A Star is Born: New KC-46 Demo Team Flies First Show

Nov. 15, 2024 | By David Roza

There’s a new player on the air show circuit: the world’s first KC-46 Pegasus demo team debuted at a Texas airshow last week, marking the latest first for the Air Force’s new aerial refueling tanker.

The demo team performed at the Wings and Warriors Fly-In at San Marcos, Texas on Nov. 9, according to a Nov. 14 press release by the 97th Air Mobility Wing at Altus Air Force Base, Okla., home of the 56th Air Refueling Squadron, which hosts the demo team.

During the show, the team performed a high-speed pass at just 500 feet with the refueling boom extended, followed by a pass with the gear and flaps down.

“The team showcased the KC-46’s air refueling and slow-speed maneuvering capabilities,” Maj. Gary Sowa, 97th Operations Group KC-46 demo team lead, said in the release. “This gave spectators a glimpse into the aircraft’s versatility.”

Air Force fast-jet demo teams such as the Thunderbirds and the F-22 demo team make a splash at airshows with their tight turns and sneak passes. But the “heavies,” the term for larger aircraft such as transports and tankers, are no less impressive for their size and grace.

The 140-ton C-17 transport, for example, shows off its ability to take off and land in just a few thousand feet of runway, while tankers mimic their refueling mission by putting their boom down as another aircraft trails behind it.

Air show fans may have to wait a while before they can see the KC-46 team’s next act. The 97th AMW Public Affairs office told Air & Space Forces Magazine that the team will not perform any more shows in 2024 and is yet to announce its full 2025 schedule, but it will perform at the Altus Airpower Stampede Open House & Air Show scheduled for April 12-13, 2025. Once the rest of the 2025 lineup is solidified, it will be published on the wing’s Facebook page.

Flying a tanker is a team effort, and there are 13 total KC-46 aircrew members—seven pilots and six boom operators—at the 97th AMW certified to fly the demo team profile, the public affairs office explained. The minimum and typical aircrew during a demo performance consists of two pilots, one boom operator, and one pilot serving as a safety observer for a total of four aircrew. One of those crew members is Tech Sgt. Lacy Pickett, a boom operator.

“Being part of this demo team is very meaningful, especially as a woman in this field,” she said in the release. “We’re showing the public how far we’ve come in the KC-46 community and proving just what we’re capable of.”

Any Air Force unit worth its salt has a distinct shoulder patch, and KC-46 demo team sports one with a unique take on the emblem of the 56th Aerial Refueling Squadron. The emblem features a bird wearing a graduation hat watching over a smaller bird without one, which symbolizes the squadron’s mission as an aircrew training squadron.

The demo team version features that same design but with the silhouette of a KC-46 with its boom extended splashed on the right-hand side, the words “KC-46A Pegasus” scrawled across the top, and “97 AMW Demo Team” along the bottom.

A KC-46 Pegasus aircraft from Altus Air Force Base, Oklahoma, executes a fly-over at the Wings and Warriors Fly-In at San Marcos, Texas, Nov. 9, 2024. U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Jonah Bliss

The crew took out a special tail for the debut last week. It sported a black-and-white triangle symbol known as the Triangle Y, the marking assigned to the 97th AMW’s predecessor, the 97th Bombardment Group, during World War II. Each of the three aircraft types at the 97 AMW (C-17s, KC-135s, and KC-46s) has a jet with the Triangle Y painted on the tail in tribute to the wing’s long history.

“There is not a jet permanently assigned to the demo team, but the team coordinates with the 97th Maintenance Group to fly the KC-46 with the Triangle Y tail flash when it is available,” the wing’s public affairs office explained.

Last week’s debut marked the latest first for the KC-46, which Airmen from the New Jersey-based 305th Air Mobility Wing flew to the Middle East late last month for the tanker’s first-ever operational deployment, though the tanker had flown one-off operational sorties before that. The first KC-46 was delivered to the Air Force in 2019, and Air Mobility Command cleared it for worldwide deployments and combatant commander taskings in September 2022.

The older KC-135 tanker has a demo team, and now the Pegasus will show off the future of Air Force aerial refueling.

“With each demo flight, we’re not just showing what the KC-46 can do,” Sowa said. “We’re reshaping its story, growing as a team, and inspiring future Airmen.”

Silver Star Airpower: Inside an F-15 Mission to Block an Attack on Israel

Nov. 15, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

This is the first in a multipart series based on exclusive interviews with nine Airmen who helped respond to Iran’s April 13 attack on Israel. For the rest of the series, read Part 2, ‘Air Force Fighters Kept Going Amid Chaos’ and Part 3, ‘Did We Do Enough?’

RAF LAKENHEATH, U.K.—Flying their F-15E Strike Eagle through the Middle Eastern night on April 13, pilot Maj. Benjamin “Irish” Coffey and weapons system officer Capt. Lacie “Sonic” Hester anticipated picking up signs of Iranian one-way attack drones and missiles launched at Israel.

Sure enough, Coffey said, “we get a radar hit, and another, and another, and another.” To be sure the blips were missiles and not cars on the ground, Hester cued the jet’s air-to-ground targeting pod to get visual confirmation.

“She recognizes there’s no roads in that area. It’s just open desert,” Coffey said. “So all these radar hits that we get, 20 to 30 of them at that initial [sweep], were real, and they were headed west.”

Those hits represented the leading edge of some 300 ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and one-way attack drones in a barrage that was Iran’s first-ever direct attack on Israel and perhaps the largest drone attack in history.

USAF fighters helped defeat the attack, downing 80 drones in one of the largest displays of combat airpower in decades. On Nov. 12, U.S. Air Forces in Europe commander Gen. James B. Hecker decorated 30 Airmen at RAF Lakenheath for their contributions to that mission, awarding Coffey and Hester Silver Star Medals for their heroism.

The events of April 13, Hecker said at the ceremony, were a clear sign that “the nature of warfare has changed, especially when it comes to … one-way UAVs.”

The 494th Fighter Squadron, nicknamed the Panthers, deployed to an undisclosed Middle East location in October 2023 after Hamas’ attack Oct. 7 attack on Israel, and over the course of the next five months downed several Iranian one-way attack drones, breaking new ground for the Air Force.

Iran’s drones have been a common feature in Russia’s war on Ukraine, but the U.S. did not have much experience countering those threats, a niche weapon that falls between a missile and air-to-air combat.

Coffey took that experience, “essentially reviewing everybody’s tapes … and then everything he had known and studied,” said Capt. Brian Tesch, a young weapons system officer with the unit. “He wrote a paper of like, ‘Here’s how you will execute if you find a drone out there.’”

Coffey’s tactics development soon proved crucial. Israel launched an attack that killed senior figures in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Syria on April 1, and Iran vowed to retaliate. The 494th braced for the response.

“We were on kind of an alert status for about a week, week and a half, leading up to that point,” said Maj. Clayton “Rifle” Wicks. “We knew that there was going to be some sort of large-scale attack. How big we didn’t quite know, and when exactly we didn’t quite know.”

Anticipating that the attack would likely come at night, the squadron kept at least two jets in the air, plus extra crews on the ground ready to go within 30 minutes. The days dragged on. Then, on April 13, Coffey and Hester were one of the crews scheduled to fly the first six-hour shift, alongside squadron commander Lt. Col. Curtis Culver and Lt. Col. Timothy Causey. Wicks, having flown the night before, was the “operations supervisor,” acting as a liaison with the Combined Air Operations Center and other command-and-control elements.

U.S. Air Force Maj. Benjamin Coffey, 494th Fighter Squadron pilot, suits up at RAF Lakenheath, England, for a deployment to an undisclosed location in Southwest Asia, Oct. 13, 2023. U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Seleena Muhammad-Ali

“There were a couple nights leading up to that point where we’re like, ‘tonight’s going to be the night, or we think tonight’s going to be the night,’ and then it wouldn’t happen,” Wicks said. “So then April 13 rolls around, it was kind of like that again. I didn’t show up for my shift that night being like, ‘tonight’s the night.’”

Capt. Matthew “Pepper” Eddins and Capt. Garrett “Bull” Benner were one of the crews on alert status. They too “didn’t really think much was going to happen that night, to be honest,” said Benner.

Intelligence reports suggested otherwise. Wicks began giving crews whatever new information he got as they walked out the door.

“Things were just happening so fast out there that it was pretty much a sort of a pickup game. … I remember feeling guilty that I couldn’t do more for them, before launching my friends out into the darkness to who knows what,” Wicks said. “So that part was tough.”

The alert crews—Eddins and Benner and Capt. Austin Leake and Capt. Stepan Volnychev—took off with the first scheduled formation, putting four aircraft in the air. F-15s from the 335th Fighter Squadron at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, N.C., which had just deployed to the region, were also airborne, as were F-16s from the D.C. Air National Guard’s 113th Wing. Wicks was monitoring a command-and-control feed when the F-16s started to engage.

“A message comes across that just says … like Viper 72 is ‘Winchester,’ which means they are out of missiles. They have no bullets left. They have nothing,” Wicks said. “And I remember, I got chills, and the hair on the back of my neck stood up, because that was the first time I was like, ‘Oh my gosh. Command and control can’t keep up with the amount of missiles that are being shot and things that are happening.’ And that’s the only message they got across.”

In the air, Coffey and Hester were tasked as mission commanders, responsible for multiple “lanes” of airspace that the formation had to defend. Now, they faced an attack on a scale they had never seen before—flying at low altitude into the night.

“I first get hit with dread, recognizing the numbers we were seeing,” Coffey said. “This wasn’t a small-scale or a chest-thumping show of force. This was an attack designed to cause significant damage, to kill, to destroy, and now we are on literally the leading edge of firepower, able to try to do something about that. And that lasted maybe for 10, 15 seconds, and then training kicked in, and it was time to get the job done.”

Confronted with more targets than they could possibly hope to take down by themselves, the aviators started prioritizing the one-way attack drones.

As Coffey and Hester directed aircraft where to go, the other aviators quickly fell back on their training and started executing.

Weapon Systems Officer Capt. Lacie Hester prepares for a weapons check ride aboard her F-15E Strike Eagle in 2021.

“The first reaction, it was really exhilarating, a lot of adrenaline, especially to finally see the picture that we did see of the tons of radar contacts across the scope,” Benner said. “After that though, once we kind of realized that we were getting into a flow, then it was just fun.”

“As we’re turning away just so we can build some more space from the next wave, you look back and you see drones impacting the ground, like, ‘Oh, they got another one. They got another one,’” added Eddins. “Looking a few miles away, and you see another one impacts: ‘Oh, the Vipers got another one.’ And then you hear from your flight lead, Hey, turn hot, so pitch your aircraft back around and target again. ‘Here we go again,’ and it’s just almost repetitive at that point.”

It didn’t take long for every aircraft in the formation to exhaust their firepower. In the span of about 20 minutes, most of the fighters had fired off all eight of their air-to-air missiles. Coffey and Hester had “hung ordnance”—a missile that didn’t fire for one reason or another, and were forced to return to base, while Eddins and Benner waited another 10 or 15 minutes for more fighters to arrive with fresh firepower and to direct them using their own radar, before turning back themselves.

“I think that’s when I started to realize where the drones were and where we’re going, we’re somewhere around there, and if anything in this group gets through, then this is going to be a danger on the back end,” Eddins said. “So that kind of starts setting in. It really, really started to kick in when the ballistic missiles started blowing up overhead, as Israel started shooting them down.”

To complete the series, read Part 2, ‘Air Force Fighters Kept Going Amid Chaos’ and Part 3, ‘Did We Do Enough?’

494th Fighter Squadron Decorations

Silver Star Medal

Maj. Benjamin Coffey

Capt. Lacie Hester

Bronze Star Medal

Maj. Clayton Wicks

Master Sgt. Timothy Adams

Distinguished Flying Cross

Lt. Col. Curtis Culver (V)

Lt. Col. Timothy Causey (V)

Capt. Logan Cowan (V)

Capt. Gabriel Diamond (V)

Capt. Trace Sheerin (V)

Capt. Brian Tesch (V)

Capt. Matthew Eddins (C)

Capt. Garrett Benner (C)

Capt. Austin Leake (C)

Capt. Stepan Volnychev (C)

Capt. Claire Eddins

Capt. Carla Nava

Capt. Kyle Abraham

Capt. Eric Edelman

(V) indicates a Valor device, (C) indicates a combat device

Air and Space Commendation Medal

Capt. Alexander Thennes

Master Sgt. Michael Bialaski

Tech. Sgt. Brandon Brown

Staff Sgt. Sarah Moir

Staff Sgt. Kendra Wertsbaugh

Staff Sgt. Daniel White

Air and Space Achievement Medal

Staff Sgt. Michael Wright

Staff Sgt. Ethan Tarver

Senior Airman Ardo Dia

Senior Airman Sanders Joseph

Senior Airman Rico Sanchez

Airman First Class Treyvon Walker

U.S. Airmen and families gather to recognize Airmen during a ceremony at RAF Lakenheath, England, Nov. 12, 2024. Airmen from the 494th Fighter Squadron, 494th Fighter Generation Squadron, and supporting units were recognized for their contributions during a defensive operation against hundreds of one-way attack drones, formally known as one-way attack unmanned aerial vehicles, and missiles launched from Iran and Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen against Israel April 13-14, 2024, while deployed in the U.S. Central Command’s area of responsibility. U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Seleena Muhammad-Ali

Integration is the ‘Manhattan Project’ Facing Air Force Leaders

Nov. 14, 2024 | By John A. Tirpak

“Integration” will be the key to future Air Force success and will be the key to achieving war-winning advantage over adversaries in the future—if USAF can pull it off, senior USAF leaders said Nov. 13.

“It’s so important, I would offer that it’s the Manhattan Project of our generation, and hopefully, we can get there first,” said Lt. Gen. Michael G. Koscheski, deputy commander of Air Combat Command, at AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies Air Force Futures conference.

The original Manhattan Project produced the atomic bomb that helped end World War II, a monumental secret project drew together some of the world’s best minds with the singular goal of producing the world’s first atomic weapon.

Likewise, integration is “really difficult, varsity-level stuff,” Koscheski said, requiring the Air Force not only to align its own capabilities and structures, but to connect with the other services and with allies to complete “the long-range kill chain.” The aim: That targets detected and confirmed by one military service or nation can be “finished” by another, he said.

“We talk a lot about platforms and weapons, and those are very important,” Koscheski said. “But the network and integration piece is key.”

Integration is a central theme to the Air Force’s “re-optimization” drive, launched in February. Conceived by Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, the push includes multiple references to integration, including the creation of a new office to oversee integration and a new command responsible for integrating requirements and capabilities.

The Integrated Capabilities Office stood up in July within the Secretariat and is responsible for coordinating efforts related to the core operational imperatives and cross-cutting enabling functions across the Air Force. The Integrated Capabilities Command, not yet fully assembled, is supposed to absorb the requirements roles that now belong to Air Combat Command, Air Force Global Strike Command, and Air Mobility Command, centralizing the requirements process in a single command.

That decision remains controversial among some Air Force leaders, who worry that divorcing requirements from operations could undermine combat effectiveness.

The Air Force has said the ICO will facilitate Integrated Development Campaign Teams led and staffed by operational experts from the newly formed U.S. Space Force Space Futures Command and U.S. Air Force Integrated Capabilities Command, along with acquisition professionals from Air Force Materiel Command’s Integrated Development Office and multiple Space Force acquisition organizations.

Doug Young, Northrop Grumman vice president of strike systems, cited the B-21, built by Northrop, as exemplifying the integration of multiple capabilities and platforms. B-21 was conceived as a “family of systems,” Young said, and the idea of integrating the B-21 with a host of offboard sensors and platforms was “baked in” from the outset.

“I don’t really think that a ‘family of systems’ concept necessarily has to be considered a cost problem to overcome,” he said. “There are a lot of existing systems, and…connecting them is not a big cost driver. In many cases, it’s not technical. It’s actually people and policy; how we get those information streams to the platforms quickly.”

Koscheski also said the Air Force is “doing pretty good” in terms of developing the end of the kill chain: munitions. The service is working on a range of all-new weapons that are able to fly further and will be harder to spot and stop.

It’s also making progress on “affordable mass,” which could be achieved with large numbers of relatively inexpensive one-way munitions. While Air Force is buying high-end “counter-maritime” munitions—such as the AGM-158 Long Range Anti-Ship Missile—and new longer-range air-to-air weapons, “the problem is, they’re expensive.”

USAF wants to complement those with “Franklin,” a Defense Innovation Unit initiative to develop long-range weapons for $100,000 per round, rather than $1.5 million or more.

“Franklin” is named for Aretha Franklin in a nod to her hit song “Respect;” the idea behind the weapons si that an enemy must “respect” hordes of cheap incoming missiles and devote defenses to them, which could make it easier for manned or unmanned aircraft to penetrate air defenses and survive.

In Franklin, the Air Force will have “a…$100,000 weapon that can go about 500 miles and can punch a hole in a ship.” While those weapons do not necessarily have to do that, adversaries will be “threatened and [therefore] honor those weapons,” he said. “That mass will make our…weapons more effective and more capable.”

The B-21 bomber is designed for flexibility so it can rapidly accept a wide variety of weapon loadouts.

“The Air Force is going through a complete redo, really, of what kind of weapons are out there,” Young said. “Most of the weapons that we’ve been talking about in previous years were developed in the ’90s. And there’s really a generation that’s coming online with new weapons, many of them tailored for exactly the kind of missions that we’re talking about in terms of operating in anti-access/area denial areas, and really doing new things, unique things, in order to deal with” heavily-defended airspace.

These emerging weapons will be integrated with each other to achieve the effects they’re built to deliver, he said.

“It’s really about…connecting those things,” Koscheski said. “A lot of good work has really started to happen now that many of these systems are out operating.”

Koscheski said a decade of work is paying off, giving the Air Force increased “ability to be able to adapt and tie into those networks and take advantage of off board” sensors.

As Military Suicide Deaths Rise, DOD Hopes For ‘Unprecedented Investment’ In Prevention

Nov. 14, 2024 | By David Roza

The Department of Defense hopes an “unprecedented investment” of about $261 million in the fiscal year 2025 budget will boost suicide prevention efforts as the number of Active-duty military suicide deaths continues to rise.

On Nov. 14, the department released its latest Annual Report on Suicide in the Military, which found that 523 total force service members died by suicide in calendar year 2023, compared to 493 in 2022. That’s a five percent increase, but the Active-duty component saw a 12 percent increase from 331 deaths by suicide in 2022 to 363 in 2023.

The rates are similar to that of the U.S. population when adjusted for age and sex differences, officials said, but they cautioned the year-to-year increase is not statistically significant, meaning it may just reflect normal variation.

“While I know 12 percent may seem like a large change, reaching statistical significance requires changes in multiple factors which are less visible in relatively small populations with relatively small event counts,” Dr. Elizabeth Clark, director of Defense Suicide Prevention Office, told reporters on a media roundtable.

One thing that is statistically significant: a long-term rise in Active-duty suicide deaths since 2011, officials said.

“These longer-term analyses are more robust than the year-to-year comparisons, and for the longer term, we continue to see a gradual, statistically significant increase in the active component suicide rates from 2011 to 2023,” Clark said.

military suicide — Military suicide deaths from 2021 to 2023. (Screenshot via 2023 Annual Report on Suicide in the Military)

Other key findings are summarized below:

Enlisted males under the age of 30 accounted for 61 percent of suicide deaths in the Active component

Among Active-duty suicide deaths, firearm was the most common method of injury (65 percent) followed by hanging/asphyxiation (28 percent)

92 percent of Active suicide deaths occurred in the continental U.S., typically in areas with large populations of service members such as California, Texas, Virginia, and North Carolina

The Reserve suicide count increased from 65 in 2022 to 69 in 2023, while the National Guard count decreased from 97 in 2022 to 91 in 2023, but the long term suicide rates for the Reserves and National Guard remained stable from 2011 to 2023, neither increasing or decreasing.

Fewer spouses and dependents died by suicide in 2022 (the most recent year available) than in each of the two previous years. But the long-term rates increased between 2011 and 2022. In 2022, 93 spouses died by suicide, along with 53 dependents.

Within a year of their death, 44 percent of Active-duty troops who died by suicide reported intimate relationship problems, 42 percent reported a behavioral health diagnosis, 29 percent reported administrative/legal problems, 24 percent reported workplace difficulties, 12 percent reported financial difficulties, and 2 percent experienced assault or harassment. The figures are not mutually exclusive, so victims could have reported multiple stressors.

One troubling sign from the data is how many suicide victims sought mental health help: 67 percent had a primary care encounter in the 90 days prior to their death, 34 percent had an outpatient mental health encounter, 8 percent were discharged from an inpatient mental health facility, and 18 percent were on psychotropic medication at the time of death.

Prevention Efforts

The report comes amid a yearslong effort from the highest level of the Pentagon to curb the rising number of suicide deaths. Last year, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin started a prevention campaign guided by recommendations from the Suicide Prevention Response and Independent Review Committee (SPRIRC).

The campaign follows five lines of effort: foster a supportive environment; improve the delivery of mental health care; address stigma and other barriers to care; revise suicide prevention training; and promote a culture of lethal means safety (i.e. encourage safe firearms storage).

In a statement, Austin said the department has completed 20 of the 83 steps on a prevention to-do list. Clark said the department has implemented a year-long media campaign to raise awareness of suicide prevention resources; hired more than 1,000 staff to work with leaders to make command climates free from abuse and harm; recruited and retained more behavioral health providers; started studying its suicide prevention and response training for areas of improvement; and worked with firearm retailers near bases to offer discounts for safe firearm storage devices.

Part of the issue is that DoD does not always know which efforts are effective, said Dr. Timothy Hoyt, Deputy Director of the Office of Force Resiliency for the Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness.

“In many cases, we may have had effective programs but weren’t measuring whether or not they were having a substantial impact on the overall number,” Hoyt said. “And so going forward, it’s our commitment through these SPRIRC-enabling actions to really invest in tracking these efforts and finding those things that are the most effective.”

$250 Million

More money could change that: in its fiscal year 2025 budget request, DoD is requesting $261 million to implement SPRIRIC, Hoyt said. For comparison, SPRIRC received $17.8 million to implement 10 prevention efforts in fiscal year 2024. Austin described the potential windfall as “an unprecedented investment in suicide prevention,” and the $261 million is just a slice of a larger $547 million effort towards suicide prevention.

“We have witnessed that principled leadership and focused resource investment makes a difference and can decrease harmful behaviors,” Austin said.

Part of the money would go towards ensuring non-medical counseling systems are “robustly implemented” and sustainable, Hoyt said. That effort lines up with comments then-Chief Master Sgt. of the Air Force JoAnne Bass said at a leadership symposium in February.

“When I talk to our mental health providers, they tell me that out of every 10 Airmen that come to mental health, only two need clinical mental health support; the other eight just need to know someone cares,” she said. “There is a shortage of mental health providers, but there is not a shortage of leaders and wingmen. We have to embrace community and talk to one another.”

Another effort is improving predictability in service members’ day-to-day lives, which Hoyt said helps troops spend time with their family and stabilize their careers. The report offers few details on how that effort would percolate across the services, but commanders have made similar calls in the past.

“If I had one gift that I could give to the Airmen of Air Mobility Command, it would be predictability,” then-AMC boss Gen. Mike Minihan told Air & Space Forces Magazine in September. “We have to … still provide, to the best we can, predictability so their professional and personal lives are not continually in a state of chaos.”

Troops can also expect to see “much more dynamic” suicide prevention training that “meets them where they are,” Hoyt said.

“I think we’ve heard loud and clear the message from the front lines that previous suicide prevention training–whether slide decks or just videos that people watch without any facilitation–were not working,” he said.

Suicide prevention overlaps with other military quality of life issues: some of the steps on the to-do list include improving child care programs and spouse employment, and reviewing military pay tables. Others include making it easier to hire behavioral health professionals, making it easier to schedule tele-behavioral appointments across state and international boundaries, and creating tools for leaders to facilitate difficult discussions.

“There’s still much more work to do,” Austin said, “and we won’t let up.”

Service members and veterans who are in crisis or having thoughts of suicide, and those who know a service member or veteran in crisis, can call the Veterans/Military Crisis Line for confidential support available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Call 988 and press 1; text 988; or chat online at VeteransCrisisLine.net/Chat.

Air Force Electronic Warfare Chief Sees Limits to AI

Nov. 14, 2024 | By Shaun Waterman

Artificial intelligence and machine learning may in the future offer important capabilities to the Air Force’s radio frequency warriors, who confront America’s enemies in the electromagnetic spectrum—but that day is still some time off, according to their commanding officer.

“When it comes to cognitive [electronic warfare, or] EW, I just don’t see that we’re there yet,” Col. Larry Fenner Jr., the commander of the 350th Spectrum Warfare Wing, said at AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies inaugural Airpower Futures Forum Nov. 13.

By cognitive EW, Fenner explained, he was referring to the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning, or AI/ML, to replace time-consuming and labor-intensive manual work involved in the processing of spectrum data collected by aircraft on a mission, to turn it into actionable intelligence, which can then be used to engineer electronic countermeasures or protective measures.

“We don’t have a component on an aircraft that can … do everything that we [currently] have to do [in the] rear echelon on the fly. That’s ideal, but we’re not there,” Fenner acknowledged.

In the current fight, Fenner said, “where we see the potential insertion of AI and machine learning is in that data architecture.” Using AI/ML to automate the processes of isolating an anomalous signal, and then generating a waveform to counter it would be a “game changer,” Fenner said.

Automating anomaly detection “allows me to go quicker. So now my engineers know exactly the target signal to go after to start doing their engineering processes” to produce defensive techniques or countermeasures Fenner added.

It would also allow the rapid scaling up of capabilities, which would be important in a high-end electromagnetic spectrum, or EMS, conflict with a peer adversary.

“Not having hours and hours of manpower, pouring over this particular one signal, but being able to do it at scale with hundreds of signals. That, to me, is the game changer, because now I can adapt quickly to that environment and get that back to the warfighter at the speed of relevance for that fight,” he said.

All that processing, and its planned future automation, would take place in the rear echelon, Fenner said, which could prove a problem in the vast Pacific theater, where China would be seeking to sever the communication lines of U.S. forces

In the Indo-Pacific, “the tyranny of distance issue will be significant, especially for the 350th Spectrum Warfare Wing when it comes to data wrangling. How are we going to get that data back from the forward edge to make sure that our folks can do the analysis and the exploitation and re-engineering and push it back out to the warfighters?” he asked.

“That’s going to be a difficult problem, especially when you’re in a dynamic, contested environment. How do you move that data, or get the folks out there that’re going to be able to pick up that data from the aircraft? Or is there a way to have an airborne network that passes that data back to your [rear] echelon? These are going to be difficult problems as we try to update the electromagnetic operating environment,” he said.

He added that there were a number of barriers he had to overcome to succeed: “Funding, resources, infrastructure and personnel are some of the barriers … some of them are man-made, some of them are policy-made,” he said.

One issue was “standardization,” he said. The wing supplied EMS data to more than 75 different platforms. But there is an issue. “Not every pipeline has the same structure,” Fenner said. “So what works for one particular platform does not work for another. … We have seen where we can go fast, but there are areas where policy variables, dissimilar structures, manpower-intensive processes do slow us down, and that’s what we’re highlighting right now, so that we can go faster.”

The activation of the 350th SWW in 2021 was seen by many as an attempt to refocus the Air Force enterprise on EMS operations or EMSO—a term that encompasses intelligence gathering and spectrum management as well as traditional offensive and defensive EW. It’s a focus that is badly needed after two decades of relative neglect during the war on terror, when nation-state adversaries had watched U.S. forces in action, and worked on ways to counter their superiority, Fenner said.

“Our adversaries, they definitely had an opportunity … to build up their [EW] apparatus and their capabilities … to counter what has traditionally been an advantage for us in the spectrum,” he explained.

The stakes couldn’t be higher, he argued, echoing previous remarks by senior Air Force officials, “If we lose in the spectrum, we lose in the air,” he said.

EW for Life: A Fresh Approach to Tech Refresh and Logistics

Nov. 14, 2024 | By Adam Stone

The Air Force may be operating the oldest, smallest air fleet in its history, but it hasn’t stopped keeping those planes modernized and combat-effective against the latest weapons and threats.

Josh Erlien, director of life cycle integration for Tactical Aircraft Electronic Warfare at BAE Systems, says his mission is to provide enhanced product support that goes beyond spares and repairs to ensure USAF maintains technological superiority in its battlespace.

“Life cycle integration is a concept that we’re applying at BAE Systems to embed people like me into product lines and programs in all phases,” he said. From the design phase to production and through a system’s entire life cycle, these embedded experts serve as advocates and thought leaders to ensure warfighters have ready and relevant electronic warfare capabilities when they need them most.

“We need to be focused on ease of upgrade, ease of maintainability, to get them back into the fight,” he said.

Too often, logistics and product-support issues don’t get attention until it’s too late: An aircraft is on the ground and no spare parts are on the shelf. “Those tend to be symptoms, and not the root cause,” Erlien said. Life cycle integration is about left-shifting sustainment thought into the design, and constructing support packages that can withstand the contested environment. Support needs to be “a forethought, not an afterthought.”

Life cycle integration focuses on examining the underlying drivers such as material strategy and contract structure that can potentially impact readiness. “We look at the end-to-end supply chain velocity,” he said. They also look at the warfighting environment, he added, because “How our systems are going to be used should strongly influence our design.”

Erlien brings a warfighter’s perspective to the job. He served as a Deceptive Electronics Countermeasures (DECM) technician in the Marine Corps, and before joining BAE Systems in 2022, he was chief of product support for the Spectrum Warfare Department at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Crane, Indiana. “I understand the constraints that our maintainers are faced with,” he said.

To avoid supportability challenges, Erlien said, BAE Systems focuses on the foundational elements of product support, such as good technical documentation, a focus on readiness, and understanding customer constraints, while striving to be innovative.

“Life cycle cost is everything,” he acknowledges. “Our customers demand performance,” he adds. “But they also demand affordability.”

To thread that needle, BAE Systems looks at ways to minimize development time by employing a leverage strategy. Leveraging existing architecture to speed up the delivery of new EW capability and drive down cost. He said: “We’re leveraging modularity to update systems, leveraging investments in infrastructure, adapting building blocks to apply to another customer’s mission.”

A product designed for one mission system could be adapted to fit another customer’s application while also trying to leverage economies of scale in material procurement and Public-Private Partnerships that enable the best mix of public and private resources.

Designing for sustainability, supportability, and upgradeability is also key. “Our customers are demanding resilience be built into our weapons systems,” Erlien said. BAE Systems aims to answer that call.

“Resilience is the ability to reconfigure, to repair at the point of need, to keep our systems ready to go without needing to be evacuated back to a depot.” To respond to new threats, he said, systems must be upgraded as needed to adapt to a changing environment.

“It’s not just having the product on the shelf available for use,” Erlien said. It’s about being ready with a solution as soon as one is needed. “As we are designing products and setting up sustainment strategies, we have upgrade in mind,” he said. This is about “making sure that our customers can do what they need to do with the system to make it the most useful in the battlefield.”

Increasingly, that means updates implemented in software rather than hardware, enabling greater adaptability and rapid updates as threats change. “The ability to upgrade software in the field is critical,” Erlien said. “Software controls the functionality of our systems, and so making that easier for our customer to do in the field, at the point of need, is vital.”

The Air Force keeps its systems in use for decades, but the systems it fights with today are typically vastly improved versions of the ones they began with years ago—and building blocks to the solutions they’ll fight with tomorrow. Integrating enhancements with life cycle support solutions is one way BAE Systems helps the Air Force stay ahead of mission requirements.

Air Force: First CCA Models Pass Critical Design Review as Future Plans Being Debated

Nov. 13, 2024 | By John A. Tirpak

The two Collaborative Combat Aircraft designs—one each from Anduril Industries and General Atomics Aeronautical Systems—passed their critical design reviews in early November, clearing the way for detailed production efforts to get underway, the Air Force said Nov. 13. However, the way ahead for future upgrades and increments of CCA remain undecided.

Col. Timothy M. Helfrich, Air Force Materiel Command’s Senior Materiel Leader for the Advanced Aircraft Division, confirmed the milestone following a CCA panel discussion at the inaugural Airpower Futures Forum in Arlington, Va hosted by AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.

“Both Anduril and General Atomics, both industry teammates, are on the path to first flight, on a timeline that allows us to get operational capability by the end of the decade,” Helfrich said in the panel discussion. “We are on track, if not ahead, in some areas.”

“The lessons that we’ve learned so far is that we need to be able to know when enough is good enough,” he added. “If we are to continue to add capability and gold-plate” the CCAs, “we’re going to miss out on our cost and what’s important in our schedule targets.”

The critical design review is the final step in certifying that a design should meet requirements, and it establishes a program’s baseline. It not only checks a program’s maturity at both the overall and component levels but confirms that there’s a realistic plan for entering production and testing the item.

The Air Force is making “some of those tough trades to say, ‘this is good enough.’ … moving forward has been a challenge because we want a lot, but we are making a decision,” he said.

CCAs are the Air Force’s planned uncrewed, autonomous aircraft that will escort fighters and carry extra weapons for them. They are also expected to engage enemy aircraft on their own. Later versions will likely have roles in air defense suppression, electronic attack, and other air combat missions. Operational capability with the initial versions—in number—is expected before the end of the decade.

Helfrich, in the panel discussion, clarified the nomenclature being used on the CCA program and said it hasn’t been decided how long CCAs will be operated or whether there will be upgrades or all-new versions of CCAs at various intervals.

Anduril and General Atomics are building competing versions of CCA Increment 1, which will be dedicated to the air-to-air mission. The Air Force is still in the process of deciding whether Increment 2 will be a more or less sophisticated aircraft, Helfrich said, and it hasn’t been settled whether either will later be upgraded or simply phased out, as technology and the threat change the service’s needs.

“The Air Force has a lot of learning to do over the coming years,” he said in response to an audience question, “but I do expect that there will be a time where we have a mixture of Increment 1s and Increment 2s; [and] maybe Increment 3 out there.”

He said the mix of CCAs “will change, based on what is necessary to meet our force design and our commitments.”

The funding and expectation for Increment 2 have provided “one of the ways that we’ve been able to control our appetite” for capabilities on Increment 1, Helfrich said.

“Our original plan was—and the funding that was laid in—was for two increments. … You don’t have to get everything into this Increment 1. What we need to do is get it out there, with the minimum viable capability, on time or early, and on-budget or under budget. But Increment 2 …. we are close to getting started in earnest on that.”

There is a government analysis underway for Increment 2 “with other parties…and internal government agencies” to determine the needed attributes of the system.

“And then next year—actually this fiscal year—we will kick off concept refinement, where we then bring in industry to help us further define what those attributes are and whittle down those use cases,” Helfrich said. “It’s really the same approach that we did for CCA Increment 1.”

He also said that studies and experiments so far indicate that pilots of crewed fighters will likely be able to control many more CCAs than originally thought.

Senior USAF leaders have speculated that the CCA program could eventually achieve a rhythm of introducing a new design every two to four years, which would be better for staying abreast of both changing technological opportunities and threats.

Helfrich emphasized that Increment 2 is not a derivative or growth version of Increment 1.

Just because it’s called Increment 2 doesn’t mean it “has more capability … we’re still looking to figure out … the right balance and do the analysis” of the needed capability “to maximize low cost,” he said. The Air Force may yet decide to “change the focus” of CCAs “from a missile truck to something else,” perhaps an electronic warfare platform.

“I think it’s a little too early to say whether or not we’re going to do “Increment 1B or 1C. We’ll have to learn as Increment 1 rolls out and as Increment 2 rolls out, but we do expect them to be complementary,” and that there will be “multiple Increments in the force at the same time.”

Helfrich said the life expectancy of a CCA is also not yet determined. Early concepts called for using the craft for a number of sorties, and then divesting them on one-way missions, with the idea of avoiding the creation of a sustainment enterprise to support them.

“A lot has to do with how you use them,” he later told Air & Space Forces Magazine. While a small number of CCAs may be used for training, most of their missions would likely be practiced in simulators, and the aircraft themselves would be stored in a crate until needed for operations.

Asked if CCA life expectancy would be measured by flight hours, engine cycles, missions or some other metric, Helfrich said it would be flight hours.

With regards to life expectancy, he told the symposium, “a lot of that has to do with how you build your airframe, right? And so you do end up with life expectancy … and that comes down to flight hours, is how that’s typically measured.” But the expected service life will also depend on the “structural load and how much you build it to do. And if you shorten the life expectancy … then you can potentially take out some weight, saving costs or allowing you to bring other things into the airplane.”

USAF’s New Force Design, Still a Secret, Will Be ‘Fiscally Informed’

Nov. 13, 2024 | By Amy Hudson

As the Air Force completes a highly anticipated force design—its first real overhaul in a generation—the leaders overseeing the work drew a narrow distinction over how the resulting future force will be funded.

“I would say that it really is fiscally informed, not constrained,” said Lt. Gen. David A. Harris, deputy chief of staff of Air Force Futures, during a keynote address Nov. 13 at the inaugural Airpower Futures Forum, produced by AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.

“I can build you the world’s best Air Force—we as a team can build the world’s best Air Force—but I’m here to tell you, we probably can’t afford it,” Harris said. “What we can do, … is actually develop a logic and rationale … to argue for additional resources about why these systems need to come together.”

Speaking earlier in the day, Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin, said the new force design is focused on ensuring lethality, survivability, mass, and connectivity.

Harris intentionally did not mention China in his keynote, noting that an effective force design must be adaptive and able to evolve as threats and technology change. Similarly, he said he began the work by thinking about force design in relation to the National Defense Strategy, only to be asked to remove such references as the force design should be a “living document” that overarches current strategy as it relates to threats or conflict areas.

Instead, the force design is focused on identifying the best mix of capabilities, systems, technologies, and personnel to achieve all of the Air Force’s five core functions:

Air superiority

Global strike

Rapid global mobility

Command and control

Intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance

Asked how the force design could evolve if the Air Force does not acquire the Next Generation Air Dominance platform, once envisioned as the replacement for the F-22 Raptor, Harris said it would not change the overall design, but it would “challenge the way that you would actually execute a mission area.”

The Air Force was supposed to make a selection for the builder of a crewed NGAD combat jet this year but paused the process in the summer rather than commit to a winner. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said he made that decision because the threat picture had changed, technology had advanced, and he wanted to be sure that the design he was looking at was still what the Air Force needed and would need in the future.

Now USAF leaders are in the midst of a major program review, with a panel of experts including former Chiefs of Staff Gen. John Jumper, Gen. Norton Schwartz, Gen. David Goldfein, and former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Ralston, reviewing the findings.

Lunch Keynote Address by Lt. Gen. David A. Harris, Deputy Chief of Staff, Air Force Futures.
Mitchell Institute Airpower Futures Forum at Army Navy Country Club on Nov. 13, 2024, in Arlington, Va. Photo by Mike Tsukamoto/Air & Space Forces Magazine

Harris said the NGAD decision would impact force structure and other development. “There’s probably multiple force structures, some of them may not include any of that, but I’ll tell you,” he said. “It’s less about the platform and more about the systems and how they are coming together. How do you actually replicate the effects that system would have in Mission Area One or Mission Area Two? There’s a lot of ways that we can actually achieve air superiority.”

Allvin and Harris both spoke in terms of capabilities for three “Mission Areas,” which refer not tp the area those capabilities would operate in, but rather the locations from which they would launch from:

Mission Area 1: Capabilities that can be based or positioned close to an adversary, and can deliver concentrated effects against adversary forces while operating in those close confines.

Mission Area 2: Long-range capabilities based far from potential adversaries, but able to launch from a distance and penetrate a contested environment to deliver precise strikes or effects.

Mission Area 3: General-purpose capabilities, which can be positioned in a variety of locales, and that can provide mass and flexibility for a variety of uses. These capabilities could also support Mission Area 1 and 2 capabilities under certain circumstances.

Harris did not indicate one way or another whether the force design requires the manned NGAD platform, saying only that the Air Force has “not given up on air superiority” and that the service still needs the capabilities that NGAD represents.

“I think the numbers of it matter,” he said, referring to the estimated cost of a manned next-gen fighter, which Kendall has pegged at between $200 million and $300 million. “If you’re going to overinvest in one area, then I need to see where you are going to be taking hits from, then I think that’s where the mission areas, and what that threat looks like, and the intensity of that threat actually matter.”

But, he added, “There could be a time when I want to invest more in the C5ISR … and maybe less in some of the other three” core capabilities, Harris said. “There’s a framework here that we’re trying to describe.”

This is where the cost comes into the picture, he explained. “It helps us be fiscally informed about what capabilities we want and how many, the quantity, of that,” Harris said.

How to Scale AI: The Key to Crossing from Pathfinder to Success

Nov. 13, 2024 | By Adam Stone

Military leaders see applications for artificial intelligence in everything from autonomous aircraft to logistics and cybersecurity. But scaling up from pilot programs to operational is proving to be a major hurdle.

Scaling AI “is very much about building a scaffold or a framework,” said Jay Meil, chief data scientist at SAIC. Narrowing down to “what problem are we actually going to solve” is the first step, he said. “Once we identify that problem, we need to come up with a defined quantitative outcome, and we also need to identify applicable data.”

Good foundational work will help break the problem down into components, and then approach those smaller challenges with the idea that they can be combined later on.

“You can build a small pilot to solve one of those small problems,” Meil said, and then combined pilots can be constructed with future scalability in mind. “You want to build the framework in such a way that it’s extensible and scalable.”

The architecture should be able to easily accommodate more computing capacity; more storage capacity; increased functionality; and expanded data sets. “You want to have very robust processing pipelines and compute pipelines in order to be able to scale it organically over time,” Meil said. Anticipating the potential for additional data or alternative uses of that data can be crucial to creating a path for growth.

Meil is working on a pilot effort for an Intelligence Community customer with exactly that in mind. “We’re building those frameworks and pipelines out so that when they’re ready, they can slowly add more scope, more data, and more scale to the program,” he said.

The mindset is to focus three steps ahead—to envision possible full-scale applications as they mature. And that means starting out with a question: Is AI really the right solution for a given problem?

Meil said he looks for several key markers in addressing the issue. Will AI make the operator’s work easier? Will AI accelerate the speed of decision? Can AI be leveraged in a repeatable way? Does using AI create a force multiplier? And is the relevant data needed to build an AI model available?

If the answers are yes, Meil said, then AI can indeed be “the answer.”

For organizations new to AI, a partner like SAIC can provide invaluable experience and insight to the challenge. “Our focus is to bring these orchestration tools, these workflows and these scaffolds or frameworks, to make this process easier—in a repeatable manner,” he said.

Sometimes the hardest part is a lack of historical data. “Especially when we’re dealing with mission data, we are going to have sparse data sets,” Meil said. “We’re not going to have a lot of information on particular EW signatures or cyber information or information about adversaries,” he said.

But that doesn’t mean AI can’t help. Synthetically generated data can fill the gaps, and AI can help with that. “With generative AI, you might see a new ship that the model has never seen before, and it can generate an answer based on everything that it has learned in the past about previous ships or previous samples,” he said.

Weaving data together to combine, for example, intelligence data and command and control data, is the next step. With data available in a single place, “machines can make decisions and help the warfighter, recommending courses of action,” Meil said.

Some applications may require data to be isolated, such as in combined operations overseas, when some data sources may be shared by one partner but can’t be shared with others. Understanding that requirement ahead of time is key, Meil said. “All of the data can be physically co-located…and logically separated,” he said. “If you and I are searching for the same things, but we have different access levels, we’re both able to access the information that we need.”

With appropriate tagging, that approach can also apply to applications and users with different levels of access. By building that in from the start, the AI application will be readily scalable, and the focus can be on the mission, where existing doctrine and decision-making guidance is already well established.

Building on established doctrine helps ensure AI is providing viable courses of action, and that the humans in the loop—the ultimate decision makers—are always in charge. “There’s no need to rewrite [the rules] around Artificial intelligence,” Meil said. “We train the models on the doctrine that is already in place, that people are comfortable with, to make decisions in similar ways. And we always keep that human on the loop.”