Here’s When New PT Gear, Other Updated Uniforms Will Be Available for Airmen

Aug. 10, 2021 | By Greg Hadley

Dozens of changes are coming to the Air Force’s dress and appearance standard, as the service prepares to implement initiatives recommended by the 2020 Air Force Uniform Board.

The changes will become official when Air Force Instruction 36-2903 is republished in early October 2021, but Aug. 10, USAF released images of some of the new uniforms that will be rolled out over the coming 15 months and previewed some of the appearance changes.

On the appearance front, hosiery will now be optional for women in all variations of the dress uniform. Hair accessories, previously limited to 1 inch, can be up to 2. The Air Force has recently made several major changes to its regulations on women’s hair grooming, allowing female Airmen to wear ponytails and braids and have their hair extend six inches to either side of the point where hair is gathered behind their head.

Men will now be allowed to grow their hair to a bulk of 2.5 inches from the scalp, up from the previous 2 inches and double what was allowed up until September 2020. Men will also be allowed cosmetic tattoos on their scalp.

No change was announced to the service’s beard policy, which has been a point of contention for some Airmen who wish to grow out facial hair.

However, wing commanders will now be allowed to authorize the wearing of approved morale patches on Fridays and special occasions.

“We remain committed to maintaining an iterative approach with our dress and appearance standards,” Lt. Gen. Brian T. Kelly, deputy chief of staff for manpower, personnel, and services, said in a statement. “During this most recent review we approved several updates fully aligned with our Air Force standards and culture that maintain our focus on warfighting while providing options to meet many of the needs of our Airmen.”

The biggest uniform changes are coming to the Air Force’s PT gear. On March 2, the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center revealed the updated design for the athletic wear, the first PT uniform update in nearly two decades. On Aug. 10, the service announced that the new gear is expected to be available in October 2022, with a four-year transition period following.

Tweaks to the service uniforms were also announced. Shirts and blouses will be made with a material that is stain- and wrinkle-resistant and moisture wicking.

For men, the shirt body will be lengthened and tapered and have a redesigned armhole and shoulder.

For women, blouses will also be lengthened and feature a redesigned armhole, along with a new neckline and collar and realigned buttons. There will also be a new maternity blouse, designed for a better fit through all trimesters.

Men’s trousers will have redesigned pockets, and women’s trousers will have a lower waistband and be straight cut, as opposed to a tapered fit. The front darts will also be removed to create a flat front.

The new men’s long-sleeved shirts will be available immediately in August 2021, while the short-sleeved men’s shirt, the tuck-in style blouse and the new maternity blouse are all expected to be available in October 2021. The updated semi-form fitting blouse will follow in January 2022, followed by the updated trousers and slacks in May 2022.

In August 2022, women will be able to buy dress mess slacks, two years after the Air Force announced it would no longer require floor-length skirts. Since then, women who have wanted to wear pants have had to buy men’s mess dress trousers and have them altered.

Among other changes, the new Air Force guidance will also allow Airmen to put their hands in their pockets while in uniform as well as drink water and use their phone while walking in their uniform.

The Space Force will continue to follow Air Force guidance until the service develops its own grooming and uniform policies, expected to be released in late 2021.

Pentagon Hints Afghan ‘Leadership’ Will Be to Blame if Kabul Falls

Aug. 9, 2021 | By Abraham Mahshie

At least five provincial Afghan capitals had fallen to the Taliban within three days, and U.S. airstrikes had failed to turn the tide for retreating Afghan forces, leading the Pentagon on Aug. 9 to preemptively blame a lack of political and combat “leadership” if the Afghan government falls.

“They have the advantages, and it’s really now their time to use those advantages,” Pentagon spokesman John F. Kirby said of the Afghan government’s Air Force, modern weaponry, and superior numbers in the face of the rapid Taliban advance.

“Whatever the outcomes are when we look back on this, we’re going to see that leadership, leadership in the field, [and] leadership in Kabul were really the keys,” Kirby added. “We will certainly support from the air where and when feasible, but that’s no substitute for leadership.”

Kirby declined to state the nature of “over-the-horizon” air support after the Sept. 11 withdrawal deadline.

In recent days, U.S. airstrikes have helped to push back some Taliban advances, but Kirby would not disclose the number of strikes or how many more may be coming other than to say they did not originate from Afghan soil.

Despite the recent U.S. barrage of air support, the Pentagon assessment of the Afghan government’s fight was dismal.

“We are clearly concerned,” Kirby said.

Kirby stressed that the U.S. over-the-horizon ability to strike terrorists remains “robust,” but he provided no new details on how logistical and maintenance support will be provided from afar. The U.S. is known to be negotiating with several countries in the region for basing rights.

Presently, U.S. airstrikes are believed to originate from B-52s based across the Persian Gulf at Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar, and from the USS Ronald Reagan carrier strike group in the Arabian Sea.

“The secretary continues to believe that the Afghan forces have the capability, they have the capacity, to make a big difference on the battlefield,” Kirby said, noting U.S. support would come “where and when feasible.”

But the U.S. relationship with Afghanistan will change.

“We are focused—as we should be, given the president’s directive—we are focused on completing the drawdown by the end of the month and transitioning to a different bilateral relationship with Afghan forces,” he said.

Austin to Seek Waiver in Mid-September Requiring Troops to Get the COVID-19 Vaccine

Aug. 9, 2021 | By Abraham Mahshie

As the COVID-19 delta variant rapidly spreads across the country, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III announced he will ask President Joe Biden for a waiver to require all military service members to be vaccinated against the novel coronavirus, but he will wait at least a month, the Pentagon confirmed Aug. 9.

The Defense Department released Austin’s memo to the force just before Pentagon spokesman John F. Kirby said the reason for the delay is so that services could work on a rollout plan. Services have been offering the vaccine on a voluntary basis since December.

“He met with the service Secretaries this morning—they all understand the timing here,” Kirby said. “He wants those implementation plans to be ready.”

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall told Air Force Magazine during his first interview as the department’s leader that Airmen and Guardians need to get vaccinated to protect their families and teammates. The COVID-19 delta variant is spreading rapidly, with the Air Force returning to “exponential growth.”

“Every morning I get a report about other air bases that have raised their levels of concern about COVID and taking greater steps,” he said. “If we want to get out of this and really get this behind us, people have to get vaccinated. And so, the one thing I would say is to urge our Airmen, our Guardians, their families, and the people that they know, associate with, their loved ones, to get vaccinated.”

Kirby said more than 60 percent of the force has been fully vaccinated and some 73 percent of service members have received at least one dose. However, the vaccines are still voluntary as a condition of their emergency use approval by the FDA.

To date, DOD has administered more than 4.6 million vaccine doses. Among active-duty members of the military, 212,815 have been stricken by the coronavirus and more than 1,800 remain hospitalized.

Despite congressional urging, the Pentagon had long declined to ask for a presidential waiver to require the coronavirus vaccine prior to full Food and Drug Administration approval.

Then, Biden asked Austin to consider requiring the vaccine.

The memo released Aug. 9 comes after Austin consulted with the Joint Chiefs, service Secretaries, and medical professionals and details his support for requesting a waiver.

The White House has already put out a statement saying Biden supports making the COVID-19 vaccine mandatory for members of the military.

“I strongly support Secretary Austin’s message to the Force today on the Department of Defense’s plan to add the COVID-19 vaccine to the list of required vaccinations for our service members not later than mid-September,” Biden is quoted as saying. “Being vaccinated will enable our service members to stay healthy, to better protect their families, and to ensure that our force is ready to operate anywhere in the world.”

Nonetheless, the Pentagon said Austin will wait.

“He intends to ask for a waiver by mid-September unless or until FDA licensure occurs first,” Kirby said.

“It’s a process issue,” he added. “Until FDA licensure has occurred, you still need a formal waiver provided by the President of the United States.”

The Pentagon declined to say how the new vaccination plans will affect deploying service members or how members of the military might be punished if they refuse the vaccine once a presidential waiver is granted and the vaccine becomes required.

Kirby said vaccine refusal in the military, long a concern that led Austin to record a video in February on vaccine safety, was not a problem.

“We don’t have any evidence to suggest this is a widespread problem right now,” he said.

The Pentagon said Austin reserves the right to request the waiver sooner than the mid-September timeframe.

“We’re going watch the trends closely. We are seeing an uptick in cases, an uptick in hospitalizations across the force as we are in the country, and the delta variant is a factor,” Kirby said. “If [Secretary Austin] needs to move sooner than this timeline, then he’ll do that.”

Secretary Kendall’s Plan: Lessons From the Cold War, More Engineers

Aug. 9, 2021 | By Brian W. Everstine

When Frank Kendall got a call from the White House asking if he could return to the Pentagon to lead the Department of the Air Force, he didn’t need long to think it over.

Kendall, who left public service in 2016 after leading Defense Department acquisition for four years, knew becoming the department’s top civilian was a chance to help address a growing national security problem about which he’d been sounding the alarm for more than a decade.

“The short answer is, I thought I could make a contribution to our national security,” Kendall told Air Force Magazine in an exclusive interview, his first since starting as Air Force Secretary. “I’ve been obsessed, or, if you will, very concerned maybe would be a better way to say it, with Chinese military modernization since 2010. And I think we have made some progress in addressing that problem. But, there’s a lot more that can be done.”

‘Capability had atrophied’

Kendall has spent almost 50 years working in military acquisition. A West Point graduate and former soldier, Kendall oversaw weapons buying in the Pentagon in the Obama administration. He said he came of age in the Cold War, a time when the U.S. was toe-to-toe with a great power, and that history, in some ways, is repeating itself now—and the military needs to adjust.

“I spent the first 20 years of my career in the Cold War working on some of the types of issues that we’re actually confronted with now: a peer competitor who is acting very aggressively to try to defeat us, and responding to that,” Kendall said. “One of the things that we did then, routinely and in great depth, was operational analysis—modeling and analysis to support requirements decisions. And I noticed when I came back in 2010 … that we weren’t doing that. That capability had atrophied. So, one of the things I hope to do is recreate some of that or expand on the capabilities that we have now.”

‘Better decisions’

Kendall takes over an Air Force in flux, with a budget proposal that aims to reshape the service’s fleet lacking momentum on Capitol Hill and in a Pentagon beginning to draft its next National Security Strategy.

When Kendall left DOD acquisition, programs such as the B-21 and the Air Force’s Next Generation Air Dominance system were nascent and the F-35 faced an uncertain future. With new initiatives taking root, such as the service’s Advanced Battle Management System and the DOD’s overarching joint all-domain command and control concept, Kendall said he wants the Air Force to focus on emerging tech to compete.

“The obvious one that people talk a lot about is artificial intelligence and autonomous capabilities,” he said. “But there are others. There’s some sensing advantages that are coming along—there are opportunities there. Things like cognitive radar and cognitive [electronic warfare]. There are things that allow us to take some commercial technologies and communicate much more effectively and process data much more effectively, that allow us to make better decisions—various parts of an engagement scenario, if you will. And I think that we can mature that technology very quickly and get it applied to military problems.”

‘Not outrageous amounts of risk’

On specific platforms, Kendall is coy. On the day of the interview, he rushed from briefing to briefing with meetings overlapping each other in the Pentagon’s E ring of offices belonging to senior officials, taking a brief respite to talk to a journalist. The meeting prior was on the state of the B-21 Raider program.

“I actually walked in here from a brief on it, but that really doesn’t mean I can tell you anything about it,” he joked, before adding the Air Force’s position that it is performing “reasonably well. What I’ve seen suggests that that’s the case, so I’m encouraged by that. But again, we still have a long way to go.”

Throughout his career, including as the DOD’s lead on acquisition, Kendall said he looked at “literally hundreds if not more, a thousand maybe, programs.” His view is to structure programs “to get to that objective of meaningful military capability as quickly as possible and as efficiently as possible,” though the department’s track record in recent years is spotty at best—the F-35 and KC-46 stand out as examples.

“Cost and schedule overruns disrupt everybody … they cause lots of problems, and I try to avoid those, but do so in an approach that takes some risk, but not outrageous amounts of risk,” Kendall said.

“And what I’ve seen in part, I think in the last few years, is situations where people are going very, very quickly, but not necessarily in the right direction and not necessarily very efficiently. If you’re running fast in the wrong direction, you’re not making progress. And if you’re running as if you’re in a sprint when you’re actually in a marathon, you’re not going to do very well either. So, getting what we do right is first, and then doing it in the most efficient way is second, and in this position, I’m going to be focused on both.”

‘Largely a leadership problem’

Kendall is quick to say, however, that his job isn’t just acquisition. He’s the Secretary, and he’s working on initiatives in other areas, such as personnel and retention. Following in-depth disparity reviews focusing on the problems minority Airmen face, Kendall said wants to ensure that “every Airman and Guardian is treated with dignity and respect and [that] we have a culture in which that is the norm and anything else is not accepted.” Barriers to service that some Airmen face are “largely a leadership problem to me, and we need to address it at every level, and we need to address it constantly.”

The Department of the Air Force needs to be able to “tap into all the human capital potential that’s out there, wherever it may come from.” An engineer by trade, Kendall said his view is that expertise needs a bigger role in service. “One thing that I think we need to do is make sure we have more engineers. We need to have people who are technically astute. We’re in a technological competition, in part, and developing technologies and then applying them more effectively than our potential adversaries is key to success. And what I described is engineering.”

‘Back in that game’

While the fiscal 2022 budget process is playing out on Capitol Hill, the Air Force is in the middle of preparing its fiscal 2023 budget. While much of that work took place before Kendall came in, he said he took the role “when I could be most influential—I think it’s fair to say that I may have just made it” and is making changes.

“It’s been a pretty hectic first 10 days,” he said. “Now, I’ve had great support from the staff. That’s been very encouraging, and we’re working our way through that. So, it’s possible that I’ll make some different recommendations than the Air Force did or would have made before I came.”

On the date of the interview, Aug. 6, Kendall was wrapping up his 10th day in office. He said he was surprised how fast he could adjust back to the “Pentagon pace of doing business—to 12- and 14-hour days and not getting much sleep. And going from one subject to the other, and the intensity of what we’re trying to do here, coupled with its importance.”

“I actually like working in the Pentagon. There aren’t many people that would say that out loud,” he said. “But, as in the show ‘Hamilton,’ this is the room where it happens. In fact, this is the building where it happens. This is where we decide. … This is where we’re going to do the things and make the decisions that are going to keep us safe and free—or not. And it’s an honor, it’s an awesome amount of responsibility I have, and it’s very humbling to be back in that game after a four-year hiatus. But it’s also incredibly stimulating and rewarding and fulfilling. I feel like when I walked in the building, … there I was back in the game, just like that.”

Cyberattacks on Commercial Space Are Inevitable, Deputy SPACECOM Boss Warns

Aug. 9, 2021 | By Greg Hadley

It is “only a matter of time” before cybercriminals and bad actors start launching attacks on commercial space assets, the deputy commander of U.S. Space Command warned Aug. 9.

Space Force Lt. Gen. John E. Shaw, speaking at the virtual Small Satellite Conference, predicted that as commercial space becomes an increasingly active and crowded sector, there will be increased “interoperability” between assets in orbit so that satellites from different government agencies, private companies, and academic institutions can better connect and communicate.

But because the cyber and space realms are so intertwined—Shaw referred to them as “BFFs,” an initialism for best friends forever—the threats facing cyber will come for space as well.

“I hate to be a negative-looking predictor, but I think it’s only a matter of time before we see some of the same cyber challenges … that we’ve seen threaten really have some sort of manifestation in the space domain, whether it’s a ransomware attack on a commercial space system or some sort of infiltration of a control system of a commercial constellation,” Shaw said.

In response to those potential threats, SPACECOM boss Gen. James H. Dickinson has prioritized cybersecurity and resilience “for our basic capabilities, because they are so reliant on cyber technologies, and therefore may be vulnerable to those kinds of things,” Shaw said.

“Anyone who has been working with U.S. Space Command or U.S. Space Force or another part of the Department of Defense on space capabilities, you know we are continually asking, ‘How is this going to be cyber resilient? How are you building it in at the beginning, at the very beginning? How are you baking in cyber defense mechanisms into your capability that you’re building?’” Shaw said. “We can’t do future space capabilities without acknowledging the cutting edge of cyber, both the threats but also the defenses and the capabilities there that need to be woven in.”

Another key aspect for ensuring safety in space, Shaw predicted, will be the development of “rules of the road for behavior.” It’s been a common refrain among top defense officials—Dickinson called for international norms to be established in space Aug. 3 during the Navy League of the United States’ annual Sea-Air-Space Exposition, and last month, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III signed a memo pledging to have the Pentagon follow a framework of rules for behavior in space.

In particular, though, Shaw focused on the issue of space traffic management. At the moment, the Defense Department is responsible for tracking thousands of satellites and pieces of debris in orbit. It has long planned to transfer that duty to the Department of Commerce, but the switch has been slow, and while Shaw said he believes it is “on the brink of happening,” it is far from complete.

“I think we will get there—it’s just a matter of how and when and getting the resources lined up in organizations,” Shaw said. “We’ve actually been working with the Department of Commerce for a number of years now on potentially doing just that. I think we just have to hit that inflection point.”

The development of norms and rules in the commercial sector, Shaw said, will be welcomed by institutions.

“Ninety-eight percent or more of people operating in space are going to want to buy into that because it lowers the risk of the challenges for their venture,” Shaw said.

Aerospace Corp. Sees Need for Tools to Test Black Box Software in Spacecraft

Aug. 9, 2021 | By Shaun Waterman

“In space,” read a T-shirt worn by one attendee at the DEF CON hacker conference in Las Vegas last week, “no one can hear you get hacked.” And, increasingly, no one can independently test your software to root out vulnerabilities, according to a presentation there by The Aerospace Corp.’s top cybersecurity expert Brandon Bailey.

With the growing commercialization of space, Bailey pointed out, more and more space systems are running commercial, proprietary, closed-source computer programs, which he characterized as “black box software” because no one outside the company that produces it can get access to the source code.

“Go and ask SpaceX if you can analyze the source code for the Falcon 9—they’re probably not going to let you,” Bailey told Air Force Magazine in an interview.

He contrasted this with more traditional space systems, often using government- or contractor-designed custom software to which engineers and researchers had much greater access.

“In the past, we were operating with more of a white box mentality. And we had full source code access at times,” he told the audience in his presentation. “So we’re trying to figure out, how do we tackle this problem moving forward as we are getting more and more black box software to perform mission-critical activities” in space.

The issue will grow more urgent as more commercial, off-the-shelf technology is deployed in both government and private-sector space systems, he said.

Black box software is a cybersecurity issue, experts say, because one of the main ways to root out vulnerabilities in software—the flaws in a program that let hackers break into and take over computer systems—is to analyze the source code. This is known as static analysis.

When the source code is installed, it is compiled into what’s called a binary—a file of machine language, the 1s and 0s that actually run the computer. Because they’re compiled into machine language, binaries are not amenable to traditional static analysis.

With proprietary software for conventional computers, such as the Windows or Mac operating systems, Bailey explained, cybersecurity researchers can get around this problem quite simply. They just load the software onto a PC with any associated peripherals, such as printers, and switch it on. They can then analyze the binary as it is running—a process known as dynamic analysis.

But in space systems, the software programs generally don’t run on conventional computers such as PCs. Instead, they tend to be embedded in exotic hardware such as the nozzles that control fuel flow or the motors that move an antenna. “When that black box mentality extends itself to spacecraft, and embedded systems, that can be a problem because … with embedded systems, you need the targeted hardware to run it on,” explained Bailey.

He described to the audience at DEF CON a number of different workarounds for this problem—tools that could perform static analysis on binaries, for example.

Bailey said he had been researching the topic, on and off, for “the last few years” but had found only a handful of tools. “For embedded processors and spacecraft, it’s such a niche market. There’s not a whole lot of capabilities out there that can really unpack all these niche architectures that we would see on a spacecraft,” he said.

The issue was that there wasn’t a mass market. “From a commercial perspective, you have got to have a lot of users to make it beneficial from a cost benefit point of view to produce some sort of products or tools to do things.”

Bailey said the automotive industry provided a possible model. “More and more software is being executed on your car, … and the car manufacturers are accepting risk from all [this software] that they don’t know about.” Driven by concerns about their liability for software flaws, automotive manufacturers were seeking to develop tools for, among other things, static analysis of binaries, Bailey said.

“So I see that very interesting parallel with space as we move into this commercialization and start pulling products off the shelf,” he said.

News about Chinese Silos Highlights Need for USAF to Accelerate Change, Brown Says

Aug. 6, 2021 | By Abraham Mahshie

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. highlighted the “catastrophic” implications if the Air Force does not change fast enough to keep up with China but added that recent public information about the buildup of Chinese intercontinental ballistic missile silos will help generate the public support he needs.

“It’s kind of good that it’s out there so folks see the pace of change from our adversary,” Brown said in a gaggle after he spoke at the National Press Club on Aug. 6. “It actually helps to validate what we’ve been talking about, why we need this capability.”

In recent weeks, research groups studying satellite imagery of a desert in western China have spotted more than 100 new silos for intercontinental ballistic missiles, The Economist reported.

Brown said China could overcome U.S. air superiority by 2035, noting how change has largely stalled in the Air Force. When he commissioned in 1984, the United States was developing a new fighter jet every two-and-a-half years. Only four fighter jets have been developed since, he said.

That reality stares at him every day that he walks into the Pentagon.

“There’s a very stark print that I get to look at every day when I come into the Pentagon,” Brown said of the graphic “Wings Through Time” by Robert Emerson Bell that depicts every aircraft ever used in the Air Force as if seen from above. Dozens of planes fly in a chronological transition and color scheme from deep brown to Air Force blue.

Brown specifically described two aircraft on that spectrum: the B-52 and the KC-135. “You look at them on that print—they are closer to the Wright flyer than they are to today. That tells you something about our United States Air Force and how we can change,” he said.

But it’s not about the wow factor of modern weapons or the size of the force—USAF must have the “right mix” of capabilities to defeat China, he said.

There is an urgency to finding that balance, he argued, and the politics of keeping legacy systems or a sizable fleet of older aircraft must be abandoned. That is something China has already done, Brown added.

“They cut the less relevant parts of their force to invest in the part of the force they need to gain an advantage,” he said.

The result is a strategic growth now challenging the U.S. in the Pacific.

“The People’s Liberation Army has the largest aviation forces in the Pacific, the largest conventional missile capability in the Pacific. They are building hypersonic missiles, and they’ve established bases and military strategic points,” he said.

Brown said China has done it all “underneath our nose,” including the “slow and insidious” construction of landing strips and capabilities on South China Sea islands that will allow them to project forward a defense of the mainland.

The U.S. Air Force, meanwhile, must rely on partners and allies in the region who are increasingly bullied by Chinese economic might. U.S. aviators must also learn to operate in a more “austere” environment with simple landing strips and prepositioned capabilities.

The Air Force is the oldest and smallest it’s ever been, yet Brown acknowledged the service might have to get even smaller in order to bring the new technologies that will enable it to compete against peer adversaries such as China.

“I’d rather have a smaller capable force than a larger, hollow force,” he said. “The United States Air Force has some tough decisions as we go forward to make sure we have the capabilities that will be competitive against the threat.”

Part of developing that capability will be to retire single-mission platforms such as the A-10 to invest in multi-mission aircraft capable of operating in a denied environment.

Brown also called for continued investment in the service’s Advanced Battle Management System, which connects sensors and shooters, and to modernize the nuclear triad, though some liberal lawmakers are pushing to scale back the latter due to its high price tag.

In May, Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.), the chairman of the House Armed Services readiness subcommittee and a member of the strategic forces subcommittee, argued USAF should “pause” any major recapitalization of its ICBM fleet, insisting the Minuteman III could be life-extended and still be viable through the 2030s. However, senior military leaders argue time is up: The U.S. must modernize its nuclear forces now or risk losing credibility.

One rationale for cutting or delaying the Air Force’s Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD), the replacement for the 50-year-old Minuteman III ICBM system, is that China possesses a small number of ICBMs. The new satellite imagery reveals an ambition to vastly expand that capability.

“My concern is that China continues to increase their capabilities at a [fast] rate of change, as far as numbers of particularly aircraft and missiles and ranges of missiles,” Brown said. “We need to get moving at the same pace, if not faster.”

USAF-Related Foreign Military Sales to Surpass Last Year Despite Pandemic

Aug. 6, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

Foreign Military Sales of Air Force-developed equipment in fiscal 2021 will likely surpass 2020 levels, despite the COVID-19 pandemic, Brig. Gen. Brian R. Bruckbauer, director of the Air Force’s Security Assistance and Cooperation Directorate, told reporters Aug. 5.

Air Force FMS sales were $17 billion in 2019 and increased to $24.8 billion in 2020. Bruckbauer said FMS sales as of June 30 were $7.9 billion, and the directorate is expecting to eclipse last year’s figure, he said during the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center’s Life Cycle Industry Days virtual seminar.

“Even with a global pandemic, Foreign Military Sales continues to be somewhat brisk,” he said. Slowdowns are related mostly to countries where “national budgets are driven by tourism,” so they are more affected by the travel downturn. But with “a lot of the larger partners we deal with, [there was] not much of a change, even during COVID,” he added. The directorate has a backlog of “$226 billion in active FMS casework,” and some $41 billion of FMS cases are “on offer,” meaning they are ready to execute but the customer has yet to “sign on the dotted line.”

The directorate has seen about an 11 percent annual growth in work, and its workforce has been able to “flex” with that changing demand, Bruckbauer said.

Most of the contracts have to do with F-35s, A-29s, F-16s, F-15s, and MQ-9s, as well as assorted munitions, he said. The directorate also works with the Defense Logistics Agency on spare parts, logistics, and sustainment of systems sold through FMS, he added.

It also manages the “Worldwide Warehouse Redistribution Service,” or WWRS, which Bruckbauer described as a kind of “eBay” for spare parts and equipment. When a nation is looking to divest spare parts for aircraft or systems it no longer operates or if it has downsized, that country can offer the items for sale through the WWRS, and the directorate can “facilitate that,” he said.

The program “has been a success,” and the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, which funds the U.S. Air Force’s FMS activities, “is looking to do even more with that,” added Bruckbauer.

The Air Force wants to help the customers any way it can. “The last thing we want to see is for these very significant capabilities [to] become static displays,” he added.

Bruckbauer said there is $1.53 billion on offer in munitions, but his team said that did not mark a substantive uptick from previous years. Heidi Grant, when she took over as head of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency in 2018, said she would urge FMS customers to take advantage of high production rates and low unit costs to restock their munitions inventories. This year, the Air Force sharply reduced its budget request for direct-attack munitions, saying it reached its own restocking objectives.

He also said the Air Force has recently transferred some ex-USAF C-130s to partners under what’s called the “ramp for ramp” program.

“We are going to take a stronger look at how we’re advertising to partners what the third-party transfer menu looks like,” he said, referring to U.S.-type aircraft that may be in the boneyard or with countries seeking to divest.

“So, in the coming months, I think we’ll be working on a better way to share that with our partners so they know what’s available.”

The recent purchases of F-16s for the Adversary Air role don’t go through Bruckbauer’s organization, he said, but are “direct commercial sales” by the countries selling the jets.

On the recent sale of the F-35 to the United Arab Emirates, a letter of acceptance has been signed by the UAE, but it has not provided the deposit money, Bruckbauer’s staff said. The Biden administration is reviewing the sale.

Lack of JADC2 Coordination Across Services is ‘Recipe for Disaster,’ Analyst Warns

Aug. 6, 2021 | By Greg Hadley

The Defense Department is setting up a “recipe for disaster” if it does not establish a joint program executive office to coordinate joint all-domain command and control efforts across services, a top defense analyst is warning.

In a brief published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies on Aug. 5, Todd Harrison, director of the center’s Aerospace Security Project, argued that DOD’s current approach risks individual services, combatant commands, and agencies all developing “multiple stove-piped networks that do not allow the kind of interoperability and resilience that would be possible with a more coordinated approach.”

A prime example of that risk, Harrison told Air Force Magazine in an interview, is the Air Force’s Advanced Battle Management System. While Air Force leaders envision ABMS as a whole new approach to command and control that will be central to larger JADC2 efforts, Army leaders have expressed skepticism that it will be able to scale widely enough to meet their needs.

“In ABMS, the Air Force is developing a system that may work well for connecting a few thousand aircraft, but the same system may not work well for connecting hundreds of thousands of soldiers (and their equipment) on the ground,” Harrison wrote in his brief. “And if the Army and Navy develop their own independent battle networks, connecting them to ABMS may end up being an afterthought or, worse, an unfunded requirement.”

The Army’s doubts about ABMS come even after the Air Force and Army reached a two-year agreement in October 2020 to work more closely together on their respective JADC2 efforts—the Army has dubbed its venture “Project Convergence.”

Those concerns, Harrison said, speak less to potential flaws in ABMS and more to the broader problem of coordination.

“I think the fact that the Army is publicly voicing its concerns that ABMS is not going to meet their needs just reflects the fact that the Air Force doesn’t really have a mandate to build a system that will meet the needs of the Army and the Navy and the other services,” Harrison said.

“The Air Force’s mandate is to build its own system, and so I think that that is a role and a mission that is an organizational problem that needs to be addressed right away.”

Establishing a joint program office, Harrison added, would ensure efforts are properly funded and synchronized. And as part of that office, one service would have to take the lead.

“I think the Air Force [or the] Space Force could lead this, because a lot of this is going to happen in or through space,” Harrison said. “But they’ve got to pick someone and put them in charge of that, [and] have representatives from all the other services so that they can advocate for their work environment, but if you don’t have a single belly button in charge … then it’s a recipe for disaster.”

In his brief, Harrison noted five “layers” to JADC2—sensors, communications, processing, decision, and effects. As part of that process, he wrote, many sensors will be air- or space-based, and much of the communication will likely involve space as services turn to free-space laser communication, also called lasercom.

“One of the key challenges we face is adversaries using electromagnetic warfare to disrupt our communication systems, and lasercom is much more resilient to interference, just because of the nature of it, … so I think that makes it very important,” Harrison said.The Air Force explored the possibility of lasercom communication with its Transformational Satellite Communications System started in 2003, but the program was eventually cut in 2009. Harrison noted, however, that the technology has been utilized in several recent projects from various private and public agencies.