USSF’s Combined Full- and Part-Time Component Would Be Called the ‘Space Component’

April 28, 2022 | By Amanda Miller

Leaders of the Space Force reinforced their idea to depart from the typical military component structure of separately organized Active and reserve forces in favor of a single hybrid component structure they called the “Space Component.”

Both Chief of Space Operations Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond and Chief Human Capital Officer Patricia Mulcahy referred to the theoretical new organization as the “Space Component” in separate congressional hearings April 27. A Space Force spokesperson confirmed that Space Component is the organization’s envisioned name.

The Space Component would merge full- and part-time Guardians into one component. How it might incorporate existing Air National Guard space troops remained up for debate.

Raymond implied before the House Armed Services Committee that the hybrid component structure would benefit Guardians and their families based on knowledge gleaned from two years of overhauling “how we recruit, assess, train, develop, promote, employ, and take care of our Guardians.”

Describing the plan as “bold and transformational,” he said the hybrid structure is the service’s “No. 1 legislative proposal.”

Mulcahy explained that the service needs to compete for talent “with the well paid and dynamic space industry.” The leaders hope to achieve more individual flexibility through the hybrid structure.

“This approach could ensure our members do not have to choose between their military careers and their personal lives by encouraging continued participation,” Mulcahy told the SASC’s subcommittee on personnel April 27. This Space Component would extend the continuum of service and enable us to recruit and retain the exquisite, highly technical force we need in an efficient and effective and fiscally sound manner.”

The Space Force’s personnel guidelines emphasize “digital fluency,” which the service’s Chief Technology and Innovation Officer Lisa Costa has said applies to all Guardians.

“I don’t care if you’re in acquisition—you cannot acquire things well if you don’t understand the tech that you’re buying, right?” Costa told reporters at the Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colo., on April 5.

Her office, focused on “asymmetric, disruptive technology,” oversees the Space Force’s University Partnership Program, which exists in part to recruit future Guardians with degrees in science, technology, engineering, and math. The office also set up the service’s Digital University, which offers about 23,000 higher ed courses from contracted vendors, to “help make everyone more digitally fluent,” Costa said. Students can take sets of courses that add up to “microdegrees.”

The flexible structure of the Space Component could help the service retain some of that expertise, Mulcahy said.

Raymond said the service is still evaluating, as instructed in the fiscal 2022 National Defense Authorization Act, options for whether or how it will incorporate existing space-oriented Air National Guard units into the Space Force.

He laid out possibilities for what could happen to the existing “836-or-so” members of Guard space units:

“You could keep the Guard [units] in the Air National Guard and have the Air National Guard continue to provide support,” Raymond said. “Option 2 is you could take the men and women out of the Air National Guard and set up a separate Space National Guard. Or you can take those capabilities out of the Guard totally and put them in this one component.”

Rep. Salud Carbajal (D-Calif.) spoke for the units, such as the California Air National Guard’s 148th Space Operations Squadron based out of Vandenberg Space Force Base that provides satellite command and control for military satellite communications. Carbajal said the Guard units would like to be brought into the Space Force’s fold.

“My understanding is they’re not the only National Guard unit around the nation” that wants to do so, Carbajal said.

Biden Calls for $33B Aid Package to Ukraine as Money Runs Out

April 28, 2022 | By Abraham Mahshie

President Joe Biden called on Congress on April 28 to pass a supplemental aid package worth $33 billion to replace the nearly-exhausted $3.5 billion Ukraine aid package passed in March. The multi-faceted replenishment includes weapons and humanitarian and economic assistance, and it would deliver $16 billion to the Department of Defense in support of the Ukraine war effort.

“The cost of this fight is not cheap, but caving to aggression is going to be more costly, if we allow it to happen,” Biden said from the White House, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

In the months that led up to the Feb. 24 invasion, NATO eastern flank allies worried about the buildup of 150,000 Russian troops near their borders. The also worried that Putin—if he were allowed to move unopposed in Ukraine—might attempt to retake countries that were once within the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence.

“We need this bill to support Ukraine in its fight for freedom,” Biden said. “Our NATO allies and our EU partners, they’re going to pay their fair share of the costs as well. But we have to do this. We have to do our part.”

Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III threw his support behind the bill at an afternoon Pentagon press conference alongside his Canadian counterpart.

“The President has now requested $16 billion for the Department of Defense to address Ukraine’s self-defense needs in the crucial weeks ahead,” Austin said.

The defense Secretary said the new package included $6 billion more for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which procures weapons and systems for Ukraine; $5 billion for additional presidential drawdown authority, which allows for the transfer of material from U.S. stocks; and $5 billion to help pay for security on the NATO eastern flank. Another $4 billion will go to the State Department’s Foreign Military Financing program, which helps Ukraine buy American-made weapons.

Some of the DOD money will create a “critical munitions acquisition fund” for the department to establish a strategic reserve of munitions, including anti-aircraft and anti-tank munitions.

Steady Stream of Weapons to Ukraine

The administration has committed more than $4 billion in defense aid to Ukraine so far, including millions of rounds of ammunition and an ever-increasing litany of weapons targeted to Ukraine’s battlefield needs, including anti-tank Javelin and anti-air Stinger missiles.

Ukraine claimed on April 20 that the weapons have led to heavy Russian losses, including 171 aircraft, 150 helicopters, and 850 tanks. Ukraine also claims that more than 20,000 Russian soldiers have been killed so far.

In the past week, the U.S. aid to Ukraine has included 90 long-range artillery fire 155 mm Howitzers intended for the Donbas front line, a flat terrain in southeastern Ukraine where soldiers in trenches have been pitted against Russian-backed separatists for eight years, since Russia first invaded in 2014 and began to equip separatists. After being pushed back from the capital, Kyiv, where Russia faced logistics and sustainment failures, Putin directed his forces at Russian-speaking eastern and southern Ukraine.

A senior defense official said April 28 that after regrouping, “Russian forces are making slow and uneven, … incremental progress in the Donbas.”

Russia has pounded Ukraine with more than 1,900 missiles to date, including a heavy barrage that has nearly leveled Mariupol, a port city on the Sea of Azov, a key transit point between Russian-occupied Crimea and the Russian border with Ukraine that is now in Russian hands.

Austin met with chiefs of defense and other officials from more than 40 nations April 26 at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, rallying new levels of support and establishing a monthly “Ukraine Contact Group.”

“We’re facilitating the significant flow of weapons and systems to Ukraine from our allies and partners around the world, including tanks, artillery, and other weapons,” Biden said. “Thanks to the aid we provided, Russian forces have been forced to retreat from Kyiv.”

The assistance has included 10 anti-armor systems for every Russian tank on the battlefield, he said.

The President, however, warned that the “drawdown authority,” which allows him to transfer excess U.S. defense material to Ukraine, is running out.

“Basically we’re out of money,” he said. “I’m sending Congress a supplemental budget request that’s going to keep weapons and ammunition flowing without interruption to the brave Ukrainian fighters.”

Armed Overwatch Contract Coming This Summer, AFSOC Boss Says

April 28, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

A contract award for U.S. Special Operations Command’s Armed Overwatch program is likely coming before the end of the summer, the head of Air Force Special Operations Command told Congress on April 27.

Testifying to the Senate Armed Services emerging threats and capabilities subcommittee, Lt. Gen. James C. “Jim” Slife said the timeframe on the decision was within “months.”

“All the back and forth with industry [is done]; the proposals have been received; all the questions have been answered; and the source selection team is going through their deliberations and is going to make a recommendation to the milestone decision authority at SOCOM here in the coming weeks,” Slife told Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) “And then a contract will probably be awarded prior to the end of the summer.”

SOCOM wants to buy 75 light aircraft as part of the Armed Overwatch program to deploy in support of ground forces for “close air support, precision strike, and SOF intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance in austere and permissive environments,” according to a SOCOM contract document.

Slife had previously predicted in February 2021 that a procurement decision would come as soon as fiscal 2022, and the timeline he articulated to Congress would stay just within that window, as fiscal 2022 ends Sept. 30.

The decision on Armed Overwatch would also come a little more than a year after SOCOM awarded a total of $19.2 million to five companies for prototype demonstrations for the program.

That includes, Leidos’ Bronco II, MAG Aerospace’s MC-208 Guardian, Textron Aviation Defense’s AT-6E Wolverine, L-3 Communications Integrated Systems’ AT-802U Sky Warden, and Sierra Nevada Corp.’s MC-145B Wily Coyote. One of those five contenders is expected to replace the Air Force’s U-28 Draco fleet.

Congress, however, has expressed skepticism about the Armed Overwatch program in the past, questioning the need for it and refusing to fund procurement in the fiscal 2021 National Defense Authorization Act. Kelly seemed to address some of that skepticism in questioning Slife, asking him to explain why the program would be more “affordable and effective” than existing aircraft it would likely replace, such as the A-10 and the MQ-9 drone.

Slife pointed to the versatility of the platform.

“Our methodology for supporting our forces on the ground over the last several decades has really boiled down to the development of what we call an “air stack” over objective areas. And so you’ll typically have single-role specialized platforms—AC-130s, A-10s, MQ-9s, U-28s—you have a stack of airplanes over an objective, each platform providing a niche capability to the force on the ground. That averages, in terms of cost per flying hour, over $150,000 an hour … to generate kind of the typical stack for that,” Slife said.

By comparison, Armed Overwatch’s cost per flying hour will be “something less than $10,000,” representing savings of 93.3 percent, Slife said.

And, “It allows us to push those platforms further forward into more austere areas where they can operate co-located with the ground teams that they’re partnered with,” Slife added.

Kelly pushed further, asking Slife how the Armed Overwatch platform would compare to an aircraft such as the AC-130J gunship.

“Clearly there will be missions that require more deep magazine fire support than what an Armed Overwatch platform might have,” Slife acknowledged. “But the idea of the Armed Overwatch platform is [that] it’s a modular capability and so you can outfit the aircraft with a robust suite of sensors that will exceed what is available with most dedicated ISR platforms today. Or you can outfit the platform with a robust suite of precision munitions.

“It really depends on the mission, and so clearly, the Armed Overwatch platform is not a panacea for every tactical situation that a ground force might find themselves in. But for what we envision the enduring counter-[violent extremist organization] mission looking like, we think it’s a prudent investment.”

Armed Overwatch prototypes — Top row, left to right: L-3 Communications Integrated Systems’ AT-802U Sky Warden; Textron Aviation Defense’s AT-6E Wolverine; MAG Aerospace’s MC-208 Guardian. Bottom row, left to right: Leidos Inc.’s Bronco II; Sierra Nevada Corp.’s C-145. (Aircraft not to scale) Staff illustration by Mike Tsukamoto.

Air Force Leaders Explain 5-Year Divestment Plan and Smaller F-15EX Fleet

April 27, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

Editor’s Note: This story was updated on May 3 to include clarification from Rep. Rob Wittman’s office on which fleets he was including when discussing divestment numbers.

The Air Force plans to divest nearly 650 fighter aircraft over the coming five years while purchasing fewer than 250, reducing its fleet by exactly 400 tails, a pair of congressmen said during House Armed Services Committee hearings April 27. Those cuts would include a much-reduced buy for the F-15EX

The F-15EX is one of the few fighters the Air Force has planned on buying in the immediate future. But the overall decline of 400 aircraft would be part of a significant divestment plan over the next several years, as outlined by Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing several weeks ago.

During that hearing, Fischer said the Air Force was planning to cut 1,468 aircraft and buy 467, for a net decline of 1,001. The service declined to comment at the time, as the 2023 “J-books,” which justify programmatic line items, had not yet been released.

On April 27, Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.) and Rep. Donald Norcross (D-N.J.) both cited figures of 646 aircraft to be retired and 246 bought. A spokeswoman for Wittman later told Air Force Magazine he was referring solely to tactical fighter aircraft.

Lawmakers had plenty of concerns over the proposed decline of the fleet, even as Air Force leaders insist they need to sunset older platforms to free up funds to develop and field newer systems.

“I understand [Next Generation Air Dominance] and modernization and all the things that we want our aircraft to do, unmanned platforms. But 400 is one heck of a big vulnerability, capacity, and capability gap,” Wittman told Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr.

“That operational deficit, … the numbers aren’t that simple. An aircraft—retiring and buying one aren’t equal. But it is an indicator. … What specifically caused the Air Force to accelerate this [divestment] so significantly?” Norcross asked Lt. Gen. David S. Nahom, deputy chief of staff for plans and programs.

Brown acknowledged that shedding more airframes than it is taking on creates operational risk for the Air Force. But it’s worth it, he argued, because “there’s a balance between the operational risk we will see today as we make that transition, versus the risk we will have in the future if we don’t start to modernize.”

Nahom, for his part, echoed comments he’s made previously that competing priorities in the budget, particularly the need to modernize two legs of the nuclear triad, limited the number of aircraft USAF could buy in the coming years.

“There are some competing needs, as we look in the overall Air Force beyond the fighter portfolio, specifically the nuclear portfolio, which as we recapitalize two-thirds of the nuclear arsenal, and many of those articles now are in procurement, not just already RDT&E, in this FYDP. That does crowd out some investment that we have to be cognizant of as we look forward to the fighter portfolio,” Nahom said.

F-15EX Changes

Within those overall changes that the Air Force has planned for its fleet, one of the biggest shifts scheduled to take place in the next five years is with the F-15EX Eagle II, the fourth-generation fighter meant to complement the F-35 and NGAD.

Most immediately, the 2023 budget request asks to buy 24 F-15EXs, double the 12 it requested in 2022.

But in the longer term, the Air Force’s J-books reveal that the service plans to reduce the overall buy of the EX from 144 to 80—a 44 percent decline. It’s a move Air Force officials hinted at several years ago.

That combination of a bigger buy in this budget and a smaller one overall was intentional, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall told lawmakers.

“We’re accelerating the buy to buy it out. We’re actually reducing the total quantity substantially. … So we’re trying to buy that out as quickly as possible. We made some other adjustments in order to do that. It’s a more efficient way to buy the capability.”

The need to get the EXs as soon as possible was necessitated by the degraded state of the F-15Cs currently in the fleet, Andrew P. Hunter, the Air Force’s acquisition head, told a HASC panel.

“We’re ramping up production. And we’re doing that to meet the fact that with the aircraft that the F-15EX is replacing in the near term … those aircraft very much need to be replaced, both from a threat perspective and just a sustainability perspective,” Hunter said.

The F-15C/D’s issues have been ongoing for years, and a recent Congressional Budget Office report found the aircraft’s availability had dipped all the way to 45 percent.

Meanwhile, despite not being fifth-gen, the F-15EX has several “unique capabilities,” Kendall said.

“It carries more munitions than the F-35 can. So for certain missions like cruise missile defense of the United States or defensive counter-air missions, it’s a superior platform, despite the lack of some of the full fifth-generation capabilities,” Kendall said. “It does have a number of fifth-generation components on it to give it more capability than a baseline F-15 would have.”

So why is the overall size of the fleet going to be smaller than anticipated? Nahom once again blamed competing budget priorities, saying the service would have to rely more on the F-15E, which is newer than the F-15Cs and Ds, but less advanced than the EXs.

“Right now, based on resources and based on trade-offs, we’re going to have to keep more F-15Es than we initially thought we would have kept,” said Nahom. “We’re going to have a certain size F-15 fleet. In a resource-unconstrained world, those would all be EXs—newer airplanes, better sustainability, more time on them, etc. Right now, as we look at the budgets moving forward, we’re likely to keep more of the F-15Es to be part of that F-15 fleet.”

NGAD Price Per Tail Will More Than Double That of F-35

April 27, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

The manned fighter aircraft that will form the centerpiece of the Air Force’s Next Generation Air Dominance program will cost hundreds of millions of dollars per plane, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall told members of Congress on April 27—but the service can reduce costs in development and sustainment.

Speaking before the House Armed Services Committee on the fiscal 2023 budget request, Kendall specified that the main NGAD fighter would cost “multiple hundreds of millions of dollars … on an individual basis,” acknowledging that such a price tag “is a number that’s going to get your attention.”

By comparison, the F-22 cost roughly $135 million per tail, making it the most expensive fighter the U.S. Air Force has ever developed. The F-35A, meanwhile, costs around $80 million per jet, but that number could rise.

NGAD, according to Kendall’s estimate, will dwarf those costs, at least when it comes to price per plane. But the sixth-generation platform will fulfill a key air dominance role, Kendall noted.

“It’s going to be an expensive airplane; F-22 was an expensive airplane. It was one of my aircraft in one of my earlier positions, but it’s also an incredibly effective aircraft. It’s been dominant in the air for decades now. And we expect NGAD to be the same,” Kendall said.

With such a massive cost per plane, though, work will have to be done in other areas to keep the program’s overall cost down.

“That starts in development,” Kendall said, highlighting the need to design the system so that “you can do upgrades and do maintenance very efficiently.”

That need has been highlighted by the sustainment costs and issues for the F-35, which have become a massive cost for the program and will surpass $1.25 trillion across its service life. Kendall, however, sounded optimistic that NGAD could avoid a similar fate, using new practices such as modular design and common interfaces.

On top of that, the broader NGAD program will include aircraft that are “much less expensive, autonomous, uncrewed … employing a distributed, tailorable mix of sensors, weapons, and other mission equipment,” Kendall has said in the past. These unmanned teammates will be attritable, Kendall told Congress: not expendable, but cheap enough that they can be employed for more risky tasks.

Exactly how cheap these platforms will be remains to be seen—Kendall told lawmakers the Air Force does not yet have a “hard estimate” like it does for the manned fighter.

But considering the costs associated with the sixth-generation fighter, as well as the relatively substantial costs of the F-35 and the F-15EX, these unmanned teammates will have to be inexpensive to fulfill the Air Force’s usual “high-low” mix of fighters, Kendall said.

“We need a more affordable mix for the future,” Kendall said. “And the question is, how do we get there? And that’s one of the reasons I’m introducing the idea of uncrewed combat aircraft that are much less expensive and can be attritable, … not necessarily expendable—they’re not munitions—but they can be used at a higher rate and help populate our force structure.”

Such a system is still a ways down the road, however. In the meantime, Kendall said, the Air Force remains committed to Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr.’s vision of a “4+1” fighter fleet comprising the F-35, F-15EX, F-16, F-22 until NGAD is fielded, and the A-10.

Powering NGAD

In addition to the broader NGAD fighter, Kendall also shed some light on the program still in development that is likely to power the jet—the Advanced Engine Transition Program. Next-generation engines being developed as part of AETP are cutting edge, providing more range, greater acceleration, and increased cooling capability.

Those engines have proven intriguing enough that there has been interest in Congress in installing them on F-35s before the end of the decade, and the 2023 budget request from the Air Force devotes roughly $273 million to AETP. This led to questions from lawmakers concerned that the Air Force was creating a second F-35 engine program.

“It’s not a second F-35 engine. It’s a completely new and much-improved F-35 engine, potentially,” Kendall said. “It’s a technology that was in very early stages of development when I first saw it in 2010, that has matured fairly well. It offers the opportunity for, on the order of 20-25 percent cost savings or mission-range improvements. So it’s a substantial improvement and would be a replacement for the current engine, not a second one.”

However, like NGAD, the cost of AETP is likely to be high, Kendall hinted.

“There’s a [more than] $6 billion development cost associated with getting that engine completely developed and into production,” Kendall said. “So we’re looking at that. We’re funding the development this year, the next increment, but it’s going to have to compete in our budget for those resources going forward. But it would be a substantial improvement over the current capability.”

And like NGAD, observers shouldn’t expect AETP to be fielded in the immediate future.

“We’re a few years away from having a fully developed engine. There’s a substantial development program ahead of us,” Kendall said.

Poor Conditions, Disregard for Safety Still a Problem for Private Military Landlord Convicted of Fraud, Senate Report Says

April 27, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

Even after one of the nation’s largest private military landlords, Balfour Beatty Communities, pleaded guilty to defrauding the Air Force, Army, and Navy for performance bonuses by submitting false information to the military, employees have continued to submit incorrect or incomplete work order information, a congressional investigation found.

In December 2021, Balfour Beatty, which is responsible for 43,000 privatized military homes across 55 installations, agreed to pay $65 million in fines and restitution as part of its guilty plea after investigations uncovered that from 2013 to 2019, employees maintained two sets of maintenance records at some bases—one detailing issues of mold, asbestos, and leaks that were not promptly fixed; and another set of falsified accounts of quick repairs that allowed the company to collect bonuses from the Pentagon.

At the time, executives told Congress that the company had undertaken “a significant reorganization,” firing employees and improving its training. But a report from the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs’ subcommittee for investigations released on April 26 concluded that recent actions by Balfour Beatty “bear striking similarities” to those the company admitted in its guilty plea.

In particular, the report cited “numerous examples since late 2019 of poor conditions in Balfour Beatty’s military housing and disregard of safety concerns and environmental hazards that put military families at risk.”

In a hearing accompanying the release of the report, two service members accused Balfour Beatty of prematurely closing work orders before problems had been addressed, changing work orders to eliminate mentions of mold, failing to make lasting repairs, and more.

Air Force Tech. Sgt. Jack Fe Torres, who is stationed at Sheppard Air Force Base, Texas, told lawmakers that his wife and children began experiencing medical problems after moving into a Balfour Beatty home, raising concerns about mold. Those concerns were initially dismissed by maintenance supervisors, Fe Torres said, but subsequent tests revealed widespread issues with mold in the home.

At the same time, Fe Torres said, work orders were often marked as completed on Balfour Beatty’s online tracking platform, Yardi, before the actual repairs were made. Shoddy repairs also led to more work orders, making it seem as though different issues were happening, instead of the same problem reoccurring. Finally, work orders were sometimes changed by Balfour Beatty to eliminate mentions of mold.

“Originally when we looked at the report, it would be classified as something that’s in there. And then maybe a day or a couple of weeks later, the title will be changed,” Fe Torres said. “In terms of my background, I am a … heating and air conditioning technician. So I’m working on work orders all the time, and I’m able to track and look at these kinds of stuff. And I know for a fact that if a customer puts in a request for a work order, that title should not be changed, and it should not be closed before completion.”

As a result of the mold issues in their home and poor initial repairs, Fe Torres said, his family was forced to relocate to a hotel twice in three months—and Balfour Beatty classified the work order in Yardi as related to “carpentry.”

“What you’re looking at is what you’ll see across the board at all of the Balfour Beatty installations,” Rachel Christian, the chief legislative officer for Armed Forces Housing Advocates, told the Senate panel. “They are taking what is a hazard in a home and making it a simplified request. So that when the seven-year maintenance history … is provided to the next tenant, it’s not going to be correct. Also, it’s way easier to close out a carpentry request than it is to provide a full-scale mold remediation.”

In a separate panel, Balfour Beatty executives disputed the conclusion that the evidence provided by Fe Torres and others in the report constituted a broader pattern of misconduct.

“I reject the suggestion that it’s a systemic failure,” Richard C. Taylor, president of facility operations, renovation, and construction, told Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.). “You cited [a] case that you just read with 12 emails, 11 emails—As I shared with you, we’re a company that processes 280,000, on average, emails annually. Things go wrong. We don’t always get it right the first time. We’re not perfect. … What’s important for us is that we understand where our shortcomings are and we take action to correct those deficiencies.”

Taylor also touted the company’s customer satisfaction ratings. In 2021, he said, it received an average score of 4.53 out of 5 from more than 40,000 survey respondents.

Ossoff noted, however, that previous Balfour Beatty executives similarly pointed to high customer satisfaction ratings in 2019, when the fraud scandal was still ongoing.

“Why should a company convicted of major criminal fraud, that engaged in a scheme to defraud the United States, remain in a position of trust, responsible for the safe housing of the hero service members and their families on installations across the country?” Ossoff said.

In response, Taylor pointed to new practices introduced since 2019, including no longer linking bonus pay to internal performance reports and better oversight.

But for Fe Torres, Balfour Beatty still stands out as one of the most difficult privatized housing operators to work with.

“I’ve been stationed two other places and never once had any issues. Especially where they know my background, they know what I do, they’ve always, when we put a work order in, [they’ll say], ‘We’ll be there right away.’ They come out to fix it, and we never had any issues. My family never had any problems.

“I can be at work, and I have deployed twice, three times, and I’ve never had to be worried. I’m an instructor, and every time we put a work order in [with Balfour Beatty], I’m having to be at the house because my wife is scared that they’re going to blow her off, because they don’t want to talk to the spouse. They just want to talk to the military person, because if I see something wrong, they can just go ahead and tell my leadership, and then I get in trouble for it.”

Boeing Loses $1 Billion on VC-25B, T-7A; Calhoun Pledges to Rethink Lowball Bids

April 27, 2022 | By John A. Tirpak

Boeing took huge financial hits on its Air Force One and T-7A Advanced Trainer programs for the Air Force in the first quarter of 2022, chalking up the losses to the triple whammy of COVID-related labor problems, inflation, and supply chain issues. Company president and CEO David L. Calhoun also attributed the “messy” quarterly report in large part to the company’s lowballed bids for fixed-price development programs, an approach he said he’ll be avoiding in the future.

Boeing took a loss of $660 million on the Presidential Aircraft Recapitalization (PAR) program, also known as the VC-25B, or “Air Force One,” and a $367 million charge against its T-7A advanced trainer program, for a combined loss of more than $1 billion.

Boeing defense revenues were down 24 percent in the first quarter as the company also suffered a loss on its Navy MQ-25 refueling drone program.

Boeing didn’t report any hits on its KC-46A tanker—another fixed-price development program—on which it already has booked more than $5 billion in losses.

The VC-25B loss was the result of “a public negotiation that happened some time ago,” Calhoun told reporters on a quarterly results call, alluding to former President Donald Trump’s demands for lower costs on the jet that also resulted in one fewer aircraft, the deletion of aerial refueling capability, and the use of pre-owned aircraft for the mission. The VC-25B contract was signed in 2018.

As for Air Force One, “I’m just going to call [it] a very unique moment, a very unique negotiation, a very unique set of risks that Boeing probably shouldn’t have taken,” Calhoun said, “but we are where we are, and we’re going to deliver great airplanes.”

Along with previous losses on the VC-25B, Boeing is now $1.1 billion over its $3.9 billion contract for the two presidential aircraft.

On the fixed-price contracts generally, “We took some risks, not knowing COVID would arise and not knowing the inflationary environment [that] would take hold, like it has,” Calhoun said. “Both of those things have impacted us fairly severely.” He pledged that Boeing will “continue to do our work and deliver first-rate airplanes to our customer in the government.”

While Calhoun was not in charge when the T-7 and MQ-25 fixed-price contracts were signed, he said he was on the board and, “Yes, they were written off the day we took them, knowing that we would be investing a fair amount of our own money in the future of those airframes.”

Nevertheless, he believes “those are going to be really good bets.” Even though development costs are “more than we had anticipated,” the aircraft “don’t go away.” They represent production programs of “many, many airplanes. And I think both airplanes are going to be very successful in supporting our military.”

The inefficiencies in the programs were “predominantly COVID-related,” and that exacts a greater toll on defense programs than commercial ones, Calhoun said.

“In the defense world, when a COVID line goes down or a group of workers steps out, we don’t have a whole bunch of cleared people to step into their shoes. So it has always been a tougher, tougher implication. And for VC-25B, where the clearances are ultra high, it’s really tough.”

Calhoun summed it up that Boeing “just got whacked in a number of different areas” and said the lowballed fixed-price problem is one “that I hope I never contribute to.”

Former Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson said in 2019 that Boeing’s bid for what became the T-7 was nearly $10 billion less than what the service expected to pay. In light of that, Air Force Materiel Command chief Gen. Arnold W. Bunch Jr. said the service might have to change its cost estimating methods—but warned that, first, “you’ve got to see the performance” and whether the actual costs match the bid.

Boeing will roll out the first production example T-7A on April 28.

Airmen Aim to Promote Diversity in Aviation With Event at HBCU

April 27, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

An Air Force UH-1N helicopter will land near Cramton Auditorium on the campus of Howard University in Washington, D.C., on April 30, fulfilling one pilot’s dream and perhaps sparking a few more.

That’s the hope of 1st Lt. Dontae Bell, a pilot with the 1st Helicopter Squadron at Joint Base Andrews, Md. Bell, along with others, helped organize the “We Fly Too” event showcasing diversity in aviation that will be highlighted by the UH-1’s arrival and will include an appearance by Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., the service’s first Black Chief.

Speaking during an April 26 webinar hosted by Private Air Media Group, Bell said he first got the idea as an undergraduate at Howard, and he never quite gave up on it.

“I wanted to land on Howard’s field. And in the process of doing that, I wanted to also figure out a way to get back to my alma mater and really tell folks about the magic of aviation, which is something I didn’t really discover until later in the game,” Bell said. “One thing led to another. I wanted to see if we could get the Chief of Staff of the Air Force involved, and, of course, being a lieutenant, I didn’t really imagine how much it would take to get someone at that level onto a campus and speaking to students.”

It is Bell’s hope that the event, which will include panels and displays for students in college, high school, and middle school at a historically Black institution, will inspire young people to pursue aviation. It’s a hope shared by Lt. Col. Redahlia Person, commander of the Air Force ROTC detachment at Howard, one of the largest HBCUs in the country.

“It’s about opportunities and spreading that wealth and starting at a young age,” said Person, a career maintenance officer. “I think, had I been exposed to it a little bit sooner, I would have no problem wanting to fly. So I did the next best thing, which is to be responsible for fixing them and giving the pilots the keys.”

The Air Force has continued to struggle with a lack of diversity in its aviation career fields—a recent Air Force Inspector General report found that the operations career field is the least diverse specialty code in terms of race, ethnicity, and gender, and the pilot speciality is the least diverse of them all. Roughly speaking, nine out of every 10 pilots in the military and in commercial industry are white, noted Lt. Col. Kenyatta Ruffin, an F-16 pilot.

“The problem isn’t the 90 percent … Like, I love all the pilots I fly with. They’re my bros, right?” Ruffin said. “It’s not about the 90 percent we have. It’s about the 90 percent that are stuck on the ground, that don’t have an opportunity, that are looking up to the sky and have no way to connect that dream or [of even] knowing it’s a dream.”

The general lack of opportunities for minorities even affects those who do get a chance.

“Anyone who goes through UPT, undergraduate pilot training, will face their set of issues. But I found that the reason why it was so challenging for me is because it felt particularly isolating,” Bell said, noting that he tried to quit several times. “And I don’t say that to say anyone treated me super unfairly—maybe there were moments that were a little awkward—but … I was the only African American in my cohort, in my class. So out of 20 people, it was just me. … And I felt … a lot of cultural differences when we would hang out outside of the specific classroom areas. And honestly, in the pilot training world, that’s where a lot of learning would happen.”

It was a feeling shared by Tech. Sgt. De’Mario Greene, a flight chief with the 1st Helicopter Squadron, when he went through training for special missions aviation.

“It was, ‘Well, I’m learning something new,’ so I also have the intimidation of being the best at one of the most difficult Air Force jobs there is, and then I also have, ‘Oh, it’s just me here.’ And sometimes we can be in our own heads and we can allow that to conquer us,” Greene said. “But I think it’s important that you have good leadership and good mentorship at the top. I ran into a similar situation down in New Mexico, and I had a lieutenant colonel pull me into his office. … He motivated me to stay in aviation. And to this day, that was one of the best conversations that I’ve ever had in my life.”

Mentorship is crucial, all four Airmen agreed—and with “We Fly Too,” they hope to encourage and connect more prospective service members with those who can guide them.

“Mentorship is one of my passions, and we often overthink it and make it too difficult,” Ruffin said. “And I say it all the time—I said it to my Airmen: If you’ve been in the Air Force for more than one day, you have something to offer to the person behind you.”

Air Force Announces It Will Buy E-7 Wedgetails to Replace AWACS

April 26, 2022 | By John A. Tirpak

The Air Force will buy some Boeing E-7A Wedgetails to replace a portion of its aging E-3 Sentry fleet, the service announced after evaluating two prototypes.

The Air Force “has decided to replace a portion” of the E-3 Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) fleet with the E-7, the service said April 26, without disclosing how many it expects to procure. In its fiscal 2023 budget request, the Air Force asked Congress to let it retire 15 of its 31 Sentry aircraft, but a service spokesperson said not to assume those aircraft will be replaced on a one-for-one basis.

“That will be determined after the evaluation,” she said.

The fiscal 2023 budget proposal also included a request for $227 million in research, development, test, and evaluation for a “rapid prototype” example of the E-7, which, despite the description, will not be delivered until 2027. A second prototype will be requested in the fiscal 2024 budget, the service said—with a delivery date not disclosed. A “production decision” is to be made in fiscal 2025, well before the prototypes are even delivered.

The service said the savings obtained by divesting the E-3s will pay for acquiring their replacement.

“The E-7 system was developed by Australia for the Australian Defence Forces,” the Air Force said. “The unbreakable U.S. and Australia alliance and interoperability amongst the armed services enabled the Department of the Air Force to leverage this considerable investment and exceptional capability.”

The E-7 is “the only platform capable of meeting the requirements for the Defense Department’s tactical battle management, command and control, and moving target indication capabilities within the timeframe needed to replace the E-3,” the service said.

Air Force officials have previously said the Northrop Grumman E-2C Hawkeye and the Saab Erieye, both turboprop-powered AWACS-type aircraft, lack the speed, altitude, and capability USAF needs for the mission.

Senior USAF leaders have expressed their interest in the E-7 for several years. Last October, Gen. Mark D. Kelly, head of Air Combat Command, said he wanted them in the inventory “two years ago.” Complimentary comments have been offered by Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. and Pacific Air Forces commander Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach.

Due to its age, obsolete engines, and diminishing vendors, sustaining the E-3 fleet has become a “Herculean effort,” Kelly said, with mission capable rates dipping near 50 percent on “a 45-year-old airframe.”

Last October, the Air Force said it was entering a contract with Boeing to evaluate how the E-7, which was designed and optimized for the Royal Australian Air Force, could be adapted for USAF use.

Unlike the E-3, which uses an iconic rotating radome mounted ahead of its vertical tail, the Wedgetail uses an Active Electronically Scanned Array radar mounted in a blade-like structure on the back of a 737 airframe. Because it is digital, the blade antenna has a faster revisit time than the mechanical radome, which has some latency. It also requires less maintenance. The gaps at either end of the blade are filled in by sensors in an overhanging lip, called the “Top Hat.”

Australia, South Korea, Turkey, and the U.K. either have or plan to sign up to buy the E-7, but it would require different equipment and a different architecture to be compatible with USAF systems. Boeing has said it will supply an “open architecture” version of the E-7 to USAF, which would allow other companies to supply systems for the aircraft, but the existing version does not have this capability.