Expeditionary Center Tackles Training Amid COVID-19

Dec. 15, 2020 | By Brian W. Everstine

JOINT BASE MCGUIRE-DIX-LAKEHURST, N.J.—When the coronavirus pandemic hit the U.S. and much of the country entered lockdown earlier this year, the Air Force still needed to deploy with ready Airmen.

That posed a challenge for the Air Force Expeditionary Center here: How could the Expeditionary Operations School and the 421st Combat Training Squadron take on the growing demand for prepared Airmen while keeping people safe?

“The expeditionary mission never went away,” Maj. Gen. Mark D. Camerer, commander of the Expeditionary Center, said in a Dec. 8 interview here.

“We were actually here working more hours” to figure out how to get incoming students whose deployment orders hadn’t changed “the training they needed so they can be effective downrange, while keeping them COVID-safe,” he said.

The Expeditionary Operations School is tasked with training Airmen with combat skills as they head to austere locations in the Middle East and Africa. It also handles air advisers, Phoenix Raven security forces, and contingency response Airmen. About 10,000 students go through the schoolhouse each year, where the 421st CTS and 423rd Mobility Training Squadron oversee training.

The number of Airmen told to take the training was already on the rise when COVID-19 hit, as it’s now required for all Airmen going to Africa to have combat training. The Defense Department restricted personnel travel around the globe, but that didn’t affect pre-deployment training. The 421st CTS paused for about two weeks to rewrite lessons and find ways to spread out its students in line with social-distancing guidelines.

“We had to compare every job qualification standard and every advanced deployment requirement pre-COVID with what we could continue to do safely and effectively in order to meet theater entry requirements,” said Tech. Sgt. Justin Wadekamper, 421st CTS contingency response course director, in a release earlier this year.

At first, students had to quarantine for 14 days in on-base lodging before the training course. Airmen took some computer classes and did some physical training, and the USO and American Red Cross donated books, puzzles, and snacks while they were stuck inside.

Now, the quarantine is no longer a requirement. Camerer said they test people for the virus before they arrive and once they get to the school instead.

“As we’ve learned about the disease, and we’ve learned about how it spreads, we’ve adjusted what we do to stay relevant,” said Camerer, who took command in September.

Some Airmen were able to waive training if they completed it in recent years. Courses that typically involved about 200 members were broken down to small bubbles. If an Airman in a bubble comes down with COVID-19, it’s easier to monitor that limited group. Cleaning ramped up, and Airmen have to wear masks when indoors.

The school changed its schedule from 14 days in class, including weekends off, to 10 days straight with no days off.

“As we come up on this holiday, it will literally be the first deep breath of about 11 days in a row,” Camerer said. “I think we’re going to slow down operations to almost nothing and … and take a break.”

The pre-deployment expeditionary skills training run by the 421st CTS includes lessons on dealing with active-shooter scenarios, weapons, self-administered medical aid, battlefield movement, improvised explosive devices, and more. Training is tailored to whether Airmen are heading into hostile or uncertain environments.

The goal is to give Airmen who typically don’t expect to encounter an attack outside the wire a baseline of training to fall back on and stay calm—though, hopefully, they never need it.

On a recent chilly day, Air Force Magazine worked through a training scenario with a team of Airmen in several professions, ranging from finance to maintenance. The Airmen in the cohort moved through a “village” just off the McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst flight line, where they encountered simulated mortar fire and friendly and hostile checkpoints. The group also confronted a mock tribal leader in an engagement that spiraled out of control when blanks from AK-47s started firing.

The training is reminiscent of years of outside-the-wire interactions in Afghanistan—only now with face masks.

“The Airmen here at this schoolhouse worked overtime to make sure we can still produce what our combatant commanders required downrange,” Camerer said.

Space Force Putting Ideas to the Test in Year 2

Dec. 15, 2020 | By Rachel S. Cohen

The Space Force spent its first year transforming how the military is organized, trained, and equipped to wield satellites, radars, and other capabilities in combat. It will spend its second year proving whether those changes can work.

As the newest service turns 1 year old on Dec. 20, it is preparing to welcome in thousands more recently selected Airmen in fields such as intelligence and acquisition next year. It plans to grow to 6,400 Active-duty members by the end of September, and total about 16,000 employees including civilians and members assigned from other branches. About 2,400 Active-duty personnel are part of USSF now.

“Now we have to develop those folks to fill those positions and do that organically from the United States Space Force, … focused on the domain of which we are responsible for, and being able to move at speed,” Chief of Space Operations Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond said on a Dec. 15 call with reporters.

“As new missions come about, we will add squadrons as those missions materialize,” he added.

Chief Master Sergeant Roger A. Towberman, the Space Force’s Senior Enlisted Adviser, said the service is figuring out when it makes sense to bring those new members in “one by one.” People in career fields shared by both the Air Force and Space Force—cyber, intel, acquisition, and others—who were tapped for transfer can start joining Feb. 1, 2021.

“When’s the right time for this person to swap out?” Towberman said. “I wouldn’t say we’re in a hurry to do that. But there certainly is a sense of urgency, there’s a sense of excitement. We want to make sure that we can move as quickly as practical.”

He suggested that, in some cases, it may make more sense to keep people in their Air Force jobs longer before bringing them into the Space Force. Members of the Army and Navy departments will be allowed in starting on a limited basis next year.

Space operators who work with satellites and related technologies began transferring in September. The service has also begun picking people for promotion through selection boards, including three chief master sergeants who will pin on the new rank at the beginning of 2021.

The Space Force will release its plan for a reserve component in the next few weeks, Raymond said. That’s likely to offer more flexibility or opportunities than the Reserve and Guard pieces of other armed forces, and the general said it could serve as a pathfinder for the rest of the military.

A human capital strategy should come to fruition soon that will introduce new ideas for recruitment, retention, and training. The Space Force argues that its small size relative to the rest of the military makes it an ideal guinea pig for more modern approaches to personnel management.

“We still have a lot of work to do to finalize that strategy and fill in some of the blanks. We’ve been holding writing conferences over the last few weeks to be able to do that,” Raymond said. “This will be the most important thing that the Space Force does in the next few months, because it’s going to provide us the means to recruit, attract, assess, develop, and retain a force that we need to be able to operate in space.”

On Dec. 16, Raymond will host a summit of USSF general officers to refine the service’s plans and strategies for offering space power to commanders around the world.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff is set to welcome Raymond as its eighth member on Dec. 20, too. He has sat in on those meetings for the past year, and the congressionally directed move further ingrains space issues into high-level decision-making.

“This next year is all about integrating the Space Force more broadly,” Raymond said. “I do see us integrating with the joint force to a greater extent now that we’re up and running and have built a service, looking at how do you do that force presentation?”

That planning extends to closer collaboration with commercial industry and other nations, too.

“We’ll continue to open up additional training opportunities for allied partners,” he said. “We just put an officer into the Space Operations Command in France. We’ll continue to do that as we also continue to take space professionals from our partners into our ops centers as well.”

Raymond pointed to other instances where the force continues to evolve. For one, the Department of the Air Force has settled on a plan for how the Space Systems Command will manage hardware and software development and sustainment. That needs Air Force Secretary Barbara M. Barrett’s approval but is expected to get up and running in 2021.

“I’m really pleased with how it’s turned out,” Raymond said. “This builds on [the Space and Missile Systems Center’s reforms] that builds some unity of effort and allows … competition between disruptors and prototypers and more traditional acquisition organizations.”

The Space Force is slated to join the Intelligence Community for a closer relationship with organizations such as the National Reconnaissance Office, which operates multiple intel-gathering satellites.

Raymond also noted that he signed a memorandum of understanding with the Japanese government on Dec. 15 to solidify a space payload-hosting partnership. Through that collaboration, two U.S. space domain awareness systems will hitch a ride on Japanese navigation satellites. That frees up American agencies from spending money on more satellites to carry those payloads itself.

The four-star said he won’t speculate on how the incoming Biden administration approach to space might differ. He met with the group overseeing the Defense Department’s transition to the new administration earlier this month for a “really good conversation,” but declined to offer details.

“What isn’t going to change is my focus, and the focus of our team … on building a service that delivers national advantage,” he said.

Gremlins Program Optimistic About Next Tests After Drones Fail to Dock

Dec. 15, 2020 | By Rachel S. Cohen

Dynetics and its partners are planning next steps for the Gremlins drone swarming program after the aircraft failed to dock with a C-130 in recent flight tests.

A third round of demonstrations began Oct. 28 at Dugway Proving Ground, Utah. Five Gremlins aircraft have flown for around 11 hours in total so far, including three drones that were airborne for seven hours in the recent tests.

Dynetics, a Leidos subsidiary, is the prime contractor on the program run by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which plans to hand the final product to the Air Force and other military customers. Kratos Defense and Security Solutions leads airframe production as part of that team.

“The first focus was really to demonstrate all the automated and manual safety behaviors that are needed to ensure the safe operation of the vehicle on the range and to avoid risks to the manned C-130 aircraft,” Tim Keeter, who manages the Gremlins team at Dynetics, told Air Force Magazine on Dec. 15. That’s given program officials confidence that the drones can fly safely.

The three X-61As individually tried out “rendezvous” and “station-keeping” maneuvers, about 125 feet away from the C-130. Then they crept to within 50 feet of the docking “bullet” that is designed to clamp onto the drone in midair. Over the course of nine tries, the aircraft came “within inches” of capture but fell short each time, Keeter said.

Several factors played into the tricky flight dynamics. The docking station extended from the C-130 swung like a pendulum as the Gremlins tried to connect. Communications between the C-130 and the drones could be delayed. How the various systems interact with the airflow can be hard to model as well.

Analysts will dig into data gleaned from the tests to figure out what fixes need to happen before the next tests. Updates will focus on “interplay between the aerodynamics involved on those final few feet, as well as in all the parts of our avionics and [air vehicle] system and our C-130 system,” Keeter said.

Some changes will come before future demonstrations. Others will be pushed to the long-term to-do list. Certain software changes might offer a bigger payoff, Keeter said, while other procedural tweaks can improve the number of times a Gremlin docks.

“All of our systems looked good during the ground tests, but the flight test is where you truly find how things work,” Scott Wierzbanowski, program manager for Gremlins in DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office, said in a Dec. 10 release. “It just wasn’t close enough to engage the recovery system.”

Collecting aircraft mid-flight will be a key step toward fielding deployable drone swarms, and the team is optimistic that it will see success next year. Researchers ultimately want to launch and recover four Gremlins aircraft within 30 minutes, as a stepping stone toward doing so with a dozen or more.

“It’s an engineering problem at this point,” Keeter said. “I think we’re going to accomplish it during our next test. We were hoping, certainly, to get there in November, but we’re not quite yet there. But we have a lot of data and a nice path forward that we’re working on getting to before the spring.”

The Gremlins team hasn’t yet set a date for the fourth round of tests. Dugway is packed with programs whose test schedules have been delayed by the coronavirus pandemic, and each is jockeying for a slot on the calendar, Keeter said.

The Gremlins program is one part of a broader effort to incorporate aircraft and weapons swarms into combat operations for coordinated attacks or intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. The Air Force hopes that adopting small, easily replaceable unmanned systems will make it more resilient and offer more options on the battlefield.

Gremlins requested $12.1 million in fiscal 2020, but progress is taking longer than expected because of the pandemic. DARPA planned to wind down its part of the program and transition Gremlins to the armed forces in 2021, according to its latest budget request.

Keeter said that while COVID-19 delayed tests earlier this year from March to July, the pandemic has had minimal impact on cost. Earthquake damage at Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, Calif., also complicated plans last year.

As the team moves from technology demonstrations to mission demos, the effort will involve a single person controlling multiple aircraft and various sensors at once. Dynetics eventually wants Gremlins to be able to loiter for one hour in a 300 nautical mile radius, and to carry a payload of more than 50 pounds in the nose cone.

“It’s compatible with the Air Force logistical infrastructure, and that includes the training,” Keeter added. “We’ve got draft technical orders, and all the things that will need to be done to move this into an operational system. So we believe we’re well-positioned for that step to begin working more closely with the different military stakeholders.”

New York Reservists Return from First KC-135 Combat Deployment

Dec. 15, 2020 | By Brian W. Everstine

Dozens of Airmen and four KC-135s from the 914th Air Refueling Wing returned home to Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station, N.Y., this month from the wing’s first combat deployment with the tankers.

The wing switched from flying C-130s to KC-135s beginning in 2017, became fully mission-ready in April, and four months later deployed to Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar, as part of Operations Freedom’s Sentinel and Resolute Support. The New York-based Airmen have also flown training missions with partner countries in the region.

They returned home on Dec. 12 and 13 after four months in the Middle East.

Many of the Airmen previously deployed to fly the Hercules overseas. They retrained on the KC-135 over the past few years in preparation for this deployment.

“I was on the last deployment in 2016, and it was bittersweet to have my last … C-130 flight at Al Udeid before I went to KC-135 training,” Lt. Col. Dennis Jakubczyk, 914th Operations Support Squadron commander, said in a Dec. 14 release. “Being one of the last (914th) guys to fly the C-130 in combat and then being one of the first Airmen to go out the door with the tanker on our first deployment operationally was kind of amazing.”

Roper: ARRW Hypersonic Missile Will Fly This Month

Dec. 14, 2020 | By Brian W. Everstine

The Air Force will flight test the U.S. military’s first hypersonic missile this month, Air Force acquisition boss Will Roper said Dec. 14 at the inaugural Doolittle Leadership Center Forum. But while having a hypersonic weapon is an achievement, Roper added, it is not a full solution to the challenges posed by increasingly capable peer adversaries.

Video: AFA on YouTube

Roper’s comments came during a conversation with Air Force Association President and retired Lt. Gen. Bruce “Orville” Wright at an event titled “From Acquisition to Lethality.” That event featured a three-general panel with top leaders from Air Force Materiel Command, who spoke from the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Dayton, Ohio. The forum was produced in partnership with AFA’s Wright Memorial Chapter there.

The AGM-183A Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW) beat out the Hypersonic Conventional Strike Weapon as prototyping progressed, and it completed captive-carry testing earlier this year. The first planned booster test flight is expected this month with production beginning next year, Roper said.

Hypersonic capabilities will give the Air Force a valuable stand-off strike option, but may not be quite as crucial to U.S. defense strategy as it was to China’s, Roper said. He pointed to Chinese development to counter U.S. missile defense systems, which are not designed to take on maneuverable, ultra-fast weapons.

Hypersonic weapons development “fundamentally challenges the principle of ballistic missile defense by making the missile non-ballistic,” he said. Those missiles fly lower, using the curvature of the Earth and quick movements to blind defenses to their approach.

“As we field the first hypersonic weapon, and I’m excited we’re doing that, it doesn’t undercut this investment our adversaries have, nor take away the principle of safety that I would expect they hold,” Roper said. “The U.S. has exceptional capabilities, especially in stealth aircraft that can penetrate and put weapons where they wish. So do our adversaries believe we don’t have the ability to target them? I would hope not. Hypersonic weapons just then become another way to do it.”

While stealth weapons provide the U.S. a strategic advantage in penetrated air defenses, hypersonic capability enables a conventional B-52 bomber to stand off at a distance while attacking a well-defended target. In conflict with a country like China, this combination presents “a landscape of problems.”

ARRW was tested this year with the B-52H, and Air Force Global Strike Command expects to also equip the B-1B to carry it. Roper said earlier this year it also could be carried on the F-15. Gen. Duke Z. Richardson, Roper’s military deputy and top USAF uniformed acquisition officer, said Dec. 3 that developing ARRW as a rapid prototype meant the missile will receive operational capability in 2022—five years earlier than if it was a traditional program.

Moving faster—in acquisition as well as in battle—is critical to making the Air Force ready and able to defeat adversaries in an increasingly complex world.

Buying complex weapon systems and waiting years for them to develop and reach the field no longer works, given the rapid evolution of technology in the commercial sector and huge advancements countries like China have recently made, Roper said.

But “we don’t have to wait on technologies anymore” because they are coming faster than the service can even plan for them, he said, thanks to changing approaches to development like digital engineering and tapping into commercial-sector innovations.

Like ARRW, those practices are available to other cutting-edge Air Force projects as well.

The Air Force applied digital engineering to develop and fly its first Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) prototype. This approach uses computer-generated models to predict how a system performs before committing to bending metal, when costs rise rapidly. But this requires a fresh approach to acquisition, Roper said.

The good—and bad—news, is this will require massive change in the Air Force—“change how we train, change how we think about requirements, change the entire Air Force end to end,” Roper said.

The Advanced Battle Management System is another program that is driving change. Intended to replace the E-8C Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System aircraft, it has grown into a networked “Internet of Military Things” to connect the force in new ways.

A coming ABMS tool dubbed “ReleaseONE” will provide what Roper previously called “a mini-internet instantiated in our mobility fleet,” in the form of a pod that can relay information over local data gateways. That should help combat assets talk when their communications are cut off by enemy forces.

Enabling such connectivity is the concept driving joint, all-domain command and control, but Roper said the JADC2 term has become so ubiquitous that it is losing its punch.

“I don’t know what it means anymore in the means of a traditional operational concept,” Roper said. ABMS must move from experiments to actual systems to prove the concept of a “battlefield vision of the internet” can truly connect sensors and shooters in real time, just like computers and cell phones do now in the civilian world.

“We don’t have to invent a different kind of internet for the military, we simply have to build what works commercially in a military sense,” Roper said.

Two innovation organizations intended to help drive such a future and leverage commercial development are AFWERX—a tech “startup” within the Department of the Air Force to fuel development and connect companies with military customers—and AFVentures, a venture capital-like effort to secure seed funding for small businesses that are creating military-relevant tools.

Both have seen success, with AFWERX using multi-round competitions and conferences to get firms under contract to tackle real problems. AFVentures investments have helped attract other investors, producing a 4-to-1 multiplier effect to further accelerate development, Roper said.

One area Roper said the Air Force must develop quickly is artificial intelligence. Already widely used in commercial solutions for voice recognition, online sales, social media, and more, AI will be a major contributor to ABMS—if only Airmen learn to trust it.

AI can be more effective than humans in certain circumstances, yet duped in others. Nevertheless, as challenges become faster and more complex, even the highest-end weapons platform could be bested by a competitor’s solution if it effectively uses AI.

Without AI, “you are asking people to close their [decision-making] loop against a machine that can make a million decisions before a human can read a display,” Roper said.

AFMC Overhauling Acquisition, Personnel Practices to Stay Relevant

Dec. 14, 2020 | By Brian W. Everstine

As Air Force Materiel Command makes changes to speed up how it buys, tests, and sustains weapon systems, the command is also overhauling its personnel practices to ensure its Airmen face fewer career hurdles and can succeed, the command’s boss said.

AFMC is overhauling its approach to hardware and software management under its “AFMC We Need” vision and the broader Air Force’s “Accelerate Change or Lose” orders through steps such as digital engineering, increased foreign military sales, advanced manufacturing, and conditions-based maintenance, command boss Gen. Arnold W. Bunch Jr. said Dec. 14 during the inaugural Doolittle Leadership Center Forum.

Video: AFA on YouTube

At the same time, however, command employees have said they face their own hurdles in training, career progression, and obtaining new certifications. Those challenges limit the command’s ability to succeed overall.

“There’s no one that comes in and goes, ‘You know, I think I really want to go slow today,’” Bunch said. “They all want to go fast. But they all, in many ways, face impediments … and we’ve got to eliminate those.”

Airmen have told leaders their training options aren’t what they’d like them to be. In response, the command created the November training event “Agile Patriot,” which offered about 1,000 people new pointers and briefings on how their jobs connect to the Air Force’s higher mission. Many Airmen also said the training for first-line supervisors is lacking, so the command created a pilot program that will become available across the organization in January to improve their education.

As the effects of the coronavirus pandemic are expected to linger long-term, Bunch said the command is expanding remote work options. Right now, this means coordinating with different parts of the command to loosen restrictions that might require people to be in the office instead. Setting guidelines and overcoming roadblocks to make it easier to work from home could also attract experts from across the country who may join AFMC without relocating.

“Maybe I don’t have to have someone sitting right in Dayton, Ohio, or in Boston,” Bunch said. “Maybe I can, through telework, recruit someone in Silicon Valley or in Texas or wherever it may be.”

AFMC has since 2018 cut the time it takes to interview candidates and offer a position. For those who snag a job, it is also trying to on-board new employees and get them working in as few as four days, Bunch said. Security clearance backlogs, computer login processes, and other issues can slow that down.

Lt. Gen. Shaun Q. Morris, commander of the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center, said the center’s training systems need to be more agile as well. This means a shift toward on-demand courses, where an employee can “reach into the training system and pull information they need, in the time that they need it,” he said. The certification process needs to be available anytime someone wants to pursue those, too.

Parts of AFMC are adapting to supporting two armed forces rather than one. Since the Space Force stood up one year ago, the Air Force Research Laboratory has changed how it operates to provide more support for that service, AFRL boss Brig. Gen. Heather Pringle said.

There are about 700 personnel within AFRL dedicated to supporting space clients and technology in the short term, along with a new deputy technology executive officer who will better integrate space into the AFRL portfolio.

In September, AFRL’s new transformational capabilities office matured to the point where it could start managing the department’s most promising projects. In the second phase of growth, the office is focusing on creating partnerships and developing its workforce, Pringle said. It should reach full operations by the end of 2021.

Under “Accelerate Change or Lose” and the 2018 National Defense Strategy, the Air Force has to keep pace with potential adversaries like China who are undergoing a “whole-of-nation approach, consolidating resources in a way that’s going to be a challenge for our nation to keep up with,” Pringle said. “They are putting resources behind it, collecting talents necessary to implement such a plan.”

AFMC is responding to that shift by using intelligence experts in new ways outside of combat operations. For example, AFLCMC is embedding intelligence analysts in acquisition programs to ensure the executives have the right information about what upgrades to pursue.

The goal is to “ensure that where our adversaries go, we’re already there,” Morris said. “We want them constantly reacting to us, not the opposite way around.”

Bunch said that when competing with other global powers, it’s important to ensure American intellectual property is protected.

“I don’t want our billions or millions, or whatever it is, of dollars of investment being siphoned off at a fraction of the dollar so that someone else can capitalize on that,” Bunch said. “We need to continue to make our investments to ensure that we are protecting our networks and our intellectual capital.”

Space Force Commands Working Together to Grow in Year Two

Dec. 14, 2020 | By Rachel S. Cohen

The new boss of the Space Force’s operations branch on Dec. 14 offered a peek into how the organization is working with other parts of the service as they mature.

Space Operations Command (SpOC) formally stood up at a ceremony in October, making it the first Space Force branch to do so. Space Systems Command (SSC), which will oversee hardware and software development, sustainment, and retirement, is slated to be up and running next summer. Space Training and Readiness Command (STARCOM), which will manage the pipeline from new recruits through graduate space education, should launch next year as well.

Space Operations Command boss Lt. Gen. Stephen N. Whiting said each organization is trying to stay linked so each piece of the service understands what the others need as they move forward.

“Even though SSC has not yet stood up, we have a number of touchpoints with them,” Whiting said during an event hosted by the Space Force Association. “[Space and Missile Systems Center boss Lt. Gen. John D. Thompson] leads a group of program executive officers from his organization and other development organizations who support our mission areas in their meetings.”

Over the past several months, SpOC has offered its perspective to SSC through Whiting as well as through an operations working group with members from the Space Force and U.S. Space Command, the joint combatant command that uses assets such as satellites and radars for daily military missions.

Their relationship will particularly evolve as the space enterprise looks to cut the time it takes to put new satellites on orbit, test cutting-edge technologies, and hand more tools to service members who want to code new software on their own rather than relying on defense companies and contracts for upgrades.

“This morning, I took a brief from a young Airman in our enterprise … who taught himself to code. He’s a space operator who went in and wrote a new piece of software that has completely improved part of our mission area, and has freed up 15 percent of the manpower of that squadron to be repurposed from rote tasks into higher-priority tasks that are more warfighting-focused,” Whiting noted. “That’s the kind of innovation that we’re looking to unlock with the digital Space Force effort.”

Space Training and Readiness Delta Provisional, the predecessor to STARCOM, sits under SpOC as it prepares to work on its own, Whiting said. Delta Commander Col. Peter J. Flores participates in SpOC meetings, and the organizational proximity helps officials in the operations and training fields collaborate more smoothly.

Building new training processes and collaboration with the operations realm will be a key aspect of the training organization’s growth over the next several months, Whiting said.

“We really are trying to use more modern technology to provide that three-dimensional visualization of the battlespace,” he added. “Our squadron that’s in the Space Training and Readiness Delta, the 533rd Training Squadron … out at Vandenberg (Air Force Base, Calif.) is doing some really interesting things in that space, to include some virtual reality.”

US Sanctions Turkey Over S-400 Buy

Dec. 14, 2020 | By Jennifer-Leigh Oprihory

The State Department on Dec. 14 announced sanctions against Turkey’s Presidency of Defense Industries (SSB) over the country’s purchase of the Russian S-400 surface-to-air missile system—a move the Trump administration has threatened for more than a year.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo carried out the sanctions allowed by the 2017 Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), which lets the U.S. government retaliate against those who do significant business with entities connected to Russia’s defense or intelligence sectors.

Pompeo said that SSB’s dealings with Russia defense-export agency Rosoboronexport to obtain the S-400 triggered CAATSA sanctions. Buying the S-400 reportedly cost more than $2 billion, according to the Associated Press. The air defense systems began arriving in Turkey in mid-2019.

The State Department said the sanctions are intended to “impose costs on Russia in response to its wide range of malign activities,” and not to undermine Turkey’s “military capabilities or combat readiness.”

According to the State Department, the sanctions:

Ban “specific U.S. export licenses and authorizations for any goods or technology transferred to SSB;”
Ban American financial institutions from loaning or crediting SSB more than a total of $10 million in any 12-month period;
Ban the U.S. Export-Import Bank from helping with exports to the organization;
Require the U.S. to oppose loans from global financial institutions that benefit the organization; and
Freeze the assets of and place visa restrictions on SSB President Ismail Demir; SSB vice president Faruk Yigit; Serhat Gencoglu, who heads the organization’s air defense and space branch; and Mustafa Alper Deniz, a program manager for the group’s regional air defense systems directorate.

“Today’s action sends a clear signal that the United States will fully implement CAATSA Section 231 and will not tolerate significant transactions with Russia’s defense and intelligence sectors,” Pompeo said.

The sanctions come after Turkey’s acquisition of the S-400 also prompted the Pentagon to cut off Ankara from the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program. The Defense Department argues that the NATO ally cannot own both the key fighter jet and a Russian-built defensive system designed to take it out.

Pompeo urged Turkey to work with the U.S. to “resolve the S-400 problem immediately.”

“Turkey is a valued ally and an important regional security partner for the United States, and we seek to continue our decades-long history of productive defense-sector cooperation by removing the obstacle of Turkey’s S-400 possession as soon as possible,” he wrote.

Turkey’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs pushed back against the sanctions in a Dec. 14 statement, condemning the U.S. decision to pursue that route rather than accept a Turkish proposal to solve the S-400 problem “through dialogue and diplomacy” as “completely senseless.”

“The conditions which compelled Turkey to acquire S-400 systems are well known,” the ministry wrote. “[President Donald J. Trump] himself has admitted on many instances that Turkey’s acquisition was justified.”

The ministry alleged that there was no “technical merit” to U.S. claims that the S-400 could endanger “NATO systems,” and reiterated Turkey’s willingness to address the issue via a working group.

“Turkey will take the necessary steps against this decision, which will negatively affect our relations and will retaliate in a manner and timing it deems appropriate,” it wrote. “Turkey will never refrain from taking the necessary measures to safeguard its national security.”

The ministry encouraged the U.S. to rethink the sanctions and remedy what it deemed a “grave mistake as soon as possible,” and said it was still willing to solve the S-400 problem through diplomatic channels.

American lawmakers have urged the executive branch to levy CAATSA sanctions, and added a provision in the fiscal 2021 defense policy bill to make them mandatory.

In October, a bipartisan pair of senators sent a letter to Pompeo pushing for sanctions amid worries that Turkey may have used the S-400 system to track American-made F-16s. The jets were returning from an August exercise that Cyprus, France, Greece, and Italy held in response to Turkish aggression in the Mediterranean Sea, Air Force Magazine previously reported.

National Guard Support for COVID-19 Vaccine Rollout Ramps Up

Dec. 14, 2020 | By Brian W. Everstine

As America’s first approved coronavirus vaccine is shipped across the country and frontline workers are getting their first jabs this week, National Guardsmen have been activated to assist with transportation. Military airlifters are standing by to support commercial shipping networks as well.

Governors in 26 states are planning to use the National Guard in some capacity to help with distributing the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine that the Food and Drug Administration authorized Dec. 11 for emergency use. In Ohio and West Virginia, for example, Guardsmen are working at a state warehouse where they break down large shipments of the vaccine to send to smaller distribution centers. In Oklahoma, the Guard itself is transporting the vaccine from a main hub to satellite sites, the adjutants general of the states told reporters.

“We are a surge force for our state,” Ohio Adjutant General Maj. Gen. John C. Harris Jr. said. “We bring a wide variety of not only capacity to augment the size of the workforce, but also specialized skills within that workforce. … This is exactly what the Guard does.”

The unpacking and breaking down process is a “very scripted routine” that the Guard members have been rehearsing in advance to ensure it is done correctly, Harris said. In West Virginia, the only Guard members who will actually handle vaccine vials are licensed health care providers, said Brig. Gen. Murray E. “Gene” Holt, the state’s adjutant general and commander of Joint Task Force Corona.

Fifty-five initial shipments of the new messenger RNA vaccine have already been distributed across the country through FedEx and UPS aircraft and trucks, with another 95 en route, Army Gen. Gustave F. Perna said at a Dec. 14 briefing. Perna is the chief operating officer of Operation Warp Speed, the public-private effort to accelerate coronavirus vaccines and therapeutics.

More shipments will roll out in the coming days, to reach 636 total in the first round. Operation Warp Speed has identified nearly 600 more orders that will go next.

Within the Defense Department, officials last week said 44,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine will be shipped to 13 locations across the U.S., South Korea, Japan, and Germany. Military health care professionals, emergency services, and public safety personnel will be the first to receive the vaccines in a phased rollout, though DOD is not requiring its employees to get the shot.

Once a Moderna-made vaccine receives FDA approval, about 6 million doses will be shipped to 3,285 locations across the country as well.

While UPS and FedEx will lead vaccine transportation, U.S. Transportation Command and Air Mobility Command have prepared to help out.

“USTRANSCOM is prepared to support DOD, (Department of Health and Human Services), and all partners in Operation Warp Speed, to include the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention],” the command said in a release. “USTRANSCOM anticipates a limited role in OWS vaccine distribution, but stands ready to assist in planning and executing any options that may service the transportation and distribution requirements of OWS as needed.”

Air Mobility Command has recently surveyed its aerial ports at various bases to determine their capacity to store and ship the vaccines, which must be kept in extremely cold freezers.

“AMC tasked all [aerial port squadrons] to assess their ability to store and ship COVID vaccines,” AMC spokeswoman Capt. Nicole Ferrara said. “There has been no unit directed to move them at this time, this is just AMC getting ahead for planning purposes. This is a relatively routine mission, as we move vaccines all the time, and we wouldn’t expect this to be much different.”