Space Force to Test New Insignia Next Month

Feb. 25, 2021 | By Rachel S. Cohen

Space Force troops will try out new rank insignia for the first time next month, as the service looks to shake up the traditional chevron design it inherited from the Air Force.

“We’re excited about that, to get feedback and figure out what that insignia looks like, and new uniforms and all those things coming up later in the year,” Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force Roger A. Towberman said Feb. 25 during AFA’s virtual Aerospace Warfare Symposium.

The new insignia will accompany the Space Force’s fresh take on a rank and grade structure that took effect at the beginning of February. While officials know some people are disappointed in the decision not to throw the existing ranks out the window entirely, they said what Guardians do matters more than what they’re called.

“We were very deliberate to say, ‘Hey, we’re not going to call them first, second, third class. We’re going to treat them more as as one group, where the levels within that group are mostly in the control of the specialists,’” Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force Roger A. Towberman said.

The Space Force landed on Specialist 1, 2, 3, and 4 for its first four enlisted ranks, followed by sergeant, technical sergeant, master sergeant, senior master sergeant, chief master sergeant, and chief master sergeant of the Space Force. Leaders hope that ladder adds meaning to a Guardian’s career path as they improve over the years.

Towberman indicated that adopting Specialist 1 through 4 as the lowest ranks helps reinforce the service’s model of leveling up as Guardians learn new skills. As troops reach the noncommissioned officer ranks, he argues it also sends a message to start out with sergeants.

“We really wanted to put the strong servant rank of sergeant right there to say, at the first level of supervision, there’s nothing more important than serving your team and their family and loved ones,” Towberman said.

He suggested that the service could later split its technical sergeants into tiers based on their level of interest in a particular line of work. Those conversations are still in the works.

“We’ve left the door open,” he said. “If I want to spend my life on an ops floor … and I’m really, really good at it and I want to stay really good at it, and I don’t want to do some other things, but I want to stick around and I want to be invested in more, then maybe we go Technical Sergeant 1, 2, and we step up from there.”

When the new ranks were first revealed, many on social media criticized the Space Force for lacking more creativity. But just because the public wants different changes doesn’t mean it makes sense for the force, Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. David D. Thompson said.

“There were a lot of people with opinions and ideas and things they thought were important about ranks,” he said. “The idea that there was going to be some deep and significant cultural impact to the Space Force … was way over-emphasized and, frankly, not particularly supported in analysis.”

People connect first with their service, then to their mission area, he said. They tell others they spent their career as an Airman or an intelligence officer, not as a captain. Assigning Guardians a completely different slate of ranks—such as one influenced by iconic pop culture like “Star Trek,” as some wanted—wouldn’t change that, Thompson said.

“We made changes that were important, that we need to make, and now it’s important for us to build the culture based on our service, based on our mission capabilities,” he said.

Here’s How Air Force Leaders Are Fighting COVID-19 Vaccine Stigma

Feb. 25, 2021 | By Jennifer-Leigh Oprihory

When it comes to easing enlisted Airmen’s reservations about getting the COVID-19 vaccine, the only way out is through, Chief Master Sgt. Brian P. Kruzelnick, Air Mobility Command’s command chief master sergeant, said during the Air Force Association’s virtual Aerospace Warfare Symposium.

Air Force Maj. Gen. Jeff Taliaferro, the Joint Staff’s vice director for operations, on Feb. 17 told House Armed Service Committee legislators that one-third of all U.S. military troops have declined the COVID-19 vaccine, though he said that decision doesn’t make them non-deployable. A recent Blue Star Families survey found that military family members are also largely on the fence about getting inoculated against the virus, Air Force Magazine previously reported.

Enlisted leaders can help ease their Airmen’s nerves through “timely and accurate communication” that removes emotions and sticks to the facts, Kruzelnick said during a pre-recorded enlisted leadership panel that aired on Feb. 25.

“In light of not communicating often and early with your team, they’re gonna get information elsewhere,” he explained. “And where they get it elsewhere, most likely might not be accurate—it might be misinformation that makes the decision even tougher after that.”

If leaders enter into these conversations prepared to tell Airmen how they fit into the situation and how it impacts them, Kruzelnick says, they can help their teams “make the best decision possible.”

Chief Master Sgt. Charles R. Hoffman, command chief master sergeant for Air Force Global Strike Command and Air Forces Strategic-Air, agreed.

“I think for us, it was transparency,” Hoffman said. “It was about an informed decision. It was about a discussion, and I think that led to Airmen making the right decision for themselves and the Air Force.”

Kruzelnick also encouraged leaders who are eligible for vaccines to “get up front” and get vaccinated, since he’s observed a trend where people want to see someone else go through the process first to make sure it’s safe before taking the dive themselves. However, he said he anticipates the enlisted force’s “take rate” for the vaccine to improve with time.

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. said that during his recent travels, he informally asked Airmen to help him understand “the atmospherics of those that decide to take the vaccine versus those that elected not to.”

“They didn’t tell me whether they have taken the vaccine or not, ’cause I’m not taking names,” he told reporters during a vAWS media roundtable Feb. 25.

Brown’s findings largely mirrored Kruzelnick’s insights: Airmen, he said, want to know more about the COVID-19 vaccines’ potential side effects and see people they trust make it through the vaccination process before getting the shot themselves.

However, he also found some Airmen are frustrated that being vaccinated doesn’t negate the need for mask-wearing and social-distancing, and that is deterring them from opting in.

He said he’s telling these Airmen that the sooner they get vaccinated, the sooner everyone will be able to ditch the mitigation measures.

And while the independent Air Force amn/nco/snco Facebook page on Jan. 14 shared photos of a memo from a Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif-based squadron suggesting that non-vaccinated Airmen ran the risk of having leave requests denied, Brown clarified that USAF isn’t punishing troops for being on the fence about the vaccine.

“We are not denying leave and not allowing folks to travel because they have not gotten the vaccine,” he told reporters.

Editor’s Note: This story was updated on Feb. 25 at 8:29 p.m. EST and to include new information from CSAF Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. and at 8:44 p.m. EST to clarify a quote from Brown.

30 Years After Desert Storm: Feb. 25

Feb. 24, 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. 25:

A Scud missile hits a Dhahran barracks used by U.S. Army Reservists, killing 28 and wounding more than 100.
Baghdad Radio airs Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s order for Iraqi forces to withdraw from Kuwait.
At least 517 oil wells in Kuwait are on fire.
U.S. and French forces secure the coalition’s western flank inside Iraq.
The U.S. Army’s 101st Division moves north to An Nasiriyah on the Euphrates River.
The U.S. 24th Mechanized Infantry Division turns east to cut off possible Iraqi avenues of retreat north from Basra.
U.S. and British armored units move eastward toward Iraqi Republican Guard’s armored divisions along the Kuwait-Iraq border.

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.

WATCH: vAWS ‘21 Day 1 Highlight Report

Feb. 24, 2021 | By Air & Space Forces Magazine Staff

Video: Air Force Association on YouTube

The new enlisted guide to professional military education; the Chief of Staff on force employment and legacy systems; and the KC-46 begins to to contribute. All this and more from Day 1 of the Air Force Association’s virtual Aerospace Warfare Symposium.

To Inspire New USAF Tech, Look to Mars Rover

Feb. 24, 2021 | By Rachel S. Cohen

Last week, NASA’s Perseverance rover thrilled citizens of Earth when it landed on Mars with the promise of a new chapter in red planet exploration.

But the military could also learn a thing or two from the spacecraft’s trip for future research and development efforts, Space Force Chief Scientist Joel B. Mozer said Feb. 24 during AFA’s virtual Aerospace Warfare Symposium.

NASA “took a very advanced machine with tons of advanced sensors to a distant, hostile place without real-time communication or [positioning, navigation, and timing] infrastructure,” Mozer said. “They put their package right on target, using automated decision-making and terrain-relative navigation. These are exactly the technologies that we will need to fight wars in the future.”

The Air Force and Space Force need to pay attention to the rover’s adventures, he said, because China is using similar spacecraft to collect samples from the dark side of the moon.

The Department of the Air Force, which encompasses both the Air Force and Space Force, has highlighted many of those forward-looking ideas for years as must-have tools to win against other advanced militaries. To get there, its research and development budget nearly doubled from fiscal 2011 to fiscal 2020, when it reached about $35 billion.

Even as the military tries to speed toward flashy new technology, it must not lose sight of the building blocks that lead to breakthroughs, said Gen. Arnold W. Bunch Jr., head of Air Force Materiel Command.

“I don’t want any reduction in … basic research funding,” he said. “We’ve got to continue to focus in that area, and not just [get] caught up with what we’re doing now, or five years from now. What technologies and what research areas do we need to be focused on so we’re looking 30 years out?”

The Air Force’s research and development budget request was nearly $27 billion for fiscal 2021, while the Space Force asked for $10.3 billion.

No matter which part of the Air Force Research Laboratory comes up with the next great idea in aerospace, Bunch said, it must be able to translate to both the air and space realms. He praised the decision to keep both research areas underneath the lab, saying splitting up air and space programs would stymie innovation.

The military must design its technology to take on a set of challenges that spans domains, Moser said. That information war is already underway.

“Combatants are going to strive to collect and act on as much information as they can as part of the kill chain,” while trying to stop the U.S. from doing the same, he said. “We have to get in the mode where we’re designing our systems to operate in an austere, ‘fog of war,’ openly hostile cyber environment.”

That’s where Perseverance could lend some inspiration: making sure combat information can get where it needs to go, despite traveling somewhere inhospitable. It’s an argument in favor of unhackable AI, quantum computing, and communication upgrades, Moser said.

“Developing defensive and offensive tools for information-based warfare … that’s where our big leaps and strides are going to come in the near term,” he added.

The Department of the Air Force has multiple initiatives underway, like the cutting-edge “Vanguard” programs and various pathfinders, to try to deliver new products to troops faster. But if they want to succeed, officials argue, they need to push the envelope a bit more.

“We have to continue to emphasize within the Research Lab and within the S&T community, that failure is OK,” Bunch said. “If everything we’re doing within AFRL is successful, and successfully transitions, then, quite honestly, we have failed miserably.”

How USAF and the Space Force Can Move Forward on Diversity and Inclusion

Feb. 24, 2021 | By Jennifer-Leigh Oprihory

The Department of the Air Force’s new Office of Diversity and Inclusion is using the findings of the Air Force Inspector General’s 2020 Independent Racial Disparity Review and the framework the office used during its time as a task force to mold its future efforts, the office’s boss and Acting Senior Advisor on Diversity and Inclusion Tawanda R. Rooney said at the Air Force Association’s 2021 virtual Aerospace Warfare Symposium.

USAF’s Diversity and Inclusion Task Force hit the ground running last summer, helping to create Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps scholarships to Historically Black Colleges and Universities, amend Air Force dress and appearance rules, and cultivating “strategic relationships” with African American Greek organizations and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, Rooney said a pre-recorded diversity and equity panel that aired Feb. 24.

“But, as you know, that was just a start,” she said.

She said her office, which was formally established on Jan. 11, is taking a three-pronged approach to its mission, focusing on how to improve culture, increase diversity, and quantify its progress on both fronts.

Rooney said D&I is crucial for the department to maintain “innovative and technological” superiority over its adversaries in today’s “increasingly … complex global security environment.”

“We have to be able to attract talent from our communities, compete for those skills, and provide professionals that are committed to our nation,” she said.

The Department of the Air Force announced after the vAWS panel was recorded that it is undertaking a second disparity review—this time, focused on additional races, as well as ethnicity and gender.

Breaking the Cycle

The results of the Air Force Inspector General’s 2020 Independent Racial Disparity Review “weren’t surprising,” but should still serve as a wake-up call for the Air Force, Deputy Chief of Staff for Manpower, Personnel, and Services Lt. Gen. Brian T. Kelly said during the diversity and equity panel.

“I think that if we’re not careful, this time, we could have the same outcomes,” he said. “We could have all these good, well-intended actions, not result in moving forward.”

After the report came out, the service took time to brainstorm ways it could alter its approach to diversity and inclusion to affect lasting change.

“There’s three parts of this for us,” he said.

First, he said, USAF must change its culture to ensure that policy changes take.

“In the past, we’ve made changes, but the culture wasn’t accepting of the changes, right? So when individuals left or individuals moved on, the culture never changed, and it just reverted back to where it was before,” he said. “So that’s important.”

Next, he said, the Air Force must make sense of the barriers its Airmen face.

Thirdly, he said, USAF must ensure that the way it handles talent management reinforces and incentivizes the cultural shifts it wants to see.

He pointed to the service’s recently released Airman Leadership Qualities—which will eventually form the backbone of its Officer and Enlisted Performance Reviews—as one example of a procedural shift designed to make diversity and inclusion a cultural norm.

“The OPRs and EPRs are going to have a factor on there that talks about your ability as a leader to be inclusive and to nurture and build inclusive teams,” Kelly said. “So we are indicating to the force and we’re reinforcing and incentivizing to the force the fact that we want to have this inclusive culture, and if you as a leader, don’t have that skill set, right, you’re not gonna … move forward, right, until you can develop that skill set.”

Former Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force, former AFA President, and retired Gen. Larry O. Spencer agreed. To him, the 2020 AFIG review begged two questions: Why are the numbers this way, and how should the Air Force react?

“You know, there’s some interesting things in the study,” he said. “For example, the study points out that more minorities tend to go into non-operational career fields. OK, I don’t assume there’s anything nefarious there, but why is that? And … once we find out why that is, and what do we do about it?”

Spencer said he hopes the Air Force will zero in on the root causes of racial disparities moving forward, and create “an action plan that will be part of our DNA.”

Space Force Diversity

The most effective ways the Space Force can continue its drive towards increased diversity and inclusion in the wake of the AFIG report’s December 2020 release include continuing to pursue strategic university partnerships, the introduction of coaching and mentorship opportunities earlier in Guardians’ careers, and working diversity and inclusion into pre-command training for enlisted and commissioned leaders, Space Force Chief Human Capital Officer Patricia Mulcahy during the same panel.

The university partnerships are crucial because the technical nature of Space Force career fields make diversity a challenge from the get-go, she explained.

“We’re operators, intel, cyber engineers, and systems acquisition folks,” she said. “So we already feel the challenge of, that tends to not be as as diverse a group that are coming in from high schools and colleges.”

For this reason, she explained, the Space Force has been engaging with universities that offer the kind of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics that the service keeps an eye out for, while also being “connected to more diverse talent.” For example, she said, USSF partnered with North Carolina A&T State University because of its strong engineering program and institutional focus on serving the African American community.

“These are some of the things we think that we need to do more of from the beginning,” she said.

Next, she said, while the Space Force began formalized coaching for all of its O-6s two years ago, the service needs to heed feedback about giving Guardians this kind of one-on-one support earlier in their careers.

“In our pre-command training, we’re now doing it with both the officers and … our senior NCOs,” she said.

This pre-command training has also been updated to include diversity and inclusion talks on things like tackling difficult dialogues and confronting unconscious bias, she added.

PACAF Boss Calls for E-7s to Replace Aging E-3 AWACS

Feb. 24, 2021 | By Brian W. Everstine

The head of Pacific Air Forces is calling for new aircraft in his theater to meet the need for air superiority, including a quick short-term replacement for aging airborne warning and control aircraft and, in the future, the service’s next generation fighter.

PACAF boss Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach told reporters during the Air Force Association’s virtual Aerospace Warfare Symposium he is advocating for the Air Force to quickly procure the E-7 Wedgetail airborne early warning and control aircraft, the Boeing 737-based aircraft already in use by Australia and South Korea to replace aging E-3 Sentrys that have struggled to get in the air.

“The fact is, we actually need something relatively quick because of the reliability of the E-3,” Wilsbach said. “It gets harder and harder to get airborne.”

The Air Force’s E-3 AWACS is based on the older Boeing 707. There have been recent upgrades, and the fleet is expected to fly into the 2030s, though Wilsbach said “it’s challenged at the moment because of how old it is.”

Within the Pacific, PACAF will be tasked with fighting in anti-access, area-denial areas set up by adversaries, which would require both takedowns of surface-to-air missiles and taking away an enemy’s air-to-air capability. The modernized E-7 would help with domain awareness, and then PACAF would need an advanced fighter to complete the missions.

To that end, Wilsbach said he is advocating for the Air Force’s future Next Generation Air Dominance platform and its advanced weapons “so that we can stay relevant as our adversaries continue to advance.”

“Air superiority is foundational to most other things that we would want to be able to do in our theater,” he said. “Because if you don’t have air superiority, then most everything else that you want to do is really held at risk.”

AFWERX Aims to Formally Launch SpaceWERX This Summer

Feb. 24, 2021 | By Jennifer-Leigh Oprihory

AFWERX expects to formally launch SpaceWERX—a center for military-space-centric innovation intended to support Space Force acquisition—this summer, AFWERX director Air Force Col. Nathan P. Diller told reporters at the Air Force Association’s virtual Aerospace Warfare Symposium on Feb. 24.

Former Air Force acquisition czar Will Roper announced the hub’s creation last December, adding that it would call Los Angeles Air Force Base, Calif., home. Space Force Chief of Innovation Lt. Col. Walter ‘Rock’ McMillan, who has been tasked with directing the hub, is currently assembling a team to run it, Diller said.

“We are expecting very soon—in the coming months—to actually narrow down that space topic into what would be our space prime,” Diller said. “That will be the first prime that will be moving forward under our current plan.”

Diller said that SpaceWERX would discuss “the contracting activities associated with this space prime” at the summer launch event.

In the nearer term, Diller said, AFWERX anticipates multiple space companies to participate in Space Pitch Days and seek out additional Strategic Funding Increases for their innovation efforts via AFVentures’ Supplemental Funding Pilot Program.

Going Digital Will Take Courage; Fighter Study Looks to 2040s

Feb. 24, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

The transformational acquisition ideas championed by former Air Force acquisition chief Will Roper will survive his departure from the service, but it will take “courage” to implement them, USAF acquisition leaders said at AFA’s virtual Aerospace Warfare Symposium. They also said the Air Force’s new tactical aircraft study—in parallel with a Joint Staff study—will take a decades-long look at aviation requirements.

“We all believe strongly in digital acquisition,” acting Air Force acquisition executive Darlene Costello said in a Feb. 24 press conference at vAWS. The strategy “fits nicely” with the advanced capabilities the Air Force needs to pursue, and digital engineering, agile software development, and open architectures will be the hallmarks of all new programs, she said, so Roper’s initiatives will continue.

With regard to digital, “e-systems,” such as the Next-Generation Air Dominance fighter or the Low-Cost Attritable Aircraft, top uniformed acquisition official Lt. Gen. Duke Z. Richardson said it will take courage to get full potential from them. Such programs would design and field a limited number of systems—with an abbreviated service life—and be rapidly replaced with the next in the series, under the concept Roper put forward.

“Because we don’t want to engineer a lot more structure into something” to make it last a long time, “It’s going to require courage on our part. As a nation, we’re really going to have to commit to doing this, because when it … times out, it will have to have another one right behind it. And if we’re not willing to have that courage, then we shouldn’t start it,” Richardson said.

The follow-on series “might be a variation of the series we just bought,” Richardson noted. “And really, the only way you can do that with speed is with these digital tools.” The digital models can be quickly altered to “pursue some new part of the threat that we weren’t seeing” and add a new feature to the design.

The tactical aviation study Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. announced last week will be a view of USAF’s combat aircraft requirements over several decades, Richardson explained.

In his remarks to defense writers Feb 17, Brown was “talking about the age of the fighter fleet,” which averages 29 years now, Richardson said. “We’ve got a Chief here who is fully embracing … digital acquisitions … He’s thinking, ‘is there a way to refresh my fighter fleet quicker?’”

The TacAir study will be about establishing “what the fighter fleet will look like, and making sure he has the right tool for the right job. He would not want to apply one tool to every job, especially if it’s an expensive tool.”

Brown said he would conduct the study in cooperation with the Office of the Secretary of Defense’s Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation shop to get an independent view of costs, so the Air Force’s plans will have validity when measured against those of the other services in an ongoing Joint Staff review of tacair. He also said he would consider a clean-sheet “generation five-minus” aircraft for some less-demanding missions, to free the F-35 for the most highly-contested missions requiring peak capability. He specifically ruled out buying new F-16s for less-demanding missions, preferring digital, clean-sheet approaches.

While some interpreted Brown as suggesting the Air Force may back away from the F-35 program, Costello said there has been no deviation from the planned acquisition of 1,763 of the fighters for the Air Force.

While Brown said the tacair study should be concluded in time for the fiscal 2023 budget deliberations, Richardson said the TacAir timeline will look ahead 30 years, and isn’t focused on the short term.

“We’ve got a lot of programs we’re trying to move forward,” Richardson said. Brown’s timeline is “not within the FYDP,” or future years defense plan. “His time horizon is out to 2030 and beyond, even 2040. He’s thinking, ‘what will my force mix look like [then]” so, think about it from that perspective … way out there.”

Richardson’s hoping the study will identify “a whole list of programs that we should go after. I’m also hoping … it will also show us the phasing of it, so if we do something for a lesser threat, it will also inform us … when we might even want to start that.”

Work is being done now to find the knee in the curve that will distinguish between “expendable” and “attritable” unmanned systems, to develop affordability plans, he said.

Asked about a “major redesign” of the B-21 bomber referenced in Air Force Magazine’s current issue, Costello said that while the bomber did indeed require a redesign—the article describes changes to the aircraft’s inlets—the program is proceeding on cost and schedule. Richardson said such issues are “part of the development process” and there’s no reason to suspect a “schedule break” on the B-21 because of it.