STRATCOM Boss: AI Useful, But Don’t Expect ‘WarGames’

Nov. 20, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

The head of U.S. Strategic Command has no interest in replicating the plot of the 1983 film “WarGames.”

Put another way, Gen. Anthony J. Cotton wants to use artificial intelligence to more efficiently process vast amounts of data related to America’s nuclear weapons. But what to do with those weapons will remain a human-made decision, he said Nov. 19 at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

In “WarGames,” an artificial intelligence program called WOPR—pronounced “Whopper”—located at Cheyenne Mountain Complex, Colo., controls U.S. nuclear weapons.

“WarGames, it has this machine called the WOPR,” Cotton said. “So the WOPR actually was that AI machine that everyone is scared about. And guess what? We do not have a WOPR in STRATCOM headquarters. Nor would we ever have a WOPR in STRATCOM headquarters.”

Cotton’s comments come just a few days after U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese president Xi Jinping met in Peru and agreed on “the need to maintain human control over the decision to use nuclear weapons,” according to a White House readout.

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

Those remarks generated headlines and drew some pushback on social media, but Cotton said he was misinterpreted.

“When I spoke last month, that got some feedback like, ‘Oh my god … Cotton just wants AI to make the decision to go nuclear.’ That’s absolutely not what I said,” he said.

In fact, Cotton emphasized at the time that “advanced systems can inform us faster and more efficiently, but we must always maintain a human decision in the loop to maximize the adoption of these capabilities.”

At the CSIS event, he once again argued that AI can play a role for Strategic Command, by helping humans sort through the “terabytes of data that would otherwise hit the floor.” One example is intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) information.

“How do I get and become efficient on ISR products?” Cotton asked. “How do I get efficient on understanding what’s the status of my forces? … AI and machine learning can absolutely help us with those things and really shave a lot of time off.”

Ultimately, Cotton wants to use AI so that he can provide the president with options in a matter of minutes, not hours—something that might not be possible without AI as more data streams become available.

Still, he noted that extra caution is warranted when it comes to AI in STRATCOM.

“I do not take it lightly that what I’m responsible for is a little different than what other combatant commanders are responsible for,” he said. “I absolutely take it incredibly seriously, and so do the men and women of my team, understanding that we’re responsible for crown jewels of this nation.”

Before There Are Part-Time Guardians, USSF Needs to Figure Out Promotions, HR, and More

Nov. 20, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

Scores of different HR systems, a new model for how to handle promotions, and protections against conflicts of interest are all challenges the Space Force will have to resolve as it tries to bring part-time Guardians into the fold instead of a traditional Reserve component.

And until the service has a complete construct for how to make all that happen, it can’t offer a definitive timeline for eager service members, personnel chief Katharine Kelley said Nov. 20.

The Space Force Personnel Management Act passed by Congress last December gave the service five years to implement its new hybrid part-time/full-time construct. USSF spent the first year of that timeline laying groundwork and setting up the process for Air Force Reservists with space missions to join the Space Force full time, Kelley said during an event hosted by AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.

“We’re excited on how that’s gone. We’ve got a huge amount of interest, and maybe more interest than we have space at the moment, but we will get there,” said Kelley, who serves as Deputy Chief of Space Operations for Human Capital. “And I think these next four years of the execution window are going to be focused on, how do we create the ecosystem in the IT world to support the HR that is now fundamentally different than what the Air Force has in place today.”

Officials have noted in the past that they will need to think through how to do pay, benefits, retirement calculations, and more in a combined component. Another question is how Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) benefits would work for part-timers. Kelley highlighted the scale of the technical challenge.

“We think there’s easily over 300 systems in play today that somehow touch on the ecosystem of managing talent in DOD. And I’m emphasizing DOD here, and that’s not even discussing really where we go with external touch points that really matter for military,” Kelley said. “How your data flows to the VA matters. So think about all the external touch points as well as we go through this.”

These systems must either be adjusted to co-mingle part-time and full-time Guardians, or be replaced. That process is made all the more complicated by the fact that the Space Force relies on the Air Force for support functions, including much of its HR.

“The Space Force has to leverage the HR ecosystem that the Air Force has in place, by and large, and that ecosystem is pretty antiquated,” Kelley said. “The Air Force is doing unbelievable things right now to break free of some of the legacy models and really modernize the architectures. But all of those endeavors were preceding the Space Force Personnel Management Act. So a lot of what our limiting factors are to the execution side of our new legislation have to do with how we can manage and influence the system architectures to support these new talent models.”

Katharine Kelley, Deputy Chief of Space Operations for Human Capital, at the Air, Space & Cyber Conference on September 18, 2024. Photo by Mike Tsukamoto/Air & Space Forces Magazine

Besides pay and benefits, the Space Force will also have to adjust how it assesses Guardians for promotions—always a sensitive topic—so that part-timers can be evaluated next to full-time troops.

“We envision one promotion ecosystem, whether you have served in a full- or part-time capacity,” Kelley said. “The idea is that we’re going to highly value credentialing, certifications, qualifications and training, and those can be garnered whether you’re in full- or part-time work roles. And so the idea that the team is fleshing out for us right now is, how do we build a promotion ecosystem that values both types of work roles simultaneously?”

On top of that, there are ethical concerns about part-time Guardians with jobs in the space industry. It’s an issue the Reserve and Guard already deal with today, and Kelley noted that they have measures in place the Space Force will likely copy. Yet given that the Space Force wants Guardians to be able to flex between part-time and full-time work more easily, the service may have to do more.

“We’re going to have to be a little more mindful of what that person is doing in their personal capacity, and what the work role is that they may be performing in the Space Force,” Kelley said. “So we’ve got more work to do to really define what that looks like.”

Officials have made some progress in defining the kinds of jobs part-time Guardians will have in the new construct—test and evaluation, training, teaching, or planning—and what they won’t do—employed-in-place operations, i.e., operational roles that don’t require deploying, such as flying satellites or defending cyber networks.

But much remains unsettled. And until the service has a clearer picture on how it will all work, Kelley was reluctant to offer a timeline, even as she acknowledged intense interest in the topic.

“It’s a construct that has to be fully fleshed out before we can actually say, this date and this is how,” Kelley said.

There is urgency to make progress, though, given the demand the Space Force is seeing from combatant commanders.

“The size of our service today, coupled with what’s at stake for national security, we need to take advantage of every force multiplication option we have, and this is one of them,” Kelley said.

The Data-Centric Interdependencies that Make Battle Management Happen

Nov. 20, 2024

Joshua Conine, SAIC’s Director of Space Command and Control (C2) Growth, identifies the key elements in large C2 systems in the U.S. Air Force and Space Force, and how SAIC creates resilient and distributed architectures that support Battle Management.

INDOPACOM Boss Not Worried About China ‘Playing Chicken’ in Pacific

Nov. 19, 2024 | By John A. Tirpak

The head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command doesn’t see 2027 as a definitive date for China to invade Taiwan, nor is he concerned that the increasing frequency of provocative Chinese naval maneuvers will lead to war with the U.S. But he is concerned about U.S. readiness in the region, especially after supplying Ukraine and Israel with billions of dollars in munitions.

Adm. Samuel Paparo, speaking Nov. 19 at the Brookings Institution, said “the closer we get to 2027, the less relevant the date becomes.” At that point, China will declare itself ready” to take Taiwan by force, Paparo said—but only if certain set conditions are in place.

China’s 2005 anti-secession law, aimed at Taiwan, says it will invade only if:

Taiwan declares its independence from China

A third power intervenes in the dispute

Beijing determies that “unification was irrevocably beyond its reach by any other means.”

None of those conditions are in play, Paparo said. U.S. policy is to preserve Taiwan’s “right to self-determination” he said, not necessarily to shape its governance. Moreover, Paparo argued China prefers to achieve its goals through coercion by other means instead of military conquest.

The real significance of the 2027 date was the shift in timeline for when the Chinese military had to be ready for a possible invasion, up from 2035, Paparo said.

“It was never a ‘sell-by’ date. It was never a date where the PRC had declared, ‘we’re going on this date,’” Paparo said.

Nevertheless, “I think it was a worthy benchmark to say … we had better pay close attention to this,” Paparo said. The INDOPACOM commander noted that he has to prepare his combatant command to be ready to respond every single day.

“The closer we get to it, the less relevant that date is, and the more we must be ready today, tomorrow, next month, next year, and onward,” he said.

Paparo also said he is not worried about a sudden escalation if China performs provocative maneuvers by bringing its ships and aircraft into extremely close proximity with U.S. aircraft and vessels.

“The way one controls for unintended escalation is by enhancing one’s understanding of the strategic environment or of the tactical environment,” he said. Observers have expressed concern about a scenario where “there are two vessels in close proximity to one another. They’re playing chicken on the high seas, and there is a collision. That collision results in some bravado … passions are inflamed, and this results in a conflagration with a big war.”

That scenario “does not keep me up at night,” he said, because U.S. units “are trained to be safe, to be within the rules.”

“They’re trained when making choices, to choose to be safe, because we’re a dignity culture and not an honor culture,” he said. “Nobody’s going to be out there counting coup over playing chicken. You don’t play chicken with a $2 billion warship over some transitory point of honor on the high seas. And if there were to be a collision … they’ll maneuver to a position of advantage where we’ll be in a safe position, and cooler heads can prevail. And I have that confidence in that.”

“That doesn’t mean that there’s zero chance of it,” Paparo added of a potential collision leading to greater conflict. “But I … view a very, very low probability of such a situation. I think this is the stuff of fiction.”

Other Concerns

Outside of China, Paparo was asked if North Korea—which recently tested intercontinental ballistic missiles with the range to reach the continental U.S.—has also equipped those rockets with multiple precision-guided, independently targeted reentry vehicles.

“Not yet,” he said, adding that he expects aggressive ICBM testing by North Korea to continue.

He called North Korea’s supply of weapons and now soldiers to Russia’s war on Ukraine as “dangerous and transactional.” In return, he expects North Korea will get “submarine technology and propulsion technology.”

Paparo said he is encouraged that China has voiced support for denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula, but North Korea’s rhetoric and actions “adds complexity to an already dangerous situation” and the relationship with Russia “imparts more risk on the allies”

Paparo is also worried about general readiness due to low weapon stocks, he said. The U.S. has drawn from its own supplies to arm Ukraine and Israel in recent months and deployed troops and systems amid tensions in the Middle East.

“Now with some of the Patriots that have been employed, some of the air-to-air missiles that have been employed, it’s now eating into stocks,” he said. “To say otherwise would be dishonest.”

Weapons can be “moved with alacrity to any theater—none are reserved for any theater” but “inherently it imposes costs on the readiness of America to respond in the Indo-Pacific region, which is the most stressing theater for the quantity and quality of munitions, because the [People’s Republic of China] is the most capable” potential threat.

“We should replenish those stocks and then some. I was already dissatisfied with the magazine depth” before the two conflicts erupted, and “I’m a little more dissatisfied with the magazine depth. You know, it’s a time for straight talk.”

Cyber Guardians Get Some Friendly Competition While Training to Defend NRO

Nov. 19, 2024 | By Shaun Waterman

When Delta 26, the Space Force unit that defends the National Reconnaissance Office from cyberattacks and online espionage, wanted to stage competitive training exercises this year, they used a private sector cyber range for part of the contests and run them at an unclassified level, its commander said this week.

Space Training and Readiness Command is “still working to build out their cyber range, so we had to go commercial,” Col. Erica Mitchell told Air and Space Forces Magazine on Nov. 18 on the sidelines of CyberSat, the cybersecurity conference for the space and satellite sector.

At the unclassified level, “It had to be a more generic exercise” in defending an enterprise network, as opposed to one that specifically gamed out a cyber attack on the NRO, the secretive spy satellite agency, Mitchell said. Five teams, each drawn from one of the five squadrons in Delta 26, competed over the course of four days.

The exercises, dubbed Cyber Spartan 24-1 and 24-2, were staged in January and August and represented the “crawl” phase in a crawl/walk/run progression, she said. STARCOM issued a release with a few details of the first one in March, but the second has not been previously reported.

The exercises were “a great success,” she said, despite “a few technical difficulties with the range,” which she declined to elaborate on. Her big takeaway as commander was that “we really have to move towards getting ready for multiple attack vectors in multiple places, not all looking for the same attack in the same place.”

Both exercises included a so-called Capture-the-Flag, or CTF, component, staged by a private sector provider Hack The Box. CTFs are a long-standing cyber tradition in the private sector—hacking contests where teams compete to use knowledge of IT networks and their vulnerabilities to locate and gather pieces of computer code known as flags. In a CTF like the one in Cyber Spartan, the teams compete to collect the most flags but don’t directly attack each others’ systems.

Despite the gamelike elements, CTFs are a proven method of assessing cyber skills, said exercise director Maj. Ryan Galaz. “A capture-the-flag event, to me, is a really fun way to determine the knowledge and proficiency levels of our operators,” he said.

Both exercises also included a “blue team” element, Galaz said, in which each team was responsible for a network under attack, competing to see which could most quickly understand and report on the attack they were facing.

Each team went through six attacks in which they were given just 30 minutes to figure out what had happened.

“What we wanted to do,” explained Galaz, “was not only test the ability of an operator to assess correctly what’s going on, but really test their timeliness, because, in the midst of a contested, integrated environment … we need to know how quickly you can identify, detect and report in an accurate manner.”

Again, the teams didn’t compete directly, Galaz said: “They were just up against the clock and against themselves, really.”

“It was what I call parallel play,” said Mitchell, “where you have your toddlers playing side by side” rather than directly engaging with each other.

Cyber Spartan 24-2 also included a third element, another simulated attack, said Galaz, where “we put all the teams together so they could practice working as a team, because we’re all geographically separated, to then respond to an adversary.”

Rather than the one-off attacks of the blue team exercise, he added, this third element tested the teams’ ability to work together effectively to fight off a concerted campaign by a determined attacker.

“The aim was to really force them into a corner where they’re going to have to talk [to each other]. We started disabling machines, leaving some traces [of what we’d done] on one of the team’s assets, and then leaving others on another team’s. So they would have to then communicate,” he said.

Galaz said the objective was to create a more realistic analogue of the chaotic and confusing conditions that would transpire in a real conflict. “No plan survives first contact with the enemy. So their mission plan went out the window 15 minutes into the action,” he said, “They have to continue to evolve, to stay ahead of the curve.”

The eventual objective would be to fuse the various elements of the exercise together into a more realistic war simulation, said Mitchell, “where the squadrons may start each with their own individual fights, but then it’s all going to be aggregated up, and then we’re going to direct [things] the way we would in an actual war scenario,” she said.

Both competitions were won by the Delta’s 661st Cyber Operations Squadron.

“They did a fantastic job,” Mitchell said.

In 24-1, the blue team contest was close but 661 came out ahead. In the CTF, “they destroyed the competition,” said Galaz. The second time around, though, things were much tighter. “It was razor close on both” the CTF and the blue team simulated attack events, he said.

Planners are currently working on the next iteration of Cyber Spartan, to be staged next year, Galaz said: “Now we’re looking at what type of craziness can we do for 25-1 that still keeps the operators enjoying themselves, because that’s the best way [to get them] to pay the most attention or learn the most—and get all the training value we want from it. So we’re excited about that.”

SDA Will Be 6 Months Late Launching Next Satellites, But May Up the Pace After That

Nov. 19, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

The Space Development Agency will start launching its next batch of satellites in March or April 2025, six months later than originally planned, but agency director Derek Tournear suggested he may try to increase the pace of launches after that to get back on schedule.

Tournear offered the new timeline along with a host of updates on his organization’s low-Earth orbit constellation during an event with AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies on Nov. 19, including plans for future missile defense and position, navigation, and timing capabilities.

SDA first started launching what it called its “Tranche 0” satellites in April 2023 and finished in February 2024—a process that also included several months of delays. All told, Tranche 0 includes 29 data transport and missile warning/tracking spacecraft in orbit to demonstrate their concept for a large LEO constellation.

Tranche 1, consisting of more than 150 operational satellites, was supposed to start going up in September, followed by a launch every month for 10 months. But at the Defense News Conference on Sept. 5, Tournear revealed that the first launch would be pushed back to “around the end of this calendar year,” citing problems producing necessary parts at scale.

Two months later, Tournear pushed the timeline back once again to March or April, saying suppliers had been overly optimistic in how fast they could scale production and solve supply chain delays, particularly for key components like optical communications terminals and encryption devices.

“Tranche 0 was just getting the parts in hand. Tranche 1 is building up your manufacturing capability, which always goes slower than people anticipate,” Tournear said.

Moving forward, though, Tournear said vendors have started hitting their production goals, and “we have high confidence that the schedule we have now is going to hold.”

With satellites now being assembled “daily,” Tournear also suggested SDA may look for other ways to get back on schedule—and live up to its motto of “Semper Citius,” or “Always Faster.”

“We know SpaceX can launch faster than once a month, so we can bring this in,” Tournear said of the launch schedule. “The space vehicles will be ready faster than that once we start the initial launching, but it’s just a matter of how fast will it take us to get through launch and early operations and pull that in.”

To that end, Tournear said he would be willing to accept and store completed satellites from contractors if they are ready before a launch vehicle is.

SpaceX has already been awarded all the launches for Tranche 1, receiving orders in 2022 and 2023, and the company has come to dominate the market with its rapid cadence—it has launched 10 times in November already, including three launches in two days.

Regardless, Tournear said all of Tranche 1 will launch over 10 months at a “maximum.” That timeline would have launches extending into 2026—the same year Tranche 2 satellites are supposed to start going up.

Tranche 3

While Tranche 1 satellite production is ramping up and design reviews for Tranche 2 have finished, SDA is already moving forward on Tranche 3, with plans to officially ask industry for proposals starting in January 2025.

Each tranche is meant to include new easily available technologies and capabilities, a process officials call “spiral development.” For Tranche 3, that will mean a few things.

Among the 150 or so data transport satellites, a “fraction” will include a new “lightweight” position, navigation, and timing signal, Tournear said.

The Pentagon has been investing more and more in backups and alternatives for the Global Position System satellites, and Tournear said the new signal coming from SDA’s satellites will help in that regard.

“The details of that are still being worked out. We’re working very closely with the Army, because the Army is the one that would be fielding the receivers for these things,” he said. “And so I can’t go into more details, primarily because it hasn’t firmed up until we get more alignment with what the Army actually wants us to demonstrate and fly on Tranche 3. But it’ll be a very small signal in an L- or S-band that we’ll demonstrate.”

Meanwhile, Tournear also wants up to nine satellites in Tranche 3 that can do both missile warning and missile defense.

“Missile warning is launch detection: the old school, ‘now we can affect mutually assured destruction. Let the President know where we’re under attack.’ Tracking is not only can we tell you that the missiles have been launched, but as they maneuver, we can tell the impact point, so we can tell the people downrange to prepare theater air defenses, or in worst case scenario, at least tell them to prepare for duck and cover,” Tournear said. “Defense takes that one step further and says, not only can we detect the maneuvering missiles, we can detect them to such accuracy that I could send that data down to an interceptor with no other sensors needed.”

Tranches 1 and 2 will include a few satellites each that can do missile defense, and Tranche 3 will look to build on that by combining missile launch and missile defense on the same satellite.

“We’re really interested in hearing from industry on what those capabilities are,” Tournear said.

‘Blueprints’ for China’s New Fighter Similar to F-35, Air Force Chief Says

Nov. 19, 2024 | By Chris Gordon

The Air Force’s top officer said China’s new stealth fighter has one distinctive feature: It appears to draw its inspiration from the U.S.’s F-35.

“It’s still fairly new,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin said in a Nov. 19 interview with Air & Space Forces Magazine. “But, yes, it’s pretty clear; you could put it side-by-side and see, at least, where we believe they got their blueprints from, if you will.”

China’s J-35A was recently unveiled at the Zhuhai Air Show by China’s People’s Liberation Army. As Allvin noted, the plane looks remarkably similar to an F-35, though, unlike the American warplane, it is equipped with two engines instead of one.

U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Ridge Shan

Allvin declined to discuss details of what the U.S. knows about the J-35, citing a need to protect classified information. But much of Allvin’s program to bring about the “re-optimization” of the U.S. Air Force is driven by the need to deter China’s growing military.

“Overall I think we should just be very aware of the scope and the scale—if nothing else, the scope,” Allvin said, referring to China’s growing air forces.

China also operates another stealth fighter, the J-20 air superiority aircraft, and is working on the H-20 flying wing stealth bomber, according to a 2023 Pentagon report on China’s military forces.

In March, then-commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command Adm. John C. Acquilino said that China’s People’s Liberation Army had “the world’s largest Navy, soon to be the world’s largest Air Force.”

China has over 3,100 aircraft in the PLA Air Force and PLA Navy of which about 2,400 are combat aircraft, the Pentagon report noted.

The U.S. Air Force has around 4,000 crewed, non-trainer aircraft. The U.S. Navy and Marines have thousands of aircraft of their own.

China has a long history of copying U.S. aircraft designs, though that doesn’t mean their combat aircraft are as capable as their American counterparts in other respects.

“The Chinese development of their capabilities is something we need to we need to respect and be able to account for,” Allvin said. “One thing that they’ll never catch up on us is the quality of our force, the quality of our entire total force, the quality of our [noncommissioned officer corps], the quality of our aviators, the maintainers, all of that. But I don’t want to make it a close fight.”

The Air Force has recently unveiled major structural reforms and a new force design designed to better counter China.

“We have to have an Air Force that can still survive and can execute effectively in many different threat environments,” Allvin said.

‘Did We Do Enough?’ Airmen Heed Lessons from Their Air Victory over Iran

Nov. 19, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

This is the third and final installment in a multipart series based on exclusive interviews with nine Airmen who helped respond to Iran’s April 13 attack on Israel. Part 1 and Part 2 are available here.

RAF LAKENHEATH, U.K.—Below the F-15E Strike Eagles, the swirl of missiles, interceptors, and debris flying through the night lit up the night sky like the Northern Lights, one Airman recalled.

Iran had launched more than 300 one-way attack drones, ballistic missiles, and cruise missiles at Israel and the attack was now at it its crescendo. After following orders to “launch to survive,” fighters from the 494th Fighter Squadron were airborne and confronting their mission.

“‘All right, take five seconds to breathe, get our wingmen up with us, because they finally were able to take off,’” Capt. Logan Cowan, an F-15E pilot, recalled thinking. “And then it’s like an ‘everything happening everywhere, all at once’ scenario.”

In addition to F-15E and F-16 fighters, USAF tankers and command-and-control aircraft were in the air, as were aircraft from coalition partners and Israeli interceptors.

“The totality of the situation was, ‘Oh sh–,’” Cowan mouthed.

Ahead of Cowan’s formation, Maj. Benjamin Coffey and Capt. Lacie “Sonic” Hester were back in the thick of things, airborne for the second time that night, having left their bunker at the base in the midst of an Alert as other personnel took shelter from the attack. They launched in a new jet after returning to base with a missile that failed to fire.

Like their first sortie, Coffey and Hester quickly expended all their missiles; again, one failed to fire. As a last resort, they fired their F-15E’s 20mm gun, but with limited effect.

As airborne mission commanders, however, they still had work to do.

“We need to coordinate the other fighters. We need to coordinate for our partners, so that they know where the threat is,” Coffey said. “And at that point, instead of trying to do subsequent gun attempts, we bring fighters back … we reset where the fight is going on, and we start handing off threats.”

Three other fighters from the squadron remained in the air, including a two-ship flown by Capts. Cowan, Gabriel Diamond, Trace Sheerin, and Brian Tesch that was entering the fight for the first time.

“We’re just all over the place, hunting down the tracks that other jets picked up and where they saw the drones and cruise missiles,” Tesch said.

The attack seemed to have petered out. But then the crews got word from Coffey and Hester that a few “straggler” drones were 300 or so miles away. Snapping in that direction, the F-15Es raced to intercept them as they approached a city.

“Obviously that makes the hairs on the back your neck stand up,” said Sheerin. “If you’re out in the middle of the desert, that’s fine. If something misses, something goes wrong, the worst that happens is … a random crater that could have been from an asteroid pops up somewhere in the desert.

“But as soon as you start throwing in completely innocent people who have nothing to do with this conflict, and now you have explosives flying over them, and heavily laden supersonic fighter jets flying very low altitude over them, that complicates the equation quite a bit.”

Cowan and Diamond were the flight leads, but Sheerin and Tesch were in a better position to take the first shot.

“We’ve set up the intercept, and I’m waiting for him to shoot,” said Cowan. “I query him once, I query him twice, and then all of a sudden, I look up and this missile just flies off his jet and explodes in the center of my field of view.”

Despite their exhilaration, however, they decided against trying for a second intercept—the risk too great given the chance of civilian harm. Instead, they passed custody of the target off to coalition fighters further back.

Gen. James B. Hecker, head of U.S. Air Forces in Europe, praised that decision during a Nov. 12 ceremony decorating members of the 494th. Amid the excitement and adrenaline of aerial combat, the restraint the crews showed stood out in its own way.

After that, most U.S. fighters returned to base, while Cowan, Diamond, Sheerin, and Tesch still had to fly for several hours more. In the wake of adrenaline-infused takeoffs and dramatic shootdowns, quiet now descended as the sun rose in the east.

Looking out, the Airmen saw dozens, if not hundreds, of trails of smoke from missiles and interceptors winding through the sky.

“Like a ball of yarn,” Sheerin said.

“Like a bird’s nest,” Tesch said.

“It was one of the most incredible things I’ve ever seen,” Cowan said. “Because the sun is shining through all these missile smoke trails, it looks like a bowl of spaghetti in the sky.”

For the next several hours, the last two F-15Es patrolled the airspace as the impact of what had just happened sank in.

Coffey and Hester, returning to base, also took stock.

“We can see the Iron Dome [Israeli air defense system] going off in the distance. We can see base defense fires from all the bases around us going off. And there is a long period of about 20 minutes where we just talked about, ‘Did we do enough?’” Coffey said.

A U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle assigned to the 494th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron “Mighty Black Panthers” lands in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility, Oct. 13, 2023. U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Josephine Pepin

Aviators and maintainers turned on the news and got their answer: 99 percent of all drones and missiles had been intercepted, and the few that got through caused minimal damage and no fatalities. What some have called the biggest drone attack in history had been thoroughly thwarted.

“After everything was down, and all the hung missiles were put up, and we had already re-armed and got ready to go for a second round, then we had time to breathe and start processing what actually happened,” said Staff Sgt. Ethan Tarver.

The entire squadron, Coffey said, breathed a collective sigh of relief. And in the days and weeks to follow, they were able to appreciate just how much they had done, said Staff Sgt. Kendra Wertsbaugh.

“What we did was very important, saved many lives, and also showed that times are changing, and with unmanned aerial devices [threatening allies], we are prepared to just defend against anything,” Wertsbaugh said.

On Nov. 12, leaders, dignitaries, and scores of fellow Airmen gathered in a hangar at Lakenheath to recognize those accomplishments. On a stage set up beside an F-15E, Hecker handed out awards ranging from the Air & Space Achievement Medal to the Distinguished Flying Cross and Bronze Star. Hester became the first woman in the Air Force to receive the Silver Star.

And if, as Hecker said during the ceremony and Air Force leaders have often repeated as of late, the nature of warfare is changing, then members of the 494th can look back on that night in the Middle East as a key moment.

“I’m too young, too inexperienced even now to be able to tell you where warfare will go in the future. That’s not my purview,” said Sheerin. “But with how things continue to change, I know from the lessons learned in this as a squadron … as a fighter community specifically, I think we’re moving in a good direction, and I think we will be able to continue to assess and improve specifically with the lessons learned from the 13th of April.”

Part 1 and Part 2 are available here.

494th Fighter Squadron Decorations

Silver Star Medal

Maj. Benjamin Coffey

Capt. Lacie Hester

Bronze Star Medal

Maj. Clayton Wicks

Master Sgt. Timothy Adams

Distinguished Flying Cross

Lt. Col. Curtis Culver (V)

Lt. Col. Timothy Causey (V)

Capt. Logan Cowan (V)

Capt. Gabriel Diamond (V)

Capt. Trace Sheerin (V)

Capt. Brian Tesch (V)

Capt. Matthew Eddins (C)

Capt. Garrett Benner (C)

Capt. Austin Leake (C)

Capt. Stepan Volnychev (C)

Capt. Claire Eddins

Capt. Carla Nava

Capt. Kyle Abraham

Capt. Eric Edelman

(V) indicates a Valor device, (C) indicates a combat device

Air and Space Commendation Medal

Capt. Alexander Thennes

Master Sgt. Michael Bialaski

Tech. Sgt. Brandon Brown

Staff Sgt. Sarah Moir

Staff Sgt. Kendra Wertsbaugh

Staff Sgt. Daniel White

Air and Space Achievement Medal

Staff Sgt. Michael Wright

Staff Sgt. Ethan Tarver

Senior Airman Ardo Dia

Senior Airman Sanders Joseph

Senior Airman Rico Sanchez

Airman First Class Treyvon Walker

Water Can Be a Global Security Issue. This New Tool Will Help The Military Plan

Nov. 18, 2024 | By David Roza

From flooding in North Carolina to droughts in East Africa, changing water cycles exacerbated by climate change are driving instability around the world. Even in peacetime, mud or rain can slow troop movements, cancel sorties, and generally make life more difficult for U.S. military leaders.

But a new tool launched late last month aims to give leaders across the government better information at a faster tempo to predict and manage water-related risks when planning military operations, disaster response, environmental monitoring, resource management, and more.

The Global Hydro-Intelligence (GHI) system takes information from a wide range of sources, including satellites, ground-based sensors, and climate models, to give planners a “comprehensive picture of global water dynamics,” Lt. Col. Mickey Kirschenbaum, a public affairs officer for weather force management at Air Force Headquarters, told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

If it gets wet, it’ll likely be in the GHI system, which aims to provide accurate and timely information on soil moisture, snow cover, vegetation health, precipitation, and many things in between, both in the short term and the long run.

“GHI-based products and services will, for the first time, establish a routinely available source of global water assessments spanning near-real-time analyses to future projections,” Col. Patrick Williams, director of weather at Air Force Headquarters, said in a Nov. 15 press release. “This will arm warfighters, planners, and decision makers with assessments of surface hydrology features and their potential effects across time scales.”

U.S. Air Force and NASA officials hold a ceremony to celebrate their collaboration and the initial operational capability of Global Hydro-Intelligence at the Pentagon in Arlington, Va., Oct. 30, 2024. GHI is a strategic tool designed to predict and manage water-related risks for military leaders. (U.S. Air Force photo by Chad Trujillo)

Current systems combine three main approaches, Kirschenbaum explained:

traditional hydrological models, which analyze historical data and statistics to forecast floods and droughts but are limited by ground-based data quality

Satellite-based observations that provide global water cycle data but are not ideal for real-time military decisions

Regional forecasting systems that integrate local ground observations, and meteorological models to assess water-related risks in specific geographical areas

The problem is that none of those three approaches were designed with military operations in mind. GHI aims to bring in data from many sources, then use “real-time data processing and analytics” to produce timely information for commanders.

The system will also use machine learning and advanced modeling techniques to make more accurate predictions of future floods, droughts, and other water events. And it’s all designed to be user-friendly for non-experts.

“Unlike many regional systems, GHI offers global coverage across all time-scales, making it a valuable tool for military operations that span multiple countries and regions,” Kirschenbaum said.

It’s a team effort: representatives from the Air Force, NASA, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers all took part in an Oct. 30 ceremony at the Pentagon celebrating GHI’s initial operational capability. The Navy, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory also contributed to the project.

Each agency has something to offer: for example, NASA’s Land Information System plays a key role assimilating data to create terrestrial hydrology models. Dr. Jerry Wegiel, NASA’s principal investigator for GHI, said the new system will give the government a first-of-its-kind trusted information set about the movement of water, according to the press release.

GHI comes at a key moment as the Air Force aims to bring weather forecasting back into operations planning, a muscle group that atrophied during the Global War on Terror.

“The way weather is used today, we’re an obstacle,” Williams told Air & Space Forces Magazine in July. “Before the pilot takes off, we’ll tell them what conditions they’ll see, which impacts how much fuel they need, how many bombs they can carry, and how to get back safely. [But] we can do so much more than that.

“We can purposely force the adversary into situations that they don’t want to be in where they have to pick between a bad choice and a worse choice,” he said.

That could mean sending U.S. bombers in behind a storm to attack an enemy airfield, or predicting when atmospheric conditions limit the radar systems used to guide enemy surface-to-air missiles.

Like any weapon system, it pays to have a better weather knowledge system than the other guy. The textbook example is D-Day in 1944, when Allied planners took advantage of a break in the storm that German forecasters missed. But weather forecasting requires powerful computers, talented operators, and quality data, the last of which is particularly tough as only two of the military’s 60-year-old weather satellites are currently operational.

“Not having weather satellites up there is a huge, huge problem,” Williams said. 

New satellites for the Pentagon’s secure use would be the ideal solution, but GHI helps close the gap by integrating with other government agencies and making their water data available more quickly.

“We are extremely excited for the role that GHI is going to play in future operational planning and the enhanced situational awareness it’s going to bring to the fight,” Maj. Gen. John Klein Jr., Air Force deputy chief of staff for operations, said in the press release.

Mr. John M. Schnittker (front), agricultural advisor, Kirkuk Provincial Reconstruction Team, U.S. Department of State, evaluates a wheat field after hearing local resident’s concerns of water shortages, Hawijah, Iraq, April 26, 2007. (U.S. Army photo by Spc. Michael Alberts)

Faster data in greater quantities is important when climate change is disrupting weather patterns, which in turn disrupts human patterns. Drought is one example: in a March report, the United Nations said water deficits can be linked to 10 percent of the increase in migration worldwide.

“This displacement can, in turn, contribute to water insecurity by placing added strain on water systems and resources in settlement locations, thereby fueling social tensions,” the UN report states. “This water scarcity can increase the risk of conflict.”

Better, faster information could help generate policies to mitigate that risk, “allowing decision-makers and diplomacy to have a greater effect before crisis turns to violence and the armed forces are called,” the press release explained.

Still, GHI is designed to address a wide range of applications beyond anticipating water-induced conflicts or humanitarian crises, Kirschenbaum said. Other areas include environmental monitoring and resource management.

“The system’s ability to integrate diverse data sources and provide real-time analytics makes it a versatile tool for various stakeholders, including government agencies, environmental organizations, and international bodies, to make informed decisions across multiple domains,” he said.