No Protests in B-52 Re-Engining Award to Rolls-Royce

No Protests in B-52 Re-Engining Award to Rolls-Royce

The deadline for lodging protests against the selection of Rolls-Royce North America to provide new engines for the Air Force’s fleet of B-52s has passed, and none have been lodged on the Government Accountability Office’s docket.

“The deadline passed at [close of business] Monday, Oct. 25,” an Air Force source said. The companies had 10 days after receiving a debrief on why they were not selected to make it known if they planned to protest, and that has not happened.

Rolls-Royce won the B-52 Commercial Engine Replacement Program, or CERP. The contract, announced Sept. 24, is worth $2.6 billion if all options are exercised. The company will build 650 of its F130 powerplants, now flying on the C-37 transport and E-11 Battlefield Airborne Communications Node aircraft, for installation on all 76 B-52Hs, each of which will receive eight engines.

Neither GE Aviation nor Pratt & Whitney, which were not selected for the contract, were immediately able to comment about potential protests. The Air Force said it received four proposals for the CERP program; as a matter of policy, it does not reveal who submitted those proposals. Pratt and GE had both publicly touted their response to the request for proposals.

Although a protest is the typical remedy when a company believes it was unfairly treated in a source selection, companies can also take action through the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, an avenue which may still be open to a non-selected competitor.

Rolls’ proposal was substantially lower than the Air Force’s own estimates of what the CERP would cost. Early in the program, the service estimated it might cost $10 billion. Rolls’ contract also calls for spare engines, support gear, commercial engineering data, and sustainment activities. A timetable for the installs has not yet been set.

The CERP program has been underway since 2018 and is one of the first to be an “e-Series” program, conducted in a paperless, digital fashion. The Air Force expects the new engines to deliver up to 40 percent better range than the Pratt TF33s with which the B-52s have been flying for 59 years.

Space Force ‘Very Happy’ With Air Force Research Lab Realignment

Space Force ‘Very Happy’ With Air Force Research Lab Realignment

The Air Force Research Laboratory has finally filled a new post announced more than a year ago to be a single point of contact for its new customers in the Space Force—and those customers say the lab’s realignment to work for two services appears to be succeeding.

AFRL will be making an announcement about the candidate selected for the new position of deputy technical executive officer for space shortly, officials said.

Meanwhile, the man whose job it is to tell AFRL what the new space service needs from the lab, Space Operations Command Chief Scientist Joel B. Mozer, told Air Force Magazine he’s more than satisfied with the efforts AFRL has made to be responsive to Space Force requirements.

AFRL Commander Maj. Gen. Heather L. Pringle “has bent over backwards to demonstrate that she is committed to the Space Force as well as the Air Force, and so we’re very happy with that,” he said.

“The lab has done an amazing job of setting up those forums and councils to make sure that we have an input into their processes,” Mozer added.

Last year, having decided not to try to break off the space-related parts of AFRL, but rather to preserve the institution as “one lab, [serving] two services,” Pringle tapped Kelly D. Hammett, who runs the AFRL Directed Energy Directorate, to figure out how to make that vision a reality.

“So, we’re not going to actually rip all those billets and money out and make them a separate organization. They’re going to essentially be [assigned to the Space Force and then] given back to AFRL to execute in place,” Hammett told Air Force Magazine. His job, he said, was to figure out, “How are we going to do that? How are we going to make decisions and prioritize things to reflect Space Force priorities?”

The working group Hammett led recommended the creation of a new senior staff position—the deputy technical executive officer for space. Reporting directly to the commander, the new post is “a single voice that can speak to the customers across the Space Force, to hear their concerns, to get their demand signal, and to help prioritize it through the internal process” at AFRL, Hammett said.

Although the post was originally conceived of as a Senior Executive Service appointment, “Those SES billets are very hard to come by,” explained Hammett. The new job uses AFRL’s specialized hiring authorities to appoint a senior-level executive known as a DR-5, above the top-level civil service GS-15 designation but still below the SES level. ”It’s a special position,” Hammett said. “We only have about 20 of these in all of AFRL,” including the director of the Systems Technology Office and “a couple of our deputy directors at different directorates.”

Nonetheless, lacking an SES rank will make the job more challenging, Hammett said. “This person is the integrator—the conductor, I call it—of all of our space [science and technology]. They’ve got to be able to talk, persuade, … build consensus because now they’re not going to have the status of an SES,” but they will be trying to manage the chiefs of AFRL directorates who are SES. “So they’ll be below them in rank trying to say, ‘Well, I need you to come change your investments over here to do this because Space Force said so.’ That’s going to take tact and diplomacy.”

“I kind of wish it was at a higher level,” said Mozer of the new post. “It’s not what we [in Space Force] originally hoped for, and I think, not what AFRL originally hoped for, either.” Still, as a deputy to the commander, the new appointee would presumably carry her two-star imprimatur when talking to AFRL leaders, Mozer said. 

In September last year, Hammett himself was tapped for the new role—dual hatted in addition to his day job running directed energy research—an interim appointment that has lasted more than a year.

In his day job, Hammett explained, he oversees three lines of effort using directed energy. One is electro-optics— using lasers and sensors to “track and image objects in space for space domain awareness, so we can know where they are very precisely and very rapidly.” Electro Optics is one of the four elements of AFRL that was administratively shifted to the Space Force. The second is the development of terrestrial-based directed energy weapons, like the Tactical High Power Operational Responder (THOR)—a microwave weapon developed for air base defense against drone swarms. The third is … Well, he can’t really say.

“In terms of any space superiority, or space control stuff, I cannot talk in the open about anything that might be going on there. But you can kind of get the gist of it,” Hammett said. “There are technologies that we’re working on that could potentially enable some capabilities. And that’s about as far as I can say.”

But part of the mission of the Space Force is deterrence: How can that be achieved if its leaders can’t talk about its capabilities? 

“You have no credible deterrence if your potential rivals don’t know anything about what your potential capabilities are,” admitted Hammett. “There have to be some acknowledged capabilities to provide that deterrence,” he said, adding this was well understood by Space Force leadership. “Gen. Raymond has talked about the need to declassify more … The question is what are you going to reveal and what are you going to keep hidden?”

But neither Hammett, nor his soon-to-be announced full-time replacement as deputy TEO for space will get to make that call. “Those decisions are at the four-star or Secretary level,” he said.

Mozer said he was consulted on the development of the deputy TEO for space post and on individual candidates for the job. Indeed, he was originally going to be a member of the appointment board that makes the hire but couldn’t make the scheduling work.

Last week, Pringle called Mozer to tell him they had made a selection. “I expect that to be public in the very near future,” he said. AFRL spokesman Bryan Ripple told Air Force Magazine that paperwork had to be completed before any announcement.

Just One Piece of the Puzzle

Why did it take more than a year to fill this vital new role? Hammett explained that the creation of the deputy TEO for space was just one element of a concept of operations the working group had developed to realign AFRL.

That CONOPS also proposed a series of changes—not to organization, but to governance—to make AFRL more agile in its responses to Space Force research and technology needs. The plan needed buy-in across the enterprise and from Space Force partners.

“It took months and months of effort to get everybody on the same page,” recalled Hammett. Then there was a debate about who would provide the billet for the new post. ”Is this a Space Force person, or is this an AFRL person? That’s still not 100 percent determined. We are launching out with an AFRL person,” he said.

Finally, both Hammett and Mozer separately made the point that this was a post requiring exceptional talent and that headhunting for such a job always takes time.

When the new deputy TEO for space arrives, the person will find that, now that the governance changes in the CONOPS have been implemented, there are two new forums that bring together AFRL leadership to meet Space Force requirements.

The Space Science and Technology Board brings together the directors of the four major AFRL elements that were administratively transferred to the Space Force—Space Vehicles, Rocket Propulsion, Electro-Optical, and Systems Technology. According to Hammett, this group represents the 10 percent of AFRL resources focused directly on space.

The Space Science and Technology Group brings together management teams at the “action officer level” from every one of the lab’s nine technology directorates, plus its functional directorates such as finance and personnel—and research partners such as AFWERX and the Transformational Capabilities Office, as well. “Everyone is there,” said Hammett.

The group, he explained, is key to leveraging the 90 percent of AFRL resources which aren’t focused directly on space “but may be very space relevant,” such as research into materials, sensors, electronics, cybersecurity, and human performance. “There’s a lot of that which we need to harvest to make the Space Force successful,” he added.

The board meets every other week, the group weekly. That‘s a major shift up from the usual tempo of AFRL governance, points out Hammett. (For comparison, the AFRL Council, the lab’s leadership body, meets quarterly.)

“It allows us to … make decisions and try to establish policy and respond on a very rapid timescale, to the types of demand signals we’re getting from the Space Force, because they are moving fast and implementing,” Hammett said. “They’re in Year 2, and they want ‘new this’ and ‘new that,’ and so we really have to be able to respond at that speed.”

And so far, so good, said Mozer. In the Wartech process, for instance, which helps AFRL incubate its top priority Vanguard R&D programs, “Space is doing just fine.” With “a couple of space-focused programs out of a small handful, I would say that we are getting our fair share,” he said.

However, he added, “It’s still to be determined how well this works out in the long run.” The Space Force is “very new and exciting” right now. But what would happen as the shine wears off? “The real question is as we go forward, do we revert back to our old ways of doing things? Or do we keep the same focus on it? And I think we will, but that’s the thing we have to watch out for,” he said.

Mozer described his job as being “the demanding customer for [AFRL], to really give them some meaty priorities and problems to work on,” drawn from the strategic direction provided by the Chief of Space Operations Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond.

“My role is to … translate CSO guidance into [science and technology] priorities for the lab and the acquisition community,” he explained.

Mozer said his biggest challenge was balancing immediate needs against longer-term requirements. Raymond, for instance, had set resilience and survivability of current constellations as an immediate strategic objective. And AFRL was developing Navigation Technology Satellite-3 (NTS-3) as a more resilient alternative to GPS. “So that’s a good example of where they know what our problems are, there’s a clear need, and they’re addressing it,” Mozer noted. “Where it gets harder is how do you balance that against the longer-term needs to build cislunar”—the space between Earth orbit and the Moon—“architecture or develop in-orbit refueling or repair … How do you allocate resources between the needs hitting your windshield today versus a potential need that’s coming down the pike and you have to invest now to develop options” to deal with it.

“That’s where it gets fuzzy,” Mozer said. It’s made fuzzier still by the commercial space sector, which is racing to develop new capabilities—often innovating faster than even cutting-edge research institutions can in the military. “What we have to do is figure out what are the unique things that if the government doesn’t invest in it and doesn’t buy down the risk, or do something else that industry is not going to do, those things aren’t going to happen. Those are the high priority things that we need to do.”

To help think about resource allocation, Mozer has developed what he calls the nine matrix: Three columns and three rows. “The three rows are: One, evolutionary work that will make our current systems better, faster, more capable, cheaper, whatever. The next row is revolutionary work—things that change the game, just totally new ways of doing things. And the third is what I call tech surprise, … scientific and engineering disciplines where we think there might be outcomes that could be surprises to us in a military sense, or things like quantum computing that we don’t necessarily think that we are going to weaponize right away. But we certainly would be worried if somebody else did it when we weren’t paying attention.”

The three columns are:

  • Work that supports the current generation of satellites for the next five years
  • Work that supports the next generation of overhead architecture currently being designed by the Space Warfare and Analysis Center, 15 years out
  • The next generation after that, “which is really when you start thinking about these long-term ideas of expanding into cislunar space, and Mars, and space logistics,” Mozer said.

“If you have a certain size of technology budget, you need to allocate it among each of those nine buckets,” said Mozer. Right now, he said, the Space Force view was that the biggest investment, up to 30 percent of its total budget, should go on “game-changing, next-generation stuff.”

The advantage of the matrix, he added, “from a prioritization perspective, [is] it allows us to turn the knobs if we decide, for instance, we want to take risk in the future to pay for the present or vice versa,” Mozer said. “All we have to do is change the allocations between those nine elements then we can communicate that to the lab—it’s a clear way to communicate what our tolerance for short-term versus mid-term versus long-term risk is.”

Report: Texas and Virginia Top DOD Spending by State; Texas and California Lead for Air Force

Report: Texas and Virginia Top DOD Spending by State; Texas and California Lead for Air Force

A new report by the Defense Department’s Office of Local Defense Community Cooperation found that Texas and Virginia were America’s top recipients of defense spending, some $83 billion and $64.3 billion, respectively. Texas and California topped the spending categories for Air Force contracts and personnel, some $17 billion and $15 billion, respectively.

The analysis of fiscal year 2020 data, which runs from Oct. 1, 2019, until Sept. 30, 2020, broke down DOD spending in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Over the fiscal year, DOD spent $593.9 billion, the equivalent of 2.8 percent of America’s gross domestic product. Contracts accounted for $439 billion while DOD payroll accounted for about $155 billion.

The report is meant to help local officials assess their state’s dependence on defense spending and to target assistance for “more resilient communities and companies.” State-by-state graphics include heat maps for spending by county and a list of the defense contractors and how much they were paid.

Among the states where the Air Force received the highest proportions of defense spending compared to the other services, Nebraska was highest at 79 percent, Oklahoma next at 74 percent, then Montana at 73 percent. However, with defense spending ranging from just $300 million to $3.4 billion, the actual dollar value spent on the Department of the Air Force is relatively low compared to higher dollar states.

The states where the Air Force received the largest share of funding were Texas and California. In Texas, $13.53 billion was directed to contracts and $3.33 billion to personnel. In California, $12.32 billion was spent on contracts and $2.55 billion on personnel.

Colorado, which hosts U.S. Space Command, as well as Space Force field commands Space Training and Readiness Command and Space Operations Command, ranked fifth overall in Air Force dollars at $6.18 billion. Some $4.93 billion was spent on contracts and $1.25 billion on personnel in the state. Ranking third and fourth for Air Force dollars was Virginia at $8.46 billion and Florida at $8.42 billion.

Just over 60 percent of DOD’s spending went to just 10 states.

Top 10 States by Total Defense Spending

RankStateDefense Sending
(Billions)
1Texas$83.0
2Virginia$64.3
3California$61.0
4Maryland$30.4
5Florida$29.1
6Connecticut$23.6
7Arizona$20.2
8Massachusetts$18.6
9Pennsylvania$17.8
10Georgia$15.8
Total for Top 10 States$363.8
Total for Top 10 States and Washington, D.C.$593.2
Source: U.S. Department of Defense
Office of Local Defense Community Cooperation

The majority of contract dollars were spent on supplies and equipment, such as aircraft and parts (54 percent), services (34 percent), research and development (7 percent), and construction (5 percent). The biggest chunk of personnel pay was spent on Active-duty military (46 percent), followed by civilian pay (40 percent). The National Guard received 8 percent of personnel dollars, and the Reserve received 6 percent of DOD personnel dollars.

The top defense contractors nationwide in fiscal 2020 were Lockheed Martin with $72.9 billion, General Dynamics with $22.8 billion, Boeing with $22.4 billion, and Raytheon with $20.2 billion.

The DOD Office of Local Defense Community Cooperation did not immediately respond to calls and emails from Air Force Magazine requesting comment on the report.

L3Harris Wins Contract to Upgrade Counterspace Systems

L3Harris Wins Contract to Upgrade Counterspace Systems

Space Systems Command awarded L3Harris Technologies Inc. a $120.8 million contract to develop a “ground-based deployable electronic warfare capability” that can “reversibly deny satellite communications, early warning, and propaganda,” according to an Oct. 22 contract announcement. 

Under the contract, L3Harris will upgrade 16 Counter Communications Systems at Peterson Space Force Base, Colo.; Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif.; Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Fla.; and classified locations outside the continental United States, according to the announcement. 

“CCS is the only offensive system in the United States Space Force arsenal,” said Lt. Col. Steve Brogan, SMC combat systems branch materiel leader in the SMC special programs directorate, in a January 2020 Space Force release. “This upgrade puts the ‘force’ in Space Force and is critical for Space as a warfighting domain.”

Work is slated to be complete by February 2025 and will be performed in Melbourne, Fla.

Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. David D. Thompson said earlier this year that electronic warfare will remain a priority for the new service. Electromagnetic warfare is one of seven disciplines the Space Force listed as necessary to secure space in its Space Power doctrine released last year. 

Of the Space Force’s $10.5 billion research, development, test, and evaluation budget for 2021, $57.2 million funded counterspace programs. It requested another $38.1 million in its 2022 RDT&E budget request. 

Kratos, General Atomics Get Contracts for ‘Off-Board Sensing Station’ Unmanned Fighter Escort

Kratos, General Atomics Get Contracts for ‘Off-Board Sensing Station’ Unmanned Fighter Escort

The Air Force Research Laboratory awarded Kratos Unmanned Aerial Systems Inc. and General Atomics Aeronautical Systems matching $17.7 million contracts for an “Off-Board Sensing Station,” which is an unmanned aircraft that would extend a manned fighter’s sensing range and also potentially carry additional weapons for that aircraft.

The cost-plus-fixed-fee contracts are potentially worth $49 million if a $31.4 million option is exercised. They call for the two companies to deliver a “base effort” within a year, while the “option technical effort” would be completed by the end of January 2024. The work supports AFRL’s Autonomous Collaborative Platforms program and is a technology maturation effort. Seven companies competed for the contract, but only one will be carried into fabrication.

The Broad Agency Announcement dates back to September 2020 under what AFRL called “Science and Technology for Autonomous Teammates,” or STAT, and proposals were submitted in April of this year. The Air Force expected to award two basic effort contracts but planned to exercise only one option; the BAA said AFRL “cannot afford” to exercise two options. The BAA said the service was looking for an open-architecture system “to achieve the goals of rapid time-to-market and low acquisition cost.” The OBSS is “the second aircraft demonstration in a product line concept for attritable aircraft development, treating the aircraft as a limited-life commodity,” USAF said.

Kratos, in a press release, said the OBSS is “intended to be an affordable, highly modular conventional takeoff and landing, jet-powered” unmanned aerial system. It aims to “provide significant performance for sensor extension missions” for manned aircraft, but also potentially offer a “significant offensive weapons volume” or “weapons bay extension.”

The concept is part of AFRL’s ongoing manned-unmanned teaming prototyping efforts and presumably explores using escort aircraft to augment the capacity and capability of manned fighters.

Kratos is heavily involved in the arena of low-cost attritable aircraft systems, and AFRL has already tested the XQ-58 Valkyrie and UTAP22 Mako in the arena of manned-unmanned teaming. General Atomics has an extensive line of UASs, including the Predator, Reaper, Gray Eagle, and Avenger lines serving the Air Force and Army.

Kratos said the OBSS—of which it declined to supply an image—is “a new addition” to the company’s UAS line, meant to employ kinetic and non-kinetic effects that “generate affordable, force-multiplier combat power.” It will use digital engineering methods to “develop, leverage, and integrate system-ready technologies” and perform “prudent early ground and flight demonstrations and experiments.”

Steve Fendley, Kratos Unmanned Systems Division president, said the contract shows Kratos is getting larger, “further enabling our economies of scale” across its UAS portfolio. The company seeks to help USAF supply “mass to the fight” by “bending the cost curve to enable the U.S. to acquire and employ large numbers of aircraft” that challenge an adversary and “force them to recalculate their options.”

Eric M. DeMarco, Kratos Defense and Security Solutions CEO, said the company is “committed to disrupting the …national security market by providing rapid, agile, affordable, and relevant systems.” The OBSS award “reaffirms our approach to treat affordability as a technology.” He credited the company’s Ghost Works unit as designing its OBSS.

General Atomics could not immediately be reached for comment.

With One Week to Go, Thousands of Airmen, Guardians Set to Miss COVID Vaccine Deadline

With One Week to Go, Thousands of Airmen, Guardians Set to Miss COVID Vaccine Deadline

With a week to go until the Department of the Air Force’s Nov. 2 deadline for Active-duty Airmen and Guardians to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19, nearly 95 percent of Active-duty Air Force and Space Force members are vaccinated, according to the latest data.

On top of the 94.6 percent who are fully vaccinated, 1.8 percent are partially vaccinated, leaving just 3.6 percent of the force who have not received any shot of the vaccine. Those figures confirm Defense Department Press Secretary John F. Kirby’s comment Oct. 25 that the “vast majority” of the total force have received the necessary shots.

At the same time, the Department of the Air Force, which has the earliest vaccine deadline among the services, will have to deal with thousands of Airmen and Guardians who have refused the vaccine. Out of more than 330,000 Active-duty members, 3.6 percent equates to more than 10,000 Airmen and Guardians. The shortest amount of time it takes to get fully vaccinated is two weeks after a single-dose shot such as Johnson & Johnson‘s.

Those who refuse the vaccine can seek a medical or administrative waiver, such as a religious waiver, to avoid it. The number of service members who have actually obtained those waivers, particularly religious ones, is “very, very small,” Kirby said.

The Air Force has not released any exact number on waivers, but a spokesperson told Air Force Magazine the service will begin reporting the “number of approved administrative and medical exemptions” in its weekly update.

Refusing the vaccine without a waiver “may be punishable under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). Military commanders retain the full range of disciplinary options available to them under the UCMJ and must consult with their servicing Staff Judge Advocate for additional guidance on vaccination non-compliance,” the spokesperson said in an email.

The service currently has no plans to release data on disciplinary action taken against Airmen and Guardians who don’t get the vaccine, the spokesperson added.

Service members aren’t the only ones facing a deadline to get vaccinated, though. Hundreds of thousands of civilian DOD employees will have to be fully vaccinated by Nov. 22, and a memo released by the department Oct. 18 spelled out the enforcement process for that deadline, including a five-day period of “counseling and education,” a short suspension without pay of up to 14 days, and finally, “removal from Federal service for failing to follow a direct order.” More guidance is forthcoming, Kirby promised Oct. 25.

“We owe the workforce additional context about actual implementation on their part, and we’ll be having that out pretty soon,” he said.

Under an executive order from President Joe Biden, federal contractors must be fully vaccinated by Dec. 8. During a quarterly earnings call Oct. 26, Raytheon CEO Greg Hayes said he expects that the mandate will cause “some disruption in both the supply chain and with our customers,” according to multiple media reports.

At the same time, Raytheon is “going to work our way through this,” Hayes added. The defense contractor implemented its own vaccine mandate before the White House did, and it has been joined by other major players in the industry who have announced plans to comply with the requirements, including Boeing, L3Harris, Honeywell, and Lockheed Martin.

Alternate Fighter Plan: Cut F-15EX, Extend F-22, Buy New Stealth Jets, More F-35s

Alternate Fighter Plan: Cut F-15EX, Extend F-22, Buy New Stealth Jets, More F-35s

The Air Force’s “4+1” fighter plan for the 2020s, unveiled in recent months, will leave the service with a fleet that’s too small and improperly configured to deal with peer threats. What’s needed is a plan that emphasizes stealth aircraft; rapidly retires non-stealthy and expensive-to-maintain “legacy” airplanes; and doesn’t create gaps in USAF’s ability to control the air in a conflict, according to new analysis from AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.

Mitchell released a paper Oct. 25 offering an alternate fighter roadmap, saying the Air Force’s plan is budget-driven rather than strategy-driven.

“When you look at where we are today, and the Air Force’s plans for how they intend to get to the fighter force of the 2030s, there’s going to be a significant gap, a decrease in capacity—and, in some cases, capability—before we get to” the 2030s fighter force the service envisions, said Heather Penney, Mitchell senior resident fellow and author of the study, in a briefing for reporters. Mitchell’s plan offers an alternative path to the fighter force USAF seeks, she said. The report is titled, “The Future Fighter Force Our Nation Requires: Building a Bridge.”

Mitchell recommends the Air Force do what’s necessary to bring on at least 200 new fighters a year, just to keep the force at its current numerical levels. Current rates “are nowhere near this level,” Penney wrote.  

The “4+1” plan spelled out in recent months calls for the F-22, closely followed by the Next-Generation Air Dominance fighter, as one leg; the F-35, the “cornerstone” of the fleet, as another; the F-15E/EX as a supplement to carry big weapons as a third; and F-16s to serve as a force-capacity maintainer. The A-10s are described as the “plus one” for close air support needs, as it can neither dogfight nor penetrate enemy airspace. Both the F-22 and A-10 would phase out in 2030, USAF has said.

The faults in USAF’s strategy are that it doesn’t buy F-35s fast enough; it retires the F-22 before its replacement is in hand; and it spends scarce dollars on non-stealthy and “increasingly irrelevant” F-15EXs that should go to an all-new fighter than can survive and be built in numbers, said retired Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, dean of Mitchell. The Air Force must also plan for combat losses unlike what it has experienced in the last 20 years, he said, due to the accelerating capability of adversaries such as China.

“The Air Force must revisit its decision to slow production rates” of the F-35, Penney said in the report. Numbers must be increased so that legacy aircraft that are no longer up for peer fights can be retired “one for one” with new jets, she said. Meanwhile, investing in the F-15EX—which, despite being updated with new flight controls and electronic warfare, will remain a non-stealthy aircraft—should be abandoned in favor of a rapid program to introduce a stealthy new and less expensive force—a multirole fighter complement to NGAD. The Air Force has referred to this airplane as a generation “4.5 plus or 5.0 minus” aircraft. The airplane is roughly analogous to the F-16 as the “low-end” fighter to the F-15’s “high end” in the 1980s.

Retiring the F-22 before a full force of NGADs is in hand—what Mitchell described as “gapping the force”—would allow China “the fait accompli it seeks” in potential conflicts such as with Taiwan, Deptula said, because the Air Force would not be credibly able to challenge it.  

The Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies presented an alternative fighter force roadmap during a virtual rollout event on Oct. 26. Top left to right: Mitchell Senior Resident Fellow Heather Penney and John Venable, senior research fellow for defense policy at The Heritage Foundation. Bottom left to right: Retired Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, dean of the Mitchell Institute, and retire Lt. Gen. John Michael Loh, former commander of Air Combat Command.

Mitchell’s eight recommendations to the Air Force are:

  • Develop a “planning force” that actually meets the National Defense Strategy’s requirements to deter peer adversaries while having enough in reserve to deal with a possible second conflict. This would “go a long way in educating the American public and the Congress” in understanding USAF’s fighter force structure requirements; and explain the risks of not building the requisite inventories.
  • “Extend legacy F-16s, wholly divesting the F-15C/D, A-10C, and F-15E inventories as F-35 production ramps up.” The F-16s can still function in “permissive environments” and can affordably provide multirole capacity in the near term, wrote Penney, a former USAF F-16 pilot, but the other airplanes “should be fully divested on a one-for-one replacement rate” as F-35s are built. The money saved would be put toward buying F-35s and procuring the NGAD.
  • Kill the F-15EX and use the funds to launch a “new, stealthy, general-purpose fighter design” that USAF has tentatively dubbed the MR-X. The Air Force “accepted the F-15EX not because it will be relevant to future warfare” but because of a desire for a competitive production line to spur operating cost reductions on the F-35. The MR-X would be affordable and “relevant to the threats of the future,” whereas the F-15EX, because it is not stealthy, would have to “stand off” so far from enemy territory that it would “negate” the value of standoff weapons strapped to it. Mitchell said the F-117 and YF-16 are models of how USAF can “advance new designs and capabilities affordably.”   
  • Ramp up the F-35, offsetting F-15C/D, A-10C, and F-15E retirements. Penney told reporters that while Lockheed Martin has negotiated a peak production rate of about 155 F-35s a year, the additional tails needed could be obtained “by adding a third shift.” The Air Force has said it prefers to wait for the Block 4 version of the F-35, but Penney wrote that those aircraft now in production “have the foundation” for Block 4 and could be updated later. Increasing F-35 production also “provides some hedge” if NGAD is delayed. Mitchell documents assert that “every F-35A that is not bought between now and [2030] is one less Block 4 aircraft in the Air Force’s 2030 inventory.”
  • Close the F-35 Joint Program Office. Deptula said the JPO as now structured—run by a committee of F-35 users, both U.S. and international—takes too long to reach decisions and moves too slowly to stay ahead of threats. The services all have their own F-35 “integration offices,” so this wouldn’t be hard to accomplish, Penney said, and the result would be more focused on each user’s needs, particularly those of the Air Force.
  • Keep and modernize the F-22. Deptula noted that telling Congress the F-22 will retire in 2030 means the jet would not get needed upgrades in the late 2020s, because Congress would not want to fund improvements that would go into airplanes about to phase out. Rather, Penney wrote, the F-22 provides meaningful capability for “both the European and Pacific theaters,” and USAF should not let go of the F-22 until the NGAD is fielded and operational. The air superiority mission “must not be gapped,” Deptula said.
  • Accelerate “and remain steadfastly committed to” the NGAD. Penney called NGAD the “foundation of the future fighter force” but noted it won’t be fielded until the 2030s. USAF must remain “wholly committed” to seeing it through.
  • Abolish the “pass through” section of the Air Force budget. Deptula noted that the pass-through—monies that appear to be part of USAF’s budget but are not controlled by it, being diverted immediately to classified DOD programs, mostly in space—give Congress the impression that USAF’s budget is about 20 percent bigger than it is. Deptula said that since the 1991 Gulf War, it appeared as if the Air Force has “received nearly $1 trillion more” than it actually has; and that removing this idiosyncrasy would better illustrate how underfunded the service is, relative to the other services. Moreover, “Space Force was basically an unfunded mandate,” which the Air Force is paying for out of hide, with little additional appropriation, even though it is absorbing space functions of the other services, he said. Given general agreement that dealing with China is mainly an Air Force problem, abetted by the Navy and to a much lesser degree the Army, budget proportionality is needed, he said; in buying power, USAF has been last among the services for more than 30 years.

“The Air Force faces a crucial transition,” Penney wrote. While USAF leaders are struggling to recapitalize “core missions while staying within serious budget restraints”—the Air Force must in the same timeframe recapitalize three-fourths of the nation’s nuclear deterrent—it’s been pushed to delay fighter programs so much that its “ability to fulfill its national defense responsibilities” is threatened. The Air Force has grown “too old and too small” to meet all the missions demanded of it, and past efforts to cannibalize the force, paying for new programs by retiring still-relevant capabilities, “have not worked.”

Flatly, she said, the Air Force “does not have the combat aircraft capacity” to cover its global responsibilities while functioning in “a high operational tempo of a complex and multipolar world.”

Slowing the F-35, and buying the “50-year-old” F-15EX design is “not a sound means to build the fighter force the nation needs,” she said. Though “well intentioned” and attempting to live within political reality, the Air Force’s 4+1 plan “only widens the gaps in foundational … capabilities” at a time when the world is getting “increasingly complex and dangerous.” Fighter recapitalization “cannot be put off any longer.”

ISIS-K Could Have Ability to Strike Outside Afghanistan in Six Months, DOD Official Says

ISIS-K Could Have Ability to Strike Outside Afghanistan in Six Months, DOD Official Says

The Islamic State’s Khorasan branch, responsible for the suicide bombing that killed 13 U.S. service members during the evacuation from Kabul, could develop the capacity to strike outside Afghanistan within “six to 12 months,” the Pentagon’s policy chief warned Oct. 26.

Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Colin H. Kahl, testifying to the Senate Armed Services Committee on the security situation in Afghanistan, added that al-Qaida could develop the same capacity within one to two years. Both terrorist groups, he said, already have the intent to strike the U.S. 

Back in July, John T. Godfrey, the acting U.S. Special Envoy for the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, warned that ISIS-K remains a “serious threat” and said he agreed with military officials that the group could reconstitute capabilities within two years. 

That assessment, however, was before the final withdrawal of American troops and the collapse of the Afghan National Security Forces, leading to the Taliban seizing control of the country. Now, the threats posed by ISIS-K and al-Qaida highlight the uncertainty surrounding future terror threats from Afghanistan. 

ISIS-K and the Taliban are each other’s “mortal enemies,” Kahl said, but the Intelligence Community is not yet sure of the Taliban’s ability to prevent ISIS-K from developing capabilities. In the Doha agreement signed in February 2020, the Taliban agreed to renounce al-Qaida, but officials have testified that it never abided by that condition of the deal. Kahl indicated Oct. 26 that the two groups’ relationship remains complicated but said the Taliban is “wary” of letting al-Qaida use Afghanistan to launch external attacks due to fear of international reprisals.

The timeline Kahl articulated for ISIS-K and al-Qaida was based on estimates from the Intelligence Community, but “those estimates … are based on no U.S. or coalition intervention,” said Army Lt. Gen. James J. Mingus, director for operations for the Joint Staff. “The goal would be to keep those time horizons where they’re at now or push them even further.”

Right now, the only way for the Defense Department to monitor that threat and intervene is through “over-the-horizon” capabilities, the closest of which are stationed in the Persian Gulf area. 

Mingus, echoing comments by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Army Gen. Mark A. Milley and U.S. Central Command boss Marine Corps Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., said conducting counterterrorism efforts from the Gulf, a several-hours flight from land-locked Afghanistan, is “harder, but we believe we have the assets in place right now if necessary to disrupt and or degrade the terrorist networks in Afghanistan.”

“We are deploying ISR over Afghanistan every single day,” Kahl added. “We also have national technical means. … We are sharing intelligence with regional partners and with our other partners, the U.K. and others, who are very focused on this problem set. So we will get after this challenge and we will try to grow our capability to get after it.”

As part of the effort to grow capabilities, the U.S. has had conversations with Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, two countries that border Afghanistan, about basing agreements, Kahl said, though he declined to discuss more details in an unclassified setting. Pakistan, another Afghanistan neighbor, has also been “pretty good” in working with the U.S. on counterterrorism negotiations, Kahl added.

“Pakistan is a challenging actor, but they don’t want Afghanistan to be a safe haven for terrorist attacks, external attacks, not just against Pakistan, but against others,” Kahl said. “They continue to give us access to Pakistani airspace, and we’re in conversations about keeping that airspace open.”

NGAD, New Weapons, E-3 Replacement Among Air Combat Command’s Top Priorities, Kelly Says

NGAD, New Weapons, E-3 Replacement Among Air Combat Command’s Top Priorities, Kelly Says

The Next-Generation Air Dominance Fighter is Air Combat Command’s top priority, because without it, the Air Force can’t provide the control of the air the whole military depends on to operate, Air Combat Command chief Gen. Mark D. Kelly said. He also named a replacement for the E-3 AWACS, new weapons, and command and control improvements among the command’s top needs.

Speaking at a Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies virtual event, Kelly said NGAD is his No. 1 requirement. He described it as a sixth-generation air superiority system able to operate at long ranges—farther than would be encountered in the European theater. Kelly said NGAD is “designed to operate beyond a single spectral band of the RF [radio frequency] spectrum, to thrive in a multispectral environment,” and it also “senses” the battle space and “connects” the rest of the force, so “that I can put [it] in the adversary’s back yard.”

The NGAD is really a multi-service requirement because the other services are “not remotely—remotely—designed to operate without” control of the air, Kelly noted. “Everyone’s counting on the Air Force to provide that.”

Kelly’s other priorities include:

  • Fulfilling the “fighter roadmap,” which he laid out at the AFA Air, Space & Cyber conference in September. This includes F-35s, F-15s, F-16s and, until around 2030, A-10s and F-22s;
  • “Fifth-generation AMTI,” or airborne moving target indicator capability; a replacement for the E-3 Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS);
  • Air base defenses—possibly including directed energy systems;
  • “Fifth-gen weapons for our fifth-gen Air Force”;
  • And, investment in joint all-domain command and control.

Not Soon Enough

The E-3 is “unsustainable without a Herculean effort,” Kelly said, and while there are “miracle workers” in the maintenance force that keep it flying, “there’s only so many miracles [they] … can pull off before physics come into play on a 45-year-old airframe.” The AWACS of today is “outdated and only getting older” and also “just not interoperable with what we need to do” in a multispectral battle, Kelly said. Getting a new platform “can’t happen fast enough.”

The Air Force made its first move toward a new AWACS, the Boeing E-7A Wedgetail, last week in an industry solicitation, but Kelly could not provide a timeline for acquiring it. “I want them in the inventory … two years ago,” Kelly said. “Not to be flippant, but that’s actually the answer I would give Congress and anybody else.”

He said that neither he nor the Air Force have done a good job “of unambiguously articulating the no-fail [nature] of the air domain sensing piece.”

He said he’s in constant contact with the acquisition organizations of the Air Force, “and we’ll defer to them with regards to how fast it can actually happen,” but, he said, “I don’t think it will happen in 2022 or 2023, but I can guarantee you I’ll be talking to them on a weekly basis to make sure we get it as soon as we can.” The Air Force, he said, needs “a modern sensing grid.” He also said he’s agnostic about other potential solutions, but “if you know of one, send me an email, because I don’t know of any.”

Though Kelly did not mention the new Advanced Tactical Trainer among his top priorities, this, too is an important new program, he said. The T-38s used in that mission now “have 1960s-era tail numbers,” he said, and every day, it becomes “more disconnected” from the modern systems fighter pilots need to learn. “We can’t fill that void fast enough.”

Asked if acquiring the system—the requirements of which are very similar to the capability in the new T-7 trainer—will have to wait until the T-7 buy is complete, Kelly said the ATT won’t necessarily be a T-7 variant.

The T-7 program of record is 349 airplanes, Kelly said, and Air Education and Training Command needs those as soon as it can get them, to train the youngest aviators.

“There could be a different solution out there,” he said, but “I need to get our aviators, as soon as I can, something that is not such a leap” from 1960s technology in the T-38 to 2021 technology in the F-35. “Right now, I’m putting that tactical bridge on the shoulders of our young instructors on the flight line.” But he has, again, signaled the acquisition community that the fighter trainer needs to come sooner than later. He needs something cheaper than $20,000 per hour flying cost, but “closer to $2,000-$3,000 an hour.”

Making Progress on F-35

While Kelly admitted that the Air Force is chronically short of engines for the F-35 due to parts supply issues, he said great progress has been made in reducing the shortage from as many as 48 F-35s that were grounded “for power modules or some engine issues” to less than 40 aircraft. That is “not a trivial accomplishment,” Kelly said, “because every day, they’re introducing more jets to the system. So, it’s not a small improvement, it’s an exponential improvement, and I expect that trend to continue to zero.”

Getting there, however, required Kelly to “curtail some of our airshow schedule” to make sure “we don’t over-consume our engines for not a good return on our training investment.”

Kelly said he is satisfied with about 200 training hours for F-35 pilots per year, supplemented with simulators, and said that 65 percent aircraft availability is also acceptable, because it can be surged to over 70 percent. He said, the 65 percent figure is “a steady state line” for him.

Engine Issues

While he’s aware of “pressure” on the supply of engines for F-15s and F-16s, Kelly said he’s meeting all of the demand. Where engine issues are serious, he said, are on TF33 powerplants used on the E-3 AWACS, E-8 JSTARS, and B-52. Those engines are so old and hard to get parts for that aircraft are being cannibalized “before those engines cool down” to feed others.

Reaper’s Future

The MQ-9 Reaper will persist in the force, and ACC is moving to give it the capability to take off and land autonomously in bad weather, Kelly said. That will also reduce the manpower needed for the launch and recovery effort.

The Reaper will be “a key contributor to our sensing grid” for years to come, Kelly said, due to its ability to carry a “pretty decent” weapons load and Gorgon Stare long-dwell intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance pods.

As for what comes after the MQ-9, Kelly touted a new program for a low-observable unmanned adversary air system that could also carry sensors and perform an operational role outside of training.