US Space Command Says It Has the Backs of NASA, Allies, Commercial Partners

US Space Command Says It Has the Backs of NASA, Allies, Commercial Partners

Sept. 22, 2021 | By Amanda Miller

The U.S. military plans to “be there” for NASA and commercial providers of “critical” space capabilities as activity picks up on and around the moon.

Commander of the joint-service U.S. Space Command, Army Gen. James H. Dickinson, made the pledge during his speech at the Air Force Association’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference on Sept. 21. 

Newly reestablished in 2019 as the military’s 11th combatant command, U.S. Space Command’s “two-part focus” includes “traditional, enduring, no-fail, supporting space functions like position, navigation, and timing, satellite communications, missile warning, and support [of] the human spaceflight operations” at NASA, Dickinson said.

He added that the Artemis program, NASA’s planned lunar exploration campaign, “presents an exciting opportunity” for the command.

“The United States is going back to the moon, and one day we’ll put an astronaut on Mars,” Dickinson said. “U.S. Space Command will be there for NASA in support of those efforts.”

On the other hand, the second, “extremely important” part of the command’s focus—its “supported warfighting function”—is wholly new, Dickinson said. This includes “conducting space operations and protecting and defending U.S., allied, partner, and critical commercial space operational capabilities.”

He didn’t name a specific threat but alluded to “irresponsible behavior of our competitors” generally understood to include anti-satellite weapons tests that create hazardous debris fields in orbit.

In the past few years, the number of satellites in orbit tracked by the U.S. has about doubled, Dickinson said. The trend has given rise to the discipline of space domain awareness, which is one tool the command is sharpening to perform its mission.

Dickinson said that unlike the activities of space situational awareness and space traffic management—“largely passive” and “designed to keep us informed on what’s occurring in space, and when it will occur”—space domain awareness looks at, “more importantly, why it’s occurring.”

Leaders within the command have said that in cislunar space in and around the moon, space domain awareness is its only mission for now.

U.S. Space Command announced in August that it had reached initial operational capability, or IOC, meaning it had “matured to the point where we have strategic effects,” Dickinson said at the time.

At the AFA conference, he elaborated that IOC is “the point where we’ve built a solid enough foundation to pivot to a new objective. It’s where we can credibly claim to be organized and effective for employing both our enduring no-fail support functions to the Joint Force and our supported warfighting functions as well.”

Space Discussions Still Hampered By Secrecy

Space Discussions Still Hampered By Secrecy

Sept. 22, 2021 | By Shaun Waterman

Discussions within the Space Force and between it and industry partners about new architectures for satellite constellations are sometimes hampered by the extraordinarily high levels of classification involved, a Lockheed Martin executive told AFA’s Air, Space, & Cyber Conference.

“So much of the discussion today is in the classified domain,” said Eric Brown, Lockheed Martin’s director for military space mission strategy. “And I’m not talking about [sensitive compartmented information] SCI, I’m talking about well beyond that.”

SCI is a sub-category of Top Secret classified information that’s restricted to people “read in” to the relevant compartment. Like the similarly designated Special Access Programs or SAP, access to SCI is limited to very small numbers of officials considered to have a “need to know.”

Information about the vulnerabilities of military satellites, such as to cyberattacks, is typically highly classified in this fashion, according to defense sources.

But that secrecy “makes it really difficult to have the kinds of engagements [with vendors] that are required in order to select future force designs and capabilities,” Brown said.

“Exchanges on future architectures are often driven to lower classification levels due to the limitations in having discussions between the Space Force and industry about some of the more critical but sensitive topics held at very high classification levels,” Brown clarified later via email, adding that this “keeps important conversations from happening.

“Government and industry need to engage at the right level [of classification]—enough to make sure the right discussions can happen.”

As an example, he mentioned the ongoing reviews by the new Space Warfighting Analysis Center (SWAC) that were considering alternative architectural approaches in various space mission areas. Companies had a lot to offer, he argued.

“There’s a lot of insights the industry would have into the performance of various spacecraft and payloads, what’s the capability of the ground [segment] based on different architectural considerations, and bringing their technical creativity to bear,” he said.

But the extremely highly classified nature of so much information, especially about U.S. offensive capabilities in space (often referred to as “space control” capabilities) and the vulnerabilities of its satellite assets, made that conversation difficult and incomplete, explained Brown.

The conversation would proceed very differently, depending on the information available, he pointed out.

“Think about two versions of the same mission: One where from a resilience standpoint you can’t protect your assets on orbit; and the other one, where you’re bringing to bear all the capabilities the United States has that you don’t have the luxury of discussing in an open forum,” he said.

“These would take you to two different force designs,” Brown explained in his email. “These force designs are classified at lower levels than the mission capabilities, so it makes it tough to architect the right system.”

At a panel the following day, Randall Waldon, director of the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office, defended the use of appropriate classification. “There’s a myth … that we are overclassified. And I’ll tell you, there may be some truth to that. But … it’s a balance between how transparent you want to be publicly, and to [congressional overseers on] the Hill—and by the way we give the Hill a lot of classified briefs—and what you actually want to keep away from your adversaries” who are trying to steal the nation’s secrets to erode its technological edge.

Allies also have argued that the de-classification of space could help improve international collaboration in space. Speaking at the Space Symposium last month, British Air Chief Marshal Sir Mike Wigston said, “We would all recognize that there are some aspects of what goes on in space that have probably been too highly classified for too long, and there is a need to share that information.” Wigston specifically cited the need to declassify parts of space domain awareness.

Space Force Chief of Space Operations Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond, speaking during an April 2020 Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies virtual event acknowledged that space is “overly classified,” hinting that a new DOD policy to ease the high levels of classification was in the works.

“To do that deterrence, you have to change the calculus of your opponent. And to do that, you have to be able to talk, and you have to be able to message,” Raymond said at the time.

Software Chief ‘Dropped The Mic’ as He Quit; Now Senior USAF Officials Say They’re Looking Into His Recommendations

Software Chief ‘Dropped The Mic’ as He Quit; Now Senior USAF Officials Say They’re Looking Into His Recommendations

Sept. 22, 2021 | By Shaun Waterman

The Air Force is considering whether senior military officers without technical experience or skills should continue to be put in charge of advanced technology acquisition programs following a blistering resignation letter from the service’s chief software officer earlier this month.

Nicolas M. Chaillan, who had held the position since May 2019, “has really helped us move forward and [highlighted] things that we need to change in the Department of the Air Force, relative to improving our software skills,” Acting Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics Darlene Costello told a media roundtable at AFA’s Air, Space, & Cyber Conference on Sept. 21. “So all of his recommendations that he made we take seriously, and we look into and see what we can do about them.”

Her remarks added specificity to previous comments Sept. 20 by Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, who told reporters he had spoken to Chaillan about the latter’s concerns. “I think a lot of the things that he’s raising, he had brought up before in the context of doing his job as software chief officer,” Kendall said, adding, “He has some concerns that I think are being addressed. And I’m going to continue to look into that.”

“They’re saying the right things,” Chaillan told Air Force Magazine after being told of Costello’s comments. “Time will tell if the actions match up.”

Chaillan quit dramatically Sept. 2, announcing his decision in a “drop the mic” LinkedIn post expressing frustration with military bureaucrats who had, he said, refused to “walk the walk” on IT modernization and more agile acquisition. In the post, he called on the Air Force, and indeed the entire Department of Defense, to “stop putting a Major or Lt. Colonel (despite their devotion, exceptional attitude, and culture) in charge of [identity credentialing and access management], zero trust or cloud [computing] for 1 to 4 million users when they have no previous experience in that field.”

“No commercial company would put someone without a technical background in charge of their cloud [migration project] or their email,” he told Air Force Magazine. Even though the job of CIO or CTO was a management role, “They have to be able to understand the technical basics at least” so that they can ask the right questions and have a chance of knowing if they are being snowed or misled.

Even skilled practitioners “struggle” with IT projects at the DOD because of the huge size and complexity of the organization, Chaillan said. Leaders could delegate technical questions, he added, but that can just mean “contractors get to make the key decisions. … And they don’t always put the best interests of the taxpayer or the warfighter first.”

Costello, the Air Force’s senior-most civilian acquisition official, said the service was looking into how to make the best of its limited talent pool when it came to the management of very technical programs. “We are looking into what can be done and what can’t be done. We don’t have necessarily all the right talents in the right place, but we also don’t have an infinite amount of talent, either, so looking at what is the right balance of that is absolutely one of the things that we’re working with our personnel team [on], and we’ll continue to work with our program teams to see what we can do to optimize for the people who are put [in charge] of programs like that.”

But not everyone seemed onboard with Chaillan’s criticisms. “I think it’s a matter of degree,” said Lt. Gen. Duke Z. Richardson, the Air Force’s senior-most military acquisition officer. “I don’t know that I personally agree that we don’t put the right people in charge that have the technical background,” he said. “The folks that are working on a lot of these projects are pretty darn astute … We will always put people in those positions that are qualified, and I’ll just leave it at that. I think we do a pretty good job at that,” he said.

Richardson said the concerns Chaillan raised were well understood. “I’m not sure there was anything new in his set of recommendations that we didn’t know about and that we’re not [already] working,” he explained, adding, “Things don’t always move as fast in the government as we’d like them to. There’s lots of reasons for that.”

Contract for New B-52 Engines ‘Imminent’

Contract for New B-52 Engines ‘Imminent’

Sept. 21, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

The contract to re-engine the B-52 bomber should be awarded by the end of this month, senior service acquisition officials reported Sept. 21.

The award of the B-52 Commercial Engine Replacement Program (CERP) is “imminent,” Lt. Gen. Duke Z. Richardson, top Air Force uniformed acquisition official, told reporters at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference. Darlene Costello, acting USAF acquisition executive, said the process of evaluating the last elements of the proposals is being done and that the source selection should be completed “within the month.” She added, “It could be faster, but I will not accept” a source selection until the program executive officer’s team has “completed their work.”

The program seeks to replace the B-52’s original-equipment TF33 engines with new business-class power plants that should improve fuel burn by 30 percent and range by 40 percent, while requiring far less maintenance. Offerers have said their engines are so reliable that they will not need to come off the wing of the B-52 for an overhaul during the bomber’s remaining lifetime.

Richardson said using the “mid-tier acquisition” approach approved by Congress for prototyping efforts on the CERP will likely save about three years on the program’s timeline. It might be possible to accelerate it a bit more, he said, but the acquisition community wants to ensure “that we do it properly, … we want to make sure we do ‘speed with discipline.’” The target for getting the re-engining underway is 2030, he said, because after that the TF33 is “not going to be very supportable.”

If the program were of the standard type, it would be in the “technology maturation and risk reduction” phase at this point, he said.

GE Aviation, Pratt & Whitney, and Rolls Royce have tendered offers on the program, which required that they submit electronic proposals that could be matched against each other digitally by Air Force Materiel Command. GE has offered the CF34-10 and its Passport engine, while Pratt & Whitney is tendering its PW800. Rolls Royce is offering its F130 engine.

Pratt & Whitney initially proposed an upgrade of the TF33, but the Air Force rejected that idea.  

The CERP will likely be converted to a major acquisition program after the initial phase is complete, Costello said.

The Air Force intends to replace all eight engines on each of 76 B-52s, for a total of about 608 power plants, plus spares. The service wants to retain the B-52 through about 2050. It has said the program, which industry officials predict could be worth $10 billion, could potentially pay for itself through maintenance avoidance and fuel savings.

Boeing will integrate the selected engine onto the B-52, converting the jet’s old analog engine controls to digital ones. While Boeing provided “information” to the Air Force about which engines were relatively easier or harder to integrate—and what other changes might be required—the company did not make a recommendation of any particular engine, a Boeing program official said. Boeing will decide how the engines should be placed on the wings and whether to mount them in twin-engine nacelles, as the TF33s are mounted now. The official said the disused infrared blisters on the aircraft’s nose will be removed to improve airflow to the new engines, restoring the aircraft’s original profile.  

In addition to the B-52’s engines, the Air Force is planning to replace the bomber’s radar, communications systems, and much of the cockpit.

Space Force Takes Shape With More Guardians, New Training, and Transferring Missions

Space Force Takes Shape With More Guardians, New Training, and Transferring Missions

Sept. 21, 2021 | By Amanda Miller

Living in a hotel before he’d PCS’d to the D.C. region, Space Force Chief of Space Operations Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond “was coming down the elevator” on the first morning he was authorized to wear his Operation Camouflage Pattern uniform with blue name tapes.

“A lady in the elevator looked at me, and she said, ‘You know, I don’t think I’ve ever met anybody in the Space Force before. I haven’t seen this uniform.’”

“I said, ‘Well, unless we’ve met, and unless we’ve met this morning—right before this—this is it. This is the first person,’” he said, recalling a time not so long ago when “there was absolutely one Guardian in the United States Space Force”—him. 

But over the subsequent year and a half, the service has taken shape.

In addition to unveiling new uniforms Sept. 21, including a prototype service dress uniform and a PT uniform that’s being wear tested, Raymond’s update delivered at the Air Force Association’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference included:

Numbers of personnel

The Space Force is up to 6,490 Active-duty members, Raymond reported, with 86 Air Force Academy graduates having commissioned directly into the Space Force and officers otherwise commissioning “from every commissioning source there is,” Raymond said.

In December 2020, the service graduated its first seven enlisted members from Basic Military Training—part of the “broader Air Force BMT,” as Raymond put it, that enables the new service to “capitalize on that infrastructure that’s there.” Since then that number has grown to more than 500 graduates. 

Meanwhile, Raymond said the Space Force admitted a Guardian with Type 1 diabetes, the first ever such direct accession into the U.S. military. 

Revamping PME

The USSF has addressed professional military education courses from the bottom up. 

“We started with Undergraduate Space Training—completely revamped that,” Raymond said, “shifted that from an unclassified course to a top secret course focused on the threat and training our operators to operate in the contested domain from Day 1.” 

Raymond said the USSF has also updated its professional development courses at Airman Leadership School, the Noncommissioned Officer Academy, Squadron Officer School, Air Command and Staff College, and Air War College—“putting more space in the curriculum.” At the same time, the service continues to reorganize and create new courses specific to the Space Force, such as the new Space Fundamentals Course embedded in the Air Force Test Pilot School, which is on its third class.

Some courses were redesigned to have a classification allowing allies to take part, “and we’re already seeing that,” Raymond said.

Connecting communities

The Space Force also established the Space Warfighting Analysis Center that Raymond called “a small organization with PhD-level talent” which, “coupled with operators … have built a new force design for our first case—missile warning/missile tracking—and they have united the Department,” naming a number of Defense Department entities with a stake. 

“Everybody’s rowing in the same direction,” Raymond said, predicting that the approach will “reduce duplication, reduce costs, and increase our ability to go fast.” 

Meanwhile the Space Force became the 18th member of the Intelligence Community, which “allows us to strengthen the relationship with all of the intelligence agencies,” Raymond said. “Now we have an opportunity … to dig deeper on the threats that we’re seeing in the domain, to understand those threats more fully, and really begin to work on this thing called the National Space Intelligence Center,” another new initiative.

Absorbing missions

The Space Force will take over satellite programs from the Army and Navy as soon as the fiscal 2022 defense budget becomes law. The “first traunch,” or batch, of satellites to move over will include the Army Satellite Operations Brigade’s Wideband Global SATCOM, or WGS, and the Navy’s Ultra-High Band communications constellations and ground systems.

‘The Fight’

“We’re convinced that if deterrence were to fail, we’re going to have to fight and win the battlespace for superiority,” Raymond said. “That’s not going to be an easy fight. That’s a joint fight. That’s a fight that covers great distances. And that’s a fight that happens at incredible speeds—17,500 miles an hour, just to be in the fight.”

He referenced the robotic arm on a Chinese satellite—that “in the future could reach out and grab another satellite”—and a Russian “nesting doll” satellite that’s “a satellite inside a satellite inside a satellite. 

“The satellite launches, opens up; another satellite comes out; it opens up; and a projectile is shot at a satellite—to destroy U.S. satellites and to destroy the advantages that that provides us,” Raymond emphasized, describing a theoretical scenario. “It destroys our ability to sense data from around the globe, to be able to bring that data down to Earth, be able to fuse that data with data from other domains.”

Space Force Releases First Ever Human Capital Plan

Space Force Releases First Ever Human Capital Plan

Sept. 21, 2021 | By Greg Hadley

The Space Force has released its first ever human capital plan, touting it as an “aspirational” document aimed at bolstering and developing the U.S.’s newest, smallest military branch.

“It’s really cutting edge. It’s forward leaning, forward looking. It’s pushing the boundaries,” Chief of Space Operations Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond said at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference. “It’s uniting all aspects of personal development, from assessments to recruiting to development, for all Guardians—officers, enlisted, and civilians.”

At the foundation of the 25-page document, leaders said, are five objectives. Two of them are common to any organization—generating and engaging talent, and developing and employing that talent, acknowledged Patricia Mulcahy, deputy chief of space operations for personnel and logistics.

But while the objectives are common, the way the Space Force plans to go about achieving them are different, especially from other services. When it comes to recruiting, the service “maybe won’t look where everyone else looks,” Chief Master Sgt. of the Space Force Roger A. Towberman said in his keynote address.

In particular, Towberman and other leaders emphasized the need for the service to prioritize diversity, especially given its current demographics. Right now, Mulcahy said, only 18 percent of the Space Force is composed of women.

“Diverse teams outperform consistently homogeneous teams—they simply do,” said Brig. Gen. Shawn W. Campbell, USSF’s deputy human capital officer. “And so when we talk about the team construct and how we build these teams, we’re looking at teams in terms of the needed diversity to provide different perspectives.”

Flexibility is another key component in the plan to identify and recruit talent. For individuals with experience at NASA, in academia, or in other space-based sectors, Raymond said he hopes to “do more innovative things like full time and part time and go back and forth based on where you are in your life.”

Competencies and capabilities

Once Guardians are in the service, the Space Force is hoping to “migrate from highly structured career paths to a regulated market approach,” according to the document, titled “The Guardian Ideal.”

That will take the form of a talent marketplace similar to the one the Air Force has now, Campbell said. In the Space Force marketplace, however, positions will be coded with competencies—“knowledge, skills, attributes, and behaviors”—starting with core competencies then expanding to specialities and terminal occupational competencies.

In this system, every Guardian will be able to see how their competencies line up with the position. 

“We’re not necessarily looking at just grade pay, or it’s time for you to rotate, or it’s time for you to do X kind of job, because … we don’t have a pyramid,” Campbell said. “That’s not, we think, the best way for us to develop nor employ our Guardians.”

The aim of these competencies, Space Force talent strategist Jason Lamb said, is not to keep Guardians confined to a single career field. Instead, he said, competencies will define capability, not just experience. And when it comes to identifying capabilities, Towberman indicated in his speech that the service will take a more expansive approach.

“We question things like using what … you’ve done to guarantee what you’re capable of,” said Towberman. “And we look instead for aptitude tests, for perhaps suitability tests, personality tests. We’re ready to look at anything that allows us to best predict the outcome we want, which is greatness in our business.”

Enabling resiliency

At the moment, Guardians continue to follow Air Force standards for physical fitness tests. Changes, however, could be coming soon, as The Guardian Ideal identifies a timeline of developing a fitness program and standard by the end of 2021. 

All indications point to that program having a unique structure. The service has previously said it is working on a “holistic health and wellness” program, and the human capital plan teases out that concept, promising to address fitness, ergonomics, nutrition, and sleep hygiene.

As part of taking a more comprehensive view, Mulcahy added, the service hopes to take a more detailed, scientific approach, one that deemphasizes the traditional yearly fitness test.

“We have a view that fitness needs to be an everyday thing. And so we’re looking at ways to potentially get away from the one and done, once a year. This evaluation lets you go, ‘OK, I don’t worry about that anymore.'” Instead the service is moving toward one “that compliments a daily regimen of fitness,” Mulcahy said.

In pursuit of that, Campbell said, the service will look to invest in wearable technology that can track Guardians’ health—their sleep pattern, their heart rate, and other key markers—and then provide that data to Guardians to help them live healthier lives on a daily basis.

And physical fitness is just one aspect of the resiliency the USSF aims to build.

“We know that fitness, whether physical or mental, spiritual, financial, is not episodic,” Towberman said. “I could win the lottery and still end up poor. Fitness is about a process. It’s about a lifestyle. And what we owe you as an institution is better choice architecture, better resources, better incentives, to make sure that everyone can be resilient across all the domains of fitness. We don’t want some episodic test, creating more anxiety than it relieves. We want you to sleep more. We want you to eat better. We want you to hydrate. We want you to take care of each other.”

Digitally fluent

Raymond has previously said he wants the Space Force to be America’s first “digital service,” and Towberman certainly leaned into the perception of USSF as the younger, more technologically savvy service in his keynote, “Rick rolling” the audience to kick off his speech.

But while many of the younger Guardians joining the Space Force grew up with the internet and are likely more at ease with some technologies, it would be a mistake to think of them as already “digitally fluent,” the stated goal in The Guardian Ideal.

“I think we often look at particularly Gen Y and Gen Z, and we say, well, they’re all digital natives,” Campbell said. “They are in the sense that they grew up with technology that we think about in ubiquity around us, but they don’t understand how it works. That’s different. So we want to make sure you understand not only how to use it, but how to apply it in the most meaningful way.”

Not everyone in the Space Force will have to be a gifted coder or digital expert, Towberman emphasized. But every Guardian will need to be able to work with those people to find the proper applications of those skills.

“We need to understand the power that can be unlocked with the power of great programmers, with digitally fluent humans,” Towberman said. “And it’s those things together, both the imagination and the craftsmanship—that’s architecture. That’s a blend of the two. We need that. Sometimes we’ll get that in one person. Oftentimes, we’ll need that in teams.”

Collaboration

The release of The Guardian Ideal comes amid a string of announcements from the Space Force. On Sept. 20, the service announced its insignia for the enlisted ranks, and on Sept. 21, it revealed preliminary versions of its dress uniform and PT gear.

Those announcements, Towberman said, exemplified the final objective: connecting in a collaborative environment.

“What I’m most proud about is that these [insignia] came from Guardians,” Towberman said. “We asked, and we had hundreds of ideas. Then we asked some more, and we down-selected. Then we asked some more, and we down-selected again. And then we shared, and we changed, and we discussed. … But what I know is we could have had countless other outcomes. And we would have gotten good feedback on them, because it really was about the process. And I’m proud of the process and I was confident all along, not because I thought the outcome was something I could guarantee. It was the process that I believed in.”

Kendall Asks IG to Investigate Afghanistan Drone Strike

Kendall Asks IG to Investigate Afghanistan Drone Strike

Sept. 21, 2021 | By Abraham Mahshie

Two days before the American deadline to withdraw from Afghanistan, with thousands of Afghans pressing to reach Hamid Karzai International Airport—and anticipating an imminent terrorist threat—an Air Force drone struck a car in Kabul. But instead of stopping a terrorist threat, U.S. Central Command would later acknowledge a mistake that killed 10 civilians.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin directed Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall to launch an investigation into the factors that led to the accident, and on Sept. 21, Kendall appointed Air Force Inspector General Lt. Gen. Sami D. Said to direct the investigation.

“In most situations, we have the luxury of time,” Kendall said at a Sept. 20 press roundtable at the Air Force Association’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Md.

“I have watched those operations,” he added. “In the very tragic case that we just had, we didn’t have the luxury of time. I think that was a major factor in the mistake that was made.”

After much speculation, CENTCOM commander Marine Corps Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr. admitted the error at a Sept. 17 Pentagon briefing.

“Having thoroughly reviewed the findings of the investigation and the supporting analysis by interagency partners, I am now convinced that as many as 10 civilians, including up to seven children, were tragically killed in that strike,” McKenzie said. “Moreover, we now assess that it is unlikely that the vehicle and those who died were associated with ISIS-K or were a direct threat to U.S. forces.”

McKenzie offered his condolences to the family and friends of those killed after the vehicle and target had been tracked for eight hours. The revelation followed a New York Times report indicating that the target of the strike was Zemari Ahmadi, an aid worker employed by a U.S. nonprofit.

“This strike was taken in the earnest belief that it would prevent an imminent threat to our forces and the evacuees at the airport,” McKenzie said.

Pentagon spokesman John F. Kirby on Sept. 20 first indicated that an Air Force investigation would be announced, noting the IG would have 45 days to make recommendations.

VanHerck: ‘Russia is the Primary Military Threat to the Homeland Today’

Sept. 21, 2021 | By Abraham Mahshie

Gen. Glen D. VanHerck, commander of U.S. Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command, said Russia remains the most urgent and immediate threat to the homeland even as China captures the attention of defense policymakers.

“Russia is the primary military threat to the homeland today. It is not China—it is Russia,” VanHerck told Air Force Magazine on the sidelines of the Air Force Association’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Md.

VanHerck explained that while China is the “long-term existential threat” to America, Russia is the stronger warfighting threat today.

“From a kinetic standpoint—submarines, bombers, cruise missiles, those kinds of capabilities—Russia is the primary military threat,” VanHerck said, calling Russia and China “equals in non-kinetic—cyber, space.”

“They have to both be feared,” he added.

VanHerck’s comments came after he participated in a Sept. 21 panel discussion on homeland defense alongside the head of Space Operations Command Lt. Gen. Stephen N. Whiting and the commander of U.S. Fleet Forces Command Adm. Christopher W. Grady.

During the discussion, VanHerck stressed his belief that the United States needs more robust forward deterrence should America’s strategic deterrence fail.

“Homeland defense today is too reliant on what I think is the foundation of homeland defense, and that is our nuclear deterrent,” he said. “What that doesn’t do for us is give us opportunities to de-escalate early and deter earlier.”

VanHerck said his objective is to give decision makers more time by moving the decision time “further left.” He named ballistic missiles as another form of deterrence and called for a change in how forces are projected to harden resiliency.

“If your only option to prevent an attack on the homeland is to nuke them, you’re not in a good place,” he said. “We have to create other capabilities and options to create doubt in their mind about ever striking our homeland.”

VanHerck said he needs a policy that describes what American assets should be defended kinetically.

“It probably starts out with continuity of government, nuclear command control capabilities, forward power projection capabilities, defense industrial base, those kinds of things,” he said.

Grady said fast-melting Arctic ice means America’s adversaries will soon be much closer to the homeland.

“They are always here,” he said of recent Chinese exercises near Hawaii.

“Within about 10 years, we’re going to have the Russians and the Chinese operating in that space 24/7/365,” he said. “If you postulate that forward then, and juxtapose that against [the concept of] defend far forward, we’re gonna have to defeat that threat before we can get forward.”

SpOC’s Whiting said defending the homeland from space is no longer as certain as it was in the 1970s and ‘80s, when a treaty with the Soviet Union guaranteed noninterference in national technical means of verification, such as satellites.

“Russia and China have demonstrated that they will do that,” he said of their demonstrated anti-satellite capabilities in space.

“Things like missile warning, we can no longer rely on the fact that we’ve built strategic systems,” he said. “We now have to have an architecture that will survive in the face of those threats and continue to provide the information that can help defend the homeland.”

VanHerck also pointed to the new hypersonic missile capabilities fielded by Russia and tested by China.

“Are we going to defend the homeland from hypersonic capabilities? Or, are we going to rely on or allow our strategic deterrence to do that?” he posed.

VanHerck said the question was for policymakers to decide using the upcoming Missile Defense Review, Nuclear Posture Review, and a new National Defense Strategy.

He also stressed the importance of investing resources in improving America’s Arctic capabilities.

“I am the DOD Arctic advocate,” he said.

“To compete in that Arctic, in that strategic environment, you have to be persistent. You have to be present. I need comms up there,” VanHerck stressed. “What matters is, do you apply resources to that problem set?”

He added: “If we’re not going to resource the Arctic, because we’re going to resource somewhere else, that’s a risk our policymakers are going to make, and we’ll move forward, and I’ll salute smartly.”

Pringle Wants Fresh Eyes on Air Force Lab’s Work for Space Force

Pringle Wants Fresh Eyes on Air Force Lab’s Work for Space Force

Sept. 21, 2021 | By Shaun Waterman

Air Force Research Laboratory Commander Maj. Gen. Heather L. Pringle is bringing fresh eyes and outsider perspectives to the storied lab, and she’s hiring a new executive to ensure that it will serve the newly created Space Force as well as it serves its traditional customers in the Air Force.

Pringle announced the creation of the new post of deputy technology executive officer for space science and technology shortly after assuming her command in June 2020, saying the official would act as a “single focal point” for Space Force customers. Then in September 2020, she quietly appointed Kelly Hammett, who runs the lab’s Directed Energy Directorate, to the role in an interim capacity. The DE directorate is one of four elements of the lab that have been administratively transferred in whole or in part to the Space Force—the others being the Space Vehicles Directorate, the Rocket Propulsion Division, and the Systems Technology Office of the Sensors Directorate.

But Hammett was “dual hatted” as DE director and deputy TEO for space, Pringle said. “He has another full-time job, but he has been doing and is doing a phenomenal job of bringing together our entire space science and technology portfolio, ensuring that it’s well aligned with the Space Force’s strategic priorities and that we’re meeting what our Guardians need for the future of warfighting,” she said.

The deputy TEO for space chairs a new Space Science and Technology Board that the AFRL leadership created to better integrate space and Space Force priorities across the entire portfolio of the lab’s activities.

Pringle added that the hunt for a full-time, permanent appointee to the new post “is ongoing right now. I don’t have the results of that yet, because we’re still in the middle of it,” she said.

Pringle has also made a series of hires of outside experts, using new authorities for enhanced remuneration recently provided by Congress. She said she had appointed “highly qualified experts” as strategic advisers in five key areas where they will “ensure that our science and technology portfolio is at the cutting edge and we’re bringing in those outside ideas.” The five areas and the respective appointees are:

Pringle has made bringing in outsiders something of a trademark, said AFRL Command Chief Master Sgt. James “Bill” Fitch, because she understood the benefits of a fresh perspective.

“I’m not a traditional Air Force Materiel Command guy,” he said. (AFMC is the home command for AFRL.) “I’ve never been in this command or in AFRL. I’m an operator by trade—that is my background.

That background—and the focus it brought onto the warfighter as the end user of AFRL technology—was the reason he got hired two months ago, Fitch explained. “She’s such a maverick. She wanted an outsider—she wanted somebody that could, as an operator, come in and look at how science and technology is being done and is being grown and evolved and how it’s going to be applied to the warfighter.”