Watch, Read: In Keynote, Kendall Warns ‘Putin Made a Very Serious Miscalculation’

March 8, 2022

Watch the video or read the transcript of Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall’s March 3, 2022, keynote address during the AFA Warfare Symposium: “One Team, One Fight.” This transcript is made possible through the sponsorship of JobsOhio.

Good morning. I’d like to first thank AFA for their patience and their cooperation as we worked through the process of having another major AFA conference during the COVID pandemic. Last fall we were hopeful that COVID was receding as people became vaccinated. Unfortunately, the Omicron variant had other plans, and too many Americans, for whatever reasons, made decisions not to be vaccinated. I’m hopeful once again that we’re on a good trajectory, and I appreciate the vast majority of Airmen, Guardians, and DAF civilians who have become fully vaccinated. Yesterday we stopped wearing masks in the Pentagon. It was truly great to see all those smiling faces; in fact it was great just to see those faces, but they were smiling. The DC area met the CDC’s new low-risk criteria; unfortunately Orlando does not. We’re definitely making progress – at least for now. Let’s keep it up. I don’t want to sound like a nag up here. I emphasize what the chief just said a moment ago. We do not want to be the super source or a super-spreader for a new variant that sets us all the way back so let’s please follow the rules while we’re here. I’d really appreciate that; all our Airmen and Guardians here appreciate that as well.

I want to especially highlight the resiliency of our Airmen and Guardians and their families. The last two years have upended everything that we might consider our normal routines, across the board. These men and women, from every imaginable background, have never stopped working to ensure that the United States Air Force and Space Force remain the best the world has ever seen, and their families have borne this burden right along with them. I also appreciate all that industry has done to continue supporting our nation during this crisis. My hat’s off to every one of you.

I’ve been part of our “one team” for over six months now, and what I’d like to do this morning is to give you some feedback about what I think I’ve learned so far about our Department, what I’ve tried to accomplish in my first few months, and where I think we need to go. Before I do all that though, I’d like to say a few words about current events and our historical context.

Somewhere during my education, I recall being instructed that it’s dangerous to draw major conclusions from contemporary historical events. Understanding and interpreting the broad, lasting impact of highly-disruptive events requires some distance in time, and a clear-eyed, objective perspective that is simply impossible in the moment. I think that observation was wise, but here we are. The threat of a major land war in Europe was something that until a few days ago most of us believed was extremely remote. So much for that.

Two Fridays ago I spent the day at CYBERCOM. As I was leaving, I mentioned to General Nakasone that based on what I’d seen that day, most of the world was about to have a major emotional event; something that would shock people into a new understanding of reality, something which has now unfortunately come to pass. A few weeks ago, well before the invasion of Ukraine, I told those present at the weekly Department of the Air Force staff meeting that they should put one of those little yellow sticky notes up on their workstation to remind themselves that great power conflicts could happen, and could do so at any time.

I was trying to create a stronger sense of urgency about the importance of our work. I don’t think there is much doubt about the possibility of major power acts of aggression at this point. If war between major powers does happen, it will most likely be the result of a miscalculation by an authoritarian head of state.

In my view President Putin made a very, very, serious miscalculation. He severely underestimated the global reaction the invasion of Ukraine would provoke, he severely underestimated the will and courage of the Ukrainian people, and he overestimated the capability of his own military.

Perhaps most of all, he severely underestimated the reaction from both the United States and from our friends and allies. A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to have dinner at the home of the Ambassador to the United States from Finland. His comment to me was that the actions the Biden Administration was taking to prepare and unite the free world to counter Russia might not stop Putin from invading—he’s likely to have already made the decision to do so—but, they are preparing the world for like-minded nations to work together if he does invade. As I often say: One team, one fight.

Where this will lead, I honestly don’t know, but if President Putin thought he could divide NATO, divide Europe, and even divide the United States, he was wrong. Now it’s up to all of us to ensure that something like this does not happen again. Our role, the role of the Department of the Air Force, is clear: to provide the Air and Space Forces that will deter aggression, and if necessary, defeat it. As my former boss Secretary Leon Panetta said in every speech I ever heard him give, there is no more sacred obligation than the duty to protect our nation and our values.

How will we meet this obligation? The Biden Administration is about to release the National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy. I don’t want to get ahead of that process, but you can be confident that despite current events the pacing challenge remains China.

You can also be confident that alliances and partnerships will be emphasized under the “integrated deterrence” rubric. Russia and other threats will not be discounted, but China, with both regional and global ambitions, the resources to pursue them, and a repressive authoritarian system of government, will be our greatest strategic national security challenge. Some of you will recall my three priorities from last September when I spoke at that AFA conference – China, China, China.

Since then I’ve had several months on the job. What have I learned? Firstly, I’ve gotten to meet a lot of Airmen and Guardians. Nothing is more inspiring to me than to have informal conversations with the men and women who wear the Air or Space Force uniform. The dedication, commitment, professionalism, and passion these people bring to their service and to the nation is simply awesome. Thank you, all.

As I’ve traveled to places like Alaska, Montana, North Dakota, and Thule Greenland, the positive attitudes, drive, and commitment I’ve seen from our men and women serving far from home and sometimes in challenging circumstances is just exceptional. I am going to talk to my staff about some warmer travel options, however. Diego Garcia, Niger, and Djibouti are on the list for this year and I’m telling my staff that we’ll average out to a very moderate temperature.

My remarks today are about warfighting and operational capability, the subject of this conference, so I won’t be focusing on people today, but our Airmen and Guardians are the heart and soul of who we are, what we stand for, and what we are sworn to protect. I have enormous respect for our Airmen and Guardians. They are always foremost in my mind, and I know I can say the same on behalf of the entire Department of the Air Force leadership team.

But I’ve also learned about the problems our institution faces. We’re stretched thin as we meet Combatant Commanders’ needs around the globe. We have an aging and costly-to-maintain capital structure with average aircraft ages of approximately 30 years and operational availability rates that are lower than we desire.

While I applaud the assistance the Congress has provided this year, we’re still limited in our ability to shift resources away from legacy platforms that we need to retire to free up funds for modernization.

We’re not flying and training as much as we would like to be, sacrificing in part a significant historical advantage of superior flying experience for our pilots and our aircrews. We’re carrying the costs of a roughly 20 percent excess capacity of real estate. We have a significant number of programs in the Air Force that are not fully-funded beyond the budget year. We have a Space Force that inherited a set of systems designed for an era when we could operate in space with impunity.

Moreover, our entire military was designed for an era in which our potential adversaries did not possess space systems of their own that actively threaten our terrestrial joint forces. We’ve only begun to define, and have not yet fully resourced, the space systems that we will need to secure the nation.

Overall, we do start more programs than we can afford, and we don’t prioritize the most promising ones early so that we can ensure they cross the value of death to production and fielding. As General Brown has noted in his recent orders, we still have too much bureaucracy.

Finally, we know that despite the progress we’ve made, we have more work to do to ensure every Airman and Guardian has the opportunity to reach their full potential and to serve in an environment where they will always be treated with respect.

The Department of the Air Force’s senior leadership team, myself and the Under Secretary, the Service Chiefs, their Vices, and our Senior Enlisted Leaders, are all focused on addressing these issues. While I’m involved in getting after every one of them, my highest personal goal as Secretary has been to instill a sense of urgency about our efforts to modernize and to ensure that we improve our operational posture relative to our pacing challenge; China, China, China. The most important thing we owe our Airmen and Guardians are the resources they need, and the systems and equipment they need, to perform their missions.

To achieve this goal, I’ve commissioned work on seven operational imperatives. These imperatives are just that; if we don’t get them right, we will have unacceptable operational risk. For those here from industry please pay attention; this is what the Department of the Air Force will be investing in and this is where we need your expertise, intellectual capacity, and creativity.

Before I walk you through them, let me give you a little historical context to set the stage. I’ve been around a few decades and I’ve always loved history. Keep in mind that China started its efforts to defeat U.S. power projection forces about 30 years ago, after the First Gulf War. What does that mean – 30 years? Let’s take a quick look at four 30-year-long periods in modern history and the history of warfare.

In 1901, there was no significant military air arm, there was no military air arm. The Wright Brothers were refining the design of the 1903 Wright Flyer, but at this time there had never been a manned, powered, heavier-than-air aircraft flight.

Thirty years later, in 1931, we had fought World War I and airpower, machine guns, tanks and radios had become a major element of modern militaries. By 1931 Billy Mitchell had demonstrated the obsolescence of the battleship, even if some were still not convinced. By 1931 there was an Army Air Corps with about 17 hundred aircraft.

Another 30 years later in 1961 we had fought World War II and the Korean War, demonstrated the criticality of airpower to tactical and strategic operational success, transitioned from propellers to the jet engine and from guns to air-to-air missiles. We had introduced intercontinental bombers, ICBMs, satellites, and of course nuclear weapons.

By 1991, the beginning of the 30 years in which China has been investing in ways to defeat U.S. power projection, we had fought the war in Vietnam, the Soviet Union had collapsed, and we demonstrated unprecedented conventional warfare dominance in the First Gulf War. The entire world had begun its reliance on GPS. Airborne surveillance systems—AWACS and prototype JSTARS—provided air and ground situation awareness and C3 battle management. The first stealth fighter, the F-117, was used in combat. Thirty years ago the B-2 had flown and the F-22 was in development.

The final 30 years take us to last year, 2021. In this period space was militarized to provide targeting support to long-range ground, sea, and air-based missiles; ground-based anti-satellite weapons were fielded and a range of counter-space weapons entered development to threaten satellites in all orbits. Highly accurate land and maritime attack Medium Range Ballistic Missiles and advanced land attack cruise missiles were fielded.

Beyond visual range air-to-air missiles were fielded, and a variety of hypersonic weapons, including intercontinental-range systems were tested or fielded. Military services devoted to long-range precision rocket forces and strategic support forces for space and cyber warfare were created, transforming military structures. Unlike the 30 year periods that I discussed before this one, these items on the list I just gave all occurred in China.

The point is that for the last 120 years, technology and warfare have changed dramatically in each 30 year increment. During the last 30 years, the US has not stood still, but we have not moved fast enough. We must accelerate change or, as General Brown noted, we will in fact lose.

A few months ago, the senior Department of the Air Force leadership team agreed to focus on a list of seven operational priorities, imperatives to help guide our investment decisions. These imperatives are all things we must accomplish in order to provide forces that can deter or defeat conventional military aggression by a peer or near-peer competitor. The two stressing cases we’ll analyze are a possible invasion of Taiwan and land assault on a NATO member. We have very visible evidence now that at least one of those is quite possible; so is the other one. Both are characterized by high operational tempos with large numbers of combatants on each side.

These are not the types of problems the Department of the Air Force has been focused on since the Cold War ended and especially not since 9/11. But as current events show, they are the types of problems we must be organized, equipped, and ready for. Not some time in the future, but now.

Fortunately we’re not starting from zero, but in each case we do need to improve our capability with a sense of urgency. I’m not at liberty to discuss the FY23 budget yet, but you’ll see alignment between the Department of the Air Force’s budget and the National Security and Defense Strategies on one hand, and these imperatives on the other. That said, there is still a great deal of work to be done in finalizing the best long-term modernization program for each of these imperatives.

Some of that work will, by necessity, have to inform our FY24 submission next year. The way we’ve organized the work is to put a team of operational and technical or acquisition experts in leadership roles for each of the seven imperatives. The overall effort is led from the operational perspective by Lt Gen Hinote for the Air Force and Lt Gen Liquori for the Space Force. Darlene Costello is the overall lead for acquisition and technology.

None of the operational imperatives exists in isolation. Space considerations transcend each and every one of them, and many are tightly coupled. For that reason, we’ve brought on board Dr. Tim Grayson, who has joined the Department of the Air Force as a highly qualified expert — small letters — responsibility for overseeing and coordinating the work on the seven imperatives.

Analysis efforts across the imperatives are being conducted by the Department of the Air Force Studies and Analysis organization led by Rowayne Schatz and the Space Warfare Analysis Center led by Andrew Cox. This will not just be an internal Department of the Air Force effort. For the industry, laboratory, and FFRDC people here, we need and welcome your help in addressing each of these imperatives successfully, and we’re actively soliciting your inputs.

The first imperative is Defining Resilient and Effective Space Order of Battle. The U.S. and its allies depend on space for a range of military services; communications, intelligence, targeting, navigation, and missile warning included. Our potential adversaries have fielded their own versions of these services and are also fielding a variety of ways to attack U.S. systems.

The simple fact is that the U.S. cannot project power successfully unless our space-based services are resilient enough to endure while under attack. Equally true, our terrestrial forces, Joint and Combined, cannot survive and perform their missions if our adversary’s space-based operational support systems, especially targeting systems, are allowed to operate with impunity.

This imperative will build on the excellent work already completed by Gen Raymond and his team, including that conducted by the Space Warfare Analysis Center, the Space Development Agency, and others. We’re also working closely with the Intelligence Community, especially the National Reconnaissance Office led by Chris Scolese.

As a critical input to this effort, the Vice Chief of Space Operations, Gen D.T. Thompson, is leading the effort with the other Services to define the totality of Joint operational requirements for support from space. We’re also grateful for the pioneering work done by General John Hyten, who recently retired, when he defined the vision for future military space. One team, one fight.

Of all the imperatives, this is perhaps the broadest and the one with the most potential impact.

The second imperative is Achieving Operationally-Optimized Advanced Battle Management Systems (or ABMS). This imperative is the Department of the Air Force component of Joint All Domain Command and Control. It is intended to better define and focus our efforts to improve how we collect, analyze, and share information and make operational decisions more effectively than our potential adversaries.

Our existing battle management platforms such as JSTARS and AWACS are aging and difficult to defend against modern threats. Our C3 battle management centers, Air Operations Centers especially, are in great need of modernization and are also vulnerable to attack. The theory of ABMS, and more broadly JADC2, has been that by using modern networking and communications capabilities in tandem with artificial intelligence for battle management and data collection from numerous sources, we can effectively process information to support superior operational decision-making, substantially improving the performance of our forces.

That’s a reasonable working hypothesis, but we can’t invest in everything and we shouldn’t invest in improvements that don’t have clear operational benefit. We must be more focused on specific improvements with measurable value and operational impact.

Also, as I’ve learned more about our current “legacy” C3 battle management systems, it’s also become apparent to me that the Department of the Air Force needs more than just ABMS appliques that add specific capability and connectivity, and more automated decision making. We also need a program to modernize C3 battle management more generally. This imperative will finish the job of defining that program.

The next imperative is Achieving Air and Ground Moving Target Identification at Scale. The scenarios of concern present target-rich environments in which densely spaced, many-on-many engagements, in a compressed timeframe are the norm. ABMS and JADC2 won’t be of any value without efficient, timely target acquisition. The targets of interest are air, ground and maritime mobile targets associated with an act of violent aggression, such as the one we just saw in Europe or an invasion of Taiwan.

This imperative is about identifying, tracking, and enabling the engagement of numerous targets—such as mobile missile launchers, ships, aircraft, etc—nearly simultaneously. The scenarios of interest are likely to be more like D-Day and decided in a few hours, rather than the long term strategic bombing campaign carried out by the Eighth Air Force.

Currently, the Department of the Air Force uses aging and vulnerable legacy systems, JSTARS and AWACS principally, to provide Air and Ground Moving Target Indication radar-based “pictures” if you will of the battlefield or airspace, and targeting-quality tracks for handoff to other platforms and engagement systems. What enables our aforementioned ABMS investments to be successful starts with the ability to acquire targets using sensors and systems in a way that allows targeting data to be passed to an operator for engagement.

The efficiencies from ABMS and JADC2 come from the ability to see the battlefield and to then make smart decisions about which of those targets to engage and what weapons to employ. But for the scenarios of interest it all starts with those sensors. They must be both effective against the targets of interest and they must be survivable.

Ideally we’d prefer to do these functions from space, which should be more cost effective if adequate resiliency could be provided, but that isn’t the only possibility. And technical limitations, as well as the urgent need to replace some of our aging legacy systems, may limit near-term options for some of this functionality. This imperative will identify, analyze, and select for investment the most promising approaches to acquire and analyze AMTI and GMTI data. The Department of the Air Force is working closely with the intelligence community as we explore this trade-space.

The next imperative is Defining the Next Generation Air Dominance (or NGAD) System of Systems. On its current trajectory the tactical air force is not affordable. The crewed fighters we plan to acquire; F-35, F-15 EX, and the NGAD platform, are all too costly to fill-out our needed force structure as legacy aircraft retire. In effect the F-35 becomes the low end of our high-low mix.

NGAD must be more than just the next crewed fighter jet. It’s a program that will include a crewed platform teamed with much less expensive autonomous un-crewed combat aircraft, employing a distributed, tailorable mix of sensors, weapons, and other mission equipment operating as a team or formation.

The program that became the NGAD experimental technology demonstrator program started with a DARPA study that I commissioned several years ago that concluded we needed a system-of-systems approach for next generation, air-to-air combat. I believe this is a valid concept, even more so than seven years ago when the study was conducted.

This imperative envisions nominally one to five un-crewed combat aircraft controlled by a single, modern, crewed aircraft – principally the NGAD platform but also potentially the F-35. The idea is for the crewed aircraft to be essentially calling plays and employing the un-crewed combat aircraft as wingmen in tactically-optimized ways. Introducing these un-crewed autonomous and attritable aircraft to the tactical air dominance equation opens up a world of fascinating tactical opportunities.

The exact mix of crewed and un-crewed teaming, what is carried on those un-crewed aircraft individually, and what kinds of plays could be available for the operator to select, these are all being analyzed and defined as part of this imperative.

This imperative builds on work already done under programs like Skyborg in the Air Force, ACES at DARPA, and the Australian loyal wingman program, and others. The intent is to cross the valley of death and move forward with the fielding of the first instantiation of a program of record that integrates crewed and un-crewed platforms operationally. The assessment we have made is that the technology programs I have discussed—and others—have done enough to build confidence that this goal is achievable.

With this program the DAF will have a platform, in quotes, a platform in the sense that the IT industry uses platform – not in the sense that we all use it – in a commercial technology sense of the word, platform, from which to continuously extend technology applications and functionality as that technology matures. Initial fielding will be followed by a program of continuous development and incremental fielding of both hardware and software.

The next imperative is defining optimized resilient basing. One of the dependencies that our competitors have come to understand and design forces to attack is our reliance on well-established forward tactical air bases. The NGAD tactical family of systems that I just described won’t be viable without resilient forward basing.

The Department of the Air Force has a long-standing dependency on a handful of forward air bases in the Western Pacific and in Europe. In all cases these air bases are at fixed locations that are very well known. With precision munitions, it’s possible for an adversary to send a great deal of weapons against each of these assets.

China, in particular, has acquired a large number of precision conventional rockets and is working on fielding large numbers of hypersonic weapons which are even harder to defend against. We must find a way to keep these bases open if attacked, or to take away that easy targeting opportunity that we’ve provided.

The concept that the Department of the Air Force is pursuing to address this problem today is called Agile Combat Employment or ACE. It’s the idea that one doesn’t just operate from an individual fixed base. Satellite bases dispersed in a hub-and-spoke concept provide numerous locations and make forces less easily targetable because of their disbursement.

The ACE concept is absolutely an important step in the right direction, but it must be fully defined and adequately resourced to be successful. This imperative builds on prior work to define the optimal mix of dispersion, hardening, deception, and active defenses to ensure the resilience and operational effectiveness of our tactical air assets. Most of our forward basing is in allied nations that we are trying to protect and defend, so it is an absolute requirement to work with our many allies around the globe to implement and succeed in this great imperative.

The next imperative is defining the B-21 Long Range Strike Family of Systems. This initiative, similar to NGAD, identifies all of the components of the B-21 family of systems, including the potential use of more affordable un-crewed autonomous combat aircraft.

The technologies are there now to introduce un-crewed platforms in this system-of-systems context, but the most cost effective approach and the operational concepts for this complement to crewed global strike capabilities have to be analyzed and defined. One of the things that people often miss about un-crewed systems is that if you’re going to use an autonomous platform with a crewed system, it has to have range capability to go as far as the crewed system goes and support that system with a reasonable payload when it gets there.

We’re looking for systems that cost nominally on the order of at least half as much as the manned systems that we’re talking about for both NGAD and for B-21. Together, with the B-21 and NGAD platforms, un-crewed systems would provide enhanced mission-tailorable levels of capability. They could deliver a range of sensors, other mission payloads, and weapons, or other mission equipment and they can also be attritable or even sacrificed if doing so conferred a major operational advantage – something we would never do with a crewed platform.

Finally, the seventh imperative is overall readiness of the Department of the Air Force to transition to a wartime posture against a peer competitor. This imperative is about assessing the ability of our Department to quickly and effectively deploy and support Air and Space forces deployed to defeat aggression thousands of miles from the United States.

To go from a standstill to mobilizing forces, moving them into theater, and then supporting them takes the collective success of a large number of information systems and supporting logistical and industrial facilities and infrastructure. We have never had to mobilize forces against the cyber, or even the kinetic, threats we might face in a conflict with a modern peer competitor.

This imperative will analyze the entire mobilization and support ecosystem to ensure it is adequately hardened against the threats we would expect a peer adversary to present. It will identify and prioritize the investments we need to ensure success. To mobilize our Airmen and Guardians, track them, and get them into the field, we must have secure networks. Beyond that it includes our transportation systems, our logistics systems, physical security, and everything we depend upon to go to war.

There’s a strong allies and partners aspect to this imperative as well. It’s logistics nodes that we’re going to have to use, considerations like fuel and power that are going to require in order to support our forces. A range of things.

Alright, I’ve given you a lot to think about. At the end of the day all of this is about making good decisions and then moving out quickly to field real capability. You may have heard me say it many times, but we need to get meaningful operational capability in the hands of operators as quickly as possible…and that entails risk acceptance and some commitment.

Languishing in never-ending, small-scale experimentation does not get the warfighters what they need, but neither does wasting time and money on dead ends that won’t produce cost-effective and affordable solutions for our warfighters. We have to get our choices right about these imperatives, and we have to do so quickly.

Clearly we have some hard work ahead of us and we need your help, all of your help. Change is hard; change is hard, but losing is unacceptable. One team, one fight.

Six Space Technologies the USSF Needs in Order to Maintain the US Advantage

March 8, 2022 | By Nick Adde

As challenges to the U.S. military’s advantage in space continue to mount, the need to foster innovations and develop technologies to meet them rises accordingly.

A panel of experts addressed the technologies necessary to maintain superiority during a March 4 discussion at the AFA Warfare Symposium in Orlando, Fla.

“The United States has worked for decades to keep space peaceful,” said retired Air Force Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, dean of AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, who moderated the discussion. “Given adversary actions, we’ve got to respond. We need to present senior leaders with a range of effective options, and that means pursuing both defensive and offensive capabilities.”

The Space Force’s chief technology and innovation officer, Lisa Costa, outlined the critical space-security activities underway now:

Securing freedom of action in space—through artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and advanced analytics.
Improving survivability and resilient architectures.
Digital engineering throughout the processes of acquisition, training, and operations.
Adopting responsible AI and ML that Guardians can trust.
Improving space access, mobility, and logistics.
Enhancing current services, including search and rescue; space commerce; and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance.

The panel’s industry representatives—Nicholas Bucci of General Atomics and Frank DeMauro of Northrop Grumman—offered their views on how partnerships between businesses and the government could support the efforts of Costa’s team.

space technologies — The Space Force’s chief technology and innovation officer, Lisa Costa, from left, and Nicholas Bucci of General Atomics and Frank DeMauro of Northrop Grumman take part in the AFA Warfare Symposium, March 4, 2022. Staff photo by Mike Tsukamoto.

“This is about what is driving … innovation. It’s all about size, weight, and power improvements in terms of capabilities,” said Bucci, vice president of defense systems and technologies at General Atomics.

Bucci would like to see a 500-kilogram satellite do the work now performed by a 5,000-pound satellite; to advance technology that can deliver better access to space; and to get talented people who can foster innovation hired in the space community.

DeMauro, Northrop Grumman’s vice president and general manager of strategic deterrent systems, described how the company developed a way to dock onto and refuel existing commercial satellites—thus extending their lives—and how such technology could support the military mission as well.

In order to continue such support enterprises and activities, DeMauro said companies must plan the designs of their factories accordingly.

“[When] figuring out the flexibility we need to have in our systems, we also need to have the flexibility in our factories and in our systems to be able to pivot quickly, to be agile in what we’re delivering to the customers,” DeMauro said. “We’re going to have to figure out how to make sure that it’s meeting the needs of the warfighter.”

Service Cyber Leaders Discuss Challenges of Joint Operations

March 8, 2022 | By Shaun Waterman

Divergent ways of thinking about time were among the more unexpected challenges to joint cyber operations highlighted by commanders from three different services in a panel discussion at the AFA Warfare Symposium in Orlando, Fla., on March 4.

Combatant commanders tend to focus on current engagements in the continuum of competition with adversaries employing hybrid tactics below the level of armed conflict, said Lt. Gen. Timothy D. Haugh, commander of the 16th Air Force and Air Force Cyber Command. “How do they use our overall [cyber] force to be able to engage an adversary today in the information environment or in cyberspace [in a way] that creates advantage?”

For leaders of the geographic combatant commands, the question is: “How do we engage the gray zone elements of our adversaries that are trying to create advantage for their nation? And how do we create opportunities for [the U.S.] interagency [policy and planning process] and our allies to be able to slow that advance?”

Air component commanders, by contrast, Haugh said, tend to focus on a longer time horizon—working out how information operations and cyber forces could assist their efforts to surge forces and work with allies in response to crises like the current one in Europe.

For air component commanders, Haugh said, “It’s about how do they enable their dynamic force employment? How do they amplify their exercises with allies and partners to strengthen resolve as part of the areas that could be enabling for agile combat employment? As we think about our partners and how we will work together in an area of crisis or conflict.”

Time, in the form of time at sea, was also on the mind of the Navy’s top cyber warrior, 10th Fleet and U.S. Fleet Cyber Commander Vice Adm. Ross Myers. The Navy faced a tougher challenge in recruitment and retention than the other services, he said. In the Navy, in addition to the same wage gap with the lucrative jobs that top cyber warriors could land in the private sector, “we do go to sea. And not everybody that’s inclined in cyber is necessarily inclined to spend months at sea.”

Combine that with the nationwide shortage of cyber talent, Myers added, and “We’re in a constant battle to acquire and retain a combat ready [cyber] force.”

Like in all the services, Myers said, a generation of Navy leaders who came into a service without email are challenged to relate to the digital natives they now command.

“It’s hard for me to relate to a 20-year-old that lives with an iPhone in their hand. That’s their means of communication … and they live and breathe with that thing. They sleep with it. That is foreign to me,” he said. “But it does not diminish the fact: Leadership is leadership. Whether it’s electronic, or whether it’s physical, it still demands and requires all of us to be good leaders.”

“In truth and reality, the Navy [had] some of the last units to go … into the electronic age,” said Myers, who entered the service in 1986. “When I came in the Navy, we were still doing letter mail. Email addresses didn’t exist,” he recalled, noting that he now leads a fleet “where I guarantee you there are sailors that have never received a letter at sea. The only thing they’ve received are emails.”

Like other digital natives, young Navy service members took connectivity for granted, added Myers. “If you want to come close to a mutiny, cut off the internet connection … for more than a few hours, and offer no explanation for it,” he said.

Army Maj. Gen. William “Joe” Hartman, commander of Cyber Command’s National Mission Forces, admitted that he, too, entered the service in the pre-email era. But he said he learned the basics of cybersecurity from the legendary “Ranger Handbook: Five Principles of Patrolling,” one of which was security.

“Until you had security, you couldn’t do anything else. And that’s the environment that we’re still in. And for a network operation, it starts with security,” Hartman said. “Once your network is secure, you can then communicate those important things you need to, and you can make those decisions that as a senior leader you need to make. But if you’re unclear on the security of your network, you shouldn’t make any decisions. You shouldn’t take any actions, until your network is secure. And that’s a little bit blunt. But that just is the way that we’ve always operated in the Department [of the Army].”

Even leaders from the pre-email era had families who tended to take connectivity for granted, said Lt. Gen. Mary F. O’Brien, Air Force deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and cyber effects operations, who moderated the discussion.

“When I was deployed to Afghanistan,” she recalled, “my son said, ‘Mom, are you going to have WiFi in Kabul, so you can order my saxophone reeds and schedule my lacrosse camp?’ And I said, ‘Yes, I will,’ and he goes, ‘OK, we’ll be fine.’”

Full-Spectrum Employment Is an Industry Priority for EMS Warfare

March 8, 2022 | By Hope Hodge Seck

With peer adversaries gaining ground in electromagnetic spectrum warfare, the U.S. military must employ the entire spectrum to protect warfighters and press the advantage, a panel of industry experts said. Speaking at the AFA Warfare Symposium on March 4, the experts in EMS warfare also urged agile development to keep pace with the threat.

Complicating the strategic picture is greater signal density from commercial as well as military use, said Lisa Aucoin, vice president of F-35 Solutions at BAE Systems.

“Relying on stealth as we have in the past is no longer a sole option,” Aucoin said. “I think one of the key pieces here is employing the entire spectrum, not only [radio frequency], but [infrared], to kind of branch that range of frequencies, to enable us to detect more threats in real time.”

Aucoin was joined on the panel by Paul K. Turner, principal product development engineer at AT&T Public Sector, and Andy Lowery, chief product officer at Epirus. Col. William “Dollar” Young, commander of the Air Force’s newly created 350th Spectrum Warfare Wing, moderated the discussion.

After Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. declared in January 2021 that the service had been “asleep at the wheel” for the past three decades in EMS warfare, the Air Force has intensified its pursuit for dominance in that space. It released an Electromagnetic Spectrum Superiority Strategy in April and has made big shifts, including the creation of the 350th, to prioritize spectrum warfare.

The Air Force also announced in February that it had achieved initial operating capability of the Legion pod, an infrared search-and-track sensor designed for integration with the F-15C Eagle.

Aucoin listed key developments that must take place to fully employ the electromagnetic spectrum for EW countermeasures: hardware and software innovations to provide improved instantaneous bandwidth; better emitter identification; high-speed scanning; and greater radar sensitivity.

“These new techniques will evolve as the threat evolves, and we have to go faster than our adversaries,” she said.

Lowery, who previously worked as chief engineer for the Navy’s Next-Gen Jammer program, said solutions dependent on software rather than hardware can help the Defense Department become more agile and available to adapt at the speed of enemy threats. Epirus’ flagship product is an open-architecture system that uses high-power microwave technology to neutralize enemy drones.

“A warfighter has a threat they haven’t seen before. We identify it. We study it. We send out to the field real-time, over-the-air updates,” he said. “And now that threat can be taken care of.”

Further investment in research and development, Aucoin said, could help the Defense Department to extract more signal information from the spectrum it can access. Also, she said, it’s important to begin thinking about and employing the spectrum in a holistic, collaborative way.

“We tend to think of RF by itself; we tend to think of IR by itself, laser by itself,” she said. “We need to make all of those things work together to do what we need them to do.”

KC-135s, Air Support Ops Team Deploying to Europe

March 7, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

The Pentagon is sending KC-135s and roughly 150 Airmen to Europe to support troops already deployed there in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, press secretary John F. Kirby announced March 7.

The tankers will come from Fairchild Air Force Base, Wash., and are planned to go to Souda Bay, Greece, “to provide additional aerial refueling support to the commander of U.S. European Command,” Kirby said in a press briefing.

Fairchild is home to the 92nd Air Refueling Wing, the Air Force’s lone “super” tanker wing. The 92nd boasts 63 aircraft in its inventory and is often called upon for refueling needs. Kirby did not specify how many tankers would deploy.

The move is one of several ordered by Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III over the weekend, Kirby said. Approximately 40 members of an air support operations center also will deploy to Poland and Romania from Fort Stewart, Ga., where the 15th Air Operations Support Squadron is based.

On top of that, roughly 300 personnel from a modular ammunition ordnance company out of Fort Bragg, N.C., and a support maintenance company out of Fort Stewart will deploy to support the 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, in Germany.

All told, roughly 500 service members are being deployed in support of the 7,000 U.S. troops who recently deployed to Germany.

“Specifically, the ones we’re talking about today are enablers,” Kirby said. “And we said before when we deployed the additional 7,000 that there would be associated enablers with them. This is part of that support.”

Over the past few weeks, the DOD has shifted troops and resources several times in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, seeking to bolster allies along NATO’s eastern front. On top of the 7,000 service members announced in late February, F-35s, F-16s, and F-15s have all taken part in joint training and enhanced air policing missions, and an infantry battalion, attack aviation battalion, and attack aviation task force totaling 32 Apache helicopters, multiple Stryker units, and 4,700 troops from the 82nd Airborne Division deployed as well.

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.”