5th AF Boss on Maintaining Readiness in Japan During the Pandemic

Dec. 1, 2020 | By Brian W. Everstine

The lack of training ranges and airspace in Japan are making it difficult for U.S. aircrews to maintain readiness during the pandemic, the head of U.S. forces in Japan said.

U.S. and Japanese aircraft and personnel need to leave the country for high-end training, often traveling to major exercise such as a Red Flag in the United States, said Lt. Gen. Kevin B. Schneider, commander of 5th Air Force and U.S. Forces Japan. Although there are ranges inside Japan, such as the Draughon Range near Misawa Air Base or a smaller space at Camp Fuji, those locations face encroachment issues with local populations and local officials are hesitant to allow events even if they use inert training munitions.

“We don’t have the training ranges, we don’t have the airspace, and we don’t have the freedom of maneuver flexibility that I would like for forces to maintain their highest level of readiness,” Schneider said during a virtual Air Force Association “Airmen in the Fight” event. “So we work, fight, challenge every day to figure out ways that we can improve the opportunity.”

The Defense Department has restricted travel for troops during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the cost of travel has increased, impacting Pacific exercise planners trying to figure out how to safely hold the annual Cope North exercise and decide whether the event should be pared down, he said.

U.S. and Japanese military leaders meet regularly to discuss ways to creatively improve training opportunities locally.

Japan has shown a “genuine appetite that they want to do more with us,” Schneider said. “We need to find ways to do more with the opportunities that we have here in Japan. I believe it chips away at our deterrence value if we’re having to take the show on the road and go somewhere else to train.”

Despite initial “hand wringing and anxiety” about the end of the continuous bomber presence at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, training opportunities with bombers have increased under the new dynamic force employment, which includes both shorter-term bomber task force deployments and long-distance flights to the Pacific that take off and land at home bases in the continental U.S., Schneider said. While some of the first missions were more of a photo opportunity, the training has since become more intense.

Japanese military leaders want to be able to “get more tactical employment, more training out of these bomber sorties, and I fully embrace that,” Schneider said. “I want to look for ways that we can build our capabilities, whether we’re using the bombers as training aids for our own capability or we’re looking to employ with them. But I think there’s a lot of things we’re going to continue to do and evolve going forward.”

High-end training is becoming even more important as Japan fields F-35s. As of now, the Japan Air Self-Defense Force has more than a dozen of the fifth-generation aircraft and is planning to stand up its second squadron later this month, with plans to buy 147 of the aircraft. This will make Japan the second-largest operator of F-35s, and the U.S. needs to share as much of its operational and training knowledge as possible so Japan can quickly be effective.

The U.S. Marine Corps also operates F-35s in Japan at Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni. The Air Force is undergoing force structure planning as it looks to phase out its aging F-15Cs at Kadena Air Base, with the possibility of basing F-35As or new F-15EXs there. Schneider said he did not want to get ahead of these discussions, but it was his opinion that it would be beneficial to increase the fifth-generation presence in Japan with F-35As.

Air Force Mulling New Career Fields for Coders, Data Analysts

Dec. 1, 2020 | By Rachel S. Cohen

The Department of the Air Force is working to create new career fields in areas like software development, data science, artificial intelligence, and machine learning, hoping to attract digital experts away from private-sector technology jobs and bring the service into the 21st century.

Lt. Gen. Brian T. Kelly, the Air Force’s deputy chief of staff for manpower, told reporters Dec. 1 that officials are considering the details of how those new jobs would work and how many people might need to fill them.

“Are these career fields that would start from Day 1 in the Air Force, or would they be … fields that you might do something else until you’re a mid-grade [noncommissioned officer] or a mid-grade captain or something, and then cross-train into those?” he said. “We’re going through that analysis now. But we see … the potential for two or three more career fields that we don’t have today.”

He indicated those positions would initially be filled by people from other Air Force professions.

The military is wrestling with how best to attract, task, and keep people in digital fields. The tech sector offers more money and job flexibility, while the Defense Department lags years behind best practices in software development. USAF is responding to the problem building out its information warfare capabilities with new organizations for cyber and intelligence experts, and beefing up teams that can rapidly write new software code.

Air Force and Space Force officials are pushing for digital fluency as a way to recruit and retain younger members as well. The department is offering training through Digital University, an online technical school for cybersecurity and information technology lessons. It’s also outsourced IT work to companies like Microsoft and AT&T so Airmen who once ran those networks can focus instead on cyber operations.

The Space Force’s top general likes to say the newest service will also become the first digital service.

“Everybody that comes into the Space Force … they’re going to speak a second language, and that second language is computer language,” Chief of Space Operations Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond said during a Dec. 1 U.S. Chamber of Commerce event.

Walter Reed Says It’s Ready for a Holiday COVID-19 Surge

Dec. 1, 2020 | By Jennifer-Leigh Oprihory

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to ravage the country, the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center—which recently treated President Donald J. Trump after he contracted the new coronavirus disease—told Air Force Magazine it is poised to handle the surge predicted to grip the nation this holiday season.

The Bethesda, Md.-based hospital’s ability to expand its inpatient and intensive care unit operations lies at the heart of this readiness, the office wrote in a Nov. 30 response to questions from the magazine.

“We developed and tested our expansion plans for inpatient and ICU operations, using patient loads as the catalyst for implementing the changes,” the office wrote.

These efforts including the testing of “Rapid Response Shelter tents,” which the office said boost Walter Reed’s “medical surge capabilities” and can help the hospital respond to any large-scale incident—pandemic or otherwise—that might require it to treat more patients than its indoor beds can accommodate.

This photo shows the interior of one of the Rapid Response Shelters set up as a demonstration of “proof-of-concept” during the Rapid Response Shelter deployment exercise conducted at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in March 2020. The exercise wasn’t in response to any increase in patients or diagnoses, but, rather, a preemptive measure to assess the ability to rapidly expand the facility in the event of a patient surge. **Photo: Harvey A. Duze/DOD**

“The shelter is an inflatable tent-based system with HVAC, integrated lighting, privacy curtains, and an oxygen delivery system,” that is powered by portable generators, the office wrote.

The hospital has also trained and equipped team members to administer “inpatient care for adult medical surgical patients” if Walter Reed does, in fact, run out of internal beds, the office added.

And if the demand for the hospital’s ventilators requires their use to be prioritized, medical providers will be tasked with deciding how their use will be divided up “based on individual circumstances at the time of treatment,” the office wrote.

At the moment, the hospital has 244 spaces where it can treat patients, it said.

“During the initial stage of the pandemic, we developed a plan to expand our operational bed capacity by almost 35 percent, then added acute care and ICU beds to increase the capacity up to 50 percent,” the office wrote. “Finally, we identified clinical spaces within the hospital that, if needed, could be quickly repurposed to maximize care for patients. We are glad to have the option to expand, but absolutely grateful that we have not needed to implement the entirety of the plan thus far.”

All of this planning aside, the office said prevention is its first step in tackling the pandemic, with staff members keeping in touch with beneficiaries to inform them about how they can lessen their risk of contracting the new coronavirus and, consequently, helping the hospital keep beds freed up.

“Should the need arise for any of our beneficiaries to require hospitalization, WRB [Walter Reed Bethesda] works closely with the other military hospitals in the National Capital Region to ensure we have adequate staff and resources to continue to provide quality care in the event our capacity ever becomes strained,” the office wrote.

The hospital is also making the most of involvement in the National Capital Region Market—which is made up of the Air Force, Army, and Navy—by taking advantage of shared resources more than it ever has before.

“The Market approach also provides our patients access to a larger network of specialist and providers and creates greater opportunities to maintain skills and share resources,” the office wrote. “Most importantly it strengthens our medical readiness by allowing us to ready the medical force.”

The whole National Capital Region recently saw a spike in COVID-19 infections.

The hospital’s drive-through screening area, where individuals who might’ve been exposed to the virus or who are symptomatic first report, is witnessing a 6-8 percent positivity rate, the office said, which almost mirrors the rate being seen in “the surrounding community,” it noted.

As of the morning of Nov. 30, the Defense Department had recorded a total of 117,736 COVID-19 cases among its uniformed service members, their dependents, and DOD civilians and contractors.

As of the same afternoon, the Department of the Air Force reported 24,510 COVID-19 cases among its Active-duty Airmen and Space Professionals, Air Force Reserve Command personnel, military dependents, and USAF and USSF civilians and contractors. Uniformed personnel account for 14,520 of those cases.

Keeping Staff Prepared, Sane, and Safe

The hospital is also working to ensure its team members are as prepared as possible for any influx in COVID-19 cases, in terms of both technical proficiency and personal resilience, the office explained. These efforts include:

The development and execution of training programs that let the hospital widen the critical care skillsets of “more than 1,000 doctors, nurses, and respiratory technicians.”
Engineering “tiered medical teams” led by the hospital’s most well-versed physicians and nurses, and comprised of “clinical, nursing, and support” personnel from multiple disciplines with differing levels of experience to help the hospital “maximize [its] ability to care for as many patients as possible”
Making psychologist-designed and -developed self-care resources and weekly virtual “resiliency activities” available to its team members
Promoting and permitting telework to the fullest extent possible

The hospital is also committed to ensuring its staff has enough personal protective equipment to do their jobs, the office said, adding that its current supply of these items is “strong.”

“To ensure our continued supply strength, we are accounting for our critical items with significant attention placed on detail forecasts of burn rates,” the office wrote. “This process ensures that all orders are placed and fulfilled on time, and also gives us the ability to scale up our supply stock quickly should the need arise.”

The hospital didn’t indicate how long it expects these PPE stores to last.

In addition, Walter Reed is keeping COVID-19-positive patients in designated locations of the hospital to minimize their risk of exposing healthcare workers or other patients to the virus, while continuing to offer “face-to-face care for patients with acute, urgent, emergent, required routine, and readiness healthcare issues,” the office wrote.

The hospital is also screening individuals for the virus at all of its entry points, sending people displaying potential symptoms to the isolation locations, and has beefed up social-distancing and mask rules, it said.

“The health and safety of our patients, our staff, and their families remains the top priority at Walter Reed Bethesda,” the office wrote.

In cases where hospital personnel are potentially exposed to the virus, Walter Reed’s occupational medicine team works with them individually to figure out appropriate next steps and to keep everyone safe, the office said.

“Out of an abundance of caution, after learning that some patients and staff were unknowingly introduced to asymptomatic people who are now COVID+, WRNMMC staff were appropriately screened and placed on quarantine, as required,” the office noted. “Specified areas of the hospital underwent intense cleaning in alignment with [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] protocols.”

How Other Hospitals Are Coping with COVID-19

Air Force Magazine also reached out to the Defense Health Agency and the Department of Veterans Affairs to find out how other military and VA hospitals were faring with the current surge in COVID-19 cases and what, if any, steps they were taking to prepare for potential holiday-season influxes.

The Department of Veterans Affairs’ medical centers have enough capacity, personal protective equipment, and supplies to keep up with “current demand,” VA spokesperson Randal Noller wrote in a Dec. 1 statement to Air Force Magazine. However, the statement didn’t indicate how long they expect those stockpiles to last.

“VA has put in place rigorous safety measures at all of its facilities, including employee and veteran COVID-19 screening, physical distancing, and appropriate personal protective equipment such as face coverings,” Noller wrote. “Additionally, VA will continue to maximize the personalized virtual care options of telehealth, phone consults, and wellness checks, as these services have been a valuable link to veterans during this challenging time.”

The Defense Health Agency didn’t respond to an inquiry from Air Force Magazine by press time.

Production of First T-7A Sims Begins at St. Louis

Dec. 1, 2020 | By John A. Tirpak

Boeing is building the first two weapon systems trainers and an operational flight trainer for the new T-7A Red Hawk advanced training aircraft at its St. Louis, Mo., facilities, the company said Dec. 1. When completed, the devices will equip initial T-7A cadre units at Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph, Texas, in 2023.

The Air Force has ordered 46 simulators and associated ground equipment, but under the initial T-7A contract funding, it will buy seven simulators. The T-7A is a package training system comprised of supersonic trainer aircraft, simulators, and courseware.

The devices can digitally connect with in-flight aircraft and enable live, virtual, constructive (LVC) and embedded training. The flight trainer is identical to crew stations in the actual T-7A aircraft, and student pilots will be able to rehearse virtually any technique on the ground before performing it in the air.

The simulators have high-fidelity visual systems with 8K projectors, which translate to 16 times the clarity of traditional high-definition video. They are also equipped with “dynamic motion seats,” which simulate vibrations and acceleration cues. The simulator itself does not move on hydraulic struts as some other simulators do, however.

A Boeing spokesman said that in addition to the weapon system trainer and operational flight trainer, the company is building part-task trainers that “create a dual-desktop training environment, which uses the same high-fidelity simulation as the WST.”

The T-7A and its associated simulators is the centerpiece of Air Education and Training Command’s “Pilot Training Next” initiative, as well as Air Combat Command’s “Reforge” overhaul of fighter pilot training.

The simulators and aircraft all employ open mission systems architecture, allowing software updates to be routinely and competitively developed. Boeing said it will be upgrading the system using “one push” software updates, meaning the aircraft and simulators will all receive identical software updates simultaneously. What a pilot sees in the classroom, sim, or desktop trainer will always match what he sees in the aircraft, T-7A training and sustainment director Sherri L. Koehnemann said in a press release. “Future pilots can expect more holistic, immersive training,” she added.

Boeing’s T-7A contract, awarded in 2018, calls for a purchase of 351 tandem-seat trainer aircraft and 46 simulators, but the Air Force can purchase up to 475 aircraft and 120 sims. Initial operational capability with the T-7A is expected in 2024, while full operational capability is set for 2034. As the T-7A fleet delivers, the Air Force will continue to fly the T-38 Talon in the advanced training role for fighter/bomber-tracked pilots.

Air Combat Command has said it will consider the T-7A as the basis for Aggressor and light strike missions, as well, but the T-X competition won by Boeing did not award any credit for suitability in those missions. ACC is also evaluating a number of T-X competitors for a short-term lease to explore the Reforge fighter training program.

CSAF, CSO Give 2 Enlisted Members Surprise of a Lifetime

Dec. 1, 2020 | By Amy Hudson

Senior Airman Chris Chavez was manning the phones at the Robins Air Force Base’s 12th Airborne Command and Control Squadron when a familiar voice called with surprising news.

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. was calling to say he had personally selected Chavez to become a USAF officer through the Senior Leader Enlisted Commissioning Program, which enables senior leaders to hand-pick talented Airmen who have exhibited exceptional performance and leadership abilities to earn direct commissions through Officer Training School.

“It was the most exhilarating phone call of my life,” Chavez said in a USAF release. “It is an amazing opportunity. I still get butterflies in my stomach thinking about it.”

Col. Ed Goebel, commander of the 461st Air Control Wing, said Chavez is an “outstanding Airman who embodies the Air Force’s core values.”

“His work ethic, impeccable character, and exemplary record was recognized at the highest levels in our Air Force. I have no doubt that he will excel at OTS and in this next chapter in his life,” Goebel added.

About a week earlier, Staff Sgt. Kevin Justice got a similar surprise when Chief of Space Operations Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond popped into an exercise teleconference to say he had selected Justice as one of the Space Force’s two SLECP selectees.

Justice, a space control technician assigned to the 4th Space Control Squadron, part of the new Space Delta 3, said he was shocked, but is excited for the opportunity. After earning his gold bars, Justice will transition from the enlisted 1C6 Space Systems Operations career field to the officer 13S Space Operations career field, according to a Space Force release.

“Our Space Force is absolutely full of highly qualified and motivated space professionals, so to rise to the top of such an outstanding field of peers and be selected for this program is truly a testament to Kevin’s performance and character,” Raymond said. “While the Space Force is a very technology-driven service with equipment both on the Earth and in orbit, its success is founded upon the exceptional men and women, like Kevin, who will lead the Space Force into the future.”

The SLECP program offers two tracks, one that allows enlisted members to pursue full-time degrees while on Active duty and another that allows members who have already earned a degree to directly commission through OTS. There are no boards or applications; instead, for each cycle, each USAF major command selects one Airman and the Space Force selects just two candidates.

Air Force Retention Soars Amid COVID-19 Uncertainty

Dec. 1, 2020 | By Rachel S. Cohen

More people are opting to stay in the Air Force than at nearly any other time in the past 20 years, choosing to stay put amid pandemic-era economic uncertainty.

The Air Force wanted to grow by 900 Active-duty members to 333,700 Airmen in fiscal 2021. But by October 2020, the service had already hit the workforce goal it set for September 2021. The Active-duty force now sits at around 334,600 people, according to Lt. Gen. Brian T. Kelly, the Air Force’s deputy chief of staff for manpower, personnel, and services.

Retention levels in nearly all career fields are “extraordinary” right now, he said. In the past two decades, the only time retention outpaced the current rate was after the 9/11 terror attacks, according to the Air Force.

“Some of that probably reflects the economic challenges and things associated with COVID,” Kelly told reporters Dec. 1. “But it also hopefully reflects a little bit of our ability to start to provide that kind of culture and environment where Airmen and families want to stay with us, and want to be part of what the mission of the United States Air Force is.”

Service officials predicted earlier this year that COVID-19 would lead to an uptick in retention as people sought stability.

The Air Force will now tackle having too much of a good thing: It wants some people to leave Active-duty service to join the Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve earlier than they planned, and it will retrain some people in overmanned career fields to work in jobs that are short-staffed. It could also ditch some of the bonus pay that has enticed Airmen to stay in the first place.

Conversely, the Air National Guard has seen retention sag this year as members saw their activation orders continually extended throughout the summer. ANG expected to miss its manpower goal of 107,500 at the end of September.

Active-duty operations jobs continue to lag behind in staffing, though each career field will need a different number of people at various ranks. Some professions will need more master sergeants to come in as the service balances the force, while others might require more staff sergeants.

Kelly said those opportunities will be voluntary, not mandatory. Officials plan to release a list of career-change options by mid-December.

That approach squares with Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr.’s goal to use Airmen more efficiently across the workforce instead of relying on constant manpower growth.

It’s a different perspective for a force that has struggled with competition from private companies and repeatedly offered bonuses in fields like aircraft maintenance and cybersecurity. While commercial airlines are seeking fewer military aviators to jump to the private sector, shortages in the pilot corps remain.

The Air Force is about 2,000 pilots short of where it needs to be, about the same as before the pandemic, Kelly said. It’s still gathering data, but had hoped that the airline hiring slowdown would stop pilots from leaving.

“At some point in time, that will recover, and airline industries will come back,” he said. “A lot of what we’ll be focused on is how do we produce more, and make sure that we can close the gap by being able to produce more pilots on the early end.”

A recent report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies argued that three changes—involving squadron commanders in the retention contract process, offering retention bonuses earlier, and revamping how the Air Force chooses which aircraft students will go on to fly—would further boost pilot retention as airline hiring picks up again.

Kelly hopes that policy changes to make the force more inclusive, foster professional development, better help people with special needs, and more will also keep employees longer.

Higher-than-expected retention is also leading the Air Force to pare back its recruitment goals. Though the changes are small and vary by profession, Kelly said the department will seek about 1,800 fewer enlisted Airmen than anticipated.

“We want to have an overall, comprehensive strategy that allows us to manage the size and shape of the force accordingly, and not just use reductions in accessions,” he noted.

“Although [cutting recruitment] would probably achieve it very quickly and could reduce some pressure on the system for recruiting, particularly in a COVID environment, at the same time, it probably presents us the opportunity for challenges down the road when we don’t have the right size and shape of the force in certain areas.”

Air Force to Lead US, Australia Push for Hypersonic Technology

Nov. 30, 2020 | By Rachel S. Cohen

Australia’s military will help the Pentagon pursue so-called “air-breathing” hypersonic weapons and more under the U.S.-run Allied Prototyping Initiative, the U.S. Defense Department said Nov. 30.

The Southern Cross Integrated Flight Research Experiment (SCIFiRE) initiative “will be essential to the future of hypersonic research and development, ensuring the U.S. and our allies lead the world in the advancement of this transformational warfighting capability,” Michael Kratsios, Acting Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, said in a release.

It’s the second partnership created through the prototyping initiative since it launched last year. Norway became the first as part of a bilateral effort to pursue solid fuel ramjet technology.

Together, the U.S. and Australia will build full-size, long-range prototypes that ride air currents to fly shorter distances at five times the speed of sound or faster. Those weapons and aircraft are expected to be more maneuverable and harder to detect than earlier high-speed systems. America wants its first new missiles to be operational in the next few years.

Researchers plan to vet their designs through realistic flight demonstrations. The U.S. Air Force will run the program through its weapons program executive officer, Brig. Gen. Heath A. Collins.

Collins told Air Force Magazine in September the service is pursuing a new, air-breathing Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile as one of its two top hypersonic weapons programs. The Air-Launched Rapid-Response Weapon is the other big-ticket hypersonic project. Another air-breathing technology dubbed “Mayhem” would be larger than ARRW and could carry multiple types of payloads.

“The effort will also pursue potential co-production opportunities between the two countries, and leverages U.S. and Australian collaborative hypersonic activities over the last 15 years, namely the Hypersonic International Flight Research Experimentation (HIFiRE) program,” DOD said. “SCIFiRE continues collaborative research efforts involving the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy, the Royal Australian Air Force headquarters, and the Australian Defence Science and Technology Group.”

The Allied Prototyping Initiative is run by the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering as a way to leverage industrial bases around the world and field new technologies faster. It aims to build international partnerships alongside tech objectives as part of the current National Defense Strategy, which pushes for the U.S. to be a leader in a global coalition that outpaces Russia and China.

“Working with our defense scientists here in Australia and our partners in the U.S. Air Force and across the U.S. Department of Defense on leading edge capabilities brings out the best in our Air Force team,” Air Marshal Mel Hupfeld, Australia’s Chief of Air Force, said in the release.

Air Force Scientific Advisory Board to Wrap Up 2020 Studies

Nov. 30, 2020 | By Rachel S. Cohen

Air Force science advisers will meet Dec. 17 to discuss the findings of their recent space research as they close out this year’s deep-dive studies.

The Air Force Scientific Advisory Board is a group of around 50 researchers and engineers who are asked to tackle the biggest science problems facing the service. They issue recommendations that guide Air Force development programs and shape future planning.

In 2020, the board considered emerging space technologies, military communications, and autonomous systems behavior. As the year comes to a close, advisers will hear the results of a classified Innovative Space Applications study that could pave the way for unique new Space Force projects.

They discussed the results of the other two secretive analyses, dubbed “Communications in the Future Operating Environment” and “Understanding and Avoiding Unintended Behaviors in Autonomous Systems,” on Nov. 6.

Those add deeper understanding to the military’s pursuit of joint all-domain command and control across various radio, satellite, and computer networks, and furthers development of “smart” data-crunching algorithms as well as aircraft and weapons that can carry out their own battle plans.

Advisers picked up another short-term study on the so-called “vanguard” projects that are seen as the Air Force Research Laboratory’s most promising ventures. Experts presented their recommendations on how best to choose and manage future vanguard programs in a public, virtual meeting in September.

The department is considering its second round of high-profile efforts that will pull resources and focus from across the development enterprise, hoping to speed the designs to fruition. Its current picks include the autonomous Skyborg jet concept, Golden Horde weapon swarming, and the Navigation Technology Satellite 3.

The board has not announced its 2021 study topics, which will likely kick off at the winter meeting in mid-January. The Air Force did not respond to questions about the advisory board’s work Nov. 30.

At that winter meeting, slated for Jan. 11-14, board members will hear the results of a review of the Air Force Research Laboratory’s science and technology portfolio for fiscal 2021. Their opinions could shape the Air Force’s S&T 2030 strategy that was drawn up to accelerate innovative tech efforts, but that lab leadership says can be further refined and move faster still.

“SAB reviews examine the AFRL’s science, people, strategy, resources, focus, facilities, and results and assess the technical quality, relevance, and balance of the … S&T portfolio,” according to the panel’s website. “Each of these weeklong reviews addresses programs in one of the AFRL technical directorates, with essentially all AFRL research programs being reviewed over every four-year cycle. These reviews have informed Air Force leadership and influenced science and technology pursued and adopted by the Air Force.”

International Community Must Remain Focused on ISIS in Iraq, Syria

Nov. 30, 2020 | By Brian W. Everstine

As the coalition’s footprint in Iraq and Syria “diminishes,” international support for institutional changes, such as building a local judiciary and a military that can sustain itself, is necessary to ensure the Islamic State group does not return, the No. 2 commander of Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve said.

United Kingdom Army Maj. Gen. Kevin Copsey, speaking during a virtual Middle East Institute event Nov. 30, said the “international political microscope” needs to stay focused on areas within Iraq and Syria where ISIS remains. The group still operates in rural areas such as the Euphrates River Valley and contested regions near Kurdistan, though it has shifted to “survival mode” and is focusing more on criminal activity.

Without continued international support, particularly NATO-led efforts on training and maintaining readiness, ISIS could return because of a continued ability to provide command and control and limited financing in these regions, Copsey said.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the organization is “stepping up, enhancing our presence in Iraq to provide more support.” The U.S., however, is planning to withdraw about 500 troops from Iraq by Jan. 15, 2021, bringing the total American contingent to 2,500 personnel in the country, Acting Defense Secretary Christopher C. Miller has said.

“We need to prevent ISIS from returning,” Stoltenberg said on Nov. 30. “The best way of doing that is to enable the Iraqi security forces to be able to fight Daesh and to become stronger.”

NATO is focused on building the “right ability for the security apparatus to hand over to the judicial apparatus,” Copsey said. “That needs to go hand in hand with trying to resolve all the other security challenges the government faces, … of which all the OIR has done is deal with the symptoms. And that’s the key thing we need to get after, not the military anymore.”

Iraqi military forces are able to conduct day-to-day missions with limited coalition support outside of advising in operations centers. “They plan, they exploit any operation. …. So that momentum is there,” Copsey said. “There’s still probably work to do … but the day-to-day operations show strong momentum behind it that as we see the twilight of our mission out here I have no doubt that they have the abilities to keep on going.”