Air Force Identifies Airman Who Died in Self-Immolation at Israeli Embassy

Air Force Identifies Airman Who Died in Self-Immolation at Israeli Embassy

The Air Force identified the Airman who died after setting himself on fire in front of the Israeli Embassy on Feb. 25 as Senior Airman Aaron James Bushnell, a cyber defense operations specialist assigned to the 70th Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Wing.

Originally from Whitman, Mass., the 25-year-old Bushnell first joined the Air Force on May 5, 2020. His duty station was the 531st Intelligence Support Squadron at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, Texas. His duty title was innovation services technician, and his decorations included the Meritorious Unit Award, National Defense Service Medal, Air Force Good Conduct Medal, Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, and Air Force Training Ribbon.

“When a tragedy like this occurs, every member of the Air Force feels it,” Col. Celina Noyes, commander of the 70th ISR Wing, said in a statement. “We extend our deepest sympathies to the family and friends of Senior Airman Bushnell. Our thoughts and prayers are with them, and we ask that you respect their privacy during this difficult time.”

The incident is still under investigation. An online video showed Bushnell wearing a military uniform and shouting ‘free Palestine,’ as he burned, multiple outlets reported. The incident took place at around 1 p.m. on Feb. 25, according to Washington D.C. police, who are investigating the incident along with the U.S. Secret Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. The Airman was taken to a hospital but died from his injuries overnight.

Bushnell was raised in a strict religious compound in Massachusetts, The Washington Post reported, with friends saying he expressed disapproval of U.S. military support for Israel’s invasion of Gaza. His final act caught his friends by surprise, the Post reported. New Hampshire TV station WMUR News reported that Bushnell was an engineering student at Southern New Hampshire University and had pre-registered for the upcoming term that starts next week. 

About 1,200 people were killed when the militant group Hamas attacked Israel from Gaza on Oct. 7. Israeli troops invaded Gaza later that month, and about 30,000 people have been killed since then. The U.S. has supplied Israel with weapons and military equipment. The conflict has threatened to escalate as Iran-backed militia groups across the Middle East began lashing out at commercial shipping off the coast of Yemen and at U.S. troops stationed in Iraq, Syria, and Jordan, where three American soldiers were killed in a drone attack in January.

The U.S. and U.K. have responded with airstrikes, including several on Feb. 24 that were meant to weaken the Houthis, an Iran-backed rebel group that has attacked commercial shipping off the coast of Yemen since November.

Editor’s note: The story has been updated with more recent information on Bushnell’s decorations.

B-52 Flyover Highlights US Presence at Singapore Airshow

B-52 Flyover Highlights US Presence at Singapore Airshow

Two B-52 Stratofortresses from the 5th Bomb Wing conducted a flyover at Changi Air Base during the Singapore Airshow late last week. The BUFFs, currently deployed to Anderson Air Force Base in Guam, flew to Singapore to be featured at the biennial event, which concluded Feb. 25.

The air show is recognized as one of the largest defense exhibitions in the Pacific, with this year’s iteration hosting over 120,000 trade and public visitors. While the bombers were the only American aircraft to conduct a flyover, other U.S. aircraft, including the F-35A, MQ-9, and P-8, were also showcased at the exhibition.

It has been a busy few weeks for the B-52s since they deployed to Guam in late January for a Bomber Task Force rotation. They took part in Cope North 24, a multilateral exercise including Japan, Australia, France, South Korea, and Canada. One of the bombers participated in a bilateral patrol drill with three Philippine FA-50 fighters over the South China Sea within the Philippines’ Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). And last week, members of the Senate Armed Services Committee staff visited Andersen to discuss B-52 operations in the Pacific with the 23rd Expeditionary Bomb Squadron.

At the Singapore Airshow, the Stratofortresses were not the only military aircraft to conduct demonstrations. The Republic of Singapore Air Force showcased their F-15SG fighters and AH-64D Apache attack helicopters. The Republic of Korea’s T-50s, a supersonic trainer jet built by Korea Aerospace Industries and Lockheed Martin, performed a team demonstration as well. And the Indian Air Force’s HAL Dhruv multi-role helicopter, manufactured in India, and the Indonesian Air Force’s KT-1B training aircraft, imported from South Korea, performed synchronized air maneuvers.

The event also featured solo flyovers by commercial aircraft, marking the debut of C919 by Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC) in front of a global audience for the first time. The German manufacturer Airbus, Boeing’s main competitor in the international commercial plane market, also showcased its A350-1000 flyover.

The U.S. and Singapore routinely engage in military exercises as well, with their air forces conducting annual three-week training in November 2023. Andersen Air Force Base in Guam is currently preparing for potential infrastructure upgrades to accommodate up to 12 Singaporean F-15SGs, with plans to expand approximately 209 acres of Guam over the next three to seven years to provide training facilities for the fighters and potentially other DAF service components or partner nations’ aircraft or missions operating from the base in the future.

The USAF B-52s were featured in the last iteration of the Singapore Airshow in 2022, alongside the F-35 A and B types, the RQ-4 Global Hawk, the KC-46 Pegasus, and the P-8 Poseidon.

What Will ‘Airman Development Command’ Look Like?

What Will ‘Airman Development Command’ Look Like?

Two weeks after the Air Force announced it will expand Air Education and Training Command (AETC) and rename it Airman Development Command, the service says it is in the process of working out what that transition will look like, when it will take place, and what specific areas could benefit from the reorganization.

“Headquarters staff is sprinting ahead by conducting follow-on analysis and is currently developing an implementation plan for the execution of the actions required to get us to initial operational capability,” AETC spokesperson Capt. Scarlett Trujillo told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “More information will be provided as it becomes available.”

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin announced the change at the AFA Warfare Symposium on Feb. 12, where Air Force senior leaders rolled out a substantial reorganization effort meant to prepare the service for a possible conflict with China. 

Airman Development Command is meant to centralize the branch’s efforts to train Airmen who can work on difficult problems in small units cut off from higher levels of command. It is also meant to empower ADC to change that training quickly in response to operational demand.

“We have a loosely integrated form of force development in our Air Force, in that we provide policy and we disseminate that largely into the functional areas disparate throughout the force, and we expect those leaders to be able to interpret it in the way that we intended,” Allvin said Feb. 12. 

“But without an organizing construct, a way to align the general direction that we’re sending the force, those interpretations largely start to divide,” he added. “This is what we want to rein back in and hold one commander accountable for the alignment of the force development activities.”

air force tech school
Airman 1st Class Nathalie Olarte, a 362nd Training Squadron crew chief apprentice course student, deconstructions a C-130 Hercules landing gear brake system to take a deeper look at the components at Sheppard Air Force Base, Texas, Jan. 21, 2022. (U.S. Air Force photo by John Ingle)

One possible benefit of that alignment could be shifting from “task-based” training to a “competency-based development model that is focused on performance outcomes and application to real-world situations,” Trujillo said.

“This is a learner-centric approach to training and education that enables different learners to progress at different rates, allowing students to graduate faster and get to the operational unit faster,” she added.

One component of AETC is already pursuing similar changes. In September, Maj. Gen. Michele Edmondson, commander of the Second Air Force, which oversees Basic Military Training and tech school, said the force aims to make enlisted education more personalized by letting instructors tailor the training pace to each Airmen and by giving Airmen access to course materials through tablets, audiobooks, videos, or augmented or virtual reality.

The personalized model is showing promise at Keesler Air Force Base, Miss., where cyber Airmen have “a degree of choice about direction and pace of their pathway, which often results in completing the curriculum more quickly than in the past,” Edmondson told Air & Space Forces Magazine. 

Some students with previous cyber experience are graduating early after demonstrating they have the skills to do so. Instructors are also seeing performance improvements among C-130 maintenance trainees at Sheppard Air Force Base, Texas, after adopting similar changes.

Expanding the authority to make changes like these under Airman Development Command “would not only accelerate this transition, but enable rapid changes to career field training based on operational feedback and future capability development,” Trujillo said.

The mission to recruit, train, educate, and develop Airmen will be the same under ADC as it is today under AETC, but the hope is that ADC will be more effective because of its greater authority and ability to rapidly change how the Air Force produces and retains Airmen. 

‘Not Trying to Build Robots’

One ongoing effort throughout AETC is to make Airmen better at working in small groups on complicated problems. In 2022, BMT started a new training exercise called PACER FORGE, where trainees split up into small groups for physically demanding scenarios meant to emulate Agile Combat Employment, the concept where small teams generate airpower from remote or austere locations, sometimes performing jobs outside of their career field, and capable of moving quickly. AETC is currently experimenting with a similar concept for technical skills training under the name BRACER FORGE.

“The curriculum is competency-based and focused on growing leadership skills by empowering small teams to operate in environments that are purposefully ambiguous and rapidly changing to enable trust and a greater understanding of commander’s intent and mission command.” Trujillo said. 

A Basic Military Training trainee looks back while holding a weapon during a simulated deployment exercise known as Primary Agile Combat Employment Range, Forward Operations Readiness Generation Exercise or PACER FORGE at Joint Base San Antonio – Chapman Training Annex, Nov. 20, 2023. (U.S. Air Force photo by Vanessa R. Adame)

The Air Force is baking similar training experiences into officer commissioning programs such as the U.S. Air Force Academy, where the superintendent, Lt. Gen. Richard Clark, said the goal is to teach cadets “how to think, not what to think.”

“We are not trying to build robots here,” he said in a panel discussion Feb. 14 at the AFA Warfare Symposium. “We want people that understand and that have the skills to think in whatever environment they’re placed in.”

Recent changes to Officer Training School also emphasize hands-on experience and real-world scenarios. Even the F-35 fighter jet training units in Arizona and Florida now involve ACE-style exercises where students take off for a training sortie, land at an unfamiliar field without the usual support facilities, and operate out of there for several days or weeks, said Lt. Gen. Brian Robinson, head of AETC, in the Feb. 14 panel.

“They learn to think through that,” he explained.

Exactly when the shift from AETC to ADC will take place is still being worked out, as AETC is still “executing the implementation planning phase,” at the direction of Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, Trujillo said.

When asked what barriers or challenges pose a problem for this centralization effort, the spokesperson called on Congress “to pass timely appropriations now, and in subsequent years.”

Congress is currently relying on continuing resolutions rather than passing a larger spending bill. If a CR is still in effect on April 30, the entire federal government will see funding slashed across the board to the tune of billions of dollars, according to the Congressional Research Service. The latest CR expires in early March, and Congress has been slow to agree on a larger budget.

“A continuing resolution of any length cedes time to our pacing challenge that cannot be bought back,” Trujillo said. “We must move forward with a sense of urgency to ensure Airman readiness.”

Autonomous Cargo Planes: Is This the Future of ACE?

Autonomous Cargo Planes: Is This the Future of ACE?

The Air Force got a taste of how autonomous aircraft could enable Agile Combat Employment last month, as two startup businesses demonstrated how their software and hardware retrofits could let conventional aircraft taxi, take off, fly, and land without a pilot at the controls. 

The demonstrations took place in California during Agile Flag 24-1, which ran from Jan. 24-Feb. 3 with the primary purpose of certifying the ACE capabilities of the 4th Fighter Wing, which flew their from its home station at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, N.C.

Reliable Robotics and Xwing each demonstrated autonomous retrofits to Cessna aircraft during the exercise. Both received their airworthiness approval from the Federal Aviation Administration shortly before the exercise began.

Reliable Robotics had a crew rapidly set up a control station at Sacramento McClellan Airport to control the flight of a Cessna 208 Caravan operating at Hollister Municipal Airport, 120 miles away. 

“What we were trying to do is we were trying to demonstrate that … we could operate on their timeline, in their location, and be flexible with any kind of mission-planning that would need to be done in order to be operationally relevant for them, anywhere on the planet,” retired Maj. Gen. David O’Brien, senior vice president of government solutions, told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “And that was a big hit.”

Xwing flew a second Cessna 208 Caravan more than 2,800 miles, completing multiple missions, including an operational mission in which the aircraft transported equipment between March Air Reserve Base and McClellan. 

“When we were invited to Agile Flag, the Air Force didn’t really know what to ask us to do,” said retired Col. Matthew Getty, Xwing’s business development lead. “And that magic process of a good exercise happened in real time, when they saw the technology, started to understand it, and then had a requirement and they said ‘Hey, can you do this?’” 

Xwing’s Cessna 208B Grand Caravan, N101XW, sits on the flightline at McClellan Airfield in Sacramento, California, as a C-130H Hercules from the Montana Air National Guard takes off, Jan. 27, 2024. U.S. Air Force photo by Matthew Clouse

The two companies are working with the AFWERX, the Air Force Research Laboratory’s innovation arm, and the “Autonomy Prime” program, which has been in the works for more than a year now.  

Distinct from what the Air Force is trying to achieve with autonomous technology for Collaborative Combat Aircraft, which aims to team manned fighters with unmanned “wingmen,” the tech on display at Agile Flag seeks to leverage autonomy to support logistics and to adapt any available aircraft into a pilot-less one. 

These pilotless aircraft retain a human “on the loop,” actually a controller on the ground to make high-level flight path adjustments and communicate over the radio as needed.  But the aircraft itself need not carry any personnel.

Without a pilot in the cockpit, the autonomy technology handles the basic flying, presenting the pilot on the ground with a simple interface that requires less training and reduces their cognitive load. 

“The person that is in the ground floor station is not flying the airplane, that person is choosing the destination and is talking to air traffic control,” Xwing CTO and founder Maxime Gariel said. “So there are no flying skills.”

Rather, the operator needs to be “somebody who knows about aeronautical decision-making, so if I send this airplane, am I sending this airplane into a very dangerous environment or not?” he said. “Am I good to let the airplane enter the runway, for instance? It’s really low training.” 

The technology also provides flexibility, noted Reliable Robotics CEO Robert Rose. Trained pilots can switch between aircraft types more easily, and their time can be used more efficiently. 

“If you have to have a person inside the aircraft to go off to someplace 1,000 miles away or whatever, they’re now stuck at that out station,” said Rose. “And if you’ve got two, three, four, five, aircraft that you’re trying to run back and forth between those two locations, you’re going to quickly run out of people. Because the reality is aircraft need to be unloaded. … And with remote piloting now, you’re going to increase the effective flight hour utilization of that pilot.” 

Both advantages could be crucial in the Indo-Pacific. Agile Combat Employment is built on the idea of small teams of Airmen dispersing to operate from numerous remote or austere locations. In the Pacific, those locations will likely be many small islands with limited resources.  

Moving teams around and ensuring they get the equipment they need is a massive logistical problem that Air Mobility Command has been working on. But the Air Force is battling a persistent pilot shortage, and even when pilots are available, the aircraft they fly are usually large. 

“Our [mobility] fleet starts at a C-130, generally speaking,” said Getty. “And it’s just not an efficient way to move a large amount of what we need to move. Ginning up a C-130 with the manpower and the tail of that aircraft, we’re often forced to wait to move that aircraft until it becomes more of an efficient operation where I’ve got more stuff to shove in there.” 

As a result, Getty said the Air Force has focused on solving the problem of moving “1,000 pounds over 1,000 miles” more efficiently. The Cessna aircraft used by Xwing and Reliable Robotics are ideal for such a problem, he argued. 

“A lot of the attention that we’re getting after Agile Flag is coming out of the Pacific. And they’re asking, not, ‘Can you guys put this on a C-130?’ [but] ‘How soon can I have a Caravan?’” said Getty. “So we think that the requirement and the need for this type of platform that we’re actually building on today is needed today. And we could produce it and deliver it today.” 

Not that the Air Force isn’t interested in scaling the autonomous solution to larger platforms: Reliable Robotics has already conducted for the Air Force a feasibility study of autonomy for larger aircraft, the KC-135 tanker. 

“The feedback to us right now is that they are definitely interested in this,” O’Brien said. “I think they want to continue to explore it. And I’m expecting to see some additional requests coming from the Air Force to industry in order to further refine this capability.” 

Getty said the Air Force must free up its limited pool of pilots for the most demanding missions—while entrusting autonomous technology to handle more basic actions. 

“Do I really need Air Force pilots—highly trained, with exquisite training, two years of training, millions of dollars—to fly supplies to pre-position on an island?” 

Both companies said their autonomous technology could also help reduce crew configurations, something AMC has experimented with in recent years, by helping reduce the workload for a single pilot. The concept is similar, officiasl said: freeing the human to focus on the more difficult parts of the mission. 

Watch, Read: One Panel at the AFA Warfare Symposium the Chief Wants Airmen to Know

Watch, Read: One Panel at the AFA Warfare Symposium the Chief Wants Airmen to Know

Lt. Gen. Adrian L. Spain, deputy chief of staff for operations, and Brig. Gen. David C. Epperson, director of current operations, spoke with Air & Space Forces Magazine editor-in-chief Tobias Naegele at the AFA Warfare Symposium on Feb. 13, 2024 about Air Task Forces, Combat Wings, and the Air Force Force Generation Model—all things that will affect Airmen’s deployments for years to come.

Watch the video or read the transcript below, made possible through the sponsorship of Schneider Electric.

Tobias Naegele: 

Good morning. So among the highest interest items after Warrant Officers is deployments from what we’ve seen on traffic on our website. We’ve got just the right couple of people here to talk to us about changing the way the Air Force is deploying. We have the A3, Lt. Gen. Adrian Spain and Brig. Gen. Dave Epperson, and these guys are rebuilding the way the Air Force is going to build out deployments in the future. 

So we’ve heard a lot about task forces. We started hearing about task forces last summer. The Air Task Force was going to be the new thing. And now we have heard about combat wings. And what I’d really like you guys to do is to unwrap that for us. And as a warning to everybody, you will be educated on a whole new set of acronyms that will be totally confusing. So I’ve asked them not to overdo it on the acronyms and to just try to use the whole phrases and then we’ll get to the acronyms by the end, and then you’ll know the difference between, well, I won’t even get into them. I’m going to get them wrong. So let’s just start. Air Task Force—what is it? And then how is it different from the wings that we’re going to go to? 

Lt. Gen. Adrian L. Spain: 

Can everybody hear me? I think this is on. Great, thanks. Yeah, thanks a lot, Tobias. I really appreciate you being here. And thanks to the AFA for hosting and allowing us to talk about this really important topic for the Air Force and for our Airmen. I’d like to start by backing it up a little bit before jumping right into Air Task Forces. We’ve been on this journey, this evolution of how we deploy for really a long time. Ten years ago as a group commander, we were talking about it in terms of white space, “Hey, how do we build in more white space and more predictability for our units?” Five to seven years ago, we started talking about it in terms of, “Hey, how do I deploy in teams to build up mutual support, camaraderie, war fighting ethos before I get there? And I have a grouping and a core of folks who can help take care of each other when we descend upon a deployed location in theater and not show up alone.” 

And in this journey from Gen. Goldfein, “Hey, we’re going to do some men teaming here. Instead of sending people out as individuals, we’re going to send them out in a men of three.” That was the goal to build some of that. The expeditionary air base, you almost got me there on the acronym, expeditionary air base is a natural evolution of that where we’re still trying to build up bigger teams from fewer places to go to rotational locations and execute a war fighting mission that have built up some comradery and familiarity and some training together at the command level in the expeditionary air base, while still also crowdsourcing a decent amount of the remaining support that go into these rotational locations. It’s important to remember also during that time, we never got relief from the deployments. So as we evolved over time, we had to really continue and figure out how to do this while we still supported a hot fight in CENTCOM and while things got hotter around the world in different places. 

And so it had to be slow and steady over time to build this up. And the expeditionary air bases were a natural evolution of that. And then the Air Task Forces from that was really a clean sheet look from the XABs, from the expeditionary air bases, to figure out a better way to consolidate more, have fewer locations, bigger teams, train them together for a distinct period of time before they all went to the same place and executed a war fighting mission. And so the Air Task Forces and the elements of the Air Task Forces do that for us. They don’t all come from the same base currently, but they do come from many fewer locations, bigger teams that know each other, that train together for 12 to 18 months before they’re in an available phase as far as the Air Force Force Generation model is concerned. And then they deploy together. 

We’re in the middle of the expeditionary air bases right now. The first tranche of the XABs happened in October, so we’re deploying this way now with the expeditionary air bases. The first tranche of Air Task Forces, the commanders are selected, they will begin their training this summer to deploy in the fall of 25. So 26.1 is when the Air Task Force has three elements, two that will go to CENTCOM, one that will go to the Pacific, and we’ll deploy in that model, which brings us to the combat wings. 

So what we described through that evolution was really about rotational forces. The Air Task Force that we tried to put together or that we put together really spoke to an evolution of rotational forces, but that was also applicable for standing forces and theater forces. The combat wings really speaks to the remainder of the force. How are we going to define each of these elements that are standing in addition to the rotational forces that the Air Task Force represents now and really in the future? I think there’s still plenty of work to be done in terms of the interplay between Air Task Force and the combat wings, but that’s the evolution and that’s how we got here and that’s what we’re trying to really do is build war fighting effectiveness over time with coherent teams that meet the attributes that the chief talked about yesterday or over the last couple of days for this current strategic environment and the one going into the future. 

Tobias Naegele: 

So let’s break down what are the elements of an Air Task Force and then how those are evolving? You’re getting lessons already now that you’re applying, so how will that inform what you’re doing with the combat air wings? 

Brig. Gen. David C. Epperson: 

Yeah, absolutely. So as you look at it, the chief talked about when he introduced this, that you think of the command layer, you think of the mission layer and the sustaining layer. And so those are really the elements that we’re building together in this. For the Air Task Force itself, we have a command element and we have an air staff that falls underneath them that executes that C2 layer. Beneath that, you’ll have a mission layer, which will be a fighter squadron, a bomber squadron, an airlift squadron that we will deploy out. And then the final layer is that combat service support layer, and that’s the layer that’s going to create the base operating support. 

So at a lot of these locations, especially in CENTCOM, the Air Force is responsible to run that base and make sure that the airfield is up and running and we’re caring for all the personnel there. And that base operating support level is what we will accomplish that. Under the Air Task Force, what we’ve done is we’ve located that command element at one location and they will show up as Gen. Spain said, the start of this summer. For the sustaining layer, those will be in teams of a 100 to 150 people. Be it two to three bases that will then come together when it’s time for deployment. 

Tobias Naegele: 

So they’ll train separately. But the longer term view would be that these wings will be a more cohesive unit, at least in most cases, in one location. 

Brig. Gen. David C. Epperson: 

So the way that we plan on doing it is, as we talked about, this is spiral development. With the expeditionary air base, we have a core nucleus that is training together and the rest of it is converging at a deployed location. With the Air Task Force, we’re really leveraging the Air Force Force Generation cycle. And so that combat sustaining layer, those teams of a 100 to 150 personnel will come together in the prepare phase, which is a year prior to them being available to commit. During that time, they will train together at that unit, they’ll develop those Mission Ready Airmen skills, they’ll learn the different tasks that their entire team is working on, and they will, instead of being completely functionally aligned, they’ll start to become mission aligned and mission focused. The prepare phase will last for six months, and then we go into the certify phase. During that certify phase, the vision is that those combat service support teams from different installations will come together and operate during exercises and certification events. 

So the whole team of that ATF will come together at some point multiple times before they deploy down range. I think what we’ve started to learn from the expeditionary air bases, as Gen. Spain said, those deployed in October, and we all know that on October 7th, CENTCOM heated up based on what happened with Israel. And we took immediate lessons from that. And one of the commanders that deployed as an expeditionary airbase commander, what he said was he was able to operate at the speed of trust from the second they got on the ground. And that’s really what we’re trying to get to when we talk to Air Task Forces. And then when we continue this spiral development towards deployable combat wings, now all of that structure is at one location training together throughout the entire Air Force Force Generation cycle. So they know how to work together, the command and control knows and understands all the elements, and they really can hit the ground running. 

Tobias Naegele: 

So you’ve mentioned Mission Ready Airmen and Agile Combat Employment underscores everything that you’re doing. This is built for ACE. So talk about how we get from here to there in terms of that ACE preparation. Those Deployable Combat Wings are going to pick up and go as a unit to one or multiple locations and operate like that. 

Lt. Gen. Adrian L. Spain: 

Yeah, so I think that there’s a couple of things in that question. One, the ACE construct is a schema maneuver to enable war fighting effectiveness for the Air Force. The core tenets of that, the core skill sets of that we will train to, in every one of our war fighting and every one of our war fighting missions. Inside the Air Task Force, there are elements that enable ACE operations, but within the scheme of maneuver of a combatant commander. So we’re going to fall in on a campaign that is either heating up or ongoing, and the ACE, Agile Combat Employment, Execution will enable that schema maneuver. 

The Deployable Combat Wing will absolutely have the elements required, and the intent is to fully resource the Deployable Combat Wing to enable all of its war fighting missions and functions and responsibilities to include agile combat employment and either falling in on a single place and hub and spoken out of a single place or falling in on multiple places depending on what the combat and commander needs going forward. But as a core skillset for the Air Force going forward, that Agile combat employment is absolutely baked in and it’s expected. We will build through the training cycle opportunities to stress those units, ability to operate in that environment distributed and aggregating and continue to build that out as they get ready to join to get into their available phase. 

Tobias Naegele: 

So we’re going to have three kinds of combat wings deployable in place, and then Force Generation Wings. I’d like you to describe those and you guys can jump in and play off each other, describe the differences and then it would be helpful, I think, for people here to understand how they might fit into that. So an example of existing wings or elements and how they may contribute to those three. 

Lt. Gen. Adrian L. Spain: 

Yeah, so the three combat wings that we’re describing are Deployable Combat Wings, DCWs, Combat-Generation Wings, CGWs and In-Place Combat Wings, which are ICWs. DCW would look a little bit like a mountain home. There’s still a lot of work to be done on this and so we haven’t defined particular wings at this point, but a place like a mountain home where you have all the resources required at your disposal, the entire wing is under 1C2 structure or a common C2 structure with a base support element that is intended to pick up and go in its entirety as a unit of action. 

Resource to do just that, trained to do just that. And the whole thing leaves and we leave behind a min level of support for the installation and the folks that are left behind, but there isn’t mission that’s left behind there in that sense. A Combat-Generation Wing would be a little different. You have elements that would deploy, but the whole wing isn’t going to deploy and it won’t be resourced to do that. Probably an imperfect example is a base like Travis where there are lots of missions going on, but some elements of that wing are going to leave to go forward into a war fighting mission somewhere in a theater. 

Tobias Naegele: 

And they’re going to plug into a DCW. 

Lt. Gen. Adrian L. Spain: 

And they will plug into a command and control structure as defined by the combatant commander. And the beauty of the Air Task Forces and the combat wings is, and I think we’re going to get to this in a little bit, but going either to Europe or to the Pacific or to CENTCOM or to AFRICOM, it’s designed to fit into any C2 structure really and fall in on the prevailing command and control apparatus of the combatant commander and the schema maneuver that they define. And once we know where to plug in, it has the elements required to both take orders and to give orders and to operate off a mission command and commander’s intent if it’s disconnected. And then the in place combat wing would be a wing like Malmstrom, you’re going to execute your combat missions from home station. You’re not going to deploy forward. You’ll need a different set of resources to be able to operate in that mode from there. 

Tobias Naegele: 

So you’re going to have to identify in this process who’s got what? Because some of those wings are not actually resourced to do what you need them to do, and they’re going to have holes. And then I guess you’re hoping that you’re going to find some pieces that you can plug in without disrupting operations somewhere else. 

Brig. Gen. David C. Epperson: 

Yeah. Ultimately, as the chief and the secretary alluded to, we know what we’re trying to accomplish, and now there’s a lot of work still to be done on the exact how of it. And so the next piece of it is to really look across the force and to identify which ones of those wings are going to be a Deployable Combat Wing, who will be a Combat-Generation Wing and who will be an In-Place combat wing. And once we have that, then we’ll start to look at what are the resources required. Initially as we step into this, we will try to do things as efficiently as we can, but we’ll realize that it’s not going to be perfect from the get go. It’s going to take some time. It’s going to take some evolution as we move through this process to really make sure that we know where all the right resources are and how much they need. 

And I think that’s what’s good about this spiral development. By using the Air Task Force and deploying those, we start to see better what is required in the training environment for a Deployable Combat Wing. Do we have the manning and the personnel identified correctly to be in that sustaining layer to operate a base at a forward location? And so through this spiral development, we’ll continue to refine based on what we’re seeing in the expedition airbase, the Air Task Force to help us develop what that will look like when we get to the deployable combat wings and the In-Place Wings. 

Lt. Gen. Adrian L. Spain: 

Hey, Tobias, if I can jump in, one of the things that this is really helpful in, and the secretary’s had us working on things like this for the last five months or so, and one of the observations we had pretty early on is that there are some areas of the Air Force we don’t really see ourselves very well. We can’t define it really well. We haven’t structured it in a way that’s easily describable to others when we’re trying to articulate risk, readiness and capacity. And so when we start to identify to include, “Hey, what is a deployable combat wing and what’s an in place combat wing?” And we know what those things look like in our minds as Airmen because we’ve operated in and through them for our whole careers, but outside of that, that may not be true, and it may also not be true that we’ve resourced them in that same way from an installation perspective. 

And so what this allows us to do internally is say, “Hey, I have a different resourcing requirement for a Deployable Combat Wing than a Combat-Generation Wing than an In-Place Combat Wing.” And have I resourced them to that requirement? No. Or yes, yeah, we have. We’ve done it perfectly or nope, we haven’t done it perfectly. So now we can have an internal dialogue that’s meaningful and bounded by the structures and the attributes that we value to say, “Hey, this is what I need this wing to be able to do, and therefore I’m going to provide the resources required in order to get there.” And if I don’t have them in the right places, which to your point, we probably won’t to start when we figure this out, we are where we are with the resources that we have. We’ll probably be a little bit imperfectly postured. But now I can start making either the requests or the advocacy for those resources to get us whole or to move folks around as if necessary, to create whole capabilities as opposed to partial capabilities. 

Tobias Naegele: 

So let’s pick up from that for a moment. The Army presents forces as brigade combat teams, and they, I don’t know, 50 whatever brigade combat teams, and everybody knows that, or at least the joint staff knows that and understands that. And the Marines have Marine Expeditionary Units, and the Navy has carrier battle groups, and they have a really good way of saying, “I’ve got this one right now, and if you don’t, I can’t put another one in the Arabian Sea until whenever.” 

The Air Force has just been, “Yeah, we can do that, we can do that. We can do that in twos and threes and fours and squadrons and task forces.” And that’s worn you out over 20 some years. I mean, that’s why the force is sort of perpetually stretched, perpetually tired, and yet always able to deliver. This is going to actually tell the joint staff that you don’t have forces available or you might not, or there’s going to be a cost. And that’s been a really big challenge. A, is there a demand signal for that? And B, how will they respond to this changing approach? 

Lt. Gen. Adrian L. Spain: 

Yeah, that’s a great question and we’ve actually been on this path for a little bit now in some force elements. So I think number one, anytime you can define risk better, the joint staff is willing and wants to hear that. And the secretary, frankly, who is the ultimate risk owner, the secretary of defense, wants to know where he’s accepting risk or not accepting risk deliberately. I’d say one of the areas that this helps us do is define the risk that is being accepted more sufficiently. 

For ourselves, we can articulate it more effectively and advocate for a particular method or means and for the secretary of defense and the department to say, “Hey, is this risk that you are willing to take now? Because there is a cost,” unlike previously where we had a hard time defining the cost of employing in the ways that we did before because I couldn’t articulate the full risk. I had force elements, unit type codes. We’re not going into acronyms, I didn’t do that to you. So we have these small aggregations of niche capabilities— 

Tobias Naegele: 

Like 3,000. 

Lt. Gen. Adrian L. Spain: 

—all across the Air Force, which is roughly equivalent to the number that the army has. Totally different scale in terms of numbers, but we broke ourselves up into these little tiny pieces. But going back to the attributes required over the last 30 years, what was valued of the Air Force was flexibility and the ability to respond to a need not as whole intact mission capabilities, but in really smaller, compact- 

Tobias Naegele: 

Micro units of action. 

Lt. Gen. Adrian L. Spain: 

Micro units or specific elements that were required for a specific amount of time. But I didn’t need the whole apparatus to come forward to do that. And that was the value over the last 30 years that the Air Force brought to the table. Hey, we were flexible enough to adjust and we organized ourselves that way. That attribute is not going to work in this current strategic environment. We know that. We’ve seen that. We’ve watched this evolution occur over the last five to 10 years to get us to where we are now and going forward, we know we need to be on this path, which is great that we are continuing to march down it. 

We know, as Fuji mentioned, it’s going to be imperfect, but we have to go this way. The fight of the future is about bringing whole capability into theaters to either fight alongside our Airmen who are already there and Guardians and Soldiers and Sailors and Coast Guardsmen and civilians. Getting into theater and fighting alongside them, and a treating forces because this fight is going to be different than the ones that we’ve been in for the last 30 years. And then backfilling those forces with more whole capability that has to come forward to continue fighting and piecemealing it and micro units, to use your phrase, and aggregating from a hundred different places, literally as we’ve done in CENTCOM. 

To descend upon a problem and figure it out once you get in that location is not going to work in this environment and we recognize that. And really that’s the impetus for the change is, “Hey, this is about war fighting effectiveness. Yes, it helps us to articulate risk better. That’s absolutely true. Yes, it helps us to articulate capability and capacity better, but this is about war fighting effectiveness, and the next fight is not going to be the same fight as the one that we’ve been executing for the last 30 years.” 

Tobias Naegele: 

So this is going to be hard. And there are folks out there who will say, you’re putting extra burden on Airmen, extra burden on commanders to work through a series of changes that are really about the joint force and about the combatant commanders, and that shouldn’t be their problem. But you see a rainbow or gold at the end of the rainbow there. So why is it worth it? 

Brig. Gen. David C. Epperson: 

I think besides the, we need to do this for optimization, I think why is it worth it. Historically, when I go around and I’ve talked to a number of large groups of people, one of the questions I get from the combat service support area is, “Well, Air Force Force Generation is really about aircraft units, it’s about the fighter squadron, it’s about the bomber squadron, it’s about the airlift squadron and how do they go through the Force Generation cycle to be ready to be available to commit?” The intent for the Air Force Force Generation cycle all along was to apply to the entire Air Force, not just that one piece of the Air Force. And so what this does, especially through the Air Task Force and then ultimately into the deployable combat wings like I talked about earlier, we actually take those Airmen and we have them start to focus on the deployment a year out. 

So when they hit that prepare phase and AFFORGEN cycle, they are starting to actually prepare. It gives them that predictability. Right now, you go back to 23 and even part of what we’re doing for the expeditionary air bases here in 24, some of those Airmen, although they might be in a bucket that says, this is your potential deployment timeline, they don’t know what unit, what location, and whether or not they’ll get tapped. As we move forward, they will have that predictability because they will go into a combat service support team that they know in one year I’m going to deploy, and they’ll know exactly what location they’re going to deploy to. 

And so they can provide that continuity and the ability to truly train to what we’re asking them to do and to build that team that other units like a maintenance AMU, Aircraft Maintenance Unit or something like that where they build that teamwork all the time. We now get that across the entire base operating support mission function and build those mission focused teams from the beginning. So I think it’ll provide that predictability and truly prepare our Airmen for what we’re asking them to do down range. 

Lt. Gen. Adrian L. Spain: 

Here’s put a thought in your head on this one. So part of what we also valued over the last 30 years was efficiency and garrison function over deployed mission. So in the combat service support arena, when you prepared to deploy, you got pulled out of your squadron as an individual, you started to do your individual training to get to your deployed location. You deployed as a single, you showed up there, you joined a team. You had to build comradery with that team, learn what your function was there. But the wing back home kept going exactly as the same. Because all those, the institutions there and the installation functions were valued and consistency and efficiency in the installation was valued. 

Imagine if that wing every day was focused on war fighting mission. So there’s installation functions that’s occurring, but what we value and what we favor and privilege is the war fighting mission, regardless of what’s quadrant you happen to be in or what your function is. So now your comm troops, your security forces, your CE teams are focused on the same exact mission that the mission generation for settlement is focused on. It’s focused on the commander’s ability to execute that mission from an austere location or to work from a hub and a spoke. And you’re building those skill sets every day. Today, not today, we’re getting better at this with the Mission Ready Airmen and Multi Capable Airmen efforts as we work through the evolutions there and individual ready training, ready Airman training, excuse me. 

But the focus is still on the installation function or had been still on the installation function where now your focus is on your war fighting function. And I still have installation work to do, but it’s not the primary thing that I’m preparing for every day. I’ll use the analogy as a flyer. I had a daily flying schedule, I’d go do a local sortie and I was training to a high end threat on a local sortie day to day. There’s no equivalent for your FSS troop in a squadron historically organized around installation functions. A daily sortie for that troop is different in a mission environment than it is at the installation, and they don’t have the opportunity to go train to that. Working with the MSGs that I’ve grown up with, we used to talk to those guys and say thank you all the time because their reward for great work is just another stack of work. They don’t get to finish an exercise. They don’t get to cross a finish line. 

Its, “Hey, thank you for doing such a great job. Here’s your incentive,” another piece of paper or another project or another contract or another travel voucher, so it doesn’t ever end. But now they get to feel like in this environment that they’re a part of this same team. I am connected to the mission in a way that we haven’t experienced in the Air Force in a very long time. And so I’m pretty excited about that element of it. That everybody… You don’t have people across the other side of the base that say, “Hey, are we flying F-16 over there at Langley? I haven’t been over to the flight line.” And vice versa. Hey, I only go over there when I need a lot of help. This is our team. Those are my maintainers, that’s my comm troop, that’s my CE troop, that’s my pilot, that’s my commander. Those are really important things and concepts that this allows us to get to. And then when you have to go into the fight, you’re going in with a team that’s built that bond in a day-to-day model that we don’t replicate currently. 

Tobias Naegele: 

So last night when we were talking, Fuji said there is a secret efficiency to those Mission Ready Airmen because they’re going to be able to do more things. And maybe that means in some cases you don’t need as many people because you don’t need one person to do this one job. You can have one person who can do a couple of different things for you. Talk about that and how that might, because you don’t really know yet how that’s going to affect things, do you? 

Brig. Gen. David C. Epperson: 

Right. We’re working through that right now, and part of the training plan that we’re developing is identifying those areas where we can broaden our Airmen and really look at that Mission Ready Airmen skillset. When I was a group commander and in a deployed location, sometimes I would go around and visit my Airmen and I might walk into one area at 10:00 a.m. and talk to an Airman and they’re like, “How’s it going?” “Oh, great. I finished my work at 9:30. I’m hanging out. I’m on duty until four this afternoon, but everything’s doing okay. I miss my family,” and that kind of stuff. I’d go somewhere else at 20:00 and talk to another troop that had been working a 14-hour day and jobbing it all day and tell you their motivation was amazing because they truly understood why they were in this deployed environment and what they were doing. 

What the Mission Ready Airmen lets us do is to cross level the playing field a little bit so that I don’t have one Airman that only has two hours of working a day and one Airman that has 14 hours of work in a day. I am not asking them to be an expert in a different career field. It’s not like I want somebody to, the easiest example is explosive ordinance disposal team. I don’t want to train somebody else on which red wire to cut. 

There’s certain skill sets that are definitely the skillset, but you look at that and depending upon what fight you’re in, that EOD Airmen might not have a full day’s work every day. When something happens and you have an unexploded ordinance, I mean, that is probably the most critical thing on that installation and that’s going to take priority. But the rest of the time that Airman might be able to help the electrician or the HVAC or they might be able to help with airfield repair, there’s things where we can cross level that with the Mission Ready Airmen. And so a lot of people say it’s doing more with less. I don’t think so. I think it’s more optimizing the Airmen that we have and making sure that they have that capability to help across the team. 

Tobias Naegele: 

So you’re moving. The thing that I think is exciting about the Mission Ready Airman concept is that you’re moving away from an industrial age model assembly line. All you do is pick up this screw, turn it here, move it on. Then you do the next task. And instead you’re saying you can do a whole bunch of things. So it’s every marine, a rifleman in the Marine Corps. Every sailor is a damaged control man in the Navy. Everybody’s got not just a bunch of crappy ancillary duties, but real capability that contributes to the mission, makes them feel more part of it, but also makes greater values to the human being. 

Lt. Gen. Adrian L. Spain: 

Yeah, you bet. And the other thing that it does is it allows innovation to occur at the lowest level. So when I’m functionally aligned in a functional squadron, I know how to take risk within the function. I don’t know to go help somebody else in a different function because I don’t see them every day. I’m not organized around them. I know what I’m asked to do and I get that job done and I look for things to help out with in that area, but I’m not looking for other things to do. And what this allows us to enable is the power of these Airmen at the lowest levels to go figure out ways to help. And so to Fuji’s point, we don’t know if there’s a resource savings in this or if there’s a resource gain in this or if there’s a resource bill in this. 

But what we do know is it empowers Airmen because they connect to the mission in a different way, in a more holistic way, dare I say, a mission over function way from an attributes perspective that allows folks to come up with good ideas on their own and just get after it. And that is going to help us speed up and keep pace with the pace of the next environment that we’re going to have to fight in and through. So the empowerment at that level is going to be really powerful for all of those Airmen support, mission, generation and command, because I can establish intent for the entire organization, organized around a mission that we’ve all trained to together, and an understanding of where I fit in and how I can help most in multiple areas, not just in the area that I went to tech school in. 

Tobias Naegele: 

So you brought up resourcing, and I think resourcing is really important because the Air Force has had a difficult time articulating and making its case for resources over the past 20 years. There was the sacrifice for the greater team in the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, but during this period of time, the Air Force has really been under-resourced. And a lot of the resourcing requirement or arguments have been about this weapon system or that weapon system, not about this unit of action or that unit of action. And so this is, in addition to giving the ability to articulate risk, you’re actually going to have the ability to define shortfall and no kidding requirements. I need this in order to deliver this function. That should be really empowering for the force going forward. And probably it’s above most of everybody’s pay grade, maybe except for his, but it’s a really important piece to this because you can explain to your bosses what you need and they can explain to their bosses and to Congress what the requirement is. 

Lt. Gen. Adrian L. Spain: 

Yeah, that’s right. And with the specificity that we just haven’t been able to do in a very long time. And you can do it in a way that is unemotional and really agnostic of the outcome. Once I’ve defined the unit of action and we’ve defined how many of those that we have and how much capability we have within each mission area, that’s all we have. That’s it. What you decide to do with it is up to you. We would have some recommendations in how we use that, but the combatant commanders can use their formations exactly how they want to use them. The Secretary of Defense can use the formations exactly how he wants to use them, and we can help define the risk. But we only have this many, and if you want us to have more, we have some ideas on that, whether it’s a posturing and where we’re actually physically sitting or whether it’s a resource discussion about gaining more capability, whole units of action and mission areas. 

It allows us to have this discussion in a way that’s very easily definable and more like the other services, which should be helpful at the end of the day, regardless of the answer. And over time allows us to be consistent in what it is that we’re actually after. In the past when we’ve had these resource discussions about weapon system X, location Y, it’s been divorced from this unit of action and whole capability discussion, now we can roll it into that discussion and say, “And this is why I need it,” for the combat capability that this combat commander needs that you’re trying to implement with the National Defense Strategy, et cetera. So we can define it in their terms and then it’s a choice and we can keep operating exactly as we have been and will be, or we can get some help. 

Tobias Naegele: 

So all politics is local and all news is local. You guys got two minutes and you have about 3,000 ambassadors out there who can take this story to their units of action or their unit type codes. Back to the people that they work with and they talk to every day and explain how life is going to change. What are the three things that they need to tell everybody? How do they carry that message forward to say, “Help is on the way,” but more than help is on it. This is how it’s going to change things. This is what everybody needs to know. 

Lt. Gen. Adrian L. Spain: 

Well, I’ll say a couple of things. One, this is about what we value. We value the Airmen, we value the team and we value the mission. And what we’re trying to continue this evolution toward is a set of conditions that values the Airmen and trains them to be ready for the fight that we know that may come our way, we hope doesn’t, but we need to be prepared for. It values the team and the attributes of the team that we know that will be successful or that needs to be successful in the environment that we’re talking about. And it values the mission effectiveness of that team once it gets to the area that we’re asking it to go in harm’s way or in preparation for harm’s way as a crisis evolves. 

And all of these things, while imperfect today are in order to get to that end state and we’re on a path, we need your help in getting there. We value your feedback. We’ve gotten direct feedback on the expeditionary air bases. We need your feedback on the Air Task Forces. We’ll need your feedback on the Deployable Combat Wings, the Combat-Generation Wings and the In-place Combat Wings, so we can make it better faster. But we’re going this direction and it’s to value those things, the Airmen, the team, and the mission readiness that is required for the strategic environment. 

Tobias Naegele: 

Gen. Epperson, you want to add one more takeaway? 

Brig. Gen. David C. Epperson: 

I think my boss said it perfectly. 

Tobias Naegele: 

All right. I think I did it in the wrong order. So that’s what happens. Have a round of applause to a couple of great guys. Thank you very much. 

Brig. Gen. David C. Epperson: 

Thanks. 

Tobias Naegele: 

Great job. 

‘Proliferation Everywhere’: How Space Force Will Answer New Threats

‘Proliferation Everywhere’: How Space Force Will Answer New Threats

Revelations that Russia is developing a space-based anti-satellite nuclear weapon made headlines earlier this month, posing threats to military and civilian satellite constellations.

The Space Force aims to counter that risk by doubling down on its “proliferation” strategy, which thus far has been led by the Space Development Agency, which plans to launch more than 400 satellites in the next five years. In the future, however, the USSF will need to expand into other orbits, including seldom-used orbits, to ensure resiliency, said the Space Force’s lead acquisition executive, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Space Acquisition Frank Calvelli.

Asked if the Pentagon was betting too heavily on its LEO satellite constellations and “putting too many of our eggs in that basket,” Calvelli answered that “proliferation in LEO is one approach to resiliency” among others.

Clementine G. Starling and Mark J. Massa, both of the Atlantic Council wrote last week that “a kinetic attack from Earth on any single small satellite would be highly inefficient. But a nuclear attack presents a wider problem.”

They continued: “A nuclear detonation in space would add significant radiation to orbits used by a number of U.S. military satellites, causing them to degrade in the weeks and months following the detonation unless they are specifically hardened against radiation.” 

Maj. Gen. Michael Traut, head of German Space Command, said at the recent Munich Security Conference that “if somebody dares to explode a nuclear weapon in high atmosphere or even space, this would be more or less the end of the usability of that global commons.” 

Calvelli hinted at Space Force expansion into medium-Earth orbit as well as in geosynchronous orbit, where its largest satellites have traditionally operated. 

“I’m an advocate of proliferation everywhere,” Calvelli said. “I think we should be proliferating more in MEO, we should be proliferating more in GEO as well. And so I think we’re taking the first steps through SDA in proliferation of LEO, but I also see us proliferating more at other orbits and trying strange orbits too, as well.” 

LEO is considered any orbit up to 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) from Earth; MEO and GEO cover vast swaths of space extending some 35,000 kilometers out from the Earth. The number of satellites in LEO has exploded in recent years, and now includes about 8,000 satellites. By comparison, MEO (about 200) and GEO (about 500) are far less populated. 

Traditionally, the high cost of launch has been a factor, but Calvelli noted that “the launch environment has changed so much” in recent years. Established providers ULA and SpaceX, which are able to reach all orbits, are lowering their pricing, and newer providers like Rocket Lab, Firefly, and Blue Origin are entering the market, creating more competition and launch capacity.  

Airman Dies After Setting Himself on Fire at Israeli Embassy

Airman Dies After Setting Himself on Fire at Israeli Embassy

This story has been updated to reflect that the Airman involved has since died.

An Active-Duty Airman set himself on fire in front of the Israeli Embassy on Feb. 25, the Air Force confirmed to Air & Space Forces Magazine. The man was taken to a local hospital and was in critical condition, the Washington D.C. Police Department wrote on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. The Air Force said in an email on Feb. 26 that he “succumbed to his injuries and passed away” overnight. The service said it will provide more details 24 hours after next of kin notifications are complete.

An online video of the incident showed the man wearing a military uniform and shouting ‘free Palestine,’ as he burned, multiple outlets reported. The incident took place at around 1 p.m., according to D.C. police, who are investigating the incident along with the U.S. Secret Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.

A D.C. police explosive ordnance disposal team was also called to investigate a suspicious vehicle at the scene, but it was cleared after no hazardous materials were found.

The incident took place a day after American and British military aircraft struck targets in Yemen in an effort to weaken the Houthis, an Iran-backed rebel group that has attacked commercial shipping off the coast of Yemen since November. Iran-backed militia groups across the Middle East began lashing out after Israel invaded the Gaza strip in October in response to attacks by Hamas earlier that month. About 1,200 people were killed in the initial attack by Hamas, and the death toll since then in Gaza is approaching 30,000.

U.S. troops in Iraq, Syria, and Jordan have been attacked more than 165 times since Oct. 17. The U.S. has responded with a series of airstrikes, including a round that struck 85 targets in Iraq and Syria earlier this month after three troops were killed in Jordan. The U.S. has also supplied Israel with weapons and military equipment. In protest, activists have staged multiple demonstrations at Travis Air Force Base, Calif., a key military airlift installation. U.S. officials say they want to support both Israelis and Palestinians.

“We don’t have to choose between defending Israel and aiding Palestinian civilians,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken wrote in an op-ed in October. “We can and must do both.”

US, UK Warplanes Strike 18 Houthi Targets After New Ship Attacks

US, UK Warplanes Strike 18 Houthi Targets After New Ship Attacks

American and British forces carried out a series of airstrikes to weaken the Houthis’ military capabilities on Feb. 24, attacking 18 targets at eight locations in response to the group’s latest attacks on commercial shipping off the coast of Yemen, the Pentagon said. 

It was the fourth wave of “necessary and proportionate” strikes against Houthi military installations since January, not counting numerous self-defense strikes that have sought to blunt the Iran-backed rebels.

The Pentagon said that the strikes were aimed at “Houthi underground weapons storage facilities, missile storage facilities, one-way attack unmanned aerial systems, air defense systems, radars, and a helicopter.”

The strikes were carried out by U.S. Navy aircraft flying from the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and Royal Air Force aircraft, according to U.S. officials.

The British Ministry of Defense said that four RAF Typhoons participated in the mission along with two Voyager refueling tankers. The RAF jets took off from RAF Akrotiri, the U.K. air base in Cyprus.

“Intelligence analysis had successfully identified several very long-range drones, used by the Houthis for both reconnaissance and attack missions, at a former surface-to-air missile battery site several miles northeast of Sanaa,” the U.K. MOD said in a statement. “Our aircraft used Paveway IV precision-guided bombs against the drones and their launchers, notwithstanding the Houthis’ use of the old missile battery revetments to try to protect the drones.”

On Feb. 24, 2024, the U.K. conducted strikes against Houthi targets, flying from RAF Akrotiri, Cyprus in the Mediterranean. Four Royal Air Force Typhoon aircraft, supported by a pair of Voyager tankers, conducted deliberate strike against Houthi sites in Yemen. UK MOD Crown copyright 2024

U.S. officials did not provide a battle damage assessment, but Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III said in a statement that the mission aimed to “further disrupt and degrade the capabilities” of the Houthis to attack U.S. and international vessels in the Red Sea, the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, and the Gulf of Aden.

“The United States will not hesitate to take action, as needed, to defend lives and the free flow of commerce in one of the world’s most critical waterways,” Austin said. 

Australia, Bahrain, Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, and New Zealand provided support for the U.S. and British operation, their governments said in a joint statement, without specifying the nature of the assistance.

“These strikes are in response to Houthis’ continued attacks against commercial and naval vessels that have not only endangered international seafarers but the lives of the Yemeni people,” the joint statement said.

The Houthis have launched a persistent series of attacks against international vessels, including hits on U.S. and British-owned ships in recent days. A Feb. 18 missile launched by the Houthis struck the British-owned M/V Rubymar, which forced the crew to abandon the ship. U.S. Central Command said on Feb. 23 that the ship was carrying 41,000 tons of fertilizer and the attack had created an 18-mile-long oil slick that now threatens to become an environmental disaster.

The damaged M/V Rubymar in an undated satellite image courtesy of U.S. Central Command

A Feb. 19 Houthi one-way drone attack struck the U.S.-owned Navis Fortuna, and another missile attack that day nearly hit the American-owned M/V Sea Champion, which was on its way to deliver humanitarian aid to Yemen. A Feb. 22 missile attack struck the British-owned M/V Islander and injured a crewmember.

The Houthis have also claimed to have shot down two Air Force MQ-9 drones over the past three months.

“The Houthis’ now more than 45 attacks on commercial and naval vessels since mid-November constitute a threat to the global economy, as well as regional security and stability, and demand an international response,” the joint statement said.

Iranian-backed militia across the Middle East began lashing out after Hamas attacked Israeli civilians on Oct. 7, killing some 1,200 people. Israel’s fierce response in Gaza has emboldened the rebels, particularly the Houthis, which are armed by Iran and part of Tehran’s so-called Axis of Resistance, which also includes Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, and militias in Syria and Iraq.

U.S. troops in Iraq, Syria, and Jordan have been attacked more than 165 times since Oct. 17. The U.S. has responded with a series of airstrikes, including one that struck 85 targets in Iraq and Syria earlier this month after three troops were killed in Jordan.

The Biden administration says it is trying to avoid a wider war in the region, acting only when necessary to protect U.S. and allies’ troops and international commerce. 

“We will continue to make clear to the Houthis that they will bear the consequences if they do not stop their illegal attacks, which harm Middle Eastern economies, cause environmental damage, and disrupt the delivery of humanitarian aid to Yemen and other countries,” Austin said.

Experts: 2025 Could Be ‘Year of Decision’ in Ukraine War

Experts: 2025 Could Be ‘Year of Decision’ in Ukraine War

Both Ukraine and Russia are stretched economically and militarily by their war, which could end as early as next year due to exhaustion of resources, a battlefield innovation, or an external event that undermines one side, expert panelists at a Center for Strategic and International Studies event said Feb. 23.

The panelists also agreed that timely aid for Ukraine—particularly longer-ranged weapons—is in the urgent national interest of the U.S., which could face dire “main street” consequences if Russia prevails in the conflict.

Eliot Cohen, who holds the Arleigh Burke chair at CSIS and led the 1991-1992 post-Gulf War survey of that conflict, said the Ukraine war is wrongly viewed as stuck in a World War I-style stalemate. Russia promotes that view, Cohen argued, to bolster its narrative that Ukraine’s defeat is inevitable, given Russia’s presumed greater staying power.

“I think it’s a mistake to talk about it as stalemate,” he said, instead describing the conflict as “ positional warfare” in which the initiative swings back and forth.

“There’s a lot of initiative, there’s a lot of adaptation and innovation and change with the initiative going back and forth,” he said. “And we don’t know how long this positional phase may last.”

Innovations which have contributed to momentum swings include the use of drones, satellite reconnaissance on a tactical scale, and the triangulation of cellphone signals and other intelligence that has pinpointed troop concentrations.

Still, Cohen said 2025 may be the “year of decision” for the Ukraine war, because by that time, either side may have exhausted the aid they can get from their allies, or there may be a new military development or innovation that suddenly causes one side or the other to achieve a breakthrough.

Rustem Umierov, Ukraine’s new defense minister, will likely spend the rest of 2024 preparing for that endgame, Cohen said. He will be focused on “sustaining” the Ukrainian military; finding the troops needed for the fight, equipping them, and designing a strategy that holds onto territory taken in Ukraine’s offensives and counter-offensives thus far.

After Russia’s initial invasion and Ukraine’s subsequent counter-offensive, the war‘s third phase has been defined by “a series of attacks and counterattacks,” Cohen said. Russia’s latest successes have come at “horrifically high costs,” he said, but have gained it the initiative.

Still, while “it’s easy to get fixated on the land campaign,” he said, Ukraine has had major success against Russia’s navy despite lacking a navy of its own, sinking the Russian’s flagship and many major combatants. There is also a “deep strike campaign,” in which Russia and Ukraine have used long-range missiles and drones—and in the Ukrainians’ case, special operations forces—to reach far into each other’s territory.

Finally, there is an information warfare campaign where both sides are trying to convince the rest of the world that they have the advantage. The panelists said Russia’s top priority is to convince the West—particularly the U.S. Congress—that Ukraine cannot win the war, and they agreed this will become a self-fulfilling prophecy if aid is withdrawn.

Emily Harding, director of CSIS’s intelligence, national security, and technology program and formerly of the CIA and National Security Council, said a “straight line analysis” of where the war is headed suggests Russia will “continue to throw metal and personnel” at Ukraine.

“You have to think that Ukraine will be stuck in this defensive position for at least the next year while they try to figure out some fundamental things and a reevaluation of the strategy,” she said. Ukraine will have to decide whether to conscript to meet its manpower needs and how to knit together “this hodgepodge of different materiel” it has been receiving from the West “into an effective, coherent fighting force” while holding off Russia’s latest offensives.

Disruptors of that scenario, she said, would include the passage of a U.S. aid package to Ukraine. That would remove any excuse for other European countries to “back off what they’ve been doing” in support of Ukraine, and also give Kyiv an opportunity to “bring the fight home to the Russians” with more direct attacks, she said.

If the West provides more long-range weapons, Ukraine might also be able to strike deeper in Russian territory—making the general Russian population “understand the costs of this conflict” and reverse broad support for the war, Harding said. It is possible there could also be more mutinies among Russian forces, like the Wagner group last year.

Another disruptor might be Ukraine finding “a way to pick its battles differently…ways to focus on a particular area and make gains there,” she added.

There could also be “a fall-off” in Russian munitions production “that could be a game-changer for the conflict, she said. The fact that Russia is having to source munitions and military parts from China, North Korea, Iran, Syria, and other allies “tells us something” about their long-term capacity to sustain war production, she said.

Ultimately, Russia can’t sustain a string of “victories” such as at the recent capture of Deka, where it took as many as 17,000 casualties in one battle; a five-to-one ratio of losses versus Ukraine, Harding said. The Ukrainians “were able to hold off the Russians for quite a period of time until they ran out of ammunition and personnel,” she noted.

At the same time, despite the impressive numbers of weapons the U.S. alone has provided to Ukraine—including more than 10,000 Javelin anti-tank missiles, 2,000-plus Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, 31 Abrams tanks, 186 Bradley fighting vehicles, 189 Stryker vehicles, almost 200 155mm Howitzers, and more than two million 155mm rounds—the current political stalemate on more aid has kept the Ukrainians from achieving a breakthrough, Harding argued.

“We’ve been fiddling while Rome burns,” she said. “We’ve been debating amongst ourselves … now for two years” what will push things “over the top.”

She added, “I would classify the debate inside the U.S. as partially self-deterrence”—driven by the fear that providing more advanced or longer-ranged weapons to Ukraine will “be the thing that tips Russia over into widening the conflict.”

“It just hasn’t happened. Russia is just as interested in keeping this restricted to Ukraine as we are and the more that we let them continue to push forward without pushing back the more they’re going to  push,” she said. “Russia is a bully, and they respond to strength.”

Cohen said there still is a failure to supply Ukraine “at the right level of urgency.”

While 10,000 Javelins “makes sense” the provision of just 31 tanks or a single Patriot air defense battery is “ridiculous,” he said.  

“We have hundreds of Abrams tanks sitting in storage. These are older model Abrams that are not the ones that our Soldiers use. They’re available,” he said. “They could have gone there long ago. And I think it reflects a failure to think” of provisioning Ukraine at the proper scale, he said. “In a serious war” the victor will lose large amounts of assets, he said, noting historical precedent. To win, “you’re going to take heavy losses and that means you need to think on the right scale and there has been unfortunately, a systematic failure … to take it to wide scale.”

Mike Vickers, former undersecretary of defense for intelligence and assistant secretary for special operations, said he wished he could “wind back the clock, that the U.S. didn’t pursue an incremental strategy” in arming Ukraine.

“I think the Ukrainians would be much better off if we were bolder early on with long range fires,” he said.

Vickers said that with longer-range precision weapons—such as the Taurus missile being provided by Germany—Ukraine will have the ability to hit rear areas and supply routes to arrest Russia’s forward motion. With the U.S. Army ATACMS missile, the Kerch Bridge—a major Russian supply route connecting Crimea with Sevastopol—”might not be standing very long.”  

Cohen echoed that, saying Ukraine knows how to disrupt Russia’s rear, “their logistical nodes, command and control, headquarters, things like that…So it is a critically important capability.”

Vickers said supporting Ukraine is “about as black-and-white as you can get in moral terms” and is also critical to the defense of Europe, which is “very important to the United States in its long-term competition with China and Russia.” Defeat would mean a weakening of American and European resolve, and a loss of America’s status as the leader of the free world.

“It sends messages to bad guys everywhere,” he said, adding “China’s watching this closely. … Their calculus about Taiwan will be affected by how this war turns out.”

Harding said there is a “straight line” from the outcome in Ukraine to “somebody’s wallet in Kansas.” The “just-in-time” global system of supply depends on a world that abides by the rule of law, she said.

Vladimir Putin’s aim is to “prove that the U.S. is pointless, that the U.S. is weak, and that U.S. democracy is not all it’s cracked up to be,” she said. Similarly, China wants a world “that’s made safe for Chinese business,” run the way it works best for China. It doesn’t care about “personal freedoms [or] …democracy, but about “making money for [China] and its businesses.”