Richardson Takes Over SOUTHCOM, Only the 3rd Woman to Lead a Combatant Command

Oct. 29, 2021 | By Amanda Miller

A Black Hawk pilot who commanded her assault helicopter battalion in Operation Iraqi Freedom took over U.S. Southern Command in a ceremony Oct. 29.

Army Gen. Laura J. Richardson, who received her fourth star Oct. 18, became the third woman to lead one of the U.S. military’s 11 unified combatant commands and the first to lead SOUTHCOM. She assumed command from Navy Adm. Craig S. Faller, who is retiring.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, a retired Army general who led U.S. Central Command, presided over the command change that took place in the gymnasium of Southern Command headquarters in Doral, Fla., near Miami.

In his remarks, Austin recalled first meeting Richardson when she was assigned as a Senate liaison escorting congressional delegations into Iraq.

“I’ve been impressed with her ever since,” Austin said. “Most recently, she led U.S. Army North doing everything from fighting wildfires to helping Americans get vaccinated. It was an extraordinary time, and she did an extraordinary job. … As the President says, she is pushing open the doors of opportunity for all women in our military.”

As an ROTC cadet, Richardson graduated from Metropolitan State University of Denver, later earning degrees from the Army Command and Staff College and National Defense University. She has commanded “from the company to the Theater Army level,” according to a command statement. Her spouse, whom she met at flight school at Fort Rucker, Ala., according to Austin, is Lt. Gen. James M. Richardson, deputy commanding general of Army Futures Command.

After accepting command, Laura Richardson acknowledged recent challenges and said the command “will focus on rebuilding regional resilience; expanding our security, cooperation, and multilateral exercises; and increasing training and education.

“We will synchronize our efforts across all combatant commands to narrow the seams our competitors are trying to exploit. We will draw upon the strength in our neighborhood from partners who share our values of freedom, democracy, respect for human rights, the rule of law, and gender equality.”

Richardson joins the small club already comprising Air Force Gen. Jacqueline D. Van Ovost, who took over U.S. Transportation Command this month; and retired Air Force Gen. Lori J. Robinson, who headed U.S. Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command from 2016 to 2018.

Encompassing more than 16 million square miles, Southern Command’s area of operations includes the Caribbean and Central and South America. Its five service- and special operations-affiliated components, plus three joint task forces, counter international organized crime in the region, especially the drug trade; provide relief from natural disasters along with other humanitarian aid; and take part in multinational military exercises.

A recent example: an earthquake in August.

“The men and women of this command were ready for a quiet Saturday after a busy work week,” Austin said, evoking that day. “But at 8:30 in the morning, a 7.2-magnitude earthquake hit Haiti, and churches and schools and homes collapsed. Boulders blocked the roads. One of America’s neighbors needed help, and so you raced to respond—all of you, from Adm. Faller on down.

“You sent aircraft to survey the damage and helicopters from Joint Task Force Bravo in Puerto Rico’s National Guard; delivered food and aid; and working together with [the U.S Agency for International Development], you saved hundreds of lives. It was a massive effort, but, you know, that’s what SOUTHCOM does time and again.”

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Mark A. Milley put the command’s significance into perspective, describing its international partnerships as critical to securing half the globe.

“Southern Command has built an incredible reputation for regional expertise for interagency cooperation and partnership,” Milley said, and it has “really put meat on the bones of a concept that SecDef Austin has introduced to us called integrated deterrence. And it means a great deal, not only in Asia, in Europe, in Africa, in the Middle East—but it means a great deal right here, … to counter the malign influences of adversary nations that dare to come into the Western Hemisphere.”

Milley estimated that 23 of the 47 allies and partners throughout the region were represented at the ceremony, “and we’re all shoulder to shoulder in that common cause to protect our hemisphere from any international threats. … Deterrence against our potential adversaries such as China, or Russia, or Iran, or terrorists, or drug cartels, or human traffickers, or any other threat will be met with a unified level of resistance by every single country in this hemisphere.”

In his farewell speech, Faller said he “wasn’t sure” if he’d be “smiling or crying” and settled on, “thank you—the two best words in the English language,” he said.

“Martha and I are filled with gratitude,” Faller said, referring to his wife. “That’s the way I would describe how I feel, how we feel, about today. We’re grateful for the opportunity to have served this great nation and in this wonderful command.”

Turkey’s Erdogan and Biden to Face Off Over F-16 and F-35 Debacle

Oct. 29, 2021 | By Abraham Mahshie

President Joe Biden can help smooth tensions with Turkey and prevent the NATO ally from further defense purchases from Russia if he throws his support behind the acquisition of 40 F-16s and about 80 modernization kits at an expected meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Rome set for Oct. 30-31, experts believe.

Kicked out of the F-35 program for acquiring the Russian S-400 air defense system, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is expected to lobby for $1.4 billion in credit toward a $6 billion renovation of Turkey’s aging air force. The deal could also improve U.S. relations with the Black Sea NATO ally, which have been strained since the Trump administration sanctioned Turkey’s defense industry and Congress blocked the transfer of six F-35s.

Turkey had originally hoped to purchase 100 of the fifth-generation aircraft.

“This deal is a positive if it goes through ultimately,” said Kadir Ustun, executive director of the SETA Foundation, a Washington think tank financed by private Turkish donations. “Turkey would feel reassured, and it wouldn’t have to turn to third countries for fighter jets because it’s no longer in the F-35 program.”

Turkey has had an on-again, off-again defense sales relationship with the United States in recent years. Turkey fields a fleet of F-16s but was denied the right to purchase Reapers a decade ago. When the U.S. pulled its Patriot missile system out of Turkey in 2015, a deal could not be reached to sell the American aerial defense system to Turkey. That’s when Russia stepped in and offered the S-400.

NATO allies balked at the thought that Russian technicians could be manning the controls of an S-400 as it studies the vulnerabilities of the F-35. Turkey went ahead with the purchase anyway, securing Russia’s most sophisticated radar and missile defense system for $2.5 billion in 2019 and triggering a mechanism that ultimately kicked Turkey out of the F-35 program in September of that year.

Turkey reportedly even tested the new system on American F-16s.

Still, U.S. officials are hoping a deal between Biden and Erdogan can put the two countries back on the right course, even if lingering issues such U.S. support for Kurds in northern Syria and the S-400 remain unresolved.

“The United States and Turkey have longstanding and deep bilateral defense ties, and Turkey’s continued NATO interoperability remains a priority,” a State Department spokesperson told Air Force Magazine.

The State Department acknowledged that Turkish officials have publicly expressed their interest in purchasing F-16s but said the negotiation about the $1.4 billion paid into the F-35 program is separate.

“The United States has not made any financing offers on Turkey’s F-16 request,” the spokesperson said.

The new F-16 Viper block 70 and 80 modernization kits provide advanced electronically scanned array (AESA) radar with a new avionics architecture, structural upgrades to extend aircraft life by 50 percent, new software, and advanced datalink, targeting pod, and weapons, according to Lockheed Martin.

The Defense Department announced Oct. 27 that a high-level meeting took place between the DOD and the Turkish Ministry of Defense in Ankara to discuss remaining issues resulting from Turkey’s removal from the F-35 program.

“The meeting demonstrates the commitment of the United States Government to conclude respectfully Turkey’s prior involvement in the F-35 program,” Pentagon spokesperson Lt. Col. Anton T. Semelroth said in a statement. “Discussions were productive, and the delegations plan to meet again in the coming months in Washington, D.C.”

The Turkish Embassy in Washington did not respond to requests for comment from Air Force Magazine.

DOD spokesperson Jessica R. Maxwell told Air Force Magazine that consultations are ongoing.

“The six aircraft Turkey has a financial interest in remain in U.S. possession and have been placed in long-term storage awaiting final disposition in consultation with Turkey,” she said. Maxwell declined to comment on the potential F-16 acquisition pending formal notification to Congress.

The position of the Senate Armed Services Committee, which approves foreign military sales, is mixed.

In July, Chairman Bob Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, voiced strong opposition to Turkey’s alleged human rights violations and anti-democratic activity, and he made the S-400 a red line.

“Under no circumstances will I support the lifting of CAATSA [Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act] sanctions if the S-400 remains in Turkey,” he said in a committee hearing on the U.S. policy toward Turkey. “Nor would I support Turkey rejoining the F-35 program. I am proud of the role played by Congress to advance these sanctions and ensure their implementation. The message should be clear—any effort to weaken NATO from within or outside will be met by a robust response by the United States.”

Menendez’s office did not respond to an inquiry from Air Force Magazine about its position on the proposed F-16 acquisition.

The office of Ranking Member James E. Risch, an Idaho Republican, provided a more nuanced tact.

“Senator Risch has been clear Turkey will never have the F-35 as long as it has the Russian S-400,” a spokesperson told Air Force Magazine. “That said, he does recognize that Turkey does have a credit and has already spent a considerable amount of money that now cannot go towards the F-35.”

Ustun believes the future of the U.S.-Turkey defense partnership, and even Turkey’s participation in NATO, may lie in the hands of the U.S. Congress.

“If the U.S. refuses, once again, to kind of give those F-16s to Turkey, they’ll probably have no choice but to turn to Europe, but again, Russia will probably try to give Turkey a good deal,” he said.

Reports indicate that Erdogan has made overtures to Moscow to buy Su-35s and Su-57s fighter planes and jointly produce military aircraft engines.

“I think a presidential involvement will be necessary,” Ustun said of Biden’s potential role with Congress. “He would need to probably convince congressional members, and then if they insist on Turkey getting rid of S-400, that’s a deal breaker.”

GE Secures $1.58 Billion Contract for F-15EX Engines

Oct. 29, 2021 | By Greg Hadley

General Electric has secured a $1.58 billion contract with the Air Force to build up to 329 engines for the F-15EX, the Pentagon announced Oct. 29.

The contract will begin with 29 F110-GE-129 engines followed by seven option lots to total a “most probable quantity” of 329 engines if all options are exercised. Work is expected to be completed by June 2031, the contract award states.

GE Aviation had already won the initial contract for a batch of F-15EX engines back in June 2020 as part of an “unusual and compelling urgency acquisition” meant to speed the fourth-generation jet into testing.

GE delivered the first of those engines in September 2020. Raytheon’s Pratt & Whitney said at the time that it planned to submit a version of its F100 engine for a full competition. The Air Force issued its request for proposal in February, and the Oct. 29 contract award stated there were only two offers received.

If Pratt & Whitney decides to protest the award, it has 10 days to file a protest with the Government Accountability Office.

The contract award for the engine comes just a few days after the F-15EX underwent its first ever operational test mission at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev. The Air Force currently only has two F-15EXs in its entire fleet but plans to expand that in the coming years to anywhere from 144 to 200. At one point, the service said it would need 461 engines for the fighter.

The Air Force’s 2022 budget requested 12 new EXs, and its unfunded priority list asked for 12 more.

Compared with the F-15C, which the Air Force has operated since the 1980s, the F-15EX has a fly-by-wire flight control system, a powerful processor, additional weapon stations, and will employ the Eagle Passive Active Warning and Survivability System (EPAWSS), among other improvements. The jet will also have an open missions systems architecture to facilitate rapid and competitive upgrades. It is not, however, stealthy like the fifth-generation F-35.

Pentagon Policy Office to Add ‘Senior Person’ to Handle Climate Change

Oct. 29, 2021 | By Greg Hadley

The Defense Department’s policy team will be reorganized in the near future as the Pentagon continues its push to emphasize climate change as a national security threat.

Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Colin H. Kahl, speaking Oct. 29 at a virtual event hosted by the think tank New America, hinted at the coming reorganization in his office by saying a “senior person” would be in charge of a range of climate-related issues, to be announced in the next few weeks.

“We’re going to be making some organizational changes in the coming weeks and months to make sure that we have an organization that champions these issues and that it is resourced to champion these issues, to make sure that it gets integrated into all of the various documents that we oversee—the National Defense Strategy, but also the contingency planning guidance, the combatant command campaign plans,” Kahl said. “There’s a whole bunch of ways in which policy can drive prioritization.”

Elsewhere in the conversation, Kahl added that he wants his office to address “issues like climate change and energy in the Arctic.”

Kahl’s comments come just a few days after the Pentagon released its DOD Climate Risk Analysis, a document intended to “paint the landscape of the strategic risk that climate change is causing across the board,” Kahl said.

The climate analysis detailed a less stable future with new risks for the military as rising temperatures and ocean levels, changing precipitation patterns, and more severe weather events are likely to create ripple effects.

Most immediately, these effects could challenge readiness, as Kahl pointed to the flooding of Offutt Air Force Base, Neb., in 2019 and the effects of Hurricane Michael across a number of installations in 2018.

“If you saw the wreckage on these bases, I mean, frankly, no terrorist organization has done that amount of damage in the past few years to American installations in the United States, but climate change has,” Kahl argued.

But the issue isn’t contained to the homeland, said Joseph Bryan, the Pentagon’s senior adviser for climate. If the military can improve its energy efficiency, it can reduce its carbon footprint—and be more resilient on the battlefield.

“The more efficient we can be at the tactical edge, the more efficient we can be in our operations, the less we’ll require of our logistics, and the more we can mitigate the risk for contested logistics,” Bryan said. “Now, that is essential to the mission. It also happens to be quite good for the climate.”

Linking readiness and mission capability to the challenge of climate change, Bryan added, has been a key part of his effort to raise the issue’s importance for leaders. It’s also Kahl’s response to criticism that climate change efforts are distracting DOD from its strategic competition with China.

“These issues are more intertwined than, I think, sometimes the skeptics or the critics may think,” Kahl said. “First of all, in places like the Arctic, climate change is actually accelerating competition with peers and near-peer competitors—not just Russia, which is an Arctic nation, but also China which has aspirations for commercial and resource endeavors in the Arctic.

“ … Some degree of global warming is inevitable, which means there will be a race for resilience, a race for adaptation,” Kahl added. “And the countries that are able to roll with the punches, and the militaries that are able to roll with the climate punches better, will be in a better competitive position.”

Kahl also said many of the resiliency measures the Pentagon can take to combat climate change are steps it should be taking to defend against China as well—issues such as securing the supply chain and building up infrastructure.

“We don’t see any trade-off between the investments that we need to make on the climate front and the challenges that we need to address on that front and making sure that we remain laser focused on China as our pacing challenge,” Kahl said.

In DOD Experiments, Target Identification Gets Faster, More Accurate With AI

Oct. 29, 2021 | By Amanda Miller

Employing artificial intelligence to help identify targets in a simulated fight, “and then turning that into a solution”—whether it’s kinetic or non-kinetic—has reportedly shortened the decision-making from what might have taken as long as five hours to just one hour while also improving accuracy.

Army Col. Joe O’Callaghan, 18th Airborne Corps fire support coordinator and artificial intelligence-enabled targeting lead, summarized some of his service’s discoveries during an online event presented by Defense One and NextGov on Oct. 28. His remarks recapped aspects of the Army-led Scarlet Dragon bombing exercise this month that relied on satellite images and which included “heavy investment” by the Air Force.

As the Army’s “global response force,” O’Callaghan said the 18th Airborne started investigating AI applications during “a lengthy dialog on … the necessity to evolve our capability to conduct warfare.” The evolution comes as the corps transitions from a counterinsurgency focus to preparing for possible large-scale combat operations, “which really is back in the news again for us,” O’Callaghan said.

A-10s from the Air Force’s 75th Fighter Squadron took part in Scarlet Dragon along with the 53rd Wing and 461st Air Control Wing, as did the 108th Wing of the New Jersey Air National Guard. Queries to Air Combat Command and the 18th Airborne about further participation by the Department of the Air Force weren’t immediately answered.

For a sense of how AI has affected the speed and precision of targeting, O’Callaghan cited a recent test in which AI algorithms narrowed down initial sets of data that were then vetted by human analysts. “When we took the AI and tipped the human where to look, we were exceeding 95 percent in our capabilities to identify what to look for,” he said. That was better than both the 44 percent precision of AI on its own and the approximately 85 percent precision of just humans, but accuracy wasn’t the only gain.

“Instead of being [in excess] of 320 minutes, we were actually doing this in right around one hour. So you’re talking a difference between five hours versus one—and that was preferring itself into immediate tactical decisions that could be made,” O’Callaghan said. “And this really is the crux of targeting. AI is now enabling us not only to conduct more targeting, but to conduct it quicker and then begin to quickly merge intelligence and operations together.”

With AI first culling the available intelligence information, “an analyst is no longer looking at 700 square kilometers of geospatial information,” O’Callaghan said. “He’s actually having that presented to him. And then he’s rapidly checking what the computer has provided and then moving that into a decision process that is going to result in an effect being delivered against it.”

The Department of the Air Force has reportedly started to deploy AI algorithms in targeting as well. Secretary Frank Kendall announced in August that the Chief Architect’s Office had “deployed AI algorithms for the first time to a live operational kill chain … for automated target recognition.” He said the event represented “moving from experimentation to real military capability.”

Looking ahead to the broader adoption of AI, O’Callaghan paraphrased an idea he found “fascinating” that he heard put forth by Eric Schmidt, the former Google CEO who chaired the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence:

“Use government for what government does best—that’d be targeting. Those are the cases that haven’t been monetized in the industry,” O’Callaghan said. “And use commercial for what commercial does best. They’ve already got the developers—the engineers.”

O’Callaghan said DOD’s Project Maven, which uses machine learning to identify people and objects in intelligence imagery, “formed a real critical linchpin of all of this … a way for us to really institutionalize this and continue to evolve it.”

The national AI commission’s work ended following the publication of its 756-page final report, but Schmidt, now an investor in the AI startup Rebellion Defense, has committed a share of his personal fortune to continuing the commission’s work.

Editor’s Note: This story was updated Oct. 29 at 7:08 p.m. Eastern time to include information from Air Combat Command about units that took part in Scarlet Dragon. F-15s from the 4th Fighter Wing “did not end up participating in the end due to mission requirements,” according to a spokesperson.

HASC Readiness Panel Sets 3-Month Deadline for Plan to Rescue Depots

Oct. 28, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

Calling the condition of the military’s depots, shipyards, and arsenals a “crisis,” House Armed Services Committee Readiness panel chair John Garamendi (D-Calif.) gave Pentagon acquisition and sustainment officials three months to return a five-year plan for modernizing the military’s organic industrial base, warning that the “request … will be enforced.”

Although Pentagon leaders call the in-house industrial plants “national treasures,” Garamendi said, the “supposed commitment” to their rehabilitation “is not translated into action,” and the facilities are “chronically underfunded, to the point where [they] are relics of the past.” The “crumbling, WWII-era depots are outdated for today’s missions,” Garamendi asserted, adding, “some are on the national historic register.”

Citing a Government Accountability Office report, Garamendi said the depots are struggling with equipment that in many cases is a decade past its life expectancy. The conditions are hazardous, safety is threatened, and the system is inefficient, and not prepared for tomorrow’s weapon systems, he charged.

Garamendi chided the services for supplying 20- to 25-year plans for modernizing the facilities. “I’ve told all the witnesses here today that there is no such thing as a 25-year plan,” he said. “That is a cheap way of saying you don’t have a plan.” He added that he “cannot imagine any private-sector industry accepting a 20-year timeline to catch up to its competitors. But that is what the military is saying.”

Within three months, Garamendi said the committee will expect a “detailed” five-year plan of the highest-priority projects for each service, with “the preliminary engineering and environment” assessment. He also wants detailed budget plans, saying, “Show me the money.”

Committee ranking member Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) agreed with Garamendi on most counts and echoed the demand for the five-year plan in three months.

Garamendi was particularly incensed that depot projects were on the services’ unfunded priority lists. Calling that a “resource play,” he said such a move “sends the message that the facility and equipment optimization is optional; in other words, not a priority … It can’t be both ‘absolutely essential’ and then not prioritized.”

He said “Both sides” of the aisle will “find a way … to know what you’ve proposed” in service budgets for depots in fiscal 2023 and after, “and then we’ll find out what the Secretary approved, and if those don’t match the five-year expectations of the committee, … your replacements will hear from us. This committee is not messing around.”

While he said he understood that each of the witnesses are “acting” as service acquisition executives pending nominations and confirmations of political appointees, he warned them, as senior advisers to the eventual incumbents, to advise a straightforward and urgent plan to deal with the depots. “The heat is going to be upon you,” he said.

Garamendi also said the committee “may do prioritization” of projects among the services, to make sure those most pressing are dealt with first. He also admitted that Congress bears some responsibility for the issue, as continuing resolutions instead of approved budgets have made it easier and sometimes necessary for the services to reprogram funds from the organic industrial infrastructure to pressing weapons programs.

Air Force acting acquisition, technology, and logistics executive Darlene Costello said the Air Force is applying “the same level of urgency” to the organic sustainment enterprise as it is to its combat capabilities.

“Our current aircraft inventory is becoming significantly more expensive to maintain as it ages,” she said, increasing in cost 130 percent over 20 years due to its average age, “even with a 15 percent decrease in total aircraft inventory” over the same period. At an average age of 29 years, “the Air Force fleet is the oldest in the Department of Defense. Air Force depot workers are developing new processes and using new tools to speed things up, she said, and in 2021 delivered “602 aircraft, 316 engines, 141,353 parts, and 611 software bundles to the warfighter.”

“But even with creative problem-solving, our challenge is exacerbated by the aging infrastructure, a dwindling supply and manufacturing base, and challenges recruiting highly skilled technicians and STEM workforce. It’s essential that Air Force depots “stay ahead of future missions” and build infrastructure to deal with fifth-generation systems in volume, she said.

In 2019, the Air Force built a “20-year strategic plan to revitalize the depots” that would improve readiness. “We continue to refine that plan,” she said, noting the Air Force has spent $2 billion over the previous four fiscal years to improve the infrastructure and equipment across the three complexes. The program is called “catch up and leap ahead,” and Costello said a congressional mandate of six percent of service spending on depots is regarded by the Air Force as “the floor … We want it to be more.”

Members and witnesses agreed that updated facilities would go a long way in recruiting and retaining essential workers, while antiquated facilities would cause them to leave. A majority of the depot workforce is nearing or at retirement age.

Most of the half-dozen members in the hearing questioned Costello and her peers at the Army, Navy, and DOD about whether they believed vaccination mandates were threatening to force many essential workers out of their jobs, but the witnesses said that vaccination rates are running above 96 percent and they have heard no widespread complaints.

SDA Rescinds, Relaunches Tranche 1 Proposal Process After Protest

Oct. 28, 2021 | By Greg Hadley

After one of the bidders lodged a protest the same day proposals were due for the Space Development Agency’s Tranche 1 Transport Layer of small satellites earlier this month, the agency is planning to rescind that request—and to issue a new one under a different acquisition authority.

The new request for proposals should not impact the “delivery timeline, cost, or technical requirements” for the Tranche 1 Transport Layer, which is intended to be the first large batch of satellites that will help make up the National Defense Space Architecture used for missile warning, communications, data coverage and sharing, and other capabilities, SDA spokesperson Jennifer Elzea said.

The original request for proposals called for up to 126 satellites in Tranche 1, significantly up from the 28 satellites that will make up Tranche 0. Tranche 1 would be divided between six orbital planes and split between multiple vendors. Each bidder was instructed to develop two of the orbital planes, along with 42 satellites.

Maxar Technologies, a contractor more known for providing satellite imagery than developing hardware for the Defense Department, lodged its protest of the SDA’s request for proposals Oct. 8. At the time, a company spokesperson told Air Force Magazine that “Maxar wants to ensure that the government is following its own rules in connection with the procurement and is confident that the SDA is committed to complying with the [federal acquisition regulations].”

In a statement issued Oct. 22, Elzea said SDA had “heard from industry through a protest that pointed out the solicitation may have inadvertently limited competition. SDA is committed to full and open competition and the agency understands protests are a potential and not uncommon part of the process, but SDA would like to avoid even the perception that competition was limited in some way.”

The Government Accountability Office dismissed Maxar’s protest in light of SDA’s decision to cancel the old solicitation, an SDA official confirmed. The new solicitation was posted Oct. 28, with the same requirements of up to 126 satellites split between six orbital planes.

The new solicitation is under an Other Transaction Authoritiy, an alternate pathway from standard acquisition practices that allows for more flexible, rapid agreements that are generally not subject to federal acquisition regulations.

“While this is a shift from our earlier acquisition approach, OTAs generally allow for a more streamlined solicitation, evaluation, and contract award process that is well-suited for SDA,” Elzea said in a statement.

A December 2020 report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies found that the DOD’s use of OTAs has expanded dramatically in recent years, with OTA obligations growing more than 700 percent in the span of five years.

As part of the OTA process, the new Tranche 1 solicitation notes, SDA will be able to make an award only if a “nontraditional” defense contractor or nonprofit research institution significantly participates in the prototyping process, all significant participants in the award are small businesses or nontraditional defense contractors, or “at least one-third of the total cost of the prototype project” is paid for by funds not provided by the federal government.

Elsewhere in the proposal, SDA sets out a deadline of Sept. 30, 2024, for launching the first satellites in Tranche 1, with new proposals due by Nov. 24. Tranche 0 is expected to launch by March 31, 2023. Space Development Agency Director Derek M. Tournear has said he hopes to roll out new capabilities every two years as the agency builds out the constellation of low-Earth orbit satellites.

DOD Tests AI-powered Spectrum Management Technology on Aerial Combat Training Ranges

Oct. 28, 2021 | By Shaun Waterman

The Department of Defense is prototyping new spectrum management technology that lets artificially intelligent software route radio communications and wireless data links to the best frequency available, taking account of congestion on the airwaves and even enemy jamming.

The prototype, dubbed OSCAR, for Operational Spectrum Comprehension, Analytics, and Response, will be developed and tested at five aerial combat training ranges—the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Edwards Air Force Base, Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, and Naval Air Station Point Mugu, all in California; and the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

The news comes amid increasing congestion of the electromagnetic spectrum (EMS) and growing concern about peer adversaries such as China who might be able to hack, jam, or intercept the globe-spanning EMS communications upon which the U.S. military relies.

“The nation has entered an age of warfighting wherein U.S. dominance in air, land, sea, space, cyberspace, and the electromagnetic spectrum (EMS) is challenged by peer and near peer adversaries,” states the foreword in the Defense Department’s October 2020 Electromagnetic Spectrum Superiority Strategy. “These
challenges have exposed the cross-cutting reliance of U.S. Forces on the EMS, and are driving a change in
how the DOD approaches activities in the EMS to maintain an all-domain advantage.”

Peraton Labs announced the three-year, $18 million contract award from the DOD Office of the Undersecretary for Research and Engineering on Oct. 26. The company’s Vice President for Network Systems Sunil Samtani, said aerial combat training is an excellent use case for the new technology. Like a video game, it requires enough bandwidth to project simulated enemy targets onto the visual displays of the trainees and maneuver them in real time.

“Flight training is a really, really hard problem,” explained Samtani. “When you are doing live virtual constructive training, you have the [trainee] fleet in the sky, and then you have a lot of emulated assets”—pretend enemy aircraft, basically—“being generated on the ground. And you have to pass information back and forth, pretty much in real time [and with high fidelity] and that requires very high bandwidth, so you can get spectrum congestion, you can get different communications devices interfering with each other.”

OSCAR relies on the increasing virtualization of radio frequency (RF) technology. Modern communications equipment is software defined—capable of switching wavelengths and even waveforms at a moment’s notice, simply by running different code. These software defined radios “will have an interface OSCAR can plug into, that will allow it to dynamically manage the frequencies being used,” Samtani said. If one wavelength is too crowded, or being jammed, OSCAR simply instructs both the transmitting and receiving devices using that frequency to reconfigure themselves and switch to another, less crowded or unjammed, part of the spectrum.

OSCAR connects to the software-defined equipment via a control plane—a separate channel from the one carrying the data or voice communications the device is transmitting. Samtani explained that OSCAR’s machine learning algorithms crunch data derived from signal processing by its sensor network and identify the optimal frequency for every conversation, to avoid both congestion and jamming.

“Some of these radios can be configured for spectrum contestation. You can run them in an LPI [low probability of interception], LPD [low probability of detection], or anti-jam mode, Samtani said. “OSCAR’s algorithms can tell the difference between an issue of congestion or accidental interference and something coming from an adversary” and would automatically trigger either stealth or anti-jamming modes as appropriate.

For legacy communications equipment that can’t be reconfigured on the fly to use a different frequency, OSCAR will suggest an “exclusion zone” for the frequency it uses—keeping other users of that wavelength out of the area where they might create interference, perhaps only during key moments for the mission using the legacy kit.

“OSCAR doesn’t just coordinate frequencies, but time and space as well,” Samtani said.

Current spectrum management approaches lack the automated dynamic orchestration OSCAR offers, he added, and are at best useful for gaming out a manually operated spectrum usage plan.

“This is a system that goes beyond the current state of the art in terms of spectrum management,” he said.

The communications user won’t notice anything, except perhaps better communications quality than they’re used to, Samtani said. The frequency hopping can happen completely automatically, or as just a series of suggestions to the spectrum manager, depending on how OSCAR is configured, he said.

Samtani explained that OSCAR would provide spectrum managers with a “common operational picture” of their spectrum resources—showing which assets, where, are using what frequencies. The manager can see all assets on the range using spectrum, Samtani said, “even ones he or she didn’t deploy … There might be squatters out there who are using spectrum. The manager can see all that in a single picture.”

OSCAR employs a sensor network—deployed across the range—to collect the data which makes up this common operational picture and is displayed on a map-based dashboard. The dashboard also doubles as an operator console, and OSCAR will offer the spectrum manager options for ensuring the smooth functioning of data and voice communications.

“They can’t wait to try it out,” he said of the spectrum managers at the five ranges.