STRATCOM Chief: Air Force Needs 145 B-21s and More New Strategic Systems

March 18, 2025 | By John A. Tirpak

The Air Force should buy 145 stealth B-21 bombers to cope with the increased threats to U.S. security since that program came into being, Gen. Anthony J. Cotton, head of U.S. Strategic Command, said at the McAleese and Associates annual Defense Programs Conference.

Cotton also said the Air Force should reassess the planned number of AGM-181 Long Range Stand-Off weapons and “pay attention” to the progress of the B-52J upgrade program. The Navy probably needs to up the number of ballistic missile subs it is planning for as well, he added.

“I, as a customer, want to see increased rates” of B-21 production, Cotton said, noting that the program’s low production rate was set “when the geopolitical environment was a little bit different than what we face today.”

While Cotton said the current plan of 100 B-21s should be the absolute minimum, he favors a figure of 145, which he said was the sense of Air Force Global Strike Command when he commanded that organization—his last assignment before taking the helm at STRATCOM.

This is not the first time Cotton has indicated he would like more Raiders. Last year, he told lawmakers that he would “love” to have more than 100 of the bombers, but he did not offer the 145 figure he presented now.

“That gives us 220 bombers when the BUFFs (B-52s) are included,” Cotton said at McAleese. Cotton also said he’s “really happy with the work Northrop Grumman is doing” with development and testing of the B-21.

He also praised Raytheon for its “amazing” work on the LRSO, the new nuclear missile the Air Force is working on to succeed the AGM-86B Air-Launched Cruise Missile. Like the B-21, though, he suggested the program needs to grow.

“Again, we have to question now, what are we looking for, as far as capacity [and] sufficiency, there,” Cotton said, due to the evolving security situation, without specifying how many additional LRSOs he thinks should be acquired. He’s ready to “move out” with that program, he said.

The Air Force plans to buy 1,087 LRSOs, 67 of which would be used for development and test. That figure was set in the early 2010s and was largely based on the nuclear capabilities of Russia, before China embarked on an aggressive campaign of building strategic weapons and developing new hypersonic missiles. The LRSO is highly classified and is set to enter operational service in the late 2020s.

Cotton also said that the Navy’s new Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine also likely needs to be built in greater numbers than were originally envisioned, for all the same reasons. The threat is “significantly greater” than it was in an earlier era, and “this is not ‘Cold War 2.0,’” he said.

While Cotton was pleased with progress on the B-21 and LRSO, he said he is “a little worried” about the B-52J upgrade, which comprises new engines, navigation, radars and other improvements that will extend that bomber’s service life to 2050 or beyond.

“It is my LRSO carrier,” he said, “so I need to make sure the Air Force is paying attention to that—to the acquisition strategy—and gets the B-52J out on the ramp as soon as we can.” He did not explain why he is concerned about the upgrade’s progress, or why the Air Force might not be giving the program the attention it deserves. The program has experienced some delays and cost increases as it has transitioned from a fast-tracked prototyping program to a major acquisition program.

The final leg of the new nuclear triad, the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile, is also struggling with delays and cost concerns. Cotton said that when he was at Global Strike Command, he predicted the program would be a “mega project,” with breathtaking scope and cost—including a new missile, launch silos, civil engineering, and upgraded command, control, and communication.

Still, “that doesn’t mean it’s a project that does not need to be accomplished,” given the rising importance of deterrence programs as the U.S. faces not one but two peer nuclear competitors, he said.

Noting that he will retire in the coming months, Cotton said he regrets that the U.S. did not tackle the various strategic modernization programs in a staged, sequential fashion—“one a decade”—instead of all at once. There “is no margin” left and no time left to get these projects accomplished, he said, warning that the zeal to contain costs should not result in the delay or cancelation of any of them.

F-15E Strike Eagle Crew Unhurt After Emergency Landing

March 18, 2025 | By David Roza

Crew members on an F-15E Strike Eagle assigned to the 4th Fighter Wing were uninjured after making an emergency landing at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, N.C., on March 18.

The crew was flying a training sortie when they declared an in-flight emergency and made an emergency landing at about 11:15 a.m., a base spokesperson told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

No other aircraft were damaged in the incident, which is currently under investigation, the spokesperson added.

A photo of what appeared to be a Strike Eagle resting on its belly was posted to the popular unofficial Facebook page Air Force amn/nco/snco on March 18, but the base spokesperson could not confirm if the photo was of the mishap aircraft.

The incident comes about seven months after a KC-46 tanker suffered a mishap while refueling a pair of Strike Eagles over California, damaging one of the fighters. Roughly a year ago, a T-6 trainer aircraft performed a “belly landing” with its gear up at Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph, Texas.

The Air Force has 218 F-15Es with an average age of 31 years, according to 2024 data. The jet’s latest mission capable rate stood at 55.44 percent, up slightly from 55 percent in 2023. An aircraft is “mission capable” when it is able to perform at least one of its several core missions. The Air Force does not disclose full-mission capable rates, which measure aircraft types’ readiness to conduct all assigned missions.

According to the service’s most recent flight statistics, the entire F-15 fleet, including C and D models, has averaged 1.6 Class A mishaps and 3.1 Class B mishaps per year over the last decades. Class A mishaps are ones that result in either $2.5 million in damages, death, or the destruction of an aircraft. Class B mishaps are ones that result in anywhere from $600,000 to $2.5 million in damages, permanent disabilities, or hospitalizations for three or more individuals.

This is a developing story and will be updated as more details become available.

Air Force Sending Teams to Make Sure Bases Are Following Executive Orders

March 18, 2025 | By Greg Hadley

The Department of the Air Force will send small teams to “validate” compliance with President Donald Trump’s executive orders. The groups will visit nine bases before the end of the month following direction from a Pentagon task force.

Since the beginning of his second term in January, Trump has issued a series of executive orders aimed at eliminating initiatives related to diversity, equity, and inclusion; “gender ideology,” and Critical Race Theory.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth established a “Restoring America’s Fighting Force” task force “to ensure compliance” with Trump’s orders, he wrote in a Jan. 29 memorandum. That task force has directed the military departments to confirm that they are implementing the orders.

The Air Force is sending “validation teams” with fewer than 10 members to visit bases between March 17-28, a department spokesperson told Air & Space Forces Magazine. While there, they will review documents, analyze programs, conduct focus groups, audit classes, and interview personnel.

Specifically, the teams will focus on making sure the Air Force is:

Not considering factors such as sex, race, and ethnicity during promotion and selection processes

Not trying to meet any quota, objectives, or goals based on sex, race, or ethnicity

Not providing any training or instruction on diversity and inclusion, “gender ideology,” and Critical Race Theory

Not sponsoring any boards, councils, or working groups that “incorporate” those topics

Providing instruction focused on a lethal force; Hegseth’s memo specifies that institutions “shall teach that America and its founding documents remain the most powerful force for good in human history.”

The Air Force has already taken steps to follow those guidelines, such as revoking officer applicant pool goals based on race and gender; disbanding working groups that sought to remove barriers for minority groups; and revising training material.

However, the process has not been without controversy. Some have objected to the removal of media and training curriculum about Air Force trailblazers and argued the working groups were focused on promoting readiness, not diversity and inclusion. Others have suggested service officials have gone too far in acts of “malicious compliance,” or obeying the directive in a way intended to undermine the order’s intent.

The “validation teams” will monitor progress on implementing the orders by visiting nine Air Force and Space Force installations meant to be a “representative sampling” of the department, an official said. The tentative list includes:

Peterson Space Force Base, home of the Space Force’s Officer Training Course, Space Operations Command, and Space Training and Readiness Command

U.S. Air Force Academy

Buckley Space Force Base, home of the Air Reserve Personnel Center

Randolph Air Force Base, home of the Air Force Personnel Center and Air Force Recruiting Service

Joint Base San Antonio (Lackland), home of Basic Military Training and the 149th Fighter Wing

Keesler Air Force Base, home of the Technical Training School

Hurlburt Field, home of Air Force Special Operations Command

Maxwell Air Force Base, home of Air University and Officer Training School

Robins Air Force Base, home of Air Force Reserve Command

Once the teams are finished, the department will continue to conduct “in-depth reviews” to ensure compliance, a release stated.

Civilian Employees

While the Air Force makes sure it is following Trump’s orders on diversity, race, and gender, it is also working to implement a directive from Secretary Pete Hegseth to cut down on its civilian workforce.

Hegseth has said his goal is to trim five to eight percent from the Pentagon’s 800,000 or so civilian employees.

On March 18, a defense official told reporters that DOD has tried working toward that goal by:

Implementing the “deferred resignation program” spearheaded by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency

Instituting a civilian hiring freeze

Firing several thousand probationary employees, who have fewer job protections

The last effort has been hampered by litigation, but the official said nearly 21,000 people have taken the deferred resignation, while around 6,000 jobs per month are going unfilled due to the hiring freeze.

The official could not provide a breakdown between the military departments but did say “certainly the numbers are going to be somewhat similar across the services.”

The Air Force did not immediately reply to a query about how many of its civilian workers are involved in the reductions.

Exemptions are allowed based on national security needs, and the official did note that “any critical area that the Secretary and the services have identified is going to be weighed heavily when determining which portions of the workforce and what skill sets need to be retained.”

Last month, Hegseth exempted 17 critical areas from his budget review to identify five to eight percent in potential “offsets,” including Collaborative Combat Aircraft program, nuclear modernization, and homeland missile defense—all important Air Force and Space Force missions. Those areas may be shielded from personnel cuts as well.

The Air Force officially started its deferred resignations Feb. 28, allowing participating employees to stop working but still get paid through September 2025. It implemented its hiring freeze March 1.

Allvin: Air Force Needs ‘High-End Penetrating Capability’ in Future Combat

March 18, 2025 | By Chris Gordon

The Air Force needs a high-end aircraft that can operate in contested environments and work with new Collaborative Combat Aircraft semi-autonomous drones, the service’s top officer said March 18—requirements that still yet may be met by the Next-Generation Air Dominance fighter.

“Instead of going all high-end and then breaking the bank and not being able to sustain it, we need to have that balanced capability mix. But we do need to have high-end,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin said at the McAleese and Associates annual Defense Programs Conference.

Allvin’s comments come as the Pentagon has yet to decide how to proceed with the NGAD fighter, a costly program to develop a sixth-generation piloted aircraft that the Air Force had previously cast as a high priority before it was paused for review at the tail end of the Biden administration.

“The family of systems does need high-end penetrating capability,” Allvin said. “With respect to the overall package and what gets put forward, I think this administration will be making that decision [on whether to proceed with a crewed NGAD fighter], and we’re going to move out on that. But you do need the ability to maintain air superiority and penetrate contested environments, and that’s what our Air Force does.”

The coming months will be decisive for the Air Force’s fighter fleet. The service’s first CAAs—General Atomics’ YFQ-42A and Andruil Industries’ YFQ-44A—will fly this summer, service officials say. The Trump administration is also poised to make a decision on what to do about the NGAD crewed fighter. CCAs are considered part of a broader NGAD “family of systems.”

Initially envisioned as a replacement for the F-22 Raptor, officials had suggested that NGAD crewed fighter would cost perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars per jet.

A decision is expected to look at the crewed fighter’s prospective capabilities compared to its high price tag, as well as how well that aircraft can operate with Collaborate Combat Aircraft. CCA flight testing will inform how the Air Force balances crewed and uncrewed platforms.

The XQ-67A collaborative combat aircraft, top, and the Anduril Fury CCA is displayed at the Tech Expo at the Air, Space & Cyber Conference on September 17, 2024.
Photos by H. Darr Beiser and Mike Tsukamoto/Air & Space Forces Association

“We’re going to be on a learning curve with them understanding just what [CCAs] can do,” Allvin said. “That will determine the capability mix between that and our high-end platforms that they will be integrated with and aligned within the human-machine team. What exactly that looks like, the proportion, we don’t know yet. And to be able to or to try and drive towards a single solution right now is probably not responsible.”

The service has made clear it does not see future conflicts as fully autonomous—at least for the foreseeable future.

“I think we’re a ways away from fully putting combat in the hands of just unmanned systems,” said Lt. Gen. Dale R. White, the service’s senior uniformed acquisitions official. “I believe we will get there. We will iterate to that, and we will have mixed systems until we get comfortable as a function of time. … We have to get to a place where comfortable knowing that the system can act and do the unthinkable. We’re still going to need systems and capabilities in the fight. … We’re still going to need that Marine or that Soldier to jump on the grenade to save the platoon. We’re still going to need that function. We’re still going to be a human on the loop to do the unthinkable things that we have to do. And so there’s going to be a period of time of transition that we’re going to have to work through.”

The review of Air Force programs will also be influenced by other new service initiatives: the USAF’s evolving Force Design and its provisional Integrated Capabilities Command, which are designed to focus the Air Force’s thinking on which platforms it wants to develop and why.

The Force Design covers different “mission areas” in which the Air Force will sketch out a variety of capabilities to match a range of threats.

Integrated Capabilities Command, which is currently operating in a provisional status pending a review by the Trump administration, is focused on problem-solving for the service and the joint force rather than just the priorities of major commands.

“This is probably not comfortable for industry, but this particular environment does not favor long-term, big bets because we think we know what the future is going to be for the next 25 years,” Allvin said. “Because if you’re wrong, you’re really wrong. The ability to reinvest is sometimes tough.”

In addition to high-end platforms, Allvin said the Air Force is exploring what he called “asymmetric” capabilities “that are disruptive early on” in a conflict. This a new concept, he said, which seeks to confront adversaries with a dilemma so that the U.S. doesn’t “have to use all of your high-end kit from the very beginning.”

“We absolutely have to have air superiority. … What we need to break away from intellectually is we have to have our superiority the way we always have had it,” Allvin added. “Air superiority also does not necessarily have to be for days and weeks on end where the skies are clear. … Air superiority is designed to enable other things, so when you have air superiority, it might be temporal, it might be regional, but as long as it’s synchronized to the joint force objectives, we are still accomplishing what the joint force needs and what the nation needs out of its Air Force.”

Lockheed Get $122 Million for Gear to Accelerate JASSM and LRASM Production

March 17, 2025 | By John A. Tirpak

Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control received a $122.6 million modification to a previous Air Force contract on March 14 to ramp up production of stealthy, long-range AGM-158 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile/Long Range Anti-Ship Missiles.

In a contract award, the Pentagon said the deal is for “tooling and test equipment needed to increase production quantities” of the JASSM and LRASM. The work is to be done in Orlando, Fla., and completed by July 2028. The contract does not specify how many missiles Lockheed is gearing up to build at rate.

Lockheed and the Pentagon agreed on the original contract aimed at helping increase production in 2018, and this is the third time it has been modified. Collectively, the four awards are valued at $401.7 million.

For its own stockpiles, the Air Force requested 550 JASSMs in its fiscal 2025 budget request; the same number as it did in fiscal 2024. The missile costs about $1.5 million per round. The Air Force also contracts with Lockheed for the Navy’s purchases of LRASM.

The company referred queries about the contract to the Air Force.

Last year, Lockheed described an August 2024 contract modification as “part of the Large Lot Procurement pilot program with the U.S. government [that] enables the ability to increase annual production quantities by providing additional resources for long-lead procurements and facilitating production line efficiencies.” It said that multiyear procurements of weapons like JASSM and LRASM “are a key anti-fragility measure to increase industry resilience and ensure operations can be ramped more quickly.”

The company said it invested in “in the continued development [and] expansion” of JASSM and LRASM production in 2022, and in that year added a new 225,000-square-foot factory to existing production facilities to increase production quantities. The new facility includes “factory model forecasting, a fully-robotic paint line, and more automated processes,” the firm stated.

The JASSM and LRASM are externally nearly identical, but the latter is optimized for striking sea targets. The JASSM-ER (extended range) reportedly has a range of about 600 miles, but Lockheed last fall unveiled an unsolicited proposal for the JASSM-XR, a longer variant of the munition with a range company officials suggested will near 1,000 miles. Lockheed builds JASSM and LRASM in Troy, Ala.

Lockheed MFC’s Michael Rothstein, vice president for strategy and requirements, air weapons, and sensors, told Air & Space Forces Magazine in a recent interview that the company sees the JASSM/LRASM as the “high end” of a high-low munitions mix, complementing the relatively inexpensive munitions the Air Force is seeking under the Enterprise Test Vehicle program and other initiatives. Lockheed is offering its own version, called the Common Multi-Mission Truck, which Rothstein said in its basic form could cost as little as $150,000 per round.

F-22 Pilot Swaps in for Guardian at International Space Station

March 17, 2025 | By Unshin Lee Harpley

An F-22 pilot with more than 200 combat hours in the Middle East is trading places on the International Space Station with the first Space Force Guardian to ever launch into orbit.

Air Force Maj. Nichole Ayers, along with her crewmates, launched aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft carried by a Falcon 9 rocket on March 14 and safely arrived at the ISS early March 16.

Space Force Col. Nick Hague, who arrived at the station last September, started return preparations with his crewmates March 17 and is scheduled splash down March 18.

Ayers is part of Crew-10, the latest in the Commercial Crew Program, alongside fellow NASA astronaut Anne McClain, mission specialist Takuya Onishi of Japan, and cosmonaut Kirill Peskov of Russia. Together, they will take part in Expedition 73 aborad the ISS, conducting more than 200 experiments over the next six months, including new research and technology demonstrations aimed at advancing space exploration and life on Earth.

“I can’t wait to get to work up here,” Ayers said in brief remarks after she entered the station for the first time.

Hague was part of Crew-9, which included only him and cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov on the way up, but will add astronauts Barry E. Wilmore and Sunita Williams for the return. As part of Expedition 72 program, they conducted more than 150 experiments over more than 900 hours.

“Crew-10 is made up of some of the most intelligent, efficient, and caring people I’ve ever worked with,” Ayers said in a release. “We make an amazing team because we take care of each other and back each other up on everything, both operationally and personally.”

U.S. Air Force Maj. Nichole Ayers (second from left) poses with her SpaceX Crew-10 mission team before their scheduled launch on March 14, 2025. Ayers was previously stationed at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson where she was assistant director of operations and an F-22 pilot for the 90th Fighter squadron in 2021. NASA/Bill Stafford/Helen Arase Vargas

The former combat pilot says she has long dreamed of becoming an astronaut, inspired by the Space Shuttle program that played a key role in constructing and servicing the ISS, the largest man-made space structure on orbit.

“As a child, I always loved flying and space and grew up during the Shuttle era,” recalled Ayers. “When I learned you could fly the Space Shuttle, I knew I wanted to be a pilot in the Air Force and pursue my dreams of becoming a NASA astronaut through that path.”

Ayers completed pilot training in 2014 and began flying the T-38A at Langley Air Force Base, Va. As an instructor pilot, she led combat training missions for F-22 Raptor pilots. She logged over 200 combat hours with the Raptor during Operation Inherent Resolve—the campaign against the Islamic State group across Syria and Iraq—and accumulated more than 1,400 flight hours in the T-38 and F-22.

“My time in the Air Force prepared me well for this mission,” she said. “Taking care of your teammates in adverse or austere environments is something every Airman learns throughout their career.”

Her latest role in the service before officially joining NASA in 2021 was serving as the assistant director of operations for the 90th Fighter Squadron, which oversees the Raptor fleet at Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska.

“Most of my training has been in the operational realm; learning to make split-second decisions under intense pressure is a skill we learn throughout our time as Air Force pilots,” said Ayers. “We train for the worst and hope for the best—training to go to the International Space Station is no different.”

A Falcon 9 rocket launches the Crew Dragon’s 10th operational human spaceflight mission to the International Space Station from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center, Florida, March 14, 2025. This mission also enables the return of NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, along with Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov and U.S. Space Force Col. Nick Hague, the first Space Force Guardian to launch into space. U.S. Space Force photo by Airman 1st Class Collin Wesson

Many NASA astronauts come from military backgrounds, including dozens from the Air Force, but it has been several years since an Airman was in orbit.

Basic requirements for becoming an astronaut include peak physical condition, proven leadership, a master’s degree in a STEM field, and at least three years of professional experience—or, for pilots, 1,000 hours in the cockpit, with 850 of those in high-performance jets. Ayers holds a master’s in computational and applied mathematics from Rice University, following her bachelor’s from the Air Force Academy.

After that, candidates undergo intense reviews before being selected. Hague, for example, said it took him 10 years and two rejections before he became a NASA astronaut.

Once selected, astronauts then take on two years of training to master spacewalking, robotic arm control, and flying T-38 jets—something Ayers already has down. Since the 1960s, NASA has maintained a fleet of T-38 Talon twin-engine jet trainers to refine candidates’ precision maneuvers and emergency procedures.

“I absolutely loved every minute of my time at the Air Force Academy and throughout my entire flying career in the T-38A and F-22,” said Ayers. “Representing those communities and the Air Force as a whole as we embark on our mission to the International Space Station is truly special and one of my greatest honors.”

Hague, meanwhile, will return to Earth after achieving a historic milestone for the young Space Force. Col. Mike Hopkins became the first Guardian in space when he transferred into the service aboard the ISS in 2020, but no Space Force member had ever launched into orbit before Hague.

Military Gains Latitude in Latest Strikes on Houthis

March 17, 2025 | By Greg Hadley and Chris Gordon

The U.S. struck a wide range of Houthi targets in Yemen over the past two days and is hitting more today, the Pentagon said March 17.

Air Force Lt. Gen. Alexus G. Grynkewich, director of operations for the Joint Staff, said U.S. forces struck more than 30 targets in the first wave March 15, resulting in “dozens” of military casualties. More strikes followed March 16, Grynkewich said at a Pentagon briefing, but he did not say how many.

“Today, the operation continues, and it will continue in the coming days until we achieve the President’s objectives,” Grynkewich said.

U.S. Central Command released videos of the March 17 actions against the Houthis on social media. The footage shows F/A-18 Super Hornets and EA-18 Growler electronic warfare attack aircraft launching from the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier, which is in the region.

CENTCOM forces continue strikes against Iran-backed Houthi terrorists… pic.twitter.com/Ao5FD7mDHW
— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) March 17, 2025

President Donald Trump announced a renewed campaign March 15, saying the U.S. would attack the Iranian-backed Houthis in response to their attacks on shipping in the Gulf of Aden, the Red Sea, and the Bab El-Mandeb Strait for over the past year.

U.S. forces launched several large-scale strikes on Houthi facilities over the past year, including under the Biden administration, but had not conducted any in recent months. Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said the latest campaign will continue until the Houthis stop attacking shipping vessels and American personnel.

Grynkewich said the Pentagon was striking a “much broader range” of targets this time around, and that operational commanders now have greater targeting authorities than before. Included are “terrorist training sites, unmanned aerial vehicle infrastructure, weapons manufacturing capabilities, and weapon storage facilities,” Grynkewich said. “It also included a number of command and control centers, including a terrorist compound where we know several senior Houthi unmanned aerial vehicle experts were located.” He later added that U.S. forces also hit “detection capabilities that have been used to threaten maritime shipping in the past.”

A U.S. official previously told Air & Space Forces Magazine that the strikes were conducted by fighters launched from the Truman and Tomahawk land attack cruise missiles fired from U.S. Navy vessels.

In response, the Houthis launched a counter-attack, an hours-long drone and missile attack against the Truman battle group and its accompanying warships in response. U.S. Air Force fighter jets shot down multiple drones over the Red Sea.

Grynkewich and Parnell confirmed the retaliation but downplayed the threat.

“The Houthis claim to have tried to attack the Harry S. Truman,” Grynkewich said. “Quite frankly, it’s hard to tell, because while we’re executing precision strikes, they missed by over 100 miles. … I would question anything that they claim to the press that they’re doing or not doing. It’s very hard to tell what they are [doing] just based on the level of incompetence that they’ve demonstrated. There’s also been a number of other attempts to interdict vessels in the Red Sea, using UAVs and some cruise missiles as well. All of those have been easily defeated by our fighter aircraft.”

The U.S. military is expected to send additional aircraft to the region, officials previously told Air & Space Forces Magazine. The Pentagon has periodically surged Air Force assets in the Middle East during periods at moments of high tension.

Also on March 17, U.S. Africa Command announced it had conducted a “collective self-defense airstrike” against the terrorist group al Shabaab in Somalia. AFRICOM said it assessed that military adversaries were killed in the strike, while no civilians were harmed.

Experts: ‘Kudos’ to Air Force Progress on Kill Webs, but Some Problems Persist

March 17, 2025 | By Shaun Waterman

AURORA, Colo.—The Air Force has made progress integrating its own kill webs and figuring out how to break the enemy’s, but its partnership with industry on the issue has been hampered by programmatic silos and classification issues, executives from three of the biggest U.S. defense contractors said this month.

During a panel discussion at the AFA Warfare Symposium on March 4, executives also noted that the resiliency of American “blue” kill webs, and the U.S.’s ability to disrupt enemy kill webs rely on domination of the electromagnetic spectrum (EMS), but the Air Force also faces challenges integrating cutting edge communications and electromagnetic warfare technologies into its platforms.

Silos

Silos across programs can force contractors to produce a series of bespoke solutions to requirements that are 95 percent identical; while high classification levels complicate training, testing, and operational analysis, the executives said.

“We still have lots of silos that keep us from having a full and open dialog,” said Dave Harrold, vice president and general manager of countermeasure and electromagnetic attack solutions for BAE Systems. As an electronics supplier, he said, “what we see coming down is every different platform wants something almost similar, but bespoke. And so that that costs money, that takes time, that that often has engineering implications.”

The solution, he suggested, is better communication and coordination so that acquisition officials can integrate their architectures and requirements.

“Sometimes if we could just have that conversation where [we say], ’this other program office is asking for, like, 95 percent of the same thing you’re asking for, but this one little thing makes it a little bit harder,’” said Harrold.

“There’s always going to be something that’s a little bit different for a particular platform, and we understand that,” he added, “But the more leverage we can gain, the faster we can create solutions.”

Harrold said the Air Force has made progress breaking down some of those silos, but high classification levels for electronic warfare threats are another kind of silo. Many U.S. war games can’t use real threat data—a problem for contractors because they rely on the war games to do operational analysis on the effectiveness of their system.

“Sometimes we do the war games at a classification level that doesn’t include all the Gucci stuff, right?” Harrold said. “And that changes the entire narrative of what’s in the art of the possible there, from an operational analysis perspective, which is critically important.”

The defense industrial base is “investing heavily in operational analysis,” Harrold added, “So, the more real threat data that we can have, the more accurate of an answer that we can give,” about how the system will work under fire.

“If all we have to go on is some fuzz ball that doesn’t actually represent a real threat, you’re not going to get the sort of fidelity in the answer that we would like to give to you,” he concluded.

“That was really good feedback. I’m taking notes here,” said panel moderator Maj. Gen. William Betts, director of plans, programs, and requirements for Air Combat Command.

Chain vs. Web

A classic kill chain—like a forward observer calling in an air strike—is linear and singular. The observer connects to the Air Operations Center, the AOC to the pilot.

The F-35 “is its own kill chain,” said Ed Zoiss, president of space and airborne systems for L3Harris. “All by itself, it can find and locate the target, it can decipher if it’s friendly or foe, and it can launch a weapon on it.”

By contrast, kill webs are dynamic and overlapping: The observer should be able to call on a variety of fires through different command chains and use a variety of sensors to provide feedback on the accuracy of the strikes.

The Air Force had made great progress on kill webs but there was still a long way to go, said Zoiss, a panelist who spoke later with Air & Space Forces Magazine.

“Imagine the F-35 being able to launch a weapon from a ship offshore,” he suggested. That would require “connecting the Navy’s command and control, and fire control architecture, in with the Air Force.”

The theoretical poster child for kill webs, Zoiss said, is President Donald Trump’s Golden Dome initiative to create a missile defense system that would use satellites and space sensors for target acquisition and tracking and fire control to cue, at least initially, land- and sea-based interceptors.

The key to making it all happen, though, is resilient communications, said retired Gen. Jeffrey “Cobra” Harrigian, now vice president of strategic campaigns for aeronautics, strategy, and business development at Lockheed Martin.

Even as a four-star general, Harrigian said he found it difficult to get Pentagon leadership’s attention on critical communications resiliency problems.

“I’m gonna throw stones a little bit,” announced Harrigian, who retired as commander of U.S. Air Forces in Europe-Air Forces Africa in 2022. “There were problems in the field relative to this exact issue that we were challenged to get into the building. I’ll put it that way, and to get the building to react to what the warfighter needed,” he said.

Harrigian recalled his work in the early years of the Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS) program, the Air Force component of joint all-domain command and control (JADC2) initiative.

“We struggled trying to figure out what we wanted to do,” he said, “It took a while.”

The solution was “a conversation that occurred between those in the field [and], those working at the headquarters level” that “broke down the stovepipes to get the right people in the room.”

He encouraged current Air Force leadership to “get industry out front at PACAF [and] USAFE, understanding the problems.” Only by being involved hands on could contractors ensure that when making big investments in future capabilities they were “actually getting after the right problem and fixing those things at the edge for today’s fight, which we can then spiral into the future fight.”

Next Steps

The Air Force’s response to the need for coordinated solutions across the service and the joint force was to establish an Integrated Capabilities Command—an effort that is currently paused as the department awaits new leadership.

Harrigian said he saw the value in the new organization, but he pointed out the command would take five years to establish.

Zoiss said that, in the meantime, the service was making great progress on communications resilience.

“I’m not going to go through a lot of the programmatic details, but I will tell you that many of the platforms right now that are currently in service are being outfitted with additional ways to communicate, methods that were outside the original scope of the platform when it was conceived, allowing for a much more resilient architecture, allowing for it to pass communications and targeting data up to a much broader set of platforms,” he said.

“Kudos to the Air Force,” Zoiss continued, “We still see the kill chains and kill webs becoming much harder and much more resilient.”

From Iran to Golden Dome: Lessons for US Missile Defense

March 17, 2025 | By Greg Hadley

AURORA, Colo.—As the Pentagon prepares to move out on President Donald Trump’s ambitious “Golden Dome” missile defense project, leaders said at the AFA Warfare Symposium this month they are looking to the recent examples of Iran’s attacks on Israel last year to understand the challenges ahead.

In April and October 2024, Iran launched hundreds of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and one-way attack drones at Israel. The U.S. played a key role in defeating those strikes, as the Space Force provided missile warning, and the Air Force and Navy both shot down threats.

Now, as the U.S. ponders how to build a “Golden Dome” defense shield for North America, Iran’s attacks loom large, especially given the even greater missile volumes that could be volleyed at the U.S. from more capable adversaries like China or Russia.

“What we are seeing is more proliferation,” said Col. Ernest “Bobby” Schmitt, commander of Mission Delta 4. “More countries have access to this, what I would call legacy technology, but they also are looking at getting more of it. It’s becoming cheaper to develop and build those capabilities. And so, for example, what we saw with Iran last year, they have a lot of missiles, right? But they’re mostly the legacy systems. And so what the adversaries are doing is using those legacy systems and implementing different TTPs, so using more mass and trying to time it differently.”

Essentially, Iran tried to overwhelm the system. Lt. Gen. Douglas A. Schiess, now commander of Space Forces-Space, remembered when he was head of space forces for Air Forces Central in 2014-2015 that the system was meant to handle “tens” of missiles at a time. In April, Iran launched around 120 ballistic missiles and 30 cruise missiles, in addition to attack drones.

“Quite frankly, the system did as well as it could,” Schiess said. “It provided the missile warning that we needed to our joint members and our allies. But it wasn’t good enough. There was latency in it. There was mistyping. But we did our job, we were able to give missile warning.”

That in and of itself was a major accomplishment, said Lt. Gen. Heath A. Collins, director of the Missile Defense Agency. The complexity of putting “a bullet on a bullet,” as experts have described missile defense, is such that some have questioned whether it could be done effectively in real-world scenarios.

“The long dialogue that missile defense would never work, well, we have certainly shown in the last year that missile defense will work,” Collins said. “The system we put in place saved lives and it kept Israel safe and in the fight.”

Located in the Mission Control Station at Buckley Space Force Base, Colorado, the Overhead Persistent Infrared (OPIR) Battlespace Awareness Center (OBAC) provides near-real-time OPIR data exploitation products that deliver situational awareness to Space Delta 4 operators and other users. Courtesy Photo

Still, leaders wanted more, said Lt. Gen. David N. Miller Jr., head of Space Operations Command.

“The key thing I think people need to realize is the demand that the Joint Force has on the Space Force is not just ‘duck-and-cover’ missile warning,” he said. “The demand signal is actually missile warning, tracking, and targeting.”

One of the biggest hurdles to that is speed—processing, confirming, and disseminating data fast enough. Some of that came down to training, using the April attack as the new benchmark for Guardians.

Schiess and Miller said they also learned when to reinforce their crews with extra personnel when intelligence indicates an attack is likely. And Collins said his team learned it needed to speed up the normally laborious software updates the Pentagon is notorious for.

“We were able to cut that down into less than a week from beginning to end, getting software out to the field,” Collins said. “And in the last year and a half, we’ve provided hundreds of updates to the field to answer the problems that we’ve seen.”

Leaders also made the calculated decision to automate some of the system in certain circumstances.

“One of the things that we worked on JTAGS, the system that we took over from the Army when the Space Force stood up, it was already in the process of [gaining] the ability to do what we call auto-release,” Schiess said. “And so we have men and women on the loop, tracking missiles, typing them, and sending the tracks out once they’ve done all that confirmation. We knew that we had to be so much faster that we had to get into auto-release. And so … we worked out, ‘Hey, we think we’re confident enough with the system to be able to do that in a specific situation without putting ourselves in a dangerous situation where we might mistype that there’s an attack against North America.’”

By the time the October attack occurred, “we were much faster,” Schiess said. “We were able to work through some latency issues.”

Yet as successful as the U.S. contributions were, officials see an even taller task ahead with Golden Dome, envisioned as a massive integrated air and missile defense architecture to protect the homeland from all kinds of threats coming from adversaries like China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea.

“We can’t wait another 30-some years to get after it because the threat is changing each and every day, and more threats are coming,” Schiess said.

Today, the Space Force is pursuing new missile warning and tracking satellites in low-Earth, medium-Earth, geosynchronous, and highly elliptical orbits. Putting all of that together so that missile warning personnel can respond as quickly as they did against Iran will not be easy, said Army Col. Alexander Rasmussen of the Space Development Agency.

“We’ll have more data than we’ve ever known what to do with … and the question is going to be, are we going to be able to take advantage of it?” Rasmussen said. “We’re going to need the systems that will be able to process it, but how is it going to make sense to the Guardian or the warfighter, with so much coming at them? As we’ve seen in real-world events, systems need to be pretty robust to be able to make sense of things so people can make decisions in real-time.”

The operators also have to have enough interceptors to counter increasingly big missile swarms, especially if attacks are mounted repeatedly.

“Magazine depth is going to be crucial in the future,” Collins said. “The large volleys that we saw were just small percentages of the actual overall inventory that Iran can bring to bear. We need to raise our game when it comes to magazine depth.”