Air Force About to Make First Hypersonic Missile Flight, After Recent Failure

Feb. 26, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

The AGM-183A Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon will make its first all-up flight within the next seven days, following a recent failure of the system, hypersonics experts revealed at AFA’s virtual Aerospace Warfare Symposium. The system will go into production within a year.

“We actually have hardware built and are getting ready for our first booster flight test next week,” Brig. Gen. Heath A. Collins, program executive officer for weapons and director of the Air Force’s armament directorate, said in a panel discussion.

“So, there’s real hardware coming,” he said. “We’re also getting ready to transition into production in about a year on that program, so it will be the first air-launched hypersonic weapon that the Air Force has.”

Maj. Gen. Andrew Gebara, Global Strike Command director of strategic plans, programs and requirements, confirmed Collins’ remark, saying the ARRW test will happen “imminently,” and that “we’ll have operational capability … by ’22, or two AFA Orlandos from now.”

Collins said that “earlier this year … we had a slight bump on the road in test,” but the integrated government-industry team “focused, found the flaw, fixed the flaw, [and] got a corrective action in the air in less than 30 days … That just tells you that the team is really tight.”

Lockheed Martin is “part of that open transparency … But getting the right people at the right time on the program, to solve this failure and not miss a beat as we move forward … is a good example of how to get after” hypersonic development.

Sources reported an ARRW failure in late December, chalking it up to “dumb mistakes;” one reported that a technician failed to follow a checklist and another reported an improperly fastened control surface. Michael White, the principal deputy for hypersonics in the Pentagon’s directorate of research and engineering, seemed to confirm these reports in his panel remarks.

“We need to get it right the first time,” White said. “We have this mindset that we want to fail early and often so we can accelerate learning and actually develop quicker. But that’s only valid if your failures are because you’re learning about [technological] discoveries and the ability to do hypersonic flight. If our failures are that we forgot how to do a checklist, and tighten a pin on a fin, and we lose a flight vehicle because a fin falls off, that’s not acceptable failure.”

Adding engineering rigor to flights to make sure that everything is in readiness “is absolutely imperative,” he said.

Gebara also offered some new insight into how many hypersonic weapons GSC’s bombers will be able to carry.

Speaking about the ARRW and a follow-on air-breathing system, the Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile, Gebara said: “I can put four ARRWs on a bomber, but I can put 20 HACMs on a bomber, if done right. Maybe more, if I have different pylon.”

He said GSC sees hypersonics as “being an evolutionary approach over time. What we don’t want to do is spend 20 years on one capability, and that’s all we get. We started ARRW. One of the advantages of ARRW … [is] it’s available, it’s good capability, it’s quick. We also want to get to that cruise missile capability.”

It would be “a shame,” he said, if the Air Force became “content with just one thing and that’s all we did. I think those days are behind us, and we need to work toward that evolutionary approach.”

Collins echoed the comment, saying it’s essential to build the infrastructure for continuous hypersonic weapon development.

“We need to start planning today for what comes next. We’ve got to keep that pump primed, keep our subject matter experts primed and focused on our challenges, not filtering off to pursue something else that they find more exciting.” The Air Force should “continue a solid stream of funding on the technological base to keep hypersonics moving forward, and then, the PEO and the program office, we need to … move with the speed of relevance, given maturing threats.”

He added that the best way to keep costs down on hypersonics is “not to start a huge, massive development every time you want a new capability. I think you develop the capability pipeline … agilely throughout the life cycle of a weapon system.”

ACC Moving Forward with ‘Reforge’ Experiment Amid Funding Concerns

Feb. 26, 2021 | By Rachel S. Cohen

Air Combat Command is trying to move forward with an experiment it hopes will pave the way for a larger overhaul of fighter pilot training, despite pandemic-era complications.

Last year, ACC signed off on a concept called “Rebuilding the Forge,” or Reforge, which would shorten training by at least a year by consolidating certain training phases and keeping student pilots at one base longer. Air Force Magazine previously reported the new T-7A Red Hawk trainer jet would be a centerpiece of that educational fleet to reduce the strain on the operational combat force.

But the coronavirus pandemic intervened, slowing ACC’s plans for getting Reforge off the ground, ACC boss Gen. Mark D. Kelly told reporters Feb. 26 at AFA’s virtual Aerospace Warfare Symposium.

“COVID has been the sand in the gears of a whole lot of things we’ve been trying to do,” Kelly said. “Before we can do Reforge as an established program, we need to do our … experiment.”

The command is working through the contracting process for the resources it needs to test the Reforge idea, he said.

Last year, the Air Force started looking at leasing Lockheed Martin and Korea Aerospace Industries T-50 or Leonardo M346 training planes as part of the project. Renting eight airplanes had won support at the highest echelon of the Air Force, Air Force Magazine previously reported, but the service had yet to get on contract.

Reforge will also rely on augmented and virtual reality simulation to give students extra practice on maneuvers where they need more help, and offer students more stability through fewer moves between bases. ACC hopes that, if successful, the program will also help reverse a yearslong pilot shortage.

Kelly believes the Air Force will include funding for Reforge in the fiscal 2022 budget request, but did not say how much money the program might need.

“I’d like to start it as soon as possible,” he said.

That 2022 money could be enough to get off to a good start, but Kelly says he needs five years’ worth of funding that he doesn’t have right now.

“It’s a continual discussion I have with the Air Force team that has to balance a whole lot of budget pressure,” he said. “I think we’re going to have money to do our experiment, and our experiment needs to … get follow-on funding.”

Hopefully, Reforge will prove to be a solid solution to giving pilots a fuller education between fighter jet fundamentals in the T-38 trainer and high-end qualification on a platform like the F-35 or F-22.

“We’ve got a long way to go in terms of getting the program up and going,” Kelly said.

ANG Helps Texas Recover from Winter Storm Uri

Feb. 26, 2021 | By Jennifer-Leigh Oprihory

Nearly 140 Air National Guard personnel from Texas and Kentucky have responded to parts of Texas that were devastated by Winter Storm Uri, ANG Director Lt. Gen. Michael A. Loh told reporters Feb. 26.

The polar vortex ravaged Texas’ power grid and deprived many citizens of running water.

ANG’s efforts in the Lone Star State have primarily consisted of working with Texas citizens “on commodities and points of distribution,” and figuring out how to care for the state’s population in the immediate term “to save lives, minimize suffering, [and] get Texas back on its feet,” Loh said during a media roundtable held during the Air Force Association’s virtual Aerospace Warfare Symposium.

Additionally, he said, C-130Hs from the Texas and Kentucky ANGs conducted water delivery missions.

As of Feb. 24, the Texas ANG’s Fort Worth-based 136th Airlift Wing had flown over 26 such missions, moving “nearly 1,300 tons of bottled water” provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to afflicted areas throughout the state, a wing release said.

“Other aircraft, such as C-130Js, C-17s, and various rotary craft, augmented the deliveries,” the release said.

And from Feb. 22-26, the Kentucky ANG’s Louisville-based 123rd Airlift Wing flew 12 C-130H airlift missions, transporting more than 10 tons of food, water, and other supplies to multiple locations in Texas, the wing wrote in a release.

Fourteen Kentucky Air National Guard Airmen took part, it added.

“We’re honored to have had this opportunity to serve the people of Texas,” Maj. Gen. Jason Craig, an aircraft commander with the 123rd AW, said in the release. “We’ve also been humbled by the reception and appreciation that’s been shown to us. This group of Guardsmen performed admirably, showing great dedication to completion of the mission.”

Kelly Worries F-35 Flying Costs Won’t Hit Target, and That China May Get NGAD First

Feb. 26, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

Air Combat Command boss Gen. Mark D. Kelly isn’t confident that F-35 operating costs will be tamed to $25,000 per hour by 2025, which is the service’s goal. He’s also concerned China will field advanced fighter technologies like those in the Air Force’s developmental Next-Generation Air Dominance system before the U.S. does.

“I’m not brimming with confidence” that the $25K by ’25 goal will be met, Kelly said of the F-35. “I haven’t lost confidence,” he told reporters in a press conference during AFA’s virtual Aerospace Warfare Symposium, and that’s why he’s about to hit the road to visit operating locations, the depot, and other facilities, to “have conversations” about how the goal can be reached. The idea is not to “talk about how we feel” but get to a “plan of action and milestones” to achieve the $25K target.

“But as I sit here today, I’m not overly confident we’ll get there,” Kelly said.

Sustainment officials with Lockheed Martin, maker of the F-35, told reporters Feb. 23 they believe they can reach the goal under a new Performance-Based Logistics proposal, which the Air Force is evaluating. The F-35 Joint Program Office rejected an earlier version of the PBL pitch, which company officials had previously said was the only way they’d hit the cost per flying hour target. The target is expressed in 2012 base-year dollars.

Kelly also said he’s concerned the nation won’t have the “courage” to field a new fighter based on NGAD technologies before America’s “pacing threat” adversary, China, starts deploying one.

“I for one am confident … that the [NGAD] technology will get fielded,” and that adversaries who come up against it will “suffer a very tough day, and a tough week and a tough war,” he said.

“What I don’t know … is if our nation will have the courage and the focus to field this capability before someone like the Chinese fields it and uses it against us,” he said. There’s a “keen focus” on NGAD technology, and “we just need to make sure we keep our narrative up and articulate the biggest benefit we’ve had as a nation to have leading-edge technology ensuring we have air superiority,” because the nation’s joint military forces “are designed” to operate with control of the air. “It’s less designed to operate it without it,” he added.

Kelly raised the issue of NGAD himself at the end of the press conference, expressing surprise that no one had asked him about it. At AFA’s virtual Air, Space and Cyber conference, former USAF acquisition chief Will Roper revealed that an NGAD prototype has already flown, but no further details of the program have since been revealed. The new aircraft is sometimes described as a “6th generation” fighter, designed to be fielded rapidly, serve only a handful of years, and then be replaced by the next iteration of technology, under Roper’s construct.

Asked about Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr.’s revelation of a new tactical aviation study, Kelly said it’s important to think of it as a “clean sheet” analysis, and that less-capable aircraft that may be looked at would fulfill less-taxing missions.

Alert missions to defend the national airspace, or in parts of the world where air defenses are light, “don’t require a 5th- or 6th-gen capability,” Kelly said. And to apply a high-end fighter to those missions requires “a significant jump in investment as well as cost per flying hour,” he said. The study will prove a 10-15 year “lens” about what is really needed, he said.

Kelly echoed Brown’s comments about the service not having lost confidence in the F-35 , saying it will serve the nation “a lot of years,” as well as in partner nations’ air forces.

“We need to make sure that calculus of the capability [and] capacity of our F-35 fleet goes into the TacAir study,” as to “what’s going to round out the rest of our stable,” Kelly said.

DOD Commission to Look at All Options to Combat Sexual Assault

Feb. 26, 2021 | By Brian W. Everstine

The Pentagon’s new Independent Review Commission on Sexual Assault in the Military has 90 days to find ways to combat the problem within the ranks, and the group will consider all options to address an issue that has “shattered the dreams” of many members who joined with optimism about their service.

“This commission is dedicated to the service members who suffered from sexual assault, both those who have come forward and shared their stories at great personal cost and those who suffered in silence and who continue to suffer in silence, alone and also at a great cost,” said Lynn Rosenthal, who has been appointed to lead the commission, in a Feb. 26 briefing.

Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III, in his first official step in the position, ordered a review of the military’s overall sexual assault and sexual harassment prevention efforts. The commission’s first step will be to look at the department’s guidance, policies, and procedures. At the end of 90 days, the commission will present to Austin and President Joe Biden its recommendations to address the issue.

“All options must be on the table,” Rosenthal said. “The most pressing task facing this commission is accountability for those who have committed sexual assault. But I want to be clear that that is not the only task. We will also look at climate, culture, and prevention.

“One of the hardest things to hear when you listen to survivors talk is how hostility was conveyed by their attackers, this hostile approach to them as part of the sexual assault. And that approach was to the victim: You don’t belong here. You don’t belong in this military. No one will believe you if you talk about what happened, and you will be blamed.”

The commission wants to tell these survivors that “you do belong in this military … and it’s our job to make this climate safe for you to be here,” she said.

The commission, whose members are still being selected from a pool of military leaders, advocates, and sexual assault experts, will consult outside experts and stakeholders. One frequent suggestion to alleviate some of the related issues is to take the handling of sexual assault cases out of the chain of command. DOD officials have regularly opposed this, but Rosenthal said the commission will look at the issue “with an open mind and diverse views.”

AETC Adds Human Performance Layer to UPT 2.5

Feb. 26, 2021 | By Jennifer-Leigh Oprihory

Air Education and Training Command has incorporated a focus on human performance optimization—which includes personal resilience, health, fitness, diet, and mental performance—into its Undergraduate Pilot Training 2.5 program, 19th Air Force Commander Maj. Gen. Craig D. Wills said at the Air Force Association’s virtual Aerospace Warfare Symposium.

UPT 2.5, which he characterized as the command’s answer to a charge from former Air Force Chief of Staff and now retired Air Force Gen. David L. Goldfein to scale its Pilot Training Next program, launched last July with a focus on “four proven concepts,” Wills said:

Parsing out educational content to individual students according to the paces at which they learn, instead of divvying it up to everyone on an identical—but not necessarily efficient—schedule.
Developing and leveraging “immersive training devices” that leverage tools such as artificial intelligence and virtual reality to make training more personalized.
Teaching in a way that focuses on the learner
“Quality instruction at an acceptable [instructor pilot]-to-student ratio”

But following the program’s summer rollout, AETC officially added the “Comprehensive Readiness for Aircrew Flying Training initiative” as a fifth tenet of UPT 2.5, Wills announced during a pre-recorded “Training for War” panel that aired Feb. 26.

CRAFT’s official mission is to “instill 21st century aviators with a holistic approach to human performance optimization, beginning in Undergraduate Flying Training and evolving throughout the Airman’s career, targeting the physical, cognitive, and resilience domains,” 19th AF spokesperson Aryn C. Lockhart wrote in an email to Air Force Magazine. More specifically, CRAFT aims to generate better “student learning outcomes,” make aircrews more resilient and less injury-prone, and to maximize the way these Airmen perform, she wrote.

“Current CRAFT personnel include aerospace physiologists, strength coaches, mental performance coaches, and a dietician,” she wrote.

In the long run, Lockhart wrote, CRAFT looks to make the Total Force more lethal and combat-ready.

The initiative was in the cards for UPT 2.5 since before the new training program launched, but became operational in October, she noted.

The endeavor, which follows similar efforts by Air Combat Command and Air Force Special Operations Command, “promises a lot of potential for us,” Wills said.

“It just seems obvious that rather than waiting for our lieutenants to go out and get broken in the MAJCOMS and then fixed, why don’t we start from the very beginning, with a nutritionist, a strength coach, cognitive specialists?” he said. “Let’s build a better human, a more resilient, more adaptable, a better thinker, and let’s build that into pilot training from the beginning.”

F-15Es Conducted Strike on Iranian-Backed Militias in Syria

Feb. 26, 2021 | By Brian W. Everstine

Two USAF F-15E Strike Eagles conducted the Feb. 25 strike on infrastructure used by Iranian-linked militias in Syria, dropping seven precision-guided munitions on a border crossing complex in a move designed to send a message in the region, the Pentagon said.

The F-15E strike destroyed nine facilities near the Abu Kamal border crossing with Iraq and damaged two more in the complex, Defense Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters Feb. 26. The complex is an “entry control point” that the militias, Kait’ib Hezbollah and Kait’ib Sayyid al-Shuhada, used to bring weapons and fighters into Iraq.

President Joe Biden ordered the strike the morning of Feb. 25 as a way to retaliate for the Feb. 16 rocket attacks on a U.S. operating location and other targets near the Erbil International Airport in Iraqi Kurdistan, which killed one non-American contractor and injured a U.S. service member and multiple other contractors. It was the first such strike Biden has ordered as President, Kirby said. The strike is justified legally through both Article II of the U.S. Constitution and Article 51 of the United Nations that outlines the right of self defense, he said.

The operation had two goals, Kirby said: to “make an impact on these groups and their ability to conduct future” attacks, and “to send a very clear signal that the United States is going to protect its people, it’s going to protect our interests, and it’s going to protect those of our partners in the region.”

U.S. forces depended on Iraqi and Kurdish investigations into the attack and other intelligence to develop the targets, he said. That local intelligence “certainly was of significant assistance” in putting together strike options.

However, Iraqi forces did not take part in the strike, and it was completely in Syrian territory. The U.S. military notified Russia in advance of the attack through the deconfliction phone line. As of the afternoon of Feb. 26, the battle damage assessment was ongoing and there were “preliminary indications of casualties on site,” but no specific numbers, Kirby said. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claims 22 militia members were killed in the strikes.

NORTHCOM, NORAD Needs to Modernize Faster, Change Thinking to Improve Deterrence

Feb. 26, 2021 | By Brian W. Everstine

U.S. Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command are working to combine disparate data streams for a more complete picture of a threat, while also developing ways to protect North America from advanced threats by getting “left of launch” and into an adversary’s thinking.

NORTHCOM and NORAD boss Gen. Glen D. VanHerck, speaking during the Air Force Association’s virtual Aerospace Warfare Symposium, said his commands need to move faster to bring in new technologies to improve protection and deterrence. This includes using big data and artificial intelligence to bring together feeds and information sets that used to be shared by phone calls—capabilities the command recently demonstrated in an Advanced Battle Management System demonstration in early September.

“Much of the awareness exists today, but it’s in stovepipes. It’s not analyzed in a timely manner where operational commanders and strategic decision makers can actually utilize it,” VanHerck said.

While the U.S. military is going in the right direction, it is not going fast enough in taking advantage of the pace of technological development in the commercial industry, he said.

VanHerck highlighted the need to deter against advanced hypersonic threats, which adversaries such as Russia are developing. While the U.S. military’s nuclear deterrence is key to protecting against a nuclear strike using hypersonic weapons, a conventional hypersonic weapon is a different threat. To counter this, the military needs to “think further left” and get into the enemy’s OODA loop—the observe, orient, decide, act though process.

“We need to be able to posture forces and message to create doubt in their mind about utilizing these capabilities to attack the homeland to achieve their objectives,” VanHerck said. “And so that’s what I mean by deterrence by denial. It’s about doubt about the success that they can actually achieve.”

Additionally, NORTHCOM and NORAD are adjusting their thinking on protection. North America is a lot of ground to cover, and “we don’t need to defend everything,” he said. The most critical infrastructure can be defended kinetically, and other areas should be protected in other means, such as with improved deterrence and even the use of electromagnetic spectrum capabilities, VanHerck said.

NORTHCOM and NORAD are working closely with the Ballistic Missile Defense Agency on ways get after these objectives, VanHerck said.

Roth Talks Transition Amid Administration Change, COVID

Feb. 26, 2021 | By Rachel S. Cohen

John P. Roth is no stranger to transition.

Over the past several years, Roth has often been a go-to official tasked with steadying the Pentagon and the Air Force as they move between eras in leadership.

As acting Air Force Secretary, he’s now shepherding the department through the first months of the year as the nation awaits President Joe Biden’s pick for a permanent Air Force Secretary. Handing off the Air Force and Space Force to a new administration should be smooth and transparent, Roth said Feb. 26.

“We are here to defend the nation, and that’s not going to change, regardless of which administration,” he said during AFA’s virtual Aerospace Warfare Symposium.

His remarks came the day after the U.S. military sent two F-15 fighter jets to carry out an airstrike against Iranian-backed militia facilities in Syria on Feb. 25. The military action is the Biden administration’s first-known military action in the Middle East in retaliation for recent rocket launches at American troops in the region.

“We can’t afford to take a pause, strategic or otherwise, and wait for all the various nominations to take place and all the kinds of things that go along with that,” Roth said.

For the past year, the Air Force has also adjusted to pandemic-era precautions as the new coronavirus spread around the world, killing more than 500,000 Americans so far.

The department has done its best to maintain military readiness, Roth said, while standing up a Space Force, pushing more than 27,000 people through basic training since February 2020, continuing bomber patrols, and further deploying to conflicts in the Middle East.

Now, the Department of the Air Force is ramping up its support to the nationwide COVID-19 vaccination effort. Two teams are already in place to help the Federal Emergency Management Agency dole out shots, with another four or five teams ready to go, Roth said.

He praised the vaccine rollout within the Air Force and Space Force as well.

“Virtually our entire leadership team has taken the vaccinations,” Roth said. “Everybody needs to step up.”

More than 270,000 shots have gone into Airmen and Guardians’ arms, he said, though about 20 percent of people offered a vaccine have declined. Those who turned down a shot are “starting to come around as well,” Roth added.

“Vaccinations are key. [Continuing] to honor the COVID protocols is a key, and we as a nation will get this behind us, and we the Air Force stand ready to do our part,” he said.

The Department of the Air Force this year will again try to convince Congress to let it overhaul parts of the inventory to better challenge China, though that modernization pivot is taking longer than the services might like.

“Within the last couple of weeks, we’ve seen a number of political leaders articulate the need to take a hard look at what China means to us. We as an Air Force need to stay ahead of that curve,” Roth said. “In terms of aircraft, in terms of command-and-control capabilities, in terms of IT capabilities, in terms of space capabilities, we need to make sure we maintain that momentum.”

But the Air Force can’t win wars with superior technology alone, he noted. The military is newly grappling with deep dives into sexual assault, racism, and ideological extremism in its ranks as well—issues that threaten readiness on the personnel side.

“We need to ensure that we have … an enterprise where people can come in and work to their maximum potential, and not live in fear, or not have to look over their shoulder,” Roth said. “We need to be open and honest about the challenges, and we need to address those.”