C-130 Catches an X-61 Gremlins Vehicle in Airborne Recovery Test

Nov. 5, 2021 | By Amanda Miller

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency crashed one of its four remaining Gremlins air-launched drones during a flight test in October but not without demonstrating some of the autonomous swarming program’s key objectives.

In tests, the X-61 Gremlins Air Vehicles, or GAVs, launch from the wing of a C-130. October’s test at the Army’s Dugway Proving Ground, Utah, both “successfully validated all autonomous formation flying positions and safety features” and “ultimately demonstrated airborne recovery to a C-130,” according to a Nov. 5 DARPA news release. Dynetics is the prime contractor on the program, and Kratos Defense builds the X-61s.

A video posted to YouTube shows the recovery. It begins with an X-61 in flight. A mechanical arm and a tether with a node on the end, described by the program as a bullet, extend from the back of a C-130. The X-61 connects with the bullet then the vehicle’s wings swivel 90 degrees until they’re stowed parallel with the main body. Next the X-61 is reeled in by the tether until it’s secured in the grip of the mechanical arm, which hauls it the rest of the way inside the C-130.

Lt. Col. Paul Calhoun, the Gremlins program manager in DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office, said in the release that the recovery operation “demonstrates the feasibility of safe, reliable airborne recovery” and “was the culmination of years of hard work.”

In addition to the autonomous formations and the recovery performed during the course of four flights of single X-61s, DARPA demonstrated that it could refurbish an X-61 after a flight and have it flying again within 24 hours. Plus, “many hours of data were collected over four flights including air vehicle performance, aerodynamic interactions between the recovery bullet and the GAV, and contact dynamics for airborne retrieval,” according to the release.

Intended to collaborate as a swarm, recoverable air-launched autonomous vehicles promise to “dramatically expand” the distances at which drones can be deployed and their potential uses, DARPA says.

The first airborne Gremlins test in January 2021 demonstrated some fundamental aspects such as data links and the vehicles’ ability to transition to powered flight. An X-61 also crashed in that test after a parachute didn’t deploy, but the parachute was only meant for the test.

A DARPA spokesperson confirmed that after the second crash in October, from an electrical system failure, the agency now has three working X-61s and those will be enough to prove, mathematically, the ultimate goal of flying and recovering four X-61s in under 30 minutes.

Accountability for Erroneous Kabul Strike Up to Combatant Commands

Nov. 5, 2021 | By Abraham Mahshie

The release of an Air Force Inspector General report on the erroneous Aug. 29 air strike that killed 10 civilians in Kabul, Afghanistan, has prompted questions about accountability that will now be left up to the relevant combatant commanders, according to the Pentagon.

“The report and its findings have now been transmitted to U.S. Central Command and U.S. Special Operations Command,” Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby said Nov. 5.

“That doesn’t mean that the door has been closed on accountability,” he added. “Each of those commanders can take a look at the process breakdowns and can determine for themselves if, in fact, in addition to process improvements, there might need to be accountability at their level, and that would be up to them … It’s now a commander-led, focused effort.”

Kirby said Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III was briefed on the report Nov. 1 and gave CENTCOM Commander Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr. and SOCOM Commander Gen. Richard D. Clarke until mid-November to report back.

“The commanders at those two institutions will now have an opportunity to digest his findings and recommendations and come back to the Secretary in a matter of a couple of weeks with whatever recommendations they have to implement those findings and recommendations,” he said. “The Secretary specifically invited them to come back to him with any additional actions they might deem appropriate.”

The independent investigation by Air Force Inspector General Lt. Gen. Sami D. Said spent 45 days studying the CENTCOM airstrike that killed aid worker Zemari Ahmadi and his family.

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, 13 Americans had been killed in a terrorist attack at the airport checkpoints, and the investigation found that attack led to “confirmation bias” and the erroneous attack, though no laws were broken.

Said made three process recommendations to narrowly apply to short-fuse, over-the-horizon strikes in urban areas, which he described as defensive in nature. They included limiting confirmation bias, better information sharing, and better assessments of the presence of civilians.

A careful study of video footage found that two minutes before the strike there was physical evidence that a child was at the compound where the Toyota was parked. Ultimately, seven children and three Afghan men died in the strike.

But Said did not recommend disciplinary action, re-training, or de-credentialing of any of the 22 individuals he interviewed who were directly involved in the incident.

“Let me just be upfront: I didn’t eliminate the possibility of accountability,” Said remarked in a media briefing at the Pentagon on Nov. 3.

“That is commander business. What I concluded at our level in this investigation … I didn’t find violations of law or law of war,” he said. “What I found is the disconnects were an aggregate process breakdown in which many people are involved and it wasn’t any particular individual that was causal to that.”

A SOCOM spokesperson told Air Force Magazine Nov. 6 that it would be “inappropriate to discuss or speculate” on the recommendations before the commander’s review is complete.

“Gen. Clarke has read the investigation into the 29 Aug. strike,” the spokesperson said. “He will submit his recommendations on how to best address the investigation’s findings and recommendations to the Secretary of Defense in the next few weeks.”

CENTCOM did not immediately respond to an Air Force Magazine request for comment.

Lawmakers Warn Time is Running Short to Get 2022 NDAA Passed

Nov. 5, 2021 | By Greg Hadley

With less than two months left in 2021, lawmakers are warning that time is growing short for Congress to sort through the procedural hurdles necessary to get the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act signed into law.

In a press conference Nov. 2, 13 Republican senators called on Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the majority leader, to immediately bring the 2022 NDAA to the floor of the Senate for a vote. The Senate Armed Services Committee reported its version of the bill to the full Senate on Sept. 22, and the House passed its version a day later. Once the Senate votes on its bill, the two versions will have to be reconciled in conference, voted on again, and sent to the President’s desk for signature.

“Even though the National Defense Authorization Act is bipartisan and fulfills Congress’s most important duties—to provide for the common defense and take care of our troops—Sen. Schumer still won’t let us vote on the bill,” SASC Ranking Member Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) said in a statement. “Meanwhile, in the three months since the Armed Services Committee passed this bill, the threats we face around the world—China and Russia, North Korea and Iran, terrorist organizations in Afghanistan—have only gotten worse. By not prioritizing national security now, Sen. Schumer is sending a terrible message to our troops, allies, and adversaries.”

Inhofe added that by not bringing the bill to the floor, Schumer “has almost guaranteed this year will be one of the latest starts to the bicameral conference process ever.” In the past decade, the Senate has passed its version of the NDAA in November twice and December twice.

Inhofe and his fellow Republicans’ concerns were echoed across the aisle by Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), chair of the House Armed Services Committee. Speaking with reporters, Smith said he “can’t argue with the Senate Republicans on this issue. There is no reason that this bill has not been put on the floor in the Senate,” according to Politico.

The NDAA is typically considered “must-pass” legislation and has been approved by Congress every year for more than half a century. While it does not actually appropriate the money spent on defense, the policy bill does authorize the appropriations and sets a host of policies and restrictions. It also typically sets a number of reports for the Pentagon to deliver to Congress, and without it, certain special pay authorizations will expire.

While more than 50 days are still left until the new year, shepherding a bill through the necessary parliamentary procedures could take weeks.

First, Schumer has to file a motion to proceed to a full vote on the bill, said Martin B. Gold, a partner at Capitol Counsel law firm and an expert on congressional rules. Once he does so, he can file a cloture motion on the motion to proceed in an attempt to limit debate. But once he does, Senate rules call for an intervening session before the cloture vote, which requires 60 votes to succeed.

Even then, Gold told Air Force Magazine, the rules call for up to 30 hours of debate before the actual vote on the motion to proceed. If the full time is used and the Senate isn’t in session around the clock, four days can pass from filing a motion to proceed to actually voting on it. And then the process restarts with the vote on the bill itself, with the same requirements for an intervening session and up to 30 hours of debate after cloture.

“The general rule of thumb for a bill like the NDAA is that you can anticipate something in the neighborhood of two weeks, start to finish, motion to proceed to final passage,” Gold said. “It’s an approximation.”

These timelines can be bypassed with a unanimous consent agreement, Gold noted, but just one objection would trigger the process. Ways exist to compress the timeline—by keeping the Senate in session nonstop and over the weekend.

Of course, once the Senate passes its bill, the process isn’t over. The Senate and the House will have to meet in conference to hash out the differences in their versions, then return the reworked bill to each chamber for a final vote.

The length of time it takes to work through the conference process is murky, but a Senate Armed Services Committee aide told Air Force Magazine that the committee typically plans for around three weeks to pass between the Senate and House coming to a basic agreement for a compromise and final passage in both chambers.

Advance “administrative” work can and is being done, the aide said, to ensure the conference process moves as quickly as possible.

Still, a time crunch is coming—both the Senate and House are scheduled to be in recess from Nov. 8 to 12, then again the week of Thanksgiving, and once more starting Dec. 13 until the end of the year. That leaves just three weeks of scheduled session, as Congress also debates a host of other issues, including President Joe Biden’s social spending bill and a dozen appropriations bills. Meanwhile, the continuing resolution currently funding the government expires after Dec. 3.

“The most powerful nation on Earth is running on autopilot,” Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) said in a speech on the floor of the Senate on Nov. 4. “And we only have four weeks until the government shutdown, unless Congress takes action. It’s not a theoretical exercise. The actions we take or don’t take in this chamber, with respect to the fiscal year 2022 appropriations bills, affect people’s lives, but also the direction of this nation.”

Commercial Satcom Providers Must Meet Federal Cyber Standards for Military

Nov. 5, 2021 | By Shaun Waterman

Commercial satellite communication providers who want to sell their services to the U.S. military will have to meet the same voluminous cybersecurity standards imposed on federal agencies themselves—plus additional ones specific to space and national security, according to a Space Force official.

The long-delayed standards will be phased in starting next year and will be fully in place by 2025, said Jared B. Reece, the manager of the Infrastructure Asset Pre-Assessment Program, or IA-Pre, within the Space Force office that buys commercial satellite communication services for DOD.

“We wanted to implement a level playing field between the security standards for both our own [DOD] systems and our contract systems,” Reece said. So IA-Pre will require contractors to implement the IT security controls in the NIST 800-53 Risk Management Framework, just like DOD and other federal agencies must—and to use the “high impact baseline,” the most rigorous version of the standard.

NIST Special Publication 800-53 is a comprehensive catalog of over 900 security controls, broken down into 18 “families” that govern every aspect of how an IT system is operated, from ”access control” to “configuration management” and “incident response.” Additional baseline publications define the controls appropriate for the sensitivity of different systems. There will also be ”overlays”—additional or more specific control standards—designed for national security systems and space systems, Reece said in his first major interview about the program.

The move comes amid growing concern about cyberattacks on U.S. satellites that could cripple the U.S. military’s global communications network. Lt. Gen. Stephen N. Whiting, who heads Space Operations Command, predicted last year that a “cyberattack is where we are most likely to face the enemy in space.” Experts consider cyberattacks the most likely kind of military strike against satellites because they are much lower cost and typically reversible in their effects, compared to kinetic weapons.

IA-Pre, Reece explained, qualifies assets—satellites and their associated ground systems—rather than enterprises or organizations. This is important in a commercial satellite marketplace where “there are owners, operators, resellers, distribution partners, any number of assorted teaming agreements … within the industry.”

This complex marketplace meant multiple bidders might submit proposals for a single contract using the same satellite, Reece said. “We might get two companies proposing each other‘s satellites to the same [contract].”

Under the existing system, in which cybersecurity compliance is assessed during the procurement process for each bidder, acquisition officials might find themselves making multiple assessments of the cybersecurity of the same commercial satellite asset, Reece said, because it figured in contract bids from multiple vendors.

IA-Pre is designed to speed procurement by creating a kind of “approved product list” of satellite assets that have been pre-assessed as meeting the required standards, Reece said.

“Right now we’re doing a lot of duplicative work,” he explained. “Having a list of cleared assets, pre-evaluated assets, reduces all those evaluations to one: Once they’re on the asset list, they’re good to go.” Multiple vendors might bid using a single pre-evaluated asset, and the Commercial Satellite Communications Office, or CSCO, can “just pull that information from the asset list, versus every vendor submitting it every time.”

By pre-qualifying the assets, IA-Pre will also mean an end to the lengthy cybersecurity assessments currently required during the procurement process itself, Reece said.

Critically, IA-Pre will also, for the first time, require third-party assessments. Currently, contractors self-attest that they meet required cybersecurity standards.

Under IA-Pre, asset owners will be required to hire qualified third-party assessors, who will review documentation that lays out the asset’s compliance with required control standards and baselines. “The third-party auditor is going to come in, review the system documentation against the baseline, and then submit their findings back to the government,” Reece said.

The assessors will be drawn from a pool of certified third-party assessors the Space Force maintains—known as Agents of the Security Control Assessor (ASCA)—who work to validate contractor compliance with existing security standards.

Such third-party assessments—involving time on site for hourly-paid consultants and their hotel and travel bills—can quickly get expensive, Reece acknowledged, adding CSCO was working with contractors to help them minimize such costs. “The strategy is to maximize the background off-site work and minimize the on-site work,” he said.

CSCO anticipated that the expense of compliance to IA-Pre would show up in increased pricing for the services it buys, Reece said. “We see that coming into the costs of the procurements that we’re doing,” he said.

The third-party process may come as a shock to some contractors, said Andrew D’Uva, president of Providence Access Company, a satellite technology consultancy.

“I won’t call anybody out,” D’Uva told CyberSatGov on Oct. 7. “But I’ll just say that the satellite community has, across the spectrum, taken varying approaches to self-attestation. One person’s version of ‘We met the requirement’ might not be the same as another person’s,” but they all counted for the same under self-attestation, he said.

IA-Pre would for the first time bring “transparency, and hopefully an objective set of criteria and practices that are being applied by … the IA-Pre assessors,” D’Uva said.

Reece said he expected some contractors to fail to meet the new standards. “I don’t anticipate 100 percent compliance upfront,” he said. But the 800-53 standard included a process for contractors to stay on the approved list while they work to achieve compliance. “If you don’t pass, you’re not going to get kicked off, you have chances to review and update that [evaluation],” he said.

The Plan of Action and Milestones (POAM) process produces a roadmap to repair any failings the IA-Pre evaluations identify, Reece said. “If they’ve got 30 controls where they’re non-compliant, they have to put a POAM out for each of those controls.”

The POAM process also allows contractors to explain why they can’t implement a particular control—and to offer alternative security measures and mitigations, Reece said, “The POAM can also say, ‘OK, because of the system, there are certain controls we can’t [implement] … we can’t do X, Y, or Z, here are our mitigations to this control.’”

The evaluations—POAMs and all—will be weighed by officials at CSCO and Space Systems Command, said Reece, but the objective was not to play ‘Gotcha,’ he said. “We don’t want industry to fail out and not be able to participate. We want to incentivize them, give them standards to achieve and push them to ensure that they’re selling us a secure solution,” he said.

IA-Pre aims to provide contractors a return on investment for their spending on security, said Reece. “We give them a chance to showcase their investment through these evaluations.” Compliance could be used as a factor in awarding contracts under a relatively recent procurement innovation known as Best Value Trade Off. BVTO replaced the old Lowest Price, Technically Acceptable standard that basically compelled acquisition officials to always buy the cheapest product.

Google Is ‘Excited’ to Compete for DOD’s New Cloud, DIU Director Says

Nov. 4, 2021 | By Amanda Miller

The head of the Defense Department’s Silicon Valley innovation hub addressed news of Google’s interest in competing for a pending DOD cloud contract.

Defense Innovation Unit Director Michael Brown said Google’s managers are “excited” to be back in the hunt for DOD contracts. Speaking during the 2021 Aspen Security Forum on Nov. 4, he attributed to the Pentagon, in part, past protests by the software maker’s employees that ended its participation.

The New York Times first reported Nov. 3 that Google is “aggressively pursuing” the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability, the DOD’s replacement for its now canceled Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure program. JEDI was canceled after getting bogged down in a legal challenge.

“We strongly believe a multi-cloud strategy offers the department the best solution today and in the future,” a Google spokesperson told Air Force Magazine in response to a query about Brown’s comments or to confirm that Google is competing for the new cloud contract. “We are firmly committed to serving our public sector customers, including the DOD, Department of Energy, NIH, and many other government agencies, and we will evaluate any future bid opportunities accordingly.”

The DOD announced in July that it was creating the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability, “which will be based initially on direct awards to fill our urgent, unmet requirement for a multi-vendor enterprise cloud spanning the entire department in all three security levels with availability from CONUS to the tactical edge, at scale,” said a Pentagon spokesperson at the time. It’s intended to facilitate the DOD’s joint all-domain command and control concept and initiatives to accelerate the adoption of artificial intelligence.

Brown, who withdrew his nomination to lead DOD acquisition in July because of an investigation into a complaint that he circumvented federal hiring regulations, replied to an audience member’s question about what’s changed—why he believes Google is “excited” now when in the past, the company dropped out of the Project Maven artificial intelligence initiative over the employee protests.

“Well, fortunately, I think it’s two things,” Brown said. “One is, I think they were caught flat-footed by the fact that a well organized group of vocal protestors—who are a fewer number of employees than their own [military] veteran population and families of veteran members at Google, a very large company, obviously—started to dictate an agenda of activism, which I don’t think the management was a hundred percent behind, but they were flat-footed,” Brown said.

“And I’ll lay some of the blame at the Defense Department’s feet,” he continued. “I think we could have been more outspoken at the time about how important it is for missions to provide our intelligence analysts and military folks with capabilities so they’re analyzing what they’re seeing and not spending time looking at individual pixels. And anytime we can minimize any collateral damage, we should be excited about that mission as well.

“So I think that’s changed, but I think they also see a tremendous business opportunity. Why should the Google management sit there and say no while Microsoft and Amazon are very excited about bringing unlimited compute power.”

Meanwhile, he said Google has gone through DOD certifications for its platforms, “and they’ve said, ‘We didn’t do that just for show. … And let’s face it, from a taxpayer standpoint, to maximize competition—that’s going to be the way we get value and stretch the defense dollar.”

China Military Power Report Highlights Concern over ‘Taiwan Contingency’

Nov. 4, 2021 | By Abraham Mahshie

The Pentagon’s new report on Chinese military power released Nov. 3 highlights a 2027 military modernization milestone that positions China for “credible military operations” against Taiwan.

“They’re preparing every contingency to unify by force,” noted a senior defense official briefing journalists on condition of anonymity ahead of the report’s release. The official said the defense analysis of China’s military strength in 2020 found a range of ways the country is preparing for a “Taiwan contingency,” including a newly defined 2027 military development milestone.

The first appendix of the nearly 200-page unclassified report to Congress breaks down the disparity between the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan’s military forces.

Of China’s total 1 million-person ground force, 416,000 are in the Taiwan Strait area compared to Taiwan’s 88,000 personnel. From an air standpoint, China maintains 800 fighters and fighter trainers in the eastern and southern theaters compared to Taiwan’s 500. China maintains a total force strength, including trainers, of 2,800 fighters.

The 2027 benchmark has been described by Chinese premier Xi Jinping as “intelligentized warfare.”

“It’s one where they say that the PLA’ s capabilities should be networked into a system of systems,” the official said, reflecting language often used to describe the U.S. military’s joint all-domain command and control (JADC2) effort.

“If they realize those goals for 2027, that would provide them with more credible military operations and the Taiwan contingency,” the official added.

Citing People’s Republic of China military literature, the official said options can begin with a “joint blockade campaign” and escalate to a full-scale amphibious invasion. Likewise, air missile strikes, cyber attacks, or a seizure of offshore islands near Taiwan are options China appears to be preparing for.

The official described China’s dual-pronged approach toward Taiwan as both preparation for invasion and to deter allies and partners such as the United States from intervening on Taiwan’s behalf.

“They often talk about to deter, or to compel Taiwan, to abandon moves toward independence,” he said. “But presently it appears to be that they’re preparing every contingency to unify by force and wanting to be able to deter, to delay, or otherwise to counter third-party intervention.”

‘Immediate Concerns’

The Pentagon classified as “immediate concerns” the so-called Taiwan contingency but notes that the PRC has developed a pressure campaign against the breakaway island since 2016. Aside from building a military force capable of invasion and quick victory, the campaign has included diplomatic isolation, military intimidation, and information and influence operations.

China has also put “pretty heavy pressure” on countries that maintain unofficial relationships with Taiwan to seize their engagement, and China disseminates misinformation about Taiwan on social media.

The defense official, however, deferred to the Intelligence Community as to whether China intends to mount an invasion of Taiwan in the near term. However, he did say U.S. efforts to strengthen deterrence and defend itself will continue.

“Any threat to undermine peace and security in the western Pacific would be of a grave concern to the United States,” he said, referencing the Taiwan Relations Act, the scope of which covers threatening activities beyond military action, to include economic blockades and embargoes against the island.

“The United States will continue to make available to Taiwan the defense articles and services necessary to enable Taiwan to maintain a sufficient self-defense capability,” a State Department spokesperson told Air Force Magazine on Nov. 4.

Since 2017, the U.S. has sold more than $19 billion in arms to Taiwan.

“The United States also supports Taiwan with training and encourages an innovative and asymmetric security posture,” the official added.

Air Incursions Raise Risk of Miscalculation

While the report covered only activities in 2020, the defense official said the massive air incursions by the Chinese air forces in October were a worrying development.

“Certainly, you can see that those were much higher than what we’ve seen before,” he said.

China flew nearly 150 aircraft over Taiwan’s southwest air defense identification zone over a four-day period, the largest such incursion ever.

“We are concerned about activities that might look like they’re aimed at intimidating Taiwan, that could be destabilizing or kind of increase the risk of some kind of miscalculation or incident,” he explained.

The official went on to describe the possible intent of the event.

“It presumably serves multiple purposes for them,” he said. “Sometimes I think what they’re aiming at is to try to intimidate Taiwan militarily. Sometimes, I think they may be trying to send a message to the United States, or to other allies and partners. They are also certainly trying to improve their training under sort of realistic conditions— that’s something that they write about a lot in their literature.”

The official said bomber flights in the region and other activities around Taiwan have demonstrated similar objectives.

“The PRC activity and the pressure they’re putting on Taiwan is only increasing,” he said—”therefore, as you know, potentially destabilizing and, I think, of growing concern to everyone.”

Report: New Stealth Aircraft and Capabilities in China’s Air Arms Eroding U.S. Advantages

Nov. 4, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

The Chinese air force is developing new stealth aircraft and expanding the weapons-carrying capacity of its J-20 stealth fighter, the Pentagon said in its annual report on Chinese military power, issued Nov. 3. The Pentagon said U.S. advantages in the air domain are “eroding” as China’s air and naval air forces shift from a defensive mode to power projection and long-range attack.

The People’s Liberation Army Air Force and Navy (the PLAAF and PLAN) together operate the largest air forces in the Indo-Pacific region and “the third-largest in the world,” with 2,800 aircraft—not including trainers or unmanned aerial systems—of which 2,250 are combat-coded bombers, fighters, and multi-role airplanes, according to “Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China, 2021.”

Quoting China’s own internal defense white paper from 2019, the Pentagon said the air forces are transitioning from strictly air defense to “offensive and defensive operations,” toward building a “strategic” air force capable of projecting power at long range.

“The PLAAF is rapidly catching up to Western air forces,” the report said. “This trend is gradually eroding longstanding and significant U.S. military technical advantages” relative to the PRC “in the air domain.”

The Pentagon revealed that in addition to China’s J-20 Mighty Dragon and FC-31 stealth fighters, as well as a “strategic” stealth bomber, China is developing “new medium- and long-range stealth bombers to strike regional and global targets.”

The strategic stealth bomber, likely called the H-20, employs “many fifth-generation technologies,” having a range of 8,500 kilometers and a payload of “at least 10 metric tons.” It will have a nuclear mission in addition to filling conventional roles, and the Pentagon estimated it will take “more than a decade to develop this advanced type of bomber.” However, the DOD has consistently underestimated China’s ability to rapidly field new aircraft over the last two decades.

The near-term goal of the PLAAF is to become a more effective and capable force “proficient at joint operations.” The Chinese air force has reorganized itself into multi-role brigades and has disbanded its fighter and fighter-bomber divisions.

The Pentagon reiterated its previous report’s assertion that, within the next several years, the PLAAF will transition from obsolescence to “a majority fourth-generation force.”

The marquee aircraft of the PLAAF is the J-20, which the Pentagon said has been fielded in “limited numbers,” without being specific, although recent open-source estimates place it around 150 airplanes. China continues to develop the FC-31 Gyrfalcon two-engined lookalike of the American F-35 either for export or as “a future naval fighter for the PLAN’s next class of aircraft carriers.” China has taken delivery of all 24 Su-35 advanced Flanker aircraft it bought from Russia and continues to develop its own J-15 version.

Upgrades of the J-20 are already underway, including “increasing the number of [air-to-air missiles] the fighter can carry in its low-observable configuration” as well as “installing thrust-vectoring engine nozzles, and adding supercruise capability” by installing indigenous WS-15 engines. Early models of the J-20 relied on Russian engines, and China watchers are divided over whether PLAAF’s engine suppliers have overcome production problems with high-performance fighter engines.

The report does not include developments in China’s military since 2020. Just in October 2021, China allowed images to circulate of a two-seat J-20 taxiing—suggesting a manned/unmanned teaming role for the backseater—and a refined version of the FC-31 in flight. The FC-31 images showed a catapult launch bar on the nose landing gear and a wing-fold mechanism on the wings, clearly indicating the jet is headed for carrier service.

China’s nascent strategic bomber capability is embodied in an upgraded H-6N, a derivative of the Russian Tu-16 “Badger,” which boasts an air refueling capability for longer range and recessed carrying space on the fuselage for an “air-launched ballistic missile.” Other variants of the H-6 are being upgraded for long-range attacks of targets in the “second island chain” perimeter of China in the Pacific.

Other new aircraft in China’s air force include the GX-11, a variant of the Y-9, used for jamming and electronic countermeasures, “designed to disrupt an adversary’s battlespace awareness at long ranges.” In addition to the Russian Il-78 Midas aerial tanker, China has modified some H-6U bombers into the tanker role. A tanker version of China’s Y-20 transport, which resembles the American C-17, is also in development. While the report says deliveries of the Y-20 are underway, it did not give numbers.

Another new aircraft is the KJ-500 airborne early warning and control aircraft, an advance over the KJ-2000 and KJ-200 variants. This AWACS-like airplane with a circular radome housing active electronically scanned array radars, is also believed to be used for networking various parts of the joint Chinese forces.

The Pentagon drew on showcased systems in the People’s Republic of China’s 70th Anniversary parade in 2019 to describe many of China’s unmanned aircraft, noting the new Gongji-11 stealthy flying-wing aircraft, believed to be capable of carrying weapons and a host of systems meant to conduct intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance.

In addition, the report called out the “large dual-engine TW356 transport UAV that suspends a large cargo pod between the two large engine nacelles” as a noteworthy development. The Xianglong “joined-wing high altitude” unmanned aircraft, a rough analog to the Global Hawk, is being deployed to airfields in Western China and on Hainan Island. The report also noted a “rocket-powered,” high-speed UAV called the Wuzhen-8.

Unlike previous reports, the latest version did not describe PLAAF and PLAN air-to-air missiles. China’s PL-15, analogous to the American AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM), has longer range than the U.S. missile.

Airmen and Guardians are Accelerating AI From the Campus of MIT

Nov. 4, 2021 | By Amanda Miller

Airmen and Guardians working side by side with researchers in the field of artificial intelligence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are part of a unique military unit that’s helping to steer some of the research studies while also attempting to guide the Air Force’s and Space Force’s wider adoption of AI.

Under the new research partnership, the Department of the Air Force and university jointly decided on 10 research projects to focus on, a departure from the typical top-down style in which the department advertises grant-funded topics, said Col. Tucker Hamilton, the Air Force’s director of the DAF-MIT AI Accelerator. Started in January 2020, when projects got underway, the accelerator also differs because it doesn’t focus solely on developing a military capability—it also benefits “the public good,” Hamilton said.

In fact, Hamilton doesn’t consider AI to be a capability at all but instead a “tool that enhances all other capabilities.” The work that the accelerator’s 12 Active-duty troops and four Reservists are taking part in is “meant to further the science of AI” in ways to be broadly applied—“not just in some military sense,” he said. “Everything that we decided on with them to pursue had to have a use for a military application as well as a use for a societal application.”

The research projects involve about 140 faculty members, researchers, and students from MIT and the federally funded, national security-focused MIT Lincoln Laboratory. The accelerator’s director on MIT’s side is Daniela Rus, who also directs MIT’s Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Lab and served on the Defense Innovation Board advising defense secretaries.

From Hamilton’s perspective, “AI is ubiquitous right now,” he said. “Everything is being influenced by machine learning. So how do we, as a military, approach the technology?”

How it Works

Hamilton was an F-35 test pilot before becoming an MIT fellow with the Air War College, where he learned about the accelerator. Having the qualifications to serve as a program manager, he applied. The Airmen and Guardians assigned to the accelerator report to Hamilton, “so we work together as a military unit,” but they also embed with research projects.

Officers and enlisted members assigned to the accelerator full time come from career fields that complement the projects but also bring some prior understanding of machine learning, Hamilton said. They’re pilots, in part, but also weather, intelligence, and cyberspace operations officers as well as analysts in geospatial intelligence and operations research among others.

“We tried to, first and foremost, find the right people because right now, there are only a handful of people that truly understand this,” Hamilton said.

Three of the four Reservists taking part in the accelerator fulfill a special role. They’re “hugely important for this because,” as CEOs in their civilian lives, “they’re the ones that are actually running AI companies,” Hamilton said. “They have the ability to understand this technology more than most people in the military can understand it.”

The service members each embed with one or two of the research projects, ranging from the likes of AI-assisted autonomy for safe decision-making, optimization of training schedules, and personalized instruction in a foreign language.

“They help actually write some of the code, and they give [the researchers] perspective—like, ‘Well, this is how a pilot would use this type of technology in the field.’ Or, ‘This is what a pilot would be thinking’—or any kind of operator,” Hamilton said. “Our C-17 pilot—he’s working on our project that helps pilot training students.”

For the researchers’ part, “It gives them a vast amount of clarity on their efforts, on their research, on the direction that they’re moving—and also motivates them because they see an [eventual] outcome,” Hamilton said. “They see something that is like a practical application, which excites people.”

AI Ambassador

Space Force Capt. Jazmin Furtado works with the accelerator part-time from across the country at Los Angeles Air Force Base, Calif., looking into how existing AI research relating to space domain awareness could benefit the DOD, “especially the Space Force,” she said.

An Air Force Academy graduate, Furtado went to MIT for her master’s and eventually was assigned to Kessel Run, the Air Force’s software development hub, as a portfolio lead during its early pursuits of AI—where she was one of a handful of people directed to “do AI.”

“It was a very vague statement, but it was a very big goal and vision,” she recalled. “A lot needed to be done in terms of, ‘How are we collecting data?’” That was also when she first connected with the accelerator.

Now on the heels of a fellowship at SpaceX, she’s applying all that experience as a program manager in space command and control architecture for the Space Force’s Space Systems Command. She’s focused on “overseeing these enterprise data stores” and envisions helping to build a digital environment that’s already optimized for AI, which all relies on quality data. “In order for it to be actionable, it has to be accessible,” Furtado said.

Wider Adoption

Alongside helping to “mold” the research projects, the accelerator is also “accelerating the empowerment and implementation of machine learning”—a branch of AI—“throughout the department,” Hamilton said.

The work includes documenting methodologies for the wider adoption of AI—“the frameworks that are going to allow our Airmen and our Guardians to create machine learning solutions for their own organizations,” Hamilton said—as well as providing education courses taught by MIT personnel.

Hamilton believes that in the long run, AI will be best at “teaming with humans.”

“Maybe it is in a situation where you have a pilot flying, and they are being fed pieces of information that the computer is seeing that the human couldn’t decipher that helps them and enhances their performance,” he said.

In hopes of guiding acquisition organizations in their use of AI, for example, a group of Air Force and Space Force acquisition program managers are assigned as fellows to the accelerator for four months—dubbed “Phantoms”—and developing the first toolkit-style document describing, “This is how you need to think about machine learning when you acquire it, when you contract for it,” Hamilton said. “How should you think about this technology when you’re diving into it—when you’re trying to hire industry partners to solve a problem you have using machine learning? What are the things you should be thinking?”

Courses have ranged from a senior leaders’ course for general officers; to leaders’ courses for the likes of squadron commanders and civilian government executives; to a coders’ course “that’s very intense … for a select few,” Hamilton said. “We’re trying to teach people organic ability to code and to create machine learning algorithms and go through data.”

Thanks to such a close partnership with “a world-class academic institution,” Hamilton said, “We’re making advancements revolutionary to the entire field—the entire world.”

DOD Invites Companies to Help It Visualize the Space Domain

Nov. 3, 2021 | By Amanda Miller

The Space Force wants to better visualize the space domain, so the Defense Innovation Unit is asking companies—both from the U.S. and internationally—to send in ideas for a shot at funding.

Having teased the Global Space Innovation Project on social media, officials with the DIU previewed the project via video conference Nov. 3. It’s a solicitation for technology that’s already in existence or in development that could take the types of data collected for space operations and turn it all into something user-friendly—like an app—to visualize the domain and the status of space systems.

“We’re looking for things that are already somewhat developed that we can take that next mile and really customize to our needs,” said Matt Tompkins, a co-founder of SpaceWERX, which stood up in August and collaborates with DIU.

In the public video conference, the officials said they have experience funding international companies following 2020’s joint U.S.-U.K. International Space Pitch Day.

They said multiple awards could be made and there is no prerequisite for a company to apply. They declined to state a dollar amount for the total project or an upper limit for individual awards but acknowledged they are modeling the program off of Small Business Innovation Research Phase 2 grants. Those are generally $750,000 for two years. International companies wouldn’t be eligible for SBIR grants, though they are still eligible to receive funding.

The Space Force’s Space Systems Command and the Space Force’s Space Rapid Capabilities Office are funding the project, while the DIU is taking care of the contracting side.

An announcement with more details, including answers to frequently asked questions, goes up on the DIU’s website Nov. 4—but the officials said it will be intentionally broad and doesn’t even specify whether a single solution or a suite of apps is preferred:

“Tell us why you think one solution is better than the other,” Tompkins said.

Submissions will be accepted Nov. 4-18. Companies may team up to apply.