Brown Reinvents the Chief’s Reading List

March 22, 2021 | By Brian W. Everstine

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. is reinventing the Chief’s reading list, posting an updated library of suggested books, podcasts, and other forms of information instead of a static list.

Brown, in announcing the CSAF Leadership Library, said he wants it to change as “novel ideas are published, recorded, and debated.”

“I am an avid reader and consumer of information, constantly looking for ways to broaden my perspectives and develop myself as a leader,” he wrote in a March 22 memo. “As a learning leader, I’m in constant search for a range of ideas and perspectives that force me to think more broadly and provide me an opportunity to engage in deeper conversations with regards to leadership and world events.”

Brown’s first picks are the books “Lincoln on Leadership” by Donald T. Phillips and “The Infinite Game” by Simon Sinek, the “How Britain Invented, Then Ignored, Blitzkrieg” episode of the “Cautionary Tales” podcast, and the Netflix documentary “The Playbook: A Coach’s Rules for Life.”

“Think deeply about the ideas presented in this Leadership Library, challenge preconceived notions, and find ways to build a better Air Force for today’s Airmen and for those who will follow us,” Brown wrote.

Report Details Systemic Issues Among Aircrew Flight Equipment Airmen

March 19, 2021 | By Brian W. Everstine

Aircrew flight equipment Airmen face deep problems maintaining proficiency, largely stemming from inadequate training and high operations tempo, and the Air Force should respond by expanding the number of personnel and overhauling the career field’s progression, according to a new report.

Air Combat Command tasked RAND Project Air Force to investigate the causes of deficiencies within the AFE career field because of continued problems that rose to the level of command leadership, the organization wrote in a 150-page report published March 17.

Airmen in the AFE career field, established in 2008 with the merger of the aircrew life support and survival equipment Air Force Specialty Codes, are in charge of outfitting pilots, aircrew, and special warfare operators with life support and other flight equipment.

“In light of the direct impact that AFE personnel have on aircrew safety, maintaining a high level of performance of its personnel is of great concern to Air Force leadership,” the report states. “Yet performance problems among AFE personnel have surfaced repeatedly over the past several years, raising concerns that the process for maintaining the proficiency of AFE personnel is in need of a major overhaul.”

RAND visited eight USAF bases across multiple commands and conducted dozens of focus groups and other discussions with AFE Airmen to determine the problems. The report finds that the Airmen’s on-the-job training is not meeting their needs, largely because of curriculum problems and inexperienced trainers. These issues come up early in an Airman’s career and continue at units across the command.

“Tech school is, I don’t want to say useless, but kind of,” one Airman told RAND, explaining that taking leave after learning the basics means there is a “brain dump. … It’s hard not to. As far as proficiency, tech school doesn’t help. We need to be able to go to the base and learn what you have.”

At the bases, there are inexperienced instructors conducting training, which continues the problem of low proficiency. Noncommissioned officers and junior superintendents are not very experienced in some of the areas they oversee, which is often the result of moving between mission areas—such as from supporting fighters to supporting bombers.

“When I got here, I started from knowing very minimal,” another Airman said. “When I was getting into the training, it felt like the people training me almost didn’t know how to do it. There wasn’t an organization or a method to doing it. … I could feel a lack of confidence in their own knowledge and I didn’t realize until I got to the point where I am how poor that training was.”

Issues with the syllabus mean Airmen are teaching things that are outdated and “a lot of stuff that is unnecessary,” an Airman said.

Airmen in AFE units must complete a “high volume of tasks,” which is causing low morale, the report states.

“We just don’t have time,” an Airman said. “In every section that’s the reality. We have various tasks. It’s just not feasible to get everything done and train among the ops tempo.”

“Unless there is an uptick of manning and decrease in ops tempo, we are going to have proficiency problems,” another Airman added.

Going forward, RAND recommends

The Air Force work to reduce the burden and “skill gap” of Airmen caused by moving personnel across the missions by adding more manpower and eventually “shredding” the career field, for example by separating fighter AFE from bomber AFE.
Units need to reduce the burden and lack of skills caused by moving between shops on an ad hoc basis by developing a strategy to govern the process.
The Air Force needs to “change how training is managed and resourced” to address the issues with the syllabus and inexperienced trainers.
Leaders need to be set up to succeed by assigning them to sections aligned with their experience, the report states.

RAND experts noted that AFE is one of the only enlisted-only career fields in the entire Air Force, which means there is a problem of advocacy across the service without officers. USAF could develop a “select set of officers with AFE-specific expertise and experience.”

“The intent would be to produce officers who would be well situated as advocates for the career field and who could ensure a long-term investment in the AFE career field beyond the tactical level of leadership and execution,” the report states.

HASC Cites ‘Enormous Concern’ About F-35; Readiness Chair Suggests Buy Cutback

March 19, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

The House Armed Services Committee has “enormous concern” about the F-35 fighter’s sustainment, and Congress may cut back on purchases of the jet to let the sustainment enterprise catch up, Readiness subcommittee chair Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.) said March 19.

Garamendi, near the end of a hearing on the military’s organic maintenance capability, said the “huge problem” with the F-35 is, “we buy more planes [but] we’re not able to maintain the older ones, so the more we buy, the worse the overall performance has been. That is going to stop.” He did not elaborate about whether he intends to try to restrain F-35 purchases in the upcoming fiscal 2022 budget.

“The entire F-35 system is of enormous concern to the committee,” Garamendi said, noting that HASC chair Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) “weighed in on this in a very big and important way, this last week.” Smith complained about assorted issues with the F-35, calling it a “rathole,” but allowing that it may not be an expendable program.

The panel chairman also told service sustainment chiefs, including Air Force Sustainment Center Commander Lt. Gen. Donald E. “Gene” Kirkland, that “there is a very deep concern in the committee about the F-35 overall,” especially the possibility that key parts of the jet are manufactured in China, and therefore may in some way be compromised. This sentiment was also voiced by congresswoman Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), who asked panelists if they knew of any F-35 parts made in China. The service witnesses promised to get back to her, but Navy Vice Adm. Dean Peters, commander of Naval Air Systems Command, offered that there likely are.

“We track the main components very closely, and I don’t know of any main components that come from China,” Peters said. However, “as you go down the supply chain, at the third or fourth tier, it’s very likely that there are some electronic parts that come from China.”

Garamendi responded that “we don’t have an answer” about how to fix the problem. The issue of Chinese content in the F-35—both parts and software—was one of great colloquy in a strategic arms hearing earlier in the week.

In his opening remarks, Garamendi voiced his concern that the services aren’t properly resourced to keep sustaining older systems, even as preparations are made for new ones. He’s worried about “overly-optimistic timelines” for introducing new platforms, and not having infrastructure in place to keep old ones going until the new ones arrive. At the same time, he said he’s frustrated that the services “pay a premium for old technology that is less capable, not fuel-efficient, dependent on a limited network of suppliers, and reliant on obsolete manufacturing processes.”

He urged the witnesses to move out smartly in adopting new sustainment technologies, such as 3-D printing, the use of “big data” and predictive maintenance. He also urged them to attract a new cohort of workers for the depots.

“We must ensure we can hire and train the next generation in a timely fashion,” he said. Kirkland replied that the Air Force has numerous intern, STEM, and scholarship programs with schools in the areas around its major depots to attract new line workers. The average age of employees in Air Logistics Centers is 44.5 years, he noted.

Garamendi also said that he’d observed a lot of “blue tarps, inside” depot buildings, presumably there to block rain. He told the witnesses he wants to know what kind of repairs and investments are needed to get the logistics infrastructure up to par, even if those requirements don’t make it into the President’s Budget. “There are ways … to convey” that information, he told the witnesses. “I want the facilities modernized. I’m here to fight for you.”

Addressing himself to Kirkland, Garamendi said, “The Air Force is going to have a large number of new platforms, extremely sophisticated platforms,” in the coming years, some of which are “still classified.” The committee needs to know, he said, “What are your maintenance demands for those new platforms,” so Congress can help prepare the service to care for them? He wants the Air Force to provide an integrated maintenance plan within the next three or four months.

“We don’t want to have another F-35 fiasco,” Garamendi asserted.

Editor’s Note: This story was updated on March 23 at 8:23 a.m. EDT to correct Garamendi’s political party.

Space Force Increasing International Outreach as the Service Grows

March 19, 2021 | By Brian W. Everstine

As the military’s newest service continues to grow its own ranks, it is expanding collaboration with allies as well through more exchanges, data sharing agreements, and increased participation in major wargames.

Lt. Gen. B. Chance Saltzman, the U.S. Space Force’s deputy chief of space operations for operations, cyber, and nuclear, said during a March 19 Brookings Institution event that growing these efforts is a major initiative because space-based capabilities are important assets for both the U.S. and international allies.

“We recognize that we are far more powerful, from protecting and defending and actually accomplishing space operations and space capabilities, if we do it as an allied, partnered force,” he said. “There’s just more to be brought to bear if you include your allies and partners.” Saltzman highlighted the annual Schriever Wargame. The event, which began in 2001 under Air Force Space Command, is the main space training event focused on military operations in that domain and is “really central” in how the military frames its force design for space.

For several years, the event included representatives from Five Eyes allies—Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. The most recent iteration, which wrapped in November 2020, expanded to include France, Germany, and Japan. Future iterations could include even more participating nations, Saltzman said.

Additionally, the Space Force is “actively working to build relationships” for officer exchange partnerships. There are existing agreements with Canada and the United Kingdom, along with NATO and others. Saltzman said he recently met with United Kingdom leaders and said any UK officers who come to join the space staff will have “tremendous challenges and opportunities.”

“We have a plan to engage over a dozen countries in terms of space and space capabilities,” he said. “That includes everything from data sharing agreements to literally personnel exchange.”

The creation of the Space Force and the addition of Chief of Space Operations Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond to the Joint Chiefs of Staff has made the domain a key focus in the development of military policy and operational discussions. Previously, the Joint Staff didn’t have a member solely focused on the domain, so space capabilities could fall through the cracks.

“The ability to focus resources, advocacy, prioritize where you want to put your limited manpower, what you want to focus on and not have it filtered is an important service-level responsibility and it gives it an attention at the joint level that we may have not had beforehand,” Saltzman said.

AFRL Breaks Ground on $3.5 Million Space Environment Laboratory

March 19, 2021 | By Amy Hudson

The Air Force Research Laboratory on March 16 broke ground on a 3,500-square-foot facility located on 72 acres at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M., that will allow the Space Vehicles Directorate to test sensor systems before sending them to the field.

The Skywave Technology Laboratory is slated to cost $3.5 million, and “will provide the work space our teams needs for space environment research, which involves developing and testing new instrumentation, preparing for field experiments around the globe, as well as collecting and processing data to support ionospheric and radio frequency research,” said Todd Parris, head of the Geospace Environment Impacts and Applications Branch, in a release. “We have been working out of temporary shipping containers and from our lab across base. It’s exciting to have this new facility to explore innovative capabilities to bring to the warfighter.”

AFRL’s field development team conducts research, develops prototypes, and tests technologies used to monitor and predict the space environment, as well as the potential effects on air and space systems, according to the release.

“Understanding the space environment is super important to our Air and Space Forces,” Col. Eric J. Felt, the director of the Space Vehicles Directorate, said in the release. “The space environment affects many military systems and services, everything from the actual spacecraft operating in the environment to any radio frequency service that has to operate in or through space. This lab will give us the knowledge we need to take our research to the next level. We want to be able to measure, predict, and command the space environment to give us that tactical advantage in space and terrestrial domains.”

The Air Force Research Laboratory realigned to support both the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Space Force after the new service was established in December 2019.

Air Force Gaming Connects Airmen, Guardians Regardless of Age, Rank

March 18, 2021 | By Amy Hudson

When Capt. Oliver Parsons was a missileer assigned to Minot Air Force Base, N.D., from 2014 to 2018, the long, grueling winters started to take a toll on his mental health. He and his wife turned to video games as an escape from feelings of depression and anxiety. But they also realized they needed to connect with other people.

Moving on to Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., the Parsons discovered gaming events like TwitchCon and began to connect with other Airmen gamers. They were struck that, while the Army and Navy had organized gamer communities, the Air Force didn’t have any such thing. So in 2019, Parsons and a group of friends decided to start their own.

Air Force Gaming grew into a 24/7 grassroots organization focused on building resiliency and retention, and now it is officially part of the Air Force Services Center. Some 14,000 Airmen and Guardians play on the dedicated Air Force Gaming platform, an esports hub built for the Department of the Air Force; 20,000 play on the original Discord platform. Since their official launch last November, Air Force Gaming participants have logged 115,000 voice minutes and more than 100,000 text chats among Airmen and Guardians.

Now the U.S. military’s first official esports league is going global. Airmen and Guardians at bases around the world can form teams and play in a seasonal intramural league that will culminate in a March Madness-style championship tournament. Participants can play Call of Duty, Rocket League, or League of Legends. Airman and Guardians who don’t want to commit to league play can instead sign up for weekend tournaments, said Parsons, who now serves as the deputy chief of sports fitness and readiness under AFSC.

“We knew there was an appetite for gaming from our Airmen and Guardians, but this program has already exceeded our expectations,” Col. Marc Adair, director of operations at the Air Force Services Center, said in a release. “Air Force Gaming has created a community where our Airmen and Guardians do so much more than just play video games. I’ve heard stories of friendships and camaraderie, and that’s what this program is really all about.”

Senior leaders are starting to take notice.

Capt. Zach Baumann, one of the co-founders of Air Force Gaming, recently played (and beat) Lt. Gen. Christopher P. Weggeman, Air Combat Command’s deputy commander, in a game of chess in his regular The Airman’s Gambit series. As they played, they talked about a variety of things, from the integration of the 24th and 26th Air Forces into the 16th Air Force to Weggeman’s personal journey from fighter pilot to digital strategist for the Department of the Air Force.

Baumann asked the three-star what it means to be a digital Airman, saying there is a perception that the service expects everyone to be “100-percent very techy coders.”

Weggeman used the chess game to highlight the “spectrum” of digital Airmen in the service, calling the 29-year-old a “digital native” and himself a “digital immigrant.”

“Based on when you were born, you grew up amongst all this digital, internet of things. You’ve had smartphones your whole life,” he told Baumann. “I’m a digital immigrant. In my formative years, we didn’t have any of that technology. I literally remember playing Atari, having my first game cartridges plug into a console, and putting quarters in Pacman and Centipede. … So, you are all digital natives, and we’re digital immigrants and we’re cohabitating together.”

Weggeman said a digital Airman needs to be aware of the digital ecosystem, and understand how “we all leave exhaust everywhere we go that can be harnessed for good and bad.” Digital Airmen must also understand there are some things computers can simply do better than people, and some things that humans are really good at. They shouldn’t be “threatened by that idea,” Weggeman added.

Baumann took the opportunity to share with Weggeman that 75 percent of the Air Force Gaming community is between the ages of 18-34, saying “I really see this community that’s been building and kind of exploding, snowballing because people are engaging online. These are tomorrow’s leaders.”

Parsons said the Air Force chaplain corps also is looking to get more involved, noting the next Airman’s Gambit will feature Maj. Gen. Steven A. Schaick, chief of chaplains, on March 23. Airmen and Guardians who want to tune in for that event can watch it live on Air Force Gaming’s Facebook page.

Air Force Gaming also is starting to work with the Air Force Research Laboratory’s war gaming department. “We’re going to start integrating their projects that they’re doing with our community,” he said. “And, you know, building out that digital Airman, that digital Guardian, lethality. You know, there are common interests there, whether it’s testing games that they’re doing, looking for ideas, or finding that security forces senior airman that actually is like an amazing coder.”

The organization also is working with the Air Force’s Digital University.

Parsons said such partnerships could foster “good conversations” and allow more senior USAF officials to hear from and understand perspectives from a different generation.

“We like to say Air Force Gaming’s a movement, you know, and we’re seeing these pieces start to connect, and I can’t really imagine what it’s going to be like … a year, two years, five years from now,” Parsons said.

GAO: F-35 Block 4 Will Keep Slipping Without Realistic Work Estimates

March 18, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

Declaring the F-35 ready for full-rate production and delivery of its Block 4 upgrade will continue to slip because of delays in upgrading the simulator, and because of too-optimistic forecasts of how long software upgrades will take, the Government Accountability Office reported.

The Defense Department is still developing the F-35 simulator, slowing testing and further delaying the start of full-rate production, according to the report.

Without an updated simulator, completion of F-35 testing isn’t possible, the GAO said, because the program can’t “replicate complex test scenarios that could not be accomplished in [the] real-world.” Until that’s “fixed,” the GAO said, the conclusion of the engineering and manufacturing development phase and start of full-rate production “remains undetermined.”

The Pentagon has blamed the year-plus delay in declaring full-rate on difficulties integrating the F-35 with the Joint Simulation Environment, which puts the fighter into war scenarios to see how many are needed.

While development of the Block 4 is now in its third year, and “DOD added another year to the schedule,” GAO found that finishing the upgrade in the planned time “is not achievable.” It said the Defense Department “routinely underestimated the amount of work” necessary to develop Block 4, failing to take into account previously too-rosy estimates of software efforts. Until it sets a more realistic schedule, “stakeholders will lack reliable information on when capabilities will be delivered.”

While mostly compliant with GAO’s own “Agile Assessment Guide” for monitoring software progress, the Joint Program Office isn’t using automated data collection tools to monitor software development performance, the audit agency said. It relies on contractor reports, which GAO said are “often based on older data,” and that, too, has “hindered officials’ timely decision-making.” The program also hasn’t set software quality performance targets, and without them, is “less able to assess” if the contractor is performing at an acceptable level.

The GAO recommends the Pentagon update its Block 4 schedule to “reflect historical performance,” saying the program has routinely overshot its upgrade milestones. It suggested “more achievable timeframes for Block 4 modernization capability development and delivery,” and that the Pentagon “provide an accurate baseline for comparing future cost estimates.”

To speed things along, the GAO urged the incoming undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment to “identify and implement automated tools to enable access to real-time data for software development metrics.” This will ensure that program decisions are based on reliable information.

Finally, the GAO recommends that the USD/A&S direct the program office to set “software performance target values” for critical software.

US, South Korea Prepare for Transfer of Wartime Operational Control

March 18, 2021 | By Brian W. Everstine

The U.S. and South Korean militaries are on schedule for the transfer of wartime operational control authority in 2022 and are taking steps to improve readiness, though the two leaders would not say if large-scale military exercises would return to the peninsula.

South Korean Defense Minister Suh Wook said the alliance has created the “necessary conditions” for the transfer of operational control of combined forces. Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III, speaking alongside Suh during a joint press conference March 18 in Seoul, added that the combined force is “ready to fight tonight and we continue to make progress toward the eventual transition of wartime operational control to a ROK-commanded future combined forces command.”

The U.S. and South Korean militaries have not held large-scale joint training operations since former President Donald J. Trump’s meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in 2018, instead focusing on “command post” training exercises and smaller local operations. This extended hiatus means large-scale flying exercises like the former Vigilant Ace have not taken place in about four years, and U.S. and South Korean aircraft must leave the peninsula and go to events like Red Flag for high-level training.

Suh said that despite the ongoing pandemic, the two militaries conducted one of the command post exercises earlier this year.

Austin emphasized that readiness remains a “top priority,” but despite the change of administrations, he would not yet commit to a resumption of exercises.

“We’re always looking for ways to make training better, and I think not only here but around the globe, we’ve learned to be flexible, we’ve learned to be adaptive, and we have always, always been effective,” he said. “In terms of … what the training regimen will be going forward, that will be a joint decision between us and the ROK, and we’ll continue to work with the leadership here in the ROK to address those issues.”

Austin and Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken met with their South Korean counterparts on this and other issues, and he said the U.S. is “focused on ensuring that we have the required capability to defend the alliance and defend the ROK if and when called upon to do that.”

“So we have tremendous capability at hand,” he said. “We’re going to increase that capability by ensuring that we can continue to operate as a combined team.”

Here’s How the Air Force Resourced Leaders for Extremism Stand Downs

March 18, 2021 | By Jennifer-Leigh Oprihory

The Department of the Air Force has given USAF and Space Force commanders and senior enlisted leaders a toolkit to help equip them to carry out Defense Department-directed stand downs to address extremism within their ranks, department spokesperson Lt. Col. Malinda Singleton confirmed to Air Force Magazine on March 18.

Singleton also confirmed that a Feb. 17 slide deck entitled “Identifying & Addressing Impermissible Behavior,” which surfaced on the unofficial Air Force amn/nco/snco Facebook page on March 17, was an authentic part of this departmental resource.

“The toolkit contains resources including guided discussion modules that are designed to be presented in small group settings and are deliberately structured to provide Command Teams maximum flexibility,” she wrote. “These modules do include the three core areas identified by the Secretary of Defense, ‘Why We Serve: Our Oath of Office,’ and ‘Impermissible Behaviors & Reporting Procedures’ that meet the requirements established for this Stand-Down.”

The slide deck:

Provides sample scenarios of inappropriate behaviors that troops and civilians have undertaken and their command-action consequences
Gives examples of what kinds of activities would be inappropriate for service members and civilians (both GS employees and contractors) to undertake, respectively, as well as what kinds of command actions leaders could take and tools they could utilize in response
Guides leaders through figuring out whether an organization that an individual might be affiliated with or a piece of material is allowable
Defines relevant terms (i.e. what constitutes a “supremacist” vs. an “extremist”)
Shows how mere interest in a controversial organization can evolve into advocacy for it
Outlines personnel, administrative, disciplinary, investigative, and judicial tools and organizational resources at leaders’ disposal to address extremist activity
Outlines which Uniform Code of Military Justice offenses such activity may broach
Addresses special considerations for civilian employees and contractors
Lists relevant Air Force and Defense Department Instructions

The Department of the Air Force also included a “play sheet” to help Air Force and Space Force leaders lead discussions based on the aforementioned module, which included sets of talking points aimed at “defining extremism,” understanding how beliefs can evolve into extremist ideologies, and how extremism can lead to violence.

According to the document, these conversations should “engage Airmen and Guardians in a manner that fosters connection, encourages help seeking, and generates feedback related to how the Air Force and Space Force can better support Airmen/Guardians and their families.” It also stressed the document was “a tool, not a script.”

During last month’s Air Force Association virtual Aerospace Warfare Symposium, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. told members of the press the department had sent a series of videos and stand down instructions to local leaders, Air Force Magazine previously reported.