COVID-19, Not Technical Issues, Mostly to Blame for Grey Wolf Delay, AFGSC Boss Says

June 4, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

Air Force Global Strike Command boss Gen. Timothy M. Ray said the Air Force did not include any new MH-139A Grey Wolf helicopters in its fiscal 2022 budget request because of certification delays related to the pandemic.

Ray said the issue with the helicopter, which the command will use to support and provide security for its missile fields, is more “a matter of paperwork” due to delays in Europe stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic than any technical issues with the aircraft.

“I spent some time talking to Boeing about this three weeks ago,” Ray said during a June 3 virtual event hosted by AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. “I would characterize these problems as administrative certifications, not terribly technical in nature. [It’s] not very complicated technology.”

Ray said he’s “not concerned” about the issue, noting the necessary certifications should come “in six months. We’ll be just fine.”

Boeing is partnered with the Italian firm Leonardo on the program, and Europe was “hit very hard with COVID,” he noted. This made it difficult to certify that the militarized aircraft would function like its civilian counterpart. There also were issues with scheduling testing, he said.

The Air Force received approval to buy eight of the helicopters in 2021, but the certification issue has blocked the purchases. The service had planned to buy the same number in 2022 as it works toward a total fleet of 84 helicopters. The service originally expected Grey Wolf to reach initial operational capability this year, but it’s not clear what the new timeline will be.

In November, the Air Force announced it would base the helicopter’s Formal Training Unit at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama.

Editor’s Note: This story was updated at 1 p.m. on June 7 to correct the status of helicopters expected to be purchased in 2021.

Ray: B-21 Program Structure Keeps it On-Track and On-Cost

June 4, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

The success of the B-21 program so far is due to its modular approach and incremental changes to its technology, not its requirements, Air Force Global Strike Command head Gen. Timothy M. Ray said June 3.

“We’ve codified the approach … of open mission systems [and] modularity of design, and that allows us to keep very stable requirements” on the B-21, Ray said during an AFA Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies streaming discussion. “It’s not necessary to return to [the Joint Requirements Oversight Council] and ask for a new radio, weapon or sensor, or new defensive systems.” These are assumed to be a necessary “part of the bomber,” he explained. Because of that, “you can build it very quickly,” and there have been no requirements changes on the program, he added.

Ray was responding to a question about how the B-21 remains technologically relevant despite the threat having increased during the six years the program has been underway and the years of requirements development before that. The Raider program simply incorporates new technologies as they’re needed, he said. The B-21 is managed by the Air Force’s Rapid Capabilities Office and is being built by Northrop Grumman at its Palmdale, California, facility, which Ray recently toured.

The B-21 approach, which is also being used on the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent missile program, is one of the main reasons the B-21 received unusual praise from House Armed Services Committee chairman Adam Smith (D-Washington) recently, Ray said. Smith hailed the B-21 as a well-thought-out and well-run program, saying it’s “on time, on budget, and they’re making it work in a very intelligent way.”

Because of the new bomber’s management approach, “It will take me roughly a tenth of the time to put the JASSM-ER on the B-21 than it did on the B-2,” Ray said. But it is sticking to its baseline requirements, he noted.

“Do you add it now? No, you field [the bomber] on time, on cost, [with] stable requirements,” he said. The Raider won’t get block upgrades, either, he said, unless it’s something “incredibly significant.”

“We do increments and updates. And those can happen [quickly]; they don’t take big depot mod lines—you can do those on the flight line, right there at the airplane,” Ray said.

Air Force Global Strike Command boss Gen. Timothy M. Ray speaks with retired Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, dean of AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, during a virtual event June 3. Mitchell Institute YouTube video.

Keeping requirements and funding stable has helped the program. Ray said Acting Secretary John P. Roth asked him why he wasn’t late on the program and he said, because “I refuse to change the requirements,” allowing him to “focus on finishing the things I need to do” and prompting “some of the praise we got from Chairman Smith.”

Re-engining the B-52 and giving it a digital backbone is another necessary part of the bomber portfolio, Ray said. The bomber, which Ray said “is older than me,” is still “an analog airplane.” While some “pieces and parts are digital, … if I want to be effective at electronic attack or rapid modernization, I have to have that digital piece.”

The re-engining will be “on the conservative side,” provide a savings of at least 20 percent in fuel costs, Ray said. However, “it may seem counterintuitive, … but it’s not a 20 percent savings in tankers—it’s actually much higher.” In some scenarios, he said, the re-engining will reduce the B-52’s need for tanker support by “almost half,” expanding the flexibility of the force and freeing tankers for other missions.

Ray said he also wants to provide some relief for the “poor maintenance guys trying to … keep that TF33 in the game.” The TF33 is the B-52’s original engine, which has served nearly 60 years.

Ray: Pace of China’s Strategic Advancement is ‘Breathtaking,’ Cause for Alarm

June 3, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

China’s strategic portfolio is advancing even faster than the U.S. anticipated, and this should be cause for concern, said Air Force Global Strike Command boss Gen. Timothy M. Ray.

“The pace is breathtaking,” Ray said during an AFA Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies streaming event June 3. There have been frequent episodes over the last six months where China demonstrated a capability and the U.S. intelligence assessment fell “short of what they were accomplishing,” he added.

China is also clearly moving to secure its regional sphere of influence, and America’s allies and partners “need to know we’re there for them.”

“I think [China is] thinking very clearly about the regional and global problem set. I think they’re building the arsenal” to address it, Ray observed.

Ray has briefed members of Congress at the top secret level on the situation, but “even at the secret level, it’s pretty intimidating.”

“They’re working through the problem—warheads, delivery systems, command and control, warning, how fast, and how you field it—and they’re getting glowing grades in all those things,” Ray said. The pace of China’s progress and the “diversity of their approach … commands respect,” he asserted.

Ray said that going forward with the U.S. Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent missile program will be $38 billion cheaper than attempting to upgrade and extend the life of the Minuteman III missiles. However, he noted, “the price tag has gotten bigger” each time the decision has been postponed.

The Minuteman suffers from “old parts” and the inability to repair them, Ray said. The situation is “just going to get worse,” he added.

Deleting the GBSD from the nuclear triad of bombers, ICBMs, and sea-launched ballistic missiles would require other investments to achieve the necessary deterrence, Ray said.

“We’ll need more bombers, tankers, crews,” and they’ll need to be on alert, Ray said. It would be a “bill to pay that would come at the expense of other things.”

Ray said AFGSC has “tripled the number” of bomber task force deployments over the last year, but the pace will need to be reduced.

B-52s were simultaneously deployed in Europe, the Middle East, and the Indo-Pacific for short periods last month. AFGSC conducted 18 bomber task force deployments in fiscal 2020, and it’s “about 50 percent higher this year,” Ray reported. That’s “a fourfold increase from ’19-’21.”

The bombers “stepped in to meet the demand,” he said, for example, supplying bombers within 51 hours to Central Command after a “cold call.”

This is a pace “that we can keep up just a little bit longer, but then I think we need to slow down just a touch, and get a little bit better at what we do,” Ray said. The “sweet spot” for such deployments is somewhat lower than what AFGSC has been accomplishing.

While the rest of the force scaled back its operating tempo during the COVID-19 pandemic, “we got better,” he said. “We had the best bomber readiness in the history of the command in the middle of COVID-19. The B-1s slowed me down a little bit recently, [but] … nuclear readiness stayed high.”

The bombers are “covering the withdrawal in Afghanistan; we’re one of multiple over-the-horizon … joint fires covering that” and the command is doing “phenomenal work with just a handful of bombers.”

Overall, “I think the morale is high. The entire bomber force has really embraced this way of life … They see the strategic importance, see the importance to allies, and they’re getting the practice in the long-range kill chains, that we know we’re going to have to do under duress, and we know we can do them from anywhere on the planet, very quickly.”

Ray said he expects the recent grounding of the B-1—the third in recent years, this time because of a fuel system problem—will be lifted soon.

“We’ll be in a better place next month,” Ray said. “We need to do this safely and smoothly.”

Ray also said the Navy has not asked for help with its new sea-launched nuclear cruise missile, and that there are no plans to achieve any commonality between it and the Air Force’s Long-Range Stand Off missile, but USAF is willing to share knowledge if asked.

Air Force Will Try Again to Launch ARRW Hypersonic Missile in July

June 3, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

The Air Force will attempt a second booster flight test of its hypersonic AGM-183A Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon “next month,” said Gen. Timothy M. Ray, head of Global Strike Command.

Speaking during a virtual Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies event June 3, Ray said he’s confident USAF will be able to overcome the “challenges” that prevented the ARRW missile from making a test flight in April.

“This is not a problem that’s beyond us,” Ray said. “It’s just a matter of time.” The Air Force Armament Directorate is “being smart about this; we’ll get there.”

An attempt to launch the ARRW was made April 5, but the missile did not come off the pylon. Brig. Gen. Heath A. Collins, head of the Armament Division, said at the time that the inability to get the missile to “complete its launch sequence” was a disappointment but that the test provided useful data.

In February, Collins said another failed attempted test early this year was a “slight bump in the road,” which was resolved within 30 days. And then in December 2020, ARRW did not accomplish planned test objectives because of what Pentagon officials called “dumb mistakes.”

Defense hypersonics lead Michael White, at AFA’s virtual Air Warfare Symposium in late February, said that while the “fail early and often” philosophy is a sound one, “that’s only valid if your failures are because you’re learning.” If a failure is due to “we forgot how to do a checklist, and tighten a pin on a fin, and we lose a flight vehicle because a fin falls off, that’s not acceptable failure.”

Ray said he thinks both the ARRW and HACM are needed for the bomber force to multiply an adversary’s problems. The Air Force’s 2022 budget request increases hypersonics weapon development funding from $386 million in 2021 to $438 million, including prototyping of the ARRW, Southern Cross Integrated Flight Research Experiment (SCIFIRE), and Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile (HACM) systems.

Hypersonics paired with bombers is a “natural” mix, Ray said. Such weapons can be launched from “anywhere on the planet, and we can do it a lot faster than I think our adversaries would want to see us do it.” Connecting the hypersonic missile’s speed to the bomber’s inherent “flexibility, range, speed, payload, [and] access” multiplies the “number and types of targets we can hold at risk,” Ray said. “We can come from lots of different places and angles.”

Bombers already are practicing the “targeting process of a hypersonic weapon,” with a B-52 conducting such an experiment at the recent Northern Edge exercise in Alaska. Maj. Gen. Andrew J. Gebara, AFGSC director of strategic plans, programs, and requirements, said at AFA’s virtual Air Warfare Symposium in February that the B-52 will be able to carry four ARRWs but could carry 20 HACMs and “maybe more, if I have a different pylon.”

Bombardier Gets Contract for Up to 6 E-11A BACN Aircraft

June 3, 2021 | By Brian W. Everstine

The Air Force recently awarded Bombardier a $465 million contract for up to six more E-11A Battlefield Airborne Communications Node (BACN) aircraft.

The E-11A, a heavily modified Bombardier Global 6000 business jet, acts as “Wi-Fi in the sky.” It is used heavily in Afghanistan, connecting troops on the ground, communications systems, and radios.

The indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract includes a firm order for one aircraft, with as many as five to follow. Bombardier will modify the aircraft at its Wichita, Kansas, facility with interior and paint work to be done at its facility in Tucson, Arizona, the company said in a press release.

“Bombardier is proud to be chosen once again by the U.S. Air Force to provide our high-performing global aircraft and our unique expertise in support of the BACN program,” said Michel Ouellette, Bombardier’s executive vice president of specialized aircraft, programs, and engineering. “Our U.S.-based employees are honored to be lending their skills in support of this elite project.”

The Air Force, in its fiscal 2022 budget request, said it will buy one E-11 immediately to replace the one that crashed in Afghanistan in January 2020, bringing the fleet back up to four.

The service also announced May 28 it would base an E-11 squadron at Robins Air Force Base, Georgia, if it is able to retire the E-8C Joint STARS fleet.

Vandenberg Plans Commercial Space Zone to Increase Launch Capability on Base

June 3, 2021 | By Brian W. Everstine

As the Defense Department looks to work more closely with private space companies in hopes of making launches quicker, cheaper, and easier, Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, is working with companies, academia, and the government to increase the ability of these organizations to launch from the base.

Vandenberg has signed a memorandum of understanding with these groups to establish a “commercial space enterprise zone” on the sprawling base to bring in companies to use the base’s existing infrastructure and build more, improved launch sites to increase the pace of launches.

“This space is going to help serve the mission … with those smaller rockets launched more frequently,” said Col. Joe Tringe, the individual mobilization augmentee to the commander of Space Launch Delta 30 at Vandenberg. “These enable these proliferated constellations, which allow for those imaging missions and weather missions that are going to be so important across the board. And because they’re important for both the DOD and for commercial partners, we can envision sharing infrastructure that’s going to allow them to be launched more frequently and be maintained.”

According to a recent impact study by the REACH economic action group and California Polytechnic State University, increasing the commercial space industry presence on the base could add 1,968 jobs and grow the base’s annual economic impact to $6 billion over the next decade, up from its current impact of about $4.5 billion.

In addition to the “commercial space enterprise zone,” Vandenberg is broadly studying other potential infrastructure changes, including electricity needs, water flow, and traffic patterns. These studies are expected to be completed “in the coming months,” Tringe said during a virtual event focused on the future of space on California’s Central Coast.

“This is really an enterprise,” he said. “Launch is certainly a critical part of that, but also we’re concerned with, What do you do with satellites once they’re on orbit, you know? How does the supply chain work, you know? All these different pieces need to fit together like a puzzle.”

Space Force officials have said increased collaboration with the commercial industry, particularly with companies providing smaller, cheaper launch services, will be key to increasing capability on orbit. Chief of Space Operations Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond said last month the Space Force would likely move toward providing space-based intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance using capabilities that commercial companies have developed since small satellites have become more operationally relevant.

“We’re really interested in where innovative industries are seeing launch going in the future and what they’re doing to get to that future,” Col. Robert P. Bongiovi, the Space and Missile Systems Center’s launch enterprise director, said in November. “It’s not just, how do we get from Earth to orbit? What are the different on-orbit [concepts of operations] that might drive different launch needs, what do we need to be doing to get these future constellations up there?”

Space Force Looks to Operationalize New Structure, Build Culture in 2022

June 3, 2021 | By Greg Hadley

Through its first year of existence, the U.S. Space Force was focused on the “macro”—developing the overall structure by which the entirely new service would be organized. Now, as it heads into Year 2, USSF will seek to “actually operationalize” that new structure, said Col. Matthew S. Cantore, commander of Space Delta 2.

Speaking at an Air and Space Warfighters in Action event hosted by the Air Force Association on June 3, Cantore and Chief Master Sgt. April L. Brittain, senior enlisted leader from Space Delta 2, broke down how that new structure differs from the traditional Air Force one and how it will continue to evolve in 2022 and beyond.

With both Cantore and Brittain coming from an Air Force background, they both “bleed blue internally,” Cantore joked early on in Thursday’s event, and they acknowledged the tight bond between the Air and Space Forces. But in the coming years, that blue “is turning to a dark black” as the composition of the Space Force changes.

Specifically, interservice transfers from the Army and Navy are expected to increase in 2022 and 2023, Cantore said, and as those troops come on board, Space Force culture will change.

“We’re excited about that, and I think that’s going to make us stronger,” Cantore said. “We talk about diversity in a lot of ways—that diversity coming from the other services is going to force us maybe a little bit out of our traditional Air Force comfort zone, but this is not the Air Force as a service, it’s a new service, and so we’re finding our way.”

Space Force Delta 2 commander Col. Matthew S. Cantore and Chief Master Sgt. April L. Brittain, senior enlisted leader, join Air Force Association President retired Lt. Gen. Bruce “Orville” Wright for an update on Space Delta 2 during an Air and Space Warfighters in Action virtual event June 3. Air Force Association YouTube video.

A New Way to Operate

Compared to the Air Force, the Space Force’s new structure of deltas and garrisons has fewer tiers, Cantore explained.

“We have gotten rid of the numbered air force echelon, and we have taken the wing and the group echelons, which we all knew and loved for many years, and we’ve pushed those together, smashed them, and then broken them out,” Cantore said. “So we’ve taken the base operating support, all that combat service support functions, and we’ve taken those and put those into a garrison, which is so critical to support the mission, and now we have the delta, which is singularly focused on the operational mission that we’ve been assigned.”

With fewer levels of command and a smaller force overall, training for the Space Force will have to be different and more all-encompassing, Cantore said.

“As we get ready for significant events, we prepare, we do large scale exercises, but that’s not the norm on a day-to-day framework,” Cantore said. “And so our training, I believe, needs to move to the evolution where it is holistic and enterprise-level.”

The delta, not the squadron, is the “presented force” for the Space Force. And compared to the size of Air Force wings and groups, deltas are small, at least when it comes to personnel.

“I think total, when I was an ops group commander, I started with about 2,000 people, if you add in all the contractors, all the civilians. … Now we’re sitting about 400, 450 total when we add everything together,” Cantore said.

Understanding a Congested Domain

In addition to bringing in new people, Cantore said he expects new systems to come online in 2022 that will expand Space Delta 2’s capabilities and responsibilities.

“[Personnel] numbers wise, you don’t really see a lot of growth here directly in Space Delta 2, but there’s so much going on from a systems standpoint going forward,” Cantore said. “Where you are going to see a lot of growth, I believe, is in the satellite communications arena.”

As part of its operational mission, Space Delta 2 is tasked with tracking thousands of satellites, rockets, and pieces of debris in orbit, and as the unit gets up to date and tracks everything that is already out there, hundreds of more payloads are being added—Cantore noted there have already been more payloads launched into orbit in the first five months of 2021 than there were in all of 2020.

Beyond just tracking those objects, Cantore said Space Delta 2’s goal is to synthesize all the data and collaborate across other Deltas, as well as other services, allies, and commercial partners, to formulate a better understanding of what it all means.

“Understanding what goes on in the domain is the foundation of everything that has to happen going forward, and so we take that very seriously,” Cantore said. “It is certainly not without challenges. This growth that we’re seeing right now—that we have no expectation is going to slow down—it’s going to continue. It’s certainly pushing us to develop and upgrade our capabilities so that we can stay one step ahead of what is becoming a more and more congested domain.”

While still fulfilling that mission, though, the service must also continue to develop its new structure and culture. And developments along that front are expected in the coming months—Brittain said during the same event that USSF is “expecting to release” its new ranks and insignias “hopefully in the June timeframe.”

USAF Slashes Bomb Funding, Hinting at New Systems or Return to Boom and Bust

June 2, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

The Air Force slashed its request for most weapons in its fiscal 2022 budget request, while boosting its ask for longer-range, stealthy systems. The budget proposal indicates the service is either shifting away from short-range missiles and bombs or will soon find itself back in the boom-and-bust munitions procurement cycle—or both.

The Air Force’s request for Joint Direct Attack Munitions fell 88 percent, from 16,800 enacted in fiscal 2021 to 1,919 weapons in 2022. The high water mark of JDAM production was 30,872 units in 2019, meaning JDAM production for the Air Force will have fallen more than 93 percent in three years, if Congress goes along.

Most standard USAF munitions were requested at much smaller rates in the 2022 budget. Hellfire missile purchases 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, over enacted 2021 levels.

Maj. Gen. James D. Peccia III, deputy assistant secretary for budget, told reporters at the budget rollout May 28 that the Air Force is “reducing munition procurements as the program approaches warfighter inventory objectives.” The JDAM and SDB 1 “are at, or approaching, healthy inventory levels,” he said, and the money saved by not buying as many of the extant weapons can be plowed back into advanced systems like the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile-Extended Range and hypersonics programs such as the AGM-183 Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon, or ARRW. An Air Force spokesperson said the Air Force is “comfortable” at the level of the weapon stockpile.

Along with other shifts in funding, the munitions buy seeks to modernize the fleet “for a high-end conflict in 2030 and beyond,” Peccia said.

The only weapons USAF is asking to increase are the GBU-53 Stormbreaker (formerly the Small Diameter Bomb 2) and the AGM-158 JASSM-ER, which the Pentagon said is a crucial weapon due to its stealth and reach. Procurement of both weapons would be increased about 25 percent.

Air Force Budget Request for Munitions

Weapon Type	2021 Enacted (units)	2022 Requested (units)
JDAM (all variants)	16,800	1,919
AGM-114 Hellfire	4,517	1,176
Small Diameter Bomb 1	2,462	998
Small Diameter Bomb 2	743	985
AGM-158 JASSM-ER	400	525
AIM-9X Sidewinder	331	243
AIM-120 AMRAAM	268	168
AGM-183A ARRW	0	12

Source: USAF budget documents

The Air Force is also working on a successor to the JDAM that would have longer range, reduced signature, and greater maneuvering capability to avoid terminal air defenses, about which the service declined to comment.

The JDAM and other cuts come just a year after Gen. Arnold W. Bunch Jr., head of Air Force Materiel Command, told Air Force Magazine he was hoping to end the “sine wave” cycle of boom-and-bust weapons procurements, especially as the weapons accounts tend to be bill payers for other parts of the budget.

After the 2021 budget request was revealed, Bunch said USAF was able to “make a dent” in its years-long munitions shortage, and the Air Force was on “a better trajectory” after preferred munitions were no longer being used at a high rate against ISIS in Iraq and Syria.

Bunch said he hoped to “level off” at the 2021 production rates, but that USAF was planning to change its weapons focus to “the high-end fight.”

Former head of Air Combat Command retired Gen. James M. Holmes said last year that the Air Force meant to “start slowing down” on JDAM, both to pay for other weapons and focus on threats such as China, which require munitions having greater range and survivability. JDAM and Hellfire are direct-attack weapons with limited range.

The advantage of smoothing out munitions production would be to give Air Force planners and industry alike more predictability about weapons production and lower costs by making smarter decisions about workforce and materials.

A spokeswoman for Boeing, maker of the JDAM, said, “Our contracts with the U.S. Air Force allow for flexibility in annual orders,” but the company declined to offer further comment.

Mark Gunzinger of AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies said USAF’s move to increase the production of long-range systems at the expense of short-range ones is “exactly right” and “one of the few things I applaud in the Air Force’s budget.”

The JASSM-ER and other “mid-range standoff weapons are capable of penetrating contested areas and striking high value targets such as Chinese mobile missile launchers,” and in the case of the Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile variant of JASSM, Chinese ships as well.

“JDAM and SDBs are great weapons, but they were never designed to survive” in an integrated air defense system, Gunzinger said.

Rather, the Air Force needs “fifth-generation weapons for fifth-generations platforms.” He included on his short list of needed weapons the ARRW, of which the Air Force wants to build 12 in 2022 for $141 million.

That said, the Mitchell Institute’s analysis concludes that “USAF’s planned inventory of JASSM and LRASM could be depleted in a matter of days during a major conflict with China.” Such systems have been “underfilled for years” by the Defense Department, and “it continues to do so, despite the fact that industry cannot quickly surge their production during a crisis.”

Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, builder of the JASSM and LRASM, is building a new plant to handle expanded production of the weapons at its Troy, Alabama, location.

Gunzinger said the Air Force must “balance the range, size, cost, and cost-per-effect of its future weapons. Hypersonic weapons, he noted, have very long range and are highly survivable, “but they are too large to be carried in significant numbers per sortie and they cost too much to buy in large quantities,” and so they may be “little more than niche weapons.”

Michael White, DOD’s lead for hypersonic systems, said in a Center for Strategic and International Studies program June 2 that the Pentagon aims to build hypersonic missiles “at scale,” and this will become more possible when smaller, air-breathing hypersonic weapons become available. The ARRW and its counterparts in the Army and Navy tend to be large systems which can only be carried by bombers, or fired by ships or heavy ground equipment.

The Air Force’s first production numbers released for ARRW, contained in its 2022 budget request, peg the cost of the first tranche of usable missiles at $13.4 million apiece.

A former senior defense official said recent Pentagon wargames showed that the winner in a Pacific conflict will be the side with the largest magazines of hypersonic missiles, and noted there are “thousands of aimpoints” in the theater, requiring the weapons to be affordable.

Based on Gunzinger’s analysis, “there is a sweet spot for munitions that have ranges between 65 miles and out to JASSM-ER’s range,” he said. Such mid-range weapons will “give penetrating aircraft enough standoff to avoid highest-risk point defenses surrounding high-value targets but won’t be so large that they can’t be carried internally by stealth aircraft.” Gunzinger has suggested in previous studies that USAF would find value in modifying some existing weapons with a propulsion pack to extend their range and keep attack aircraft at a greater distance from air defenses.

The Air Force’s budget request for conventional munitions basic research increased from $127.1 million in 2021 to $151.8 million in 2022. The request for applied research on conventional weapons increased from $133.9 million in 2021 to $157.4 million in 2022.

NATO Buys, Operates Kessel Run’s Tanker Planning App

June 2, 2021 | By Brian W. Everstine

NATO has bought and already used an application known as Jigsaw, which was developed by the Air Force’s in-house software development team, Kessel Run, to handle refueling tanker planning in the Middle East.

The alliance used Jigsaw to plan air-to-air refueling operations during the two-week exercise Ramstein Ambition 21, according to a press release.

“The use of the application during the NATO exercise showcases how far reaching and influential the modernization efforts of Kessel Run have become,” said Col. Brian Beachkofski, commander of Kessel Run, in the press release. “Our efforts to enhance our AOC Weapon Systems, now seem to be positively enhancing the abilities of our allies as well.”

Jigsaw first rolled out in 2017 at the Combined Air Operations Center at Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar, and NATO purchased the application in late 2020. The program brings together data from current, previous, and planned tanker operations to plan the most effective missions for deployed aircraft. It replaced a previous process in which five or six people would to spend up to eight hours each day drawing tanker plans on a whiteboard. USAF officials told Air Force Magazine in 2018 that they estimate the application has saved 400,000 to 500,000 pounds of fuel each week.

Kessel Run said the program has saved the Pentagon more than $500 million in fuel costs and “has provided the DOD with enhanced combat capabilities through its increased coordination in the planning of refueling missions,” according to the release.

NATO’s Allied Command Transformation also wanted Jigsaw to alleviate its “manpower intensive” refueling planning process. The software will be in use at NATO Air Operations Centers around the world.

“To keep our nations safe in such an unpredictable environment, we need to keep our Alliance strong,” said project lead Lt. Col. Jonathan Clow in the release. “Innovation and experimentation are critical components of NATO’s future defense, security, and deterrence.”