Air Force Wants to Cut 421 Old Fighters, Buy 304 New Ones

May 14, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

The Air Force will ask Congress to retire 421 legacy aircraft through 2026, replacing them with just 304 new fighters, according to fiscal 2022 budget talking points obtained by Air Force Magazine. The savings derived from operating a smaller fleet will be put toward acquiring new systems such as the Next-Generation Air Dominance fighter later this decade, and a new Multi-Role fighter, called MR-X, in the 2030s.

“The information outlined in the talking points regarding future Air Force fighter force structure is pre-decisional,” said Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder, an Air Force spokesperson. The document was not labeled as such, however. He declined further comment about potential future budget or resourcing decisions.

The 421 aircraft described in the talking points include a total phase-out of the aged F-15C/D fleet, numbering about 234 aircraft, by the end of fiscal 2026. The F-16 fleet would be reduced by 124 aircraft, mostly from what are called the “pre-block,” or oldest models, leaving a force of 812, also by the end of 2026. The A-10 attack plane would be reduced from 281 total aircraft to 218, for a reduction of 63 tails, but on a more aggressive timeline ending in fiscal 2023.

Over the future-years defense plan ending in fiscal ’26, the Air Force would also bring on 84 new F-15EX and 220 F-35A fighters, resulting in a net reduction of 117 jets over the five-year period. The downsizing would be the largest since the “CAF Redux,” or Combat Air Forces Reduction of the early 2010s, in which the USAF trimmed its fleet by about 250 airplanes.

Air Force leaders have been pushing for several years to be allowed to retire legacy systems in order to pay for new ones that will be more relevant to the future fight, particularly in the Indo-Pacific theater. Service officials in recent days have said they plan to start phasing out the fifth-generation F-22 in 2030, to be replaced by the classified NGAD family of systems, known to be at least one manned fighter and potentially several unmanned variants. Like the NGAD, the new MR-X would also be designed using new digital methodology to drastically reduce design, development and fielding timelines, while sharply reducing sustainment costs by baking in a short service life, with the expectation that successor aircraft will follow swiftly.

“To just keep pace with the threat would require an additional $6- to $7 billion per year to modernize our current force projected into the future,” the USAF talking points say. “Even if affordable, this force falls well short of the capability required to counter a future peer threat.” The document goes on to argue that no technology can transform “our fourth-generation fighters into fifth-generation fighters, or fifth-generation fighters into NGAD.”

The paper also points out that legacy systems are becoming “significantly more expensive to sustain” and that the USAF fields one of the oldest fleets serving worldwide. The Air Force’s fleet averages 28.6 years, the document points out; by comparison, the Navy’s fleet averages 14.4 years; the Army’s aviation arm averages 15.3 years; the Royal Australian Air Force, 8.9 years, and the U.K. Royal Air Force, 16.5 years.

Lt. Gen. David S. Nahom, deputy chief of staff for plans and programs, said this week that the USAF’s operating and sustainment costs are “skyrocketing,” and increasing at double the rate of inflation, due to the age of the aircraft. He said 44 percent of the USAF’s fleet is operating beyond its planned service life. The F-16 was initially expected to serve until only about 2005.

The F-22 fleet of about 180 aircraft would remain intact through the FYDP, receiving continuing funds for sensor upgrades and to remain fully viable until it begins transitioning out of the force in 2030. According to the talking points, though, the F-22 “cannot be made competitive against the threat two decades from today.”

The NGAD “family of systems” represents “our ability to fight and win in the highly contested environment in the future,” the document says. The new methodology of developing the NGAD “at a pace future threats cannot match” will allow the Air Force to maintain its advantage.

Even so, however, the Air Force seems to have accepted that broad control of the air in a high-end conflict is no longer achievable. It is aiming, rather, for “temporary windows of superiority” in “highly-contested threat environments,” with “complementary capabilities” for the Joint force and U.S. allies. To achieve this, the USAF needs “full-spectrum survivability, high speed, advanced weapons, and extended ranges.”

To perform the “global strike” mission, the USAF adds to those characteristics “sufficient payload” and resilience achieved through “the use of human-machine teaming and a mix of manned and unmanned systems.”

The F-16 and A-10 fleets would also continue to receive funding for structural modifications and capability enhancements to keep them relevant until they fully retire.

The plan reflects the results of “extensive gaming and analysis using the most difficult problem (China) and the most difficult scenario (Taiwan) at the most difficult time (2035),” according to the document. “It is clear that the Air Force must change the future fighter force structure mix by changing investment priorities to provide the capability, capacity, and affordability required to meet a peer threat,” they said.

Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. said May 12 the service must neck down from seven fighter types to “four plus-one,” the “one” being the A-10, in order to reduce the costs of maintaining so many logistics trains.

The A-10 is “very effective in current conflicts, but it is not viable in the long term,” according to the talking points. “Its lack of survivability in the evolving global threat environment and its singular capability set renders it ineffective in the needed role of affordable capacity.” The A-10 cannot perform the defensive counter air, suppression of enemy air defense, or homeland defense missions, the documents said. The service has tried to retire the A-10, unsuccessfully, several times, thwarted by enthusiasts who say it is an unmatched close air support machine.

However, the Air Force plans to prosecute the CAS mission in a different way, Lt. Gen. S. Clinton Hinote, deputy chief of staff for strategy, integration, and requirements, told Air Force Magazine on May 13. Hinote did not describe the new CAS concept but suggested it would involve unmanned aircraft.

Beyond the FYDP, and potentially into the 2030s, the Air Force expects about 600 “post block” F-16s—C/D models from Block 40 on—to remain in the force with with some upgrades, useful in both permissive and some competitive environments. The transition to the MR-X is expected “in the mid-30s.” This new airplane will be a “clean sheet” design, created by digital methods, and the “decision point” to launch the program is now expected to be “six to eight years away,” according to the document. The MR-X “must be able to affordably perform missions short of high-end warfare.” The F-35 could potentially fill this role, but only if its operating costs could be “brought significantly lower.”

The F-15E/X is described in the papers as “an outsized weapons truck,” useful for carrying standoff weapons in a contested theater or performing air superiority in less-contested airspace. Interestingly, while the Air Force has mentioned that the F-15EX could launch the hypersonic, air-to-surface AGM-183A Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon, or ARRW, the talking points say it can also carry an “outsize … air-to-air” weapon, as well. Presumably, this is a long-range weapon meant to counter China’s long-range PL-15 air-to-air missile, but the documents don’t say whether the weapon referenced is the AIM-260, a classified developmental air-to-air missile revealed two years ago.

The Air Force plans to buy 11 F-15EXs in 2022, followed by 14 in 2023 and 19 annually thereafter through the FYDP. If that ramp rate extends through the decade, the USAF would buy its 144th F-15EX in 2030. Contractual documents released last year show that the USAF has options to buy up to 200 F-15EXs.

Brown told a defense symposium this week that his tactical aircraft study, announced in February, is not meant to be a product delivered to Congress, but is an internal assessment of the right future fighter force mix, which will inform the fiscal 2022 budget request but would be implemented in the fiscal ’23 budget and Program Objective Memoranda.

The White House is expected to release its full budget May 27. The Biden administration released a “skinny” budget last month, which calls for $753 billion for national security programs, including $715 billion for the Department of Defense.

DOD Eases Mask Rules to Follow New CDC Guidance

May 14, 2021 | By Amy Hudson

The Defense Department no longer requires masks at DOD facilities for fully vaccinated personnel. The guidance applies to everyone who is at least two weeks past receiving their final dose, and covers both indoor and outdoor activities, according to a May 13 memo from Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen H. Hicks.

The memo was released the same day the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its guidance for limiting COVID-19 transmission. The new CDC guidance says fully vaccinated people can resume pre-pandemic activities without wearing a mask or physically distancing, “except where required by federal, state, local, tribal, or territorial laws, rules, and regulations, including local business and workplace guidance.”

The CDC recommended masks continue to be worn on public transportation, airplanes, and at hospitals and medical facilities.

“All DOD personnel should continue to comply with CDC guidance regarding areas where masks should be worn, including within airports,” Hicks wrote. “Personnel who are not fully vaccinated should continue to follow applicable DOD mask guidance, including continuing to wear masks indoors.”

Commanders and supervisors can still make exceptions to “ensure a safe workforce,” Hicks wrote, but “commanders and supervisors should not ask about an employee’s vaccination status or use information about an employee’s vaccination status to make decisions about how and when employees will report to a workplace instead of teleworking.”

President Joe Biden issued an executive order on Jan. 20 requiring all federal workers to wear a mask when around others, to social distance, and to follow CDC guidelines. Speaking from the White House on May 13, he called the CDC’s new guidance “a great milestone, a great day,” and strongly urged all Americans to be vaccinated. “It’s going to take a little more time for everyone who wants to get vaccinated to get their shots,” Biden said. “So all of us, let’s be patient with one another.”

Army Lt. Gen. Ronald J. Place, director of the Defense Health Agency, told reporters in late March he expected every military member who wants to receive a vaccine to be able to get one by mid-summer.

“Based on projections that we have, both supply side and vaccination side, we do fully expect to be open to all … of our DOD eligible populations on or before the first of May,” Place said in a March 31 briefing. “At current uptake rates for those who want to get it, we think by the middle of July or so … the department will be vaccinated.”

DAF Will Devote Office to Digital Engineering as Advances Gain Steam

May 13, 2021 | By Amanda Miller

The Department of the Air Force will set up a permanent office dedicated to digital engineering within Air Force Materiel Command that the Air Force and Space Force will share.

The department is “putting some resources and personnel in place to move from what has been a wonderful and fantastic campaign of a coalition of the willing, if you will, about 900-strong … to move to a more structured activity that can really be providing assistance and responsiveness and provisioning this journey,” said Kristin Baldwin, deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force for science, technology, and engineering.

An emphasis on digital engineering in its acquisition and research and development programs is part of the USSF’s vision, announced this month, to be a “digital service.”

Described simplistically, digital engineering leaves blueprints behind in favor of continuously evolving digital models. To provide an update on the department’s efforts to transition to digital engineering, Baldwin appeared on The Aerospace Corp.’s “The Space Policy Show” on May 13 along with Air Force Maj. Gen. Kimberly A. Crider, who is mobilization assistant to Chief of Space Operations Space Force Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond.

Baldwin and Crider shared some of the lessons learned from pathfinder programs that are testing out processes, and they predicted some forthcoming changes, including what to expect in new and existing programs, trends in training and education, and the vision for a shared digital environment where all of the department’s future engineering development will take place.

Within the pathfinder programs, a common theme to emerge has been the importance of thinking ahead.

“We’re learning a lot about how the architecture needs to work, how you need to design for this up front, how you need to plan ahead to think through the kinds of architecture you require, the kinds of modeling that you need, the kinds of modeling tools and how to string these tools together in an open and modular kind of way,” Crider said.

It’s helped that the department had already introduced the “e” designation for programs that meet certain thresholds.

“As we’ve come along in the Space Force and looked to accelerate our efforts … we have found that having those capabilities available to us and starting from that instead of having to build all that out has saved us an immense amount of time,” Crider said.

Baldwin acknowledged that existing programs may not be able to incorporate many of the forthcoming changes, such as the common digital environment. An assessment will help determine what’s possible. New programs, meanwhile, are expected to go all in on digital engineering from the start.

Crider described how the shared engineering environment will work: “The government owning the development environment and the tech baseline that goes along with that and making that available to industry and programs throughout,” she said.

“We have become much more attuned to the importance and the value of common enterprise services and standards … this idea of common enterprise services that we want all programs to be able to leverage and use and industry partners to be able to leverage and use,” Crider said. “Many of you out there have heard about Cloud One and the government’s program to deliver enterprise cloud services leveraging commercial industry products and toolsets and integrating that into a set of services that are secure. …”

Eventually the environment will include more components, including Platform One, Crider said:

“Platform One deployed on Cloud One—to provide that environment, that tech stack—for continuous development of models, integration of models, and then infusion of data associated with those models. And that data is brought in from Data One—so a common enterprise set of services for hosting, storing, managing, securing, and protecting data.”

The digital vision won’t come to pass without a more skilled workforce, Crider said. While she’s noticed that higher ed institutions are teaching digital engineering more often, the department has another plan—namely, Digital University—to offer content with which members can continuously build on digital skills.

They cited data security and interoperability of the shared environment as challenges going forward, but those may not be the biggest.

“It’s one thing to build out the environment,” Crider said. “It’s another thing to actually make it part of how you work. So the whole cultural evolution, really getting in the pool and doing your program review, your test reviews, your capability development—all in this rapid, integrated fashion, where all day, every day, we can do a program design review with our partners right on the fly, and we can dive deep on different design options and think through things with our partners across industry …

“Actually shifting our culture … that can’t be understated.”

New Force Design: NGAD Needed Soon, F-22 Sunset Begins in 2030

May 13, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

The Air Force is preparing to unveil a new 30-year fighter force design that includes at least two all-new fighters, a much greater use of autonomous and unmanned aircraft, a new way of providing close air support, and a narrowing timeline for retiring aircraft such as the A-10, F-16, and F-22, said Lt. Gen. Clinton S. Hinote, deputy chief of staff for strategy, integration, and requirements.

Hinote said the F-22 will begin to phase out in about 2030—the exact timeline will be situation-dependent—and the Next-Generation Air Dominance fighter will be needed soon to defeat a Chinese stealth aircraft and missile threat that is “closer than we think.”

In a May 13 interview with the editors of Air Force Magazine, Hinote said Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr.’s revelation that the USAF is planning to reduce its fighter fleet from seven types to “four plus one” is the kickoff of a “transparency” campaign to explain choices to be unveiled in the fiscal 2022 budget submission.

Brown said the future fighter fleet will include the F-35, F-15EX, late-model F-16s, and the Next Generation Air Dominance, or NGAD family of systems; the “plus one” being the A-10. Brown did not mention the F-22, and “this was something you all rightly picked up on very quickly,” Hinote said.

The Air Force plans a “transition” from the F-22 to the NGAD, and “we felt like, now is a good time for us to be able to talk about how we’re going to bridge” between the two systems.

While the F-22 is a good airframe—it has been updated and will continue to receive upgrades, “mostly sensors,” Hinote said—the Air Force is anticipating “the sunset of the F-22 … in about the 2030-ish timeframe.” That won’t be the full retirement of the type, but the beginning of its phase-out, he said. By then the F-22 will be 25 years old and the Air Force should be deep into a new cycle of fielding NGAD and its successors on what could be as rapid as a five-year cycle.

“Our Chief of Staff Gen. Brown has it exactly right: We must ‘accelerate change or lose,’” said AFA President retired Lt. Gen. Bruce “Orville” Wright. “If he says it’s time to start thinking about retiring the F-22, then he understands something about what’s coming with NGAD. The Air Force has led the way in developing and fielding the most advanced technologies on the planet and integrating them into complex weapons systems. They’ve done that from the F-117 a generation ago to the B-21 today. We have to respect Gen. Brown’s confidence and that proven capability to deliver.”

The F-22 fleet is small and suffers from vanishing-vendor problems, senior USAF officers have said recently. A recent high-level USAF planning document said the F-22 won’t be competitive two decades from now. Hinote said the F-22 “has its limitations and we can’t modernize our way out of the [air superiority] problem with just using an updated F-22.”

However, the Air Force will not allow any gap in its ability to achieve air superiority, he insisted.

“We believe … we have a good story,” he said, which is that the F-22 will be kept “viable as a bridge to get to the new capability. This is not an area of the Air Force where we feel we can take a lot of risk.” Though he thinks some mission areas might tolerate gaps or risks—he didn’t name them—air superiority “is not one of them.”

One of the reasons senior leadership is talking about the F-22 and NGAD is because the budget request to be presented in the coming weeks will show a “large … commitment” to the NGAD, Hinote said.

The service expects to have “a tight transition plan” between the F-22 and NGAD, he added. Until NGAD is available, “We feel like a good use of our resources is to keep the F-22 viable as we are developing this sea change in the way we field capability.”

Depending on the threat and hedging against problems in NGAD, the USAF may consider a service-life extension program for the F-22, but Hinote said that seems unlikely because the NGAD is making swift progress.

“I was surprised at how well it’s doing,” he said. He has escorted a number of members of Congress to see the jet—which former USAF acquisition chief Will Roper revealed last September has already flown—and they have come away “at a minimum, fairly impressed,” Hinote assessed. Members of the Office of the Secretary of Defense have similarly visited the program, and “seeing is believing,” he added.

“We still have to make it real, and there’s a lot to do in the program, but when you see what is going on, and you hear it from the Airmen who are flying it, you get a chance to really understand … where we’re going.” He said he wished he could “brag on” the contractors who have brought the program so far, so quickly, but much of the project remains classified.

The NGAD timetable will be “event driven,” but Hinote doubts it will be 10 years before it is in operational service. The “long pole in the tent” right now is integrating “the most important things onto that platform with a government reference architecture.”

He also noted that NGAD is a family of systems and will be “optionally manned,” meaning several versions of the jet may be built and employed with or without crews.

When the budget comes out, “it may not look like a 100 percent” replacement of F-22s with NGADs because “you’re talking about a set of capabilities, … some of that may be unmanned [or] optionally manned. So it’s not one-for-one.”

Broadly, he expects the Air Force to embrace autonomous aircraft as force multipliers. “We’re really working hard at identifying the true value propositions” in missions where unmanned systems may be used, he reported. He noted the Skyborg autonomous aircraft test earlier this month, which did not require the use of a runway for launch or recovery—something that could be a game-changer as the Air Force seeks to complicate the targeting problem for adversaries.

The NGAD concept calls for rapid turnover in technology, such that when one is about to be deployed, the next version will already be in design, if not development. Hinote suggested that the second NGAD type is already in design, then said, “I can’t confirm or deny that one.” But the Air Force is embracing the concept because it will allow “the great companies of our industrial base to re-enter the competition at the design phase, as opposed to crowding them out in the sustainability phase” as a consequence of what has recently been coined “vendor lock.”

It hasn’t been decided what the optimum cycle of NGAD platform turnover should be, but the hardware and software will be in a perennial spiral, Hinote said.

“As you’re allowing that program to mature, through a spiral series, you’re designing the next platform” with new software and sensor technology, he said. As these are integrated into the existing version, “you jump over that one” to the next one. “It could be every five years,” he said. “It could be every eight years.”

The A-10, which also is expected to fly until the 2030s, will be superseded by a “new way” and “new concepts” of delivering close air support, Hinote said.

“We’re not looking at building another non-survivable close air support aircraft like it,” he explained. “The lines on the battlefield are not necessarily where you’re going to be. In fact, it’s probably going to look much more distributed … [that’s why you’re seeing the] long-range fires discussion … play out in the press and in the Pentagon.” This is a “big, big deal,” he said. Close air support will “feel much different.” The new aircraft will be used “typically” in the counterterrorism environment, Hinote said, and the new concept is “pretty compelling.” He didn’t give details, but said that when the new capability becomes available “it’ll be pretty evident that we need to just go ahead and divest the A-10 and move to the new” construct.

As for the F-16, Hinote confirmed what Brown has suggested, that it will likely be a “clean sheet design” created in much the same way as the NGAD, using digital methods. The role envisaged for the new airplane will be homeland defense and missions “that don’t necessarily require a high level of survivability.” For example, it may not need to have “radar stealth.”

However, this is not a pressing decision, as “our F-16 ‘new’ blocks are actually still in decent shape; we can upgrade them and keep them viable for some time.” When it comes time to “sunset” the F-16, “a clean sheet design using digital tools is the way to go,” Hinote said.

Fielding the NGAD is urgent, Hinote added. While he would not say when the threat will overmatch USAF’s current capabilities, “the time is absolutely coming where the combination of something like a [Chinese] J-20 with an advanced … missile is a threat to air superiority for the United States. … It’s something we’ve got to address.”

‘Skyrocketing’ Support Costs Threaten Air Force Modernization

May 13, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

The Air Force’s weapon sustainment costs are rising fast and threaten to poach funds from developing new systems if the service can’t “figure out a way” to retire old hardware, Lt. Gen. David S. Nahom, deputy chief of staff for plans and programs, said May 12.

“We’ve let our fleets get old,” Nahom said at a McAleese and Associates virtual conference. “About 44 percent of the Air Force fleet is now flying beyond its design service life.” The “so what” of that figure is that the cost of weapon sustainment and support (WSS) is “skyrocketing,” Nahom said.

“In the next couple of years, we’re projecting our WSS costs to go up at over twice inflation,” he said, “creating enormous problems.” The Air Force is also struggling to manage seven different fighter fleets—Nahom counted the F-15C, F-15E, and F-15EX as three separate platforms, along with the A-10, F-16, F-22, and F-35—something that “no other air force” has attempted to do, he said. The service needs to retire some legacy hardware to make room for cutting-edge systems, he said.

The difficult trades will be in deciding how much to invest in high-end capabilities for a high-end fight, Nahom said, “but at the same time, you have to be in a lot of places,” such as performing homeland defense and low-end theaters. “We have to figure out how to do that affordably.”

“We’ve never been more in demand,” Nahom said of combatant commander demands for Air Force systems, and while “that’s a good thing—it’s good to be in demand—it’s also challenging, because if you’re going to recapitalize, and shift resources to … high-end warfare, you’re going to have to find some lulls in current operations to do it.”

The Air Force has to adjust from “the post-9/11 COIN [counterinsurgency] focus” to peer competition, he said. There are “opportunities” to be found in “incredible new technologies,” and congressional authorities are creating new ways “to get at” these technologies, which the USAF “can take advantage of,” he said.

With the “realization” of the new threat comes “a realization that we’ve got to figure out how to take risk,” Nahom added. There’s too much preoccupation with the immediate risk and not enough on preparing for the future, he said.

The new national security strategy “tells us to, quote, meet the challenges from a position of strength … and shift out of unneeded legacy platforms to cutting-edge capabilities, which is exactly where we see things as the Air Force.”

He said the service is focusing on what the nation “absolutely needs the Air Force to do,” such as control and exploit the air domain, so it can control the air “at a time and place of our choosing,” deliver strikes “anywhere, anytime, and at a moment’s notice,” and move people and equipment rapidly in a crisis. Focusing on these “unique” core needs will allow the USAF to discover “the things we no longer need to do,” he said.

“The way we accomplished those tasks in the last 10-15 years is not the way we’re going to need to accomplish them in the 10-15 years ahead of us,” Nahom noted. The seven fighter fleets have to be “condensed down to something manageable,” he said.

Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. did not include the F-22 on the short list of four fighter fleets that will be part of the future force, and a service spokesperson later confirmed that, long-term, the Raptor will retire to be succeeded by the NGAD.

Likewise, the three-bomber fleet of today—B-1s, B-2s, and B-52s—will have to transition to a four-bomber fleet, including the B-21, before it necks down to a two-bomber force of just the B-52 and B-21. That will be tricky to do because “we have to walk away from the B-1 and B-2, … but we can’t do it right away,” Nahom said. It will certainly involve retiring more B-1s to the “boneyard” at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona, he said, to invest the savings into the remaining aircraft and the B-21.

He reiterated that the service must shift from being platform-oriented to results-oriented, focusing not on “MQ-9s or Global Hawk” but on the intelligence product, agnostic of what platform generates it.

In preparation for the 2023 program objective memoranda, Nahom said his shop recently concluded a “deep dive” into the kill chain. It looked at where the service is along the sequence from intelligence preparation of the battlefield to the “find, fix, target, track, engage, assess” sequence. And, it looked for the best places to invest, Nahom reported. In the 2023 Program Objective Memorandum, “I think you’re going to see us moving some things around, because these are things we’re going to have to get at right away … We have to change our investment.” He did not offer specifics.

The ’23 POM will also be “where you’ll see the real trades in this risk discussion” the Air Force has been having internally, Nahom said.

The Air Force will also be looking at new concepts of basing—the agile combat employment model—to operate from locations that may not have a runway, and it will be conducting logistics “differently,” Nahom said. Other neglected priorities include the “operational test and training infrastructure, … ranges of the future, adversary air, and virtual environments.” The Air Force also has some “infrastructure concerns; our real property is getting old, and we have to make sure we get that right.”

The Air Force is struggling with management of personnel transitioning from old weapon systems to new ones. There’s so little margin built into the process that people are practically expected to stop working on an F-16 one day and start on an F-35 the next, or go straight from a KC-135 to a KC-46. “We have found a good balance this year,” but the “no overlap” transitions are becoming an ever-more vexing problem, Nahom said.

The F-35’s cost per flying hour and cost per tail per year is an ongoing challenge, Nahom said, because the Air Force, at the outset of the program “thought we could operate it for less” than the actuals being turned in. No one has any complaints about the performance of the jets; surveys of pilots who came to the F-35 from the F-16, F-15, and A-10, asked what they would take to battle, all preferred the F-35, he said.

“It’s a great airplane. … We need to make it greater” in terms of its sustainment cost and reliability, Nahom said. The Block 3s now coming off the line are “good airplanes,” he said, and even though the Air Force prefers the capability that will be in the Block 4 version, “we will not stop buying” the Block 3s. “We will convert those” to Block 4s, he said, adding that the long-term threat requires the Block 4’s capabilities.

Air Force Says Suicide Rates are Dropping in 2021 After Two Years of Increases

May 13, 2021 | By Brian W. Everstine

Suicide rates in the Air Force are starting to drop after back-to-back years of exceptionally high rates as the department enacts new policies to address the problem.

There were more than 100 suicides in the Air Force in both 2019 and 2020, causing leaders to order a “tactical pause” to discuss the issue and study new policies aimed at curbing the problem. Lt. Gen. Brian T. Kelly, the deputy chief of staff for manpower, personnel, and services, told the Senate Armed Services personnel subcommittee May 12 that though it is only five months into the year, there has been some progress.

“While early and unofficial, our suicide rates to date in 2021 are back to pre-2018 levels,” Kelly said.

Following the standdown, and the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the Air Force “provided tools and lessons from the previous tactical pause to help maintain social connections during a time of physical distancing,” Kelly said in prepared testimony to the committee.

The Air Force for the first time offered training for family members, including ways for loved ones to identify warning signs “and act as another sensor in our detection and prevention methods,” he said. So far, more than 4,785 family members have taken the training.

In 2020, the demographic most likely to commit suicide was single men ages 23-30, ranked E-1 to E-4. Research showed that relationship issues are the biggest stressor associated with suicide, with about 40 percent of suicides preceded “by significant relationship problems or failure,” Kelly said. Between 20 percent and 30 percent experienced two or more stressors, and another 40 percent had no apparent risk factors.

Personal guns have been involved in more than 70 percent of Air Force suicide deaths since 2015 and are the most common means of suicide, Kelly said. Within the past two years, an Air Force campaign focused on safe storage and “reducing the immediacy of access to firearms for those in distress and preventing firearm accidents” has distributed 202,000 gun locks along with education and training materials, Kelly said.

For 2021, the Air Force is focusing on five “prevention priorities:” building connections, detecting risk, promoting protective environments, and equipping Airmen and families to mitigate risk and build resilience. These will include pressing leaders to “build unit connection and purpose,” increasing communications about prevention resources, focusing on time-based prevention, including the gun safes, empowering families, and evaluating the overall efforts “to drive program improvements,” Kelly said.

CSAF: F-22 Not in USAF’s Long-Term Plan

May 12, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. wants to neck down the Air Force’s fighter inventory from seven fleets to four, and the F-22 is not on his short list.

Speaking during the McAleese FY2022 Defense Programs Conference on May 12, Brown said the tactical aviation study, which launched earlier this year, isn’t meant to produce the exact “right mix” of fighters for the future but to assemble a range of options that will shift as the threat does.

“What I’m looking for out of the [TacAir] study,” Brown explained, is not necessarily “the exact answer of what is the exact mix” of the USAF’s combat aircraft of the future. “I’m really looking for a window of options,” he said, because “the facts and assumptions based on the threat will change over time.”

He called the study an “internal document” and something that’s “not so much to be delivered to Congress.”

The study will “shape some of the ‘22” budget, “but it’s really designed to help me shape ’23,” Brown explained. The analysis is being conducted in concert with the Joint Staff and the Pentagon’s Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation shop.

The extant seven-fleet mix of fighters will need to be reduced to “four, … plus one,” Brown said. The objective mix will include the A-10 “for a while”; the Next-Generation Air Dominance system; the F-35, “which will be the cornerstone” of the fleet; the F-15EX; and the F-16 or its successor.

He did not mention the F-22 or the F-15E. Asked to clarify, an Air Force spokesperson said Brown is thinking very long-term and in the context of “a very small fleet,” which will become increasingly hard to support, especially as it passes the 25-year age mark in 2030. The F-22 will “eventually” retire from the inventory, she said, noting the F-22’s likely successor will be the NGAD.

“The F-22 is still undergoing modernization,” USAF spokeswoman Ann Stefanek said. “There are no plans to retire it in the near-term.” How and when the F-22 will retire will depend on the outcome of the TacAir study, she said, adding that the “plus one” Brown referred to was the A-10. “We have talked about the A-10 serving into the 2030s” but not beyond, she noted.

“We’ll have the F-16s with us for a while,” but it will be replaced with something else, Brown said. Whether that will be “additional F-35s or something else into the future” remains to be seen.

Lt. Gen. David S. Nahom, deputy chief of staff for plans and programs, noted earlier in the conference that the seven fighter fleets now include the F-15C/D, F-15E, F-15EX, F-16, F-22, F-35, and A-10. He said it is essential to reduce the number of fleets because of the excessive costs of maintaining so many logistics trains for them all.

Brown called the NGAD the “air superiority fighter of the future,” but he said it’s not just the aircraft that’s important to him but “how we build it.” He’s counting on digital design and acquisition to offer more options as time goes on.

His omission of the F-15E from his short list indicates that that aircraft, too, is being eyed for phase-out in the 2030s, when it will be as structurally aged as the F-15C/D fleet is now. The last F-15Es were bought in the late 1990s, but the bulk of the force is much older. The F-15EX, though planned for now to be flown by a single pilot, will have a second cockpit and all the structural strengthening of the F-15E as well as the F-15E’s conformal fuel tanks. Observers have noted the F-15EX is more like the F-15E than the F-15C, which it is now replacing. The Air Force has said it will acquire as many as 144 F-15EXs, but the contract with Boeing leaves the door open to as many as 200.

The decisions on how many and what type of aircraft will be in the mix don’t need to be made immediately but as long as eight years from now, Brown said.

“But you need to start shaping the thought process and realizing I can’t do this in one budget year,” he added. “This is why the collaboration with Congress is so important. I’ve got to lay this out with some analysis and then have a conversation of where we’re headed.” It will also require a “conversation with industry” about the art of the possible.

“I … need facts and analysis to lay this out, and that’s what I’m focused on,” Brown said.

As for unmanned/unpiloted aircraft, Brown said he anticipates they will make up a larger portion of the force in the coming years. Recent wargames have looked at the right mix of those platforms, he said, and there will be “some of both.” The Navy recently said it expects to transition to a majority of unmanned aircraft in its carrier air wings inside a decade.

He also said the TacAir discussion is leading to an analysis of “what the future fighter squadron will look like” in terms of its manned and unmanned components and how that will drive changes in training. The time is now to shape those future forces, Brown asserted, because he doesn’t want the Air Force leaders to look back in 15 years and think “they should have … planted these seeds.”

U.S., Partner Space Launches on Track as Importance of International Collaboration Grows

May 12, 2021 | By Brian W. Everstine

The Space and Missile Systems Center is one step closer to sending U.S. payloads on Japanese space launch vehicles, a key move toward increasing international cooperation in the increasingly important domain.

SMC boss Lt. Gen. John F. Thompson, speaking May 12 during a virtual Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies Space Power Forum, said strengthening these ties with allies is important to realizing “big-time” cost savings and speeding up the delivery of operational capability.

Space and Missile Systems Center commander Lt. Gen. John F. Thompson speaks with retired Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, dean of AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, during AFA’s virtual Space Power Forum on May 12.

In April, an SMC team went to Japan and “conducted successful interface verification testing” with U.S. optical sensor payloads and Japanese satellite simulators. This means the effort with the Japanese Quasi-Zenith Satellite System is on track for payloads to be delivered to Japan in 2022, with launches scheduled for 2023 and 2024.

The agreement with Japan, which was signed by the heads of the U.S. Space Force and Japan’s Office of National Space Policy in December 2020, is one of several steps the Space Force and U.S. Space Command are taking to increase work with allies.

Separately, the Wideband Global Satellite-11, which is expected to be delivered to the Space Force in 2024, will provide services to eight nations in addition to the U.S. Thompson said partners have contributed about $440 million to WGS-11, which will help cover launch, resiliency, sustainment, and upgrades to the ground system. Funding also helped improve the capability of the satellite, including greater bandwidth and an increase in the channels it can access.

Wideband Global SATCOM connects users including the U.S. armed forces, the White House Communications Agency, State Department, Australia, Canada, Denmark, Luxembourg, New Zealand, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, and Norway. WGS-11 builds on work done by allies in WGS-6 and WGS-9, during which partners contributed over $1 billion dollars altogether, and “WGS-11 continues that tradition,” Thompson said.

The U.S. and Norway in recent years have collaborated on the Enhanced Polar System Recapitalization to provide communications in the Arctic region, with satellites expected to launch in 2022. The joint work between the two countries has brought $900 million in savings, and both countries are “getting operational capabilities to warfighters years earlier,” Thompson said.

On a staff level, SMC and the Space Force have increased personnel exchanges and outreach to entities such as consulates to provide more possibilities for collaboration, Thompson said.

“If the global space economy is going to grow as it’s expected to … then we’ve got to be able to take advantage of these international partnerships over the next few years to take mutual advantage of ourselves and our allies,” he said.

Raymond: Expect the Space Force to Provide Tactical ISR

May 12, 2021 | By Brian W. Everstine

The Space Force will move more into the role of providing space-based tactical intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance—a role typically filled by the Intelligence Community—with a new ground moving target indicator capability possibly coming soon.

USSF Chief of Space Operations Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond said that since small satellites have become more operationally relevant and the cost of launches has dropped, “there’s a role here for the Space Force and tactical-level ISR.” U.S. Space Command and the Space Force’s predecessor Air Force Space Command have not typically participated in this role, but now is the time to provide the service in a role that is “complementary” to what already exists, he said.

“I really believe this is an area that we will begin to migrate to, because we can do it and we can do it in a way that doesn’t break the bank and is focused on our joint and coalition partners,” Raymond said May 12 at the McAleese FY2022 Defense Programs Conference.

One specific mission area is GMTI. Space-based tracking of ground targeting is possible through leveraging commercial capabilities. Raymond said to be on the lookout for more on this, though he did not provide specifics.

Space and Missile Systems Center boss Lt. Gen. John F. Thompson, speaking during a May 12 Mitchell Institute Space Power Forum, said, “We look forward to sharing details” on what this will include. There are “many” small and medium businesses, startups, and other organizations that have relevant capabilities already and “we are confident that we can procure … that data in a commercial way.”

Space and Missile Systems Center commander Lt. Gen. John F. Thompson speaks with retired Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, dean of AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies virtual Space Power Forum on May 12.

The service is also expanding its missions by absorbing systems from the Army and Navy. The services recently reached an agreement on what can move into the Space Force, and Raymond said officials are now finalizing plans.

The Space Force is not “breaking into the other services.” Instead, its roles need to be “value added, not subtracted.” In the service’s first year, it determined which USAF capabilities would transfer, and over the past several months, that work has focused on the Army and Navy.

“It’s those areas where it will increase readiness of both services and the joint force, it will save some costs, and will allow us to develop our people in a way that is more effective,” Raymond said.