Arctic Edge Brings Army’s Patriot, Avenger Systems to Alaska for the First Time

March 22, 2022 | By Amy Hudson

Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska—The Army brought its Patriot surface-to-air missile system and short-range Avenger air defense system to Alaska for the first time to take part in the state’s largest joint force exercise, Arctic Edge, which wrapped up March 16.

The U.S. Northern Command exercise—and the inclusion of the Patriot and Avenger systems—were in the works long before Russia launched its war in Ukraine and caused tensions to skyrocket around the globe. But having the ground-based air defense systems in Alaska sends a clear message to adversaries who might consider striking the homeland.

“Having air defense forces in Alaska in cold weather times proves that we can do it,” said Army Maj. Gen. Frank M. Rice, commander of the South Carolina National Guard’s 263rd Army Air and Missile Defense Command.

“It sends a message to not only our adversaries but to our allies that we are willing and capable of defending the homeland,” Rice told Air Force Magazine during a recent visit to the base.

Officially known as the Phased Array Tracking to Intercept of Target, the Patriot has been heavily used in the U.S. Central Command area of operations. Arctic Edge was the first time the system had been tested in extreme cold. The Florida National Guard’s Avenger air defense system also figured in the exercise, tasked with defending a drop zone from cruise missiles roughly a 40-minute drive away from where the Patriots are set up on another remote section of the base.

Some of the Soldiers participating had never seen snow before, let alone minus 30-degree temperatures, yet they took turns manning the equipment 24 hours a day.

“Being that this is such a different environment, such a rigid environment, the equipment has issues,” Rice said. “We’re looking at training issues—things that we have to do differently here than we would at home.”

One of the lessons learned early on was that everything in the Arctic takes longer. The Patriot needs a level, stable platform to operate, but that didn’t exist on site. The Army began rotating small groups of Soldiers to Alaska in 2018 to plan the defense design, Rice said. But because the ground is frozen for so much of the year, there is a very small window of time in which construction can take place.

“All construction happens here in the two-and-a-half months of summer before the ground freezes again,” Rice said. To prepare for the exercise, Army North built a concrete platform to hold the system, driving rods into the ground during the summer then placing a narrow 4-foot flag pole on top for snow plows to spot the rods once they were covered in snow.

Traveling the icy roads took 50 percent longer, leading to the remote area of Eielson where the various components of the Patriot MIM-104 air defense system were set up on the new concrete pad—even though the area had already been cleared by plows and sat surrounded by four-foot walls of snow—said Capt. Robert Mock, commander of the Texas National Guard’s 5th Battalion, 52nd Air Defense Artillery Regiment, Alpha Battery as he walked through a waist-deep trench in the heavy Alaskan snow. The battery’s Soldiers dug the trench so they could get from the radar system and command center to the launcher itself.

“As you train into an environment, you can get faster, but the first time you have to do it slow because there are slip and fall hazards everywhere,” Rice said. “It’s such a different environment from what we normally operate in that it takes some learning, and we’re making those gates.”

Mock said each fire unit can hold up to eight launchers at a time, but the battery was directed to bring a minimum engagement package, which included just two launchers

The Patriot fires a solid-fuel interceptor capable of destroying tactical ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, or aircraft, with a range in excess of 60 miles, according to the Missile Defense Agency. Avenger, on the other hand, is intended for shorter-range, low-altitude air defense. It is equipped with a 50-caliber machine gun and two 360-degree rotating turrets with two missile pods capable of holding up to four Stinger missiles.

U.S. Army Specialist Michael Oneal, an Avenger crew member assigned to 1st Battalion, 265th Air Defense Artillery Regiment, Florida Army National Guard, prepares a camouflage tarp to place over a staged Avenger air defense system during Exercise Arctic Edge 2022 at Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska, March 10, 2022. The Avenger air defense system is a self-propelled surface-to-air missile system which provides mobile, short-range air defense protection for ground units against cruise missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles, low-flying fixed-wing aircraft, and helicopters. U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Joseph P. LeVeille.

Lt. Col. Tina Madovoy, commander of the 265th Air Defense Artillery Battalion, praised the Soldiers’ ability to overcome the harsh conditions, noting that in less than a year, some of the battalion went from operating at the Army’s National Training Center in Southern California, where temperatures routinely hit 115 degrees, to the Arctic, where temps dipped to about minus 20 at night.

“We knew things were going to be more challenging coming up here,” Madovoy said. “Everything is harder to do with the cold—it’s just realizing how difficult it is to overcome some of the challenges. But our Soldiers are very innovative, and creative, and very capable. And we’ve overcome everything we’ve had to do so far.”

Capt. Eric Grant, the logistics officer with the 1st Battalion, 265th Air Defense Artillery Regiment, said that prior to the exercise, the Florida Guard spent months winterizing the equipment it would bring to Alaska, to include pre-installed heaters and battery maintainers.

“So, it’s not stock. It’s not typical. It was one of the largest Arctic, I guess, installs in the state of Florida to date, and all of this Arctic equipment will stay on the vehicles in case we do have to come back for another exercise.”

During the exercise, the ground-based air defense systems integrated with the F-22 Raptors on alert as part of U.S. air sovereignty missions; the air operations center; the Navy’s USS Curtis Wilbur guided-missile destroyer, which was providing command and control, and Canadian mid-range radars based out of the border town of Beaver Creek. The systems tracked F-16s from the Ohio Air National Guard’s 180th Fighter Wing, which deployed to Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, along with some 100 Airmen to provide simulated adversary air.

180FW deploys to Alaska for AE22 — F-16 Fighting Falcons, assigned to the Ohio National Guard’s 180th Fighter Wing, sit on the flightline after a snowfall at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, during U.S. Northern Command Exercise Arctic Edge 2022, March 6, 2022. AE22 is a biennial defense exercise for U.S. Northern Command and Canadian Armed Forces designed to demonstrate and exercise a joint capability to rapidly deploy and operate in the Arctic. U.S. Air National Guard photo by Staff Sgt. Kregg York.

The objective during Arctic Edge was to work on tactics, techniques, and procedures for operating in such cold, harsh conditions, but officials did not rule out a live-fire exercise in the future.

“I don’t think that we’re limited in the scope of some of the things that we want to do in working together,” Lt. Gen. David A. Krumm, commander of the Alaskan Region of the North American Aerospace Defense Command, told Air Force Magazine. “I would just say that we want to make this larger. We want to make it more integrated.”

Krumm said the U.S. knows how to do missile defense, air defense, and ground defense, but that it is still working through exactly how to do all of those things in the Arctic region. “We have a very robust air defense with NORAD being here for so many decades,” he said. “This was just a very unique opportunity for us to integrate the maritime and land-based assets as well.”

That integration is key to defending the homeland, he emphasized.

“We are very fortunate this year, for the first time ever, to be able to get some of the air defense artillery assets up here to work together with our air operations center, with our fighter aircraft airborne,” he said. “We were able to operate and organize a common operating picture that allowed us to seamlessly work together to integrate ground-based air defenses, or GBAD, along with our air defenses, and for our pilots and our operators to train and work together in a different environment.”

Arctic Edge included some 1,000 U.S. and Canadian military personnel from more than 35 units. It’s linked to several other service-specific exercises that took place concurrently between February and March, including the National Guard’s Arctic Eagle, the U.S. Army’s Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Capability (JPMRC) exercise, and the U.S. Navy’s ICE-X.

Pentagon Acquisition Nominee Calls for ‘Much More Focus’ on Increasing Production Lines

March 22, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

The Pentagon and the defense industrial base need to up production lines for munitions, drones, and other key weapons systems—and quickly—the nominee to lead the Defense Department’s acquisition enterprise told a Senate panel March 22.

William LaPlante, nominated by President Joe Biden to serve as undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, also agreed with several members of the Senate Armed Services Committee during his confirmation hearing that more has to be done to increase competition and ensure future systems can be upgraded on the fly.

Most immediately, though, LaPlante advocated for more manufacturing across the board.

“I would say, to start with, we as a country have to have more hot production lines, period,” LaPlante told Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), who raised the issue of supply chain choke points during a potential conflict.

In recent months, concerns over the strength of the defense industrial base have grown. The National Defense Industrial Association gave the base’s health and readiness a failing grade in February, and a recent DOD report sounded the alarm on consolidation potentially raising costs and risks to the supply chain.

In March, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. and Space Force Chief of Space Operations Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond both referred to the industrial base as “fragile” and questioned whether it would be able to surge production if needed.

The question of surging production came up during LaPlante’s hearing, as Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) asked whether the Pentagon and Congress need to make immediate one-time investments to “expand production of key munitions” in the wake of Russia’s invasion into Ukraine.

“Yes, we do. I believe—and Senator, you said the words ‘hot production lines’—I believe we need multiple hot production lines, whether it be munitions, UASs, and the like,” said LaPlante. “They, by themselves, are a deterrent, and we need to put much more focus on that across the board.”

That focus on munitions and unmanned aircraft systems—both of which the U.S. has sent to Ukraine as part of military aid packages—came up again when Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) asked LaPlante what he would change to bolster production and ensure more research and development projects don’t stall in what is commonly called the “Valley of Death.”

“One would be to up the production lines of the production lines we currently have—munitions, UASs—and just get them higher production,” LaPlante said. “But the second is working all the weapon systems across the Valley of Death, to make sure we’re injecting technology into the systems we have, because we have the program officers over here that have the weapon systems, and we have the technologists over here. We have to make that pipeline goal and make it a metric for success.”

LaPlante’s focus on increasing large-scale production is in line with Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall’s stated focus on delivering real operational capabilities over “one or two leave-behind unmaintainable token prototypes that came out of an experiment.” LaPlante and Kendall previously worked together when LaPlante was the Air Force’s acquisition boss and Kendall was the acquisition chief for the Pentagon—in his opening statement March 22, LaPlante thanked Kendall for his mentorship.

LaPlante’s background in the Air Force came up again when he was asked by Inhofe which programs the DOD should take more risks with in hopes of encouraging innovation.

“We learned the lesson from both [USS] Ford, and we’d like to think we learned a lesson from F-35 that you have to have mature technologies; you have to be thoughtful in the design; and you have to adhere to independent cost estimates right from the beginning,” LaPlante said. “It takes a little bit of time at the beginning, saves a lot of trouble later.

“But to get innovation, what you have to do is we have to build the modular systems like we did for the B-21. And so once you have the open system, then you can be upgrading the technology very fast. And the technology that matures will earn its way on and you have continuous upgrades. It can be done.”

The development of the B-21, which is moving closer and closer to its first flight, has been held up as an example of innovation by many, including Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and then-Air Force Global Strike Command head Gen. Timothy M. Ray.

The B-21 “was designed with an open standard right from the beginning, such that continuous technology can be upgraded for the next decades to come. That should be in all our systems,” LaPlante told King.

LaPlante also noted that increased consolidation in the defense industry threatened to drive up prices and decrease competition. To combat that, he said, DOD needs to once again focus on operational capabilities and overcoming the Valley of Death.

“Small businesses and industry have to see that there’s skin in the game, that they have a viable line of business if they’re successful and innovative, [and] they don’t just get a one-off contract for a prototype,” LaPlante said.

LaPlante’s nomination faced little resistance in the SASC hearing, putting him one step closer to confirmation for a position that hasn’t had a permanent appointee since January 2021. Biden’s first pick for the job, Defense Innovation Unit head Michael Brown, withdrew his nomination amid scrutiny that he allegedly circumvented hiring regulations at DIU.

Air War Ramps Up in Russia-Ukraine Conflict as Russian PGMs Run Out

March 21, 2022 | By Abraham Mahshie

The air war is changing over Ukraine, with Russia picking up the pace of sorties but running low on precision-guided munitions, a senior defense official said March 21. Russia also has allegedly fired hypersonic weapons, a move possibly made to gain momentum after nearly a month of fighting and no major population centers under its control.

“They are beginning to face some inventory issues with precision-guided munitions,” a senior defense official told reporters on a telephone briefing, explaining the increased use by Russia of unguided bombs, or “dumb bombs.”

The official also said Russia is seeing increased fail rates of its PGMs.

“They’re just not operating. They’re failing. Either they’re failing to launch, or they’re failing to hit the target, or they’re failing to explode on contact,” the official added. “Why would you need a hypersonic missile fired from not that far away to hit a building?”

Pentagon officials have not confirmed Russian claims that it used hypersonic weapons March 19 and March 20 to hit an ammunition depot in the Carpathian Mountains of Southwestern Ukraine and a fuel depot in Kostiantynivka, in Donetsk oblast. The second strike was just beyond the contact line of territory that Russian-backed forces have controlled since 2014. Both strikes are believed to have been fired from aircraft operating from Russian airspace.

“It could be that they’re running low on precision-guided munitions and feel like they need to tap into that resource,” the official said. “It could be that they’re trying to send a message to the West, but also to Ukraine, and trying to gain some leverage at the negotiating table.”

Securing Air Defenses

In a televised interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria on March 20, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he was willing to sit down one on one at the negotiating table with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Earlier in the week, Zelensky asked the American Congress for help obtaining the S-300 missile defense systems possessed by numerous Eastern European countries.

DOD has repeatedly said it is working to facilitate a transfer that would help Ukraine to better protect its skies. While visiting Slovakia on March 17, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III secured a willingness to transfer an S-300, but the following day Bulgaria’s prime minister emphatically refused to transfer its S-300 systems, or any lethal defense assistance, to Ukraine.

“These are active consultations,” Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby said in a March 21 press briefing, “not only with that nation but many others about how to provide Ukraine the kinds of defensive capabilities, to include long-range air defense, that we know that they’re comfortable using, they’re trained on, that they already have in their inventory and whether that can be bolstered,” he explained.

Once secured, an S-300 could be in place in Ukraine within a week. The Wall Street Journal reported that Ukraine already operates some Russian air defense systems, such as the S-300, but is in need of more “to blunt Russia’s aircraft and missile attacks.”

Austin plans to accompany President Joe Biden to a NATO leaders summit in Brussels on March 24, followed by meetings in Poland on March 25.

As DOD works to get Ukraine more air defense systems, the Pentagon has said it will not stand in the way of unilateral combat aircraft transfers. On March 8, the U.S. refused a deal to take possession of Polish MiG-29s for onward transfer to Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Russia is stepping up its sorties.

“In the last 24-48 hours, we have seen air activity from both sides increase,” the senior defense official said.

The Pentagon assesses that Russia flew more than 300 sorties, but DOD declined to quantify the increase on the Ukrainian side. Ukraine had been flying as few as five to 10 daily sorties into contested airspace covered in large part by Russian surface-to-air missile systems.

After suffering more than 1,100 missile strikes, and with no NATO appetite for imposing a no-fly zone, Ukraine has increased its call for air defenses.

Russia may be attempting to strike more from the air before such systems are in place.

Russian ground forces are stalled outside Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Mariupol, the Sea of Azov port city that would help Russia form a land bridge from the Donbas region to Crimea. On March 21, Ukraine dismissed a Russian proposal to surrender Mariupol.

Thus far, Russia has taken control of just three cities, all in the south near heavily fortified Crimea. They are Kherson, Berdiansk, and Melitopol.

Russia is suffering setbacks in other tactical areas, the senior defense official said, from communications and command-and-control to logistical, sustainment, and surface-to-air integration.

“They are taking casualties every day,” the defense official said. “They are losing aircraft. They are losing armor and vehicles—there’s no doubt about that—tanks, [armored personnel carriers] APCs, artillery units, helicopters, fixed wing jets.”

The Pentagon assesses that Russia still retains just under 90 percent of its combat power. Likewise, Ukraine retains more than 90 percent of its own combat power thanks to constant replenishment from Western partners.

DOD expects a $300 million defense assistance package to run out by week’s end, but it is already sourcing an additional $800 million defense assistance package, the White House announced March 16.

“What we’re seeing is a near desperate attempt by the Russians to gain some momentum and try to turn the course of this in their favor,” the official said. “Right now, it doesn’t appear like they have a lot of leverage to negotiate with.”

How DOD’s Old Concrete Infrastructure Could Start to Fix Itself

March 21, 2022 | By Amanda Miller

The military’s old concrete will repair its own cracks if researchers can pull off what the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency hopes under its new BRACE program. DARPA’s Biological Technologies Office announced the four-and-a-half-year BRACE research program—short for Bio-inspired Restoration of Aged Concrete Edifices—March 17.

Companies and research institutions have until April 8 to register for a Proposers Day informational event scheduled for April 13. A Broad Agency Announcement for BRACE should be published “in the coming weeks,” the agency said in a statement.

Citing the Defense Department’s concrete airfields and missile silos, the agency acknowledged in the statement that “maintaining and repairing concrete is of increasing strategic importance to both defense and civilian infrastructure.”

Surface treatments for repairing cracks are “short-lived and do not address the underlying causes of decay,” so DARPA wants to figure out how concrete can repair itself from within by adding a vascular system, inspired by the arteries and veins in biological organisms, to transport “healing substances” through the concrete, according to the release.

DOD also needs new approaches to quickly repair airfields after attacks, DARPA said in a pdf describing the Proposers Day event: “Rapid patching of craters is the current repair strategy to repair runway surfaces after an attack,” according to the pdf. “New approaches are needed that will work with DOD’s Expedient and Expeditionary Airfield Damage Repair (E-ADR) capability to restore airfield operations with a minimal logistical footprint.”

New research already suggests that “cross-disciplinary technologies” can impart “self-healing capabilities” to old concrete, according to the statement. The Proposers Day will include cross-disciplinary teaming opportunities.

If successful, BRACE will “prevent new damage, shorten repair time, and reduce maintenance costs, allowing for extended infrastructure service life,” said BRACE program manager Matthew J. Pava in the statement.

“Today’s DOD has inherited, and relies upon, a significant amount of concrete infrastructure from the 1940s and 1950s that cannot be easily replaced,” Pava said.

Research will take place in two technical areas. The first will involve figuring out how to impart existing concrete with vascular systems—which in addition to transporting the healing substances should involve some self-monitoring so people will be able to know the systems are working down deep in the concrete. The second technical area will involve practical ways to put the systems into the concrete and how to maintain and repair them.

“While BRACE is focused on DOD applications, our hope is that the technologies generated will have potential civilian benefits as well,” Pava said in the statement.

Pentagon Announces Classified JADC2 Implementation Plan, Unclassified Strategy

March 21, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

More than eight months after Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III signed off on the Defense Department’s strategy for joint all-domain command and control, the Pentagon has an implementation plan for that strategy—and an unclassified version of the strategy for the public to see.

On March 15, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen H. Hicks signed the JADC2 implementation plan, which “details the plans of actions, milestones, and resourcing requirements” and “identifies the organizations responsible for delivering JADC2 capabilities” necessary for the DOD’s ambitious effort to connect sensors and shooters from every domain into one massive network.

“We must maintain continued focus and momentum on these initiatives and programs, which enhance department capabilities to face current and future threats,” Hicks said in a press release. “Command and control in an increasingly information-focused warfighting environment have never been more critical. JADC2 will enable the DOD to act at the speed of relevance to improve U.S. national security. JADC2 is delivering capabilities beginning now, and it will continue to be funded in the coming years.”

The implementation plan is classified, but USMC Lt. Gen. Dennis A. Crall, the Joint Staff’s chief information officer, told reporters in a Pentagon briefing on March 18 that it is “the delivery mechanism, the how we’re going to get there, who’s responsible, what order do you put these in, what are the prerequisites to make sure that you have an actionable plan that can be executed, and finally those milestones which include funding.

“If those are absent, what you end up with is a really neat story, a grand idea, but really nothing that comes off the conveyor belt at the other end,” Crall said. “And this is what the … [implementation] plan actually does for us, it takes a look very clearly at specific and prioritized plans.”

Those plans remain classified for several reasons, Crall added, including the need not to identify where “you prioritize against vulnerabilities and threats,” and the desire to not release milestones and timelines for contracts that have yet to be awarded.

The full strategy document also remains classified, but the unclassified eight-page summary establishes three overarching functions—sense, make sense, and act.

The “sense” function in JADC2 is defined by the “implementation of advanced sensing methods and information management technologies” to gather data that can be shared broadly across the Joint Force and with allies and partners.

The “make sense” function requires artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other technologies to “extract, consolidate, and process massive amounts of data and information directly from the sensing infrastructure,” providing information to commanders.

The “act” function requires information-sharing, open and resilient communications, and training to ensure lower-level commanders can make decisions when needed.

In order to achieve those functions, the strategy summary identifies five main lines of effort the Pentagon will pursue in making JADC2 a reality:

Establish the JADC2 Data Enterprise
Establish the JADC2 Human Enterprise
Establish the JADC2 Technical Enterprise
Integrate Nuclear command, control, and communications (NC3) with JADC2
Modernize Mission Partner Information Sharing

In establishing the various enterprises to make the JADC2 approach work, the strategy calls for resilient, cybersecure networks that use standardized interfaces and are operated by service members who have received the updated training and professional development necessary to work with AI and other technologies across the Joint Force.

That final point might be the most important, Crall said in his press briefing.

“I am confident that we will solve the technical pieces of JADC2. There is a way to do this. I also believe that process and policy, under the right pressures, will form around the needs of the department and we will find ways to do things in an efficient and safe way,” Crall said.

“I am less optimistic on the people side if we don’t take some pretty strong action. It’s really the people that are our strongest asset, and … really as a department, as a government, even beyond DOD, while there is value with our people, we don’t really have the best roadmap. We don’t really know what it means to recruit the right market. We don’t really know what it means to train and develop the kind of workforce we need not only today, but in the future.”

What gives Crall some optimism, he added, is that leaders recognized the importance of the human issue and included it as a line of effort.

“There’s clearly the right amount of attention to this. But we haven’t cashed that check yet,” he said.

Details about how NC3 and JADC2 can be integrated were not revealed, but U.S. Strategic Command boss Adm. Charles “Chas” A. Richard has told Congress that he is “very pleased that a subset of what JADC2 is doing is for nuclear command and control.”

National Champions Crowned at AFA’s CyberPatriot XIV

March 21, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

Teams from North Carolina to California gathered March 18-20 in Rockville, Md., to compete in the national finals of the Air Force Association’s National Youth Cyber Defense Competition, CyberPatriot XIV.

The culmination of months of training and competition, the finals featured 28 teams competing across three divisions—Open, All Services, and Middle School. The competition began in October 2021 with more than 5,000 teams. The field steadily winnowed down through rounds in which teams were given a set of virtual operating systems and tasked with finding and fixing cybersecurity vulnerabilities while maintaining critical services.

“The competitive and creative spirit of these young people, not to mention their incredible technical acumen, is awe inspiring,” said AFA President and retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Bruce “Orville” Wright. “Cyber warfare is today what air warfare was a century ago—a new kind of combat in a new domain. These kids—champions and finalists alike—are developing the skills our nation will need to protect our way of life from bad actors seeking to infiltrate every sector of American life, from business to government.”

In the end, teams from San Diego completed a clean sweep of the national titles: CyberAegis Flashpoint from Del Norte High School claimed the Open Division championship; Terabyte Falcons from Scripps Ranch High School Air Force JROTC won the All Services Division; and CyberAegis Cobra from Design 39 Campus won the Middle School event.

This marks the third consecutive national championship team from Del Norte High School in the Open division, while Scripps Ranch High School’s Air Force JROTC previously won the All Services division at CyberPatriot XI in 2019.

In the final round, each team served as administrators for a small business, working to “find and fix cybersecurity vulnerabilities, maintain critical services, resolve injects, and defend against hostile Red Team attackers.”

“You may not realize how significant this is today, but one day this will be very significant,” Air Force Chief Information Officer Lauren Barrett Knausenberger told the finalists at the weekend’s award ceremony. “Your hobby and your passion that you have displayed this week—and really, you’ve been at this for a while—it is something that our nation very much needs. Whether you’re going to serve in the military, whether you are going to work for a corporation, we need this in our country.”

Also at the award ceremony, AFA recognized eight competitors who had reached the finals of the competition for four years in a row as CyberPatriot Cyber All-Americans:

Emily Foreman from U.S. Naval Sea Cadet Corps Sacramento Division
Kevin Hu from Del Norte High School
Emily Kelso from U.S. Naval Sea Cadet Corps Sacramento Division
Darius Kianersi from Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology
Tristan Lee from Army JROTC from Roosevelt High School
Darin Mao from Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology
Tanay Shah from Del Norte High School
William Smith from U.S. Naval Sea Cadet Corps Sacramento Division

Open Division

National champion: CyberAegis Flashpoint from Del Norte High School (San Diego, Calif.)
Runner-up: Half Dome from Franklin High School (Elk Grove, Calif.)
Third place: TN Patriot | KaliPatriot from Cookeville High School (Cookeville, Tenn.)

All Services Division

National champion: Terabyte Falcons from Scripps Ranch High School Air Force JROTC (San Diego, Calif.)
Runner-up: Runtime Terror from Troy High School Navy JROTC (Fullerton, Calif.)
Third place: The Lockouts from Air Academy Cadet Squadron-CAP (Colorado Springs, Colo.)

Middle School Division

National champion: CyberAegis Cobra from Design 39 Campus (San Diego, Calif.)
Runner-up: CyberAegis Scimitar from Oak Valley Middle School (San Diego, Calif.)
Third place: The Chunk Marios from Lawler Middle School (Frisco, Texas)

AT&T Component Winner

Half Dome from Franklin High School (Elk Grove, Calif.)

Open Division Cisco Networking Challenge

1st Place: CyberAegis Chopstick from Del Norte High School (San Diego, Calif.)
2nd Place: Half Dome from Franklin High School (Elk Grove, Calif.)
3rd Place: CyberAegis Flashpoint from Del Norte High School (San Diego, Calif.)

All Service Division Cisco Networking Challenge:

1st Place: Terabyte Falcons from Scripps Ranch High School Air Force JROTC (San Diego, Calif.)
2nd Place: Runtime Terror from Troy High School Navy JROTC (Fullerton, Calif.)
3rd Place: The Lockouts from Air Academy Cadet Squadron-CAP (Colorado Springs, Colo.)

Middle School Division Cisco Networking Challenge Winner

CyberAegis Scimitar from Oak Valley Middle School (San Diego, Calif.)

Austin Tries to Budge Bulgaria Toward Lethal Support for Ukraine

March 18, 2022 | By Abraham Mahshie

Bulgaria is one of the Eastern European countries that possesses the S-300 air defense systems that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said are urgently needed to repel Russia’s air assault. The Black Sea NATO ally also has the same Soviet-era MiG-29 and Su-25 fighters used by the Ukrainian Air Force.

But Bulgaria also depends on Russian gas, and so far Bulgarian Prime Minister Kiril Petkov has refused lethal assistance to Ukraine and ruled out transferring its jets.

The delicate dynamic is what Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III faces in meetings in Bulgaria from March 18 to 19.

Austin landed at Bezmer Air Base near the Black Sea coast March 18 and was greeted by the Bulgarian defense minister and chief of defense before visiting with American troops. The U.S. maintained about 200 troops in Bulgaria before the arrival of a Stryker brigade from Germany. Austin was expected to hold meetings with his Bulgarian counterpart and to meet with Petkov just as Russia expanded its cruise missile attacks on the once-safe western part of Ukraine.

“In the West, reports of missile strikes in the vicinity of Lviv International Airport appear to be accurate,” a senior defense official told reporters in a statement.

Russia began striking air bases and a military training center in western Ukraine on March 11.

The Pentagon assesses that Russia remains “largely stalled across the country” but has effectively isolated major cities, including Chernihiv and Mariupol, which have suffered humanitarian disasters amid indiscriminate bombing and shelling of civilian targets.

Russia has launched more than 1,080 missiles since the start of the war.

In a March 16 address to the U.S. Congress, Zelensky specifically asked for help acquiring S-300 missile defense systems and fighter jets. Getting those from Bulgaria will be a tough sell, a Bulgarian defense official told Air Force Magazine.

“The official position of the government is no military support, just humanitarian,” the official said. “But let’s see what’s going on in the next couple of days or weeks.”

Petkov began his term in office in December 2021. An anti-corruption crusader who founded his own party, he took office only after forming a delicate coalition government whose factions include a party sympathetic to ties with Russia.

“He’s quite keen to rely on NATO partners and NATO allies,” the official said. “But at the same time … the question is political because we have a coalition government.”

In October 2020, Bulgaria and the U.S. signed a 10-year roadmap to deepen defense ties and improve Bulgaria’s military readiness and capabilities. In the past five years, the U.S. has provided more than $160 million in security assistance to Bulgaria. Bulgaria has also purchased eight F-16s, but a recent Lockheed Martin production delay could mean Bulgaria’s air modernization may not happen until 2025.

Petkov has previously said Bulgaria doesn’t have enough combat aircraft to defend its own territory. On March 17, after a meeting with Austin, Slovakia’s Defense Minister Jaroslav Nad said his country would be willing to give up its S-300 and MiG-29s if replacements were provided.

To reassure NATO eastern flank allies, the U.S. moved two Patriot missile batteries from Germany to Poland, and the Netherlands repositioned a Patriot battery to Slovakia. Likewise, Bulgaria’s neighbor, Romania, possesses a Patriot battery, and NATO member Turkey has the Russian-made S-400 missile defense system.

The Bulgarian official said “it makes sense” that the missile defense capacity of both NATO ally neighbors could cover Bulgaria’s own small territory.

But Bulgaria has also been besieged by hybrid warfare and espionage threats from Russia. On March 18, Bulgaria expelled 10 Russian diplomats. A week prior, two Russian diplomats were expelled.

“It means something is going on,” the official said.

Meanwhile, supply routes from multiple Eastern European NATO allies continue to flow defense assistance into Ukraine, and the Pentagon assesses that the air space over Ukraine remains contested.

“The Ukrainian Air Force is continuing to fly aircraft and employ air and missile defense,” the senior defense official said.

Whether Ukraine receives the air defense systems it requires to keep its air space contested, or better protect civilian populations, may depend on the success of Austin’s latest European swing.

Lockheed Martin Aero Sees Growth Opportunities in Manned-Unmanned Teaming

March 18, 2022 | By John A. Tirpak

Lockheed Martin sees itself well positioned to pursue the Air Force’s new uncrewed aircraft programs to complement both the tactical and strategic bomber fleets, having conducted experiments in manned-unmanned teaming for more than 17 years, company aeronautics executive vice president Greg Ulmer said.

Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Development Programs, or Skunk Works, has been putting “a lot of attention … on manned-unmanned teaming,” or MUM-T, Ulmer said in an early March interview.

“It really is going to be a family of systems,” and Lockheed Martin’s F-35 will likely play a central role, he said.

“We have done a lot of operational analysis in support” of the MUM-T concept with the F-35, he said. The company sees the uncrewed aircraft as “extending the range of an F-35 … beyond the F 35, in front of the F-35 … improving the survivability, enhancing the sensors” of that aircraft.

“Taking that information, and putting it in the fusion engine of an F-35, I think, is very impactful” from an intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance perspective for the entire force, he said. “It enables the capabilities of everything around it,” he added.

Ulmer said Skunk Works has done “quite a bit of work from a MUM-T perspective” on both recoverable and attritable aircraft working in concert with the current manned combat aircraft fleet, having done “a lot of demonstrations” since 2005.

The Air Force has branded its fighter force structure through the early 2030s—the F-22 transitioning to the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) aircraft, F-35, F-15EX, F-16, and the A-10—as the “4+1” plan, and Ulmer said he thinks the unmanned systems are “additive” to that mix and constitute a “4+1+1 … if you will,” he said.

“We’re focused on autonomy, artificial intelligence,” he said. The uncrewed aircraft will “have its own capability set,” and the pilot will be able to direct it to go off and conduct a side mission to assist the flight with the overall objective; either reconnoitering an area, or perhaps suppressing air defenses.

The pilot “provides a high level task, and then … the MUM-T vehicle will perform that task and then provide that information.” The F-35 pilot would not be directly controlling the vehicle; it would accomplish the mission on its own, following parameters previously set for it.

“It has the autonomous capability to do the mission set on its own accord,” he said.

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said at the AFA Warfare Symposium earlier this month that he expects an F-35 or similar platform would direct as many as five unmanned aircraft flying in concert with it. Kendall couched the new tactical unmanned system as both enhancing the capabilities of manned platforms and expanding the capacity of the force, providing numbers in a battlespace where the Air Force expects it will take losses.

Pacific Air Forces commander Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach said March 14 that he thinks USAF’s manned aircraft should be designed as “exquisite” platforms with high capability, while the unmanned systems that accompany them should be designed to be acquired at a cost low enough that their loss would be bearable. Kendall said that for the right mission and target, the escort aircraft might be sent on one-way missions.

Lockheed Martin has discussed a number of stealthy, unmanned aircraft it has flown over the last 20 years, and it built the Air Force’s still largely-secret RQ-170 unmanned reconnaissance drone. Ulmer said this experience will be a discriminator for the company as the Air Force explores this new class of aircraft.

Ulmer noted that Lockheed Martin has done a number of demonstrations “relative to the human interface” on how the pilot would direct a “loyal wingman”-type aircraft and how the information captured would be displayed to the pilot and made available for other aircraft in the formation and in the broader task force to make use of it. Last year, the company linked five F-35s, an F-22, and a U-2 in its “Project Hydra” demonstration, in which the various aircraft obtained and shared tactical information for all to use.

“These are really kind of stepping stones, where we work the elements as we approach MUM-T,” he said.

Lockheed Martin divisions such as Sikorsky Rotary systems—which recently flew an unmanned Blackhawk helicopter—as well as Missiles and Fire Control, Aeronautics, and Space—have been pooling their expertise to develop aircraft autonomy and the sharing capabilities needed to make MUM-T work, Ulmer said.

Although the Air Force has said it plans to phase out the F-22 starting in 2030, Ulmer said he expects the F-22 to serve beyond that point.

“I know the time horizon associated with an NGAD,” he said, but the timing of its arrival isn’t firm yet, and the F-22 will be needed until the NGAD is available.

“It’s understood … that the F-22 is in that equation” of the 4+1, he said. “It remains to be seen what the time horizon will be for NGAD. So the F-22 is going to be in play for the foreseeable future. And to me, that’s a decade-plus.”

Ulmer said he has not been told the F-22’s primary mission will change as the NGAD comes online, from air superiority to, perhaps, stealthy ground attack.

“To my understanding, for the foreseeable future, it is still the air superiority platform,” he said.

New Head Skunk for Lockheed Martin

March 18, 2022 | By John A. Tirpak

John Clark, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics vice president for engineering and technology, will take over the company’s Advanced Development Programs division, or “Skunk Works,” on April 4, the company announced.

Clark, a 23-year employee of Lockheed, succeeds Jeff Babione, who has headed Skunk Works since 2016, and is retiring.

Clark supervised 8,000 engineers and worked on “technical concepts for products and processes” in his previous position. He was also Skunk Works’ vice president of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance and unmanned aircraft, which Lockheed aeronautics executive vice president Greg Ulmer said will be a major push for the company in the coming years.

In this role, Clark “focused on the modernization and sustainment” of ISR and unmanned platforms, such as the U-2 and secret RQ-170, as well as battle management and command and control.

Babione oversaw significant increases in the Skunk Works portfolio and workforce, as well as a modern expansion of the unit’s factories and facilities in Palmdale, Calif. Babione had previously served as chief engineer on the F-22 program—which received the Collier Trophy—as program manager for the F-35 and supervisor of Lockheed’s fighter portfolio, including the F-16, F-22, T-50 and F-2. He previously worked on the YF-22 concept demonstrator as an employee of Boeing.