Brown: New Force Deployment Strategy Coming, Legacy Not Just Old Platforms

Feb. 24, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

The Air Force’s new force presentation model will give Airmen more predictability in their lives and better show national leaders the costs of applying air and space power, Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. said at AFA’s virtual Aerospace Warfare Symposium. He also better defined what “legacy” systems will have to be divested to make way for new concepts and technologies.

The new model will offer “a little more predictability” for Airmen, Brown said in a Feb. 24 streamed interview at vAWS. The new model will collect data to show where assets are coming from and what USAF can’t do if it’s tasked to do something else.

“We continue to give and give and give, which is good—flexibility is a key aspect of airpower,” Brown said. But the new model also needs to “better track our future readiness. As an Air Force, we sometimes have a hard time articulating our near-term, and longer term readiness and how it affects modernization.”

Having a new force generation model will make it “much easier to articulate” what the unintended impacts will be, Brown said. “Okay, we can deploy earlier, but you’re going to leave a hole someplace else,” he said. This is essential because of the diversity of capabilities the Air Force provides.

“This is going to help us build a tempo that’s predictable,” he said. “And then, we can use our dynamic force employment [model], but follow the business rules we have.” These deployments will be shorter, and that will be “readiness enhancing.” It will also allow USAF to return deployed capabilities to their normal training cycles more swiftly. “I find value in that,” he said, adding that the concept is still being developed.

The new construct will apply Bomber Task Forces and Dynamic Force Employments to be present in hotspots, but for less time, he said. In this way, Airmen will have more predictability about how much time they’ll be away from home, but the application of aerospace power will be more unpredictable to adversaries, he said.

Brown recently penned an op-ed in the Washington Post with Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David E. Berger suggesting more of a tradeoff between current readiness—paying for deployments, maintaining current equipment, etc.—against future readiness. Keeping “legacy” capabilities that “no longer provide an edge over competitors” will strip the U.S. of its advantages over time, the two wrote.

The two suggested “redirecting savings” from divesting older systems toward “transformative modernization” of the force, to ensure it can deal with future threats.

“We shouldn’t take all the risk in the future,” Brown said in the vAWS session.

Asked what defines a “legacy” system, Brown said it’s not necessarily something that’s old, noting that the 60-year-old B-52 will be kept in service for years to come.

“I think of it from a capability perspective,” he said. “Is the capability relevant today [and] relevant tomorrow?” If it won’t be relevant in the future, will it be “overly expensive to make it relevant for tomorrow? To me, that’s … legacy. Not something we would use 10, 15, 20 years from now.”

USAF Engineer Pops the Question During FOD Walk at Laughlin

Feb. 24, 2021 | By Jennifer-Leigh Oprihory

Foreign object debris walks are typically all about keeping things—especially garbage and aircrafts’ inner workings—apart.

But during a recent safety-driven jaunt at Laughlin Air Force Base, Texas, two members of the 47th Civil Engineer Squadron decided to tie their futures together.

Squadron civilian engineer David De La Cruz proposed to 1st Lt. Jorden Sowden on a Feb. 21 FOD walk at the Texas installation, the base announced in a Feb. 23 Facebook post featuring pictures from the flight line proposal.

One of the photos depicts De La Cruz taking a knee in front of Sowden to pop the question as their squadron colleagues looked on from a pandemic-friendly distance.

David De La Cruz (left) and 1st Lt. Jorden Snowden (right) pose for a photo following his flight line proposal on Feb. 21, 2021. **Photo: 2nd Lt. Rachael Parks/USAF**

The couple, who met at the base, have both been stationed at Laughlin for 3 years, the base wrote.

The two aren’t the first members of the USAF community to use an unorthodox, but AvGeek-worthy, setting as a romantic backdrop in the past year.

On Nov. 10, two Reservists assigned to Dobbins Air Reserve Base, Ga., tied the knot aboard a C-130 immediately following a pre-scheduled training sortie, Air Force Magazine previously reported.

DOD to Unveil New Vision for Joint Professional Military Education

Feb. 24, 2021 | By Brian W. Everstine

The Joint Staff on Feb. 25 will unveil a new vision for developing enlisted leaders, shaping military education to develop noncommissioned officers who can lead joint service members to be better prepared for future wars, the military’s top enlisted leader announced at the Air Force Association’s virtual Aerospace Warfare Symposium.

“No fight has been unilateral. It has taken a joint effort, a multinational effort, to get after the mission at hand. And that is the model we have to follow from now on,” said Senior Enlisted Advisor to the Chairman Ramón Colón-López, the first Air Force member to serve in the role. “So, the joint perspective is critical to the success of future missions.”

An educated joint force is a more lethal force, so the military’s senior enlisted leaders from each department, including the National Guard and Coast Guard, came together to reshape how troops can learn as their careers develop. Service member’s education needs to be more relevant, pointed, and timely.

The enlisted PME vision, called “Developing Enlisted Leaders for Tomorrow’s Wars” will be unveiled Feb. 25, with the intent to “provide the foundation of expectations from every member fighting a joint war.”

The past 20 years of combat have proved that the military will not fight as individual services. To illustrate this, Colón-López said that when he became the first Airman to serve as SEAC in December 2019, he was stripped of the title of “chief” because the Joint Staff did not want the top enlisted advisor to have a parochial view of leadership.

“That forces any entity in this particular position to learn and know more about what is important in the culture that resides in any particular service,” Colón-López said. “So, when we look at great power competition and the way that we are going to train and fight and equip for future conflicts, it’s going to take a joint approach. What we’re going to do for you because of this necessity is make sure that we give you the right tools to set you up for success.”

The new vision comes as Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., in his first directive to the department, said Airmen education needs to change to focus more on potential adversaries such as China.

Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force JoAnne S. Bass, during the vAWS discussion, said the Air Force is at an “inflection point” in its change. The service is the smallest it has ever been, with adversaries growing, she said. The service needs to take advantage of this time to make required changes, including becoming more joint to be ready for the future.

“We have an opportunity now, today more than ever,” she said. “We’ve got to get this right.”

The Air Force is in the “business of growing, developing, and training Airmen to think differently.” These Airmen need to be “resilient and have the grit to be who we need them to be,” Bass said.

Lockheed, Government Negotiating New ‘Skinny’ F-35 Sustainment Deal

Feb. 23, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

Lockheed Martin and the U.S. government are working out a down-scoped version of the F-35 Performance-Based Logistics concept the company pitched 18 months ago, but the goal is still to get the fighter’s operating cost to $25,000 a year by 2025, in fiscal year 2012 dollars.

“We skinnied … down” the scope of the PBL concept, Ken Merchant, Lockheed F-35 sustainability vice president, told reporters in an online press conference to coincide with AFA’s virtual Aerospace Warfare Symposium. The government is expected to release a sole-source request for proposals to Lockheed in the coming months, but Merchant couldn’t predict when the company could get a contract.

“The sooner we get the PBL enacted, the sooner we’ll see the improvements and savings,” Merchant said. Under a PBL contract, the company guarantees a certain number of aircraft will be mission capable a certain percentage of the time, and can achieve that goal however it sees fit. Bruce Litchfield, Lockheed aeronautics VP for sustainment, said subcontractors on the PBL plan “have the option to do reliability improvements, repair capacity increases, and partnerships with the depots.”

With the down-scoped PBL, overall savings will be lower, Merchant said. He couldn’t speculate as to what the savings will be until the company sees the final RFP, but they won’t be “anywhere near what we had hoped for before.” However, sustainment performance will be at least as good, he said.

The government balked at handing so much authority over to Lockheed to make long-term decisions about how parts and sustainment would be managed, Merchant said. Although other governments—F-35 partners—are comfortable with such deals, such arrangements are relatively rare in the U.S., he said. BAE Systems, for example, manages the Typhoon fighter’s sustainment, and in Australia, contractors get “stewardship” contracts, Merchant noted.

What the two parties ended up with is a “try before buy” arrangement of five years, Merchant said. “If it’s successful, there’s an opportunity to do another five and another five after that. If it’s not, there’s planned to be off-ramps that will allow the government to go other routes,” he explained.

The company has confidence it can deliver on the down-scoped PBL because it has already reduced costs per flying hour by 40 percent, on the items “that Lockheed controls,” Merchant noted. The government controls 49 percent of the cost per flying hour on the F-35, he said, and he quoted the current cost per flying hour as $36,000.

Lockheed has done some PBLs with its own contractors, but can’t go too far in doing so, Merchant said. “I can’t really go out and make commitments for my company that are going to take five years to [see] a return on investment,” he said. “With a PBL, I can make those investments up front and I’m assured … that I’ll get a fair return on those dollars over time.”

“What we’re pressing forward with now is a supply, support, and demand reduction capability,” Merchant said. The company will be focused on spares, ensuring parts bins are full and “the right supplies are in the field where needed.” The company will also be “looking for ways to reduce that demand for spare parts by improving repair capacity across the enterprise” of F-35 users, “as well as keeping parts on-wing longer.”

Merchant said that 92 percent of the parts flying on the F-35 today “are performing at or better than specification.” The other eight percent are being scrutinized for how they can be more reliable, available, and maintainable. Among the approaches is to accelerate the cure time on low observable parts, to turn them faster and get the aircraft back into service.

Lockheed has set up some PBLs with its own suppliers. “Even though we’re on annual contracts” with the government, the company has signed some five-year deals with suppliers and “taken risk” in doing so. BAE was put in charge of electronic warfare sustainment and the move “has brought the right behavior to that supplier in that enterprise.”

Parts are more plentiful, he said, once at 47 percent “fill rate” and now at 97 percent, “and that just over two years out of a five-year plan.” The organic repair capacity for EW systems was also stood up “several months ahead of plan.”

All of this “gives us great confidence” that the PBL can eventually be expanded “to the program level,” Merchant said.

That said, “there’s still a lot of things we need to go fix, and we need more velocity in the repair system,” he said.

Litchfield emphasized that costs per flying hour on the F-35 are coming down, and said the company can “unleash a lot of the capabilities we have, to drive efficiency” on sustainment.

In the field, Merchant said, “maintainers say the jet is King Kong. It’s really starting to improve and … mature.” There was a 13 percent increase in mission capability rates in 2019, and today the fleet average, globally, is 70 percent, he asserted. That didn’t happen because of the increase in the number of aircraft serving—now up to 615 aircraft—but “because we designed in reliability and have worked to improve the performance of those jets.” Lockheed expects to deliver between 133 and 139 F-35s in 2021, he added.

Ground Test T-7A Next-Gen Trainer Taking Shape

Feb. 23, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

The first T-7A static test article is taking shape at Boeing’s St. Louis, Mo. facilities, and should be fully assembled in the next few months, company officials reported Feb. 23. The first all-up T-7A will be rolled out early in 2022, they said.

The non-flying aircraft, which will lack internal equipment, will be fully assembled when its empennage—two vertical tails, rear fuselage, and horizontal stabilizers—arrives from Boeing’s T-7A partner Saab, which is building the structure in Linkoping, Sweden. The shipset should arrive in about a month, senior operations and quality manager Tom Bresnahan told reporters in an online press conference to coincide with AFA’s virtual Aerospace Warfare Symposium.

The forward fuselage is 90 percent complete and is being put together by just three workers, Bresnahan said. Maintainers and technicians are helping develop “the most efficient way to put it together.” The aircraft has come together so far with no re-drilling of holes and “minimal or no shimming,” verifying the digital design methods used on the T-7A, he said. The static article will be tested to ensure a service life of 8,000 hours on the T-7A.

Charles Dabundo, T-7 vice president and program manager, said the first airworthy, production T-7 will be delivered in 2023, and the first squadron will be operational in 2024. Boeing is eyeing an initial production rate of one per month “building up to about five per month,” Dabundo said. The Air Force plans to buy at least 246 T-7As.

The two eT-7As, the pre-production aircraft used to verify Boeing’s performance proposals to the Air Force, have been flying to explore some parts of the flight envelope and will continue to do so through the rest of this year, Dabundo said. Beyond that, “we will keep them active,” he said. Flight testing of initial production aircraft will be done at both St. Louis and Edwards AFB, Calif.

Dabundo said Boeing has had some preliminary discussions with the Navy about the T-7 potentially answering its need for a T-45 replacement, but “that’s not a program of record, yet,” he said. “We hope to play a role” in that project, he added. There has also been some interest in a light combat version of the T-7, or for use as an Aggressor aircraft, but such discussions are also very preliminary, Dabundo said. He declined to discuss what kind of combat payload such an aircraft would be able to carry.

30 Years After Desert Storm: Feb. 24

Feb. 23, 2021

In commemoration of the 30th Anniversary of Operation Desert Storm, Air Force Magazine is posting daily recollections from the six-week war, which expelled Iraq from occupied Kuwait.

Feb. 24:

G-Day. Coalition ground forces embark on what turns out to be an 100-hour campaign.
Tanks fitted with bulldozer blades punch holes in Iraqi defenses.
Air war enters final phase—support for coalition ground forces.
U.S. Central Command boss Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf Jr. throws 100,000 troops into assault on Iraqi forces, which surrender in large numbers. Coalition attack sorties total 97,000.

Check out our complete chronology of the Gulf War, starting with Iraq’s July 1990 invasion of Kuwait and running through Iraq’s April 1991 acceptance of peace terms.

Brown Challenges Airmen to Cut Through Bureaucracy, Develop Bold Ideas

Feb. 23, 2021 | By Brian W. Everstine

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. is calling on Airmen to find ways to cut through red tape and bureaucracy in order to meet mission needs quickly, as the service is working to develop Airmen who are capable in jobs outside their core career field.

In a Feb. 22 letter to the force, Brown said he has ordered wing commanders to find ways to empower Airmen at all levels, and get out of the way.

“Organizational structure is necessary, but we need Airmen who can cut through slow, ineffective processes and accelerate positive change,” Brown wrote in the memo. “Understandably, friction arises between maintaining rigorous checklist discipline and experimenting with new ideas. Fast and innovative does not mean makeshift and chaotic—responsibility goes hand-in-hand with empowerment. It does require the courage to respectfully question the status quo, assess risk, and take action while learning from setbacks and failures on our way to successes.”

In the letter, Brown highlights “multi-capable Airmen” from across the service who took it upon themselves to create new ways of doing things, such as refueling an MQ-9 with a fuel bladder in a C-130, hot-pit refueling and crew hot-swaps in KC-135s, and an “ethical construct” for artificial intelligence.

“Airmen asked the hard question of, ‘Why?’ and their leadership courageously responded with, ‘Why not?’” Brown wrote. “These Airmen were not afraid to try bold ideas that may not initially be met with success. Adopting this mindset across our force—in both operational and support roles—will allow us to protect the nation well into the future.”

The letter comes as the Air Force is developing its official process for multi-capable Airmen—training processes both centrally for the service and at wings across the globe—in what officials say is a needed cultural shift for the service.

C-17s, C-130s Fly Dozens of Missions Delivering Water to Texans

Feb. 23, 2021 | By Brian W. Everstine

Several Air Mobility Command and Air National Guard C-17s and C-130s have delivered dozens of pallets of bottled water to help people across Texas dealing with water outages in the aftermath of winter storms.

The missions from outside the state began with one C-17 each from Travis Air Force Base, Calif., and Joint Base Charleston, S.C., flying from their home bases to Naval Air Reserve Station Fort Worth, Texas, on Feb. 19 to load bottled water provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The C-17s then proceeded, one with 16 pallets to Galveston and another with 16 pallets for Corpus Christi.

Shortly after, C-17s from both Charleston and Travis flew seven additional airlifts of water pallets to Ellington Field in Houston, Kelly Field in San Antonio, Abilene, Galveston, Corpus Christi, and McAllen. On Feb. 22, four C-130s from Little Rock Air Force Base, Ark., delivered water to College Station, Jack Brooks Regional Airport near Beaumont, Long Viet, and Abilene. Three more Travis C-17s delivered water to McAllen, College Station, and Galveston. Missions are expected to continue.

At Kelly Field alone, the 802nd Logistics Readiness Squadron unloaded more than 80,000 water bottles for the city of San Antonio, according to a 502nd Air Base Wing video.

FEMA requested support from U.S. Northern Command to transport the water, with the missions conducted by Air Mobility Command and U.S. Transportation Command, according to a TRANSCOM release.

Within Texas, the 136th Airlift Wing at NAS JRB Fort Worth, Texas, has been flying regular mission to transport water and supplies across the state. This includes an expected 12 sorties alone on Feb. 23, according to the Air National Guard. The Texas Military Department said Feb. 20 that the wing and the Texas Army National Guard had flown more than a half a million water bottles in 24 hours.

At the peak of the crisis, more than 12 million people across Texas were under boil water notices, with utility companies across the state struggling to bring water pressure back after the record low temperatures, according to NPR.

USAF’s 2020 Accidents Include A-29 Crash That Disabled Airman

Feb. 23, 2021 | By Rachel S. Cohen

When an A-29 light attack plane crashed in Afghanistan last summer, the U.S. military reassured the public that its pilot had ejected and was rescued. But the reality was more complicated.

The unidentified Airman, an American flying an Afghan Air Force Super Tucano as part of the U.S. training mission in the country, is now permanently, partially disabled, according to Air Force Safety Center data obtained by Air Force Magazine. The A-29 was destroyed after suffering from what initially seemed to be mechanical issues.

Air Education and Training Command, the organization in charge of the training wing the pilot belonged to, declined to provide more details about the pilot’s condition or what the Airman is doing now.

“Because it was an Afghan A-29, the Air Force did not have the lead for the accident investigation,” AETC spokesperson Marilyn C. Holliday said. “The Air Force did complete a safety investigation, which is not releasable.”

The July 9, 2020, incident is one of the 72 total aviation accidents that occurred in the Air Force over the course of fiscal 2020. Air Force Magazine on Feb. 19 obtained more details of those mishaps, some of which were not made public at the time. The data is current as of Feb. 16.

Statistics show the Air Force is “continuing the generally decreasing trend of aviation Class A mishaps over the last 10 years,” the service said.

But the most destructive accidents have not tapered off nearly as much as the Air Force might like, given its push to improve maintenance and training protocols, while those that caused lesser damage also rose.

Thirteen of the 72 total accidents caused injury or death, according to an Air Force Magazine analysis. Accidents are broken down into flight mishaps, flight-related mishaps, and ground operations mishaps.

Twenty-nine Class A aviation mishaps occurred in fiscal 2020, including 23 incidents involving manned aircraft and six involving unmanned aircraft. Those numbers are slightly higher than the 26 mishaps in fiscal 2019, but nearly on par with the 10-year average of 31 accidents, the Air Force Safety Center said. The service has seen 29 mishaps a year on average over the past five years, the center added.

Class A incidents are those in which Defense Department aircraft are destroyed or total more than $2.5 million in damages, or where a person is killed or permanently, fully disabled.

Seven people died as a result of aviation accidents between Oct. 1, 2019, and Sept. 30, 2020, the Air Force said. Fourteen aircraft were destroyed in that time period as well. Both figures are slightly lower than the five- and 10-year averages.

For Class B accidents, the Air Force saw 39 manned aircraft mishaps and four unmanned mishaps, totaling 43 incidents. That’s a jump from 36 Class B accidents in the previous year—about the same as the five-year average of 45 accidents per year, but lower than the 10-year average of 49.

“Overall, statistics tend to fluctuate from year to year, so the service looks at trends within the data to see if there are significant changes and, more importantly, to determine if there are common issues,” the Safety Center said in a statement to Air Force Magazine.

F-22 fighter jets saw the most severe problems most often, with five Class A mishaps over the course of fiscal 2020. A-10s, C-17s, and F-15s tied for the most Class B mishaps. Among unmanned aircraft, the MQ-9 Reaper logged seven Class A and B crashes in that time.

Among the previously unreported Class A mishaps:

Oct. 13, 2019: A C-17 from the Tennessee Air National Guard’s 164th Airlift Wing suffered engine damage after shutting down because of “high exhaust gas temperature” upon startup in Delaware. No injuries were reported.
March 31, 2020: A C-17 with the 62nd Airlift Wing in Kuwait suffered turbine damage because of a similar “high exhaust gas temperature” problem, but safely returned to base. No injuries were reported.
May 1, 2020: An F-22 at the 1st Fighter Wing at Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Va., saw an engine stall shortly after takeoff, causing the plane to shut down in flight. The fighter jet returned to base and no injuries were reported.
July 14, 2020: An F-22 at the 325th Fighter Wing at Tyndall Air Force Base, Fla., incurred damage to the right engine because of foreign object debris. No injuries were reported.
July 24, 2020: An F-22 suffered a hydraulic fire during ground operations at the 325th Fighter Wing. No injuries were reported.
July 26, 2020: A B-1 at the 28th Bomb Wing at Ellsworth Air Force Base, S.D., sucked a cable into an engine during a maintenance run, causing significant engine damage. No injuries were reported.
Aug. 19, 2020: A C-17’s onboard inert gas generating system caught fire during takeoff, injuring the plane and three people at the 60th Air Mobility Wing at Travis Air Force Base, Calif.

The Air Force also recorded six Class A incidents involving unmanned aircraft, including one on July 24, 2020, where an unnamed drone was completely destroyed in a crash while controlled by an Air Force Special Operations Command unit in an undisclosed location. It’s possible that aircraft could be a secretive RQ-170 reconnaissance drone or any others kept out of the public eye.

MQ-9 Reapers comprised the rest of the most severe incidents. One “intentional ditching” over Somalia in June 2020 led to a total aircraft loss for the 432nd Wing out of Creech Air Force Base, Nev. That same month, the New York Air National Guard saw another MQ-9 damaged when it lost thrust upon takeoff and left the runway.

Reapers were completely destroyed in August 2020 in an unknown location while flying for the 27th Special Operations Wing, and in September 2020 in Kuwait while flying for an undisclosed unit. Another MQ-9 at Holloman Air Force Base, N.M., was damaged upon takeoff on Sept. 2, 2020, as well.

Nineteen types of airframes, from the A-10 to the CV-22, were involved in Class B mishaps over the course of the year. Their woes span engine fires, bird strikes, foreign object debris, and more.

Class B events meet at least one of these criteria: they incur damages costing between $600,000 and $2.5 million; cause a permanent, partial disability; or lead to inpatient hospitalization of at least three personnel.

An MQ-9 in Jordan was “struck by [a] vehicle” when taxiing, causing major damage to both the drone and the vehicle, according to the Air Force. The lower hatch of a U-2 spy plane’s camera bay fell off the aircraft mid-flight. Multiple F-16 fighter jets were “damaged in weather” in South Korea, the same day a typhoon brought heavy rain to parts of the country, but landed without incident.

One B-1 bomber from the 7th Bomb Wing in Nevada saw an electrical malfunction in flight that sent smoke into the cockpit, then blew out a tire upon landing. On one unfortunate day for an A-10 in Georgia last April, the aircraft’s gun malfunctioned, its engine was damaged, its “canopy departed,” and it landed with its landing gear up—but no injuries were reported.

The Safety Center also shed more light on the XQ-58 Valkyrie crash in October 2019 that rendered the prototype “Skyborg” drone temporarily unusable. The Valkyrie experienced “several failures” while trying to land during a test in Arizona, causing “severe structural damage.”

“In final descent, the prototype cushion system, which was employed for the initial test series but is not intended for ultimate operational use, suffered an anomaly resulting in the aircraft sustaining damage upon touchdown,” Valkyrie manufacturer Kratos said, according to Inside Defense.

The wingman drone returned to flight testing in January 2020.

Not all entries in the list provided by the Air Force included damage costs; those that did totaled nearly $29 million. The bulk of that cost, $23.6 million, comes from a C-130J’s hard landing in Germany in April 2020. It is slightly more expensive than the $21 million in damage cited in the Air Force’s accident investigation for the event released Feb. 16.

The Air Force has already incurred at least five Class A mishaps so far in fiscal 2021, including the Feb. 19 T-38 crash in Alabama that killed 23-year-old 1st Lt. Scot Ames Jr. and a Japanese student pilot.

“We are a close-knit family and the loss of our teammates affects us all,” said Col. Seth Graham, commander of the 14th Flying Training Wing—the same wing to which the now-disabled A-29 pilot belonged. “The strength of our bond is what will help us get through it together.”

Read the entire list of fiscal 2020 accidents here.