AMC Looks to Virtual Reality to Help Curb Suicides

March 18, 2021 | By Brian W. Everstine

Two bases in Air Mobility Command are using virtual reality to teach Airmen how to talk to someone who might be suicidal.

The Air Force in recent years has been grappling with high levels of suicide in its ranks. In 2019, the department ordered a one-day “resilience tactical pause” to address the issue, only to see the numbers remain high in 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic spread. AMC and the Air Force Installation Contracting Center recently saw a way to move beyond the typical computer-based training and use virtual reality headsets to take training to another level.

AFICC expedited its Small Business Innovation Research program, and within 60 days of the contract being built it awarded Moth+Flame a contract for headsets to be evaluated at Scott Air Force Base, Ill., and Travis Air Force Base, Calif., according to an AMC release.

“The need for this work was so obvious,” said Victor Jones, AMC suicide prevention program manager and VR suicide prevention contract owner. “We wanted to provide a training experience unlike anything ever encountered, … a realistic conversational interaction in a simulated environment that would have unparalleled realism in having these difficult, uncomfortable but necessary conversations.”

Using the VR headsets, an Airman talks with another Airman in distress in a simulated scenario, asking questions such as, “Do you have a gun in the house?” and “Are you thinking about harming yourself?”

“Actually going through the process of talking to someone with thoughts of suicide is much different than sitting through a PowerPoint presentation,” said Kaitlyn Woodruff, the AFICC contracting officer assigned to the training program, in the release. “It impacts you emotionally and takes the fear out of talking to someone thinking about suicide.”

The contract covers 50 headsets and four training scenarios at the two bases, though only one scenario is currently under evaluation. AMC is collecting data to determine the effectiveness of the training before deciding if it could be scaled across the command, and eventually the entire Department of the Air Force.

Initial feedback showed 98 percent of leaders at the bases would recommend the training and 93 percent said it would be more effective than traditional training, Task & Purpose reported.

“VR training resonates with them, they’re going to get more when they have this interactive training,” AMC boss Gen. Jacqueline D. Van Ovost said in a recent roundtable with reporters. “And so we’re going to move away from computer-based training and get to the more interactive stuff. Looking at interactive training, you actually have to verbalize … those kinds of things you may not want to say.”

The goal of the training is to enable the Airmen to be able to recognize another in distress, have those difficult conversations, and “guide that Airman to safety,” Jones said.

“Every Airman matters, right? And the investment we make in every Airman matters, and that is what we want to get across to our force,” Van Ovost said.

US Pays Most of Shared Defense Costs with Japan, South Korea

March 17, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

The U.S. pays more than half of the cost of keeping forces in Japan and South Korea, but it’s a good deal for the U.S. and enhances regional security, the Government Accountability Office found.

In a March report, “Burden Sharing: Benefits and Costs Associated with the U.S. Military Presence in Japan and South Korea,” the GAO determined that the U.S. pays about 62 percent of the cost to keep U.S. forces in Japan, while it pays about 70 percent of the cost to keep forces in South Korea. Those numbers don’t count some indirect contributions those countries make, such as waived taxes and duties, utilities, and foregoing rent on facilities the U.S. uses. The release of the study comes as Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III travels through the Far East, including stops in Japan and South Korea.

The cost to keep U.S. forces in Japan was $33.5 billion from 2016-2019, of which the U.S. paid $20.9 billion and Japan paid $12.6 billion, the GAO found. The cost of maintaining U.S. forces in the Republic of Korea was $19.2 billion over the same period, of which the U.S. paid $13.4 billion and the ROK paid $5.8 billion. The GAO based its numbers mainly on the U.S. defense budget, with other inputs from the Department of State and the host countries.

The U.S. gets six main benefits from maintaining forces in the two countries, the GAO said. According to the agency, the investment:

Promotes regional stability, deters adversaries, and ensures “a favorable balance of power” in the Indo-Pacific
Enhances the defense capabilities of Japan and South Korea, especially by promoting interoperability of their defense systems with those of the U.S.
Enables prompt response to contingencies in the region, both military and non-military (i.e., natural disasters)
Promotes non-proliferation of nuclear weapons because both countries are under the U.S. nuclear umbrella; a status that also rationalizes the denuclearization of North Korea
Strengthens bilateral relationships with both countries
Promotes a “free and open Indo-Pacific” by encouraging “good governance and economic prosperity.”

The bulk of the U.S. budget money comes from, in order of size: military personnel, operations and maintenance, family housing operation and maintenance, family housing construction, and military construction, the GAO said. Operation of forces is not counted because they are considered an expense wherever they are.

The U.S. has about 55,000 troops in Japan—the largest forward-deployed force—and 28,500 troops in South Korea, the GAO said. The U.S. uses “dozens of sites” in both countries, “ranging from tens of thousands of acres for training … to single-antenna outposts.”

GAO was required to do the report under the National Defense Authorization Act of 2020.

To assess the subjective “value” of the U.S. presence in the two countries, GAO included structured interviews with 20 “governmental … and non-governmental experts from think tanks and universities,” and gauged their opinion of whether the U.S. gets value from its basing agreements with Japan and Korea. The experts typically said they “agree” or “strongly agree” with the six benefits the GAO mentioned. They cautioned, though, that local opposition to U.S. forces in some locations—Okinawa, for example—may make those operating locations untenable in the long term. The U.S. has relocated some forces already to reduce friction with host nations.

The Air Force spent an average of about $1.8 billion annually maintaining forces in Japan and about $1 billion annually maintaining forces in South Korea over the period GAO examined.

Biden: Meeting Deadline for Afghanistan Withdrawal Will be ‘Tough’

March 17, 2021 | By Brian W. Everstine

President Joe Biden cautioned it will be “tough” to the meet the May 1 deadline to withdraw all forces from Afghanistan, telling ABC News he’s “in the process of making that decision now.”

“The fact is, that was not a very solidly negotiated deal that … the former President worked out,” Biden said. “So we’re in consultation with our allies, as well as the government, and that decision, it’s in process now.”

Under the deal announced in February 2020, the U.S. would draw down to 2,500 forces by January 2021 and completely withdraw by May 1. The Pentagon has said it is at the 2,500 level, though The New York Times reported there are about 1,000 more forces in the country that are being kept “off the books,” by assigning them to other agencies, such as the Central Intelligence Agency.

Biden told the television show that a full withdrawal could still happen, and it would not “take a lot longer,” though the May 1 deadline would be “tough.” He said the lack of an orderly transition from former President Donald J. Trump “has cost me time.”

The Pentagon has repeatedly said the level of violence is too high in the country, and the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction has reported that enemy-initiated attacks continue to rise.

Within the past two days, U.S. forces in Afghanistan conducted multiple airstrikes targeting Taliban fighters that were “actively attacking [and] maneuvering” on Afghan forces in Kandahar, said U.S. Forces-Afghanistan spokesman Col. Sonny Leggett, who noted that Taliban claims that they were not actively attacking are false. The U.S. continues to defend Afghan forces in accordance with the agreement, he added.

Pacific ABMS On-Ramp Canceled Due to Budget Cuts

March 17, 2021 | By Brian W. Everstine

The Air Force canceled its Pacific-based Advanced Battle Management System on-ramp later this year after it already cut back the scope of its most recent event in Europe because of Congressionally mandated budget cuts.

Congress, in the fiscal 2021 defense policy bill, questioned the need for the wide-ranging exercises. Lawmakers claim the Air Force doesn’t have clear priorities or planning for ABMS, which began as a replacement for the E-8C Joint STARS and morphed into a massive overhaul of how the service can connect sensors, aircraft, and assets in other domains. The skepticism and cutbacks are limiting how the service is planning and operating the on-ramps, as the Department of the Air Force enters a new budget cycle that is expected to keep the Pentagon’s funding limited.

The service last month held the fourth demonstration in Europe, showcasing variously technology aimed at new ways to connect sensors and shooters locally at Ramstein Air Base, Germany. The even focused on base defense and ways to better link sensors and aircraft in the Baltic Sea.

The funding cut meant the Europe event could not include new “user interface and applications” that would have presented new ways to “leverage data for information advantage and decision superiority,” said Preston Dunlap, the Air and Space Force’s chief architect, in a March 17 roundtable. U.S. Air Forces in Europe also “had the opportunity to do more agile operations,” but that too had to be curtailed in favor of defensive operations because of funding.

USAFE boss Gen. Jeffrey L. Harrigian told Air Force Magazine the command shifted its own funding into the European ABMS onramp because it was such a priority. This included taking money from the command’s information technology accounts to address IT-related issues in the event.

Although smaller than originally planned, the European event still demonstrated several new capabilities focused on three mission sets:

Dynamic targeting
Base defense
Agile operations.

Companies on the ground or operating remotely included Amazon, Juniper, SpaceX, ViaSat, Apogee Research, Kratos, and Anduril, among others. Each worked “side by side with our operators to be able to get capabilities over the finish line and to harden them and to make them usable for the activity,” Dunlap said.

For example, the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Ninja counter-UAS system linked up with Anduril’s Sentry sensor towers in the base defense scenario, while SpaceX’s Starlink internet communication system moved unclassified and classified data from local systems and military satellite communications “back and forth in a way that’s never been done before,” Dunlap said.

A C-17 also moved classified data through its “organic” satellite communications capability to handheld Apple and Samsung tablets, with which operators could interact, in what Dunlap said was a step toward “getting the power of the ops center or the intel center in the palm of your hand.”

The Air Force is planning its fifth event this summer, with the goal to focus on “decision superiority and information advantage;” survivable, agile, and distributed operations; and rapid all-domain kill chains, Dunlap said.

The sixth planned event in Pacific, which was canceled because of the funding shortfall, was to also include Australian forces. It would have built upon the framework of the Europe event, which was the first to include allies, “in a real operational environment,” Dunlap said. It also would have been the second ABMS on-ramp to take place in the Pacific—the third demonstration took place in the region in September 2020.

The event “would have been very helpful to drive this forward and add in more partner nations as well to the networks,” Dunlap said.

“We’ve got to be able to test, and experiment, and demonstrate, and operate like we fight and where we fight,” he said. “We need not just the ingredients, but the recipe, and we need to test the recipe where we need to operate.”

Heraldry Reviews Are Done, But Don’t Expect a Report.

March 17, 2021 | By Jennifer-Leigh Oprihory

When Department of the Air Force leaders in December ordered comprehensive reviews of all organizational heraldry, symbology, awards, mottos, and more, to identify issues that might impede their drive toward increased diversity and inclusion, they gave commanders 60 days to make any necessary changes.

Anything deemed “derogatory to any race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, age, or disability status”—including callsigns, if commanders chose—was fair game, spokesperson Maj. Holly Hess told Air Force Magazine.

But the findings of these commander-led inquiries won’t be compiled into a comprehensive report, said department spokesperson Ann M. Stefanek. Rather than spot checks for compliance, the reviews were intended to focus commanders’ attention on inclusion and review heraldry with that in mind, she said.

“This was a direction to go do, make changes on the spot, and get feedback from your units as to how you can make things better,” she said.

The order didn’t require commanders to compile lists of problematic aspects of heraldry or culture that fell under the reviews’ purview. Likewise, they didn’t have to share information about their findings or action steps with higher levels of service or Department of the Air Force leadership.

“The Department of the Air Force trusts its leaders to make thoughtful judgement calls and trusts those leaders to conduct a proper review,” Hess said. “Commanders have been advised to work in conjunction with their historians, staff judge advocates, and equal opportunity specialists in determining any item(s) that, in their judgment, could detract from a professional or inclusive workplace.”

Commanders received no special guidance, frameworks, or rubrics to use in the review, Stefanek said. “I wish we could give a guidebook, because it sure would make life easier for commanders, but that’s why our senior leaders have put great trust and confidence in commanders to make those tough calls,” she said.

That being said, if Airmen or Guardians feel that their commanders are dropping the ball when it comes to ensuring diversity and inclusion in their units, they’ve got “opportunities …where they can report a problem,” Stefanek noted.

At least one Air Force organization made changes as a result of the directive. The 51st Civil Engineer Squadron at Osan Air Base, South Korea, jettisoned a morale patch and went back to an older version when it was found the more recent image resembled an image used by a white supremacist group, the military newspaper Stars and Stripes reported March 16.

B-1s, B-2s Fly Together Near Iceland, Highlighting Importance of Arctic Ops

March 17, 2021 | By Brian W. Everstine

Two B-2 Spirits and two B-1B Lancers linked up near Iceland for a training mission March 16, highlighting the importance the Air Force is placing on the Arctic region.

The four bombers flew a “long-range integration” in the high north, meeting up off the coast of Iceland during the night to “refine the skills necessary” to operate in that environment, U.S. Air Forces in Europe said in a press release.

“Bomber Task Force missions are critical to maintaining our global competitive edge,” USAFE Deputy Commander Lt. Gen. Steven L. Basham said in the release. “The importance of providing Airmen the opportunity to train in unique environments can’t be overstated.”

The B-2s deployed to Lajes Field, Portugal, earlier in the day, where they conducted a hot-pit refueling and crew swap before taking off again. The bombers will be based at the installation in the Azores for their task force deployment, according to USAFE.

The B-1s, from Dyess Air Force Base, Texas, deployed to Ørland Air Base, Norway, for the first time last month, and have flown multiple training missions in the region.

Deploying the bombers to Norway and operating in other areas of the high north demonstrates the Air Force’s intention to operate regularly in the Arctic, sending a message both to allies and potential adversaries such as Russia that the region is a priority.

The Department of the Air Force in July 2020 released its first-ever Arctic Strategy, highlighting that the Air and Space Force “is the most active and invested U.S. military department in the Arctic.”

“As more countries are drawn to the Arctic region, some with competing interests, it’s imperative that we maintain free, fair access for all nations,” Basham said March 5. “And we will continue to work diligently with our NATO allies and partners to ensure that stability.”

F-35 Full-Rate Still Months Away, But Won’t Signal Production Surge

March 17, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

The Pentagon won’t declare the F-35 to have completed development for a few months more at least, but even when that happens and the program is declared ready for full-rate production, there won’t be a big jump in the jets coming off the production line, the program office reported.

“We’ll see an estimate” on when full-rate can be declared “in a couple of months,” said an F-35 Joint Program Office spokesperson who spoke to Air Force Magazine on background. But, she added, “I don’t know that there is a big surge [in production] associated with Lot 15,” which is the next lot being negotiated between the government and prime contractor Lockheed Martin.

The sticking point in declaring full-rate—known as Milestone C, which signifies the conclusion of development—continues to be integrating the F-35 with the Pentagon’s Joint Simulation Environment, she said. The JSE is a kind of wargaming system that determines the right mix of platforms and weapons for a war scenario, but it is dependent on dataponts such as maintenance turn rates and aircraft availability, which have been volatile over the six years the F-35 has been operating with the services.

“The amount of integration … of proprietary data … wasn’t clearly understood up-front,” the JPO spokesperson said. There’s now a team in the Office of the Secretary of Defense that is “evaluating all the necessary steps” to get that integration to occur, and “get it up and running to a satisfying place,” she said.

A new estimate for completion hasn’t been finalized. Once OSD gets it from the Naval Air Systems Command and the JPO, it will have to certify it as “a new baseline,” she said.

“It’s more complicated than originally anticipated,” she said. However, there is “more mature” data available on the F-35’s availability performance, so a solution is within sight.

Former Pentagon acquisition and sustainment czar Ellen Lord postponed the full-rate production for more than a year waiting on the F-35’s integration with the JSE. The inability to get the jet out of the engineering and manufacturing development phase has been seen by some as an opportunity to curtail the F-35 buy.

Lockheed F-35 Vice President Gregory M. Ulmer told reporters in February that the next three lots of F-35 production—15, 16, and 17—will collectively have “on the order of 100” fewer aircraft than the Lot 12, 13, and 14 deal. He didn’t say why production would slide, but original plans called for overall F-35 production—for U.S., partner, and foreign military sales customers—to continue ramping up to about 220 a year and plateauing there until the bulk of the jets going to the U.S. services were delivered.

The Air Force, which has requested 48 jets a year but was funded for 60 by Congress in the last few years, will not reach its goal of 1,763 F-35s until the early 2040s if it doesn’t substantially increase its buy rate. Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. said at AFA’s virtual Aerospace Warfare Symposium last month that a production surge may be necessary.

While “production smoothing”—attaining an efficient production rate and sticking to it—is desirable to “make sure your curve is level and predictable for suppliers”—the U.S. services are rejiggering their F-35 plans, according to the JPO.

The services have “had to re-phase” their overall aircraft buying strategies, “or in some cases, they’ve decided they’d rather buy later and hold on for the Block 4 capability.” She added that “all the services are going to have to figure out how best to apply their scarce resources.”

The current configuration of the F-35 is the Block 3f. Block 4 will incorporate additional capabilities, made possible by the Tech Refresh 3, which cuts into the production line in Lot 15, now under negotiation. The TR3, as it’s known, incorporates more powerful processors and a larger display, among other improvements.

Air Force officials have said privately for the last two years that they prefer to buy bigger quantities of the Block 4, as it will obviate the need to retrofit a lot of jets with the earlier, “baseline” configuration.

Lot 15, which delivers in 2023, will likely call for 148 aircraft, she said. The totals for Lots 16 and 17 aren’t yet available. Lots 12, 13, and 14 were for 149, 160, and 169 jets, respectively.

“I don’t think you’ll see a large deviation” in production when full-rate is declared, she said. “When we finally cross the line on Milestone C, we’re not suddenly going to get additional manufacturing capability.”

Improving Distributed Decision Making

March 17, 2021

The Air Force has been modernizing for years, digitizing a variety of tasks. That transition has been greatly accelerated by the pandemic. While the majority of organizations, including the Air Force, may have allowed intermittent telework, they had never before had to contend with the challenges of an almost fully remote workforce. As a result, airmen are now distributed in unprecedented ways.

As airmen have transformed dining rooms into desks and serve as technical support for their children’s remote learning, bigger challenges persist. How does an organization such as the Air Force transition from an in-person prioritization and planning process to an equally effective digital alternative during and after the pandemic?

How has changing to a remote work environment affected the way organizations conduct their day-to-day business operations and decision-making processes? According to a Harvard Business Review study on knowledge workers conducted earlier this year, since COVID-19 workers have spent 12% less time managing across their organizations through meetings, and 9% more time on externally focused work with customers or other external partners. The study’s findings suggested that workplace changes due to COVID-19 have helped us to more effectively prioritize our work. We are spending less time in meetings, and more time doing the work that allows our organization to be successful.

At least one Air Force organization has managed to successfully carry on its activities virtually through the use of technology enablers during the pandemic. This organization is tasked with many Top-Secret level projects to support the Air Force mission.

The organization’s Program Objective Memorandum (POM) process for collecting, managing, and prioritizing its budgeting data is complex due to the large number of stakeholders involved and the important mission of the organization. Prior to COVID-19, the process was already effective in many ways—sophisticated enough to receive inputs from many stakeholders and to capture complex layers of data. However, it involved multiple disconnected systems and spreadsheets for requirements collection, gap analysis, prioritization, and programming. In addition, while many aspects of their process did not include classified data, the nature of their work could only be reached through certain physical access points on a military base.

Once COVID-19 lockdown restrictions began, access to the base and thus the network became limited because nearly all employees had become remote. The organization had two choices:

They could delay their process until post-pandemic, thereby creating schedule risk,
They could find a way to streamline and automate their existing process so that valuable work could continue in spite of the majority of their workforce teleworking.

This past fall, more than 150 Action Officers, Approvers, and Senior Leaders collaborated to manage their data using a new, innovative process. They gained approval to move part of their data and processes to a cloud-based service that could be accessed from any location. This helped them complete their data collection, evaluation, and prioritization steps in a more efficient way and circumvented much of the access issue. The new process was further bolstered by the organization moving large portions of their data to a single platform that allowed for data-distributed management for all stakeholders in the organization.

The organization moved from using multiple platforms to a single platform for collecting Gaps and Issues, managing the meta data, leveraging permissions for user access, and prioritizing. These innovative adjustments enabled them to gain even greater efficiency in their process and to continue serving their mission during an uncertain time. Despite the challenges, training, and change management inherent in a new process, the organization’s leaders reported a 25% improvement for the process compared to pre-pandemic, and expect additional improvements in the coming years.

To consolidate this process, the organization partnered with Decision Lens, a data-science based decision-making solution that helps organizations with effective planning. Decision Lens provided the organization with a FedRAMP certified data and analytics management platform, housed in an easy-to-use software system. Action Officers were able to access, update and score their data to generate a prioritization, which was then used as the key artifact during group and board final reviews. This process not only eliminated the need for multiple disconnected spreadsheets and systems, but also enabled senior leaders to have greater insight into deeper layers of decision drivers.

The partnership with Decision Lens enabled the organization to create a direct line from strategic priorities to collection, to management, to scoring. COVID-19 has led the organization to streamline its procedures and operate more efficiently than ever before.

The pandemic has forced many people and organizations to become creative in how they operate, and in some ways to rethink their decision-making processes. Ongoing isolation has led organizations to work harder than ever to collaborate and work together. Organizations have realized the limitations of their traditional methods of storing and processing data and are seeking modern solutions to not only continue operations, but to actually innovate and improve their processes to advance towards their goals without geographical limitations.

Decision Lens helps organizations prioritize, plan, and allocate resources effectively. Learn more about how your organization can thrive by automating certain programming, budgeting, and execution processes in a distributed workforce environment.

B-2s Head to Lajes Field for Bomber Task Force

March 16, 2021 | By Brian W. Everstine

B-2s deployed to Europe on March 16, conducting a hot-pit refeuling at Lajes Field, Portugal, before taking off again to conduct bomber task force missions in the region.

The undisclosed number of bombers took off from Whiteman Air Force Base, Mo., and did the hot-pit refueling and crew swap with its engines running at the base, according to a U.S. Air Forces in Europe release. The B-2s will be based out of Lajes Field for their upcoming missions.

The B-2 deployment comes as B-1s from Dyess Air Force Base, Texas, are deployed to Ørland Air Base, Norway, for the first time, to conduct their own bomber task force missions.

“These missions will add even more depth to this already historic bomber task force iteration,” USAFE boss Gen. Jeffrey L. Harrigian said in a release. “B-2s joining the B-1s in theater offers unique opportunities to advance our readiness as we continue to work with and learn from our allies.”

USAFE did not disclose how long the B-2 deployment will last. The deployments of both the B-1 and B-2 are occurring as NATO’s massive Defender Europe exercise kicks off. This year’s iteration will include more than 30,000 personnel from 27 nations, with operations in more than 30 training zones, according to U.S. Army Europe.