Congress Passes 2022 NDAA, Sending Bill to President Biden

Dec. 15, 2021 | By Greg Hadley

The Senate passed the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act on Dec. 15, sending the annual policy bill to President Joe Biden’s desk and ensuring that Congress’ long-standing record of passing an NDAA every year remains unbroken.

“I am pleased that the Senate has voted in an overwhelming, bipartisan fashion to pass this year’s defense bill. Our nation faces an enormous range of security challenges, and it is more important than ever that we provide our military men and women with the support they need to keep Americans safe,” Senate Armed Services Committee chairman Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) said in a statement shortly after the 88-11 vote.

“This bill provides our military with the resources and authorities they need to defend our country—which is more important now than it’s ever been before, at least in my lifetime,” SASC ranking member Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) said in a statement. “This bill sends a clear message to our allies—that the United States remains a reliable, credible partner—and to our adversaries—that the U.S. military is prepared and fully able to defend our interests around the world.”

The bill’s passage was also hailed by the National Defense Industrial Association, which issued a statement saying it contains provisions that “support the Defense Department’s continued modernization efforts and, in concert with our highly skilled industrial base, provide the necessary resources for a strong national defense.”

The NDAA authorizes spending levels and allows Congress to exercise oversight over the Pentagon, setting policy and requiring reports each year. This year’s version authorizes $768 billion in spending, $740.3 billion for the Defense Department, well above the $715 billion DOD budget requested by Biden.

However, the bill does not appropriate any funds—the government is currently operating under a continuing resolution, keeping spending levels frozen at fiscal 2021 levels. And in a speech on the Senate floor shortly before the NDAA’s passage, chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) urged his colleagues to back up their support of the NDAA with an appropriations bill to fund it.

”Now, the NDAA is an important piece of legislation … it sets overarching policy for the Department of Defense and guides our national security,” Leahy said. “But, but, make sure people understand, what it does not do provide the funding to implement the policies it sets. It says what the policies will be, it declares what the funding should be, but there’s not one penny, not one penny in this bill.”

Among the policies the 2022 NDAA authorizes are a 2.7 percent pay increase for service members and an overhaul of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, removing the decision to prosecute certain crimes such as rape, sexual assault, murder, and kidnapping, from the chain of command. The bill also changes the UCMJ to include sexual harassment as a punishable offense.

Those changes to the UCMJ were touted by House Armed Services Committee chair Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) as “sweeping” and transformative, but they were panned by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a longtime advocate on the issue, as insufficient.

“Commanders can still pick the jury, select the witnesses, grant or deny witness immunity requests, order depositions, and approve the hiring of expert witnesses and consultants,” Gillibrand said at a press conference, per NY1.

In addition to the those changes, the 2022 NDAA contains numerous provisions related to the Air Force fleet. It funds the service’s request to procure 48 new F-35s and adds five F-15EXs to an initial request for 12, while prohibiting the retirement of any A-10s but allowing certain C-130s, KC-10s, and KC-135s to be sent to the boneyard.

The bill also promises to revamp the F-35 program in a number of ways. It calls for a report from the Pentagon on how it will install engines from the Adaptive Engine Technology Program in the current and future F-35 fleet starting in 2027. It also sets up the transfer of sustainment activities for the F-35A from the Joint Program Office to the Air Force in 2027, followed by acquisition activities in 2029. Another provision limits the size of the F-35A fleet starting in October 2028 if sustainment costs don’t come down.

Still another provision requires the Pentagon to conduct testing on aircraft that have the Onboard Oxygen Generating System, starting with the F-35, to assess the system’s safety and effectiveness after pilots reported relatively high rates of hypoxia-like events. Another safety-focused section requires the Air Force and Navy to submit reports every six months on the state of their ejection seats after a 2020 incident in which an F-16 pilot died when his ejection seat malfunctioned after a botched nighttime landing.

As the Space Force continues to stand up, the 2022 NDAA also contains provisions related to the new service. It gives the Secretary of the Air Force the authority to delegate senior procurement executive duties to the assistant secretary of the Air Force for space acquisition and integration.

It also requires a study and a report on how the Space Force should structure its reserve components, including a look at how much a Space National Guard would cost. Another required report will study the issue of over-classification in the USSF, something Chief of Space Operations Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond has bemoaned.

The final bipartisan vote on Dec. 15 brought an end to a lengthy legislative process that started in July.

After the Senate and House Armed Services Committees both reported their markups of the bill in September, the full House approved its version Sept. 23. The Senate, however, did not take up the bill for months, leading to some bipartisan criticism of Majority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).

Finally, the Senate began the process of considering the NDAA in mid-November. But while Schumer attempted to move the bill quickly to start the conference process, his efforts were thwarted by Republican lawmakers who accused him of rushing and not allowing “open and robust” debate on amendments.

The setback led to leaders of the HASC and SASC announcing Dec. 7 that they had drafted a compromise version of the bill outside of the conference process, combining elements of the version passed by the full House and the version agreed to in the Senate Armed Services Committee, as well as some of the hundreds of amendments proposed by senators after the SASC reported the bill to the full chamber.

However, several notable provisions were stripped out of the new compromise bill. Both the House and the SASC versions would have required women to register for the draft, but that was dropped. An effort to repeal the long-standing 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force was taken out as well.

Still, the same day the new NDAA was unveiled, House members passed it in an overwhelming 363-70 vote, and the Senate voted 86-13 on Dec. 14 to end debate on the bill, setting it up for a smooth final passage.

Air Force Releases First Doctrine Note on Agile Combat Employment

Dec. 14, 2021 | By Greg Hadley

The Air Force announced the release of its first doctrine publication on agile combat employment Dec. 14, laying out its core frameworks and concepts as the service looks to codify and develop the new operational approach.

The new doctrine note, signed by Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., defines ACE as “a proactive and reactive operational scheme of maneuver to increase survivability while generating combat power throughout the integrated deterrence continuum.”

The approach relies heavily on multi-capable Airmen who can operate in austere locations and move quickly, and is defined by five core elements in the doctrine note: posture, command and control, movement and maneuver, protection, and sustainment.

Taken together, these elements “complicate the enemy’s targeting process, create political and operational dilemmas for the enemy, and create flexibility for friendly forces,” the doctrine note reads.

The Curtis E. LeMay Center for Doctrine Development and Education, the Air Force’s principal organization for developing and assessing doctrine, created the doctrine note in consultation with experts across the service.

“Rapid development of guidance is essential to accelerating change for our service and our joint teammates,” Maj. Gen. William G. Holt II, LeMay Center commander, said in a statement. “This doctrine note represents another milestone in our ability to develop and leverage emerging doctrine.”

The hope is that this new doctrine note will serve “as a point of reference to help build new best practices we can then integrate into current doctrine and use to inform future doctrine,” Lt. Col. Richard Major, Air Force doctrine development director, said in a statement.

ACE was developed as a concept by Pacific Air Forces in recent years in response to threats from China, North Korea, and Russia. Fewer main operating bases in the region and growing threats to those bases from new technologies put Air Force assets in danger.

The solution advanced by Brown, then the commander of PACAF, was to be “light, lean, and agile”—distributing forces across a greater range of locations to simultaneously reduce the threat to the USAF and increase unpredictability for adversaries.

Over time, both Pacific Air Forces and U.S. Air Forces in Europe have incorporated ACE exercises into their regular training, though neither major command has declared initial operational capability of the concept.

Air Force Doctrine Note 1-21, “Agile Combat Employment,” lays out the reasons ACE is needed, defines key terms for the concept, and sets out a framework for how it should work.

Informing the whole concept is posture—the placement of forces such that they establish deterrence “by being strategically predictable, but operationally unpredictable.” This increases adversaries’ strategic considerations, but it also requires coordination and interoperability, both across the services and with allies and partners.

With a distributed force, command and control becomes about “centralized command, distributed control, and decentralized execution,” the note states. The development of joint all-domain command and control will increase connectivity and commanders’ ability to coordinate, but “it is highly expected that elements conducting ACE will lose connectivity with operational C2.” As a result, Airmen will have to be trained to understand commanders’ intent and execute based on that.

Movement requires careful posture planning as well as coordination within and across theaters to ensure assets can be maneuvered quickly and at scale when needed.

Protection is necessary to harden the bases and other locations where forces operate, working under the assumption “that air bases are no longer considered a sanctuary from attack” and require both active and passive defenses.

And finally, just as ACE’s posture distributes forces, sustainment is predicated on diversification—using multiple sources to reduce stress on the logistics and infrastructure.

“ACE sustainment plans should focus primarily on aircraft sortie generation but should also include the ability to execute implied tasks such as receiving airlift or sealift for resupply, executing [base operating support] functions, and contracting local services, supplies, and equipment,” the doctrine note states.

All told, ACE “requires a revolutionary change in how the Air Force thinks about and conducts operations within the modern operational environment,” the note concludes, and the concept’s doctrine will continue to be refined over time.

Lockheed to Offer ‘Competitive Pricing’ on T-50-Derived Advanced Fighter Trainer

Dec. 14, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

Lockheed Martin will offer a variant of its T-50A in the competition to build the Air Force’s new tactical fighter trainer rather than a clean-sheet design, the company said Dec. 14, insisting it will achieve “competitive pricing” with the aircraft. The jet was second in the T-X competition that Boeing won with a fresh design three years ago.

“Lockheed Martin has responded to both the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Navy for their respective advanced tactical training programs,” the company said in a press release, referring to the Air Force’s Advanced Tactical Trainer and the Navy’s Tactical Surrogate Aircraft. “And, we look forward to developing competitive pricing for TF-50 aircraft programs that would meet the requirements as defined today.” A spokesperson elaborated that this goal will also cover “any new requirements that emerge in the future.”

The company’s T-X proposal “was based on a low-risk solution, the T-50A configuration that was aggressively priced to meet the requirements, including a 2023 [initial operational capability] date,” she said. “Since then, we have made significant advances in digital engineering and open architectures that are enabling affordability and at the same time, accelerating development, production, upgrades, and responsiveness.”

When queried about the ATT fighter trainer in October, Lockheed Martin said it would offer a solution to the ATT query but was reviewing the requirements and not yet ready to say if it would offer a new airplane, as Boeing did in the T-X.

Lockheed Martin and Boeing went head to head for the Air Force’s T-X, with Lockheed Martin offering the T-50A, a derivative of the T-50 jet trainer it developed with Korea Aerospace Industries. When the Air Force announced that Boeing had won that contest in September 2018, it said the company bid nearly $10 billion less than what the service itself expected to pay. Boeing has chalked up its win to advanced digital design, a streamlined software plan, and open-system architecture.

Lockheed Martin did not elaborate on why it is again offering the T-50 rather than a new, tailored design.

Lockheed’s ATT nomenclature of TF-50 is a hybrid of its T-50 trainer and the F-50 light fighter based on the T-50. Lockheed and KAI have sold variants of the airplane to Indonesia, Iraq, the Philippines, and Thailand.

“The designation depends on the configuration and the customer requirements,” the spokesperson said, noting that South Korea operates the jet in four configurations: T-50 for advanced jet training; TA-50 for lead-in fighter training; T-50B for the “Black Eagles” demonstration team; and FA-50 for light combat aircraft. The T-50A offered in the T-X competition was a “block upgrade to the baseline aircraft” with a fifth-generation cockpit, advanced avionics, and an embedded training system, aerial refueling capability, and “other enhancements to meet” Air Education and Training Command’s needs.

“The TF-50 is configured as a light attack fighter/trainer with additional enhancements to include radar, [electronic warfare] system, tactical data link, and other capabilities” to meet Air Combat Command requirements, she said.

The Air Force announced the ATT competition Oct. 12, saying it wants between 100 and 400 airplanes to serve as a bridge between undergraduate pilot training and frontline fighter squadrons. The goal is to offload much of the training now done on actual frontline fighters to the new aircraft, saving money and freeing the frontline aircraft for combat assignments. The program dovetails with ACC’s “Reforge” concept for overhauling fighter training. The Air Force wanted responses by Nov. 23 describing what companies could offer in terms of “feasibility, estimated cost, and schedule” for the first 100 aircraft. USAF has not said when it expects to introduce the new airplane.

Because the Air Force and Navy’s needs are so similar, USAF said contractors could simply submit the same information for both. The Navy wants a trainer to succeed its T-45, but its concept currently calls for student pilots to perform only touch-and-go’s on an aircraft carrier, not fully arrested traps. Consequently, the aircraft need not have an arrestor hook and associated equipment.

Air Force leaders have suggested—even before Boeing won the T-X—that the winner of that contest would likely see a secondary USAF market for tactical trainers and companion trainers, akin to the application of the T-38 in those roles over the last five decades. However, the Air Force has said the ATT is not a lock for Boeing and that the service wants competition.

Moreover, while Boeing has said the T-7A could be modified for combat tasks, it lacks the external hardpoints the Air Force wants in the ATT and has only an optional aerial refueling system. The T-7A design was focused on Air Education and Training Command’s requirements for the T-X and not toward future derivatives, Boeing said at the time it was selected.

The ATT requirements specify that it must be able to carry various sensor or electronic warfare pods and/or external fuel tanks.

Air Combat Command is also looking at buying or leasing a handful of advanced trainers to prove the Reforge concept before the T-7A is available, and Lockheed is a competitor offering the T-50 for that requirement.

The Air Force requires that the ATT have a secure open architecture. Preferred capabilities—desirable but not mandatory—include a zero-zero ejection seat and an automatic ground collision avoidance system as well as a helmet-mounted display system.

AFRL’s ‘Fight Tonight’ to Prototype AI and Gaming Tech for Attack Planning

Dec. 14, 2021 | By Shaun Waterman

The Air Force is looking for ways to combine artificial intelligence and interactive gaming technology to revolutionize and dramatically shorten the process of planning complex air attack operations.

At two industry days Dec. 8 and 9, the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Information Directorate in Rome, N.Y., asked interested vendors to submit white papers by Jan. 10 explaining how they would use each of these new technologies to augment human decision-making in the planning cycle and slash the time taken to produce a master air attack plan (MAAP) from 36 hours or more to four. The program, called Fight Tonight, provides a total of $99 million in funding, which AFRL expects to hand out in two phases, each featuring two or more separate awards of between $3 and $40 million.

“These master attack plans are at the theater level,” Jeffrey Hudack, the Fight Tonight technical director, told Air Force Magazine. “They cover all our forces in theater—resource and target allocation, materiel and logistics, airspace management—there are thousands of assets …. Tasking them all together, figuring out the most effective way to achieve objectives, is an incredibly complex undertaking.”

The length and complexity of the MAAP planning cycle means commanders don’t generally get presented with more than a handful of options, added Fight Tonight Program Manager Lt. Col. Sean Carlson. “Because the process is incredibly cumbersome, you really have to commit to one course of action early on so that you can effectively plan your logistics and align all the other pieces to make it happen.” But that comes at a heavy price: “Because the process takes so long, and the environment is so dynamic, oftentimes, by the time [the planning] is done, the landscape has changed so much that your initial plan has lost effectiveness.”

Artificial intelligence could dramatically shorten that planning process, Hudack explained. “AI is very good at situations where we have known quantities—managing fuel requirements, matching weapons to targets, knowing how many aircraft of which type you need for a particular task,” he said. For instance, making a series of incremental adjustments to a plan, which would involve recalculating fuel demands and multiple other cascading changes, currently takes many hours. Fight Tonight would make it possible in minutes.

On the other hand, Hudack said, humans are better at assessing less easily quantifiable factors. In drawing up the MAAP, there may be “political considerations, or other considerations that aren’t really amenable to being read by a machine,” he said. “What we’ve come to realize is that there are certain things AI is good at, and there are certain things humans are good at, and navigating that line is really where the value comes.”

The announcement says that, based on the white papers, AFRL may invite one or more vendors to submit detailed technical proposals by Feb 25. Fight Tonight is sponsored by AFRL’s Transformational Capabilities Office.

The biggest changes from Fight Tonight, said Carlson, will come in the ease with which alternative possible options can be generated and assessed, making it possible to explore the trade-offs between different courses of action. “You’re talking about going from two or three possible options to hundreds,” he said.

Assessing those much larger collections of options is where the second kind of new technology, interactive gaming, comes in, Hudack added. “You can’t just hand over a bunch of spreadsheets and say, ‘Here’s all the data you need to make your decision.’ … The gaming industry has decades of experience designing user interfaces that take you right to the high-level information you need and then allow you to drill down into the finer-grained data.”

The idea is to integrate the two kinds of technology into a single user interface that can be connected to the real-life data sources available to mission planners in an Air Operations Center, or AOC.

The program envisions a two-stage development process. In Phase 1, vendors will spend two-and-a-half years developing and prototyping the technology. In Phase 2, they’ll have two years to test, integrate, and eventually install it in a real AOC.

Fight Tonight will have a radical impact on the way planners do their jobs, said Hudack, which was why the two-phase process was important: “You have to co-evolve the technology and the concepts of operations” that employ it, he said.

Editor’s note: This story was updated at 10:08 a.m. Dec. 16 to correctly refer to master air attack plans (MAAPs).

UN Addresses Lethal Autonomous Weapons—aka ‘Killer Robots’—Amid Calls for a Treaty

Dec. 14, 2021 | By Amanda Miller

The United Nations’ secretary-general advocated for new restrictions on autonomous weapons as a U.N. group that negotiates weapons protocols started a week of meetings, in part, to discuss the matter.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres addressed the Review Conference of the U.N.’s Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons. Taking place in Geneva, Switzerland, the Review Conference happens every five years. Guterres preceded the weeklong meeting with a Dec. 13 message encouraging conference members “to agree on an ambitious plan for the future to establish restrictions on the use of certain types of autonomous weapons.”

He described autonomous weapons as those “that can choose targets and kill people without human interference.” The conference has identified artificial intelligence, for one, as an “increasingly autonomous” technology.

The Air Force has experimented with autonomous weapons such as the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Golden Horde, which did not become a program of record but did succeed in getting Small Diameter Bombs to collaborate with each other after receiving and interpreting commands mid-flight. The experimental Perdix micro-drones, under the DOD’s Strategic Capabilities Office, rely on AI. And although the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency’s Gremlins drones don’t rely on AI yet, they’re designed to accommodate that level of computing.

Some countries and international rights groups want the convention to negotiate a treaty that would ban what the U.N. calls lethal autonomous weapons systems—and what others call “killer robots”—but diplomats told Reuters that’s not likely to happen this week. It would require a consensus, and the U.S., for one, has already rejected the idea. Russia was expected to do the same.

The U.N. group began convening experts on lethal autonomous weapons systems in 2014. It could agree on other guidelines short of a treaty, a diplomat told Reuters.

Speaking during an American Enterprise Institute webinar about AI on Dec. 7, NATO’s David van Weel articulated why countries such as the U.S. might oppose a treaty on autonomous weapons.

Van Weel put the issue in terms of a hypothetical attack by a swarm of drones. “How do we defend against them? Well, we can’t, frankly, because you need AI in that case in order to be able to counter AI,” he said.

Van Weel represented a minority on the panel. His counterparts—an Oxford scholar and a tech attorney—supported a treaty to “de-weaponize” AI. The University of Oxford’s Xiaolan Fu, professor of technology and international development, thought that even to start a dialog would amount to progress.

Considering AI to have “the risk to be as toxic as a nuclear weapon, if not more,” Tech Group co-head Jonathan Kewley of the firm Clifford Chance said AI-enabled weapons need people in the loop the same way nuclear weapons do.

AI “doesn’t have a conscience. It doesn’t have a moral fiber unless it’s programmed in,” Kewley said. “AI has the risk to be as toxic as a nuclear weapon, if not more, and if we don’t have the equivalent of that moral compass, the finger on the button designed in through a treaty—because we’re not going to design the technology to prevent this unless there is a treaty involving China, the U.S., and others—we’re going to have a similar issue to nuclear risk.”

NATO’s van Weel suggested he might stop short of AI-assisted activities that the U.S. has already acknowledged, at least in experiments.

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall revealed in September that the Air Force’s chief architect’s office “deployed AI algorithms for the first time to a live operational kill chain … for automated target recognition,” though neither he nor an Air Force spokesperson at the time provided details about the target. Meanwhile in October, the Army-led, joint-service Rapid Dragon exercise relied on AI analysis of satellite images for targeting and reportedly shortened the decision-making from what might have taken as long as five hours to just one hour while also improving accuracy.

However, van Weel suggested that current AI, which he described as “very preliminary” and “very rudimentary,” is “by no means capable of making such important decisions,” even just “using AI to enhance the decision-making process.”

In its Ethical Principles for Artificial Intelligence, the DOD says its AI will possess “the ability to detect and avoid unintended consequences, and the ability to disengage or deactivate deployed systems that demonstrate unintended consequences,” but the document stops short of specifying humans’ role in its principle covering governability.

SASC Advances Nomination for New Vice Chairman of Joint Chiefs

Dec. 14, 2021 | By Greg Hadley

The Senate Armed Services Committee advanced Adm. Christopher W. Grady’s nomination to be Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Dec. 14, moving him one step closer to taking on the military’s No. 2 job.

The committee’s favorable report on Grady was expected after his confirmation hearing Dec. 8, during which multiple Senators, both Republican and Democrat, expressed optimism about advancing his nomination to ensure the vice chair position is filled as quickly as possible.

It’s been more than three weeks since Air Force Gen. John E. Hyten officially stepped down as vice chair, leaving one of the top positions in the Pentagon vacant. Defense Department Press Secretary John F. Kirby has called any sort of gap in the vice chairman role “not optimal,” but noted that the Joint Staff has worked through such situations before. By law, there is no procedure for naming an “acting” vice chairman, but some of Hyten’s roles and responsibilities can be delegated on an “acting” basis, Kirby added.

Now, Grady, who most recently led the Navy’s Fleet Forces Command, awaits a vote on the floor of the Senate. His hearing in front of the Senate panel proceeded, for the most part, smoothly, as he advocated for nuclear modernization, an end to over-classification, and a data-based approach on the Joint Requirements Oversight Council. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) was the only committee member who publicly stated he might not vote for Grady.

But while leading lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have previously pledged to act quickly to minimize any vacancy, any individual Senator can place procedural “holds” on nominees after they are reported out of committee, which can slow down the process—such holds delayed Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall’s appointment for roughly a month.

On top of that, the Senate’s calendar for the final few weeks of the year is already crowded as it continues work on the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act, raising the nation’s debt limit, and negotiating on President Joe Biden’s social spending bill, called Build Back Better. Indeed, Grady’s confirmation hearing was originally scheduled for Dec. 2 but was postponed to accommodate the potential floor schedule for the NDAA.

The calendar could clear up some soon though—the Senate is expected to finish its work on the debt limit Dec. 14, and the NDAA is nearly done as well. A new compromise version of the annual defense policy bill passed the House with a large bipartisan majority, and the Senate voted 86-13 to invoke cloture on the bill Dec. 14, setting it up for final passage as early as the evening of Dec. 15.

The Senate Armed Services Committee also voted Dec. 14 to favorably report a list of 10 pending military promotions in the Army, Navy, and Space Force.

Air Force Discharges First Service Members for Refusing COVID-19 Vaccine

Dec. 14, 2021 | By Greg Hadley

The Department of the Air Force discharged 27 service members for refusing to get the COVID-19 vaccine, marking the first known instance of military personnel being kicked out of the service for failing to follow Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III’s order that all service members receive the vaccine.

An Air Force spokeswoman confirmed the discharges to Air Force Magazine on Dec. 14, saying all of those discharged were Active-duty members, but the exact breakdown between Airmen and Guardians was not immediately known.

The number of those discharged is almost certain to grow—when the department’s first-in-the-military deadline of Nov. 2 passed, 800 Airmen and Guardians were recorded as refusing the vaccine. Since then, the number of refusers has grown past 1,000 in the Active duty, and includes 3,234 across the total force.

This first wave of discharges includes Airmen and Guardians for whom the separation process was the most straightforward. None of those discharged sought a religious or medical exemption, the Air Force confirmed—if they had, they would have been considered in compliance with the vaccine mandate while their request was pending. And the majority were in their first term of enlistment—Airmen who have six or more years of service, as well as those who are noncommissioned officers or who are being discharged under anything less than honorable conditions, have the right to a hearing by an administrative discharge board.

Those discharged were counseled on the benefits of the vaccine, and their commanders were allowed to impose punishments short of separation, an Air Force spokeswoman said. In the end, however, they continued to refuse the vaccine, disobeying a lawful order.

On Dec. 7, the Air Force released its procedure for dealing with vaccine refusers, giving those who refuse and are denied an exemption five days to either start the vaccination process, file an appeal, or request to separate or retire. Those who still refuse “will be subject to the initiation of administrative discharge,” according to the memo signed by Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall.

The vast majority of Airmen and Guardians have followed the order to get the vaccine—the department’s most recent data show 97.3 percent of the Active-duty force and 95.4 percent of the total force are at least partially vaccinated, with roughly another 1 percent currently holding medical or administrative exemptions.

On Nov. 1, the Air Force announced that it had discharged nearly 40 basic military and technical trainees for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine. Unlike the 27 Active-duty members discharged, though, those individuals were recruits and not yet members of the military, an Air Force spokeswoman said.

No Accountability for Kabul Airstrike That Killed 10 Civilians, Pentagon Says

Dec. 13, 2021 | By Greg Hadley

A pair of combatant commanders reviewed the Air Force Inspector General’s report on the erroneous Aug. 29 airstrike that killed 10 civilians in Kabul, Afghanistan, and made no recommendations related to accountability, the Defense Department’s top spokesperson said Dec. 13.

U.S. Central Command head Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr. and U.S. Special Forces Command boss Gen. Richard D. Clarke both reviewed the report from Air Force IG Lt. Gen. Sami D. Said and reported back a variety of recommendations to Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III, Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby said. Not included, however, was any recommendation of punishment or discipline for the service members involved in the strike.

“None of their recommendations dealt specifically with issues of accountability,” Kirby said in a press briefing. “The Secretary reviewed their recommendations—I won’t get into all of them; some of them are understandably classified—but he approved their recommendations. So I do not anticipate there being issues of personal accountability to be had with respect to the Aug. 29 airstrike.”

Kirby later confirmed that Austin is not calling for any accountability measures in relation to the strike, which came after 13 U.S. service members were killed in a terrorist attack at Hamid Karzai International Airport.

Austin’s decision, Kirby added, was in line with the conclusion reached by McKenzie and Clarke—that the airstrike, which killed aid worker Zemari Ahmadi and nine members of his family, was caused by a breakdown in process and execution, “not the result of negligence, not the result of misconduct, not the result of poor leadership,” Kirby said.

As to whether lower-level commanders will be able to implement any accountability measures as a result of the strike, Kirby deferred to McKenzie and Clarke.

The original investigation by Air Force Inspector General Lt. Gen. Sami D. Said found that a strike cell in Qatar, studying video footage for eight hours, believed Ahmadi’s white Toyota Corolla was a vehicle of interest and that he was involved in planning a terrorist attack against American service members at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. Only three days earlier, the 13 Americans had been killed in a terrorist attack at the airport checkpoints, and the investigation found that the attack, in part, led to confirmation bias and the erroneous strike, though no laws were broken.

Shortly after Said’s report was released in early November, the New York Times reported that in a 2019 strike against ISIS in Baghuz, Syria, dozens of civilians were killed along with 16 fighters before U.S. Central Command allegedly covered up wrongdoing and disallowed an investigation of war crimes.

A few days after the Times report, Austin briefed the media on civilian casualties and said DOD has “more work to do in that regard, clearly.” When asked if he would impose disciplinary action or otherwise hold people accountable, Austin said that “leaders in this department should be held to account for high standards of conduct and leadership.”

In the case of the Afghan airstrike, Austin did not believe accountability measures were needed, Kirby said. Generally speaking, though, Kirby said the department is open to changes “to the way we analyze information and intelligence, act on that intelligence, target, and … the actual execution procedures of a strike.”

No such changes were announced Dec. 13.

Dr. Steven Kwon, the head of the aid group Nutrition & Education International, where Ahmadi worked, issued a statement calling the lack of discipline for the airstrike “shocking,” according to CNBC.

“How can our military wrongly take the lives of 10 precious Afghan people and hold no one accountable in any way?” Kwon said. “What message is it sending to family members who lost their loved ones—and my employees who lost a beloved colleague?”

Kwon’s statement also criticized the Pentagon for not yet evacuating family members of those killed from Afghanistan or paying reparations. Kirby responded by saying DOD remains committed to both options.

“We are working very hard with [Kwon] and his organization to affect the relocation of the family members,” Kirby said. “And I think as you can understand that, with respect to an ex gratia payment, which we’re absolutely willing to make, we want to make sure that we do it in the most safe and responsible way, so that we know it’s getting to the right people and only to the right people.”

USAFE Watchful, But Operating Normally, as Tensions Build Between Russia, Ukraine

Dec. 13, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

U.S. Air Forces in Europe hasn’t changed the way it operates even though Russia is massing forces on the Ukraine border, but U.S. and NATO allies are keeping a close watch on the tensions, USAFE commander Gen. Jeffrey L. Harrigian said Dec. 13.

Speaking at an AFA Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies virtual event, Harrigian said the NATO air arms are “working closely together to understand” what Russia’s activities, in all domains, are in order to have a “shared understanding” of what’s going on.

“We’re largely focused on … how we ensure our team is ready, our posture is where it needs to be, and we’re working that in cooperation” with allies and regional partners, Harrigian said, indicating no change in the posture of USAFE in light of Russia’s movements. If partners spot a change in Russian activities or status, they will alert the U.S., he said, and “we [will] all have a better understanding of what options would be available to us.”

He said his “Job 1” is to “offer my best military advice to General [Tod D.] Wolters, [Supreme Allied Commander, NATO], and … up through the Secretary” of Defense.

“Our focus internally is we’ve got to make sure we’re ready. And that readiness piece is across not just the airplanes but the people,” Harrigian said.

“We all want diplomacy to work,” but “as we work through the options we’re going to present, it’s going to all be about avoiding miscalculation” and anything that “takes decision space away from our superiors.”

He’s also communicating to the Airmen of USAFE the seriousness of the Ukraine tensions and emphasizing that Airmen remain resilient.

Harrigian said USAFE and Ukraine have not conducted any joint air exercises in the last couple of years and that non-flying joint drills have been about “force development activities” on which he did not elaborate.

Retired Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, dean of AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, talks with U.S. Air Forces in Europe-Air Forces Africa boss Gen. Jeffrey L. Harrigian during a Dec. 13 Mitchell event.

The October 2018 Clear Sky Exercise was the last joint air drill between the two countries. It paired U.S. Air National Guard and Lakenheath, U.K.-based F-15s with Ukrainian MiG-29 Fulcrums, Su-27 Flankers, and Su-24 Fencers to “increase the level of interoperability” between the air arms, according to a USAFE release. U.S. C-130s and KC-135 tankers participated as well.

Harrigian has had conversations with the Ukrainian air chief, but not recently. “There’s a relationship there. We expect that to continue,” he added.

Relative to operating in proximity to Russia, Harrigian said, “We have, over the last 18 months, continued to execute operations in international waters,” and “that has not changed at this point.” USAFE has exercised with the U.S. Navy and partner navies in the Baltic and Black Seas, refining tactics, techniques, and procedures “and the way we do business,” he said. This practice will ensure an up-to-date shared understanding of TTPs in the event of a crisis, Harrigian added.

He said Bomber Task Forces dispatched to Europe by Air Force Global Strike Command have been a great success delivering the message that the U.S. is able to rapidly deploy heavy airpower to the continent. Harrigian said allies and partners are lining up to participate in future such deployments, either running intercepts or escorting American bombers.

The 9th Expeditionary Bomb Squadron completed a six-week bomber task force mission Nov. 15 across the North Sea, Baltics, and Black Sea region, integrating coalition capabilities and practicing agile combat employment. The next such deployment will happen soon, Harrigian said. The deployments are also essential in familiarizing bomber pilots with operating in Europe so that if they need to conduct a real-world contingency, “it won’t be the first time” they’ve flown in the region.