Air Mobility Command boss Gen. Jacqueline D. Van Ovost and UPS’ Captain Houston Mills discuss the global challenge of strategic airlift at the Air Force Association’s virtual Air, Space & Cyber Conference. The panel discussion was moderated by AFA’s Executive Vice President retired Maj. Gen. Douglas L. Raaberg.
Watch Air Force Materiel Command boss Gen. Arnold W. Bunch Jr., Air Force Reserve Chief Lt. Gen. Richard W. Scobee, Air National Guard Director Michael Loh, and Maj. Gen. John E. Shaw—head of the Space Force’s Space Operations Command who has since been nominated to be U.S. Space Command’s deputy commander—discuss how they fought through ongoing COVID-19 pandemic earlier this year. The panel discussion, part of the Air Force Association’s virtual Air, Space & Cyber Conference, was moderated by AFA Executive Vice President retired Maj. Gen. Douglas L. Raaberg.
Darroch Greer and Paul Grenshaw—co-writers, directors, and producers of “The Lafayette Escadrille”—discuss their film with Douglas A. Birkey, executive director of the Air Force Association’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, during a session from AFA’s virtual Air, Space & Cyber Conference.
Check out “The New Digital Experience,” a panel held as part of the Air Force Association’s virtual Air, Space & Cyber Conference that featured a conversation between Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. Stephen W. “Seve” Wilson, USAF Chief Transformation Officer Lauren Knausenberg, and Maj. Kimberly A. Crider, who serves as mobilization assistant to Space Force Chief of Space Operations Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond. Frank Zaborowski, AFA’s senior director of CyberPatriot operations, moderated the discussion.
Watch Maj. Gen. DeAnna Burt, Maj. Gen. Charles S. Corcoran, retired Maj. Gen. John Horner, and retired Maj. Gen. Mike “Boe” Boera discuss the future of aerospace power with moderator and retired Lt. Gen. Glen W. “Wally” Moorhead III. The panel discussion was featured during the Air Force Association’s virtual Air, Space & Cyber Conference.
President Donald J. Trump declared U.S. dependence on China for rare-earth elements a “national emergency,” directing a multi-agency review and action before the election to establish domestic sources of the materials, which are used in a range of crucial defense and commercial applications.
His executive order provides for loans and grants to domestic and possibly foreign mining companies and relaxes environmental safety standards to reduce potential vulnerability should China or other foreign nations cut off supplies of the vital materials. Rare-earth elements are essential for manufacturing cellphones, hypersonic vehicles, aircraft engines, and more.
China provides more than half of U.S. annual consumption of 31 of 35 “critical” materials, and the U.S. has no domestic supply for 14 of them.
Trump’s order said continued dependence on China, both direct and indirect, is intolerable, noting that China cut off supply of key materials to Japan in 2010 as a coercive diplomatic tactic and that the U.S. must not become susceptible to such tactics.
U.S. dependency on China for materials such as gallium and graphite, “constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat” to national security, and Trump calls for “expanding and strengthening domestic mining and processing capacity” to guard against supply disruptions. Trump also wants to develop more domestic or friendly sources for barite, which is used in fracking operations to mine natural gas.
In the order, Trump instructed the departments of Defense, State, Commerce, Interior, and more—to collectively and individually assess the situation and to recommend policies to create or restore domestic sources of supply. To achieve those objectives, the order allows for grants, quotas, tariffs, and relaxing environmental protections.
In May, the administration invoked the Defense Production Act to step up rare earths production, setting aside $1.75 billion to buy materials for precision munitions. In 2018, Trump directed the Pentagon to list all the foreign-supplied materials on which it depends, especially those sourced from “adversarial” nations.
To further bolster U.S. supply and level the playing field, the order makes it harder for U.S. companies to buy from countries that don’t observe minimal regulations regarding health and human rights and environmental protections. At the same time, it allows for “initiatives” to “help allies build reliable critical mineral supply chains within their own territories.”
The order also directs cabinet departments to “examine the meaning of the terms ‘avoid, reduce, or sequester’ ” in environmental laws that demand companies “avoid, reduce, or sequester air pollutants or anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases.” The Secretaries of Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, the Army, and the head of the Environmental Protection Agency are to “use all available authorities to accelerate the issuance of permits and the completion of projects” to help expand domestic supply of critical materials. They are also to look into “the re-use” of historic and abandoned mining sites, as these may have tailings containing rare earth metals.
The White House defined “supply chain” as anything to do with “exploration, mining, concentration, separation, alloying, recycling, and reprocessing of minerals.”
The Secretary of the Interior is also to look at whether authorities under National Defense Resources Preparedness laws “can be used to establish a program to provide grants to procure or install production equipment for the production and processing of critical minerals” in the U.S.
“Irregular warfare” isn’t just for special operations forces.
A newly published summary of an annex to the 2018 National Defense Strategy argues despite decades of asymmetric conflict—wars where enemies have exploited weaknesses in U.S. technology and tactics—the Pentagon is still underprepared for that kind of combat.
The Defense Department says the entire military must get better at irregular warfare not just to fend off the rise of nonstate terror groups and cyber attackers, but to stymie Russia and China as well. The National Defense Strategy pivots the Pentagon to focus on potential conflict with those countries and other advanced militaries instead of lower-tech militants in the Middle East and Africa.
The summary, released Oct. 2, points to China, Russia, and Iran as “willing practitioners of campaigns of disinformation, deception, sabotage, and economic coercion, as well as proxy, guerrilla, and covert operations.” Those types of fights don’t fit neatly into the physical “great power competition” the U.S. expects to wage with complex new fighter jets, hypersonic weapons, and other high-tech assets.
“Our department’s shift towards great power competition does not signal an abandonment of the critical competencies we have developed to prosecute irregular warfare,” the summary said. “Instead, this shift gives us a vital opportunity to update our approach to irregular warfare and meet the full range of challenges posed by our adversaries and competitors today.”
Irregular warfare refers to conflict with enemies like the Islamic State group that have less-advanced technology than the U.S., that are generally not part of formal state-run militaries, and that sow disinformation and propaganda to achieve their goals. Rather than relying on traditional military action such as airstrikes and ground invasions, irregular warfare leans more heavily on digital deception and weapons that exploit holes in an adversary’s abilities.
Irregular warfare has long fallen in the court of special operations troops, whose approach can be more flexible and unconventional than their conventional counterparts. The military must rethink how the joint force will use forces for counterterrorism and counterinsurgency missions as well as digital ventures like cyber and information warfare, DOD said.
To address the issue, the Pentagon advised more consistent investment in irregular warfare capabilities that are easily upgradable and cost-effective, to prepare for “gray area” conflict, like that in cyberspace, to escalate into the physical realm, and to put forth unified effort across the DOD and other federal agencies and allied and partner countries.
Troops should have a “widespread understanding and sufficient expertise in IW,” the summary said.
The Air Force is overhauling how it organizes, trains, and equips offensive and defensive cyber forces and its intelligence-collection units to meet some of these demands. But while the service touts advances in areas such as artificial intelligence, it faces a significant struggle to maintain an inventory that can take on a world power and non-state actors with different resources and aspirations.
“As we seek to rebuild our own lethality in traditional warfare, our adversaries will become more likely to emphasize irregular approaches in their competitive strategies to negate our advantages and exploit our disadvantages,” DOD said. “Their intent will be to achieve their objectives without resorting to direct armed conflict against the United States, or buy time until they are better postured to challenge us directly.”
Nearly 500 military personnel took their own lives in 2019, and most of those were young, enlisted white men, according to the Pentagon’s annual suicide report, released Oct. 1. Guns played a role in most of those incidents.
The most recent statistics show about 50 fewer service members died by suicide in 2019 than in 2018, as the armed forces have stressed the importance of mental health and connectedness. The suicide rate among Active-duty personnel has remained about the same over the past two years, while the National Guard and Reserve’s rates have dipped since 2017.
“We in the department must do all we can to address and prevent these tragedies,” Defense Suicide Prevention Office Director Karin A. Orvis said during an Oct. 1 press briefing. “Our research and our data enables us to better understand and combat suicide in our military community. We will use the information from this report to inform and improve our efforts.”
She noted that the individual counts may change over time, as pending cases are confirmed as death by suicide or not.
Air Force Magazine previously reported that 137 Airmen took their own lives in 2019, up 33 percent from 2018, despite the service’s efforts to address the problem. While that number was the highest in Air Force history, prompting the service to direct its commanders to take a day to address mental health with their units, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. recently said the service is on track to hit the same number amid the uncertainty of the coronavirus pandemic.
“We do recognize the potential impact of COVID-19 on the wellbeing of our service members and families,” Orvis said, adding that it’s too early to tell whether military suicides will outpace 2019 numbers. “We’re closely monitoring potential impacts and taking actions in advance.”
The Pentagon report found that Active-Duty and National Guard suicide rates are comparable with the U.S. adult population, after accounting for age and sex, and lower for the Reserve.
According to DOD data on uniformed personnel, the Air Force lost 111 members to suicide in 2019, an increase of about 38 percent over 2018. Its suicide rate neared 26 incidents per 100,000 troops in the Active component; the report did not provide rates for the Air Force Reserve and Air National Guard.
The Active-duty Air Force saw more suicides than the Navy and Marine Corps, but fewer than the Army. Its suicide rate was higher than the Navy’s, but lower than that of the Army and Marine Corps.
The Pentagon logged 344 suicides among Active-duty uniformed members overall in 2019, an increase of about 5.5 percent over 2018. It saw 65 suicides in the Reserve component, down from 81 the year before, and 89 in the National Guard, down from 136 in 2018.
The Space Force, which was created in late December 2019, was not included in the report.
Pentagon officials said the department has taken steps over the past year to help save lives, acknowledging that people who die by suicide often face multiple stressors at once.
To help make young, enlisted troops more resilient, the department created a pilot program to equip service members with “foundational skills to deal with life stressors early in their military career,” officials said. DOD also created video trainings on how to notice and react to suicide warning signs on social media. Those videos may become more widely used across the military.
DOD has partnered with the Department of Veterans Affairs to increase National Guard personnel’s access to counseling.
To better support military families, the department trained thousands of civilian medical providers to educate troops and their families on how to deal with firearms and other lethal means they may have nearby, and issued more resources to direct military families to support services. DOD also partnered with the Department of Veterans Affairs to increase National Guard personnel’s access to counseling.
DOD and the military services have started taking suicide-prevention strategies from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention into account when looking at how well their programs are working, officials said.
A variety of other self-help and safety resources and pilot programs, including work to lessen the impact of the pandemic on employees’ mental health and to launch a DOD crisis hotline in July 2022, are underway as well.
Maj. Gen. John E. Shaw, the head of the Space Force’s operations organization, is up for a promotion to be the deputy commander of U.S. Space Command, the Pentagon said Oct. 1.
If confirmed by the Senate, Shaw would also rise to the rank of lieutenant general.
He currently holds two complementary jobs: One is head of the Space Force’s Space Operations Command, where he is in charge of organizing and equipping troops for space domain awareness, space electronic warfare, satellite communications, missile warning, nuclear detonation detection, intelligence collection, and more. The other is head of SPACECOM’s Combined Force Space Component Command, where he oversees more than 17,000 people across four operations centers in the U.S. who conduct daily missions with satellites, radars, and other space-related assets provided by the armed forces.
As SPACECOM’s deputy commander, Shaw would play a larger role in the broad policy and planning work of the Defense Department’s newest combatant command. That includes how SPACECOM executes its warplans and works with regional commanders and other groups like U.S. Strategic Command, U.S. Cyber Command, the military services, and the intelligence community.
Shaw’s nomination also continues the Department of the Air Force’s legacy in SPACECOM leadership; an Army general is currently serving in that top job for the first time.
He has held a variety of jobs across the space community, like running the 21st Space Wing at Peterson Air Force Base, Colo., and serving as deputy commander of the Space Force’s predecessor organization, since the 1990s.
In addition to more traditional military space missions, Shaw has said troops could someday head to orbit to man operations centers, or broaden its role in search-and-rescue for those who go to space. The Department of the Air Force already handles terrestrial rescue of astronauts going to and coming from the International Space Station.
“If a small asteroid or meteorite did hit the Earth, there would be some sort of emergency management response on the part of our nation to support wherever that landed, and the Department of Defense would be happy to be a teammate [with NASA] in that regard,” he added in June.