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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Video: SAIC’s Cloud One and EITaaS Programs Bring Capability to the Warfighter

Video: SAIC’s Cloud One and EITaaS Programs Bring Capability to the Warfighter

Oct. 28, 2021

Fazal Mohammed, Software Solutions Director at SAIC, discusses the advantages that SAIC’s Cloud One and EITaaS software programs provide for the capability needs of the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Space Force.

China’s New Two-Seat J-20: Trainer or Manned-Unmanned Teaming Platform?

China’s New Two-Seat J-20: Trainer or Manned-Unmanned Teaming Platform?

Oct. 28, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

A short video of a Chengdu J-20 Mighty Dragon that circulated on the internet Oct. 28 shows a taxiing new two-seat version of the stealth fighter, still in primer and untreated composite. It could indicate at least a trainer version of the airplane or possibly China’s future approach to manned-unmanned air combat teaming.

China has hinted at the existence of a two-seat J-20—possibly known as the J-20B or J-20S—in social media videos and trade show presentations, but the new images, if authentic, indicate the airplane has reached the fabrication stage. China has leaked or allowed videos to be circulated of Mighty Dragons taxiing at the same test facility since the J-20’s existence was first revealed during former Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ visit to that country in 2011.

The U.S. opted not to develop a two-seat/trainer version of the F-22 and F-35. This was both to save money but also because it was believed pilots could become proficient enough in the simulators that their first flight in the types could also safely be their first solos. That decision was based on experience with the A-10 and F-117, neither of which had an operational two-seat version for training.

While China may have learned from operating the J-20 in a training/development role for the last few years that a two-seat trainer is needed to improve safety, the fact that it was not created early in the program hints that there are other reasons for its appearance now.

One possibility is that the two-seat J-20 is a rough analogy of the USAF’s F-15E two-seat strike airplane, in which the weapon systems officer manages the employment of ground attack munitions. However, the J-20 is clearly optimized for higher-altitude flight and likely, standoff operations in the strike role. The F-15E was built around the two-seat F-15B/D trainer versions, however, which appeared soon after the single-seat F-15A and C models.  

The two-seater may also indicate that, like the U.S. Air Force, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Air Force is planning to operate drones or other unmanned aircraft in partnership with its frontline fighters. A second crew member in the cockpit could relieve the pilot of managing these additional aircraft while operating in what is sure to be a complex and rapidly-shifting air combat environment. The back-seater could reduce the pilot’s workload substantially in this application, at the cost of some reduced range due to the extra weight of a second crew station.

China is known to be working on a number of “loyal wingman”-type projects—including a stealthy-looking, cockpit-less jet similar to the J-20 called “Dark Sword”—and recent intelligence estimates have said that China is advancing rapidly in artificial intelligence. Dark Sword features a chin-mounted, faceted electro-optical system like the one on the J-20 that is a near-twin of that on the F-35, and which the Pentagon believes was stolen and copied. The second crew member could potentially manage unmanned teammates for a large number of J-20s.

It’s unlikely that the new aircraft is meant to be an electronic warfare version of the J-20, as the emissions required for such a mission would largely negate the airplane’s stealth qualities. Such a mission would likely best be hosted aboard a non-stealthy platform.

The U.S. Air Force did not have a comment on the new aircraft.

Secretary Austin Chairs Biweekly China Briefings Amid Hypersonics Test Worries

Secretary Austin Chairs Biweekly China Briefings Amid Hypersonics Test Worries

Oct. 27, 2021 | By Abraham Mahshie

Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III chaired a China-focused military briefing Oct. 27, part of a biweekly series of briefings with senior military commanders about China’s growing threat in the wake of an orbital hypersonic weapon test that elicited public worries from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

A flurry of attention about the possibility that China tested a nuclear-capable hypersonic weapon in August was confirmed by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Mark A. Milley in a Bloomberg TV interview released Oct. 27.

“What we saw was a very significant event of a test of a hypersonic weapon system. And it is very concerning,” said Milley. “I don’t know if it’s quite a Sputnik moment, but I think it’s very close to that. It has all of our attention.” 

Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby declined to comment on the Chinese test first reported by Financial Times, but he confirmed that Austin has maintained regular China-oriented briefings after a DOD China Task Force stood down in June.

“I literally just came from the Secretary’s latest China brief,” Kirby said during an Oct. 27 Pentagon briefing. “One of the things he tasked himself with at the end of the task force was personal leadership over a regularly scheduled coordination and discussion session with the senior leadership here at the department, including the service Chiefs and the service Secretaries, as well as appropriate combatant commanders.”

Austin defined China as the department’s “pacing challenge” during his nomination hearing Jan. 19 and has repeatedly warned of China’s aggressive behavior and rapid military technological advances.

Kirby said no one Chinese technology is the most concerning to the Secretary.

“There’s a suite of issues with respect to China from the security perspective,” he said. “Taken together, all those things are reason for concern.”

The department’s work under Austin began with the task force that interviewed hundreds of experts and reviewed thousands of pages of policies, analysis, and intelligence. The task force, led by Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs Dr. Ely S. Ratner prior to his confirmation, is now informing every aspect of the U.S. security approach to China.

That includes operational concepts, the DOD budget, programs, priorities, training, and exercises, and it will be a factor in the global posture review and upcoming National Defense Strategy.

“A free Indo-Pacific remains a key national security goal of the United States,” Kirby said.

Kirby made clear the U.S. is not there yet when asked about America’s own hypersonic capabilities and defenses against an adversary’s use of a hypersonic weapon.

“It’s in the budget,” he said. “Our own pursuit of hypersonic capabilities is real, it’s tangible, and we are absolutely working towards being able to develop that capability.”

The Air Force has conducted a series of hypersonics tests in recent months, although some have failed.

“This is not a technology that is alien to us, that we haven’t been thinking about for a while,” Kirby said. “I would argue that it’s not just our own pursuit of the sort of technology, but our mindfulness that we have defensive capabilities that we have to continue to hone and to improve.”