Air National Guardsmen Help Save Lost Mariners in Micronesia

Aug. 4, 2020 | By Jennifer-Leigh Oprihory

A five-member KC-135 crew composed of Air National Guardsmen from Hawaii and Pennsylvania helped track down three mariners who got lost in the Federated States of Micronesia on Aug. 2, enabling their rescue a day later.

The three individuals left Puluwat Atoll in Micronesia’s Chuuk state on July 29 en route to Pulap, another atoll located about 24 miles away, but were reported missing when their boat didn’t show up, according to a 36th Wing release.

“Joint Rescue Sub-Center Guam received notification of an overdue skiff last seen in the vicinity of Chuuk and requested our assistance,” said Maj. Shaun McRoberts, 506th Air Expeditionary Aerial Refueling Squadron assistant director of operations, in the release. “Once notified, we began immediately working a plan to launch crews to locate the missing vessel.”

Lt. Col. Jason Palmeira-Yen, Maj. Byron Kamikawa, and Tech. Sgt. Shane Williams from the Hawaii Air National Guard’s 203rd Air Refueling Squadron, and Tech. Sgt. Rodney Joseph and Senior Airman Jeremy Williams from the Pennsylvania ANG’s 171st Air Refueling Wing subsequently took off from Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, in a Stratotanker and determined the lost mariners’ location after about three hours in the air.

The missing persons were found on Pikelot Island in Micronesia’s Yap state, the wing said. Footage shared by the wing shows they’d crafted a distress call on the island’s shore.

Video:Master Sgt. Richard Ebensberger/36th Wing

“We were toward the end of our search pattern,” recalled KC-135 pilot Lt. Col. Jason Palmeira-Yen in the release. “We turned to avoid some rain showers and that’s when we looked down and saw an island, so we decide to check it out and that’s when we saw SOS and a boat right next to it on the beach. From there we called in the Australian Navy because they had two helicopters nearby that could assist and land on the island.”

HMAS Canberra, a RAN ship that was in the area, agreed to ditch its planned itinerary so helicopters that were located on it could undertake search sorties, the wing wrote.

“Canberra was returning to Australia while the rest of the task group continued on its way to participate in Exercise Rim of the Pacific off Hawaii,” Australia’s defense department wrote in an Aug. 3 release. “The ship sailed overnight to reach the search area, and in cooperation with U.S. aircraft operating out of Guam, located the men on the island. Crew of 1st Aviation Regiment in an Army armed reconnaissance helicopter landed on the beach, delivered food and water, confirmed the men’s identities and checked they had no major injuries.”

The U.S. Coast Guard also assisted the stranded individuals by having an HC-130 Hercules airdrop “a radio and message block” letting them know that the FSS Independence—a Micronesian Pacific Patrol Boat—was on its way to save them and bring them home, the 36th Wing release said.

The mariners were finally rescued at midnight local time on Aug. 3, when the Independence arrived at their location and sent a boat crew to get them, the wing wrote.

Trump Swears in Brown as Air Force Boss in Oval Office Ceremony

Aug. 4, 2020 | By Brian W. Everstine

Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. took a ceremonial oath of office Aug. 4 in a surprise event at the White House, two days before he officially becomes the 22nd Chief of Staff of the Air Force.

Accompanied by his family and senior Air Force and Defense Department leaders, Brown raised his right hand and took an oath administered by Vice President Michael R. Pence. President Donald J. Trump said he moved the short ceremony to the Oval Office at the last minute.

“There’s only one Oval Office, and I said, this was the big leagues, and we have to have you and your family over to celebrate,” Trump said at the ceremony. “You’ve had an incredible career, and this is a capper.”

Senators unanimously confirmed Brown to the post in a historic 98-0 vote in June. He will become the first African American officer to serve as chief of staff of one of the armed forces, after holding leadership positions in combat organizations around the globe.

“It is a distinct honor for me to have this opportunity, and so I feel very honored and blessed,” Brown said.

The White House event was a ceremonial proceeding that does not replace the change of command on Aug. 6 at Joint Base Andrews, Md., according to the Air Force. Outgoing Chief of Staff Gen. David L. Goldfein will retire and hand over his responsibilities to Brown that day.

It is unusual for the White House to hold its own swearing-in ceremony in advance of the formal military proceeding.

Goldfein, Air Force Secretary Barbara M. Barrett, Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. John E. Hyten, incoming Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force JoAnne S. Bass, and others attended the gathering.

“Today’s a little bit of a bookend, for us,” Goldfein said alongside his wife, Dawn. “We started this journey with my best friend and my high school sweetheart, and I get to hand over the service to one of my other best friends, C.Q. Brown.”

USAF, Israeli F-35s Train Together

Aug. 4, 2020 | By Alyk Russell Kenlan

American and Israeli F-35s trained together earlier this week, in the second bilateral exercise between the two countries focusing on Joint Strike Fighter operations.

U.S. Air Forces Central Command and the Israeli Air Force conducted “Enduring Lightning II” on Aug. 2 over Southern Israel. F-35Is with the IAF’s 140th Squadron flew with 421st Expeditionary Fighter Squadron F-35As and a KC-10 from the 908th Expeditionary Air Refueling Squadron. A Gulfstream G550 “Nachshon” from the IAF’s 122nd Squadron flew command and control for the exercise.

The exercise tested all specialties of the F-35 and participant aircraft including in-air refueling, engaging targets, and command and control, an Air Force press release said.

“The two air forces maintain close cooperation, including mutual learning and sharing of lessons learned,” an Israeli Defense Forces statement said.

Israel was the first foreign country to buy F-35’s, and has agreed to buy 50 aircraft for $1.5 billion. Lockheed Martin has delivered 14, so far. The IAF named the plane “Adir,” which means “Mighty One” in Hebrew. In addition to the two Enduring Lightning exercises, Israeli and U.S. F-35s also flew together alongside United Kingdom jets in a June 2019 “Tri-Lightning” event.

“The Americans are our number one partner,” the head of the IAF’s International Exercises Department said about the first “Enduring Lightning” exercise in a March press release. “I see great importance in cooperating on the most advanced plane in our collection with us as hosts.”

Disagreement over Tata Could Stymie Air Force Leader’s Confirmation

Aug. 4, 2020 | By Rachel S. Cohen

Democratic senators on Aug. 4 indicated they could hold up the confirmation of Shon J. Manasco as Air Force undersecretary as recourse for the Trump administration’s decision to install a controversial official into a key Pentagon policy post without Senate approval.

Anthony J. Tata, a retired Army brigadier general, is performing the duties of deputy undersecretary of defense for policy. His July 30 Senate confirmation hearing was abruptly canceled, just hours before he was supposed to appear, amid bipartisan concerns about his fitness for the job. He has served as a senior adviser to Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper since April.

Tata now works for James H. Anderson, the acting undersecretary of defense for policy. Anderson was confirmed as the policymaking deputy—the job Tata now holds—in June. But Anderson is instead acting as a placeholder in the top policy job because no one has been confirmed as his boss, opening the lower post for Tata.

The nominee has called former President Barack H. Obama a “terrorist leader” and made disparaging remarks about Islam.

Giving Tata the job anyway has sparked the ire of congressional Democrats, including those with the power to hold up the confirmation process for defense officials.

“The committee should carefully consider an appropriate response to this end-run around our rules and our constitutional prerogatives,” Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), the ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Aug. 4.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said he is “disinclined” to support any Pentagon nominee that comes before the Senate, and “will almost certainly oppose nominees unless something is done to correct this situation.”

“Almost certainly, [Tata] would have been rejected by this committee after our review, meticulously, of his record,” Blumenthal said. “He was unfit to serve. He is unqualified for the position where he is now serving. … We must take action.”

Meanwhile, Committee Chairman Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.) argues President Donald J. Trump has the authority to appoint DOD officials into critical positions.

“There are many Democrats and Republicans who didn’t know enough about Anthony Tata to consider him for a very significant position at this time,” Inhofe said in a July 30 release. “We didn’t get the required documentation in time; some documents, which we normally get before a hearing, didn’t arrive until yesterday. As I told the President last night, we’re simply out of time with the August recess coming, so it wouldn’t serve any useful purpose to have a hearing at this point, and he agreed.”

That standoff loomed over an Aug. 4 confirmation hearing that vetted Manasco to be the Air Force’s No. 2 civilian official, John E. Whitley to lead the Pentagon’s independent cost projections office, Michele A. Pearce to be the Army’s next general counsel, and Liam P. Hardy to be a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces.

Manasco is nominated to formally hold the undersecretary post after unofficially serving in the role since December 2019. He previously worked as assistant secretary of the Air Force for manpower and reserve affairs.

During the hearing, Manasco indicated there’s no need to change the service’s safety standards following a recent spate of aircraft crashes.

“What I would want to continue to reinforce is just steadfastness, discipline, and never, ever bending as it relates to the safety standards,” he said. “I do believe we have the right safety standards. We have to refocus our efforts on being disciplined about following them.”

Five Air Force fighter jets have crashed since mid-May, prompting the head of Air Combat Command to visit Airmen around the country to discuss safety and training. ACC is “assessing current and historical data and looking for common trends or issues,” and has updated its safety information, but did not pause flying operations, according to a command spokeswoman.

Fifteen aircraft suffered the most costly and destructive kind of mishaps in fiscal 2019, known as “Class A” incidents, according to the Air Force. Another 27 incurred lesser damage in “Class B” mishaps that year.

Manasco acknowledged the Air Force may have to do more to fight military ships, as the Pentagon focuses on potential conflict in the Indo-Pacific. That could mean growing the Air Force’s share of the Navy-led Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile program, and possibly cutting back on other types of munitions. The service may buy up to 400 LRASMs, compared to as many as 10,000 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles and other far-reaching munitions.

“Especially with the Chinese and their growing fleet, we’re going to have to take that threat more seriously than maybe we have in the past, and as we do that, I would anticipate we will have to look carefully at our munitions inventory to make sure that we can meet that threat in the event that we need to,” Manasco said.

He backed the Air Force’s negotiations with Lockheed Martin to drive down sustainment costs and to own more of the technical data for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, hoping to get more control over platform upgrades.

“At the same time, we can really begin to tap into a broader set of suppliers that can help us create some competition to be able to lower those costs down,” he said.

He also promised Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) he would brief her on the future of the Air Force’s tactical airlift fleet within the next year.

Manasco will help oversee the Air Force’s policy shifts as the service tries to tackle racism in its ranks as well. The service is reviewing issues of discrimination in its military justice system and promotion process, among other changes to make the Air Force more equitable.

“Racism of any form has no place in the Department of the Air Force, period,” he said. “If confirmed, I will work diligently to make sure that it is eradicated from our ranks, as this is a scourge on our society and there’s simply no place for it.”

The committee must vote to send Manasco’s nomination to the full Senate for consideration.

USAF, DOD Need COVID-19 Convalescent Plasma Donors to Help Fight Pandemic

Aug. 4, 2020 | By Jennifer-Leigh Oprihory

The Air Force is helping the Defense Department collect COVID-19 convalescent plasma from individuals who have recovered from the disease in hopes that it can help the military treat other patients, the service announced last month.

While the military is now nearly halfway to its goal of collecting 10,000 units of convalescent plasma—or the liquid part of the blood donated by people whose bodies have beaten the disease—it’s still seeking potential donors to help it reach that target by Sept. 30.

“Currently, we have almost reached 50 percent of our goal and encourage those who are able to donate to do so to help fight this persistent enemy,” Air Force Deputy Surgeon General Maj. Gen. Sean L. Murphy said in an Aug. 4 statement to Air Force Magazine.

According to the Food and Drug Administration, when people come down with COVID-19, they develop antibodies—or proteins that can tackle the virus that causes the disease.

Since these proteins live in blood plasma, when a qualifying recipient receives a convalescent plasma donation, it may boost their immune system and aid in their recovery, according to a July 10 USAF release.

“Early results in convalescent plasma therapy have shown great promise,” said Air Force Surgeon General Lt. Gen. Dorothy A. Hogg in the release.

However, plasma transfusions are reserved for COVID-19 patients who are in the hospital and “severely ill with the disease,” and must be performed according to an approved protocol, the release noted.

To take part in this DOD effort, a potential donor must:

Be DOD personnel, a family member of DOD personnel, or a non-DOD civilian “with access to collection facilities on installations.”
Be 17 years of age or older.
Weigh a minimum of 110 pounds.
Be healthy.
Provide laboratory test results showing they tested positive for the virus that causes COVID-19.
Have had no symptoms of COVID for at least two weeks.

Additionally, “women who have ever been pregnant” may be required to undergo additional antibody testing to qualify, the release said.

“If a donor believes they meet these requirements, they must first contact the local blood donor center before coming in, and if they qualify, set up an appointment,” Army Blood Program director Col. Jason Corley said in the release. “Once set up, the donor must bring the required documentation and undergo the standard donation procedure. Final determination will be made by the medical director or designee.”

Donations may be made at the following Armed Services Blood Program Centers:

Armed Services Blood Bank Center, Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Bethesda, Md.
Naval Medical Center Portsmouth Blood Donor Center, Portsmouth, Va.
Fort Bragg Blood Donor Center, Fort Bragg, N.C.
Kendrick Memorial Blood Center, Fort Gordon, Ga.
Sullivan Memorial Blood Center, Fort Benning, Ga.
Blood Donor Center, Keesler Air Force Base, Miss.
Lackland Air Force Base Armed Services Blood Bank Center, Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, Texas
Robertson Blood Center, Fort Hood, Texas
Akeroyd Blood Donor Center, Fort Sam Houston, Texas
Fort Bliss Blood Donor Center, Fort Bliss, Texas
Naval Medical Center San Diego Blood Donor Center, San Diego, Calif.
Armed Services Blood Bank Center – Pacific Northwest, Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash.
Tripler AMC Blood Donor Center, Tripler Army Medical Center, Hawaii
Naval Hospital Blood Donor Center, Guam
Armed Services Blood Bank Center Europe, Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, Germany

The Air Force said it has used convalescent plasma to treat at least one COVID-19 patient so far.

“The first patient to receive convalescent plasma in the Air Force occurred in the intensive care unit at Keesler Air Force Base in April of this year,” said Chief Master Sgt. George “Steve” Cum, Medical Enlisted Force and Enlisted Corps chief, in the release. “This patient received plasma from the Armed Services Blood Program and was treated, has fully recovered and has been discharged.”

Helicopter Pilot Training Experiment Skips Fixed-Wing Courses

Aug. 4, 2020 | By John A. Tirpak

In an effort to improve helicopter pilot training and alleviate the Air Force’s overall pilot shortage, Air Education and Training Command is about to experiment with a back-to-the-future plan that would send pilots to a helicopters-only flight school, resurrecting a format discontinued in the 1990s.

A “small group experiment” starts later this week at the Army’s Fort Rucker, Ala., training base, and contracts are expected to be awarded within the next two weeks for contractor-run helicopter training to begin next month, 19th Air Force Commander Maj. Gen. Craig D. Wills told Air Force Magazine.

The experiment is the first step in Undergraduate Helicopter Training Next, a program to answer the question: “Could you not produce a world-class helicopter pilot by training them exclusively on helicopters? And we believe the answer is yes,” Wills said in a July 30 interview.

“For about 20 years, we’ve trained our helicopter pilots by sending them through T-6 training first,” Wills said. After getting through Undergraduate Pilot Training, being selected for helicopters, and going on for chopper-specific training at Fort Rucker, graduates eventually fly Air Force HH-60G Pave Hawks and UH-1N Hueys. Some also go to CV-22 Osprey tiltrotors, some of whose pilots also come through the T-1 Jayhawk aircraft track.

Now USAF will look at providing training to pilots in rotary wing aircraft from the start. If successful, the shift will free up as many as 60-80 fixed-wing slots in the T-6 every year, helping to alleviate the overall pilot shortage, Wills reported. The first group will comprise eight student pilots.

“In September, we’ll have another small group try out, and we’ll use a contracted model,” Wills explained. “We’ll contract for about 50 hours of rotary wing training with a civilian company and then [students will] go to Rucker to finish the second half of their rotary-wing training.”

Wills said the main reason for the change is to “build a better helicopter pilot.”

The plan is to “do it in 9-11 months, instead of 17 or 18 months,” he said, without any less proficiency among pilots. Freeing the slots in fixed-wing classes “will help increase fixed-wing pilot production. So it looks to us at this point like a complete win across the board,” Wills said. Depending on when contracts are let, contractor introductory training would start “mid-September,” he said.

The new program dovetails with Pilot Training Next, which seeks to evolve Air Force undergraduate pilot instruction, optimizing candidate coursework for the aircraft they’ll eventually fly, and taking full advantage of virtual reality, artificial intelligence and other new learning technologies. Pilot Training Next is also aimed at creating shorter courses with higher pilot throughput.

The helicopter initiative follows an experiment last year called “Project DaVinci,” in which a small group of pilots was trained using increased simulation and virtual reality. It was so successful the first class of six pilots graduated six weeks ahead of schedule. That experiment aimed to halve rotary-wing instruction from 28 weeks to 14 while doubling the number of helo graduates to 120 per year.

While AETC leadership is bullish on the new plan, “we’ve got to get through these small-group tryouts,” and prove the concept will “produce world-class rotary-wing aviators,” Wills said. “We’ve got to take the hard lessons learned…adapt and do the work.” He added, that the plan is not “perfectly cooked, yet.”

Air Force to Continue ‘Zero-Based’ Budget Reviews

Aug. 3, 2020 | By Rachel S. Cohen

Annual budget reviews instituted by former Air Force Secretary Heather A. Wilson should make it easier to settle the hard financial decisions that loom ahead, a top Air Force aide said Aug. 3.

Wilson, who served as secretary from 2017 to 2019, began a department-wide review in January 2018 to cut down on programs and activities worth less than $30 million apiece that no longer merited funding. It was the first such deep-dive in more than 20 years, Matthew P. Donovan, then the Air Force undersecretary, said at the time.

In February, the Air Force said its budget debate, known as a “zero-based review,” for 2021 came up with $4.1 billion in spending cuts over the next five years. Some of that money may have come from decisions to retire aircraft such as the B-1 bomber, A-10 attack plane, and RQ-4 reconnaissance drone.

Anthony P. Reardon, administrative assistant to Air Force Secretary Barbara M. Barrett, indicated those reviews will continue under current service leadership. The discussions are similar to the Army’s “night court” reviews that look at ways to reinvest money in higher service priorities.

“All the ‘zero-based’ reviews with Secretary Wilson, they were extremely effective,” Reardon said during an Air Force Association event. “I think we’ve built a process that’s iterative, so we do it every time now, maybe not to the full-up degree … but we get pretty close to it. So I think if we’re given time, that’s become the normal way of doing business now.”

As the Pentagon prepares for years of little budget growth, thanks to congressional spending agreements and the unexpected expense of coronavirus pandemic relief efforts, the annual process of deciding how best to downsize can make stagnant funding more bearable.

Budget planning happens on three levels now. The Air Force Warfighting Integration Capability office looks at what the service needs in its future force to succeed, then poses that vision to the planners, who figure out how to structure portfolios like procurement and operations. Program managers then try to work their initiatives into that bigger strategic picture.

“Sometimes we get frustrated by bogeys when somebody comes forward and says, ‘I want you to cut this much out of your budget, I want you to move this much in this direction.’ [It] makes it a little bit more challenging,” Reardon said. “But I think the processes that Secretary Wilson put in place are enduring processes, and I think they’re going to make the budget development a little bit easier.”

This year’s budget process has also sped up to get ahead of the November presidential election and a possible transition of power in January, Reardon said.

The Air Force is preparing its fiscal 2022 budget request, after asking for about $169 billion in 2021. However, it’s likely the military will have to work under a continuing budget resolution starting Oct. 1 that holds it to 2020 spending levels and blocks new programs from starting until Congress passes funding bills for the coming fiscal year.

Air Force Research Laboratory Will Realign, Not Split

Aug. 3, 2020 | By Shaun Waterman

The new commander of the storied Air Force Research Laboratory will realign—not reorganize—the lab so it can ably support both the new U.S. Space Force and its traditional Air Force customers.

“We’ll be one AFRL serving two services: The Air Force and the Space Force,” said Brig. Gen. Heather L. Pringle, commander of AFRL, in an interview with Air Force Magazine. A new deputy technical executive officer will be “responsible for integrating our space [science and technology] portfolio,” Pringle said, and will report directly to her. The new executive will be “the single focal point for the U.S. Space Force,” she added.

Pringle, who took command in June, said the realignment is her No. 2 priority behind implementing the Air Force’s 2030 Science and Technology Strategy.

The Space Force “controls its own money, and has its own budget, and it will set its own priorities for the [science and technology] research that it requires,” Pringle said. “Our job will be to align our force to that and execute it.”

Administratively, some 720 of the AFRL’s 12,700 military, civilian, and contractor personnel will be “chopped over to the Space Force and then reassigned back to us,” Pringle said. These will include most of today’s Space Vehicles Directorate, and parts of the Rocket Propulsion and Electro-Optical Divisions.

To personnel on the ground in the far-flung AFRL enterprise—which stretches from Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio to Kirtland, N.M., and and as far Maui, Hawaii—the transition will be “seamless,” she predicted. “You might have a name tape change, if you’re in the military, but you’re going to have the same reporting chain.”

It’s important to keep the AFRL together, Pringle said, invoking Air Force Materiel Command boss Gen. Arnold W. Bunch Jr. who, as AFRL commander, was fond of saying, “Technology doesn’t know what it’s for.” What something is invented to do may not be where it proves most valuable.

“Space S&T is not only happening in the Space Vehicles Directorate [and the other elements being transferred], it occurs all across our lab,” Pringle said, citing materials and human effectiveness and information technology that can be applicable to the Space Force.

“We’ve been supporting space [science and technology] for decades” and continue to work on transformative space technologies.

As an example, she cited the Navigation Technology Satellite-3, an AFRL program designed to provide a more secure, next-generation alternative to GPS. NTS-3 is one of a very few Air Force Vanguard programs—high-priority projects intended to deliver strategic advantages to the U.S. warfighter.

Col. Eric J. Felt, who leads the Space Vehicles Directorate, said new technologies of interest to the Space Force and the Air Force “are not two separate circles,” but rather “overlap a lot,” as in a Venn diagram. “If you were to just chop off some people and say you’re the people that are working on space, you would miss out on the whole intersection of those Venn diagrams.”

Autonomy is one such example, Felt said, concerning development of artificial intelligence systems that can control planes and satellites. With a single AFRL, “We’re able to both work together on autonomy technology and apply it in these different domains.”

Dealing with that kind of overlap research, Felt said, was the key to success, and the new deputy technical executive officer’s “main job is to identify and make sure that the intersection of those two circles is effectively managed.”

Indeed, noted retired Maj. Gen. Curtis M. Bedke, who commanded AFRL from 2007-10, this was precisely the rationale for creating AFRL in 1997 when all the Air Force’s then-separate labs were fused into a single research enterprise.

“The real value of the Air Force Research Laboratory is that anything that is a really hard project, the projects that are of the most value to the Air Force and to the nation, have been those that require the directorates to work with each other to solve a truly important long-range challenge,” Bedke said.

“The nation can’t afford to split up these teams of scientists that have taken decades of hard work to create and to nurture,” said Bedke, now a consultant and senior fellow at AFA’s Mitchell Institute of Aerospace Studies. “You don’t want to create an artificial barrier with an organizational split and send them off on their own merry way. “

Yet the devil will be in the details, noted one former senior defense official, who asked to remain anonymous because of sensitivities with his current employer. “The real issue is who’s going to be directing the research budget and where [AFRL] will be aiming to transition successful technologies to … They have to figure out the acquisition.”

Elements of AFRL being transferred to the U.S. Space Force

Space Vehicles Directorate (AFRL/RV) — Almost the entire directorate is transferring (one notable exception is the Atomic Long Range Systems Branch/RVBN); 419 of 441 total positions are moving to Space Force.
Rocket Propulsion Division (AFRL/RQR) — Some parts of this division (part of the Aerospace Systems Directorate) are transferring; 74 of 138 positions are moving to Space Force.
Electro-Optical Division (AFRL/RDS) — Almost all of this division (part of the Directed Energy Directorate), mostly based on Maui, Hawaii, is transferring; 136 of 139 positions are moving to Space Force.
Sensors Directorate (AFRL/RY) – Positions from the Systems Technology Office are the only ones transferring from this directorate; due to the fact that its work is classified, the specific number of positions moving from this organization cannot be made available.
Additionally, some contracting support (for mission execution) for the various transferring organizations will also transfer.

USAF Adds 8 New Companies to Combat Networking Contract

Aug. 3, 2020 | By Rachel S. Cohen

Eight more companies are getting the chance to join the Air Force’s Advanced Battle Management System, bringing the total number of participating firms to more than 50.

The Air Force added ARES Security, AT&T, Centauri, Cogniac, NanoVMs, Pacific Defense, SRC, and Systematic to an open-ended contract under which companies could each receive up to $950 million. Each is pitching hardware and software that can crunch data and connect the Air Force’s computer systems, aircraft, and weapons faster and with fewer bureaucratic hurdles.

“These contracts provide for the development and operation of systems as a unified force across all domains,” spanning air, land, sea, space, cyberspace, and the electromagnetic spectrum, the Pentagon said in a July 31 contract announcement. The funding pot ends in May 2025.

The service is testing how the technologies could interact during periodic combat simulations at various Air Force bases. The next two demonstrations, featuring U.S. Space Command, U.S. Northern Command, and U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, are slated for late August and early September.

“In the USSPACECOM and USNORTHCOM onramp, ABMS-provided systems will connect sensors and fires from ships, submarines, ground troops, aircraft, and commercial satellites to shoot down simulated bombers, cruise missiles, unmanned vehicles as well as negate targets in other domains,” the Air Force said in a July 31 release. “In the USINDOPACOM onramp, ABMS-provided systems will begin to enable location and platform-agnostic command and control and information availability at the tactical edge in the Pacific.”

The Air Force plans on spending around $300 million to test and develop battle management technologies next year—up from $140 million in 2020—and about $3.3 billion on the new network over the next five years. It has budgeted $185 million overall for ABMS in 2020.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect the correct amount of Air Force funding for the Advanced Battle Management System in fiscal 2020.