Congress Set to Extend CR into March Despite Pentagon’s Warnings

Feb. 7, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

Congress will consider yet another continuing resolution—the third this fiscal year—to keep the government funded into March, as lawmakers continue to haggle over the fiscal 2022 budget.

The Further Additional Extending Government Funding Act, introduced in the House Committee on Rules on Feb. 7, would keep the government open through March 11, with spending mostly frozen at fiscal 2021 levels. The current CR is slated to expire on Feb. 18.

The act does include additional funding for the Defense Department’s response to the jet fuel spill at Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility near Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii—some $350 million in total, including $250 million from the services to address drinking water contamination. The Air Force’s contribution is just over $27 million.

The additional CR has been widely expected for some time now. Senate Appropriations ranking member Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) and House majority leader Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) both indicated as much in recent interviews.

However, it does come after a concerted effort by Pentagon officials to push lawmakers to pass a new budget. Every service Chief and DOD comptroller Mike McCord appeared before the House Appropriations defense subcommittee on Jan. 12 to testify on the effects of a yearlong CR. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. warned that it would be “shattering,” and Chief of Space Operations Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond said it would be particularly devastating for a new service such as the Space Force.

Under a CR, new programs are stalled, production increases are delayed, and funds are stuck in the wrong accounts, Pentagon officials and budget experts warn.

The latest continuing resolution would mean the Defense Department, along with the rest of the federal government, will have been operating under a CR for more than five months, one of the longer CR periods in recent history. However, there is still a ways to go before a full yearlong CR, which last occurred in 2013.

Congress has already passed two continuing resolutions for fiscal 2022, and appropriators say they have yet to reach an agreement on topline funding.

The 2022 National Defense Authorization Act authorized, but did not appropriate, $740 billion, an increase of some $25 billion over President Joe Biden’s budget request. Democrats, however, have also sought to increase funding for other non-defense programs to an even greater degree, while Republicans have argued there should be “parity” in the increases for defense and non-defense spending.

Single ISIS Bomber Using ‘Disturbing Lethality’ Killed 170 Civilians, 13 US Troops During August 2021 Evacuation

Feb. 6, 2022 | By Amanda Miller

A single suicide bomber killed 13 American service members and 170 Afghan civilians during the August 2021 evacuation from Afghanistan, contrary to the Pentagon’s initial report that described a “complex” attack, according to senior military leaders following the completion of an investigation.

After interviewing more than 100 witnesses and receiving reports of examinations of all the bodies, investigators found that all those who died in the August 2021 suicide bombing at the Abbey Gate leading into Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, had died from a bomb “explosively directing ball bearings through a packed crowd and into our men and women,” Commander of U.S. Central Command Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr. said during a Feb. 4 Pentagon briefing. The troops wore body armor and helmets, but those couldn’t stop “catastrophic injuries to areas not covered,” he added.

The ball bearings made wounds that looked like gunshot wounds, “and combined with a small number of warning shots [by U.K. and U.S. troops], that led many to assume that a complex attack”—one involving both the bomber and gunmen—“had occurred,” McKenzie said.

Officers who took part in the briefing cited accounts by Marines—disoriented from the blast and from leaks caused when the blast punctured their own tear gas canisters—as contributing to the confusion about what really happened.

However, others were in a better position to see what happened, “especially those witnesses in observation towers, both American and British, who were in locations unaffected by the blast and that had commanding views of the scene before, during, and after the explosive attack,” McKenzie said.

The troops in the towers saw no ISIS shooters, and neither did analysts of drone footage trained on the area 3 minutes, 8 seconds after the explosion.

Military officers involved in the withdrawal mission corrected the record in a Pentagon briefing late Friday.

The day after the attack, McKenzie had said “two suicide bombers, assessed to have been ISIS fighters, detonated near the gate.” He was referring to the now-confirmed bombing and one thought to have exploded near a building that sheltered British evacuees. The initial attack “was followed by a number of ISIS gunmen who opened fire on civilian and military forces,” McKenzie said at the time.

But after an investigation, he and others now say a single suicide bomber killed 170 people in the crowd along with a U.S. Sailor, a Soldier, and 11 Marines who were screening the evacuees.

The crowd being so tightly packed, along with the bomb’s “disturbing lethality,” McKenzie said, added up to so many deaths.

DOD leaders have also recanted their story, in the months following the evacuation, of the mistaken drone strike that killed 10 innocent civilians, including seven children, at a home in Kabul three days after the bombing.

The officials first said they had targeted “a vehicle known to be an imminent ISIS-K threat,” referring to the ISIS-Khorasan branch. Then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Mark A. Milley said three days later that he believed the strike was “righteous.”

But media outlets reported otherwise, and DOD leaders eventually admitted that the military had made a series of wrong assumptions and targeted an innocent aid worker.

Fighter Pilot Lawmakers in Congress to ‘Speak on Behalf of Airpower’ With New Caucus

Feb. 4, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

In May 2020, Rep. Mike Garcia (R-Calif.) was sworn into Congress and became part of a select group of lawmakers to with experience as a military aviator—he flew F/A-18s as an officer in the Navy.

Now, nearly two years later, that group has expanded significantly, and they’ve come together to form a brand new caucus.

The Mach 1 Caucus, officially announced Feb. 3, will unite Garcia, Rep. August Pfluger (R-Texas), Rep. Jake Ellzey (R-Texas), and Rep. Scott Franklin (R-Fla.) as advocates for fighter jets and their pilots—with firsthand experience in the matter.

“The reality is, we went from, really in the House, not having any members who had a fighter pilot background or tactical air background in the military, to four of us in the span of a year or so,” Garcia told Air Force Magazine in an interview. “And so we got together and we just started to talk about how do we optimize this? How do we turn our experiences into something that can benefit not only other House members, but also our nation’s security?”

Like Garcia, Ellzey and Franklin were both Naval aviators—Garcia and Ellzey even flew together in combat operations. Pfluger is the lone Air Force representative of the bunch; he flew F-15s and F-22s over the course of nearly 20 years in uniform.

All four lawmakers are relatively new to Congress, but given their fairly unique backgrounds, they believe they have an especially powerful voice when it comes to airpower issues.

“It’s really important that people who have been there, who have flown really, really advanced weaponry—myself, the F-22, the other guys, the F/A-18 and some other planes—it’s important that we act as translators,” Pfluger told Air Force Magazine in an interview. “That we synthesize some of the threat information, and then really speak on behalf of airpower to the appropriate committees and to the leaders.”

Their decision to band together and advocate for air dominance, both Garcia and Pfluger said, was driven principally by the threat posed by competitors like China.

“This conversation is really focused on China. We need ‘big A’ Airmen … everyone in the joint air fight, in the air dominance side of warfare, we need to provide them every tool possible to defeat whatever threat is coming out of any country, but specifically as we focus on China,” said Pfluger.

Their goal is to be a “Rosetta Stone” for their fellow lawmakers, capable of explaining the complexities of the military services’ fighter and attack platforms. That could be especially important as the Air Force and Navy look to retire their older assets and procure funds to buy new ones, like the F-35.

“In this environment, where we have a major threat in the form of China, the airpower, the air superiority, and the planning and budgeting and appropriations behind these programs becomes extremely critical,” Garcia said. “And the average member, especially in the House, really doesn’t understand what these programs are, what they do, what these platforms are, what their missions are.”

But it’s not just the planes themselves that will get the Caucus’ attention. Garcia said he’ll also look to advocate for more flying hours to improve pilots’ training, saying focus on training has “atrophied” in recent years during the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“You need a significant bump in in flight hour funding to get the proficiency levels up to where they need to be,” Garcia said. “And you know, in some squadrons right now, they’re flying 10 to 20 hours a month. And that’s unacceptable, even against a lower intensity conflict kind of mission, but to go against something like China requires a lot more than that.

Both Garcia and Pfluger said they want the Caucus to help address the services’ pilot shortages, by working to ensure better pay and quality of life for military aviators. Doing so, they said, is a competitive necessity.

“Our government spends anywhere from $2 to $3 million per pilot, getting them trained to go to the fleet, and after seven or eight years, they have the option to get out,” Garcia said. “And if we can’t provide the quality of life to incentivize them to stay in, we effectively lose that investment and we’ve got to start all over with new pilots.”

One quality of life issue that has become an increasingly public concern for the fighter pilot community is the rate of cancers among aviators. A recent Air Force study showed fighter pilots between 1970 and 2004 were statistically more likely than their non-flying peers to be diagnosed with and die from certain kinds of cancers, particularly melanoma skin cancer and prostate cancer.

“I see the Mach 1 Caucus as championing several issues this year. We’ll pick our priority issues, and there probably will be technical issues. But I can guarantee you that this will be one of them; we will be looking very closely at the cancer rates,” Pfluger said.

Already, the caucus has had a meeting with Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall to “make sure that we understand where his head is at and how we can help,” Garcia said, and the members plan to continue connecting key figures in the Pentagon and industry with other members of Congress.

But while other Congressional caucuses like the Airborne ISR Caucus, Joint Strike Fighter Caucus, and Long-Range Strike Caucus include a broad range of Representatives, not all of whom are veterans, the Mach 1 Caucus will likely keep its membership list short, limited to those with fighter pilot experience, Garcia said.

There could be at least one addition later this year though—one of Garcia and Ellzey’s fellow Navy pilots, Matt Stoll, is currently running in a special election in California scheduled for its first round of voting in April.

Should Stoll win, it would give the caucus a decidedly heavy Navy tilt, not that Pfluger seems to mind.

“It takes three Navy pilots to compete with one Air Force pilot,” Pfluger joked about the current group.

Next WGS Satellite With More, Narrower Coverage Beams Starts Production

Feb. 4, 2022 | By Amanda Miller

A more capable iteration of the Space Force’s Wideband Global Satellite Communications satellites, WGS-11+, can start production since passing a critical design review.

The new satellite is destined to join a constellation of 10 other WGS satellites in high geosynchronous Earth orbits providing communications to deployed forces.

Space Systems Command announced the milestone Feb. 1. A statement said WGS-11+ “will have more communications flexibility than the entire existing WGS constellation”—referring to the new satellite’s numerous coverage beams—with “twice the mission capability in contested environments.”

Other improvements involve “uniquely” shaping the terrestrial footprint of the beams for smaller footprints that are less susceptible to jamming.

WGS users include the military, the White House Communications Agency, the State Department, and international entities in Australia, Canada, Denmark, Luxembourg, New Zealand, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, and Norway.

At the time the program passed its preliminary design review in October 2020, contractor Boeing said delivery was on track for 2024.

In its newest announcement, Space Systems Command said the program “maintains an aggressive five-year schedule poised to deliver six months faster than legacy WGS satellites.”

The Defense Department started placing WGS satellites in orbit in 2007. A description published by the Air Force calls the constellation “the backbone of the U.S. military’s satellite communications” adding the satellites themselves are its “highest capacity communications satellites.”

The “narrower spot beams” on WGS-11+ are designed “to deliver a stronger, more reliable connection,” said vice president of Boeing Government Satellite Systems Troy Dawson in the Boeing release.

A Space Force Good Conduct Medal? Here’s the Design Submitted for Approval

Feb. 4, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

The Space Force is currently the only military branch without its own version of the Good Conduct Medal, awarded to service members who have completed three consecutive years of “honorable and faithful service.”

That could change in the near future, and a recent social media post shows what the medal might look like.

A user on the Space Force’s official Reddit page uploaded a photo of a Space Force Good Conduct Medal in late January, seemingly already physically produced.

On the front, it shows a modified version of the Space Force seal, with the service’s trademark Delta in front of a Globe, encircled by an Elliptical Orbit and with the Polaris Star to its upper left. The seal is surrounded by “United States Space Force” and the motto “Semper Supra.”

The back has the same three words in a ring—Efficiency, Honor, Fidelity—that are on the Army and Air Force’s versions of the medal. It also contains the phrase “For Good Conduct.”

The ribbon is tan on its outer edges, with parallel stripes of black, dark blue, and light blue around a single white stripe in the middle.

Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force Roger A. Towberman regularly responds to posts on the Space Force subreddit, and in a comment on the post showing the Good Conduct medal, he confirmed that “this is the design that’s been submitted for approval.”

Towberman didn’t specify to whom the design had been submitted, but the Army’s Institute of Heraldry is responsible for the “design of unit insignia, awards, decorations, badges, and flags” for the entire military—the official Guide to Air Force Heraldry directs emblem packages to be submitted to the Institute of Heraldry. Air Force Magazine has submitted an inquiry to the Space Force seeking clarification.

“We tried hard to make it distinct yet congruent with the other services (aka same philosophy you’re used to hearing from me on many things),” Towberman wrote of the Good Conduct Medal.

Towberman added that the medal will be awarded after three consecutive years of service, same as the other branches. For transfers from other services to the Space Force, “I’m told the dates will align with the last one from whichever service one came from,” Towberman wrote, though he cautioned that was not yet finalized.

But while the design and the rules governing the medal seem mostly ironed out, there is still one significant hurdle remaining—the Good Conduct Medal was established by an executive order of the President, last amended by Dwight D. Eisenhower, which didn’t mention the Space Force. So President Joe Biden will have to sign off on any changes, Towberman indicated, and he had “no guesses on timeline.”

The Space Force has no service-specific medals to date, but Guardians can still wear ribbons they’ve earned while serving in other services.

CENTCOM Boss Says There is ‘Rare Opportunity’ to Integrate Air, Missile Defense in Region

Feb. 4, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

While much of the Pentagon’s stated focus in the past few months has been about pivoting away from the Middle East to strategic competition with Russia and China, “the most immediate and credible threats to the American homeland” are still coming from the Middle East, U.S. Central Command boss Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr. argued Feb. 3.

And the biggest threat in CENTCOM, McKenzie added during a virtual seminar hosted by the Middle East Institute, is neither the Taliban in Afghanistan nor the Islamic State group—it’s Iran.

Iran “remains the central threat around which U.S. Central Command is organized and my top priority as its commander,” McKenzie said in his keynote address. “Specifically, my mission is to deter Iran from undertaking malign activities that undermine the security and stability of the region.”

While Afghanistan generated the most headlines during the U.S. withdrawal last summer, and ISIS was back in the news Feb. 3 after their leader died during an American raid, Iran has steadily developed as a threat to the region and to American interests, McKenzie said.

“For the last five to seven years, Iran has relentlessly built its theater ballistic missile capabilities. These are surface-to-surface missiles that have ranges that can go as far as Israel, for some of their missiles,” McKenzie said. “But they have several thousands of these missiles, and they have assiduously cultivated this force, … even at the fact of starving their own people to ensure that the engineers, the factories that generate these missiles have the resources they need to do it.”

On top of its ballistic missile stockpile, Iran has also made a large effort in the “last two to three years” to grow its fleets of drones and land attack cruise missiles.

Iran’s use of these expanded arsenals has been limited thus far—McKenzie credited that in part to the U.S.’s airstrike killing Iranian military leader Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani. But there have been a series of recent strikes conducted by Iranian-backed militias on Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. The strikes have mostly been attributed to Yemeni Houthi rebels.

“Do any of us actually believe that those missiles were engineered and designed in Yemen?” McKenzie said. “Clearly, they were finished there, they were launched from there, but they came from someplace else, and I think we all know where that place was.”

McKenzie referred to the current state of affairs as “contested deterrence, because we have largely achieved that goal in that we believe Iran is deterred from taking those actions directly. However, what Iran is obviously not deterred from is acting with their proxies to advance their regional goals across the region.”

But while Iran continues to threaten stability in the region with its support for these rogue militias, it has also created an opportunity for the U.S. Iran’s aggressive actions have “focused the minds of our partners in the Gulf,” McKenzie argued.

“Here’s the opportunity: Collective security in that region could best be approached, I would argue, initially from an integrated approach to air and missile defense,” McKenzie said. “And here’s the beauty of that approach: It does not threaten state sovereignty. You don’t have to station someone else’s forces in your country. You don’t have to send your forces to be stationed in someone else’s country. Instead, what it’s about is the sharing of information. Because really, in order to have an integrated air and missile defense, what you need is good sensor coverage that is shared, to build what we call a common operational picture, that all partners can see.”

Integrated air and missile defense is an objective that CENTCOM commanders have pursued for years, McKenzie acknowledged, and the Gulf Cooperation Council—composed of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates—have frequently struggled to cooperate.

But in addition to Iran’s overaggression, there are other reasons to be optimistic, McKenzie said, the first being the easing of tensions between Qatar and other Gulf nations, as well as the fact that U.S. President Joe Biden has nominated Qatar to be designated a “major non-NATO ally,” and its cooperation in an integrated defense system is crucial, McKenzie said.

“If you look at a map of the Gulf, Qatar occupies key geographic terrain right in the middle,” McKenzie said. “It is hard to come up with a good defense architecture if Qatar is not part of that architecture.”

Second, McKenzie said, is the recent shift of Israel from the European Command area of responsibility to CENTCOM’s.

“The unique capabilities that Israel brings, now that Israel is in the Central Command area of responsibility, is another great resource that we can draw upon as we build this,” McKenzie said.

All this taken together presents a “rare opportunity,” McKenzie said, but he also warned against “overselling” the promise of a breakthrough.

McKenzie himself, however, won’t be in charge of any integrated air and missile defense—his tenure as head of CENTCOM is coming to an end soon. The White House has nominated Army Lt. Gen. Michael “Erik” Kurilla to take over as commander.

ISIS Leader Dies in Raid as Pentagon Opts Against Airstrike

Feb. 3, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

Islamic State group leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi died Feb. 2 during a U.S. counterterrorism raid in northwest Syria, President Joe Biden announced, removing a “major terrorist threat to the world.”

The raid was conducted by U.S. Special Operations forces under the control of U.S. Central Command, Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby said in a statement, with no American casualties. Kirby declined to provide any more information about the personnel who carried out the raid.

The mission had been in planning for months, and troops were on the ground for roughly two hours, Kirby told reporters in a press briefing. Upon landing near the building in Atmeh, Syria, U.S. forces used a bullhorn to “make several call-outs beseeching everybody in that building to leave” peacefully, Kirby said.

Shortly after the call-outs began, six individuals on the first floor were evacuated, but an explosion rocked the third floor of the building. Officials said the detonation was caused by al-Qurayshi, and that in addition to killing himself, it killed at least three other people on the floor.

“In a final act of desperate cowardice, with no regard to the lives of his own family or others in the building, he chose to blow himself up—not just the vest, but to blow up that third floor—rather than face justice for the crimes he has committed, taking several members of his family with him,” Biden said in brief remarks from the White House.

U.S. Central Command leader Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., in a virtual seminar hosted by the Middle East Institute, said the explosion was “more massive than would be expected from a suicide vest,” and that it actually ejected several bodies, including al-Qurayshi’s, onto the ground below.

On the second floor, below al-Qurayshi, one of his deputies and the deputy’s wife engaged the U.S. troops, “firing back on our forces,” Kirby stated. During the subsequent firefight, the lieutenant, the wife, and another child were killed.

Al-Qurayshi’s body was identified using fingerprints and DNA analysis, Kirby said.

Before the U.S. troops left the area, though, a group approached the building. McKenzie said they were “assessed to be linked to the local al-Qaeda affiliate” and armed. Two members of the group were killed “by a gun engagement from a helicopter in defense of U.S. forces,” McKenzie added.

As American forces left, one of their helicopters suffered what Kirby called a “drive train issue.” The helicopter landed safely, but it was abandoned and subsequently detonated and “struck by air launch munitions to ensure that no sensitive equipment would remain in Syria,” McKenzie said.

The Pentagon’s estimates that at least nine people were killed during the raid. The Associated Press cited first responders in reporting that 13 people had been killed, including six children and four women.

However, 10 civilians, including eight children, were spared during the raid, officials said—six from the first floor and four more identified on the second floor.

The choice to conduct a raid instead of an airstrike was made, Biden said, to try to limit civilian casualties. The DOD has been under fire after a series of New York Times reports revealed thousands of civilian deaths in the Middle East caused by American airstrikes with little to no accountability. Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III has ordered department leaders to draft an action plan to prevent and respond to civilian casualties.

“Knowing that this terrorist had chosen to surround himself with families, including children, we made a choice to pursue a Special Forces raid at a much greater risk to our own people, rather than targeting him with an airstrike,” Biden said.

With al-Qurayshi dead, ISIS is now leaderless, “but their twisted ideology and their intent to kill, maim, and terrorize still threaten our national security and the lives of countless innocents,” Austin said in a statement.

The Islamic State was driven underground in 2019 with the loss of virtually all of its former territory. Since then, however, the group has continued to conduct terrorist attacks, including a suicide bombing this past August in Kabul that killed 13 American service members and dozens of civilians during the U.S.’s withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Kirby declined to say whether al-Qurayshi had any involvement in that particular bombing, but he did say that al-Qurayshi was a “hands-on” leader who maintained “situational awareness” of a recent attack on a Syrian prison housing thousands of ISIS fighters that resulted in hundreds of deaths. He was also “directly involved” in the 2014 atrocities of the Yazidi minority in Iraq during which thousands were killed and raped in a campaign the United Nations labeled a genocide.

“This is a man that we should all be happy is no longer walking on the face of the Earth,” Kirby said.

McKenzie echoed that assessment, saying al-Qurayshi was more of a planner and operator than his predecessor, the infamous Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

“I think it’s going to be a significant blow to them. And look, I don’t want to oversell it, because local variants of ISIS … are going to continue to flourish,” McKenzie said. “… But I do think it makes it harder for them to come up with an integrated global approach.”

Senate Confirms New Air Force Inspector General

Feb. 3, 2022 | By Greg Hadley

The Senate on Feb. 2 confirmed Maj. Gen. Stephen L. Davis for a third star and assignment as the department’s new inspector general.

Davis previously served as director of global power programs in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics overseeing the “direction, planning, and programming” of major programs such as the F-35, F-22, B-1, B-2, and Ground Based Strategic Deterrent.

Now, he’ll take over as the Air Force’s top investigator at a time when the service is taking hard looks at several key issues.

Under Lt. Gen. Sami D. Said, the Air Force IG’s office recently conducted reviews that found widespread racial and gender disparities in ascensions, promotions, punishments, and other key areas. Leaders have pledged to continue tracking that data and to conduct root-cause analyses.

Elsewhere, Air Force Special Operations Command boss Lt. Gen. James C. Slife has called for an inspector general investigation after an anonymous complaint that his command lowered its standards to push a female Airman through special tactics officer training. Slife has disputed the complaint, saying the claims are “either factually incorrect or missing important context.”

Also in the past few months, the inspector general was tasked with investigating the erroneous strike in Kabul this past August that killed 10 civilians amid the U.S.’s hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan. That investigation concluded that execution errors and confirmation bias led to the mistaken strike, but subsequent media reporting on other deadly strikes has pushed the Pentagon to expand its efforts to reduce civilian casualties.

Davis started out in the Air Force as a missileer, with his first assignments overseeing ICBMs. Since then, he has held positions with Air Force Space Command, the Air Staff, U.S. Strategic Command, the Joint Staff, and the National Nuclear Security Administration. He also served as commander of the 91st Missile Wing at Minot Air Force Base, N.D. Before his most recent position on the Air Staff, he worked as director of global operations at U.S. Strategic Command.

Davis was nominated to be the new Air Force Inspector General by President Joe Biden on Dec. 15, and his nomination was reported out by the Senate Armed Services Committee on Feb. 1, followed by confirmation via unanimous consent on the floor of the full Senate.

Air Forces Africa Balances Engagement With Human Rights in Rwanda Meeting

Feb. 3, 2022 | By Abraham Mahshie

AFRICAN AIR CHIEFS SYMPOSIUM, KIGALI, Rwanda—Security is the thing many Rwandans love most about their country. The land of a thousand hills has clean streets, where citizens can safely walk at night. The countrysides of rice and banana plantations are lush and carefully manicured. Police officers man the corners of city streets in the capital, Kigali, and the Rwandan military participates in peacekeeping missions across the continent, with the U.S. Air Force providing strategic lift to Rwandan defense forces.

But another Rwanda emerged since President Paul Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front entered the country from Uganda, overthrew the government, and ended the 1994 genocide that killed nearly a million Tutsis.

Kagame, 64, now presides over a peaceful oasis in a continent plagued by instability, military coups, violent extremist groups, and deep poverty, but accusations of human rights abuses plague the celebrated hero known by most as “his excellency.” President since 2000, Kagame’s government is accused of targeted assassinations, disappearances, and torture, including the deaths of journalists and opposition figures, according to the non-profit group Human Rights Watch.

The president has elevated his international reputation militarily by participating in peacekeeping missions in troubled regions of Africa. This year, Rwanda also co-hosted the 11th African Air Chiefs Symposium with United States Air Forces in Europe-Air Forces Africa Jan. 24-28 in Kigali.

“Most observers would agree, Rwanda is not a stable country,” National Defense University scholar Joseph Siegle told Air Force Magazine in a telephone interview before the symposium. “They’ve just put a lid on all of these building up pressures that are there, even though outwardly, it seems to be so.”

But Rwanda is secure, Siegle amitted, and it has the influence in the Great Lakes region of Africa to prevent instability from spreading from the troubled eastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

“It’s a smoldering set of challenges, and they are pursuing regional solutions,” Siegle explained.

Hence Rwanda’s hosting of this year’s AACS, the first in-person event in two years, with a goal to work toward shared strategic airlift on the continent.

“Many of Africa’s emerging security challenges are transnational, and so, no one country has the resources to respond alone. We must prioritize the benefits of working together,” Kagame said during his brief and much-celebrated symposium attendance to deliver opening remarks amid intense security.

“Security and prosperity are two sides of the same coin, you cannot have one without the other,” he concluded.

USAFE-AFAFRICA commander Gen. Jeffrey L. Harrigian told Air Force Magazine that balancing human rights concerns with the U.S. military’s strategic objectives requires engagement that can lead to improvements.

“The important part for me personally has been, let’s understand the entire picture,” he said in an exclusive interview before the start of the final conference day.

“Clearly, human rights is important to us, and something that, as the United States, this is who we are. But at the same time, understanding the nuances of what’s happening here was something that was important to me, because it gives context to the relationships,” he said, noting that he had several engagements prior to the event with U.S. Ambassador to Rwanda Peter H. Vrooman. The conference week also helped to deepen U.S. Air Force and Rwanda Defence Force trust and cooperation.

“As we’ve, I’ll call it, ‘matured,’ our relationship with the Rwanda Defence Force here, at least this past week, it’s clear to me, they are extremely professional, dedicated to their mission set,” Harrigian said. “I think it’s in our best interest to stay close to them and continue to grow this relationship because at the end of the day, they will continue to grow their capabilities.”

He added: “We walk the journey together, and if we’re not here, that will come to an end. … I would offer it’s not in our interest to do that.”

Peter H. Vrooman, U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Rwanda, right, and Rwandan Air Force Lt. Gen. Jean Jacques Mupenzi, Rwandan air chief of staff, center, greet U.S. Air Force Gen. Jeffrey L. Harrigian, U.S. Air Forces in Europe-Air Forces Africa commander, upon his arrival in Rwanda for the 2022 African Air Chiefs Symposium in Kigali, Rwanda, Jan. 24, 2022. U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Brooke Moeder.

Rwanda-U.S. Cooperation

Rwanda’s participation in African Union peacekeeping missions across the continent has contributed to stability and allowed African nations to manage their own crises with reduced external assistance from the U.S. Air Force and European partners.

In January and February 2014, two U.S. Air Force C-17s airlifted a Rwandan mechanized battalion of 850 soldiers and more than 1,000 tons of equipment to the Central African Republic for a peacekeeping mission.

In recent years, Rwanda has sent peacekeeping forces to Mozambique and Sudan, providing airlift, evacuation, and use of air assets in joint actions. Before Rwanda’s participation in the United Nations–African Union Mission in Darfur, which ended in 2016, Rwanda was the second largest contributor of peacekeeping forces in the world. It now stands at fourth, according to the RDF.

In remarks July 21, 2021 at a U.S.-Rwanda preparatory meeting for the 2021 Peacekeeping Ministerial in Seoul, Vrooman highlighted the U.S.-Rwanda partnership, and Rwanda’s peacekeeping efforts over nearly two decades.

“Rwanda undertakes peacekeeping as a constitutional and moral obligation,” Vrooman said, reflecting on how the UN failed to act to prevent the 1994 genocide.

The ambassador noted how the United States has trained and the RDF has deployed more than 45,000 personnel in support of UN missions globally. As of July 2021, Rwanda had more than 5,000 troops, police, and others on UN missions.

In a pull aside interview after his remarks at AACS, Vrooman told Air Force Magazine about the delicate balance between human rights concerns and military-to-military ties.

“I’m really a strong believer in engagement, diplomatic as well as military engagement,” Vrooman said. “Some people don’t always believe in that, but I have found that that’s really how you come to greater understanding. It doesn’t mean that you will always have influence. But, if you don’t try, you won’t have any effect.”

The Rwanda Defence Force cooperates with the United States mainly in the training of some Air Force cadets and senior officers at air staff and command courses, RDF said. Such courses often include human rights and law of war training.

Vrooman said he has seen firsthand the benefits of U.S. training to instill human rights values.

“Rwandans are very receptive to it,” said Vrooman, a former student at the National Defense University.

Vrooman said using pressure tactics like sanctions are hard to roll back, and can limit the opportunity to deepen a partnership and exert positive influence.

“That limits your ability at times to be able to engage. So, it’s a balancing act,” he said.

In written responses to questions from Air Force Magazine, Rwandan Defence Force spokesman Col. Ronald Rwivanga flatly denied that his country commits human rights abuses.

“False and unfounded accusations,” Rwivanga said. “Where the answer is not satisfactory there are courts to deliver individual concerns.”

Asked what is being done to strengthen human rights in Rwanda and the RDF, Rwivanga said: “They are already strong enough.”

“A people centered transformation agenda, a justice system that satisfies Rwanda[’]s needs, and an economy that is steadily growing and strives to improve the livelihood of the citizens is what we consider to be the principle human rights,” he said. “All dissent and contestation is managed through democratic channels by electing the right leaders that people want. This is what is happening and will continue to happen.”