Lord, Former Air Force Leaders Named to New Panel to Reform Pentagon Budgeting Process

Feb. 1, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

A new commission aimed at reforming the Defense Department’s budgeting process will include former Pentagon acquisition and sustainment chief Ellen M. Lord as well as several former high-ranking Air Force leaders.

Lord will be joined on the newly formed Commission on Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution Reform by Eric Fanning, who served as undersecretary of the Air Force from 2013 to 2015 and acting Secretary for six months in 2015; Robert F. Hale, former comptroller and chief financial officer at the Pentagon and former head of Air Force financial management; and Raj Shah, an Air Force Reservist who headed up the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit Experimental.

Fanning, Shah, Hale, and Lord were selected to the commission Feb. 1 by the chairmen and the ranking members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees—Reps. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) and Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) and Sens. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) and Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), respectively.

That quartet will be joined on the commission by 10 other appointees, selected by the Secretary of Defense, Republican and Democrat leaders in the House and Senate, and the top lawmakers in both chambers’ Appropriations committees.

Together, the commission will be tasked with looking at ways to shake up the Pentagon’s planning, programming, budgeting, and execution process. Officials in Congress and observers have frequently bemoaned the budgeting process as slow, inflexible, and unresponsive.

“One of the relics of those days gone by is the current DOD budget process,” Reed said at a SASC hearing in 2021. “It was a product of [former Secretary Robert] McNamara, the Whiz Kids, and I can assure you those Whiz Kids are not kids anymore. It’s been 70 years.”

The commission was established under a provision in the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act and will have until September 2023 to send a report to Congress. Under the NDAA, the commission will review the current PPBE process, evaluate its effectiveness, consider alternatives, and issue policy and legislative recommendations.

Lord served as the top weapons buyer for the Defense Department from 2017 to 2020, where she oversaw the development of the Adaptive Acquisition Framework, a rework of the DOD’s acquisition rulebook aimed at making the process faster and easier. She also was in office for the first portion of the COVID-19 pandemic, which created some stress on the defense industrial base.

Fanning, in addition to serving as the No. 2 civilian leader in the Air Force, also served as Secretary of the Army and Chief of Staff to the Secretary of Defense, among other positions.

Hale is a former Navy officer who also spent more than a decade at the Congressional Budget Office analyzing defense issues. He then served as the Air Force’s comptroller from 1994 to 2001 before returning to the Pentagon from 2009 to 2014.

Shah is an F-16 pilot who in 2016 was appointed by then-Secretary Ash Carter to oversee a DIUx program aimed at connecting with private industry as a technology hub to acquire new capabilities faster.

F-35 JPO Finishes First Phase in Overhauling Logistics System

Feb. 1, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

The F-35 Joint Program Office’s efforts to revamp the fighter’s troubled sustainment and maintenance enterprise reached a new milestone as the JPO announced the installation of 14 hardware systems for its new Operational Data Integrated Network.

The hardware systems, called the ODIN Base Kit, were installed between July 2021 and January 2022 and replace the troubled Autonomic Logistics Information System—all “first-generation ALIS servers” are now out of the field, the JPO said in a press release.

ALIS was intended to be a vast information-gathering system that tracked F-35 data in-flight, relaying to maintainers on the ground the performance of various systems in near-real time. It was meant to predict part failures and otherwise keep maintainers abreast of the health of each individual F-35.

Instead, the system was crippled by outdated technology, false alarms, laborious data entry requirements, and clumsy interfaces. By January 2020, the JPO announced that it was dumping ALIS in favor of the rebranded ODIN.

ODIN, officials said at the time, will be more secure, produce fewer errors, and be easier to use. It will also provide improved insight into F-35 parts usage and enable predictive maintenance, driving down costs.

The ODIN Base Kit is the first part of the new system to be rolled out to military installations and will continue to be installed through 2023, the JPO said. It is “75 percent smaller and lighter than previous hardware and was procured at nearly 30 percent lower cost,” the office stated.

The reduced weight is especially key, considering a Government Accountability Office report found that the ALIS servers “weigh approximately 200 pounds and require at least two people to lift … [and] need a whole room to operate,” creating logistical challenges, especially for deployments. In contrast, the OBK has two modules that weigh under 100 pounds each.

“Recent global OBK installations mark a major milestone in modernizing the F-35 logistics information systems in support of global operations,” F-35 Program Executive Officer Lt. Gen. Eric T. Fick said in a statement. “This was a team effort between the Department of Defense, defense industry, and our F-35 Partners, and is a giant step forward in support of international logistics and operational management of the global and expanding F-35 fleet.”

The ODIN Base Kit is designed to run both the ALIS software and future ODIN software programs, the joint program office added.

“We’re excited about the improvements ushered in by the ODIN Base Kit in 2021 and look forward to outfitting the entire fleet with this enhanced capability as schedules and funding permit,” said Air Force Col. Dan Smith, JPO maintenance systems program manager overseeing ALIS and ODIN. “OBK feedback has been overwhelmingly positive and will save our F-35 maintainers time and operating costs throughout the maintenance lifecycle.”

While the first generation of unclassified ALIS servers are now out of circulation, other units will be replaced throughout 2022 and 2023. And OBK itself will also be updated as Lockheed Martin and the JPO look to design and develop “improved hardware for classified functions.”

The following locations received ODIN Base Kits:

Naval Air Station Lemoore, Calif.
Nellis Air Force Base, Nev.
Hill Air Force Base, Utah
Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska
Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, Calif.
Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort, S.C.
Lockheed Martin Aeronautics factory, Fort Worth, Texas
Eglin Air Force Base, Fla.
Luke Air Force Base, Ariz.
Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. (three OBKs installed)
Amendola Air Base, Italy
Portsmouth Naval Base, U.K.

The Operational Data Integrated Network Base Kit, or OBK, (pictured) replaces the legacy Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS) computer hardware called the Standard Operating Unit-Unclassified (SOU-U) server. The new ODIN hardware is 75 percent smaller and lighter than previous hardware. It was procured at nearly 30 percent lower cost, and it’s designed to run ALIS software as well as future ODIN software applications. Navy Photo by Dane Wiedmann.

Shared Strategic Airlift Is Focus of Africa Air Chiefs Meeting

Feb. 1, 2022 | By Abraham Mahshie

AFRICAN AIR CHIEFS SYMPOSIUM, KIGALI, Rwanda—Challenged by inadequate infrastructure and vast distances, the U.S. Air Force has for decades provided airlift to France and African nations to help fight terrorism, support peacekeeping, and respond to disasters on the continent. But Air Forces Africa is calling for a better way—sharing strategic airlift.

AFAFRICA helped bridge gaps of trust and capabilities between widely divergent nations in a four-day symposium of African air chiefs that concluded Jan. 28 in Kigali, leveraging the American power to bring neighboring nations together to discuss sharing air platforms, like the many C-130s the U.S. has provided to partner African nations.

“The goal here is to find ways that we can look at it across the continent and leverage the regional expertise that is so prevalent here,” U.S. Air Forces in Europe-Air Forces Africa commander Gen. Jeffrey L. Harrigian told Air Force Magazine in an exclusive interview at the 11th African Air Chiefs Symposium (AACS).

At the third and final AACS meeting of his tenure, Harrigian said air liaison officers had across the continent helped clarify the problem and create a shared understanding with the nations they work with. This year’s AACS, the first since 2019, identified what is “in the realm of the possible” on a continent with 54 nations and widely divergent capabilities and resources.

Symposium co-host, Rwandan Air Force Gen. Jean Jacques Mupenzi, defined the shared security challenges of a continent with porous borders that are often frequented by arms, drug, and human traffickers as well as terrorists.

“Our region is vast [and] characterized by limited transportation infrastructure, hence [it] requires effective air mobility mechanisms to bridge distances, support replenishment of troops in theatre … , and attend to humanitarian assistance,” he said in his opening remarks.

“Strengthening regional cooperation in the air domain is critical in order to respond to common security challenges on the continent,” he added.

In many far-flung parts of Africa, terrorist and criminal groups have established safe havens where government control cannot reach adequately. There, the groups can operate freely, recruiting and spreading false propaganda that decreases trust in the central government.

Air Force Special Operations Command combat aviation advisor Lt. Col. Jared Cordell said that for many of the African countries he has worked with, strategic airlift is essential to national security.

“In a lot of places, airlift is the most valuable and most important thing that they can do because it brings cargo, men, and equipment to places that need it,” he said in a phone interview ahead of the conference.

“It … brings governance to those outlying areas and shows the country’s flag in disparate and outlying parts of the various countries,” he explained. “It’s not the U.S. flag that’s showing up at a random airstrip in another place. It’s their own country that’s bringing their own country’s governance to that area.”

Finding a Way Forward

To identify next steps for shared strategic airlift in Africa, Harrigian participated in bilateral meetings with air chiefs, closed-door discussions, and a briefing by the air transport resource sharing working group of the 26-member Association of African Air Forces.

A group of nine African nations from the Maghreb and Western and Eastern Africa, along with the U.S. Air Force, met virtually six times between April and August 2021 to discuss the problem set. Regional groups including the African Union and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), both potential recipients of shared air assets, were observers.

Tunisian Air Chief Maj. Gen. Mohamed Hajem, who represented one of the nations in the working group, said shared strategic airlift in Africa will require that nations have a common doctrine and standard operating procedures.

“That’s really the vision with the program, with the planning, and we should be aware of our actual capacity and the threats and challenges of the future,” he told Air Force Magazine on the sidelines of the symposium.

Harrigian said the first step to accomplishing that will be to identify what command and control might look like and to leverage what exists within regional organizations.

“We kind of have a broad understanding of what the construct would look like,” he said. “There’s some really unique relationships, multilateral ones that happen regionally. And so, we have to try to pull that together into a continental view. … That’s not easy. It’s a heavy lift.”

The Maghreb countries of Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia have the most advanced air forces on the continent but do not cooperate together in the air domain. Nonetheless, Tunisia is taking a lead role to promote sharing air assets in other parts of Africa.

Hajem emphasized that Harrigian’s leadership on the continent has advanced peace and security while also elevating the U.S.-Tunisia relationship.

A working group presentation at AACS found that operational-level potential exists but that agreements between senior political and military leaders are the biggest challenge. Nations must also plan ahead, acquiring interoperable assets, ensuring a reliable supply chain of spare parts, and building common practices.

“All that should be ready so that you can employ your air assets and procedures on U.S. standards to be sure that you are interoperable with the U.S. side and other partners,” Hajem said.

Botswana Air Chief Maj. Gen. Hendrick Tbuthu Rakgantswana told Air Force Magazine that his southern African nation relies on the U.S. for both training and equipment. Rakgantswana himself learned to fly C-130s at MacDill Air Force Base, Fla.

Botswana recently acquired three C-130s through U.S. Foreign Military Sales, but one is grounded due to the maintenance financial constraints, highlighting a potential benefit of resource sharing.

“In our regional economic community, the Southern African Development Community, we face a lot of disasters and crises, and we don’t have the requisite airlift capability,” he said. “So, it means, now, that we have to come together and pool our resources together.”

Resources could include funds, platforms, or trained personnel.

Botswana is involved in peacekeeping efforts in Mozambique and also provides airlift assistance to neighbors Lesotho and Malawi. But a true structure of sharing would allow countries to do more.

“This mechanism is the answer—we just now have to make it fit in the existing structures,” he said, such as the African Union or SADC.

“We just need that link. They just need to appreciate the existence of the Association of African Air Forces and how it can assist from strategic air lift mechanisms,” he said, noting that AACS is already strengthening trust among African nations.

King Aerospace Appeals to Military Prime Contractors

Feb. 1, 2022

Prime defense contractors represent some of the most prestigious names in aviation. They know what they’re doing. Think BAE Systems, Boeing, Collins Aerospace, General Dynamics, General Electric, Honeywell, Huntington Ingalls, L3Harris, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon Technologies and more. Yet, even these global, time-tested, industry leaders can find themselves in need of added support.

That’s where subcontractors come in. King Aerospace offers a case in point. While this contractor logistics support (CLS) provider occasionally serves as a prime contractor itself, its smaller size leads it to more frequently fill a subcontractor role. King Aerospace positions itself uniquely, saying it is really in the people business with a focus on making a positive difference in the lives of others. They just happen to work on aircraft (albeit often some extremely important aircraft).

King Aerospace has gained performance-based experience supporting the U.S. government and all branches of the military—Air Force, Army, Coast Guard, Navy/Marine Corps, Department of Energy, Department of Defense, Drug Enforcement Administration, Federal Bureau of Investigation and Homeland Security. Since many prime contractors request confidentiality about the subcontractor’s role, King Aerospace refrains from publicly sharing specifics. It simply notes its extensive, hands-on experience supporting government-operated, special-mission aircraft, primarily military derivatives of Boeing, DeHavilland and Beech King Air aircraft.

“Whether the aircraft is flying a top-level government official or conducting information-gathering flights over a demilitarized zone on the other side of the world, our support does not waver,” says Jarid King, president of King Aerospace Companies. “Our no-excuses approach ensures each mission receives the attention it deserves. Which means it gets our complete attention.”

CLS Is a Calling

Delivering CLS services can take King Aerospace to some risky places. The men and women who wear the King Aerospace wings could use the locations’ volatility and potential danger as an excuse, but they do not. They get the job done so members of the U.S. military can do theirs.

Most of the military aircraft King Aerospace supports are commercial derivative aircraft not originally designed for military needs. Its team understands how to modify and maintain these aircraft for the military’s use. It’s also more cost effective for the government – and taxpayers – than building military-specific aircraft and maintaining special parts for them. Aircraft CLS programs cover a wide scope of services from field support technicians who provide maintenance at the flight line to supply-chain management. King Aerospace does it all.

The military expects MROs to meet the highest standards as they manage and maintain government-owned aircraft fleets and subcontract work from major defense contractors. It helps that the expected highest-possible quality aligns with the operations King Aerospace has in place for its corporate and VVIP aircraft, including the Boeing Business Jet. King Aerospace has been honored as the Boeing Supplier of the Year for collaboration.

“That’s especially meaningful to us, because it acknowledges our ability to listen, problem solve and pull together as a team,” says Greg Mitchell, vice president of government services for King Aerospace Inc. “We approach CLS as our patriotic duty. We give it all we’ve got – and we do it well.”

Specialized logistics support directly speaks to King Aerospace’s maintenance abilities and company-wide passion for service to the men and women in the U.S. Armed Forces. Many King Aerospace team members are themselves veterans. They embrace the company’s long-stated passion for God, Country and Family.

“At King Aerospace our commitment to God, Country and Family is not sales rhetoric, but a way of life,” says Jerry King, company founder and chairman.

A Focus on the Why

King Kulture drives the excellence of the company’s services. Part of that is helping all team members find and follow their “why,” their internal motivation. Everyone involved in its contractor logistics support services understands their unique and valued roles. What they do each and every day, wherever they are in the world, helps ensure our troops’ readiness and America’s security, both today and tomorrow.

While many CLS providers average five to 10 years for contract retention, King Aerospace typically keeps contracts from 10 to 18 years. Because of this longevity, King Aerospace often acts as the stabilizing factor as military forces rotate in and out. It shepherds the new personnel as they transition in. More work frequently comes their way, a sign they are delivering at a high level.

Troops Only Fly If Aircraft Do

CLS helps ensure U.S. military troops’ mission readiness. Soldiers can’t fly if aircraft are grounded.

“CLS produces a dynamic environment,” says Jarid King. “You must be ready for anything, anytime – and time and again we’ve proven that we are.”

King Aerospace’s highly trained team members rapidly deploy wherever and whenever they are needed. The company operates AS9110C-certified facilities and FAA repair stations at Biggs Army Airfield, Fort Bliss, El Paso, TX; Kirtland Air Force Base, Albuquerque, NM; and Camp Humphreys, South Korea. It also operates 24/7 logistics outposts around the world, including some of the most remote, hostile and harsh locations. Forward deployed locations can on rare occasion come under attack by opposing hostile forces. The company takes the protection of its personnel seriously and ensures appropriate measures are taken to minimize risks and threats.

“It’s no small thing to get parts and people into challenging environments where travel is restricted,” says Mitchell. “I’m proud of our dedicated, mission-focused team and how they continually strive to do the right thing for the right reasons and with the right attitude. The most commendable of all – they do it even when no one is looking.”

Lockheed Selects Alabama and Georgia as Production Sites If It Wins Next Tanker

Jan. 31, 2022 | By John A. Tirpak

If Lockheed Martin wins the Air Force’s upcoming KC-Y tanker competition, the jets will be built in the U.S., in partnership with Airbus, at facilities in Alabama and Georgia, company LMXT director Larry Gallogly said Jan. 31.

“Green” Airbus A330 airliners would be assembled in Mobile, Ala., and then modified to a unique U.S. Air Force configuration of the Multi-Role Tanker Transport—already serving with 14 countries—at Lockheed’s L-10 building at its Marietta, Ga., plant, Gallogly told reporters on a conference call. The cavernous L-10 building hosted the C-5 Galaxy production line, and then the modification of the Galaxy fleet to the C-5M configuration, now complete.

Studies are underway to determine how much under-roof square footage would be needed to accommodate the A330 production effort in Mobile. No new construction is necessary at Marietta. Announcement ceremonies with the governors of both states took place during the day.

Lockheed announced the LMXT effort last September, and was leaning toward Mobile and Marietta as the build locations, but had not yet nailed down the particulars of construction at that time.

An undetermined number of initial KC-Y aircraft would be built as A330s at Toulouse, France and reconfigured outside Madrid, Spain, for military duty, Gallogly said. U.S. workers would train on the existing lines before the production enterprise is created in the U.S., to reduce the learning curve and get up to max production rate as quickly as possible. The two U.S. sites would build tankers only for the U.S. Air Force; international versions of the MRTT, including Canada’s, would still be built in Europe.

Airbus would do the majority of the engineering on the U.S.-unique versions, Gallogly said, building on its engineers’ intimate knowledge of the aircraft. Lockheed would also do some engineering on the U.S.-unique systems.

A total of about 1,300 jobs would be created across Alabama and Georgia, and Gallogly said the figure referred to “direct jobs” and isn’t inflated with “supply chain jobs or anything else.”

No “used” A330 airliners will be converted for the Air Force, as was done for Australia, Gallogly said: all the jets will be new-build. Converting used aircraft injects “a lot of uncertainty…in the process…when you open up a huge airplane,” he said.

“The customer wants uninterrupted recapitalization of their tanker fleet,” Gollogly reported, and assuming a win, Lockheed expects to begin delivering aircraft “in the 2029, 2030 timeframe.” He called that timeline “notional,” based on the company’s discussions with the Air Force and the service’s public requests for information so far. It takes two years to build an A330 and 18-24 months to convert one to an MRTT; Lockheed hopes, with rapid learning curve reductions, to quickly get down to 18 months for conversion at Marietta.

The Air Force is expected to issue a request for proposals about a year from now, in March, 2023, with an award in late 2024. The service wants between 140 to 160 KC-Y aircraft, which would complement the service’s KC-46 fleet and would replace most of the KC-135s still flying in the 2030s. The Air Force is not interested in a “clean sheet” or stealthy aircraft, and wants a non-developmental item, meaning the LMXT will compete with the KC-46, being the only large tankers in production. The jet will be “built in America, by Americans, for Americans,” and will comply with Buy American laws, Gollogly said.

Mobile was selected for the work because, Gallogly noted, Airbus made good on its promise in the last tanker competition to do airline work there, and the port in Mobile will make it easy to move large sections of the aircraft. There is also an established aerospace labor pool in the Mobile area. The Marietta facility has been a Lockheed production location for decades, with “an incredibly skilled workforce,” he said.

“We’re taking advantage of a highly capable, highly experienced” labor pool, he said. He said Lockheed claims a $8.3 billion economic impact across the two states, “with 24 facilities in Alabama, 22 throughout Georgia, and then all the supply chain jobs that go with it.”

While Lockheed will work to source as much content of the tanker as possible in the U.S., it recognizes that “there’s a very successful existing supply chain that supports the MRTT right now. So we don’t want to do anything that is going to increase the overall cost of the aircraft or induce any risk into our producing and performing with this aircraft.” He added, “This airplane has to work on day one.” Engines will be sourced from either Rolls Royce or GE Aviation in the U.S.

“There’s a lot of U.S. content on this aircraft already,” he added.

The LMXT would have an autonomous refueling capability, and by virtue of its large size, be able to go further with a larger load of fuel than the KC-46, Gallogly asserted. Two pallet stations on the MRTT’s lower level will be converted to fuel tanks to give the aircraft more offloadable fuel capacity, and the jet will be able to take off with all tanks full, he said. A large capacity is USAF’s “number one priority,” he said. “That’s the gap that needs to be filled…[and]…that’s what we have based our proposed configuration on.” The longer range and capacity is needed to multiply options in the Pacific theater, where distances are great, he said. It will have “almost 10,000 nautical miles of unrefueled range.”

The jet will also have a “full” Joint All-Domain Command and Control suite, he said, as the Air Force expects the jet to be “out there all the time” and functioning as a communications platform as well as a tanker. The JADC2 suite the Air Force wants is “far more than…just hanging a pod on the wing but…a more robust communication node.”

The JADC2 suite and self-defense capabilities would make the LMXT different from the MRTT. Gollogly also said the existing MRTT boom system would be retained; again, to minimize disruptions and risk from creating a new one.

Gollogly said that a “very senior” USAF official asked told him if the boom, and vision system would be retained, and when Gollogly said they would, the senior official said, “‘Good. Don’t mess up the boom.’” Gollogly said the LMXT would be unusual in that the U.S. is used to being the leader on a new system, which international customers then modify for their own use. In this case, it’s “little backwards” in that the foreign partner is the leader, but he counted this as a benefit, because Airbus and its customers have already dealt with the MRTT’s “growing pains,” and “bumps in the road.” The jet is already certified to pass fuel to the F-35 and F-22.

Broadly, Lockheed expects new specifications for the KC-Y.

“These will definitely not be ‘KC-X’ requirements,” Gollogly said, as those needs were determined “some time ago, in a very different geopolitical environment.”

Pentagon: US May Deploy Extra Troops to Eastern Europe Beyond 8,500 on Alert

Jan. 31, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

The Defense Department has already told 8,500 troops to prepare to deploy for a potential Ukraine contingency within five days. But even more American service members could soon be deployed to eastern Europe, either from the U.S. or from within the continent, Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby confirmed Jan. 31.

Kirby’s comments came as clarification after President Joe Biden told reporters on Jan. 28 that he would be “moving troops to Eastern Europe and the NATO countries in the near term—not a lot.”

While Kirby refused to say how many troops could be deployed or where they might go, he did say that they would be separate from the 8,500 figure previously announced. Those troops, who have not actually been deployed yet, would be the U.S. contribution to a 40,000-member NATO Response Force, which requires consensus within the alliance to activate.

“The 8,500 troops that we talked about last week are part of our contribution to the NRF. The NRF has not been activated,” Kirby said. “What the President was talking about was the potential for additional U.S. troops to bolster the capabilities of some of our eastern flank NATO allies.”

Those troops, Kirby added, would be moved under a bilateral agreement between the U.S. and whatever country hosts them.

“You can’t just unilaterally decide to throw extra U.S. forces at a country. You want to make sure that they’re on board with it, and that you’ve had the appropriate conversations,” said Kirby. “And what I would tell you is that those sorts of conversations are ongoing.”

When asked for a rough estimate of how many troops might be deployed, Kirby declined, saying, “it would be inappropriate for me, since we are in active discussions with allies, to ballpark it right now.”

NATO allies in Eastern Europe and along the Black Sea have been publicly pushing for an increased U.S. presence in their countries, as Russia continues to mass forces along the Ukrainian border, fomenting fears of a potential invasion that would upend security in the region. Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė, and Romanian President Klaus Iohannis have all indicated a willingness to host more troops in the past few months.

“When it comes to bilateral agreements or arrangements with NATO allies, if they need additional capabilities, if they would want that, then we would work it out individually with each nation to make sure that we’re meeting the need as best they desire and can accommodate,” Kirby said.

Any troops deployed to the region would be under the command of Air Force Gen. Tod D. Wolters, who serves as both head of U.S. European Command and NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe.

But Kirby indicated that some of the troops deployed to eastern flank allies might already be in Europe underneath Wolters’ command.

“An option available to us is to use U.S. forces that are already in the European theater. You don’t necessarily have to flow in forces from the States or from even other theaters,” Kirby said. “We have tens of thousands of U.S. troops on European soils, both in a permanently based environment, as well as on rotational orders. And so we’re taking a look at the whole menu of opportunities available here and units available.”

There are also already U.S. forces who have deployed to eastern European nations in recent weeks. On Jan. 26, half a dozen USAF F-15Es landed in Estonia to aid NATO’s enhanced air policing mission, and on Jan. 4, F-16s from Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany, deployed to fly with Polish F-16s in Lithuania and with Belgian F-16s in Estonia, also as part of the air policing mission.

Pentagon Office Expands to Meet Demand for International Space Agreements

Jan. 31, 2022 | By Amanda Miller

The demand for international space agreements is so high, just keeping up can be a challenge, said Space Force Col. Raj Agrawal.

Agrawal described how the department is responding to the heightened demand during the Jan. 27 episode of The Aerospace Corp.’s “The Space Policy Show.” He also mentioned other changes taking place at the Pentagon and at Space Force field commands to involve more countries in U.S. military space activities.

Chief of the Secretary of the Air Force’s International Affairs office’s Space Division since July 2021, Agrawal brought to the job experience working in five different air or air and space operations centers, where his role was “to use space to make everything else more effective,” he said. His deployments exposed him to the process of “allies and partners working together, fighting together, and building relationships.”

Serving in South Korea and in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility “with a whole host of allies and partners” introduced Agrawal to some of the international personnel he works with now. “A lot of those relationships have really become so important now in my current job,” Agrawal said. “We recognize each other from years ago being deployed together.”

Growing from a few people to more than 20 and still hiring, Agrawal said his division is “a very fast-moving, responsive division that focuses on what Gen. Raymond wants to achieve,” referring to Space Force Chief of Space Operations Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond. The new jobs are part of the Space Force headquarters’ ultimate total of 600.

The division is “wholly focused” on helping the Space Force to build partnerships “and, what’s more, for us to build spacepower capacity,” Agrawal said. Traveling with Raymond when he meets with international counterparts, the division drafts partnership agreements based on the outcomes.

The department has also expanded international affairs to the Space Force’s three field commands—Space Operations Command, Space Systems Command, and Space Training and Readiness Command—which occupy the same organizational echelon as the Air Force’s major commands.

“So now each of the field commands have an international affairs partner mission and are making available all of the security cooperation tools that we have on the U.S. Air Force side, now on the U.S. Space Force side. It is thrilling to see happen,” Agrawal said. “If you could see inside the machine, I think you’d be impressed.”

Advantages of international cooperation to the U.S. include adding to what Agrawal refers to as “passive spacepower capacity.”

“We’re in a situation where we have limited budgets. We have a situation where we maybe we can’t get after all the things we want to get after … And the more we work together to build out our capacity, the more we can deter anyone that tries to hold our advantage in space at risk.”

Agrawal said one thing the department wants to do is build an architecture of space assets, or a “space order of battle, … that is interoperable with our … partners and also makes it so that any disruption of that space order of battle is a disruption to many nations, not just the U.S.”

For other countries, goals and advantages vary.

“Most nations that have any technological capability, they become more effective, and become more efficient, by integrating space … all across the spectrum of their power,” Agrawal said. “And they also recognize that there are nations such as China and Russia having disrupted that efficiency, and they want to partner with us.”

F-15EX Fires First Missile Successfully

Jan. 31, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

The F-15EX successfully fired its first weapon on Jan. 25, launching an AIM-120D missile at a BQM-167 unmanned aerial target over the Gulf of Mexico, the Air Force announced.

Maj. Benjamin Naumann and Maj. Mark Smith, pilots with the 40th Flight Test Squadron, flew the fighter during the test fire, as part of the 53rd Wing’s Combat Archer—an air-to-air weapons system evaluation program.

The F-15EX “detected the drone using onboard sensors, acquired a weapons-quality track, and launched the missile at the target” as part of the test, the Air Force announced in a release. The shot was then determined to be a success.

“This was an end-to-end verification of the entire weapons system, which will pave the way for more complex missile shots in the future,” Colton Myers, F-15EX test project manager with the Operational Flight Program Combined Test Force, said in a statement.

The missile fire marks a major milestone for the F-15EX, which first arrived at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., for combined developmental and operational tests in March 2021.

Soon after, the new fighter participated in Northern Edge 21, a wargame in Alaska. The Eagle II posted a mixed record at the exercise, “shooting down” some adversaries but also getting shot down itself.

After Northern Edge, the fighter underwent “developmental flight and ground testing” that revealed several issues with its Suite 9 software system that were resolved. It deployed in October to Nellis Air Force Base, Nev., for a week’s worth of operational tests.

Combining developmental and operational testing “has been critical to our test success, allowing us to break the mold of ‘traditional’ testing, while ultimately resulting in an overall better product for the warfighter, and in a shorter timeline than if we adopted the traditional approach,” Myers said in a statement.

Right now, the Air Force has just two F-15EXs in its fleet, both at Eglin. In the coming years, though, that number will expand significantly. The Air Force signed a deal with Boeing to buy up to 144 of the jets in the next 15 years, though that number could change.

The fiscal 2021 National Defense Authorization Act included 12 F-15EXs, and the 2022 NDAA authorized 17 more after the Pentagon asked for a dozen in its budget request. However, Congress has yet to pass an appropriations bill to actually increase funding for fiscal 2022.

Kendall: Air Force Still Digging Itself Out of ‘Readiness Hole’

Jan. 31, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

The Department of the Air Force is set to embark on a readiness review as it works to dig itself out of a “readiness hole,” Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said during a virtual Coffee Talk event with Chief Master Sgt. of the Air Force JoAnne S. Bass.

During the Jan. 27 event, Kendall was asked by a viewer how he planned to address bureaucracy affecting maintenance by inhibiting acquisition of parts and equipment.

Kendall responded by noting that bureaucracy is just one of several problems facing the service’s sustainment enterprise and, by extension, its readiness.

“I’m very concerned about our readiness levels, our availability of the current fleet. Some fleets like our battle management fleet, AWACS as well, are not anywhere near where they need to be,” Kendall said.

Kendall cited multiple reasons for the sustainment problems, including “some issues … in terms of the IT system, how well it supports that in terms of delays and so on. There were supply line issues, in terms of the supply chain. There’s some issues with bureaucracy and a number of things,” Kendall said. “In some cases, we’re operating pretty old aircraft, and it’s hard to get the parts for them. It’s a long lead time to get them made for us because they’ve been out of production for a long time. So there’s a range of things there that we have to look at.”

Reports from the Government Accountability Office and the Congressional Budget Office have shown the availability and mission capable rates of Air Force aircraft declining over time. Data from the Air Force has also pegged the average age of the fleet at over 29 years old, with some of the battle management/C3 aircraft that Kendall referenced averaging more than 40 years old.

The E-3 Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) in particular has been frequently cited as an aging aircraft in need of replacement. Commander of Air Combat Command Gen. Mark D. Kelly noted in 2021 that “it takes a miracle … every day just to get it up in the air.”

All these readiness issues, Kendall said, are the result of sequestration—automatic spending cuts that started in 2013 and extended for nearly a decade.

“We dug a readiness hole during that period just because we didn’t have resources for it,” Kendall said. “And to be honest, we’re still digging our way out of it. Sequestration has been gone just a short period of time now, and I think we’re getting better. It’s a trade-off we have to make, between near-term operational capabilities and things longer [term] as we look at budgets, try to balance some of the costs.”

Kendall’s sense that the Air Force’s readiness issues are improving will be put to the test soon. “We’ve got a big readiness review coming up at headquarters here pretty shortly. We’ll be looking at all these issues,” he said.

Regardless of what the review finds, the department needs to take a more integrated approach to sustainment to ensure its aircraft are ready to fly, said Kendall.

“We need to basically design our systems for sustainment, for maintenance. We need to put the systems … in place that will support them efficiently,” Kendall said. “And frankly, we haven’t paid enough attention to that, at certain times and on certain programs, certainly.”