USAF Experiments with Drones to Better Monitor Russia in the Arctic

Sept. 18, 2024 | By Unshin Lee Harpley

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.—U.S. Air Forces in Europe is testing more uses for drones to extend its Arctic surveillance, emphasizing that while sharing information might be “the easiest and cheapest” option, it’s far from enough, its leader said.

“We’ve been experimenting with MQ-9s, with Global Hawks … trying to go up farther north in the Arctic Circle, which we haven’t done in the past,” Gen. James B. Hecker, commander of USAFE and NATO Allied Air Command, said at the AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference.

The MQ-9 Reaper, dubbed the “hunter-killer,” provides medium-altitude surveillance with 27-hour endurance, focusing on time-critical, high-value targets in permissive environments. Meanwhile, the RQ-4 Global Hawk, a high-altitude “deep look” ISR platform, complements satellites and manned aircraft, staying airborne for up to 34 hours depending on the mission payload.

An MQ-9 Reaper remotely piloted aircraft from the 556 Test and Evaluation Squadron flies over the Nevada Test and Training Range during a live-fire exercises with Hellfire missiles and GBU-12 Paveway II bombs. Airman 1st Class Victoria Nuzzi

Last month, USAFE deployed the RQ-4 to RAF Fairford in the U.K. for the first time for an undisclosed duration. The command noted that this deployment will include operations through “international and Allied airspace.” NATO also currently operates five RQ-4D Phoenix aircraft from Sigonella Naval Air Station, Italy.

Hecker also expressed interest in high-altitude balloons or experimental, solar-powered drones as a way to improve domain awareness in the Arctic, a crucial region where NATO and Russia frequently come into contact.

And it’s not just USAFE that wants to expand the use of surveillance drones. Gen. Gregory M. Guillot, head of NORAD and U.S. Northern Command, said earlier during the conference that these drones as a potential “gap filler” while the service works to procure over-the-horizon radars (OTHR). He emphasized that the UAVs would need to be adapted for the Arctic’s unique conditions to maintain endurance and altitude.

While MQ-9s and RQ-4s can soar tens of thousands of feet above the ground, Hecker also said he wants to boost low-altitude surveillance and defense. In particular, he Ukraine’s cost-effective ISR system known as “Sky Fortress,” a smartphone-based network of acoustic sensors that detect drones by sound. These sensors relay data to mobile teams, enabling them to shoot down UAVs with minimal training.

“I had a demonstration done at Ramstein where they brought up these sensors, put them around the air base, and we saw that it worked,” Hecker told reporters during a roundtable at the conference. “We did another demonstration in Romania, and several other countries came and saw that it worked. … I briefed all the NATO Air Chiefs on this and had the guys come in and brief the physicists. They’re very excited about it. Now, we just need to have them pony up, get some money, and try to put these sensors out there.”

Air Force Gen. James Hecker, commander of U.S. Air Forces in Europe-Air Forces Africa and NATO Allied Air Command, Lt. Gen. Case Cunningham, Commander, Alaskan Command, U.S. Northern Command, Maj. Gen. Jonas Wikman, Air Chief of the Swedish Air Force, and Major General Øivind Gunnerud, Chief of the Royal Norwegian Air Force at ‘Deterring Russia in the Arctic’ panel discussion at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference.

At just a few hundred dollars per sensor, it’s an affordable and highly effective system that has already proven its value against Russian drones, Hecker said.

The urgency to enhance ISR in the Arctic is fueled by an uptick in Russian aircraft activity in the region, on top of Moscow’s increasing coordination with China. Other Arctic nations like Norway—with a large portion of its territory inside the Arctic Circle—are seeing it too.

“On average, per year, we intercept Russians once or twice per week, and we see their ships all the time,” said Maj. Gen. Øivind Gunnerud, Chief of Royal Norwegian Air Force. “And since the climate is that harsh, search and rescue is also important.”

Sweden and Finland—two Arctic neighbors close to Russia—also joined NATO recently, beefing up the alliance’s presence.

“What we add is changing the geography in the Arctic completely,” said Maj. Gen. Jonas Wikman, Air Chief of the Swedish Air Force. “That means a huge thing that enables new plans, and achieving true deterrence in the Arctic is going to be making use of that new geography, combined with our strengths, making new plans, and exercising those plans. Because true deterrence against Russia comes from demonstrating that we are an alliance.”

With more territory comes broader surveillance, and NATO is putting information sharing at the forefront.

“A lot of countries have a lot of different capabilities… and if we share that information, that’s going to give us a lot more than we have,” said Hecker. “We’re already doing that, and we have agreements to even do it more. It’s not for any one country, there’s no way you can do it (by yourself), so we have to do it together.”

Could Trainees Start Carrying Real Rifles in BMT? There’s Interest, but No Timeline Yet

Sept. 18, 2024 | By David Roza

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.—There is no timeline yet on when, if ever, Air Force and Space Force trainees might be expected to carry actual weapons at Basic Military Training, the head of the 37th Training Wing said Sept. 18. The decision to do so would have to be made at higher levels such as the commanders of the Second Air Force, Air Education and Training Command, and even the Chief of Staff of the Air Force.

“It’ll have to go through that entire process to make sure we understand what we’re doing and why we’re doing it, and then just to ensure that we are actually prepared to do that in a safe manner,” Col. Willie L. Cooper told reporters at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference.

Starting in late July, future Airmen and Guardians were each issued an inert M4 carbine after completing the initial weapons familiarization course during the first week of training. The carbines have a red flash suppressor to show that they are inert, meaning they cannot be fired. Trainees then carry the weapons for the rest of the 7.5-week program and store the rifles in lockers when they’re in the dorms.

But the “desired end state” would be to have Airmen carry actual weapons, ones that are capable of being fired, throughout their BMT experience, Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force David Flosi told reporters at the conference.

“We really would want to get the real ones, because the threat’s real, the environment is dangerous,” he said.

Trainees used to carry inert weapons until the program halted in 2012. The 737th Training Group, which oversees BMT, brought it back to prepare for possible conflict against China or Russia, which experts say will be more bloody than any the U.S. military has experienced for decades.

“Incorporating practice weapons into realistic scenarios in a controlled environment builds confidence, corrects errors, and manages stress by providing regular practice that reduces hesitation and increases combat effectiveness,” group commander Col. Billy Wilson Jr. said in a press release in August.

air force rifle — U.S. Air Force Basic Military Training trainees carry weapons at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland on August 2, 2024. (U.S. Air Force photo by Ava Leone)

In a near-peer conflict, Airmen may have to work in small teams and perform tasks outside their usual career field, such as carrying a rifle and guarding an airfield.

“So understanding lethal means and understanding the responsibility that comes along with it, that’s time well spent,” Flosi said. “It’s a little bit of individual responsibility and accountability, and also its another reminder that you’re in the profession of arms.”

Both Marine and Army recruits carry weapons with them throughout boot camp, during which they learn to fire at the rifle range. Currently, Air Force trainees learn to fire rifles during the fifth week of BMT, then wield training rifles during PACER FORGE, the 36-hour combat exercise at the end of BMT.

“Carrying a weapon … gets that training, the awareness, the confidence, the ability to handle it safely, as they go through the pipeline,” Cooper said.

The colonel said the 37th Training Wing will continue to refine BMT so that it prepares trainees for the end user: the deployable combat wing.

“How do we get our folks, our trainees, acclimated to what they’re going to face at that combat wing, what they’re going to be expected to do,” he said. “That’s where you’ll continue to see tweaks at PACER FORGE and throughout their career.”

A group of Basic Military Training trainees walk together during a simulated deployment exercise known as Primary Agile Combat Employment Range, Forward Operations Readiness Generation Exercise or PACER FORGE at Joint Base San Antonio – Chapman Training Annex, Nov. 20, 2023. (U.S. Air Force photo by Vanessa R. Adame)

‘A Fine Balance’: How to Manage More Exercises Versus Readiness

Sept. 18, 2024 | By Chris Gordon

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.—The Air Force and Space Force will have to manage a delicate balance between building readiness and preparing forces as they conduct more realistic, large-scale exercises, senior leaders said Sept. 18 at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference.

“An exercise is a great way to build skill sets. We build interoperability, and there’s a lot to be gained,” Gen. Kevin B. Schneider, commander of Pacific Air Forces, said during a panel discussion. “There’s also a burn that’s associated with exercises.”

The Air Force wants to move towards more limited-notice, large-scale exercises. That push is headlined by REFORPAC, a roughly two-week exercise set to place across the Pacific next summer, which will integrate the U.S. Air Force with U.S. Indo-Pacific Command’s plans for operationally relevant training for a fight in which forces need to disperse to different bases under simulated attack and communications may not be available. REFORPAC is modeled on the Cold War-era REFORGER exercise aimed to prepare the U.S. to face a threat from the Soviet Union. The Air Force is already moving in that direction with the Air Combat Command-led Bamboo Eagle exercise in 2024 and the Air Mobility Command-led Mobility Guardian last year.

“We’re understanding better how the training events need to be improved,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin told Air & Space Forces Magazine in August. “We’re putting together more regional training sites so they can deploy before they get to a big Bamboo Eagle. Now we look to expand that because we’ve got to scale it to the entire Air Force.”

However, exercises, while not real-world fights, do impact readiness. Aircraft are flown, using up equipment and taxing Airmen.

“For us, as we continue to do more, we have to take a hard look at the prioritization and understand the impacts on readiness because we do not know when the next crisis is going to happen and we’ve got to be on our toes for all that,” Schneider said. “It’s an ongoing focus item … to make sure that at the same time, we don’t consume too much of our force to give us the opportunities to respond.”

The Air Force conducts exercises for several different reasons. In addition to training the force to fight, exercises are often alliance-building events. Some are diplomatically driven to build relationships with countries.

In 2023, the Air Force brought A-10 Warthog close air support aircraft and more to South America, an ofteen-overlooked area in U.S. military circles, for an exercise led by U.S. Southern Command.

A U.S. Air Force A-10 Thunderbolt II from the 64th Air Expeditionary Wing prepares for takeoff at Chiclayo, Peru, July 12, 2023 U.S. Air Force photo by Master Sgt. Chris Hibben

“The influence the [People’s Republic of China] has there is immense,” the head of Air Force Reserve Command Lt. Gen. John P. Healy said. “So it was an absolute show of force. And what we tried to do is we tried to put a mini Air Force there, everything from C-17, A-10, C-130s, tankers to show that we have the capability, with many eyes watching, of doing things like this.”

But top commanders said they do not want to tax the force too much.

“We come up with events, and we’ve got a few where a Delta commander feels like this is not a readiness-generating event, there are no learning objectives that satisfy any of my requirements to meet a EUCOM or PACOM requirement, we don’t send the force element to go,” said Lt. Gen. David N. Miller, the head of Space Operations Command. “That has generated some hard feelings reports, which are my job to receive. But I think that has also disciplined our structure.”

At the tactical level, wing commanders say they also carefully judge tradeoffs to ensure they don’t overextend their troops. The 31st Fighter Wing based at Aviano Air Base, Italy, has deployed its F-16s to the Middle East twice in the last year to fend off Iranian aggression while still fulfilling multiple exercises focused on integrating with European allies and preparing to defend NATO, conducting a myriad of exercises in the past few months.

Wing commander Brig. Gen. Tad D. Clark echoed senior leaders, noting his Airmen and aircraft cannot be overused and that careful consideration must be made not to conduct too many exercises that would harm his ability to be ready to fight or scale down how many forces the wing commits to an exercise.

“We have a strategic calendar, we think it through, we see what the taskings are, and we try to plot it out, so that we give it deliberate thought of what we’re committing ourselves to, what we’re committing ourselves to, and what we’re not able to fully support,” he told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

“That’s why we try to be as deliberate as possible and have good communication with the headquarters, expressing what we’re able to do, and then lay out the [tradeoffs],” Clark added. “There are some exercise opportunities that have not been tasked but have been made available, and we’ve respectfully communicated that we’re just going to have to … not participate based on our operational cycle, how busy we are, how many aircraft we have, and some limitations—because we could do it all, but to what cost is the question.”

An F-16 Fighting Falcon from Aviano Air Base, Italy, lands at an undisclosed location in the U.S. Central Command’s area of responsibility in April 2024. **USAF**

Senior leaders say they are cognizant of those concerns.

“Exercises help build readiness, but exercises also come with a cost,” Schneider told Air & Space Forces Magazine in an interview. “You can exercise so much that it actually starts to decrement your readiness, because you can’t reconstitute.”

“It’s a fine balance, and I work with the wing commanders to understand how much is too much,” Schneider continued. “When it comes to exercising, there’s tremendous benefit that comes from it. There’s also tremendous benefit from being able to just focus on the things you weren’t able to do during an exercise: take care of maintenance, take care of some of the other things, and make sure that your people and your equipment are healthy to be able to respond across the spectrum.”

Space Force Close to New Launch Contracts—But Only If Congress Passes a Budget

Sept. 18, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.—The Space Force is preparing to award billions of dollars in launch contracts by the end of this year—provided Congress passes a budget. If Congress only passes a continuing resolution, the schedule may have to slip.

By the end of 2024, Space Systems Command wants to award a contract for the next phase of its National Security Space Launch program. It also wants to observe a final certification flight from United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur rocket and see the first certification flight from Blue Origin’s New Glenn vehicle.

All three events are key to Phase 3 of the NSSL program, which will be responsible for launching the military’s most important new satellite systems into orbit from 2025 to 2029.

Brig. Gen. Kristin L. Panzenhagen, SSC’s program executive officer for Assured Access to Space, told reporters at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference that much work remains to be done. The Space Force took a “dual-lane” approach to this phase—Lane 1 prioritizes commercial-like missions where a higher risk tolerance is allowable, while Lane 2 is for the “most stressing heavy-lift launches” where full mission assurance is essential.

Contract winners will get to compete for task orders for specific missions within the program. ULA, Blue Origin, and SpaceX all got contracts for Lane 1 in June. Source selection is ongoing for Lane 2 and awards are expected toward the end of this year, Panzenhagen said.

“It’s a big important contract, we’re definitely doing a lot of due diligence on that,” she said.

Panzenhagen and SSC commander Lt. Gen. Philip A. Garrant both said the contract award could be complicated if Congress fails to pass a budget by the start of fiscal 2025 on Oct. 1. If they pass instead a a continuing resolution, spending levels will be frozen at 2024 levels and new programs can’t be started.

“Pending a budget, we will make those awards,” Garrant told reporters in a virtual roundtable.

As for launch operations, he added, “We do have the ability to prioritize where our CR funds go, and clearly space lift and National Security Space Launch is important.”

SSC has previously said it will award up to three Lane 2 contracts in a bid to increase competition in a launch market that is now dominated by SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets. ULA and Blue Origin are widely considered the top two competitors after getting Lane 1 contracts, but neither company has an active launch system that is certified for NSSL’s most important missions.

Strictly speaking, neither company’s rocket needs to be certified before a contract award—SSC’s criteria only requires that the bidders have a plan to achieve certification by October 2026. However, the criteria also note that “the Government may assign a significant strength or a strength if the offeror demonstrates the proposed Launch System is ready earlier than the required readiness date.”

The upcoming flights of Vulcan and New Glenn could help demonstrate that readiness, though Panzenhagen noted that the NSSL contract award is not waiting for any particular contractor’s flight.

Vulcan is set to launch Oct. 4 with an inert payload for its second certification flight. If all goes well, Panzenhagen said her team will work to make sure the rocket is certified for NSSL missions, which it will have to do to get launches under Phase 2 of the program, where ULA and SpaceX are the only contractors.

“I’m definitely looking forward to that second certification flight. It’s not instantaneous that if they have a clean flight, they’re automatically certified,” said Panzenhagen. “We have a lot of data to go through after that just to make sure that everything performed up to expectations.”

Blue Origin, meanwhile, does not have a firm launch date for New Glenn but is targeting the first half of November. The launch will carry technology from Blue Origin’s Blue Ring logistics vehicle and will be targeted for NSSL certification, the company has said.

“Every time we can get more providers, we’re looking forward to that,” Panzenhagen said. “You don’t have the similar expectations because with Vulcan we had a first flight to look at. This will be the first flight of a brand new rocket, so we’re very excited to see how that performs: the first step of a longer certification path for them.”

The stakes for Lane 2 are particularly high, consisting of nearly 50 missions and encompassing only three providers. Competition for individual missions in Lane 1 will likely grow, as additional providers can join that program via periodic “on-ramps.” Panzenhagen confirmed that her office held an industry day for the next on-ramp last month and expect to release a solicitation next month.

New B-21 Bomber Now Flying Up to Twice a Week

Sept. 18, 2024 | By John A. Tirpak

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.—The B-21 Raider bomber, which began flight testing last November, is now generating sorties as frequently as twice per week at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., and ground testing of two similar aircraft is well underway, program officials said at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference.

“We’re really starting to strike up a flight cadence,” Northrop Grumman aeronautics president Tom Jones said in a panel discussion on the B-21.

Also during the panel, officials released the first official video of the B-21 flying, though amateur videographers have captured footage of the aircraft before.

“We’re actually able to generate two test flights, sometimes, in a given week, which, if you think about how far [in the flight test program] we are, that’s great,” Jones said. When the B-21 contract was awarded in 2015, “we made a vow that we were going to design this system to be a daily flyer.”

“Clearly,” Jones said, “I think we’re well on our way to delivering the kind of asset that can be that daily flyer” for Global Strike Command, something that has only rarely been achieved with the B-2, due to its need for heavy maintenance after every sortie.

The first B-21 to take to the skies is still the only one that has flown, however.

Jones said Northrop’s goal with T-1—the first flight test aircraft—was that it would be as near to the eventual production version, P-1, as possible. Flight tests so far have largely validated the digitally predicted performance.

“Everything we’ve heard is, it flies very much like the model,” Jones said. “We’ve been able to make significant expansions of the flight envelope to date, and we’re finding the model to be accurate enough that we’re actually using the model itself to inform our test points and our test plan, in which I think is very good place to be.”

“The handling qualities are better than expected coming out of the simulated environment—validating the accuracy of the digital models the team has developed and analyzed over many years,” Northrop test pilot Chris “Hoss” Moss, said in a release.

There are three aircraft in test, Jones said. Panelists did not disclose any planned flight test milestones or say when a second B-21 might take flight.

“We’ve got the one in flight test, and we’ve got two in structural tests,” Jones said. One is in a structural life test, wherein metal bars, pulleys, and wires pull and push on the airframe to find out where it might break after years of flying. The tests will determine how the B-21 ages over time. This is not “flashy,” Jones said, but “if you intend to build a lot of these and operate them for a long time, this is very important work. … All components that have to advance if you’re going to be successful.”

An Air Force spokesperson said the three B-21s referenced by Jones are included within the six B-21s the service has acknowledged are in some stage of construction.

“I’d say…I think the program is progressing very well,” Jones said. “I don’t want to jinx myself, but we’ve had more issues with test fixtures and training of our test personnel that we actually have of the test article itself, which, again, is a pretty good place to be at this point.”

Jones said the goal of making T-1 nearly the same as P-1 “saves a lot of…risk” on the program, chiefly because it will smooth and streamline the progression from flight test to production-level aircraft.

The B-21 has been designed with an open architecture to be able to adapt to changes in the threat, said William Bailey, director of the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office, which manages the B-21.

“Hopefully people are tracking the fact that the threat environment is very complex, and it’s very dynamic,” Bailey said. “You know, our adversaries have been watching us for 30 years … and they are not stupid, and they are not static, and they are demonstrating that they can develop and field things that complicate our plans, and that’s why this pursuit of an open design is so important. You need to plan for this.”

The Air Force is “not stupid or static, either,” he added. “We watch them as well, and really at that point it allows us to not only take into account an environment where there’s going to be new threats, but it also enables the opportunities for new technologies, for new companies that did not exist when we first pursued these things.”

AFSOC Will Deploy Ospreys in ‘Weeks,’ But Full Fleet Readiness Is Still Months Away

Sept. 18, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.—Air Force Special Operations Command will deploy some of its CV-22 Ospreys in the coming weeks after months of limited operations, its commander said Sept. 18. But even when deployed, Ospreys will be required to operate within 30 minutes of a safe landing zone—a factor that will inevitably impact operations and planning.

Speaking with reporters at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference, Lt. Gen. Michael E. Conley said around 60 percent of the command’s Osprey fleet is flying again, 11 months after a fatal crash in November 2023 triggered a lengthy grounding. Aircraft started flying again in May, following safety restrictions and a slow, phased approach. In July, the Air Force withheld CV-22s from a planned exercise in Japan to focus on “internal training.” Aircraft and crew alike are still working their way back.

“My whole fleet is not operationally ready yet,” Conley said. “But I have enough capacity and the right crews trained to provide capabilities on the battlefield.”

Conley declined to say where the Ospreys would deploy but noted it would not be in Europe or the Indo-Pacific, where AFSOC already has CV-22 wings at RAF Mildenhall, United Kingdom, and Yokota Air Base, Japan.

“We will go back to the missions that only the CV-22 can do, or what the combatant commanders need us to do,” he said.

Conley estimated that all of AFSOC’s 51 CV-22s would return to full flight within the next few months.

“We’re bringing about three [aircraft] every 10 days or so that are ready” for functional check flights, he said. “And so we’re tracking late ’24, early ’25 that the 51 tails in AFSOC will be fully operational.”

Lt. Gen. Michael Conley, Commander, Air Force Special Operations Command at Air, Space & Cyber Conference, September 16, 2024. Photo by Mike Tsukamoto/ Air & Space Forces Magazine

But fully operational comes with an asterisk. Conley and a command spokeswoman both said Ospreys must stay within 30 minutes of a spot to land, which they termed “a mission planning issue,” not a flight restriction. Applying that to potential combat zones and hostile territory \will require planning and deconfliction, the spokeswoman said.

New safety procedures now in place advise pilots to land after a second warning about metal fragments in the Osprey gearbox. Previously the standard waited for three warnings before a mandatory landing. The Air Force Accident Investigation Board, headed by Conley, that looked into the November 2023 accident in Japan determined the cause of the fatal crash was a failed gear.

“Our criteria prior was three chip [warnings] was a ‘land as soon as practical,’” Conley said. “We’ve changed that to one, and then two becomes a ‘land as soon as possible.’ At the end of the day, there will always be aircraft commander and crew discretion. It’s the nature of what we do. The environments are unique, depending on where we fly and what we’re doing, but we have tightened up the guidance to try to make it less ambiguous to the crews up there.”

Conley’s timeline for AFSOC’s CV-22s to be fully operational is slightly ahead of the Navy’s schedule for its Ospreys. Vice Adm. Carl Chebi, head of Naval Air Systems Command, told Congress in June that the Osprey would not be cleared for full, unrestricted flight operations until mid-2025.

Chebi has been a “great partner,” Conley said.

The Osprey fleet as a whole has come under intense scrutiny in recent months—the crash in Japan was the fourth deadly V-22 mishap in just over two years across the U.S. military, and lawmakers and family members of troops killed in the accidents have demanded answers.

Conley insisted that AFSOC has taken a deliberate and safety-conscious approach in returning it to flight. “To be blunt about it, I would not put the men and women of AFSOC back on the plane if I wasn’t confident that it could do what we needed it to do,” Conley said.

“As part of my Accident Investigation Board duties, I spent time with families after the report came out, and that’s hard,” he continued. “Those families are still grieving, and I appreciate that. They were all gracious to me and my team as we met and spent time with them. I owe it to the families to make sure that we’re giving [Airmen] the safest aircraft we can. And I wouldn’t put them in harm’s way if I didn’t have confidence in it.”

Saltzman’s Focus Shifts to People and Transformation: Mitchell Institute’s Charles Galbreath

Sept. 18, 2024 | By Tobias Naegele

As the Space Force approaches its 5th birthday in September, Gen. B. Chance Saltzman is shifting his talking points from why the Space Force is necessary and needed, to how to transform the service into the powerhouse he wants it to be. That means talking about building up manpower, adding substantial resources, and building the bridges into allies, partners, and the Pentagon’s combatant commands that will help ensure space capabilities get to the people who need it, when they need it now and in the future.

Charles Galbreath spoke with Air & Space Forces Magazine’s Editor in Chief, Tobias Naegele, at AFA’s 2024 Air, Space & Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Md.

AI Will Enhance Logistics—If Systems Get Modernized First, Vendors Say

Sept. 18, 2024 | By Shaun Waterman

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.—Artificial intelligence could be a force multiplier in logistics and sustainment for managing Air Force systems and technology, but there’s no magic wand that can sprinkle AI dust to magically modernize legacy systems, vendors here said at AFA’s Air, Space and Cyber Conference on Sept 18.

To achieve the full potential of AI-driven predictive algorithms, existing systems and business processes must also be overhauled, and that needs to happen first, said Justin Woulfe, cofounder and chief technology officer of Systecon North America, a logistics fleet management software provider.

“We all know that inside of our maintenance systems and supply systems … there’s a lot of fuzzy information,” he said, “The reality is, there may not be a lot of value in some of the data fields in there. So being able to understand them in a more automated way doesn’t help.”

The problem, he explained in an interview later, is that legacy systems often record data that “somebody needed in 1988 and no one’s used since then.”

The Air Force could learn from the U.S. Navy, which successfully “modernized their IT portfolio to be able to buy AI [tools] in a much better way, not just trying to throw AI on top of some of the legacy solutions that exist in old school IT systems that are holding us back, frankly,” Woulf said.

Other panelists agreed it was important to match the right tool for the right tasks, with AI as much as with any other technology.

“Just because you have an AI hammer does not mean you should use an AI hammer for every single problem,” said Matt George, founder and CEO of Merlin Labs, which develops autonomous flight systems.

In developing AI pilots, George said, there are three stages of looking at a problem. Firstly, can it be solved using conventional “highly deterministic software,” which produce predictable results every time for core flight control and navigational tasks? “If the problem is not solvable deterministically, we then use what we call sniper shot AI skills, so things like natural language, where an aircraft controller or air battle manager can go talk to the system in … a constrained, machine learning way.”

For problems not solvable by either approach, “then and only then, you breakout that true transformer-based AI hammer and be able to enable the system to be a little bit creative,” he said.

The importance of the step-by-step approach is that it allows trust to develop, he said. Merlin would introduce autonomous systems as a “junior pilot,” where the human pilot was “able to go monitor or override and be able to go train that [AI] pilot and build trust.”

Trust was essential, and building it was tough, George said. “When folks ask us what’s the hardest technical problem that we’re facing … the answer I always give is human factors. The hardest part of what we’re dealing with is human factors.”

Those human factors meant a gradual approach was essential, he said. “When you first get in an aircraft with somebody else who’s not flown with you before, or that you don’t necessarily trust completely, your hand is really tight on that stick. And then you gradually relax to the point where you trust the other pilot on the flight deck with you,” he said.

That trust is just as important in sustainment and logistics as it is in autonomous flight, added retired Air Force Col. Louis Ruscetta, now with vendor Virtualitics. AI decision-making needs to be transparent and auditable, because where serious decisions are involved, no one is going to trust a decision coming from a black box.

“In the end, the human, those maintainers, those supply chain reps, they’re on the hook. The commanders in the field that are making the decision, that have that authority and responsibility, need to understand what information that’s being fed into those tools … again, it gets back to building that trust,” he said.

Defense Unicorns on Software Acquisition – Live at ASC24

Sept. 18, 2024

Victoria Wyler, Defense Unicorns’ Growth Lead discusses software acquisition at AFA’s 2024 Air, Space & Cyber Conference at the Gaylord Convention Center in National Harbor, Md.