Mercury Systems Chief Operating Officer Roger Wells talks with Air & Space Forces Magazine Editor-in-Chief Tobias Naegele about the latest advances, opportunities, and needs for edge computing and how Mercury’s systems can provide processing power for the Air and Space Forces.
The Air Force is making sweeping changes in how it deploys Airmen, but the differences among the major commands’ needs are creating problems in the quest to define a single new deployment model as top commanders push back the idea that one system will work across the entire force.
“The problem with implementing [AFFORGEN] that I’ve seen – and I think it’s widely recognized now – is that one size doesn’t fit all,” said Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall in a livestreamed Facebook discussion Sept. 6. “Every unit doesn’t have the capability, just because of its mission requirements, to do that sort of a model cycle.”
Kendall and Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force David A. Flosi discussed the new force generation model, known as AFFORGEN, and the drive to change from deploying individuals to deploying wings, as the Air Force’s “units of action.”
The AFFORGEN cycle consists of four six-month phases: deploy; rest and reset; prepare; and high-end training to get ready for the next deployment. Officials say the model will help articulate capacity, risk, and readiness to the joint force, make rotations more predictable for Airmen and families, and enhance unit cohesion during deployments.
“Part of our discussion with the MAJCOM commanders … was, ‘We’ve got to have a standard model that we all use, that we can talk about, and be on the same page, particularly as we talk to the Joint Staff,’” then-Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. said in 2021.
But Airmen at multiple levels pushed back. In July, before he retied from commanding the 18th Air Force, Maj. Gen. Corey J. Martin told Air & Space Forces Magazine that mobility Airmen would need a modified AFFORGEN because of continuous high demand for airlift and refueling.
“Our Airmen don’t necessarily have the luxury of having a six-month reset in the traditional sense that it was designed,” Martin said in July. ”I understand why we have it, but for the 18th Air Force, as it was designed, it is probably not sustainable, because of the amount of operations we continue to do in that reset band.”
Kendall told the Facebook audience that commanders will be able to tweak the model to fit mission needs.
“What I think [Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin] and I have been encouraging people to do is figure out what kind of a readiness creation and expenditure cycle makes sense for what you do, and then tailor around it,” he said. “So don’t use just the one model and feel like you rigidly have to follow that or force it into your place where it may not be compatible.”
At the same time, Kendall reiterated his belief in AFFORGEN’s “underlying concept”: giving Airmen time to rest, reset, and train after deployments, and that doing so can build back readiness after years of stretching troops and equipment to the breaking point.
Ongoing operations in the Middle East led to the Air Force “crowdsourcing” deployments—sending individuals or small groups from dozens or even hundreds of different units, who to met down-range and had to become a unit instantly. Instead, leaders want to move back to a fight-how-you-train model where Airmen go through workups as a group, first as “expeditionary air bases,” then as task forces, and eventually as wings.
Getting to that system, however, has involved a series of overlapping changes.
In 2022, Air Combat Command started designating “lead wings,” with the idea that squadrons would be assigned those wings, sometimes only for a time. The combined units would then train together in anticipation of a large-scale conflict that would require massive deployments.
Expeditionary air bases started deploying in October 2023, drawing together Airmen from U.S. bases in the same region to train and deploy together as a team for setting up a base, establishing and supporting operations, and providing leadership.
That was followed by Air Task Forces—essentially a command staff and a base support team, all at the same base, with attached Mission Generation Force Elements and Mission Sustainment Teams. The Air Force announced six Air Task Forces in May, and the first one, the 12th Air Task Force at Scott Air Force Base, Ill., stood up Sept. 4.
Deployable Combat Wings represent the next phase of this development. The DCWs would deploy as a “unit of action,” with the goal of having some ready to go by the fall of 2026.
“This is a transition period, and we will stay in a state of transition, which is driving multiple methodologies being in the field at the same time,” CMSAF Flosi said, acknowledging the service has disparate plans in place at once.
Adjusting individual rotations to the new schedule will not be instant. Some Airmen have been selected for assignment, deployment, or to relocate in the middle of their AFFORGEN cycle, forcing them to leave their teams in mid-stream.
“We have put people into the lead wing process in the cycle, and they’ll also get tapped for an out-of-cycle deployment, or they will get tapped for PCS four months before the deployment window,” Flosi said. “We are working our way to get much better at that.”
Flosi said personnel specialists are working to prevent such occurrences.
“The codes are coming to stabilize them through the cycle,” he promised.
Piasecki Aircraft, a firm known for its rotorcraft, conducted the first flight of its uncrewed tilt-duct vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft Sept. 6, partially funded under a contract from AFWERX, the Air Force’s innovation arm.
The aircraft is envisioned as a possible autonomous evacuation and rescue craft or a battlefield resupply platform.
The two proof-of-concept demonstrations on the same day—the first for an autonomous tilt-duct aircraft—were flown with the aircraft tethered to the ground at Piasecki’s Essington, Pa. facilities. The first flight was flown with Piasecki’s Aerial Reconfigurable Embedded System Demonstration Vehicle (ARES–DV) alone and comprised a minute of hovering flight. The second flight mounted the Army’s Mobile Multiple Mission Module (M4), and again achieved a minute of hovering flight. This second flight demonstrated “the ability of its triplex fly-by-wire flight control system to sustain a stable hover in multiple configurations and a dynamic ground environment,” Piasecki said in a statement.
The current propulsion configuration is “two turbine engines feeding a combiner gear box (via driveshafts to right angle duct gearboxes, which drive rotor shafts),” a Piasecki spokesperson said. “Future configurations will use a propulsion system that best fits customer mission and needs.”
The Air Force has been looking at technology concepts that could extend the reach of its combat search and rescue aircraft and reduce the number of personnel exposed to fire while recovering downed Airmen close to or behind enemy lines. The tilt-duct aircraft is one such concept; it is being pursued under a November 2023, $37 million joint Air Force/Army Strategic Funding Initiative program. The Air Force element is being conducted under AFWERX.
In addition to ARES work, the contract called for Piasecki to demonstrate VTOL aircraft powered by hydrogen fuel cells.
The company said the Sept. 6 demonstrations are “the first step to demonstrate the potential of ARES to revolutionize autonomous airborne casualty evacuation [CASEVAC], cargo resupply, and provide other multimission capabilities in support of small, distributed combat units. The flight represents the beginning of the experimental flight test program. The company was not immediately able to expand on how many flights are expected or over what timeline. It also did not disclose the ARES’ takeoff weight or potential operational range.
“From this milestone, Piasecki will continue with flight envelope expansion to demonstrate performance hovering in and out of ground effect and low-speed maneuvering before moving into transition flight test points and eventually forward flight testing,” a company spokesperson said. “Upon completion of flight envelope expansion, the team will simulate a casualty evacuation (CASEVAC) mission with the M4 module.”
The tilt-duct concept allows operation from areas without the need for a runway and could work well with the Air Force’s Agile Combat Employment model of operating from large numbers of dispersed and austere locations, supported by small numbers of resupply/logistics aircraft.
The ARES-DV was initially developed by Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works under a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency program, but is now continuing development under Piasecki.
The ARES can be operated as uncrewed aerial system or with “an optional manned flight module,” Piasecki said. Its small landing footprint would enable “shipboard and expeditionary operations as well as provide embedded multimission C4 [command, control, communications and computers], ISR [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] combat and logistics support to small, distributed combat forces operating over extended distances and in complex terrain.” The vehicle is meant to be “rapidly reconfigurable” with mission payload modules supported by a common flight module. This approach is intended to “reduce overall logistics footprint and cost.”
John Piasecki, CEO of the company, said the project has progressed “since its origins as a DARPA conceptual design through years of research and development … to mature the technology leading up to today’s landmark achievement,” which the company called an “aviation milestone.”
He said that after “successfully expanding the aircraft’s flight envelope, we will implement modifications to enable flight demonstration of a fully autonomous CASEVAC and logistics resupply capability.”
Barth Shenk, Air Force Research Laboratory program manager for ARES, said the aircraft “creates a new baseline for VTOL technology applied to heavy-payload, time-critical logistics crucial for dispersed operations.”
Honeywell Aerospace provides the ARES’ compact fly-by-wire integrated flight control system, which Piasecki said is “designed to fit into the limited space available on smaller aircraft.”
The system provides “safety-critical flight control capabilities typically found in much larger airliners and advanced fighter aircraft,” Piasecki said, enabling “precise handling and stability across a wide range of flight conditions.”
Piasecki acquired Lockheed’s Sikorsky Heliplex in Coatesville, Pa., in mid-2023, planning to convert the facility into a state-of-the art development and testing site for VTOL and uninhabited aircraft.
The Air Force has also pursued electric VTOL capabilities through its Agility Prime program, also through AFWERX, purchasing aircraft from Joby Aviation and Archer Aviation.
Despite the Space Force’s “laser-focused” effort to accelerate an initiative to bolster its GPS constellation, the service’s No. 2 officer said the effort is mostly in the study and analysis phase.
“I don’t think we’ll ever move fast enough,” Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. Michael A. Guetlein said at the Defense News Conference last week. “There is an enormous amount of attention from the White House on position, navigation and timing (PNT) and how to shore up those signals, looking at alternative capabilities. Is there another way we could be doing this, that’s more resilient, more survival against the threat? I would say we could be doing more in this area.”
One of service’s main efforts in the area is dubbed Resilient GPS, or R-GPS. The idea is to add around 20 small, cost-effective GPS satellites to the existing 31, addressing rising concerns about over-reliance on the existing satellites and the possibility of an attack on them.
The initiative first emerged in February when Space Systems Command began exploring the commercial market for a constellation of GPS satellites, seeking “ways to reduce lifecycle cost and increase the pace of GPS satellite development, production and on-orbit deployment.” In April, the Department of the Air Force revealed it had chosen the program as one of the first to take advantage of its new ‘Quick Start’ authorities.
But the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense turned down the service’s request to reprogram $77 million for Resilient GPS in the 2025 budget in June. They cited unclear benefits, questioning whether the additional satellites would better protect against GPS jamming compared to other methods, and noted the program for focusing solely on satellites while overlooking the need for the M-code equipment—an encrypted GPS signal essential for jamming resistance. They also questioned whether the program should have followed the regular budget process.
While details on the R-GPS program’s direction is scarce, experts share lawmakers’ reservations regarding the new initiative.
“Whatever solution the Space Force pursues, it must address the variety of the most likely and most dangerous threats, such as jamming, cyber and potential threats to the on-orbit architecture,” said Charles Galbreath, senior resident fellow at Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. “But if the resilient GPS architecture that they’re putting forward does not address all these concerns, the service may need to rethink their strategy to gain Congressional support.”
The question centers on whether the new system will simply add more of the same GPS satellites or include satellites with different waveforms to better counter jamming. Guetlein noted that the service is currently exploring these areas of concern, with the Space Warfare Analysis Center leading the effort.
“What can we do to shore up the civil signal and the military signal on GPS, to get more resilience during times of crisis—that study is going on right now,” said Guetlein. “We’re looking at, can we proliferate it? Can we disaggregate it? Or is there an alternative, technically, that we should be pursuing? Those studies are ongoing, the discussions are happening in the Pentagon as we speak.”
Guetlein noted that should be GPS be disrupted for even just 15 minutes, the U.S. would face a $1 billion hit to the economy, and that it would “dwarf anything that we’ve seen since COVID.”
“If we lose GPS in this nation, we can’t get crops out of the field, we can’t get goods off the shelf or off the boat, we can’t get ambulances to your house, and you can’t travel,” Guetlein warned.
The vulnerability of GPS could seriously amplify the chaos in a conflict. If the Space Force’s constellations face interference, similar to what China, Russia, and others have demonstrated, it could disrupt U.S. military logistics and navigation on land, sea, and air. This would also hurt the accuracy of GPS-guided munitions, leading to more flights needed to hit targets and putting additional American and coalition aircrews at risk, while also raising the chance of collateral damage.
“We are laser-focused on guaranteeing space capabilities will be there when needed, which means we need more SATCOM, more resilient position navigation and timing, or GPS,” added Guetlein. “We’re waiting on the 2025 budget on the Hill to see what that shakes out.”
TINKER AIR FORCE BASE, Okla.—Just a few hallways removed from the massive industrial floor of Building 9001, where technicians, welders and mechanics grind away to keep Air Force planes flying, a highy skilled team is solving crucial problems without bending metal, changing fluids, or fiddling with wires.
The Air Force Sustainment Center Software Directorate, barely one year old, was established in summer 2023 to unite three software engineering groups, a total of 5,000 engineers spread among a dozen locations. Their work here is a sign that the Air Force’s coding efforts have grown since USAF stood up its first software factory less than a decade ago.
As part of the Sustainment Center, the Software Directorate is among the Air Force’s largest software-focused organizations, yet typically flies under the radar.
“We’re creating software all the time,” Michael E. Jennings, senior leader for the directorate, told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “We’re not called the Software Sustainment Directorate. We are the Software Directorate within the Sustainment Center. And so our mission really is probably much bigger than a lot of people realize.”
Jennings and his engineers focus on the future, trying to see what new advances and improvements they can program into software to enhance aircraft performance.
“We are constantly very aware of what the threat is from our adversaries … being able to create software very quickly in a DevSecOps environment, to be able to take software and put software on a platform very, very quickly, to be able to handle whatever threat is out there,” Jennings said.
The team’s involvement in a weapons system depends on who owns the data rights. The Software Directorate is almost entirely responsible for the software on the F-16 and A-10, for example, while providing supplementary code for the F-35, Jennings said.
Older aircraft like the B-52 or E-3 are also getting updates. “You absolutely have strong software systems that can be put on a lot of these systems,” so as long as they can keep flying.
But even more than platform-specific code, software that is applicable across platforms and enables better technical integration is where Jennings focuses his team.
“We’re not winning against our adversaries with one single airplane anymore,” Jennings said. “We’re winning it as an integrated system. And the way it’s an integrated system is through software. It’s that software that’s talking to all of these systems, whether it’s an up-front F-35 using its sensor systems to understand what the battlefield looks like and connect that with an F-22 and to be able to connect that back to a B-52 to be able to engage weapons.”
What that looks like is a common, government-owned standard interface, through which any aircraft system can exchange data. Such Open Mission Systems have been a holy grail for years for program executives.
Jennings’ crew works with the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center and Air Force Materiel Command’s new Integrated Development Office to prioritize work. Together, they share recommendations, priorities, and then take action, depending on whether the aircraft’s software work is led by the directorate or industry.
“As we talk about the systems of systems, we’re really laying out that framework for how we connect together and really create the next generation of the standard architectures for how we interconnect together,” Jennings said.
Now the Air Force is pushing to modernize battle management and command, control, and communications—the systems acquired and developed for that effort need to be able to work together to transfer data at the speed the service needs, and common software can help that. To that end, Jennings said his team regularly works with C3/BM czar Brig. Gen. Luke Cropsey to ensure they are on the same page.
“We need to be able to be better and design more what I call federated systems, in regards to how the systems are set up to be able to make rapid changes to mission computing while leaving the flight stuff, alone,” he said.
Changing software code in one area can impact other parts of the code, affecting flight safety, so changes must be rigorously examined and tested—slowing the pace of upgrades. In the future, Jennings wants the software controlling different functions within the aircraft to be more separate and distinct, so that an update to one will not affect other aspects.
“It’s like Legos, right? It’s creating a system of Legos,” Jennings said. “Some Legos, you’re leaving alone. You’re leaving those structures apart, but you’re allowing these systems to be able to talk to each other and integrate each other to be able to function and to understand where each other are at. Making sure we have the right radios on the systems to be able to communicate, to be able to pass data, to each other, and to be able to trust that data is so important.”
Federating systems within aircraft should accelerate updates. Already, speed is improving, even if it’s not as fast as many would like.
“Most of the changes we’re measuring on the F-16 are now in months and not years,” Jennings said. In future systems, updates could be much faster. But in older ones, the limitations on speed remain.
“When you talk about DevSecOps in its purest form, you’re pushing stuff out there, like, on a daily basis,” Jennings said. “You can’t do that with a B-52 because of the way it’s architected, but I can still create changes to that.” It’s all just a matter of time.
Late last month, Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico welcomed a new resident: an AC-130J Ghostrider flying in from its old home at Hurlburt Field, Fla.
The arrival, celebrated with an official ceremony Sept. 5, marks a new chapter for Air Force gunship aircrew training, which is currently split between the two locations. By bringing AC-130J training under one roof, planners hope to make the training pipeline faster and more efficient.
“The training quality has been outstanding,” Lt. Col. John Barringer, commander of the 73rd Special Operations Squadron at Kirtland, told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “We’re focused on being able to reduce the timeline, get that standard of training that the AC-130 community has established, and then get them [aircrew] to the operational unit faster.”
Under the status quo, AC-130J student pilots complete their initial qualification training at Kirtland for about four to six months. That’s where students learn to fly the C-130J, the four-engine transport plane of which the AC-130J is a variant.
Once they complete initial qualification training, students move to Hurlburt to start mission qualification training, which is where they learn to fly the AC-130J, a ground attack platform with two cannons sticking out the left side of the fuselage, the ability to drop a range of bombs and missiles, and a crew in back who operate the aircraft’s weapons and sensors.
Mission qualification training “really familiarizes them with how we employ the AC-130J Ghostrider,” said Lt. Col. Joshua Martin, operations officer for the 73rd SOS. “That is more like the mission sets that we accomplish, how to integrate with the crew for the mission.”
The problem with the current arrangement is the transit to Hurlburt: paperwork, finding lodging in Florida, and travel itself stretches the pipeline by about a month.
“It’s a break in training for at least a month, if not more,” Barringer said. “We reduce that month gap immediately by moving them right to the flightline as soon as they’re done with the initial qual.”
The move will also benefit the rest of the crew, as the 73rd will conduct all initial and upgrade training for pilots, combat system officers, weapons system operators, aerial gunners, and other positions, Martin said. The current arrangement for those other crew members is more disparate, with some Airmen training at the 19th Special Operations Squadron at Hurlburt.
The journey back to Kirtland also streamlines things on the organizational side of the house. Under the status quo, AC-130J crew training takes place under both Air Education and Training Command (AETC), which oversees the 58th Special Operations Wing at Kirtland, and Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC), which oversees Hurlburt Field.
Putting all training activities under AETC helps centralize training resources and expertise, which lets AFSOC focus on operations, Barringer and Martin explained. The 73rd SOS used to be an operational squadron stationed at Hurlburt Field, but it was deactivated in May and then reactivated a month later as a training squadron under AETC.
“They [AETC] are the experts on educating and training Airmen,” the squadron commander said. “So moving the training of all AC-130J aircrew into this major command—to me, that’s probably the biggest thing I’m excited about. This entire office, this entire organization is focused on training, and that’s it.”
“That allows AFSOC to focus on deployments, preparation for deployments, and readiness, while we focus on those training objectives,” Martin added.
The 58th Special Operations Wing trains about 10,000 aircrew every year for special operations, rescue, VIP airlift, missile site support, and other missions on a range of helicopter, fixed-wing, and tilt-rotor aircraft.
The plan to consolidate AC-130J training at Kirtland was first announced in 2020, with the first aircraft and Airmen scheduled to arrive in fiscal y2023. As it turned out, the first AC-130J did not arrive until Aug. 27, near the end of fiscal 2024.
When asked what caused the delay, Barringer and Martin said the answer was above their pay grade, but they acknowledged that military basing decisions are complicated processes involving a lengthy environmental study and other factors. It was not until May 2023 that Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall formally signed off on the basing decision.
The squadron will eventually host six aircraft and 299 people including aircrew, maintainers, and support staff. The goal is to be ready for student training by April 1, 2025, and right now the squadron is on pace to meet that goal, Berringer asked. Some temporary facilities will have to be built and other buildings updated to handle the new mission, but most of those projects are nearing completion, he added.
Coming to Kirtland also marks a new base for the AC-130 community, which previously was limited to Hurlburt and Cannon Air Force Base, N.M.
“Now we have three bases that folks could potentially rotate to,” Martin said. “It provides new opportunities for our folks to crossflow and to get some new experiences with formal training schoolhouses in AETC. So more opportunities there and a new community we can be involved with.”
Gen. John D. Lamontagne took over Sept. 9 as the top officer at Air Mobility Command, promising to continue the organization’s sweeping preparations for the prospect of war in the Pacific that have picked up speed in recent years.
The change of command brings the newly minted four-star from his front-row seat to NATO’s efforts to keep the war in Ukraine from spilling across Europe to Scott Air Force Base, Ill., where Lamontagne will lead nearly 107,000 troops and civilians who conduct daily transport and aerial refueling missions around the globe.
In a speech at the change of command ceremony, Lamontagne likened the current tactical hurdles Airmen face to the challenges their predecessors navigated in World War II. Troops of wars past secured battlefield victories even with limited resources under difficult circumstances, he said, and so will today’s Air Force.
“We fight tonight and win tonight with what we have tonight,” Lamontagne said. “We will also have an eye to the future so that our successors will also guarantee … the ability to project power anywhere around the world, in the face of any adversary, at the time and place of our choosing.”
As AMC commander, Lamontagne will have to juggle the operational demands of the U.S. military’s response to conflicts and humanitarian crises worldwide, training and acquisition initiatives to prepare for the future, and the health and well-being of his troops and their families.
The past 12 months alone have seen air mobility units airdrop aid to Gaza, conduct humanitarian aid and security missions in Haiti, and support the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Chad and Niger—plus longer-term initiatives to redefine how Air Force squadrons deploy and vie with China and Russia for military dominance.
Lamontagne is a decorated airlift pilot who previously served as the deputy commander of U.S. Air Forces in Europe-Air Forces Africa and held several other command roles across the mobility enterprise and on the Joint Staff. Military leaders at the ceremony said that resume has prepared the general to continue building a flexible, fast-moving command that can ferry troops and equipment anywhere on Earth.
“We’ve got a lot more work to do,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin said. “Gen. Lamontagne’s going to take us there.”
Lamontagne replaces Gen. Mike Minihan, who is retiring after more than three decades in uniform. “Mini,” a career C-130 Hercules airlift pilot known for his booming voice and small kindnesses to troops and their families, has served as AMC boss since October 2021.
Over the past three years, Minihan has urged Airmen to connect with a mission bigger than themselves as the Air Force looks to the Pacific. He has ordered units to ensure they can perform in the vast Pacific, emphasized the importance of mental health, and encouraged troops to bend tactical rules to push missions farther and faster than in decades past. He’s also brought on the troubled KC-46 Pegasus tanker while exploring future aircraft that could blur the lines between traditional airlifters and tankers.
“I stand here reluctant and defiant that this is my last act of uniformed service,” he said, “reluctant that the best job and also the longest job that I’ve ever had terminates in just a few moments; defiant that I’ve been judged excess.”
“The greatest gift warriors can give to one another is the gift of respect,” he said. “You have mine, always.”
Minihan is an “Airman’s Airman” who led the command with a steady hand during turbulent times, said his predecessor, U.S. Transportation Command boss Gen. Jacqueline Van Ovost.
“He brought a passion that he wore on his sleeve … which empowered others to do the same,” Allvin added. “He had a passion for the mission, and a drive and a personality that was infectious and led people to want to follow.”
The service chief pledged to continue Minihan’s push for more realistic training that illuminates where the Air Force is ready for war—and where it still falls short.
“You can’t win the fight if you can’t get there, and you can’t sustain the fight,” Allvin said. “The joint force is waking up to this. … That’s something that will be a hallmark of Gen. Mike Minihan and [his wife] Ashley’s time here.”
Conventional software processes no longer make sense in an age where technology changes overnight and sensors and software systems either keep pace or fail. But trying to adapt modern commercial software practices to legacy applications and contracting is no easy task.
“We’ve got rules and regulations, and you have got to check all these boxes,” said Airman-turned-bureaucracy hacker Bryon Kroger, Founder and CEO of Rise8, a software development house specializing in mission-critical software applications.
As an Air Force intelligence officer operating in combat zones, Kroger observed the tragic results of the failure to fix known software flaws. Later, as an acquisition officer and pioneer with the Air Force’s Kessel Run software factory, he helped deliver the kind of rapid software updates he wished he’d had in combat.
Now he’s dedicating himself to ensuring future warfighters get the updates they need at the speed of relevance.
“Our ability to conduct future warfare will be about how quickly we can respond to the enemy with new software,” Kroger said. “Not just offensive and defensive cyber, but new software capabilities to run the war.”
The idea of rapid software updates can be scary for those who grew up in a conventional development environment, where it takes years to gather requirements, code to those requirements, and then test the finished product before an Authority to Operate (ATO) is granted.
But speed does not have to mean eliminating all those safeguards. “The military lives in a world where we say: ‘Well, we want to make sure that what you’re delivering works,’” Kroger said.
That’s still necessary. But there are ways to ensure software is secure and reliable without having to wait a year or more for an ATO.
It was at Kessel Run that Kroger first pursued the concept of a continuous ATO (cATO). It’s a secure and reliable means for ensuring that software updates can be pushed into production quickly, relying on software “containers” to narrow the scope of what needs to be tested and proven before software goes live. Automation ensures that code is tested and complies with all requirements.
In a peer conflict, Kroger said, “we’re going to find out very quickly that our software is not up to the task.” That’s to be expected. The challenge is how fast can fixes be put into action.
In conventional software development, requirements are compiled and lumped together such that an update may take years to complete. Pushing some of those components into production sooner entails risk.
“Commanders do have a lot of leeway to accept risk, but not very many people want to get crosswise with the law and find themselves on the floor of Congress explaining why there was a major cybersecurity breach,” Kroger said.
But in a modern, agile software development context, developers work more closely with operators and break down the requirements into more digestible pieces that can be completed in a matter of hours, days, weeks, or months instead of years. These “sprints” define the pace of development.
Called DevOps or DevSecOps, this more rapid process can accelerate capability to the warfighter—but only if the software, once developed, can be cleared for use in production. That requires an initial ATO.
The continuous ATO (cATO) eliminates the delays that come with leaving testing and certification to the end. By doing those things in parallel time is saved and mission effectiveness improved, Kroger said.
Case in point: “In Ukraine, where Starlink was getting jammed, they deployed a software update to the Starlink system and stopped the jamming immediately,” Kroger said.
To deliver results like that, DOD needs to modernize its authorization processes.
In May, the Pentagon published evaluation criteria for obtaining a cATO. “DOD must respond quickly to rapidly changing threats through the continuous integration and
delivery of capabilities, cybersecurity, resiliency, and survivability,” the document states. “To allow software delivery organizations to deploy more secure software faster, the Department will implement a new approach to system authorizations: Continuous Authorization to Operate (cATO).”
Those “organizations that want to move faster and are willing to adopt the necessary culture change… [must make the shift from] a document-based, point-in-time
technical security assessment approach … to a continuous risk determination and authorization concept by continuously assessing, monitoring, and managing risk.”
What’s more, the document concludes, “cATO raises the security standard over a traditional Authorization to Operate (ATO) and provides the ability to deploy software more rapidly to the field while improving security.”
Suppose for example a defense agency wants a web-based application deployed in the cloud. Before starting, “you should have the cloud in place, the platform that the app’s going to run on, and the path to get there,” Kroger said.
The path to production depends on a level of trust. Ideally, “the authorizing officials should all trust each other,” Kroger said. Achieving that level of trust requires “government and industry coming together to establish enterprise-level paths to production that are relatively consistent across the services and maybe even the agencies.”
Such a clear production pipeline won’t solve every authorization-related problem, Kroger admits. “But it will solve probably 80 percent of the use cases.”
Once the bulk of cases are covered, the remainder can be dealt with more effectively. One ATO—or cATO—at a time.
Sept. 9 marked the end of an era as Gen. Mike Minihan, the head of Air Mobility Command, retired after a 34-year career and passed the baton to Gen. John D. Lamontagne at a ceremony at Scott Air Force Base, Ill.
During his tenure, Minihan oversaw some of the most demanding periods in AMC history. The command’s 107,000 troops and 1,100 aircraft responded to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s invasion of Gaza; moved U.S. troops out of Niger; delivered aid to a series of humanitarian crises, and put on Mobility Guardian 2023, a massive exercise where 70 aircraft, 3,000 personnel, and several international partners practiced moving troops and supplies across the Pacific for two weeks.
Mobility Guardian was just one part of a wider effort across the Air Force to prepare for possible future conflict against a near-peer rival such as Russia or China. Elsewhere, mobility troops are flying longer sorties than ever to prepare for the vast reaches of the Pacific and working in smaller teams than ever so they can quickly avoid incoming missile strikes.
It’s a lot to juggle, which is why Minihan wishes he could give mobility Airmen an easier way to handle it all.
“The reality is, we have to find ways that can handle both the tyranny of the urgent and also plan for the future,” he said. “So if I had one gift that I could give to the Airmen of Air Mobility Command, it would be predictability. We have to, with all of that, still provide, to the best we can, predictability so their professional and personal lives are not continually in a state of chaos.”
Every three minutes around the clock, a mobility aircraft takes off or lands after refueling fighters, hauling supplies for a humanitarian relief effort, or a wide range of other missions. That tempo picks up in response to crises, and with only so many aircraft and crews available, AMC is sometimes referred to as “Another Missed Christmas.”
“When we surge, we have to provide an opposite recovery time so that what was lost can be gained back, but also we don’t lose what should have been done,” he said. “So we have to really proactively drive the recovery for the Guard, Active-Duty, Reserve when it comes to the surges that they do routinely.”
Other generals have raised similar concerns. Earlier this year, Maj. Gen. Corey J. Martin, then-head of the 18th Air Force, the only Numbered Air Force under AMC, said mobility Airmen may need their own version of the Air Force Force Generation deployment schedule (AFFORGEN), a two-year cycle made up of four phases: prepare, certify, deploy, and reset, each of which lasts six months.
“Our Airmen don’t necessarily have the luxury of having a six-month reset in the traditional sense that it was designed,” Martin told Air & Space Forces Magazine.
In the meantime, Minihan strived to make it easier for Airmen to handle life stress through “Warrior Heart,” an effort to give equal attention and priority to mind, body, and craft by eliminating the stigma surrounding mental health treatment, lowering barriers to treatment, and increasing access and options.
The general pointed out Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, which in July 2023 launched a program called Sean’s Room, where service members can walk into a room at the 305th Air Mobility Wing’s Passenger Terminal and get confidential, informal peer support from trained volunteer Airmen.
The idea lines up with what then-Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force JoAnne Bass said in February: only two out of every 10 Airmen who seek mental health need clinical support, according to mental health providers. “The other eight just need to know someone cares,” she said.
“There is a shortage of mental health providers, but there is not a shortage of leaders and wingmen,” Bass added.
By October, Sean’s Room had already helped more than 500 guests and saved nine lives, according to Senior Airman Connor Runkle, a C-17 crew chief who played a key role standing up the program along with 305th AMW commander Col. Elizabeth Hanson.
“These individuals received the help and support they needed because we were there to answer their calls,” Runkle said in a press release last year.
Minihan wants mobility wings to have the resources they need to pursue those kinds of ideas.
“We need to be the headquarters that supplies those tools,” he said. “I think we’ve made enormous progress. At the same time, I know we’ve got a lot more to do.”
Resource issues extend beyond mental health. After Mobility Guardian, Minihan set a goal to outfit 25 percent of the mobility enterprise with connectivity upgrades by 2025. Airmen say secure, beyond-line-of-sight communication—a capability enjoyed by fighter and bomber pilots for decades—is crucial for them to fly the rest of the joint force across the Pacific in a near-peer conflict. But progress has been slow, and reaching the goal by 2025 is very much in doubt.
“There is absolutely a way that we can still get there,” he said. “However, it’s in jeopardy unless we get some infusion of resourcing earlier.”
The technology to provide that connectivity exists. When asked what might be getting in the way, Minihan pointed to the Air Force-wide resourcing problem, the fact that AMC is starting from further behind than other major commands, and the unnecessary bureaucracy that former Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. criticized in his “Accelerate Change or Lose” strategy.
“I think my frustrations are similar to what Gen. Brown laid out,” Minihan said. “The bureaucracy is always a challenge, especially when it comes to developing new technology or instituting technology that already exists.”
In speeches and memos, Minihan made strong statements about the urgency of preparing for near-peer conflict, which experts say will be far more bloody than any Americans have seen for generations. The statements were too strong, some argued—in 2023, the Pentagon distanced itself from a memo in which Minihan predicted a war with China in 2025 and encouraged his Airmen to get to the shooting range and “aim for the head.”
What was his strategy? The general said it was to be clear and concise on the things that he as AMC boss felt needed urgent action.
“I’ve been consistent throughout my whole career in my approach towards commanding and putting a team on the field that’s ready to dominate and win,” he said.
That, and his experience as deputy commander for U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, was why he was promoted to be AMC boss in October 2021, he said.
“I was also told by Gen. Brown, the morning he promoted me and we did the change of command, to go faster,” he said. “I felt a sense of urgency and action from the get-go. I use tools to help define what that urgency and action would look like, and that urgency and action that was delivered by those tools has been extremely successful.
“I am not the least bit concerned about the legacy of Mike Minihan,” he added. “I am consumed with the legacy for Air Mobility Command and its total force Airmen, civilians, families, retirees, everybody that wore the AMC patch past, present, and future.”
The general’s own future lies in Florida, where he will move to help take care of his parents, explore doing nonprofit work, and be available for service members who want advice.
“I have not been able to control my personal tempo for decades,” he said. “I’m looking forward to learning the civilian side of Mike Minihan, and I’m looking forward to spending incredible amounts of time with my family.”
Now it’s up to Gen. Lamontagne to keep building the momentum for what Minihan calls “the most relied-upon force in the history of warfare.”
“Mobility Airmen understand that their efforts … deliver the peace, prosperity, and prestige every day that not just this nation deserves, but the free world deserves,” he said. “We’ve got to do everything in our power to make sure that they have the tools necessary to be successful.”