Small Satellite Architectures Get New Boosts From SDA, NRO

Jan. 10, 2025 | By Greg Hadley

The Pentagon’s efforts to launch and connect hundreds of satellites in orbit got two separate boosts Jan. 9, courtesy of the Space Development Agency and National Reconnaissance Office.

First came a major milestone for SDA’s low-Earth orbit constellation, called the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture. Contractor York Space Systems announced one of its data transport satellites had established a laser communication link with a missile warning/tracking satellite built by another vendor, SpaceX.

Speaking at the Spacepower Conference last month, SDA director Derek M. Tournear described such a connection as the final demonstration needed to validate the agency’s plans for a network of satellites that can “mesh” and relay data around the globe at high speed. By using laser communications instead of traditional radio frequencies, SDA hopes to transfer more data faster, using less power and smaller equipment, with enhanced speed and signal security.

Back in September, Tournear announced that SDA had demonstrated a laser communications link between two SpaceX satellites. But going between two vendors served as a critical test of the agency’s decision to create standards for an optical communications terminal and then award contracts to more than half a dozen vendors. By proving out the standards, SDA can be more confident that all sorts of contractors can plug their systems into the architecture, increasing competition and driving down costs.

For the warfighter, validating the technology behind SDA’s “mesh network” is crucial to ensuring sensors and shooters around the globe can transmit data in seconds—a particularly important task for SDA’s mission of missile warning and tracking.

“Achieving the first inter-vendor, inter-layer laser link demonstrates the tangible value of open standards and collaborative efforts in rapidly achieving an integrated space architecture,” York CEO Dirk Wallinger said in a statement. “We are proud to support SDA’s vision for an interconnected space architecture for the warfighters.”

The laser link demo should also help SDA feel more confident proceeding with its next launches, scheduled for this spring, which will put the first operational PWSA satellites in orbit.

Shortly after York’s announcement, the National Reconnaissance Office successfully launched its seventh batch of satellites for a new proliferated constellation. The launch took place late Jan. 9 at Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif., with a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

The NRO has remained tight-lipped, as it usually is, about its constellation, only noting that it serves to bolster the agency’s intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities. In a release, the agency said it launched almost 100 satellites in 2024, and Director Christopher Scolese has said going back 18 months, that figure is more than 100. The plan is to launch hundreds more going into 2028.

Like the Space Force, the NRO wants to shift from a few large, exquisite satellites to large numbers of smaller, less capable birds.

Pentagon officials say fewer satellites offer “juicy” targets for an adversary such as China or Russia, who would have to take out only one or two using a direct-ascent anti-satellite missile or some other weapon to wreak havoc on the U.S. military, which relies heavily on space assets for navigation, communications, intelligence, and more.

With hundreds of satellites, on the other hand, the U.S. wants to deter an attack in the first place by ensuring it would be ineffective, Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen H. Hicks said in a Jan. 10 speech at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies.

“We’re ensuring that the web of satellites DOD can draw upon is so great, that attacking or disrupting them would be a wasted and escalatory effort,” Hicks said.

Hundreds of satellites also ensure global coverage in low-Earth orbit, where spacecraft do not have a persistent “stare” like they do in the higher geosynchronous orbit.

While the NRO and Space Force work on their proliferated architectures, the two organizations are also working on a joint venture to move the ground moving target indication mission to space—using satellites to track targets on land and transmitting tactical data to troops on the ground. It remains unclear how the NRO’s proliferated architecture will feed into that effort.

Chief to Airmen: New Standards and Enforcement Are Coming

Jan. 10, 2025 | By Chris Gordon

The Air Force is reviewing dress and appearance standards for Airmen and will begin to more strictly enforce regulations, Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin said in a video address to Airmen released on Facebook Jan. 10. The changes will start rolling out in the next 90 days.

New policies and standards will also cover other topics besides appearance. The main objective is to ensure rules and regulations are clear and not subject to interpretation or “selective enforcement,” Allvin said.

“This selective enforcement can lead to situations where the Airmen believe then they have the opportunity to do selective compliance,” Allvin said. “This is where the danger lies.”

Unclear or “complex” standards are “difficult to understand,” he added. And that has made them “more difficult to comply with, and maybe more challenging and difficult to enforce.”

Unified policies for the entire service help set the tone for Airmen to be “dedicated to the team above the individual,” Allvin said. “Better standards and accountability” will help Airmen be “proud not only to wear the uniform but have the discipline that is the backbone of the greatest air force in the history of the planet.”

The updates come in response to concerns Allvin and Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force David A. Flosi heard expressed by rank-and-file Airmen and senior leaders.

Specific policies are now under review and Allvin has told wing commanders to expect the first round of updates to be disseminated to commands in the next 90 days as final decisions are made.

Language will be revised to ensure policies, waivers, and procedures “are easy to understand, easy to comply with, and easy to enforce,” Allvin promised. “Along the way, we want to ensure they are aligned across the entire United States Air Force.”

Differences across commands and in enforcement have generated controversies in recent years. But the changes being developed now also flow from Allvin’s drive to unify the Air Force and diminish some of the cultural distinctions between Major Commands.

When Allvin rolled out organizational changes a year ago, he emphasized the new service-wide role for Air Combat Command, for example, which is now charged with ensuring force readiness across the Air Force. ACC Commander Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach has instituted more inspections and closer adherence to uniform policies over the past year.

Airmen from the 412th Medical Group stand at parade rest prior to conducting an Air Force Service Dress Class A uniform inspection at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., March 9, 2024. U.S. Air Force photo by Giancarlo Casem

Increased enforcement is not just about looks, Allvin said.

When “Airmen decide for themselves whether they should comply with a tech order or safety regulations, or other instructions … the damage is to property, is to our equipment, but most importantly, we get Airmen injured or killed,” Allvin says in the video, as the screen shows a photo of the burnt-out wreckage of a B-1B bomber that crashed as a result, according to an Air Force investigation, of lax standards enforcement. “That’s what’s at stake, and that is what is driving some of these decisions.”

Changes will be introduced in phases. “We’re not going to wait a year or two years to roll out an entire batch,” Allvin said. “As we make the decisions, we’re going to distribute them to the force to start enforcing as they come to you.”

Airmen can now expect tighter enforcement of regulations and commanders will be expected to hold more frequent formations and inspections.

“We’re also directing that episodically we have the formations to come together, in uniform, to do a couple of things,” Allvin said. “The first thing is to be able to look at yourself, look at your teammate, hold yourself and him or her accountable to ensure that you’re in standards, you are proud that you are wearing this uniform in a manner that befits the call to arms that we have answered. At the same time, it offers the opportunity for the command leadership to be able to share the very latest and updated guidance to ensure we are all on the same sheet of music.”

But even though standards are being revised, the imperative now is to take standards seriously and to enforce them appropriately, according to the USAF Chief.

“You do not need to wait until the next policy change comes out or the next standards update comes out to enforce standards,” Allvin said. “Enforcing standards shows your commitment to the institution.”

Kendall: CCA Increment 2 Shouldn’t Be ‘Exquisite,’ But Better than Increment 1

Jan. 8, 2025 | By John A. Tirpak

Analyses and wargames indicate the second increment of the Collaborative Combat Aircraft program should not be an “exquisite” aircraft—meaning very stealthy and equipped with many sensors and weapons—but it should have more capability than Increment 1, and an additional cost of 20-30 percent would be acceptable, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall told Air & Space Forces Magazine this week.

The CCA program is meant to produce semi-autonomous combat aircraft to fly in formations alongside with manned platforms, carrying extra weapons or, in later iterations, acting on their own or in concert with other CCAs on sensing or attack missions.

Yet the capabilities and the cost of these “wingman” drones remain a frequent topic of discussion among Air Force and industry leaders.

For the first increment, at least, Kendall has said the Air Force is shooting for a cost per airframe that is a “fraction” of the price of a crewed F-35, somewhere between $25-30 million each.

Preliminary work has begun on a second increment, but to date, Air Force officials had declined to define the characteristics it wants for this second bath, with the possibilities ranging from an even simpler and cheaper aircraft than Increment 1 to a very sophisticated platform that could penetrate deep inside contested airspace and conduct kinetic attacks.

Increment 2 should “definitely” not be “exquisite,” Kendall said.

“The idea here is affordable mass,” he explained during an extensive exit interview. Wargames and analyses have shown that CCAs in large numbers multiply combat options for the Air Force and impose a significant cost on any adversary, who must take each one seriously and dedicate missiles or countermeasures to stop them, Kendall said. Making a highly capable—and expensive—CCA would defeat that value, he said.

Yet Kendall also seemed to pour cold water on the notion that Increment 2 will be simpler and cheaper than Increment 1.

“I think, personally, something that has some increase in cost over Increment 1 would not be outrageous,” he said, citing a cost increase for the second iteration as “20 or 30 percent, something like that. But, again, it depends upon the mix, right? What capabilities do you put on every aircraft, every CCA? What do you distribute?”

The Air Force has typically equipped its fighters with “all the subsystems necessary for that fighter to essentially operate alone: its own sensors, its own [electronic warfare], its own countermeasures,” Kendall said.

But in the future, the secretary said, the service may instead choose to split up those capabilities among different CCAs as well as the manned fighter. An enemy would have to assume all the CCAs are similarly capable, “and that’s a substantial advantage for the user,” he said.

Kendall may also have been hinting at some of the options being explored for the Next-Generation Air Dominance system, which he characterized as a crewed successor to the F-22. Kendall has left decision-making on the way forward for the NGAD to his successors in the Trump administration.

CCA Increment 1—which has two variants being developed by Anduril Industries and General Atomics—is “moving forward really well,” Kendall reported.

“We’re going to get that fielded within the next few years. We’re going to get a lot of experience with that. What I have seen in simulations with our operators shows that it has enormous operational payoff, and we’ll get more experience with actually using them in operational units and operational exercises, and so on. We’re going to learn an awful lot from that,” he said.

At the same time, Kendall also wants to see updates and improvements. For the autonomy technology that underpins CCAs, the Air Force is still running programs like the X-62 Vista and the Viper Experimentation and Next-gen Operations Model–Autonomy Flying Testbed program, or VENOM-AFT.

For sensors, weapons, and airframes, work is “well underway” on Increment 2, and the Air Force is “sorting through different configurations for Increment 2, and what we want to do there, to get full advantage” Kendall said.

However, he reiterated that the Trump administration will make the final choice on what CCA Increment 2 looks like.

Ultimately, though, Kendall said he regards launching the CCA program and getting the first increment on contract is one of the signature programmatic achievements of his tenure as secretary. The CCA is “a transformative capability for the Department, for the Air Force,” he said.

New F-15 Electronic Warfare System Starts Full Production

Jan. 8, 2025 | By Greg Hadley

The Air Force has cleared a new F-15 electronic warfare system for full-rate production and awarded a $615.8 million contract to Boeing to install the Eagle Passive Active Warning Survivability System (EPAWSS).

EPAWSS comprises two kits manufactured by BAE Systems, which consist of “integrated radar warning, geolocation, situational awareness, and self-protection solutions,” according to the company. EPAWSS is standard equipment on the new F-15EX Eagle II, but the Air Force is also upgrading 99 F-15E Strike Eagles with the advanced technology, as well.

Boeing is responsible for modifying the F-15 and will be installing the system.

EPAWSS is the technology that turns the F-15EX into what some have called a generation 4.5 fighter, positioning it between conventional fourth-gen F-15s and fifth-gen F-22s and F-35s. The Air Force says EPAWSS can enable equipped jets to “deny, degrade, deceive, disrupt, and defeat radio frequency (RF) and electro-optical/infrared threat systems within contested and highly contested environments.”

Growing competition in the electromagnetic spectrum has set off something of an EW arms race, and the Air Force and its suppliers have been mum about specific EPAWSS capabilities. One EPAWSS capability officials have described is “cognitive” EW—the ability for the system to understand new threats and adapt its response without human input.

EPAWSS includes two kits. Group A kits comprise underlying parts needed to support the upgrade, while Group B kits include EPAWSS’ main components. Boeing’s contract covers “procurement of Group A and Group B kits, system engineering program management, and interim contractor support lay-in material,” the Pentagon said.

Work will be performed at Boeing’s St. Louis facilities, where the F-15EX is built, and in Nashua, N.H., home of BAE’s Electronic Systems Division.

The contract announcement did not specify the number of EPAWSS kits included. It did, however, state that procurement funds for the project will come from fiscal 2023, 2024, and 2025 investments. According to budget documents, the Air Force asked for 26 sets in fiscal 2023, 19 sets in 2024, and 21 in 2025. But documents also showed plans to install 4 sets in 2023, 14 in 2024, and 19 in 2025.

After 2025, the Air Force still plans to buy five more full EPAWSS kits, plus five Group B kits for the test aircraft that were already modified during the system’s development. Fifty-five fighters will get the kits installed over the course of 2026-2028.

Meanwhile, the service also plans to buy 98 to 144 F-15EX fighters—a number that has fluctuated in recent budget cycles. as Air Force and Congressional leaders have debated how many are needed.

Officials have described the F-15’s current EW system as “functionally obsolete” against modern threats, making EPAWSS vital to jam and/or spoof adversaries’ radars and signals to evade detection. The technology shares capabilities developed for the F-35, whose powerful EW system have earned rave reviews. BAE also manufactures that system.

F-16 External Fuel Tank Falls into Florida Neighborhood, No Injuries Reported

Jan. 8, 2025 | By David Roza

No injuries were reported after a 300-gallon external fuel tank fell off an F-16 fighter into a residential neighborhood outside Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., on Jan. 7, a base spokesperson told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

The tank fell off at around 11 a.m. and landed in Niceville, just 3.5 miles northeast of the base, the spokesperson said.

Eglin uses manned F-16s to test new weapons, uncrewed QF-16s as aerial target drones, and just recently received modified F-16s to test autonomous flying technology as part of the Viper Experimentation and Next-gen Operations Model – Autonomy Flying Testbed program.

The spokesperson could not say to which unit the mishap aircraft belonged but did say it was manned and the base later confirmed it is assigned to the 96th Test Wing. An investigation is underway.

“Eglin authorities are cleaning up the area and taking measures needed to ensure the fuel tank is safely removed,” the base public affairs office said in a press release. The base will fly a small drone over the area to survey the impact zone.

Photos posted online by local media outlet Mid Bay News show what appears to be the centerline fuel tank that hangs from the middle of the F-16’s fuselage, but the base spokesperson could not immediately confirm that was the specific type of tank that fell. The Eglin public affairs office later said in the release that it was a 300-gallon fuel tank.

Based on the photos, the tank landed in between two homes, a little over a quarter mile away from an elementary school.

On Facebook, the popular unofficial Air Force amn/nco/snco page posted photos allegedly showing the F-16 after it landed at Eglin with its center fuel tank missing.

“Only by the grace of God, it landed between two houses,” Niceville City Manager David Deitch told the Mid Bay News, which also reported “a strong smell of jet fuel” in the area.

Many service members are exposed to jet fuel throughout their careers, but the long-term health impacts of such exposure is not yet clear, according to a 2023 presentation by the VA.

The incident came about four weeks after an exercise which saw first responders with the Eglin-based 96th Test Wing practice responding to a “large-scale aircraft accident” with outside agencies.

Late last year, the Air Force Chief of Safety Maj. Gen. Sean M. Choquette rolled out a new effort that requires aircraft maintainers to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) so they can access more information about costly accidents. The move was in response to an increase in ground mishaps involving maintenance, aircraft towing, and other flight line work. The NDA is meant to give maintainers the same timely access to safety investigation findings that aircrew members already enjoy, he said.

“We said, ‘hey, [maintainers] need to be brought into the fold here, because ground operations mishaps were increasing, and they need to be better trained on where mistakes are being made,’” Choquette told reporters in October.

This story has been updated with more details from Eglin Air Force Base.

Biden Admin Prepares ‘Substantial’ Final Aid Package to Ukraine

Jan. 7, 2025 | By Chris Gordon

The Biden administration is preparing to announce its “substantial” final package of military assistance to Ukraine before President-elect Donald Trump takes office on Jan. 20, defense officials said Jan. 7.

The military assistance, which is to be drawn from existing U.S. stocks, will be detailed when Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III convenes the 25th meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group on Jan. 9. That coalition of some 50 countries was established to coordinate aid to Kyiv.

But Pentagon officials acknowledge they will not be able to spend all of the funds they have on hand to help Ukraine before Trump assumes the presidency.

“There will be more than a couple of billion dollars remaining in PDA assistance for future use after Jan. 20,” one senior defense official told a small group of reporters, referring to the Presidential Drawdown Authority used to replenish U.S. stocks of weapons given to Kyiv.

As Russian forces continue to make small advances in eastern Ukraine and Ukrainian troops counterattack in Russia’s Kursk province, the future of the conflict may be entering a critical phase.

Trump vowed during the presidential campaign to quickly negotiate an end to the war, which is estimated to have led to more than one million dead and wounded on both sides,

But Russian President Vladimir Putin has shown little interest in a negotiated compromise.

Trump has named an envoy to pursue potential talks with Moscow, retired Army Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg. But the willingness of the incoming administration to continue military support to Kyiv is unclear, and Trump has recently trained his national security focus on his hopes to buy Greenland and his complaints over Panama’s administration of its canal.

The uncertain prospects for diplomacy over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have spurred a debate over whether the Biden administration moved too slowly to provide Kyiv with sophisticated weapons, such as F-16 fighters and ATACMS surface-to-surface missiles.

Critics have argued the U.S. should have provided Ukraine with key weapons systems like the F-16s and ATACMS before Ukraine launched its counteroffensive in 2023, which failed to achieve a breakthrough. The F-16s, those critics say, would have helped Ukraine to better defend its skies from Russia’s aerial assaults of missiles, drones, and glide bombs.

Pentagon officials pushed back against the notion that its approach of gradually providing more capable weapons hampered Ukraine’s defenses.

There is “a misperception that I believe is out there, that we, the United States, should have done more sooner to support Ukraine’s defense,” a second senior defense official said.

“What Ukraine needed in 2022 was, first and foremost, the capabilities to fight off the Russian assault on Kyiv,” the first defense official said. “So that was the focus, and that was driven by what the Ukrainians needed in 2022, and that included countries being willing to send Soviet legacy aircraft because that’s what Ukrainian pilots knew how to fly. In 2022, they didn’t know how to fly things like F-16s.”

Kyiv had appealed for the Western aircraft and proposed in 2022 that aircrew training begin on the multirole F-16s even if the aircraft themselves would not arrive right away.

Some 79 F-16s have been pledged to Ukraine by the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium, and Norway after the U.S. gave approval for the transfers in summer 2023. Ukrainian pilots have been trained on F-16s in the U.S. and Europe by a coalition of allies. Denmark and the Netherlands, the most vocal supporters of providing Ukraine with F-16s, began delivering used F-16s from their stocks to Ukraine in late summer 2024.

The U.S. also provided ATACMS surface-to-surface missiles in October 2023, but they were not sent until Ukraine’s counteroffensive had begun to run out of steam.

With the conflict gridlocked, the Pentagon said it is up to the Trump administration to determine future Ukraine policy, including what security guarantees Kyiv might receive in a potential peace settlement.

“What we are focused on right now, especially at the Pentagon, is providing Ukraine with the defense capabilities that we can provide in the time we have, including putting things on contract that will be delivered throughout 2025 and into 2026 in order to build that capability so that Ukraine can be in the strongest possible position if it comes to a negotiation,” the first defense official said. “Our calculation is that Putin is not one to give up something that he doesn’t have to give up, and Putin is going to be most impressed as he faces a negotiation, and he faces a war in which he has not yet achieved his objectives, and which the costs are building up on him. He is going to be more inclined to be reasonable, to listen to Ukrainian requirements, the stronger Ukraine is on the battlefield.”

Kendall: Reveal of New Chinese Aircraft ‘Hasn’t Really Changed’ USAF Plans

Jan. 7, 2025 | By John A. Tirpak

The appearance of new Chinese combat aircraft in recent weeks—potentially a new bomber and medium bomber, a smaller, fighter-size aircraft, and a new AWACS platform, among others—didn’t influence current Air Force leadership’s recent decisions on the Next-Generation Air Dominance program or the service’s broader strategic outlook, Secretary Frank Kendall said.

In an exit interview with Air & Space Forces Magazine, Kendall said the newly-revealed Chinese aircraft “have not had an impact” on how his team has approached NGAD; Kendall paused the program in summer 2024, launched a review of its requirements, and ultimately deferred a decision on the program’s future to the incoming Trump administration and the next civilian leaders of the Air Force.

“I’ve been watching China modernize their military for quite a while,” Kendall said. “They’re working aggressively to build a military designed to keep the U.S. out of the Western Pacific, and I think, over time, they have more ambitions than even that.”

Strategically, “they’ve already shown that they’re going to modernize their strategic forces and dramatically increase their inventory of nuclear weapons. And in space, they’re doing similar things, right? They’re really militarizing space at a high rate. So that was already baked into all the things we were thinking about, and the arrival of those … airplanes, visible to the public, hasn’t really changed that,” he said.

Indeed, Kendall said he still has no regrets about punting an NGAD decision to the new administration.

“Anything I did with a couple of months left in office was like to be reconsidered anyway, but it would be much harder to change direction” if contracts were awarded and the program was moved forward, he said. “Keeping that trade space open … was a much more efficient thing to do. It was just the right thing to do.”

Meanwhile, Kendall and his team will leave behind an extensive analysis of NGAD for their successors, allowing them to understand their options and then make their own choice based on their own strategic priorities.

NGAD, being a very expensive program, will be weighed against other high considerations, Kendall said, noting that there are “strategic priorities” for both the Air and Space Forces that must be addressed and weighed against various NGAD approaches.

“What motivated us to take another look [at NGAD] was the affordability” Kendall said, noting that there were other missions to which the service wanted to devote added resources such as “more aggressive counter-space capabilities, airbase protection, particularly our forward air bases.”

Yet affordability wasn’t the only issue, Kendall said, reiterating concerns that changing threats and technology also forced a reconsideration.

“My operators were not 100 percent sure they had the right airplane,” he said. “And I agree with that. I think it’s really worthwhile to think carefully about what is essentially an F-22 replacement. Is that really the right new design?”

The stakes of the decision are high, because “we’re not going to get another sixth-generation program any time soon. This is a tens of billions of dollars commitment, and it’s a multidecade commitment, so you really want to be sure you’re pursuing the best operational capability with those resources,” the secretary added.

Asked what recommendation his blue-ribbon panel of stealth experts—including analysts, former Chiefs of Staff, and senior generals—came up with regarding NGAD, Kendall said they reached “a consensus that there are a number of other things that we need to fund” but if resources are available, “then it would still be beneficial to have an NGAD-like aircraft.”

Kendall could not go into detail because of classification, but said several alternatives were considered.

“We looked at something that’s more of a lower-cost, multi-role kind of a capability. We looked at something that’s more tailored to work with [Collaborative Combat Aircraft], although, of course, NGAD could do that. And we looked at some other ’out of the box’” ideas, he said, adding that “some of them might be worth pursuing independently.”

Off-Road Reaper: Air Force MQ-9 Roughs It for ACE Exercise

Jan. 7, 2025 | By David Roza

Over its 20 years of service, the MQ-9 Reaper drone has typically landed on paved runways, where it is rearmed and refueled by a large group of maintainers and support staff.

But a recent exercise saw Air Force Special Operations Command land an MQ-9 on a dirt strip in New Mexico on Dec. 16, where it was rearmed, refueled, and launched again by a small group of Airmen. The tactic is part of Agile Combat Employment, the Air Force’s strategy to send small groups of Airmen to many different remote or austere operating locations in a conflict with China or Russia so that they are more difficult to target.

“In the future fight, we assess we will no longer be able to rely exclusively on the main operating bases that have persisted,” the flight commander of the 1st Special Operations Mission Sustainment Team (SOMST), which met the Reaper on the ground, said in a Dec. 31 press release. The release did not state the commander’s name or rank.

“Operating in austere environments anytime, anyplace, and anywhere is critical,” the commander said. “It enables commanders to have options—something critically needed in special operations forces.”

air force mq-9 — A U.S. Air Force MQ-9 Reaper completes a 180-degree turn on a dirt surface during Exercise Reaper Castillo at Melrose Air Force Range, New Mexico, Dec. 16, 2024. (U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Gracelyn Hess)

Exercise Reaper Castillo took place at Melrose Air Force Range, N.M., near Cannon Air Force Base. A pilot and sensor operator controlled the drone from Hurlburt Field, Fla., more than 1,100 miles east.

Officials from the Hurlburt-based 1st Special Operations Wing told Air & Space Forces Magazine it could not say how many Airmen supported the MQ-9 at the dirt strip or how quickly they turned the aircraft around, citing security reasons. But they did say the Reaper needed no physical alternations to land on the dirt.

Reaper Castillo is the latest in a series of experiments to break the MQ-9 out of the conventional procedures and operations in which it has been used over the past 20 years.

Typically, Reaper missions involve crews operating the aircraft from ground control stations hundreds or thousands of miles away, while crews closer to the aircraft handle takeoff and landing, where the shorter signal delay reduces the chance for catastrophic error in those dangerous phases of flight.

But since at least 2021, the Air Force has begun to let the Reaper land itself using an autopilot function known as the automatic takeoff and landing capability (ATLC). That cuts the aircraft’s footprint by about 55 people and lot of equipment. Past exercises in New Mexico and the Pacific shrunk the footprint to just 10 Airmen and a pallet and a half of gear, small enough to fit aboard relatively light transports such as CV-22 Osprey and C-130 Hercules.

Besides auto takeoffs and landings, then-AFSOC commander Lt. Gen. Tony D. Bauernfeind said in 2023 that he envisioned a future where Reapers act as “capital ships” from which smaller uncrewed aerial systems (UASs) launch to establish a sensor grid or a communications pathway for the joint force.

The idea was part of a project known as adaptive airborne enterprise, where MQ-9s stretch beyond their traditional role as intelligence and strike platforms to become mobile control centers for a network of sensors, communications devices or loitering munitions for far-flung special operators.

“Can we establish a network that goes 5 miles, 50 miles, 500 miles?” Bauernfeind said. “I don’t know, we have to work the physics and the tactics, techniques, and procedures to find out how far we can push these networks out that will then give us that grid that we need to support the joint force.”

The vision became reality later that year, when a single crew at Cannon controlled three MQ-9s for about 30 minutes. Six days later, a crew air-launched two smaller drones from an MQ-9 and controlled them with an additional crew member. Reaper Castillo shows the capability could travel far from established bases.

“We have to break out of the mindset that we need a huge, paved runway with co-located launch and recovery aircrews,” the Reaper Castillo mission commander said in the Dec. 31 release. The commander’s rank and name were also not provided. “If we can free ourselves from the traditional mindset, it makes MQ-9 combat reach nearly limitless.”

Recent shootdowns of MQ-9s in the Middle East over the past few months are a reminder that the slow-moving Reaper may not be able to evade anti-air weapons in a near-peer conflict. Networks of smaller drones controlled by the Reaper may extend its reach and help keep the $30 million aircraft out of range of those weapons. Either way, it beats the risk of sending a human pilot to do the job, said the mission commander.

“The MQ-9 is extremely relevant in today’s fight and will be in the future as well,” the commander said. “It allows us to go places and do things that we cannot risk sending manned aircraft—such as high-threat environments.”

Airmen assigned to the 1st Special Operations Support Squadron Mission Sustainment Team refuel an MQ-9 Reaper assigned to the 1st Special Operations Wing at Melrose Air Force Range, New Mexico, Dec. 16, 2024. (U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Gracelyn Hess)

Space Force Eyes New Jam-Resistant Tactical SATCOM Options

Jan. 7, 2025 | By Greg Hadley

Two competing prototype payloads, developed by Northrop Grumman and Boeing and both set to launch in 2025, aim to open a new era of secure, jam-resistant tactical communications.

Northrop has finished assembly and testing of its payload for the Protected Tactical SATCOM-Prototype (PTS-P) program and is now working on integrating the system onto one of its ESPAStar buses, the company said Jan. 6. Boeing is in the advanced stages of integrating its PTS-P payload with its new Wideband Global SATCOM satellite, WGS-11, a spokesperson told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

The Space Force has sought more secure communications solutions for several years and sought to ramp up the effort in its fiscal 2025 budget request. PTS-P seeks to develop a secure communications system impervious to adversary jamming. The prototypes will employ new cryptography, signals, and more. How the variants perform will influence how USSF proceeds with a program projected to cost some $2 billion over the next five years, according to budget documents.

The intensity of electronic warfare jamming in the Russia-Ukraine war has highlighted the need for jam-resistant satellite signals, but the Space Force program dates back even further. USSF’s Advanced Extremely High Frequency satellites provide jam-resistant tactical and strategic comms today, but the Space Force plans to split its tactical and strategic requirements in the future.

Evolved Strategic SATCOM for nuclear command and control and other strategic missions will handle one set of signals, while USSF’s Protected Anti-Jam Tactical SATCOM (PATS) family of systems, includes PTS-P and the Protected Tactical Waveform and ground infrastructure, called the Protected Tactical Enterprise Service, will support tactical requirements.

Both Northrop Grumman and Boeing passed a preliminary design review for PTS-P in 2020, and the Space Force awarded prototype contracts in 2021. Northrop’s version passed its critical design review in September 2021, and will be a “free flyer” with its own dedicated satellite, an ESPAStarHP bus. Boeing’s version completed its critical design review in 2022, with the decision made then to host it on the WGS-11 satellite. (Sharing payloads is one way of the Space Force is holding down costs, as with the Enhanced Polar SATCOM-Recapitalization payloads, which are hosted on a Norwegian satellite launched in 2024.

Boeing’s PTS-P payload will supplement WGS-11’s main mission. The WGS constellation provides high-bandwidth global communications coverage, which lacks advanced anti-jamming capabilities. Congress funded the newest WGS satellites, the 11th and 12th in the series, in 2018. Boeing and Space Force officials say the newest iteration will be able to direct its signals in a narrower beam, making it harder to spoof or jam its signals.

A Boeing spokesperson told Air & Space Forces Magazine that PTS-P will be able to demonstrate its prototype technology even as the rest of the WGS satellite operates, then transition to become fully operational after the demonstration if needed.

The Space Force has split the PTS program into two phases: PTS-Prototype and PTS-Resilient. Even as Northrop and Boeing are working on PTS-P, they are competing for PTS-R, which will operationalize the technologies demonstrated in the prototypes. The plan is to create two payloads “with full signal processing and switching capability that allows direct connectivity between users,” and that can either orbit on their own dedicated satellites or be hosted on other spacecraft.

On top of that, the Space Force is also working on what it calls PTS-Global, which “bridges the gap between the more focused capabilities provided by PTS-R and the broadly available but also the lower assured access capabilities provided by existing/emerging MILSATCOM and commercial services,” according to budget documents.

The Space Force is seeking nearly $250 million to get started on PTS-Global in the fiscal 2025 budget, which has yet to gain final approval. That budget would also fund PTS-Resilient for source selection this year, with the goal of launching satellites in fiscal 2029 at a total cost of some $2.14 billion over five years.