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

Sept. 20, 2021 | By Greg Hadley

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sept. 20, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

United CEO Says Veterans Have ‘Leg Up on Everyone’ for Management Spots

Sept. 20, 2021 | By Abraham Mahshie

As an Air Force Academy cadet in the late 1980s, future United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby became aware he would never fly for the Air Force when he was asked by an instructor to close his eyes and fly straight and level in an F-4 over the Gulf of Mexico.

“When I closed my eyes and flew straight and level, I was at a 30-degree left bank,” Kirby recalled in his keynote address at the Air Force Association’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Md.

“And then he said, ‘Now open your eyes and turn it back to flat, and so I felt like it was a 30-degree right bank,” he said. “He laughed at me and said, ‘Well, you’re never gonna be a fighter pilot.’ I’m like, ‘I’m sure he’s right.’”

Kirby went on to work at the Pentagon instead and then entered the aviation industry, reaching the positions of president of US Airways, American Airlines, and United before ascending to United CEO job in May 2020.

Now, he is highlighting the advantage veterans bring to United management, as long as they can make the transition from military hierarchy to private sector independence.

“You’ve got to make the transition successfully,” he said. “With that history and that background, if you can do it, it gives you a leg up on everyone.”

Kirby pointed to United’s Hawaii general manager Ernie Young, who served four tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and was named to oversee the United Airlines flights that helped carry Afghan refugees to the U.S. from Ramstein Air Base in Germany.

“That military background, what he has, what Ernie has, is something that no one in the civilian world could ever have,” Kirby said. “He’s a rock star who has the ability to do more than anyone who doesn’t have that experience.”

Kirby said veterans must be able to leverage their leadership and management skills culled from a career in the military, but also to be creative in a private, meritocracy-type environment.

“There’s a transition from the military, which is very hierarchical and by-the-book, to something that is not hierarchical, that encourages a little bit more individuality and willingness to kind of break the rules,” he said.

It’s the kind of innovation he is now brining to United, which aims to be the first commercial airline to re-introduce transcontinental supersonic passenger flights by 2029, ordering 15 aircraft.

During COVID-19, Kirby also encouraged United to be the first airline to impose a mask mandate and the first to require vaccines, and he partnered with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency on a study to prove that airline filtration systems prevent the spread of the virus.

Kirby said his airline keeps auxiliary power units running so that airflow is continuous before passengers board and after they de-plane to assure the cleanest air.

“If you stand for something, people will run through walls for you,” he said about the controversial steps.

Kirby’s football analogies did not end with air filtration. With a hunch that a global pandemic would hamper the industry into 2022, the United team prepared for the worst and did not ground or retire aircraft when Delta and American retired hundreds of aircraft.

“We’ve got this opportunity now,” he recalled thinking. “They’re all shrinking. They’ve created an opening on the field that we’re going to run through, and so we ordered 500 airplanes in the next few years.”

The bet, Kirby said, is that international and business travel will rebound.

That innovation does not go as far as unmanned aircraft, nuclear-powered aviation, or suborbital rockets, such as the recent Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin efforts offering space forays for the super-rich.

Kirby said unmanned aircraft still face a cyber threat and that rocket propulsion is far too costly with a huge environmental impact. The executive prefers to invest in development of electric airplanes.

Asked by AFA executive vice president, retired Maj. Gen. Douglas L. Raaberg, what he learned at the Air Force Academy that has colored his thinking and leadership style, Kirby reflected for a moment.

“I loved my time there—well, especially the further away from it I was,” he said to laughs from an auditorium filled with uniformed Airmen and Guardians. “I realized that I learned a lot. I learned discipline. I learned do the right thing. I learned, ‘No excuses, sir.’”

Air Force Leaders: ‘We Are Out of Time,’ China Has Caught Up

Sept. 20, 2021 | By Amy Hudson

The Air Force’s futurist has an alarming message for Congress: “We are out of time.”

Lt. Gen. S. Clinton Hinote, deputy chief of staff for strategy, integration, and requirements, told reporters at the start of the Air Force Association’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference on Sept. 20 that the Department needs to modernize its forces now, divesting equipment that won’t stand up in a high-end fight, or face the reality that defeat is inevitable.

“As somebody who is cognizant of the evidence at all classification levels, cognizant of what’s going on in our exercises … our training, I believe the light is blinking red,” Hinote said. “Why? Because it used to be that when we did future war games, we were having trouble when we set the war game five, 10, 15 years out into the future. … It used to be a future problem. But what has changed since the last time we sat in this building two years ago, is that it’s not a future problem. … It is a current problem.”

Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. in his keynote address said China’s People’s Liberation Army has the largest aviation forces in the Indo-Pacific and the largest conventional missile capability in the world, and is actively fielding hypersonic missiles. China also is establishing bases around the globe, often in places where the U.S. already has a presence.

China has said its armed forces will be fully modernized by 2035 and “world class by 2050,” said Brown, who noted that “China continues to move its modernization timelines left at a rate of change that is outpacing the United States.”

“The day after the last C-17 left Kabul, I was in the Indo-Pacific where a graver threat is manifesting, where the risk and stakes are high,” Brown said. “We must move with a sense of urgency today in order to rise to the challenges of tomorrow, because the return to strategic competition is one of our nation’s greatest challenges. Strategic competition may not be as stark or obvious as a 9/11-like event, but it can be just as catastrophic. We cannot wait for a catastrophic crisis, whether it be sudden or insidious, to drive change for the Air Force and the Joint Force. If we do, it will be too late.”

Hinote said the Air Force is not having success in war games fought with today’s technology.

“The people we would use tonight, the platforms we would use tonight, are not going well,” Hinote said. “What we’re finding is that in key areas of the competition between China and the United States, … we’re pairing. In a few important areas, we’re behind—tonight. This is not a tomorrow problem. This is a today.”

Hinote didn’t elaborate on the areas where the U.S. is losing to China, but he did highlight what the Department plans to do about it. It must:

Modernize its two legs of the nuclear triad. For the Air Force, this includes the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent to replace the aging Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile and bringing on the new B-21 bomber.
Divest equipment that won’t stand up against a peer competitor such as China. Hinote says the service can no longer afford to maintain seven fighter fleets and must reduce the force to just four fleets. USAF wants to modernize the F-22 Raptor until the Next Generation Air Dominance platform comes online; the F-35 strike fighter will serve as the backbone of the fighter fleet; the F-15E and F-15EX (which he called a 4.5 or 4.6-generation aircraft) will replace legacy C- and D-variants; and a modernized F-16 is needed for the homeland defense mission.
Expand aerial refueling capability. Hinote views tankers as a three-step process. The KC-46 Pegasus, once dubbed KC-X, will fill a void in the short term, while the KC-Y will take advantage of existing technology to relieve some of the pressure on the service’s KC-135 fleet in the near term. KC-Z will be the developmental tanker and will consider things such as stealth, speed, and whether it is a manned or unmanned platform, Hinote added.
Invest in artificial intelligence. “We are going to need development pathways to field large amounts of autonomous—not just unmanned but fully autonomous—systems,” Hinote said. “That is part of our future.”

But Hinote acknowledged the Department of the Air Force can’t make these changes on its own. It not only needs buy in from important stakeholders such as Congress, the administration, and internal parties within the Department of Defense, but they also all need to be on the same page about the need for change and the pace of that change.

“We haven’t had that yet. That’s just the honest truth,” Hinote acknowledged.

That’s why he repeatedly called the Air, Space & Cyber Conference the “most consequential conference that I have been part of,” saying the Department doesn’t plan to waste this opportunity to raise its voice and get its message out.

“I am very concerned about the direction of our force,” Hinote said. “I lead the part of the Air Force that’s called Air Force futures. We call ourselves the voice of tomorrow’s Airmen. I am concerned that tomorrow’s Airmen will not have what they need to defend the nation in their time, if we don’t change now. We are out of time.”

In addition to changing Air Force culture, Brown said the service must also change its relationship to the defense industry, echoing the need to make a compelling case to external stakeholders to accelerate change, using “defensible analysis and evidence” to back up its case.

“We will succeed in this endeavor only through cooperation of both traditional and emerging industry opportunities to streamline processes and incentivize intelligent risk taking,” he said. “If we do not get our relationship with industry correct, we’ll end up with fifth-generation fighters shooting fourth-generation weapons against a sixth-generation threat,” Brown cautioned.

Kendall Promises ‘We Can Do Better’ at Fighting Race and Sex Discrimination

Sept. 20, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

Department of the Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said the lesson the Air Force and Space Force should take away from the sudden collapse of the U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan is that divisions in that government and nation were responsible.

Within the Department of the Air Force, he said, surveys show conclusively that the Air and Space Forces are not providing opportunities for all their people fairly. He pledged to embrace diversity and to act to improve the department’s performance in issues related to diversity. He also expressed alarm that one third of all USAF women have reported sexual harassment, and he promised to address the issue with urgency.

“My intent is to actively address each of these issues,” Kendall said. “There are some programs already ongoing in each of these areas. The Department has not ignored them by any means, but I believe we can do better.”

With regard to sexual assault and harassment, “We will be implementing the Independent Review Commission’s recommendations and any statutory guidance regarding separate reporting and prosecution channels that comes out of the Congress this fall. I intend for the Department of the Air Force to be ready to implement that guidance immediately once it becomes law.”

Kendall praised the efforts of Airmen to evacuate both military and civilian personnel from Afghanistan, chalking it up as one of the unique capabilities of the Air Force to accomplish such a feat. However, he said the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban offers a lesson “that we, as Americans, and we as Airmen and Guardians, should not miss.”

That lesson—“painfully clear”—is that the Afghan government and military “were not ‘one team’ engaged in ‘one fight.’ Even when faced with an existential threat to their freedom, they could not overcome their internal divisions and unite against a common enemy. As a direct result, the people of Afghanistan have lost their freedom.” The Department of the Air Force, the U.S. military, and the nation need to recognize the need to act in unison to address common threats, he said.

He also pledged a closer working relationship with industry members and to exploit the expertise resident in the academic and nontraditional industrial communities to address the threats faced by the DAF.

“There is not a moment to lose,” Kendall asserted.

Space Force Reveals Insignia for Enlisted Ranks

Sept. 20, 2021 | By Greg Hadley

Chief Master Sgt. of the Space Force Roger A. Towberman unveiled the insignia for the new service’s enlisted ranks Sept. 20, with nods to its Air Force roots and heavy use of deltas and hexagons.

The base design for Specialist 1s features a dark blue hexagon, with a white delta in the middle. “The six-sided border surrounding the insignia represents the USSF as the sixth branch of the U.S. Armed Forces,” the service said in a statement. The hexagon has also appeared in the emblems for the service’s three garrisons.

For grades E-2, E-3, and E-4, the insignia adds horizontal stripes, inspired by a proposal from Chief of Staff Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg in 1952 for the Air Force’s insignia, as the service was first developing its own identity separate from the Army. Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif., is named in his honor.

“We honor his vision with our modern rendition of the classic concept,” the Space Force’s statement reads. “Space Force specialist stripes represent ‘terra firma,’ a solid foundation of skills upon which the Space Force, represented by the Delta, is built.”

For noncommissioned officers, the insignia features traditional chevrons: three for sergeants, four for technical sergeants. It also has the “Delta, Globe, and Orbit,” representing “the totality of our Space Force.”

Senior noncommissioned officers add what the Space Force calls “orbital chevrons” atop a globe. These chevrons represent low-Earth, medium-Earth, and geosynchronous orbits, the service said, with the delta placed above the globe and in orbit to signify the “higher level of responsibility” and “willingness to explore and innovate” of master sergeants, senior master sergeants, and chief master sergeants.

For Towberman’s own rank, Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force, the new insignia adds back the delta over the globe, as well as a pair of stars and a braid around the Delta, Globe, and Orbit.

Since its founding in December 2019, the Space Force has revealed its emblem, official flag, and service-specific ranks. However, the service is still developing its own uniforms, grooming policies, and PT standards. Officials have said the new uniforms will be revealed by the end of 2021.

Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force Roger A. Towberman announced today the new design of the #SpaceForce's enlisted rank insignia. #SemperSupra pic.twitter.com/2O6P441u8h
— United States Space Force (@SpaceForceDoD) September 20, 2021

Collins Aerospace Advancing Rapid Capabilities Evolution Through Open Systems

Sept. 20, 2021

At Collins Aerospace, we understand the need for a more agile, connected battlespace. We achieve this through open systems. Our customers consistently mention these recurring challenges:

Breaking vendor lock
Leveraging new and commercial technologies more quickly
Speeding the development and deployment of new capabilities to the warfighter, while minimizing impacts to airworthiness certifications

With vitally important generational efforts such as the Next-Generation Air Dominance platform and the Advanced Battle Management System ramping up, maximum flexibility and openness is increasingly important. At this month’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference we are exhibiting several capabilities aimed at helping the Air Force tackle its biggest challenges.

An Open Systems Leader

Developing open systems for three decades, Collins is uniquely positioned to provide solutions that allow our warfighters to continually adapt and overcome a threat environment that seemingly changes daily. Through our open and modular avionics, mission and connectivity solutions, we offer a cost-effective approach that allows customers to protect their previous investments while also upgrading and fielding new technologies more frequently.

Software Open Standards

The DOD favors more open and readily upgradable systems. For example, the Future Airborne Capability Environment or FACE™ focuses on developing reusable, portable software components, providing many benefits to end customers considering ‘from scratch’ software development, which can be a large cost driver for military programs.

Through our active involvement in the open standards community, we realize this new environment requires a new way of thinking. As a founding member of the FACE Consortium, Collins has been closely involved in advancing and maturing this critical multi-service open standard. Additionally, we have taken the lessons learned over the past 10 years and applied them to our product development efforts.

We remain committed to developing FACE Certified products. Many of our products completed the official FACE Conformance Certification process and are listed within the FACE Registry. Examples include:

MFMS-1000 which provides civil-certifiable RNP RNAV navigation, flight plan management and guidance capabilities
LVPC-1000 Localizer Performance with Vertical Guidance Calculator
Auto Avoidance Re-router (ARR-7000), to name a few.

Raytheon Technologies, our parent company, has the most FACE-conformant software components outside operating systems than any other company.

Collins is also a founding member of the Open Mission Systems (OMS) program Collaborative Working Group (CWG). We have remained actively involved in the development of the OMS and Universal Command and Control Interface (UCI) standards as well as the tools used to support development of Open Architecture Management (OAM) compliant systems. In addition, Collins remains an active participant in various experimentation and industry events. Collins’ sensors, including its SYERS-2C and MS-177A, have been used in multiple demonstration and flight test events integrating OMS and Common Mission Control Center (CMCC), which required significant involvement with the CMCC consortium.

Enabling Next Gen Air Dominance. Courtesy: Collins Aerospace

Hardware Open Standards

On the hardware side, Collins has been active in developing Hardware Open Systems (HOST) compliant capabilities for many DOD programs, including the KC-135 and KC-46. Leveraging HOST standardized framework, our product lines use 3U components including: single board computers, avionics I/O, networking video mixing, power supplies, and backplanes to build up more complete systems. A number of our cards and components are also designed to align to the Sensor Open Systems Architecture™ (SOSA™).

Our product line approach uses common and standardized hardware and software building blocks that can be reused across numerous products and platforms. This includes our mission computer product line, which conforms to the 3U form factor and OpenVPX standards. This approach results in increased modularity, interchangeability of new technology and the reuse of hardware design across legacy and future platforms. This supports our customers’ need for affordability, rapid upgrades and long-term sustainability.

Third Party Integration

By building to common open interfaces and standards, Collins enables government customers or third parties to independently integrate new applications on our systems. Another way Collins is an industry leader in third party integration is our involvement with ARINC-661, a widely used 2D graphics industry standard for both civil and military aircraft. We self invested to develop a toolkit used by dozens of companies, ranging from small businesses to OEMs, to integrate their equipment into Collins and third-party systems. Benefits of this toolkit approach include minimizing the cost of adding new display functions to the cockpit, better managing obsolescence in a rapidly evolving environment and allowing OEMs or end users the ability to standardize their Human Machine Interface (HMI) in the cockpit.

Digital Backbone

Our enterprise-wide open systems approach also supports ongoing efforts around developing a “digital backbone.” This approach provides technologies that are focused on providing basic infrastructure to place digitally enabled components in an aircraft and effectively maintain them over an aircraft’s lifecycle. Collins’ digital backbone also enables customers to more rapidly and frequently upgrade and integrate new products and technologies. Doing this successfully requires systems designed in such a way that third parties and other customers can readily be integrated into the environment without Collins involvement.

Another key aspect of our digital backbone efforts is ensuring that simple changes don’t impact numerous aircraft systems. To help with this, Collins has developed and demonstrated a method of securely separating safety-of-flight critical systems from other mission systems. This separation significantly shortens integration and deployment times, as certification efforts are minimized for those critical systems that are partitioned, resulting in faster airworthiness recertification. As a result, customers can more frequently upgrade, providing not only benefits to cost and schedule, but, as importantly, having aircraft systems that can evolve more rapidly than the ‘block upgrade’ cycle.

Conclusion

Collins Aerospace takes an enterprise approach to developing solutions architected around open systems to provide customers more control over their platforms, allow for greater mission flexibility and enable easier and faster advancements over time as new capabilities are tailored and integrated into their programs to meet evolving mission needs.

Please visit our website for additional information or contact J.R. Skola, jr.skola@collins.com, to schedule demonstrations.

About Collins Aerospace

Collins Aerospace, a unit of Raytheon Technologies Corp. (NYSE: RTX), is a leader in technologically advanced and intelligent solutions for the global aerospace and defense industry. Collins Aerospace has the extensive capabilities, comprehensive portfolio and broad expertise to solve customers’ toughest challenges and to meet the demands of a rapidly evolving global market. For more information, visit CollinsAerospace.com.

Kendall: Modernize Now to Counter China

Sept. 20, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

China is “acquiring a first-strike capability” with its nuclear forces, and the Department of the Air Force does not have “a moment to lose” in modernizing its conventional and nuclear capabilities, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said in his keynote address at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference.

Kendall confessed he “worked hard to get this specific job” because of his grave concern about China’s military advance—saying his priorities are “China, China, and China”—and said the Air and Space Forces are the key national security instruments to match and deter China’s capability. He also warned Congress that the Air Force will fall behind its Chinese counterparts if it must continue to field irrelevant gear for the sake of constituent jobs.

He revealed that the Air Force has five B-21 stealth bombers in production, and Kendall is scrutinizing the Advanced Battle Management System, which he called “not focused,” to get it to do what the service needs it to. He also pledged faster prototyping and better linking of prototypes with quickly-fielded capabilities.

China has moved away from a “wise and prudent” policy of maintaining a credible “minimal deterrent” nuclear force, Kendall said, and he noted recent revelations in the press that China has embarked on a furious pace of building ICBMs and silos.

“Whether intended or not, China is acquiring a first-strike capability,” Kendall declared. While “No one could rationally desire or plan to initiate a nuclear war”—and he said he’s convinced “China does not”—the missile-building program is cause for deep concern and creates the possibility of “a catastrophic mistake.” The Air Force does not have “a moment to lose” in modernizing its own nuclear forces and matching China’s surge in conventional capability.

To that end, Kendall said five B-21 stealth bombers are in production at Northrop Grumman’s Palmdale, Calif., factory. Program officials have forecast a first flight in mid-2022.

Kendall said that since 2010, he’s been “pounding the drum about how serious a threat” China’s military modernization program is to “the ability of the United States to project power” in the Indo-Pacific.

China is “increasing inventory levels and the sophistication of their weapons and modernizing redundant systems throughout the kill chains that support their weapons,” he explained. These include “hypersonic weapons, a full range of anti-satellite systems, plus cyber, electronic warfare, and challenging air-to-air weapons.”

China has also “invested smartly in anti-access area denial systems designed to defeat US power projection,” with “precision weapons of steadily increasing ranges” and steadily growing numbers, Kendall said.

The range of these weapons has “gone from a few hundred miles to thousands to literally around the globe,” he added, going “from a few high-value assets near [its] shores to the second and third island chains,” and most recently to intercontinental ranges and even to the potential for global strikes from space. China is rapidly fielding new “aircraft carriers, air bases, and logistic nodes in their near abroad.”

Kendall is a West Point graduate but said if the U.S. is going to “win the ‘one fight’ to keep our freedom, it will be because of the success of our Air and Space Forces.” While he respects the roles of the other branches, “without control of space and the air domains, their missions become all but unexecutable.”

“Only the Air and Space Forces have the ability to control the global high ground. Only the Air and Space Forces can project power on short notice to anywhere that it is needed. Only the Air and Space Forces have the ability to confront and defeat aggression immediately, wherever it occurs,” he said. “Only the Air and Space Forces have the ability to come to the aid of our global allies and partners with little to no notice when and where aggression occurs.”

To be stronger, “we are going to have to change,” Kendall said. “Our strategic competitors have studied how we fight, and they have taken asymmetric steps to exploit our vulnerabilities and to defeat us. We have to respond with a sense of urgency, but we also have to take the time necessary to make smart choices about our future and our investments.”

Kendall said he came into office just a few days before the fiscal year 2022 budget request was submitted and noted that it “did not comply with every piece of direction the Department of the Air Force has ever been given by Congress, which seems to have some very strong views on the importance of retaining aircraft that we no longer need and that do not intimidate China. The costs of these aircraft are consuming precious resources we do need for modernization.”

He urged Congress not to cling to “legacy systems” that don’t address existing threats, let alone future ones, and asked members to set aside constituent interests for national ones.

Frequently during his confirmation process, he said, it wasn’t unusual to have a “senator agree with me” on the need to address the Chinese threat “and in the same breath to tell me that under no circumstances could the—take your pick—C-130s, A-10s, KC-10s, or MQ-9s in that senator’s state be retired, nor could any base in his or her state ever be closed or suffer losses that would reduce local revenues.”

The Air Force “will not succeed against a well-resourced and strategic competitor if we insist on keeping every legacy system we have,” he warned. “Our one team cannot win its one fight to deter China or Russia without the resources we need and a willingness to balance risk today to avoid much greater risk in the future. I do understand the political constraints here, and I’m happy to work with Congress to find a better mechanism to make the changes we need, but we must move forward.”

Kendall said the Air Force shouldn’t be “doing demonstrations and experiments unless we can link them to true operational improvements and unless they move us down the field to lower-risk acquisition programs.” He plans to strengthen these links and “use state-of-the-art analytical tools to do so.”

He said he views the Advanced Battle Management System as not having “adequately focused on achieving and fielding specific measurable improvements in operational outcomes.” He will push to “keep our eye on the ball,” meaning “focusing on the fielding of meaningful military capability into the hands of our operational users. It does not mean one or two leave-behind unmaintainable token prototypes that came out of an experiment.”

The Next Generation Air Dominance program, he noted, has been underway in one form or another since 2012 and “has demonstrated key technologies in an experimental risk reduction prototype that is directly on the path” to a new fighter. He said it’s “more than a next-generation tactical aircraft, however; it is a coordinated systems-of-systems approach to air dominance.”

Space Force is “pursuing a space-based ground moving target indicator, or GMTI, capability,” that will “replace a portion of the JSTARS sensing capability,” Kendall said. “It will surpass the range limitations of current air platforms, and will provide capabilities in both contested and non-contested environments.”

His “observation from outside of government for the last few years is that the Departments of Defense, and of the Air Force, have embraced the idea of innovation and the pursuit of innovation without adequate attention to how innovation should be harnessed to specific operational performance improvements.” That will change under his leadership.

“We must be open minded and objective about the operational doors that technologies like autonomy, artificial intelligence, microelectronics, data analytics, and others can open for us,” Kendall asserted.

He also urged a faster pace to embracing new operational concepts, noting that “we are not accustomed to contending with a capable peer competitor. Even our most senior military leaders have little to no experience dealing with a peer competitor,” and the service has lost much of our ‘muscle memory’” in this regard, having focused on violent extremists for decades.

“We need a strong sense of urgency, but change for change’s sake isn’t the answer. If we don’t get the direction of change right, our actions will be counterproductive, and we will continue to squander our most precious resource, time,” he warned.

Kendall said he’s deeply concerned about surveys that show conclusively that the Air Force isn’t providing opportunities for all its people fairly and pledged to take action to embrace diversity. He also expressed alarm that a third of all USAF women have reported sexual harassment and promised to address the issue with urgency.

With regard to sexual assault and harassment, “we will be implementing the Independent Review Commission’s recommendations and any statutory guidance regarding separate reporting and prosecution channels that comes out of the Congress this fall. I intend for the Department of the Air Force to be ready to implement that guidance immediately once it becomes law.”

He also pledged a closer working relationship with industry members and to exploit the expertise in the academic and nontraditional industrial communities to address the threats faced by the Department.

“There is not a moment to lose,” Kendall asserted.

AFSOC Seeks ‘True Amphibious’ Capability for MC-130J With Demo Flight in 2022

Sept. 20, 2021 | By Abraham Mahshie

Air Force Special Operations Command needs a “true amphibious” platform to enhance capabilities in the Indo-Pacific theater and plans a demo flight of an amphibious version of the MC-130J by late 2022.

AFSOC commander Lt. Gen. James C. “Jim” Slife said the command is at an “inflection point.” It will increasingly prioritize support to the Air Force, rather than Special Operations Command, and seek capabilities to operate in an island environment in the South China Sea and East China Sea. In that effort, AFSOC is moving forward to make its most versatile and flexible platform, the MC-130J, capable of personnel infiltration and exfiltration, logistics, resupply, and personnel recovery in aquatic environments.

“Our regional focus around the world has obviously shifted,” Slife said at a media roundtable at the Air Force Association’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Md.

“The Indo-Pacific Region writ large is, you know, it’s obviously a region most appropriately characterized by the vast bodies of water that are there,” Slife said. “Rather than wholesale, clean-sheet acquisition programs, we need to be looking at how to use the relatively modernized fleet that we have in new and novel ways.”

AFSOC recently announced efforts to develop a twin-float amphibious modification of the aircraft. Slife said digital engineering will make a flight test of one aircraft possible in calendar year 2022.

“If there is a way that we can use an MC-130J in an amphibious capability, that’s something we’re very interested in,” he said.

“Right now, this is a bit of an experimentation effort to see if it can be done,” Slife added, noting that an acquisitions plan had not yet been developed. “Ideally, we’d like to do a flying demo next year … that is a very aggressive schedule for something of this nature.”

Slife said AFSOC has already considered a variety of configurations. Digital design and digital engineering will make the flying demo possible in late 2022, but he could not say when procurement and fielding of the new amphibious platform would be possible.

“It’s going to depend on how that demo turns out, what performance trade-offs would be required in order to field that capability,” he said. “We haven’t made any decisions on whether we would field that for the entire fleet or a number of kits that would be available when needed.”