Mildenhall Tankers Continue Supporting French Operations in Africa

March 12, 2021 | By Brian W. Everstine

The USAF air refueling mission to support French counter-terrorism operations in Mali is entering its eighth year, with KC-135s offloading more than six million pounds refueling French aircraft.

The 100th Air Refueling Wing at RAF Mildenhall, United Kingdom, is now the sole unit deploying to support the mission, called Operation Juniper Micron. KC-135s and Airmen deploy to Morón Air Base, Spain, to fly the missions to refuel French aircraft.

From February 2020 to February 2021, the KC-135s from the 351st Expeditionary Air Refueling Squadron flew 204 sorties, totaling 1,800 hours, according to a Mildenhall release.

“French combat aircraft are dependent on in-flight refueling to accomplish their mission,” said Master Sgt. R. Chris King, 351st Expeditionary Air Refueling Squadron superintendent, in a release. “French air assets originate a considerable distance from their working area and burn a large amount of their fuel just to reach the area. Providing the ‘gas station in the sky’ greatly enhances on-station capability and operational productivity of those assets.”

KC-135s regularly fly under 10 hour missions to Mali and other areas in North Africa, according to the release. The 351st EARS consists of two KC-135s and more than 50 Airmen.

The French mission, called Operation Serval, began in late 2012 after the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution and the Mali government requested help to rid the country of Islamic militants. The French government has recently pressed the U.S. to continue providing assistance, while the Pentagon reviews its global force structure.

In January 2020, during a visit to the Pentagon, French Minister of Armed Forces Florence Parly said, “The U.S. support is critical to our operation. Any reduction would limit our effectiveness against terrorists.”

Army Chief Stakes Claim to Deep Strike, Defense Suppression Missions

March 11, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

The Army’s push to develop hypersonic weapons is an effort to present adversaries with multiple dilemmas and take on the Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses role as well as deep strike, service Chief of Staff Gen. James C. McConville said March 11.

The Army’s efforts at “long range precision effects and long-range precision fires” are meant to “provide commanders in the global campaign with multiple options,” he told reporters during a virtual Defense Writers Group. While the Navy and Air Force have “incredible capabilities” in deep strike, “we’re all together in the Joint Force.”

An organization to employ long-range fires is already taking shape, and McConville said two such task forces will be deployed in the Indo-Pacific and one in Europe.

He said hypersonic missiles could destroy enemy air defenses and pave the way for Air Force and Navy aircraft to penetrate enemy air defenses.

“If someone says, ‘Hey, this is something new for the Army,’” it is not, he said, claiming that AH-64 Apache helicopters in the Gulf War 30 years ago “took out those two air defense systems that opened up a gap and allowed the Air Force to go on and … do the incredible things they could” in Iraq. He did not mention Air Force cruise missiles and stealthy F-117s penetrating Iraqi air defenses in the opening hours of that conflict, or conducting SEAD strikes throughout the six weeks of the air campaign.

“We wouldn’t do [that] today, but we might do it differently,” McConville said. But the Army taking on the SEAD mission “is one of those concepts we’re going to need for the future, … and we’re going to do it from maybe a strategic range, [to] put more challenges on potential competitors.”

The Army is also looking to use long-range fires to “set up our own anti–access, area denial capability … [to] put pressure on those developing a sea-based capability.”

Asked why land-based deep strike could be better than air-based, he said, “The value of land-based is it’s 24/7. So, it’s always there. It’s tough to sink some of the islands [in the Pacific Ocean], if you have the ability” to operate from such a location, given mobility capability.

Army deep strike is “an option that may, in the future, enable both air and maritime maneuver, which is something different than we’ve done in the past, although you could argue we did that in Desert Storm.”

McConville said the Army is building a “multi-domain task force,” the first of which is being experimented with in the Indo-Pacific theater now.

“We’re not ready to say where it’s actually going to be stationed,” he said, but he noted that Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III is “in the Pacific now” and “a lot of diplomacy is going on.”

The task force will provide “long-range precision effects and long-range precision fires, and we are building it while we’re flying it, so to speak.” In addition to hypersonic, mid-range, and “precision strike” missiles, it will also possibly include air defense systems, McConville said. The task force has intelligence, information operations, cyber, electronic warfare, and space capabilities, he noted.

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. called for a roles and missions review during his confirmation process, saying there’s no better time to review exactly what jobs the service should manage than in the initial years of a National Defense Strategy, the infancy of the Space Force, and in the midst of a global pandemic.

“Now is the time to reconsider our approaches to air power, and if confirmed, I am ready to participate in a meaningful discourse to rethink prior assumptions and take steps towards consolidating and reducing redundancies,” Brown told lawmakers in May 2020.

First F-15EX Arrives at Eglin; ACC Commander Kelly to Deliver 2nd Jet

March 11, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

The first F-15EX flew to Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., March 11, a day after the Air Force accepted the airplane at Boeing’s St. Louis, Mo., facilities. The second airplane will be delivered the week of April 6, and will be flown to Eglin by Gen. Mark D. Kelly, head of Air Combat Command.

The Air Force signed the DD250 form accepting the airplane on March 10, and it was flown to Eglin by the commanders of the 40th Flight Test Squadron and 85th Test and Evaluation Squadron, which will put the jet through its paces.

During the flight, an F-15C, the first F-15E, and the new EX flew in formation, service officials said, for a family portrait of the Eagle.

Air Force Materiel Command will own aircraft No. 1 and use it for developmental testing, while Air Combat Command will own No. 2 and use it for operational testing. An ACC spokeswoman confirmed that Kelly will be delivering the ACC jet to Eglin, where there will be an arrival ceremony to mark the advanced Eagle’s entry into service.

Both initial aircraft will be used to support the Integrated Test and Evaluation team, which an AFMC spokesman said is “a combined [developmental testing/operational testing] approach used effectively by the F-15 test team at Eglin … for modernizing the legacy F-15C/D and F-15E fleets.”

To expedite testing of the EX and declare it ready for operational service, the test team will “leverage previous test data from advanced foreign military sales variants,” an AFMC spokesman said. An expansive flight test program was conducted by the U.S. Air Force on the Saudi Arabian F-15SA, which has the EX’s fly-by-wire flight controls. “However, the F-15EX has USAF avionics and Operational Flight Program software,” the spokesman said. Tests to be done at Eglin will serve to ensure the EX meets specifications and expected performance, and is “operationally effective and suitable for F-15 mission sets prior to fielding,” he said.

The EX model differs from the C/D in having a very powerful mission computer, fly-by-wire systems, conformal fuel tanks, and an additional weapon station under each wing. It also has the Eagle Passive Active Warning Survivability System, an electronic warfare and electronic deception suite also headed for the legacy F-15 fleet. Though it is a two-seat jet, the Air Force plans to operate it with a single pilot. The EX made its first flight Feb. 2 at Boeing’s St. Louis, Mo., facilities.

“With its large weapons capacity, digital backbone, and open architecture, the F-15EX will be a key element of our tactical fighter fleet and complement fifth-generation assets,” Air Force program manager Col. Sean Dorey said in a press release. “In addition, it’s capable of carrying hypersonic weapons, giving it a niche role in future near-peer conflicts.”

The Air Force plans to buy 144 F-15EX aircraft over the next 10-12 years, to replace the F-15C/D model, which “is fast approaching the end of its useful life,” Air Force Life Cycle Management Center said in a press release. The EX “provides a cost-effective and expedient solution to refresh the F-15C/D fleet and augment the F-15E fleet” to meet National Defense Strategy “capability and capacity requirements well into the 2040s,” while avoiding availability disruptions that would result from a service life extension/modification program, AFMC said.

Six more aircraft are included in Lot 1 and will be delivered to Eglin in fiscal 2023. They will also be used for operational testing. Aircraft in Lots 2 and 3 will be delivered to Kingsley Field, Ore.—the F-15 schoolhouse—and Portland Air National Guard Base, also in Oregon, in fiscal 2024 and 2025, respectively. The 142nd Wing at Portland ANGB will be the first operational unit for the EX.

The process of acquiring the EX began in February of 2019, when then-Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. David L. Goldfein signed the F-15EX Rapid Fielding Requirement Document to address the problem of the F-15’s age, now averaging 37 years across the fleet. AFLCMC’s Fighters and Advanced Aircraft Directorate then “developed the acquisition strategy, awarded the contract, conducted design and verification reviews, and worked with Boeing to manufacture and test the aircraft in record time,” according to AFLCMC.

Air Force Materiel Command boss Gen. Arnold W. Bunch, Jr. offered compliments to the “entire team” for “bringing this platform online in record time and in the middle of a global pandemic.” With its “open mission systems architecture and weapons capacity, the F-15EX will provide an outstanding capability for our nation for years to come.”

The Air Force has said the EX will have the structural capability to serve into the 2050s.

JAIC Chief: Culture and Process Biggest Barriers to Pentagon Adoption of AI

March 11, 2021 | By Shaun Waterman

If the Department of Defense is going to get AI-ready by 2025, meeting the target set by a blue-ribbon commission this month, it will have to get out of its own way, Lt. Gen. Michael S. Groen, director of the Pentagon’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center said March 11.

“It’s not just technology right? The technology is just a small piece of it,” he told a GovernmentCIO Media & Research event. More important for the DOD when it came to implementing AI was the need for digital modernization and to overcome bureaucratic inertia and other cultural or process barriers.

“You have personnel who have to take Navy data, put it on a hard drive, fly it to an Air Force network to transmit to another Air Force place, so they can push it out to different elements in the Joint Force,” said Groen. “That’s unacceptable, right? We’re moving data on hard drives … because we won’t allow each other’s personnel access to each other’s networks.”

These kinds of stovepipes were more apparent to JAIC personnel, Groen explained, because they weren’t in the business of developing new technology, but rather of working to implement existing technologies into new capabilities.

“We’re not a research and development organization, we’re an implementation organization. A ‘do’ tank rather than a think tank, right? Our job is to make AI applications happen across the department,” he said.

But that meant much more than merely perfecting the technology, he said. “What really kind of stares you in the face is: Yeah, that’s cute. How are you actually going to fight with that? … How are you actually going to … turn [that] technology into capability?”

To answer that question, and to get across the bureaucratic barriers to AI adoption, JAIC needed leaders across DOD to commit to exploring the benefits of AI, including for back office functions. “We’re not talking about terminators here,” Groen said, “We’re talking about making the department as efficient and effective as any American corporation is today.”

Turning technology into capability, Groen said, had always meant putting it into the hands of “the process experts, the mission owners, the functional experts, … committed leaders who understand their processes and say, ‘Wow! You know what, we could do these processes a lot better than this [using AI.]’ ”

The daunting part of that task was “The scale of the Department of Defense and how many of those leaders need to put their hands up and go, ‘Holy cow! I’m missing the train here. I need to get working [on AI] in my space.’ That’s intimidating,” he concluded.

Groen spoke alongside Yll Bajraktari, executive director of the congressionally chartered National Security Commission on AI, which presented its final report to Congress on March 1.

The report, presented by commission chair and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and his vice chair, former Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert O. Work, warned in grim tones that “America is not prepared to defend or compete in the AI era.”

“Within the next decade, China could surpass the United States as the world’s AI superpower,” the report concludes.

To avoid being overtaken, the U.S. “must double down on our existing advantages,” Bajraktari said.

AI is so central to national security because it amplifies so many military capabilities and can detect and expose strategic vulnerabilities of an adversary. It enables battlefield systems, like autonomous vehicles or drones, to be deployed at speed and scale. “In the future, warfare will pit algorithm against algorithm,” the commission’s report states, “Humans cannot be everywhere at once, but software can.”

Military Housing Companies on Track to Meet Tenant Bill of Rights Requirements

March 11, 2021 | By Brian W. Everstine

Three of the largest companies providing on-base military housing say they are on track to implement all requirements under the Defense Department’s new Tenant Bill of Rights, though one company skipped out on appearing before lawmakers in a joint hearing on housing issues.

Representatives of three companies—Balfour Beatty Communities, Lendlease Americas, and Corvias Group LLC—testified before the House Armed Services readiness and military personnel subcommittees on March 10 that they have taken steps, including spending more money to improve housing and improving communication with service members, in the aftermath of multiple high-profile reports of substandard housing.

One company, Clark Realty Capital, declined to participate in the hearing. Readiness subcommittee chairman Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.) said the panels had heard “disturbing testimony” about the company’s housing and the no-show raised concerns about “their ability to be transparent” both to Congress and its residents. The company oversees housing at several installations, including Fort Belvoir, Va., and Joint Base Andrews, Md., and Garamendi said representatives would visit those installations to see first-hand the issues.

Following a series of Reuters investigations in 2019 into base housing, which highlighted extensive issues with maintenance and even falsified records, Congress passed multiple provisions aimed at holding the companies accountable and improving the quality of life for service members.

This included the Tenant Bill of Rights, signed by top military leaders in February 2020, which included 15 rights, such as clearly defined leases, timely maintenance, accurate records, and other provisions. The companies said they expect to meet the requirements by June or July, when summer permanent change of station moves pick up.

One of the highest profile problems for the Air Force focused on Balfour Beatty properties at Tinker Air Force Base, Okla., where housing had extensive issues with asbestos and other problems. The Air Force required the company to submit a plan by the end of 2019 to improve its management. The company fired many of its own employees as part of a fraud investigation, and there is a Department of Justice investigation ongoing.

Rick Taylor, president of facility operations, renovations, and construction with Balfour Beatty, told lawmakers the company undertook “a significant reorganization” and improved its training.

At Tinker, the company worked to remediate issues with broken water lines that caused systemic problems, and, “I can tell you that we are slowly building back the trust of Tinker residents,” he said.

Air Force Inspector General: ‘Human Error’ Enabled Andrews Breach

March 11, 2021 | By Jennifer-Leigh Oprihory

A complacent defender failed to prevent an intruder from accessing Joint Base Andrews, Md., on Feb. 4, the Air Force Inspector General found. In a report released March 11, the IG said the intruder came upon a malfunctioning gate and, because of other Airmen’s mistakes, accessed the Andrews flight line and boarded a C-40B aircraft assigned to the 89th Airlift Wing.

Getting On Base

During a March 11 call with reporters, AFIG Lt. Gen. Sami D. Said said that “three layers of breakdown” made the events of Feb. 4 possible.

The first, he said, was that a 316th Security Forces Squadron Airman allowed the man to enter a base gate “without the proper credentials.”

The intruder shouldn’t have been allowed on base since he lacked a Defense Biometric Identification System card or other alternate ID that would’ve given him access, and wasn’t on Andrews’ Entry Access List, the report stated.

The defender who let him through said they couldn’t recall whether the intruder “presented his driver’s license or any other form of ID prior to driving through the gate,” even after watching a video replay of the incident, it stated. During questioning, the Airman admitted to have gotten “complacent” and ignoring standard procedures in letting him on base, the report added.

The Airman has been disciplined, but Said wouldn’t disclose what that looked like.

“Command action [has] been taken against the Airman at the gate, and as you know, we don’t disclose the specifics just out of privacy for the particular individuals,” he said. “We don’t want to undermine that or embarrass them, but yes, action against that particular Airman is complete.”

The Airmen’s mistake wasn’t the result of broader training or operational issues, Said added.

“At the end of the day, it was a human error at the gate,” he said. “We didn’t find any particular indication that overall training is deficient, [or that] overall tactics, techniques, and procedures are deficient. It was an individual failure by an Airman that clearly then said, ‘I know what I’m supposed to do. I didn’t do it because I was distracted … and failed to follow through.’”

However, Said said, in response to the AFIG inquiry, the base “reemphasized to all their security forces personnel all the basic steps that are required and the protocols and the procedures at the gate.”

Accessing the Flight Line and Getting on the Plane

After getting on base, the intruder then entered the Andrews flight line via an automatic gate that malfunctioned and remained about a foot and a half open, Said said.

“That gate had been previously written up as having a problem fix, and in the preceding days to this incident, had not been identified as having any additional problems,” he said. “However, on the date of the incident, it remained open, which is a repeat of [a] deficiency identified earlier, so had the gate closed as it should have, he couldn’t have accessed the flight line physically.”

Andrews is putting a bigger emphasis on ensuring repairs made to “fences and gates that give access to sensitive areas” can be validated in order to prevent future security gaps, he said.

Finally, an Airmen on the flight line—both “roving security forces patrols and Airmen” who were training on the aircraft—”failed to challenge the individual as to why he was on the flight line.” Said said Airmen didn’t spot the intruder while he walked from the malfunctioning gate to the aircraft, and then didn’t challenge him as he boarded it.

“Security Forces personnel were present and should have seen [the intruder] and intercepted him before he accessed any resources,” the report states. “89 AW personnel on the aircraft should have challenged [him] when he boarded the aircraft without a [restricted area badge], but they were focused on training with a reasonable expectation of security while parked inside a restricted area.”

Said said the people who should’ve challenged him potentially assumed he was a contractor with permission to be on the flight line.

“The individual wasn’t attempting to disguise themselves, but … was wearing clothes that could have been confused as a contractor,” Said said. “Normally, it’s bluish in color.”

Luckily, Said said, once defenders were tipped off to his presence in the base’s passenger terminal that’s located beside the flight line and his confused state, they “apprehended him pretty darn quickly—the minute he came off the plane.”

No Threat Found

The intruder had no known ties to Andrews, and while the Air Force found wire cutters in his vehicle, he said his office has “zero reason to believe” the intruder meant to harm anyone.

“He had nothing with him that could’ve harmed anybody, and then when we questioned him several times as to why he was there, his response was, ‘I just wanted to see airplanes,’” Said said.

According to Said, the intruder also stood no chance of reaching Air Force One.

“You know physically, it’s a long ways away, but more importantly, the layers of security that individual would have to go through and get anywhere close to the portion of [the] flight line where the presidential aircraft is kept, there is no way he’s gonna get to that.”

Different parts of the Andrews flight line are guarded at different protection levels, ranging from PL-3 (the lowest level, which the C-40B section of the area fell under) to PL-1 (the highest protection level, which applies to the area where Air Force One is kept), he explained.

The Department of the Air Force Officer of Special Investigations on Feb. 4 determined that the intruder possessed “an extensive arrest history” in addition to “an active warrant for his arrest,” and that he was homeless and unemployed at the time of the breach, the report stated.

Additional Fixes

In addition to reupping defenders’ awareness of gate rules and procedures and ensuring that mechanical fixes to its fences and gates actually take, Andrews also is working on “long term fixes” in response to the AFIG’s findings, including beefing up “physical security structures from a variety of things,” Said said.

“I don’t want to get into details because they’re a little bit security sensitive, but you’d guess, cameras, some additional detection equipment that would help in case you have another breakdown in human failure, individual failures, you’ll have some backup systems that might help us out,” he said.

This is notable, because the report found that the base couldn’t account for the intruder’s whereabouts for at two stretches of time:

Between his entrance to the base at 7:16 a.m. EST and his arrival at its exchange parking lot at 8:10 a.m. EST
Between his exit from the lot at 9:34 a.m. EST and the time personnel spotted him in the passenger terminal around 11:45 a.m. EST

Overall, Said said, he’s “comfortable and confident” the base understands his office’s findings “and that they’re actually going … the extra mile to make sure they cover down and prevent something like this from happening again.”

The Department of the Air Force’s separate review of security at all USAF and USSF installations, which was triggered by the Feb. 4 breach, is being handled by the service’s A/4 directorate. It kicked off approximately two weeks ago and “will take a few months to do,” Said added.

On Guard, But Not Immune

Andrew’s reaction to the AFIG investigation hasn’t made it immune to breach attempts, however.

On the afternoon of March 6, a 29-year-old man unaffiliated with the Defense Department used a Ford F-150 to ram “a swing arm at the” base’s main gate “multiple times,” a base spokesman wrote in a March 11 email to Air Force Magazine.

“U.S. Air Force Security Forces Airmen deployed mechanical road barriers, so the individual veered across the median and into a field,” the spokesperson added. “He then crashed into a fence on the base’s perimeter; the reinforced fence stopped the vehicle.”

The would-be intruder was then detained and found to pose “no threat” to base operations, they wrote. However, base defenders discovered “drug paraphernalia on” the intruder’s person, the spokesperson wrote, noting that “he appeared to be under the influence of an illegal substance.”

“Security Forces cited the man for federal charges and he was later turned over to local law enforcement for additional unrelated civilian charges,” the spokesperson wrote.

First Air Force to Become SPACECOM’s Air Component

March 11, 2021 | By Brian W. Everstine

First Air Force will provide Air Force support to the recently re-established U.S. Space Command, making the organization responsible for both protecting the homeland and now supporting operations in space, the department announced March 11.

The numbered Air Force also will continue to support U.S. Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command.

“First Air Force was the natural choice to serve as Air Force component to U.S. Space Command,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. said in a release. “In this new role, First Air Force will be better able to identify and address gaps and seams when integrating space power into the support of the homeland defense mission. This will also inform efforts to better fuse space operations into air operations centers around the globe.”

Air Combat Command is working out how to organize, train, and equip First Air Force for the new mission, with initial operational capability expected by the end of calendar year 2021.

In its current role, First Air Force provides aerospace control and air defense of the continental United States, and coordinates air response for natural disasters such as wildfires.

“We have a staff of seasoned professionals with decades of proven success in protecting the air domain in defense of the homeland. We look forward to supporting USSPACECOM in their efforts to defend against threats to the space domain,” said Lt. Gen. Kirk S. Pierce, First Air Force commander, in the release.

USAF assets already provide support for human space flight, with missions such as rescue aircraft and Airmen on alert for launches.

“The U.S. Air Force is a critical contributor to the U.S. Space Command mission as evidenced by their support to Human Space Flight,” said U.S. Army Gen. James H. Dickinson, USSPACECOM commander, in the release. “We welcome First Air Force to our joint team.”

24th SOW Using Machine Learning to Prevent Injuries in Special Tactics Airmen

March 10, 2021 | By Jennifer-Leigh Oprihory

Tech company Sparta Science is pairing force-plate technology with machine learning to help Air Force Special Operations Command’s 24th Special Operations Wing predict and prevent injuries in its special tactics Airmen.

“The 24th SOW Human Performance team is consistently looking for innovative ways to assess, maintain, and enhance the health and performance of our most valued asset, our special tactics Airmen,” Hunter Treuchet, the Human Performance program director with the wing, said in a release. “Acquiring force plates and machine learning technology allows for an objective assessment and identification of potential musculoskeletal issues, which could impact operator readiness.”

Sparta Science Founder and CEO Dr. Phil Wagner told Air Force Magazine a force plate can be likened to “a high-power bathroom scale.”

“It measures how you stand or jump in three different directions in about 3,000 points a second,” he explained. The process involves scanning an individual while they’re in a plank position, while they balance on one foot, and during a jump, according to a video demonstrating the process.

Video: Sparta Science on YouTube

According to Sparta’s website, these force plate scans gauge “unique movement qualities” and machine learning lets the company chart how an individual measures up against an in-house “database of over 2 million scans, generating your Movement Signature instantly.”

From there, Sparta and its partners—who also include other segments of the Air Force, Army, Navy, and U.S. Special Operations Command—can focus on injury prevention, since Sparta’s software generates personalized training plans based on individuals’ force-plate scans.

This technology means troops can track their progress as they work to counter these musculoskeletal vulnerabilities, since subsequent scans can be compared with one another. It can also theoretically be used to create a service member profile, from Military Entrance Processing to their eventual squadron assignment, so they can train to stop injuries and enhance their performance, said retired Army Maj. Gen. Malcolm B. Frost, the former head of the U.S. Army Center for Initial Military Training who now serves as a strategic advisor with Sparta.

“I think the ultimate goal we’re trying to do is create this vital sign, so … wherever you are, like, you can quickly be measured by this compared against your history or others’ so you get the best plan to be healthy, right?” Wagner said.

Wagner said this innovation, collectively referred to as “Force Plate Machine Learning,” or FPML, for short, enables Sparta to create profiles for what a scan from a member of a certain service or a service member within a particular AFSC might look like.

“How do we fit both the occupational role and the injury risk from all this data coming in?” he said.

Wagner said that while ACL vulnerabilities are among the most common when scanning athletes, “the big three” kinds of injuries Sparta sees within the Air Force special tactics community impact the lower back, knees, and ankles. The lower-back troubles can be traced back to rucking and the use of body armor, he said.

Frost said these observations make sense when one remembers that special tactics Airmen work “side by side with” elite forces like the Navy SEALs, Special Forces personnel, and U.S. Army Rangers.

“It is in line with a lot of what I would kind of call that classic, high-end infantry-type mission, … although they do some other special things, and that rides right into, you know, the injuries, the types … [we are] seeing through the machine learning,” he said.

Sparta’s also collaborating with the Air Force Research Laboratory to see if FPML can be used to help predict and prevent neck pain in USAF pilots, Wagner said.

“Jets are faster, helmets are heavier, right, and so as a result, there’s quite a significant amount of stress on the head and the neck region,” he said. “And so we have a plank test, and so doing that plank position on the plate allows us to identify neck pain and potential neck injuries.”

Sparta aspires to spread the use of FPML not only more widely within the Defense Department, but also to allies overseas, Wagner said.

Though Wagner couldn’t provide numbers as to how accurate these force-plate scans for the military are, he said that when the same technology is used for athletes, its “sensitivity specificity is about 76 percent.” For context, he said, mammograms are typically around 72 percent, and blood pressure cuffs are around 80 percent.

“So, you know, at least compared to other standards, within data we’ve published and research, it’s right up there with a lot of common diagnostic tools, whether it’s [a] blood pressure cuff or a mammogram,” he said.

The longer military units utilize Force Plate Machine Learning, the more data they’ll accrue and the more predictable the resulting reports will become, Frost noted. However, he said, U.S. military organizations and units have reported back that the technology is “absolutely a factor that’s helping,” he said.

The company is also working to ensure that its fast database of scans doesn’t pose an unintended threat to operational security, Wagner added.

“We’re actively pursuing an ATO authority to operate with different branches to operate within the government intranet, and … pursuing FedRAMP certification, which is [a] services-wide approach of being on the government intranet,” he said. “In the interim, most organizations within the military are using an offline, air-gapped solution, so it’s only on that device, so there’s no way to actually penetrate that through the internet, or, you know, other outside means.”

U.S. Poorly Integrates CCMDs, Hasn’t Figured Out Hybrid, Hyten Says

March 10, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

The current system of integrating the responsibilities and actions of regional commanders in chief doesn’t work well, and the U.S. is still failing to address hybrid warfare coherently, Gen. John E. Hyten, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said March 10.

He also discussed China and Russia’s strategic activities, how to approach modernizing NORAD, and his efforts to inject more speed into the joint requirements process.

Speaking on an online seminar of the Canadian Conference of Defence Associations, Hyten said the U.S. is struggling with “the integration piece” of its system of regional combatant commands, and who has responsibility for threats and conflicts that overlap the commands’ areas of regard.

“We’ve learned that we actually don’t know how to do that very well,” Hyten said. “We don’t effectively operate in an integrated manner.” The U.S. is experimenting with ways to close those seams through exercises and wargames, some alone and some in concert with allies, “especially in Europe,” he said.

“So, we’ve achieved the first step of the 12-step process, but we haven’t moved beyond,” he joked.

The impulse is to re-organize the system, he said, but “in almost every case … that’s the worst place to start dealing with the problem.” The first task is to “figure out what you need to do, … who needs to do what, how it needs to work, and then say, ‘Am I organized correctly to do that?’”

The analysis is being done within the Joint Warfighting Concept, he said, with all the combatant commands, allies, and partners playing a role.

“I’m not sure we’re organized incorrectly,” he cautioned, noting that the CCMDs are the direct connection to individual and groups of allies in theaters, and those relationships are key.

Almost every CCMD, for example, has a responsibility to deal with Russia, Hyten noted. Even U.S. Southern Command is dealing with Russia’s relationship with Venezuela, he said.

“You can’t look at each COCOM as a unique function that only deals with that territory, because all problems are global,” Hyten asserted.

In that context, the recent proposal to move responsibilities with Israel from U.S. European Command to U.S. Central Command is not a “fundamental change” in the construct, he said.

On the subject of refreshing the North American Aerospace Defense Command, Hyten said the U.S. and Canada need to “sit down together and figure out what aerospace defense really means. Let’s look at the threats and what we have to do,” and then decide if NORAD is doing too much or too little, and whether it is too big or too small. That should drive decisions on how and what to modernize it, he said.

“You don’t modernize just to modernize. You modernize to do something, and the only way to [do that] is to figure out what that is,” Hyten said. Absent that step, “Modernization just means, we want you to build new stuff for all your old stuff.”

The U.S. has not “done a good job of understanding the hybrid threat, and therefore we haven’t done a good job of responding” to it, Hyten said of Russia’s mix of information and kinetic warfare.

Russia “and others” see hybrid warfare as “another means … to their end state.” Russia is “trying to change the perception of others around the world … They believe they can walk up to a line and not cross the line and still achieve their objectives in the ‘gray zone’” of influence.

The U.S. and its allies needs to “open our eyes and realize … that is a strategy. We have to study it just like we study conventional warfare or … nuclear warfare, just like we’ve studied counterterrorism.” If hybrid is not treated with the same discipline of analysis and response, “you will not be effective … because it is a focused effort by a nation-state in trying to challenge the West,” he said.

Hyten said his biggest concern is that “we have not taken a fresh look at it, and therefore, everybody’s idea of how to deal with it is based on their own perceptions … That’s not how we deal with every other element of warfare, but somehow that’s what we’ve fallen into.”

China and Russia have to be faced with “open eyes,” Hyten said, and dealt with based not on wishful thinking but their behavior.

“It’s important to be realistic,” he warned. “If [China is] building a nuclear triad … [and] massive and powerful space capabilities, if they’re building and using cyber capabilities inside the United States [and Canada], they’re doing it for a reason. They’re not doing it because it’s … kind of fun.” America’s adversaries are “using enormous amounts of national treasure to build things that basically threaten the West; not just the United States …To threaten the liberal order that was developed after World War II, that we’ve operated under for the last eight decades.”

The COVID crisis has been a revelation about China, Hyten said.

“We saw China show their true colors,” he asserted. “They still have not been transparent about what happened in Wuhan. They still have not been transparent in helping the world deal with the virus … They still have not been transparent on supplies.” The U.S. and its allies need to view China “not just from a [physical] security perspective—am I going to be attacked—but what are the other elements going on that impact our everyday existence? And China over the last year has not helped the world in our everyday existence, and they still aren’t. So it’s important that we open our eyes and understand that.”

Likewise, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine shouldn’t be ignored, he said, but all its aggressions looked at “with open eyes” and realism.

Hyten said he “hasn’t fixed the problem” of injecting far greater speed into the joint requirements process, something he hopes to advance in his last months in the job. He noted that in 2000, the military moved from a threat-based process to a capabilities-based system, wherein it was reasoned that, “if we just develop the capabilities, we’ll be able to stay ahead of any adversaries as far in the future as you can see.” That approach, though, led to a risk aversion that drove all decisions to the Pentagon “and away from the field,” slowing things down and building an elaborate bureaucracy.

“We have to get back to the way we did it in the 1950s,” he said, explaining that Thule Air Base, Greenland—with an early warning radar, 10,000-foot runway, two hangars for B-52s, and a town for 2,500 people—was built “in 91 days, … 600 miles from the North Pole” at the order of former head of Strategic Air Command, Gen. Curtis LeMay, and held up for many decades of use. The Pentagon needs to emulate that and delegate authorities to lower levels “and allow people to do their job.”

His goal is to tell the services, “Here’s your joint requirement, just go build it, and go fast. That’s what we’re trying to do. It’s frustrating, but we should all take ownership of the fact that we’ve become bureaucratic and slow, and we have adversaries that move very fast.”