How Social Distancing Helped the Air Force Fix Lackland’s Dorms

Sept. 21, 2020 | By Jennifer-Leigh Oprihory

A tent city erected at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, Texas, on April 28 not only gave Air Education and Training Command “swing space” to ensure its Basic Military Training recruits and tech school students heeded COVID-19-era social distancing mandates, but it also gave the command a chance to make much-needed dorm repairs, AETC boss Lt. Gen. Marshall B. “Brad” Webb said Sept. 16.

The system, which is slated to deactivate on Oct. 1, is on loan from Air Force Materiel Command and staffed by Airmen from the base’s 433rd Airlift Wing and the Texas Air National Guard’s 149th Fighter Wing.

“That tent city gave us a lot of flexibility,” Webb said during a panel on USAF talent management that was held as part of the AFA’s virtual Air, Space & Cyber Conference. “It also gave us the opportunity to … take down dorms kind of one at a time and get some phased maintenance, if you will, accomplished on those, and it’s gotten us on a really, really strong footing.”

Brig. Gen. Caroline M. Miller, commander of Joint Base San Antonio and the 502nd Air Base Wing, said these improvements were a joint effort between the 502nd ABW and the 37th Training Wing.

“The 502[n]d Air Base Wing secured a BEAR, or Basic Expeditionary Airfield Resource, base kit that delivered a capability to the installation to continue training Airmen in the event of a catastrophic infrastructure failure to one of AETC’s weapon system platforms (i.e., training dormitories),” she said in a Sept. 18 statement to Air Force Magazine. “Recognizing the critical vulnerability and capitalizing on the opportunity Tent City provided, we coordinated a plan with the 37th Training Wing, providing engineers from the 502[n]d Civil Engineer Squadron with a safe, controlled environment with minimal impact to the training mission.”

Since May 1, these engineers have performed “critical maintenance” on 11 buildings at Lackland, including “recruit, housing and training, Airmen training complexes, and dining/classroom facilities,” finished over 2,500 work orders, and resolved a maintenance backlog, she said.

“This is similar to the phased maintenance completed on aircraft to ensure their sustainment and operational readiness,” Miller added.

Lackland’s dorms demand the same kind of careful and consistent attention that USAF’s aircraft are given, said 37th Training Wing Commander Col. Rockie K. Wilson.

“AETC’s training dormitories are a unique asset that require proper sustainment to produce the Airmen we need,” he said in a Sept. 18 statement to Air Force Magazine. “Since these facilities are foundational to developing Airmen, they need to be sustained like a weapon system.”

While the combination of these buildings’ ages, the constant nature of AETC’s training mission, and the pandemic environment have made this crucial upkeep challenging, Wilson said the wing and its “joint base partners” have risen to the challenge.

“For the BMT specifically, much of this has to do with enabling access in conjunction with periods where our trainees are dislocated for readiness training and during non-accession periods to allow our Military Training Instructors to reconstitute themselves and their families,” he said. “The evolution of this process synergizes both the resilience of our training facilities with the readiness and resilience of our Airmen.”

In addition to these recent fixes, Wilson noted that two new dorms currently under construction at the base are slated to be finished by 2023. Two others should be tentatively constructed by 2026, he added.

“These projects will effectively mark the complete recapitalization of the legacy training facilities for basic military training,” he said.

In an April interview with Air Force Magazine, then-Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David L. Goldfein cited AETC’s employment of the tent-city system as an example of the command’s creative approach to tackling the coronavirus challenge.

BMT Is Ending at Keesler—for Now

Sept. 21, 2020 | By Jennifer-Leigh Oprihory

Keesler Air Force Base, Miss., will welcome its final Basic Military Training flight of 2020 in the last week of September, with graduation slated for before Thanksgiving, 2nd Air Force Commander Maj. Gen. Andrea D. Tullos told reporters on Sept. 21.

“We’ll then take about 90 days to do an after-action and a reassessment of how that operation went, and we will have plans, if asked and if necessary, to resume BMT probably no earlier than February of next year,” she said during an Air Education and Training Command conference call.

The fiscal 2021 production targets that 2AF received from USAF aren’t high enough to merit the use of two BMT locations next year, Tullos said, though she noted that “COVID gets a vote.”

“If we have challenges, and we see spikes and outbreaks, and the CDC issues us guidance that causes us to lose our ability to use San Antonio as our full production point, we’ll be prepared to reopen that capability and resume again next year,” she told reporters.

The Air Force in April began a proof of concept at Keesler to demonstrate the feasibility of hosting BMT at a non-Lackland location in case of a contingency—not specifically the COVID-19 pandemic. After the test flight of trainees graduated in May, AETC announced plans to simultaneously hold BMT at Lackland and the Mississippi base until pandemic surge operations concluded.

Tullos credited U.S. Military Entrance Processing Command and Air Force recruiters with making the pause on BMT ops at Keesler possible, since going back to business as usual—for the most part—at Lackland hinged on the ability to get new recruits to San Antonio amid the pandemic.

“What it’s really come down to has been our ability to … ship with agility into Lackland,” she said. “So we were very concerned that we would not be able to get recruits from across the country into San Antonio, which you’ll recall has been pretty much a hot zone for COVID since the first arrival of the [Princess] cruise ship passengers, as well as our citizens from Wuhan province, much earlier in this year.”

Soldier’s Death Spurs Harder Look at Military Sexual Assault Across DOD

Sept. 18, 2020 | By Rachel S. Cohen

The Air Force has more to do to lead by example, and to create a culture where people feel comfortable discussing sexual assault and other forms of violence with their superiors, service leadership said.

The death of Army Spc. Vanessa Guillén, a 20-year-old Soldier who disappeared from Fort Hood, Texas, in April, has reverberated across the Pentagon. FBI and court records show that Guillén was allegedly dismembered and buried in the woods by another Soldier and his girlfriend, according to Task and Purpose. A motive is still unknown, though the 3rd Cavalry Regiment launched an investigation into claims that Guillén was sexually harassed before her death.

“Empowering leaders at every level to be able to help create a culture and a climate where Airmen are willing to talk and share what is going on in their lives, maybe that would have helped the Vanessa Guillén situation,” Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force JoAnne S. Bass said at the Air Force Association’s virtual Air, Space & Cyber Conference.

Bass said leaders should be empowered to elevate concerns about interpersonal violence to get them heard. In cases where someone’s direct boss is causing a problem, she said, Airmen should feel able to talk to other superiors or offices that can help.

“We can do better [at] providing them the tools to handle some of these very, very challenging [issues]—whether it be COVID, violence, sexual assault, racial disparity, all these are things that our young people are having to deal with in leadership roles,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. said. “There’s some things we need to talk about [in] leadership development that we can improve upon.”

While Guillén has become the face of the military’s own #MeToo movement, the Pentagon as a whole has not yet found a solution to curb sexual assault in its ranks.

More than 60 percent of all investigated sexual assault and harassment cases across DOD in 2019 happened between service members, according to the department’s latest annual Report on Sexual Assault in the Military. More than 7,800 sexual assault cases were reported in the department in fiscal 2019, a 3 percent increase. The Air Force accounted for 1,683 of those, a 9 percent jump.

Guillén’s story echoes across each of the armed forces. Airman 1st Class Natasha Aposhian was killed at Grand Forks Air Force Base, N.D., in June, in what her parents believe was a domestic violence incident with another Airman. Aposhian “told [Airman 1st Class Julian Carlos Torres] the day prior to her killing that she did not want to date him any longer,” her family told Stars and Stripes. Torres died in the incident as well.

Guillén’s death and the outcry it prompted from people with similar experiences spurred the Department of the Air Force to create an Interpersonal Violence Task Force in July. This month, the department is surveying service members on their experiences with sexual assault and other forms of violence as it looks for solutions.

“Those events highlighted inexcusable violence against our service members by fellow service members,” Air Force spokeswoman Maj. Holly Hess said. “Department of the Air Force leaders acknowledged there were concerns from Airmen and space professionals about violence, stalking, bullying, and threatening behaviors in both the Air Force and Space Force. In response to those concerns, the Interpersonal Violence Task Force was created.”

The task force will use feedback from the survey to shape recommendations for future policy changes.

Congress is taking another look at the problem as well. The U.S. House of Representatives will vote on a bipartisan bill named after Guillén that aims to reform how military sexual assaults and harassment are reported.

Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), head of the House Armed Services military personnel subcommittee, and Rep. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) introduced the “I Am Vanessa Guillén Act” with more than 100 co-sponsors on Sept. 16.

“The legislation responds to these resounding calls for change by offering provisions that would revolutionize the military’s response to missing service members and reports of sexual harassment and sexual assault by making sexual harassment a crime within the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and moving prosecution decisions of sexual assault and sexual harassment cases out of the chain of command,” Speier’s office said in a press release.

Their bill would instead shift prosecution decisions to an Office of the Chief Prosecutor within each military service, hoping to avoid situations where commanders stifle assault or harassment claims or where superiors are handling cases in which they are accused.

Military personnel would be able to file negligence claims and seek compensation from the Defense Department for sexual assault or harassment cases.

Also, the bill calls for a Government Accountability Office investigation into how the military handles missing service members, and a GAO evaluation of the armed forces’ Sexual Harassment/Assault Response and Prevention programs. A new, confidential harassment reporting process would feed into the Pentagon’s “Catch a Serial Offender” database.

Sens. Mazie K. Hirono (D-Hawaii) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) introduced companion legislation in the Senate.

Building the Base of the Future

Sept. 18, 2020 | By Jennifer Hlad

Nearly two years after Tyndall Air Force Base, Fla., was slammed by Hurricane Michael, leaders there are working not just to rebuild that base, but to create a “base of the future” with a focus on resiliency, sustainability, and smart technology that can serve as a model for the entire Department of Defense.

“Innovation is at the very core of what we’re doing, not only in the smart technologies that we’ve implemented, but in the agile process, the ‘how’ of building the base we need, not the base we had,” said Brig. Gen. Patrice A. Melancon, executive director of the Tyndall Program Management Office, during a panel discussion at AFA’s virtual Air, Space & Cyber Conference.

The Air Force has “reached a critical point in time” where it must assess the “enduring strength, resiliency, and efficacy of its installations,” explained Brig. Gen. William H. Kale III, the Air Force director of civil engineers and deputy chief of staff for logistics, engineering, and force protection.

“We face some formidable challenges right now,” he said. “Our installations are not sanctuaries, as we continue to compete with near-peer adversaries. Our installations are not immune to severe weather and climate events. Our installations are not modern and must be upgraded to meet the future operating environment and withstand threats across all domains.” And the necessary changes and upgrades must be done under “continuous budget constraints.”

But there is an opportunity now to rebuild Tyndall and Offutt Air Force Base, Neb.—which sustained significant flood damage in 2019—as “installations of the future,” he said.

For Tyndall, that means rebuilding the installation “to withstand natural disasters and optimize mission readiness,” Melancon said. “By integrating the newest technology and infrastructure, updated cybersecurity, and the most creative innovations, we’re ensuring Tyndall is going to be around for the next hundred years, despite the environmental and climatic norms of Florida.”

Kale said the Air Force is taking a “holistic look,” not just at the weather, but also at readiness issues. And after seeing the “new innovation and technologies” being installed at Tyndall and Offutt, “We’re going to take those opportunities and then exploit them across the rest of the enterprise,” he said.

Partnerships with civilian companies like AT&T, as well as the Defense Logistics Agency and Army Corps of Engineers, have been a crucial part of the effort, Melancon noted, because the Air Force does not own the utilities at Tyndall.

The key to those partnerships is trust, said Lance Spencer, a retired Air Force colonel and client executive vice president for AT&T.

“We need to trust each other. We need to come together and figure out how to collaborate and solve problems,” he said. Though AT&T declared nationwide 5G in July, it is “tough to get on military bases and build and get that coverage,” but it’s “fundamental to the base of the future environment. … So I would encourage the Air Force to find ways to basically open the gates and help companies like us get in there and provide that foundational capability that will underlie all the base of the future capabilities.”

Eric Silagy, president and CEO of Florida Power and Light, echoed Spencer’s point.

“It’s really about trust,” he said. “You can exchange information, and then you establish that trusted partnership, and then leverage it, because there’s so much information and experience out there that you can leverage… that’s off the shelf largely, which will save the Air Force millions, if not billions, of dollars over the long term. And then we can work together with whomever that is to make sure that the base is truly mission ready, and all the critical infrastructure is in place to meet the needs when required.”

Melancon said she hopes other bases are paying attention.

“While I would never wish a Hurricane Michael on another base, I think every wing commander has a responsibility to think about these ‘base of the future’ concepts, anytime they look at implementing an infrastructure project or renovation, and take what makes sense for their situation to implement,” she said.

Air Force to Incorporate Study of Potential Adversaries into BMT, PME

Sept. 18, 2020 | By Brian W. Everstine

Airmen, from basic military training through graduate studies at Air University, need to increase their study and understanding of potential adversaries, such as China and Russia, to better understand the Air Force’s place in the world and the risk of potential conflicts, the service’s senior uniformed leaders said.

All leaders, from first-line supervisors to commanders, need to be able to talk to their Airmen “and go, ‘Here’s what you’re doing, and why it’s important,’” Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. said Sept. 16 during the Air Force Association’s virtual Air, Space & Cyber Conference. “You start talking about great power competition, we need to understand what our adversary thinks.

“We can count the number of platforms, [but] we need to understand how they think. What makes them tick? What drives their intent? … I’m challenging myself, I’m challenging the entire Air Force, that we’ve got to be able to talk about this because it helps us to understand the risks that we as a nation are incurring.”

Brown’s “Accelerate Change or Lose” white paper, released shortly after he took office, said the service needs a “deep institutional understanding” of China and Russia, and must be able to retain Airmen who understand the threat and have attributes “necessary for success.”

He told reporters at vASC that this will start as early as basic military training, so Airmen of all Air Force Specialty Codes understand their jobs and how they can contribute.

Brown said USAF needs to make sure it addresses the threats when Airmen first enter the service and explain: “Here’s why we do this, and how you connect, and why you’re going to deploy to a certain location, and why you go to this certain exercise,” he said.

Such conversations will extend through professional military education, including noncommissioned officer academies and Air University courses.

In his previous job as commander of Pacific Air Forces, Brown encouraged all Airmen to read the Pentagon’s National Defense Strategy. The 14-page document “is not that much reading, but it gives you a sense of … what we’re doing, what we’re thinking about, and so, the more senior you get, the more you need to step back and start thinking about this,” he said.

The Air Force is still evaluating what PME will look like in the future, as the COVID-19 pandemic has changed how it operates, Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force JoAnne S. Bass said. More courses are online, but the service is still looking through data and lessons learned before it decides what role virtual learning will play in the future.

“There are some things that COVID has allowed us to be able to do, and do really quickly, that are more effective than pre-COVID,” she said. “And so we need to stick with those things, but the jury’s out on the PME piece. There is a certain goodness that you get on face-to-face, being around other people, being around different tribes, and doing that.”

New Ops Group Tries a Better Approach to Cyber Warfare

Sept. 18, 2020 | By Rachel S. Cohen

A new 867th Cyberspace Operations Group stood up at Joint Base San Antonio, Texas, on Sept. 18 to streamline the Air Force’s cyber offense and defense, as well as its intelligence collection in the digital realm.

Sixteenth Air Force, which oversees information warfare in the service, provides cyber expertise to U.S. Cyber Command and others across the Pentagon. The new group answers to the 67th Cyberspace Wing and sits alongside the 67th, 318th, and 567th Cyberspace Operations Groups. It will oversee the 315th, 341st, 833rd, and 836th Cyberspace Operations Squadrons.

“We now have the ability to focus on two distinct mission sets,” Col. Lauren Courchaine, commander of the parallel 67th Cyberspace Operations Group, told Air Force Magazine on Sept. 17. “While they’re still both focusing on offensive cyberspace operations, [group Commander Col. Travis Howell] … has the ability to truly focus on the cyber national mission force and the prosecution of malicious cyber actors.”

Each of the military services offer cyber mission force teams to CYBERCOM for a range of offensive and defensive work, from protecting the integrity of U.S. elections to defending against hackers or assisting partner countries facing an influx of disinformation.

Howell’s cyber national mission teams in the 867th COG “defend the nation by identifying adversary activity, blocking [attacks], and maneuvering to defeat them,” according to the Defense Department. The services began training their teams in 2013, and all 133 teams became fully operational in 2018.

Howell said the reorganization shows the Air Force cyber staff is learning how to plan better for operations. It’s an evolution that moves beyond simply organizing, training, and equipping cyber forces, he said.

“As the force was maturing, the teams were maturing, as CYBERCOM was coming together and maturing as a staff and putting out their orders to go execute, there was a … maturity issue at the operational level,” Howell said. “What this opportunity affords now is that you have unity of command and force presentation, not only through my group but as well as Lauren’s.”

While Howell handles those units, Courchaine can focus on what combatant commands around the world need, like protecting air defense systems from electronic attack. That means her Airmen in the 67th COG can spend more time gathering information on what bad actors are doing on digital networks and the electromagnetic spectrum, assessing security, and attacking when needed.

“Under one chain of command, I have intelligence Airmen sitting next to cyberspace Airmen sitting next to developers and acquisition professionals,” she said. “There is a constant … loop of innovation and refinement of not only capabilities, but thoughts and operations.”

That was happening before the Sept. 18 realignment, but Courchaine argues missions weren’t as effective as they could be because cyber-focused intel personnel were pulled between two different commanders in the 67th Cyberspace Wing and 70th Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Wing.

Howell, who until recently served as CYBERCOM’s current operations division chief, said the information warfare field needs to think differently than it did 10 years ago in the early stage of the cyber mission forces.

The 867th COG and CYBERCOM both want Airmen to have an evolving skill set that matches the rapidly changing digital era, possibly with career fields and training that look different from what currently exists. The cyber enterprise wants to move past the traditional means of intelligence collection—tracking things like online communication and surveilling networks—and do more with publicly available information like social media posts and GPS tracking.

“We’re not there yet as a service to look at the capacity of those Airmen and those career fields and do that realignment, but I think that is where we need to start asking some hard questions about, can we get there as a service?” Howell said.

Airmen are still fairly new to thinking about how digital information can translate into military action in the physical world. In an era where adversaries can track military personnel’s habits through apps like the workout mapper Strava or the brewery logger Untappd, the Air Force wants to improve its training and software so it can do the same.

As demand for their skills continues to grow, the 67th Cyberspace Wing and its organizations are trying to do better for the Joint Force while combating burnout. It’s tough to recruit new cyber operators when people can get more money and job flexibility in the private sector, so the force is making do with the manpower and resources it has amid an election season and global pandemic.

The 67th COG has seen fewer than five coronavirus cases so far, Courchaine said, and they’re trying to keep it that way.

“We’re working 24/7/365 and I have crews that, in some respects, are the experts not only in the Air Force, but in the Department of Defense, so I have to make sure that I can maintain that capacity,” Courchaine said. “We’ve done things like make sure that we have cots and sleeping bags and [meals ready to eat] in the event that there is a large outbreak of COVID and that I have to deploy my Airmen in place so that I can maintain mission readiness.”

“We’ve really had to put our arms around their families as well and find ways that we can still maintain the resiliency of the family unit so that our members can wake up every day and go do a very, very important mission,” she added.

Department of the Air Force Enhances Support to Nursing Mothers

Sept. 18, 2020 | By Jennifer-Leigh Oprihory

The Department of the Air Force recently beefed up its support for its uniformed and civilian USAF and Space Force personnel who breastfeed.

A recent memo, which updates USAF’s lactation policy introduced last year, immediately requires unit commanders to set aside “a private area” where nursing mothers can pump and properly store breast milk, a Sept. 17 release about the measure said.

“The room may be temporary or permanent, depending on needs and availability,” the release stated. “Lactation rooms must be private, lockable from the inside, sanitary, and have access to refrigeration, hot and cold water, and electrical outlets.”

The nursing mother’s room located in the Hartinger building on Peterson Air Force Base, Colo., also known as Building One and currently home to many U.S. Space Force and U.S. Space Command personnel, is one example of how USAF and the Space Force support working mothers. **Photo: 2nd Lt. Idalí Beltré Acevedo/Space Force**

The updated guidance also requires commanders and bosses to ensure these women are given lactation breaks that are actually long enough for them to get the job done.

“The duration of the lactation break varies, including the time to express breast milk, (which depends on the age of the infant, the amount of milk produced, a stress-free environment, quality of pump, etc.), as well as the distance the lactation room is from the work area, the convenience of water and refrigeration sources, and cleaning supplies,” the memo states.

This is significant because, as Lt. Col. Jeanette Anderson, an Air Force Surgeon General perinatal nursing consultant and member of the Air Force Women’s Initiative Team noted in the release, “the amount of time needed to produce breastmilk varies from woman to woman.”

A nursing mother assigned to U.S. Space Command uses resources located in the private nursing mother’s room in Building 1 at Peterson Air Force Base, Colo., on Sept. 11, 2020. Photo by 2nd Lt. Idalí Beltré Acevedo/Space Force

The Air Force release praised the team—who it said consolidated feedback from the field about last year’s policy, “consulted with experts, and routed recommendations”—for championing the update.

“Many women choose to continue breastfeeding after they return to work,” said Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Reserve Affairs and Airman Readiness Christy Nolta in the release. “We should do what we can to support that choice, making it easier for nursing moms to continue to serve. Changes like these contribute to readiness and improve quality of life for our service members and their families.”

The updated guidance will expire on Aug. 15, 2021, or as soon as its directives become part of an Air Force Instruction, whichever happens sooner, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Manpower and Reserve Affairs John A. Fedrigo noted in the memo.

AFRL Eyes Multiple Experiments as Next Space ‘Vanguards’

Sept. 18, 2020 | By Rachel S. Cohen

Military researchers are eyeing multiple projects that could become the next Space Force “vanguard” programs, the high-profile ventures that receive extra money and attention from across the Department of the Air Force.

The “Precise” initiative and the Cislunar Highway Patrol System (CHPS), which were recently selected in an internal competition for more attention, are top candidates, said Col. Eric J. Felt, who runs the Air Force Research Laboratory’s space vehicles directorate.

The Precise experiment will be the lab’s first foray into very low Earth orbit, 200 to 300 kilometers above the planet, to study the ionosphere’s effects on satellites and other space assets. CHPS will evaluate how objects move in cislunar space and new ways to track them.

“Those are two examples of some good potential future space vanguards, but we’re not quite ready to nominate them yet,” Felt said. “They still have some homework to do on those, but there’s lots of examples in every mission area.”

More may emerge through avenues like the new WARTECH planning summit, which scopes out the most promising research projects for further investment.

Speaking to reporters Sept. 16 during the Air Force Association’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference, Felt said he’s found two concepts through WARTECH that could become vanguards, but did not provide details.

Other notable space experiments include the Space Solar Power Incremental Demonstrations and Research Project (SSPIDR), a joint effort with Northrop Grumman. It hopes to create a beaming system that could provide solar power to overseas bases using a receiving antenna on the ground, so installations don’t have to rely on vulnerable convoys and supply lines.

“SSPIDR is a collection of flight experiments designed to mature different critical technologies needed to build an operational solar power beaming system in space,” according to an AFRL fact sheet. “The SSPIDR project team examined the needs of the operational prototype and identified five critical technologies needing further development to make this system a reality. The technologies driving the effort are deployable structures, energy generation, thermal, radio frequency beaming, and metrology.”

Another is the Demonstration and Science Experiments (DSX) satellite effort, which is already part of the Space Force’s Space Test Program-2. DSX is studying space radiation that can damage spacecraft components, in order to design systems that last longer on orbit.

The Department of the Air Force will pick its next vanguards—or none at all—at a meeting of the Capability Development Council in January. Once work is underway, a new Transformational Capabilities Office will decide whether vanguards are good enough to grow into a formal procurement program.

Navigation Technology Satellite-3 is AFRL’s first space vanguard program, aiming to improve on the reliability and accuracy of location and timing data offered by the GPS enterprise. The first experimental satellite will launch in late fiscal 2022 for a yearlong test on orbit, and could expand to up to nine satellites.

The level of military investment in NTS-3 is more significant than L3Harris usually sees for similar research programs, said Joe Rolli, head of PNT business development at L3Harris, which is building the NTS-3 satellite. The Department of the Air Force wants $157.6 million for vanguards in fiscal 2021, including $24.6 million for NTS-3.

It’s one of the company’s first opportunities as the prime contractor on a leading space program rather than providing mission system software as a supplier.

The program is benefiting from being a higher priority from AFRL and working with more than the organizations at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M., which hosts the Space Vehicles Directorate, NTS-3 Program Manager Arlen Biersgreen told Air Force Magazine Sept. 16. For example, the team is collaborating with the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center early on to get the program up and running faster, which wouldn’t be the case outside of a vanguard initiative.

Communicating with many different stakeholders across the Air Force and Space Force can be challenging, Biersgreen said, “but it also means there’s that much more visibility and that much more focus.”

“We have [SMC development experts] in meetings with us every single day, they participate in those major milestone reviews with L3Harris and the other contractors,” he said. “We also interact with the portfolio architects on the basis of the actual transition planning itself, and then we are interacting with the enterprise corps when it comes to launch and operations, and then the production corps … is what the [GPS system program office] itself has transitioned into.”

The biggest change from a typical research and development program is greater involvement with satellite operators, which is helping the Airmen who will use NTS-3 transition easily to the new system.

“We’ve seen in the major programs that if those things aren’t well coordinated, you’re not able to deliver capabilities on a tight and predictable timeframe to the warfighter,” Biersgreen said. “It’s absolutely been a value-added exercise via vanguard.”

Aviano, Ramstein Airmen Head to Bulgaria for Thracian Viper 20

Sept. 18, 2020 | By Jennifer-Leigh Oprihory

Airmen from Aviano Air Base, Italy, and Ramstein Air Base, Germany, will train with their counterparts from Bulgaria, Greece, and Romania as part of exercise Thracian Viper 20, the 31st Fighter Wing said Sept. 18.

The exercise, which is being held Sept. 18-25 at Graf Ignatievo Air Base, Bulgaria, looks to boost participating air forces’ “operational capacity, capability, and interoperability” with its host country, a wing release stated.

“During the exercise, U.S. and Bulgarian air forces will conduct training, enhancing our ability to rapidly deploy to remote locations and take command and control of the region,” U.S. Air Forces in Europe-Air Forces Africa wrote in a release.

About 150 personnel from Aviano’s 31st Fighter Wing will participate, including Airmen and six F-16s from the 555th Fighter Squadron, as well as members of the 31st Maintenance Group and 31st Mission Support Group.

“The Triple Nickel’s participation in Thracian Viper will validate and refine our ability to closely integrate with other European air forces,” said Squadron Commander Lt. Col. John Ryan in the wing release. “Integrating with our Bulgarian hosts and other partner nations both strengthens our relationships and yields more lethal fighting forces that are ready and able to conduct integrated operations when called upon.”

Additionally, about 15 Airmen from Ramstein’s 435th Air Ground Operations Wing will support refueling operations during the exercise, USAFE-AFAFRICA said.