Final SIGAR Report Points to Afghanistan’s Growing Dependence as U.S. Drew Down

Aug. 18, 2021 | By Abraham Mahshie

The 11th and final Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) comprehensive lessons learned report reveals telltale signs over the 10-year U.S. drawdown that the Afghan government could not sustain progress made nor provide for its own security.

The scathing report, released Aug. 16, also criticizes the $145 billion reconstruction effort for harboring unrealistic goals and timelines but commends social progress such as lower child mortality rates and increased per capita GDP and literacy rates.

“If the goal was to rebuild and leave behind a country that can sustain itself and pose little threat to U.S. national security interests, the overall picture is bleak,” the report’s conclusion reads.

The final SIGAR report also appeared to predict the Afghan military’s capitulation and Taliban takeover.

It noted that the Taliban controlled more territory and that security had progressively worsened despite $83 billion spent to build the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces.

The reason, the report stated, was a failure of clear strategy.

“At various points, the U.S. government hoped to eliminate al-Qaeda, decimate the Taliban movement that hosted it, deny all terrorist groups a safe haven in Afghanistan, build Afghan security forces so they could deny terrorists a safe haven in the future, and help the civilian government become legitimate and capable enough to win the trust of Afghans,” the report reads. “Each goal, once accomplished, was thought to move the U.S. government one step closer to being able to depart.”

But after 10 years of escalating, the U.S. gradually began to decrease its footprint and spending, starting around 2011. That drawdown revealed “how dependent and vulnerable the Afghan government remains.”

The Afghan reliance on the U.S. military to sustain progress was long known.

“There [was] a fundamental gap of understanding on the front end, overstated objectives, an overreliance on the military, and a lack of understanding of the resources necessary,” Afghanistan strategy coordinator at the National Security Council from 2007 to 2013 Douglas Lute told SIGAR.

The report also states that resources were inadequate for the job and the agencies in charge were reversed from their customary roles.

DOD had a budget of $696 billion compared to the State Department’s budget of $56 billion. The security environment necessitated that the job of political reconstruction, normally a State Department role, was instead given to the Defense Department.

“U.S. policymakers had no other viable option but to lean on the military and simply pretend State holds the reins in such missions,” the report reads.

With America pulling out all its forces, the report provides questions for policymakers to consider to avoid waste in future reconstruction efforts.

The United States is currently involved in smaller scale reconstruction efforts in a host of war-torn countries, the report notes, including Mali, Burkina Faso, Somalia, Yemen, and Ukraine.

The Afghanistan reconstruction effort was seen by policy makers as a necessary pathway to prevent a terrorist safe haven.

“U.S. officials came to believe that even the narrow mission of keeping al-Qaeda from returning required rebuilding institutions, and these were plagued by increasingly interconnected reconstruction problems,” the report reads.

The harbinger of the Taliban seizing territory as the U.S. withdrew was known as early as 2014.

“The drawdown laid bare just how hollow the alleged progress had been,” the report reads. “Contested territory that had been cleared by U.S. forces was hastily ‘transitioned’ to Afghan officials who were not ready, allowing the Taliban to seize districts as U.S. forces vacated them.”

Meanwhile, the U.S. government pressured Afghanistan’s to drastically increase the size of its military and police force to provide its own security, but without necessary funding. To do so, the length of training was cut in half.

In March 2014, then-commander of U.S. Forces-Afghanistan Gen. Joseph Dunford told the Senate Armed Services Committee that when coalition forces withdrew, “the Afghan security forces [would] begin to deteriorate.”

He continued: “The only debate is the pace of that deterioration.”

A 2017 SIGAR report concluded that the U.S.-designed Afghan force “was not able to provide nationwide security, especially as that force faced a larger threat than anticipated after the drawdown of coalition military forces.”

Even as late as 2020, nearly a quarter of the Afghan National Army had to be replaced each year due to attrition and retention problems.

“Solders going AWOL was one of the challenges driving those elevated attrition rates,” the report stated.

In the summer of 2021, the Taliban seized more than a quarter of the country in weeks.

“What Ambassador Nicholas Burns observed about the war’s early years has remained true ever since: The Afghan government ‘cannot survive without us,’” the report quoted.

These Airmen Closed Down Bases in Afghanistan. Now They’re Back to Run the Evacuation

Aug. 18, 2021 | By Brian W. Everstine

A specialized emergency response team, which was called upon months ago to close down bases in Afghanistan, is back in the country to help bring Americans and partners out as the Taliban surrounds the last remaining U.S.-controlled airfield.

The Pentagon announced Aug. 18 that Airmen with the 621st Contingency Response Group at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, N.J., are deploying back to Afghanistan, just weeks after returning home, to help run air operations at Hamid Karzai International Airport, where U.S. and coalition airlifters are racing to fly out U.S. citizens and Afghans who have helped with the American cause. Defense Department photographs show Airmen with the 821st Contingency Response Group from Travis Air Force Base, Calif., also deploying. They, too, recently returned home from Afghanistan.

“This is a dynamic Air Force unit highly specialized in the rapid deployment of personnel to quickly open airfields and establish, expand, sustain, and coordinate air mobility operations,” Pentagon spokesman John F. Kirby said Aug. 18. “So, this is a group that knows how to run airfields and can help with the actual air operations on the ground.”

A CRG comprises on-call teams of Airmen who deploy on short notice to analyze an airfield and set up operations. It includes air mobility liaison officers, who coordinate with ground forces, and multi-capable Airmen who can coordinate air operations, provide security, on and offload aircraft, and conduct other missions.

At Hamid Karzai International Airport, they will run a constant flow of C-17s, C-130s, and international airlifters at the one-runway airstrip in a city now surrounded by Taliban.

Air Force Magazine spoke exclusively with some Airmen who served in this mission before the Taliban’s advance.

Col. Daniel Mollis, Task Force 74 commander and deputy commander of the 621st Contingency Response Group, called the drawdown the unit’s “Super Bowl,” saying in an early August interview that everything the community does was “coming together in terms of our capabilities.”

Contingency response Airmen got orders to quickly deploy to Afghanistan as President Joe Biden announced the withdrawal plan in April. The group built its teams and orders within 72 hours of the President’s announcement and was on the ground in Afghanistan in just 10 days—most of those in a restriction of movement due to COVID-19.

“It’s not hard to fill our requirements. This was something that everyone was ready to go do—and ready to drop everything, no notice, and go execute this mission,” he said.

The task force sent teams to airfields and forward operating bases across the country to bring out sensitive equipment and people, while also repairing airfields for operations and providing security. The teams dispersed to locations with very limited communications, operating on “mission-type orders” to bring out equipment, personnel, and themselves without regular command and control.

“[On a] tight timeline, with limited personnel, we have limited capability and equipment … and you have a constant airflow that we have to maintain in order to continue that timeline,” Mollis said. “So when things like that happen, where a runway needs repair and we don’t have the [civil engineer] capabilities on hand, that’s when that mindset steps in that, well, we’re going to figure out how to do it safely, but we’re going to get it done.”

The small numbers of Airmen have to do everything to conduct those operations and to scale based on the size of the installation—from a FOB to Bagram. “Because, eventually we had to get ourselves out the door,” he said. “So, you’re slowly decreasing your scale while conducting the retrograde. So, to me, it’s almost like taking apart the aircraft as you’re still flying.”

The task force did not have the “clearest definition of requirements, or what we had to go do,” just a timeline from the joint force commander. “And that happens often with our mission … When there’s a gap, we’re called. We are a good force to be called upon to go execute and fill those gaps and seams.”

For Mollis, that initial withdrawal was the “culmination” of his career.

“It was the opportunity to do something that really made the entire, multiple decades, matter, and that’s what carried me through what was also the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. But it was truly an honor to see what these Airmen accomplished,” he said. “I feel that I asked way too much on a daily basis, and they exceeded it every day.”

NORTHCOM Presses Case for New Approach to Homeland Defense

Aug. 18, 2021 | By Amy Hudson

The head of U.S. Northern Command says the United States needs to modernize its communication and warning systems for homeland defense to ensure leaders have more time and better options before launching a kinetic response to potential threats.

Future operations will inevitably demand that multiple combatant commands work together, often in multiple domains, to defend the U.S. homeland, said Air Force Gen. Glen D. VanHerck, who leads both NORTHCOM and the North American Aerospace Defense Command, speaking Aug. 17 at a Center for Strategic and International Studies event. “I think this is the way of the future, whether that be for a peer competitor or even a rogue actor who has access to information that creates opportunities for them to challenge [us] across all domains.”

Created 20 years ago in the wake of the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., NORTHCOM still relies on the same analog systems and processes to share threat data and intelligence. For example, if a warning radar detects a Russian bomber approaching from the Northeast, controllers must telephone the command center, where another operator must make another call to the appropriate sector, either the continental NORAD region, Alaska NORAD region, or Canadian NORAD region. Only then would someone call VanHerck’s headquarters. The process takes minutes to unfold.

“That’s not good enough,” Van Herck said. “Imagine having a single pane of glass [that allows you to] see that all in real time, … so you can globally collaborate on response options to something like that. That’s where we’re going.”

NORTHCOM completed the third in a series of Global Information Dominance Experiments, known as GIDE, July 8-15. GIDE applies machine learning to create an artificial intelligence system that shares information across all 11 combatant commands in “real time, or near-real time,” VanHerck said.

The latest experiment included three “synchronized but distinct stages,” according to a NORAD/NORTHCOM release:

Stage One “focused on cost-effective data solutions to increase decision space through earlier indications and warnings,” according to the release.
Stage Two evaluated the ability to respond to a contested logistics scenario and “demonstrated global collaboration to rapidly create deterrence options and dynamic contested logistics planning.”
Stage Three “demonstrated the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center’s Matchmaker capability for machine-enabled crisis deterrence and conflict defense options.”

In the competition stage of the July experiment, a GIDE team aggregated early indications and warnings from 120 days of geopolitical events, using real-world alerts to highlight adversary actions and requiring collaboration across combatant commands. During the experiment, leaders used artificial intelligence to review deterrence responses, according to a video shown during the CSIS event.

The GIDE 3 experiment also included a conflict stage in which a military Blue Force faced off against Red Force threats at Michigan’s Alpena Combat Readiness Training Center. A cloud-based computer network, accessible both in Michigan and at Tyndall Air Force Base, Fla., enabled participants to share data and demonstrate responses.

In the first GIDE experiment, in December, NORAD and USNORTHCOM took part in a table-top exercise with U.S. Southern Command, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, U.S. Transportation Command, U.S. Strategic Command, and the undersecretary of defense for intelligence and security to prototype the concept. Then in March, GIDE 2 expanded participation to all the combatant commands and brought in the JAIC. Unlike the first experiment, GIDE 2 included “live-fly events,” according to a release.

The Department of the Air Force Chief Architect Office provided “significant funding and manpower resources” for GIDE 3.

“I think the tools that we demonstrated are ready to be applied at the operational to strategic level to create time and decision space,” VanHerck said.

A fourth experiment is planned for fall 2021.

Mission Creep Cost the Afghanistan War; Early Airpower Victory Squandered

Aug. 17, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

Airpower rapidly achieved America’s goals in the Afghanistan War 20 years ago, but a change in the mission led inexorably to this week’s chaotic exit, Air Force Association leaders said Aug. 17.

“Afghanistan will be long remembered as an unsuccessful ground war” that followed a “highly successful aerospace power campaign,” said retired Lt. Gen. David Deptula, dean of AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, in a message posted on the association’s website.

By late 2001, just three months after the 9/11 attacks, critical U.S. security interests in Afghanistan had been achieved, Deptula said, by partnering U.S. airpower with “a light footprint of special operations personnel” and the Afghan Northern Alliance.

“Neutering al-Qaeda and eliminating Afghanistan as al-Qaeda’s sanctuary were critical U.S. security objectives,” Deptula said, but “trying to turn Afghanistan into a democracy was not.” This, he said, was “the critical error of U.S. strategy perpetuated by four Presidents and 20 years of U.S. Army leadership.”

Aerospace power is also closing out the U.S. presence in Afghanistan, he noted: “A small contingent of security forces are holding the airport in Kabul, helping evacuate friends and allies amid an unfolding disaster.”

Now comes the “trillion-dollar question,” he said.

“Why did the U.S. pour hundreds of thousands of ground forces into Afghanistan over 20 years after U.S. vital security objectives were realized?” The question is not one of mere historical interest, he said, because “the answer illustrates the importance of clearly defining U.S. security objectives and acting rapidly and effectively, with the right amount and right kind of force, to achieve them.”

In a June op-ed for Forbes, Deptula wrote that Afghanistan suffered from “a serious case of mission creep. We evolved from a mission of unquestionable security rationale into one that was not ours to solve”—the transformation of Afghanistan into a modern, democratic nation-state.

“This mission creep will not be easy to admit, but it is necessary to recognize if we are to avoid similar outcomes in future conflicts. It also highlights the failure of the ground-centric, nation-building-via-a-land-occupation strategy embraced by U.S. Central Command and by a U.S. Joint Staff dominated by land warfare officers who did not learn—or relearn—the lessons of Vietnam.”

Deptula argued that the key capabilities for the U.S. military are intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance “to understand the threat” and to maintain “kinetic options against high-value targets,” and providing both these capabilities to friendly indigenous forces where appropriate. The fact that U.S. forces engage this way worldwide—and that people are generally unaware of it—“is proof of their effectiveness,” he wrote. “Threats are managed discreetly, challenging situations are kept under control, and U.S personnel are not subject to undue risk.”

Rapid global response and ISR are hallmarks of aerospace power, and “if properly understood, [it] should be the force of choice for U.S. national security leadership in the coming weeks, months, and years,” he asserted.

Retired Maj. Gen. Doug Raaberg, AFA executive vice president, said, “We do know this: America’s Air and Space forces are the most lethal arm of a more lethal joint force; they will be there when America’s vital interests are at risk and civilian authorities need them most.”

AFA President retired Lt. Gen. Bruce “Orville” Wright said, “How we reflect on what has passed, and what we learn from it, will say more about our future than it will about what got us to this point.” He urged that “we … never forget, and forever honor the courage and ultimate selfless sacrifice of America’s war fighters and their families.”

USAF Investigating Remains Discovered on C-17 After Leaving Kabul

Aug. 17, 2021 | By Brian W. Everstine

The Air Force is investigating the events that led to a C-17 taking off with civilians clinging to its landing gear then falling to their deaths as the aircraft left Kabul, Afghanistan, amid a chaotic scene Aug. 16.

Videos of the C-17 departing have been seen around the world, with a mob surrounding it as it taxied at Hamid Karzai International Airport. Other videos showed at least one person falling after it took off.

The Air Force Office of Special Investigations is reviewing all information regarding the incident, in coordination with Air Mobility Command and other international partners.

“OSI’s review will be thorough to ensure we obtain the facts regarding this tragic incident,” the Air Force said in a statement. “Our hearts go out to the families of the deceased.”

The C-17, tail number 2-1109, deployed from Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash. Deployed aircraft are regularly flown by aircrews from other locations. It landed at Hamid Karzai International Airport on Aug. 16 to deliver a load of equipment to support the evacuation of both American and Afghan civilians from the country as the Taliban claimed control of Kabul.

Before the aircrew could even offload the cargo, however, the plane was surrounded by hundreds of Afghan civilians who had breached the perimeter of the airport, according to the statement.

“Faced with a rapidly deteriorating security situation around the aircraft, the C-17 crew decided to depart the airfield as quickly as possible,” the Air Force said.

Human remains were discovered in the wheel well of the C-17 once it returned to Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar. The C-17 is impounded to allow crews to collect the remains and inspect the aircraft before it returns to flight.

In addition to the review, AMC safety officials “are doing due diligence to better understand how events unfolded” to ensure current and future flight operations are safe.

“Alongside our joint force, interagency, and international partners, the U.S. Air Force remains laser-focused on maintaining security at HKIA to prevent a situation like this from happening again as we safely process Afghan civilians seeking to depart the country,” the Air Force said.

Air Force Releases 2022 Promotion Board Schedule

Aug. 17, 2021 | By Greg Hadley

The Department of the Air Force recently released its selection board schedule for 2022, establishing separate schedules for the Air Force and Space Force and moving up certain boards to earlier in the year.

The Air Force Personnel Center also announced the formation of a new developmental category within the Line of the Air Force for the selection boards.

For the Space Force, promotions from sergeant to master sergeant will be considered in May, followed by major through colonel in October and senior master sergeant and chief master sergeant in November.

“The October field grade officer board will be Space Force’s second consolidated officer board as a separate service,” said Col. Scott Arcuri, U.S. Air Force Selection Board Secretariat chief, in a release.

The Space Force is shifting to selection boards for all noncommissioned officers. In 2021, it replaced tests with boards for certain enlisted Guardians in E-6, E-7, and E-8 grades, though it only included those in the space systems operations field, according to Air Force Times. This upcoming year will mark the first time all candidates from E-5 through E-9 will be included, a Space Force spokesperson confirmed to Air Force Magazine.

On the Air Force side, the chaplain, colonel, and some lieutenant colonel boards will meet several months earlier than they did in 2021, “moving the colonels’ promotion boards earlier in the year to better align with the colonel assignment process,” Arcuri said.

Specifically, the chaplain boards will meet in late March and early April, some three months earlier than a year ago. The same accelerated timeline will also apply for all Line of the Air Force colonel boards.

Candidates for colonel in the medical, dental, nurse, and biomedical sciences corps will meet with boards in June, also three months ahead of last year.

In the more immediate future, the board for lieutenant colonel candidates in the combat support developmental category will meet in January 2022, several months before the other developmental categories.

This will happen, Arcuri said, to “address shortages in some LAF-C [Line of the Air Force-Combat Support] career fields.”

In March, the Air Force’s newest board will meet to consider candidates for lieutenant colonel in the cross functional operations developmental category. The new category is for “Foreign Area Officers (FAOs) who now have their own Air Force Specialty Code,” Arcuri said in the release. Candidates for colonel in the new category will compete in the same late March-early April timeframe as other LAF colonel candidates.

9 C-17s Arrive in Afghanistan to Help with Evacuations

Aug. 17, 2021 | By Brian W. Everstine

Nine C-17s flowed into Kabul overnight after the international airport opened, carrying in more U.S. troops for security and conducting evacuations of American, Afghan, and other third-country people following a chaotic day at the last U.S.-controlled position in Afghanistan.

“As we speak, we are continuing air operations, and air operations continued throughout the night,” Maj. Gen. William D. “Hank” Taylor, the Joint Staff’s director of operations, said during an Aug. 17 briefing.

The U.S. mission is to maintain the security of the airport, and the Pentagon is deploying more members of the 82nd Airborne so air operations can continue. This includes sending the 82nd’s commander to oversee security, while the overall commander of U.S. forces on the ground coordinates with partner nations to ensure security.

Pentagon spokesman John F. Kirby said local commanders are speaking with Taliban commanders outside the base to ensure there are no additional security incidents. On Aug. 16, U.S. forces shot two individuals “with hostile intent.” Since then, there have not been any other incidents and there have been no threats from the Taliban.

“HKIA remains secure,” Taylor said, referring to Hamid Karzai International Airport. “It is currently open for military flight operations as well as limited commercial flights.”

In addition to U.S. C-17s, international aircraft including United Kingdom and Australian C-130s and a French A400M have operated from the airport, according to reports and flight tracking data.

Taylor said if the security situation holds, the goal is to increase U.S. operations to one flight per hour with a goal of evacuating about 5,000 people per day. Kirby said during an earlier appearance on CNN that between 5,000 and 9,000 Americans are in Afghanistan, as well as many thousands more Afghans who worked with the U.S. and NATO. The bulk of these personnel are not at the airport, and neither the Department of Defense nor the Department of State have outlined ways to get them to the airport.

“The military tasks require securing the airfield, something we are absolutely focused on doing,” Taylor said, adding that any information on what’s happening outside the airfield would be coordinated by the State Department.

U.S. Central Command boss Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie visited the airport Aug. 17 to evaluate the situation and meet with leaders on the ground.

“I saw firsthand our defensive lay down and the work our forces are doing to efficiently operate the airfield while ensuring the safe movement of civilians and diplomats who are leaving Kabul,” McKenzie said in a statement.

The airfield is secure and open to civilian air traffic under visual flight rules, McKenzie said.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, during a separate Aug. 17 briefing, said member nations have committed to flying more aircraft into Kabul to bring their citizens and Afghan partners out.

The “precondition for getting these other Afghans out is, of course, to have the airport up and running,” Stoltenberg said. “Many NATO allies are helping to ensure exactly that.”

Taylor said 500-600 Afghan forces are also helping to secure the airfield.

Stoltenberg said Afghan forces did not put up enough of a fight against the Taliban, enabling the group to advance more quickly than anyone had predicted and leading to the chaotic security situation on the ground. After the U.S. reached its agreement with the Taliban in early 2020 to withdraw, NATO nations followed suit because the alternative would have been more deployments for an open-ended war.

“When the United States decided to end its presence in Afghanistan, and the U.S. has been responsible for the majority of the Soldiers and has carried the brunt of the burden all the way, there [was] no willingness from other European allies, Canada, other partner nations, to replace or fill in after the United States,” he said.

Editor’s Note: This story was updated at 5:07 p.m. on Aug. 17 to include additional information from U.S. Central Command.

DOD Planning for up to 22,000 Afghans to Evacuate

Aug. 16, 2021 | By Greg Hadley

The Defense and State Departments are planning to fly thousands more Afghans out of the country in the coming days, even as disturbing images of Afghans desperately attempting to board U.S. aircraft and flee the Taliban spread across social media Aug. 16.

To date, according to officials from both departments, roughly 2,000 Afghan citizens who assisted with the U.S. mission in Afghanistan have been relocated out of the country as part of the Afghan Special Immigrant Visa program in the past several weeks, officials from both departments said.

State Department press secretary Ned Price said another 1,600 individuals have been airlifted out of Afghanistan in recent days by U.S. aircraft. Those individuals include American citizens who worked at the Kabul embassy, SIV holders, refugees, and “other vulnerable Afghans,” Price said. He declined to break down the number of each category.

The Defense Department, meanwhile, is planning to establish up to 22,000 spaces for SIV refugees on its bases, according to Garry Reid, the lead for the DOD’s crisis action group for Afghanistan.

In the weeks before the Taliban’s breakneck conquest of Afghanistan, as the U.S. continued its withdrawal, several hundred Afghans approved for special immigrant visas were relocated to Fort Lee, Va., for housing and processing.

Reid said DOD is planning to establish additional spaces at Fort Bliss, Texas, and Fort McCoy, Wis. Other installations may be used in the future, he added.

Amid the chaos of Aug. 16, several hundred SIV recipients and their families were able to get on American aircraft and leave the country, Reid added. With thousands still waiting, though, the pace will have to increase.

“We certainly have a much greater requirement,” Reid acknowledged. “We are still in the process of bringing in forces. These aircraft, as space is available on the outbound, have been taking passengers, and, of course, this has been somewhat disrupted in the last 24 hours.”

In retaking control of Hamid Karzai International Airport, the U.S. also hopes to re-establish commercial travel, Price said, which could allow endangered Afghans to leave the country in another way.

Ultimately, Price added, the U.S. plans to evacuate “as many as we can” while maintaining a diplomatic presence in the airport—the American embassy has been completely abandoned, but Price said the goal is to maintain some sort of presence on the ground “as long as it is safe to do so.”

So long as that presence at the airport is maintained, Price said, the State and Defense departments will work to evacuate as many Afghan citizens as possible.

However, when asked if the State Department had reached any sort of agreement with the Taliban to continue operating out of the airport, Price demurred, saying that although there had been some “constructive” talks, “we are going to look for their actions, rather than listen to their words.”

Contracts Advance Skyborg Toward Becoming Program of Record on Time

Aug. 16, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

Contracts worth a combined $20.2 million to Kratos and General Atomics for development of the Autonomous Core System of the Skyborg unmanned aircraft control system will propel Skyborg toward becoming a program of record on time in 2023, the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center announced Aug. 16.

Kratos received $13.2 million for work on its XQ-58A Valkyrie, while General Atomics received $7 million for work on its MQ-20 Avenger. The Air Force did not say when the contracts were exercised. The work will support further integration of the Autonomous Core System (ACS) in the aircraft as well as experimentation in large-force exercises. The goal is to enter a program of record in 2023, confirming a timetable the program executive officer for fighters and advanced aircraft hedged about just last week.

Skyborg is one of the Air Force’s “Vanguard” pathfinding technology programs, seeking an artificial intelligence-enabled system to control unmanned aircraft in a future manned/unmanned aircraft teaming concept.

“These contract actions, while tactical in nature, are strategically important to this Vanguard as we continue to discover and learn how we will employ this advanced technology in the fight,” Program Executive Officer Brig. Gen. Dale R. White said in a press release Aug. 16. “The team has always been committed to transitioning Skyborg to a program of record, and we’ll be ready in 2023 as the Air Force prepares its FY’23 President’s Budget submission early next year.”

Last week, however, White hedged about whether Skyborg would be ready in that timeframe, saying timing would be based on funds available.

“I won’t say [2023] is not achievable,” White told reporters in a press conference Aug. 12. “I will just say that it has to be balanced with all of the other requirements we have across the portfolio.” He added that there’s “still some amount of work that we want to do with respect to both the platform and the autonomy piece before we make that transition, and so we’re on a path to do that.” There is “commitment” from “warfighters and … requirements writers” that Skyborg will be part of the future force, White said.

If the Air Force thinks Skyborg will “fit inside future budgets, certainly I think we’d be ready. I just don’t think we’re ready to commit to that right now,” he added. Leidos developed the autonomous flight control system, which White said is intended to be “platform agnostic.”

White indicated that USAF continues to evaluate how Skyborg-related aircraft will “fit into the overall picture of the force structure in the long term.”

The Autonomous Core System successfully operated a General Atomics MQ-20 Avenger—the Air Force has an unspecified but small number of these stealthy “Predator C” drones—in a June “Orange Flag” exercise. The system had previously operated Kratos’s UTAP-22 Mako, demonstrating that the same system could fly different airplanes.

“Flying the Skyborg ACS on platforms from two different manufacturers demonstrates the portability of the government-owned autonomy core, unlocking future multimission capabilities for the joint force,” Air Force Research Laboratory commander Maj. Gen Heather L. Pringle said in a press release about the experiment.

The ACS will also be used experimentally on Boeing’s stealthy Airpower Teaming System drone, developed with Australia. White said the Boeing airplane will fly with ACS next year.

The Air Force Life Cycle Management Center said the next operational exercise with Skyborg will be conducted this fall.