New War Strategies Could Renew Emphasis on Intra-Theater Airlift

March 29, 2022 | By Amanda Miller

The military’s capacity to move people and objects around within single geographic combatant commands may have taken a back seat to other “mobility priorities” in recent years, but the commander of U.S. Transportation Command now sees intra-theater airlift as an “area of increased interest.”

Air Force Gen. Jacqueline D. Van Ovost presented testimony about her command’s posture to the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 29.

“From a requirements perspective, intra-theater airlift has experienced some of the greatest change of all mobility priorities over the past few decades,” Van Ovost said in prepared testimony. She referred to C-130 fleet capacity, in particular, having fallen by about half “from a high of well over 500 aircraft” during Operation Desert Storm.

She attributed the dwindling focus on intra-theater airlift to the military’s having done away with “a ‘two major war’ sizing construct, as well as de-emphasis of other high priority global missions not associated with a major contingency as a force-sizing demand.”

Yet the classified Mobility Capability Requirements Study directed in the fiscal 2020 National Defense Authorization Act “highlighted the potential value of this mission area in the future operating environment,” Van Ovost said.

The study took into account new intelligence and emerging concepts “in contested environment scenarios,” according to a statement issued by the command in July 2021 after the study’s completion. “We also assessed our adversaries’ capabilities and intent,” said Army Gen. Stephen R. Lyons, Van Ovost’s predecessor, in the statement. “We’ve advanced significantly in our analytic framework.”

In her prepared testimony, Van Ovost referred to a “complex new security environment” that will challenge the command’s “ability to deliver a decisive force for high-end conflict when needed.”

“The contested environment will present challenges that degrade our ability to exercise command and control of our forces, delay integration of our commercial partners in a timely manner, and disrupt the steady tempo of mobility operations,” Van Ovost said.

In reply to a question from SASC chair Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) about mobility aircraft becoming long-range targets, Van Ovost said that in regions such as the Indo-Pacific and Europe, the command is taking the approach of “diverse and disperse.”

“We are seeing that we’re going to have more distributed operations in more locations, which will provide us that redundancy and resilience,” Van Ovost said. “So we are very much looking at how we do intra-theater disbursement at a time and place where we’ll be able to resupply the forces securely but keep it moving so they don’t become targets in the future.”

To address intra-theater airlift, TRANSCOM expects to publish results by this summer of ongoing research into “emerging warfighting concepts and future operating scenarios to evaluate mobility capacity along with other related variables.”

One future warfighting concept the study may take into account is the idea of cargo and refueling aircraft pitching in as bombers, such as in experiments in which cargo aircraft drop palletized munitions. While she was still commander of Air Mobility Command in 2021, Van Ovost said in a discussion with AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies that mobility aircraft could “be a maneuver force inside the threat ring.”

EUCOM Boss: ‘My Suspicion is We’re Going to Need More’ US Troops in Europe Long-Term

March 29, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

The head of U.S. European Command predicted that more American troops will need to be stationed on the continent in the coming years, even after the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine ends.

Air Force Gen. Tod D. Wolters, appearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 29, didn’t say how many more troops would be needed in Europe, or whether they should be permanently stationed or continuously rotated in. But his endorsement of an increased presence comes as the Defense Department seeks to pivot its focus to the Indo-Pacific and China.

“I think what we need to do from a U.S. force perspective is look at what takes place in Europe, following the completion of the Ukraine-Russia scenario, and examine the European contributions and, based off the breadth and depth of the European contributions, be prepared to adjust the U.S. contributions,” Wolters said in response to questions from Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) “And my suspicion is we’re going to still need more.”

In addition to commanding EUCOM, Wolters also serves as Supreme Allied Commander, Europe for NATO. And in that role, he has witnessed a dramatic change in European attitudes towards defense in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Germany has pledged to boost its military spending by 100 billion Euros, Italy has indicated it will do the same, and Finland and Sweden are considering joining NATO.

These changes will impact what the U.S. needs to do in the region, Wolters said, especially as other countries pour resources into NATO’s eastern flank.

“What I also examine in my other command hat is the increase of European involvement. And in specific targeting of what we’re doing with respect to the population and capability increase in the Baltics, we’ve seen a dramatic shift as a result of contributions from multiple nations,” Wolters said. “Several had been published in the open press: Germany, the United Kingdom, Denmark have all been very, very generous with respect to their recent contributions to the [Enhanced Forward Presence] battlegroups.”

The Enhanced Forward Presence groups, in Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, and Poland, are deployed on a rotational basis. But increasingly, those nations and others in Eastern Europe have clamored for a permanent U.S. military presence—Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė, and Romanian President Klaus Iohannis all have indicated a willingness to host more troops in the past few months.

“Obviously there’s always a mix between the requirement of permanent versus rotational and there are pluses and minuses of each one,” Wolters told lawmakers. “We’ll have to continue to examine the European contributions to make a smart decision about where to go in the future.”

Pressed further by Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) as to how he would balance the need for more troops in Europe with increased demands in the Indo-Pacific and whether that impacts the need for permanent presences or rotations, Wolters said that it depends.

“As we’ve seen what has unfolded in Ukraine with respect to Russia, it’s allowed us the opportunity to take a look at the whole of government, multi-domain force and examine what shifts we could possibly make in the future,” Wolters said. “From a NATO perspective, … those contributions that those allies and partners have committed impacts the appropriate effect that we could deliver, which goes all the way back to, how smart we need to be with respect to making the right decision given global ramifications on permanent versus rotational.”

Wolters’ projection of more troops comes just a few weeks after Mara Karlin, assistant secretary of defense for strategy, plans, and capabilities, told the House Armed Services Committee that the Pentagon was overhauling its Global Posture Review in light of the Russian invasion to consider adding more troops, either on a permanent or rotational basis, in Eastern Europe.

Wolters isn’t the first head of EUCOM to make the case for an increase presence; His predecessor, Army Gen. Curtis M. Scaparrotti, told Congress in 2017 that he needed more forces in the region to modernize and counter Russia.

Like Wolters, Scaparrotti said there were benefits and drawbacks to both a permanent presence or rotations. At the time he made his comments, though, he was overseeing a region with a far smaller presence than Wolters currently has—Wolters told Congress the number of American troops in Europe has swelled from 60,000 to roughly 100,000 as of March 24.

Whether that presence will continue to grow in the short-term remains to be seen, Wolters told Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.)

“We take a conditions-based approach, and we look at the issues second by second, minute by minute. I would just tell you that based off the dynamic environment that exists today, that number could change,” Wolters said. “I suspect that it probably will, and in which direction will be determined based off conditions in the environment.”

That dynamic environment was highlighted as Wicker asked Wolters about recent reports that Russia has pledged to scale-back operations near the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv as its focus has shifted to the eastern part of the country.

Those shifts “are exactly what we see from a EUCOM perspective,” Wolters confirmed.

Broken ARRW: Hypersonics Program Faces Uncertain Future after 2023

March 28, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

The Air Force’s Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon may be running out of chances to prove its worth.

The service’s 2023 budget request does not include any procurement funds for the troubled hypersonics program, and though officials said they remain committed to the program in 2023, its future is less certain.

“[We’re] not walking away. It’s funded in FY 23,” Maj. Gen. James D. Peccia III, deputy assistant secretary for budget, told reporters. “And then we’ll make an assessment after that.”

ARRW has hit a number of setbacks recently, failing three booster flight tests in 2021—failing to leave the pylon in April, separating but failing to fire its booster in July, and once again not separating from the plane in December.

Those failures led to Congress stripping out the planned procurement of 12 ARRW missiles in the 2022 budget; the Air Force had asked for $160 million on the assumption that the tests would go smoothly, paving the way for the missile to rapidly enter service.

There is no plan to restore that procurement in 2023.

“There are no procurement quantities for ARRW in this budget,” Peccia. “There’s actually a … sliver of procurement for ARRW this year, but we expect to do a reprogramming with the Hill to move that into RDT&E, so there won’t be any procurement for ARRW in ‘23.”

Instead, the budget funds $577 million in research, development, test, and evaluation for the department’s hypersonic programs, which includes both ARRW and the Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile. That marks a substantial increase from the $438 million requested in 2022, but those funds aren’t split evenly between the two.

“We increased funding for hypersonic weapons, for the ARRW and the HACM program, and primarily the increase lies within the HACM, the hypersonic cruise missile,” Peccia said.

HACM has received less funding than ARRW in the past, only really emerging as one of the Air Force’s top hypersonic efforts in the fall of 2020—it started receiving RDT&E funding as its own line item in fiscal 2022.

But in the March 28 budget rollout, officials highlighted HACM as a key line of effort for the Air Force’s hypersonic efforts.

“I think when it comes to hypersonic weapons, we’ve got to have the right mix, and so we’re committed not only to ARRW [but] as well as to HACM, and that’s why you see RDT&E funding for both of those,” Air Force Under Secretary Gina Ortiz Jones said.

The Air Force’s budget overview documents did not specify how much of the $577 million requested is intended for ARRW, a boost-glide weapon that is fired into the atmosphere and uses the energy from its rocket to fly toward its target, or HACM, which uses air-breathing engine technology for propulsion.

In providing an overview of the entire Defense Department’s hypersonic efforts, Vice Adm. Ronald A. Boxall, director of force structure, resources, and assessment for the Joint Staff, said the Air Force plans to field HACM by fiscal 2027, but he made no mention of when ARRW might enter service.

“This budget completes prototyping of the Air Force Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon, ARRW, and fields the Hypersonic [Attack] Cruise Missile, HACM, on the F-15 in 2027,” Boxall said.

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall recently has cautioned against placing too much emphasis on hypersonic weapons simply to match China’s focus in the area. Instead, Kendall has hinted that hypersonic weapons may not be “cost-effective,” saying the service will likely only have small quantities of them as a result.

In a February webcast with the Air Force Association’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, Kendall was noncommittal about whether ARRW’s testing woes could put it on the chopping block.

The ARRW “has had some test problems,” he acknowledged. “That’s not unusual in a development program.” Kendall said the Air Force is still investigating the most recent test failure, and he hopes “that we’re learning from that experience.” But the service will have to “make some decisions about that weapon system, … like everything else,” depending on the results of the investigation.

Missile Warning, Resiliency, and More Transfers Boost the Space Force’s 2023 Budget Prospects by a Lot

March 28, 2022 | By Amanda Miller

The Space Force could be in for a big budget boost in fiscal 2023 if the Biden administration’s request for a 36 percent bump has anything to do with it.

The Space Force’s $24.5 billion budget request for 2023 is a $6.5 billion increase over the $18 billion enacted by Congress for fiscal 2022. Accounting, in part, for the increase, the Space Development Agency’s budget becomes part of the Space Force’s for the first time in 2023. A greater emphasis on missile tracking and more interservice troop transfers also factor in.

The additional money will help to achieve Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall’s No. 1 “operational imperative” for the department of establishing a “resilient and effective space order of battle and architectures.”

The budget request is “a critical first step to combat emerging space threats” and to transition military space activities “from combat support to warfighting,” according to the Department of the Air Force’s overview of its budget request. The amount generally covers weapons and sustainment, education, training, support of the Space Force’s field commands, and carrying out missions, headquarters operations, and the duties of centers for doctrine, intelligence, and professional military education.

While the Space Force’s “indispensable support … underpins all other joint operations,” that support is “insufficient against the pacing challenge,” which is China, said Undersecretary of the Air Force Gina Ortiz Jones during a Pentagon briefing on the Department of the Air Force’s budget request March 28.

Within the Space Force’s $24.5 billion request, it would get $4 billion for operations and maintenance, including 200 more uniformed Guardians to bring the service’s total to 8,600. The O&M budget also includes the Defense Department’s proposed 4.6 percent pay raises for both military and civilian personnel; and 4.2 percent and 3.4 percent higher allowances for housing and subsistence, respectively. It adds $205 million above fiscal 2022 to fund weapons system sustainment at 83 percent of the requirement, an increase of 4 percent; plus $67 million to elevate six of the service’s space deltas—roughly equivalent to Air Force wings—to be fully mission capable.

The Space Force’s proposed $3.6 billion procurement budget includes three National Security Space Launches plus a launch for the Space Development Agency along with “investments in two follow-on” Global Positioning System satellites, “which will provide new capabilities including a spot beam that provides a 100x anti-jam improvement over current encrypted military code,” according to the overview.

A bigger percentage of the Space Force’s budget would go to research, development, testing, and evaluation than any other service’s at about 65 percent, or $15.8 billion of the Space Force’s request, an increase of $4.5 billion over the fiscal 2022 request. The amount is “to protect and defend current space assets, build more resilient and defendable architectures, and develop offensive capabilities to challenge adversary space capabilities,” according to the overview.

A slide presented March 28 specified $3.5 billion for Next-Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared geosynchronous missile-warning satellites, up $1 billion from fiscal 2022; $566 million for the Evolved Strategic SATCOM and $121 million for the Protected Tactical Enterprise Service programs to resist communication jamming; and $231 million for rapid prototyping of the ground-based Deep Space Advanced Radar Capability, or DARC, for space domain awareness.

Jones said during an earlier briefing with members of the press March 25 that space domain awareness, along with missile warning and tracking, contribute to the DOD’s broader goal of “integrated deterrence.”

The new budget request asks for $1.03 billion for a “Resilient Missile Warning/Missile Tracking” program. Air Force Maj. Gen. James D. Peccia III, the deputy assistant secretary for budget, would only say March 28 that the “initiative is looking at all orbits.”

The Space Development Agency’s National Defense Space Architecture being designed for low Earth orbit accounts for another $987 million for missile warning and tracking in the Space Force’s RDT&E budget along with $461 million for its data transport satellites. Congress added $550 million on top of the SDA’s fiscal 2022 budget request of $936.7 million to speed up its missile tracking layer. SDA officials told reporters March 15 that they estimated SDA’s first batch of 28 infrared missile-tracking satellites would total $2.5 billion and that the satellites could be in orbit by 2025.

Pentagon Requests $773 Billion for 2023, Sends New Defense Strategy to the Hill

March 28, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

The Pentagon’s $773 billion fiscal 2023 budget request, released March 28, is highlighted by inflation, a classified new National Defense Strategy, and a continued focus on China as the pacing challenge while also categorizing Russia as an “acute” threat.

When accounting for inflation, the top line represents a growth of 1.5 percent over the fiscal 2022 appropriations approved just a few weeks ago, Defense Department comptroller Michael J. McCord told reporters. Without inflation, it is a 4 percent increase.

The 2023 request marks a $30.7 billion increase over the $742.3 billion enacted budget for fiscal 2022. But nearly half of that increase—some $14 billion—was attributed to the Pentagon’s need to incorporate “goods and services inflation increase in our buying power,” McCord said. Another $6 billion went to increases in compensation for personnel, including a 4.6 percent pay raise for service members and civilian employees, increases in the Basic Allowance for Housing and Basic Allowance for Subsistence, and a raised minimum wage for contractors.

Still, McCord and other Pentagon officials stressed that concerns about inflation, which has hit record highs in recent months, is difficult to project forward and subject to change.

“We built into this ‘23 budget the best information that we have at the time we built the budget,” Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen H. Hicks told reporters. “As in any year, we’re going to be working that as we get closer to the reality, and even in execution, we’ll have to work on that.”

The 2023 budget request, McCord said, “is directly informed by the new National Defense Strategy … which in turn, builds on the Secretary’s message to the force and outlines our defense priority.”

The full text of that new NDS is still not public—a classified version was presented to Congress, while an unclassified fact sheet was released along with the budget.

The strategy outlines four defense priorities, nearly all of which can be directly tied to China. They are:

“Defending the homeland, paced to the growing multi-domain threat posed by the PRC.
Deterring strategic attacks against the United States, allies, and partners.
Deterring aggression, while being prepared to prevail in conflict when necessary, prioritizing
the PRC challenge in the Indo-Pacific, then the Russia challenge in Europe
Building a resilient Joint Force and defense ecosystem.”

McCord outlined three main ways the 2023 request funds the new strategy: integrated deterrence, campaigning, and building enduring advantages.

Integrated Deterrence

Integrated deterrence, which incorporates a broad range of capabilities across domains and locations to deter adversaries, has been a frequent theme of DOD leaders for months now. The 2023 request includes $276 billion for procurement and research and development—the largest-ever such request. This includes $56.5 billion to advance air power, with the procurement of 61 F-35s across the department, of which 33 will be F-35As for the Air Force, 24 F-15EXs, 15 KC-46s, the B-21 bomber, among others. It also includes more than $34 billion for modernization across all three legs of the nuclear triad and $24.7 billion for missile defense.

“The three legs of the nuclear triad provide mutually supporting capabilities, and our investment to modernize the triad will help ensure that nuclear weapons continue to deter aggression and protect our allies and partners,” said Vice Adm. Ronald A. Boxall, director of force structure, resources, and assessment for the Joint Staff.

Also included in integrated deterrence is the Pentagon’s efforts in long-range fires, particularly hypersonic missiles. With $7.2 billion total in funding, the budget calls for the Army to be the first to field a hypersonic missile in 2023, followed by the Navy in 2025.

The Air Force, meanwhile, isn’t scheduled to field a hypersonic cruise missile until fiscal 2027—the 2023 budget completes prototyping for the Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon, but it doesn’t actually procure any of them, Boxall said.

Campaigning

Campaigning “refers to being intentional about the actions you take in your presence, in your posture, all of the things that you do on a more day-to-day basis, especially in the combatant commands, to achieve your strategic ends,” McCord said.

In the Indo-Pacific, that means prioritizing China, with $6.1 billion for the Pacific Deterrence Initiative. Much of that funding goes toward new missile warning and tracking architecture, the defense of Guam, and more training and experimentation in the region, McCord said.

For Europe, campaigning means recognizing Russia as an “acute threat,” a phrase repeated by officials across the budget rollout and a seeming nod to Russia’s recent invasion of Ukraine. That invasion has sparked a strong response from the U.S. and NATO leaders, and the budget request includes funds to provide assistance to Ukraine as well as more than $5 billion for security cooperation and updated capabilities with allies.

But while the Russia-Ukraine conflict has drawn global attention, its effect on the 2023 budget was limited, McCord claimed.

“We did not feel that what is happening today altered the picture that China is the No. 1 issue to keep our eye on,” McCord said. “Obviously you can draw your own conclusions about Russia’s performance on the battlefield … but … all these documents were pretty much finalized some time ago, so this is not attempting to be a commentary on what’s happening last week or the week before.”

Building Enduring Advantages

Efforts to build enduring advantages run the gamut, from investments in personnel issues and military construction, to funds dedicated to dealing with the effects of climate change, to a record-breaking research budget.

For service members, in addition to the 4.6 percent pay raise, the budget also includes increased fee assistance for child care, $2 billion in family housing construction, and another $1.3 billion for quality-of-life and medical facilities.

Other efforts to bolster talent retention and support for service members include expanded diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility initiatives and $479 million to implement the recommendations of the Independent Review Commission on Sexual Assault in the Military, which DOD leaders have pledged to follow.

For research and development of future capabilities, the budget calls for $130.1 billion, the largest RDT&E budget ever and a 9.5 percent increase over the the fiscal 2022 budget, itself already the largest research budget ever. Technologies such as artificial intelligence and 5G are particular focus points for more research.

And for the first time, the budget breaks down just how much money the entire department is spending on climate change initiatives: $3.1 billion, with $2 billion for installation resiliency, $807 million for science and technology, $247 million for operational energy, and $28 million for contingency preparedness.

The decision to separate out the funding for climate change is in keeping with the Biden administration’s stated focus on the issue as a national security threat, but it does raise the possibility that some lawmakers may try to target the account while making cuts or shifting funds within the budget.

Hicks, however, expressed confidence that wouldn’t happen.

“I don’t think it creates an attack surface [for lawmakers],” Hicks said. “I think it demonstrates the administration’s commitment to ensuring we are resilient. We have to be resilient to cyber threats. We have to be resilient to climate change. Every lawmaker comes from a state or district where they are seeing the effects firsthand: rising sea levels, drought, fires, hurricanes … and that affects our installations. So we’ve seen a clear alignment in a bipartisan way with Congress on the installation resiliency piece of this.”

Likely Budget Battle in Congress

While Hicks may not expect a battle over the budget’s climate initiatives, it seems likely that there will be a real push by some in Congress to increase the budget’s overall top line, given the impact of inflation and pressure by many lawmakers to increase spending for 3 percent to 5 percent real growth.

Already, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has released a statement saying “this budget neglects to sufficiently account for historic inflation. The Pentagon’s inflation assumptions for 2023 are almost certainly low, nor does the budget make up for current record inflation rates.”

A similar process unfolded in the last budget cycle. President Joe Biden’s budget request of $715 billion for DOD in fiscal 2022 was a slight decrease when adjusted for inflation, and Congress quickly moved to increase that top line, with bipartisan support from the Senate Armed Services Committee and the House Armed Services Committee.

Air Force to Retire Half Its AWACS Fleet, Most JSTARS, Leaving ‘Small Gap’ in ISR

March 28, 2022 | By Abraham Mahshie

The Air Force plans to retire half its AWACS fleet of E-3 Sentries and most E-8C JSTARS in fiscal 2023 and 2024, but it anticipates a delay between the retirements and new space-based ISR capabilities that could replace them, Air Force leaders said as the 2023 budget request rolled out.

JSTARS aircraft “are not survivable—they’d be gone in a minute,” said Maj. Gen. James D. Peccia III, deputy assistant secretary for budget, explaining why the Air Force plans to retire 12 of 16 Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System, or JSTARS, aircraft by the end of fiscal ’24. The first eight of those aircraft would be retired in fiscal ’23, with four more aircraft going in 2024. Those funds would be redirected to develop more survivable intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, or ISR, capabilities.

Similarly, the Air Force plans to retire 15 E-3 Airborne Warning and Control System, or AWACS, aircraft from Tinker Air Force Base, Okla., also because of reliability and survivability concerns. “We’re going to a new capability,” Peccia said. The E-3 is “not survivable in a future fight, so it doesn’t bring us the capability we need.”

The Air Force intends to invest $227 million into E-3 AWACS recapitalization development, almost certain to be an acquisition of Boeing’s E-7 Wedgetail. Australia already operates a version of that aircraft.

Peccia admitted there will be a capability gap as new capabilities, including space-based ISR, are being developed. “There may be a small gap, but not anything we can’t manage,” he said.

Both fleets are about 40 years old, and readiness and maintenance are growing challenges.

For now, however, the 16 remaining AWACS aircraft would be retained at Kadena Air Base, Japan, and Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, Peccia said.

He said the Air Force will decide in 2023 on a new platform to provide the airborne moving target indicator, or AMTI, capability that JSTARS historically has offered. The Air Force will continue to operate multiple ground surveillance ISR platforms, such as the RQ-4 Global Hawk, “across the duration of the coverage reduction caused by JSTARS retirement.”

Peccia said a space-based solution is still in an option: “We are researching space-based capabilities.”

Air Force Would Reduce Fleet by 250 Old Aircraft, Bring on 82-plus New Ones

March 28, 2022 | By John A. Tirpak

The Air Force is asking Congress to retire 150 airplanes in its fiscal 2023 budget, including 33 of its advanced F-22 fighters, but it would also hand off 100 MQ-9 Reaper remotely piloted aircraft to another government agency and buy more than 82 other new airplanes, including an accelerated buy of F-15EX Eagle IIs. Its planned buy of the F-35 fighter would be pared back by 15 aircraft as the service waits for a more advanced model.

For the fiscal 2022 budget, out of 201 legacy types the Air Force asked to retire, Congress allowed the service to divest all except 42 A-10s.

Air Force leaders signaled that after “due diligence” and market research, they will likely seek to buy the Boeing E-7 Wedgetail as a replacement for the E-3 AWACS. They threw cold water on the notion of a competition for a second modern tanker, indicating they’ll likely stick with a modified version of Boeing’s KC-46 Pegasus. And, it will also curtail purchase of the HH-60W Combat Rescue Helicopter at 75 aircraft instead of 113, saying it will have enough aircraft for the mission after this year, given the changing nature of combat search and rescue.

Two new unmanned aircraft among Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall’s “operational imperatives”—a tactical unmanned escort for fighters and a strategic-range unmanned bomber—feature in the budget only as research and development projects. Together, they are called the Autonomous Collaborative Program, and are funded at $113 million, but are not yet a program of record.

Divestments

The fiscal 2023 budget request seeks retirements of the following aircraft:

A-10

The Air Force asks to retire 21 jets from the Fort Wayne, Ind., Air National Guard facility and transition the unit to 21 F-16s.

F-22

Of its 36 Block 20 F-22s—which are used for training and not configured as frontline combat jets—USAF is looking to retire 33, which will bring the F-22 fleet down to 153 airplanes. Kendall, in an embargoed March 25 budget brief for the press, said upgrading the aircraft to full combat capability would not be cost effective given that the F-22 is set to phase out in about 10 years. He said the savings will be applied directly to the Next Generation Air Dominance family of systems, which will backfill the F-22.

The affected aircraft “are being used for training right now but are not combat capable,” Kendall said. “So, we see an efficiency, effectively, in removing those aircraft at this point.” However, USAF asked for $344 million to upgrade the sensors and other systems on the remaining Raptors in fiscal 2023.

E-3 AWACS

The Air Force wants to retire 15 aircraft at Tinker Air Force Base, Okla. The E-3 has become difficult to maintain, with poor mission capable rates, and Kendall said the service will do market research “due diligence” and will make a decision “within the next several months” on whether to pursue the E-7 as a replacement. Only 16 AWACS will remain, but the Air Force did not say when they will phase out completely.

E-8 Joint STARS

The budget plan calls for retirement of eight JSTARS in 2023 and four more in 2024, with funding “redirected to emerging ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) capabilities that can operate in highly contested environments,” a service spokesperson said. Kendall has suggested these capabilities can largely be supplied by space-based assets.

“Basically, both the JSTARS fleet and the AWACS fleet are aging out and need to be replaced,” Kendall said.

C-130H

USAF would give up 12 C-130s from Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala., but is buying four new C-130-J30s, for a net reduction of eight aircraft. USAF budget director Maj. Gen. James D. Peccia III said the C-130s would be backfilled with the new MH-139 helicopter.

T-1 Trainer

The Air Force is introducing new simulation and training techniques to obviate the need to re-engine or replace the T-1, relying on the T-6 for the newly-determined actual flying hours. Aircraft will be redistributed among Undergraduate Pilot Training bases and will phase out as new simulation and training gear is brought online.

KC-135

The Air Force is looking to retire 13 KC-135s from the Guard and Reserve, converting the losing units to the KC-46A Pegasus. The service will take “a measured amount of risk” in the gap between the departure of the old aircraft and arrival of the new, a spokesperson said. Four of the KC-135s will come from March Air Reserve Base, Calif., and nine from Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, N.J. Kendall referred to this divestiture as a “modest” reduction, but acknowledged, “we’re going to need some cooperation from Congress on that.”

MQ-9

Kendall said the Air Force is “taking 100 MQ-9s and moving them to another government organization.” He did not specify the organization. “It comes up as a divestment, but it’s not a change in capability,” he said.

Procurement

The Air Force’s list of new aircraft buys is a bit shorter than the list of divestitures.

F-35

After several years of requesting 48 F-35s—and being given up to 12 more each of those years by Congress—the Air Force is requesting only 33 F-35s in 2023.

There’s “a whole collection of reasons” for the reduction, Kendall said. First, the performance of the F-35’s Tech Refresh 3 update is “not what we wanted,” he said, and the TR3 is the basis for the Block 4 version of the jet, which USAF has long said it prefers to buy. The Air Force is investing some additional money in the Advanced Engine Technology Program (AETP) that could power an upgraded F-35. It sees an opportunity to accelerate the F-15EX and is continuing to put money against the Next Generation Air Dominance program. After investing in those areas, in the context of “the whole TacAir portfolio,” Kendall said the F-35 reduction makes sense.

Moreover, “if you look further out in the FYDP (Future Years Defense Plan) that we’ll provide, the numbers come back up,” he said.

Asked if the Air Force remains committed to the fighter, Kendall said, “Of course.”

“We’re 15 years into production, and we’ll be building F-35s probably another 15 years. So, absolutely.” Kendall said the F-35 will continue to be, as Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. has said, the “cornerstone” of the tactical fleet “for the foreseeable future. So there’s no question about that.”

Kendall noted that the AETP is a costly development program and that USAF is still courting “partners” among the other services to share the cost and the benefit of a new powerplant.

F-15EX

The Air Force doubles its 2022 request, from 12 Eagle IIs to 24 in 2023.

Kendall said Brown wants to “replace F-15Cs as quickly as possible,” and the availability of the F-15EX makes that possible. “He did say it was on the order of six months to a year in terms of time to replace those aircraft, which are aging out very quickly,” Kendall said, referring to the time it takes to transition an F-15 squadron to an F-15EX, rather than the F-35.

“It also provides some operational features,” Kendall added. “It’s really a 4.5 generation kind of an airplane, but it provides more weapons carriage capabilities, writ large, than the F-35 does. So, for the homeland defense mission, and for some defensive counterair applications overseas, it has features that are desirable, operationally.”

Peccia said the F-15C/Ds will retire completely by fiscal 2026.

“One of the fundamental things motivating me on the operational imperatives in the TacAir area is the affordability of the future force,” Kendall noted. If we’re only buying NGAD, which is a very expensive platform; F-35s at $80 million a copy; and F-15EXs at $80 million a copy; we can’t afford the Air Force. So we’ve got to get a mix of lower-cost platforms, as well.” These, he said, would fall under the research effort toward Autonomous Collaborative Programs.

B-21 Bomber

The FY’23 budget grows by $1.7 billion to start low-rate initial production of the B-21 bomber, but Peccia said he could not reveal how many aircraft that will entail. At the time of the program’s unveiling, USAF officials said low-rate would probably entail five aircraft a year for several years.

KC-46A

The Air Force upped its 2022 buy from 14 to 15 in 2023, adding $220 million for the additional aircraft and getting the KC-46 rate up to where it was already planned to be. Kendall said he thinks the Air Force will likely stay with the KC-46 as it plans its next tranche of tanker buys.

“We had a KC-X, Y, and Z” scheme, Kendall said. “As we look at our requirements further out, [they] start to look more like a modified KC-46 than they do a completely new design.” Although the Air Force will do its “due diligence” and market research on other options, such as Lockheed Martin’s LMXT version of the A330 Multi-Role Tanker Transport, Kendall didn’t offer optimism about a new tanker contest.

“I want to be very transparent about this,” he said. “I think there’s still a possibility of competition out there, but as we’ve looked at our requirements, the likelihood of a competition has come down.” He said USAF will come to some decisions “over the next several months” and “decide where we want to go.”

HH-60W

The Air Force’s plan was to buy 113 HH-60W helicopters for Combat Search and Rescue, but USAF said it will “complete the buy” with 10 more aircraft in 2023.

“That’ll get us to 75 helicopters,” Peccia said. Kendall said that, given the shift in focus toward the Indo-Pacific, the need for the HH-60W diminished.

“It’s been reduced,” he said. “The scenarios we’re most worried about are not the same as they once were.” The HH-60W was a good solution in counterinsurgencies but doesn’t match the requirement against peer adversaries.

“The acts of aggression like we’re seeing in Europe, or we might end up seeing in the Pacific with the pacing challenge, puts us in a very different scenario, from a combat rescue point of view.”

Last August, Air Combat Command chief Gen. Mark D. Kelly said Airmen who go down in contested areas of the Pacific may have to get themselves to a place where they can be picked up, given that the air defense threat will be so challenging to manage a rescue.

MH-139

The Air Force is buying five MH-139s in fiscal 2023. Peccia said they were in the 2022 budget but had several certifications yet to be completed. Those are now done, or will be in “the next couple of months,” and the program can proceed, he said. The goal remains to buy 80 of the Gray Wolf helos. The helicopter will replace the aging UH-1Ns, which are used for security at the Air Force’s nuclear missile fields, VIP transport in the Air Force District of Washington and Japan, and survival, evasion, resistance, and escape training.

USAF Seeks ‘Transformational’ Change in 2023 Budget as It Looks to Keep Pace With China

March 28, 2022 | By Abraham Mahshie and John A. Tirpak

The Department of the Air Force is requesting $234.1 billion in its 2023 budget request, of which $40.1 billion is “pass-through funds,” or money the services will never see, while $169.5 billion is for USAF and $24.5 billion is for the Space Force. The budget request looks to cut 240 aircraft, including 33 fifth-generation F-22 stealth fighters and the majority of the AWACS fleet, to pay for additional research and development, long-delayed nuclear modernization programs, and the growing Space Force. It also significantly reduces the F-35 buy.

The 2023 budget request represents a $12 billion increase over the $182 billion enacted by Congress in 2022—one of the largest increases in years. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said the 2023 request attempts a “transformational” change in the services, motivated by China’s rapid modernization and taking into account Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Service leaders view the 2023 request as a prelude to even more profound “transformational” changes in fiscal 2024.

Research, development, test, and evaluation would get a 20 percent boost when compared to the 2022 budget request, while procurement would get a 15 percent increase. Operations and maintenance would go up four percent, while military personnel accounts and military construction would increase by 2.3 percent and two percent, respectively.

The service would pay for much of the R&D increase by retiring some 140 aircraft, including the bulk of the E-3 AWACS and E-8 J STARS fleets, and about a sixth of the inventory of Air Force’s premier air superiority fighter the F-22. USAF would also transfer 100 MQ-9 Reaper remotely piloted aircraft to an unnamed federal agency, so its total reduction comes to 240 airplanes. On the plus side, it is buying 82 new aircraft, for a net change of 158 fewer airplanes.

In last year’s budget request, USAF wanted to retire 201 airplanes and buy 91. Congress allowed all of the divestments, with the exception of 42 A-10 Warthogs.

Kendall said the service can’t afford to wait for transformative change achieved in small, incremental steps.

“What drives that is the threat,” he told reporters in an embargoed March 25 budget briefing. “We need to move aggressively.” Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown’s “accelerate or change” motto “is very apt,” Kendall said. “What you’ll see in the budget is part of the transformation that we’re trying to achieve.” Despite the “acute concern” over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, China remains “the pacing threat,” he emphasized.

Kendall said the budget was built expecting “aggression” from Russia against Ukraine or China against Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific. “Those of us who had access to the intelligence were not surprised by what happened,” he said. “And so, our planning took into account that this type of event could occur.”

While the services for many years funded their war consumption and recapitalization of lost assets under the “Overseas Contingency Operations” account, such funding is now either funded through the base budget or a special congressional appropriation.

The boost in R&D, however, is only a “down payment” on future capabilities, he said. There will be more “hard choices” coming in the fiscal year 2024 budget and the outyears, Kendall warned.

The budget makes a big payment on the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) increasing funds by $1.1 billion as the service moves toward an initial operational capability date of 2029. It also adds $354 million to the B-21 bomber program to continue engineering, manufacturing, and development and to support nuclear certification. The Space Force budget, meanwhile, invests heavy in missile warning and tracking, air and ground moving target technology, and space domain awareness, senior Air Force leadership told journalists at the budget preview briefing.

While air mobility is largely set, Kendall noted, “the transformation is more focused” on “the tactical side and the global strike side.”

The budget only provides for 33 F-35 fighters, versus previous years’ requests for 48, and Congress’ frequent adds above even that level. Kendall said the reduction was to buy some time for Lockheed Martin to fix problems with the Technical Refresh 3 upgrade that makes the Block 4 version possible. He insisted that the Air Force “remains committed” to the F-35 and to the total buy of 1,763. “We’ll probably be buying the F-35 another 15 years,” he said.

Retired Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, dean of AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, said the F-35 buy is the “smallest number in years.

The budget also calls for a speed-up in the acquisition of the F-15EX, which doubles from 12 bought last year to 24 in FY’23. Kendall said there’s an “opportunity” to replace the existing F-15C fleet with F-15EX, and the plan is to buy them as swiftly as possible.

“Given an F-35A production line that today can build 80 F-35As annually, this is truly high-risk to a vital program,” Deptula said. “The choice to accelerate purchases of the F-15EX—a valuable, but technologically inferior airplane—is helpful, but not adequate to shore up the Air Force’s declining combat capacity. USAF’s FY23 budget request results in numbers less than those required to sustain existing force structure. Congress should not allow that to happen.”

The 33 F-22s being retired are of the Block 20 model, and are used as training airplanes. It would be too costly to modernize them to a combat-capable configuration, said USAF budget director Maj. Gen. James D. Peccia III. Even so, the F-22 fleet would get $344 million for sensor upgrades and other improvements.

“When you put it all together, we ended up deciding to take a reduction of F-35s,” Kendall said of the overall tactical plan.

There’s also $113 million in a line item for “Autonomous Collaborative Programs,” the unmanned tactical and strategic platforms Kendall sees as complementing the B-21 and Next-Generation Air Dominance fleets. Though he noted it’s not yet a program of record.

Kendall explained that while Russia posed “an acute concern,” in planning the budget, “the pacing challenge is still China.”

Research and development accounts for 25 percent of the total Department of the Air Force budget, or $49.2 billion, divided between $33.4 billion for the Air Force and $15.8 million for the Space Force.

GBSD tops the Air Force category with a $3.6 billion investment, followed by the B-21 at $3.25 billion.

Research, Development, Test and Evaluation investment also calls for a $1.66 billion investment in the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) sixth-generation fighter and $1.08 billion in the F-35A. The NGAD investment is for advanced sensors and air vehicle technology.

Hypersonics research is proposed to receive $577 million divided between fighter-launched Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile (HACM) and the bomber-launched Air Launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW). Kendall has said he plans to reduce the emphasis on hypersonics because while they are an asymmetric necessity for China, USAF has different priorities. Peccia said that most of the $138 million increase would be directed toward HACM.

The Space Force will absorb the Space Development Agency (SDA) budget in 2023, and invest an additional $1 billion for the ground and geosynchronous orbit space segments of the Next Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared (OPIR) missile warning system, a constellation of new satellites. In all, Next Gen OPIR would be slated for $3.48 billion.

Another $1 billion would go to resilient missile warning and missile tracking to address hypersonic weapons and maneuverable reentry vehicles. Meanwhile, $987 million would go toward missile warning and tracking. On the acquisition side, the Space Force proposes a $1.1 billion investment in three additional National Security Space launches and $314 million for three SDA launches.

The Air Force end strength will decrease by 4,900 to 510,400 in fiscal 23, with Kendall indicating that would happen by attrition. The Space Force will add 200 Guardians to its ranks.

Airmen will receive a 4.6 percent pay raise, a 4.2 percent basic allowance housing raise, and a fund of $300,000 will be created for basic needs allowance that Airmen can apply for under special economic circumstances. Inflation in the budget accounts for some $6.3 billion, or a rate of 2.2 percent, in line with government standards.

While the President’s Budget is a wish list until it passes Congress, Kendall was hopeful that like last year he will get the divestments he needs to transform the services for the future.

“As we go forward, I think they’re going to be some hard choices. We are going to do some divestments,” said Kendall. “That change will continue, we have to do that. We have to really get rid of what I’ll call legacy equipment in order to have the resources to modernize.”

The Air Force Association praised the decision to fund long-delayed strategic nuclear modernization programs, such as the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent and B-21 bomber, as well as the boost in R&D funds. However, AFA president, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Bruce Wright, said the budget is insufficient to meet the growing demand for airpower around the globe.

“The Air Force budget remains flat at a time when it is shouldering costs for two legs of the nuclear triad and three decades of deferred modernization,” Wright said in a statement. “The United States justifiably surged investment in our land components funding to deal with Afghanistan and Iraq; to do that, the nation took risk and deferred investment in air and space. Now it is time to surge air and space to solve today’s threat-based demands.

US, Ukrainian leaders Meet in Warsaw as Russia Ramps Up Air Attacks on Ukraine

March 26, 2022 | By Abraham Mahshie

As Russia ramps up its air campaign on Ukraine, U.S. and Ukrainian leaders met in Warsaw to find ways to fight back Russian aggression.

Ukraine’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba tweeted a photo on March 26 of U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III meeting with himself and other Ukrainian leaders. “This special 2+2 format allows us to seek practical decisions in both political and defense spheres in order to fortify Ukraine’s ability to fight back Russian aggression,” he said.

The meeting comes after President Joe Biden called a NATO leaders summit, followed by meetings with European and G-7 counterparts, to unite allies and partners in the ongoing sanctions against Russian leaders.

The Pentagon said March 25 that Russia had dug into defensive positions around Kyiv, instead focusing its land and air effort on “liberating” the Donbas region. But Ukraine may have taken back Kherson from Russia and the Ukrainian Navy blew up a re-supply ship at the port of Berdyansk on the Sea of Azov.

Ukraine’s recent moves could drive a wedge in Russia’s effort to lockdown the eastern region of the country, home to a large minority of Russian speakers. Russia has surrounded the port city of Mariupol for days, a missing link that would connect occupied Donbas with Crimea. For weeks, Defense Department officials have pointed to a perceived effort by Russia to lock down the south and pin down Ukrainian forces in the Joint Forces Operation area, where they have operated since Russia invaded in 2014.

“The Donbas is really where they’re … focused right now, on the ground and in the air,” a senior defense official told reporters March 25.

“They have tried to make up for the fact that they haven’t been able to move well on the ground by the increasing use of airstrikes, and missile strikes, and artillery strikes on population centers,” the official added. “They don’t appear to want to pursue Kyiv as aggressively, or frankly, at all.”

Moscow has fired more than 1,250 missiles into Ukraine, and despite reporting about high fail rates for its air-launched cruise missiles and a depleting missile inventory, DOD assesses that Russia still has over half its fire power.

Russia claimed March 25 that its first wartime objective has been achieved.

“The combat potential of the armed forces of Ukraine has been considerably reduced, which makes it possible to focus our core efforts on achieving the main goal—the liberation of Donbass,” Sergei Rudskoi, head of the Russian General Staff’s Main Operational Directorate, said in a statement.

The Defense Department rated Russia’s combat power as 85 to 90 percent of its pre-positioned strength. Recent DOD assessments of Ukraine’s combat power were estimated at 90 percent, based on constant replenishment from Western partners.

The defense official said parts of the $800 million defense package signed by President Joe Biden March 16 have started arriving in Ukraine, with additional shipments of anti-tank Javelins and anti-aircraft Stingers arriving in Europe in the coming days.

“Another flight arrived in the region today,” the defense official said in response to a question from Air Force Magazine.

Long-range air defense systems promised by Biden in a public address following Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s speech to Congress have yet to arrive. Likewise, after the U.S. rejected an offer by Poland March 8 to help transfer MiG-29s, the official clarified that “the United States is not putting a veto on people giving the Ukrainians aircraft.”

Even without the SAMS and aircraft it says it needs, Ukraine is still holding off the Russian advance.

Ukraine appears to be making headway in the south of the country, where Russian forces moving north from Crimea made their strongest advance and took the city of Kherson early in the month-long war.

“Kherson is actually contested territory again,” the official said.

Losing Kherson would split Russian forces and hinder an attack on Odesa. Russia also suffered a blow in another city it controls in the south, the port city of Berdyansk, where a Russian warship that had been resupplying troops was blown up pier side by the Ukrainian Navy.

DOD asserted that the Russian aim in the east could be motivated by an effort to consolidate gains, unless they are undone.

“They are putting their priorities and their effort in the east of Ukraine. And that’s where still, there remains a lot of heavy fighting,” the official said. “We think they are trying to … secure some sort of more substantial gains there as a potential negotiating tactic at the table.”