15,000 Reserve, Guard Airmen Remain Unvaccinated Two Weeks from Deadline

Nov. 17, 2021 | By Greg Hadley

On Nov. 2, the Air Force became the first military service to implement its COVID-19 vaccine mandate, with more than 10,000 Active-duty Airmen and Guardians remaining unvaccinated after the deadline.

Two weeks later, the total number of those unvaccinated has dropped, but only to 9,685, and the backlog of religious accommodation requests remains upwards of 4,800 with a pressing deadline to rule on them.

At the same time, another deadline is looming. Airmen from the Air Force Reserve and Air National Guard must be fully vaccinated by Dec. 2, the first deadline for any Reserve or Guard component in the military. While that deadline approaches, however, the Pentagon and the Oklahoma National Guard are engaged in a dispute over whether the Defense Department has the necessary authority to require the vaccine for the Guard.

The Air Force’s most recent data, released Nov. 17, show that 94.9 percent of the approximately 501,000 individuals in the Total Force are at least partially vaccinated, leaving roughly 25,500 Airmen and Guardians completely unvaccinated.

More than 1,600 Active-duty service members have been granted exemptions to the vaccine mandate—though still no religious exemptions have been given—and another 8,068 have not started the vaccination process, either due to refusal, pending exemption request, or other reasons.

That leaves more than 15,000 Airmen in the Air Force Reserve and Air National Guard who are completely unvaccinated. The Air Force won’t release any data on exemptions or refusals of the mandate for the two components until after the Dec. 2 deadline.

Some of those unvaccinated individuals are likely part of the Oklahoma Air National Guard, which is in the middle of a legal debate over the mandate. On Nov. 11, newly installed adjutant general Brig. Gen. Thomas H. Mancino issued a memo stating that no member of the Oklahoma National Guard, which includes the state’s Air National Guard, would be required to take the vaccine, according to The Oklahoman.

In a statement, Mancino defended the move, saying that while the Guard is on Title 32 status—under command and control of the state government but federally funded—they must follow orders from Gov. Kevin Stitt, who is not requiring the vaccine. That would change, Mancino indicated, if the Guardsmen were activated under Title 10 orders, which puts them under federal control.

Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby pushed back on this claim, though, in a Nov. 15 press briefing, saying that Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III had the authority to mandate the vaccine for the National Guard, even on Title 32 status, because “when they’re called up for their monthly training, they’re still federally funded.”

More specifically, a defense official said in a Nov. 17 background briefing that “service members in the Guard have to maintain federal recognition. Maintaining federal recognition means they are part of the Army or Air National Guard of the United States and are available to deploy, be mobilized, and to serve as part of the U.S. military. … That federal recognition can be conditioned upon various requirements,” such as a vaccine mandate.

The official appeared to be referencing section 323 of Title 32, which details how federal recognition can be withdrawn from a Guard member who fails to meet the “qualifications prescribed by the Secretary.”

How the Pentagon plans to enforce this provision remains unclear, however, with Kirby responding to questions on that issue simply by saying, “It’s a lawful order, and refusing to do that, absent of an approved exemption, puts them in the same potential as Active-duty members who refuse the vaccine.”

Russian ASAT Test Emphasizes Urgency of AFRL Quest for Defensive Satellite Tech

Nov. 17, 2021 | By Shaun Waterman

The Russian test of an anti-satellite weapon this week highlighted the vulnerability of orbital assets on which the U.S. military increasingly relies, and it dramatically demonstrated why a new U.S. Space Force research and development program is focused on defensive technologies, according to experts and military officials.

The test, which created hundreds of thousands of pieces of space debris, reduced a derelict Russian spy satellite to a cloud of orbital debris—showcasing the kind of weaponry the Space Force will have to counter if it is to provide critical communication, surveillance, and other capabilities to U.S. forces on the ground in an all-out shooting war with a peer competitor like Russia or China, explained Brian Engberg, director of the Space Control Technology Branch of the Air Force Research Laboratory.

“Our current priorities are on establishing defensive measures and resilience for our satellite platforms,” Engberg told Air Force Magazine. The idea, he said, is that, even in the teeth of an attack using weapons like the one Russia tested Nov. 15, Space Force orbital assets should continue to “provide critical space-based services like communications, navigation [and] timing, operational awareness, information dominance, which then enable strong offensive and defensive advantages for [our terrestrial forces] on land, sea, and [in the] air.”

A Tough Ask

That’s a tough ask, said Brian Weeden, director of program planning for the Secure World Foundation, who has spent two decades studying the issue. The Russian weapon, a vehicle-launched ballistic missile called Nudol, is a direct ascent anti-satellite weapon or DA-ASAT, Weeden explained.

The missile acts like a rocket, powering a kinetic kill vehicle, or KKV, into a collision path with the target satellite. The KKV doesn’t need a warhead, just a guidance system to make last minute course corrections to steer it into the target, Weeden said. Kinetic energy does the rest. “At the speed the KKV is traveling and the satellite is also, in low Earth orbit, probably already moving at six or seven kilometers per second … It’s just boom,” he said.

Weeden also pointed out that explosions in space lack the destructive power of their counterparts on the ground. “No atmosphere means no blast wave, no concussion effects,” he noted.

Nonetheless, the DA-ASAT is a very effective weapon, he said. “From launch to impact, you may have as little as five or 10 minutes” before the KKV impacts the target. When the launch occurs, the target satellite may still be beyond the horizon, meaning it wouldn’t see the telltale flare.

“So I think it’s very, very difficult to counter that,” he said, adding that an architecture based on hundreds of satellites would be less vulnerable than one based on two or three.

The effectiveness of DA-ASAT probably explains why the U.S., China, and India have also successfully tested such weapons, Weeden added.

Understanding the brief window of time satellite assets will have to respond to threats is powering a major focus of AFRL’s research, said Engberg, referring to satellite autonomy.

“We’re not on a path to Skynet,” he joked. The aim of the research is to show how satellites can use artificial intelligence and machine learning “to be able to detect and make a decision about protecting its own capability, when you cannot wait for a human on the ground to receive data, make a decision, and send up a command to avoid a potential threat.”

Autonomy is especially important when dealing with directed energy weapons, which travel at the speed of light, Engberg said. “We anticipate there will be scenarios and threats for which a human in the loop commanding a satellite or a system of satellites from the ground will not be fast enough to defeat certain threats, especially speed-of-light threats.”

In addition to autonomy, the other two foci of R&D in the Space Control Technology Branch are cybersecurity of space systems and space situational awareness in the vast empty spaces between Earth orbit and the Moon, Engberg said.

A Changing Strategic Calculus

The strategic calculus embedded in the Space Force’s R&D focus on defensive capabilities is that deterrence by denial (i.e. hardening U.S. space systems) is a more productive strategy than deterrence by destruction, said Weeden. Especially given that the U.S. military relied much more heavily on space than potential adversaries. “The calculation has always been that deterrence by threatening reprisal doesn’t work as well if your adversary doesn’t rely on space as much as you do,” Weeden explained.

Over time, that strategic calculus might shift, Weeden said, especially with regard to Beijing.

“China is investing a lot of money in developing its own constellation of GPS satellites. They’re developing their own satellites for reconnaissance and intelligence collection; they’re building a space station; they’re developing their own satellites for communications. They’re investing a lot of money in developing space, so I think it is true that over time, China is going to become more of a stakeholder in space.”

But he cautioned that currently, the traditional security calculus still holds true. “At the moment, when it comes to national security benefits from space, the U.S. still relies a lot more on it than China does,” Weeden noted. “Particularly for something like a Taiwan Straits or a South China Sea crisis, where we would be ‘playing away’” and more reliant on globe-spanning communication.

China, which has astronauts building a space station in a similar orbit to the ISS, has not reacted to the Russian test or published what safety measures its astronauts may have taken as they construct the Tianhe module of the space station. The China Manned Space Agency said Oct 15 that it was publishing orbital data for Tianhe and hoped “relevant agencies and organizations of other countries will pay attention to these data and avoid collisions,” according to state media.

The Russian test and its impact on the ISS also demonstrates the growing danger that a war in space might create, Engberg added.

The Kessler Syndrome and the End of Orbit

As thousands of satellites are launched into LEO constellations such as Starlink and OneWeb, the risk grows that any single collision could spark a chain reaction, as debris collides with additional satellites, in turn creating more debris. Such a cascade could end by destroying everything in orbit, a phenomenon known as Kessler Syndrome.

An early public indication Nov. 15 that something was amiss in orbit was when NASA ordered astronauts in the International Space Station to take shelter in the crew capsules that would return them to Earth in an emergency. The concern was, Weeden said, that the debris field from the Russian satellite, in orbit a mere 40 or 50 kilometers above the ISS, might impact the space station.

“The debris field spreads above and below the destruction point. We don’t know how high yet, because that data is still being collected and analyzed,” he said.

Kessler Syndrome is, in some ways, like climate change was in the last century, he said. “It’s a poorly understood risk, but it’s getting worse,” he said. “All we know is, there’s some unknown probability that one of these pieces might hit something else over the next years to several decades. And space is big. So the probability is pretty low. But you do this frequently enough, and the probabilities catch up to you, eventually.”

For exactly that reason, Weeden said, strategists tended to favor attacks on orbital assets that were non-kinetic, and if possible temporary and reversible.

“The high risk of collateral damage from offensive space weapons means no one will really benefit from escalating a [kinetic] conflict into the space domain,” added Engberg.

Despite its rather bland name, the Space Control Technology Branch that he heads is the center of AFRL’s efforts to develop new space warfighting technologies. Earlier this year, AFRL Commander Maj. Gen. Heather L. Pringle cut the ribbon on a newly opened 26,000-square-foot, $12.8 million Space Warfighting Operations Research and Development, or SWORD, laboratory. The building now houses the branch’s few dozen scientists, engineers, and support staff, part of the Space Vehicles Directorate at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M.

But Engberg insists, “AFRL is not investing in offensive space capabilities … Our goal is to provide a safe flight environment [in orbit] through [domain] awareness and reliable services [to warfighters] through agility and survivability, … but [to] be prepared for irresponsible behavior,” he said.

Weeden pointed out that informed observers believed the U.S. had undeclared offensive kinetic capabilities in space and continued to research technologies that could be used for non-kinetic attacks.

“Many of us assume that existing U.S. missile defense interceptors … could be used to target satellites with basically just a software change. … We know the U.S. has done a lot of research on technologies for rendezvous and proximity operations—getting close to other satellites—that could be used in co-orbital attacks. We know there’s a lot of research being done in lasers and other directed energy weapons. We know the U.S. has probably the best cyber offensive capabilities in the world.

“So a lot of us assume that the U.S. has more capabilities than what they’ve revealed,” he concluded.

Wargames Show Air Force Isn’t Accelerating Fast Enough, Hinote Says

Nov. 16, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

The Air Force’s mantra under Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. has been to “accelerate change or lose,” but the most recent wargaming indicates, so far, the latter, according to Lt. Gen. S. Clinton Hinote, the Air Force’s futurist. The corrective action is to speed up the deployment of large numbers of unmanned systems and to proliferate operating locations to complicate an enemy’s decision-making, he said.

“Unfortunately, the wargaming says that we’re not accelerating our change fast enough,” said Hinote, the deputy chief of staff for strategy, integration, and requirements, during a webinar hosted by the Center for a New American Security. Brown’s mantra is proved right by the outcomes of recent exercises—about which Hinote did not elaborate—saying, simply, “We’ve got to go faster.”

He noted that the Air Force “used to” think it had until 2030 or so to achieve its evolution but now sees the need to get to a new posture by around 2027, given the advances being made by China and other potential adversaries. That horizon makes it “more difficult to imagine” starting new systems now that will be ready by then, making an imperative of connecting the equipment already in hand, he asserted. The short timeline also puts a priority on training, he said, which will make “a huge difference there.”

Hinote said the Air Force has recently opened up some of its exercises to Capitol Hill staffers and members of Congress, allowing the stakeholders to “help us shape the game, and we took the results back to them to show them what happened.” It’s “one of the ways of helping us tell the story of the change we need and the fact that we need to get after it faster,” he said.

The Air Force has pitched Congress to allow the retirements of legacy platforms and systems that are no longer relevant in order to free up manpower and funds for new systems, but Congress has been skeptical so far.

Future Combat Power

The Air Force is now looking to large numbers of unmanned aircraft as one way to achieve the combat power needed without the expense of building every airplane with a seat, displays, and an escape system for a human operator. The profusion of airborne targets, he said, will make an adversary’s job harder and make it easier for USAF to achieve air superiority at the time and place of its choosing. Hinote did not mention the Next-Generation Air Dominance, or NGAD, system as central to this mission.

The service will soon be doing experiments to examine “what does a unit of combat power look like?” he said. “If they’re flying all of these small unmanned aircraft around … to accomplish different things?” he continued. “I don’t know what that looks like, yet. … We need to experiment with that and exactly how to build those units.” However, he called the work “exciting … because we get a chance to shape that for the next generation of Airmen.”

Air superiority has become “much more challenging,” Hinote said, and “it will require us to think differently than we have in the past.” In fact, “I have a lot of trouble with” the idea of perpetual air dominance. For while total air control was a “prerequisite” to almost all military operations, but Hinote said, “I don’t see [that] as a viable thing to try to establish.” New thinking will be needed about “how we’re going to penetrate into those contested areas and how we’re going to create that effect of air superiority.”

The Air Force will have to put more thinking into defending the homeland from air attack and projecting forces forward to protect allies, he said.

“We are going to have to … reimagine air superiority for the next 40 years,” he said.

Hinote expounded on the need to multiply operating locations to complicate the enemy’s targeting problem, saying the Air Force will transition toward a force that increasingly will be “runway independent,” taking advantage of unmanned systems that can launch from a vehicle or patch of ground using “rocket-assisted takeoff” and recover by parachute, and aircraft that can take off and land either on a short runway or road, or vertically. He said the service must evolve from being concentrated on three or four bases to “tens … to thousands.”

“The best way of defending yourself, … given all the firepower an adversary like China could bring to a fight, is you’ve got to disperse; you’ve got to spread out; you’ve got to be able to take a punch to the point where they can’t concentrate on just a few targets.” That translates to more bases and more—smaller—formations, he said, where decision-making is in the hands of people on the scene applying commanders’ intent, especially if communications are interrupted, as they likely will be.

Adversaries have learned to make their crucial assets, such as air defenses, mobile, and now the Air Force must adopt that mindset as well, Hinote said. “We want to create that same issue for them.”

A Strategy of Denial

The Air Force will apply a “strategy of denial” in its future deployments, he said. “It’s going to be very important for us to create power projection capabilities that can survive and defend in those very contested areas, which means they need to be different than they were before,” he asserted.

Underlying it all will be joint and multi-domain operations, where decision-makers can view agnostically provided intelligence then choose from which domain an effect will be delivered. This, too, will complicate an adversary’s planning and posture, he said.

Asked what key capabilities the Air Force needs, “certainly you’re going to see better weapons. Right now we’re in need of a better air-to-air weapon, a better ship-killing weapon, and a better surface-to-air-missile-killing weapon,” he said.

The service has said little about its AIM-260 successor to the Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile, used for dogfighting, except that it’s meant to redress the advantage that China has with its long-range PL-15 missile. The Air Force is buying the stealthy Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM) in small quantities and has talked about using directed energy systems to spoof or destroy surface-to-air missiles.

“The F-35 of the future will be very different from the one we’re buying today,” Hinote said, as it will have far greater sensing and communicating capabilities to populate a combat cloud of data that all combatant commands will be able to “pull” from. He also said he believes allies should be trusted with far more data and intelligence than they are now, to help them do better in a coalition fight.

The F-35 will be key to creating the data sphere that unmanned aircraft, with artificial intelligence, will use to accomplish their missions, he said.

“Use humans to do what humans do best, and I have a feeling that’s going to change a lot of things,” he said.

Hinote also asserted that small companies—new entrants in defense—will be needed to build the numbers of unmanned aircraft the Air Force will need, with the traditional primes still having “a huge role to play” building “those very military-specific things that really only they can do.”

But the smaller vendors are “an incredibly interesting part of the industrial base” that can make platforms inexpensively with “the potential to produce large amounts of … unmanned aircraft, autonomous collaborative platforms,” Hinote said. “That would be a defense industrial base really worth building, and we’re hoping to see that.”

Air Force Fails Audit Again, Says It’s Made Progress

Nov. 16, 2021 | By Greg Hadley

The Department of the Air Force once again failed its audit for fiscal 2021, but leaders say they’re making progress in cleaning up the department’s books, with hopes of a clean audit later this decade.

The independent public accounting firm Ernst & Young identified 19 major issues, classified as “material weaknesses,” that are preventing the Air Force from passing the audit. That’s down from 22 a year ago and 23 two years before that. The Air Force has been undergoing full financial audits for four consecutive years and has never passed.

“Now entering our fifth year under audit, DAF leadership is growing more eager to demonstrate to both Congress and the American taxpayer the full impact having a clean set of books can have on our mission,” Stephen R. Herrera, acting assistant secretary for financial management and comptroller, said in a statement. “So much so that, in FY21, we refined our approach that not only paved the way for a highly successful year, but set us up to sustain this momentum moving forward.”

Of the three major issues that came off the list this past year, two were downgraded, and one was resolved. In a letter written to accompany the financial report, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall credited those improvements to the Air Force’s development of real-time tracking capabilities and master schedules.

“FY 2021 marked an important maturation point for the DAF’s audit efforts. The rollout of an Integrated Master Schedule is operationalizing our audit strategy and driving a methodical, disciplined approach to track progress and produce on-demand metrics that demonstrate risks, issues, and remediation requirements,” Kendall wrote.

The Air Force’s stated goal is to get a clean audit opinion on its General Fund by fiscal 2026 and for its Working Capital Fund by fiscal 2028.

While full financial audits only began four years ago, the Air Force’s annual financial statements indicate that the department’s General Fund, which supports its core missions and overall operations, and Working Capital Fund, have not passed an audit for at least a decade now. Prior to fiscal 2017, these disclaimers were all based on the department’s financial records not conforming to standard accounting practices.

The entire Pentagon failed its 2021 audit for the fourth consecutive year, the Defense Department announced Nov. 15, with eight out of 26 reporting entities obtaining unmodified audit opinions, the same number as last year.

In 2020, department officials estimated that they would produce a clean audit by 2027. But this year, Michael J. McCord, undersecretary of defense (comptroller), sounded less certain about that timeline in a briefing with reporters.

“When we’re at this stage, where none of the three military departments have a clean opinion, for example, we’re not just close enough in my opinion to say that I know, for sure, it’s going to be 2027 or it’s not,” McCord said.

Amendments Abound as Senate Starts Process of Passing 2022 NDAA

Nov. 16, 2021 | By Greg Hadley

After weeks of waiting, the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act is on the move in the Senate as Majority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) took action on the bill Nov. 15.

The move comes after pressure from members of both parties in the House and Senate urging Schumer to take up consideration of the annual defense policy bill, which is considered “must-pass” legislation every year.

Speaking from the floor of the Senate before he filed a motion to proceed and for cloture on the motion to proceed, Schumer said that “with cooperation, the Senate can and should move through this important legislation that we attend to each year.”

Schumer’s parliamentary procedure starts a process that could take days or even weeks, depending on how quickly Senate leaders want to press forward and whether any senator will raise objections and draw the process out. The Senate is also scheduled to be in recess Nov. 22-26 over the Thanksgiving holiday. Should the process drag into December, it would mark just the third time in the past 11 years that the NDAA has passed the Senate that late.

Also potentially lengthening the debate around the bill are the hundreds of amendments that have been filed in the past few days—791 in total as of Nov. 15. Virtually every member of the Senate has sponsored or co-sponsored an amendment, and as part of his floor speech, Schumer indicated that two more high-priority pieces of legislation will be added as amendments.

First, Schumer said he will include the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act, a bipartisan measure aimed at combating China and boosting investments in research, technology, and manufacturing, as an amendment to the NDAA. The USICA was passed by the Senate in June but has stalled in the House, and Schumer had previously raised the idea of tying it to the NDAA to speed up negotiations.

Schumer also said he will include an amendment to the NDAA that if approved would repeal the 2002 Iraq War authorization. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved such a measure in August, but it was never brought to the full Senate for a vote. Proponents say the Authorization on the Use of Military Force is no longer applicable to the current threats the U.S. faces in Iraq and is overly broad, while critics of a repeal argue that repealing it could have unintended effects and limit the U.S.’s ability to confront terrorist threats.

“The NDAA is the logical place to have that vote on the Senate floor,” Schumer said. “The Iraq War has been over for nearly a decade. An authorization passed in 2002 is no longer necessary in 2021, and in no way will repealing this measure impact our ability to keep Americans safe nor [will it] impact our relationship with Iraq.”

There will be votes on other amendments as well, Schumer promised. But there are not likely to be many. Senate staff are already working through the hundreds of amendments filed, a Senate Armed Services Committee aide confirmed to Air Force Magazine, sorting non-controversial, bipartisan measures into packages that will be adopted en bloc. Other measures will be considered by Senate leadership to determine whether they should be brought to the floor and voted on—in past years, generally between five and 10 amendments have gotten floor votes.

Defense Department

A number of the amendments offered by Senators touch on Pentagon-wide issues.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) introduced a measure to strip language from the NDAA that would require women to register for the draft.

Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) and other Republicans filed an amendment aimed at stopping the Defense Department from reducing the military’s nuclear weapons stockpile, while Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) introduced an amendment that would limit the number of nuclear submarines, land-based ICBMs, air-launched cruise missiles, and B-21s the Defense Department can have.

Several amendments are aimed at the DOD’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate, with efforts from Republicans to either delay the mandate, create exemptions for those who have had COVID-19, or prevent anything other than an honorable discharge for those who refuse the vaccine.

Competing amendments from Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) and Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) would establish studies to look into the 20-year Afghanistan War and what went wrong, with Duckworth’s measure establishing an independent commission and Scott’s forming a bicameral joint committee.

Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) also introduced legislation that would require the service academies to provide Cadets and Midshipmen with their “initial issue of clothing and equipment” at no cost.

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) along with Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) introduced the U.S.-Greece Defense and Interparliamentary Partnership Act of 2021 as an amendment, under which Congress would back selling F-35 Joint Strike Fighters to Greece. Greece has pushed to buy the fifth-generation fighter.

Air Force

Several of the amendments proposed are targeted directly at issues concerning the Air Force.

In particular, Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) introduced an amendment that calls for the Air Force Secretary to look into establishing an Advanced Battle Management System center of excellence. In Warnock’s state, Robins Air Force Base has already been promised some of the ABMS mission as the Air Force looks to retire the E-8C Joint STARS.

The two senators from Ohio, Republican Rob Portman and Democrat Sherrod Brown, introduced an amendment that would require a report from the Air Force on the benefits and costs of maintaining at least 12 aircraft each in the Air Force Reserve Command authorized for specialty missions such as weather reconnaissance, aerial spray, and firefighting.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) submitted an amendment requiring the Air Force to submit a strategy for “the acquisition of combat rescue aircraft and equipment,” while Sens. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) and James Risch (R-Idaho) want a report and a plan from the Air Force for how Airmen will train and operate in environments without access to GPS.

Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) introduced legislation that calls for the Air Force to invest in energy storage and backups for USAF bases with nuclear missions to ensure mission-critical functions can continue in the case of a power shortage caused by “a failure of the electric grid, a cyberattack, or a natural disaster.” Thune’s state of South Dakota is home to Ellsworth Air Force Base, which hosts B-1B bombers.

Space Force

There are fewer amendments currently filed that touch on the Space Force, but one in particular, from Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), could certainly impact the Space Force’s current structure. Inhofe’s amendment would prohibit, starting in October 2024, the use of Air Force personnel to provide operational support for Space Force installations, unless the Secretary of the Air Force certifies that only Air Force personnel are capable of providing the support necessary.

Also as part of the amendment process, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) introduced the fiscal 2022 intelligence authorization bill, which passed out of committee but never received a floor vote, as an amendment. As part of that bill, there would be an annual report “evaluating the partnership between the National Reconnaissance Office and the Space Force.”

Bomber Task Force Europe Completes Mission as Russia Threatens Partners in East

Nov. 16, 2021 | By Abraham Mahshie

As Russia threatens U.S. partners in Eastern Europe with another unexplained troop buildup, 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.

“We are building the agile combat employment framework alongside our allies and partners to launch a cohesive team, postured and ready, to respond to adversary aggression,” commander of U.S. Air Forces in Europe–Air Forces Africa Gen. Jeffrey L. Harrigian said at the conclusion of the mission, which saw integration of fourth- to fifth-generation aircraft, air refueling by partner nations, and use of isolated air bases in nontraditional areas.

The B-1B bombers and nearly 200 support personnel deployed to RAF Fairford, England, for the mission, using British ranges and flying with a variety of Royal Air Force platforms as well as those of other nations, including Turkish KC-135 refuelers and Norwegian F-35 Lightning II aircraft. The strategic bombers also integrated with Romanian, Polish, and Canadian fighters and supported the NATO Air Policing mission over Romania.

In coming days, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III is to meet with his Norwegian and Ukrainian counterparts as the Pentagon closely watches Russia’s latest troop buildup near Ukraine’s border.

“We do continue to see unusual military activity and concentration of forces in Russia, but near Ukrainian borders, and that remains concerning to us,” Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby told reporters Nov. 15. “If you look at our exercise regimen, our exercises are defensive in nature, and they are in keeping with our alliances and partner commitments in the region.”

The Bomber Task Force Europe mission had been previously scheduled and was not directly related to the buildup.

Kirby said the intent of Russia’s movements are not clear.

“We put press releases out about them. We show photos and video of them. I talked about them every day here from the podium. I even will tell you what units are involved, what exercises they are going to be doing, and what capabilities they are going to be testing,” Kirby said of U.S. exercises. “There’s been no transparency from the Russian side about this concentration of forces in the western part of their country, and we continue to urge them to be transparent.”

The bomber task force missions that concluded focused on new tactics that allowed for intercept and escort training between coalition air forces, close air support to ground forces, and counter-maritime missions. U.S. Cyber Command protection also was tested, as was the first refueling with the Versatile Integrating Partner Equipment Refueling kit, a simplified new tool for refueling from coalition bases.

US Army Likely to Field DOD’s First Hypersonic Weapons in Next ‘Year or Two’

Nov. 16, 2021 | By Shaun Waterman

The first battle-ready U.S. hypersonic weapon will be fielded within a year or two by the Army, and the Navy is not far behind, according to the Department of Defense official overseeing research into the emerging and disruptive technology.

The Army’s Long Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW) program has already fielded transporter-erector-launchers and other ground elements, noted Gillian Bussey, director of DOD’s Joint Hypersonics Transition Office. “The only thing that’s missing is the missile,” she said. But, “We’re looking at having that fielded in the next year or two.”

Bussey told attendees of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Ascend space technology conference that the Army program will be the first U.S. hypersonic system “that will actually be deployed and … ready for use.” Bussey called it “a pretty successful effort.”

The Navy’s Conventional Prompt Strike system will follow close on the heels of the Army version because both programs use the Common Hypersonic Glide Body, which, as Bussey pointed out, was successfully tested last year and has now been transitioned into both programs.

For its part, the Air Force has yet to stage a successful all-up test of the AGM-183 Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW), the service’s own boost-glide system. Bussey focused her presentation on the Air Force’s efforts to develop a scramjet—a supersonic combustion ramjet-powered hypersonic cruise missile—dubbed the Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapons Concept (HAWC), a smaller hypersonic system that could be launched from a fighter aircraft.

Without providing new details, she touted a successful Sept. 27 test of the Raytheon-built HAWC, powered by a Northrop Grumman scramjet. She also mentioned Southern Cross, a joint project with the Royal Australian Air Force to develop a scramjet-powered technology demonstrator for a hypersonic cruise missile.

“What’s really nice about this project is we’re able to leverage 15 years of collaboration in Australia in a number of technical areas,” she said.

HAWC and ARRW are both still in testing and technology development—Phase 1 of a four-phase process—that Bussey outlined, although she listed them as “transitioning” to Phase 2, which is prototyping. Phases 3 and 4—fielding and program of record—still lie ahead for all of DOD’s hypersonic weapons programs, she said.

“We think we’re well on track to having a program of record with some of those systems [that we’re prototyping],” she said. “And that’s where you get to this point, the significant quantities that we need to really make a difference on the battlefield.”

Defense experts both inside and outside government have noted that a future war will demand thousands of aimpoints for precision munitions, but only small handfuls of hypersonic systems are being bought at this stage.

Building such a number of hypersonic weapons won’t be possible if they’re too expensive, Bussey warned. Her boss, Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Heidi Shyu, told reporters Oct. 12 that the department needed “more affordable hypersonics” as current systems can be priced at tens of millions per unit.

The Pentagon’s total budget request in the 2022 fiscal year for hypersonics research was $3.8 billion, up $600 million from $3.2 billion the year before.

Bussey said hypersonic cruise missiles, “allow for a lower cost per mission and … for launch platform flexibility,” which can also keep costs down.

The Joint Hypersonics Transition Office, part of the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, was set up with a $100 million budget by congressional mandate in 2019 after concerns that the services’ hypersonic development efforts were duplicative and inefficient. Congressional overseers, Bussey said, “were concerned that across the department, there were too many disparate efforts. We weren’t really getting the efficiency out of the dollars that we were spending, that technologies weren’t transitioning, so they really charged us with focusing on transition and jointness.”

Bussey said her office is also “focused on expanding the DOD hypersonics ecosystem” and has established a university consortium with $20 million in research grants to draw academics into research that would advance the hypersonics development agenda.

Both China and Russia are pursuing hypersonic weapons programs and claim to have made breakthroughs. Missiles that can maneuver at hypersonic speeds are considered very hard to intercept, which makes them a disruptive technology, according to defense analysts. The National Defense Strategy declared hypersonic weapons a top research-and-development priority alongside artificial intelligence, robotics, and directed energy.

How to Break a Program: Funding Instability, Requirements Changes

Nov. 15, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

The fastest ways to hobble a major acquisition program are to put it through the funding instability of continuing resolutions or to apply constant major changes to the requirements once the program is well underway, panelists said on an AFA Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies webinar Nov. 15. The one major aircraft program over the past three decades that escaped serious problems in development and production—the Navy’s F/A-18E/F—benefitted from being largely left alone by Congress and senior Pentagon leaders in these regards.

“If you want to damage a program or make it unsuccessful, create requirement and funding instability,” said Randall G. Walden, head of the Air Force’s Rapid Capabilities Office, which is currently managing the B-21 bomber and Advanced Battle Management System. “The moment you do that, you’re going to break the program.”

Every time he goes to Capitol Hill, Walden said he begs Congress to “please make [funding] stable.” Likewise, changing the requirements—whether driven by Congress or the Pentagon—“drives instability in the program where we may not have the money to cover it.”

The B-21 has gotten high marks from Capitol Hill, and Walden said the program’s success owes much to good communication with Congress, realistic requirements, and stable funding. Changing those aspects “most likely … results in time added, and time added equals cost added,” Walden said.

The Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies discussed its recent paper, “From EMD to Milestone C and Beyond: Common Issues that Affect Developmental Programs Transitioning into Production,” during a Nov. 15 virtual event.

The panel was discussing a Mitchell paper by retired Lt. Gen. Mark D. Shackelford, “From EMD to Milestone C and Beyond: Common Issues that Affect Developmental Programs Transitioning into Production.” Shackelford was the senior Air Force uniformed acquisition officer in his last assignment.

Shackelford looked at major aircraft development programs including the B-1B and B-2 bombers; the C-17 airlifter; the KC-46 tanker; the A-12 joint attack plane; and the F-22, F-35, and F/A-18E/F fighters, and of all of them, only the F/A-18 Super Hornet could be considered a largely untroubled program, he said.

The reasons the Super Hornet was an “outlier” to the other major aircraft projects had to do with a number of factors, Shackelford said.

“There was a good relationship between government and contractor, based on their prior relationship on the earlier Hornet,” he said. The program used “integrated product teams, … strictly controlled requirements, had stable funding—only two minor reductions over 12 years—seven test aircraft, ample time to test, a logical workshare arrangement, and substantial management reserve,” he said.

Shackelford hastened to add, though, that while the F/A-18E/F had some “substantial differences” compared to the F/A-18C/D, the Super Hornet was “not a clean-sheet design, but an evolution of the earlier Hornet.” Most of the other programs examined were pursuing some technologies for the first time.

Of the others, some of their banner problems were that the B-2 “started manufacturing before design was complete,” while the F-22 program “underestimated cost and schedule and suffered from a very aggressive bid from the prime contractor” with an “unrealistic cost and schedule [that] distributed workshare” among three different contractors, “and, later in [engineering and manufacturing development], a hands-off approach” from government, leaving too many decisions in the hands of Lockheed Martin.

The notorious 1980s A-12 stealth program suffered from just about every area in which the Super Hornet excelled, Shackelford said, with an adversarial government-contractor relationship, unrealistic schedule and budget, immature technology, and excessive classification that prevented good oversight.

“Lack of flexibility compounds these management problems,” Shackelford noted. “Not being able to recover from a misstep, or negotiate a solution to an unexpected challenge, can leave government or the contractor to double down on approaches with negative outcomes.”

Government needs to apply “active contract management,” he said. Ideally, it also should “own the technical baseline … and make changes to its contractor approach as needed. The goal is to build trust and partnership, backed up by data and accountability.”

When asked if the existing milestone system is in need of an overhaul, given the need to accelerate programs, Shackelford said no.

“I would go so far as to say that the milestone system is OK,” he said. “But we need to be able to tailor the milestone system to deal with the challenges that a particular program is facing. Things like spreading out a milestone event to multiple mini-milestones is one solution that’s commonly taken with that.“ Walden said this is precisely the approach the B-21 has taken, particularly with software.

The true value of the milestone system is “that it gets the detail of what’s going on in the program up to the very top decision-makers so that they get insight into … the overall status of the program. And we’ve got to be careful to keep them informed,” Shackelford said.

The “key decision-makers are actually part of the audience for this paper … because they’re the ones that control things like funding,” he added. Milestone reviews help create a consensus understanding of expectations for a program and “how to deal with them,” Shackelford said.

He found no universal warning signs that a program was headed for problems “other than the importance of communication.” While good progress has been made in pushing decision-making to lower levels, “in general, the information still needs to flow back up so that these decision-makers do control at the very top level, … so that they’re aware of things and have an understanding of the impact of the decisions that they make.”

Vets Group Calls VA Program to Target Toxic Exposure from Burn Pits ‘Wonky Doublespeak’

Nov. 15, 2021 | By Abraham Mahshie

The White House directed the Department of Veterans Affairs to help veterans exposed to burn pits and other in-service toxic hazards get the care they need, but a leading veterans group says the effort is just more “wonky doublespeak that doesn’t accomplish or change anything.”

During the two decades of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq, a widespread practice of toxic burn pits exposed thousands of service members to carcinogens who have developed diseases decades after service separation, making the veterans ineligible for care if they cannot prove their disease was service related. Despite high-profile efforts by the likes of Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and comedian Jon Stewart, who helped pass similar legislation for 9/11 first responders, numerous bills have floundered. Now the VA is taking another approach through a pilot program and “exposure model.”

“The goal of this new model is to lower the burden of proof for veterans impacted by exposures and [to] speed up the delivery of health care and benefits they need,” a Nov. 11 VA press release stated.

“We are seeking more information from veterans, more evidence from more sources, and looking to take every avenue possible to determine where a potential presumptive illness based on military service location may exist in a more expedient and holistic manner,” said VA Secretary Denis McDonough in a statement. “We want all veterans who may have been impacted to file a claim even if it was previously denied.”

But a veterans group says creating another model to study possible relationships of in-service environmental hazards to medical conditions is not the promise of presumption of disease they need for immediate care.

“This does nothing and is insulting,” said Mark T. Jackson, an Army veteran working on behalf of the Stronghold Freedom Foundation, which represents service members who served at Karshi-Khanabad (K2) Air Base, a secret Uzbek staging base for the invasion of Afghanistan. Veterans assigned there have since developed numerous rare cancers and other ailments.

“The solution is automatic presumption of service connection for ANY veteran who presents ANY illness known to be caused by the carcinogens known to be present in burn pits, radiation, and contaminate soils,” Jackson said via e-mail. “It’s mostly wonky doublespeak that doesn’t accomplish or change anything.”

A White House fact sheet acknowledged there are “gaps and delays” in the scientific evidence showing a conclusive link to adverse health impacts, which include a range of respiratory and gastrointestinal ailments. The result is that many veterans do not have access to VA care.

The new VA “comprehensive military exposure model” goes beyond what science can prove to include other scientific research and factors, but it does not require any changes.

“VA developed a new model to accelerate the decision-making process to consider adding new presumptive conditions,” the statement read.

House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs Chairman Mark Takano (D-Calif.), who sponsored an omnibus bill to help veterans exposed to toxins, said in a statement Nov. 11 that the new model is a good start but that legislation is also needed.

“For too long, veterans have had to prove that they were exposed to toxicants by their government or face waiting decades for the science and presumption decisions to catch up,” Takano said in the statement.

The move will “attempt to reduce that burden and ultimately, speed up the delivery of” benefits, he added.

“We still must pass comprehensive legislation to ensure all veterans exposed to toxins during their service have access to VA’s high quality care and benefits,” he said. “Today’s announcement makes it clear—the momentum is on our side.”

Jackson worries the move just buys the VA more time to look at its own data and practices while sick veterans continue to fend for themselves.

“They are going to review a few diseases with their new model and develop a new one and then give themselves 90 days to then consider a change to rulemaking,” he said. “If that works, they intend to use the model on other conditions with the same non-committal outcome.”

Jackson said veterans must apply within 10 years for some conditions, while for Iraq War veterans, the grace period is just five years. The White House fact sheet calls on Congress to extend the period of coverage after separation for 3 million Iraq veterans.

“This is another betrayal wrapped up in wonktalk and lawyerese that does precisely nothing for K2 vets or any veteran suffering—or who will one day suffer—from diseases caused by burn pits,” Jackson said.

For the Pentagon’s part, spokesperson John F. Kirby said Nov. 15 that Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III would throw his weight behind the effort.

“This is an issue that the Secretary takes very seriously,” Kirby said in response to a question from Air Force Magazine. “[Austin] fully supports the VA Secretary’s desire to make care for these maladies more available and to reduce the burden on our veterans of proof.”