Wildfires Challenge Blaze-Fighting C-130 Crews

July 23, 2021 | By Brian W. Everstine

High temperatures and drought across the West are sparking an almost unprecedented operations tempo for Air Force firefighting C-130s and aircrews.

C-130s from three Air National Guard wings and an Air Force Reserve wing are flying missions with the Modular Airborne Firefighting System, supporting the U.S. Forest Service. Activated a month earlier this year than in 2020, they are flying at twice the pace as last year, fighting huge blazes including the Dixie Fire in Northern California.

“You can really see the impact,” said Col. Gary Monroe, commander of 1st Air Force (Air Forces Northern)’s 153rd Modular Airborne Firefighting System Air Expeditionary Group. “The heat, the drought, and all the conditions out there are just very bad for sparking wildfires. … That’s why we’re here, to help with that, and to mitigate any damage or suffering that’s out there for our neighbors, our friends, our families, our citizens all around us.”

First Air Force is the Defense Department’s operational lead for USAF’s efforts fighting the fires, operating under activation by the U.S. Forest Service. The group is headquartered next to the USFS National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho, with MAFFS aircraft flying out of McClellan Airport in Sacramento. The units train early in the year to be ready to go once needed, with this year’s spin-up beginning in April. The Air Force knew “that the fire season could be early,” Monroe said.

For the 152nd Airlift Wing of the Nevada Air National Guard, the activation order came in late June, but what was anticipated as a month of missions has not abated.

Lt. Col. Patrick McKelvey, a C-130 pilot, flew three rotations—including a personal record of nine fire-retardant airdrops in one day—when the activation was extended another month July 20. The wing also flew out another aircraft, with the Wyoming Air National Guard’s 153rd Airlift Wing and the Reserve 302nd Airlift Wing in Colorado also contributing to the fight. The California Air National Guard’s 146th Airlift Wing has been flying support since the early days of the fire season.

“We found ourselves in the situation of kind of scrambling to put together another month worth of a second crew that we didn’t know we were going to need,” McKelvey said. “So, I just told the scheduler, throw me in where you need me. Put me in, coach.”

As of July 22, MAFFS crews have flown 252 sorties, with 247 drops totaling 697,746 gallons on 12 fires.

The typical day of operations starts about 9 a.m. with a mission briefing, with groups such as CalFire and the Forest Service outlining where help will be needed. Once launch orders come out, detailing the latitude/longitude for the area and radio frequencies, the C-130s take off and link up with “air attack”—an aircraft flying higher, coordinating other planes and firefighters below like an E-3 AWACS would in a combat zone.

Once in the fire area, the C-130 then falls in with a “lead plane,” typically a small OV-10 Bronco or a King Air 200, that leads the Hercules through the fire zone. The lead plane uses smoke to signal to the Herk where to start the drop and where to stop, and how to egress the area.

After conducting drops of the red retardant, which crews call “mud,” the C-130 then lands at a nearby tanker base to start the process again.

“We’re just going in and out of tanker bases: landing, shutting down, filling up with retardant … fire back up, take off, and go back to the fire,” McKelvey said. “Most of our days have just consisted of just doing that all day long. Just in and out, back and forth, just hauling mud to the fire.”

For McKelvey, the mission is a big change from his background. A former Navy F/A-18 pilot, McKelvey transferred to the Air National Guard to stay in Nevada while remaining in military service. Though his time in a Hercules is shorter than that of the other MAFFS pilots, the background of difficult flying, such as operating off carriers, translates.

“It’s some of the most dangerous flying I’ve done in my career,” he said. “And it’s high risk, high reward.”

While the C-130 crews try to keep the procedures of dropping the retardant similar to those of regular airdrops—following the same callouts and checklists—the environment is massively different.

Typical airdrop landing zones have been surveyed, with crews knowing the way in and out and ensuring the environmental conditions are predictable. Above burning mountaintops in high temperatures, pilots do not have the luxury of that predictability.

“For us, every situation we go into is unique,” he said. “Nobody has seen it. You’ve never flown that line. You have absolutely no idea what you’re getting into. And we’re going down to 150 feet and doing it far slower than we would normally do an airdrop because of the way the retardant comes out of the airplane. So, it’s lower, you’re heavier at max gross weight, you’re using far more power. It’s hot, you’re at high altitude up in the mountains, canyons, obstacles, trees. Next to flying around the aircraft carrier at night, this is probably some of the most high-risk flying I’ve ever done.”

Crews are wringing out every bit of performance from their lumbering C-130s. Some aircraft have advantages, including upgraded 8-blade NP2000 propellers or the Rolls-Royce T56 3.5 engine enhancement.

“We’re taking off at 155,000 pounds, which is the max gross of the airplane,” he said. “If it was cold weather, it would be great, right? Better performance. But things don’t catch fire when it’s cold. They only catch fire when it’s insanely hot, which affects our performance. So we will be max performing the airplane a lot of the time. And there’s a lot of situations where you’re asking every ounce of performance from the engines.”

The individual units deploy maintainers along with the aircrews to help keep the aircraft flying. The Nevada unit is also in a good position, with its home base only a two-hour drive away, to bring it parts or more expertise. The unit’s home base in Reno is also a divert location for MAFFS aircraft up in California if they have a problem.

The 152nd AW C-130s have flown every day extensively and have not run into a maintenance issue.

“Our airplanes have just been absolute chariots,” McKelvey said.

Weather, however, does have a say. There have been multiple times when a C-130 flew into the fire traffic area behind the lead plane but encountered unsafe conditions—such as high turbulence or hot “dead air” that impacts the aircraft’s performance—and the aircraft commander called off the flight or changed their approach.

“The ultimate decision obviously rests on the aircraft commander on the C-130 to say, ‘This looks good’ or ‘This doesn’t look good,’” he said. “There have been many situations where the aircraft commander looked at a situation and just didn’t feel comfortable and bailed out of it or took a go-around before getting into it.”

Not everyone is up to this mission. “You don’t just have to [just] meet the qualifications—you have to be good as well,” McKelvey said. “Just because you’re qualified doesn’t mean you’re going to do it … the MAFFS instructors and the cadre that are in are kind of the ones that determine whether or not somebody gets selected.”

The MAFFS crew is a small community. “We pick the best pilots, aircrews, and everything else experience-wise to get out there and fly this mission so that they can be the best they can all the time,” Monroe said.

Crews rotate in and out of duty on a weekly basis to stay fresh and avoid hitting the 10-day limit on consecutive days flying. Each unit has about 10 trained crews, and there is no shortage of volunteers.

“We love this mission—this is an outstanding mission—but if we’re called out, that means somebody is losing some property, or in danger, or something like that,” Monroe said. “We never want that, but we are there to help. And that’s why we’re ready.”

The MAFFS mission is unique in its operational requirements while also contributing to protecting the public, said McKelvey, the former Super Hornet pilot.

“In the world I grew up in in the military, I got to do a lot of the things that we trained for, as far as combat, close air support, support the troops on the ground, but I would say 99 percent of the stuff we did was training for something that you hope never happens,” he said. “Whereas this, it’s an operational mission that we get to do in our own backyard for the benefit of our neighbors, community, etc. So when you’re driving a fire line down a residential neighborhood and putting retardant down trying to save homes, and you come back the next day and you see that retardant line and everything on the one side of the line is burned and everything on the other side of the retardant line is still standing, there’s a lot more job satisfaction knowing that you were able to help save someone’s home, someone’s business.”

Lakenheath F-15E Pilot Thanks Spotter Who Alerted Him to Engine Malfunction

July 23, 2021 | By Greg Hadley

An F-15 pilot with the 48th Fighter Wing at RAF Lakenheath, United Kingdom, got to meet the civilian plane spotter who potentially saved his life.

In a Facebook post from RAF Lakenheath, 492nd Fighter Squadron pilot Maj. Grant Thompson was seen personally thanking Ian Simpson, a British aviation enthusiast.

Simpson happened to be watching planes take off at the base July 13 when he noted that one F-15E Strike Eagle was seemingly spewing fire and sparks out of its right rear engine, but the pilot seemed unaware.

According to the BBC, Simpson said he called the base’s switch board and was connected with the 48th Fighter Wing field operations group. From there, Thompson was alerted to the issue and was able to land safely without incident, according to the Facebook post.

“From our perspective, it was a normal takeoff,” Thompson told the BBC, adding that Simpson’s quick actions “100 percent” saved his life as his wingmen later noted that it appeared to be a nozzle malfunction on his F-15E.

Simpson told the BBC that he knew something was wrong when he continued to see sparks coming from the engine after takeoff, realizing then that they were not an afterburner.

Thompson and Simpson met July 20, with Thompson thanking Simpson and presenting him with several gifts in appreciation, including a trucker hat and his 48th Fighter Wing insignia patch.

Images from the original incident started making the rounds on social media soon afterward and picked up traction with local and national media outlets. Observers noted that it appeared that one of the F-15’s F100 engines had a damaged exhaust nozzle.

Little bit of an issue on takeoff for @48FighterWing F15@ThePhotoHour #AvGeek #aviation #aviationphotography @TheAviationist pic.twitter.com/i3hahHcy09
— Matt Smart (@MattSmartie999) July 13, 2021

The 48th Fighter Wing is the only F-15 fighter wing in the U.S. Air Forces in Europe command, and Thompson’s 492nd Fighter Squadron won the Raytheon Trophy in 2017.

Roth Extends Special Leave Accrual Rules for All Airmen, Guardians

July 23, 2021 | By Greg Hadley

Once more, Airmen and Guardians will be able to carry over up to 120 days of leave from fiscal year 2021, acting Secretary of the Air Force John P. Roth announced July 23.

The move, Roth wrote in a memo distributed to the major commands, is aimed at helping service members who have been unable to take leave due to restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic. While more and more of those restrictions have been lifted as of late, “many [Department of the Air Force] service members, through no fault of their own, have found it difficult to manage and reduce their individual leave balances to no more than 60 days,” Roth wrote.

The special leave accrual rules are essentially the same as the ones put into place for fiscal 2020, when the pandemic severely limited travel and movement. All Airmen and Guardians on Active duty and all Reserve and Guard Airmen on Title 10 or Title 32 orders can accumulate up to 120 days of leave, double the usual 60, and keep up to that amount for another three years, now until Sept. 30, 2024.

“Rest and recuperation are vital to morale, unit and personal performance, and overall motivation for Airmen and Guardians. The Department of the Air Force recognizes the importance to provide opportunities for its service members to use their earned leave in the year it was earned and provide respite from the work environment,” Roth wrote.

Airmen and Guardians who have already been approved for special leave accrual for other reasons will not lose leave, and no matter when their special leave exemption is set to expire, they will still be able to carry up to 120 days until 2024, Roth added.

Roth’s decision comes a month after Ramon Colon-Lopez, the senior enlisted adviser to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said in a Facebook post that service secretaries would be allowed to grant special leave accrual at installations and mobile units “where conditions that severely restrict members’ opportunities to take/use leave still exist,” noting that many of the military’s bases have now lifted COVID-19 restrictions.

At the same time, Colon-Lopez also said that service secretaries would be granted “wide latitude” to determine special leave rules for all members.

SpOC Commander Sees Spacefaring Guardians in Future

July 23, 2021 | By Abraham Mahshie

As military operations in space move farther from the Earth, the head of Space Operations Command believes Guardians joining the Space Force now may eventually need to enter orbit or transit through space to make quick decisions to protect American interests in space.

“As we think about future threats, as we think about where commerce may go, human history tells us that where commerce goes, that we have had a need to have a military defense,” Lt. Gen. Stephen N. Whiting told Air Force Magazine by phone from SpOC headquarters at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs.

“We’ll see how that plays out, but if we project out those kinds of trends, it would not surprise me if in the career of young Guardians joining today, we have manned missions on orbit,” he added.

Recent space forays by billionaire space entrepreneurs Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson demonstrate a capability that could benefit the Space Force.

“Just look at what we’ve seen in the last two weeks with Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic,” said Whiting.

“I tell young Guardians who are joining the service today, I think within their careers, if we think about a 20-year career arc, there’s a good chance there will be Guardians either on orbit or transiting through space for some military missions,” he said. “So, the capabilities that we’re seeing now being built in commercial industry, funded by commercial industry, will give us those kinds of opportunities.”

The first billionaire space entrepreneur to reach suborbital flight was Branson July 11 on Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo, reaching 85.9 kilometers before gliding back to Earth after a total flight time of about 13 minutes.

Nine days later, Bezos boarded Blue Origin’s New Shepherd and reached 107 kilometers over an approximately 11 minute flight.

The Space Force currently has two former NASA astronauts within its ranks, Col. Mike Hopkins and Col. Nick Hague. But their practical application as spacefaring Guardians is still unclear. An early Space Force recruiting video with a Guardian wearing an astronaut suit elicited many questions that still have not been answered.

“The reason we have people in space is to do stuff that machines can’t do,” a SpOC spokesperson told Air Force Magazine. “You have to weigh the risk against the benefit. It’s really hard to put people in space, and it’s dangerous.”

The spokesperson explained that the cost and risk of putting people into space still favors having machines operate for military space purposes, but that could change as military operations in space move farther from Earth.

Communicating with satellites and space vehicles operating on distant planets requires long lag times to travel hundreds of thousands or even millions of miles. When a problem arises for a system operating far from Earth, the system must first send a problem signal to Earth. Once received, a solution has to be developed and a command signal sent back.

“When you project that out further, the lag is greater,” the SpOC spokesperson explained.

“When you’ve got a human who’s on the scene making decisions, the OODA loop [observe–orient–decide–act] is shortened. He can react to a situation very quickly,” the spokesperson added. “There may come a day when we need people there making those fast decisions that a computer can’t make.”

Whiting, whose command controls the more than 70 Space Force satellites on orbit, emphasized the visionary nature of the projection.

“There’s a lot that will have to happen between now and then, but it’s exciting that commercial industry is delivering these capabilities at their own costs that we can then potentially leverage in the future for the mission that we foresee coming,” he said. “And those missions could, in fact, extend beyond Earth’s orbit, out to cislunar or beyond as commercial industry looks for those opportunities to expand commerce in those areas.”

Next Two KC-46 Beddowns Will be Guard Locations

July 22, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

The Air National Guard will get the next two tranches of KC-46 Pegasus tankers, at locations to be decided within the next 12 months, Deputy Chief of Staff for Plans and Programs Lt. Gen. David S. Nahom told the Senate Appropriations Committee on July 21.

“The next two beddown locations for the Air National Guard, we’re actually going to have that conversation in the next year,” Nahom said at a hearing to discuss divestitures of USAF aircraft to pay for modernization. “And of the Air National Guard units flying the KC-135 now, we’re going to transition two of those” to fly some of the planned 179 KC-46s, Nahom added.

In May, the Air Force said it’s looking at two Active-duty bases, one of which would host the next 24 KC-46s, and six Air Force Reserve locations, one of which will get 12 Pegasus tankers. The Air National Guard wasn’t mentioned in that announcement.

On July 22, the Senate Armed Services Committee, in its markup of the fiscal 2022 budget, allowed the Air Force to divest just 18 KC-135s from the Active-duty inventory and did not allow any Stratotankers to be divested from the Air National Guard fleet.

Nahom said the Air Force’s plan is to buy out the 179 KC-46As in its contract with Boeing then go to a “bridge tanker” before moving on to a future airplane that would replace the remainder of 300 KC-135s. The Air Force put out a request for information to the defense industry on a “bridge tanker” this week.

“We’re keeping our eyes open to advanced technology,” Nahom said of the KC-135 replacement. “There may be something else beyond the KC-46, beyond a 767-based platform, to take us into the future.” The Air Force has discussed autonomous tankers and stealthy refueling aircraft, including jets far smaller than the 767-based KC-46, as possible future tankers. The service has said it’s keeping an eye on the progress of the Navy’s MQ-25 Stingray tanker, which will operate off aircraft carriers and fly without a human crew aboard.

Nahom noted there are still “seven more years of procurement of the KC-46, so the good thing is, we have time to have these conversations and look at the technologies out there, and make sure that when we get to 179, and go to jet 180, and start replacing the next round of KC-135s, we have the right aircraft.”

Despite advancements in engine technology, especially for future combat aircraft, Nahom said the Air Force sees no reduction in need for tanker aircraft, and that in fact, U.S. Transportation Command has been “working with us” to manage reduction in the tanker fleet to have a minimum impact on USAF operations.

“If your eye is on China … and you look at the distances in the South China Sea, you have to have the gas,” Nahom said.

The Air Force has “over 490” tankers now but is divesting the KC-10, which Nahom said is a well liked platform but “very expensive” to operate, and that the plan is to neck down to 179 KC-46s and 300 KC-135s as soon as possible.

Nahom told Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) that USAF needs more tanking capacity in Alaska to support combat aircraft there. Alaska is the “center of fifth-gen capability” with numbers of both F-22s and F-35s increasing there, he said, and more refueling capability is needed.

“We’re committed” to adding four tankers to the Alaska theater, he said, the only limiting factor being construction of facilities to handle the additional jets and additional “Airmen we send up there.”

KC-135s will not be withdrawn from Alaska “until we can replace them with something,” he said.

When reviewing which two Air National Guard locations will get KC-46s “in the next year,” Nahom said, “we will assess all of the locations and make sure we find the most suitable [ones] through our normal strategic basing process.”

The Air Force fields Active-duty KC-46s at McConnell Air Force Base, Kan.; Reserve KC-46s at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, N.C.; and Air National Guard KC-46s at Pease Air National Guard Base, N.H. Future Active-duty bases are Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, N.J., and Travis Air Force Base, Calif.

SASC Completes NDAA Markup With $25 Billion Extra, New Name for Air National Guard

July 22, 2021 | By Greg Hadley

The Senate Armed Services Committee voted to approve its markup of the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2022, increasing the top line of President Joe Biden’s defense budget by $25 billion while seemingly nixing the possibility of a separate Space National Guard.

The markup was approved 23-3 on July 22 and a summary released July 23, detailing roughly $740 billion in spending for the Defense Department. The Biden administration had requested $715 billion for the department in late May. Included in both versions of the budget is a 2.7 percent pay raise for troops.

“After a lengthy but productive markup, I’m proud this year’s bipartisan National Defense Authorization Act increases the defense topline to the National Defense Strategy Commission’s recommendation of three to five percent real growth,” Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), ranking member of the committee, said in a statement. “This is a big win for our national security and sends a strong message to both our allies and adversaries that America is prepared to stand up for ourselves and our friends.”

Included in the markup, which will now advance to the full Senate, is a name change for the Air National Guard, making it the Air and Space National Guard. Such a move would likely mean there would be no separate Space Guard established.

The question of whether to establish such a Guard has been debated for more than a year now—the Senate Armed Services Committee endorsed the creation of a Reserve component for the Space Force in the 2021 NDAA but asked for more evidence that a Space Guard was necessary. Top military leaders, meanwhile, have backed the idea, including Director of the Air National Guard Lt. Gen. Michael A. Loh, who pushed the idea while he was a major general and the adjutant general for the Colorado National Guard.

In response to queries from Air Force Magazine on July 22, the National Guard Bureau said it does not comment on pending legislation.

The Senate committee markup also does not touch the Space Force’s request for an end strength of 8,400 Guardians, but it would grant the Secretary of the Air Force the ability “to vary U.S. Space Force end strength by a greater degree than is otherwise permitted for the Armed Services in order to give the Secretary additional discretion to build and establish the U.S. Space Force.” It also would temporarily exempt the Space Force from certain grade restrictions to allow the service to build up its base of general and flag officers.

The Air Force, meanwhile, saw its end strength request increased by nearly 1,000 Airmen, from 328,300 to 329,220. The service would also receive additional funding for a new F-35A fighter on top of the 48 it requested, despite not asking for any more F-35s in its unfunded priority list.

The UPL did ask for an extra $360 million for F-35 sustainment, including 20 F135 power modules and weapons system sustainment, and the SASC markup does grant that total, distributing $175 million for power modules and $185 million for weapons systems.

By comparison, the SASC markup includes an extra $575 million for an additional five F-15EX fighters, more than the budget request but less than the $1.376 billion and 12 new fighters included in the unfunded priorities list.

Elsewhere, the Senate committee markup would once again block the Air Force from retiring any A-10s, despite the service requesting to retire 42 of the airframes. In contrast, the markup would permit the retirement of the 18 requested KC-135s and 12 KC-10s—two less than requested for retirement.

Senate Confirms Ortiz Jones for Undersecretary of the Air Force, Hold Remains on SECAF Nomination

July 22, 2021 | By Brian W. Everstine

The Senate on July 22 confirmed Gina Ortiz Jones to be the next undersecretary of the Air Force, giving the service a No. 2 civilian leader while the nominee to lead the service remains in limbo.

Ortiz Jones, along with five other Defense Department nominees, were approved by unanimous consent in the Senate. The vote came exactly one month after the Senate Armed Services Committee advanced her nomination.

The other confirmed nominees are:

Heidi Shyu to be undersecretary of defense for research and engineering.
Ely S. Ratner to be assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs.
Shawn G. Skelly to be assistant secretary of defense for readiness.
Meredith Berger to be assistant secretary of the Navy.
Caroline D. Krass to be general counsel of the Department of Defense.

The confirmations double the number of confirmed leaders within the Pentagon after some nominations have languished for months in the Senate and many positions are without nominees.

During a July 21 press conference, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III said his team is focused on the process of nominating leaders “each and every day, and we continue to work with the White House to make sure that we have quality and qualified applicants to fill these seats.”

Frank Kendall, the Biden administration’s pick to lead the Air Force, is still without a confirmation vote because multiple lawmakers have placed a hold on his nomination. Sens. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) have holds on Kendall, while Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) recently dropped her hold on both Kendall and Shyu after both agreed to extend their ethics agreements.

Ortiz Jones is the sixth woman to be confirmed for the job and the first openly gay person of color to hold the role. She served in the Air Force for three years as an intelligence officer, deploying to Iraq and reaching the rank of captain. She received a master’s degree from the Army Command and General Staff College. She also worked as a civilian for U.S. Africa Command and the Defense Intelligence Agency. In 2016, she joined the office of the U.S. Trade Representative before running for Congress in 2017, losing to Republican William Hurd.

During her confirmation hearing, she cited her uncle, who joined the Navy as a steward, which was one of the only positions available to Filipinos at the time.

“My own service started with a four-year Air Force ROTC scholarship that took me from San Antonio, Texas, to Boston University. I was honored to wear our nation’s cloth. However, similar to my uncle’s limited career opportunities because of his ethnicity, my experience in the Air Force was hindered by the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy,” Jones said in her opening statement. “Yet I, too, remained undeterred because of my desire to serve our country. That experience cemented my resolve to ensure anyone ready and able to serve can do so to their full potential, and accordingly, our country’s fullest potential.”

Secret Global Hawk Successor Due in 2027-2029

July 22, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

The successor to the RQ-4 Global Hawk should be available for service late in this decade, Lt. Gen. David S. Nahom, Air Force deputy chief of staff for plans and programs, told the Senate Appropriations Committee on July 21.

Answering questions on divestitures of systems the Air Force wants to make in order to free up funds for new technologies, Nahom said the Block 40 Global Hawk fleet is no longer survivable against modern air defenses and that its replacement is coming, but not swiftly.

At “the speeds it flies, the altitudes it flies, and the makeup of the aircraft, it’s just not survivable in these contested environments that we’re going to be looking to gather intelligence from in the future,” Nahom said of the Block 40 Global Hawk. But “we rely on it” to meet the Ground Moving Target Indicator mission, along with the E-8 Joint STARS, he told Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.). He noted that the Air Force is starting to retire the E-8s due to their advanced age.

“The Block 40s will be very critical in the next six, seven, eight years, while we go to the ‘what next,’” Nahom said. He deferred further discussion of the follow-on capability to a closed, classified session.

Likewise, Nahom said the MQ-9 Reaper, “as … incredible as it is,” particularly in the Middle East, “is not survivable. It was never designed for what we foresee … in the South China Sea.”

With about 300 MQ-9 aircraft, the Air Force has enough, he said, and will re-jigger how they are organized to save some money on manpower and contract operations. Nahom said it’s “appropriate” to do so now that the U.S. is reducing its footprint in the Middle East.

Asked what will replace the MQ-9, Nahom again said the details are secret.

The Air Force is “bringing on … a family of systems” for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, Nahom said, reiterating, “I’ll have to come back in classified session to talk about that more.”

The Air Force has said it will upgrade some of the MQ-9 fleet with Link 16 datalinks, increased electrical power, longer wings, and new electro-optical systems, as well as an open architecture to rapidly upgrade its capabilities. The service has declined to say whether the upgraded MQ-9s, to be called the MQ-9 Multi-Domain Operations (M2DO) aircraft, will have an electronic warfare mission, given the increased power generation capability.

The 300 extant aircraft are “enough to take us into the mid-2030s,” Nahom said. “We are not reducing the size of the squadrons, or manpower out of those squadrons. What we’re asking is to reduce some of the combat lines in the manner we’ve been flying them in the Middle East.” As they are flown now, “we operate it in a very manpower-intensive way. So we’re looking to reduce some of the combat lines and operate that aircraft a little differently,” he said, without providing details. “We’re not taking any crews out” of the MQ-9 system, he added, and USAF will “transition smartly” to whatever replaces the Reaper.

The aircraft will be used “in competition” with peer enemies but in “places around the world” that are less threatening to the non-stealthy airplanes.

Nahom said he’s “always concerned with what we divest, because I know what the combatant commanders and our Airmen need around the world.” He said he’s “very concerned with readiness,” acknowledging, “We’re not investing in readiness, right now.” The Air Force’s 2022 budget shows stepdowns in funding for flying hours as well as weapon system sustainment, along with other readiness accounts.

Instead, the Air Force is putting its divestiture savings toward new systems, and Nahom said he understood it can be a hard sell because “some of these things are not going to be in service for 10, 12 years, and we’ve got to make sure we continue the investment so they do arrive,” specifically mentioning the B-21 and Next-Generation Air Dominance fighter.

The B-21 will be “critical to our national defense. And we cannot do what we did with the B-2 and only buy 20 of them. We’ve got to make sure that we stay invested, and that is a concern,” he said.

Nahom said he is often asked if the 2018 National Defense Strategy got it “right,” and he said his answer is, “yes, but …”

“I would say the threat has accelerated much more than we would have thought back in 2018,” he asserted.

Shelby responded that in his opinion, China is a greater threat than Russia was during the Cold War because, “The Chinese have the economic base that the Soviet Union never had.”

Nahom replied that while the threat can seem overwhelming, the U.S. has its own advantages, mainly in alliances and partnerships that Russia and China do not have.

SAIC Proves Enterprise IT-as-a-Service Works for Airmen and Guardians

July 22, 2021

Imagine if every time you moved to a new home, you had to connect the electricity, plumbing, and internet all over again. All the wires, pipes, and switches connecting you to the world were your responsibility. That’s how the Air Force operates its information technology. For generations, it’s managed everything itself.

Now that’s changing. The Department of the Air Force is pursuing a future in which it buys all its IT as a service, from cloud computing to networking and from email to the help desk.

Enterprise IT as-a-Service (EITaaS) is a far-reaching vision intended to modernize IT services and keep them updated by putting the onus on the provider to offer best-of-breed technology solutions so Airmen and Guardians can focus on what counts most: Deterring war and fighting and winning, if necessary.

The Air Force is about a year into perhaps the biggest test yet of that concept: a three-year, risk-reduction program on nine bases involving help desk and on-site support and service. Ultimately, EITaaS could encompass everything from desktop equipment and network connectivity to software and network services ranging from email and video conferencing to accounting, personnel, and logistics systems. All of this falls under commercial IT construct of managed services which will lead to cost efficiencies and ensure that the AF and USSF have a 21st century network which paves the way to JADC2/ABMS in the future. EITaaS helps enable the DOD vision of true interoperability.

Basic computer services should be so routine they’re automatic, says retired Air Force Col. Jose Rivera, the program director who leads the EITaaS End User Services program for prime contractor SAIC.

“The aim is to be invisible,” he says. “You don’t want anyone to notice you’re there because the services and tools you’re providing should just work.”

When Airmen show up at their “battle stations,” he said, “they should just sit down and do their job without thinking about the technology.”

Airmen and Guardians today grew up as “digital natives,” Rivera says. They can’t conceive of a world without smart phones and instant internet connectivity. They’re used to downloading an app themselves and having it work right away. They expect technology to work on demand. Having that modern, seamless experience also means attracting and retaining top talent for the Air Force and Space Force.

“So with EITaaS, the idea is to give them that same kind of experience, just like they’re used to with their phones,” Rivera says.

Customer experience — the ‘Holy Grail’

“Delivering that positive user experience for Airmen and Guardians on the ground, that is our Holy Grail,” Rivera says.

Put another way, it’s about giving users a high-end consumer experience. “If you think about Genius Bars with Apple, how do you build that next generation of service desk that is artificial intelligence-enabled, tier zero?” asked Bill Marion, then the Air Force’s deputy chief information officer, in a Federal News Radio interview in 2020. “That went live for about 70,000 Airmen with a ServiceNow platform … work[ing] trouble tickets with speed and agility.”

Moving to an Enterprise IT as-a-service construct for all IT services in the Air Force that is based on commercial best practices and performed by a commercial vendor allows Airmen and Guardians to move focus on defending our country. Commercially operated IT support provides the AF with trained and knowledgeable IT professionals who can help remedy any problem thereby increasing Airmen and Guardian productivity.

For Rivera, it’s about treating Air Force customers as individuals, not trouble tickets. “This is a retail business, not a wholesale business,” he says. “Every interaction is measured. We’re constantly looking at data about how the customers feel about how we’re doing. You win it one customer at a time.”

SAIC is partnering with the USAF on the Risk Reduction Effort (RRE) for End User Services. Ranked by Gartner as the top provider in the U.S. for services in the government vertical in the categories of infrastructure implementation and managed services, and application managed services, SAIC is providing commercial services in an enterprise environment for nine bases:

Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany
Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska
Buckley Space Force Base, Colo.
Offutt Air Force Base, Neb.
Cannon Air Force Base, N.M.
Hurlburt Field, Fla.
Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala.
Gunter Annex, Ala.
Pope Field, N.C.

In addition to 24/7 on-call support, SAIC has field services teams at each location. “We think of these guys as ‘contract Airmen,’ Rivera says. “They are on the front line, every day, and they are fulfilling the operational mission imperative—making sure everything just works.”

The company also has a liaison team embedded with the 16th Air Force to work on cybersecurity issues.

Rivera says it’s important his “contract Airmen” maintain a strong personal touch. “If someone answers one of our surveys and records a bad experience, we follow up with that customer,” he says. “Why was the experience unsatisfactory? How can we make it better the next time? We are very focused on those details.”

The feedback and personal touch are essential because the hardest part about moving to an approach like EITaaS is helping users through the challenges of change.

“The Air Force is nearly 75 years old, and for the longest time, the service provisioned its IT organically,” Rivera says. “IT was provided by Airmen within the chain of command.” Getting used to a different paradigm is difficult, but necessary.

“Commanders grew up with these young officers—I was one of them—managing the IT network and they only needed to pick up the phone to get those folks to jump up and run through walls for them,” Rivera says. To be confident in EITaaS, they have to imagine the same level of commitment. Even better, they need to be confident the system will work whenever, wherever they need.

“As the Air and Space Forces shift focus to mission assurance functions, improved enterprise IT services will allow Airmen and Guardians to maximize time spent on the mission and minimize delays due to inefficient IT,” stated Brig. Gen. Chad Raduege, Air Combat Command Director of Cyberspace & Information Dominance during the opening of the first USAF Tech Café.

Rivera said SAIC applied organizational change management expertise to make the transition as seamless as possible. The company never stops measuring its progress, he said.

“We meet regularly with different stakeholders in the Air Force, from the very senior level all the way down to the Airmen and Guardians in the field. We needed to make sure that we understood their concerns, and addressed them in a positive fashion to make sure that every single one of my customers understands the value that we bring to the mission,” Rivera said. “We reinforce that with every communication.”

The teamwork between the Air Force and SAIC builds brick by brick. “It’s an iterative process,” Rivera said. “It’s not one conversation. It’s every contact. We build trust in our services one customer at a time, one contact at a time.”