As Number of US Javelins Dwindle, Biden Pushes for More Funding to Replenish Stockpiles

As Number of US Javelins Dwindle, Biden Pushes for More Funding to Replenish Stockpiles

May 3, 2022 | By Abraham Mahshie

President Joe Biden traveled to the Troy, Ala., Lockheed Martin production facility for Javelin anti-tank weapons to highlight that weapon’s role in helping Ukrainian soldiers push back Russia on the battlefield. Biden is calling for passage of a $33 billion supplemental bill that would begin to replenish American stocks.

“We’re at an inflection point in history,” said Biden, after describing how American firepower defended European democracy during World War II and is now keeping American troops out of another world war. “There’s an ongoing battle in the world between autocracy and democracy.”

Biden said Russian President Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping are bent on changing the world order by force. He called the Russia-Ukraine war “the first real battle … to determine whether that’s going to happen.”

“We built the weapons and equipment and helped defend freedom and sovereignty in Europe years ago. That’s true again today,” the President said.

The United States has already given Ukraine $3.7 billion in assistance since the start of the conflict, including more than 5,500 of the Javelin missiles. But legislators are now worried that American stocks will be depleted and that the U.S.’s ability to defend the homeland may be in danger.

“Our cupboards will be bare,” said Senate Armed Services Committee member Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) in a statement calling for use of the Defense Production Act, or DPA, to increase the amount and shipment of arms to Ukraine.

“Our latest surge of weapons to Ukraine marks a major challenge to manufacturers,” he said. “America is rapidly depleting its inventories of key arms—needing urgent restocking.”

Blumenthal said one-third of American Javelin missiles have been given to Ukraine, noting that the DPA is needed because at current capacity, producing 1,000 Javelin missiles takes a year.

Biden made only passing reference in Alabama to the potential problem when he called on Congress to pass a $33 billion supplemental budget that would support defensive, humanitarian, and economic assistance to Ukraine for approximately five months and begin to replenish American stocks.

“I urge the Congress to pass this funding quickly to help Ukraine continue to succeed against Russian aggression, just as they did when they won the battle of Kyiv, and to make sure the United States and our allies can replenish our own stocks of weapons, to replace what we’ve sent to Ukraine,” he said.

Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III, in congressional testimony May 3, said it is possible for the U.S. to replace its stocks within a year with the supplemental funds requested.

“It’s not only possible, but we will do that,” Austin said in response to a question from Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) at a Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee hearing.

“We will always maintain the capability to defend this country and to support our interest,” Austin added.

At his April 26 meeting with more than 40 allies and partners at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, Austin spoke with defense ministers from countries giving assistance to Ukraine that do not have large stockpiles of reserves like the United States. Eastern flank NATO defense officials have expressed to Air Force Magazine their concern about giving from their limited stocks. In some cases, the U.S. is believed to have provided assurances to those nations, or facilitated additional protection, such as the temporary deployment of Patriot missile systems to Poland.

“This will help us to not only replenish our stockpiles, but also replace some of the capability that we’ve asked our partners and allies to provide,” Austin said.

In a May 2 Pentagon press briefing, Press Secretary John F. Kirby said the depleting stockpiles are not impacting American readiness.

“With every drawdown package, we make an assessment about the impact on our readiness,” Kirby said. “We can assure the American people that we are more than capable of continuing to defend the homeland, and we look at this with every single package.”

Kirby said that in recent weeks, Austin met with defense production CEOs to talk about production lines and that an entire session at Ramstein was devoted to the defense industrial base across the nations providing assistance to Ukraine.

“We have not seen any negative impact on our ability to defend this nation across a range of military capabilities,” Kirby said. “That is not something we take lightly.”

Greater Threat Doesn’t Necessarily Mean More B-21s Needed: Brown

Greater Threat Doesn’t Necessarily Mean More B-21s Needed: Brown

May 3, 2022 | By John A. Tirpak

Heightened threats from Russia and China don’t automatically translate to a need for more than 100 B-21 Raiders, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. told the Senate Armed Services Committee on May 3. The service may simply bolster the number of escorts that go with the new bomber to do the long-range strike role, he said.

There is an “ongoing analysis” of how many B-21s the Air Force should ultimately buy, Brown told the SASC, and those are looking at whether to acquire “either more B-21s, or other capabilities that work with the B-21,” he said.

Brown and Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall also fielded questions on inflation’s effect on the Department of the Air Force; the procurement of E-7 Wedgetails to replace AWACS; retirement of some F-22s; lessons learned from Ukraine; and the possibilities of accelerating various programs.

On the B-21s, Brown said the Air Force is “working through crewed and uncrewed collaborative platforms that can work very closely with the B-21, so it may not mean, necessarily, an increased number of B-21s, but additional capability to go with the B-21, as well.”

Kendall has set as one of his seven “operational imperatives” the need to field strategic, unmanned collaborative platforms to be part of the B-21 “family of systems,” which could become available toward the end of the decade.

Brown acknowledged that there will always be some number of B-21s involved with training and maintenance, leaving fewer aircraft available for operational missions. But he said the program “is on track” and USAF will ensure it’s “easier to maintain … to increase aircraft availability.” The service would get the benefit of more aircraft if the ones it has are available more of the time.

Kendall said USAF is “concerned about inflation across the board” and that “our biggest, immediate concern is fuel prices—they’ve gone up substantially.” Kendall said the Air Force will have “about a $2 billion shortfall this year” for fuel “that we’ll have to address through one mechanism or another.”

There’s no way to predict what inflation will be like in 2023, “and we don’t know how different aspects of the economy will be affected,” Kendall said. “So we’re going to need to work with the Congress to make adjustments as we go forward.”

A number of senators criticized the Administration for offering a defense budget that increases at less than the rate of inflation, calling it a defense “cut.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) noted the planned retirement of 33 F-22s in the fiscal 2023 budget and pointed out that the F-22 had originally been sold to Congress as having a service lifetime to 2060. She said she “applauds” the Air Force for “making the tough call” to retire instead of upgrade them, but suggested they had not been properly tested before a commitment to production, and this now contributes to their lesser capability.

She said the F-35 was also bought before being adequately tested and quoted the Government Accountability Office estimate that it will cost $11.7 billion to modify older models to the Block 4 configuration.

“You know where I’m going with this,” Warren said, quoting back to Kendall his onetime assertion that the F-35 was “acquisition malpractice.”

Kendall responded that what he meant at the time was that a production commitment to the F-35 had been made before flight testing had begun, and “It wasn’t a stable design,” he said.

“My rule of thumb for aircraft programs is that you should have about a year of flight testing under your belt—at least—before you commit to production,” a rule that may signal the timeline for programs such as the Next Generation Air Dominance aircraft.

“There’s always this tension, Senator, between people who are anxious to get … that new, wonderful airplane that’s coming out, and they don’t want to wait another two or three years to have you finish the design and then put on the upgrades that are coming,” Kendall asserted.

He added that “almost all of our aircraft evolve over time to respond to the threat.” The F-15 and F-16 have gone through this, and the F-35 “is now going through Technology Refresh 3 and Block 4 … The threat keeps changing.”

With that changing threat, the F-22’s capability has diminished, Kendall said, and it would cost “$50 million apiece” to bring the 33 F-22s being retired up to combat standards—an amount Kendall said would be better applied to new weapons.

Warren said the F-22 and F-35 bear lessons for the NGAD. “It’s largely classified. It may be necessary, but it’s also going to get even less oversight,” she noted “No public reports, less scrutiny from the GAO, the DODIG, and from the press, and this lack of transparency that we’ve already seen fail us becomes an even riskier process.”

Seeking a ‘Grand Bargain’

Chairman Jack Reed (D-R.I.) noted that the Air Force plans to acquire the E-7 Wedgetail sole-source from Boeing, and given that, asked about a way to “get the aircraft faster” by executing a “grand bargain” along with other countries, such the U.K., that are already signed up to buy it.

“We are exploring options to try to do that [but] it’s not clear” that it can be done, Kendall said. He admitted it is likely to be no less than four years to buy the Wedgetail, because “we’re buying new commercial airplanes and then modifying them” to the Wedgetail configuration.

“Getting the airplanes is about a two-year process, and then modifying them is another two-year process,” he said.  It might be possible to “get access to aircraft earlier,” and there may be “ways to reduce risk and make that schedule.” Kendall said he’d work with the committee on the issue because “getting the aircraft quicker is something we all want.”

The Wedgetail uses the fuselage and wings from the 737-700 and the landing gear from the 737-800, creating a hybrid aircraft.

Lessons from Ukraine

Asked what lessons can be learned from the conflict in Ukraine—and whether Russia’s heavy loss of aircraft and armored vehicles indicates that those platforms are obsolete—Kendall said it highlights the criticality of “sophisticated” aircraft and the need to overcome ground-based air defenses.

“Control of the air is critical to military success. And the failure of the Russian military to gain control of the air is a major contributor to the difficulties they’re having,” Kendall said.

“On the other side of the equation, the Ukrainians have used the air defense systems that they have quite well. They’ve been able to keep them survivable against the threat, which I think says as much about the lack of capability of the Russians as it does about the capability of the Ukrainians. So, you may need to be careful about learning too many lessons from this until we really study it carefully,” Kendall asserted.

The conflict thus far has “reinforced my views about the importance of airpower, … but airpower must be sophisticated enough to deal with the threats that it faces, including ground-based air defenses like the ones the Ukrainians are employing,” Kendall said.

Asked for his perspective, Brown said, “Air superiority cannot be taken for granted.” A successful air force must be able to defend against air-to-air as well as surface-to-air threats, and “that’s what we, as the United States Air Force, are focused on, [making] sure we have the capability to do both, and train to that as well.”

Brown couldn’t say why Ukraine is not flying all its aircraft and suggested that Ukraine may be holding some in reserve to deter Russian air attacks.

Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond, chief of space operations, said the war in Ukraine shows “the character of war has changed … This war shows the value of space providing information” to the defenders “as well as the value of commercial capabilities in intelligence being able to share information broadly … and shape the gray zone operations.”

Kendall said none of the lessons learned from Ukraine would suggest the Air Force has been precipitate in retiring the KC-10, and Brown noted that the KC-46 was in Europe for five weeks, and Airmen were “pleased” with how it did “in a deployed environment.”

Brown said USAF has “come to an agreement with Boeing” on the Remote Vision System, that “in about a year” the process of converting the aircraft to RVS 2.0 should begin.

He also said “we’re about eight airplanes away” from full certification of the KC-46 with all the types it needs to be able to refuel. Other issues with the airplane are “being worked out.”

On munitions, Kendall said that although the Air Force is buying only 88 Long Range Anti-Ship Missiles—a variant of the AGM-158 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile—the LRASM is “not the only anti-ship missile” the service is buying and that USAF will “definitely need more anti-ship capability going forward.”

The AGM-183 Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW) hypersonic missile “has to have some success before we can go into production,” Kendall said, noting that the missile has “had some test failures.” And while engineers learn from failure, he doesn’t want to commit to production until the missile demonstrates it can work, he said.

“There are two tests that are planned over the next several months,” he reported, and those should indicate the health “and where we are” in the program, he said.   

Calvelli to Be Sworn In as First Space Acquisition Chief This Week

Calvelli to Be Sworn In as First Space Acquisition Chief This Week

May 3, 2022 | By Abraham Mahshie

Frank Calvelli will officially take his place as the first assistant secretary of the Air Force for space acquisition and integration later this week. In the newly created position, confirmed by the Senate on April 28, Calvelli will work to streamline decisions the Space Force requires to catch up with the heavy spending of space adversary China.

Calvelli brings deep public- and private sector-space experience to the new organization, Secretary of the Air Force, Space Acquisition and Integration, or SAF/SQ.

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall released a message via Twitter when Calvelli was confirmed, noting the “long-awaited Senate confirmation.”

“Frank’s experience and leadership will be invaluable to putting meaningful military capabilities into the hands of U.S. Space Force Guardians and developing the space-based capabilities that enable and protect our partners across the Joint Force,” Kendall said, according to the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force’s official page.

The new position reflects Kendall’s effort to speed up decision-making to get weapons into the hands of war fighters. In his February nomination hearing, Calvelli said he would bring his 30 years of experience at the National Reconnaissance Office, including eight as its principal deputy director, to “drive speed” into the acquisitions process.

“We are at a critical juncture for our defense space architecture, and there is a real sense of urgency,” he said. “The nation needs to outpace its adversaries and maintain the technological advantage we get from space.”

Calvelli’s position was created by Congress more than two years ago, but he said he would make up for lost time.

He also described the role he intended to play moving the force toward a more resilient space architecture, to include: taking advantage of diverse orbits, adding new technical capabilities, using  smaller, more proliferated satellites, improving space situational awareness, rapid reconstitution, and  integrating commercial capabilities.

Calvelli will take over for interim acquisitions chief Brig. Gen. Steven P. Whitney, whose had served in the role since August 2021.

Biden Nominates Army’s Cavoli to Be New EUCOM, NATO Commander

Biden Nominates Army’s Cavoli to Be New EUCOM, NATO Commander

May 3, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

President Joe Biden has nominated Army Gen. Christopher G. Cavoli to become the new commander of U.S. European Command and Supreme Allied Commander Europe, the Defense Department announced May 3. 

If confirmed, Cavoli would replace Air Force Gen. Tod D. Wolters. That transition will be especially critical as Europe and NATO deal with the fallout of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, one of the continent’s biggest security crises since World War II.

Cavoli speaks Russian and has served as the Joint Staff’s director of Russia for and as a foreign aArea officer with a concentration on Eurasia. He currently serves as commander of U.S. Army Europe-Africa, overseeing more than 60,000 Soldiers, though that number has grown recently with new U.S. deployments to Europe to bolster NATO’s eastern flank and to provide deterrence against Russian aggression.

Starting in January 2018, Cavoli assumed command of U.S. Army Europe until October 2020, when he took over the newly consolidated U.S. Army Europe-Africa. Cavoli has also served as commander of the 25th Infantry Division, the 7th Army Training Command, a batallion, and an infantry brigade combat team.

Wolters confirmed in a March 29 hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee that he would be stepping down in the near future after taking command in May 2019. News of Cavoli’s nomination was first reported by the Wall Street Journal in April but not officially announced for several weeks. 

With a dynamic situation still unfolding, European force structure could look far different in the coming months and years. Already, Germany and Italy have pledged to boost their defense spending dramatically, while Sweden and Finland are moving quickly to potentially join NATO.

At the same time, the Pentagon has emphasized that Russia remains an “acute” threat, and some fear that Russian President Vladimir Putin may resort to biological, chemical, or even nuclear weapons in his war against Ukraine, which has dragged on far longer than expected and is becoming increasingly brutal. 

Against this backdrop, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III recently visited Ramstein Air Base, Germany, to host 40 other nations for the Ukraine Defense Consultative Workshop, dedicated to better coordinating the rapid transfer of weapons to Ukraine and considering the country’s future defense needs against Russia. 

The U.S. alone has delivered billions of dollars worth of lethal aid to Ukraine in the form of ​​millions of rounds of ammunition and a long list of weapons including anti-tank Javelin and anti-air Stinger missiles, with billions more likely on the way. If confirmed, Cavoli will have to help oversee a massive logistical effort to deliver that aid to Ukraine.

With Wolters’ upcoming departure, two Air Force generals will be left among the 11 combatant commanders—Gen. Glen D. VanHerck, head of U.S. Northern Command; and Gen. Jacqueline D. Van Ovost, head of U.S. Transportation Command.

In Time for Fire Season, Meet TAK, the US Govt.’s Suite of Free Situational Awareness Apps

In Time for Fire Season, Meet TAK, the US Govt.’s Suite of Free Situational Awareness Apps

May 3, 2022 | By Amanda Miller

A U.S. government-built app for situational awareness is bringing wildland firefighting into the internet age.

Originating as a product of the Air Force Research Laboratory aimed at improving the precision of close air support, Air Force units have adopted the military’s version of TAK—Tactical Assault Kit—for improving the precision of other activities, such as parachute jumps.

Meanwhile, the free downloads and plugin architecture of TAK’s civilian version—Team Awareness Kit—are giving firefighters, among others, the ability to layer real-time information over satellite images. They can track the locations of team members, vehicles, fires, and a potentially unlimited array of factors to help guide first responders in an emergency.

AFRL still has an office supporting TAK along with a practical reason for wanting more civilian first responders to adopt the app: “Because we want to have everybody on the same page,” said Ralph Kohler, an AFRL principal engineer who promotes TAK to agencies and departments inside and outside the federal government.

Released for Apple iOS earlier in April, the TAK smartphone apps were already running on Android and Microsoft mobile platforms before going live on the Apple App Store. 

TAK grew out of the problem of fratricide in close air support, which became apparent in Afghanistan in 2001 when a U.S. service member called in an air strike on his own location—a mistake that occurred after he changed the batteries in his GPS device.

“The number that came up was his position, when he replaced the batteries, not the position he had worked up where he wanted the bomb to be,” Kohler said.

The explosion killed three U.S. troops and five Afghan fighters and injured then-transitional Afghan government leader Hamid Karzai, among dozens of others.

The mistake came down to having “insufficient technology to plot coordinates on a map,” explained Ryan McLean, director of the TAK Product Center at Fort Belvoir, Va. 

“So a lot of efforts kicked off out of that,” McLean said. “One of the things that shook out of those problem-solving efforts was through the Air Force Research Laboratory—something called Android Map—which became TAK, which has now become this family of products.”

Locations of interagency resources tracked on the Tamarack Fire in California and Nevada in 2001, viewed in the iTAK app, which is the iOS version of TAK (Team Awareness Kit). Department of Homeland Security illustration.

Akin to one of the Air Force’s software factories, McLean described the TAK Product Center as “a unique organization in the U.S. government” that isn’t funded by any one department but collectively by multiple federal agencies. TAK merged with other apps along the way, and the TAK Product Center has incrementally improved TAK and aspires to achieve “TAK continuous delivery.” 

TAK works for fighting wildfires for the same reason it works for close air support, McLean said. Both call for “friendly force identification and target correlation.” 

“If you can do those two things, you can do close air support in the military. If you can do those two things, you can also do a lot of other things. 

“We can add all these great features—plugins, radios, some pretty novel stuff with geospatial data, open interfaces, open source, all that—but at the end of the day, it’s a capability for friendly force identification and target correlation.”

TAK’s 250,000 users work for local, state, and federal agencies, including 18 DOD and other federal programs of record, with some foreign military sales. 

“We’ve all been just absolutely amazed by the combination of friendly force identification/target correlation, with open source [code], with a usable interface. Those three things came together at the right time, and now we’ve seen TAK proliferate and become this massive ecosystem that it is,” McLean said.

The Air Force could find that TAK benefits its part-time Airmen in addition to their Active-duty counterparts. Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen H. Hicks said in remarks at the Worldwide Logistics Symposium 2022 that the number of personnel days the National Guard spends firefighting has gone up from just 14,000 to more than 176,000.

Firefighting

Back at the fire station, with good internet, firefighters can call up information on wildfires burning all around the U.S.

“We can see perimeters. We can see satellite heat detections. We have this wealth of knowledge,” said Brad Schmidt of the Colorado Center of Excellence in Advanced Technology Aerial Firefighting. Schmidt is the center’s wildland fire project manager. 

“The part that’s kind of unbelievable in the year 2022 is that when you actually get out onto the fire line … all that intelligence really goes out the window, and we end up relying solely on our walkie-talkie voice radios to communicate with each other and figure out where people are,” Schmidt said.

TAK, on the other hand, can import the shape of a fire, mapped by airplane, and display it along with the positions of the personnel. An example of a plugin add-on, which is in development by Schmidt’s center and the U.S. Forest Service, maps the shape of a smaller fire as a firefighter circles the perimeter, potentially on foot, with a smartphone.

The Corona Fire Department in the city of Corona, in Southern California, borders the Cleveland National Forest. Through mutual aid with the U.S. Forest Service, the local department may be the first to respond to a fire within the U.S. jurisdiction, said Fire Chief Andreas “AJ” Johansson.

“That initial assay of ‘where’s that fire’—that incident commander, that’s what they want to know. ‘How far over the ridge is it?’ If we don’t have an aircraft or a sensor to give us that from a UAS, it’s boots on the ground that will be doing it, so that plugin—we’re getting ready to train our folks on it here pretty soon,” Johansson said. “They are very excited about just the simplicity that Brad has built into this plugin. It really makes it like two clicks to start mapping.”

As a local leader, Johansson appreciates the freedom to freely download TAK, and even to inexpensively add a new feature, without having “to go to a board of a directors for a product that you subscribe to or pay for and say, ‘I need this.’” Because TAK’s code is open source, any department could hire a developer to build a new plugin.

The familiar platforms keep development costs low, said AFRL’s Kohler. “That model has really helped us get a common baseline and get everybody on the same page.”

Getting everyone in sync has included users overseas. 

“We’ve integrated with radios in Europe recently to help our European partners, and those integrations are very small efforts,” McLean said. “It doesn’t take a program office budgeting two or three years for that to happen. We can do that very quickly.”

The Future

Colorado’s center for high-tech aerial firefighting envisions a version of TAK to run on augmented reality headsets for aircraft crews who supervise firefighting from above, Schmidt said.

“They kind of have a two-fold job,” he said. “One is to coordinate the whole firefight—get on the radio with dispatch, order resources, talk to the firefighters on the ground, make sure they’re safe, and help them do their job.

“And their other function is to coordinate all the other aircraft that are coming in to actually attack the fire. So all the bigger planes that are dropping fire retardants, all the helicopters that are dropping water, they coordinate that—they do it all—with voice radios.”

Augmented reality goggles, on the other hand, could allow someone “to look out the cockpit with these goggles and see annotated, in their field of view, where people are on the ground,” Schmidt said.

That new degree of awareness—simply on a screen, for now—sums up TAK’s value proposition. As AFRL’s Kohler put it:

“When you know where everybody is, you can figure out what to do.”

Tyndall and Offutt Rebuilds Need More Funds; Projected End Date in 2027-’28

Tyndall and Offutt Rebuilds Need More Funds; Projected End Date in 2027-’28

May 2, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

It has been more than three years since Tyndall and Offutt Air Force Bases were devastated by natural disasters just a few months apart—and the rebuilding process will still take years to come, lasting most of the 2020s, a top Air Force official told Congress.

And while the Air Force has already received $5.3 billion in 2020 to rebuild the bases, the service will need more funds in fiscal 2023 and 2024, Brig. Gen. William H. Kale III, the Air Force director of civil engineers, told the House Appropriations military construction and veterans affairs subcommittee April 28.

Kale’s update on the rebuilding process came in response to questions from Rep. John Carter (R-Texas), the subcommittee’s ranking member, who noted that as part of its 2023 unfunded priority list, the Air Force included $286 million for natural disaster recovery at Tyndall, Offutt, and Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Va. 

“Yes, we do need more funding in [fiscal year] ’23. That amount is included in our unfunded priority list. … And as of right now, the way the market is working and how things are going, I suspect that we will also need some money in FY ’24 for that,” Kale told Carter. “I can’t give you an exact amount right now on that.”

Carter also asked Kale for an updated timeline on when all projects related to the recovery at the two bases would be finished, “so we all can have a party.” Kale put that projected end date in the “FY ’27- ’28 timeframe as when everything will be done program-wise.”

Lengthy timelines and rising costs are not new to the process, given the widespread destruction caused by Hurricane Michael at Tyndall and flooding at Offutt. Initial estimates for rebuilding Tyndall jumped from $3 billion to $3.6 billion, with a projected timeline of up to a decade. Meanwhile, Offutt’s cost estimates started at $650 million and are now topping $1.1 billion, with the projected end date slipping from 2024 to 2027.

Kale’s timeline is largely in line with the latest estimates, which could mean a decade-long recovery process for both bases.

However, the need for more funds to be appropriated by Congress is also running up against a military construction budget that is slated to shrink in 2023, as evidenced by the natural disaster recovery money getting pushed to the unfunded priorities list. 

On top of that, what money is in the $2.26 billion MILCON budget request is mostly dedicated to the beddown or support of new weapon systems. The biggest chunk of that is for the LGM-35A Sentinel, or as it was called until recently, the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent. 

All told, the Air Force is seeking $444 million in military construction for the Sentinel in 2023, and up to $2 billion in the next five years, Carter said. Acting Assistant Secretary for Installations, Environment, and Energy Edwin H. Oshiba acknowledged that it “is a big, humongous project.”

However, Oshiba said the MILCON projects for Sentinel are on track and proceeding in lockstep with the development of the weapon system itself. Still, even with the focus on the new system in the budget, there is potential for delays, Kale warned. 

“The two things I’m most worried about [are] No. 1, you know, when we have delays with [continuing resolutions], that can have a huge impact to this program, in particular, and we would ask to work with the committee here for help on that,” Kale said. “And then No. 2, this is a very highly technical and complex program, and there will be times where we are going to have potential cost implications, and with the reprogramming limits at $2 million and such a low percentage, that can add a significant time increase to that program.”

Such reprogramming limits have caused issues in the past, including for the natural disaster recovery efforts that are still ongoing, Kale noted.

F-16s From Aviano and Spangdahlem Swap Places in Romania to Support NATO

F-16s From Aviano and Spangdahlem Swap Places in Romania to Support NATO

May 2, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

Half a dozen F-16s from the 510th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron at Aviano Air Base, Italy, arrived in Romania on April 29, replacing similar fighters from the 480th EFS that had rapidly deployed to support NATO’s enhanced air policing mission and to deter Russian aggression.

The Aviano jets replace the F-16 Fighting Falcons from Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany, in the enhanced air policing mission. Spangdahlem’s jets first arrived at Fetesti Air Base, Romania, three months ago as Russia built up its forces around Ukraine and tensions escalated along NATO’s eastern flank.

“The continued presence of U.S. F-16s in the south-east region ensures critical capability for the Air Policing mission and strengthens NATO’s collective readiness,” Gen. Jeffrey L. Harrigian, U.S. Air Forces in Europe commander, said in a statement. “Our ability to operate shoulder-to-shoulder with our regional Allies bolsters our collective defense and interoperability across the Eastern flank.”

While in Romania, the Aviano F-16s and crew will work closely with their Romanian counterparts as well as with Italian Typhoons that have been flying in the area since December 2021, according to a USAFE press release.

In addition to Romania, the U.S. has also deployed F-15s and F-35s to Poland in recent months. As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has unfolded, Russian fighter jets have increasingly tested NATO air space, causing NATO aircraft to scramble in response.

Kendall: USAF to Discard 386-Squadrons Goal, Skip Demo Phase for New Autonomous Aircraft

Kendall: USAF to Discard 386-Squadrons Goal, Skip Demo Phase for New Autonomous Aircraft

May 2, 2022 | By John A. Tirpak

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said he is more interested in quality systems that are able to deter an adversary than the size of the force structure, signaling an end to USAF’s pursuit of 386 squadrons as a force-sizing goal.

Speaking during a May 2 Brookings Institution webcast, Kendall said he’s “not focused on” the 386 squadrons goal, officially unveiled in 2018.

“I’m not focused on counting endstrength or squadrons or airplanes,” Kendall said, but rather on “the capability to carry out the operations we might have to support [toward] … defeating aggression. If you can’t … deter or defeat the initial act of aggression, then you’re in a situation like we’re seeing in Ukraine: a protracted conflict.”

Kendall said “nobody knows” how long Russia and Ukraine will “grind away at each other,” but “we don’t want to be in that mode.” Having a large force is aimed at such a prolonged conflict, but USAF “really needs, first and foremost, to deter that act of aggression, and if necessary, defeat it, and so I am more focused on that than I am on quantity right now.”

Kendall voiced high respect for former Defense Secretary James Mattis, but said he disagreed with Mattis’ emphasis on lethality of existing forces, saying it’s more important that forces be capable and resilient and be able to survive long enough to “get to the fight” and get home. “I put that very high on my list” of priorities.

He acknowledged that USAF is asking to spend a record amount on research and development this year, and reiterated that while he’s “comfortable” with the fiscal 2023 budget request, “I’m warning Congress … that hard choices are ahead” in 2024, in the form of more equipment retirements in favor of new development or production.

The future Air Force is also not far off, he said, noting that B-21 production money is in the FY’23 budget and that the Next-Generation Air Dominance aircraft and its family of supporting systems are “not far out,” as are programs like the Joint Advanced Tactical Missile, or JATM, which will equip USAF’s fighters mid-decade. These systems will “phase in” over “the next few years.”

As an example of the new approach, Kendall said the E-7 Wedgetail USAF will buy to replace the E-3 AWACS “is going to dramatically lower the cost of sustainment. So I’d rather have that platform, which also gives us a lot more capability … than the current fleet, even though the current fleet might be larger. So size isn’t … important to me. It’s quality and getting as much quality into the force as I can as fast as I can.”

Kendall noted that “an awful lot of the equipment that we have is old,” saying the average age of USAF aircraft is 30 years and rising.

The 386 squadrons goal—up from 312—was promoted by former Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson and former Chief of Staff Gen. David L. Goldfein. However, the goal was couched as an aspirational one and was not programmed with budget dollars.  

Kendall’s also has little interest in technology demonstrations that don’t lead to “meaningful operational capability in the hands of operators as quickly as possible.”

Getting in the Game

Among Kendall’s seven operational imperatives are uncrewed aircraft that will escort manned aircraft. “I want to go directly to EMD [engineering and manufacturing development] on that,” he said. “The technology is mature enough that we can gamble on that, take some risks there, and move out quickly. So we’re not going to wait for a round of risk reduction experiments. We will conduct them in parallel with the work we need to do to get a platform moving forward.”

The Air Force will try to “synchronize efforts on things like mission systems—that can be upgraded over time—and software, that can be upgraded very easily over time, with hardware, which basically forms the basis by which you can then move forward and incrementally improve.”

Kendall said he wants to “get in the game, with something that makes a difference operationally, and then build on that.”

He said he envisions a three-year process between getting funded for a new capability and having something operationally usable. It’s riskier, though, because “the more aggressive you are with the risk you’re taking on design, the harder it is to be sure you have a stable design.” That’s needed, though, because China is moving out aggressively in fielding new systems, he said.

China’s timetable for fielding new equipment is “not better than ours. It’s probably not as good as ours. But they started earlier and they’ve been working aggressively on a larger number of things,” Kendall said.

He also said China is “not waiting to see what we do. They are basically figuring out what they need and what technology might offer them to meet their needs, and they’re moving forward.”

In Kendall’s experience with the old Soviet Union, Russia would not pursue a system if the U.S. was not already doing so, “because they figured we were so much ahead of them intellectually on weapon systems.”

The Chinese, however, “aren’t doing that. If they think something’s going to be operationally effective, they’re going to have it whether we’re doing it or not. So we have a tougher problem today than we had during the first 20 years of my career, unfortunately.”

Kendall believes China “has ambitions to be the great power on the face of the Earth,” and to do it, they must “displace the United States.” China’s ambitions have changed with its capability, he said, shifting from being a regional power to a global superpower. While not, perhaps, as interested as much in “territorial expansion,” China wants “as much influence as possible,” evidenced by their One Belt, One Road initiative.

“They want to set the rules for the economy, as much as anything.”

Kendall said his job is to provide the capability to deter and if necessary defeat “what a potential adversary might do.” And while the immediate threat might seem to be against Taiwan, “there are other places, like the Senkaku [Islands] in the South China Sea, where … aggression is possible also. So those are certainly within their near abroad.”

China has “articulated … pretty clearly … where they want to be my mid-century,” Kendall noted.

“I think we have to take them at face value. I made the mistake a few times during the Cold War, not believing what the Soviets were saying. Turns out that they meant what they were saying.”

Asked what technologies “excite” him as having the greatest potential, Kendall said, ”autonomous behaviors.” Artificial Intelligence is both a near-term capability and one that must be introduced as quickly as possible as a “decision-making” enhancement, he said.

Autonomous systems will “open up a whole range” of new tactical capabilities, he said, “and I don’t think we need to wait for more development on that.”

However, the technology “does invoke some really interesting questions about human control, and the degree of autonomy you’re really going to tolerate operationally.” If the U.S. doesn’t pursue this, “we’re going to lose” and “some of our competitors are not going to be as constrained as we are by those things.” The Air Force needs to “work those problems as we mature the capabilities.”

Kendall noted that he has worked as a human rights attorney and, “I am absolutely committed to the law of war and the assurance that we follow those rules. But we’re going to have to figure out how to vet that capability and hold people accountable for what they do … even though a machine may be acting as a proxy for the humans to some degree.” He added, “There’s work to be done there.”

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‘Challenge the Status Quo’: Top Airman Calls for More Diversity in Aviation While Visiting HBCU

‘Challenge the Status Quo’: Top Airman Calls for More Diversity in Aviation While Visiting HBCU

May 2, 2022 | By Hope Hodge Seck

From an auditorium lectern at Washington, D.C.’s Howard University, 1st Lt. Dontae Bell invoked a scene from Richard Wright’s 1940 novel “Native Son.” In it, two young Black men look up to see a skywriting plane.

“Them white boys sure can fly,” one says.

It’s 2022, and Bell, an Air Force helicopter pilot, is moderating a discussion with four other Black pilots representing nearly every platform the service flies. But a troubling reality underlies the conversation:

Only about 2 percent of Air Force pilots are Black, and that proportion hasn’t increased much in the past three decades. In fighter aviation, the imbalance is even more stark: Just 60 fighter pilots in the entire Air Force are Black, and one is the service’s top officer, Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr.

The challenge of changing that ratio was a key theme of “We Fly Too” on April 30, a half-day event at the historically Black Howard University that was co-organized by Bell, a distinguished alumnus. With about 100 attendees, mostly from Civil Air Patrol and ROTC programs, it kicked off with a town hall conversation between Brown and Dr. Wayne A.I. Frederick, Howard’s president.

Days before his Senate confirmation, Brown set the tone for his tenure by releasing a passionate and personal video discussing the killing of George Floyd. Brown has made equity a priority. He’s created working groups to develop more equitable policies for Airmen in matters ranging from hair regulations to promotion packages, and he’s overseen servicewide studies and surveys on racial disparity.

Brown said on April 30 that he was considering other changes within the aviation community to level the playing field between those with the resources to accumulate private pilot hours before coming to the Air Force and those who don’t. And for those who can’t get private pilot time, he said, the service wants to evaluate other options, such as simulator and synthetic training, that might help to better prepare prospective pilots for success.

“We want to take a look at, do some of the programs we have [that] prevent or discourage diverse backgrounds,” he said.

From his personal experience as an F-16 pilot, Brown also exhorted his audience to be bold and push for change.

“When you’re one of only one or two African-American pilots out of 70-100 pilots in a fighter wing, that’s a lot of pressure,” he said. “But I think there’s so many opportunities to open the door for yourself or for others … you’ve got to challenge the status quo. You’ve got to push a little bit.”

Panelists at Howard also understood that the timeline for steering young minority students toward Air Force careers is short; most of the teens and college students in the room were there because they had found the path already.

For 16-year-old Caleb Smith, an event attendee who made headlines last year when he became the nation’s youngest glider pilot, there was another point of indecision: whether to attend the Air Force Academy or the Naval Academy. When he put the question to the panel of four Air Force pilots, all but one of them academy grads, they chuckled.

“Is this thing on?” said Maj. Saj El-Amin, a C-37 Gulfstream VIP special air mission pilot with 89th Airlift Wing at Joint Base Andrews, Md., tapping his microphone with a wry look. But later, he added some advice: Start early in pursuing the academies, and check out “summer seminar” programs that offer students a taste of life at the schools.

“Seek those activities out—seek some of us out,” he said. “Allow them to put you in contact with a mentor, someone to be able to invest in you so you can really see which of the service academies that you want to be a part of.”

1st Lt. Darian Haynes, an MQ-9 Reaper pilot and Howard alumna, spoke in a panel focused on increasing diversity in aviation about the need to reach young people in underrepresented communities earlier in their education.

“I had zero opportunities to fly. It wasn’t that I didn’t have the means to, I just didn’t know anything about them,” she said. “By going and talking to people in middle school and elementary school, you’re planting the seed a lot earlier. So that way, it can help out with the future of aviation.”

Bold and fearless mentorship is another piece of the equation, said co-panelist Col. Alison Gonzalez, chief of the Strategy Division for Space Force.

“I’ve mentored anyone that approaches me … and I do it out in the open,” Gonzalez said. “Another way to eradicate that stigma is having open, frank, honest conversations in public. So it’s going to make people uncomfortable, but you have to be able to do that and hold those conversations.”

The most emotional moment of the day at Howard came at the conclusion of a panel on women in Air Force aviation headlined by Maj. Gen. Jeannie Leavitt, the Air Force’s very first female fighter pilot.

“Are you going to pilot training?” Leavitt asked the moderator, 21-year-old Isabella Mollison, commander of Air Force ROTC Detachment 130 at Howard.

“I want to be a C-17 pilot,” Mollison responded. “But … “

“As it turns out, I know something that you don’t know,” Leavitt said. She rose and presented Mollison with a certificate she’d signed marking the cadet’s place in Air Force pilot training. Mollison hadn’t known if she’d be permitted to go due to imperfect eyesight requiring a LASIK procedure.

She did her best to direct attendees to the next session while beaming through her tears.

Observing the entire event from the front row was retired Col. Ron McGee, son of Col. Charles McGee, one of the legendary Tuskegee Airmen of World War II. Like his father, McGee served in the Air Force, flying the F-4 Phantom in Vietnam. McGee said he felt an underlying belief that Black people were not as capable as their white counterparts still presented an obstacle to equality.

“I’ve met people today who have never ever heard of the Tuskegee Airmen at all,” he said.

McGee said he was encouraged by the day’s event and the candid discussion about the need for more diversity, but emphasized that it would take a broader effort to solve the problem of equal representation.

“This is a pretty small group with a bigger outreach, and you can feel in this auditorium an attempt to really get the story out and get more and more people involved,” he said. “But most people here already have a desire and interest. We need to be reaching those who don’t know that that interest or that desire even exists.”

In addition to discussion panels, the event included mentoring opportunities and an impressive wrap-up, with aircraft from 1st Helicopter Squadron out of Joint Base Andrews landing on the football field at Howard’s Greene Stadium.