Afghanistan Withdrawal ‘Halfway Finished’ as US, NATO Look for New Ways to Advise

June 7, 2021 | By Brian W. Everstine

U.S. forces are about halfway done with the planned withdrawal from Afghanistan as the U.S. and NATO pledge to continue their support for the country in new ways.

U.S. Central Command boss Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr. said June 7 that with so much progress already, “we will make the September deadline to complete the full withdrawal from Afghanistan.”

McKenzie also noted the U.S. will maintain an embassy in Afghanistan and will continue to support the Afghan forces, saying CENTCOM is “working now with friends in the region to establish” the capability to “go after al-Qaeda and ISIS from over the horizon from other locations in the theater.” This would be in addition to existing capabilities, such as the B-52s that are deployed to Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar, and aircraft carriers currently operating in the region.

The withdrawal is being conducted “in concert with our NATO allies and partners,” McKenzie said. Also on June 7, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg visited Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III to prepare for the upcoming NATO summit later this month, which will focus largely on the future in Afghanistan.

During a brief appearance at the Pentagon, Stoltenberg said that even though the military mission in the country is ending, “we will continue to provide support to Afghanistan” with a continued civilian presence, continued funding for Afghan forces, and NATO is “also looking into the possibility of providing out-of-country training for Afghan forces,” Stoltenberg said.

Austin said the withdrawal process is “proceeding well” and that the U.S. “remains committed to assisting our Resolute Support partners as they, too, retrograde.”

Protecting key infrastructure in the country, such as the international airport in Kabul, to enable a sustained diplomatic presence is now a top priority. McKenzie said there are advanced plans for this but did not provide specifics. Stoltenberg also said NATO is looking at ways to help Afghan forces maintain the airport and other key locations.

Despite Golden Horde Success, USAF Not Ready to Make Technology Program of Record

June 7, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

The Golden Horde Vanguard program yielded good results but will not advance into a program of record just yet, Air Force Materiel Command boss Gen. Arnold W. Bunch Jr. told reporters.

The Air Force’s “Golden Horde” Vanguard program recently demonstrated Small Diameter Bombs receiving and interpreting new instructions mid-flight and collaborating with each other to strike designated targets. Air Force Research Laboratory boss Maj. Gen. Heather L. Pringle said at the time Golden Horde is completely changing the way the Air Force thinks about munitions. And, though Bunch agreed the demo was a success, he said it will not “immediately” turn into a program of record.

“We haven’t finalized” what will be done with the technology, he said. The program was a success at demonstrating collaboration and networking, and the next step is to take that knowledge and put it into simulations run by the Air Force Munitions Research Labs to “bring in new ideas and capabilities” about how it might be fielded, he said during a June 4 Defense Writers Group virtual event.

Further experimentation will be done virtually before it is done “in the open air,” he said. The Air Force will be looking for “what gain” the system may offer. The demos have provided a technical baseline that can be modeled, and that’s less costly and “labor intensive” than using real munitions with a host of people, aircraft, and ranges, Bunch said.

Golden Horde may become a program of record later, but “not all Vanguards” will become fielded capabilities, he noted. However, in this instance, a Major Command and various Program Executive Officers were involved, so all could see the technology and its potential.

“There may be certain parts of what we found in Golden Horde that we can [apply] in another weapon or system, but in and of itself, we’re not going to make a program of record,” he said.

F-35s from Four Nations Integrate in Italian Exercise

June 7, 2021 | By Brian W. Everstine

F-35s from four nations are coming together in a large-scale exercise in Italy, during which the fifth-generation fighters will fly alongside several fourth-generation jets.

USAF F-35s from Hill Air Force Base, Utah, and F-16s from Aviano Air Base, Italy, are flying in exercise Falcon Strike 21 at Amendola Air Base, Italy, June 7-15. They will join U.S. Marine Corps F-35Bs, along with F-35As and F-35Bs from the Italian Air Force, F-35Bs from the United Kingdom Royal Air Force, and F-35Is from the Israeli Air Force.

Additional participating aircraft include the Italian Gulfstream G550, F-2000 Eurofighter Typhoon, Panavia Tornado, AMX International aircraft, Alenia Aermacchi T-346, and MQ-1s.

The Italian-hosted exercise “will provide multinational forces the opportunity to test and improve shared technical and tactical knowledge, while conducting complex air operations in a multinational, joint force environment,” U.S. Air Forces in Europe said in a release.

The exercise is the latest in a series of events aimed at integrating U.S. and international F-35s. Last month, two Italian air force F-35s operated out of Aviano as part of exercise Astral Knight 2021. During that exercise, USAF crew chiefs from multiple units performed cross-service actions such as hot-pit refueling and interoperation servicing with Italian F-35s and personnel, according to an Aviano release.

Earlier in May, the Hill F-35s flew in exercise Atlantic Trident in France, which also focused on integrating fourth- and fifth-generation aircraft, and included participation from the United Kingdom.

New Commander Takes Over 10th Air Force

June 7, 2021 | By Brian W. Everstine

Maj. Gen. Bryan P. Radliff on June 4 took command of 10th Air Force, one of three Reserve numbered air forces. The 10th Air Force oversees Air Force Reserve Command’s strike, ISR, space, cyber, and special operations assets.

Radliff took command from Maj. Gen. Brian K. Borgen, who had overseen the NAF since May 2019.

“We have fantastic guidance and priorities from our leadership, which have informed the current priorities set by Maj. Gen. Borgen, and I see no need to adjust those,” Radliff said during a ceremony at Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth, Texas, according to a release. “We will continue to focus on readiness, caring for Airmen and families, and developing resilient leaders.”

Radliff previously served as the mobilization assistant to the commander of 1st Air Force (Air Forces Northern), and before that, he was the mobilization assistant to the commander of 12th Air Force. He returns to 10th Air Force, having previously been the vice commander from 2015 to 2016. He’s a command pilot with more than 3,500 hours in the F-15C, F-16C, F-22, and T-38.

The Air Force has not announced Borgen’s next assignment. During the ceremony, he received the Distinguished Service Medal from AFRC boss Lt. Gen. Richard W. Scobee, himself a former commander of 10th Air Force.

“With Borgen as commander, 10th Air Force has provided unrelenting mission success,” Scobee said, according to the release. “He has taken the Air Force Reserve priorities and applied them to your 17 wings. Most impressive is that he has taken care of our Airmen and their families in spite of resources shortfalls, some of the harshest conditions, unprecedented churning of combat operations in a global pandemic, and he placed resiliency as his top priority and it shows in the Airmen. He is the best of who we are.”

Munitions Take Hit in 2022 Budget As USAF Keeps Eye on High-End Fight

June 7, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

Funding for munitions may have taken a hit in the Air Force’s 2022 budget request, but Air Force Materiel Command boss Gen. Arnold W. Bunch Jr. insists munitions are not serving as the billpayer for other parts of the USAF budget.

The workhorse Joint Direct Attack Munition was cut by more than 80 percent over enacted 2021 levels, while Hellfire would be reduced 74 percent, Small Diameter Bomb 1 would drop almost 60 percent, and Sidewinder and AMRAAM dogfight missiles would decline 27 percent and 37 percent, respectively.

However, Bunch said the “pipeline” will remain open for more production if needed—and Foreign Military Sales customers are being encouraged to buy—but the savings are being used to increase purchases of weapons for a “high-end fight.”

“In the last few years … we built up those stockpiles,” so not as many munitions were needed, and the expenditure rate has fallen with the disengagement from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, Bunch said. The savings were instead plowed into “high-end fight” weapons such as the JASSM-ER and Air-Launched Rapid Response hypersonic missile.

The Air Force may change the way it buys munitions, but not necessarily by returning to the leader-follower, dual-source methods of the 1980s, during the last Cold War, Bunch explained.

Instead, the Air Force wants to buy things “in a digital manner,” in which the service owns the technical baseline and can “insert new technology or a new component if our industrial partner can’t do something, and we should be able to surge” at need, Bunch said. “We’re already doing a couple of examples of that with steel manufacturers building [bomb] cases.” Digital acquisition will allow open architectures such that new technology can rapidly replace the old, he said.

“‘Owning’ is a strong word,” Bunch said, “but I want to get the technical part to the point that if we needed to make a change, to go another way to get a component in … that we can do that. And that is part of what we’re trying to do, is get that competition and move at the speed of relevance.” The approach will be applied to airplanes and other systems as well as munitions.

Across the command, he said, “we’re very focused on speed with discipline,” meaning that acquisition moves “at the speed we need, but in a disciplined manner, so we’ve got the right data rights and … models, and we understand what we’re putting on contract.”

This is “how we need to be doing all of our acquisitions. It almost needs to be the exception if we’re not going to go down that path.”

The Air Force also will “continue to invest” in the AGM-183 ARRW with an eye toward “first operational capability …in ’22 or early ’23,” Bunch said, which would indicate a slight delay.

Air Force Seeks Quicker ABMS Increments Despite Reduced Funding

June 6, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

Despite reduced funding for the Advanced Battle Management System in the fiscal 2022 budget request, the Air Force is aiming to field increments of the system more quickly, said Gen. Arnold W. Bunch Jr., head of Air Force Materiel Command.

The Air Force only received $158.5 million in 2021—half its requested amount for ABMS—and it only asked for half the amount it planned to request in 2022 ($204 million).

“We did get some money taken away, and we weren’t able to do everything exactly the way we expected to do last year,” Bunch told reporters during a virtual June 4 Defense Writers Group. This drove the Air Force to cancel one of its demonstration events, he said.

The Air Force will “look at … putting out more of these increments in a regular battle rhythm, so we’re more integrated together and we share that information in a more timely manner, and we’re pushing more things out to the field quicker,” he said. The first increment will be a communications gateway that can roll onto a KC-46 tanker and provide “additional situational awareness for the KC-46, and others, but link-in the F-22 and F-35 [with] data sharing, and create that bridge so we can share and communicate better.”

Bunch did not directly explain why the amount planned to be requested had been reduced or whether he felt the ABMS program is “struggling.”

The desire to put out better-defined increments more quickly was behind designating the Rapid Capabilities Office as the “integrating” program executive office, Bunch explained. “We’ve picked the first increment and now they’re working with the KC-46 office mobility and training Program Executive Office to get that to happen,” he said.

The Air Force will also do better at “outlining what we’re doing and pushing increments out,” he said. The service will continue to do ABMS experimentation—what the service until recently called “on-ramps”—to “look at the art of the possible” for capabilities that will be included in future increments, Bunch said. The new increments will be fielded more regularly than they have been.

Overall, “I think we looked at how we were putting it out in the field and we restructured our timelines there, to make it more effective, and deliver more capability in a regular pattern,” he said.

From Air Force to Space Force Base, Buckley Takes ‘Important Step’ With Renaming

June 4, 2021 | By Greg Hadley

The military installation in Aurora, Colorado, has cycled through several names in its 82-year history. On June 4, it received a new one—Buckley Space Force Base.

Buckley was already home to Space Force’s Space Delta 4 and Buckley Garrison before the official June 4 renaming ceremony. But with the switch, it now becomes just the fourth base to take on the Space Force name, joining Vandenberg Space Force Base, California; Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida; and Patrick Space Force Base, Florida.

“The renaming of Buckley Space Force Base is an important step towards establishing our distinct Space Force culture and identity,” said Lt. Gen. Stephen N. Whiting, Space Operations Command boss. “By aligning its title to reflect the critical space missions performed here, we signal our steadfast commitment to protecting our nation, our allies, and our mission partners operating in, from, and to space.”

Prior to becoming a Space Force base, the base had been called Buckley Air Force Base. Before that, it had been controlled by the Colorado Air National Guard, the U.S. Navy, and the Army. And as Whiting noted, it will continue to serve as a base for units from all those branches, as well as others.

“Moving forward, Buckley Space Force Base will continue to flourish as a hotbed for integrating new military space technologies, taking on new operational challenges, and providing innovative host support to its ‘Big Six’ mission partners—Space Delta 4, the Colorado Air National Guard’s 140th Wing, the Army Aviation Support Facility, the Navy Operational Support Center, the Air Force Reserve Personnel Center, and the Aerospace Defense Facility-Colorado,” said Whiting.

Buckley was one of the bases under serious consideration for the U.S. Space Command, the combatant command that takes personnel and resources provided by the armed forces and uses them in daily space operations, before it was awarded to Huntsville, Alabama. Colorado’s congressional delegation has urged President Joe Biden to reconsider the decision, and one of those lawmakers, Rep. Jason Crow, was on hand June 3 at Buckley, which is in his sixth congressional district.

“This is really a momentous moment to be here for this renaming,” said Crow. “We are sitting here in the Pioneer State, a state that was founded by people who embarked on a journey into the unknown. They moved west hundreds of years ago, many of them, and they didn’t know what challenges lie ahead. … But here we are over 100 years later, in the great state of Colorado, and it’s just so fitting, the comparison between what we’re doing here today at Buckley and what those who moved west to establish this state did in the 1850s and ’60s.”

Also on June 3, Col. Marcus D. Jackson officially assumed command of Buckley Garrison, the host unit of the base. As the garrison’s second-ever commander, Jackson will oversee the installation after serving as deputy director of the National Space Defense Center.

“By renaming Buckley Air Force Base to Buckley Space Force Base, there is a clear message being sent to our adversaries—we are focused on maintaining space dominance,” Jackson said. “This name change does not bespeak a change in Buckley’s mission, but rather it signifies a realignment of our installations under the Space Force.”

‘Rocket Cargo’ Becomes Latest Vanguard Project to Get Priority from Air Force

June 4, 2021 | By Brian W. Everstine

The Air Force wants to soon be able to deliver cargo from space, and it is putting real money behind the effort.

The Department of the Air Force announced June 4 that the “Rocket Cargo” effort is its fourth “Vanguard” program, joining the Skyborg wingman drone, the Golden Horde weapon swarming initiative, and the Navigation Technology Satellite 3 as top priorities to move from science and technology development to real-world programs.

The Department of the Air Force requested $47.9 million for Rocket Cargo development in its 2022 budget.

“Together with the Space Force, we will research commercial capabilities for DOD logistics,” said Maj. Gen. Heather L. Pringle, commander of the Air Force Research Laboratory, in a briefing. “Rocket Cargo is envisioned as a DOD interface with commercial capabilities, where we will deliver up to 100 tons of cargo anywhere on the planet in tactical timelines.”

As a Vanguard effort, the Air Force Research Laboratory is leading studies to determine if using space launches to deliver material, and possibly personnel, across the globe within hours is viable. If so, the Space Force could make it a program of record. The Space Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center will serve as the Program Executive Officer for the effort.

Air Force Materiel Command boss Gen. Arnold W. Bunch Jr., speaking with reporters in a separate event, said the Rocket Cargo program will be run out of AFRL’s Transformational Capabilities Office.

“Our role,” he said, is to provide “some of the use cases for what it would take to either move humanitarian or large-tonnage cargo” to a forward area. “What we really want to do is see where the [science and technology work is needed] for packaging it” on the rocket and moving it to forward areas “in a very quick manner” and cost-effectively. AFMC will also “help assess what the business case analysis is, whether there is a ‘there, there.'”

“One of the things that we are not going to do, [is,] we are not going to get into the rocket launch business,” Bunch added. He said the commercial launch industry “is driving that, and we’re not going to get in the way of that in any way, shape, or form.”

The idea has been floated within the Air Force before, and U.S. Transportation Command announced in 2020 it was working with SpaceX and Exploration Architecture Corp. to determine the feasibility of using private space companies to move cargo for the command. The Rocket Cargo Vanguard effort is separate from TRANSCOM’s initiative.

The idea of space cargo has “been around since the dawn of spaceflight,” but it never seemed realistic until recently as commercial capabilities have evolved, said Greg Spanjers, the Rocket Cargo program manager at AFRL. Rockets are bigger now, making it possible to carry about 100 tons—the equivalent of a loaded C-17. The cost of launches also have fallen, so it’s no longer such a major barrier.

“The reason we’re doing it now is because it looks like the technology may have caught up with a good idea,” Spanjers said. “Caught up enough for us to buy this and use it operationally today? No. There’s a number of S&T that we need to do to adapt this commercial capability into the DOD mission.”

AFRL’s focus will be on finding commercial capabilities to land a rocket on “a wide range of non-traditional materials and surfaces, including at remote sites.” AFRL wants the rockets to be able to land near personnel and structures and be rapidly loaded and unloaded. The rocket also should be able to air drop cargo after re-entry to service places where it could not possibly land.

While SpaceX has become the most visible company when it comes to reusable space launch, there are several companies that have developed capabilities, though Spanjers would not specify exactly how many would participate.

If the demonstration is successful, the Space Force would likely buy commercial cargo launches in the same way it does its current launch operations, said Brig. Gen. D. Jason Cothern, the vice commander and primary executive officer for the Space Enterprise Corps with the Space and Missile Systems Center.

“We believe that this early and active engagement is crucial to the success of bridging that S&T valley of death in order to deliver joint warfighting capabilities. If this technology demonstration proves successful and shows that terrestrial rocket-based cargo transportation is viable, and affordable, and advantageous to our DOD logistics train, SMC will be responsible for transitioning this Vanguard to a Space Force program of record,” Cothern said. “So, our goal is to be an early adopter here [with] this capability, by rapidly enhancing and leveraging the commercial investments and the advances we’re seeing for DOD purposes.”

Editorial Director John A. Tirpak contributed to this story.

Space Force Wants Extra $832 Million for Unfunded Priorities

June 4, 2021 | By Amy Hudson

The Space Force is seeking an additional $832 million to protect existing assets, make its space architecture more resilient, better train Guardians as warfighters, and support new missions, according to the service’s unfunded priorities list submitted to Congress.

The list details priorities not funded by the Space Force’s $17.4 billion budget request for 2022 and is in addition to $4.2 billion in Air Force unfunded priorities. This is the first year the Space Force has submitted its own UPL—last year the Department of the Air Force requested $4.2 billion, of which $3.2 billion was for the Air Force and $1 billion was for the fledging Space Force.

This year’s Space Force list includes $225 million “to protect and sustain what we have today,” including $122 million in weapons system sustainment to bring it up to a “moderate risk” at 83 percent funded, according to the UPL.

It also includes $66 million to fix space facilities and infrastructure.

“Resilient and ‘right‐sized’ infrastructure is needed to effectively deliver capability to support the current and emerging contested space domain,” states the service’s UPL. The funding would address “critical blast door, water, ventilation, and sewer improvements at the Cheyenne Mountain Complex in Colorado.”

More than half of the additional funding the Space Force wants—$431 million—is for developing a “warfighting punch.” It aims to invest $279 million in five classified programs for which no additional information was available, and $86 million to accelerate development of a unique Space Force professional military education program for 100 resident and 3,000 online students annually by fiscal 2023. Included in this training would be a new digital test prototype, undergraduate space training, and advanced warfighter courses, according to the unfunded priority list documents obtained by Air Force Magazine.

The Space Force also wants an additional $33.3 million to buy “Space Test and Training Range and Advanced Threat Simulation Environment support” and to “deliver multi-domain range integration of space, cyber, and air to the warfighter … and develop realistic network emulators and range control.” Another $1.8 million would modernize its space aggressor equipment to realistically replicate threats.

The Space Force is also asking for $113 million to “grow new missions,” including $28 million to expand the Blackjack radio frequency payloads for tactical surveillance, $70 million to accelerate an Air Force Research Laboratory program for cislunar operations and deep space domain awareness, $8 million to develop a Long Duration Propulsive EELV Secondary Payload Adapter, and $7 million to operationalize the Air Force Maui Optical and Supercomputing Observatory.

The Blackjack RF payload supports tactical surveillance, air domain awareness, and threat assessment for Air Combat Command. “Funding supports completion of nonrecurring engineering, initial hardware delivery, data processing, and space vehicle integration required to demonstrate on-orbit capability,” states the document. “If approved, funding would be applied to DARPA Blackjack contracts within one to two months. Space-to-surface ISR capability demonstration would occur in FY22/23 and will inform investment decisions by the Air Force and Space Force.”

And finally, the Space Force wants $63 million to help it build more resilient architectures, including fixing procurement for space-rated crypto devices that support satellite launches and systems, such as GPS III, the Wideband Global Satellite Communications system, and next-generation space-based missile warning systems.