This video captures the “JADC2” panel from the Air Force Association’s virtual Air, Space & Cyber Conference, during which Lt. Gen. B.J. Shwedo, retired Lt. Gen. William J. Bender, Lt. Gen. Chance Saltzman, and Maj. Gen. Angela Cadwell engaged in a discussion about joint all-domain command and control, moderated by AFA President and retired Lt. Gen. Bruce “Orville” Wright.
Watch: ULA’s Tory Bruno, Space Force’s “DT” Thompson at AFA’s vASC
Check out United Launch Alliance CEO Tory Bruno’s fireside chat on space with Space Force Vice Commander Lt. Gen. David Thompson—whom the Senate has since confirmed to serve as USSF’s first-ever Vice Chief of Space Operations—during the Air Force Association’s 2020 virtual Air, Space & Cyber Conference.
Watch: Fighting and Winning in Space, from AFA’s vASC 2020
Watch a panel of distinguished space leaders—retired Gen. Joseph W. Ashy, retired Gen. Kevin Chilton, retired Gen. Ralph E. “Ed” Eberhart, retired Gen. Howell M. Estes III, retired Gen. Charles A. Horner, and retired Gen. Richard B. Myers—discuss fighting and winning in space during AFA’s virtual Air, Space & Cyber Conference.
Watch: Base of the Future, from AFA’s vASC 2020
Watch Brig. Gen. William H. Kale III, Brig. Gen. Patrice Melancon, retired Col. Lance H. Spencer, and Eric Silagy discuss “The Base of the Future” during a panel held during the Air Force Association’s virtual Air, Space & Cyber Conference. AFA Executive Vice President and retired Maj. Gen. Douglas L. Raaberg moderated.
Watch: Diversity and Racial Challenges in the Air Force, from AFA’s vASC 2020
Watch Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force JoAnne S. Bass; former Air Force Vice Chief of Staff (and former Air Force Association President) retired Gen. Larry Spencer; former North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command boss retired Gen. Lori Robinson; and Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Manpower and Reserve Affairs Shon Manasco discuss diversity and racial challenges in a panel moderated by former Under Secretary of the Air Force Lisa Disbrow at AFA’s virtual Air, Space & Cyber Conference 2020.
Watch: Information Warfare, from AFA’s vASC
Watch Lt. Gen. Mary F. O’Brien, Lt. Gen. Timothy D. Haugh, Brig. Gen. Bradley L. Pyburn, Col. Lauren Courchaine, and Col. Lamont Atkins discuss information warfare in this session of the Air Force Association’s virtual Air, Space & Cyber Conference. The session was moderated by AFA President retired Lt. Gen. Bruce “Orville” Wright.
‘Air Force We Need 2.0’ Exploring Low-Cost, Unmanned Aircraft
The Air Force is working on a new version of its 2018 “Air Force We Need” force structure white paper to explore how unmanned aircraft like the autonomous Skyborg wingman drone could become part of the combat force.
That aspirational document, which advocated for growing 24 percent to 386 squadrons, didn’t include a placeholder for the lower-cost, easily replaceable unmanned aircraft that are becoming a larger Air Force development priority, Col. Frederick Haley, deputy division chief of the Air Force Warfighting Integration Capability group’s futures and concepts division, said Oct. 1.
Haley discussed the effort to refine the force structure analysis during the rollout of a new Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies study entitled “Understanding the Promise of Skyborg and Low-Cost Attritable Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.”
“We have iterated since then a study of a kind of ‘Air Force We Need 2.0,’ which is including some of these featured concepts into overall campaigns so we can understand what that might look like,” Haley said.
The Mitchell paper, authored by staff analysts retired Col. Mark Gunzinger and Lukas Autenreid, calls for USAF to rapidly pursue low-cost, attritable aircraft and unmanned combat aircraft as “an affordable way to grow the USAF’s combat capacity and balance its other requirements.”
The authors described the new unmanned systems as “a third choice” for force structure between expensive, advanced aircraft that are meant to last, like manned fighter jets, and “single-use capabilities” like precision-guided munitions. They argued that USAF should buy developmental systems like Skyborg and Gremlins swarming drones in significant numbers to use where missions may be too dangerous for human pilots, or where long-term flight or additional munitions are needed.
Gunzinger said the systems will offer the Air Force capability options inside and outside of an adversary’s air defense weapons.
The paper argued that USAF should experiment with the new systems, and quickly field them to figure out how to use them. The Air Force wants a combat-ready version of Skyborg by 2023 to act as a munitions truck, a decoy, or a surveillance vehicle for partnered fighter jets. Thirteen companies are now on contract to create technologies that could plug into an eventual Skyborg design, and the Air Force is planning flight experiments to start next year. It has already started flight tests with Kratos’s XQ-58 Valkyrie.
Skyborg’s manned-unmanned teaming abilities could give the Air Force an advantage over other advanced militaries, even if the service misses its 386-squadron goal. Earlier this year, then-presumptive Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. told senators the Valkyrie will offer pilots greater situational awareness and strike capability.
The Mitchell paper argues that unmanned aircraft should add to the service’s inventory, not replace fifth-generation stealth aircraft “needed to maintain the USAF’s combat advantage over peer adversaries.”
The authors suggested USAF develop aircraft that can be launched and recovered without an airfield, like hand- or rail-launched drones similar to the RQ-11 Raven. Because their payloads would be smaller and more affordable than larger, more complex aircraft, the analysts say it would offer the greatest combat value for electromagnetic warfare, command and control, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, and “other non-kinetic missions.”
Low-end systems would cost about $2 million to $5 million, while the most sophisticated types could cost up to $20 million, they said. Deploying them in bulk would overwhelm adversaries, the authors argued.
Gunzinger said that classified annexes supplied to Congress along with the Air Force white paper lacked various types of combat drones, though the other documents considered them and called them “very promising.”
Haley said the original “Air Force We Need” study didn’t include any of those prospective capabilities when it pushed for 386 combat squadrons because the effort was based on the current programs of record. The service is still contemplating how many of each kind of unmanned aircraft it might want in a future force.
AFWIC, which considers future technology and tactics for the force, has looked at deploying 5 to 10 squadrons of low-cost, attritable aircraft. Each unit would have roughly the same manpower footprint as a “light” maintenance unit for launch and recovery, Haley said.
The service has studied pairing two smaller, less-sophisticated unmanned platforms for every one F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, he added. Instead of creating separate units for drones, they could be part of an F-35 squadron that would handle UAV launch and recovery as well as F-35 operations.
Those mixed manned-unmanned units could be known as “air dominance squadrons” that use new tactics together in combat, said David A. Deptula, a retired Air Force lieutenant general who now runs the Mitchell Institute.
USAF has done a “fairly deep analysis” of that construct, and found that partnering fighters with drones would allow for more combat sorties than deploying a manned fighter alone, Haley said. He also said the Air Force does not see unmanned combat aircraft replacing earlier versions of the F-16 fighter at this point.
There are “lots of different options and ways to go,” Haley said, adding, “It’s so important to get these capabilities into the hands of the warfighters and start experimenting” to validate the analysts’ assumptions.
Douglas Meador, deputy program manager of the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Low-Cost Attritable Aircraft Technology program, said experiments so far have validated that a single person can command up to seven unmanned aircraft at a time, thanks to artificial intelligence.
While the Air Force has long referred to Skyborg as the “Loyal Wingman” program, Meador said AFRL is trying to ditch the wingman moniker because “it gives the impression these aircraft are going to be flying close together.”
“In many concepts … these aircraft won’t be in visual range of each other,” he noted.
Deptula added that unmanned aircraft will start reshape an Air Force inventory that is dominated by older, fourth-generation jets that lack the stealth and advanced software of newly designed planes.
“This is real work that’s being accomplished now, and I think it will be the first step in a movement to a very different-looking Air Force in the mid-21st century,” Deptula said.
Space Systems Command to Stand Up in 2021
The Space Force will stand up its Space Systems Command to oversee software and hardware acquisition “sooner rather than later” in 2021, the service’s second-highest uniformed official said Oct. 1.
Lt. Gen. David D. Thompson said during a Defense One event that the new systems management organization is moving slower than the groups that will oversee training and operations because the Space Force is still deciding which Army and Navy assets will join the new service.
Thompson serves as the Space Force’s vice commander but was confirmed Sept. 30 to formally become the four-star Vice Chief of Space Operations.
He indicated that Space Systems Command is waiting for the Pentagon’s final say on which parts of the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps will come under the Space Force to get a clearer picture of how everything fits together. That decision will come sometime in the next year so that Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines can transfer in fiscal 2022.
SSC will handle research, development, and acquisition of military rockets, satellites, radars, and other space-related assets from creation to retirement—the Space Force’s equivalent of Air Force Materiel Command. Its plan is to encompass the Space and Missile Systems Center, the Commercial Satellite Communications Office, and other space system program offices from across the Pentagon.
Space Force field commands are opening as smaller organizations known as “deltas” this year. The service did not say when its operations and materiel organizations would be fully open for business when it formally announced their creation in June.
While the Space Development Agency is set to change from being an office run by the Pentagon’s research and engineering branch to one overseen by the Space Force, the new service is still deconflicting how SDA will interact with SMC and other entities with similar missions.
Over the past several months, the Space Force has met with representatives of SDA, the Missile Defense Agency, the intelligence community, and other organizations to figure out how to productively overlap and what parts of the acquisition ecosystem may need to change.
“There are areas where we’re not going to duplicate, but we are certainly interested in the energy that comes from competing ideas and competing designs and competing approaches to a problem,” Thompson said.
The Space Force has grown to about 2,200 members since it was established in December 2019. Many civilian and military personnel are still technically part of the other armed forces but are assigned to the Space Force for work. The Space Force is expected to total around 15,000 employees, while still relying on Air Force personnel for jobs such as security forces and health care.
Tankers Practice Speedy Deployment in European Refueling Exercise
KC-135 Stratotankers from the 100th Air Refueling Wing at RAF Mildenhall, U.K., practiced supporting other aircraft in “Exercise Wolff Pack,” a multinational event over Europe that ended Oct. 1.
The three-day effort vetted the wing’s ability to deploy its aircraft to multiple places across Europe “in order to protect and defend partners, allies, and U.S. interests at a moment’s notice” and sharpen the agile combat employment (ACE) construct, wing spokesperson Capt. Shelley A. Spreier told Air Force Magazine in a Sept. 30 email.
ACE is the Air Force’s effort to move troops and planes around the globe quickly and with less reliance on brick-and-mortar installations, to be more responsive and resilient if bases are threatened.
Video: Staff Sgt. Anthony Hetlage/ 100th Air Refueling Wing
“What we were looking to do was get as many aircraft as possible away from Mildenhall to be able to provide that distributed force to the [joint force air component],” Lt. Col. Brandon Lauret, the 100th Operations Support Squadron commander, said in a video about the exercise. “With a distributed force, it makes the force less likely to be impacted by any sort of adversary action, and, therefore, we are able to provide that critical fuel to the fight.”
The wing said Oct. 1 that about 300 Airmen from 15 squadrons took part in the three-day exercise, during which the wing helped NATO allies with air refueling and worked on flexible deployment concepts with partner nations, Spreier noted.
ACE can help the 100th ARW better respond to crises, such as aeromedical evacuations or the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, as needed, Lauret said. It may also complicate movement for an enemy if the tanker fleet can move more nimbly to support combat aircraft around the globe.
“Our adversaries may know that we are here in the AOR but may never really know what our next move or location will be,” Spreier wrote. “100th ARW participation in ACE exercises the ability to develop dispersal, generation, and sustainment capabilities away from home station.”
Twelve KC-135s also took part in a Sept. 29 “elephant walk” as part of the larger exercise. Those parades of aircraft are used to signal military power to adversaries and “proved the capability of the entire 100th ARW team to ensure our readiness as a force multiplier,” Spreier said.
Other mobility aircraft elephant walks this year have featured KC-135s in Guam, KC-46 and KC-135 tankers in Kansas, and C-12s, C-130s, and a C-17 in Alaska.