Space Force Wants Your Help Naming All Its Satellites

Oct. 30, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

The Air Force has the F-22 Raptor. The Navy has its Nimitz-class (CVN-68) aircraft carriers. The Army has the M2 Bradley Fighting Vehicle. Now the Space Force wants in on the name game, and is planning to start naming its satellites, radars, and other weapons recognizable names.

Guardians can help. Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman’s latest “C-Note” memo to Guardians went out Oct. 25, inviting Guardians to put their heads together to come up with the best ways to identify USSF spacecraft.

“How do we talk about our equipment in the Space Force?” Saltzman asked. “How do we name the systems we operate? Do those names accurately reflect the Guardian spirit—the space warfighting culture that we are working to build? I am not convinced that they do. But we are making strides to rectify that.”

Space Force systems are typically known by clunky, unpronouncable acronyms—SBIRS for Space-Based Infrared System, or GSSAP for Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program, or SCN for Satellite Control Network. Naming them could make them more memorable and recognizable to the public.

Last October, the Space Force established a new designation system for future platforms with Space Force Instruction 16-403, but that move did nothing to change existing naming conventions. “It is a tremendous step to move from where we are today,” Saltzman wrote in his C-Note, “to a world in which all our systems are named to reflect the culture of their operators.”

The CSO asked Guardians to share ideas for satellite naming “themes” by Nov. 30. To prime the pump, he offered ideas of his own: “For example, should we name the systems within our Missile Warning and Tracking activities after birds of prey? Or systems within SATCOM activities after canines? Should we leverage mythology? Natural phenomena?”

Saltzman listed 10 activities of interest:

Cyber warfare

Electromagnetic warfare

Missile Warning and Tracking

Navigation Warfare

Orbital Warfare

Reconnaissance

Satellite Communications

Space-Based Sensing and Targeting

Surveillance

Theater Electromagnetic Warfare

The service is not looking for names of specific platforms at this stage, but themes for these specific categories, an official told Air & Space Forces Magazine. Names could come later, once themes are selected.

Saltzman directed Guardians to read Space Force Instruction 16-403 before submitting suggestions. That document, released with little fanfare last fall and updated in July, sets requirements: Names should be “no more than two short words,” must not infringe on any copyrights (take note, Sci-Fi fans), and must not sound like the names of some existing weapons system; names should also be “within scope of DOD values and morals.”

The designation system for Space Force weapons is similar to the Tri-Service Aircraft Designation System. The first component describes the mission and environment of the system, while the second component signifies “the design number and the design series.” The system also includes optional prefixes if the system is experimental, a prototype, or has an otherwise modified mission.

For instance, a communications satellite constellation located in low-Earth orbit, like the one being developed by the Space Development Agency, could be designated CL-1 or some other design number. GPS, a navigation warfare system in medium-Earth orbit, could be designated NM-3 or some other number.

The instruction notes that the designation system will only be required for new systems developed after October 2023, to include systems currently in development. Each system will require a designation no later than preliminary design review, and a designation and popular name prior to System Fielding Decision.

However, Guardians can request that today’s fielded systems also receive a designation and name, the instruction notes.

Space Force Weapons System Designations

Modified Mission (optional)	Basic Mission	Environment
T – Test/Training/Range	A – Attack	C – Cyberspace
Y – Prototype	B – Battle Management	D – Deep Space
X – Experimental	C – Communications	G – Geosynchronous Orbit
Z – Scientific/Calibration	D – Defend	M – Medium-Earth Orbit
	E – Electromagnetic Warfare	H – Highly Elliptical Orbit
	K – Support	L – Low-Earth Orbit
	M – Meterological	T – Terrestrial
	N – Navigation Warfare	V – Various
	P – Pursuit
	R – Reconnaissance
	S – Surveillance
	W – Warning & Tracking

Kendall: In US-China ‘Race for Technological Superiority,’ AI May Be the Key

Oct. 29, 2024 | By John A. Tirpak

China thinks it will be able to invade Taiwan by 2027 and has developed a technology edge in many key areas—but it is artificial intelligence that may be the decisive factor should conflict erupt, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said Oct. 29.

In a panel discussion at the Microelectronics Commons Annual Meeting and National Semiconductor Technology Center Symposium, Kendall reiterated what has been the defining message of his tenure: China has grown in capability, erasing U.S. military advantages, and represents an imminent threat.

Chinese president Xi Jinping “has told his military to be ready by 2027 to take Taiwan and defeat the United States if we intervene,” Kendall said. “They’re working very hard to meet that goal. I have no idea what Xi Jinping will do in 2027, but I am pretty sure that his military will tell him they’re ready, and we’ll be in a period of much greater risk.”

That risk, Kendall said, is heightened by the fact that China has designed its forces to blunt American “high value assets”—satellites, large military bases, aircraft carriers and capital ships, air bases, command and control nodes and logistical nodes—and abandoned its “large, relatively primitive” force structure centered on a large standing army.

On top of that, the Chinese invested in advanced tech—and stole U.S. intellectual property. As a result, Kendall said, they now have an advantage in cruise missiles and hypersonic weapons and are working to build one with targeting satellites and advanced, automated battle management systems.

Moreover, ‘they’re reaching out to ever-longer ranges to try to attack assets such as our tankers, for example, or our command-and-control aircraft that traditionally have operated out of range of the threats and been able to operate pretty much with impunity,” the secretary said.

Now, the U.S. and China are in “a race for technological superiority” rather than a “classic arms race … where we’re trying to build more battleships than they are.”

Addressing the topic of the conference, Kendall said microelectronics is “the enabling technology for all sorts of advances that we’re making. There are people who have said that … the AI competition is essentially going to determine who’s the winner in the next battlefield. I don’t think that’s all that far off.”

But rather than use AI as a catch-all buzzword, Kendall said he thinks of it in terms of the “specific applications” to which it can be applied, such as pattern recognition, automation, decision-making, and support functions. “On the battlefields of Europe … and to some degree, in the Middle East” are proving that these applications are “changing the character of warfare,” he said.

Perhaps the most high profile AI application for the Air Force is in its Collaborative Combat Aircraft program.

In May, Kendall flew in the X-62 VISTA F-16, which is equipped to test out “AI agents” for dogfighting. The computer on board was given a situation and flew against live-crew adversaries.

“We … did that with multiple different contractors [and] versions of the software, and it worked very well,” he said. The CCA program is “moving forward pretty quickly” and will require billions of dollars that depends on microelectronics, Kendall said.

Arati Prabhakar, of the White House Office of Science and Technology, shared the stage with Kendall and likened the AI revolution to former Defense Secretary William Perry’s push for stealth, the Global Positioning System, and other “transformational capabilities” in the 1970s.

“At the time, [Perry] testified before Congress, and he said, ‘if we do this, it will give us a 40-year advantage, because no one else has access to these technologies.’ Well, 40 years have come and gone and he was right, but we’re not going to get 40 years from any one next step in capability, because as hard as and fast as we are all running, we’re not the only country that gets to play in advanced technology anymore,” Prabhakar said.

Because of that, Prabhakar said, breakthrough research is important, but even more vital is the ability “to get it into production and use.”

Kendall said he views technology development as relying first on “exquisite, deep knowledge to make breakthroughs and move move forward. But “once that that breakthrough has been accomplished by very specialized people, generalists can do applications of that technology to a wide range of wide range of things. So we need both … you need ways to translate those ideas into reality as quickly as possible, to demonstrate they can actually be [put into] things you can really build.”

Air Force Chief: Small Drones Are Both ‘Threat and Opportunity’

Oct. 29, 2024 | By Chris Gordon

The proliferation of drones in the war in Ukraine has changed how many experts see the future of warfare. But the Air Force’s top general is cautioning against overstating those lessons as the U.S. seeks to deter China and Russia and prepare for other major threats.

“I think the appearance of drones and the appearance of rapidly replicable, low-cost, mass airborne platforms offers both a threat and an opportunity,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin said Oct. 25 at the Military Reporters and Editors Conference in Washington, D.C.

There is no question that drones provide the military with a way to strike targets with precision in a cost-effective way. That offers the opportunity, Allvin said, “to deliver combat airpower, sensing, communications in a different way.”

But what works well in Ukraine, he added, may have less utility in the western Pacific as the U.S. seeks to counter China’s growing military.

“The question that we need to address as we look at how it might impact and find its way into our Air Force writ large is the utility across the geography,” Allvin added. “I would not want us to take what’s going on in Ukraine and … transport that immediately to the Indo-Pacific because of the nature of the tyranny of distance.”

Pentagon officials have noted the utility of drones for both Russian and Ukrainian forces. Russia has used Iranian-made drones to attack Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. Russian forces have also employed small quadcopter-style and first-person view drones for reconnaissance and aerial strikes.

Ukraine, in turn, has developed long-range drones that can strike targets in Russia from over 400 kilometers away, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III said last week.

DOD recently gave Ukraine’s drone industry $800 million to keep working on long-range aircraft. And drone technology has utility for the U.S. as well, as the Air Force pursues its future force design.

“Those three words don’t often belong in the same text: inexpensive, precise, and long-range,” said Allvin. “But we’re looking at it from both that opportunity and threat perspective on how we might integrate those into the force.”

Still, many of the cutting-edge systems the Air Force is pursuing for great power competition are more sophisticated and costly than the UAVs that have proliferated in Ukraine’s airspace.

The Air Force is betting big on Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), envisioned as wingman drones that cost $25 million each and fly alongside the service’s manned fighters and bombers. The first series of designs has been unveiled, and Allvin said 150 CCAs will be in service within the next five years. The capability and mass that could be provided by those platforms have led the service to reevaluate its future manned fighter needs.

“Collaborative Combat Aircraft, I don’t want people to think of those as a quadcopter-style drone,” said Allvin. “They are certainly of a different class, and the idea is for them to be autonomous and collaborative with current systems.”

Yet another challenge is figuring out how to counter cheap drones that are used by adversaries. In the past year, U.S. troops in the Middle East have been targeted by Iranian-backed groups armed with one-way drone attack drones, including one drone strike that killed three Soldiers in Jordan in February.

Iran has also deployed one-way attack drones against Israel, which Air Force F-15E and F-16 fighters helped shoot down in April, and Iranian-backed Houthis have attacked shipping in the Red Sea, Gulf Aden, and Bab el-Mandeb strait in part with one-way attack drones by air and sea.

“The counter small-UAS threat is something that is certainly growing at a concerning pace,” Allvin said. “The barrier entry to that is low, the ability to attribute [the attack] is low. … We plan on really working on that and developing the counter small UAS to be able to counter the threats, not only here, but also the ones that we are facing overseas.”

IG Spanks Boeing and USAF Over Wasteful Spare Parts

Oct. 29, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

A whistleblower complaint about overpriced lavatory soap dispensers for the C-17 Globemaster III triggered a Pentagon investigation that uncovered about $1 million in overpayments for spare parts and a lack of oversight by the Air Force over its contractor, Boeing.

The Department of Defense Inspector General investigation reviewed 46 different parts and found “the Air Force did not pay a fair and reasonable prices” for 12 of them. Pricing data for 25 other parts was unavailable because the Air Force lacked historical records for past orders. And in some instances the purchase price paid by Boeing did not match the listed unit price for some parts.

The Air Force has awarded multiple C-17 sustainment contracts to Boeing, which built the C-17, including $23.8 billion performance-based logistics deal for 2021 to 2031. Under that contract, Boeing purchases spare parts for the C-17, and the Air Force reimburses it for the expense.

Among the 46 parts examined, the IG found the Air Force “paid reasonable prices for nine,” overpaid for 12, and that no clear answer could be found for the remaining 25. The IG defined “unreasonable” as 25 percent or more above list price.

“Boeing is responsible for being an effective agent of the Government when purchasing the spare parts, which includes obtaining fair and reasonable prices,” the DOD IG said. “The Air Force is responsible for providing surveillance during performance of the contracts to ensure Boeing uses effective cost control.”

The inspector general found fault with both parties. A tipster calling the IG’s whistleblower hotline reported the cost of the soap dispensers, leading to the review that examined 46 parts purchased during the five years from 2018 to 2022.

The IG redacted details of prices and quantities in the public release, but it noted that the soap dispensers are equivalent to those used in a residential or commercial restaurant bathrooms and that the markup was 80 times over the commercially available cost. In all, the Air Force paid Boeing back nearly $151,000 for soap dispensers worth just over $2,000, a difference of $149,072, according to the report.

Other examples the report cited included a Pressure Transmitters, billed at 36 times the commercially available cost; a Protective Dust and Moisture Plug, billed at 55 times commercial cost, and Vaneaxial Fans, billed at 14 times the commercial rate.

The IG faulted Air Force acquisition officials for failing to exercise to exercise their oversight role and for not catching the wasteful spending.

Up until 2022, Boeing used a system called the BSRAM to generate an “estimate of the types and quantities of parts that Boeing believes will be required to meet contractual requirements based on stock levels, maintenance schedules, models that predict which parts will need replacement, and parts that will require repair in the next few years,” the report notes. Yet Air Force officials never validated the accuracy of the system. The IG found that a majority of the spare parts purchased were not included in the initial estimates.

The IG also faulted Air Force officials for failing in their “surveillance” role when Boeing paid significantly more than it said it would. Officials never reviewed spare parts invoices, they told investigators.

“Until the Air Force establishes controls to require contracting officials to review spare parts purchases throughout the execution of the contract, the Air Force will continue to overpay for spare parts for the remainder of the … contract,” the office warned. “Furthermore, if the Air Force continues to overpay for spare parts, it will result in less funding for spare parts, which may reduce the number of spare parts that Boeing can purchase on the contract.”

The IG recommended that the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center and the C-17 program office develop controls for reviewing Boeing’s reports on material costs, require the contractor to notify the office if spare parts costs rise 25 percent or more above expected pricing, and regularly review invoices and spare part prices.

AFLCMC agreed with the recommendations. But the IG said AFLCMC officials did not not address its specific concerns, so its recommendations remain unresolved.

The DOD IG has previously criticized Air Force’s processes for buying spare parts. In August, the agency released a report faulting USAF for lacking proper guidance and controls for instances where contractors must pay it back for spare parts deemed defective. That report, which focused on C-130 aircraft, said the Air Force is frequently left with millions of dollars’ worth of parts that can’t be used, sometimes resulting in additional spending to get aircraft fixed and flying again.

AI ‘Will Enhance’ Nuclear Command and Control, Says STRATCOM Boss

Oct. 28, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

The Pentagon nuclear command, control, and communications enterprise is decades old and desperate for an upgrade, says the head of U.S. Strategic Command, and artificial intelligence could help fortify nuclear C3 for its no-fail mission.

STRATCOM is “exploring all possible technologies, techniques, and methods to assist with the modernization of our NC3 capabilities,” said Air Force Gen. Anthony J. Cotton, who has led the command since December 2022.

“AI will enhance our decision-making capabilities,” Cotton said at the 2024 Department of Defense Intelligence Information System Conference. “But we must never allow artificial intelligence to make those decisions for us.”

Growing threats, an overwhelming flow of sensor data, and increasing cybersecurity concerns are driving the need for AI to keep American forces a step ahead of those seeking to challenge the U.S., Cotton said. “Advanced systems can inform us faster and more efficiently,” he explained. “But we must always maintain a human decision in the loop to maximize the adoption of these capabilities and maintain our edge over our adversaries.”

Cotton said AI can help give leaders more “decision space” to ensure the entire nuclear enterprise stays secure. “Our adversaries must know that our nuclear command and control and other capabilities that provide decision advantage are at the ready, 24/7, 365 and cannot be compromised or defeated,” Cotton said.

Cotton’s predecessors at STRATCOM, Adm. Charles Richard and Gen. John E. Hyten, also addressed NC3 modernization. But at a time when the Air Force is also trying to modernize its strategic bomber force with the B-21 Raider bomber, the ICBM force with the Sentinel missile, and its ballistic missile submarine force with the Columbia class submarines, NC3 gets little attention—even though none of those systems can be effective without it.

“Despite warnings from top national security officials, important improvements to NC3 have been fragmented,” wrote Peter L. Hays of the Center for Strategic and International Studies and consultant Sarah Mineiro in an Oct. 28 blog post for the Atlantic Council.

Heather Penney, senior resident fellow at AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, noted in a recent podcast that NC3 is often taken for granted, “because it’s largely invisible … underground cables, computers, communications links, and a very few specialized aircraft and satellites are the backbone of this mission function,” she said. “But it’s not like we see those things at air shows or on promotional posters.”

Chris Adams, general manager of Northrop Grumman’s Strategic Space Systems Division, said the real challenge with NC3 is that it’s comprised of so many pieces. “It’s not a single system that was deployed at one point in time,” he said on the Mitchell Institute podcast. “It’s a system of systems. Itreally encompasses hundreds of individual systems that are modernized and sustained over a long period of time in response to an ever-changing threat.”

Injecting AI into some of those systems offers the possibility of more speed and the ability to make sense of huge amounts of information drawn in by that system of systems. There are risks with AI, as researchers have noted. including misplaced trust in AI, “poisoned” data ingested into systems, inaccurate algorithms, and more.

Cotton accounted for such pitfalls, but sees greater promise overall. “Advanced AI and robust data analytics capabilities provide decision advantage and improve our deterrence posture,” he said. “IT and AI superiority allows for more effective integration of conventional and nuclear capabilities, strengthening deterrence.”

AI could be used to automate data collection and accelerate data sharing and integration with allies, he suggested. But he also said “we need to direct research efforts to understand the risks of cascading effects of AI models, emergent and unexpected behaviors, and indirect integration of AI into nuclear decision-making processes.”

Implementing new NC3 systems—with and without artificial intelligence—will need to be a deliberate process said, Adams said.

“We have to consider when, where, and how we want to deploy the next generation of systems incrementally and carefully, so we don’t leave any vulnerabilities,” Adams said. “A good analogy is grabbing the next ring on the playground before letting go of the last one.”

NGAD Review to Finish Before End of Year, Allvin Says

Oct. 28, 2024 | By Chris Gordon

The future of the Air Force’s next-generation combat jet will be decided by the end of the year, the service’s top officer said Oct. 25.

“We intend to have that by December,” Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin said at the Military Reporters and Editors Conference in Washington, D.C. “We also want to be able to influence the Department’s Presidential Budget Submission in February.”

As currently conceived, the Next-Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) combat aircraft is a “very expensive, very capable crewed platform,” Allvin said. The Air Force paused the project this summer as it was reaching a decision point for choosing between competing designs to replace the F-22 Raptor. Rather than commit, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall wanted to make sure the Air Force wasn’t betting its future on a capability that might be had at lower cost if requirements were changed.

The NGAD design precedes the progress USAF has made with semi-autonomous Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA). Allvin said the Air Force plans to have more than 150 CCAs in service within the next five years.

CCAs don’t require life-support systems and could be developed at a fraction of the cost of manned fighters. That’s raising questions about what the mix of unmanned and manned aircraft should be.

“NGAD is a family of systems,” Allvin said. “One piece of the system is the NGAD penetrating counterair crewed platform. Some would say it’s the follow-on to the F-22. … It is part of a family of systems. That family of systems includes Collaborative Combat Aircraft, which are uncrewed. But those are already underway.”

The Air Force is studying its future force design at the same time, driven by China’s growing military and its anti-access/area denial strategy in the South China Sea. The manned NGAD platform was supposed to be able to penetrate those defenses, but the threat today is greater than it was just a few years ago.

“The ability to say, ‘We know that when this platform delivers, it is going to meet the threat’—I think we’re less certain about that than we were when we designed it,” Allvin said.

“We are now in the point where … if we go down this path, this will be a very, very costly program,” Alvin added. “The question is, with the cost, the capability, and where the threat is, is it the right [choice]?”

Pausing to consider all the options is not “slow rolling or stalling,” Allvin said. “I would call it something that’s prudent because once we go through this one-way door, it’s hard to pivot.”

The Air Force has pegged the cost of NGAD at “hundreds of millions of dollars,” but Kendall said in September that he wants NGAD capability in a far less costly platform: no more than the cost of today’s F-35—less than half the cost of the projected NGAD crewed aircraft.

CCAs are what changed Kendall’s thinking. Designed to work in close collaboration with F-35s and B-21 Raider bombers, they could reduce the requirement for a penetrating combat jet and make additional B-21s more attractive to Air Force planners. The Air Force has never said NGAD would resemble the F-22 or other fighter-type platforms, designed to outmaneuver rival fighters. Its mission is to penetrate and suppress enemy air defenses, which might make it more like a smaller, faster stealth bomber.

Would the Air Force consider buying more than the 100 B-21s now planned? Allvin answered: “We have not taken that off the table.”

Yet developing and fielding crewed NGAD aircraft remains a possibility, Allvin said. “I don’t like people having the presupposition that because we’re pausing and analyzing, we’re walking away from it,” he said. “That decision has not been made.”

A blue-ribbon panel, including three former Air Force Chiefs of Staff, one former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and two leading civilian experts is reviewing the evidence now and will recommend a way forward in December.

“As we are analyzing this, we need to understand, ‘Is this the best for the cost of what we think the threat is going to be?’ and ‘Is this the best way to be able to achieve air superiority?’” Allvin said. “And if it turns out that this platform design, as currently instantiated, is the best … we have to figure out how to pay for it.”

Air Force F-16s from Germany Deploy to Middle East

Oct. 27, 2024 | By Chris Gordon

As tensions spiral in the Middle East, U.S. Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcons from Germany have flown to the region, U.S. Central Command said Oct. 25.

The F-16s are from the 480th Fighter Squadron at Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany, and represent some of the service’s most advanced models.

They arrived just a little before Israeli aircraft attacked Iran on Oct. 26 in retaliation for Tehran’s ballistic missile attack on Israel on Oct. 1. The U.S. is hoping the fighting between Israel and Iran will end at this point and has warned Iran against escalating the confrontation.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III told his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant, that day that “the United States is well-postured to defend U.S. forces, facilities, and partners across the region” and that “Iran should not make the mistake of responding to Israel’s strikes, which should mark the end of this exchange,” according to a Pentagon readout of the call.

The 480th Fighter Squadron has some of the Air Force’s most capable F-16s, the so-called Block 50 jets that specialize in suppressing enemy air defenses. They will eventually replace the F-16s previously deployed to the Middle East from the 510th Fighter Squadron, based at Aviano Air Base, Italy, which were sent to the region in the spring. But to boost U.S. airpower in the region, the return of the Aviano F-16s has been delayed, giving the U.S. two F-16 squadrons in the Middle East.

An image from video shows a cockpit view of an F-16 from the 480th Fighter Squadron, Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany, operating as an opposition force for a counter-air exercise in June 2024. **Chris Gordon/staff**

U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptors are also in the region while additional squadrons of F-15 Strike Eagles and A-10 Thunderbolt II attack planes also arrived in the past month. The U.S. has also bolstered its air defense in the region with the deployment of a Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) ballistic missile defense system to Israel.

The Air Force F-16s, F-15E Strike Eagles, and F-22s that have deployed to the Middle East are equipped with active electronically scanned array (AESA) radars. That makes those fighters more capable of taking down drones, such as those launched by Iran, which fly at a low altitude and have a small radar cross-section, a senior U.S. defense official told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

“We are deploying them … as timely as we can,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin said when asked about the Air Force units sent to the region at the Military Reporters and Editors Conference on Oct. 25. “We certainly intend to fulfill all of those as soon as possible.”

‘Every Dirt Boy’s Dream’: RED HORSE Airmen Restore Pacific WWII Airfield

Oct. 25, 2024 | By David Roza

Clearing jungle and laying asphalt in tropical heat may not sound like fun to most people, but it’s a way of life for Rapid Engineer Deployable Heavy Operational Repair Squadron Engineers (RED HORSE) Airmen, who have spent the past year or so restoring World War II-era airfields on the Pacific island of Tinian.

“This is a huge scale,” Senior Master Sgt. Zachary Long of the 513th Expeditionary RED HORSE Squadron said in a video about the restoration effort posted to the Air Force Civil Engineers YouTube channel on Oct. 24.

“I mean, we’re talking like 500 acres, this area is, and [the Airmen] have the opportunity to run all the heavy equipment,” he added. “You can’t beat it. This is every Dirt Boy’s dream.”

Dirt Boyz is the term for civil engineer Airmen who get their hands dirty pouring concrete, operating bulldozers, fixing pipes, and all the other work involved in maintaining an air base or building a new one. Few units get more sweaty or dirty than RED HORSE squadrons, which move out fast to build or repair airfields, hangars, and other facilities when the Air Force needs it in a hurry.

Last year, the 820th RED HORSE Squadron from Nellis Air Force Base, Nev., arrived at Tinian to restore the runways at North Field, a complex of ramps, runways, and taxiways at the island’s north end. North Field was where Little Boy, the first nuclear weapon used in warfare, was assembled and loaded onto the B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay before its flight to drop the bomb on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945.

Tinian, Mariana Islands, 1945 after airfield construction, looking north to south. The massive North Field, 313th Bombardment Wing in front, West Field, 58th Bombardment Wing, in background. (U.S. Air Force Historical Research Agency photo)

The Enola Gay was just one of hundreds of aircraft that took off and landed there after the U.S. seized it from Japan in August, 1944.

“As soon as the island was seized, the Seabees, the Navy’s construction battalions, began work on the largest airbase of World War II—and in fact the largest airfield in the world at the time,” according to the National Park Service. Eventually 40,000 people worked at the base, which had six 8,500-foot runways: four in North Field and two more farther south at West Field.

International observers view the pit where the first atomic bomb used in warfare was loaded onto the Enola Gay, a B-29 Superfortress, Tinian, Feb. 13, 2024. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Akeem K. Campbell)

From there, B-29s took off to bomb Japan and Southeast Asia, but the airfields were largely abandoned by the U.S. military between 1946 and 2003, when Marines returned to Tinian for a training exercise. Marine aircraft and Guam Air National Guardsmen used a few North Field runways in the 2000s and 2010s, while Seabees and Marine engineers started improving infrastructure on the island at least as early as 2020.

The former West Field became the Tinian International Airport and is still in use to this day: Air Force F-22 fighters landed there for the first time in March 2023. That year, the Air Force went public with its plans to restore North Field, with then-Pacific Air Forces commander Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach telling Nikkei Asia that the area would be transformed into an “extensive” facility. The Air Force received $79 million in its 2024 budget for construction projects on the island.

An F-22 Raptor assigned to the 525th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron, Kadena Air Base, Japan, launches from Tinian International Airport, Northern Mariana Islands, during Exercise Agile Reaper 23-1, March 2, 2023. U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Hailey Staker

The return to Tinian is part of a strategy called Agile Combat Employment, where, in a conflict with China, small groups of Airmen would launch and recover aircraft from small, scattered air bases to avoid being targeted by long-range missiles. Tinian is one of several locations across the Pacific where the Air Force may operate in a future conflict.

But preparing those airfields takes work, and that’s where units such as RED HORSE come in. The 823rd RED HORSE Squadron from Hurlburt Field, Fla., spent more than six months restoring and rebuilding North Field, putting up new structures and clearing eight decades of overgrown vegetation, according to an April press release. The 823rd went home in April, but other RED HORSE units and Navy Seabees took up the task, with the goal of restoring over 20 million square feet of degraded World War II pavement. Restoring is easier than building brand-new runways, Airmen explained.

“Building new is not the way to go and it’s very expensive,” Lt. Col. Frank Blaz, former commander of the Guam Air National Guard’s 254th RED HORSE Squadron, said in the Civil Engineers video. “Repairing and rehabilitating what exists is a much better economic solution.”

Sometimes the work involved hacking through the jungle with a machete to find GPS coordinates marking the airfield boundary, Master Sgt. Jody Branson, operations superintendent with the 513th Expeditionary RED HORSE Squadron, told the Wall Street Journal in a recent video.

“This was part of the battle that we fought every day, going through the jungle to mark these points the entire day through the rain, through the humidity and the heat of the day,” he said.

Tinian’s North Field photographed from above in 2024. (Screenshot via YouTube/Air Force Civil Engineers)

The work paid off: squadron commander Maj. Blake Rothschild told the Journal that the team cleared North Field’s Charlie runway, which was completely covered in vegetation before they arrived.

“Over the last 60 days, what they have opened up is really monumental,” he said. “It’s crazy how fast they’ve done it.”

Completing the mission could take years, but it’s a top priority for Air Force officials, including Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin.

“Our Airmen at Tinian are successfully expanding our Agile Combat Employment options to enhance deterrence, increase flexibility, and, if needed, rapidly generate combat power,” Allvin said after visiting Tinian in April. “They are the pathfinders for advancing our scheme of maneuver in the Indo-Pacific.”

Northrop: USAF Weighs Buying More B-21 Bombers

Oct. 25, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

As the Air Force rethinks requirements for its Next-Generation Air Dominance fighter, it appears to be reconsidering the number of B-21 bombers it needs, as well.

“I think that’s exactly what the Air Force is looking at,” said Northrop Grumman CEO Kathy Warden, which makes the B-21 and is not competing for NGAD. “They are undertaking a force structure design review, and the Secretary has been open about looking at the various options they have for increasing their force size and has talked specifically about NGAD. And we know that B-21 is in the mix as well.”

Warden made her comments during an earnings call Oct. 24.

The Air Force is in the midst of a congressionally mandated force structure review and, at the same time, rushing to complete the NGAD requirements analysis ordered up after Secretary Frank Kendall paused NGAD ahead of a down-select decision on two competing designs this summer. NGAD has always been seen as an extension of the B-21 family of systems, a necessary addition to ensure the Raider gets to its target and makes it back out safely.

Air Force officials have insisted 100 Raiders is sufficient to the current need, though others have argued for building more. But Warden said Oct. 24 that the size of the B-21 fleet is one factor in part of a broader requirements review.

Cost is a major factor. Kendall paused NGAD because of the cost of each aircraft. Having previously suggested that each sixth-generation jet could cost multiple hundreds of millions of dollars, he said in September he’d prefer to pay no more than the cost of an F-35, or $80 million to $100 million per tail.

The difference, spread across a fleet size of 200-250 fighters, would yield tens of billions in savings. That’s where the B-21 comes into play. Asked during the Oct. 24 earnings call if NGAD savings could fund more B-21s, Warden made her comments.

The Air Force uses 2010 as the base year for calculating B-21 costs, when the unit cost per bomber was contractually set at $550 million. That puts its cost in current dollars at about $780 million. However, Kendall told Congress in April that the B-21 was below cost projections for low-rate initial production. The cost ceiling will go up for subsequent aircraft.

“It would be premature for me to suggest where that force structure review will end up,” Warden said of the Air Force study. “But I do think in the coming months, we may get a better indication from the Air Force as to how they’re thinking about B-21 quantities in the long run.”

In March, then-deputy chief for planning Lt. Gen. Richard G. Moore Jr. told lawmakers that a decision on a larger fleet wouldn’t be needed until the 2030s. A month later, Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin said he wasn’t looking to buy more than 100 because technological developments could produce something better by the time all those aircraft are built.

Others have argued for more Raiders, however. Air Force Gen. Anthony J. Cotton, the head of U.S. Strategic Command, has said he would “love” to have more B-21s.

“If you take a look at the real world operating requirements the Air Force has, [planners] fully understand that the Air Force’s combat capacity must grow,” retired Col. Mark Gunzinger of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “And if the challenge is to fight tonight, to respond over global ranges … that drives requirements for longer range capabilities, larger payloads, and capabilities that can operate in degraded, highly contested threat environments. That is a prescription for penetrating bombers. It’s a very common sense narrative for why we need to rebuild our bomber force.”

Gunzinger said the U.S. needs to scale up to deter two peer adversaries in Russia and China, and that more B-21s, procured at a faster rate, is the best way to do so.

“The most cost-effective way of doing that is to increase the acquisition of B-21 because it’s a two-for-one deal,” Gunzinger said. “It enhances conventional defense and it enhances nuclear deterrence.”

But Gunzinger questioned the idea of shifting spending from NGAD to B-21.

“I don’t think the capabilities they’re looking for in NGAD would mean that they could trade off NGAD for B-21 or vice versa,” Gunzinger said. “The fact is, the Air Force is so small and so old, it needs both, and it needs them in quantity.”

Another analyst, Christopher Bowie, has said: “We should plan to build more than the 100 currently on the books [because] no matter how capable an aircraft, it can only be in one place at one time.”

Citing studies from the Mitchell Institute, the MITRE Corporation, and the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, Gunzinger assessed that that the Air Force needs a bomber fleet of 300 or more aircraft, with 200 or so of them being stealthy, penetrating bombers like the B-2 or B-21.

All that discussion preceded Kendall’s decision to “pause” NGAD rather than commit to one design. He now has a senior-level panel, including three former Air Force chiefs and a former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, looking at options, and he has promised a decision by year’s end. If that triggers a reassessment and new competition, it could set back the NGAD program by years.

Not surprisingly, Warden said Northrop stands ready to increase B-21 production if asked.

“In the short run, we remain very focused on delivering them optionality. The performance that we are delivering gives them a capability that is in production now that is well below the cost target for the platform,” she said. “And we believe that that’s the role of industry, to give the government options as they think about their force structure.”

Warden said she expects the Air Force to award a second low-rate production contract before the end of the year. The service awarded the first LRIP contract after first flight of the bomber last year, though officials declined to disclose exact figures on the size of the deal and the number of aircraft covered.