‘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.

Rep. Brown Explains Support for Full F-35 Buy

May 12, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

The F-35’s operational success outweighs its readiness and sustainment challenges, it is making progress against those issues, and it is too strategically important not to keep funding, House Armed Services committee member Rep. Anthony Brown (D-Maryland) said at a defense conference.

Speaking at the McAleese FY2022 Defense Programs Conference on May 12, Brown explained that he signed a letter from 132 House lawmakers to the body’s leadership urging full F-35 support because “it’s performing well” in “executing … real-world missions.”

The April 28 letter by the leaders of the Joint Strike Fighter Caucus urged the House leadership to support whatever request the services submit for buying F-35s in fiscal 2022 as well as any that appear on their “unfunded requirements” lists. The letter was prompted by recent comments from House subcommittee leaders Reps. John Garamendi (D-California) and Donald Norcross (D-New Jersey) that they would oppose adding any F-35s to service requests this year in order to let the sustainment system catch up to the aircraft already in service. Sustainment rates on the F-35 have been the biggest of several sticking points in the program.

The F-35 is “the most expensive procurement, and likely the most expensive sustainment program in the history of the department, there’s no doubt about it,” Brown said. He has concerns about delays to full-rate production and whether this will call into question “whether the technology is still leading and ahead of our adversaries.”

He also noted “challenges” with software, simulators, and integrating the F-35 in the Joint Simulation Environment, as well as chronic issues relating to the Autonomic Logistics Information System and “setting up the government-operated and maintained depots.”

However, the F-35 is “a capability that we dramatically need, certainly as we’re pivoting to the Indo-Pacific,” and it is complementary to other needs in that theater, notably “other fighters, and the bomber fleet, [and] the refueling fleet.” He called it “integral to air dominance” and urged that Congress “continue the investment. We are making progress. There is frustration around the pace of progress, but we are going to get there.”

Brown is a Harvard-educated, 25-year veteran of the Army, in which he served as an aviator and a lawyer. His 4th district in Maryland is adjacent to the 8th district, home to the corporate headquarters of Lockheed Martin, which makes the F-35.

In an April 22 hearing on the F-35, Garamendi said he would put up “one hell of a fight” if fellow lawmakers urged adding unrequested F-35s to the fiscal 2022 budget. Garamendi said that the sustainment enterprise for the fighter was built around an expectation of a certain number of aircraft, and that steady congressional adds have contributed to sustainment woes by making it impossible for the enterprise to meet the demand imposed by the greater number of aircraft.

The letter also urged the leadership to support increases in F-35 sustainment accounts, saying that current predictions indicate the depots “may only be able to meet 42 percent of the required repair capacity.”

In fiscal 2021, the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps requested 79 F-35s, collectively, but Congress added an additional 17 aircraft to the overall buy. The Air Force has indicated it would like to buy just 48 F-35s a year and buy the bulk of its fleet of the Block 4 configuration, which will be more capable, particularly in the kinds of weapons it carries and in its electronic warfare suite.

House NDAA Vote Not Expected Until After August as Infrastructure Takes Priority

May 12, 2021 | By Brian W. Everstine

The 2022 defense policy bill won’t get out of committee until July, as the Biden administration has not yet released its proposed budget and is making a major infrastructure bill its main priority, a key lawmaker said May 12.

Rep. Anthony Brown (D-Maryland), a House Armed Services Committee member who serves on both the tactical air and land forces and emerging threats subcommittees, said during the McAleese FY2022 Defense Programs Conference that lawmakers have called for the administration to “expedite” the delivery of the budget to start the process.

However, the Democratic leadership has said the proposed American Rescue Plan should be up for a final vote before the August recess, and “if that happens, it will clearly happen before the defense authorization act,” Brown said.

This means the bill won’t get out of committee until June and “maybe as late as July,” with a full House vote after the August recess.

Because of this timeline, and recent Congressional history, Brown said while he is “not inviting” a continuing resolution, “Certainly we should all anticipate it” and hope that any such resolution “will not be for an extended period of time.”

Air Force officials warned last year that yet another continuing resolution would harm national security and prevent the department from acquiring the technology needed to compete in great power competition.

While the full budget proposal has not been released, the Biden administration announced last month it would propose $715 billion in funding for the Pentagon, and $753 billion in total for national security. The proposal would do away with the overseas contingency operations funding account and is a drop from the previous Trump administration’s projected $722 billion proposal for fiscal 2022. Republicans already are gearing up for a budget battle, saying the Defense Department should receive $753 billion in its topline budget.

Wittman Calls for 3- to 5-Percent Increase in Defense Budget As Some Dems Seek Cuts

May 12, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak and Amy Hudson

The fiscal 2022 Pentagon budget should be three to five percent over last year’s enacted budget to ensure the U.S. military is properly trained and equipped to respond to today’s threats, said Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Virginia), ranking member of the House Armed Services seapower and projection forces subcommittee.

The 2021 defense policy bill authorized $740.5 billion in spending for the Pentagon and other national security programs. President Joe Biden’s budget is expected to include a total of $753 billion for national security, but Wittman’s office said that number really should be at least $762.7 billion to show real growth.

At a separate event, House Armed Services Committee member Rep. Anthony Brown (D-Maryland) said many in his party want cuts in defense, with some Democrats calling for cuts of up to 10 percent.

“That would be devastating, I think, to both readiness and future readiness or modernization,” Brown said during a Center for Strategic and International Studies budget event. “On the other hand, you have Republicans calling for 3- to 5-percent growth above the inflation rate. That’s not going to happen, either. I think where the administration has come in—and what they’re proposing at 1.7 percent” over Trump’s 2021 request of $705 billion for the base defense budget—that increase, he said, is “to address inflation over last year’s level. I think that’s where we’re going to be.”

Brown said he would support increased spending as long as the U.S. is also investing in non-defense programs that also support national security. “If we’re making major investments in defense, traditional defense, and we’re not investing in our workforce, then we may not have the skilled workers to deliver the systems, the programs, the platforms, the facilities, that the Department of Defense needs,” he said. “So I really do think that you’ve got to invest in the workforce, you’ve got to invest in research and development, beyond just the aerospace and defense industries.”

The ’22 request is the first not affected by the 2011 Budget Control Act, which led to sequestration in 2013, the effects of which are still being felt. Aerospace Industries Association President and CEO Eric Fanning, speaking during the same CSIS event, cautioned against another “budget drill,” saying DOD already has seen what happens when you cut too much, too quickly.

“But second of all, it’s decoupled from strategy. Show me a strategy that we can meet with 90 percent of the current budget, and that’s a more interesting conversation,” said Fanning, a Pentagon veteran who has been Secretary of the Army, Acting Air Force Secretary, Undersecretary of the Air Force, and Deputy Under Secretary of the Navy. “You can’t rob Peter to pay Paul. We can’t pay for even a noticeable fraction of what we’re talking about this year, in all of the bills, with a budget exercise with the Department of Defense, [especially when the] department is facing new threats and is participating in all of the crises that we’re going through right now,” including COVID-19 relief support.

Absent the higher topline, “You’re going to have to take out resources, and that’s absolutely unacceptable,” Wittman said. He also expects the services to offer savings and “places where we can avoid duplication” in the defense budget.

Wittman said he’s pushing hard to grow the Navy from 305 ships to “over 400.” He rejected the Navy’s plan to retire some legacy platforms early in order to rebuild capacity later.

“The Navy is looking at things we ought to question,” he said. The number of cruisers the Navy plans to retire would result in a reduction of 1,200 missile tubes, he said.

“How does that get replaced? They say, ‘Wait four or five years, and we’ll get that capacity back.’ … Not acceptable,” he said. He wants a better “transition plan” explaining how the Navy will retain existing capabilities until it has new ones in hand.

Wittman touted the need to expand the Navy’s long-range precision strike capability because it will “create greater degrees of uncertainty for our adversaries, especially the Chinese.” A larger number of ships equipped with such weapons will “create a larger number of scenarios for our adversaries, so they can’t quite predict what we are going to do, or what we can do. We want to elevate the level of uncertainty for our adversaries.” This will “level the playing field” and aid deterrence, he said.

His comments come as the Army also is prioritizing long-range strike, calling itself an “all-domain” force. When asked if now is the time for a new roles and missions review, Fanning suggested that should be an ongoing thing for the Department of Defense.

“Sometimes you want duplication—sometimes competition is good among the services. There probably should be some more, actually. Put the target set in front of them, let them experiment and come back with solution sets, and see where you’re going to invest,” Fanning said. “But, I think a regular review of roles and missions is always a good idea, especially as the strategy has pivoted to great power competition from what we’ve been doing the last couple of decades. I think it’s important to take a look at where we are.”

Editor’s Note: This story was updated at 6:18 p.m. on May 13 to clarify the topline number.

U.S. Military Needs an EMS Warfare Czar

May 11, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

The U.S. military has fallen behind China and Russia in electromagnetic spectrum warfare, and one of the key ways to start pulling even again is to create a position in the Office of the Secretary of Defense with the clout to manage the joint electronic warfare enterprise, experts said on a Hudson Institute webinar.

Rep. Don Bacon (R-Nebraska), co-chair of the House electromagnetic spectrum operations caucus, said Congress has “tried to fix” the problem of oversight but has gotten pushback from the Pentagon.

“One of the problems [was] … no one was in charge of EW. Everybody felt like they owned a piece of it,” said Bacon, who previously had an Air Force career specializing in electronic warfare and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance.

“Somebody in the Pentagon needs to know they own it,” he said. The services have told him that oversight rests with their Chief or Vice Chief, but he insisted that won’t work because those officers have too much on their plate already to devote the attention to EMSO that it deserves.

“You need someone at the one- or two- star level that says, ‘This is my problem. I own it,’” Bacon asserted. There was recently a two-star officer in charge of EW, but it was a temporary position, and “we need to fix that … We need to make that permanent,” he said, promising the caucus will “push” this initiative. There needs to be an EMSO czar with “an enterprise view,” he added.

In the Air Force, electronic warfare lost status in the 1990s as the service downgraded the electronic warfare chief from a two-star position to a colonel with other duties as well, Bacon said. Meanwhile, on the Joint Staff, there was “nobody in charge.”

Bacon also said there should be “a hardwired funding process” for electronic warfare, and this, too, needs an enterprise perspective to counter measures being taken by China and Russia in the EMS. Today, there are “tons of funding lines” for projects that may or may not work well together.

Rep. James Langevin (D-Rhode Island), Bacon’s EMSO caucus co-chair, said Congress needs to “undo the damage that’s been done” in EMSO oversight.

What is needed is “a policy person in charge, like a deputy assistant secretary in charge of the strategy and implementation” across the services, Langevin said. “We don’t have that right now.” The services need to accept that, “We are … operating in environments that are contested and congested, whether we like it or not.”

If Congress doesn’t force the issue, “the strategy will end up like the 2013 and 2017 [EMS and EW] strategies,” which didn’t lead to decisive action. “I’m determined that’s not going to happen this time. We’re going to get it right.”

He noted that Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. said in January that the Air Force is “embarrassed” that it has neglected the EMS battle for so long. Brown called for an Air Staff EMS warfare strategy to be unveiled this spring.

Langevin also said the EMS enterprise needs to shift away from hardware-centric to software-centric systems “that are flexible and networked. And that’s not the way it is right now.”

Bacon noted that EMS has gotten attention in the Pentagon recently only because Congress has demanded it, and said Congress would keep up the pressure.

Bryan Clark and Timothy A. Walton presented a synopsis of their recent paper on EMS for the Hudson Institute, titled “The Invisible Battlefield: A Technology Strategy for U.S. Electromagnetic Spectrum Superiority.”

China and Russia, Clark said, have “centralized” organizations for EW and EMS that drive doctrine and technology priorities across their joint forces, something the U.S. should emulate.

“They’ve got strong leadership at the top,” Clark said. “They’ve got strategic-level organizations that manage their national-level electronic warfare missions” while the U.S. “is much more diffuse.” Many organizations in the U.S. military oversee electronic warfare, “and our systems are not pushed down to lower echelons as they are in the Chinese and Russian militaries,” he said.

“Our field forces don’t necessarily have the ability to distribute” information, and American EW systems are not numerous enough “to get sent out with every small unit that might get deployed.”

Walton said China has, since 2006, “organized so that all military units have capabilities and training to reduce their signatures, employ camouflage, employ active and passive decoys of various types.” The Chinese have also “continued to reorganize the force.” In 2015, the People’s Liberation Army stood up an EW czar on its joint staff with “an overview of EW and cyber missions throughout the force.”

China has set up a strategic EW support force, and within each service an EW, space, and cyber division, with “their own dedicated organizations for sensing [and] reconnaissance, focused on offensive and defensive electronic attack.” These specific capabilities include “low- and high-powered jammers and directed energy weapons.” Their multi-static sensors mean they can detect intruding platforms “even if they’re not emitting,” making it “very challenging for U.S. forces to know when they’re being detected or targeted. “

Meanwhile, Walton said, Russia has invested in “more mobile, integrated forces; more agile static capabilities; and more automated capabilities,” leveraging artificial intelligence and cognitive systems “to coordinate options throughout the EMS spectrum.” Russia tried out equipment and techniques in Syria and Ukraine, using lessons learned to refine their “concepts and capabilities,” he said.

David Tremper, director of electromagnetic warfare in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, said he sees opportunities for the U.S. in EMS efficiencies. Multiple services can create EW capabilities, which can port directly to the other services, he said, creating an investment multiplier effect.

“EW is unique in that I can transfer capabilities between services and I don’t need redundant systems,” he asserted. “I can spend a dollar and get five dollars’ worth of capability.” This will allow the U.S. military to “achieve efficiency that lets me absorb a flat or declining budget.” There are many opportunities for “cross-pollination” among the services, and the Army and Marine Corps are already making strides in this area, he said.

Connecting EW systems with common standards would also create “a pretty good network without any new sensors” for “consumption outside the box,” he said. This would allow U.S. forces to crowdsource awareness and achieve massive operations … and increase our survivability.”

Tremper said there are opportunities to be found without “big dollar investments” but instead through “changes in the paradigm.”

“We do have to realize we have a problem,” Bacon said. “We’ve had lots of studies … at some point, we have stop studying and start … executing … I want to start seeing some action and close this gap with a plan.”