Backfilling NATO MiG Transfers to Ukraine Not Quick or Easy

March 7, 2022 | By John A. Tirpak

If Poland, Romania, or other NATO countries transfer their Russian-made combat airplanes to Ukraine, “backfilling” those jets with American-made fighters, as Secretary of State Antony Blinken has suggested, wouldn’t happen rapidly.

Blinken, appearing on a number of Sunday TV talk shows, said Poland has a “green light” from the U.S. to send some of its obsolete, Russian-made jets to Ukraine. The U.S. would in turn “backfill” the aircraft so Poland or other countries wouldn’t have a deficit of combat air power for themselves.

“We’re talking with our Polish friends right now about what we might be able to do to backfill their needs, if in fact they choose to provide these fighter jets to the Ukrainians,” Blinken said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelensky made a Zoom call with a number of U.S. lawmakers on March 5 asking for manned and unmanned combat aircraft, and further shipments of anti-tank weapons. Senators Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) sent a letter to President Joe Biden saying they would work to get Congress to provide any funds necessary for an aircraft transfer.

However, the F-16 production line has only recently re-opened, in a new location, and it will be a while before it starts delivering completed aircraft. The F-35 production line is nearing maximum capacity, and a Lockheed Martin official said it would take 36 months from contract signing to delivery of new aircraft. “Actual production time is 18 months,” the official said.

Before Blinken made his remarks, Polish President Andrzej Duda tweeted that Poland “won’t send its fighter jets to Ukraine” or allow it to use Polish airfields. “We significantly help in many other areas,” he said.

Ukraine could not accept combat aircraft directly from the U.S. because Ukrainian pilots are not trained to fly American types and Ukraine lacks the maintenance gear and weapons needed to support them. It could make ready use of Russian types from Poland or other former Warsaw Pact countries still operating Soviet-type aircraft. Such transfers are allowable under NATO rules because they are bilateral moves and not an alliance action.

Neither the Pentagon nor State Department would provide an official comment, except to say they were aware of Blinken’s remarks. While the Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency manages weapon transfers, “the State Department makes the deals,” a Pentagon official said. A White House official said the U.S. is “looking at options” to implement such a transfer.

Bulgaria, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia all have the kinds of Russian-made aircraft Ukraine could fly, including MiG-29s. American types operated by those countries include 48 F-16s in service with Poland, which has also ordered 32 F-35s, with options for up to 48. Romania operates 17 F-16s and recently bought 32 more, second-hand, from Norway. Slovakia has ordered 14 F-16 Block 70 jets, the first of which are to arrive next year, and Bulgaria has officially ordered eight F-16 Block 70s and has requested eight more.

Providing F-16s or F-35s would be problematic, though, because wherever they came from, it would produce an immediate deficit not quickly restored. The options are as follows:

Provide aircraft from the U.S. Air Force/Air National Guard—While these aircraft could be transferred quite quickly, it would be some time before the affected units could be re-stocked with fresh aircraft, leaving them without a mission until deliveries of new airplanes are made. NATO partners may also not want these aircraft, because most are older and less sophisticated than the ones the allies already have, or are in the process of buying.
Agree to sell the allies new airplanes—In most cases, the candidate “donor” countries are already buying these aircraft. Washington could sweeten the deal by adding jets or discounting the price, or throwing in munitions or other support as part of the deal.
Provide aircraft from the “Boneyard”—It isn’t clear how many F-16s are in “inviolable” storage at the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz., storage facility; i.e. those not already subject to being harvested for parts. A Davis-Monthan spokeswoman was not immediately able to provide numbers of aircraft in this status. Again, allies may not want regenerated airplanes, and it would likely take months to bring the aircraft back up to readiness after long storage.
Third-party transfers—some F-16 operators not in the European theater may have excess F-16s, or may be getting ready to trade up to F-35s, just as Norway transferred its excess jets to Slovakia and Israel recently sold early-model F-16s for use as “adversary air” platforms. The U.S. might offer to buy back these jets and provide them to MiG donor countries. Again, the receivers might not be willing to accept these aircraft, unless they were provided at no cost.
Ask non-European countries to take a later spot in line—Countries buying the F-35 but not threatened by Russia’s invasion might be persuaded to let their jets go to another customer and accept their F-35s later. Consideration would likely be offered.

A Lockheed spokeswoman said “decisions regarding new production jets, transfers of jets between customers, as well as upgrades of current fleets, are determined by the U.S. government. We follow the guidance of those determinations.”

Now that the F-16 production line has been re-established in Greenville, S.C.—where the Block 70/72 is the new production standard—the company is planning to begin flight testing the first jet produced there “in early 2023,” she said. The line was moved to make room at Fort Worth for expanded F-35 production, and to co-locate the production line with a nearby depot facility for F-16s, which recently regenerated its first aircraft.

The first F-16 to be produced at Greenville will go to Bahrain.

In a March 3 interview with Air Force Magazine at the AFA Warfare Symposium, Lockheed Aeronautics Vice President Gregory M. Ulmer said, “We are on contract for 122 new F-16s,” which will be delivered at a peak rate of about four a month through the mid-2020s. Ulmer said the company anticipates a potential market “from 300 to 500 more beyond that.”

Ulmer said Lockheed did the first F-16 fuselage mate at Greenville “in the last 30 days.” That was “a little late to our plan” because of supply chain issues due to the COVID-19 pandemic, he said. The company has also been challenged getting a sufficient number of workers at Greenville, as it is competing with factories nearby making Michelin tires and BMW automobiles. Ulmer said Lockheed offered jobs to 100 people at a recent job fair, versus a need for 300 workers.

ISR Will Require AI, Resilient Networks, and Space Connectivity in Next Peer Fight

March 7, 2022 | By Abraham Mahshie

Multi-layered, resilient networks that can quickly reconstitute a data picture and artificial intelligence to process vast amounts of data are some of the key requirements for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance systems in the next peer conflict, industry experts said at the AFA Warfare Symposium in Orlando, Fla.

Air Force Maj. Gen. Leah G. Lauderback, director of ISR for the U.S. Space Force, asked a panel of industry leaders from Elbit Systems of America, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, and L3Harris Technologies to describe what a new ISR architecture might look like for contested and denied areas in a peer conflict.

“It’s going to require much more, I think, from a space capability looking down,” she suggested. “We also need to be looking up.”

Brad Reeves, director of C4I solutions at Elbit Systems of America, said the next ISR architecture must have AI processing to deny adversaries a centralized target.

“The sensors are going to have to do a lot of that work for you,” said Reeves. “They see something and make sense of it, and push a recommended action to us.” Reeves noted that the technology must be in place to connect all the sensors from ground, air, and space.

That means “ISR that can leverage the capabilities of autonomy in AI to be able to increase the speed of decision making, and also to be able to decrease the kill web timeline,” he added.

JR Reid, vice president of strategic development at General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, praised the move to add redundancy to space sensors in all layers, including near Earth, medium Earth, and geosynchronous orbit. But, he said, the next fight will require the ability to quickly move from one source to the other.

“You’ve got to be able to jump from the waves,” Reid said. “You’ve got to be able to use space when it’s there. When I can’t get to exactly what I want, I go to my alternate. When I can’t get to that, I move to my air layer, and [I must] be able to move seamlessly through all of those places in order to deliver the effects that airpower brings throughout the spectrum of conflict.”

Reid warned you could be “drowning” in too much data, but the defense industry can leverage commercial applications available today to sift through it quicker and pull out the information for the warfighter.

Luke D. Savorie, president of the ISR Sector at L3Harris, said his company is preparing for a next-generation requirement in ISR that takes into consideration a space architecture facing new threats from adversaries. That means heavy investment on the sensor side, larger apertures with less weight and power usage, and more connectivity, including space avionics to create connectivity to get data from GEO and LEO orbits.

“We’re trying to get as high up in the air as we can,” Savorie said. “A lot of looking up.”

CMSAF: If WAPS Testing Doesn’t Go Digital in 2022, ‘Something is Wrong’

March 7, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

Airmen, put down your pencils—possibly forever.

Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force JoAnne S. Bass said March 4 she is “hopeful” the service will finally transition to digital testing for the Weighted Airman Promotion System in 2022, a longtime goal for leadership.

Bass, speaking at the AFA Warfare Symposium in Orlando, Fla., stopped short of guaranteeing the change to WAPS testing. But she did say the Air Force will continue to press forward with changes to the enlisted evaluation system.

“I am hopeful that we are actually going to [digitize] WAPS testing. Like, it is 2022, if we can’t get out of taking a No. 2 pencil into promotion tests, something is wrong,” Bass said, before offering a joking apology to Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. “Sorry, boss. We have got to modernize some things.”

Bass’ comments follow on remarks she and Lt. Gen. Brian T. Kelly, deputy chief of staff for manpower, personnel, and services, made during a June 2021 Coffee Talk on Facebook, during which Bass called the use of paper testing “embarrassing,” and Kelly said it “makes all of us as senior leaders absolutely crazy.”

“That’s one of the things on my ‘things to do’ list,” Bass added. “Please hold us to the fire on that one.”

The move to digital testing would eliminate the possibility of losing paper tests in the mail. There have been several such incidents in recent years, costing some Airmen a shot at promotion.

It would also help usher the promotion process into the modern era, something Bass said at AWS is crucial for cultivating and retaining Airmen.

“I’m focused on how do we retain the talent that we need in 2030? Well, it’s not going to be because of policies and processes from the 1990s and the early 2000s,” Bass said. “We’ve got to change and get after all of those things, so that’s a focus there.”

However, the shift to online tests could put additional strain on the Air Force’s network, the speed of which is already a frequent source of frustration for many Airmen. The problem is so widespread that former Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s remark at AWS that the network “sucks” drew applause from his audience.

Improving the underlying network is a priority too, Bass promised, saying she has also experienced the same frustrations.

“Our Airmen always say, ‘I wonder if our leaders know, I wonder if our leaders understand the challenges we have.’ And I’m like, ‘Yes, we do, and we share those challenges, right?’” Bass said. “Like, we’re frustrated with the IT systems that we have, I mean, beyond belief. As many times as you have to add in your PIN, I have to do that too. I mean, I send stuff home to my phone or my whatever so that I can actually watch whatever I need to watch, because I can’t do it on my work [computer].”

On that front, Bass said, senior leaders are committed to addressing the fundamental issues concerning rank-and-file Airmen.

“Where I’m encouraged is, we’ve made a stance on ‘Here are some foundational things that we have got to make sure that we are funding,’” Bass said. “Cyber and IT is one of those things, Airmen programs is one of those things. We have to start to fund the foundation of what makes our Air Force move out, because we can’t modernize if the foundation is not where it needs to be.”

How Brown Plans to Battle Bureaucracy: Radical Transparency, More ’Horsepower’

March 7, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

It’s been more than a year and a half since Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. ascended to the role of Air Force Chief of Staff, and in that time, he’s repeatedly said he wants to transform the service in bold ways to make it ready for the future.

Speaking at the AFA Warfare Symposium in Orlando, Fla., however, Brown admitted his efforts have run into a familiar Pentagon problem: bureaucracy.

Brown previously tried to target the Air Force portion of the sprawling Defense Department bureaucracy as part of his series of Action Orders—issued in December 2020. The orders detailed what Brown believed needed to be done to implement his mantra of “Accelerate Change or Lose.”

Modifications to those action orders were released in February, and included a candid assessment of Action Order B, focused on bureaucracy.

“After over a year of analysis and work, significant progress on this action order has proven elusive,” the order reads. “More specifically, current Air Staff decision-making remains cumbersome, slow, allows ‘soft vetoes’ without accountability, and prioritizes compromise and consensus over decision quality. Mired in hierarchical processes and content with the status quo, the Air Staff must adapt to mission command and collaborative approaches to address the 21st Century threats and competitive strategic environment.”

In a March 3 media roundtable, Brown detailed just how bureaucracy has been hard to kill, despite the Action Order.

“I knew bureaucracy was going to be hard. I guess I’m not completely surprised because people don’t like change,” Brown said. “And I think the challenge we also had, because of COVID … [with] not everybody there in the office, you don’t have that dialogue that goes back and forth.”

A team tasked with implementing the Action Order was organized under Lt. Gen. S. Clinton Hinote, deputy chief of staff for strategy, integration, and requirements. But looking back now, Brown said, that team didn’t have “enough horsepower behind them to be able to do the things we needed them to do.”

Now, the team has been moved under Vice Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin, “so he has the visibility and he can actually drive things,” Brown said.

As part of the modified Action Order, Brown also pledged “radical transparency,” and in pursuit of that, called for the Air Staff to “ensure wide dissemination [and] provide clear understanding of CSAF intent” of key decisions and documents.

That will start with memos from Brown detailing decisions made and priorities set—it’s necessary, he said, because final decisions aren’t always treated as such.

“When a decision occurs, if you weren’t in the meeting, how do you know that decision happened? Because too often what I found is, there’s a decision made and then the staff determines we want to actually re-litigate the decision, because they … may or may not have agreed with the decision in full,” Brown said.

Having memos laying out records of decisions will decrease uncertainty and speed up the actual implementation of those decisions, Brown predicted.

“I’ve had examples of ‘You want to explore the decision that the Chief’s already made.’ Well no, we’ve already made a decision,” Brown said. “Now it’s time to explore how we implement it.”

As part of the decision making process, Brown added, he welcomes different perspectives and arguments—he just wants them to be voiced publicly, not in the so-called “meeting after the meeting” when staffers will share thoughts in smaller groups.

“I’m gonna have the meeting after the meeting, in the meeting. If you have a difference in opinion, don’t hold it,” Brown said. “Speak now or forever hold your peace, because we’re going to move out on some of these.”

In pursuit of that, the modified Action Order directs the Air Staff to primarily use Microsoft Teams for unclassified collaboration and meetings, with email, conference calls, and in-person meetings as backups. Using Teams, Brown said, will allow more voices into meetings and hopefully encourage more discussion in the moment.

Still, the challenge remains daunting.

“I think, of all the action orders, this will probably be one of the most challenging ones, because it’s a cultural shift,” said Brown. “But I think we’ve got to do this in order to make decisions faster and really flatten communication across the staff and really across the Air Force.”

Space Force Tests Health Monitoring Data to Replace PT Tests

March 5, 2022 | By Amanda Miller

Top leaders in the Space Force enthusiastically reviewed their experiences wearing continuous health monitors that could form the basis for the service to do away with conventional PT testing.

They said in press briefings at the AFA Warfare Symposium on March 4 that the black health monitoring rings that quite a few Guardians wore were part of a pilot program that’s helping the service flesh out its “holistic wellness” concept. The wellness program won’t rely on annual PT tests anymore but instead monitor the troops’ health all year round. Several senior Air Force leaders also were seen wearing the rings, but an Air Force spokeswomen said she could not confirm if the Air Force also is considering replacing its regular PT program.

The Space Force leaders want the program to ultimately amount to “more than just a physical training test like I grew up doing in the Air Force, where we ran and did sit-ups and pushups,” said Brig. Gen. Shawn N. Bratton, commander of Space Training and Readiness Command. STARCOM is one of the Space Force’s three field commands, generally equated to an Air Force major command.

Bratton, STARCOM senior enlisted leader Chief Master Sgt. James P. Seballes, Chief of Space Operations Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond, and Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force Roger A. Towberman all wore the rings.

“We think there’s something that this data provides,” said Bratton. “We’re trying to figure out, how do we aggregate that? How do we think about that? If a Guardian is conducting fitness activities throughout the week and meeting certain milestones, maybe we don’t need to do a test on [an] annual basis if they’re meeting a standard and we can keep track of that through the ring.”

Bratton expected the planning to take another year or two.

The ring’s sleep monitoring feature seemed to have made the biggest impression on all the leaders.

“It makes you very conscious if you get enough sleep, and not even if you just got enough sleep, but if you got quality sleep,” Seballes said. “If you’ve ever woken up before your alarm clock when you’re just laying there with your eyes closed, it knows the difference. If you’ve met your mark, it gives you a little crown in the morning.

Continuous assessment is one of three prongs to the service’s approach, said Towberman, a self-described “gear weirdo.” Other aspects include fitness; and culture and education.

A Guardian’s wellness may be designated green, amber, or red “so that the chain of command and the Guardian know where they’re sitting all the time with regard to readiness,” Towberman said.

Raymond found the sleep monitoring most gratifying:

“It made me much more aware of my sleep, and how much I was sleeping, and the patterns of sleep,” Raymond said. “I’m getting personal here, but if I ate a late dinner, I didn’t sleep as well, because my heart rate didn’t go down as fast at night.”

Towberman perceived a wider benefit, that of cohesiveness—“a thing that binds us. And it’s impossible not to start gamifying,” he said.

Referring to Raymond: “I’ll say, sir, what was your sleep score last night? And he wants to know mine,” Towberman said.

“So we’re building this community, this culture, of fitness where in a fun way people just immediately start taking care of each other. They’re connected.”

Putin ‘Surrounded’ by US and NATO Air and Space Power, says AFA Expert Panel

March 5, 2022 | By Abraham Mahshie

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has united NATO and proven a robust U.S. air and space capability that does not require a no-fly zone, but invasion could have been deterred if the U.S. had stronger air power, said experts at an AFA Warfare Symposium panel on the European theater.

“Our Airmen and Guardians surround the Putin regime,” said AFA president and retired Lt. Gen. Bruce “Orville” Wright, noting that the Air Force presence extends from the eastern flank of NATO to the far east of Russia in the Indo-Pacific region.

“We have everything we need in the context of watching everything that the Russian military, the Putin regime military is doing today,” said Wright. “He, again, is surrounded, certainly vertically, in a three-dimensional way in the integration of our space and air capabilities.”

Dean of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies retired Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula highlighted that sanctions did not deter the Russian military invasion of Ukraine.

“We’ve lost that conventional deterrent capability,” he said, citing a smaller Air Force than in past decades.

“Sanctions won’t affect current military conditions,” Deptula added. “It’s only U.S. military strength that would have deterred Putin’s aggression.”

Nonetheless, Deptula pointed out that sharing of U.S. Air Force ISR with the Ukrainian Air Force once the conflict began has allowed Ukraine to withstand a 4-to-1 disadvantage in air power with Russia.

“That information sharing gave them the momentum early on,” he said. “And to a significant degree, allows them to deny the Russians air superiority, along with the Russians own demonstrated military incompetence.”

In part, Ukraine is using the ISR data to target a miles-long unprotected resupply convoy, firing from an unmanned Turkish TB2 medium-altitude, long-endurence drone. To date, Ukraine has reportedly destroyed some 50 aircraft and 30 helicopters plus a number of drones.

Of Putin’s failure to take control, Deptula remarked: “He’s completely violated the principal tenet of modern warfare being that the first priority has to be securing and maintaining control of the air.”

Retired Maj. Gen. Kimberly A. Crider, who formerly served as Space Force chief technology and innovation officer, said space is already integrated in NATO’s defense and Russia deterrence.

“Vandenberg Space Force Base, [Calif.] has NATO liaison and exchange officers there on the floor of the Combined Space Operations Center working side by side, day to day, every day, coordinating on the needs of those theater operations in support of those combatant operations,” Crider said.

The multinational Combined Space Operations Center (CSpOC) at Vandenberg also interacts regularly with the emerging NATO Space Center at Ramstein Air Base, Germany.

“We know that this is an important capability for sharing information among allied partners, for coordinating support to NATO operations, and we have a very active engagement,” she said.

Moderator and British Air and Space Attaché RAF Air Commodore J.J. Attridge summed up the Russian mindset, which he said has historically been rooted in self-interest.

“Putin’s self-interest has brought the coalition together and NATO [is now] … stronger than before, and it’s unified the world,” he said. “So, thank you, Mr. Putin for that.”

Spark Tank 2022: Plan to Save Water, Fuel Crowned Winner

March 5, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

Project Arcwater, a package of technologies aimed at helping Airmen live “off the grid” by generating their own power and water, was selected as the winner of the 2022 Spark Tank competition on March 4.

In the final event of the AFA Warfare Symposium in Orlando, Fla., seven “celebrity” judges listened to pitches from six finalists presenting their ideas to improve the Air Force, in a competition modeled after the popular TV show “Shark Tank.”

Undersecretary of the Air Force Gina Ortiz Jones, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown, Chief of Space Operations Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond, Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force JoAnne S. Bass, and Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force Roger A. Towberman all served as judges, alongside guest judges Sharon Leite, CEO of the Vitamin Shoppe, and Rachel Kuhr Conn, CEO of Productable.

In the end, the winning pitch came from Senior Master Sgt. Brent Kenney, who touted the use of solar panels and a water harvester instead of diesel generators and prepackaged water to save money and space for Airmen operating in remote locations as part of the Agile Combat Employment model.

“Imagine this: You’re on a mission with your team in the middle of nowhere. You have a tough job ahead and unfamiliar territory, but the space to take what you need is limited,” Kenney told the judges. “What do you cut? Fuel? Water? Tools? Teammates? Is your choice the right choice? … The most precious resource we have in mission-planning is pallet space. Pallet space determines what goes and what stays.”

Project Arcwater will take up 60 percent less space and be 78 percent lighter than the equipment currently used, Kenney claimed. It will also be 96 percent faster to set up and cost 98 percent less to operate for a standard mission.

Pressed by Towberman on how he would convince skeptics to place their trust in his system, Kenney said education will be key.

“We have this negative connotation when we think about ‘green.’ We go back to like 20 years ago, we think of a sub-version of what that is. That’s no longer the case. This technology is here. It’s available for us to solve these problems,” said Kenney. “And I think it’s educating that middle management, that leadership to say, ‘Hey, this is a viable option.’”

Kenney’s pitch earned the votes of Brown, Bass, and Towberman, while Jones, Raymond, and Kuhr Conn voted for “Custom Facemasks for Fighter Pilots and Beyond,” an idea from Maj. Ryan Sheridan of the 10th Air Base Wing to use technology commonly found in dentists’ offices to create silicone inserts for pilots’ oxygen masks.

With a tie, Air Force Chief Information Officer Lauren Barrett Knausenberger was called to take the stage and huddled briefly with the judges before declaring Project Arcwater the winner. Project Arcwater was also voted as the “fan favorite” of the competition in an online poll.

For more information on the six finalists in this year’s competition, read Air Force Magazine’s series highlighting each idea:

Maj. Giselle Rieschick, 99th Medical Support Squadron, Nellis Air Force Base, Nev.: “Blood Delivery by UAV”
Maj. Ryan Sheridan, 10th Air Base Wing, U.S. Air Force Academy: “Custom Facemasks for Fighter Pilots and Beyond”
Matthew Correia, Air University’s Eaker Center, Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala.: “DAGGER: Developing Airmen and Guardians with Games for Enhanced Readiness.”
Maj. Allen Black, 412th Test Wing, Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.: “Project FoX (Fighter Optimization Experiment)”
SMSgt. Brent Kenney and TSgt. Matthew Connelly, 52nd Fighter Wing, Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany, “Project Arcwater”
Cadet Grant Schlichting, U.S. Air Force Academy: “Aerial Tow Rehookup”

Air and Space Force Chiefs: Defense Industrial Base May Be Too Fragile to Surge Production

March 4, 2022 | By Amanda Miller

The aerospace industrial base could pose a risk to U.S. national security because of lack of parts for aging systems, inattention to the future workforce, and the uncertainty that’s historically surrounded the success of space companies.

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. and Space Force Chief of Space Operations Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond addressed issues at the AFA Warfare Symposium in Orlando, Fla., on March 3.

Raymond cited a report by the Air Force Research Laboratory and Defense Innovation Unit that called the industrial base “tactically strong but strategically fragile.” He said in the past, proposed activity in the space sector has fizzled out.

“We need this to materialize,” Raymond said.

The report “State of the Space Industrial Base 2021: Infrastructure and Services for Economic Growth and National Security,” published in November 2021, posits that increasing Pentagon spending on commercial space technology would prompt private investors to invest even more. Its authors deemed that sustaining investors’ confidence was a “major concern” requiring “urgent action.

Raymond told the crowd at AWS22 that the Space Force perceives “opportunities for a national-level vision on the industrial base.”

On the Air Force side, Brown says he worries about the age of the fleet and “manufacturing resources where the company that actually built … whatever it is doesn’t exist anymore.” Not only is he concerned with DOD’s external suppliers but “bits of our depot as well that may not be effective.”

“If we had to surge, we’d be challenged,” Brown said.

The ability to diversify—to work with more, smaller companies—could help.

“They’re all patriotic, and they want to work with us, but we can’t make it so hard,” Brown said, referring to the hassle of navigating the DOD’s acquisition processes.

Brown also brought up the future workforce as “something we need to pay attention to” by emphasizing education in the STEM disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and math.

“We do not want it to atrophy,” Brown said. “We want that workforce to be here when we need them.”

Former Google CEO: AI Will Be ‘Force Multiplier Like You’ve Never Seen Before’

March 4, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

The Defense Department needs to upgrade its IT, add more software specialists, and empower certain programs to be more innovative—especially when it comes to artificial intelligence, the former CEO of Google said March 3.

Eric Schmidt, who led Google and its parent company Alphabet from 2001 to 2015 and chaired the Defense Innovation Advisory Board, delivered a keynote address at the AFA Warfare Symposium in Orlando, Fla., offering what he called several “blunt” criticisms and recommendations for the Pentagon.

“In the tradition of the military, I will be direct and I hope that’s OK,” Schmidt told an audience of Airmen, Guardians, and industry leaders. “If I look at the totality of what you’re doing, you’re doing a very good job of making things that you currently have better, over and over and over again. But I’m an innovator. And I would criticize, if I could say right up front, that the current structure, which is an interlock between the White House, the Congress, the Secretary of Defense’s [office], the various military contractors, the various services, and so forth, is a bureaucracy in and of its own. And it’s doing a good job at what it has been asked to do, but it hasn’t been asked to do some new things.”

Schmidt did note one exception to that criticism—the B-21 Raider program. Praising the Rapid Capabilities Office, Schmidt said the Air Force developed the new stealth bomber in a “new and innovative” way.

The challenge now is to take that approach and apply it to programs across the DOD, Schmidt said, especially to non-hardware platforms.

“Every time you try to do something in software, one of these strange scavenging groups within the administration takes your money away. It’s insane,” Schmidt said. “The core issue here in the military is you don’t have enough software people. And by software people, I mean people who think the way I do. You come out of a different background, and you just don’t have enough of these people.

“These are hard people to manage. They’re often very obnoxious—sorry, welcome to my field. They’re difficult. They’re sort of full of things, but they can change the world, and a small team can increase your productivity of whatever you’re doing.”

This issue is particularly glaring when it comes to artificial intelligence (AI), Schmidt said. And not only does the military lack the necessary personnel, the defense industrial base does too. Touring the symposium’s exhibition hall, Schmidt said he only saw “like two AI companies, … and by the way, they’re the little ones in the corner.”

Just like the B-21 program has been innovative, there are some examples of good software development, Schmidt said, pointing to Project Maven, a DOD AI project that ignited controversy among Google employees, but which Schmidt said has had “very successful classified use in the right ways.”

But Project Maven was just one project, and “to be very blunt, you don’t have enough people, you don’t have the right contractors, and you don’t have the right strategy to fill in this,” Schmidt said of the Pentagon’s work in AI. “We need 20, 30, 40 such groups—more, more, more. And as that transformation happens, the people who work for you, the incredibly courageous people, will have so much more powerful tools.”

Schmidt’s intense enthusiasm for artificial intelligence is born out of his belief that “AI is a force multiplier like you’ve never seen before,” he said. “It sees patterns that no human can see. And all interesting future military decisions will have as part of that an AI assistant.”

Schmidt is hardly alone in predicting AI will have a seismic impact on warfare. But advocates say they’ve also encountered resistance and inertia within the Pentagon.

Such doubts are preventing the U.S. military from fully embracing AI’s possibilities and forcing service members to “spend all day looking at screens doing something that a computer should do.”

Potential uses include precision weapons targeting, precision analysis, and autonomous systems, Schmidt said. But to get there, there’s something the Pentagon has to do first.

“The real problem you have is that you don’t have enough bandwidth, … which no one ever tells you this,” Schmidt said. “Your networks, excuse the term, suck. You’ve got to get the networks upgraded. You just have to, because all of these things depend on that kind of connectivity, right?”

Schmidt’s comments were met with applause from his audience—the issue of poor network connectivity and IT systems is a constant source of frustration among Airmen and Guardians.

Yet despite all this, perhaps the biggest issue facing the Air Force’s software and AI efforts isn’t really about software.

“We love to talk about strategy, and we need more money over here, and by the way we do, and we need more partnerships over here, and yes we do, and we need more of this over here, and every state has to have its money and all of that’s fine,” Schmidt said. “But what we don’t have and we need a lot more of is the kind of talent to drive this world.”

To attract and retain talent, Schmidt said, the military needs to empower innovators instead of holding them back, granting them a certain level of autonomy to make decisions and take risks. In that regard, his comments echo ones made by Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., who has made empowering Airmen one of the key themes and goals of his tenure.