USAF Chief Scientist: DOD Needs More Hypersonics Experts, Testing Facilities

USAF Chief Scientist: DOD Needs More Hypersonics Experts, Testing Facilities

Dec. 17, 2020 | By John A. Tirpak

There aren’t enough experts or wind tunnel capacity for all the hypersonics development and testing currently underway, suggesting existing programs might need to be consolidated, the Air Force’s chief scientist said Dec. 17.

Richard J. Joseph asked the head of Air Force hypersonics projects less than three weeks ago what is the top obstacle in accomplishing program objectives, and was told, “People. It’s having enough people who know enough about this to be helpful,” he said during an AFA Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies virtual event. To which Joseph said he replied, “Maybe we have too many programs. Maybe these programs need to be consolidated … There are so many programs.”

The Pentagon has not disclosed how many hypersonics programs are underway, but each service has at least one boost-glide effort in the works. USAF also has air-breathing concepts in development. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Missile Defense Agency, and Space Development Agency have a variety of hypersonic propulsion, offensive and defensive systems, and weapon-tracking technologies in the works as well.

Joseph said the Pentagon might consolidate personnel working on inlet design efforts, as one example.

“I understand there are different settings for the different programs, but we must have some things that are pretty common,” he said.

“We’ve got to do something” about the talent pool, because government and industry both have a strong demand for hypersonics-savvy people, and government “never has enough.”

“Making new talent is a long process,” he added, and government should “start on that.”

The Air Force dropped out of the multi-service Hypersonic Conventional Strike Weapon (HCSW) project early this year, saying it preferred to concentrate on the AGM-183 Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW) instead. It has subsequently talked of progress in air-breathing concepts as well. The other services already have pooled resources on some areas, such as on a common hypersonic glidebody.

The Air Force Research Laboratory announced Dec. 5 that it had tested an 18-foot long scramjet engine capable of producing 13,000 pounds of thrust. It did not say how it tested the design, produced by Aerojet Rocketdyne, except to say the tests occurred at Arnold Air Force Base’s Arnold Engineering Development Center Aerodynamic and Propulsion Test Unit. The AFRL said the test article was a significantly scaled-up version of the engine that powered the X-51 research missile.

“Tests were conducted across a range of Mach numbers” to propel a vehicle “10-times the size of the X-51,” at hypersonic speeds, said Paul Kennedy, AFRL program manager. Because of the large size of the engine, it has applications to platforms “ranging from missiles to high-speed aircraft,” Kennedy said in a press release.

Joseph said he’s “very, very concerned about our ability to do the testing for hypersonics.” He declined to say whether he thinks the Air Force is investing enough in building new wind tunnels. “I would leave that up to the test people,” but he thinks it will “come down to what the Air Force is willing to give up” in the budget “to get this. I think they’ll be willing to give up a lot.”

In addition to wind tunnels, Joseph said capacity is needed to test under many kinds of conditions. “If you’re trying to duplicate the environment, it presents a lot of challenges. Because it’s not just the airflow, it’s also the heating, and how do you simulate things like turbulence and so on.”

“That’s one of the things we do in [science and technology],” he added. “We try to understand enough about the system, so we don’t have to put it exactly in the real environment before we can develop the next step of the technology.”

Joseph said he visited Arnold Air Force Base, Tenn., recently, and hypersonic test facilities funding is “in flux.”

“A lot’s going to depend on what Congress thinks, and what Congress wants,” he noted. “Congress has been very generous, … and they’ve also been very understanding. And they have essentially almost tripled our budget for hypersonics … That’s good news and bad news because now you don’t have any excuses for not performing.”

Editor’s note: This story was updated at 2:42 p.m. on Jan. 4 to clarify the role of the Space Development Agency.

Yokota Makes Contact Tracing Mandatory for All Personnel

Yokota Makes Contact Tracing Mandatory for All Personnel

Dec. 17, 2020 | By Jennifer-Leigh Oprihory

Yokota Air Base, Japan, has rolled out an extensive set of mandatory COVID-19 mitigation measures for U.S. and host-nation personnel—including mandatory contact-tracing for U.S. troops, DOD civilians, and their families.

The base is currently at Health Protection Condition Level Bravo—the second-lowest level on the HPCON scale. Here’s a look at some of the steps the base is taking to keep Yokota safe amid the pandemic.

Mandatory Contact Tracing

Every military member, civilian, and dependent covered under a Status of Forces Agreement, and “local national” employee at Yokota must keep daily contact-tracing logs through March 5, 2021, a practice put in place after the commander of U.S. Forces Japan declared a public emergency in April.

These groups must maintain logs whether or not they’re currently experiencing COVID-19 symptoms or have had a known exposure to the new coronavirus.

According to the wing, a person must write a log entry if:

  • They come within about 6 feet of a person for more than 15 minutes, whether or not masks were worn. If this contact occurs away from the installation, they must also record where the contact occurred and how long the visit lasted.
  • Someone coughs or sneezes on them.
  • They have physical contact with someone while taking care of, visiting, or co-habitating with them, except for “immediate family” members. 
  • They visit a health care waiting room. While they’re not required to record the names of every patient there, they must indicate when they were there, the clinic’s name, and where the waiting room was located.

Healthcare professionals, “or medically trained teams,” will be the sole people to review these logs, the wing wrote.

Masking Up

Everyone on base at Yokota and/or Tama Hills Recreation Area must don a cloth face covering if social distancing isn’t possible, with the exception of service members’ personal homes or “while in private lodging in the defined local area,” the release stated. 

Individuals must cover their faces when visiting Yokota’s commissary and base exchange, as well as “all 374th Medical Group, Security Force Squadron, and Force Support Squadron facilities” with the exception of working out in a socially distant manner in the fitness center. 

However, even when exercising, personnel must keep their masks on unless they’re “actively engaging in cardiovascular exercise on a cardio machine,” taking them off for a second to hydrate, or “are in the sauna/steam room or showers,” the wing wrote.

If people who aren’t immediate family members ride together in a single vehicle, they must also wear masks, it added. However, children who are three years old and younger, as well as kids attending “child development center programs,” need not wear masks, it noted.

Further, “all personnel who wish to access” the installation or the recreation center must also wear masks when “in public, off installation in the defined local area,” the release stated. People can take off their mask if they’re exercising outside and can stay at least six feet away from people outside their immediate families or if they’re eating at a restaurant, though they must wear it when they enter and replace it as soon as they finish their meal.

“Any member declining to wear a mask in public during the period of this order and not under one of the exceptions mentioned above may be temporarily denied access to the installation or debarred,” the release stated.

Tokyo Travel Ban

All uniformed U.S. troops “whether on duty, on leave, on liberty, or on pass” need to stay within a permitted local area save for limited exceptions specified within the release, the base wrote. 

Yokota’s installation commander has defined the “local area”—for COVID-19 mitigation purposes—“as the country of Japan, excluding the Tokyo metropolitan area, which is prohibited,” according to the release. All portions of downtown Tokyo are included in this ban, it noted.

Map: 374th Airlift Wing

Base community members who reside outside of the specified “local area” are allowed to access essential services that are in their homes’ “immediate vicinity,” the release said.

Civilians and military dependents covered under the Status of Forces Agreement are strongly urged to stay within the permitted local area. If they leave, they’ll have to complete a 14-day Restriction of Movement once they get back, the release stated.

Anyone facing extenuating circumstances may submit a travel authorization request to the first general officer or Senior Executive Service member in their chain of command, the release noted. Wing personnel and units that lack a GO or SES may seek this permission from the wing commander directly, it added.

However, if any service member or civilian employee wants to visit the Tokyo metropolitan area or any “base or installation in HPCON Charlie status”—whether on leave or non-mission-essential travel—they must get special permission.

Additionally, the wing wrote, Space-A travel is currently limited to emergency flights.

Personnel may travel through the Tokyo metro area if they’re en route to an airport or bullet-train station there, so long as they keep their masks on the entire time, the wing wrote.

In terms of public transportation, flights that begin and end in Japan are allowed, as are visits to Japanese airports, bullet-train rides throughout the country, and taxi travel, so long as individuals wear masks “at all times with the exception of eating a meal on” a flight or bullet-train ride. Wing members may also ride local trains and buses, though the wing advised them to avoid overcrowded trains and to keep their masks on “at all times.”

Elsewhere in USAF

U.S. Forces-Korea spokesperson Col. Lee Peters also announced the organization would raise its HPCON level to Charlie at all of its installations as of 12:01 a.m. local time on Dec. 19.

As per this decision, all but “mission essential individuals” will telework, and masks are required within all buildings on any covered installation, as well as outdoors in cases where social distancing isn’t feasible, USFK wrote on Facebook.

While the organization said “bubble-to-bubble travel” is still allowed, it urged all personnel to minimize travel within the country as much as possible, and noted that “portions of Area I, Area II including Seoul, and Busan remain off-limits except for official and necessary duties.”

Personnel will also need to obtain exceptions to policy to make Permanent Changes of Station to or from South Korea, USFK added.

“USFK will continue to monitor the current COVID-19 situation within South Korea and will make an assessment regarding HPCON Charlie on Monday, January 4, 2021,” it wrote.

In the U.S., Travis Air Force Base, Calif., on Dec. 16 raised its HPCON level to Charlie, according to a 60th Air Mobility Wing media release.

And last week, the head of the 96th Test Wing at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., announced that the installation was going back to a “mission-essential posture,” the Northwest Florida Daily News reported, adding that the base had reached “a positivity rate of 27” percent as of Dec. 15.

As of the afternoon of Dec. 14, the Department of the Air Force had recorded 17,355 COVID-19 cases among its Active-duty and Reserve troops since the start of the pandemic. As of Dec. 15, there were nine active COVID-19 cases at Yokota, though there had not been any new positive cases “in the last four days,” according to a post on the base’s Facebook page.

Editor’s Note: This story was corrected at 9:16 a.m. on Dec. 21. The commander of U.S. Forces Japan declared a public health emergency in the region in April 2020, and the mitigation measures have been in place since then. The base issued a press release in December reiterating the safety measures.

Dunlap Looks to the Future of ABMS

Dunlap Looks to the Future of ABMS

Dec. 17, 2020 | By Rachel S. Cohen

Nearly two years after he was named as the Air Force’s Advanced Battle Management System czar, Preston Dunlap is offering more details on how the lofty concept could become a reality that’s here to stay.

He began the job of chief architect with a wide-ranging review of the Air Force’s programs to see where the breakdowns in communication, technology, and culture were happening. That team then laid out a blueprint for the various tools and processes it needed to better connect the force and shake up combat roles.

After a year of tech demonstrations across the country alongside the other military services, the ABMS team now has a clearer vision of which tools the Department of the Air Force can roll out the soonest that would immediately benefit troops. Starting in February, Dunlap wants to offer a network that Airmen overseas and elsewhere without access to hardwired internet can tap into for information on what’s unfolding around them.

“I suspect release one will have what will look like a forward-edge, mini-Internet of Things that then touches back to our cloud-based infrastructure,” Dunlap told reporters Dec. 16. “The program team has already done amazing work getting a warfighting tech stack ready, … but that’s that cloud platform software application environment that’s globally accessible.”

At an upcoming demonstration in Europe, the military aims to test-drive a better combat network that doesn’t rely on a brick-and-mortar operations center or the intelligence-crunching Distributed Common Ground System to share data. Dunlap indicated that it could dovetail with plans to turn refueling fleets into data-sharing nodes as well.

Air Force Magazine recently reported the service is eyeing communications pods that could ride on tankers so the planes could share combat data with pilots who fly up to refuel. Will Roper, the department’s acquisition boss, envisions tankers could be reimagined as multipurpose hubs within 18 months.

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. and Space Force Chief of Space Operations Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond will have the final say over the direction of each release, or round of new capabilities.

“We’re going to take that [accessible cloud-based network] as sort of case one, and then just continue to cumulatively build that, both in terms of nesting in new platforms and compute capabilities at the edge, … and then on my Space Force side of it, matching that to other Space Force-relevant capabilities,” Dunlap said.

Expanding the mission sets of existing Air Force fleets is now the responsibility of the secretive Rapid Capabilities Office, which the service recently named as the program executive office overseeing ABMS. The RCO will be in charge of packaging new capabilities together that reimagine how the military inventory is used day-to-day.

“The major tactical move here that’s happened is, we’ve had an interim team at [the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center] that’s been doing a heroic job doing the execution elements for the ABMS program,” Dunlap said. “With the appointment of an official PEO for the program, that allows us to be able to take massive scale, and focus across the whole life cycle of the program. So this is a really good thing to be able to achieve.”

His team will still guide the overarching vision for how ABMS should piece together Air Force assets. The RCO will manage the acquisition, maintenance, and upgrades of those tools.

Procurement officials must also handle challenges to those contracts, such as a recent protest by Anduril Industries. The firm is petitioning the Government Accountability Office for a review of the “tactical edge node support” piece of ABMS, which it argues is being too narrow in how it picks companies to participate, according to Inside Defense.

Dunlap and an Anduril spokeswoman declined to comment on the protest, filed Nov. 16. A ruling is due Feb. 24 and could force USAF to change course on its acquisition approach.

Over the past year, the tech demonstrations also have been a proving ground for other promising Air Force and Space Force ideas that fall outside of the ABMS umbrella—like the Global Lightning initiative to bring commercial satellite internet onto planes, or trying out a hypervelocity gun in the works at the Pentagon’s Strategic Capabilities Office.

Dunlap wants the department’s various technology ventures to have a closer relationship with ABMS. He’s looking to drive more of that integration across the science and technology world in 2021, noting that it may require congressional buy-in.

“There’s so many opportunities to be able to bring the ecosystem together, and focused attention to do that is just going to have outsized gains and impacts,” he said.

There are growing opportunities for the military to try out new ideas as a Joint Force, too. Dunlap said part of his team is visiting the Army’s Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, for example, to discuss how to move forward.

High-level military officials are drawing up a plan for how the armed forces should approach joint all-domain command-and-control, including the requirements that technology in each service needs to meet so fighter jets can talk to artillery systems and ship sensors, for instance. Their leadership on the issue is expected to help avoid the problems that have stymied connectivity in the past, like divergent data standards.

The vision pursued by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Mark A. Milley and Vice Chairman Air Force Gen. John E. Hyten is “well-aligned” with Brown’s and Raymond’s visions, Dunlap said.

“The team has been very particular to work closely with the Joint Staff and the vice chairman to make sure that we can use this actually as a test case, running through his new requirements approach. We found great synergy there between the two,” Dunlap said. 

The Department of the Air Force will use that guidance to shape its real-life ABMS tests, in concert with the RCO’s contracting work, to put out useful new tools.

Establishing new ground rules for how the Joint Force should move forward will help ingrain joint warfighting for the long haul, even after its champions like Roper and Hyten leave DOD.

“It would be a disservice to the operators to go back to thinking of vertical, insular systems as the way to win,” Dunlap said. “This set of capabilities in all the services are going to continue to be at the forefront of the minds and direction of DOD.”

Milley Meets with Taliban Representatives as Fragile Negotiations Continue

Milley Meets with Taliban Representatives as Fragile Negotiations Continue

Dec. 17, 2020 | By Brian W. Everstine

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley on Dec. 15 met with Taliban negotiators, before moving on to Afghanistan to speak with local leaders regarding the ongoing and fragile peace process aimed at ending the 19-year-old war.

The meeting marked the second time Milley met with representatives of the group the U.S. has been fighting with in Afghanistan since 2001. He previously met with the group in June, a meeting that was not announced until Dec. 17. Milley met with Taliban representatives for about two hours in Doha, Qatar, before flying to Afghanistan to meet with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and U.S. military leaders, according to The Associated Press. The AP reported that, because of security reasons, the visit was not made public until Milley left the region.

“The most important part of the discussions that I had with both the Taliban and the government of Afghanistan was the need for an immediate reduction in violence,” Milley told reporters, according to the AP. “Everything else hinges on that.”

The Afghan government and the Taliban have been negotiating an end to the conflict, though violence remains at a high level. U.S. forces are set to draw down to about 2,500 total deployed troops in the country by Jan. 15. Gen. Austin Scott Miller, commander of U.S. Forces-Afghanistan, told the AP the Taliban has increased its attacks on Afghan forces, especially in Helmand and Kandahar.

“My assessment is, it puts the peace process at risk—the higher the violence, the higher the risk,” Miller told the AP.

While the U.S. military no longer publicly discloses its airstrikes or other offenses in Afghanistan, there have been individual airstrikes on Taliban targets recently. On Dec. 10, U.S. forces conducted a strike against Taliban fighters attacking an Afghan checkpoint. USFOR-A spokesman Col. Sonny Leggett said the strike was in line with the U.S.-Taliban agreement and that claims of civilian casualties are false.

U.S. Central Command boss Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr. said Dec. 10 that after the drawdown, U.S. forces will be “very careful and more focused” on when to provide support to Afghan forces because of the reduction in capacity.

Milley, speaking Dec. 2, said the drawdown in the country comes after two decades of consistent effort in Afghanistan, which brought “a modicum of success.” Though for the past several years, “We have been in a condition of strategic stalemate where the government of Afghanistan was never going to militarily defeat the Taliban. And the Taliban, as long as we were supporting the government of Afghanistan, was never going to militarily defeat the regime.”

Editor’s note: This story was updated at 7:11 p.m. to add information about an original meeting between Milley and the Taliban in June.

Hurricane Hunters Fly First Mission of Winter Storm Season

Hurricane Hunters Fly First Mission of Winter Storm Season

Dec. 17, 2020 | By Brian W. Everstine

The Hurricane Hunters of the 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron flew their first sortie of the winter storm season, just weeks after wrapping their busiest hurricane season on record.

A WC-130J flew its first winter mission on Dec. 15, though the season officially began Nov. 1, according to a Keesler Air Force Base, Miss., release. The WC-130Js are tasked by the National Centers for Environmental Prediction, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, to collect data such as dew point, barometric pressure, and wind speed to help with forecasts, the release states.

“For winter storms we don’t fly through the system; we fly in front of the system,” said Lt. Col. Kaitlyn Woods, the chief aerial weather reconnaissance officer with the squadron, in the release. “This particular one we are doing these next two days is a storm they believe is going to generate off the Gulf Stream off the East Coast, so we want to get ahead of the system to collect what the atmosphere currently looks like and how it will affect the incoming system.”

Unlike tropical storms, when the WC-130J flies through the storm to collect data, the Hurricane Hunters fly at about 30,000 feet in front of a winter storm.

“These major winter-weather systems often affect heavily populated areas such as New England, so the data we collect better helps with forecasting the max amount of wind speed, rainfall, and/or snowfall, so those people can be better prepared,” Woods said in the release.

The Dec. 15 sortie comes more than two weeks after the 2020 Atlantic and Pacific hurricane season ended on Nov. 30. There were 30 named storms in the Atlantic, the highest on record, and the storms started early. The Hurricane Hunters flew their first sortie on May 16, two weeks before the start of the season, and flew in a total of 20 named storms in the Atlantic and two in the Pacific throughout the season, according to a Dec. 2 Keesler release. The squadron deployed to multiple locations, including Hawaii, St. Croix, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

“We went on the road eight times to fly 11 different storms,” said Maj. Jeremy DeHart, aerial weather reconnaissance officer with the squadron, in the release. “One of those deployments was a two-week marathon session flying back-to-back storms from start to finish. Another four deployments were to evacuate the aircraft due to the threat of direct impacts at home, which takes an extra toll on our personnel.”

The squadron and NOAA’s separate Hurricane Hunter aircraft flew a total of 1,950.9 hours, the third busiest since 1975, according to Keesler.

Skyborg Drone Translates Between F-35 and F-22 in Test

Skyborg Drone Translates Between F-35 and F-22 in Test

Dec. 16, 2020 | By John A. Tirpak

The Air Force successfully got an F-22, F-35B, and XQ-58A Valkyrie “attritable” drone talking to each other in a Dec. 9 test, demonstrating a connectivity between stealth platforms the service has sought for years. It was also the fifth flight of the Valkyrie—flying in formation with the F-22 and F-35.

The Kratos-made Valkyrie, one of the “Skyborg” class of drones, carried a “gatewayONE” translator system, allowing an Air Force F-22 and a Marine Corps F-35B to communicate using their otherwise incompatible datalinks: the Intra-Flight Data Link, or IFDL, on the F-22, and the Multifunctional Advanced Data Link, or MADL, on the F-35. The datalinks let F-22s and F-35s communicate with other jets like themselves without being detected or overheard, but weren’t designed to be interoperable, separated as they were by 20 years of technology advance.  

While the test began using the Valkyrie’s onboard translator payload, the communications payload lost connectivity shortly after the aircraft’s rocket-powered takeoff, the Air Force said. It isn’t yet known what happened or why the payload failed. The remainder of the test was run using a ground-based version of the system.

All told, only nine of 18 test objectives were met. The jets shared “actionable operational data” collected by the F-35B over the U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground, Ariz., the service said. 

The Air Force promoted the test as “another step toward achieving a military Internet of Things,” according to a press release. The gatewayOne translated between the two fighters’ formats and pushed data into their cockpits’ displays.

Preston Dunlap, the Department of the Air Force chief architect, told reporters on Dec. 16 the test was not meant to signal that the Valkyrie will necessarily become a flying gateway for communication between stealth aircraft inside contested enemy airspace. Rather, the translator payload was one of a number of mission-specific, modular payloads the drone can carry. However, serving as a translator between the two fifth-generation fighters and other stealth platforms could be one of those missions, as the Valkyrie is supposed to be a low-observable platform as well.

“Don’t confuse the C-3PO and R2D2,” Dunlap said, referring to the Star Wars robots that can translate many languages and serve as a multi-function tool, respectively.

“They work sympatico but they don’t have to be the same thing,” he said. In the Dec. 9 test, there was an “opportunity” to test the translator on an aerial platform that was essentially generic. “We’ll have several prototype opportunities throughout our Skyborg competition,” he said, noting the next such test will likely occur in May or later in the summer of 2021. Modularity of platforms is one of the hallmarks of the Skyborg program, he added.

The test also demonstrated “the beginning of a family of vehicles to be able to operate with the fifth-generation platforms,” Dunlap noted.

In a press statement, Dunlap said the two-way secure communications between the fighters was once thought impossible, but the test is a step toward “making the impossible possible … .In just 12 months, the team has opened the door to a world where we can put the power of an operations center into the cockpit at the tactical edge.”

The test is indicative of “the stuff ABMS is all about,” as it demonstrated cross-service communication and target handoff, said Lt. Col. Kate Stowe, gatewayONE program manager for Air Force Lifecycle Management Center, in a release, referring to the service’s Advanced Battle Management System program. The “win” of the test was “seeing gatewayONE establish a secure, two-way translational data path across multiple platforms and multiple domains.”

The Air Force also said it ran a test this week where a KC-46 tanker served as a communications node “using commercial internet routing standards over the Tactical Targeting Network Technology Waveform,” passing F-35B full-motion video to a ground controller. In both the KC-46 and Valkyrie tests, the idea was to take advantage of a platform “that’s going to be in the area already, anyway,” Dunlap observed.

“The big win here, we heard from the pilots themselves, [was] being able to push information into their cockpits … in a way that was operationally relevant and useful to them,” Dunlap told reporters. “It’s not all the data they would want, but it has opened a door. … We’ve got to keep pushing the technology that moves the data back and forth amongst the different systems.”

The tests last week also demonstrated the importance of using artificial intelligence to fly aircraft and conduct tasks like the communications translation, Dunlap noted. While “not everything worked, that’s okay, the team has learned and the team has addressed those things. [This is a] huge operational stepping stone here, [with] many chapters yet to go.”

Dunlap cautioned that the Air Force has not decided to use a gateway/translator platform as the ultimate solution for getting the F-22 and F-35 to be able to talk to one another. “Real estate” on a combat aircraft is precious and a software solution may yet be found, he asserted.

The Skyborg/F-22/F-35 test was planned to be done in April, but was delayed for reasons not explained by the Air Force.

The test was carried out by the Air Force Research laboratory, in conjunction with the 46th Test Squadron at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla.

Editor’s Note: This story was updated at 1:16 p.m. on Dec. 18 to correct the name of the squadron at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., that carried out the test. It was the 46th Test Squadron.

Space Force Wins First Trans-Atlantic Esports Competition

Space Force Wins First Trans-Atlantic Esports Competition

Dec. 16, 2020 | By Amy Hudson

The U.S. Space Force took home the win in its first CODE Bowl appearance, beating out seven other teams from the United States and United Kingdom in the “Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War” tournament.

The Dec. 11 tournament, hosted by USAA, was the first trans-Atlantic military esports competition, pitting teams from the U.S. Space Force, Air Force, Army, Navy, and Marine Corps against the United Kingdom’s Royal Navy, Royal Air Force, and Royal Marines to raise money for the Call of Duty Endowment, a nonprofit focused on finding jobs for veterans or U.S. troops transitioning out of the service.

The Space Force Team—made up of Tech Sgts. Maurice Moyer and Josh Wilson and Senior Airmen Brandon Cheatham and Brayden Belford, all from the Colorado-based Space Operations Command—beat out 200 teams from the Department of the Air Force in November for the coveted spot in the tournament. They then went on to beat all the other military services in the CODE Bowl, taking out the Royal Air Force in the final match.  

“Space Force isn’t even a year old so this may have been their very first win in anything competitive against any of the other services,” CODE Executive Director Dan Goldenberg said at the event, according to Business Insider. “So, it’s a heck of a great way to start off their history.”

Because every member of the Space Force team is based out of Colorado, they played together in person at the U.S. Air Force Academy. However, the Air Force team is stationed at different bases across the United States, so they each played remotely due to the new coronavirus pandemic, said Capt. Oliver Parsons, deputy chief of sports, fitness, and readiness and one of the founders of Air Force Gaming. AFG, which was started by a group of Airmen as a 24/7, resiliency-focused gaming organization, now falls under the Air Force Services Center. In its first competitive season, AFG has built a community of more than 10,000 service members on all platforms.

“Air Force Gaming exists to bolster resiliency and foster a community of support, mental wellbeing, and inclusion for all interested Air Force and Space Force service members,” Parsons said. “These friendly competitions are great for morale across all branches and are a great showcase for the work Air Force Gaming is doing to establish a vibrant and positive culture across the entire Department of the Air Force.”

In keeping with its resiliency focus, Parsons said Air Force Gaming also will host a series of tournaments around Christmas and New Year’s Day to connect Airmen who are not able to go home for the holidays this year.

The games will be Chess and Magic the Gathering, and registration will open an hour before the event. Anyone who wants to play can, said Parsons. Just got to www.airforcegaming.com and create an account, then get on AFG’s Discord. All registered members will receive notifications of upcoming events, he added.

“Air Force Gaming’s mission is to create an inclusive gaming organization for Airmen of all ages, ranks, and backgrounds,” said Col. Marc Adair, director of operations at the Air Force Services Center, in a release. “And with more than 80 percent of Airmen between the ages of 18-34 identifying as gamers, playing between four to 10 hours per week, we are confident that by establishing a unified hub for community and competition, Air Force Gaming can help promote resiliency, retention, teamwork, and mental well-being for service members around the world.”

Top Military Space Official Calls Out Russian Anti-Satellite Missile Test

Top Military Space Official Calls Out Russian Anti-Satellite Missile Test

Dec. 16, 2020 | By Rachel S. Cohen

U.S. Space Command said Dec. 16 that Russia has again tested a direct-ascent anti-satellite missile in a violation of space security norms.

“Russia publicly claims it is working to prevent the transformation of outer space into a battlefield, yet at the same time Moscow continues to weaponize space by developing and fielding on-orbit and ground-based capabilities that seek to exploit U.S. reliance on space-based systems,” said SPACECOM boss Gen. James H. Dickinson. “Russia’s persistent testing of these systems demonstrates threats to U.S. and allied space systems are rapidly advancing.”

The command said the test took place Dec. 15 on U.S. time (Dec. 16 in Russia) but has not answered what it entailed. Anti-satellite weapons can destroy satellites in low Earth orbit, where American intelligence-collection assets sit up to 1,000 kilometers above the planet.

United States and United Kingdom officials also raised alarm about ASAT missile tests in July and April this year.

“We stand ready and committed to deter aggression and defend our nation and our allies from hostile acts in space,” Dickinson said.

SPACECOM, which manages daily operations that use military satellites, radars, and other space-related assets, has warned that the impact of an ASAT weapon can scatter debris that may endanger other hardware traveling through space and “irrevocably pollute the space domain.”

The command has called out instances of on-orbit kinetic weapon testing as well as a pair of Russian satellites that appeared to be following a National Reconnaissance Office spy satellite.

U.S. officials urge Russia to play nice in space to avoid further conflict, as the Pentagon ramps up its own military operations under SPACECOM and the new Space Force. If diplomacy and public shaming fall short, the U.S. needs to “figure out how to have an offensive punch,” Space Force Staff Director Lt. Gen. Nina M. Armagno said.

“If we’re going to survive in a warfighting domain, we’re going to have to have defenses and offenses,” Armagno said during a Dec. 16 Washington Space Business Roundtable event. “Those programs are things that we are thinking about today, working on today, and absolutely need for a future, which may include war that extends into the space domain.”

The Space Force, which provides personnel and resources for commands like SPACECOM to use, told Congress earlier this year it plans to pursue a “broad range of counter-space options” to respond to threats against National Security Space assets. The service declared a new ground-based communications jammer ready for operations in March, saying it was the “only offensive system in the United States Space Force arsenal,” according to SpaceNews.

Editor’s note: This story was updated at 12:15 p.m. on Dec. 17 with additional information about the test.

U-2 Flies with Artificial Intelligence as Its Co-Pilot

U-2 Flies with Artificial Intelligence as Its Co-Pilot

Dec. 16, 2020 | By Brian W. Everstine

One of the Air Force’s oldest planes became the first military aircraft to fly with artificial intelligence as its copilot on Dec. 15.

A U-2 from Beale Air Force Base, Calif., flew with an AI algorithm that controlled the Dragon Lady’s sensors and tactical navigation during a local training sortie. The algorithm, developed by Air Combat Command’s U-2 Federal Laboratory and named ARTUµ in a reference to the droid that serves as a copilot in the Star Wars film franchise, took over tasks normally handled by the pilot, in turn letting the flier focus on the flying.

“ARTUµ’s groundbreaking flight culminates our three-year journey to becoming a digital force,” said Will Roper, the Air Force’s assistant secretary of acquisition, in a release. “Putting AI safely in command of a U.S. military system for the first time ushers in a new age of human-machine teaming and algorithmic competition. Failing to realize AI’s full potential will mean ceding decision advantage to our adversaries.”

The laboratory used more than a half-million simulated training missions to build the algorithm, which took over sensors after takeoff. The training scenario focused on a simulated missile strike, with ARTUµ finding enemy missile launchers and the pilot looking for adversary aircraft—both using the U-2’s radar, according to the release.

“We know that in order to fight and win in a future conflict with a peer adversary, we must have a decisive digital advantage,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr said in the release. “AI will play a critical role in achieving that edge, so I’m incredibly proud of what the team accomplished. We must accelerate change and that only happens when our Airmen push the limits of what we thought was possible.”

The flight comes more than two months after the U-2 Federal Laboratory also flew another first, using the open-source Kubernetes system to update inflight software during a training mission.

Speaking Dec. 14 at the inaugural Doolittle Leadership Center Forum, Roper said the Air Force’s adoption of AI into its military systems, like the U-2 flight and the broader Advanced Battle Management System in development, is integral to the U.S. military staying ahead of advancing rivals, such as China. Artificial intelligence-enabled weapons systems—from satellites, to operator consoles, to operations centers, and then to cockpits—are needed to close a kill chain faster and more effectively, he said.

“If there is not AI as part of that value chain, even up in the cockpit itself helping that operator sort through data that would be dizzying for a human to deal with, then the best operator in the world can lose to a mediocre operator that has AI on a good day,” Roper said. “And that’s the thing we don’t want to have happen on our watch. We have operator superiority if we give them the AI advantage. It will create a confounding effect on adversaries because now they have to train for both our people and our AI. But if we don’t do that, we will be asking people to try to close their OODA loop against a machine that can make a million different decisions before a human can even read a display. And that is too big of a risk for us to ask our next generation of Airmen and Space Professionals to take on.”