House Panel Adds More New Test F-35s to NDAA

May 23, 2024 | By John A. Tirpak

The number of new F-35s dedicated to developmental testing would rise under the version of the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act passed by the House Armed Services Committee on May 22, yet another by lawmakers to put the spurs to the lagging program.

In the 2024 version of the bill, Congress adopted a provision to fund six F-35s to refresh the aging test fleet. For the 2025 bill, Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.) offered an amendment to raise that number to nine, and his proposal was approved by the HASC in a quick voice vote.

Lt. Gen. Michael Schmidt, F-35 program executive officer, told Air & Space Forces Magazine last fall that the program’s test fleet is tired, suffers from decreasing availability, and needs to be augmented with nine new airplanes configured with test gear. The combined test force has been supplemented with operationally-configured airplanes for some time, but they are not the optimal solution, Schmidt said.

A heavy campaign of F-35 testing is already underway and the load will increase as the Pentagon tries to complete testing of the Tech Refresh 3 hardware and software package. Once that’s complete, more than 80 improvements comprising the F-35 Block 4 upgrade will require test and evaluation, not including power and thermal testing pertaining to its F135 engine.

Schmidt has told Congress in budget testimony that Block 4 is being “reimagined,” and some elements of it planned to be fielded this decade will slip to the 2030s.

Under Wittman’s amendment, all the new test aircraft would be funded in Lot 18, which, along with Lot 19, has been under negotiation almost two years. In last year’s bill, the six airplanes would have come out of Lot 19. While the 2024 NDAA specified two of each variant as test jets, the new law would give the Pentagon flexibility to decide the mix.

The Joint Program Office has long contended that it has inadequate resources to support a high tempo of F-35 testing. Exasperated with the delays—which have resulted in more than 70 F-35s completed but not delivered because the Tech Refresh 3 upgrade built into them hasn’t finished testing—the HASC slashed F-35 purchases by up to 20 jets for fiscal 2025 and is redirecting the money to set up and staff a software laboratory and a flying system integration laboratory, among other test capacity enhancements.

“We are compelled to address the ongoing Joint Strike Fighter production challenge,” Wittman said in a statement attending the markup, noting comments by former head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command Adm. Philip S. Davidson that China would be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. “With over 100 JSF aircraft projected to stack up on the ramp waiting the needed TR-3/Block 4 upgrades and further challenges with getting the right capabilities in time to address the Davidson window, it is essential that we right-size our nation’s largest defense acquisition program.”

Wittman said the new provision puts the U.S. “in a good position that allows us to address the more egregious concerns identified” by the Pentagon’s Director of Operational Test and Evaluation, “a software independent review team, and the Government Accountability Office.” The adjustments to the F-35 program “will put the JSF program on the right path. We are not interested in placing blame for the program’s challenges; we are committed to delivering solutions.”

The GAO, in an F-35 report published last week, said it may take a year to go through the normal process of accepting and delivering the completed but parked jets. The JPO has said it has gotten approval from the F-35 user community to start accepting jets with less than the TR-3 hardware and software upgrade—a so-called “truncated” version of the upgrade—as soon as the software shows adequate stability in test. The JPO has not been able, however, to offer the metrics of what would constitute “stable” or when that status is expected to be achieved.

Lockheed Martin CEO Jim Taiclet said in the company’s last earnings call April 23 that the not-quite TR-3 upgrade, which he called a “combat training-capable” version, will likely be ready to go in the third quarter. He said it will allow F-35 users to start training with the TR-3 capabilities before they’re actually resident on the airplane.

The GAO—which issued its report before the FY 2025 markup—warned that the six new test F-35s already in flow won’t be delivered and configured for use until 2029.

Former CMSAF Wright on Roger Fortson, What Air Force Leaders Can Do Next

May 23, 2024 | By David Roza

As a leadership consultant, retired Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force Kaleth Wright helps many leaders in and out of uniform hone their craft. When Senior Airman Roger Fortson was killed by a sheriff’s deputy in Florida earlier this month, several Air Force leaders sought his insight on how to handle it.

“They might be wondering if whatever they did was enough, and what would they do differently?” Wright told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

Wright is no stranger to such situations. When George Floyd was killed by police in Minneapolis in 2020 during Wright’s final year as CMSAF, the Airman made headlines by sharing his thoughts about it on Facebook.

“Who am I? I am a Black man who happens to be the Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force,” he wrote at the time. “What happens all too often in this country to Black men who are subjected to police brutality that ends in death … could happen to me.”

The post also included a warning that became reality earlier this month.

“This, my friends, is my greatest fear, not that I will be killed by a white police officer … but that I will wake up to a report that one of our Black Airmen has died at the hands of a white police officer,” he wrote.

Fortson was killed May 3 by an Okaloosa County Sherriff’s deputy who fired at him while responding to a reported disturbance call at an apartment complex at Fort Walton Beach, Fla. The deputy shot the 23-year-old Fortson six times as the Airman opened his apartment door while holding his legally-owned handgun at his side, pointing downwards. At a May 16 press conference, a lawyer for Fortson’s family, Ben Crump, said the deputy had been called to the wrong apartment.

“This is what I always feared,” Wright wrote on Facebook on May 9. “Praying for his family.”

When Airmen reached out to him for guidance, Wright heard echoes from 2020.

“The theme is the same: ‘I’m not quite sure what to do,’ ‘I’m not quite sure how to feel.’ And people are unsure how to channel their anger,” he said.

Fortson’s death cuts even closer to home for many Airmen.

“They live in apartments, they drive around, they have encounters with policemen, they own firearms,” said Wright, who, like Fortson also lived off-base as a Senior Airman, since on-base dormitories are often limited to the most junior Airmen. “There are just so many similarities that I think cause people to feel like ‘man, this could easily have been me.’”

‘A Huge Message’

In 2020, Floyd’s death helped spark larger discussions about racial disparities in the Air Force, starting with Wright and then-Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein. Four years later, the retired CMSAF said he gets the sense that more unit-level Air Force leaders shared their thoughts about Fortson’s death and engaged with Airmen about it sooner, including Fortson’s commander, Col. Patrick Dierig; the head of Air Force Special Operations Command, Lt. Gen. Tony D. Bauernfeind; the top enlisted leader for the 8th Air Force, Chief Master Sgt. Ronnie J. Woods; and current Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force David A. Flosi.

“I have heard some positives from people saying ‘my leadership is creating space for us to talk and to express our feelings and they’ve been listening,’” Wright said. “And then I’ve also heard kind of the same things I was hearing in 2020: ‘nobody’s saying anything.’”

Events such as Fortson’s death can be tricky to handle for Air Force leaders, most of whom are White. According to 2022 data, the percentage of Air Force colonels, brigadier generals, major generals, lieutenant generals, and generals who are White are 83 percent, 86 percent, 93 percent, 91 percent, and 80 percent, respectively. Those kinds of proportions can limit even the most well-intentioned Airman’s perspective.

“If you’ve never been the only person that looks like you or is of the same gender as you, you don’t know how it feels,” Wright said. “If I’m the only Black person in the unit, I’m not walking around angry all the time. I’m not walking around complaining all the time. I know, in order for my survival, basically, I have to assimilate and I have to pretend like everything is OK. Even if it’s not.”

Two obstacles often make bridging that gap difficult for leaders, Wright noted. The first is not knowing what to say or fear of saying the wrong thing, while the second is a fear of political pushback. As an example, Wright cited Air Force Col. Benjamin Jonsson. Jonsson’s promotion to brigadier general has been delayed 18 months and could stretch into 2025 because of a legislative hold placed by Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.). Schmitt has said the hold is in opposition to diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives—Jonsson penned an op-ed addressing racial injustice in 2020.

“That was a huge message to some extent, directly, and to some extent, indirectly, that, ‘hey, if you speak too loudly about this type of stuff, this is what could potentially happen to you and your career,’” Wright said. “It might cause some leaders to say, ‘I’m not quite sure if I want to get involved in this discussion.’”

The discussion is even more delicate considering that Air Force leaders can do little to change wider societal issues like race relations and police brutality. But that does not mean they are powerless, Wright said.

“On this particular issue, young African American males being killed by police officers, I don’t think there’s anything necessarily that the Air Force can or has a responsibility to do,” he said. “However, the Air Force does have a responsibility to continue to create justice and fairness within its own structure when it comes to African American males.”

For example, the Air Force found in its 2020 review of racial disparities that young Black enlisted Airmen and Guardians are almost twice as likely as their White peers to be apprehended by Security Forces and involuntarily discharged based on misconduct. Black Airmen are also underrepresented in operational fields, which promote faster and could contribute to there being fewer high-ranking Black officers.

The federally-funded RAND Corporation also wrote in April that Black male junior enlisted Airmen are 86 percent more likely to be issued an Article 15 or referred to a court-martial than White Airmen. Though the exact causes of those disparities are still unknown, RAND wrote that “having a diverse group of individuals make discipline decisions might mitigate disparities and increase trust in the process,” rather than a lone decision maker.

RAND also called for countermeasures to reduce individual biases that “go beyond traditional training,” with an emphasis “on making changes to the system such that the impacts of individual biases are mitigated.”

Leaning In

Those biases come into sharper focus after an event like Fortson’s death, which gives leaders and Airmen a chance to start a conversation, Wright said. The former CMSAF encouraged leaders to “lean into the issue” and listen to Airmen, even if they may not have all the answers. But listening alone is not enough, Wright said, recalling a recent discussion with a group of Air Force senior leaders who held listening sessions with their Airmen.

“I asked, ‘OK, well, what did you learn?’ And they were pretty quiet,” he said. “There is, I think, a responsibility to allow people to express themselves and listen, but there should be some takeaways: what are you hearing from people that you didn’t already know, that you didn’t realize? Or, what are you hearing that makes you think, ‘OK, based on this feedback that I’m getting from these Airmen, here’s something that we can do differently in our organization.’”

Airmen can also feel empowered to start the conversation. Wright encouraged Airmen to talk with their leadership if they are slow to act.

“Say, ‘hey, here’s the deal, here’s how people in the organization are feeling, and we’d love to have a forum to be able to discuss,'” he said. “You may not be looking for any particular answer, but it doesn’t make sense for us all to walk around and pretend like nothing happened.”

Some troops are already on it: in the weeks since Fortson’s death, Airmen around the world worked together on social media to organize remembrances and tributes for him, many of which took place this week. Those events and conversations can continue into the future.

“Lean on your family, your friends, your colleagues,” Wright said, “and also people who might be able to help you decide, ‘OK, here’s something that we could do in our local area to make this situation better.'”

Lawmakers Move to Bulk Up Oversight of Sentinel ICBM, But Reject Attempts to Curb Program

May 23, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

Lawmakers are taking several steps toward increased oversight of the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile program after the Air Force announced earlier this year that it was suffering critical cost and schedule overruns—but there is little appetite to cancel or curb the program.

The cost sparked a Nunn-McCurdy review of the program, which pauses work and requires certification from the Secretary of Defense to continue. While that process likely won’t wrap up until July, several provisions in the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act approved by the House Armed Services Committee on May 22 look beyond that toward managing the program if and when it is approved to move forward.

HASC chair Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) led the charge in his markup of the bill, including a section that would require the head of U.S. Strategic Command to submit regular reports to Congress on the “long-term plan for strategic nuclear forces during vehicle transition.”

Those reports would have to include plans for the years 2028-2036, covering:

“A baseline strategy for maintaining a minimum of 1,550 nuclear warheads” across the nuclear triad, including ICBMs.

Operational considerations “including, as necessary, the identification of areas in which greater risk is being accepted.”

Contingency plans if there is a “reduced strategic delivery system availability due to programmatic delays, aging, or other such factors.”

The last requirement is an apparent nod to the schedule delays both Sentinel and the Navy’s Columbia-class submarine have faced. Sentinel in particular has a “no-fail” initial operational capability deadline of September 2030 set by STRATCOM that it is close to breaching. Full operational capability is not slated until 2036.

The first required report would be due one year after the NDAA is enacted.

Elsewhere in the NDAA, the committee wants to require the Pentagon to provide it with a briefing and documentation from its Nunn-McCurdy review within one month of the Defense Secretary’s final decision. As part of that briefing, lawmakers want a “description of the alternative systems and capabilities considered, including road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missile capabilities, life extending one or more wings of the Minuteman III and deploying a mixed fleet of Sentinel and life-extended Minuteman III ICBMs for a period of time.”

On top of that, the committee is asking the Government Accountability Office to review the Pentagon’s Nunn-McCurdy review, to ensure “compliance with both letter and intent” of the law.

Artist’s concept of the LGM-35A Sentinel ICBM.

Air Force leaders have repeatedly said they are committed to continuing Sentinel despite the increased costs.

“Sentinel will be funded,” Lt. Gen. Richard G. Moore Jr., Air Force deputy chief of staff for plans and programs, said in January. The Air Force will “make the trade that it takes to make [Sentinel] happen. We’ll see as we work through this process what the results are, but we are committed to Sentinel and that [is] not going to change. It is funded now. And that’s also not going to change.”

“The primacy of the mission, I think, says a lot,” Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said in February, adding that Sentinel is “essential.”

Just two weeks ago, Pentagon acquisition boss William LaPlante reaffirmed that the DOD is committed to fielding an ICBM leg of the nuclear triad, though he did not guarantee that Sentinel would be certified.

Should Sentinel be certified to continue, Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) introduced an NDAA amendment—approved by the committee—that would require LaPlante to ensure that before the program reaches acquisition Milestone B, “the contract structure for the program allows for maximum Federal Government oversight.” That would include government control of design review entrance and exit criteria, the ability to certify completion of all subsystems and the “total system architecture,” and opportunities for competition throughout the lifecycle of the program.

Moulton’s amendment also requires LaPlante’s office to submit a report detailing how he will meet those requirements within 90 days of the program being certified to continue—if it is certified.

While the committee approved those oversight moves, it rejected amendments from Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.) to curb the program. Garamendi, a longtime critic of Sentinel, tried to pause all funding for the program and the W87-1 warhead that will go on the missile, repeal a deadline for increased production of plutonium pits to go in those warheads, and delete a requirement for the U.S. to maintain 400 ICBMs. All three amendments were voted down by solid margins.

While the House Armed Services Committee has passed its version of the NDAA, the bill must still pass through the full House and then be reconciled with the Senate version.

As representatives were marking up their bill, the Senate Armed Forces strategic forces subcommittee held a hearing to discuss nuclear weapons in the 2025 budget, and Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) also seemed to indicate he favored more oversight but continued work on Sentinel.

“Do we have the structure and the people in charge that are necessary to make sure we can get beyond [the Nunn-McCurdy breach] and get that project moving forward?” King asked Air Force Global Strike Command boss Gen. Thomas A. Bussiere.

Bussiere cited the creation of a new ICBM modernization directorate, led by Brig. Gen. Colin J. Connor, but said further work determining the authorities Connor needs has been delayed by the Nunn-McCurdy review.

Melissa Dalton Confirmed as New Air Force Undersecretary

May 23, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

The Senate confirmed Melissa Dalton to be the 28th undersecretary of the Air Force, the department’s No. 2 civilian job, on May 23.

Dalton’s confirmation comes eight months after she was first nominated to succeed Gina Ortiz Jones, who held the job from July 2021-March 2023. Department comptroller Krysten E. Jones performed the duties of undersecretary for more than 14 months—the longest tenure of any interim Air Force undersecretary in recent memory.

Dalton has served as the assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense and hemispheric affairs since March 2022. In that role, she has advised the Secretary of Defense on key issues like homeland defense, the Arctic, and defense policy for North, Central, and South America, as well as the Caribbean.

Recently, she has been performing the duties of the deputy undersecretary of defense for policy. She also had a stint as principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy, plans, and capabilities and previously served in the Obama and Bush administrations. She began her national security career as an intelligence analyst for the Defense Intelligence Agency.

As undersecretary, Dalton will be the principal deputy for Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall and help shepherd the department through its ongoing “re-optimization” for Great Power Competition, which includes sweeping organizational changes across the Air Force and Space Force.

Dalton’s nomination faced intense scrutiny from Republican lawmakers on the Senate Armed Services Committee during her confirmation hearing Jan. 23, who questioned her on the sale of unused construction materials for a border wall on the southern border, the transit of the continental U.S. by a high-altitude Chinese spy balloon in early 2023, and her relative lack of Air Force experience.

At that hearing, Dalton did pledge to prioritize nuclear modernization, leveraging her experience working on the Pentagon’s Nuclear Posture Review—that could be particularly crucial as the Air Force works on a review of its Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile program that has experienced critical cost and schedule overruns and is at risk of being cancelled.

The committee voted 14-10 to advance her nomination in March. She was confirmed in the Senate by a 56-39 vote, the first time an Air Force undersecretary has not been confirmed by voice vote since at least 2000.

Dalton is the seventh woman confirmed to the job.

What the Air Force’s New B-21 Photos Show About the Raider

May 22, 2024 | By John A. Tirpak

Editor’s Note: This story was updated May 23 with an additional photo.

Just over six months after the B-21 Raider made its first flight in November 2023, the Air Force has released three images of the bomber going through testing at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. A day later, manufacturer Northrop Grumman released another in-flight image. They are the only images of flight testing released so far.

The two Air Force in-flight images are in left profile; one showing the bomber taking off and one in flight at altitude, with the landing gear retracted. The third is a head-on shot of the bomber inside a hangar at Edwards. The Northrop photo shows the aircraft in the air in right profile.

Metadata from the photos indicates they were taken Jan. 17, May 22, and April 4, respectively, confirming that the B-21 has made at least two flights since its first on Nov. 10, 2023.

The Air Force declined to say how many total flights the aircraft has made, nor will it provide any kind of timetable of the anticipated test flight program.

Together, the three images offer only slightly more information about the aircraft than could be gleaned from unofficial photos taken of the first flight and circulated on the internet.

The takeoff image shows a very narrow, 2-D exhaust embedded in the jet’s tail. The broad, narrow exhaust is distinct from that on the B-2, the B-21’s elder stablemate, which had a more boxy, sugar-scoop exhaust. The B-21 exhaust suggests more attention to fanning out the aircraft’s heat to reduce its infrared signature, as well as keep its profile slim to defeat radar.

A lack of blackening around the exhaust could simply be an indication that the aircraft hasn’t flown very often, but it could also indicate that exhaust heat is somehow cooled inside the aircraft before being discharged as thrust. On the F-117 and B-2, this was accomplished with the use of panels very like Space Shuttle thermal tiles, which capture heat and only slowly release it.

An auxiliary air inlet can be seen, opened above the engines to provide them with more air as the jet rotates its nose up. This is necessary because of the top-mounted main air intakes, which would receive reduced air at high angle of attack. A similar, but more scalloped feature is present on the B-2.

Behind the cockpit is the heraldry of Air Force Materiel Command, the 412th Test Wing, and Global Strike Command. The “fuselage” serial number of the aircraft (0001) is visible, but it lacks the typical year of acquisition.

A long patch, in a different, darker color than the rest of the aircraft, is visible on the upper surface, roughly where the engine hot section should be. It’s adorned with a forward-pointing arrow and two apparent diamond-shaped vents are next to it. The forward part of the patch is sawtooth-shaped, a common practice in stealth aircraft where there is a surface discontinuity.

Pop-up navigation lights are visible on the outer wing, likely only used for operations in ATC-controlled airspace and clearly retractable to make the aircraft more stealthy.

Along with the images, an accompanying release from 412th Test Wing at Edwards reiterated comments made by Air Force acquisition executive Andrew Hunter earlier this month that the B-21’s test flight program “is proceeding well.”

“It is doing what flight test programs are designed to do, which is helping us learn about the unique characteristics of this platform, but in a very, very effective way,” Hunter told lawmakers on the Senate Armed Services Committee on May 8.

Hunter also said the B-21’s design is “more digital than not.”

The release also stated that the B-21 will “incrementally replace the B-1 and B-2 bombers” now operated by the Air Force. The service recently told Air and Space Forces Magazine the B-21 will not necessarily replace the B-1 and B-2 on a one-for-one basis as the new bombers become available, but Global Strike Command has said it does not expect to have the money and manpower to field four different types of bombers at the same time. The plan is to neck down to a fleet of just B-21s and B-52Js after the B-1s and B-2s retire.

The Raider was described by the Air Force as a “long-range, highly-survivable, penetrating strike stealth bomber” which will “play a major role supporting national security objectives and assuring U.S. allies and partners across the globe.” It is “expected to enter service in the mid-2020s with a production goal of a minimum of 100 aircraft.”

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin said recently that the pace at which new technology is becoming available could mean the service moves on to a more advanced design, and that 100 aircraft may be the final fleet size for the B-21.

Northrop received a low-rate initial production contract for the B-21 in December, following first flight. The company has said it will not make any money on the first five lots of the B-21, mainly because of inflation and escalated labor costs.

The Air Force noted in its release that the initial flight test aircraft are being manufactured on the same tooling and with the same personnel as will be used for production of operationally-configured Raiders. The test aircraft are also intended to have test apparatus removed and be configured as operational aircraft after the flight test effort concludes.

Air Force Releases First Official Photos of B-21 in Flight

May 22, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

Editor’s Note: This story was updated May 23 with an additional photo.

The Air Force released new photos of the B-21 Raider on May 22, offering the first official images of the bomber since it made its first flight last year.

A day later, B-21 manufacturer Northrop Grumman released a new photo of its own.

The images, which show the bomber taking off, in the air, and in a hangar at Edwards Air Force Base, are rare glimpses of the highly secretive aircraft. Outside of its official unveiling in December 2022, the Air Force has released just a handful of photos.

The service did not even release any imagery of the bomber’s first flight at Northrop Grumman’s Palmdale, Calif., facility on Nov. 10, 2023, or when the aircraft started test flights out of Edwards a few months later. Instead, local aircraft spotters and photographers have captured most publicly released photos of the Raider.

According to the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service, the photo of the B-21 taking off is from January, while the photos of it in flight and in a hangar are from early April.

In an accompanying release, the 412th Test Wing at Edwards reiterated comments made by Air Force acquisition executive Andrew Hunter earlier this month that the B-21’s test flight program “is proceeding well.”

Hunter also said “there are some key points still to come this year” in testing.

The exact number of test flights the B-21 has completed is not publicly known.

The B-21 is a developmental, penetrating strike bomber planned to deliver both conventional and nuclear munitions. Its wingspan is projected to be about 140 feet; smaller than the B-2’s 172-foot wingspan. The service plans to acquire at least 100 B-21s to replace its 45 B-1s and 20 B-2s over the next decade.

The Air Force previously said that B-21 test aircraft will be “usable assets” as soon as they are airworthy, and that the test aircraft will be converted to operational configuration after developmental and operational testing is complete.

Beards for Airmen? House Panel Proposes Air Force Trial Program

May 22, 2024 | By David Roza

Lawmakers on the House Armed Services Committee voted to create a three-year Air Force test program studying the effects of beards on safety, discipline, morale, and inclusivity, as part of their markup of the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act on May 22.

The provision, introduced by Rep. Marc Veasey (D-Texas), was included in a package of amendments adopted unanimously by the committee in an uncontroversial voice vote. In order to become law, it must survive passage in the House of Representatives and be reconciled with the Senate version of the NDAA. But in making it through the committee process, it cleared a major hurdle.

Specifically, the provision instructs the Air Force to “establish a pilot program to allow members of the Air Force and Space Force to grow beards,” in select units across a diverse range of environments and mission sets. The Air Force would then submit an initial report within a year of the program’s start, followed by a final report after the three-year program ends.

Elements of the report would include an evaluation of whether beards effect the airtight seals of gas masks or similar equipment; how they effect “discipline, morale, and unity within the ranks”; and “a determination whether allowing members to grow beards improves inclusivity.” It would also include identifying any negative perception or bias towards members with beards, as well as strategies to mitigate that bias.

Besides the Air Force beard pilot program, Veasey also introduced—and the committee approved—an amendment requiring the Navy to brief the House Armed Services Committee on a study being conducted by the Naval Health Research Center on the effect of beards on gas mask seals. The briefing would be required no later than March 1, 2025.

air force beards — U.S. Air Force Senior Airman Caleb Mills, a boom operator assigned to the 91st Air Refueling Squadron operates boom controls during an air refueling flight to commemorate Black History Month at MacDill Air Force Base, Florida, Feb. 1, 2023. U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Alexander Cook.

The amendments will likely be celebrated by many Airmen who have advocated for years for the service to allow beards without a waiver. Currently, Airmen are allowed to grow beards if they receive a religious exemption or a medical waiver for conditions such as pseudofolliculitis barbae (PFB), also known as razor bumps, a skin condition caused by ingrown hairs that makes shaving painful and can lead to scarring if skin is not given a chance to heal.

Waivers have become easier to obtain in recent years. Former Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force JoAnne Bass’ team repealed policies that had barred bearded Airmen and Guardians from serving in some positions and they made it easier to qualify for beard waivers. Earlier this year before Congress, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin estimated that the number of shaving waivers for PFB has seen an “almost 50 percent increase in the past several years” due to increased awareness of the waiver process.

But a 2021 study conducted by military doctors found that, due to a lingering cultural stigma, Airmen with shaving waivers took longer to earn promotions and often could not land high-profile positions as recruiters, military training instructors, Honor Guard members, or positions on the Thunderbirds flight demonstration team.

Since Black men are more likely to suffer from PFB, the beard ban is effectively discriminatory towards Black Airmen, the study authors argued.

“[T]he promotion system is not necessarily inherently racially biased, but instead biased against the presence of facial hair which will likely always affect the promotions of Blacks/African-Americans disproportionately because of the relatively higher need for shaving waivers in this population,” the study stated.

Yet there remains resistance among some leaders to the idea of allowing facial hair.

“If you want to look cute with your skinny jeans and your beard, by all means, do it someplace else,” then-Senior Enlisted Advisor to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Ramón Colón-López said in 2023 “But quit wasting our time on something that doesn’t have anything to do with kicking the enemy’s ass.”

Lt. Col. Simon Ritchie, the dermatologist who led the 2021 study, pushed back on Colón-López’ view.

“This has never been about looking cute or about fashion, this has always been about eradicating every possible vestige of racial discrimination in the Air Force and also about allowing those with religious beliefs to express those while in uniform,” Ritchie told Air & Space Forces Magazine at the time.

“We are forcing out talented Airmen (proven with data), we are not promoting our shaving waiver holders (proven with data), and because our waiver holders are predominantly Black this directly translates into racial discrimination,” he said.

Proponents of banning beards sometimes argue that facial hair disrupts the seal of a gas mask or oxygen mask, but Ritchie has found no direct scientific evidence to support the claim. They “may have anecdotal evidence of one to five people who they see fail the fit test,” he told Task & Purpose in 2022. “That can’t be extrapolated to hundreds of thousands of Airmen.”

Fellow NATO militaries in Canada, Germany, and Norway allow beards and show no direct evidence that facial hair disrupts gas mask seals, said Ritchie, who was stationed in Germany at the time. And a 2018 study showed that 98 percent of study participants who had an eighth-inch of beard achieved acceptable fits on civilian half-face negative-pressure respirators, which Ritchie said are comparable to the M-50 gas masks used in the military today.

A program such as the one called for in the NDAA amendment is “a good step,” Ritchie said. “At a minimum it will help to socialize the idea and maybe help to convince leaders that we can operate professionally and effectively with facial hair.”

The dermatologist cautioned that the high rates of turnover within military units may make it challenging to ascertain impacts on leadership, professionalism, and other factors within the one-year period before the initial findings are due. Still, some metrics “could be used as end points in such a scenario, like unit readiness rates, that could provide at least a high-level perspective of the impacts of allowing facial hair,” he said.

Meanwhile, the effort to remove the stigma surrounding facial hair in the Air Force is “a work in progress,” Allvin said in April. The chief also expressed concern about Airmen taking advantage of the religious exemption for facial hair.

“My interest, as the chief, is to ensure that we respect that and we honor that,” he said. “So not only do we ensure that those who qualify for those, actually achieve those: the exceptions to policy and the waivers, but we also make sure that others aren’t exploiting it.”

Gen. B. Chance Saltzman, the Chief of Space Operations, expressed a similar view.

“The key is, one, having a good process to grant the waivers expeditiously and appropriately,” he said at the hearing. “And then second is, remove any stigma, and make sure that those people that are accommodated are still respected and there’s no adverse impacts.”

Both those steps involves educating Airmen and Guardians, Saltzman said. Veasey asked at the time whether Saltzman was confident in the education effort.

“I think it’s a work in progress, because we’ve got to reach the entire group of people,” the CSO said. “But I think we’re making the right strides.”

As Pace of Launches Explodes, USSF Eyes Upgrades and Expansion for Spaceports

May 22, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

As the commercial and military space sectors continue their rapid growth, the Space Force is planning to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to upgrade its launch facilities—and will consider expanding to other locations, a top general said May 21.

Such moves are necessary because the U.S. military’s launch infrastructure and workforce has not kept pace with the increasing number of launches themselves, Space Systems Command boss Lt. Gen. Philip A. Garrant said during a Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies event.

Space Systems Command oversees the service’s acquisition and launches. In 2024, the Space Force’s two launch deltas—Space Launch Delta 30 and Space Launch Delta 45—will host 174 launches from its two “ranges” at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Fla., and Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif., Garrant said.

Yet, “the launch deltas are manned at a 2017 manning rate based on a 2017 launch assessment. We’re launching a lot more missions seven years later, yet we’re still manned as if we were doing dozens, not hundreds.”

In 2017, Cape Canaveral hosted seven launches, while Vandenberg hosted nine. In budget documents, the Space Force is projecting that it will support 192 launches—a 1,100 percent increase in eight years.

Manning isn’t the only issue. Garrant said the infrastructure and technology at Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg are old and need investment to bring the facilities up to modern standards, to say nothing of future capabilities.

“The [Office of Management and Budget] gave us $1.3 billion in the 2024 budget to get after that infrastructure,” Garrant said. “It’s going to be over 130 projects, managed in partnership with [Air Force Installation and Mission Support Center], with the Civil Engineering Center, and the Army Corps of Engineers over the Future Years Defense Plan.

“Now I’ll say that a lot of that is built-up technical debt. That’s not improving capacity, that’s getting after known capacity problems. So we’ve got to figure out new things that we can do to keep up with that.”

Last fall, Brig. Gen. Kristin Panzenhagen, program executive officer for assured access to space and director of launch and range operations at SSC, said the service was working on an analysis of future spaceport requirements.

In January, the assured access to space directorate and SpaceWERX solicited industry for proposals for the “digital spaceport of the future,” focusing on upgraded hardware, software applications, and data management.

“The United States’ current space launch infrastructure was designed in the 1970s and 1980s and pre-dates the Internet of Things (IoT),” SpaceWERX wrote in its solicitation. “While we’re currently able to meet national security space lift missions, our capacity to support public and private sector demand for access to space is falling behind.”

One way upgraded IT and infrastructure could help, Garrant suggested, is by allowing personnel to supervise and launch rockets from opposite sides of the country. But there are plenty of technologies and upgrades to consider, he added.

“It’s not just about fixing the technical debt of the existing infrastructure. It’s about building out the infrastructure,” he said.

SpaceWERX plans to hand out Small Business Innovation Research/Small Business Technology Transfer contracts as part of the “Digital Spaceport of the Future” program.

There will soon be more money in the pipeline. Garrant noted that the Space Force will soon start to collect more fees from commercial launch providers that use U.S. military spaceports, thanks to new authorities granted by Congress. Those funds will help fund more modernization efforts.

Beyond just improving existing facilities, the service may soon start considering other locations too. A draft version of the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act released by the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee includes language directing the Chief of Space Operations to brief lawmakers by Dec. 1, 2024, on “the feasibility of launching NSSL missions out of space ranges not currently utilized by the United States Space Force for NSSL, such as Wallops Island, Virginia; Pacific Spaceport Complex, Alaska; and Spaceport America in New Mexico after 2025.”

While the 2025 NDAA is still several steps away from becoming law, Pentagon officials generally respond to directive report language. Garrant addressed the provision and suggested the Space Force is open to the possibility of more spaceports.

“Congress wants us to look at additional spaceports. Are they feasible? Can we support them? Do they make sense for the orbits and the missions that we’re doing?” Garrant said. “So a lot of review of policy, a lot of review of processes, how we do mission assurance, where we need to increase infrastructure.”

The proposed alternate locations suggested by Congress present some logistical challenges.

The Pacific Spaceport Complex has supported U.S. military launches before, but temperatures stay around freezing in the winter, which can affect rockets. Spaceport America is located hundreds of miles from any large body of water where boosters or debris can harmlessly fall to Earth.

But such issues can be addressed and mitigated, suggested retired Space Force Col. Charles Galbreath, senior fellow at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. SpaceX, by far the largest launch provider, has shown it can safely land and reuse boosters, mitigating concerns about them hitting people or infrastructure on the ground. And Alaska has hosted successful launches despite the cold.

“I think it’s important that as technology matures, we continue to look for additional opportunities to expand our launch infrastructure, to account for the increasing demand, as well as ensure that we have resilience in our space launch capability,” Galbreath said.

Galbreath added that such resilience could be crucial to mitigating the effects of an adversary’s attack or natural disasters.

“When we’re looking at Great Power Competition and potential threats from China, would our launch sites become targets in a conflict? Certainly, I would think that would be a potential,” Galbreath said. “But we also have to take note of the fact that there are hurricanes that hit Florida, earthquakes that hit California. And so we don’t want to find ourselves in a situation where either through a hostile act or natural event, we’ve significantly degraded our ability to put things in space.”

Top Lawmaker Wants Report on Dogfight Missiles, Whether to Extend AMRAAM

May 21, 2024 | By John A. Tirpak

Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, wants to make sure the Air Force and Navy have enough air-to-air missiles for their crewed and uncrewed fighters through the end of the decade and is directing them to submit an annual assessment of the threat and need in his markup of the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act.

Specifically, Rogers wants to know if the services require more AIM-120 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles than they’re planning to buy, and whether an extended-range version should be added to the acquisition plan. Such a weapon could be a “hedge” against failure or delay of other air-to-air missiles in development, he said, such as the AIM-260 Joint Advanced Tactical Missile (JATM).

A provision in the bill would require the Air Force and Navy to submit a report to Congress, coordinated with the regional commanders-in-chief, by April 2025 on “the sufficiency of established inventory requirements” for AMRAAM through fiscal 2029, followed by annual updates. The House Armed Services Committee will mark up the bill May 22, and it must then pass the full House and reconciled with the Senate version.

The services’ report would explain the numbers and types of air-to-air missiles the services are developing, how many they expect to put in service, as well as the planned inventories of each type, by year.

The Pentagon is known to be developing a number of new air-to-air missiles—and evaluating several developed independently by contractors—with the intent of obtaining longer-range weapons to shoot from a greater distance, while achieving a smaller missile size to increase the number of shots available to each individual flying platform.

Pentagon acquisition and sustainment chief William LaPlante and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., have both said recently that munitions tend to be “the bill-payers” in budget crunches, and both noted a boost in the multiyear buy of AMRAAM in the fiscal 2025 budget request to address this tendency.

Through 2029—the apparent end of AMRAAM procurement—the Pentagon plans to buy:

457 missiles in 2024

462 in 2025

664 in 2026

118 in 2027

9 in 2028

Zero in 2029

Rogers wants the Air Force/Navy report coordinated with regional COCOMs, who would be directed to state the missile levels needed “to support the operational plans of the United States Central Command, the United States Indo-Pacific Command, the United States Northern Command, and the United States European Command, assessed separately for each command at low-, medium-, and high-risk levels.”

The annual report is also to look at “emerging requirements for surface-to-air defense and collaborative combat aircraft capabilities, and how such emerging requirements are expected to impact inventory requirements for air-to-air missiles.”

The AMRAAM is used in the National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System (NASAMS), which is being provided to Ukraine. The system launches the AMRAAM from the ground against air threats.

It is also presumed that AMRAAMs will be carried by Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCAs) the Air Force and Navy are planning to use for air-to-air combat.

The Air Force is working on the AIM-260 JATM, which is to improve on AMRAAM’s range by several times, to achieve parity or dominance over China’s advanced, long-range PL-15. However, the Air Force has said nothing recently about progress in fielding JATM, which was originally planned to be operational in 2022.

A problem with fielding the JATM might explain Rogers’ interest in pursuing an extended-range AMRAAM as a stopgap. The Air Force consistently declines to discuss the JATM or its progress.

The Navy is also working on a successor to the AIM-9X Sidewinder. The radar-guided AMRAAM is meant to defeat targets beyond visual range while the infrared-guided Sidewinder has traditionally been meant for targets within visual range. With the advent of stealth aircraft in competitor air forces, though, the Navy has been developing IR missiles with longer range, and the Air Force wants a radar missile that can find stealthy targets farther away.

The report Rogers wants would include “whether extending the AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile program of record through 2029 would enhance available inventories of air-to-air missiles during such period” and if the acquisition plan should “include development and fielding of an AIM-120D Extended Range missile.” Rogers wants to know what number of AMRAAMs are needed to meet COCOM needs “at a medium-level of operational risk.”

The Air Force in particular is to report on whether AMRAAM could be extended by assessing “how new propellants, binding agents, and other enhancements may increase the capabilities of such a missile” and whether buying such a weapon “could hedge against current or future air-to-air missile inventory, capacity, capability or shortfall risks.”

Either way, Rogers wants the Air Force to “develop a budget profile and schedule that would support expedited fielding of such a missile.”

The Secretaries of the Air Force and Navy are to submit the requirements report, while the Air Force Secretary is to submit the report on extending the AMRAAM. RTX’s Raytheon builds AMRAAM, and a company spokesperson said the company would not comment on the chairman’s mark.