Hypersonic HAWC Missile Flies, but Details Are Kept Hidden

Sept. 27, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

The Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept (HAWC) vehicle, developed under a partnership of the Air Force and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, made a free flight the week of Sept. 20, a DARPA spokesman said, but most details are being withheld. The vehicle, which was built by Raytheon Technologies with a hypersonic engine built by Northrop Grumman, flew faster than Mach 5, but DARPA declined to say how long the vehicle flew.

The engine “kicked on” seconds after being released from an aircraft, which DARPA and the Air Force declined to identify, although DARPA expressed appreciation to “Navy flight test personnel.” The Navy has been conducting hypersonic missile research with F/A-18 aircraft.

The engine “compressed incoming air mixed with its hydrocarbon fuel and began igniting that fast-moving airflow mixture, propelling the cruiser at a speed greater than Mach 5,” DARPA said. In order for the scramjet engine to ignite, the vehicle must be moving at hypersonic speed, so a booster is used for that portion of the flight.

All of the “primary” goals of the test flight were achieved, including “vehicle integration and release sequence, safe separation from the launch aircraft, booster ignition and boost, booster separation and engine ignition, and cruise.”

The HAWC is exploring air-breathing hypersonic flight in parallel with the Air Force’s AGM-183A Air-launched Rapid-Response Weapon (ARRW), which is accelerated to hypersonic speed by a rocket before being released and gliding toward its target.

“The HAWC free flight test was a successful demonstration of the capabilities that will make hypersonic cruise missiles a highly effective tool for our warfighters,” said DARPA tactical technology office program manager Andrew Knoedler. The test “brings us one step closer to transitioning HAWC to a program of record that offers next generation capability to the U.S military.”

A DARPA spokesman quoted Knoedler as saying, “We are readying our next vehicles and working toward additional flight tests later in the year.”

Knoedler said the test is “the culmination of years of successful government and industry partnership, where a single, purpose-driven team accomplished an extremely challenging goal through intense collaboration.” He credited a partnership of the Air Force and “Navy flight test personnel who persevered through the pandemic to make the magic happen.”

HAWC builds on previous hypersonic scramjet projects, including the X-30 National Aero-Space Plane “as well as unmanned flights of NASA’s X-43 vehicles and the U.S. Air Force’s X-51 Waverider,” Knoedler said.

The Air Force has said it plans to pursue both the ARRW and the Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile (HACM), as initial and future hypersonic attack capabilities, respectively. The HACM will be an air-breathing system, which would have longer range than the ARRW because it can use ambient air for oxidizer, rather than relying on the boost effects of a missile. As ARRW glides to its target, it will lose energy because it is no longer powered. While the Air Force plans to put the ARRW on the B-52 in early iterations, it has said the HACM will be smaller and carried on fighter-sized aircraft.

The HAWC flight test data “will help validate affordable system designs and manufacturing approaches that will field air-breathing hypersonic missiles to our warfighters in the near future,” DARPA said.

DARPA announced one year ago that it had just completed captive-carry tests of HAWC and would make a free flight by the end of 2020, but that test was scrubbed, and apparently it took another 10 months to re-attempt it. Recent efforts to fly ARRW have not been successful, and an investigation into a July failed attempt is still underway.

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said last week he’s not satisfied with the pace of achievement in USAF’s hypersonic missile programs and pledged an upcoming “deep dive” into the various programs underway, looking for ways to improve and accelerate them.

Lockheed Martin is also working on HAWC, but DARPA did not mention the company in its release.

‘Jury’s Still Out’ on How Air Force Will Handle Specialty Codes With Multi-capable Airmen

Sept. 27, 2021 | By Greg Hadley

Air Force leaders have spoken extensively over the past few years about their desire to empower Airmen to be multi-capable, training them through Agile Combat Employment exercises to operate in small groups in austere locations, using broader skillsets to do whatever is necessary.

What exactly that means for Air Force Speciality Codes, however, is still being debated, Lt. Gen. Marshall B. “Brad” Webb, head of Air Education and Training Command, said Sept. 22 at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference.

“The jury’s still out on that,” Webb said when asked in a panel discussion if the service planned to start combining AFSCs for multi-capable Airmen. “We’re split really, even at the senior levels of the Air Force, on how we’re going to proceed.”

On one hand, Webb said, some skills need a person dedicated and trained specifically to do that job, and therefore a combined AFSC wouldn’t make sense. On the other, though, certain skills can apply to different competencies, Webb said, and could “leapfrog” across AFSCs.

While senior leaders debate the approach and definitions that will undergird the system, Webb offered a prediction for the near future.

“I think we’re gonna see it, at least in these early stages, play out episodically and differently across AFSCs, just like Agile Combat Employment and multi-capable Airmen definitions are playing out differently in the theaters as well,” Webb said.

Webb was also asked how the Air Force plans to develop top-notch “software developers, data scientists, and AI engineers” to go along with pilots and maintainers, and he pointed to changes in speciality codes as part of that shifting focus.

“Probably we will see AFSC migration to some extent towards the things that make sense in a digital Air Force,” Webb said. “And I mean that departmentwide, where we don’t have the exact same AFSC linkage that we have today going forward.”

Regardless of how AFSCs look in the future, Webb added, competencies will continue to be the foundation of Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr.’s push to “empower Airmen.”

“The essence of empowering our people—there’s one little caveat that you have to have up front so that you don’t have ‘Lord of the Flies,’ and that is competence,” Webb said. “And so these competencies, whether they’re foundational competencies or occupational competencies, become very important.”

Foundational competencies, in particular, are key to crafting a new force, Webb said—one that can compete with China and Russia.

“At some point … we have to get to what is foundational. What is common to this approach, this agility of mindset, this understanding mission-type orders, being able to understand that you’re empowered to go out and you get after it, becomes very important,” Webb said. “These are the kinds of skills when I talk about foundational competencies that we’re focused on from the very get-go—Basic Military Training through technical training.”

Indeed, ensuring every Airman possesses core competencies and is empowered to make decisions is how the U.S. cannot just compete but separate itself from China, Webb said.

“When you look at China, in particular, with all its focus on space, cyberspace, hypersonics, developing their military … they could do that because they have a very authoritarian regime and not a lot of friction,” Webb said. “They fundamentally do not trust their people. The difference in America, and certainly the United States Air Force, is that we do trust our people.”

Security Demands Challenge Air Force, Defense Contractor Collaboration With Academia

Sept. 27, 2021 | By Shaun Waterman

Deeper partnerships outside the traditional defense industrial base are needed to help the Air Force deliver cutting-edge technology to the warfighter, but relationships with academia can be challenging, according to panelists at AFA’s Air, Space, & Cyber Conference.

Both the military services and the traditional defense contractors that serve them are going to have to learn to work with a much broader spectrum of partners if they are to “meet the requirements of the Air Force’s core missions in fulfilling the interim national security strategy … in a very challenging budgetary environment,” said Brig. Gen. Robert K. Lyman, the assistant deputy chief of staff for cyber effects operations, who moderated the conference’s closing session.

Partnerships with academia were among the issues at the forefront of panelists’ concerns, highlighted by the rare presence of an academic among them. Ed Vasko, director of Boise State University’s Institute of Pervasive Cybersecurity, offered a “shout out” to AFA members who had “pushed for Boise State to be here.”

“Academia really hadn’t been at the table” at previous Air, Space & Cyber events, Vasko said.

But there were challenges in working with academic institutions, the panelists acknowledged.

Steven Marker, the vice president for strategy and business development, cyber systems, at General Dynamics Mission Systems noted that his company signed master research agreements to collaborate with a number of universities. One issue that came up a lot, he said, was security: Would only graduate students who were U.S. citizens be allowed to work on projects with General Dynamics? And would the data from the project be specially segmented and protected on the university network?

“As part of our qualification of which universities we’re going to establish master research agreements with, this is one of the things we specifically addressed with them is their ability to bring on board U.S. citizen graduate students and their ability to segment the data,” said Marker.

Academic institutions that could not or would not meet the security requirements ended up being cut out of the GD ecosystem, he said.

“Honestly, there’s been universities where we’ve wanted to partner with them, because we see them as the world-class institution for [some particular technology] but they just can’t get over the hump of providing the type of graduate students that are needed to work it or guaranteeing the [data] protections [on their networks]. And so we’ll move to a different university,” Marker said.

The academic culture of universities tended to resist such security measures, said Vasko, although that was changing. “There’s been a degree of willingness to recognize the need to ensure that protection depending upon the specific partner or agency or funding source. That’s needed for protection of key intellectual data. And then the right to publish simply goes in the back seat,” he said.

The key to successful partnerships was being clear upfront about any expectations, explained Dan Rice, vice president of 5G.mil programs at Lockheed Martin.

In the company’s relationships with academic institutions, “we do ensure that through the terms and conditions, either formally or informally, that we get the ability to review the staff that’s going to be applied, that we have the ability to do security reviews on publications. Without restricting the desire of universities to publish research work, even if it’s funded by the government or by industry, to at least have that opportunity to review it and go through and provide feedback on things that should or shouldn’t be disclosed in the open press,” Rice said.

He suggested that academic institutions should employ the kind of insider threat detection tools made mandatory for Intelligence Community and DOD agencies following the June 2013 Snowden leaks and the Navy Yard shootings later that same summer. The tools track public information about employees, such as arrest warrants, debts, and any court records, as well as logging network activities on their work computer in a more timely manner than the traditional annual or five-yearly reviews.

“I think one other thing that industry and government can do is extending our insider threat practices to also evaluate the team members that we have on our university research activities. And I know this is something that Lockheed Martin does to ensure that when we see red flags, those get addressed, and we take the appropriate actions,” Rice said.

These broader partnerships are the key to unlocking the potential of new technologies for the warfighter, he added. “There’s no one source of innovation,” he told Air Force Magazine in an interview afterward.

Such partnerships had existed for decades but were changing, he said. “I think that they are becoming deeper. They’re becoming more enduring. They’re less transactional. It isn’t just about what technology can you give me today to solve my immediate problem, but it’s really about a strategic relationship.”

Those longer-term relationships could yield significant value, and industry members had become practiced at building them, said retired Air Force colonel and an AT&T executive vice president, Lance Spencer. “If you look under the hood of AT&T, you will see a lot of companies … We may have the AT&T globe and logo on it. And we’re the ones bringing it together. And we’re operationalizing it and scaling it and delivering it. But we have incubation environments where we’re working with startups. And we evaluate how they might grow and scale. And then we invest in those companies to solve problems like zero trust,” he said.

Although conventional wisdom painted a picture of the traditional military contractors as the consumers of innovation produced elsewhere, by startups or digital consumer giants, the reality was more complicated, Rice said.

“There are technology areas that we invest in because of the types of businesses we’re in that are also of great interest to the commercial industry,” he said. Niche technologies such as antennas capable of using many different parts of the spectrum—developed to operate in contested environments—could also be useful in congested ones. “Commercial industry is trying to optimize their use of spectrum,” he noted, so the capability of a single antenna to take advantage of different pieces of the spectrum is of “great interest” in the commercial sector.

Innovation, he said, “becomes a two way relationship.”

F-35 Production Set at 156 Per Year Until Completion

Sept. 27, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

Lockheed Martin and the F-35 Joint Program Office have agreed that F-35 production will peak at 156 planes per year in 2023 and remain at that level “for the foreseeable future.”

The JPO and Lockheed Martin have agreed to a “rebaselining” of the program that “ensures predictability and stability in the production process” of the F-35, the company said in a press release.

Lockheed Martin will deliver “133-139 aircraft this year [calendar 2021], 151-153 aircraft in 2022, and anticipates delivering 156 aircraft beginning in 2023 and for the foreseeable future,” it announced. The company did not say how many of each variant will be delivered. Defense officials have said the pre-pandemic goal was to achieve deliveries of 155 airplanes a year by the end of 2022.

The company delivered 120 F-35s in 2020, versus a planned 141, and reduced its planned production this year from 169 to 139. Lockheed Martin officials have chalked up the missed deliveries to supply problems stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the need to rearrange workspaces and shifts to keep workers appropriately distanced during production. However, production was never halted due to the pandemic.

Late last year, the company said it would not accelerate production to quickly make up the missed deliveries, as that would require a hiring surge or added shifts and create demand for supplied materials that would be disruptive to the rhythm of manufacturing the F-35. At the time, it expected to make up the missed deliveries by the end of 2023.

Bridget Lauderdale, Lockheed Martin vice president and general manager for the F-35, said in June that “many of our suppliers are small businesses. We were very focused during the pandemic on ensuring we were flowing resources [and] money from the U.S. government, to ensure that our small businesses could continue to operate and deliver supply” to the factory. She said the “great news is, the line is stabilizing and the supply base is stabilizing,” and she expected to “ramp back up” in the near future.

A company spokesman said the announcement is not an indication that a deal has been reached on Lot 15-17 negotiations, which continue. Program Executive Officer Air Force Lt. Gen. Eric T. Fick said earlier this month that he hoped to achieve an agreement on Lot 15-17 by the end of October but that negotiations could stretch out longer.

Both Fick and Lockheed Martin have said Lot 15-17 may not see the same year-over-year unit cost reductions in the F-35 because Lot 15 and beyond yield the Block 4 upgrade of the jet, with new and more complex capabilities.

The announcement also does not indicate that the F-35 has achieved “full-rate production” status, usually declared by the Pentagon after a program has satisfied the operational test community that it meets requirements. The Pentagon delayed the declaration of full rate to allow the F-35 to be integrated with the Joint Simulation Environment, a wargaming platform that measures the jet’s performance in highly classified conditions. While establishing a peak production rate for the F-35 is a de facto “full-rate” declaration, absent the official status, the program can’t officially enter into multiyear procurement contracts, which can reduce costs by buying materials in economic quantities. The F-35 partners already benefit from a “block buy” approach similar to a multiyear deal. However, by setting a peak production rate, a multiyear deal may be moot.

The Air Force has signaled that it will buy about five fewer F-35s per year over the next few years, preferring to wait for the Block 4 jets as they start coming off the production line in fiscal 2023. It did not include the F-35 on its “unfunded priorities list” submitted to Congress, which has added 12 jets per year to the Air Force’s request for 48 jets in the last few years.

The Air Force currently fields about 300 of its planned 1,763 F-35s. If it continued to buy the jets at a rate of 48 per year, it would complete its purchases of the fighter in the early 2050s. Original plans called for the Air Force to buy F-35s at a rate of 110 per year starting in the mid-2010s. Current plans do not forecast an Air Force production increase before 2025 at the earliest.

More than 700 F-35s have been delivered to customers worldwide, Lockheed Martin said, and the three variants have amassed more than 430,000 flight hours.

Caring for Their Son Gave the Browns a Window Into the Needs of Exceptional Families

Sept. 27, 2021 | By Amanda Miller

The Air Force’s top officer-and-spouse duo shared a personal reason they take family readiness to heart in a town hall talk on the final afternoon of AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference.

Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. and his wife Sharene said caring for their son with autism has helped to inform improvements to the Defense Department’s Exceptional Family Member Program and that EFMP families have, in turn, informed a new quality-of-life initiative called Five to Thrive.

Sharene Brown revealed Five to Thrive for the first time during the town hall.

When the Browns go on base visits as a couple, he peels off one way “for mission stuff” while “she’s doing Airman and family things,” Gen. Brown explained during the town hall Sept. 22. Those experiences helped shape Five to Thrive, Sharene Brown said, which will address issues related to housing, education, child care, spouse employment, and health care—in particular, access to health care and mental health care.

Without going into a lot more detail about the new effort, Sharene Brown said it’s “so that we can make sure that our families are doing well.” She added that for families in the Defense Department’s Exceptional Family Member Program, the five focus areas “are our main focus—not only for us, but for all of you.”

The Browns shared, with his permission, that one of their two sons has autism. He’s an adult now and blogs about it, “so he’s made this a positive,” Sharene Brown clarified.

It’s also meant they’re aware of the challenges of caring for someone while navigating the DOD system. Gen. Brown revealed that the family managed to stay stateside the first 24 years of his Air Force career to care for their son.

Sharene Brown referred to the family’s experience in the Exceptional Family Member Program as “being part of the EFMP family.”

Gen. Brown summed up recent improvements to the program that the couple have taken part in devising: streamlining some of the processes for accessing care and especially having brought in “a highly qualified expert to really focus on improving this process—because it is a process that had too much bureaucracy in it,” Gen. Brown said.

A new method tested this summer, and rolling incrementally, created something like “a speed pass if you have a minor issue,” Gen. Brown said.

A central way for EFMP families to figure out what services will or won’t be available at their next duty station is also getting up and running, so that “you get an idea—based on the condition you’re dealing with,” Gen. Brown said, “what’s [the likelihood] that you’ll be able to go” and “to ensure that you have support for your family member.”

Each time Sharene Brown travels to a base with Gen. Brown, she tries to meet with two or three EFMP families “to hear their story and hear their frustration—or how well we’re doing or not doing,” Gen. Brown said, referring to leaders.

“And I applaud her for doing that—because every family has a story.”

Rolls-Royce Wins B-52 Re-engining Program Worth $2.6 Billion

Sept. 24, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

The Air Force has selected Rolls-Royce North America as its contractor for the B-52 Commercial Engine Replacement Program, or CERP, which will supply new F130 powerplants for all 76 of Air Force Global Strike Command’s B-52H bombers, the Pentagon announced Sep. 24. If all options are exercised, the work is worth $2.6 billion.

The F130 engine is flying on the C-37 transport and E-11 BACN (Battlefield Airborne Communications Node) aircraft. The first part of the indefinite quantity-indefinite delivery contract is worth $500.9 million. The contract calls for Rolls to supply 608 engines, to equip 76 B-52s with eight engines each, with manufacture and installation to be completed by Sept. 23, 2038. Rolls said the actual number of powerplants, including spares, is 650.

The Air Force did not say when the installs will begin. The engines will be built at Rolls’s Indianapolis, Ind., facilities, where the company said it has invested $600 million in an “advanced manufacturing campus.” The work will require 150 new hires, the company said. The contract value is substantially below initial estimates, which ran as much as $10 billion for the CERP.

The Air Force said it received four proposals for the competitive contract, which also calls for spare engines, associated support gear, commercial engineering data, and “sustainment activities,” the Pentagon said.

The CERP competition has been underway since 2018 and has been a three-way contest among GE Aviation, Pratt & Whitney, and Rolls-Royce. The Air Force pioneered a number of “digital” firsts on the program, insisting on a paperless proposal in which the competitors’ engines would duke it out on computers. The service also insisted on access to tech data such that it could compete future work on the program among other companies.

“This is a major win for Rolls-Royce,” said Craig McVay, company senior vice president, strategic campaigns. “We’ve been planning and preparing for this outcome and are ready to hit the ground running to prove that we are the best choice for the Air Force and the B-52.”

The CERP is one aspect of a multi-pronged update of the B-52, which is also slated to receive a new radar, digital cockpit, and new connectivity upgrades. The Air Force plans to retain the B-52 into the 2050s, as a standoff weapon platform and as a direct attack aircraft when enemy defenses are limited or already beaten down. The last B-52H now in service was built in 1962, but the type is still flying with its original Pratt & Whitney TF33 engines. Early in the program, Pratt proposed an upgrade of the TF33, which the Air Force rejected.

The CERP is supposed to deliver up to 40 percent improved range and fuel economy for the B-52, reducing its tanker requirements and increasing its on-station loiter time. The engine is also supposed to be of such improved reliability that the engines need never come off the wing during the bomber’s remaining service life.

Senior USAF acquisition officials at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber ’21 conference said the CERP contract award was “imminent.” Acting Air Force acquisition executive Darlene Costello said the CERP would likely be converted into a USAF major acquisition program given its scope and value.

Boeing, the original builder of the B-52, will integrate the engines, radar, and other new systems onto the bomber but did not play a role in selecting the winner of the CERP competition. A Boeing official said the company provided data to the Air Force on the relative ease or difficulty of integrating each of the competing powerplants but did not make a recommendation on which one should be selected. Boeing will decide whether and how to mount the engines in twin-engine pods or nacelles, as the TF33s are now arranged, and will do the necessary aerodynamic calculations as to the placement of the engines for optimum performance and least interference with the aerodynamic structure. A Boeing official said the B-52’s disused nose-mounted infrared pods will likely be removed to improve airflow at the front of the bomber.

Van Ovost Faces Senators in Long-Awaited Confirmation Hearing to Be Next TRANSCOM Boss

Sept. 24, 2021 | By Greg Hadley

The Air Force has managed to address its gap in aerial refueling capability thanks to the KC-46 tanker being cleared for limited operations and the Air Force Reserve and Air National Guard stepping up to take on a bigger workload, Air Mobility Command boss Gen. Jacqueline D. Van Ovost said at her confirmation hearing to become the new head of U.S. Transportation Command.

Van Ovost’s confirmation hearing in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Sept. 23 appeared to go well, with none of the senators present raising any objections to her nomination, keeping her path to confirmation seemingly smooth. They did, however, pepper her with questions on China, cybersecurity, military family moves—and the state of the Air Force’s aerial refueling fleet.

Particularly, Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) asked Van Ovost about comments made by the man she would replace as the head of TRANSCOM, Army Gen. Stephen R. Lyons—in early 2020, Lyons warned that the Air Force’s plans to retire aging KC-135s and KC-10s before the KC-46 was cleared for operations would create “a capacity gap with significant impacts to combatant command daily competition and wartime missions.”

“A few years ago, that’s exactly where we were headed,” Van Ovost acknowledged. “But since then, now that we have brought the KC-46 interim capability release to bear for U.S. TRANSCOM taskings, and in addition, we have amazing support from our Total Force volunteerism to increase taskings of the Guard and Reserve refueling assets, we have been able to meet and I foresee that will be absolutely able to meet the day-to-day requirements and any wartime requirements made.”

There have been two interim capability releases for the KC-46 thus far. In July, Air Mobility Command cleared the troubled tanker to use its centerline drogue for refueling operations. In August, it was cleared to refuel C-17s, B-52s, and other KC-46s in certain circumstances.

The tanker is still not allowed to deploy for combat operations, as the Air Force and Boeing work to fix a host of deficiencies, chief among them the Remote Vision System and a “stiff” refueling boom. It did, however, help with the recent airlift of thousands of Americans and Afghan refugees, Van Ovost confirmed.

Van Ovost also seemed to hint at a new interim capability release coming, saying, “I expect we’re going to be refueling F-16s and F-15s in the very near future.” The timeline for putting Remote Vision System 2.0 into planes, she confirmed, remains 2024.

Family Moves

Beyond the aerial refueling fleet, Van Ovost fielded several questions from senators concerned about military families moving.

TRANSCOM issued what it called the Global Household Goods contract to a single company in June 2020 to assist military families with packing, moving, and unloading when PCS’ing, but that contract was protested and overturned. A new award is expected in October, but in the meantime, thousands of families have had to move, and TRANSCOM has had to coordinate with hundreds of different companies.

“Frankly, what we learned in COVID was it really exacerbated the flaws that are in the current contract,” Van Ovost said, calling it a quality-of-life issue. “And having a single move manager with a multiyear contract, they’d be more confident to invest in quality suppliers and digital IT and will be pressed with the accountability that our family members deserve.”

China

After Air Force leaders spent much of this past week emphasizing competition with China at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference, Van Ovost did much of the same in her hearing. She agreed with Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) that China is the Defense Department’s pacing threat, and she told Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) that the Chinese have tried to impose authoritarianism beyond their borders by coercing U.S. partners and allies.

In the context of TRANSCOM, Van Ovost said, these actions underline the importance of logistics.

“Facing these threats from China and Russia and strategic competition, we have learned that we really need to ensure that logistics planning is integrated with all joint warfighting functions,” Van Ovost said. “Logistics planning is not an add-on, and it needs to be part of the deliberative process as we go forward. So if confirmed, I’ll work with the other combatant commanders to ensure that logistics concerns are being addressed early and we provide options to them for the best use of the scarce resources.”

If confirmed, Van Ovost would become the third woman to ever lead a combatant command. In August, the Senate confirmed Army Lt. Gen. Laura J. Richardson, then-commander of United States Army North, to receive her fourth star and to lead U.S. Southern Command. Richardson will be the second woman to lead a combatant command, following retired Air Force Gen. Lori J. Robinson, who commanded NORTHCOM before retiring in 2018.

Last B-1B Bombers Retire Until B-21 Comes Online

Sept. 24, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

Air Force Global Strike Command has retired the last of 17 B-1B bombers from its inventory, leaving a fleet of 45 aircraft that will serve until the new B-21 stealth bomber is ready for duty, the command announced.

“The last aircraft departed Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., to fly to the boneyard at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz.,” on Sept. 23, an AFGSC spokesperson said. The divestiture supports the Air Force’s “efforts to modernize America’s bomber fleet” as authorized by Congress, he said. The plan was to accomplish the divestiture by the end of fiscal 2021, which ends next week.

The smaller fleet will allow the remaining aircraft to receive more attention, spare parts, and generally achieve a higher level of readiness, AFGSC’s Director of Logistics and Engineering Brig. Gen. Kenyon K. Bell said. The cost avoidance of operating the retired jets will also help pay for capability upgrades. The divestiture “was executed very smoothly,” he said.

Senior Air Force leaders at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference from Sept. 20 to 22 unanimously called on Congress to let the service divest other types of aircraft that are draining manpower and money away from new systems needed to deter or defeat China.

“The Air Force will not succeed against a well resourced and strategic competitor if we insist on keeping every legacy system we have,” service Secretary Frank Kendall said in his keynote speech.

The 17 B-1 bombers were retired from a fleet of 62, which the Air Force said had been overworked by long years of providing on-call air support to troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. Many of the aircraft had severe structural fatigue, especially at the wing-pivot points, because the jets were flying high and slow, instead of low and fast with wings swept, as they were designed to do.

“The aircraft we retired would have taken between $10 million and $30 million per aircraft to get back to a status quo fleet in the short term until the B-21 comes online,” Bell said.

Congress allowed the Air Force to divest the airplanes in last year’s National Defense Authorization Act.

Not all the airplanes went to the boneyard. One has been sent to Tinker Air Force Base, Okla., to serve as a prototype vehicle for test-fitting structural repairs, while another went to Edwards for ground testing. One will be torn down to create a digital twin at the National Institute for Aviation Research in Wichita, Kan., and still another went to Barksdale Air Force Base, La., to serve as a static display at the command’s museum. The digital twin will be used to develop structural repairs and capabilities improvements for the remainder of the fleet.

The remaining 13 aircraft are at the Davis-Monthan boneyard, where they will be in “Type 4000” storage. That means they’ll receive minimal protection—with latex spray on the engines and canopies—and be harvested for parts, but they will not be “recallable” from storage. Once everything of value is removed from them, the aircraft will be scrapped.

The Air Force has not said exactly when it plans to retire the remainder of the operational B-1B fleet. The service’s bomber roadmap from several years ago posited the B-1Bs phasing out in the 2031-2033 timeframe. The move hinges on the successful development and fielding of the Northrop Grumman B-21 Raider, the first five of which are under construction at the company’s Palmdale, Calif., facilities, Kendall said at Air, Space & Cyber. The first of those aircraft is expected to fly in mid-2022. The Air Force has not said whether it expects to retire the B-1B fleet one for one as the B-21s come online, although Air Combat Command chief Gen. Mark D. Kelly described the swap as a “hot handover” from one fully operational system to another.

Hyten, Wolters Call for ‘Whole of Government’ Effort to Deter Adversaries

Sept. 24, 2021 | By Abraham Mahshie

Russia’s grey zone tactics and China’s rapid growth require a holistic deterrence response and less bureaucracy, Vice Chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff Gen. John E. Hyten and NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe Gen. Tod D. Wolters warned at the Air Force Association’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference on Sept. 22.

“Russia today is a significant threat that we have to deter each and every day,” Hyten told Air Force Magazine after a panel discussion alongside Wolters at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Md.

“Russia is the significant nuclear power in the world. They have more nuclear weapons than any other nation in the word—that includes us,” he said, stressing the threat posed by Russia’s low-yield tactical nuclear weapons. “Russia is a significant threat, and the new novel capabilities they’re developing are concerning.”

Wolters, who is dual-hatted as head of U.S. European Command, spoke of the need for a whole of government American response to adversaries.

“The enemies against us in all corners have figured something out. It’s this thing called the gray zone,” he said, alternately referring to the threshold below open conflict as the “competition” or “deterrence” phase.

“What the threats of today are doing is applying all domain, whole of government, whole of nation, whole of ally, whole of partner activity in this competition phase with a degree of precision and rigor that is new,” he said. “We, as the U.S., have to respond in the competition phase from all domains, in a coordinated fashion with the whole of government, whole of nation sense at a speed and with a posture that we’ve never had to produce before.”

Wolters said that means leveraging America’s space and cyber power in addition to traditional domains.

“In the 21st century, against just about any nation state actor that constitutes a threat, if you start out and you neglect any of the domains, you’ll lose, because they’re using it,” he said.

Hyten said as chair of the Joint Requirements Oversight Council, it is his responsibility to identify new joint military requirements based on advances in technology and new concepts of operation.

The JROC is now developing a joint warfighting concept with four supporting concepts: information advantage, command and control, contested logistics, and joint fires.

“The joint requirement is going to be a critical piece of the puzzle, and it’s as simple as that. But holy cow, the execution is complicated,” he said.

Hyten said American bureaucracy may be the biggest challenge to meeting the Defense Department’s top pacing threat, China.

“China is the pacing threat because they’re moving faster than everybody,” he said.

“We better wake up and get out of our own way, remove some of the bureaucracy, allow you, the people in here, to do the work they need to do,” Hyten told a full conference room of Airmen, Guardians, and members of the defense industry at the conference’s capstone event.

“The biggest threat that I worry about is us,” he said. “Because we move slow. We are deliberate. We don’t take risk anymore. We are risk averse. It takes us two years to do an experiment, then two years to build a requirement, and two years to get a budget, and 10 years to build a program that is supposed to last for 15 or 20 years. And in the meantime, somebody like China has built four different capabilities all to do the same thing. And they’re moving unbelievably fast.”