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.

Inability to Quickly Replace Stingers and Javelins for Ukraine Highlights Industrial Base Problems

April 26, 2022 | By John A. Tirpak

The Army has probably given a quarter of its Stinger shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles to Ukraine in recent months, and restocking them could take several years, former defense officials and Raytheon’s CEO said April 26. The issue highlights the industrial base’s lack of surge capacity at a time when Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III is calling on partner nations to ramp up the flow of defense assistance for Ukraine.

In a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the health of the defense industrial base, former Pentagon undersecretary for acquisition and sustainment Ellen Lord said that, according to public-domain sources, “We have probably given Ukraine a quarter of our stocks” of Stinger missiles, but “we cannot, within the next couple of years, produce more, because we have a problem with the government not paying to maintain production capacity.”

David Berteau, a former Pentagon official who oversaw logistics and materiel, now the CEO of the Professional Services Council, said, “We’re drawing down now. In some cases, I’ve seen about a third of our available stocks … in less than two months. If we’re one-third down in less than two months and we keep that rate up, that’s only six months” to deplete an entire inventory.

“There is no way a contractor is going to deliver replacements in less than that time, even if you started today. We’re behind. You guys [Congress] should push them [the Pentagon] to hurry up.”

In a first-quarter financial results call with journalists, Raytheon Technologies CEO Greg Hayes said that although “we’re currently producing Stingers for an international customer, … we have a very limited stock of material for bigger production. We’ve been working with the DOD for the last couple of weeks … actively trying to resource some of the materials, but unfortunately, DOD hasn’t bought a Stinger in about 18 years.” Some components are “no longer commercially available,” he said. “So we’re going to have to go out and redesign some of the electronics in the missile” to substitute newer elements, and that will take time.

“We’ll wrap up production of what we can this year, but I would expect” it will likely be 2023 or 2024 when “we actually see orders come in for the larger replenishments, both on Stinger as well as on Javelin, which has also been very successful in theater.”

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said, “I think we’ve lost the luxury of time, here. The closet is bare.” Blumenthal said the Army has handed over to Ukraine “one-third of its supply” of Javelin missiles, and to go from the current production rate of 1,000 a year to the “max amount,” which he did not specify, “would take about a year. And replenishing U.S. stocks of those weapons would require 32 months.” Without President Joe Biden invoking the Defense Production Act, “we will run out of these missiles …These weapons will not magically appear for us, or our allies, or Ukraine.”

Lord said that long gaps or extremely low rates on production of munitions and other defense goods worsens the reconstitution issue. With long breaks in production, test equipment breaks or becomes obsolete, supply chain links become “broken. … We have to reconstitute that.”

The Javelin anti-tank missile, also being provided in large numbers to Ukraine, is still in production, but “right now, we are still five years” from buying all the Javelins needed for the U.S. Army, she said.

“So I think the real issue here is, how we make sure we have a resilient supply chain to produce the munitions we need, and also for our partners and allies,” Lord asserted.

The Pentagon has not sent a “clear and consistent demand signal” to the defense industry that it wants the capacity for surge production of weapons, and there is a “two- to five-year lag” to bring weapons back into series production, she continued.

“We have that because we have not invested, as a nation, in infrastructure, the equipment and tooling to have the capacity and the throughput.”

Industry won’t create that capacity on its own without clear guidance from the Pentagon.

“As an industry, if you do not have a clear and consistent demand signal, you cannot justify the capital investment” to create it, Lord said. “No board of directors is going to OK that.”

Both Berteau and Lord said the Pentagon needs to change the way it buys items and get away from the ups and downs associated with things such as munitions, which Lord noted are a traditional “bill payer” for other priorities.

Berteau said, “It is definitely a problem, and we have yet to see a single contract in place to start on that replenishment. Discussions are going on, but there’s no definition of what the requirement is, yet, because we still don’t know how much we’re going to draw down” for Ukraine. He noted that there was a request for information put out April 22 seeking suppliers for materiel destined for Ukraine, but that is only a preliminary step in the process.

Both Lord and Berteau said the administration can rely on the Defense Production Act Title III to get the ball rolling, but Congress needs to provide the funds in a timely way.

They both also said red tape discourages many companies from becoming defense suppliers and that despite many high-level efforts to accelerate the process, it still generally takes at least two years for a company to get on contract, even for something deemed an “urgent” requirement.

“It is a choice” for a company to do business with the Pentagon, Lord said. DOD and Congress must make it a more attractive business opportunity, because companies need a “fast-paced, predictable” source of funding for development, production, and sustainment.

Both also said risk-taking in acquisition needs to be rewarded and that when it goes awry, the punishments should be less onerous. Otherwise, acquisition professionals will tend to stick with “by the book” methods instead of taking advantage of swifter contracting vehicles Congress has made available in recent years.

Hayes, in the earnings call, said Raytheon will lose about $750 million worth of business due to sanctions on Russia, about half of which was for Pratt & Whitney engines for Russia’s airliner market.

“That accounts for about one and a half percent of our total sales,” he said, and could be up to $900 million for the year.

“We’re going to be able to mitigate some of that through higher sales elsewhere. But you really do lose some sales associated with aftermarket activity into Russia … It is not a small number for us.”

Raytheon is making a total break with the Russian market, he said.

“We’re done. We’re done in Russia,” he insisted. “We had a joint venture there, where we built commercial heat exchangers for Boeing and Embraer. We closed that facility. We sold our share. We aren’t going back.”

Hayes added, “I think this is crossing the Rubicon, here, as far as we’re concerned, for Russia. We’re not going to support the airlines. We’re not going to support the development programs. We’re not going to support any Russian customers going forward, while this [the invasion of Ukraine] is going on. You got it? … We’re not shipping engines there. We’re not shipping engines to Airbus that would otherwise go into Russia” for Russian airlines.

The sanctions have also cut off supplies of titanium from Russia, and that will cause Pratt and other Raytheon units to be late on some products.

“It is, I think, the biggest challenge that we have as we think about these global sanctions on Russia,” Hayes said. “We did have a … significant portion of titanium forgings and castings coming from Russia. Many of those are now on the sanctions list.”

He said that as warnings about Ukraine mounted in the fall, “The good news is … we actually started advanced purchasing back in the fourth quarter, and we were able to get ahead of some of the sanctions. So we have inventory for a big chunk of that … through the end of this year.”

But, “it’s going to take us some time to re-source some of the [titanium and aluminum] castings. And that’s going to impact some of our customer deliveries this year.”

Producing New B-21 Bomber Will Cost $20 Billion Through 2027

April 26, 2022 | By John A. Tirpak

The Air Force expects to spend close to $20 billion on producing the B-21 Raider through fiscal 2027, but it doesn’t say how many of the advanced bombers it will buy for that cost. Including research and development, USAF will spend more than $32 billion on the Raider through fiscal 2027, according to service budget documents.

Justifications for the Air Force’s fiscal 2023 budget request include spending estimates across the future years defense plan, or FYDP, stretching through 2027. B-21 procurement, which does not include military construction or research and development, is requested at the following amounts:

Fiscal Year	B-21 Procurement Funding Request
2022 (enacted)	$108 million
2023	$1.787 billion
2024	$3.551 billion
2025	$4.429 billion
2026	$4.638 billion
2027	$5.023 billion

Source: USAF budget documents

The 2022 amount is likely to be for materials and long-lead items for initial production. For the period ’23 through ’27, the planned B-21 production total request is $19.536 billion. Northrop Grumman is building the B-21.

The Air Force has opted to classify how many B-21s it plans to buy for the requested amount. However, at the outset of the program, the cost of the bomber was capped at $550 million each in base year 2010 dollars, or $729.25 million in current dollars. That figure was intended to be an average unit cost over a production run of about 100 airplanes, and early examples of a new military aircraft always cost the most, when the learning curve is highest and the most tweaks tend to be made to the design.

Meeting the price cap was deemed a “critical parameter” of the program, the Air Force said. The B-21’s predecessor, the Next-Generation Bomber, was canceled because Pentagon officials deemed its cost too high and its capability too “exquisite.”

If production costs were fixed at the current level, the Air Force could buy 2.5 B-21s in fiscal ’23; nearly five in fiscal ’24; six in fiscal ’25; and between six and seven per year after, or just over 20 for the five-year period. Those figures roughly agree with initial revelations about the B-21 contract, which calls for 21 Raiders to be built in the first five production lots. However, that would not include further cost escalation due to inflation or new capabilities demanded by changing threats.

The amounts suggest that the fiscal ’25 budget achieves something of a plateau for the bomber, with rapid growth in the near years slowing to more modest growth in the latter part of the FYDP. The Air Force has said early versions of the B-21, although designated for testing, will nonetheless be “useable assets” available for combat operations.

Research and development of the Raider doesn’t stop, though.

Fiscal Year	B-21 Research and Development Funding
2022 (enacted)	$2.873
2023	$3.254
2024	$2.322
2025	$1.708
2026	$1.527
2027	$1.262

Source: USAF budget documents

From fiscal ’22 through ’27, the Air Force expects to spend $12.946 billion on B-21 research and development, making the six-year grand total for both procurement and R&D $32.482 billion.

Randall Walden, head of the Rapid Capabilities Office, which is developing the B-21, has said the first example could roll out of the Northrop Grumman plant at Palmdale, Calif., in the next few months.

Emerging Emphasis on Missile Tracking Reflected in Space Force’s 2023 Budget Request

April 26, 2022 | By Amanda Miller

Detailed justification for the Space Force’s fiscal 2023 budget request revealed facility expansions for new radar and intercontinental ballistic missile programs and the breakdown of how the service would like to spend $1 billion on missile warning and tracking.

The Department of the Air Force published the detailed “J-book” documents the week of April 18. It is requesting $24.5 billion for the Space Force, an increase of $6.5 billion over the $18 billion enacted by Congress for fiscal 2022. The Space Force’s $24.5 billion makes up 12.6 percent of the Department of the Air Force’s $194 billion request for 2023.

Most of the Space Force’s increase—$4.5 billion—is in research, development, test, and evaluation, including $1 billion in new line items for resilient missile warning and missile tracking.

In its fiscal 2023 budget for military construction, the Space Force would like $68 million to build a three-story, 84-person dormitory at Clear Space Force Station, Alaska, for people who will be assigned there with the new Long Range Discrimination Radar for ballistic missile defense. The remote base, a 77-mile drive from Fairbanks, doesn’t have enough room in its current dorms or in the community, according to the budget documents. The dorm will also require an above-ground passageway connecting it with other parts of the base so Guardians can move around in severe weather.

The service also asked to move ahead with building a “multi-story Consolidated Maintenance Facility” at Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif., for the forthcoming successor to the Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile. The department is requesting $89 million in fiscal 2023 for the facility “to support Ground Based Strategic Deterrent test, launch Operations, and accommodate a crew of 250 personnel.” The department announced earlier in April that it had renamed GBSD the LGM-35A Sentinel. The Sentinel will require all-new “test, support equipment, training and processes,” according to the budget documents.

In line with Secretary of the Air Force Force Frank Kendall’s No. 1 “operational imperative”—to define a “resilient and effective space order of battle and architectures”—the department is requesting $1 billion in new line items for “resilient missile warning missile tracking.” These include money for the Space Development Agency’s already-out-for-bid, low-Earth-orbit “Tracking Layer” of its National Defense Space Architecture; plus the transition of a sensor demonstration experiment to a program of record for another “layer” of missile warning and tracking in medium Earth orbit.

Kendall addressed the items during his speech at the Space Symposium in Colorado Springs in April, saying the new constellations will “be able to track objects like China’s hypersonic weapon systems, or [China’s] potential fractional orbital bombardment system.”

Of the $1 billion for resilient missile warning and missile tracking in fiscal 2023, $499.8 billion is for SDA’s Tracking Layer in low Earth orbit, or LEO.

SDA director Derek Tournear told reporters at the symposium that his office expected to award multiple contracts in June for 28 total satellites—Tranche 1 of the Tracking Layer—to launch in May 2025. Congress gave SDA an extra $550 million in fiscal 2022 to accelerate the Tracking Layer, and SDA officials told reporters in June that they expected Tranche 1 to total $2.5 billion and to be in orbit by 2025. The budget documents show the annual appropriations for the Tracking Layer totaling $3.7 billion through fiscal 2027.

SDA’s “new acquisition model,” described in the budget documents as “utilizing rapid spiral development,” calls for de-orbiting and replacing tranches, or batches, of satellites within the constellation every two years.

The constellation fits into the Space Force’s overall force design for missile warning and tracking. The service’s Space Warfighting Analysis Center recommended a design of 135 of SDA’s LEO satellites and 16 in medium Earth orbit, or MEO, with the two layers “working in concert through an integrated ground solution,” according to the budget documents. “With space assets distributed in multiple orbits, the overall architecture and mission is more resilient in a contested environment.”

Space Systems Command, one of the Space Force’s three field commands, will oversee the development of the MEO layer, which arises from a “prototype effort” the command spearheaded under its previous designation the Space and Missile Systems Center. The service would like $139.1 million in fiscal 2023 and would expect to spend $827.1 million through fiscal 2027.

The budget documents say ground demonstrations of hardware and software took place in fiscal 2022.

“Transitioning development into this program element expands MEO development from a single satellite demonstration into a multiple satellite prototype system that will deliver at least 4 MEO satellites … for a minimum viable product combined warning and tracking architecture” by fiscal 2028.

The final $390.6 million, of the $1 billion for resilient missile warning and tracking in fiscal 2023, is for the LEO and MEO ground systems.

Cooley to Be Reprimanded, Forfeit Nearly $55,000 in Pay for Sexual Assault Conviction

April 26, 2022 | By Amy Hudson

Maj. Gen. William T. Cooley will be reprimanded and forced to forfeit $10,910 a month in pay for five months after being convicted of abusive sexual contact for forcibly kissing his sister-in-law in 2018.

Col. Christina M. Jimenez, the senior military judge in the case and the chief circuit military judge, provided the sentence, which came three days after Cooley’s historic court-martial concluded. He is the first Air Force general officer to be tried and convicted in a military trial.

Cooley was charged with one count of sexual assault under Article 120 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, with three specifications. He waved his right to a jury trial, and Jimenez found him guilty of one specification of abusive sexual contact for forcibly kissing the victim, who agreed to let the media identify her relationship to Cooley without naming her. He was found not guilty of two other specifications related to allegedly forcing the victim to touch him and for groping her.

Although Cooley will now lose nearly $55,000 in pay, with the conviction he faced a maximum sentence of dismissal from the service, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and seven years’ confinement. Air Force lawyers representing the victim wanted him to be dismissed from the service without pay or retirement benefits, and a reduction in rank, according to media covering the trial.

Cooley has served as a special assistant to Air Force Materiel Command boss Gen. Arnold W. Bunch Jr. since Bunch removed him from his position as head of the Air Force Research Laboratory in January 2020. Bunch, as the general court-martial convening authority, will now author the “formal admonishment, which … likely will document Cooley’s conviction and departure from Air Force standards and core values, as well as articulate Gen. Bunch’s expectations of behavior by Maj. Gen. Cooley moving forward,” said AFMC spokesperson Derek Kaufman.

Based on the abusive sexual contact conviction, Kaufman said Cooley is “subject to administrative discharge,” though he may still request to retire.

“Whether he requests to retire is a personal choice,” Kaufman said. “An officer is not automatically entitled to retire at the highest grade held. Instead, an officer is retired in the highest grade in which the officer served satisfactorily as determined by the Secretary of the Air Force.”

In an unsworn statement offered before the sentencing, Cooley apologized to his sister-in-law, wife, family, and members of the Air Force.

“I can honestly say I have come out a better human being than I was in 2018 … I will work for the rest of my life to be a better person than the one who was portrayed in this trial,” he said, according to the Dayton Daily News.

He also asked the judge to consider his wife. “Whatever I deserve, she did not deserve this, and I pray to God that she will not be left with nothing.”

Lt. Col. Matthew Neil, the government lead trial counsel, also presented an unsworn statement on behalf of the victim and her family.

“If this result influenced just one survivor to know that his or her attacker’s rank or status would not prevent them from being held accountable, that is a win for the United States and the military justice system,” said Neil after the sentence was delivered, according to a USAF release.

Editor’s Note: This story was updated at 4:28 p.m. on April 26 with additional information from AFMC on what happens to Cooley after sentencing.

Austin: Partners Must ‘Move at the Speed of War’ to Help Ukraine

April 26, 2022 | By Abraham Mahshie

RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany—Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III called on more than 40 nations providing defense aid to Ukraine to “move at the speed of war” at a meeting at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, focused on better coordinating the rapid transfer of weapons to the front line of Ukraine’s war with Russia.

“We’re all determined to help Ukraine win today and build strength for tomorrow,” Austin said in closing comments at Ramstein’s Officer’s Club. “We’ve got to move at the speed of war.”

Assembled in less than a week, Austin opened the Ukraine Defense Consultative Workshop describing a “sense of urgency,” and he committed April 26 to keeping the momentum going with the creation of a monthly Ukraine Contact Group, which will be open to any nation willing to help meet Ukraine’s evolving defense needs so it can “win” the war against Russia.

“The Contact Group will be a vehicle for nations of goodwill to intensify our efforts, coordinate our assistance, and focus on winning today’s fight and the struggles to come,” Austin said.
The group of nations made “tangible” progress at Ramstein, including new assistance from Germany, Canada, the United Kingdom, and other countries that want to remain anonymous, according to a senior defense official.

Those new weapons include air defenses and armored vehicles. Germany committed 50 Cheetah anti-aircraft systems, and the UK will provide new anti-aircraft capabilities.
The meeting included a battlefield update from Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov and his staff, a description of the U.S. European Command coordination center by Air Force Gen. Tod D. Wolters, a sober briefing by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley, and a plan for Ukraine’s long-term security needs.

U.S. Air Forces in Europe commander Gen. Jeffrey R. Harrigian told Air Force Magazine that the sense of urgency led the nations to come to Ramstein to solve the problem of timely and catered defense aid.
“I don’t think anyone could have predicted the level of dedication to this mission set,” he said during a pull-aside interview. “It’s impressive to see all the nations come together on such short notice.”
Harrigian said explaining the EUCOM coordination mechanism to those in attendance will improve delivery of Ukrainian aid going forward.

“We just needed to make more people aware of it,” he said of the EUCOM Control Center Ukraine (ECCU) at EUCOM headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany.

Harrigian also said air power was an important topic of discussion at Ramstein.
“Collectively, we’ve got to step up and understand what the Ukrainians’ requirements are, and find a way to get it to them and get it to them quick,” he said.

Estonian Chief of Defense Gen. Martin Herem told Air Force Magazine that Milley said “the next three weeks will determine how we live in the next 15-20 years.” NATO eastern flank defense officials told Air Force Magazine the meeting was necessary to encourage reticent nations to give more.

“I’m sure that more defense assistance is needed for Ukraine,” Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Błaszczak told Air Force Magazine during a pull-aside interview before the start of the conference.
“Poland is participating in this process from the beginning of the war, and now it’s the best time to coordinate this cooperation with Ukraine,” he said. “We should motivate other allies in our alliance and like minded countries to speed up this support.”

Black Sea NATO ally Romania, which borders Ukraine to the north and east, also called for broader assistance.

“It’s necessary for more action … to support Ukraine from all the countries,” Romanian Defense Minister Vasile Dincu told Air Force Magazine.

Some 29 ministers of defense and 21 chiefs of defense turned out from across the globe, including EU member states, North Africa, and the Middle East.

“The first step is to end this conflict,” Austin said. “We leave tonight strengthened, and so does Ukraine.”

All Quiet on the Northern Front, but Cyber ‘Preparation’ By Russia Underway

April 25, 2022 | By John A. Tirpak

Russia hasn’t stepped up its mock bomber runs at the U.S./Canadian landmass during its invasion of Ukraine, but cyber penetrations are up, indicating some “preparation of … the battlefield” is underway, U.S. Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command commander Gen. Glen D. VanHerck reported.

He also discussed the “episodic” U.S. strategy in the Arctic and said it’s only a matter of time before North Korea builds enough intercontinental ballistic missiles that it could overwhelm current U.S. missile defenses.

“I have not witnessed anything towards the homeland that would be provocative,” said VanHerck April 25, referencing recent Russian military activity.

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—indeed, for the last couple of years—Russian “bomber activity has been within … what I would consider historical norms.” He added that he’s seen nothing “that would give me any concerns” about changes in Russian operations in his theater.

The height of Russian bomber approaches to the North American landmass was “back in ‘20, I believe,” VanHerck continued. In 2021 and 2022, “What we’re seeing is … basically the average over the last decade or so; nothing too significant,” he said. He’s also seen no unusual “messaging” in the behavior of Russian forces on the periphery of the U.S.

However, “As you’ve seen in the public domain, it’s clear that Russian cyber activity in the [U.S.] homeland” can be construed as, “what I would [call], ‘preparation of the potential battlespace’,” VanHerck said. “But I’m not seeing anything that gives me pause right now from the air domain or the sea domain.” He did not elaborate on Russian intrusions or activity, except to reiterate that U.S. government and commercial information systems are under daily attack. Much of this is classified, he said.

Overall, he said, “I’m comfortable with our current posture based on indications and warning.”

VanHerck noted that he doesn’t control what aircraft the services and Canada use to perform the mission of intercepting bombers or unidentified aircraft that enter the North American Air Defense Identification Zone. Some Air Force leaders have suggested that using the F-22 for these missions out of Alaska burns up precious hours on that type, and that a less-costly alternative might be needed.

“It’s really a geography issue,” he said, and depends “on what platform is sitting alert” in proximity to the incursion. “I would point out that we utilize F-16s, and F-15s, and F-22s, and Canadian CF-18s to do our NORAD homeland defense mission,” Van Herck said. “It just happens to be that our platforms in Alaska that sit alert are the F-22s.”

His requirement to do homeland defense, as the NORTHCOM combatant commander, is for “long range, loiter time, an airplane that is a domain awareness sensor that could share data rapidly, and provide weapons to defend the homeland.”

VanHerck said he detects no “tensions” in the Arctic, except in the form of Russian rhetoric about its rights in the region and its development of a robust “capability to operate” there.

“You’ve got to be present to have tension, candidly,” he said. And I haven’t seen that. We haven’t been there, … having … confrontational challenges within the Arctic.”

VanHerck said the U.S. strategy for now is to have an “episodic” presence in the region, occasionally doing exercises and demonstrating “readiness and responsiveness” showing that U.S. forces are capable of operating in the region, but not necessarily present “24/7, 365.”

There’s the “possibility of friction” and “the possibility of conflict and crisis” as China styles itself as a “near Arctic” nation, and Russia makes claims in the region, and both seek “to change the international norms” and “rules-based order” that have prevailed in the Arctic since WWII, VanHerck said.

“But I don’t see specific tension, if you will, playing out in the military dimension right now” in the Arctic, he said.

Asked about the threat posed by North Korea’s missiles, VanHerck said his command has “the capability today to defend our homeland … against a limited threat.” North Korea is clearly trying to “develop capability” with ICBMs and “decoys, those kinds of things,” and will, “at some point, exceed the capacity of the current ground-based defense systems that we have” to defend against them.

That is why it’s so crucial to keep next-generation interceptor on time and on target, VanHerck added.

“It will give me additional capacity in the form of 20 additional interceptors, and also additional capability and reliability.” There’s a service life extension program underway for the current defensive system, he said, “which gives me additional capacity, as well.”

Given the current threat and program upgrades, “all of that combined leads me to believe that, today, we’re in a good position. We just have to stay on course” with upgrades to the system, he said.

RQ-4 Pilot and Instructor Faulted in Crash that Destroyed $64 Million Drone

April 25, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

A drone pilot and an instructor at Grand Forks Air Force Base, N.D., failed to realize an RQ-4 was 4,000 feet too high as it started its final approach and didn’t select the proper commands, leading the unmanned aerial system to overshoot the base and crash nearly seven miles away, according to a new accident investigation board report.

The Aug. 6, 2021 crash of the RQ-4 was also caused by an initial workstation lockup and a failure by another pilot with the mission control element to promptly sever its control link to the RQ-4, the report found.

The RQ-4, valued at $64 million when it was purchased in 2012, was destroyed when it crashed into a rural field. There were no injuries related to the crash.

In a 38-page report, the accident investigation board detailed a series of mishaps that led to the eventual crash and loss of the aircraft, which was flown by the 348th Reconnaissance Squadron of the 319th Reconnaissance Wing.

The drone took off Aug. 5, scheduled to participate first in a Red Flag exercise and then in a target location error mission. It had been in the air nearly 14 hours when the mission control element’s workstations locked up, causing the RQ-4 to proceed back to base on a preprogrammed, autonomous route.

The mission control element pilot, however, failed to follow established procedure and promptly sever communication and control between the ground control station and the airframe, which would have caused the drone to land autonomously, again using a preprogrammed route. Instead, the pilot didn’t sever the connection until after the drone had passed its final approach fix, triggering a go-around/missed approach route.

Shortly after that, a second pilot and an instructor took command of the drone via the launch and recovery element and instituted an altitude override command instead of commanding a new flight route. As a result, the RQ-4 continued on its go-around/missed approach route while flying 4,000 feet higher than it should have according to its preprogrammed route, and neither the instructor nor the pilot recognized this.

Unable to descend fast enough to account for that 4,000-foot discrepancy, the drone overshot the base and crashed.

The AIB report stated that the main cause of the crash was the second pilot’s incorrect selection of aircraft flight commands and the instructor’s “failure to provide sufficient inputs to the pilot.”

The report also faulted the first pilot for not following procedures, which caused a delayed descent and triggered the go-around/missed approach route, and the station lockup—the report did not definitively identify the cause of the lockup, but noted that the first pilot was recorded as having requested several detailed status reports in the span of one minute, and “the log time for the workstation lockup does coincide with the time for the status requests.”

The RQ-4 that was destroyed was a Block 40 variant, one of just 10 in the Air Force fleet, all of which are stationed at Grand Forks.

U.S. and Allies Overcome Barrier to Providing Sophisticated Weapons to Ukraine Ahead of Ramstein Meeting

April 25, 2022 | By Abraham Mahshie

KAISERSLAUTERN, Germany—In the months leading up to Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, Ukrainian government officials pleaded for high-end weaponry to match Moscow’s firepower. Reticent allies and partners, including the United States, considered such weaponry to be escalatory, as Russia pounded Ukraine with more than 1,000 missiles and flew 10 times more sorties than Ukrainian jets.

The distinction limiting escalatory weapons appears to have melted away ahead of a Ukraine Security Consultative Group meeting to be hosted by Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, on April 26.

The U.S. and allies are already training Ukrainians to operate American howitzers, the latest Air Force unmanned aerial vehicles, and new long-range air defense systems in addition to providing advanced Russian-made air defense systems Ukrainians know how to use.

The distinction of which weapons were once considered escalatory and which were not limited the type of assistance the U.S. and allies were willing to give Ukraine. In March, a public kerfuffle between Poland and the U.S. ensued when Poland stated its willingness to transfer two dozen MiG-29s to Ukraine by turning them over to the U.S. at Ramstein. The U.S. publicly rebuffed the offer.

At the time, U.S. European Command and NATO Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, Air Force Gen. Tod D. Wolters said the fighter jets could be seen as “escalatory.”

“The Intelligence Community assesses the transfer of MiG-29s to Ukraine may be mistaken as escalatory and could result in Russian escalation with NATO, … producing a high-risk scenario,” Wolters said in a statement.

The United Kingdom’s Secretary of State for Defense Ben Wallace told Air Force Magazine that the escalatory distinction is no longer a factor.

“Let’s be really clear about escalatory. The only escalation is happening in Ukraine as a result of Russian activity,” Wallace said in an April 8 press gaggle at Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base in Romania. Wallace was on hand for a NATO air policing change of command ceremony.

He said at the time that the training required for use of sophisticated weaponry was the principal limitation.

“Fundamentally, it’s not about powerful weapons. It’s about more sophisticated weapons. And of course, the challenges, though, with anything is more training,” he said.

“The Ukrainians clearly asked for Russian Soviet-era equipment because it just goes straight in,” Wallace said of some of the assistance requested from Ukrainian officials. “You just can’t give a new airplane type overnight.”

A day later, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson visited Kyiv, promising armored vehicles and anti-ship missile systems, like the one that recently sank the Moskva battleship, the flagship of the Russian Black Sea fleet.

Now, the U.S. Defense Department is training Ukrainians in the use of advanced weaponry. Fifty Ukrainian soldiers finished a six-day training on how to use 155 mm howitzers provided by the United States, and another howitzer course has already begun, according to media reports. Pentagon spokesman John F. Kirby said April 22 that the U.S. has already provided training and use of Switchblade UAVs and would similarly train the Ukrainians on the U.S. Air Force’s “Phoenix Ghost” drones.

Bolstering Defense Assistance

Austin’s planned meeting with more than 20 nations at Ramstein is about coordinating defense assistance for Ukraine’s future.

“Russia’s threat is going to stay here long term,” Wojciech Lorenz of the Polish Institute of International Affairs told Air Force Magazine in a meeting in Warsaw. “We have 30 NATO members, not three or five. Some states are definitely not doing enough. There is no other option actually, we just have to push and push.”

Poland has taken more risk than most NATO allies by hosting the logistics hub for defense assistance to Ukraine, which Austin visited on April 25. Lorenz said Poland believes blow-for-blow escalation with Russia is necessary if war with NATO is to be prevented.

“If you stop escalating … the signal for [Russia] is that this region is open for the negotiations,” he said. “They receive the signal that if they provoke war with NATO, that they will probably be able to divide NATO, and they will probably be able to negotiate the status of this region.”

Lorenz said Ukrainian security experts likewise have assessed that a “large part of Western support is just a fig leaf, just to demonstrate that they are doing something.”

“But actually, their determination is pretty weak,” he summed up.

Commercial Capabilities for Ukraine

In addition to the meeting with NATO allies, however, the U.S. also is reaching out to the defense industry for help.

A Defense Logistics Agency request for information published April 22 calls on the private sector to provide feedback about “weapons systems or commercial capabilities for Ukraine security assistance.”

In the RFI, the agency says the Biden administration is working “around the clock to fulfill Ukraine’s priority security assistance requests.” For that, it needs the private sector to help “accelerate production and build more capacity across the industrial base for weapons and equipment that can be rapidly exported, deployed with minimal training, and that are proven effective in the battlefield.”

The RFI specifically calls for air defense, anti-armor, anti-personnel, coastal defense, counter battery, unmanned aerial systems, and communications.

Initially unwilling to name specific systems being donated to Ukraine, the Pentagon in the past week has released itemized lists of equipment in the security packages being delivered to the country.

An April 21 fact sheet describing an $800 million package makes note of 72 155mm Howitzers, 72 tactical vehicles to tow the equipment, and over 121 Phoenix Ghost UAVs.

Another April 22 summary of the $3.4 billion in assistance committed to Ukraine since the war began listed more than 1,400 Stinger anti-aircraft systems; more than 5,500 Javelin anti-armor systems; over 14,000 other anti-armor systems; 700-plus Switchblade UAVs; Puma UAVs; laser-guided rocket systems; and commercial satellite imagery services.

DOD insisted that the Ramstein meeting is not a NATO ministerial, but it will provide an in-between step before the June NATO summit in Madrid. Forty states were invited to attend the Ramstein meeting, with DOD reporting more than 20 RSVPs so far.

“We certainly want to hear from Ukraine and from other nations about what they’re doing in terms of immediate defense assistance, and how that might change as the fighting there changes,” Kirby said at an April 22 press conference. “I think [Austin] also wants to take a longer, larger view of the defense relationships that Ukraine will need to have going forward when the war is over.”