Six Space Technologies the USSF Needs in Order to Maintain the US Advantage

March 8, 2022 | By Nick Adde

As challenges to the U.S. military’s advantage in space continue to mount, the need to foster innovations and develop technologies to meet them rises accordingly.

A panel of experts addressed the technologies necessary to maintain superiority during a March 4 discussion at the AFA Warfare Symposium in Orlando, Fla.

“The United States has worked for decades to keep space peaceful,” said retired Air Force Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, dean of AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, who moderated the discussion. “Given adversary actions, we’ve got to respond. We need to present senior leaders with a range of effective options, and that means pursuing both defensive and offensive capabilities.”

The Space Force’s chief technology and innovation officer, Lisa Costa, outlined the critical space-security activities underway now:

Securing freedom of action in space—through artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and advanced analytics.
Improving survivability and resilient architectures.
Digital engineering throughout the processes of acquisition, training, and operations.
Adopting responsible AI and ML that Guardians can trust.
Improving space access, mobility, and logistics.
Enhancing current services, including search and rescue; space commerce; and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance.

The panel’s industry representatives—Nicholas Bucci of General Atomics and Frank DeMauro of Northrop Grumman—offered their views on how partnerships between businesses and the government could support the efforts of Costa’s team.

space technologies — The Space Force’s chief technology and innovation officer, Lisa Costa, from left, and Nicholas Bucci of General Atomics and Frank DeMauro of Northrop Grumman take part in the AFA Warfare Symposium, March 4, 2022. Staff photo by Mike Tsukamoto.

“This is about what is driving … innovation. It’s all about size, weight, and power improvements in terms of capabilities,” said Bucci, vice president of defense systems and technologies at General Atomics.

Bucci would like to see a 500-kilogram satellite do the work now performed by a 5,000-pound satellite; to advance technology that can deliver better access to space; and to get talented people who can foster innovation hired in the space community.

DeMauro, Northrop Grumman’s vice president and general manager of strategic deterrent systems, described how the company developed a way to dock onto and refuel existing commercial satellites—thus extending their lives—and how such technology could support the military mission as well.

In order to continue such support enterprises and activities, DeMauro said companies must plan the designs of their factories accordingly.

“[When] figuring out the flexibility we need to have in our systems, we also need to have the flexibility in our factories and in our systems to be able to pivot quickly, to be agile in what we’re delivering to the customers,” DeMauro said. “We’re going to have to figure out how to make sure that it’s meeting the needs of the warfighter.”

Service Cyber Leaders Discuss Challenges of Joint Operations

March 8, 2022 | By Shaun Waterman

Divergent ways of thinking about time were among the more unexpected challenges to joint cyber operations highlighted by commanders from three different services in a panel discussion at the AFA Warfare Symposium in Orlando, Fla., on March 4.

Combatant commanders tend to focus on current engagements in the continuum of competition with adversaries employing hybrid tactics below the level of armed conflict, said Lt. Gen. Timothy D. Haugh, commander of the 16th Air Force and Air Force Cyber Command. “How do they use our overall [cyber] force to be able to engage an adversary today in the information environment or in cyberspace [in a way] that creates advantage?”

For leaders of the geographic combatant commands, the question is: “How do we engage the gray zone elements of our adversaries that are trying to create advantage for their nation? And how do we create opportunities for [the U.S.] interagency [policy and planning process] and our allies to be able to slow that advance?”

Air component commanders, by contrast, Haugh said, tend to focus on a longer time horizon—working out how information operations and cyber forces could assist their efforts to surge forces and work with allies in response to crises like the current one in Europe.

For air component commanders, Haugh said, “It’s about how do they enable their dynamic force employment? How do they amplify their exercises with allies and partners to strengthen resolve as part of the areas that could be enabling for agile combat employment? As we think about our partners and how we will work together in an area of crisis or conflict.”

Time, in the form of time at sea, was also on the mind of the Navy’s top cyber warrior, 10th Fleet and U.S. Fleet Cyber Commander Vice Adm. Ross Myers. The Navy faced a tougher challenge in recruitment and retention than the other services, he said. In the Navy, in addition to the same wage gap with the lucrative jobs that top cyber warriors could land in the private sector, “we do go to sea. And not everybody that’s inclined in cyber is necessarily inclined to spend months at sea.”

Combine that with the nationwide shortage of cyber talent, Myers added, and “We’re in a constant battle to acquire and retain a combat ready [cyber] force.”

Like in all the services, Myers said, a generation of Navy leaders who came into a service without email are challenged to relate to the digital natives they now command.

“It’s hard for me to relate to a 20-year-old that lives with an iPhone in their hand. That’s their means of communication … and they live and breathe with that thing. They sleep with it. That is foreign to me,” he said. “But it does not diminish the fact: Leadership is leadership. Whether it’s electronic, or whether it’s physical, it still demands and requires all of us to be good leaders.”

“In truth and reality, the Navy [had] some of the last units to go … into the electronic age,” said Myers, who entered the service in 1986. “When I came in the Navy, we were still doing letter mail. Email addresses didn’t exist,” he recalled, noting that he now leads a fleet “where I guarantee you there are sailors that have never received a letter at sea. The only thing they’ve received are emails.”

Like other digital natives, young Navy service members took connectivity for granted, added Myers. “If you want to come close to a mutiny, cut off the internet connection … for more than a few hours, and offer no explanation for it,” he said.

Army Maj. Gen. William “Joe” Hartman, commander of Cyber Command’s National Mission Forces, admitted that he, too, entered the service in the pre-email era. But he said he learned the basics of cybersecurity from the legendary “Ranger Handbook: Five Principles of Patrolling,” one of which was security.

“Until you had security, you couldn’t do anything else. And that’s the environment that we’re still in. And for a network operation, it starts with security,” Hartman said. “Once your network is secure, you can then communicate those important things you need to, and you can make those decisions that as a senior leader you need to make. But if you’re unclear on the security of your network, you shouldn’t make any decisions. You shouldn’t take any actions, until your network is secure. And that’s a little bit blunt. But that just is the way that we’ve always operated in the Department [of the Army].”

Even leaders from the pre-email era had families who tended to take connectivity for granted, said Lt. Gen. Mary F. O’Brien, Air Force deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and cyber effects operations, who moderated the discussion.

“When I was deployed to Afghanistan,” she recalled, “my son said, ‘Mom, are you going to have WiFi in Kabul, so you can order my saxophone reeds and schedule my lacrosse camp?’ And I said, ‘Yes, I will,’ and he goes, ‘OK, we’ll be fine.’”

Full-Spectrum Employment Is an Industry Priority for EMS Warfare

March 8, 2022 | By Hope Hodge Seck

With peer adversaries gaining ground in electromagnetic spectrum warfare, the U.S. military must employ the entire spectrum to protect warfighters and press the advantage, a panel of industry experts said. Speaking at the AFA Warfare Symposium on March 4, the experts in EMS warfare also urged agile development to keep pace with the threat.

Complicating the strategic picture is greater signal density from commercial as well as military use, said Lisa Aucoin, vice president of F-35 Solutions at BAE Systems.

“Relying on stealth as we have in the past is no longer a sole option,” Aucoin said. “I think one of the key pieces here is employing the entire spectrum, not only [radio frequency], but [infrared], to kind of branch that range of frequencies, to enable us to detect more threats in real time.”

Aucoin was joined on the panel by Paul K. Turner, principal product development engineer at AT&T Public Sector, and Andy Lowery, chief product officer at Epirus. Col. William “Dollar” Young, commander of the Air Force’s newly created 350th Spectrum Warfare Wing, moderated the discussion.

After Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. declared in January 2021 that the service had been “asleep at the wheel” for the past three decades in EMS warfare, the Air Force has intensified its pursuit for dominance in that space. It released an Electromagnetic Spectrum Superiority Strategy in April and has made big shifts, including the creation of the 350th, to prioritize spectrum warfare.

The Air Force also announced in February 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.

Aucoin listed key developments that must take place to fully employ the electromagnetic spectrum for EW countermeasures: hardware and software innovations to provide improved instantaneous bandwidth; better emitter identification; high-speed scanning; and greater radar sensitivity.

“These new techniques will evolve as the threat evolves, and we have to go faster than our adversaries,” she said.

Lowery, who previously worked as chief engineer for the Navy’s Next-Gen Jammer program, said solutions dependent on software rather than hardware can help the Defense Department become more agile and available to adapt at the speed of enemy threats. Epirus’ flagship product is an open-architecture system that uses high-power microwave technology to neutralize enemy drones.

“A warfighter has a threat they haven’t seen before. We identify it. We study it. We send out to the field real-time, over-the-air updates,” he said. “And now that threat can be taken care of.”

Further investment in research and development, Aucoin said, could help the Defense Department to extract more signal information from the spectrum it can access. Also, she said, it’s important to begin thinking about and employing the spectrum in a holistic, collaborative way.

“We tend to think of RF by itself; we tend to think of IR by itself, laser by itself,” she said. “We need to make all of those things work together to do what we need them to do.”

KC-135s, Air Support Ops Team Deploying to Europe

March 7, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

The Pentagon is sending KC-135s and roughly 150 Airmen to Europe to support troops already deployed there in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, press secretary John F. Kirby announced March 7.

The tankers will come from Fairchild Air Force Base, Wash., and are planned to go to Souda Bay, Greece, “to provide additional aerial refueling support to the commander of U.S. European Command,” Kirby said in a press briefing.

Fairchild is home to the 92nd Air Refueling Wing, the Air Force’s lone “super” tanker wing. The 92nd boasts 63 aircraft in its inventory and is often called upon for refueling needs. Kirby did not specify how many tankers would deploy.

The move is one of several ordered by Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III over the weekend, Kirby said. Approximately 40 members of an air support operations center also will deploy to Poland and Romania from Fort Stewart, Ga., where the 15th Air Operations Support Squadron is based.

On top of that, roughly 300 personnel from a modular ammunition ordnance company out of Fort Bragg, N.C., and a support maintenance company out of Fort Stewart will deploy to support the 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, in Germany.

All told, roughly 500 service members are being deployed in support of the 7,000 U.S. troops who recently deployed to Germany.

“Specifically, the ones we’re talking about today are enablers,” Kirby said. “And we said before when we deployed the additional 7,000 that there would be associated enablers with them. This is part of that support.”

Over the past few weeks, the DOD has shifted troops and resources several times in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, seeking to bolster allies along NATO’s eastern front. On top of the 7,000 service members announced in late February, F-35s, F-16s, and F-15s have all taken part in joint training and enhanced air policing missions, and an infantry battalion, attack aviation battalion, and attack aviation task force totaling 32 Apache helicopters, multiple Stryker units, and 4,700 troops from the 82nd Airborne Division deployed as well.

Backfilling NATO MiG Transfers to Ukraine Not Quick or Easy

March 7, 2022 | By John A. Tirpak

If Poland, Romania, or other NATO countries transfer their Russian-made combat airplanes to Ukraine, “backfilling” those jets with American-made fighters, as Secretary of State Antony Blinken has suggested, wouldn’t happen rapidly.

Blinken, appearing on a number of Sunday TV talk shows, said Poland has a “green light” from the U.S. to send some of its obsolete, Russian-made jets to Ukraine. The U.S. would in turn “backfill” the aircraft so Poland or other countries wouldn’t have a deficit of combat air power for themselves.

“We’re talking with our Polish friends right now about what we might be able to do to backfill their needs, if in fact they choose to provide these fighter jets to the Ukrainians,” Blinken said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelensky made a Zoom call with a number of U.S. lawmakers on March 5 asking for manned and unmanned combat aircraft, and further shipments of anti-tank weapons. Senators Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) sent a letter to President Joe Biden saying they would work to get Congress to provide any funds necessary for an aircraft transfer.

However, the F-16 production line has only recently re-opened, in a new location, and it will be a while before it starts delivering completed aircraft. The F-35 production line is nearing maximum capacity, and a Lockheed Martin official said it would take 36 months from contract signing to delivery of new aircraft. “Actual production time is 18 months,” the official said.

Before Blinken made his remarks, Polish President Andrzej Duda tweeted that Poland “won’t send its fighter jets to Ukraine” or allow it to use Polish airfields. “We significantly help in many other areas,” he said.

Ukraine could not accept combat aircraft directly from the U.S. because Ukrainian pilots are not trained to fly American types and Ukraine lacks the maintenance gear and weapons needed to support them. It could make ready use of Russian types from Poland or other former Warsaw Pact countries still operating Soviet-type aircraft. Such transfers are allowable under NATO rules because they are bilateral moves and not an alliance action.

Neither the Pentagon nor State Department would provide an official comment, except to say they were aware of Blinken’s remarks. While the Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency manages weapon transfers, “the State Department makes the deals,” a Pentagon official said. A White House official said the U.S. is “looking at options” to implement such a transfer.

Bulgaria, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia all have the kinds of Russian-made aircraft Ukraine could fly, including MiG-29s. American types operated by those countries include 48 F-16s in service with Poland, which has also ordered 32 F-35s, with options for up to 48. Romania operates 17 F-16s and recently bought 32 more, second-hand, from Norway. Slovakia has ordered 14 F-16 Block 70 jets, the first of which are to arrive next year, and Bulgaria has officially ordered eight F-16 Block 70s and has requested eight more.

Providing F-16s or F-35s would be problematic, though, because wherever they came from, it would produce an immediate deficit not quickly restored. The options are as follows:

Provide aircraft from the U.S. Air Force/Air National Guard—While these aircraft could be transferred quite quickly, it would be some time before the affected units could be re-stocked with fresh aircraft, leaving them without a mission until deliveries of new airplanes are made. NATO partners may also not want these aircraft, because most are older and less sophisticated than the ones the allies already have, or are in the process of buying.
Agree to sell the allies new airplanes—In most cases, the candidate “donor” countries are already buying these aircraft. Washington could sweeten the deal by adding jets or discounting the price, or throwing in munitions or other support as part of the deal.
Provide aircraft from the “Boneyard”—It isn’t clear how many F-16s are in “inviolable” storage at the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz., storage facility; i.e. those not already subject to being harvested for parts. A Davis-Monthan spokeswoman was not immediately able to provide numbers of aircraft in this status. Again, allies may not want regenerated airplanes, and it would likely take months to bring the aircraft back up to readiness after long storage.
Third-party transfers—some F-16 operators not in the European theater may have excess F-16s, or may be getting ready to trade up to F-35s, just as Norway transferred its excess jets to Slovakia and Israel recently sold early-model F-16s for use as “adversary air” platforms. The U.S. might offer to buy back these jets and provide them to MiG donor countries. Again, the receivers might not be willing to accept these aircraft, unless they were provided at no cost.
Ask non-European countries to take a later spot in line—Countries buying the F-35 but not threatened by Russia’s invasion might be persuaded to let their jets go to another customer and accept their F-35s later. Consideration would likely be offered.

A Lockheed spokeswoman said “decisions regarding new production jets, transfers of jets between customers, as well as upgrades of current fleets, are determined by the U.S. government. We follow the guidance of those determinations.”

Now that the F-16 production line has been re-established in Greenville, S.C.—where the Block 70/72 is the new production standard—the company is planning to begin flight testing the first jet produced there “in early 2023,” she said. The line was moved to make room at Fort Worth for expanded F-35 production, and to co-locate the production line with a nearby depot facility for F-16s, which recently regenerated its first aircraft.

The first F-16 to be produced at Greenville will go to Bahrain.

In a March 3 interview with Air Force Magazine at the AFA Warfare Symposium, Lockheed Aeronautics Vice President Gregory M. Ulmer said, “We are on contract for 122 new F-16s,” which will be delivered at a peak rate of about four a month through the mid-2020s. Ulmer said the company anticipates a potential market “from 300 to 500 more beyond that.”

Ulmer said Lockheed did the first F-16 fuselage mate at Greenville “in the last 30 days.” That was “a little late to our plan” because of supply chain issues due to the COVID-19 pandemic, he said. The company has also been challenged getting a sufficient number of workers at Greenville, as it is competing with factories nearby making Michelin tires and BMW automobiles. Ulmer said Lockheed offered jobs to 100 people at a recent job fair, versus a need for 300 workers.

ISR Will Require AI, Resilient Networks, and Space Connectivity in Next Peer Fight

March 7, 2022 | By Abraham Mahshie

Multi-layered, resilient networks that can quickly reconstitute a data picture and artificial intelligence to process vast amounts of data are some of the key requirements for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance systems in the next peer conflict, industry experts said at the AFA Warfare Symposium in Orlando, Fla.

Air Force Maj. Gen. Leah G. Lauderback, director of ISR for the U.S. Space Force, asked a panel of industry leaders from Elbit Systems of America, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, and L3Harris Technologies to describe what a new ISR architecture might look like for contested and denied areas in a peer conflict.

“It’s going to require much more, I think, from a space capability looking down,” she suggested. “We also need to be looking up.”

Brad Reeves, director of C4I solutions at Elbit Systems of America, said the next ISR architecture must have AI processing to deny adversaries a centralized target.

“The sensors are going to have to do a lot of that work for you,” said Reeves. “They see something and make sense of it, and push a recommended action to us.” Reeves noted that the technology must be in place to connect all the sensors from ground, air, and space.

That means “ISR that can leverage the capabilities of autonomy in AI to be able to increase the speed of decision making, and also to be able to decrease the kill web timeline,” he added.

JR Reid, vice president of strategic development at General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, praised the move to add redundancy to space sensors in all layers, including near Earth, medium Earth, and geosynchronous orbit. But, he said, the next fight will require the ability to quickly move from one source to the other.

“You’ve got to be able to jump from the waves,” Reid said. “You’ve got to be able to use space when it’s there. When I can’t get to exactly what I want, I go to my alternate. When I can’t get to that, I move to my air layer, and [I must] be able to move seamlessly through all of those places in order to deliver the effects that airpower brings throughout the spectrum of conflict.”

Reid warned you could be “drowning” in too much data, but the defense industry can leverage commercial applications available today to sift through it quicker and pull out the information for the warfighter.

Luke D. Savorie, president of the ISR Sector at L3Harris, said his company is preparing for a next-generation requirement in ISR that takes into consideration a space architecture facing new threats from adversaries. That means heavy investment on the sensor side, larger apertures with less weight and power usage, and more connectivity, including space avionics to create connectivity to get data from GEO and LEO orbits.

“We’re trying to get as high up in the air as we can,” Savorie said. “A lot of looking up.”

CMSAF: If WAPS Testing Doesn’t Go Digital in 2022, ‘Something is Wrong’

March 7, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

Airmen, put down your pencils—possibly forever.

Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force JoAnne S. Bass said March 4 she is “hopeful” the service will finally transition to digital testing for the Weighted Airman Promotion System in 2022, a longtime goal for leadership.

Bass, speaking at the AFA Warfare Symposium in Orlando, Fla., stopped short of guaranteeing the change to WAPS testing. But she did say the Air Force will continue to press forward with changes to the enlisted evaluation system.

“I am hopeful that we are actually going to [digitize] WAPS testing. Like, it is 2022, if we can’t get out of taking a No. 2 pencil into promotion tests, something is wrong,” Bass said, before offering a joking apology to Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. “Sorry, boss. We have got to modernize some things.”

Bass’ comments follow on remarks she and Lt. Gen. Brian T. Kelly, deputy chief of staff for manpower, personnel, and services, made during a June 2021 Coffee Talk on Facebook, during which Bass called the use of paper testing “embarrassing,” and Kelly said it “makes all of us as senior leaders absolutely crazy.”

“That’s one of the things on my ‘things to do’ list,” Bass added. “Please hold us to the fire on that one.”

The move to digital testing would eliminate the possibility of losing paper tests in the mail. There have been several such incidents in recent years, costing some Airmen a shot at promotion.

It would also help usher the promotion process into the modern era, something Bass said at AWS is crucial for cultivating and retaining Airmen.

“I’m focused on how do we retain the talent that we need in 2030? Well, it’s not going to be because of policies and processes from the 1990s and the early 2000s,” Bass said. “We’ve got to change and get after all of those things, so that’s a focus there.”

However, the shift to online tests could put additional strain on the Air Force’s network, the speed of which is already a frequent source of frustration for many Airmen. The problem is so widespread that former Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s remark at AWS that the network “sucks” drew applause from his audience.

Improving the underlying network is a priority too, Bass promised, saying she has also experienced the same frustrations.

“Our Airmen always say, ‘I wonder if our leaders know, I wonder if our leaders understand the challenges we have.’ And I’m like, ‘Yes, we do, and we share those challenges, right?’” Bass said. “Like, we’re frustrated with the IT systems that we have, I mean, beyond belief. As many times as you have to add in your PIN, I have to do that too. I mean, I send stuff home to my phone or my whatever so that I can actually watch whatever I need to watch, because I can’t do it on my work [computer].”

On that front, Bass said, senior leaders are committed to addressing the fundamental issues concerning rank-and-file Airmen.

“Where I’m encouraged is, we’ve made a stance on ‘Here are some foundational things that we have got to make sure that we are funding,’” Bass said. “Cyber and IT is one of those things, Airmen programs is one of those things. We have to start to fund the foundation of what makes our Air Force move out, because we can’t modernize if the foundation is not where it needs to be.”

How Brown Plans to Battle Bureaucracy: Radical Transparency, More ’Horsepower’

March 7, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

It’s been more than a year and a half since Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. ascended to the role of Air Force Chief of Staff, and in that time, he’s repeatedly said he wants to transform the service in bold ways to make it ready for the future.

Speaking at the AFA Warfare Symposium in Orlando, Fla., however, Brown admitted his efforts have run into a familiar Pentagon problem: bureaucracy.

Brown previously tried to target the Air Force portion of the sprawling Defense Department bureaucracy as part of his series of Action Orders—issued in December 2020. The orders detailed what Brown believed needed to be done to implement his mantra of “Accelerate Change or Lose.”

Modifications to those action orders were released in February, and included a candid assessment of Action Order B, focused on bureaucracy.

“After over a year of analysis and work, significant progress on this action order has proven elusive,” the order reads. “More specifically, current Air Staff decision-making remains cumbersome, slow, allows ‘soft vetoes’ without accountability, and prioritizes compromise and consensus over decision quality. Mired in hierarchical processes and content with the status quo, the Air Staff must adapt to mission command and collaborative approaches to address the 21st Century threats and competitive strategic environment.”

In a March 3 media roundtable, Brown detailed just how bureaucracy has been hard to kill, despite the Action Order.

“I knew bureaucracy was going to be hard. I guess I’m not completely surprised because people don’t like change,” Brown said. “And I think the challenge we also had, because of COVID … [with] not everybody there in the office, you don’t have that dialogue that goes back and forth.”

A team tasked with implementing the Action Order was organized under Lt. Gen. S. Clinton Hinote, deputy chief of staff for strategy, integration, and requirements. But looking back now, Brown said, that team didn’t have “enough horsepower behind them to be able to do the things we needed them to do.”

Now, the team has been moved under Vice Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin, “so he has the visibility and he can actually drive things,” Brown said.

As part of the modified Action Order, Brown also pledged “radical transparency,” and in pursuit of that, called for the Air Staff to “ensure wide dissemination [and] provide clear understanding of CSAF intent” of key decisions and documents.

That will start with memos from Brown detailing decisions made and priorities set—it’s necessary, he said, because final decisions aren’t always treated as such.

“When a decision occurs, if you weren’t in the meeting, how do you know that decision happened? Because too often what I found is, there’s a decision made and then the staff determines we want to actually re-litigate the decision, because they … may or may not have agreed with the decision in full,” Brown said.

Having memos laying out records of decisions will decrease uncertainty and speed up the actual implementation of those decisions, Brown predicted.

“I’ve had examples of ‘You want to explore the decision that the Chief’s already made.’ Well no, we’ve already made a decision,” Brown said. “Now it’s time to explore how we implement it.”

As part of the decision making process, Brown added, he welcomes different perspectives and arguments—he just wants them to be voiced publicly, not in the so-called “meeting after the meeting” when staffers will share thoughts in smaller groups.

“I’m gonna have the meeting after the meeting, in the meeting. If you have a difference in opinion, don’t hold it,” Brown said. “Speak now or forever hold your peace, because we’re going to move out on some of these.”

In pursuit of that, the modified Action Order directs the Air Staff to primarily use Microsoft Teams for unclassified collaboration and meetings, with email, conference calls, and in-person meetings as backups. Using Teams, Brown said, will allow more voices into meetings and hopefully encourage more discussion in the moment.

Still, the challenge remains daunting.

“I think, of all the action orders, this will probably be one of the most challenging ones, because it’s a cultural shift,” said Brown. “But I think we’ve got to do this in order to make decisions faster and really flatten communication across the staff and really across the Air Force.”

Space Force Tests Health Monitoring Data to Replace PT Tests

March 5, 2022 | By Amanda Miller

Top leaders in the Space Force enthusiastically reviewed their experiences wearing continuous health monitors that could form the basis for the service to do away with conventional PT testing.

They said in press briefings at the AFA Warfare Symposium on March 4 that the black health monitoring rings that quite a few Guardians wore were part of a pilot program that’s helping the service flesh out its “holistic wellness” concept. The wellness program won’t rely on annual PT tests anymore but instead monitor the troops’ health all year round. Several senior Air Force leaders also were seen wearing the rings, but an Air Force spokeswomen said she could not confirm if the Air Force also is considering replacing its regular PT program.

The Space Force leaders want the program to ultimately amount to “more than just a physical training test like I grew up doing in the Air Force, where we ran and did sit-ups and pushups,” said Brig. Gen. Shawn N. Bratton, commander of Space Training and Readiness Command. STARCOM is one of the Space Force’s three field commands, generally equated to an Air Force major command.

Bratton, STARCOM senior enlisted leader Chief Master Sgt. James P. Seballes, Chief of Space Operations Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond, and Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force Roger A. Towberman all wore the rings.

“We think there’s something that this data provides,” said Bratton. “We’re trying to figure out, how do we aggregate that? How do we think about that? If a Guardian is conducting fitness activities throughout the week and meeting certain milestones, maybe we don’t need to do a test on [an] annual basis if they’re meeting a standard and we can keep track of that through the ring.”

Bratton expected the planning to take another year or two.

The ring’s sleep monitoring feature seemed to have made the biggest impression on all the leaders.

“It makes you very conscious if you get enough sleep, and not even if you just got enough sleep, but if you got quality sleep,” Seballes said. “If you’ve ever woken up before your alarm clock when you’re just laying there with your eyes closed, it knows the difference. If you’ve met your mark, it gives you a little crown in the morning.

Continuous assessment is one of three prongs to the service’s approach, said Towberman, a self-described “gear weirdo.” Other aspects include fitness; and culture and education.

A Guardian’s wellness may be designated green, amber, or red “so that the chain of command and the Guardian know where they’re sitting all the time with regard to readiness,” Towberman said.

Raymond found the sleep monitoring most gratifying:

“It made me much more aware of my sleep, and how much I was sleeping, and the patterns of sleep,” Raymond said. “I’m getting personal here, but if I ate a late dinner, I didn’t sleep as well, because my heart rate didn’t go down as fast at night.”

Towberman perceived a wider benefit, that of cohesiveness—“a thing that binds us. And it’s impossible not to start gamifying,” he said.

Referring to Raymond: “I’ll say, sir, what was your sleep score last night? And he wants to know mine,” Towberman said.

“So we’re building this community, this culture, of fitness where in a fun way people just immediately start taking care of each other. They’re connected.”