Fire Season Now Year Round for the Guard, Hokanson Says

July 30, 2021 | By Abraham Mahshie

Firefighting technology hasn’t changed much from the days when Chief of the National Guard Bureau Gen. Daniel R. Hokanson dropped buckets of water from a UH-60 Black Hawk, and his brother, a smokejumper, parachuted in to fight wildfires on foot.

What has changed is the number of fires—and their intensity.

“We used to talk about ‘fire season,’” Hokanson told a gaggle of journalists at the Pentagon on July 29 as fires raged in Oregon and California. “It’s really a ‘fire year’ now. Fires really almost go year round.”

About 500 Guard and Reserve members and 19 aircraft are helping state authorities respond to the Bootleg Fire in Oregon and the Dixie Fire in California. Combined, the fires have already torched over 600,000 acres. The Guard’s C-130 Modular Airborne Fire Fighting Systems (MAFFS) are able to drop 3,000 pounds of retardant on a wildfire in less than five seconds, fly back, refill, and be in the air again in under 20 minutes.

“When you see a plane come in and leave that big red streak of fire retardant, we use our C-130s to do that,” said Hokanson.

To date, four MAFFS-equipped C-130s from three states have made 273 drops and flown 280 sorties.

In addition to the C-130’s fire retardant power, helicopters are called to deliver water buckets, like in the late ’90s when Hokanson was piloting fire crews.

“We use a lot of helicopters as well, with buckets, and they usually scoop up water nearby and drop it on the fire,” he said. “I used to do that when I was young and cool. So, it’s a pretty intense environment to do that.”

In anticipation of a larger wildfire season and more demand, fire crews from Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, and Arizona were trained earlier this year to provide backup, Hokanson said.

The force is always watching environmental conditions: snowfall, rain, wind, and humidity content in forests.

“When it reaches a certain level, of course, it’s very prone to fire,” he said.

Civilian fire crews used to be sufficient for fires in the fall, winter, and early spring, but now the Guard is needed more than ever before.

Hokanson said the Guard is using just 10 percent of its firefighting capacity, with a reach of up to 200 aircraft. The advanced training and the available aircraft are sufficient for the Guard to help states now, but resources will need to remain in place if the wildfire trend continues.

“We’re in a pretty good spot right now,” Hokanson said of the Guard members in nearby states who received advance training. “Most of those folks are already trained and ready to go.”

AFRL Looking for Contractors to Build Anti-UAS High-Powered Microwave

July 30, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

The Air Force Research Laboratory is looking for contractors to develop a fieldable high-powered microwave system that can protect air bases by disabling or destroying hostile drones, according to a solicitation published July 28. The program will launch this fall, and AFRL wants a prototype system in 2023.

The program is called “Mjolnir,” the name of the hammer wielded by the Norse god Thor. It will build on the success of an existing experimental version, the Tactical High-power Operational Responder (THOR), and AFRL wanted a related name for the next version, according to an AFRL press release.

The THOR demonstrator “uses bursts of intense radio waves to disable small unmanned aircraft systems [sUAS] instantly,” AFRL said. An AFRL video posted on YouTube shows the THOR sweeping microwaves against a UAS swarmS, causing them to explode or fall out of the sky instantly, but at relatively close ranges to their intended targets.

AFRL’s THOR (Tactical High-power Operational Responder) is a prototype directed energy (DE) weapon used to disable the electronics in drones and was specifically engineered to counter multiple targets–such as a drone swarm–with rapid results. Credit: Air Force Research Laboratory YouTube page.

After a two-year experiment campaign, the AFRL team “has learned a lot about the benefits of the technology and how it can be improved,” said Amber Anderson, THOR program manager. The Mjolnir will be the follow-on system using the same technology, with improved capability, reliability, and “manufacturing readiness,” AFRL said.

The goal is a deployable system that can be “economically produced in large numbers,” THOR deputy program manager Adrian Lucero said, and to “grow a fledgling industry that will become critically important as the U.S. strives to maintain our electromagnetic spectrum superiority,” he said.

The announcement comes a week after AFRL published a paper on potential future directed energy systems called “Directed Energy Futures 2060.” The paper said the Air Force is looking for systems that can destroy swaths of UASs at once, rather than individually pointing directed-energy systems at them and destroying them one at a time.

AFRL is partnered with the Joint Counter-UAS Office and the Army’s Rapid Capability and Critical Technologies Office on the project, which is being managed out of Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico, by AFRL’s Directed Energy Directorate, High Power Electromagnetics Division.

The solicitation specifies that AFRL wants “a single, near-production representative, cost-effective counter-unmanned aerial system (cUAS) that is suited to operational environments and performs at levels equal to or greater than” the THOR prototype. The program will capitalize on the earlier work and “enable future transition to a program of record.” A cost-plus, fixed-fee award is anticipated. AFRL estimates it will spend $14 million on the program in fiscal 2022 and $6 million in 2023, for a total of $20 million. Although one award is anticipated, more may be made.

Responses to the solicitation are due Sept. 13.

Northrop Grumman Earnings Up in Second Quarter, Strong on Space

July 29, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

Strong performance in space systems helped Northrop Grumman achieve sales three percent higher than a year ago, company officers reported in a July 29 second-quarter earnings call with reporters. CEO Kathy Warden said the company’s prospects are rosy given strong support in Congress for not only a higher defense spending plan than the one requested, but also for Northrop Grumman’s programs, specifically.

Warden said Congress has endorsed the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) missile system, the B-21 bomber, the F-35 fighter, and the Navy’s Triton unmanned reconnaissance aircraft based on the RQ-4 Global Hawk. She expects an “integrated” new National Defense Strategy and Nuclear Posture Review “in the next six months or so” and is “pleased” that the Biden administration is reviewing both documents in tandem.

“It is the threat environment that should define the overall defense strategy and the role of the strategic deterrent,” she said, responding to how she sees the environment for the company’s strategic programs shaping up.

The administration has clearly stated that Russia is the pacing threat when it comes to nuclear capabilities, but China’s are rapidly growing, making the programs necessary, she said. “Recent intelligence … further supports that,” she added. The NPR will evaluate how well U.S. strategic systems “measure up against that threat.”

Given the assessment and the “affordability of the programs,” Warden said Northrop Grumman has “positioned our portfolio well” and that it “should line up” with the NDS and NPR.

She noted that the Senate Armed Services Committee endorsed a $25 billion increase over the requested $715 billion top line.

“We are making great progress on the GBSD program,” Warden said. “In the second quarter, the team officially closed out the EMD [engineering and manufacturing development] baseline review with our Air Force customer, and we completed the integrated baseline review,” which is a “critical step in setting cost and schedule baselines,” she said, calling it “an important milestone for the program.” The company also recently got a contract to continue supporting the Air Force’s 400 Minuteman III missiles until the GBSD is ready for service.

Warden highlighted Northrop Grumman’s role in the recent Northern Edge wargame, touting the company’s efforts in networking and connecting systems to be able to talk to each other toward a future joint all-domain command and control (JADC2) architecture. Responding to a question, she said she anticipates that JADC2 will be a large federated system of many contractors and platforms, rather than a “big bang” contract with a single company, at some point in the future.

She also noted that Northop Grumman is working on “several restricted programs,” which are apparently above and beyond the B-21 bomber. Chief Financial Officer David Keffer said, “Volume was higher on restricted programs and E-2D,” the Navy’s airborne warning and control airplane, and there was “lower volume in autonomous systems,” which include the Global Hawk and Triton.

Warden did not discuss the B-21, except to refer reporters to the Air Force’s recently released fact sheet and artist’s concept of the bomber, and to tout the program as performing well.

Aeronautics sales were “flat for the quarter,” Keffer said, as several programs, such as the F/A-18 and F-35, are entering a “plateau” of work. As provider of the rear fuselage of the F-35, Northrop Grumman’s work levels run ahead of those at prime manufacturer Lockheed Martin, Keffer pointed out.

Space systems drove Northrop Grumman’s high performance, with sales growing 34 percent in the second quarter and 32 percent year-to-date, “reflecting continued ramp-up on GBSD and the Next-Generation Interceptor,” Keffer reported, as well as the Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO) module for NASA’s Gateway space station that will orbit the moon, plus work on NASA’s Space Launch System rocket and the Pentagon’s Next-Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared system (OPIR). Northrop Grumman is also partnered with Blue Origin on designing a human-rated moon lander spacecraft for the Artemis program—a lost bid that Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos is still trying to get the contract for.

Warden said HALO is one of the company’s very few firm-fixed-price contracts, which the company went into because it already has built similar hardware for NASA and the risk was low. The company has demonstrated that “we will walk away” from a competition if the financial risk is too great, she said. She doesn’t see more fixed-price contracts on the horizon and said the practice may even be on the wane for the industry at large.

Watchdog: Afghan Air Force Already Losing Readiness Before US Withdrawal is Complete

July 29, 2021 | By Brian W. Everstine

The effectiveness of the Afghan Air Force is already dropping even before the U.S. and coalition forces complete their withdrawal from the country, with the majority of the Afghan Air Force’s airframes losing readiness last month.

The office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction on July 28 released its latest quarterly report to Congress, detailing several issues facing the health and effectiveness of Afghan forces. The AAF, long touted as one of the few success stories in the U.S.-led training mission, has been key to Afghan military capabilities. But that is waning as U.S. contractors leave and advisers are already gone from the country.

“Five of the seven airframes experienced decreases in readiness in the last month of the quarter [June],” wrote SIGAR’s John Sopko. “This coincided with the Taliban offensive and the withdrawal of U.S. and Coalition forces, including aircraft-maintenance contractors. The combined effect of the two appeared to reduce aircraft readiness rates.”

Specifically, the AAF’s AC-208 fleet had a 93 percent readiness rate in April and May, but that dropped to 63 percent in June. The UH-60 Black Hawk fleet went from 77 percent to 39 percent. The A-29 light attack aircraft and MD-530 attack helicopter, both key to striking Taliban fighters in the country, failed to meet readiness benchmarks.

It is not clear how the AAF can regain some of this readiness as contractors have left. Sopko said during a July 29 roundtable with reporters that AAF crews are a success story, showing they are “not only brave, but as competent as they could be,” but there are small numbers of them. More cannot be trained overnight—both pilots and mechanics need months to be trained.

U.S. officials have said they will continue supporting the AAF through funding and remote advising from over the horizon. Sopko said, however, that how that will occur it isn’t clear yet and that there will be limitations in effectiveness.

“You’ve got to be there sometimes, to help somebody with maintenance, or training, or whatever,” he said. “And it’s extremely difficult. … It’s a lot better, I personally feel, when you’re face to face and when the Afghans are face to face.”

Additionally, how in-depth maintenance will occur isn’t clear. Needed maintenance is possible, though difficult and expensive, to do out of the country. For example, if a helicopter engine needs to be fixed, it could be flown out of Afghanistan, fixed elsewhere, and then flown back in.

Afghan special forces—the other success story in the Afghan military—also are stretched extremely thin. Commandos are tasked with basic jobs that regular forces should do, such as route clearance and checkpoints, because regular Afghan army soldiers refuse to conduct operations if the special forces are not there, Sopko said.

Lessons Learned

Congress created SIGAR in 2008 to conduct oversight of reconstruction projects in Afghanistan, and Sopko has held the position since 2012. He has overseen dozens of reports outlining lessons learned, effective and ineffective projects, and other topics for Congress, and as the war winds down, he cites a lot of lessons learned for the military and the country at large.

Throughout the war, for example, the U.S. military was too focused on short-term goals for leaders who rotate in and out of the country as opposed to long-term efforts. The military went into Afghanistan thinking it could create a strong central government, but that was a “mistake.” The Pentagon poured money into the country, which created waste and corruption, and alienated the Afghan people without effectively supporting the military.

“If you expect the Afghan military to win the hearts and the minds of the Afghan people, you have to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan military,” he said. “So if you don’t pay them, you don’t feed them, you don’t support them, you don’t give benefits to widows and orphans, … you don’t have medevac capabilities, then the average Afghan soldier is saying, ‘What the heck am I dying for?’”

U.S. leaders in Afghanistan didn’t focus enough on logistics, and every time a problem arose in the development of the Afghan military, “we changed the goalposts on how we were rating them,” he said.

Sopko said he has two words that can describe the mission in Afghanistan: “One is this ‘hubris’ that we can somehow take a country that was desolate in 2001 and turn it into a little Norway in [a short] timeframe. And the other thing is ‘mendacity.’ You know we exaggerated, we over-exaggerated, our generals did, our ambassadors did, all of our officials did, to Congress and the American people about, ‘We’re just turning the corner, we’re about ready to turn the corner.’ … Many of our generals talked about ‘just about ready to win.’ Well, we turned the corner so much, we did 360 degrees—we’re like a top.”

With the withdrawal almost complete, Americans need to understand what went wrong in Afghanistan, Sopko argued. Over the past 20 years, the U.S. undertook a redevelopment program in the country that was bigger than the Marshall Plan after World War II, and he expects something similar will happen again in the future.

“What we have identified in Afghanistan is relevant in other places of the world,” he said. “Don’t believe what you’re told by the generals or the ambassadors or people in the administration saying we’re never going to do this again. That’s exactly what we said after Vietnam, ‘We’re never going to do this again.’ And lo and behold, we did Iraq. And we did Afghanistan. We will do this again. And we really need to think and learn from the 20 years in Afghanistan.”

Guard to be Reimbursed for Capitol Mission in $2.1B Bill Cleared for Biden’s Signature

July 29, 2021 | By Amy Hudson

The House and Senate both passed a $2.1 billion emergency security supplemental bill July 29 that fully reimburses the National Guard for its role in protecting the U.S. Capitol after the Jan. 6 insurrection. It also provides relief for Afghan interpreters who helped the U.S. during the war and significantly increases the number of authorized Special Immigrant Visas.

The bill now heads to President Joe Biden’s desk for his signature with just two days left before the Guard’s funding runs out.

National Guard Bureau Chief Gen. Daniel R. Hokanson told Pentagon reporters last month that readiness would be “significantly impacted” if Congress did not reimburse the Guard the $521 million spent during the unexpected five-month mission to protect the Capitol. “It’s critical for us to get it this year because the funding will be required for us to complete not only our drills but all operations and training we have scheduled,” he said at the time.

Partisan priorities had kept competing bills from advancing for weeks, with Republicans calling for a clean bill that only reimbursed the National Guard and Capitol Police expenses and Democrats calling for billions in security upgrades and other priorities like funding to support Afghan coalition translators.

But the Senate unanimously approved the legislation on Thursday, and the House voted 416 to 11 in its favor.

“By passing this bill, we have honored the service of the Capitol Police and the National Guard with the funding they need. And we have sent a clear message that we respect the hard work they do,” said House Appropriations Committee Chair Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.).

The legislation also increases the number of Afghan Special Immigrant Visas by 8,000 and provides $1.125 billion for emergency transportation, housing, and other essential services for Afghans coming to the U.S. under the program.

“We have the responsibility to take care of the Capitol Police in the wake of their incredible service on January 6th and to reimburse our National Guard for costs incurred protecting the Capitol. We have the responsibility to pay for costs we have already incurred as a result of the pandemic. And we have the moral responsibility to stand with our Afghan partners who stood with us through two decades of war,” said Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.). “This bipartisan agreement addresses these critical needs, and it addresses them now because they cannot wait.”

Senior Editor Abraham Mahshie contributed to this story.

Here’s How Many Air Force, Space Force Bases are Affected by DOD’s New Mask Guidance

July 29, 2021 | By Greg Hadley

The Defense Department’s new guidance mandating the return of mask wearing in certain areas for all personnel, regardless of COVID-19 vaccination status, will impact the vast majority of Air Force and Space Force installations in the United States, an Air Force Magazine analysis shows.

More than 85 percent of CONUS Active-duty Air Force and Space Force bases and stations across the country fall in areas defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as having “high” or “substantial” COVID-19 transmission, according to July 29 data from the CDC.

The DOD, following updated CDC guidance, on July 28 directed troops, civilians, contractors, and others to wear masks indoors at DOD installations if they are in areas with high or substantial transmission.

As of July 29, the CDC counts more than 69 percent of counties in the U.S. as having high or substantial transmission, including nearly 50 percent at high, the top tier. The CDC defines a high transmission rate as counties with at least 100 new cases per 100,000 residents over a seven-day period, while substantial is 50-99 new cases per 100,000 residents during the same time period.

But certain areas of the country are significantly more affected at the moment, and the Department of the Air Force’s installations fall in many. The entire state of Florida, home to four Air Force installations and two Space Force ones, is considered to have high or substantial transmission.

All of the department’s six installations in California fall in affected areas, as do all five in Colorado and all five in Texas. In particular, many of the largest bases by Air Force population, including Eglin Air Force Base, Fla.; Nellis Air Force Base, Nev.; Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio; and Shaw Air Force Base, S.C.; as well as Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, Texas, are in areas with high or substantial transmission.

Offutt Air Force Base, Neb., was originally not included in the affected areas, but the CDC’s updated data on the evening of July 29 pushed Sarpy County, where the base is located, into substantial transmission territory.

As of the evening of July 29, just 10 Air Force Bases and Space Force Stations located within the U.S. and its territories are in areas with “low” or “moderate” transmission, meaning the new mask mandate does not apply. Of those 10, half are located either in the mid-Atlantic or New England.

The following Active-duty installations are in areas with either low or moderate COVID-19 transmission, where personnel are not required to wear masks indoors if vaccinated:

Grand Forks Air Force Base, N.D.
Ellsworth Air Force Base, S.D.
Dover Air Force Base, Del.
Hanscom Air Force Base, Mass.
Andersen Air Force Base, Guam
Joint Base Andrews, Md.
New Boston Space Force Station, N.H.
Cavalier Space Force Station, N.D.
Clear Space Force Station, Alaska
Headquarters Air Force, Va.

That leaves 62 other bases and stations in the U.S. in areas with substantial or high transmission. At the same time, President Joe Biden announced July 29 that he was directing the department to look into how and when it will make the COVID-19 vaccine mandatory for military members, a move that has been debated and discussed for weeks now.

COVID-19 transmission as of July 29. Centers for Disease Control screenshot.

Boeing Back to Profitability, Takes No Charge on KC-46 in Second Quarter

July 28, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

After six straight quarterly losses, Boeing reported profits of $755 million in the second quarter of 2021, a year after posting a $3.32 billion loss.

Boeing’s stock rose about five percent July 28 following the news. Boeing’s revenue rose $17 billion in the second quarter, up about 44 percent from the previous year, with much of the recovery stemming from its defense programs. The company did not report any new charges on programs that have recently faced losses, including the KC-46 tanker.

Interim Chief Financial Officer David A. Dohnalek said the KC-46 is being used more now that it is certified to refuel aircraft using the “joint force centerline hose-and-drogue system, which provides more daily operational capabilities.” The KC-46 is “of critical importance to our customer,” he said.

The company has reported $5 billion in cost overruns on the fixed-price KC-46 program so far, and the Air Force has said it is now beginning to look at a “bridge tanker” competition to replace remaining KC-135s once all KC-46s are delivered. Boeing is to supply 179 KC-46s to the Air Force.

Dohnalek also highlighted the first refueling of an F/A-18 by the company’s MQ-25 Stingray unmanned refueling jet as more progress in its military programs. He said the first mating of an Air Force T-7 front and back halves “in under 30 minutes” verified Boeing’s “model-based and 3D” and digital approach to designing and building the advanced trainer. The company also made money on its P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol plane and CH-47 Chinook helicopters.

Boeing CEO David Calhoun, on a quarterly results call with reporters, said the company’s defense portfolio is diverse and performing well. Dohnalek said the global defense market “remains strong … and stable” despite pressure on defense budgets from COVID-19 spending, and he said the defense sector provides “critical stability” for the company as it tries to recover from the world downturn in airline sales and operations. He also touted progress with the Space Launch System for NASA.

“We will continue to work with the administration and work with Congress to ensure the necessary support for these key programs [is] in place,” Dohnalek said.

Calhoun said the commercial market is still reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic but that domestic airline travel is recovering strongly. However, international travel, particularly in the cross-Pacific and Asian regions, is still struggling, and he predicted it will be two or three years before that segment recovers to pre-pandemic levels. He touted success in getting re-certification of the troubled 737 MAX program as more airlines accept deferred deliveries of the jet and new orders come in. The market for freighter aircraft has increased eight percent in the last year, he reported, noting that 72 percent of air freight is now carried by dedicated freighters, versus 40 percent pre-pandemic.

Partners, Allies Eager to Invest in Capabilities that Strengthen Space Force

July 28, 2021 | By Abraham Mahshie

America’s partners and allies will increasingly help foot the bill and strengthen U.S. Space Force capabilities, Vice Chief of Space Operations Space Force Gen. David D. Thompson said July 28.

“That has changed dramatically in the last several years in large part due to the activities of potential adversaries,” said Thompson, during a virtual Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies event, noting that countries once hesitant to cooperate militarily in space are now asking where they can make investments.

“These countries have been asking for several years, and we’ve been effective to some extent, ineffective in total,” he added. “They’ve been much more excited about, ‘Where can we help?’ and ‘What should we be doing?’”

Thompson said immediate areas where cooperation can happen are in communications, data relay, and space domain awareness, plus “a whole host of other things we can share and partner with that they’re ready to move out with immediately,” he said.

Thompson said those partner nations that are warming to military space cooperation are coming to realize the implications of an inability to operate in space. The allies and partners, in turn, have asked the United States to help them understand where they should invest.

In 2020, a partnership with Norway to put two communications satellites in orbit years earlier than planned will save the Space Force $900 million.

A deal with Japan will allow the U.S. to launch two payloads on Japan’s Quasi-Zenith Satellite System in 2023 and 2024 with optical sensors to improve space domain awareness.

A former senior Pentagon official who worked on national security space told Air Force Magazine that the agreements give partners access to and a stake in vital space intelligence used to defend and protect American and partner assets. Geographically dispersing terrestrial assets is also necessary.

“To do [space domain awareness] well and effectively you’d have a mixture of sensors spread across the globe,” the former official explained. “So, radars, telescopes, etc.”

One of America’s top space allies, the United Kingdom, still has a global footprint with areas close to the equator, prime for viewing the geostationary belt, the former official said. Another space partner, Australia, has a large radar in an important part of the world. U.S. companies are now launching from New Zealand, too.

“There’s continued interest in other countries developing more spaceports,” the former official said. “From a resiliency perspective, the more places around the world that we can launch from, the better.”

Many partners and allies have also increased their participation in the Schriever Wargame space training event, Thompson said.

The event includes traditional space partners such as Canada, Australia, and the U.K. and new space partners such as France and Germany, which recently stood up its own space command.

“In the last decade, [we have] certainly focused much, much more on [wargames] with our partners,” Thompson said, noting cooperation on the operational and policy level that has helped partners and allies to understand threats, challenges and needs in the space domain.

“In the past, we owned it all. We did it all. We had this culture that basically says, ‘We’re our own independent, self-contained enclave, and whatever we need, we build, we field, and we operate, and we use,” he said. “We can’t afford to do that anymore.”

VanHerck: SPACECOM ‘Critical’ to Latest High-Tech Exercise, but Hurdles Remain

July 28, 2021 | By Abraham Mahshie

U.S. Northern Command boss Air Force Gen. Glen D. VanHerck said U.S. Space Command played a critical role in a recently completed exercise that used artificial intelligence across all 11 combatant commands to provide deterrence options in a logistics-restricted environment.

The third iteration of the Global Information Dominance Experiment, which took place July 8-15, focused on conflict with a peer competitor to gauge whether artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities available now could quickly process vast amounts of raw data to help combatant commanders make decisions faster.

“We rely on Space Command sensors and capabilities for our threat warning, our attack assessment, and the domain awareness that we need to conduct our mission,” VanHerck said in response to a question posed by Air Force Magazine on July 28 in the Pentagon briefing room.

VanHerck said SPACECOM also provided adversary deterrence and de-escalation options in the experiment.

“SPACECOM offers unique capabilities for deterrence in the space environment,” he added. “SPACECOM can come up with options to potentially hold at risk a competitor’s, not only their terrain on Earth, their space capabilities, but also potentially taking a look at domain awareness of space capabilities where a competitor may be attempting to hold our capabilities at risk.”

SPACECOM tripled its participants in the third iteration. A SPACECOM spokesperson told Air Force Magazine that the focus in the GIDE 3 experiment was on machine-to-machine learning, artificial intelligence, and cross-domain data integration “in order to develop courses of action, provide best military advice and assessments, improve capabilities and resource allocation and procurement recommendations.”

Technology can be employed ‘tomorrow’

The experiment, the third in a series, used software technology available now to take in vast amounts of raw data and intelligence, analyze it, and provide solutions for decision-makers within seconds instead of days.

“I don’t want to be shooting down cruise missiles over the National Capital Region or in our country,” VanHerck said in offering a scenario that emphasized the importance of partners and allies and the role of combatant commands in what Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III calls “integrated deterrence.”

“We’re shifting our focus away from pure defeat mechanisms for homeland defense towards earlier deter-and-deny actions,” the commander said.

In the experiment, software is given certain patterns and parameters before it processes military and commercially available data. When a dangerous pattern, such as a buildup of forces, is detected, an alert is triggered that gives the option for other sensors, such as satellite capabilities, to take a closer look in a specific location.

VanHerck said the technology is not new and can be employed “tomorrow.”

“Amazon’s been doing it this way, Google, a lot of people have been figuring out how to pool and share data and information,” he said. “What we’ve do done is take it and not approach it from a military or a capability problem, but we approached this from a data and software problem, and we stitched everything together to make this happen.”

VanHerck said assistance was also provided by the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, the undersecretary of defense for intelligence and security’s Project Maven, and the Department of the Air Force’s Chief Architect Office, which conducted ADE 5, its enterprise-wide Architecture Demonstration and Evaluation.

Confidence in AI lacking among public, Congress

The commander said policy and confidence hurdles are to be overcome before machine learning and AI can be widely employed to defend the homeland.

VanHerck, who is commander of NORTHCOM and North American Aerospace Defense Command, told Air Force Magazine that includes better informing the public that a human is always behind AI decisions. He also said intelligence must be shared more readily.

“It’s policy with regards to the use of artificial intelligence, machine learning to ensure that the data sharing is available,” he said. “We may have to make that intelligence available sooner in the future by sharing the raw data, the real-time data and allowing machines to look at that data, things that today analysts may do.”

VanHerck said another challenge is that IT infrastructure has to be “secure and reliable to execute future data and information capabilities.”

The NORTHCOM commander will brief Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen H. Hicks on July 29 on the experiment’s findings.

When asked by Air Force Magazine what the role of INDOPACOM was in the exercise, the commander tipped off who the competitor in the experiment might be: “We did focus to the west this time. I will tell you that, and INDOPACOM was critical to being part of the overall solution.”

VanHerck also said that conceptually, the experiment contributes to the Air Force’s Advanced Battle Management System and the Pentagon’s priority joint all domain command and control efforts to improve information sharing, especially in denied environments.

“This is JADC2,” he said. “This information exists from today’s satellites, today’s radar, today’s undersea capabilities, today’s cyber, today’s intel capabilities. The data exists. What we’re doing is making that data available, making that data available and shared into a cloud where machine learning and artificial intelligence look at it. And they process it really quickly and provide it to decision makers.”