Discover ‘Weapons & Platforms,’ Air Force Magazine’s New Digital Database

Oct. 22, 2021 | By Greg Hadley

Ever wondered when the B-52 bomber made its first flight? What armaments are on the F-35 fighter? Just how many thousands of pounds a C-17 transport can haul? Authoritative answers are now a few clicks away.

Air Force Magazine’s new Weapons & Platforms database builds on our annual Air Force & Space Force Almanac and combines that with recent and relevant news coverage of the system in a new digital format, creating a valuable resource that Airmen and Guardians, as well as content researchers and aviation enthusiasts, can leverage. You’ll find the database on the main navigation bar on every page of this website.

Initially, this new section is limited to 30 aircraft types currently in the Air Force’s inventory—every fighter, bomber, tanker, airlifter, helicopter, and trainer. Additional aircraft, space systems, and munitions will be added in the coming weeks.

Organized by category, each individual airframe has its own page, including an overview of its history, dimensions, capacities, and performance details, and more. The latest news reports related to the airframe follow.

From the VC-25 Air Force One to the A-10 Warthog, you now have a reliable go-to source for insight on Air Force aircraft. Got comments or concerns? Write to Letters@afa.org.

Kessel Run Signs ‘Historic’ Agreement With ACC. Here’s What It Means

Oct. 22, 2021 | By Greg Hadley

As part of a continued overhaul of the Air Force’s approach to software acquisition, the service’s Kessel Run software factory signed what officials called a “historic” agreement with Air Combat Command.

The user agreement, signed Sept. 30 and announced Oct. 20, marks the first time one of the Air Force’s software factories has signed such a deal with a major command.

In previous years, Kessel Run worked with ACC and other agencies mostly through the Middle Tier of Acquisition process, Kessel Run commander Col. Brian Beachkofski told Air Force Magazine in an interview. However, that process, designed for capabilities that can be rapidly prototyped or fielded within five years, still wasn’t quite right for the software that Kessel Run was developing.

Acting Air Force acquisition boss Darlene Costello then moved the detachment to the DOD’s Software Acquisition Pathway, first unveiled in October 2020.

One of the requirements in the Software Acquisition Pathway’s process is a signed user agreement, leading to the announcement between Kessel Run and ACC.

“What’s most important about this is it highlights an area where the acquisition structure and the acquisition roles are making substantial changes to enable software delivery,” Beachkofski said. “There was always this tension in JCIDS and waterfall and static requirements, that it’s hard to do software development for a changing world in a structure that’s built to deliver aircraft and large systems with 20-year acquisition timelines.”

Under the new agreement, the relationship between the MAJCOM and the software factory has been redefined so there is “oversight defined in a way that’s relevant to software as opposed to hardware,” Beachkofski added.

Also required in the Software Acquisition Pathway is a Capability Need Statement, which will be updated yearly, as opposed to just once. That’s necessary, Beachkofski said, because the goal with software is to constantly update and change as needed.

The new user agreement with ACC covers four programs under development, with the largest being the modernization of the Air Operations Center Weapon System program. The Kessel Run All Domain Operations Suite constitutes roughly 80 percent of Kessel Run’s budget authority, Beachkofski said.

KRADOS, a suite of software programs aimed at overhauling how ACC approaches command and control planning and execution, has been in development for some time now. In April, under the old Middle Tier of Acquisition process, it was declared a minimal viable product.

“So Block 20 is the new system that we’re developing, and the software within it are a suite of applications that enable the AOC operators to do their workflows more efficiently and have a common data layer behind all of them,” said Beachkofski. “Essentially, one of the issues with the [old] system is it’s a system of systems where everything is tightly integrated. So it’s hard to make updates and changes to the system and modernize it. So we’re moving to a more modern microservice architecture, where you can make changes, and they’re not tightly coupled with all the other systems so you can keep it modernized more affordably and easier.”

The 609th Air Operations Center at Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar, became the Air Force’s first AOC to operationally use KRADOS to build an air tasking order in May, and the system was once again used during Operation Allies Refuge, which included the noncombatant evacuation operation out of Kabul, Afghanistan, Beachkofski said.

Currently, the 609th is using KRADOS to plan operations for U.S. Air Forces Central. By March 2022, Kessel Run hopes to have the actual execution of air tasking orders operating on the system as well. After that, the goal is to roll it out to all the AOCs, Beachkofski said.

Austin Visits Romania Ahead of NATO Summit, Hints at Future Black Sea Deployments

Oct. 21, 2021 | By Abraham Mahshie

Walking the flight line occupied by Blackhawk attack helicopters and American troops on rotation at the “MK” air base in Romania, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III highlighted the strategic value of one of NATO’s newest members Oct. 20 ahead of NATO defense ministerial meetings in Brussels Oct. 21-22.

“Romania is one of a handful of NATO allies that hosts a significant number of U.S. rotational forces,” Austin said after meeting Romanian Defense Minister Nicolae Ciuca.

“Security and stability of the Black Sea are in the U.S. national interest and are critical to the security of NATO’s Eastern Flank,” he added. “Russia’s destabilizing activities in and around the Black Sea reflect its ambitions to regain a dominant position in the region and to prevent the realization of a Europe that is whole, free, and at peace.”

Romanian security analyst Iulian Chifu told Air Force Magazine that Russia uses information warfare, electronic warfare, and the militarization of Crimea to threaten NATO’s Black Sea allies and partners. Russia also regularly buzzes, or flies low, over NATO commercial and military vessels in the Black Sea.

“We all understand it’s a matter of projection of force,” Chifu said of the growing Russian aggression.

“The problem is Crimea—which according to Russia is part of Russia, and they need to enforce that at some levels that are far overpassing the capacity even to attack anytime Romania, Bulgaria, and Turkey,” he said, naming the three NATO Black Sea partners.

Mihail Kogălniceanu Air Base near the Black Sea coast, known as “MK,” has received millions of dollars in European Deterrence Initiative investment and hosts several hundred American troops on continuous nine-month rotations. The air base is at the southeastern edge of NATO, just a few hundred miles from Russian-occupied Crimea.

In public comments, Austin said Romania plays a “key role” in U.S. freedom of access to the Black Sea.

The Romanian Defense Department has slated $135 million for investments at MK and training facilities at the nearby Capu Midia training area. MK has already been used as a waypoint for American deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, where 27 Romanian troops died in combat over the 20-year conflict.

In part, Romania’s investments have been made to lure additional American troops, which act as a deterrent to Russia.

But Austin was coy about committing more American Soldiers and Airmen to Romania when asked by a journalist if the investments would lead to additional troops.

“Our posture in the region continues to present a credible threat against Russia and it enables NATO forces to operate more effectively should deterrence fail,” he said, citing the ongoing force posture review. “No announcements to make today.”

In June, Romania hosted several hundred American troops as part of the Defender-Europe exercises, including missile defense exercises at Capu Midia. Romania’s 2 percent GDP spending on defense has helped the former communist dictatorship and Soviet ally emerge from behind the Iron Curtain and modernize its defense equipment with NATO interoperable hardware and American technology.

Romania hosts Phase 2 of NATO’s Ballistic Missile Defense system in Deveselu with the only operational Aegis Ashore system, active since 2016. Phase 3 will include an Aegis Ashore system in Redzikowo, Poland. Phase 1 of the missile defense program uses regional American naval assets with Aegis missile defense systems.

Preparing for the NATO Summit

Austin joined NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and defense ministers from the alliance Oct. 21 for two days of meetings that begin NATO’s strategic shift in the wake of the Afghanistan withdrawal.

While the American Defense Secretary was not scheduled to make public remarks until the meetings’ conclusion, Stoltenberg previewed the topics of discussion in a press conference Oct. 20, with a focus on NATO’s turn to technology.

“Future conflicts will be fought not just with bullets and bombs, but also with bytes and big data,” he said. “We see authoritarian regimes racing to develop new technologies, from artificial intelligence to autonomous systems.”

Stoltenberg said this week allies will kick off a $1.16 billion NATO Innovation Fund to develop dual-use emerging and disruptive technologies. NATO will also establish its first artificial intelligence strategy to incorporate data analysis, imagery, and cyber defense.

Stoltenberg also touched on historically low relations with Russia, which closed its mission to NATO this week and the NATO offices in Moscow following the expulsion of eight Russian intelligence officers from Brussels.

He also addressed the threat posed by Russia’s development of nuclear-capable and hypersonic missiles.

“These missiles pose a real threat to security in the Euro-Atlantic area,” he said. “We will not mirror Russia’s actions, but we will maintain strong deterrence and defense.”

In comments from Bucharest the same day, Austin predicted Afghanistan would be a topic of discussion.

“As you would imagine, no doubt, we will talk about NATO’s role post-Afghanistan and some of the lessons learned from Afghanistan,” Austin said.

Stoltenberg promised a “thorough and clear-eyed assessment” of the alliance’s 20-year involvement in the country, which began as a narrow counterterrorism mission and expanded to an “ambitious nation building effort.” Included will be an assessment of the risks of engaging in “big missions and operations outside NATO territory.”

Stoltenberg also expressed confidence that American commitment to NATO had returned after reluctance during the Trump era.

“What we see now is the U.S. administration which is strongly committed to rebuilding, strengthening alliances. And in particular strengthening the trans-Atlantic bond between Europe and North America,” he said.

Asked if NATO at its June 2022 summit in Madrid would give a strong signal to aspiring members, such as Georgia and Ukraine, where Austin visited prior to arriving in Brussels, Stoltenberg demurred.

“We will continue to work on how we can further strengthen the partnership with Georgia, how we can make sure that we both provide political and practical support,” he said.

Climate Change Likely to Lead to Instability, Increased Risks For Pentagon, Report Says

Oct. 21, 2021 | By Greg Hadley

Nearly nine months after President Joe Biden signed an executive order directing the Pentagon to incorporate the implications of climate change in its wargaming, analysis, and simulations, the Defense Department has released its Climate Risk Analysis report.

The report, out Oct. 21, “provides a starting point for a shared understanding of the mission risks of climate change—and lays out a path forward,” Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III wrote in its preface.

It also comes two weeks after the DOD released its Climate Adaptation Plan, intended to guide decision-making as the department deals with the effects of climate change.

By contrast, the Climate Risk Analysis is primarily focused on identifying the different ways that a changing climate will likely challenge national security—both Biden and Austin have cited climate change as a major national security issue.

With higher temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, and more frequent, violent weather events, both first- and second-order effects are likely, the report noted.

“For example, the climate hazard of changing precipitation patterns is expected to cause more frequent and intense droughts in certain regions of the world. Primary impacts of drought include reduced water availability. Secondary impacts include reduced agricultural yields, which, in certain situations, could contribute to migration,” the report reads.

On top of those risks, “malign actors” could try to exploit instability caused by climate change for their own gain, the report added. Both internal and external tensions within certain countries could also be increased if there is competition for a scarcity of resources, leading to more security risks.

In the Indo-Pacific region in particular, key U.S. military installations are on islands that could be threatened by rising sea levels, and adversaries such as China could use the impacts to expand their influence.

While the report notes that “specific hazards, impacts, and risks associated with climate change will differ by region,” its sections on specific regions were deemed “Controlled Unclassified Information” and not included in the publicly released version.

The report does include a map showing the specific impacts of climate change and the resulting potential security implications by region. For U.S. Southern, European, and Africa Commands, the two main implications cited are increased requests for humanitarian aid and disaster relief and increased instability within and between countries.

For Central Command, the biggest potential risks will be increased instability and altered or limited environments for military operations. For Indo-Pacific Command, the potential security implications include disaster relief, limited environments for military operations, and increased demand for DOD support of civil authorities. The latter two are listed as implications for Northern Command, along with an added risk of increased need for transportation, communication, and monitoring in harsh environments such as the Arctic.

Department of Defense Climate Risk Analysis

“To keep the nation secure, we must tackle the existential threat of climate change. The unprecedented scale of wildfires, floods, droughts, typhoons, and other extreme weather events of recent months and years have damaged our installations and bases, constrained force readiness and operations, and contributed to instability around the world,” Austin wrote. “Climate change touches most of what this department does, and this threat will continue to have worsening implications for U.S. national security.”

The Pentagon’s report was one of four addressing climate change released by national security agencies Oct. 21—the Intelligence Community released a national intelligence issue on the topic predicting rising tensions and instability among nations as well—while the Department of Homeland Security released a Strategic Framework for Addressing Climate Change as well as a report on how the issue will affect migration.

Air Force Asks Boeing for E-7A Wedgetail Data for E-3 Sentry Replacement

Oct. 21, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

The Air Force has taken the first step toward a rapid acquisition of Boeing’s E-7A Wedgetail airborne warning and control aircraft to replace the aging E-3 Sentry Airborne Warning and Control System, or AWACS, according to an Oct. 20 business opportunity announcement.

The Air Force announced it’s seeking information from Boeing to perform “studies, analyses, and activities required to ascertain the current E-7A baseline configuration and determine what additional work would be necessary” to make the aircraft compatible with Air Force “configuration standards and mandates.” It didn’t specify when it would be seeking the new airplane.

Senior Air Force leaders, at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber conference in September, said they were looking favorably at replacing the E-3 with the Wedgetail, given its lower operating cost and non-developmental status. Air Combat Command chief Gen. Mark D. Kelly told reporters that to maintain “707-based” aircraft such as the E-3 is no longer feasible. Kelly said he anticipated no significant issues making the E-7 compatible with USAF needs, especially since it was designed and developed in the U.S.

The Air Force, alone among its allies, does not “field a cutting-edge, air-moving-target-indicator capability,” Kelly lamented. Commenting on the AWACS’ age and maintenance issues, he said, “There’s a reason why exactly zero airlines around the globe fly the 707. Because it takes a miracle … every day just to get it up in the air.”

The Air Force has operated the E-3 AWACS since 1977, and since then, NATO, the U.K., France, and Saudi Arabia have acquired their own examples. Japan operates a similar system hosted aboard the 767 airframe. The last E-3 was built in 1992. The aircraft is used to provide long-range detection, tracking, and identification of airborne threats, as well as command and control of friendly fighters, vectoring them toward intercepts of hostile aircraft.

Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., speaking at ASC21, said the E-7 provides “an option to be able to get the capability much faster than if we were to start a new one from scratch.” He called the E-7 “a good platform” that he flew, or flew aboard, twice during his time as commander of Pacific Air Forces. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said the E-7 “could be useful” to shore up the AWACS mission.

The Wedgetail, which uses a fixed blade-like antenna on a 737 airframe—rather than a rotating radome like on the 707-based E-3 Sentry—was developed for the Royal Australian Air Force starting in 1999 and has operated with that service since 2009. It has also been selected by the U.K., Korea, and Turkey to equip their air services, offering interoperability advantages.

Gen. Kenneth S. Wislbach, current PACAF commander, noted that the Wedgetail is “a proven capability” and that he’s been impressed with its performance.

Brown suggested that funding for the E-7 could show up in the fiscal 2023 budget; the Air Force did not release out-year budget plans with its 2022 budget, now before Congress. The Air Force has used new rapid acquisition authorities given by Congress in the last few years to jump-start various prototyping efforts, as well as the F-15EX procurement.

The government wants to evaluate information regarding “diminishing manufacturing sources,” systems engineering, cybersecurity, airworthiness, test data, “spectrum allocation” and “future impacts of Federal Communications Commission forecasted sales of spectrums,” open mission systems, and M-code GPS. It designated Boeing as the only potential supplier of the system.

“The Aircraft Rapid Prototyping Requirements Document [RPRD] has specifically called out the E-7A and it has been determined that this is a sole-source requirement,” the government said.

The Air Force had planned to replace the E-3 with a “distributed” system, similar to what it is pursuing with the Advanced Battle Management System replacing the E-8 Joint STARS, but it has not said anything along those lines since it completed the Sentry Block 40/45 upgrade in 2020. Brown, however, said at AFA’s conference that the ultimate goal is to have a capability “that can be defensible” and suggested that a space-based system could be a solution.

None of the USAF leaders who addressed the E-7 said anything about how many the Air Force might buy, but the service fields 31 E-3 AWACS.

Kelly said a derivative of the Navy’s E-2D Hawkeye, which is a turboprop-powered aircraft with a rotating radome like that on the E-3 AWACS, would not match USAF’s needs.

There is some urgency to getting a Wedgetail acquisition underway, as Boeing is eyeing an end to 737 Next-Generation—on which the E-7 is based—in the 2025 timeframe, hence the “diminishing manufacturing sources” information request. The Wedgetail has much in common with the Navy’s P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft, also in use by several other countries. Boeing pitched a P-8/737-based JSTARS replacement in 2015, but the Air Force dropped that effort in favor of the ABMS.

Pentagon’s Push to Build Up Technology Talent ‘Insufficient,’ DIU Boss Says

Oct. 21, 2021 | By Greg Hadley

The Pentagon’s current efforts to add science and technology talent to its workforce are “insufficient,” especially as the U.S. seeks to counter China’s gains in the field, the director of the Defense Innovation Unit said Oct. 21.

Speaking during a virtual panel organized by the Center for a New American Security, Michael Brown said the Defense Department has a number of programs that bring in the people necessary to bolster its tech efforts, such as the Technology and National Security Fellowship and the Defense Digital Service. But those success stories “are too small relative to what we need for the challenge going forward,” Brown cautioned.

In particular, Brown said, the DOD has a tendency to staff key technology efforts with military officers who may not know the topic as well as civilian experts. At the DIU, which focuses on taking commercial technology and applying it in the military at speed, the goal is “to combine both the military officers that … we really select one by one, along with commercial technology executives,” Brown said. It’s a model he wants the department to follow in other key areas.

“We need to have more blended workforces in the areas of DOD that require that,” Brown said.

Brown is not the first to fault the Pentagon for placing officers in charge of technology programs despite having little expertise in the area. Nicolas M. Chaillan, who served as the Air Force’s first chief software officer, quit the service in dramatic fashion in September with a LinkedIn post that raised the same issue.

“Please stop putting a major or [lieutenant colonel] (despite their devotion, exceptional attitude, and culture) in charge” of technical projects affecting millions of users “when they have no previous experience in that field,” he wrote. “We would not put a pilot in the cockpit without extensive flight training; why would we expect someone with no IT experience to be close to successful?”

Acting Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics Darlene Costello later told reporters the department was considering Chaillan’s critique in how it assigned senior military officers to advanced technology acquisition programs.

As for bringing in more civilians for a “blended” workforce, the Air Force and the broader DOD have to do a better job of recruiting, developing, and retaining talent, argued panelist Loren DeJonge Schulman, vice president of research and evaluation for the Partnership for Public Service.

Too often, DeJonge Schulman argued, government organizations’ solution to the talent gap is to create short-term fellowships or rotations whereby private-sector experts work in public service for a year or two, then leave. Such a concept was championed by former Air Force acquisition boss Will Roper in a recent Politico defense forum, where he advocated for “limited tours of duty” where “[innovators] could solve significant challenges and then easily go back to the private sector where their skills are refreshed.”

The problem with this approach, DeJonge Schulman said, is that it does not develop “sustainable talent models that we can imbue understanding of technology, technology acumen … so that you can actually build policy around them, but not inculcating those into the federal workforce.”

Instead, the Defense Department in particular needs to do a better job of professional development and education for its civilian workforce—while the professional development available to uniformed service members is “very good,” DeJonge Schulman said, it is “atrocious” for civil servants.

“[We need to be] thinking through, how do we invest in civil servants’ professional development, utilize those investments in order to bring them into roles that make sense for them, and then give them challenges and opportunities that meet the need in terms of, if you’ve created this incredible talent, if you’re not actually getting the opportunities to actually succeed and apply those talents, they’re going to want to leave,” DeJonge Schulman said.

Building up the federal workforce’s technology talent should form one prong in a national technology strategy, the panelists argued. Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) introduced an amendment in the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022 requiring the President to draft such a strategy, and he argued Oct. 21 that it is necessary to compete with China.

“We’re in a race with China for the 21st century, but unlike Beijing we have no idea where we want to go or how fast we’re going to get there,” Bennet said. “That doesn’t mean we should be copying them by picking national champions or imposing a ‘one size fits all’ approach, but it does mean we should act urgently to identify priorities, align federal policies and investments, and mobilize the nation in a coherent and enduring way.”

In AI Experiment, UK and US Simulate Adjacent Operations

Oct. 20, 2021 | By Amanda Miller

Held an ocean apart but simulating adjacent military forces, a virtual demonstration Oct. 18 gave the U.K. and U.S. militaries cause to project optimism over someday jointly adopting artificial intelligence “that can learn in the field.”

The test represented “just the first step” on the way to an “experimental trial environment,” according to an Oct. 20 news release. It also demonstrated the “integration of 15 state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms, 12 U.K. and U.S. data sets, [five] automated MT workflows for training and retraining models based on mission needs, and the ability to deploy the models as a service to … end users and platforms.”

The Air Force Research Laboratory leads the U.S.’s side of the AI partnership agreement, made in December 2020 with the U.K.’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, enabling the demonstration. The AFRL didn’t immediately respond to a request for more details about the test scenario and what the algorithms do by press time.

“This research is designed to support adjacent, collaborating U.S. and UK brigades with enduring wide-area situational awareness, which aims to improve decision-making, increase operational tempo, reduce risk to life, and reduce manpower burden,” according to the release. The four-year agreement covers the sharing of technology in research as well as joint experiments that advance the concept of joint all-domain command and control.

In general, machine learning—a branch of artificial intelligence—involves “training” a set of automated procedures, or algorithms, with “labeled” data sets to recognize patterns in new data, make predictions, and improve at the task.

“The demonstration highlighted integrated AI technologies across the two nations, showcasing the ability to share data and algorithms through a common development and deployment platform to enable the rapid selection, testing, and deployment of [AI] capabilities,” according to the release. “It was the first of a rotational series of events” to be hosted by the two countries.

Participants took part from across military services, led from the AFRL’s Information Directorate in Rome, N.Y., and the U.K. lab’s site near Salisbury. Quoted in the news release, the U.S. Army’s chief roboticist in its Combat Capabilities Development Command, Robert W. Sadowski, alluded to aspects of the test, saying, “Advances in robotics and autonomy will make our formations more capable and mission-ready while providing protection to our warfighters through unprecedented stand-off.”

The Air Force has deployed AI algorithms in what Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall described as “a live operational kill chain” during his remarks at the Air Force Association’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference in September. An Air Force spokesperson told Air Force Magazine at the time that the algorithms are available at all of the Air Force’s Distributed Common Ground System sites and any air operations center.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III said at the National Security Commission for Artificial Intelligence’s Global Emerging Technology Summit in July that more than 600 AI efforts were taking place across the department. The federal commission has since completed its work, after publishing a 756-page report, but a private foundation is picking up where it left off.

Meanwhile, the Senate Armed Services Committee on Oct. 19 proposed adding, above amounts proposed by the Biden administration, $600 million to the fiscal 2022 National Defense Authorization Act for AI for unified combatant commands and recruiting AI talent.

Heritage Foundation Ranks Air Force and Space Force as ‘Weak’ in New Report

Oct. 20, 2021 | By Abraham Mahshie

The Heritage Foundation ranked both the Air Force and the Space Force as “weak” in its 2022 Index of U.S. Military Strength released Oct. 20, citing issues ranging from low readiness and misaligned investment in fourth-generation platforms to insufficient space domain awareness and offensive space weapons to match peer capabilities.

Heritage, a conservative Washington, D.C., think tank, rated Air Force capacity and capability as “marginal,” its middle ranking, while scoring readiness and the overall Air Force as “weak” on a five-point scale of very weak to very strong. The Air Force’s low ranking in readiness hinges on an annual average of 130 flight hours for pilots and insufficient investment in fifth-generation stealth aircraft most capable of facing peer adversaries. The Space Force was rated as “weak” across the board.

“On the Air Force, we’re a bit puzzled by its investment strategy,” index editor Dakota Wood said. The analyst said the Air Force was “spending more on research and development to have an Air Force that it would like to have in the 2030s, while it’s not buying enough of current production aircraft to replace its aging current fleet.”

The demands of two decades of war wore out the fleet, which has an average age of 31 years. Research and development dollars continue to outpace procurement, and the Air Force plans to cut 137 fighters and 32 tankers from its fleet by the end of fiscal 2022, leaving it at 69 percent of the Air Force that last fought a peer rival, the report finds.

“USAF currently is at 86 percent of the capacity required” to fight two major regional contingency operations, according to the report. “However, the disposition of those assets limits the ability of the service to deploy them rapidly to a crisis region. While the active fighter and bomber assets that are available would likely prove adequate to fight and win a single regional conflict, when coupled with the low mission capability rates of those aircraft …, the global sourcing needed to field the required combat fighter force assets would leave the rest of the world uncovered.”

Using the 2018 National Defense Strategy as a guidepost, the report cites mission capable rates of between 52 and 74 percent for legacy aircraft (fourth-generation and below) as insufficient to face a peer rival. It also notes a shortfall of 1,925 pilots, a number that improved slightly over the past year due to the lack of commercial hiring during the COVID-19 pandemic. The report also highlighted historic lows in sortie rates at less than 1.5 per week and flying time at 131 hours per year.

The report says the low rates are far below “healthy fighter force thresholds” of three sorties a week and 200 hours a year per pilot.

COVID had a severe effect on flight hours and sorties, the report assesses, and Heritage states that it will take several years of training for fighter pilots to recover what they lost in 2020. “Unfortunately, the Air Force is not moving on that path and will cut 87,479 flying hours from its budget in FY 2022—a reduction of 7 percent,” the report states.

Chart

Description automatically generated — Courtesy of the Heritage Foundation

Senior research fellow John “JV” Venable, 25-year Air Force veteran, told Air Force Magazine the purchase of fourth-generation aircraft over fifth-generation platforms puts the U.S. at a clear disadvantage against a peer rival.

“The Chinese and the Russians do not fear fourth-generation platforms,” he said. “But they do fear the F-35. That says a lot about what we should be buying right now.”

The Air Force asked to buy 12 F-15EXs in its 2022 budget request and included another dozen F-15EXs in its 2022 unfunded priorities list. However, in a notable break from tradition, the service did not request any new F-35 strike fighters in its 2022 unfunded priorities list.

“We could be applying that funding into the fifth-gen fighter force and actually moving the ball forward with regard to capability of our assets,” Venable said.

Neither the Air Force nor Space Force could immediately respond to a request for comment on the report’s findings.

Space Force Gets Failing Grade

Venable said the report rates the 2-year-old Space Force as “weak” based on aging and unprotected satellites, lack of space domain awareness, and insufficient offensive and defensive capabilities.

“The Space Force is not capable of meeting current—much less future—on-demand, operational, and tactical-level warfighter requirements,” states the report.

Venable said the Marshall Islands-based Lockheed Martin radar tracking system called Space Fence, which went online in 2020, only provides updates on the movement of some 26,000 objects every two hours.

“In between those two hours, what those platforms do, those satellites or missiles, … we wouldn’t have known that because of the limitation on our spaceborne and our land-based surveillance platforms,” he said, citing recent reports that China flew a nuclear-capable hypersonic glide vehicle through space in August.

Venable said the Space Force needs radars and satellites with optics to see spaceborne platforms and changes in the domain on a more regular basis.

House Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama agreed that space-based platforms are lacking.

“Space-based platforms, unmanned assets, and more distributed logistics capabilities are essential to deterring China,” he said, also citing reports of the Chinese hypersonic missile test.

“We’re not in a good place,” Rogers told Air Force Magazine in a pull-aside interview when asked about U.S. hypersonics progress an event launch marking the launch of the report. “What I’m telling you is that we’ve got some things going on that are going to put us in a great place.”

Rogers, who keynoted the launch event, cited classified information in the hypersonics area that was “really exciting.” He also said he is not worried about recent Air Force failed hypersonics tests.

“It’s one of the things I keep trying to get members to get accustomed to,” he said. “I want people to push the envelope and fail because every time you test and fail, you learn something. That’s how Kim Jong Un finally developed a missile that could reach the United States.”

The report is complimentary of the President’s proposed $17.4 billion 2022 budget for Space Force, a 13 percent increase over FY 21, but it highlights ongoing growing pains.

Heritage praises Space Force for assimilating 60 disparate offices related to space from across DOD in its first two years, but warned that a significant portion of the 21,200 space professionals that remain in the Army and Navy must be incorporated into the Space Force to “remedy the dysfunctional oversight or command and control issues that the Space Force initiative was intended to resolve.”

The report says it is not likely such transfers will be complete until fiscal year 2024 or later. The transferring of space-related units and missions from the Army and Navy has been delayed by the failure of Congress to pass a 2022 budget.

Venable said the Space Force is also behind adversaries such as China in terms of offensive capabilities in space. He said the U.S. has ground-based blinding assets that can temporarily impede a satellite’s operations, whereas China has anti-satellite missiles on Earth and laser platforms on orbit right now.

“We have no true, at least unclassified, systems that can take an offensive punch to the Chinese,” he said.

Rogers also addressed the Space Force’s apparent lack of space weapons compared to the known capabilities of adversaries China and Russia.

“We intentionally are moving or developing Space Force in a layered effort over a five- or six-year period,” he said. “I expect us to, as it matures, to continue to put more and more money in what they’re developing both offensively and defensively. So, I’m pretty pleased with where we are there. I would like to be pacing that well in other areas.”

KC-46 Completes First F-16 Coronet After Interim Capability Release

Oct. 20, 2021 | By Greg Hadley

Just days after Air Mobility Command cleared the KC-46 to start refueling Air Force F-15s and F-16s, a tanker from the 22nd Air Refueling Wing completed the Pegasus’ first Tanker Airlift Control Center-tasked F-16 Coronet.

Coronets are missions in which a group of fighters are assigned one or multiple tankers to fly with them over an ocean to ensure the smaller aircraft have enough fuel.

The KC-46A from the 344th Air Refueling Squadron at McConnell Air Force Base, Kan., flew to Naval Station Rota, Spain, where it linked up with F-16s from the D.C. Air National Guard’s 121st Fighter Squadron.

The tanker then flew with the fighters, which were returning from a deployment to the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility, across the Atlantic to their home station of Joint Base Andrews, Md.

The Oct. 16-17 mission followed closely on the Oct. 13 “interim capability release” issued by AMC that allowed KC-46s to refuel all variants of the F-15 and F-16 using the air-to-air refueling boom. It was the third such release, after AMC first cleared the tanker to use its centerline drogue, then permitted it to use its boom to refuel C-17s, B-52s, and other KC-46s in some circumstances.

With the most recent release, 62 percent of aircraft that “request air refueling support” from U.S. Transportation Command can now be accommodated using the Pegasus tanker, AMC said.

As the KC-46 has been allowed to take on more missions, the Air Force’s KC-10s and KC-135s have been freed up for other missions. This proved especially vital in August, when AMC’s fleet was stretched thin by the Afghanistan non-combatant evacuation operation that involved scores of airlift and tanker aircraft. This led to the KC-46 performing its first operational missions.

Yet while the tanker continues to expand its mission set, it still has years to go before it is expected to be declared fully operational. The plane’s boom has been plagued by issues, principally with the Remote Vision System, a 3-D video display that has suffered from latency and blind spots in certain conditions. As a result, the KC-46 has previously scraped aircraft when trying to refuel them, which is of particular concern for stealth airframes such as the F-22, F-35, and B-2, which have sensitive treatments to keep their observability low.