UN Addresses Lethal Autonomous Weapons—aka ‘Killer Robots’—Amid Calls for a Treaty

Dec. 14, 2021 | By Amanda Miller

The United Nations’ secretary-general advocated for new restrictions on autonomous weapons as a U.N. group that negotiates weapons protocols started a week of meetings, in part, to discuss the matter.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres addressed the Review Conference of the U.N.’s Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons. Taking place in Geneva, Switzerland, the Review Conference happens every five years. Guterres preceded the weeklong meeting with a Dec. 13 message encouraging conference members “to agree on an ambitious plan for the future to establish restrictions on the use of certain types of autonomous weapons.”

He described autonomous weapons as those “that can choose targets and kill people without human interference.” The conference has identified artificial intelligence, for one, as an “increasingly autonomous” technology.

The Air Force has experimented with autonomous weapons such as the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Golden Horde, which did not become a program of record but did succeed in getting Small Diameter Bombs to collaborate with each other after receiving and interpreting commands mid-flight. The experimental Perdix micro-drones, under the DOD’s Strategic Capabilities Office, rely on AI. And although the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency’s Gremlins drones don’t rely on AI yet, they’re designed to accommodate that level of computing.

Some countries and international rights groups want the convention to negotiate a treaty that would ban what the U.N. calls lethal autonomous weapons systems—and what others call “killer robots”—but diplomats told Reuters that’s not likely to happen this week. It would require a consensus, and the U.S., for one, has already rejected the idea. Russia was expected to do the same.

The U.N. group began convening experts on lethal autonomous weapons systems in 2014. It could agree on other guidelines short of a treaty, a diplomat told Reuters.

Speaking during an American Enterprise Institute webinar about AI on Dec. 7, NATO’s David van Weel articulated why countries such as the U.S. might oppose a treaty on autonomous weapons.

Van Weel put the issue in terms of a hypothetical attack by a swarm of drones. “How do we defend against them? Well, we can’t, frankly, because you need AI in that case in order to be able to counter AI,” he said.

Van Weel represented a minority on the panel. His counterparts—an Oxford scholar and a tech attorney—supported a treaty to “de-weaponize” AI. The University of Oxford’s Xiaolan Fu, professor of technology and international development, thought that even to start a dialog would amount to progress.

Considering AI to have “the risk to be as toxic as a nuclear weapon, if not more,” Tech Group co-head Jonathan Kewley of the firm Clifford Chance said AI-enabled weapons need people in the loop the same way nuclear weapons do.

AI “doesn’t have a conscience. It doesn’t have a moral fiber unless it’s programmed in,” Kewley said. “AI has the risk to be as toxic as a nuclear weapon, if not more, and if we don’t have the equivalent of that moral compass, the finger on the button designed in through a treaty—because we’re not going to design the technology to prevent this unless there is a treaty involving China, the U.S., and others—we’re going to have a similar issue to nuclear risk.”

NATO’s van Weel suggested he might stop short of AI-assisted activities that the U.S. has already acknowledged, at least in experiments.

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall revealed in September that the Air Force’s chief architect’s office “deployed AI algorithms for the first time to a live operational kill chain … for automated target recognition,” though neither he nor an Air Force spokesperson at the time provided details about the target. Meanwhile in October, the Army-led, joint-service Rapid Dragon exercise relied on AI analysis of satellite images for targeting and reportedly shortened the decision-making from what might have taken as long as five hours to just one hour while also improving accuracy.

However, van Weel suggested that current AI, which he described as “very preliminary” and “very rudimentary,” is “by no means capable of making such important decisions,” even just “using AI to enhance the decision-making process.”

In its Ethical Principles for Artificial Intelligence, the DOD says its AI will possess “the ability to detect and avoid unintended consequences, and the ability to disengage or deactivate deployed systems that demonstrate unintended consequences,” but the document stops short of specifying humans’ role in its principle covering governability.

SASC Advances Nomination for New Vice Chairman of Joint Chiefs

Dec. 14, 2021 | By Greg Hadley

The Senate Armed Services Committee advanced Adm. Christopher W. Grady’s nomination to be Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Dec. 14, moving him one step closer to taking on the military’s No. 2 job.

The committee’s favorable report on Grady was expected after his confirmation hearing Dec. 8, during which multiple Senators, both Republican and Democrat, expressed optimism about advancing his nomination to ensure the vice chair position is filled as quickly as possible.

It’s been more than three weeks since Air Force Gen. John E. Hyten officially stepped down as vice chair, leaving one of the top positions in the Pentagon vacant. Defense Department Press Secretary John F. Kirby has called any sort of gap in the vice chairman role “not optimal,” but noted that the Joint Staff has worked through such situations before. By law, there is no procedure for naming an “acting” vice chairman, but some of Hyten’s roles and responsibilities can be delegated on an “acting” basis, Kirby added.

Now, Grady, who most recently led the Navy’s Fleet Forces Command, awaits a vote on the floor of the Senate. His hearing in front of the Senate panel proceeded, for the most part, smoothly, as he advocated for nuclear modernization, an end to over-classification, and a data-based approach on the Joint Requirements Oversight Council. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) was the only committee member who publicly stated he might not vote for Grady.

But while leading lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have previously pledged to act quickly to minimize any vacancy, any individual Senator can place procedural “holds” on nominees after they are reported out of committee, which can slow down the process—such holds delayed Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall’s appointment for roughly a month.

On top of that, the Senate’s calendar for the final few weeks of the year is already crowded as it continues work on the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act, raising the nation’s debt limit, and negotiating on President Joe Biden’s social spending bill, called Build Back Better. Indeed, Grady’s confirmation hearing was originally scheduled for Dec. 2 but was postponed to accommodate the potential floor schedule for the NDAA.

The calendar could clear up some soon though—the Senate is expected to finish its work on the debt limit Dec. 14, and the NDAA is nearly done as well. A new compromise version of the annual defense policy bill passed the House with a large bipartisan majority, and the Senate voted 86-13 to invoke cloture on the bill Dec. 14, setting it up for final passage as early as the evening of Dec. 15.

The Senate Armed Services Committee also voted Dec. 14 to favorably report a list of 10 pending military promotions in the Army, Navy, and Space Force.

Air Force Discharges First Service Members for Refusing COVID-19 Vaccine

Dec. 14, 2021 | By Greg Hadley

The Department of the Air Force discharged 27 service members for refusing to get the COVID-19 vaccine, marking the first known instance of military personnel being kicked out of the service for failing to follow Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III’s order that all service members receive the vaccine.

An Air Force spokeswoman confirmed the discharges to Air Force Magazine on Dec. 14, saying all of those discharged were Active-duty members, but the exact breakdown between Airmen and Guardians was not immediately known.

The number of those discharged is almost certain to grow—when the department’s first-in-the-military deadline of Nov. 2 passed, 800 Airmen and Guardians were recorded as refusing the vaccine. Since then, the number of refusers has grown past 1,000 in the Active duty, and includes 3,234 across the total force.

This first wave of discharges includes Airmen and Guardians for whom the separation process was the most straightforward. None of those discharged sought a religious or medical exemption, the Air Force confirmed—if they had, they would have been considered in compliance with the vaccine mandate while their request was pending. And the majority were in their first term of enlistment—Airmen who have six or more years of service, as well as those who are noncommissioned officers or who are being discharged under anything less than honorable conditions, have the right to a hearing by an administrative discharge board.

Those discharged were counseled on the benefits of the vaccine, and their commanders were allowed to impose punishments short of separation, an Air Force spokeswoman said. In the end, however, they continued to refuse the vaccine, disobeying a lawful order.

On Dec. 7, the Air Force released its procedure for dealing with vaccine refusers, giving those who refuse and are denied an exemption five days to either start the vaccination process, file an appeal, or request to separate or retire. Those who still refuse “will be subject to the initiation of administrative discharge,” according to the memo signed by Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall.

The vast majority of Airmen and Guardians have followed the order to get the vaccine—the department’s most recent data show 97.3 percent of the Active-duty force and 95.4 percent of the total force are at least partially vaccinated, with roughly another 1 percent currently holding medical or administrative exemptions.

On Nov. 1, the Air Force announced that it had discharged nearly 40 basic military and technical trainees for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine. Unlike the 27 Active-duty members discharged, though, those individuals were recruits and not yet members of the military, an Air Force spokeswoman said.

No Accountability for Kabul Airstrike That Killed 10 Civilians, Pentagon Says

Dec. 13, 2021 | By Greg Hadley

A pair of combatant commanders reviewed the Air Force Inspector General’s report on the erroneous Aug. 29 airstrike that killed 10 civilians in Kabul, Afghanistan, and made no recommendations related to accountability, the Defense Department’s top spokesperson said Dec. 13.

U.S. Central Command head Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr. and U.S. Special Forces Command boss Gen. Richard D. Clarke both reviewed the report from Air Force IG Lt. Gen. Sami D. Said and reported back a variety of recommendations to Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III, Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby said. Not included, however, was any recommendation of punishment or discipline for the service members involved in the strike.

“None of their recommendations dealt specifically with issues of accountability,” Kirby said in a press briefing. “The Secretary reviewed their recommendations—I won’t get into all of them; some of them are understandably classified—but he approved their recommendations. So I do not anticipate there being issues of personal accountability to be had with respect to the Aug. 29 airstrike.”

Kirby later confirmed that Austin is not calling for any accountability measures in relation to the strike, which came after 13 U.S. service members were killed in a terrorist attack at Hamid Karzai International Airport.

Austin’s decision, Kirby added, was in line with the conclusion reached by McKenzie and Clarke—that the airstrike, which killed aid worker Zemari Ahmadi and nine members of his family, was caused by a breakdown in process and execution, “not the result of negligence, not the result of misconduct, not the result of poor leadership,” Kirby said.

As to whether lower-level commanders will be able to implement any accountability measures as a result of the strike, Kirby deferred to McKenzie and Clarke.

The original investigation by Air Force Inspector General Lt. Gen. Sami D. Said found that a strike cell in Qatar, studying video footage for eight hours, believed Ahmadi’s white Toyota Corolla was a vehicle of interest and that he was involved in planning a terrorist attack against American service members at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. Only three days earlier, the 13 Americans had been killed in a terrorist attack at the airport checkpoints, and the investigation found that the attack, in part, led to confirmation bias and the erroneous strike, though no laws were broken.

Shortly after Said’s report was released in early November, the New York Times reported that in a 2019 strike against ISIS in Baghuz, Syria, dozens of civilians were killed along with 16 fighters before U.S. Central Command allegedly covered up wrongdoing and disallowed an investigation of war crimes.

A few days after the Times report, Austin briefed the media on civilian casualties and said DOD has “more work to do in that regard, clearly.” When asked if he would impose disciplinary action or otherwise hold people accountable, Austin said that “leaders in this department should be held to account for high standards of conduct and leadership.”

In the case of the Afghan airstrike, Austin did not believe accountability measures were needed, Kirby said. Generally speaking, though, Kirby said the department is open to changes “to the way we analyze information and intelligence, act on that intelligence, target, and … the actual execution procedures of a strike.”

No such changes were announced Dec. 13.

Dr. Steven Kwon, the head of the aid group Nutrition & Education International, where Ahmadi worked, issued a statement calling the lack of discipline for the airstrike “shocking,” according to CNBC.

“How can our military wrongly take the lives of 10 precious Afghan people and hold no one accountable in any way?” Kwon said. “What message is it sending to family members who lost their loved ones—and my employees who lost a beloved colleague?”

Kwon’s statement also criticized the Pentagon for not yet evacuating family members of those killed from Afghanistan or paying reparations. Kirby responded by saying DOD remains committed to both options.

“We are working very hard with [Kwon] and his organization to affect the relocation of the family members,” Kirby said. “And I think as you can understand that, with respect to an ex gratia payment, which we’re absolutely willing to make, we want to make sure that we do it in the most safe and responsible way, so that we know it’s getting to the right people and only to the right people.”

USAFE Watchful, But Operating Normally, as Tensions Build Between Russia, Ukraine

Dec. 13, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

U.S. Air Forces in Europe hasn’t changed the way it operates even though Russia is massing forces on the Ukraine border, but U.S. and NATO allies are keeping a close watch on the tensions, USAFE commander Gen. Jeffrey L. Harrigian said Dec. 13.

Speaking at an AFA Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies virtual event, Harrigian said the NATO air arms are “working closely together to understand” what Russia’s activities, in all domains, are in order to have a “shared understanding” of what’s going on.

“We’re largely focused on … how we ensure our team is ready, our posture is where it needs to be, and we’re working that in cooperation” with allies and regional partners, Harrigian said, indicating no change in the posture of USAFE in light of Russia’s movements. If partners spot a change in Russian activities or status, they will alert the U.S., he said, and “we [will] all have a better understanding of what options would be available to us.”

He said his “Job 1” is to “offer my best military advice to General [Tod D.] Wolters, [Supreme Allied Commander, NATO], and … up through the Secretary” of Defense.

“Our focus internally is we’ve got to make sure we’re ready. And that readiness piece is across not just the airplanes but the people,” Harrigian said.

“We all want diplomacy to work,” but “as we work through the options we’re going to present, it’s going to all be about avoiding miscalculation” and anything that “takes decision space away from our superiors.”

He’s also communicating to the Airmen of USAFE the seriousness of the Ukraine tensions and emphasizing that Airmen remain resilient.

Harrigian said USAFE and Ukraine have not conducted any joint air exercises in the last couple of years and that non-flying joint drills have been about “force development activities” on which he did not elaborate.

Retired Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, dean of AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, talks with U.S. Air Forces in Europe-Air Forces Africa boss Gen. Jeffrey L. Harrigian during a Dec. 13 Mitchell event.

The October 2018 Clear Sky Exercise was the last joint air drill between the two countries. It paired U.S. Air National Guard and Lakenheath, U.K.-based F-15s with Ukrainian MiG-29 Fulcrums, Su-27 Flankers, and Su-24 Fencers to “increase the level of interoperability” between the air arms, according to a USAFE release. U.S. C-130s and KC-135 tankers participated as well.

Harrigian has had conversations with the Ukrainian air chief, but not recently. “There’s a relationship there. We expect that to continue,” he added.

Relative to operating in proximity to Russia, Harrigian said, “We have, over the last 18 months, continued to execute operations in international waters,” and “that has not changed at this point.” USAFE has exercised with the U.S. Navy and partner navies in the Baltic and Black Seas, refining tactics, techniques, and procedures “and the way we do business,” he said. This practice will ensure an up-to-date shared understanding of TTPs in the event of a crisis, Harrigian added.

He said Bomber Task Forces dispatched to Europe by Air Force Global Strike Command have been a great success delivering the message that the U.S. is able to rapidly deploy heavy airpower to the continent. Harrigian said allies and partners are lining up to participate in future such deployments, either running intercepts or escorting American bombers.

The 9th Expeditionary Bomb Squadron completed a six-week bomber task force mission Nov. 15 across the North Sea, Baltics, and Black Sea region, integrating coalition capabilities and practicing agile combat employment. The next such deployment will happen soon, Harrigian said. The deployments are also essential in familiarizing bomber pilots with operating in Europe so that if they need to conduct a real-world contingency, “it won’t be the first time” they’ve flown in the region.

Oklahoma Air National Guard Member Awarded Distinguished Flying Cross

Dec. 13, 2021 | By Amy Hudson

An Oklahoma Air National Guard Member received the Distinguished Flying Cross—the nation’s fourth-highest award for valor in combat—earlier this month for his actions during a Taliban attack in Afghanistan in 2018.

On April 30, 2018, Lt. Col. Michael Coloney was assigned to the 125th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron when more than 80 Taliban fighters attacked U.S. and Afghan Special Forces who were clearing a village in the Kapisa province.

The F-16 pilot was already airborne on another previously assigned mission when he immediately retasked to provide air support to the U.S. and Afghan troops as the Taliban launched rockets and grenades and shot small arms and high-powered machine guns at them.

He worked with combat controllers on the ground for approximately five hours, employing GPS-guided bombs and conducting high-angle strafe attacks on the Taliban fighters, sometimes less than 30 meters from friendly forces.

There were 11 casualties that day, including one American Soldier who was killed in action, but Coloney’s fire power enabled the friendly forces to escape the enemy without further loss of life.

“It was his exemplary skill, outstanding airmanship, and devotion to duty under extremely hazardous conditions that allowed Coloney to save the lives of so many U.S. and Afghan Special Forces troops that day, for which he earned the Distinguished Flying Cross,” according to an Air National Guard release.

Moving at the Speed of the Mission With Data Fabric

Dec. 13, 2021

As the DoD presses forward with Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) programs and architectures the Air Force is working to stand up technology centers that will not only allow for the sharing of data but for the sharing of data in motion. Our warfighters and peacekeepers need real time data to make decisions in the field and the traditional database structure, modernized with data lakes cannot operate at the speed of the mission.

What is Data Fabric?

Gartner defines data fabric as a design concept that serves as an integrated layer (fabric) of data and connecting processes. This layer utilizes continuous analytics over existing, discoverable, and inferenced metadata assets to support the design, deployment, and utilization of integrated and reusable data across all environments. It continuously identifies and connects data from disparate applications to discover unique, business-relevant relationships between the available data points. A Data Fabric approach enables software factories that practice continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) to deploy faster and automate version control with their internal and external data integrations.

Why do we need it?

There is an acute need to avoid the same mistakes of past data modernizations efforts. Attempting to create yet another centralized data lake with all an agency’s data would just add to data sprawl as existing databases aren’t likely to be going anywhere. More importantly, data at rest in a datastore isn’t useful when it isn’t being actively queried. Instead, as DoD has shown with JADC2, there is a real need to start thinking about creating a central connective tissue that conducts data across organizations. Doing so allows for data to stay in motion, becoming available across the enterprise as it is created and available to those who need it precisely when they need it.

“Data-in-motion is really about inverting the longstanding dynamic of data at rest. Rather than storing the data away in silos where it’s static and asking retroactive questions, what you want to do is publish the data as a stream and constantly deliver it for real-time analysis,” said Will LaForest, public sector chief technology officer at Confluent.

By removing the storage resting place, you are decoupling the producers of the data from the consumers. Data Fabric provides the connective tissue of decoupling all the different actors within an organization, so they can all produce and consume independently. This is key to making solutions scalable across a large organization – even one as big as the DoD.

How do we weave data into fabric?

A U.S. Air Force Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase III contract was recently issued to focus on deploying a Data Fabric in the Air Force. Run out of the Chief Architect Office (CAO) of the Department of the Air Force (DAF), this project aims to invigorate innovation for data centralization using event streaming architecture and integrated solutions for easier data analysis.

The CAO mission objective is to ease data visibility with an enterprise data architecture prototype that allows users to access previously siloed data, platforms, or producers by changing users’ interaction with data. A tactical Data Fabric will become a global “source-of-truth” that will make it easier to integrate disparate applications by unlocking mission silos and sharing data in real-time between analytics and mission systems.

The CAO solution is utilizing Kafka, an open source distributed event streaming platform capable of handling trillions of events a day. Kafka’s enterprise scalability has made it the open-source industry standard in not just messaging, but event streaming, allowing for real-time processing, curation, and transformation of the data in motion To support the enterprise use of Kafka, they are implementing Confluent, engineered and released by the original creators of Kafka. Confluent is the mission-ready form of Kafka with significant enhancements for developers, operations and administrators along with critical security features required by Federal programs and supported 24/7.

Turning Data Fabric into a full outfit

The Confluent Platform provides security, encryption, and monitoring capabilities including Confluent Control Center, Role-Based and Policy-Based Access Control, and FIPS 140-2 Compliance. These capabilities allow for the handling of the most sensitive data sets for critical mission operations while preserving the speed, flexibility, and scalability of Kafka.

Connectors, pre-delivered integration points to external sources of data, are key to the functioning of a data fabric. Confluent provides and supports a large collection of connectors to make integration with the data-fabric a low-no code endeavor and accelerate mission data integration from existing and emerging programs. These connectors, unlike legacy systems dependent on slower transactional REST APIs, allow for real-time streaming of data and avoid time consuming and costly creation of custom data endpoints.

A Fabric Future

A data fabric architecture meets all eight guiding principles in the DoD Data Strategy from viewing data as a strategic asset to collective stewardship and enterprise access to being designed for compliance. By “dressing” DoD systems in data fabric, our military can better utilize data to meet the vision of JADC2 and share information at speed and scale for operational advantage and increased efficiency.

NATO’s Plan to Grow Trust in Military AI

Dec. 13, 2021 | By Amanda Miller

Western militaries—already “late to the party” in the creation of artificial intelligence—risk unforeseen consequences by adopting AI made for the commercial sector, said NATO’s David van Weel.

That’s why the alliance is publicizing a new plan by which it hopes its governments will get involved in AI development from the start, both for security reasons and to “bridge a gap of distrust” in the technology.

Though he acknowledged that sharing the plan is a bit out of character for NATO, all 30 nations, including the U.S., have signed on.

“We are not known, at NATO, for publishing a lot,” said van Weel, assistant secretary general for emerging security challenges. “We try to keep secrets a lot.”

Van Weel introduced NATO’s AI strategy, published in October, during an American Enterprise Institute webinar Dec. 7. The webinar “Artificial Intelligence: Can We Go From Chaos to Cooperation?” accompanied the release of AEI’s paper, “Artificial Intelligence: The Risks Posed by the Current Lack of Standards.”

As a “pervasive technology,” AI will “have an impact on everything we do,” said van Weel. Setting aside “the killer robot discussion,” van Weel dismissed the notion of excluding AI from all military uses: “The idea that AI would not be used for defense purposes is like saying that the steam engine, when it was invented, could only be used for commercial purposes, or electricity would not be supplied to the military.”

But being behind the private sector in AI development has left governments “in a situation where regulation comes after the broad use and misuse of technology,” van Weel said. “So we need to be early to the party and make sure that we understand new technologies, not to militarize them—no, but to understand the security and defense implications.”

Van Weel said military uses of AI should be regulated, but “you don’t want to over-regulate if you don’t know that you can defend yourself within the regulations that you’re proposing.” He provided the example of drone swarms “that collectively, powered by AI, are able to follow an intrinsic pattern—for example, our water supply or one of our cities. So how do we defend against them? Well, we can’t, frankly, because you need AI in that case in order to be able to counter AI.”

But even among peers, he describes skepticism.

“I’ve been on panels quite a lot where people say, ‘Well, please, I don’t trust the defense use of artificial intelligence,’ and that’s something we need to address,” van Weel said. “We are a trusted user. We—NATO, all the 30 allies—we all subscribe to the democratic values. We all subscribe to the values our societies are built upon, and we’re there to protect them.”

NATO’s strategy proposes six principles of responsible use of AI similar to the Defense Department’s Ethical Principles for Artificial Intelligence adopted in 2020—but with a plan to verify that the principles are followed. According to NATO’s list of attributes, military AI should be lawful; responsible and accountable; explainable and traceable; reliable; governable; and having bias mitigation.

To engender confidence in the principles, NATO has also proposed a new initiative.

“Principles are nice, but they need to be verifiable as well, and they need to be baked in from the moment of the first conception of an idea up until the delivery,” van Weel said.

To that end, to verify new AI, NATO wants to create test centers, co-located with universities throughout the alliance. This includes “existing test centers with knowledge, where allies that are thinking about co-developing AI for use in the defense sector can come in and verify, with protocols, with certain standards that we’re setting, that this AI is actually verified,” van Weel said.

“It’s not a world standard yet, but if the 30 nations, Western democracies, start out by shaping industry to adhere by these standards, then I feel that we are making an impact, at least in the development of AI and hopefully also in the larger world setting standards.”

70th Annual Operation Christmas Drop Delivers Supplies to Remote Pacific Islands

Dec. 10, 2021 | By Greg Hadley

The Pentagon’s longest-running humanitarian mission hit a new milestone this month as Pacific Air Forces kicked off the 70th annual Operation Christmas Drop on Dec. 5.

Operation Christmas Drop involved Airmen from the 36th Wing, 515th Air Mobility Operations Wing, and 374th Airlift Wing gathering, packing, and dropping pallets of supplies from C-130s to more than 55 remote islands in the southeastern Pacific, including the Federated States of Micronesia and the Republic of Palau.

The operation first began in 1952 when a B-29 aircrew flying over the island of Kapingamarangi, 3,500 miles southwest of Hawaii, saw islanders waving at them, according to a PACAF release. The crew dropped supplies attached to a parachute to them, starting an annual tradition.

In 2021, the Air Force and partner nations dropped some 25,000 kilograms worth of supplies, including school supplies, clothing, rice, fishing equipment, and toys, impacting about 20,000 people, said Capt. Dan Mumford, one of the C-130J pilots flying the mission, in an interview released by the 36th Wing.

“These islands are some of the most remote in the world. They may get a boat of supplies every 4 to 5 months, but there are no airports and little to no visitors,” Mumford said in the interview. “However, we do communicate with the islands through a system of ham radios, and although many do not speak English, the stories of excitement and gratitude that are sent back to us are touching. The thing that really got me was when I was told the children on these islands don’t believe Santa Claus flies a magical sleigh—he flies a C-130.”

Speaking at a ceremony to commemorate the start of Operation Christmas Drop at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, on Dec. 5, Larry Raigetal recalled his childhood on one such island.

“I was curious where the toys were coming from, much less being fascinated with the Air Force guys standing in the C-130 and tossing down those boxes,” Raigetal said. “I wanted to find out where they came from. I wanted to know what the source was.”

Donated supplies are gathered from private donors, charitable organizations, and the University of Guam and sorted by volunteers before being packed into pallets, Mumford said. From there, crews execute low-cost, low-altitude air drops over the course of a week. And it’s not just a humanitarian mission.

“This training mission is not only a tradition but provides relevant and real training necessary for our Airmen and partner nations in the Indo-Pacific region,” Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach, Pacific Air Forces commander, said in a release.

Similar to last year, precautions were taken to lessen the risk of COVID-19. All pilots and aircrew were fully vaccinated; all volunteers handling donations wore face masks and gloves; and pallets were left untouched for hours before being closed.