AURORA, Colo.—Air & Space Forces Magazine sat down with Charles Galbreath, retired Space Force colonel and a senior fellow with the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, at the AFA Warfare Symposium to talk about Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman’s message to Guardians and all things space happening at the conference.
AURORA, Colo.—Defense industry executives who specialize in electromagnetic warfare, or EW, said March 4 that the widespread adoption of a set of universal standards has positioned the United States to advance quickly in the discipline.
Space Force Col. Nicole M. Petrucci, commander of Mission Delta 3, led a conversation with industry representatives at the AFA Warfare Symposium.
In light of “a renewed emphasis on competition and speed,” Petrucci asked the reps how the government or industry could “accelerate capabilities” for EW, an often-misunderstood area.
The practices that make up electromagnetic warfare involve the electromagnetic spectrum in one way or another, such as by interfering with communication signals, a.k.a. “jamming,” or sending fake communications, a.k.a. “spoofing.” Petrucci’s command includes the 4th Electromagnetic Warfare Squadron, whose transportable Counter Communications System, or CCS, “reversibly denies adversary satellite communications,” according to an official description.
Panel members had no shortage of suggestions for how to go faster: sticking to a set of universal standards; collaboration on contract requirements, incorporating more commercial products into weapon systems.
Amanda Whites, senior director of strategic captures at systems integration firm Parry Labs, credited the work of the Open Architecture Collaborative Working Group for creating the Universal Command and Control Interface, or UCI, a common set of standards. Interfaces are the situations in which components of a system meet, such as the jamming hardware built by one maker and software by another.
“I would say on both sides”—industry and government—“adhering to the standards, understanding the standards, and enforcing those is really what’s going to help you” speed up advancements, Whites said. “I think we’re at a point where we’ve stopped creating standards and started kind of just adhering to them. We’re noticing that our kill web is slowly starting to come together.”
The need for speed, Petrucci said, is being driven by findings like those in the 2024 Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community. The one-year threat assessment published in March 2024 foresaw “accelerating strategic competition among major powers, more intense and unpredictable transnational challenges, and multiple regional conflicts with far-reaching implications.”
Against that backdrop, Petrucci said, the Space Force wants to “get those [EW] systems … as quick as we can.”
Patrick Creighton, electronic warfare vice president and general manager at Harris Technologies, recommended getting away from “very unique bespoke requirements” when developing systems and instead enabling “more use of commercial off-the-shelf technologies,” while designing more systems to accommodate upgrades.
“We can’t be constantly relying on brand-new systems every five years,” Creighton said.
As one of the newly formed Mission Deltas, Petrucci’s command unites aspects of acquisitions, operations, intelligence, and cyber under one unit. Officials say they think the new organizational structure will speed up upgrades and strengthen outcomes.
James Conroy, Northrop Grumman’s navigation, targeting, and survivability vice president, said in his view, speed is “all about collaboration,” especially between the government and industry. “Collaboration results in efficiency, and efficiency is what results in speed.”
AURORA, Colo.—The head of Space Forces Indo-Pacific warned that China’s expanding military exercises, aided by an increased use of space, are blurring the line between drills and a potential invasion of Taiwan.
“It is clear in the increasing complexity with which the PLA exercises are done in a way, that it becomes very difficult, and will become very difficult, to discern an exercise from an invasion, and that’s clearly by design,” Brig. Gen. Anthony J. Mastalir, commander of Space Forces Indo-Pacific, told reporters at the AFA Warfare Symposium. “We have begun to see the space piece integrated into some of that, not as much early on, but more recently.”
In particular, Mastalir highlighted Beijing’s growing counter-space capabilities, particularly its anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons that can target satellites in low-Earth and geosynchronous orbits. China’s push to develop ASAT technologies—spanning kinetic and nonkinetic methods, from missiles to electronic jammers to robotic arms designed to disrupt satellites—has been a major concern for Space Force leaders.
Over the years, China has tested different ASAT weapons, including its first destructive test in 2007, a launch into GEO in 2013, and a fractional orbital bombardment system with a hypersonic glide vehicle in 2021. Former Rep. Jim Cooper has described the efforts as “perfecting kill shots.” The 2007 test, widely criticized as reckless, left debris into LEO, exacerbating the risk for all space operations. Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman has often pointed to that test as a turning point in the history of military space operations.
Mastalir warned that lately, China has been synchronizing the posturing of such weapons with its military exercises.
“For example, when you think about the counter-space weapons that China is building, including direct ascent ASATs … those are going out and being postured at the same time that the exercise is unfolding in the East China Sea,” said Mastalir. “We are starting to see more and more evidence—as they build the complexity, they’re bringing more of those forces in.”
Military leaders have raised alarms over China’s increasingly aggressive drills around Taiwan in recent years. Already in 2025, Beijing has sent multiple spy balloons and naval warships for “combat readiness patrols” around the island. Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense has also reported numerous incidents of Chinese military aircraft encircling the island. Navy Adm. Samuel Paparo, head of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, called these recent actions “rehearsals for the forced unification of Taiwan with the mainland,” stressing that such People’s Liberation Army activities are “not exercises.”
These multi-domain drills have intensified as China has moved to integrate space capabilities into its military strategy. A decade ago, the Chinese only had about two dozen satellites. Now, they operate more than 1,000—most of which, according to Mastalir, are “specifically designed to track U.S. forces.”
“(China) has been building a space architecture specifically designed to keep the U.S. outside the Second Island Chain,” said Mastalir. Their strategic goal, he noted, is aimed at limiting U.S. and allied forces’ ability to intervene in key regional conflicts, particularly in the South China Sea and around countries like Taiwan and the Philippines.
China is also pushing to compete with Starlink in the satellite internet market, with a plan to build a “mega-constellation” of more than 600 satellites by 2025, eventually reaching a total of 14,000 satellites. Mastalir warned that the next phase of Beijing’s space ambitions will go beyond communication satellites toward remote sensing.
“It’s not surprising that China, too, is going to build these kinds of mega constellations—they’ve seen firsthand how effective it is in preserving communications in contested areas,” said Mastalir. “I fully expect, as we continue to see, not just communication constellations, but the proliferation of remote sensing capabilities.”
AURORA, Colo.—One day, U.S. military personnel might target smart weapons using location data from Chinese or Russian versions of GPS, researchers from the Air Force and Space Force said at the AFA Warfare Symposium on March 4.
Such are the benefits of using multiple Global Navigation Satellite Systems.
“If you think about dropping a bomb based on data from [China’s GNSS constellation] BeiDou, for instance, there’s an initial, and I think very healthy, gag reflex that we all probably have,” said Jeffrey Hebert, the senior scientist for positioning, navigation, and timing in the Sensors Directorate of the Air Force Research Laboratory.
But once you “muscle through that,” he said, you can weigh the pros and cons. Space-based PNT is critical to the ability of the joint force to wage war.
“We need to be able to prosecute navigation warfare better than adversaries. And multi-GNSS is one way that we can accomplish that,” explained Hebert.
Multi-GNSS means using signals like the European Union’s Galileo constellation and even China’s BeiDou, Hebert said. And it’s one of the pillars of the U.S. military’s efforts to make its PNT more resilient against high-end adversaries, who might be able to jam or otherwise interfere with the signal from GPS.
“To get to resiliency from the user perspective, we need to look at diversifying sources” of GNSS signals, he said.
The key issue with multi-GNSS, Hebert said, is trust: How can you rely on a signal you don’t control? He said the answer is to take a page from the playbook of civil aviation.
“They’ve had to basically trust all of our lives, anyone who’s in the flying public, with GPS en route navigation, with being able to do a GPS approach to an airfield,” he said.
To have that level of trust in an unencrypted GPS signal, civil aviation authorities have had to augment it. That augmentation “involves monitoring, looking at the quality of those systems, and providing side channel information to the user that enhances their trust and the ability to use those [signals and systems] for safety critical” functions.
“What we’ve got to do is basically take some inspiration from that, but then map it to the use case of the military, which is a bit different,” Hebert concluded.
Currently, the Space Force is building and launching the next generation of GPS satellites, the so-called Block III and Block IIIF spacecraft. But in the meantime, explained David Voss, the director of spectrum warfare at the Space Warfighting Analysis Center, the service is taking advantage of new acquisition authorities and technologies to augment the fleet of 30 GPS satellites in medium-Earth orbit.
The service awarded four design contracts for Resilient-GPS, or R-GPS last year. The goal is to start with eight satellites, to be launched by 2028, four years after contract award. By way of comparison, the first Black IIIF satellite is scheduled to be launched in 2027, 11 years after its contract was awarded.
“What we want to do is take advantage of a lot of these new space technologies that are coming out. How do we take advantage of rapid tech insertion? How do we take advantage of the ability to multi-launch?” said Voss. Growing concern about attacks on GPS satellites meant a need for greater “orbital diversity,” he added. R-GPS, although also in MEO, will occupy very different orbital planes.
Introducing that orbital diversity, Voss said, is an example of “resilience by design.”
“There’s a lot of advantages to being able to provide that diversification,” said Voss, “It adds to performance. Additional numbers build performance. And that’s at the heart of resilience by design, is how can we build resiliency with performance into our capability?”
While the addition of R-GPS satellites won’t necessarily solve long-standing problems like jamming, it will create more capability, especially for civil users, added Lt. Gen. Philip A. Garrant, head of Space Systems Command.
AURORA, Colo.—The concept of air superiority is changing to increasingly leverage autonomous aircraft, nonkinetic capabilities, and space, but it remains the operational prerequisite if the U.S. expects to prevail in any future conflict, regardless of the cost to achieve it, senior Air Force leaders said at AFA’s Warfare Symposium.
They also emphasized the importance of flying hours, day-to-day training, and exercises as critical elements in maintaining a force that can win control of the air, along with having sufficient munitions on hand to prosecute a no-notice war, and sufficient platforms to deliver those weapons.
“Fiscal constraints do not change what it takes to win,” said Maj. Gen. Joseph D. Kunkel, the Air Force’s director of force design, integration and wargaming, in a panel discussion on air superiority. “We know what it takes to win. It takes air superiority, and if America wants to make those investments to win, then we’ll do so. If America doesn’t want to make those investments, then we’ll take more risk.”
Bottom line, he said: “I’m not so foolish to think that this is like a black and white decision … win versus loss. There’s a degree of risk involved. But “if we fund more force, we decrease operational risk, we decrease the risk of our policymakers”—and provide them with more options.
Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach, head of Air Combat Command, said air superiority allows the joint force to operate where and when it needs, making it a foundational enabler for operations in all domains. But air superiority should not be viewed in isolation from space superiority, he said. Regarding both, he said, “if you don’t have it, everything else is impossible.”
Lt. Gen. Dale R. White, uniformed deputy to the Air Force acquisition executive, said the defining lesson of the war in Ukraine is that fighting a war where neither side has air superiority “ends up in stalemate.”
U.S. adversaries are developing their own means to achieve air superiority and to try to deny that advantage to U.S. forces. Referring to recent imagery released by China of its newest fighter aircraft, Wilsbach made clear their purpose: “Sixth-gen aircraft are for air superiority,” he said. “We know what that’s for. What are we going to do about it? I don’t believe nothing is an option.”
Kunkel said the Air Force force design he is developing has “designed to” that challenge, and asserted that the design will not be “driven by fiscal choices.” Still, fiscal reality is the biggest challenge to the Next-Generation Air Dominance family of systems, which includes both Collaborative Combat Aircraft and, at its heart, a crewed fighter. Panelists didn’t offer details on what that NGAD program promises, and acknowledged the “pause” imposed last summer when former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall chose to delay rather than commit to a very costly program.
To keep NGAD alive, contractors that have not been publicly identified were given Technology Maturation and Risk Reduction contracts late last year. Industry sources said the TMRR contracts enable the companies to keep their design teams together through the end of the year, leaving a relatively short window for the new Trump administration to decide whether to proceed with NGAD.
When the Air Force paused NGAD, Kunkel said, “we asked ourselves some hard questions: ‘What does air superiority look like in the future? Does the joint force need air superiority?’ And what we found is … air superiority matters.” Wargamers “tried a whole bunch of different options, and there was no more viable option than NGAD to achieve air superiority in this highly contested environment,” he said.
Still, White said the Air Force should be “open-minded about what [air superiority] looks like.” Wilsbach added that it could take a number of forms, including “nonkinetic” ways to dominate the skies. Electronic warfare and potentially cyber techniques can add to conventional kinetic attack. Kunkel said the Air Force can attack and disrupt adversary “surfaces” using nonkinetic means.
Still another element needed to enable air superiority is training. Capability is more than aircraft and weapons; it is also about the readiness and preparation of air crew. In the ramp up to Operation Desert Storm in 1990, pilots got 20 flying hours per month; today, deploying pilots can expect just 12—a number comparable to levels flown by Russia at the nadir of its military power in the late 1990s.
Collaborative Combat Aircraft will add to crewed pilots’ capability, but the Air Force will need a combination of manned and unmanned aircraft, and the time has not yet come where the U.S. can rely on unmanned jets alone.
“We obviously use quite a bit of unmanned platforms to do our business in the day to day,” Wilsbach said. “Very soon we’ll set up the unit at Creech to accept [CCAs] and start flying them. … We’re incorporating manned and unmanned teaming, and we believe that there’s some value to that as we go into the future.” But today’s artificial intelligence has not yet advanced “to the degree that the AI can replace a human brain,” Wilsbach said. “Someday, we will have that … but right now, we don’t. So it does require manned and unmanned teams as we go forward again in the future.”
White said that artificial intelligence writ broadly will help accelerate getting air superiority, as it gives “optionality” for decision-makers pressed to make quick calls. But its potential value is also seen by adversaries.
“We pride ourselves … with being the smartest in the world,” he said, but “the reality is, the threat has changed, because our adversaries are doing very similar things. We can’t just sit back and watch.”
AURORA, Colo.—When Soldiers and Sailors went to work constructing a floating pier in Gaza last year, the U.S. Space Force monitored their security using civilian satellite intelligence. The Tactical Surveillance, Reconnaissance, and Tracking, or TacSRT program—first discussed at last year’s AFA Warfare Symposium—is a marketplace designed to let commercial suppliers identify data they can offer and military users search for answers to things they need.
One year later, Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman proclaimed the program a success.
“I don’t have to test it anymore—it works,” Saltzman told reporters. “Now they’re just making the demand signal in and we’re going to the marketplace, finding the products and delivering it. … So we’re kind of out of the test phase. It works. And now it’s about making sure if everybody’s educated how to use it, and then getting money to continue to expand the program.”
One real-world test that helped prove the program: imagery used to monitor security when the U.S. sent in the military to set up a Joint-Logistics-Over-the-Shore pier in the Mediterranean Sea in Gaza.
Space Forces Central commander Col. Christopher S. Putman said TacSRT was the best available solution.
“When we built the humanitarian relief pier in Gaza, TacSRT was where we went,” Putman revealed during a panel discussion. “We had daily products and were able to provide those on a not-classified basis to everyone that had a concern there. And they were able to see what they needed to see in an easily disseminated product.”
TacSRT played a similar role in the withdrawal of U.S. forces from air bases in Niger last year, Saltzman said in September at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference.
Combatant commands’ insatiable demand for information and the limited capacity of “National Technical Means,” the term for Intelligence Community assets, to deliver on every need drove the TacSRT requirement.
Space Forces Indo-Pacific boss Brig. Gen. Anthony J. Mastalir said TacSRT is helping to fill in gaps in coverage when other means aren’t available or appropriate.
“Commercial opens up that envelope quite a bit, and brings a lot of capability that perhaps now some task force that’s planning a low-level op that wouldn’t think they could get that kind of imagery, even though it’s commercial, it may absolutely 100 percent satisfy their needs,” he said during the panel.
Matt Brown, a principal engineering fellow at Raytheon Air & Space Defense Systems, said during a different panel that commercial services are growing in quality and capability.
“We did deliver a scalable telescope to Maxar for the Worldview Legion set of vehicles, and that’s six vehicles that allows 15 revisits to the same location every day, 30-centimeter quality imagery,” he said. “That is a capability that the government can leverage as a service today. So instead of having to build up their own constellation of capabilities, you can leverage that and that provides 90 percent of what you need as a service.”
While it seems unlikely the Pentagon will ever utilize commercial intel to that extent, Saltzman did say INDOPACOM has already tapped into the TacSRT program to support its exercises and is planning to expand its use.
TacSRT isn’t limited to U.S. users either—it can also benefit allies. Saltzman described a visit to Southern Command where the Space Force is forming a future Space Forces South. “They are using those capabilities to really great effect supporting South American partners,” he said.
U.S. Space Forces Europe and Africa commander Brig. Gen. Jacob Middleton told reporters he has used TacSRT to support allies responding to everything from floods to illegal fishing. And because it draws upon commercial services, it sidesteps many of the classification and intelligence-sharing problems Space Force leaders frequently bemoan.
“Intel is important, but as soon as you say intel, that means there’s a reason for me to protect that information for whatever reason,” Middleton said. “I just need information, and I need to get it out to the folks who actually need it. TacSRT is great. It’s doing great. I would like to see more competition in that area.”
Indeed, Middleton said demand for the program has surged to the point where he has had to establish requirements for its use, given that its funding is limited to a few million dollars. That is likely to change in the coming years, Saltzman said.
“The demand signal is now out there, and people are seeing the positive effects,” Saltzman added. “We’re going to go, ‘OK, we’ve got to go get some money for this, because we can expand this program.'”
AURORA, Colo.—The Space Force will start rolling out a new promotion system for Specialist 4s (E-4s) rising to Sergeant (E-5s) later this fiscal year, Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force John F. Bentivegna said at the AFA Warfare Symposium.
The new system aims to do away with annual caps on the number of E-4s who can become E-5s, allowing commanders to select as many qualified Guardians as they feel are ready for the responsibility of being a noncommissioned officer.
“If they’re qualified and ready and are doing the work, let’s make them an E-5, especially if they’re combat mission ready,” Bentivegna told reporters.
Under the current system, E-5 candidates are scored and ranked based on their performance and training records. A selection board then chooses which ones advance to E-5 based on their qualifications and how many E-5s can promote that year.
With the new system, every E-4 who meets the qualifications will be promoted, removing any limits on the number of eligible candidates, Bentivegna explained.
A centralized selection board will still evaluate whether an E-5 candidate is qualified, but instead of ranking those candidates based on scores, “the board will focus solely on determining each individual’s qualification for advancement to E-5,” the chief added. “This critical decision will be made based on a thorough review of each E-4’s record, performance reports, and input from their direct supervisor and commander.”
The new system is an extension of the fully qualified promotion system that already exists for Guardians ranked E-1 through E-4, where commanders evaluate and endorse Guardians as ready for their next rank based on demonstrated performance and readiness.
When the system expands to E-5s this fiscal year, it will start with a centralized selection board, but the goal is to eventually push that authority to the unit command level.
“This change empowers commanders by entrusting them with the added responsibility of identifying and promoting the most qualified Guardians to E-5 within their units,” Bentivegna said.
Most candidates make it to E-5 already. The promotion rates in 2022, 2023, and 2024, were 66.91 percent, 72.08 percent, and 95.66 percent, respectively. The new system makes it so that all qualified E-5 candidates can switch from stripes to chevrons on their rank insignia. But that doesn’t make promotion a guarantee, Bentivegna said.
“This system ensures a continued emphasis on quality within our E-5 ranks, even as we expand opportunities for advancement,” he said.
The roll-out will start sometime in fiscal 2025. While the specific qualification requirements are still being worked out, the system will incorporate factors such as time in service, time in grade, and potentially professional military education as prerequisites for promotion, the chief explained.
There are no definitive plans yet for expanding the program beyond E-5s, but officials are always seeking feedback to inform any future decisions about it, he added.
The move to expand fully qualified promotion to E-5 candidates is part of a larger project Bentivegna has championed to enhance Guardians’ experience in service. The project revolves around three themes: providing meaningful quality of life and service to Guardians and families; elevating Guardians’ warfighting mindset; and keep bringing in star talent.
“I want to make sure that your experience is one that you value, one that you respect, one that you brag about when you talk to your friends and your neighbors and your family,” Bentivegna said in September when he revealed the plan at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference. “That’s why I envision the Guardian experience. That’s why these are my key initiatives.”
Part of the effort involves keeping noncommissioned officers hands-on in the day-to-day mission for longer in their careers, rather than shift to managerial roles.
“When I talk about the future, I want to really hammer home the expectation that you never lose that requirement to be operationally relevant,” Bentivegna said in September.
The new promotion system is meant to match that and help better match enlisted talent where they can do the most good throughout their careers.
“It’s kind of modernizing how we look at the enlisted talent that we have within the service, and how do we more tightly align the promotion gateways with accomplishments and responsibility,” Bentivegna told reporters March 3.
A U.S. Air Force B-52 Stratofortress bomber flew with the Israeli Air Force and Royal Air Force over the eastern Mediterranean Sea on March 4, a U.S. defense official told Air & Space Forces Magazine. The sortie marks the third Bomber Task Force mission to the Middle East region in just the past month.
The B-52 took off from RAF Fairford, U.K.; traveled over the Mediterranean; and orbited off the coast of Israel, where it flew alongside Israeli Air Force F-35s and F-15s. The mission included integration with Royal Air Force fighters as well. The RAF has fighters based in the Mediterranean that support missions in the Middle East.
On March 6, the U.S. military confirmed a B-52 flew to the Middle East earlier in the week, “strengthening partner interoperability and demonstrating force projection capabilities in the region,” according to a statement from U.S. Central Command, which oversees U.S. forces in the region.
The Israel Defense Forces confirmed details of their participation in the mission in a post on social media.
“During the flight, the forces practiced operational coordination between the two militaries to enhance their ability to address various regional threats,” the IDF said in a post on X. The Israeli military said their alliance with CENTCOM “continues to develop and strengthen.”
That mission came just two weeks after B-52s flew “multiple missions over the Arabian Peninsula and Red Sea without landing,” Air Forces Central said in a Feb. 20 press release. Those missions, which were carried out over two consecutive days, included live weapons drops. They also included a rare Feb. 17 flight of two U.S. B-52s accompanied by Iraqi F-16s.
“Bomber Task Force missions demonstrate the U.S. military’s ability to rapidly deploy combat power anywhere in the world and integrate it with Coalition and partner forces to enhance U.S. Central Command’s ability to promote security and stability in the region,” Air Forces Central (AFCENT) said in a February press release.
All the recent Bomber Task Force missions to the Middle East were flown by B-52s temporarily based at RAF Fairford. Those BUFFS are from the 69th Expeditionary Bomb Squadron at Minot Air Force Base, N.D.
Bombers have played an increasingly important role in the Middle East in the past year. “Beyond their role as a deterrent through an active presence, the bombers have served to amplify U.S. strike capabilities against Iranian-affiliated militia groups throughout the past year,” AFCENT said last month.
In February 2024, the U.S. used B-1B Lancer bombers to strike 85 targets in Syria and Iraq to retaliate for the killing of three U.S. Army Soldiers at Tower 22 in Jordan in a militia drone attack. That site supports the Al Tanf Garrison just across the border in eastern Syria.
In October 2024, a B-2 Spirit stealth bomber struck Houthi facilities in Yemen. And in November 2024, six B-52s deployed to CENTCOM for 45 days—the first BUFF deployment to the region since 2019—and participated in airstrikes against the Islamic State group.
On Feb. 27, two B-52s also conducted a simulated weapons drop in Turkey, which, while officially in the area of responsibility for U.S. European Command, borders Syria, Iraq, and Iran, countries covered by U.S. Central Command.
The BUFFs kept up their busy stretch March 3, as they flew operated a BTF mission with Romanian F-16s, Croatian Rafales, and Bulgarian MiG-29s, U.S. Air Forces in Europe (USAFE) announced.
AURORA, Colo.—Air & Space Forces Magazine caught up with Heather Penney, former F-16 pilot and now a senior fellow with the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, at the AFA Warfare Symposium to break down the biggest developments from Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin’s keynote address at the conference. Editor-in-Chief Tobias Naegele and Penney discuss Allvin’s call for “more Air Force,” his focus on readiness, and the new designations for Collaborative Combat Aircraft drones.