Brown Launching Major TacAir Study with CAPE, Considering ‘5th-Gen Minus’

Feb. 17, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

The Air Force is launching a months-long study of tactical aviation requirements, seeking a force mix that addresses both near- and long-term requirements, which will be available in time to inform the fiscal 2023 budget request, Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. said Feb. 17.

He wants the Pentagon’s Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation shop involved so the study will have credibility and buy-in from the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

USAF needs a fifth-gen capability, comparable to the F-22 and F-35, and a “sixth-gen” capability such as the Next-Generation Air Dominance fighter, but it also needs “a mix for the lower-end fight,” Brown told reporters on Feb. 17.

Although he acknowledged that former Air Force acquisition chief Will Roper opened the possibility of buying more F-16s for this purpose, Brown waved away that idea. The F-16, he said, lacks open mission systems capability, and gets operational flight program updates—new software—too infrequently. The aircraft was designed in the 1970s, and he is more interested in a “clean sheet design,” which he referred to as a “fourth-and-a half/fifth-gen minus” aircraft. The TacAir study will decide just what is needed, and in what numbers.

The study will parallel Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III’s Global Posture Review, and the two assessments will “inform” each other.

“Right now, I wouldn’t say they’re aligned,” Brown said, noting this is another reason why he wants the CAPE involved. The TacAir study will require a lot of modeling and simulation, he said. The Global Posture Study will also lay out the “priorities of the department” and inform the direction of the TacAir assessment. To do it in “a vacuum … would be naïve,” he said.

Asked specifically about buying new F-16s, Brown said, “Actually, I want to build something new and different that’s not the F-16; that has some of those capabilities, but gets there faster, using our digital approach.”

He assumes that, “Not everybody will agree” with the study’s findings, but said, “We … want a point of departure, a point of dialog.” There will be risk associated with whatever optimum force mix emerges. “My job then is to articulate what that risk might be,” he added.

The Air Force’s fighter fleet averages 28 years old, and “that’s not going to compete well with adversaries,” Brown noted. “That’s why this force mix study is so important: to bring down the average age, to have something relevant not just today, but well into the future.”

Brown acknowledged that the Air Force is unlikely to be able to afford 386 combat wings, but said it might be possible to obtain the combat capability of that capability without as many actual aircraft.

“I want to … get as close as I can to a 386 capability with the force size I have and [the] dollars available,” he said, but there has to be solid analysis for the resulting force mix. He’s told the Air Staff and major commands, “I have a degree in engineering; it’s all about numbers and facts … That’s what I expect from the Air Staff, don’t give me emotion, bring me the facts.”

Brown said he has no doubt the major commands “understand I’m the Chief,” and said he is making “enterprise-level decisions” about the force structure. Those decisions are “not going to be popular,” he said. But, “If I don’t do that, we don’t accelerate change. I’m not sorry about that. There will be some folks who don’t like me, or don’t like what I decide, but I want to move forward with what I think is best for the Air Force.”

Combatant commanders have a different perspective, he noted, and are focused on a horizon of two or three years. Brown said he’s worried about that, too, but he also has to think about the “next 15-20 years. This is why I say we have to balance risk over time. I should not own all the risk … [it] has to be shared [with] the combatant commands and the services.” He said he’s thinking about the COCOMs that are the fifth successors to those now in the job, and he wants to “set them up for success.”

Not every mission will have everything it needs, Brown said. “That means tough choices.” The Air Force has to “look across portfolios.”

Brown acknowledged the F-35 is having engine wear issues, and said this will play in the TacAir review. The Air Force has the largest and “most mature” F-35 fleet, and is seeing F135 engines “failing a little faster in certain areas,” due to their “high use rate” and heavy deployment pace, given their relative newness in the fleet, he said.

Options are being looked at in maintenance and depot to mitigate the problem, Brown said, noting he has three- and four-star generals studying the issue.

But one big solution could simply be to use the F-35 less, Brown reported.

“I want to moderate how much we’re using those aircraft,” he said. “You don’t drive your Ferrari to work every day, you only drive it on Sundays. This is our ‘high end’ [fighter], we want to make sure we don’t use it all for the low-end fight … We don’t want to burn up capability now and wish we had it later.”

There’s “going to be some tension associated” with that approach, and “I fully expect that,” he said.

Sikorsky Wrapping Developmental Tests on New Search-and-Rescue Chopper

Feb. 17, 2021 | By Rachel S. Cohen

Sikorsky will finish its to-do list of developmental flight testing requirements for the Air Force’s new fleet of combat search-and-rescue helicopters in the next month or so, and is gearing up to deliver one chopper per month starting this summer, company officials told reporters Feb. 17.

The Combat Rescue Helicopter program is moving forward as Sikorsky has delivered eight of the nine HH-60W Jolly Green II aircraft built so far. Those eight helos are housed at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M., and Moody Air Force Base, Ga., while Sikorsky is using the ninth airframe for flight tests, according to Dana Fiatarone, the Lockheed Martin subsidiary’s vice president for Air Force and Army systems.

The HH-60W has proven it can perform in extremely hot, cold, and wet weather, and passed a midair refueling test with a HC-130J last summer. The Jolly Green II is now headed to Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake in California for radar warning receiver testing.

Steven Hill, Sikorsky’s CRH program director, said it’s too early to tell whether the helicopters are performing as expected.

The company now has 22 helicopters on contract, according to Sikorsky. The manufacturer could see an award for another 19 helos in mid-2021. The Air Force plans to buy more than 100 HH-60Ws for $7.5 billion over the course of the program.

Officials on the call referred questions about how CRH will spread across Air Force bases to replace the HH-60G Pave Hawk, which entered service in the early 1980s, to USAF. The new fleet is an updated Black Hawk variant that can fly farther than its predecessor and has more tools to protect against incoming threats, among other improvements.

Sikorsky is already looking at changes to bring its helicopters into the farther future, such as improved survivability, while also ditching earlier requirements that will be outdated once the aircraft is in use.

The Air Force on Feb. 11 published a partially redacted document indicating the service will offer as much as $980.7 million for helicopter upgrades to “combat real-world threats” to search-and-rescue missions. Those modifications will begin this year, USAF said.

“The subsequent delay by not initiating development and fielding for the [capability upgrade] requirements will continue to become more severe as the HH-60G fleet continues to age and until the HH-60W replacement helicopter becomes operationally capable,” the Air Force said.

Failures in older helos led to an undisclosed number of “losses and fatalities during Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom, as one example,” USAF noted.

SDA Preps Plans for ‘Tranche One’ Satellites

Feb. 17, 2021 | By Rachel S. Cohen

Pentagon officials are nailing down what the military wants to see from its next round of new satellites procured by the Space Development Agency, with a request for proposals due out this summer, the agency’s director said Feb. 16.

The Defense Department is in the middle of defining its needs for the group of communications, missile tracking, and other satellites known as “Tranche One,” which are slated to reach space by 2024, SDA boss Derek M. Tournear said during a Space Symposium event.

He hopes industry will latch onto plans to field rapidly upgradable batches of satellites and grow the new military constellation every two years. If SDA’s plans for deploying hundreds of satellites goes as planned, the constellation will offer DOD multiple routes to share information if some signals are jammed or systems are destroyed.

“The department has committed to filling out Tranche Zero, which is … eight [satellites] from SDA and two from [the Missile Defense Agency],” Tournear said. “Beyond that, the department is still trying to determine exactly what are the next steps.”

He hopes to have a better idea of what Tranche One will look like by May. If DOD opts to continue building out Tranche Zero’s missile-tracking capabilities instead of maturing other types of satellites like those used for space object tracking or intelligence collection, Tournear said, the military could have a persistent, regional eye on orbit to watch for ballistic missile launches by 2025. Global coverage could follow by 2027, he said.

The military plans to link SDA’s constellation to commercial satellites that offer services like imaging and internet. While the agency wants its data-transport satellites to talk directly to each other to share information, that interoperability won’t need to be baked in until Tranche One.

Tournear cautioned that other military systems—like the Next-Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared satellites in development for missile tracking—will have to send data to ground stations before SDA can use it. That means slowing the time it takes to get that information to troops around the globe.

“We’ll also be able to take cues from those systems, and then use that to cue, for example, our medium field-of-view [missile tracking] systems,” Tournear said. “But yeah, there’ll be no direct satellite-to-satellite [communications].”

SDA differentiates itself in the military space ecosystem with a mission to move faster and with more commercial players than typical satellite and payload procurement. As DOD reforms its space enterprise and tries to avoid acquisition overlap, it will keep the nascent agency separate from the Space Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center and the Space Rapid Capabilities Office. SDA is set to move from the Office of the Secretary of Defense to the Space Force by October 2022.

Success will depend on the agency’s ability to stick to a timeline that is tight by DOD standards. A set of upcoming experiments focused on beyond line-of-sight target and advanced missile tracking could help move the schedule along.

“We’re planning on tying our national defense space architecture into their planned demonstrations and exercises, so that we can essentially demonstrate that we can close that kill chain on the order of single-digit seconds,” Tournear said. “That’s how we’ll measure success for the combatant commanders—to be able to run their exercises, utilizing data from the SDA architecture and use that for actual fire.”

Pilot Error Caused 2020 C-130J Hard Landing at Ramstein

Feb. 17, 2021 | By Brian W. Everstine

Pilot error caused extensive damage to a C-130J during assault landing training at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, in April 2020, according to an accident investigation, which also found that effective aircrew training is limited.

The C-130J-30, a stretched version of the Super Hercules with tail number 11-5736, assigned to the 37th Airlift Squadron, sustained an estimated $20.9 million in damage. No aircrew members were injured in the mishap, according to a U.S. Air Forces in Europe Accident Investigation Board report released Feb. 16. An over emphasis on operational sorties instead of training and the lack of a local landing zone for assault landings at the base also contributed to the incident, according to the report.

In the late afternoon of April 23, 2020, the C-130J-30 took off for a routine pilot evaluation flight, to include a maximum effort takeoff, maximum effort landing, full-stop, and then taking off again to rejoin a formation, according to the report.

During the maximum effort landing portion of the training, the pilot began the engine power reduction (power pull) early at about 70 feet above ground level (AGL), 50 feet above the standard protocol for an assault landing, and the aircraft’s engines went fully flight idle at 45 feet AGL. The C-130 slammed down on the runway at 3.62 Gs and at a sink rate of 834 feet per minute, well above the aircraft’s limits of 2.0 Gs and 540 feet per minute. The aircraft’s nose gear did not touch the runway.

The co-pilot called for a go-around, prompting the pilot to push the throttles fully forward and take off again. The aircraft flew back around and was able to land safely.

The crew initially believed a tailwind caused the high sink rate, but investigators found that weather did not play a role in the incident.

The AIB president, in the report, said the main cause of the incident was the pilot’s early engine power reduction. Because of the C-130J’s aerodynamics, reducing power too early increases the sink rate because the aircraft’s propellers “generate high velocity airflow over the wings, directly affecting lift.” At about 10 feet above the ground, the pilot did add throttle, but it was insufficient to prevent the hard landing, the report states.

Additionally, the AIB states both pilots failed to identify this excessive sink rate in time, and once they did, they didn’t stop it or go around in a timely manner.

During the investigation, members of the 37th Airlift Squadron said the unit’s high operations tempo “leaves less time and opportunities dedicated to local area training, which is particularly important for less experienced aircrew,” the report states. Operational missions are the priority, so few training sorties and local restrictions make it difficult for pilots to practice critical skills. The base does not have a local landing zone to practice assault landings, and instead uses a painted, simulated LZ for the training, which “does not provide realistic training for assault landings and takeoffs,” the report states.

Additionally, investigators identified limitations with Lockheed Martin Engineering’s Data Transfer and Diagnostic System software, including an error in the hard landing detection algorithm, according to the report.

AFSOC Experimenting with Agile Combat Employment

Feb. 17, 2021 | By Jennifer-Leigh Oprihory

Air Force Special Operations Command is running an experiment to see if it can successfully generate small, deployable teams of multi-capable Airmen to better align with the Air Force’s agile combat employment model, AFSOC Commander Lt. Gen. James C. “Jim” Slife said Feb. 16.

“The problem statement for us is, ‘How do you build and force-generate combat support capabilities that are ready to operate in that future operating environment in a method that isn’t based on our current home station garrison construct?’ And so, this is a place where AFSOC is really putting a lot of effort right now,” he said during a Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies “Aerospace Nation” event.

Video: Mitchell Institute on YouTube

When in garrison, separate squadrons handle contracting, logistics readiness, and other support functions. But that doesn’t line up with how the command uses those skills in the fight. For example, he noted, U.S. Central Command has never asked him to “quickly deploy” a single kind of mission-support squadron to its area of responsibility.

“We’ve got a pilot effort going on at one of our bases right now where we are assuming risk in some installation support functions to build a small multi-functional team of Airmen that will go through a force-generation cycle and a deployment cycle together with the operating forces in a way that is representative of what we think the future operating environment might require,” he said.

Picture “a small unit of Airmen where the forklift driver” can also run the communications suite, and the “generator electrician” can provide security backup at a Forward Operating Base, he said. This promotion of versatile Airmen is a centerpiece of the ACE force-employment model, which also espouses quick deployments and operations from austere or bare bases.

“This type of multifunctional, team-based organization is really what I think the future of mission support is gonna look like, and so, we’re pretty excited about the work we’re doing in that regard,” he said.

Slife declined to disclose which base is hosting the pilot program, saying he said wants to give Airmen room to “experiment,” “learn lessons,” and make mistakes without outside pressure to get it right.

“I’m 100-percent confident we’re gonna be successful,” he said. “I just … don’t know whether it’ll be this year or the second cycle after we learned from the first one.”

Report: AMC Boss Expected to be Nominated to Lead TRANSCOM

Feb. 17, 2021 | By Brian W. Everstine

Gen. Jacqueline D. Van Ovost is expected to be nominated to lead U.S. Transportation Command, a pick originally expected last fall but The New York Times reported Feb. 17 it was delayed based on concerns about the White House’s reaction at the time.

Van Ovost, who has led Air Mobility Command since August, and U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Laura J. Richardson, head of U.S. Army North, were both set to lead combatant commands, but then-Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper told the Times the nominations were delayed because, “I didn’t want their promotions derailed because someone in the Trump White House saw that I recommended them or thought DOD was playing politics.” Richardson is expected to be nominated to lead U.S. Southern Command.

“They were the best qualified,” Esper told the Times. “We were doing the right thing.”

The New York Times reported that Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley will send the nominations to the White House in the coming weeks.

Pentagon officials told the newspaper that DOD leadership held off on the nominations because former President Donald J. Trump had feuded with Esper and White House officials were not likely to support the nominations because they are women, even though the administration had picked women for prominent military roles, including as Air Force Secretary. Officials were concerned the nominations would be replaced by Trump White House officials before leaving office, according to the report.

A spokesperson for Van Ovost at Air Mobility Command declined to comment on the report.

Van Ovost took over AMC in August 2020, and with the retirement of her predecessor Gen. Maryanne Miller, she became the military’s only woman in a four-star leadership position. If picked for TRANSCOM and confirmed, she would join former Gen. Lori J. Robinson as the only USAF female generals to lead combatant commands. Robinson led U.S. Northern Command before retiring in 2018.

Van Ovost also would return TRANSCOM leadership to the Air Force. Current command boss U.S. Army Gen. Stephen R. Lyons is the only non-blue suiter to command TRANSCOM in a permanent role since the command’s inception in 1987.

Throughout her career, Van Ovost has been a test pilot flying more than 4,200 hours in more than 30 aircraft, including some of the earliest flights on the C-17. Her leadership roles include the Air Force’s director of staff, the vice director of the Joint Staff, and the Joint Staff’s deputy director for politico-military affairs.

“I was very focused on being a pilot, and being the best pilot I could be, and to make a difference in that way,” Van Ovost told Air Force Magazine in an interview when she took over command of AMC. “And here we are, standing at the precipice of what might be called a pinnacle of military leadership. But frankly, it’s not so much a pinnacle. For me, it’s a new beginning. It’s a new opportunity to ask key questions, to shape the force in a way to make sense, and provide clarity to the strategic environment that we live in.”

AFSOC Boss: Armed Overwatch Procurement Decision May Come as Early as 2022

Feb. 16, 2021 | By Jennifer-Leigh Oprihory

Air Force Special Operations Command expects to conduct an armed overwatch flying demonstration “in the coming months” and U.S. Special Operations Command may make a procurement decision as early as 2022, AFSOC boss Lt. Gen. James C. “Jim” Slife said Feb. 16.

“I would like to be in procurement sometime in fiscal year ’22, and so I think we can do that at relatively low risk based on what we’ve seen from the vendors who have indicated that they intend to bring platforms to demonstrate for us in the coming months,” he said during a virtual “Aerospace Nation” event hosted by the Air Force Association’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.

Video: Mitchell Institute on YouTube

Although Congress used the fiscal 2021 National Defense Authorization Act to block SOCOM from buying armed overwatch aircraft this fiscal year, Slife said it still gave the command enough research, development, test, and evaluation funding to hold “a flying demonstration of commercially available platforms that might meet our requirements and inform our final requirement document before we go to a procurement decision.”

“That money is fully sufficient to do the demonstration program that SOCOM asked to do, and we anticipate going back for further conversation with Congress about that before initiating acquisition on the backside of a demonstration program that should take place here in the coming months,” he said.

According to Slife, SOCOM is considering a few commercial contenders, though he didn’t name-check specific airframes under consideration.

“If it is non-developmental, and it meets the requirements that SOCOM has laid out to industry, then we’re interested in looking at it,” he said.

However, he said SOCOM needs to see how the demonstrations turn out before it can determine “what an acquisition program would look like”—namely, whether it’d consist of one platform or a combination of platforms, or if the command might lease aircraft instead of buying them outright.

“We need to get through this demo to see what industry can produce at low risk in a short order,” he said.

Slife acknowledged some legislators’ reservations about how SOCOM envisions the proposed platform operating.

“I think Congress is appropriately and prudently exercising their oversight role,” he said. “I would view this as a lower-risk enterprise than perhaps some charged with oversight do, but the fact that we see it differently doesn’t mean that they’re wrong.”

The “surveillance strike methodology” SOCOM crafted to counter violent extremist organizations in the mid-2000s, which Slife called “very, very resource intensive” and involved stacking various types of aircraft, doesn’t make sense for future fights against violent extremists, both from a fiscal and operational perspective.

Instead, he said the command must “collapse the stack … into a smaller number of platforms.” Armed overwatch would answer this call by giving AFSOC “reconfigurable ISR capability” and the ability to provide close-air support while possessing “a very light logistics footprint in small, disaggregated teams … in very austere regions.”

Whatever armed overwatch platform is chosen could also be used to counter violent extremist organizations in Africa.

“What I would envision is a light footprint, a multi-role capability that has the ability to provide the intelligence needed to remain aware of the threat, and to take action where necessary, and has a kinetic capability to take action when necessary, without drawing a lot of attention to our host nations that may be hosting those operations,” he said. “That is what the future looks like in my mind, and so, you know, the armed overwatch platform would be ideally suited for that type of an operational environment.”

Slife said AFSOC expects to transition out the U-28 Draco aircraft in phases “as the armed overwatch platform comes online,” adding that the new aircraft will cost less to operate, have more versatility than its predecessor, and give the command “greater capacity to operate in those small, disaggregated kind of teams.”

“I think Congress is being prudent about this, but ultimately, I believe that SOCOM will be able to demonstrate to the Congress that this is a viable program, and it”s required for the future operating environment, so I remain cautiously optimistic,” he said.

Editor’s note: This story was updated at 9:14 a.m. Feb. 17 to correct the name of the U-28 Draco.

Nuclear Missile Program Passes Review, Moves Closer to Production

Feb. 16, 2021 | By Rachel S. Cohen

Northrop Grumman’s design for a new nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile is moving forward after the Air Force signed off on the latest development milestone in November, the company announced Feb. 16.

The Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent will replace the aging Minuteman III nuclear missiles starting in the late 2020s. Northrop is now the sole company under contract to create the new fleet under a $13.3 billion engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) agreement awarded in September.

“Achieving this milestone demonstrates our team’s commitment to deliver a safe, secure, and reliable system to the U.S. Air Force on schedule and on budget,” Steve Lunny, Northrop’s vice president for the GBSD program, said in a release. “Our team is applying a digital engineering approach that will produce a modern strategic deterrent capability for our nation and its allies.”

The EMD phase encompasses total system design, qualification, testing, and certification. It is the final major design effort before the military decides to begin production.

The company passed a benchmark known as the EMD baseline review, which looks at whether a program is on track to meet a basic set of technical user requirements, data, and configuration specifications. The review is the first step toward handing over responsibility for those criteria to the Air Force.

Up next is the integrated baseline review, which “sets the program’s performance measurement baseline,” according to Northrop. The company did not say when that next check-in is scheduled, but said the program is on track to meet it.

Northrop is slated to build about 660 of the missiles to replace 50-year-old ICBMs at Air Force bases across Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska, and Colorado. Bloomberg reported in October the decades-long effort could cost as much as $264 billion, including operating and supporting the weapons in their silos. That doesn’t include warhead development valued at nearly $15 billion.

The U.S. has 400 ICBMs ready to fire if needed at any given time. Some of the other missiles purchased will be unarmed versions used for testing.

GBSD should be ready for operations starting in 2029, though Northrop and the Air Force will continue swapping out missiles into the 2030s.

30 Years After Desert Storm: Feb. 17

Feb. 16, 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.

Heavy bombing of the Iraqi army in Kuwait has destroyed 1,300 of Iraq’s 4,280 tanks and 1,100 of its 3,110 artillery pieces, the Pentagon reports. Iraq’s Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz arrives in Moscow for talks with Soviet President Gorbachev.

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.