It’s time to reinvest in those technologies and those capabilities, I think, to advance them. There’s even techniques that allow systems to measure the magnetic field of the Earth and based on the variations in the Earth’s magnetic field, figure out where you are, terrain mapping. There are a lot of ways to solve this problem.”

In 2020, the Army launched a new office and laboratory dedicated to the modernization of position, navigation, and timing. And in 2021, the Air Force’s Strategic Development Planning and Experimentation Office, alongside the Naval Surface Warfare Center, flight-tested new PNT technologies from open software architectures fused together.

Such moves, Thompson and King agreed, are necessary to build on moving forward.

“Somebody’s got to be thinking about this,” King said. “Because in a conflict, if I’m the adversary, the first thing I’m going to do is try to knock out GPS in order to blind us.”

Battlefield Failures by Russia Bolster Congressional Support for Defense Budget

May 12, 2022 | By Abraham Mahshie

House appropriators praised the Defense Department’s efforts to strengthen Ukraine’s fight against Russia and acknowledged that Russia’s battlefield failures highlight the value of investment in U.S. military readiness.

“The war in Ukraine has also made it clear that the foundational task of properly maintaining, training, and equipping a modern military is essential to our success in the 21st century conflicts,” said House Appropriations defense subcommittee chair Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.).

“The poor performance in Russia and their military has highlighted this very fact,” McCollum added.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Mark A. Milley said fully funding the president’s $773 billion fiscal 2023 defense budget was needed at a time when China and Russia both intended to “fundamentally change” the rules-based order.

“We are entering a world that is becoming more unstable, and the potential for significant international conflict between great powers is increasing, not decreasing,” Milley said, citing the presence of 400,000 U.S. troops in 155 countries to protect American interests.

“We are currently witness to the greatest threat to the peace and security of Europe and perhaps the world in my 42, almost 43, years of service in uniform,” Milley added. “The Russian invasion of Ukraine is threatening to undermine not only European peace and stability but global peace and stability.”

Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III said the record $130 billion slated for research, development, testing, and evaluation will maintain the U.S. edge while helping service members at home with a 4.5 percent pay increase and $2 billion for military family housing construction and improvements in the wake of rising rental costs across the nation.

Florida Democrat Charlie Crist, whose district includes both U.S. Central Command and U.S. Special Operations Command, questioned the defense leaders about Russia’s use of advanced hypersonic weapons on the battlefield in Ukraine.

“Other than the speed of the weapon in terms of its effect on a given target, we are not seeing really significant or game-changing effects to date with the delivery of the small number of hypersonics that the Russians have used,” Milley said.

He said each hypersonic shot fired by the Russians has been analyzed by DOD, and he offered to brief the Crist at the classified level. The defense budget includes some $4 billion for the development of hypersonic weapons.

“The Russians have used them several times in this conflict,” Austin said. “Ukrainians are still fighting, and I’ll leave it at that.”

A senior defense official said May 10 that Russia has used between 10 and 12 hypersonic weapons in Ukraine thus far. Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby assessed that the sophisticated new weapon has been used to little effect.

“It’s a bit of a head-scratcher why you would use a hypersonic against a building. But I’ll let the Russians speak for that,” Kirby said. “We do assess that they are running through their precision-guided missiles at a pretty fast clip.”

In evaluating Russia’s battlefield shortcomings at the May 11 hearing, Austin opined that Russian President Vladimir Putin would not attack NATO.

“My view is that Russia doesn’t want to take on the NATO alliance,” Austin said.

The secretary described NATO’s 1.9 million-strong fighting force, with the “most advanced capabilities of any alliance in the world” in terms of aircraft, ships, and weaponry.

“This is a fight that he really doesn’t want to have—and that would very quickly escalate into another type of competition that no one wants to see,” Austin warned. “If Russia decides to attack any nation that’s a NATO member, then that’s a game-changer.”

Pentagon Watchdog: Space Command HQ Selection Process ‘Reasonable’

May 11, 2022 | By Amanda Miller

The Air Force didn’t break the law, nor did it violate Defense Department policy, when it chose Redstone Arsenal, Ala., as the permanent home of U.S. Space Command in 2020, according to DOD’s internal watchdog.

However, the Office of the Inspector General recommended that Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III more firmly solidify the headquarters selection process for a unified combatant command and found other irregularities and concerns.

Overall, the OIG found that the basing process “was reasonable,” according to its report dated May 11.

At the same time, the office recommended that:

Austin review concerns about Space Command’s timeline for reaching full operational capability.
Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall issue a memo reminding personnel of the requirement to “retain all records of basing actions.”
Kendall review three selection criteria—out of a total of 21 criteria—for which the Air Force couldn’t provide sufficient documentation.

Congress’ Government Accountability Office is also investigating the decision, and the OIG report also indicates that the Department of the Air Force is still “finalizing” it.

The DAF twice searched for U.S. Space Command’s permanent home base after it became the military’s 11th unified combatant command in 2019. The administration scrapped one list of finalists before then-Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper decided to go with a different process—one developed by Army Futures Command—in which local communities got to make pitches.

Convinced the command’s headquarters made the most sense at its temporary home of Peterson Space Force Base, Colo., members of Colorado’s congressional delegation have objected to the choice of Redstone Arsenal that they contended was made “for political reasons.” After his presidency ended, Donald Trump took credit for the decision.

Colorado’s members of Congress since raised the issue of Space Command’s timeline for reaching full operational capability. Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) told Air Force Magazine in an April interview that he estimated achieving “FOC” could take years longer if the command had to move to Alabama.

The OIG recommended Austin review “concerns expressed by the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the United States Space Force Chief of Space Operations, and the Commander of United States Space Command” pertaining to the command’s FOC. However, most of the senior leaders’ comments are redacted in the OIG’s report with the exception of a footnote indicating that the commander of U.S. Space Command, Army Gen. James H. Dickinson, “reiterated … [redacted] … could not provide Basing Office personnel evidence that the USSPACECOM HQ would achieve FOC sooner at one candidate location over another.”

Dickinson said in congressional testimony in March that the basing decision was preventing the command from getting to FOC “as quickly as possible” but also estimated that both staying in Colorado and moving to Alabama would put FOC in the range of “a couple/three years.”

In the department’s response, Austin said he would direct Kendall to review the concerns.

In response to the finding that “Basing Office personnel did not fully comply with Air Force records retention requirements,” the Department of the Air Force agreed to “issue a directive emphasizing the requirement … as well as conduct recurring oversight to ensure sustained compliance.”

A member of the Basing Office told OIG investigators that he believed “the Air Force only required retention of the … records that showed the selection of [Redstone Arsenal] as the preferred permanent location”—not other intermediate working documents that would help a third party such as the OIG to validate the process.

The process called for ranking six candidate headquarters locations within each of 21 criteria, but the OIG “could not determine the reasonableness or verify the accuracy” of the rankings for three of those criteria: child care availability, housing affordability, and access to military/veteran support.

DAF agreed that “prior to finalizing this basing decision,” it would “conduct further analysis” of the three criteria.

On the matter of a uniform policy for selecting combatant command headquarters locations, the OIG suggested that the official within a military department who is entrusted with the selection process be required to follow that service’s own—not another service’s—“policies, procedures, and internal controls in future combatant command basing actions.”