New DOD Suicide Report Falls Short in Key Areas

Aug. 2, 2024 | By David Roza

A new Congressionally mandated Pentagon study of military suicide rates broken down by career field offers a rare look at comparative risk factors facing service members, but may raise more questions than it answers.

“This data is a good starting point that will now help members of Congress and their staff create more specific questions,” said Katherine Kuzminski, Deputy Director of Studies and the Director of the Military, Veterans, and Society Program at the Center for a New American Security in Washington, D.C.

“To an extent, you do have to get your arms around how big this problem is,” she told Air & Space Forces Magazine. But “now we have that, so how do we get more granular, more detailed in our requests?”

“Report on Incidence of Military Suicides by Military Job Code” arrived July 31, exactly seven months after the Dec. 31, 2023, deadline set by Congress in Section 599 of the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act. Lawmakers wanted greater insight into suicide data and directed a breakdown of military suicides since 2001 by year, military job code, and status (Active-duty, Reserve, or National Guard). It further directed DOD to compare per capita suicide rates to the overall suicide rate for each service, the wider military, and to the national suicide rate over the same period of time.

One reason Congress wanted all this can be traced to a former Air Force F-16 maintainer, who played a key role pushing Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) of the Senate Armed Services Committee to add the measure to the NDAA.

“Anecdotally we know [suicide rates are] really bad in certain career fields,” said retired Master Sgt. Chris McGhee in an in an April interview with Air & Space Forces Magazine. The report was supposed to prove that point. But after seeing the report, McGhee expressed disappointment. The report, he said, is “absolutely not in line with the explicit direction of the law as it was written.”

The report identified military jobs with the highest rates of suicide, including infantry, explosive ordnance disposal and diving, combat engineers, medical care specialists, and “not elsewhere classified” technical specialists, a catch-all term that includes mortuary affairs, firefighters, and nuclear, biological and chemical warfare specialists.

Lumped Together

But DOD did not include data back to 2001 as directed, going only back as far as January 1, 2011. And it also did not detail suicides by precise occupational specialty codes.

The report starts in 2011 because the department did not have a system for reliably tracking suicide before then, according to the report’s author, Acting Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Ashish Vazirani. But a 2010 DOD study of military suicides from 2001 to 2009 would appear to show otherwise, a point first noted by Military.com.

air force suicide — U.S. Air Force Airman 1st Class Todd Ficek, 1st Combat Communications Squadron radio frequency transmission systems technician holds up an encouraging sign during a mental health awareness day at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, Dec. 9, 2022. U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Thomas Karol

Lumping together occupational specialties into broader career fields may also have diluted the insights that could be gleaned from studying the trends in specific career fields.

For example, McGhee noted, “aircraft and aircraft related” combines categories ranging from “aircraft engines,” “aircraft structures” to “aircraft launch equipment,” but it does not specify the precise jobs represented in those groups, such as avionics, propulsion, crew chiefs, and ground equipment.

McGhee wanted to see specific rates for specific Air Force Specialty Codes. The report might have listed something like the format below, McGhee suggested:

2A3X3 (The Air Force specialty code for tactical aircraft maintenance) overall rate: 29 out of 100,000 people

2A3X3 Active Duty rate: 32

2A3X3 Air National Guard rate: 28

2A3X3 Air Force Reserve rate: 27

Instead, the report does not distinguish exact specialties or between types of aircraft, such as helicopter, fighter, airlift, drones, or other types that vary wildly in terms of operational tempo and spare parts availability. Another example is the aggregated total for Special Forces, conventional infantry, and military training instructors, fields that entail many different skills and challenges.

The Pentagon cited DOD regulations for its decision, because of the small numbers in data sets. “Military service component rates will not be calculated when the number of suicides is less than 20,” as it could invite statistical instability. “Instead, only the number of suicides will be reported.”

This logic is also used in DOD’s annual suicide reports, which lists the number of suicide deaths in subcategories, such as 17-19 year-old Active-duty troops or National Guard dependents. Rates are not calculated, however.

Still, this latest report could have provided totals by occupational specialty, but officials chose not to. That differs from the 2010 study, which did list suicides for each year by service, as well as aggregated rates for all eight years, even when that number was just one person.

Kuzminski said the new report does not provide sufficient context. “If there’s 36 Special Forces deaths by suicide, is that 36 out of 40, or is that 36 out of 10,000?” she asked. “The way it’s lumped together, it’s difficult to get a sense of what [the data] truly means.”

Unlike the 2010 study, the report also does not distinguish among similar career fields in different services, such as Army and Marine Corps infantry or Navy and Air Force tactical aircraft maintainers. Not doing so makes it impossible to see whether rates vary by service, which could lead to better understanding.

“That’s why it really matters how the law is written,” Kuzminski said. “They didn’t ask for it by service, so it wasn’t presented by service.”

The 2023 William Tell competition drew F-22s, F-35s, and F-15s to the Air Dominance Center at Savannah Air National Guard Base, Ga., in September. U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Zachary Rufus

Time Warp

Another aspect missing in the report are clear breakdowns by year. The report explained the omission by saying “because doing so would not provide sufficient data to calculate a suicide rate for the military occupations. … [I]t is difficult to distinguish between random fluctuation/natural variation (“noise”) and true change (“signal”) with a high degree of confidence,” the Pentagon wrote.

But McGhee questions that logic. “The law required certain data, not DOD interpretations and solutions,” he said. “If DOD wanted to provide their own interpretation for context, there is no issue. But to supplant their interpretation as data, in violation of the law is problematic.”

By not distinguishing the data by year, the spikes and declines that would otherwise be apparent are obscured, he said. Those variations matter. An Army Times investigation this spring found suicide rates among tank brigades in recent years were higher than in other combat units, due largely to unsustainable operations tempo, under-manning, and spare parts backlogs.

Air Force data acquired by McGhee through a Freedom of Information Act request reported in 2016 that the suicide rate rose among Active duty aircraft maintainers rose from 14.7 per 100,000 in 2013 to 30.5 per 100,000 in 2014. Meanwhile, the average Active duty suicide rate rose less significantly from 14.5 to 19.

That same time period overlaps with the 2014 Air Force drawdown, when 19,833 Airmen left the service, among them at least 1,392 maintainers, widening a pre-existing shortage of more than 2,500 maintainers, Air Fore Times reported at the time. The drawdown affected experienced 5-level and 7-level maintainers, leaving inexperienced maintainers to make up those deficits.

Next Steps

The NDAA specified for the Pentagon to provide an interim briefing with preliminary findings by June, 2023, which might have presented the DOD a chance to review its limitations with Congress, but the report did not mention if such a briefing ever occurred.

In the future, Kuzminski said the individual services may be better positioned first to provide the kind of data that would generate more useful insights, and then to implement any new policy.

“It may actually be more effective, granular, and nuanced if the responsibility was to each of the services as opposed to DoD,” she said. “We need the data to know what the trends are, but in order to take action, that’s going to be at the service level.”

Future legislation may call for more data. A draft of the Senate version of the 2025 NDAA features most of the same language from the 2023 bill. A few new bits also written by Sen. King would extend the reporting to “the number of suicides, attempted suicides, or known cases of suicidal ideation [emphasis added].”

Service members and veterans who are in crisis or having thoughts of suicide, and those who know a service member or veteran in crisis, can call the Veterans/Military Crisis Line for confidential support available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Call 988 and press 1; text 988; or chat online at VeteransCrisisLine.net/Chat.

Gearbox Failure Caused Air Force V-22 Osprey Crash, Investigation Finds

Aug. 1, 2024 | By Chris Gordon

The crash of an Air Force CV-22 Osprey last year off Japan that killed eight Airmen was caused by a “catastrophic failure” in one aircraft’s gearboxes that led to an “unrecoverable” loss of control just as the crew was about to conduct an emergency landing, a service investigation released Aug. 1 found.

The mishap and multiple other fatal crashes over the last several years led to a monthslong grounding of the military’s entire Osprey fleet. The Osprey’s long-running issues with the gearbox have led to questions surrounding the aircraft’s future. The November crash, which shook the Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) community, has led the command to rethink and limit the service’s use of the Osprey for now and reevaluate the number of CV-22 pilots and aircrews it needs.

The CV-22 has two prop-rotor gearboxes mounted in each rotating engine nacelle, which allow the tilt-rotor aircraft to take off like a helicopter and fly like an airplane. While officials involved in the Osprey program said soon after the crash the problem in the November crash was not a so-called “hard-clutch engagement,” a transmission issue, which has been faulted in previous mishaps, the ultimate problem that doomed the Nov. 29 flight Osprey involved the troublesome gearbox.

A metal gear failed, causing small chips to lodge in the gearbox. This ultimately caused the left-hand gearbox and drivetrain to fail completely, pitching the aircraft into a roll and nosedive into the ocean.

“That resulted in a complete roll,” Lt. Gen. Michael E. Conley, the head of AFSOC, told reporters ahead of the announcement. “The aircraft did two full rolls and ended up impacting the water.”

An Osprey pilot, Conley, previously a one-star general, led the Accident Investigation Board. Conley jumped two stars when he was confirmed to lead AFSOC.

The crash was the deadliest CV-22 in Air Force history. Maj. Jeffrey T. Hoernemann; Maj. Eric V. Spendlove; Maj. Luke A. Unrath; Capt. Terrell K. Brayman; Tech. Sgt. Zachary E. Lavoy; Staff Sgt. Jake M. Turnage; Senior Airman Brian K. Johnson; and Staff Sgt. Jake Galliher were killed. There have been 11 crashes involving the Osprey since 1992, in which 61 people have died. There are some 400 V-22 variants across the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps.

In a rare move, his report put some of the blame on Pentagon leadership.

“[S]afety assessments and their findings were given insufficient treatment at the program level and have been inadequately communicated to the military services, creating lack of comprehensive awareness of PRGB [prop-rotor gearbox] risks, and limiting opportunities to impose risk mitigation measures at the service or unit level,” Conley wrote. “I find, by the preponderance of the evidence, that inadequate action at the program level and inadequate coordination between the program office and the services prevented comprehensive awareness of PRGB risks, and substantially contributed to the mishap.”

The transmission complexity in the Osprey has been a known issue since the aircraft debuted in the 1990s. The engine, weight, and vibration have to rotate, which puts enormous stress on the gears and driveshaft. Conley’s report underscores that.

The report also found that the crew’s actions contributed to the crash. The report found they should have diverted earlier in the flight but delayed an attempted emergency landing despite repeated and escalating warnings in the cockpit.

But the gear chipping phenomenon is not new, and the report ultimately blamed the aircraft, rather than the aircrew, as the primary cause of the crash. The chipping issue is common enough that the aircraft has a system designed to detect and clear the chips.

Conley compared the chip warnings to “a check engine light in your car.”

“The chips are a byproduct of just the gearboxes themselves,” he added. “It’s not unique to a V-22.”

The crew received six so-called “chip burn” warnings. When the aircrew decided to divert, they did not choose the closest airfield, and after the third chip burn warning, the aircraft was just 10 miles from the nearest airfield. The report said there was “an insufficient sense of urgency throughout the entire mishap sequence.” The pilot, Hoernemann, was also the mission commander for the exercise the aircraft, callsign GUNDAM 22, was participating in and may have felt the need to complete the mission, the report found. The crew received a sixth chip burn warning that indicated the aircraft was no longer burning off the stray metal pieces.

Conley said the crew likely faced “internal pressure” to complete the mission. “We ask crew members to make a million decisions, and sometimes seemingly mundane decisions or easy ones end up being consequential, and in this case, a series of decisions resulted in them extending the flight longer than they should have,” he said.

In the minutes before the accident, the crew was hovering and waiting for clearance to land from Japanese air traffic control at an airfield in Yakushima.

The pieces degraded the prop-rotor gearbox to the point where it no longer turned the Osprey’s left prop-rotor mast. Within six seconds of the prop-rotor gearbox failure, the drive system failed and the aircraft was unrecoverable. It crashed into the water, killing all eight Airmen abroad. The aircraft was assigned to 21st Special Operations Squadron at Yokota Air Base, Japan.

The accident investigation board was convened by then-AFSOC boss Lt. Gen. Tony Bauernfeind, with the investigation spanning from Dec. 6, 2023 to May 30, 2024, AFSOC said in a press release. The probe collated maintenance logs, interviews, flight recorder data, wreckage inspection, engineering and human factors analysis, and other evidence to assemble “a detailed sequence of events” surrounding the mishap, the command said.

Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) boss Navy Vice Adm. Carl P. Chebi, who heads the office that oversees the Osprey program, said in June that he did not expect the Osprey to return to full, unrestricted flight operations until mid-2025.

But Conley said while the Air Force is not using the CV-22 in combat operations, he indicated the service may soon return the Ospreys to full non-combat operations. AFSOC returned Ospreys to limited operations in March but recently pulled them from an exercise in Japan to focus on “internal training.”

“We’re getting back in the ballpark where I think we will be supporting combatant commanders this year, this calendar year,” Conley said.

The crew of the mishap flight was comprised of Airmen from the 21st Special Operations Squadron, 1st Special Operations Squadron, and 43rd Intelligence Squadron.

“This has been a hard eight months,” Conley said. “We lost eight air commandos that were valued members of this command.”

Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this article incorrectly identified the date of the crash. Air & Space Forces Magazine regrets the error.

National Guard Chief Retires With One Big Regret

Aug. 1, 2024 | By Chris Gordon

After nearly 40 years of service, the last four of which were spent as Chief of the National Guard Bureau, Army Gen. Daniel R. Hokanson will retire and relinquish command in a ceremony at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall, Va. on Aug. 2 with one key objective unfulfilled: free healthcare for all Guardsmen.

Guardsmen are not eligible for free healthcare under the military’s TRICARE program unless they are on Active status or just returning from it, but the Guard’s breathless, years-long support of COVID-19 relief efforts crystallized Hokanson’s position that Guardsmen should have the same full-time, free government health insurance provided to their Active counterparts.

“We had 43,000 Guardsmen across the country at one point supporting COVID, and what we found is we wanted to reassure their families that they would have healthcare no matter what we asked them to do,” Hokanson told Air & Space Forces Magazine in an interview earlier this year.

Going back and forth between Active orders throws off civilian healthcare plans and destabilizes coverage, which is a stressful situation for service members and their families, Hokanson explained. He wanted to bring peace of mind where “if they get hurt or injured while serving their nation, whether they’re responding to a disaster or deployed overseas, we’re going to provide the healthcare to get them ready again.”

Guardsmen can pay for TRICARE Reserve Select (TRS), a premium-based version of TRICARE military coverage, or receive civilian healthcare. But because coverage comes at a cost, many Guardsmen members go without healthcare. Guardsmen and Reservists on federal Active-duty orders for more than 30 consecutive days receive identical healthcare benefits as Active-duty servicemembers. But Roughly 60,000 Guardsmen do not have their own health insurance, according to figures from the National Guard Bureau. The National Guard Association of the United States, a non-profit, says roughly 130,000 Reserve and Guard component personnel have no “consistent” health insurance.

“When you look at a Guardsman, they’ve invested a lot of their life,” Hokanson said. “On the other hand, you look at the government, we made a huge investment in them paying for them to get through basic training, we paid for them to get through their advanced training, and we’re paying them every drill weekend. We need them to step on the field and play their position every time.”

A bipartisan group of legislators has cosponsored the Healthcare for Our Troops Act, a bill that would provide zero-cost TRICARE coverage for Guardsmen and Reservists, multiple times over the past several years, but the bill has not made it into law. Legislation introduced this year by Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.) seeks to “ensure that members of the National Guard and Reserve have the healthcare needed to maintain force readiness by allowing them to access care through the Department of Veterans Affairs when not on Active orders.”

Hokanson made a similar argument by framing healthcare as a readiness issue. Guardsmen and Reservists deemed non-medically ready were more likely to be uninsured, the Institute for Defense Analysis Found in a 2021 report, which did not endorse a so-called “TRICARE for All” option. But covered preventative care and mental healthcare help keep troops in the “ready” category, the general said.

“It’s not just that it’s a retention tool,” Hokanson said, though free healthcare for Guardsmen could also benefit retention and make employers more inclined to hire troops in lean recruiting years.

“When I talk to business executives, many of them are surprised that we don’t have it already,” Hokanson said.

Businesses receive some tax breaks for employing Guardsmen, but Hokanson recalled many executives saying the tax process can be “confusing” from state to state, while free healthcare, which employers would not have to pay for, is a more tangible monetary benefit that helps their bottom line.

“They said that is probably one of the best things that we could do to encourage businesses to hire Guardsmen,” he said.

Hokanson will likely be replaced by Air Force Lt. Gen. Steven S. Nordhaus, who is awaiting confirmation by the Senate. The Chief of the National Guard Bureau is a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

“Hopefully one day we’ll get it across the line,” Hokanson said.

How to Save Guam from Chinese Missiles with Layered Defense and Local Control

Aug. 1, 2024 | By Unshin Lee Harpley

Military leaders and analysts are urging the U.S. military to field advanced layered air defense systems to counter China’s growing missile threats to Guam, a crucial hub for U.S. military operations in the Pacific.

“The People’s Republic of China has the ability to mask a number of different threats against a lot of places in the Pacific, including Guam,” Army Brig. Gen. Patrick Costello, head of the 94th Army Air and Missile Defense Command, said at a Center for Strategic and International Studies event on July 30.

Amid China’s expanding military capabilities, one of the greatest current threats to the island is Beijing’s DF-26 intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBM), said J. Michael Dahm of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. Nicknamed the “Guam killer,” China’s versatile missile can carry both conventional and nuclear warheads and has a maximum range of over 2,000 nautical miles, putting Guam within its reach.

“The missile also has maneuvering capabilities and won’t necessarily follow a ballistic trajectory, which makes it very difficult to engage if you’re shooting at it from the ground,” Dahm told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

The Pentagon estimates Beijing’s arsenal includes around 250 launchers and 500 IRBMs, but Guam’s defenses will also need to brace for a range of land-based threats on top of that.

“Cruise missiles, drones, and other threats coming at the island from much shorter ranges could be launched from ships or bombers,” added Dahm. “So it’s about defeating the DF-26 ballistic missile in conjunction with countering time-synchronized strikes on the island.”

Referred to as “complex integrated attacks,” the layered offense will pose challenges in engaging weapons coming from various speeds, altitudes, and directions simultaneously.

The Pentagon’s $1.7 billion project for the Enhanced Integrated Air and Missile Defense system on Guam aims to deliver “complete, 360-degree protection against ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and hypersonic threats.” The initiative seeks to add land-based Aegis systems to track and intercept various threats, in addition to the already deployed Patriot and THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) systems that are designed to protect against IRBMs.

The Missile Defense Agency’s report from May reveals that a test of the Aegis system is set for December on Guam, launched from Andersen Air Force Base. This will be the island’s first missile test designed to intercept another missile, featuring an interceptor targeting a medium-range ballistic missile that will be air-launched from a C-17 Globemaster or similar aircraft. From there, the island will see up to two live-fire missile tests per year for the next decade. The project integrating THAAD, Patriot, and Aegis systems, is anticipated to become operational by late 2027.

For layered defense against threats like drones and rockets, the Army is currently leading an initiative centered around its Indirect Fire Protection Capability (IFPC), which addresses shorter-range attacks and some cruise missiles.

However, according to the Army’s head of the Program Executive Office for Missiles and Space, the island requires enhanced capabilities to address “a large number of supersonic cruise missiles.” The service is preparing an open competition in Fiscal 2025 to find new interceptors with greater magazine depth.

“Essentially, what I’ve been communicating is an AIM-120D-like capability in an AIM-9X Package,” said Army Brig. Gen. Frank Lozano. The AIM-120D AMRAAM provides greater range and radar-guided precision than the smaller AIM-9 currently used on the IFPC, enabling it to engage targets 50 to 100 miles away with advanced radar. However, directly integrating the AMRAAM system on Guam would still present practical challenges.

“Having six missiles on a launcher and having about a 45 minute reload time—you’re not going to be survivable in a Guam defensive situation,” Lorenzo said of AMRAAMs. The IFPC offers a faster reload time, and each IFPC system could hold 18 AIM-9 interceptors.

Beyond bolstering missile defense, Costello highlighted the importance of making swift and independent decisions within “tactically relevant timelines” in Guam, given its strategic and contested environment. After all, the island is much closer to Beijing than to U.S. Indo-Pacific Command’s headquarters in Hawaii, which its defense system currently falls under.

“To do that, we’re working hand in hand with the Air Force on instituting decentralized command-and-control systems, so that decisions can be made for the defense of the second island chain from the second island chain, and don’t have to come back to Hawaii,” said Costello.

Rules of engagement can become complex due to the tyranny of time, distance, and time zones. Dahm elaborated on that challenge, especially in the context of China. Beijing’s approach to warfare emphasizes controlling information about the battlefield, a concept they refer to as “informationized warfare.”

“Beijing would absolutely try to isolate Guam from the battlespace information network before launching an attack, to make the attack more effective,” said Dahm, which could involve jamming satellite communications, cutting fiber optic cables, or employing cyber-attacks. “Having local control to address threats may be essential when confronting these information-centric attacks.”

Costello said this is particularly crucial not just for Guam but for other Indo-Pacific areas of operations, where close collaboration with regional allies and partners is essential.

Air Force Risks Defeat By Neglecting Information Warfare: Think Tank

Aug. 1, 2024 | By David Roza

The Air Force may be inviting catastrophe by neglecting information warfare, an emerging domain that service officials say is fundamental to air operations, according to a new report published July 30 by the RAND Corporation, a federally-funded think tank.

Despite talking a big game about information warfare for more than 20 years and forming a numbered air force in 2019 to serve as the information warfare (IW) hub, the Air Force has not published formal, actionable requirements that lay out the exact roles and responsibilities for IW organizations, which frustrates and confuses both IW Airmen and the non-IW groups they work with, RAND found.

IW encompasses several fields, including cyber operations, electromagnetic spectrum operations (EMSO), public affairs, intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR), and weather. But the Air Force does not provide IW-specific training or clear guidance for Airmen involved, which leaves the field “highly-stovepiped along organizational and disciplinary lines,” contributes to miscommunication, and could even risk fratricide, the RAND report stated.

Meanwhile, the Air Force IW community lacks “a single, senior leader focused exclusively on IW” who also has the authority to advocate for resources, leaving the field on a shoestring budget and unlikely to operationalize in a way that produces decisive results.

Though information warfare is still a vague concept for many Airmen, RAND provided a concrete example of what can happen on the receiving end of it: a U.S. Soldier standing in line for a sports event in Latvia in 2017 being approached by strangers casually mentioning details about the soldier’s personal life and family members.

“Although potentially innocuous in this setting, such campaigns could be used in a conflict scenario to identify compromising personal or operational information that adversaries could leverage to degrade Airmen’s will to fight,” the RAND authors wrote. “These efforts could also be used to locate and intercept U.S. forces. Alternatively, if sophisticated enough, such tactics could be used to sow additional confusion amid the fog of war by breaching U.S. systems that are used to convey orders (formally or informally) and issuing false orders.”

One anonymous Air Force officer with IW experience shared RAND’s concerns.

“Frankly, the decision to group all information-related capabilities under a new ‘information warfare’ umbrella has been a disaster from the beginning,” she told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

What IW Is

Information warfare involves using military capabilities in or through “the information environment” to affect adversary behavior and protect against adversary attempts to do the same. That environment includes a range of career fields, but one common feature is the use of non-kinetic instruments with inherent informational characteristics, which provides “flexible response options” to commanders, RAND wrote, a key tool in the grey zone of great power competition.

But IW’s usefulness also extends into kinetic operations. In 2022, Gen. Mark D. Kelly, then-head of Air Combat Command, said IW “underpins USAF airpower operations by creating and leveraging information advantages … gaining advantage in the [information environment] is a precondition for airpower.”

Indeed, one interviewee told RAND that joint force weapons and platforms “are all digital and operate in the information environment. F-35s won’t get off the ground if we first lose in the [information environment].” Not only F-35s, but other Air Force aircraft could be rendered inoperable by EMSO or cyber attacks, while disinformation campaigns mimicking U.S. command and control systems could falsely order Airmen to stand down.

Clear as Mud

Despite its widely acknowledged importance, IW in the Air Force lacks many of the traits that make an effective fighting force, such as a unifying identity, clear roles and responsibilities, effective training, and adequate resources.

“Most fundamental to a comprehensive USAF approach to IW is a coherent, concrete identity,” RAND wrote. The lack of that identity “is inexorably linked to many of the obstacles impeding IW operationalization,” including unclear expectations of what IW can do, how it fits into the joint force, and what the career trajectories are for IW Airmen.

Airmen refuel an EC-130H Compass Call from the 55th Electronic Combat Group at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona, Sept. 14, 2022. U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Paige Weldon

RAND is not the first to note that lack of unity: in November, Lt. Gen. Kevin B. Kennedy Jr., head of the 16th Air Force, flagged “unity of effort” as a major goal. Specifically, his cyber, public affairs, ISR, and other specialized Airmen are pulled in different directions by conflicting operational commands.

“How do we generate unity of effort without specific unity of command?” he asked. “Yes, they’re all within 16th Air Force, but their operational activities a lot of times … are operationally controlled by somebody else.”

The anonymous Air Force officer with IW experience cited a similar challenge. The Air Force could have aligned IW with the seventh joint function laid out by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Instead, she said the Air Force went its own way, struggled to define IW and chose to resolve it “by simply tacking on all the capabilities the USAF wanted to shove under this umbrella.”

Vague definitions are more than academic, RAND and the officer said, they result in unclear mission priorities. For example, IW has roughly two halves: technical and cognitive. Technical generally refers to cyber and EMSO, which attack and defend against adversaries in cyberspace and the electromagnetic spectrum.

Meanwhile, cognitive generally refers to the newly-created, but underutilized, Information Operations career field and public affairs, which use culture, narrative, and other social science tools to influence adversary perceptions and decision-making or, in PA’s case, to defend against adversarial propaganda, disinformation, and misinformation.

The anonymous Air Force officer criticized the 16th Air Force for creating the perception that all the capabilities listed earlier “would have a place to grow and thrive,” where in reality the 16th is the result of a mash-up of the former 24th Air Force, which focused on cyber, and 25th Air Force, which focused on ISR. Those fields continue to hold sway, and the organization writ large leans tech-heavy, she said.

“The USAF would be better served by separating information-related capabilities into technical and influence categories,” the officer said, allowing public affairs and information operations Airmen to support longer-term campaigns.

“Their resource requirements are completely different and often come down to lack of personnel and empowerment,” she said. “This would also free them to follow joint doctrine that is much more useful in applying their skillsets.”

The officer called for following the Navy, which “overwhelmingly focuses” on the technical aspects of IW, RAND noted, but it at least has a clear guidance for resourcing and training to that mission. A military service can still do both technical and cognitive, as long as they make space for it, she noted, and while the cognitive side is especially critical in the face of Chinese and Russian disinformation campaigns, it is also much less resource-intensive than technical, she said.

An F-22 Raptor model rests on a map during an unclassified 325th Operations Support Squadron intelligence briefing at Tyndall Air Force Base, Fla., Oct. 25, 2017. U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Isaiah J. Soliz

Train As You Fight

Besides unclear priorities, Air Force IW also suffers from lack of understanding among the broader Air Force and joint force, which leads to unrealistic training experiences. For example, instead of creating genuine electronic or cyber attacks during a training exercise, commanders almost always opt to “white-card” an IW event, i.e., hand a card to a participant saying that their radio is jammed.

That widespread practice does not help commanders understand the effects of IW attacks or how to fix them, RAND noted. Instead, it enforces the notion that IW is less important than kinetic operations and should be prioritized as such, which conflicts with the statements of high-ranking officials such as Gen. Kelly’s position that IW is “a precondition for airpower.”

Unrealistic training contributes to a dynamic where non-IW commanders reportedly told IW Airmen, “We are pilots, we’re going to bomb things; go sit in the corner and shut up,” RAND noted. “Another reportedly claimed, ‘IO is made up and I don’t believe in it; you’ll be in charge of my travel.’”

Such circumstances do not contribute to a sense of fulfillment among IW Airmen.

“Airmen cited a sense of paralysis related to this issue, noting, ‘without a [socialized] definition of IW, everyone in the USAF IW community is unsure of how to proceed, what it means, and what is expected of them,’” RAND wrote.

To improve the situation, RAND recommended a range of actions, including:

Develop concrete requirements for IW in the Air Force

”Expend political capital and service leader time” to demonstrate that IW is a priority and “socialize” IW across the Air Force and the joint force

Restructure IW force presentation to address procedural, cultural, and structural challenges

Develop curricula for achieving IW requirements and cultural identity

Incorporate realistic IW capabilities and missions into Air Force-wide exercises, even at the cost of “mission failure”

Demonstrate IW utility through roadshows, leader rhetoric, and other high-visibility activities

Establish a holistic IW career path that balances specialization with broader IW integration

Designate IW responsibility within the Air Staff at staffs across the Air Force

Air Force’s New Integrated Capabilities Office Aims to Overhaul Acquisition

July 31, 2024 | By Shaun Waterman

The Air Force’s new Integrated Capabilities Office (ICO) aims to tear up the department’s playbook when it comes to buying, developing, and fielding new technologies, Tim Grayson, the ICO director, said July 31.

The ICO will press to replace the traditional acquisition process with a new “compressed” process which would issue contracts to industry on the basis of “attributes” rather than requirements, he said during event hosted by the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.

Attributes “look like requirements,” but don’t set exact figures in stone, he said. “Instead, it’s ‘Here are the kinds of things I care about, here’s some targets for numbers against these characteristics.’ Now, I can use that to get industry on contract, and start doing detailed design studies.”

An attributes-based process made for better outcomes, Grayson said, because of the iterative discussions they allow. “Industry can say, ‘This attribute, this is really hard. Do you really mean this?’… And the operator might say, ‘It seemed like the right thing, I don’t care that much.’” But even where the operator reaffirms the need, “they can explain the nuance of why they care, and industry might have a different idea of how to satisfy that.”

Using attributes “allows that dialogue, and then once you converge on something, we can still codify that in a formal requirement,” Grayson said.

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall announced the ICO in February, one of a slew of changes designed to “re-optimize” the Air and Space Forces for great power competition with China and Russia.

The office was formally stood up in July.

The ICO is designed to accelerate work on Kendall’s Operational Imperative initiatives, which seek to break down organizational stovepipes in the Air Force’s technology acquisition, where commands have tended to advocate for their own capabilities, leaving the department as a whole to make difficult budgetary and programmatic tradeoffs.

An example is the Air Force’s Rapid Dragon program in which palletized munitions, specifically long-range JASSM stand-off cruise missiles, are released from cargo aircraft, crossing traditional lines between Air Mobility Command and Air Force Global Strike Command.

Attributes based acquisition was one of several big changes ICO would push and be part of, Grayson said. Another was ending the traditional separation between operators, the warfighters who will use technology, and to whose specifications it is supposed to be designed, and the developers, charged with buying and/or building new technology.

Making operators develop requirements and then pass them on to the developers, resulted in a “very procedural game of telephone,” where each participant whispers to the next and the end result is nothing like what it started out as.

Instead, ICO would work with “product teams,” staffed by operators from the newly formed U.S. Space Force Space Futures Command and U.S. Air Force Integrated Capabilities Command (ICC) like those developed ad hoc by the Operational Imperative initiative.

“Bringing operators and developers together, that’s been magical,” Grayson said.

ICO was at the forefront of a cultural revolution in the Air Force, Grayson said. “Some of the things we’re talking about, three years ago, we probably would have been either laughed or yelled out of the room, for being crazy,” he joked.

The Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Power presents Aerospace Nation with Dr. Tim Grayson, Assistant to the Secretary of the Air Force, on July 31, 2024, at Air & Space Forces headquarters in Arlington, Va. Moderating the event was Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.) Dean of the Mitchell Institute. Photo by Mike Tsukamoto/Air & Space Forces Magazine

But it was a symptom of a serious problem. “From the capability and the technology side, we inherited, I would say, an unfortunate culture,” he said.

“A lot of developers have been so beaten to listen to the operator and follow requirements that people were kind of gun shy,” Grayson said. On the other hand, operators had two “failure modes,” one where they refused to engage at all: “Someone hasn’t shown me a new technology, I don’t have a field or program of record. Why should I think about operational concepts for something that doesn’t exist?”

The other failure was from a handful of operators who were “very, very creative and innovative, but didn’t necessarily have the grounding in the science and in the acquisition capabilities,” and as a result, set impossible goals.

That culture was “self-censoring, self-limiting.” Technology developers were risk-averse, budgetarily conservative, and overly concerned with box-checking compliance.

“We assume, Oh, there isn’t a requirement already. Or I haven’t done all the homework and have a full programmatic structure, … or this feels expensive, and I’m worried I might not be able to afford it or have to take it out of hide.

“We’ve got 101 reasons why we don’t let really great innovative ideas see the light of day,” he said.

The ICO was set up to be “that voice of modernization, the stakeholder that makes sure that new ideas get their day in court.”

That might sometimes provoke tension, as Kendall predicted: “Sometimes those new ideas might be at odds with something coming out of an ICC … that’s where the potential tension happens.”

Grayson pronounced himself optimistic about the progress being made.

“It’s been pretty exciting to see where we’ve gotten so far,” he said, explaining that the changes had created momentum, like a flywheel. “Now let’s do the hard work and figure out how. Even if we aren’t where we’d love to be, I’m very, very optimistic on where the flywheel takes us.”

Boeing Loses $900 Million on Defense and Space Programs as Company Taps New CEO

July 31, 2024 | By John A. Tirpak

Boeing’s board of directors has named Robert “Kelly” Ortberg, the new chief executive officer of the embattled aerospace giant, the company announced July 31. Since early this year, the company has suffered a rash of accidents and high-visibility quality problems. Meanwhile, losses continue to pile up, with Boeing’s defense and space business losing close to $1 billion, making up most of the company’s losses.

Ortberg will take over for David Calhoun in mid-August, the company announced. Calhoun said earlier this year he would retire by the end of the year.

Ortberg worked for decades at Rockwell Collins, where he rose from a program manager in 1987 to president and CEO in 2013, spending the next eight years leading the company’s integration with RTX. He retired from RTX in 2021. The other leading candidate was reportedly Patrick Shanahan, former Boeing executive, Acting Secretary of Defense and now CEO of Spirit Aerosystems, which Boeing is buying back to better integrate its production efforts.

“There is much work to be done and I’m looking forward to getting started,” Ortberg said in a stament issued by Boeing.

The announcement came along with Boeing’s second-quarter results, which showed a $913 million loss in the Defense and Space sector, as part of a company-wide loss of $1.4 billion, and the disclosure of a new deficiency with the KC-46 tanker.

The losses were on “certain fixed-price development programs, including a $391 million loss on the KC-46A program, largely driven by a slowdown of commercial production and supply chain constraints,” the company said. Boeing’s losses on the KC-46 now amount to $7.5 billion

Air Force KC-46 program officials, speaking with the press in Dayton, Ohio, Tuesday, said they have added a seventh major deficiency to the list that Boeing must correct at its own expense on the fixed-price development contract.

The new problem is with a fuel pump, the vibrations of which are damaging the jet’s air ducts. Program Executive Officer Kevin D. Stamey said Boeing is aggressively fixing the damaged ducts, is already testing a permanent correction, and the problem may soon be taken off the books, but for now it is a “Category 1” deficiency, he said.

Among the others, program officials acknowledged that corrections to the Remote Viewing System, known as RVS 2.0, that were to be fully implemented this year will not be fixed until 2026. Tests to fix another problem with the KC-46, a so-called “stiff boom,” which prevents it from connecting with and refueling the relatively low-thrust A-10, has been in testing since May, they said.

Stamey said the discovery of the deficiency and the company’s move to correct the problem was evidence that Boeing “lean forward when they have a quality escape.”

Boeing said in releasing its financial performance numbers that other defense losses were recorded on the T-7A trainer, the “Air Force One” VC-25B Presidential Transport, and the NASA Commercial Crew programs. Those programs suffered from “higher estimated engineering and manufacturing costs, as well as technical challenges,” the company said.

A rendering of the Boeing VC-25B, known as “Air Force One.” Boeing graphic

On a positive note, the aerospace giant said that its F-15EX achieved initial operational capability with the Air Force in July and that it delivered seven MH-139A Grey Wolf helicopters to the service for missile field support.

“We remain cautiously optimistic about the long term prospects of our defense business, and we believe we can progress toward a more historical level of performance over time,” Calhoun said on Boeing’s second-quarter earnings call. He reiterated that Boeing is exercising “contracting discipline” in not underbidding important contracts to secure future work.

Calhoun said Ortberg was “the board’s choice,” but he said he liked the pick. He also said he didn’t expect Ortberg to do an executive housecleaning.

“I don’t think he’s coming in with a notion to change a lot of folks,” he said on the call. “We’re in recovery mode. And we’ve got to get this thing stable and move forward.”

Reports: Ukraine Finally Receives First F-16s After Years-Long Wait

July 31, 2024 | By Chris Gordon

The first F-16s have arrived in Ukraine, finally giving Kyiv the venerable fourth-generation multirole fighter it has sought for over a year, according to multiple reports.

Bloomberg first reported the news, which was later reported by the Associated Press and Reuters.

“F-16s in Ukraine. Another impossible thing turned out to be totally possible,” Gabrielius Landsbergis, Lithuania’s foreign minister, wrote on social media.

Denmark and the Netherlands were due to provide the first jets, followed by Belgium and Norway—some 60 F-16s in total over the next few years. It is unclear how many F-16s have arrived in Ukraine if the reports prove accurate. NATO allies have indicated the process will be gradual, and Bloomberg and the AP reported Ukraine has received only a small number of F-16s so far.

The Pentagon and the National Security Council declined to comment on whether Kyiv now possesses F-16s and referred questions to Ukraine. A spokesperson for the Ukrainian Air Force did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Even if Ukraine now has F-16s, many questions remain. U.S. and allied officials have not detailed maintenance plans for the jets or publicly revealed which munitions the aircraft will be equipped with.

U.S. officials and airpower experts have said F-16s are not a panacea, noting the presence of advanced Russian surface-to-air missiles, the difficulty required to master the F-16’s full capabilities, and the need to learn Western airpower doctrine.

“It’s not going to be the … golden bullet, that all of a sudden, they have F-16s, and now they’re going to go out and gain air superiority,” U.S. Air Forces in Europe-Air Forces Africa Commander Gen. James B. Hecker said July 30. “But we started the clock, and I think that’s a good start.”

The U.S. plans to train a total of 12 Ukrainian pilots this fiscal year, as well as “dozens” of maintainers. Other pilots and maintainers are training in Europe. Some of the pilots trained in the U.S. have graduated their course with the 162nd Wing of the Arizona Air National Guard, the Air Force’s foreign F-16 pilot school, and moved on to Europe.

U.S. officials have declined to say how many pilots the U.S. has graduated from F-16 training, citing operational security, nor has the U.S. confirmed which munitions Ukraine will receive. However, The Wall Street Journal reported Ukraine would receive AIM-120 AMRAAMs and AIM-9X air-to-air missiles, as well as AGM-88 HARM anti-radiation missiles, JDAM Extended-Range guided bombs, and Small Diameter Bombers. Ukraine is already known to employ HARMs, JDAMs, and SDBs from its MiGs and Sukhoi jets, though the weapons are less effective on those aircraft than they would be if they were employed by an F-16.

This video on the other hand looks like a more solid indication that F-16s are now flying in Ukraine. Provided that it was filmed (as it appears to have been) inside the country. It’s definitely an F-16 in the footage. https://t.co/KtGSGELeKN
— Justin Bronk (@Justin_Br0nk) July 31, 2024

U.S.-origin weapons have also come with policy stipulations from the Biden administration on how they can be used. It remains to be seen whether the U.S. and its allies will authorize Ukraine to engage aircraft or ground target sites inside of Russia with F-16s. The U.S. has allowed Ukraine to use American weapons inside Russia in only limited cases.

A Pentagon spokesperson told Air & Space Forces Magazine that the U.S. would provide weapons for the F-16s but did not say which ones.

“The United States is committed to working with our Allies and partners in the Air Force Capability Coalition, including co-leads Denmark and the Netherlands, to provide Ukraine with the weapons and equipment it needs for its F-16s,” the spokesperson said. “This includes precision munitions designed to enhance Ukraine’s air combat capabilities to defend its airspace and carry out effective air-to-ground operations. Some of these weapons will come directly from DoD or Allied stocks, while others may be procured through contracts with defense manufacturers.”

US Airstrike Preempts Drone Attack in Iraq as Iran Vows Revenge for Hamas Leader’s Death

July 31, 2024 | By Chris Gordon

The U.S. launched a preemptive airstrike in Musayib, Iraq, on July 30, against individuals who were preparing to launch one-way attack drones against U.S. forces, U.S. defense officials told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

The “defensive airstrike” came a week after rockets were launched at U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria, the officials said.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, departing the Philippines after bilateral meetings there, referenced the attack July 31: “The safety and protection of our troops is really, really important to me,” Austin said. “That’s why you saw us take some measures to protect ourselves here most recently as we took out some UAVs which were about to be launched. We have the right to do that and we will continue to do that in order to protect our troops.”

The target was a facility south of Baghdad used by the Iranian-aligned Kataib Hezbollah group, which is part of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF). The Iraqi government expressed outrage at the strike on the PMF site and said it violated Iraq’s sovereignty.

Meanwhile, apparent Israeli attacks on a pair of leaders of U.S.-designated terrorist organizations increased tensions in the region. On July 30, Israel attacked and killed a top Hezbollah military leader in Lebanon. The political leader of Hamas was killed during a trip to Iran a day later in an operation almost certainly carried out by Israel.

Killed were:

Fuad Shukr, one of Hezbollah’s top military commanders, in retaliation for a July 27 attack by Hezbollah in the Golan Heights that killed 12 civilians, mostly children; and

Hamas’ political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, who was in Tehran for the inauguration of new Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkia, and had been involved in ceasefire negotiations with the U.S. seeking an end to the war in Gaza.

Israel has not acknowledged killing Haniyeh, and Austin deflected questions on the incident when asked about it by reporters.

The twin attacks inflame tensions and could lead to further U.S. involvement, either against other potential attacks on U.S. forces or if the U.S. needs to help defend Israel against a long-range attack from Iran.

“I don’t think war is inevitable,” Austin said. “I think there’s always room and opportunities for diplomacy. And I’d like to see parties pursue those opportunities.”

U.S. forces have been facing rocket attacks on al-Asad Air Base in Iraq and Mission Support Site Euphrates in Syria in the past week. Iran, which supports both Hezbollah and Hamas, is unlikely to let an attack on its own soil go without response. While its long-range attack on Israel was foiled in April, it is likely to seek some way to retaliate, either directly or indirectly, through one of its proxies, which could include Iranian-aligned militias, Lebanese Hezbollah, and the Houthis in Yemen. Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said it was Iran’s “duty” to avenge Haniyeh’s death.

Attacks on U.S. forces in the region had decreased following U.S. airstrikes in February against Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Iranian-aligned militias, which took out 85 targets in Iraq and Syria in a massive bombardment. The U.S. airstrike demonstrated America still has the will to strike inside of Iraq.

“It’s quite impressive. It’s a robust response,” Michael Knights of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “We’re demonstrating that we know the exact buildings that these drones are coming from and we reserve the right to strike them.”

U.S. troops have been attacked over 180 times in Iraq, Syria, and Jordan since October. Three Soldiers were killed at Tower 22 in Jordan, which supports the U.S. outpost of Al Tanf Garrison just across the border in Syria, in January.

“I think it’s all connected, but I think, quite frankly, I don’t see a return to where we were several months ago—not yet,” Austin said.

The U.S. has 2,500 U.S. troops in Iraq and 900 in Syria. Iraqi and U.S. officials discussed how to end the official military campaign against the Islamic State and transition to a different security relationship during meetings in Washington last week.

The Pentagon said Austin spoke with Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant July 31 and discussed the attack by Hezbollah and threats to Israel posed by a range of Iranian-backed terrorist groups, according to Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh, who provided a readout of the call.

Speaking in the Philippines, Austin said the U.S. was prepared to respond if Iran attacked Israel. U.S. Air Force F-15s and F-16s, as well as other U.S. forces, helped Israel defeat hundreds of drones and missiles launched by Iran earlier in the year.

“If Israel gets attacked, we certainly will help,” Austin said. “You saw us do that April. You can expect to see us do that again. … But we’re going to work hard to make sure that we’re doing things to help take the temperature down.”