Resurrected B-1 Coming to Dyess This Year

March 29, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

Out of the boneyard and into the force: The Air Force is breathing new life into a B-1B Lancer to replace another bomber wrecked by an engine fire last year at at Dyess Air Force Base, Texas.

The 7th Bomb Wing announced the B-1 “regeneration” March 18, marking the first time in nearly two decades that a Lancer will re-enter service after being retired.

The B-1 arrived at Tinker Air Force Base on Feb. 8 for “heavy restoration and maintenance,” according to a wing spokesperson. Once complete, the rejuvenated B-1 will return to service at Dyess later this year.

The last bomber to return to active service after a stretch in the desert boneyard was a B-52 that returned to keep the fleet at the congressionally mandated size of 76 airframes. The Air Force retired 33 B-1s in 2003, only to later bring seven back by September 2004 after receiving a mandate from Congress.

The 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz., regularly reactivates aircraft for the Pentagon, NASA, and partner nations. Aircraft sent to the Boneyard can be maintained in different conditions, depending on whether the Air Force wants to preserve the option to un-retire them. Generally speaking, the AMARG removes explosive devices, such as ejection seat motors, upon intaket, then fills fluid lines with a preservative oil, closes off openings to keep animals and birds from nesting in the aircraft; and cover the cockpit, intakes and exhaust with a spray-on latex preservative to diminish the destructive effects of sun and heat.

The Air Force retired 17 B-1s between February and September 2021. Service officials said at the time that restoring them to “status quo” would cost tens of millions of dollars per aircraft, while retiring them would allow maintainers to focus their time and resources toward keeping the remaining aircraft mission capable.

Air Force Global Strike Command noted at the time that four of the 17 bombers would be maintained “in a reclaimable condition.”

“The fact that our Air Force can call up an aircraft that has sat dormant for several years and prepare it to support our long-range strike mission, all within a year, is incredible,” said Col. Seth Spanier, 7th Bomb Wing commander, in a statement. “This entire effort speaks to our unwavering commitment to maintaining a combat-credible strike force.”

The Air Force lost another B-1 in January when a BONE crashed while landing at Ellsworth Air Force Base, S.D. The base’s runway was shut down for several weeks while a safety investigation and a cleanup took place. Unofficial and unconfirmed imagery showed severe damage to the aircraft.

An Air Force spokeswoman told Air & Space Forces Magazine that the Ellsworth crash is being treated as a Class A mishap, the most serious type, but had not yet made a final determination on whether the aircraft can be salvaged.

“There are currently no plans to bring a B-1 out from the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group (Boneyard) to replace this aircraft,” the spokeswoman added. “Our fleet remains mission capable and our ability to execute the highest priority missions supporting national defense are not impacted.”

Documents for the Air Force’s fiscal 2025 budget request project the B-1 inventory to decline from 45 aircraft to 44 aircraft next year. It takes time and money to bring one back: Dyess lost its B-1 in April 2022, when the bomber caught fire during an engine run, and dramatic video soon emerged of the aircraft engulfed in flames. A subsequent investigation found a cracked fan blade caused the massive fireball and sent shrapnel flying hundreds of feet.

Unsurprisingly, the aircraft’s flying days were done. According to the 7th Bomb Wing, once the accident investigation board was complete, maintainers stripped the carcass for 49 parts valued at over $2.7 million.

“The left wing and left nacelle were transported to the 436th Training Squadron crash lab, the only crash lab in Air Combat Command, to support their aircraft mishap investigation course,” the wing’s release noted.

Finally, the fuselage was transported to Wichita State University’s National Institute for Aviation Research, to help create a digital twin of the B-1.

The B-1 fleet is projected to remain in the active inventory into the 2030s, when the new B-21 Raider comes on board. The Air Force has been upgrading its remaining B-1s with new technology as part of what it calls the B-1 Embracing Agile Scheduling Team (BEAST) program.

Why The First Guardian to Launch into Space Is Taking Sheet Music with Him

March 29, 2024 | By David Roza

When NASA astronauts go to space, they are allowed to bring a small number of personal possessions with them. Sometimes those include family photos, baseball hats, and even musical instruments. But when Col. Nick Hague becomes the first Guardian to launch into space later this year, he will be taking a special set of sheet music along with him.

“In terms of culture, one of the things the Space Force spent a lot of time on was the Space Force song,” Hague told reporters at a media roundtable March 28. “So I’m taking up a couple original sheets of music from the Space Force song and I’ll get them back to the band members and composers that helped craft that.”

Each U.S. military branch has a song, and the Space Force unveiled its own at AFA’s Air, Space, and Cyber Conference in 2022. Named after the Space Force motto “Semper Supra,” (Latin for ‘Always Above’) the song took years of work.

“I knew they wanted something that was singable and that fit with the other anthems—the other service songs—and that would be something that could last,” Jamie Teachenor, who composed the song, told Air & Space Forces Magazine. A former member of the U.S. Air Force Academy’s country band, Teachenor worked on the song with then-Chief of Space Operations Gen. John “Jay” Raymond and Coast Guard Chief Musician Sean Nelson to arrange it for performance.

Besides sheet music, Hague is also taking up Space Force flags, patches, and other mementos from Space Force units that make space exploration possible. He plans on bringing the keepsakes back to those units when he returns.

“Those satellites that they’re operating, those are the capabilities that underpin us being able to even get to orbit,” he said. “They help track all the stuff that we could run into, they help guide us through space with GPS, space domain awareness, and understanding where we’re at and where we’re going.”

Besides bringing up mementos, Hague plans on reaching out to Guardians privately from space to “let them know what kind of impact they’re having on us.” He will be in orbit when the branch celebrates its fifth birthday on Dec. 20.

Hague is not the first Guardian in space; Col. Michael Hopkins took that honor when he transferred into the Space Force in 2020 while aboard the International Space Station. For the most part, Guardians control satellites from the ground, but Hague will be the first to launch into space when he and three crewmates ride a Space X Dragon out of Kennedy Space Center, Fla., up to the ISS. The mission is expected to launch in August.

The mission will last six months, much of which will be filled up with scientific experiments. Though the exact kind of experiments are still being determined, astronauts are trained on certain sets of skills, and scientists build experiments to work within that skillset, Hague explained. On his past trip to space, some of those involved 3D-printing human tissue and genome editing.

“It’s almost like Christmas every day up there, because you’re opening a cargo bag and pulling out a new experiment that you’ve never seen before,” he said. “But we train to have the basic skills to be able to do those, so we’re ready when they [the scientists] need it.”

Hopefully this trip will be less dramatic than his first mission. In 2018, Hague and his crewmate, cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin, had just launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan when their Soyuz spacecraft suffered a catastrophic rocket booster malfunction, forcing an abort.

“The rocket essentially disintegrated under us,” Hague told reporters.

But just five months later, Hague was back in a Soyuz, which this time successfully took him up to the ISS for a 203-day stay. The difference between the 1960s-era Soyuz and the modern Dragon spacecraft is “night and day,” he said, as the Dragon features more automation designed to reduce the burden on the operator, as well as “a much more comfortable seat.” But the colonel expects the butterflies in his stomach to be the same as that first launch.

“Space is a risky business,” he said. “We train for everything that we can envision going wrong and what to do in those scenarios.”

The training leads to a kind of double-awareness where crews enjoy the launch and the space mission but are also vigilant at all times for “the next thing that could go wrong,” he said. That may be even more true if Hague goes on a space walk, perhaps to install hardware for mounting new solar arrays on the ISS.

“It’s all those things I dreamed of when I was five years old. I’m just out there holding on to a space station zipping through space at five miles a second, watching the Earth coast by,” said Hague, a veteran of three prior space walks. “It’s pretty phenomenal.”

As NASA prepares to send astronauts back to the Moon and, eventually, to Mars, the agency is hiring new astronauts to make the journey. Hague pushed his fellow Guardians to apply for both the astronaut program and for NASA positions in general. April 16 is this year’s application deadline for hopeful astronauts.

“I think Guardians need to recognize that they work in complex control rooms, managing dynamic teams, trying to handle technical problems as they approach,” he said. “If you look at that skill set, and you look at what we do in Mission Control, at Johnson Space Center, they are analogous. So somebody who has that, is a really great teammate, handles pressure well, and can adapt to things as they change. Those are perfect candidates.

“Nine times out of 10, what I find is that people think, ‘the requirements are so high, nobody’s ever going to select me,’” he added. “Make us say no. Put in an application.”

CSAF: Without Unfunded Priorities Money, Air Force Readiness Will Suffer

March 28, 2024 | By John A. Tirpak

Air Force aircraft readiness will suffer if Congress doesn’t provide the money for spare parts and readiness requested in the service’s Unfunded Priorities List, Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin said March 28.

Out of $3.5 billion included in the annual wishlist, the Air Force tabbed $1.5 billion for “single spares restock for aircraft projected to be grounded due to lack of spare parts.” Without that, “we would have to delay” sending some aircraft to depot maintenance, Allvin said in a webinar hosted by Defense One.

“If they aren’t available, then we aren’t able to schedule them into the depot,” Allvin said, presumably because they can’t fly to depot on their own.

“‘Grounding’ is a very charged term,” Allvin added, But “the inability to have access to them and have them operate in the manner that we’d like was one of those risks we’re trying to mitigate” by adding the spares request in the unfunded priorities list.

The spares requests on the list were highly targeted to specific parts on specific aircraft that disproportionately cause them to be out of service—“which ones move the needle most”—Allvin said, and were selected using “the analytical tools that we have in the logistics and maintenance area.” The effort is part of a drive to improve parts inventories to make sure “we can keep aircraft availability, provide the combat commanders what we need today and still be able to deploy should we have to go and fight in a major conflict,” Allvin said.

The overall approach the Air Force budgeteers took was “to arrest the decline in readiness” in the unfunded priority list and deal with modernization in the actual budget, rather than include big-ticket items like additional F-35s, which have been a feature of past UPLs.

“My decision for [the] Unfunded Priority List was, really, to see what we could do this year to start ‘robusting’ that readiness, and not just to arrest the decline, but start to build it back up a little bit, because that doesn’t take away the Department’s decision space in the future,” he said. “But I didn’t want to just ask for a chunk of money just to give us more money for spares.”

The analysis of which parts would provide the biggest “immediate” benefit wasn’t completed until the late fall and winter, Allvin said, “And I didn’t want to wait for another year to make that change … that could maybe make that instant uplift to readiness in the very near term.”

The list said the $1.5 billion for spares “was partially funded during FY25, but the full requirement could not be resourced. … The fiscally constrained environment necessitated difficult decisions and it was not possible to fully fund key programs while still meeting other Air Force priorities.”

Other elements of the request focus on war readiness kits needed for Agile Combat Employment, Allvin said. Future operations that focus on smaller unit deployments to many locations will require each unit to take essential support gear and spares with it, he explained. For the past 20 years, he said, aircraft units have deployed to major operating hubs and can share those parts and that gear, but that model won’t fit with ACE.

“Now we’re going to deploy to multiple locations; you need more spare kits to be able to take the same amount of fighters to different places. That’s all this really is,” Allvin said. “These readiness … kits allow you to take the same number of fighters and go to different places and be able to operate from different places,” giving the commander “more options.”

INDOPACOM Boss: China ‘Soon to Be World’s Largest Air Force’

March 28, 2024 | By Unshin Lee Harpley

It has been known and publicly acknowledged for several years now that China has surpassed the U.S. Navy in sheer number of warships. But in recent testimony on Capitol Hill, the head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command suggested China may also have world’s largest air force soon, a surprising assessment of their rapid modernization efforts.

“The world’s largest Navy, soon to be the world’s largest Air Force,” Navy Adm. John C. Aquilino said, referring to the People’s Liberation Army, before the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 21. “The magnitude, scope, and scale of this security challenge cannot be understated, all would be challenged.”

An INDOPACOM spokesperson confirmed to Air & Space Forces Magazine that Aquilino was referring to the number of warplanes each country’s military possesses.

In its 2023 report on Chinese military power, the Pentagon noted that the PLA Air Force and Navy combined have over 3,150 total aircraft, not counting trainer variants and unmanned aircraft systems (UAS). The U.S. Air Force, by comparison, is at its smallest size in years but still has around 4,000 non-trainer, non-drone aircraft. That’s in addition to several thousand more in the Navy, Marine Corps, and Army.

Airpower and China experts expressed doubt that China would imminently overtake the U.S. in military aircraft. However, they did highlight China’s significant overall production capacity ramp-up in recent years, specifically for their cutting-edge fighters.

“The J-20 is now being produced at over roughly 100 airframes per year,” Daniel Rice,
China military and political strategy subject matter expert at the Krulak Center for Innovation and Future Warfare told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “That’s purely for indigenous consumption, for supplying the PLA Air Force with J-20 airframes. If you look at production capacity, the F-35, roughly 135 airframes per year, but 60 to 70 of those airframes are going to allies and partners.”

Rice noted, though, that the J-20 and F-35 should not be compared one-to-one.

“They have different mission sets and capabilities,” Rice added. “We like to say that the J-20 is roughly a 4.5-generation aircraft because there are different definitions of ‘generations’ between China and the U.S.”

This quality-versus-quantity assessment also comes into play when comparing the naval fleets of the two countries, as experts argue that while China may have more ships and submarines, the tonnage of America’s naval fleet surpasses that of China by a 2-to-1 ratio due to the larger size of U.S. vessels.

On the air side, China is accelerating its production of the J-16, J-10, and its sea variants as well. The J-16, a multi-role fighter, has more than 100 airframes produced annually, while the J-10’s production is around less than 40 airframes per year. But again, the J-10C is not quite the USAF’s F-15EX, and is rather “the low-end, or high-low mix of that version,” Rice said.

Yet, if production rate increases as anticipated, China may surpass the U.S. in producing their latest fighter aircraft. Rice noted that China’s development of an indigenous engine and reduced reliance on Russian-built engines have accelerated their combat aircraft production.

“With the WS-10 and WS-15 series engines, China has been able to produce a credible and reliable engine for their combat aircraft, namely J-10C and J-20,” Rice said. “Since this supply chain shift, and in conjunction with increasing production capacity for their airframes, we have seen different production facilities such as Shenyang Aircraft Corporation and Chengdu Aircraft Corporation, increase the size of their production facilities in anticipation of more throughput.”

Regional influence is another consideration in comparing fleet sizes. In his separate written testimony to lawmakers, Aquilino stated that the PLA Air Force and Navy combined constitute “the largest aviation forces in the Indo-Pacific.” While the U.S. is set to retain its long-range superiority, China’s regional dominance carries strategic concerns, especially in a scenario where it attempts to take Taiwan by force.

“China doesn’t need tankers, because it just doesn’t have to go that far,” J. Michael Dahm of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “China doesn’t need a Global Hawk that can fly for over 24 hours. It may just need drones, retro-fitted, older aircraft that can fly 100 miles across the Taiwan Strait on a one-way trip.”

U.S. airpower is also spread across the globe, with missions in Europe, the Middle East, and the homeland.

And while the China military power report excluded drones from its aircraft count, they could play a crucial role in future assessments of military power projection. China is modernizing on that front too, with the recent introduction of the Xianglong jet-powered UAS, the supersonic WZ-8, and the redesigned GJ-11 stealth Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle (UCAV).

“In an age when we’re increasingly concerned about artificial intelligence, I would say that when we start counting unmanned aircraft, it could also quickly tip the scales in China’s favor,” Dahm said.

Brown Endorses Air Force Re-Optimization: ‘The Right Thing to Do’

March 28, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. may have moved on from Air Force Chief of Staff to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, but he is keeping an eye on the Air Force’s effort to “re-optimize for great power competition”—and is pleased by what he sees.

Brown said the re-optimization led by Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, including plans to form a new Integrated Capabilities Command, establish combat wings as the service’s “units of action,” and reintroducing warrant officers to hang onto cyber talent is “the right thing to do.”

The Air Force is “very stovepiped by capability,” Brown said. “And what I really wanted to tell our major command commanders was, ‘I don’t want you doing what’s good for your part of the Air Force; you need to be doing what’s good for the entire Air Force.’ And this is a part of being able to step back and take a broader look and drive some changes that are going to increase our overall capability.”

Brown brought that same expansive view to the chairmanship, where he now advises the President and the Defense Secretary and serves as a sort of “global integrator” for the Combatant Commanders.

“I think that I have that responsibility to sit back and, as I provide advice, to look more globally,” Brown said. “And one of the things I’m doing as I engage with the combatant commanders is to talk to them about [that]…. You know, the typical response is, if there is a crisis, they will ask for more capability. My point back to them is what if you’ve got nothing? How would you mitigate?”

As CSAF, Brown made “Accelerate Change or Lose” the defining mantra of his tenure, arguing that the service needed to stop waiting for funding or other conditions, but rather risked failure if it didn’t try to start changing with what it had if it hoped to win a future war with China. His successor, Gen. David W. Allvin, built on that theme with his message to “Follow Through.”

Brown says it is no coincidence that his drive to embrace change led to a sweeping reorganization.

“I was there at the beginning of the movie, when [Secretary Kendall] started the thought process for this re-optimization,” Brown said. “And here’s what I told him and what we talked about: Change is hard. Change is hard. And you’ve got to break folks out of the inertia of where we are. And I felt that my three years as the Air Force Chief of Staff was to help us break out of inertia, to acknowledge the fact that we needed to change,” Brown said. “And then he was able to come in and do these other parts to move it to the next level.”

While “friction points” are inevitable, Brown said those help leaders navigate the potential risks attached to their choices.

Now, as Chairman Brown is still focused on many of the same themes, including his action order for analyzing the state of U.S. deterrence.

“I’d say [deterrence] is pretty good, but I do believe it’s something we’ve got to continue to improve upon,” he said. “I came in during the Cold War. And I’ve talked to [U.S. Strategic Command boss Gen. Anthony J. Cotton] recently, and some folks on our staff—when you think about deterrence theory, do we have the depth of knowledge we had during the Cold War, where you had people that really focused on deterrence? You’ve got to think about deterrence as a cognitive aspect: You’re trying to convince somebody. If you don’t understand how they think and operate, it’s hard to deter them.”

Brown’s Action Order C: Competition, urged Airmen to “understand their role in our long-term strategic competition, specifically with Russia and China.” And while service members and the general public generally have a better appreciation of the threat China poses, Brown said the risk is still high.

“The way I look at our deterrence is, do we fully understand the PRC and what their intent is?” Brown said. “And I don’t know that we do as well as we probably could.”

In that regard, Brown echoed Kendall, who said in establishing the re-optimization review process last fall that “if we were asked tomorrow to go to war against a great power, either Russia or China, would we be really ready to do that? I think the answer is not as much as we could be.”

Space Force Aims to Bring In Full-Time Reservists This Summer, Saltzman Says

March 28, 2024 | By David Roza

The Space Force wants to starting bringing in space professionals from Air Force Reserve Command this summer, starting with Reservists in full-time status who volunteer for full-time duty.

“I am hopeful that we will open the first transfer window this summer for full-time Guardians since the process to do so largely exists already as part of interservice transfers,” Chief of Space Operations Gen. B Chance Saltzman said in a March 27 memo to Guardians that was posted on the popular unofficial Facebook page Air Force amn/nco/snco. Air & Space Forces Magazine confirmed the memo’s authenticity.

The Air Force Reserve’s main space-focused unit is the 310th Space Wing, with roughly 1,100 military and civilian personnel. The Reserve also has other space units like the 26th Space Aggressor Squadron and the 9th Combat Operations Squadron.

Saltzman’s memo comes about four months after Congress passed the Space Force Personnel Management Act, which does away with “regular” and “reserve” members in favor of a combined full-time and part-time system. The Space Force hopes the new system will help manage its force more effectively, improve quality of life and retention, and tap into skill sets that many reserve service members develop in their civilian jobs.

Under the new construct, Guardians will be either on sustained duty orders (a full-time position with subsequent full-time positions throughout their career) or not on sustained duty (serving in a part-time position). According to the law, Guardians not on sustained duty would participate in at least 48 scheduled drills or training periods per year and serve on active duty for at least 14 days a year, or, alternatively, serve on active duty for training for no more than 30 days a year.

There will also be an inactive duty status, similar to the Individual Ready Reserve in other branches. However, it could be a while before the Space Force works out when the new structures take effect.

“This is a fundamental change to how we do business,” Saltzman wrote in his memo. “For example, I don’t anticipate part-time Guardians maintaining mission-ready status in 24/7 employed-in-place operations. Instead, we will leverage their expertise in institutional and service-retained functions like education, training, and test units or key staff positions.”

For Reservists in full-time status who volunteer for full-time duty, the Space Force “will work to place you based on your prioritized desires,” Saltzman said in his memo. However, Reservists who are not in full-time status may have to wait a while longer as the branch works out the nitty-gritty of standing up a part-time capability.

“Let me acknowledge the sheer amount of work we have ahead of us,” the CSO said. “We have yet to put in place the administrative processes to manage a part-time force—promotions, retirements, and more are still to be decided. I have pressed our team to move quickly, but this is going to take time.”

Saltzman intends to resolve those details as soon as possible. In the meantime, more communication and Ask-Me-Anything sessions led by the S1 personnel staff are on the way. No matter what, he said Reservists will not be asked to make a choice “until we have provided them with all the information they need to do so.”

Meanwhile, policy makers continue to deliberate on standing up a Space National Guard. The 2024 National Defense Authorization Act called for a study looking into the feasibility of leaving National Guard space-focused units in place, transferring those units to the Space Force, or transferring them to a new Space National Guard. That study was due March 1, but Saltzman said Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall will submit a report to Congress “later this spring.”

“Regardless of which way this goes, my primary concern is making sure we hang on to those units, those resources, and especially the expertise that currently lives in the Guard,” Saltzman said at the Mitchell Institute’s Spacepower Security Forum on March 27.

“The question becomes ‘well what’s the optimal way to do it?’ And then really it gets into more administrative issues,” such as whether the Space Force can afford the structure and overhead of managing two components and still have retention and upward mobility, “the things that make a force viable for its personnel.”

“We’ll see how Congress decides to organize this,” Saltzman said.

Advancing in Space, China Poses Growing Threat, USSF Leaders Warn

March 28, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

The People’s Republic of China’s rapid military advances in space mean the People’s Liberation Army no longer merely threatens American assets in orbit, but now has the space-based sensing and targeting capabilities to better enable its joint forces to threaten the U.S. on Earth, Space Force leaders warned March 27.

Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman highlighted the risks in the keynote address at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Stutdies’ Spacepower Security Forum in Arlington, Va., where he presented a four-quadrant chart illustrating the competition between U.S. “blue” and Chinese “red” space capability:

In the top left, U.S. forces dominate, Saltzman said: “This is where we lived for a significant period of time. It’s where we want to be, holding space superiority.”

In the lower left, neither side is effective in space. In that scenario, Saltzman said China is advantaged, because the U.S. joint force is so reliant on space.

In the lower right, China achieves space superiority over the U.S., the worst possible outcome for the U.S.

In the upper right. This signals “a space domain where both blue and red can use space capabilities in the way they want, and I would also argue that this favors the PRC again, because of the localities of the Western Pacific,” Saltzman noted.

“Anything other than the top left is very high risk for the joint force and our ability to project power,” Saltzman warned. And right now, “I think we are in the upper right quadrant.”

Both Russia and China have demonstrated the ability to attack satellites with kinetic and nonkinetic means. But Saltzman and deputy chief of space operations for intelligence Maj. Gen. Gregory J. Gagnon said China has moved beyond simply countering U.S. advantages in space.

“It’s not commonly understood, but since the [People’s Liberation Army Strategic Support Force] in China stood up in December of 2015, they have increased their on-orbit assets by 500 percent,” Gagnon said. “It’s not commonly understood that over the last few years they placed over 200 satellites in orbit each year. And over half of those satellites are for sensing, designed to watch U.S. forces, Japanese forces, Australian forces that are operating in the western Pacific. … So they have profoundly changed not just the threats in space, but the threat from space.”

Saltzman said China’s growing fleet of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance satellites is enabling their “kill webs,” just as the Pentagon is trying to interconnect its sensors and shooters through Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2).

“It has become increasingly apparent over the past decade that the Russians and the PRC are coupling space-based ISR with satellite-aided, precision-guided munitions that can receive SATCOM-updated targeting,” Saltzman said. “Specifically the PRC has more than 470 ISR satellites that are feeding a robust sensor-shooter kill web. … This new sensor shooter kill web creates unacceptable risk to our forward-deployed force. This is something that most of us are just not used to thinking about.”

Kelly D. Hammett, director of the Space Rapid Capabilities Office, noted that while the U.S. private sector has increased the frequency of launches and the number of civilian-owned and operated satellites in orbit, the government is still only in the nascent stage of its long-term program to build a proliferated warfighter architecture. That stands in contrast to the work China has been doing.

“We have a lot of irons in the fire,” Hammett said. “We’re building new capabilities, trying new things, trying to get to assets on range that the operators can test and train against. It’s not the force structure overall that we’re going to need to be able to compete and deter and potentially fight and win against the vast array of assets the Chinese are putting on orbit. There are 400 ISR birds, they’re launching 100 satellites a year, and most of them are very insidious. Well over half of them are space warfighting satellites. They’re not largely commercial.”

Saltzman says the U.S. must counter that threat through “responsible counterspace campaigning,” with weapons and methods that hold Chinese satellites at risk while avoiding destructive acts that would create orbital debris and befoul the domain.

What that means is still not fully clear. Retired Gen. Kevin Chilton, Explorer Chair for the Mitchell Institute’s Spacepower Advantage Center of Excellence, engaged Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy John F. Plumb on the issue of balancing offensive and defensive capabilities in space, and also on how much of that should be brought out into the open. Plumb argued the value of strategic ambiguity, acknowledging some level of capability without offering enough that a rival could “engineer against it.”

A fully functional Space Force is a military branch, and must be capable of exerting military power in its domain, Hammett suggested. That means having the capability to hold Chinese satellites at risk.

“There are a number of evolving threats, and we need to have a full array of … capabilities to address those threats,” Hammett said. “We primarily are the Department of Defense, so we defend and protect, but some of the capabilities we’re working on will have varieties of tactics, techniques, and procedures that [U.S. Space Command] will employ.”

F-22 Retirement in 2030 Unlikely as USAF Looks to Spend $7.8 Billion on It Before Then

March 27, 2024 | By John A. Tirpak

The Air Force seems to be rethinking its plan to start retiring the F-22 around 2030, as its spending plans for the air dominance fighter go well beyond that date, according to the service’s fiscal 2025 budget request.

The Air Force’s planned F-22 budget through fiscal year 2029 includes $4.7 billion for procurement and $3.1 for research, development, test, and evaluation, for a total of $7.8 billion. While the RDT&E line closes out in FY29, procurement beyond that date—labeled “to completion” in budget documents—comes to $1.2 billion.

Senior Air Force leaders have described the F-22 program now through 2030 as a “bridge” to the Next-Generation Air Dominance Fighter and its family of systems, and several have said that the technologies being developed for the F-22 in its waning service years will be directly applicable to NGAD.

The budget assumes the F-22 fleet will be reduced by 32 aircraft, to about 153 airplanes, but the documents say only 142 will receive the full lineup of improvements.

The 32 jets the Air Force wants to divest are of the Block 20 configuration, and Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall has said it would cost upwards of $50 million each to bring them up to Block 30, the most up-to-date standard. The Air Force prefers to spend that money making the younger models more capable against the anticipated threat; mainly the air-to-air challenge posed by China’s fifth-generation fighters and advanced air-to-air missiles.

The Air Force has also said that a congressional mandate to upgrade the older F-22s—which have been used only as training jets—couldn’t be accomplished until it was almost time to retire them. They would also need all the new capabilities the F-22 is receiving, to preserve fleet standardization, at even greater cost.

Pentagon officials agreed that, despite the urgency of the threat, it would be foolish to upgrade the F-22s at such expense and retire them a few months later. One said that the timing of the F-22’s retirement “hasn’t been decided … and it depends on progress with NGAD” and other factors.

Budget justification documents for the F-22 say that the procurement activities over the next five years will upgrade “the air vehicle, engine, Operational Flight Program (OFP), and training systems to improve F-22 weapons, communications, navigation, pilot-vehicle interface, and electronic warfare suite.”

Updates called out in the documents show the Air Force is giving the F-22 stealthy, range-extending drop tanks, infrared sensors, identification, friend-or-foe improvements, better Link 16 connectivity, software upgrades, and electronic warfare and navigation enhancements, as well as new weapons and hardware changes to make it more reliable and available.

The long-range tanks and infrared systems were revealed in artwork released by Air Combat Command in mid-2022, without explanation at the time. Test aircraft sporting the new underwing tanks and IR sensors have since been photographed near western test ranges, but the Air Force has declined to discuss them.

Among the new capabilities being prepared for the F-22 Raptor are the still-classified AIM-260 Joint Advanced Tactical Missile, evoked here in an image released in 2022 by Gen. Mark Kelly, head of Air Combat Command. Developed by Lockheed Martin, JATM is an air-to-air weapon designed to attack targets beyond visual range. It is needed to counter China’s next-generation PL-15 weapon. **USAF illustration**

The budget documents say the critical design review for the stealthy tanks took place in early 2023 and that technology demonstrations have been underway since. “Required Assets Available” with the tanks, which usually translates to initial operational capability, is set for the second quarter of fiscal 2026.

The infrared detection system (IRDS), which is likely to be the two slender, chiseled pods on the outer wing of the F-22 in the artwork, will enter full-up flight test in the first quarter of fiscal 2026. Production is to begin in early 2028, with deliveries the following year.

A sensor enhancement package for the F-22 includes IRST and possibly radar and other detection systems. Together, they will “improve the F-22’s sensing and tracking and ensures Air Superiority by preserving the first-look, first-shot and first-kill capabilities of the 142 Block 30/35 F-22 aircraft,” according to the justifications.

“The first 71 Sensor Enhancements Group A kits were purchased under F-22’s Rapid Fielding Middle Tier Acquisition (MTA) program authority,” the Air Force said. The new sensors are slated for flight demonstration in FY24. A follow-on production decision is scheduled to follow closely. Developmental Test and Evaluation is scheduled for the third quarter of FY25, and in the last quarter of FY26, Operational Test and Evaluation will begin.

The low-drag tank and pylons “are advanced technological designs” which will “minimally increase drag” while permitting longer range, even at supersonic speed, for the F-22.

“The pylons are equipped with smart rack pneumatic technology to accurately control ejection performance and maintain minimum drag without stores,” the documents said.

The program calls for 286 each of the tanks and pylons—enough to fully equip 143 jets, at two for each jet. They have to work at a speed of at least Mach 1.2. Wind tunnel and ground tests were completed in fiscal 2023, and flight testing is targeted to begin in the second quarter of fiscal 2024, shortly after which a critical design review is scheduled. The initial lots will be bought later in FY24. Developmental and operational testing is set to conclude in mid-fiscal 2026, with required assets available soon after.

The F-22 will also get a new Controlled Reception Pattern Antenna to help it navigate in a “GPS-degraded environment,” and achieve resilient position, navigation and timing. Retrofits will be made on 142 F-22s, of which 27 will be operated by the Air National Guard. There will be a production readiness review in June of this year, and flight testing starts in early 2025.

A series of reliability, availability, and maintainability program (RAMP) initiatives meant to make the F-22 more ready when needed are also in the funding plan. Candidates were selected for their ability to rapidly reduce maintenance workload or increased durability of the F-22’s stealth features. There is “high variability in the number of projects and kit quantities,” the Air Force said in its budget justification books.

“The RAMP program includes funding for retrofit installation labor and modifications which address corrosion, reduce maintenance hours, increase safety and provide urgent response requirements identified by the user to the F-22 fleet,” the Air Force said. These projects are also addressing safety-of-flight issues and to ease “technology insertion.” One such program replaces old fiber-optic cabling; another for a “Low Observable Mighty Tough Boot … leads to an estimated three percent increase in aircraft reliability.”

What was originally an ad-hoc Link 16 connectivity program now gives the F-22 a transmit/receive capability with Link 16 rehosted to a system that also plugs it into the Multi-functional Information Distribution Service/Joint Tactical Radio System (MIDS/JTRS), with an open architecture to speed insertion of new capabilities.

Much of the F-22 RDT&E request is for software to integrate and exploit all the new sensors and equipment the fleet will receive. The Air Force is attempting to “leverage commercially-based agile software and hardware best practices and tools” to speed the introduction of new capabilities. It’s also funding Software Integration Labs for most of the specific systems.

Other RDT&E efforts include cryptographic upgrades, technology demonstrations, “threat modeling support,” engine enhancements cybersecurity and open mission system (OMS) integration. Software is to be delivered “using a scheduled cadence for capabilities as they mature.”

The RDT&E program also includes “Project Geyser,” described as an “advanced capability” that will be assessed for “fielding configuration options.” No details were given about this project, but there will be “continued flight demonstrations and … test fleet modification into planned production configuration” in fiscal 2025.

Saltzman Pushes Need for ‘Actionable’ Space Domain Awareness

March 27, 2024 | By Unshin Lee Harpley

The Space Force is ramping up its investment in domain awareness to stay ahead in the increasingly contested space environment, and Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman described the effort as essential to his “Competitive Endurance” theory meant to guide the entire service.

“We cannot, as a country or a service, miscalculate the capabilities, force posture, or intentions of our potential adversaries,” Saltzman said at the Mitchell Institute’s Spacepower Security Forum on March 27. “We must have timely and relevant indications and warnings to help us avoid operational surprise in crisis where appropriate to take defensive actions. This means we need to have access to and invest in actionable space domain awareness.”

Space domain awareness includes the monitoring of space objects and activities, tracking environmental conditions, detecting adversary operations, and ascribing intent to actions. That missions has grown vastly more complex—Saltzman noted a 700 percent surge in active satellites since 2008, with many of those satellites possessing new technology and capabilities. That’s in addition to the increasing possibility of collision and space debris.

“We see an incredibly sophisticated array of threats, from the traditional SATCOM and GPS jammers, to more destabilizing direct-ascent anti-satellite weapons across almost every orbital regime, to on-orbit grapplers, optical dazzlers, directed energy weapons, and increasing cyberattacks both to our ground stations and the satellites themselves,” Saltzman said.

As Russia and China advance and demonstrate such capabilities, experts have warned the U.S. space infrastructure, designed to promote the peaceful use of space, is left largely defenseless and exposed to potential attacks from these nations, underscoring the urgency to strengthen domain awareness.

“Specifically, the PRC has more than 470 ISR satellites that are feeding a robust sensor shooter kill web,” Saltzman said. “This new sensor-to-shooter kill web, it creates an unacceptable risk to our forward deployed forces.”

The sensor-to-shooter kill web network system streamlines the process of launching attacks by enhancing data sharing and automating processes, with an aim to enable strikes within seconds.

Although the Space Force’s fiscal 2025 budget request is decreased by 2 percent compared to the previous year, there is notable growth—nearly 30 percent—in the allocation for space domain awareness systems, from $373 million to $484 million.

“We have to make sure we have a sensor network, so you’ll see investments in putting new sensors, Deep Space Advanced Radar Capability that we have and we’re developing, is in the budget,” Saltzman said. He also pointed to the need for a sensor network to maintain data flow and work with allies and partners to bolster surveillance.

Deep Space Advanced Radar Capability (DARC) is a ground-based system that detects and tracks deep space objects around the clock. In December, the U.S., the U.K., and Australia announced a joint DARC initiative, leveraging wide coverage locations to improve object detection and tracking in deep space.

“But I think there’s another important piece and that’s ‘Do we have the tools that pull that data together and contextualize it, so decision-makers can make timely, relevant operational decisions?’” Saltzman said. “And I think that’s where we’re also trying to invest, is to get those tools together that actually make the most out of the data that we are collecting and will be able to take on even more data and make more sense of it faster.”

The service’s FY25 R&D budget outlines plans to complete research on laser-enabled real-time space domain awareness, particularly for imaging satellites during Earth’s shadow periods, and eventually transferring this capability to Space Operations Command.

In addition, it aims to improve technologies for continuous optical and infrared imaging of objects near Earth and in GEO orbit. This includes identifying timelines for tactical purposes and spotting small satellites near important space assets. The plan also seeks to enhance daytime detection of satellites, allowing for tracking and imaging even when ground-based optical systems can’t see them.

Space domain awareness will also be powered by commercial capabilities, as noted by SpOC commander last month. Miller emphasized the importance of balancing commercial advantages with government-owned systems, stressing affordability, reliability, and meeting mission timelines. The service is on the brink of unveiling its long-awaited commercial strategy within the next month, which will offer a path forward for enhancing collaboration with the private sector.