Space Force Uniform Prototype Has Diagonal Buttons, PT Uniforms Are Black and Gray

Sept. 21, 2021 | By Amanda Miller

The Space Force’s very first member unveiled the service’s first prototype service dress uniform Sept. 21. Its dark blue coat—almost black—with upturned collar, closes with a diagonal row of six buttons.

Chief of Space Operations Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond brought two Guardians onstage to model the prototype during his speech at the Air Force Association’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference.

But first, Raymond announced that the USSF’s PT uniform is being wear-tested. Previewed in a video by an Air Force Academy grad who competed in track, the uniform includes black shorts with a version of the service’s delta logo in white; and a gray T-shirt bearing the stylized words “Space Force” in white on the back.

The six silver buttons on the coat prototype represent the service’s establishment as the sixth branch of the U.S. Armed Forces. A video showing some details included the buttons bearing the Space Force’s delta logo, mirror-finish U.S. pins worn on the collar, and silver braid near the cuffs.

Raymond said the service will accept “comments and tweaks” in the coming months before the uniforms go into wear testing.

For their combat uniform, Guardians will continue to wear the Operation Camouflage Pattern uniform, or OCP.

https://twitter.com/SpaceForceDoD/status/1440058302113533964

Chief Master Sgt. of the Space Force Roger A. Towberman announced enlisted rank insignia, featuring deltas and elongated hexagons—another nod to the USSF’s sixth-service status—Sept. 20.

The Space Force stood up Dec. 20, 2019, followed incrementally by its three field commands—organizational equivalents of the Air Force’s major commands—with the most recent, Space Training and Readiness Command, activating in August. Raymond called Space Force a “flat organization built for speed,” without additional command layers the likes of Numbered Air Forces.

“All the big, innovative companies said, if you’re big, you’re slow—and you’re not going to be innovative,” Raymond said.

Raymond said the Space Force now has 6,490 Active-duty Guardians, with more than 500 enlisting directly into the Space Force. This year it became the 18th member of the Intelligence Community.

Space Force uniform prototype. Staff photo by Mike Tsukamoto.

Air Force Turns to Startup for Help Implementing Zero Trust Tech

Sept. 21, 2021 | By Shaun Waterman

The Air Force is trying out a new tool to help implement its zero trust information technology architecture through an AFWERX research contract with Silicon Valley startup Illumio.

The Small Business Innovation Research Phase 2 contract follows a Phase 1 award in March. No figures were released in the Sept. 20 announcement.

The award will be used for pilot projects throughout the Air Force and Space Force, Mark Sincevich, Illumio’s federal director and SBIR lead, told Air Force Magazine by email. “The SBIR Phase II award is meant for research and development projects that will help the Department of the Air Force refine and bolster their deployment [of Illumio’s tools] and ultimately their Zero Trust architecture at large,” he said.

The company is working with the Department of the Air Force Zero Trust Task Force to identify key pilot projects, Sincevich said, adding that “any Air Force or Space Force base” would be able to access the tools.

Zero trust networks make it harder for hackers to move inside a network once they’ve penetrated its walls. By interrogating traffic at every juncture as it tries to move inside the network, zero trust systems raise barriers against intruders and create more opportunities to challenge and expel them. Zero trust architectures typically have three characteristics:

Each part of a system, whether a location or application, is walled off from the others;
Users must authenticate themselves continuously; and
Additional layers of security are added to protect the most valuable data in the system.

Speaking at AFA’s Air, Space, & Cyber Conference on Sept. 20, Lt. Gen Timothy D. Haugh, commander of the 16th Air Force, which is responsible for the cybersecurity of the service’s networks, called zero trust “a foundational technology” that, when implemented, would enable mission-critical data from sensors and weapons platforms to be moved around securely and ensure that security threats and vulnerabilities on any network could be mitigated in a timely manner.

“It’s critical for us to be able to do that [implement zero trust], so that we are able to operate in contested environments and trust our data,” Haugh told a media roundtable, noting that the weapons systems currently in use by the Air Force “weren’t built with the [cyber] threat in mind” and are, therefore, vulnerable to hackers.

“If we have a zero trust-based network, those threats as they’re discovered look different to us, because [zero trust] gives us freedom of maneuver within those networks into how we mitigate that threat,” he said.

“We’re pleased with the progress, but it’s got to go faster,” Haugh concluded.

The zero trust approach was made mandatory for federal civilian agencies in President Biden’s May 12 executive order, and the following day, the Defense Information Systems Agency [DISA] published a DOD reference architecture for zero trust, laying out how networks can be built in accordance with zero trust principles.

“The intent and focus of zero trust frameworks is to design architectures and systems to assume breach, thus limiting the blast radius and exposure of malicious activity,” Brandon Iske, DISA’s chief engineer for its Security Enablers Portfolio, said in a release announcing the DISA publication.

Then Illumio tool being deployed under the SBIR award is called Illumio Core. It provides both micro-segmentation—a way of slicing and dicing the IT network so that attackers cannot move freely around, even after they have penetrated the outer defenses—and a risk-based application “heatmap” that shows how the applications on a network are communicating with each other and highlights potential vulnerabilities.

“Zero trust is a strategy and not something that can be ‘achieved’ by one technology alone,” said Sincevich. “With that said, micro-segmentation is a crucial pillar of any zero trust strategy because it stops [cyberattackers] … from moving around to reach high-value assets. When attacks can’t spread, their impact is dramatically reduced.”

‘Unsatisfied’ with Hypersonics Progress, Kendall Questions USAF’s Strategy

Sept. 21, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said he’s “unsatisfied” with the pace of progress in Air Force hypersonics programs and even “the degree to which we’ve figured out what we need from hypersonics.”

Speaking to reporters at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference, he said he’s “pretty clear” on how China and Russia plan to use their hypersonic missiles, which experts say are ahead of U.S. programs.

“They’re moving very quickly,” Kendall said of Chinese and Russian hypersonics efforts. “They clearly see the value.” Describing hypersonics as among a number of “asymmetric approaches” to force structure that China and Russia are taking, he said the Air Force must first define which “target set we want to address” with hypersonic missiles, then make the case for why hypersonics are “the most cost effective way” to attack those targets. There’s still “a question mark” about that, he said, though he admitted he hasn’t seen “all the analysis that has been done to justify the current program.”

He acknowledged progress but concluded, “I would like to see it be better,” he said.

The Air Force has yet to hold a successful all-up test of the AGM-183 Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW), a boost-glide system that is accelerated to hypersonic speed by a rocket then releases a hypersonic glide body. While captive-carry tests have been conducted on a B-52 launch aircraft, the missile has failed to fly on its own at least twice.

The Air Force is also pursuing the Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile, a smaller, air-breathing weapon that could be small enough to be launched from fighter aircraft.

Mark Lewis, the head of defense research and engineering during the Trump administration and an expert on hypersonics, has said the Air Force will have to address thousands of targets in a hypothetical Pacific war but has only funded about a dozen ARRWs. That means it would have to be very selective about what targets it uses the missile for. Lewis set a DOD-wide goal of building hypersonic missiles “at scale.”

Kendall said he believes the industrial base needed to build hypersonic missiles in quantity “will follow” as the program matures.

“I think if the [funding is] there … the industrial base will respond,” he said. Although there’s been “mixed results with boost glide vehicles,” Kendall said, “I think we will get there.” The Air Force can do things to accelerate the program, he said, “but we have to solve the problem first of where we’re trying to go, and then get there as quickly as possible.”

16th Air Force Boss Says No to Direct-Commission Civilians. Airmen Are a Different Story

Sept. 21, 2021 | By Shaun Waterman

With 36,000 cybersecurity job vacancies across government, the cybersecurity human capital crisis has been called a national security threat. But Lt. Gen. Timothy D. Haugh, commander of 16th Air Force, a key cyber command, says he has all the people he needs.

“We have the Airmen we need in our force,” he told a media roundtable at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference. “We have the right talents. We have the right skills. … We have the right Airmen, and being able to apply them to the right problems is a key area of work.”

In fact, Haugh said, he hasn’t needed to use new direct commissioning authorities approved by Congress.

“The National Defense Strategy told us first and foremost: Do better with what you have,” Haugh said. “So we’ve really taken that to heart.” The Air Force prioritized cutting-edge cyber and information operations capabilities and matched that with investments in recruiting and training.

“We’ve created some of the capacity to do operations in the information environment [through] decisions we made to stop doing other things and invest in [cyber and information operations capabilities],” Haugh said. While the leaders of civilian cyber agencies use social media on a near-daily basis to implore cyber defenders to join them, the main problem Haugh faces in human capital terms is keeping the talent he had trained and developed, he said. “When I say we have the Airmen we need, I’m really saying we have the talent. You’ve got to be able to retain that. And there’s no doubt that is a challenge within the career fields we have in 16th Air Force.”

Trained cyberwarriors could easily double or even triple their salaries by moving to the private sector, Haugh said. But making sure his workforce gets training and hands-on experience with the latest cyber tools helps keep people interested. “We want to ensure that they know we’re investing in them, they know we’re going to give them world-class training,” he said. “And we have to continue to enhance our infrastructure so it’s world-class and is able to adapt with them.”

While Haugh said the Air Force has not yet needed “direct commissioning” authorities to recruit civilian cyber professionals directly into a senior officer role, he is using similar authorities to promote enlisted Airmen into the junior officer ranks.

“What we have really focused on are the direct commission programs from our enlisted … force to officers,” he said. “In many cases we know we’ve got enlisted Airmen with just absolutely amazing talents, skills, and degrees. And so what we’ve done there is to actually use direct commissioning programs that allow us to accelerate successful [enlisted] Airmen to officers, and that’s been our near-term focus.”

Direct commissions like those help strengthen leadership and retention, he said. “What we’re able to do there is take somebody with hands-on experience, put them in a leadership role, and allow them to continue to advance. So we know we have talent. We want to keep that talent within our force and also empower them to continue with whatever their goals are.”

Haugh said he saw no need to directly commission civilian experts. “That’s not an area yet that we’ve been focused on, because we’ve been really successful with the Airmen we have in those roles,” he said.

He added that the training given to his personnel now includes instruction about how to recognize disinformation and how to validate news reports they might see shared on social media. “That’s certainly a skill every American needs,” he noted. “We’re starting with the Airmen in the United States Air Force and the Guardians in the Space Force to provide them the right tools … so they can identify disinformation.”

Military leaders have long acknowledged that the campaign against disinformation—even that coming from foreign adversaries—is a whole-of-nation activity that the military cannot fight alone, and Haugh said he wants his Airmen to tackle disinformation on a personal level.

“We all have to be good watchdogs,” he said. “If somebody in my family puts out bad information on their Facebook page, I am duty bound to tell them: That’s not accurate; here’s where you can go to get relevant [accurate] information. And we can’t police that across the board, but I would like every one of our Airmen to feel like they own their particular span of control.”

Haugh said Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III had declared that defending the integrity of U.S. elections was “an enduring Department of Defense mission” and said 16th Air Force was ready to play its part. “The more that we stay sustained on the cybersecurity threats and the disinformation threats from all of our adversaries, the better … positioned we are, so that we can support DHS and FBI and the states’ [governments] in a much more coherent way.”

Air Force Wants New Engine for F-35—If It’s Affordable

Sept. 21, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

The Air Force would prefer to put new engines from its Adaptive Engine Transition Program into the F-35A, but whether that can be done affordably may depend on Navy participation, said Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall during AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference on Sept. 20.

“We’d very much like to continue the program that advances engine technology,” Kendall said. “We’ve had some pretty good success there.” But the Navy, a participant in the effort, is still on the fence. “It’s not clear that they will be going forward,” Kendall said, adding that he’s “already having discussions with the Secretary of the Navy about that.”

The head of the F-35 Joint Program Office, Air Force Lt. Gen. Eric T. Fick, told reporters last week that if the service wants the AETP engine, it will have to bear the full cost of its development and integration because the engine won’t fit in the F-35B and may not fit in the Navy’s F-35C carrier-landing model, either. The F-35 partners—the Marine Corps, Navy, allied countries, and foreign military sales customers—have all agreed that “you have to pay to be different” on the program, which aims for high commonality as a cost-saving measure, Fick said.

If the Air Force goes for a new engine, that would sharply increase operating costs, Fick said, because the fleet sustainment enterprise would have to support at least two engines, with different parts and associated equipment.

The House Armed Services Committee, in its National Defense Authorization Act language for fiscal year 2022, mandated that the JPO develop a plan for integrating AETP engines on the F-35 starting in 2027.

The AETP technology has great appeal, Kendall said, because of the “fuel savings and thrust increase we can get” from it. Contractors have said the engines could yield as much as a 30 percent savings in fuel.

GE Aviation is developing the XA100 engine, and Pratt & Whitney is developing the XA101, each of which has a third airstream that allows for greater thrust and better efficiency in cruise, as well as greater cooling capability, and, potentially, better infrared stealth.

“I’m hoping we’ll be able to go forward together,” Kendall said of the Navy’s participation. “If we have to, we’ll look hard at the affordability of going forward” as a single service, “just as we have on the rest of the program. But those advantages are substantial. And I’d like to be able to pursue them if it’s affordable.”

Kendall also said he’s skeptical the F-35’s sustainment costs can get down to “the kinds of numbers we’ve been talking about,” which the Air Force has pegged at $25,000 per flying hour by 2025. He said he plans to do a “deep dive” on the program in the coming months to see what kinds of operating costs are really achievable.

The F-35 JPO awarded Lockheed Martin sustainment contract last week that could set the stage for a performance-based logistics arrangement in the mid-2020s if the company shows significant progress in containing F-35 sustainment costs.

Kendall: China Has Potential to Strike Earth From Space

Sept. 20, 2021 | By Greg Hadley

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall likes to say he came of age at West Point in midst of the Cold War. Spending half his life involved in that frozen conflict informs his sensibilities about the threat posed by China in the future.

Kendall devoted much of his keynote address at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference on Sept. 20 to China’s emergence as a peer competitor with “the potential for global strikes from space.”

“There is a potential for weapons to be launched into space, then go through this old concept from the Cold War called the Fractional Orbital Bombardment System,” said Kendall, “which is a system that basically goes into orbit and then de-orbits to a target.”

During the Cold War, both the U.S. and the Soviet Union considered putting nuclear weapons in space. The Soviets advanced the concept with FOBS, a system that combined a low-flying missile and nuclear warhead that reached low-Earth orbit.

“If you use that kind of approach, you don’t have to use a traditional ICBM trajectory,” he said. “It’s a way to avoid defense systems and missile warning systems.” Kendall also made a vague reference to other offensive capabilities, saying there is “a potential to actually put weapons in space.”

Kendall said “there’s no question about the technical feasibility or technology to do these types of things,” noting that China already has a satellite with a robotic arm in orbit, which Chief of Space Operations Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond warned in February could be used to hook and disable satellites belonging to others.

Offensive capabilities in space are an increasingly common talking point among Space Force leaders. At the same time, Space Force leaders are working hard to declassify facts that make it hard to tell their story. The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 prohibits placing nuclear weapons in orbit, but the importance of defending assets in space remains vital, Raymond said.

“If you look at the capabilities that they’re developing, it is clear that they are developing capabilities to deny us our access to space,” Raymond said. “We can’t let that happen. If we let them happen, we lose.”

The nature of the domain means that assets face certain challenges, added Lt. Gen. Stephen N. Whiting, head of Space Operations Command.

“Space brings us untold advantages, such as being able to overfly other countries legally. You can’t fly in an airspace above other countries because that’s sovereign territory, but that also means that you are regularly and predictably over other people’s countries in what we call their weapon engagement zone,” Whiting said. “So we have to build an architecture that is resilient to potential attacks. And we have a certain space architecture that we’ve developed over the last several years—we have to be able to to defend that architecture, even as we pivot to new architectures.”

SpOC Commander Seeks More Intelligence Capability in Response to China

Sept. 20, 2021 | By Abraham Mahshie

Lt. Gen. Stephen N. Whiting was at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., in September 2007 when China destroyed a dead satellite in an anti-satellite weapon test. The target burst into 3,000 pieces, which still swirl around the globe today.

Fourteen years later, Whiting now heads Space Operations Command at Peterson Space Force Base, Colo., and argues that the Space Force must up its game in intelligence gathering.

“Certainly, we had intelligence professionals then, but not very many, and they were not leading our operations,” he said at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference on Sept. 20.

The Space Force needs more robust intelligence today to confront Chinese aggression in space, he said.

“The pace at which China has developed the threat capabilities we’ve seen has just truly been breathtaking,” he said. From 2007 to today, “they have developed an electronic warfare capability to jam our assets; we’ve seen lasers; we’ve seen on-orbit threats and grappling arms,” he added. “They’re continuing to develop those threats. So, everything we do in Space Operations Command must be intelligence-led.”

Space Delta 7, which stood up July 24, 2020, is the Space Force’s operational intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance element. Two of its three squadrons are located at Peterson-Schriever Garrison; a third is at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio.

When Space Delta 7 stood up, Whiting said, it absorbed every Air Force intelligence unit related to space. Whiting said changes already completed are delivering intelligence data directly to the SpOC operations floor.

“I’m excited about some of the improvements we’ve made,” he said. Now he’s turning to training. “Space is a domain in which we should be able to train in a high-fidelity manner in a simulated environment,” he said. Operators need holistic space domain awareness to best track and find threats.

Space Delta 7 has detachments in each of the other SpOC Space Deltas to provide mission-specific intelligence. The unit has about 350 people but is slated to grow to more than double by fiscal 2025.

“We do have a vision to grow additional units in Space Delta 7—a targeting unit and analysis unit,” he said. “But just because you have manpower slots to do that doesn’t mean you have the people yet. We have got to grow the people over time.”

Talent doesn’t mature overnight, he added. “You can’t get a 10-year-experienced intel operator without spending 10 years to build that person. So, it’ll take time to build up those new capacities. But that will be a growth area for us.”

C-17 Crews, Aircraft Getting a Break After Torrid Pace of Afghanistan Withdrawal

Sept. 20, 2021 | By Greg Hadley

In the wake of the massive Afghanistan airlift operation, Air Mobility Command is surging its use of C-5s in order to give its C-17 aircraft and crews a break, officials said Sept. 20 at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference.

Gen. Jacqueline D. Van Ovost, head of Air Mobility Command, detailed the shift in a roundtable with reporters discussing Operation Allies Refuge, which transported more than 124,000 people out of Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul from Aug. 14 to 30.

“It was one of the largest surges we’ve had. But we’ve surged before, and after you surge, there is a natural period where we want to make sure we tidy up the airplanes, to get them the services that they need, and get the crews the rest and the recovery, and frankly, the additional training on other missions that they weren’t focused on while they were solely focused on the NEOs and our top priority for the command,” Van Ovost said.

The Kabul airlift, which Van Ovost called the largest non-combatant evacuation operation airlift in U.S. history, pushed the Air Force’s fleet of C-17 Globemasters to levels far beyond their normal operational pace—roughly half of 222 C-17s in the entire Air Force were committed to the operation.

“On a given day, we have about 60 C-17s in the system operating globally,” said Brig. Gen. Daniel A. DeVoe, commander of the 618th Air Operations Center. “During this NEO, we would have 60 just in the [Central Command and European Command area of responsibility]. And at the height, we had an average of 113 per day.”

On Aug. 15, one of those C-17s ferried out 823 people, setting a new record for the most passengers transported in a single flight on a Globemaster III and making international headlines. On at least three other C-17 flights, babies were delivered.

There were also moments of tragedy, however. In one instance, desperate Afghans breached the airfield and attempted to climb onto a C-17 as it took off. The Air Force later announced it had discovered human remains in the wheel well of the aircraft and was launching an investigation.

On Sept. 20, Van Ovost said she could not comment on that specific incident as the investigation is still ongoing, but stressed the support provided to the crew on that flight.

“The most important thing for us was to take care of the crew and ensure that they had the support services necessary at Al Udeid (Air Base) to be able to process what happened, to get interviewed, and the most important thing for them was to get back into the fight,” Van Ovost said. “So after a period of time, we were able to place them back into the fight and continue to do NEO, and sort of process for them what has happened.”

Other crews were also eager to contribute as much as possible, DeVoe added.

“The aircraft commanders always have the opportunity to say, ‘Hey, the crew needs to rest. We need to be safe and step back from that.’ What we found was that they were motivated, dedicated, and would frankly come back to us with waivers and ask to go longer and to do more, and we would have to actually reel them back in,” DeVoe said.

In the aftermath, though, the Airmen who participated in the evacuation have needed to slow down and receive support, said Col. Colin McClaskey, 821st Contingency Response Group deputy commander.

“These are significant, traumatic events for those folks that are there. Lives are truly impacted, [and] unfortunately, in some cases, destroyed. Our Airmen, and all of our partners and allies that were there, they see that. It’s very personal for them,” McClaskey said.

McClaskey added that commanders at the 621st Contingency Response Wing have offered chaplains and mental health professionals as resources for Airmen when they arrived home.

While crews recover, planes will also need time. The evacuation itself had relatively few maintenance issues—“Frankly, I expected more aircraft to break than did,” DeVoe said—but longer-term work is still needed, hence the need for more C-5s.

“At the height, at any one given moment, we would have 23 C-17 teams in the air, somewhere around the globe in support of this effort, flowing through that system,” DeVoe said. “And so those crews, we are giving them a little bit of a break on the scheduling. We’re using some other airframes, so we’ve increased utilization of the C-5. We’ve surged its capacity so that we can now take the C-17 down just a little bit from normal averages and numbers, to give the maintainers at home station the chance to continue a little bit deeper maintenance on those aircraft.”

Kendall Says ‘BRAC’-Like Package Deal May Help Congress Let Air Force Retire Old Gear

Sept. 20, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall is hopeful that a congressional all-or-nothing “package” of legacy aircraft cuts, akin to what has been done with base closures, could finally let the Air Force retire the airplanes that it needs to divest in order to pay for new capabilities.

At a press conference during AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber conference, Kendall said he’s spoken with Senate Armed Services Committee chair Jack Reed (D-R.I.) about making a package of retirements that members of Congress could approve while giving them some cover for shedding aircraft programs in their states that translate to jobs and economic activity. The model would be similar to the Base Realignment and Closure process, wherein members must vote on the whole slate of closures instead of individual, state-by-state reductions. Under BRAC, members were not allowed to amend or alter the package of closures.

Kendall said his first approach in winning over members resistant to legacy divestitures is to help them “understand the importance of doing those retirements” and why the Air Force needs not only the operating savings for new systems but also the manpower to operate and maintain them. “That’s pretty fundamental,” he said, as is the fact that “the threat is increasing.”

But he said he’s hopeful that a “BRAC for force structure and legacy systems” could work, although he admitted that BRAC “is sort of a dirty word” among members who fear hard economic impacts from a downsized Air Force mission in their districts. He called it a “creative” approach.

“So, I’m not sure exactly what form that would take at this point, but I think some people would be really interested in doing things as a package in a way which provides people with a little less political exposure,” he said.

In his keynote remarks earlier in the day, Kendall said that during his confirmation process, senators tended to agree with him when he raised the issue of retiring old iron to pay for new, but “in the same breath,” he said, they would “tell me that under no circumstances could the—take your pick—C-130s, A-10s, KC-10s, or MQ-9s in that senator’s state be retired, nor could any base in his or her state ever be closed or suffer losses that would reduce local revenues.”

The Air Force “will not succeed against a well-resourced and strategic competitor if we insist on keeping every legacy system we have,” he warned. “I do understand the political constraints here, and I’m happy to work with Congress to find a better mechanism to make the changes we need, but we must move forward.”