Past is Prologue: Learn from History and Invest in Combat Airpower

June 13, 2024 | By Douglas A. Birkey

As world leaders gathered at Normandy last week to mark the 80th anniversary of the D-Day invasion, it is important to recall that America was not ready for that war. It took two and a half years to generate the combat power necessary to invade Europe, plus another year to finally defeat Nazi Germany. Victory was far from certain during key phases of the conflict.

Today, America is once again inadequately postured to confront burgeoning national security challenges. China is building up forces aggressively in the Pacific; Russia is making gains in its war on Ukraine; Iran is pursuing nuclear ambitions and proxy wars; North Korea is threatening nuclear war; and non-state actors continue to destabilize key regions. However, post-Cold War budget cuts, two decades of strategic distraction in Afghanistan and Iraq, and a succession of aggressive budget cuts have yielded a set of U.S. military capabilities and capacity that fall short of what the threat environment demands. This is especially true for Air Force fighters and bombers—two foundational elements of U.S. national security.

The ability to achieve air superiority when and where it is needed is an essential condition for any successful military operation, regardless of domain. That is why Air Force fighters are so important.

Likewise, a commander’s ability to take the fight to the enemy depends on America’s long-range attack capability—which is predominantly an Air Force bomber mission. They strike targets deep behind enemy lines, disable command-and-control networks, eliminate production centers, and damage materiel, logistics, and enemy combat forces. Bombers, in addition to submarines and land-based ICBMs, also comprise one leg of America’s nuclear triad. Combined, air superiority and long-range attack deter adversaries in times of peace and yield war-winning effects during conflict.

Both air superiority and long-range attack missions are established military imperatives. In World War II, allied forces would not have made it past the landing beaches had they been under attack from the sky. Long-range strikes played a crucial role throughout the war, degrading the German war machine with debilitating attacks against petroleum refineries, production facilities, rail lines, and more. The reason the war in Europe ended just eleven months after D-Day was that air power had already inflicted so much damage over the years, that ground forces were fighting an already degraded opponent.

The same was true in Operation Desert Storm in 1991. A monthlong air campaign set conditions such that ground forces needed just 96 hours to bring Saddam Hussein to his knees.

Today, in Ukraine, neither side controls the sky, and neither can mount a strategic air attack campaign. As a result, fighting is bogged down in modern-day World War I-style trench warfare. This is the price nations pay if they cannot control the sky and use that dominance to project decisive strikes. Surface forces slaughter each other for incremental daily gains measured in meters.

Following such a course is a recipe for disaster. Yet given the precarious state of U.S. airpower today, it could be what is in store if the U.S. faces a major power, especially China, in combat in the future. Lacking major investment today, commanders will lack the capacity and capability they will need to fight a peer foe.

The decay began after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, when the Pentagon cut Air Force combat capacity by half. In continued over the decades that followed, as fighter and bomber inventories shrank and nonstop operational demand in the Middle East, the Balkans, and elsewhere burned out remaining aircraft. At the same time, key fighter and bomber modernization programs were cut short. America built less than half the F-22s required, halted B-2 bomber production at 21, slowed F-35 production, and flew aircraft into their sixth decade and beyond. Fiscal caps imposed by the 2011 Budget Control Act strained Air Force fighters and bombers to the core.

Air Force leaders sounded the alarm six years ago, declaring that “The Air Force is too small for what the nation is asking us to do.” Yet still the cuts continued.

Now, with threats on the rise around the globe, the nation faces a choice: modernize or risk the nation’s future security. Said more bluntly, America may lose its next major war it fights for want of capable, properly sized combat airpower.

To avert this outcome, modernization is essential. This includes:

Buying more F-35 and B-21 aircraft as rapidly as possible

Developing and fielding autonomous, uncrewed Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA)

Building the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) family of systems

Investing in modern munitions in volume

Fixing the chronic pilot shortfall

Stop shortchanging operations accounts so that personnel are adequately trained, and mission equipment is sustained at a high level of readiness.

A credible force can deter war, but a hollow force—one that lacks the capacity to fight a peer adversary—invites risk. Adversaries know when America is weak and will opportunistically push against our interests.

A B-21 Raider conducts flight testing, which includes ground testing, taxiing, and flying operations, at Edwards Air Force Base, California. Courtesy photo

However, modernization requires resources, and that funding is in short supply given new budget caps, continued high inflation, and the sheer scale of modernization necessary to reset decades of neglect. The factors risk seeing an already a fragile set of Air Force combat airpower capabilities grow more precarious. The Air Force reduced its fiscal 2025 procurement budget request by $1.6 billion versus fiscal 2024, because the resources simply were not available in the topline dictated by the Pentagon. According to experts, the defense budget caps amount to a $47 billion cut to the Department of Defense in fiscal 2025 versus previously planned toplines.

Nor are things set to improve any time soon. Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall explained: “You’re going to see our five-year plan … and what you’re going to see is that life gets a lot harder as we get past ’25.”

Given what is at stake, Congress must repeal the budget caps and prioritize Air Force modernization. The joint force simply is not viable without what Air Force fighters and bombers bring to the fight. Nor can these deferred bills be ignored forever. As Senate defense appropriations subcommittee Chairman Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) knows well, the cost of postponing necessary investments is always higher: “Either pay me now or pay me later,” he has said. “It’s going to cost a hell of a lot more later.”

Ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) is calling for higher defense spending. “Our current defense investment does not meet the moment,” he said, releasing a plan that deserves serious bipartisan attention. “The emerging Axis of Aggressors is undermining U.S. interests across the globe.”

On top of more funding, the Department of Defense also needs to embrace cost per effect analysis to ensure money received is directed towards achieving best value. It comes down to investing in systems that deliver the greatest effect at the lowest cost, thus buying more defense capability and capacity for each dollar invested.

There is significant room for improvement in this regard. Consider the long-range strike mission. While deep attack is officially and traditionally an Air Force mission achieved with bomber and fighter aircraft, the Pentagon has funded the Army and Navy to develop long-range missiles that will cost $50 million per shot—an unsustainable figure given that aim points in a major theater war will likely exceed six figures. Stealthy penetrating fighters and bombers can achieve greater effects at a fraction of that cost, return to base, and do it again the next day.

Nor is this the only example. Consider the inefficiency of the Army trying to develop its own organic intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capability, comprising both aircraft and satellites, to guide those high-priced long-range missiles. The Space Force, meanwhile, is developing that same capability for the entire joint force.

In his remarks commemorating the D-Day anniversary, President Biden noted that “There are things that are worth fighting and dying for: Freedom is worth it; democracy is worth it; America is worth it; the world is worth it—then, now, and always.”

While some might call that sentimental hyperbole, the lessons of the past tell us otherwise. World War II put existential realities on the line. China, Russia, and the rest of the threats we face pose severe risks today.

As we once again face these challenges, some of them truly existential, let us resolve to rise to the occasion as did our nation nearly a century ago. We must invest now to ensure American air superiority and long-range strike capability are there when we need them.

“There is only one thing we require here to do the job—the job that will hurt the enemy the most,” noted air commander Ira Eaker on the eve of D-Day. “That is an adequate force.”

Those words still ring true, 80 years later. Heed them.

Douglas A Birkey is executive director of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.

House Appropriators Want to Cut the Space Force Budget Even More

June 13, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

The Space Force, already facing its first-ever budget cut in fiscal 2025, would face an additional 3 percent cut if House appropriators get their way. The combined cut would be 5 percent compared to 2024.

In their version of the 2025 defense appropriations bill, House lawmakers moved to slash $900 million from the Space Force’s proposed $29.6 billion budget, primarily in procurement and research and development.

Account	Requested	House Appropriations
Military Personnel	$1.378 billion	$1.376 billion
Operations & Maintenance	$5.292 billion	$5.146 billion
RDT&E	$18.7 billion	$18.277 billion
Procurement	$4.263 billion	$3.934 billion
TOTAL	$29.633 billion	28.733 billion

The biggest single cut would hit GPS III, with lawmakers seeking to save $185.9 million by cutting the buy from two to one satellite in 2025, lawmakers project.

The House Armed Services Committee proposed a similar cut in its draft of the 2025 National Defense Authorization bill. Reducing funding for the more robust GPS IIIF comes as the Space Force eyes alternate solutions for providing position, navigation, and timing from space. In February, Space Systems Command solicited industry for ideas on smaller, cheaper satellites that could rapidly go into orbit to test new technologies, and in April, the Department of the Air Force announced it was taking advantage of new “quick start” authorities from Congress to work on a jam-resistant PNT solution.

The program, initially dubbed GPS Lite, is now called Resilient GPS. But while House Armed Services Committee members expressed enthusiasm for the idea, appropriators remain skeptical. “The Committee has several concerns about the R-GPS plan and the use of this authority for this project,” lawmakers wrote. They questioned:

How the new satellites—about 20 in total—would solve issues of jamming if they use the same GPS signals existing satellites do

What the new solutions would mean for ground equipment and how that would help defeat jamming threats

Whether Resilient GPS should have followed the regular budget process and whether the department is trying to “dodge the congressional appropriations process to exercise this new, extraordinary authority.”

Lawmakers rejected the Space Force’s request to reprogram $77 million for Resilient GPS in the 2025 budget.

Lawmakers pushed back on other programs, as well. Missile warning/missile tracking satellites were among the major areas of investment in the Space Force budget request, to the tune of $4.7 billion. The House appropriations bill would trim more than $150 million from that. Among the cuts: $54.5 million for the Space Development Agency’s MW/MT efforts in low-Earth orbit, and $95.9 million for Space Systems Command’s MW/MT constellation in medium-Earth orbit, citing “vendor termination.”

An SSC spokesman, asked if the command is cancelling an existing contract or reducing requirements for a future one, declined to comment on pending legislation.

Evolved Strategic SATCOM, a new nuclear command, control, and communications satellite constellation, would be cut bu $44 million, while Protected Tactical SATCOM, for jam-resistant communications, would be cut by $85 million, including some reprogramming of funds at the Space Force’s request.

Budget Issues

Appropriators used the bill report to express frustration with how the Space Force budget is organized, complaining that “the Space Force funds a significant portion of its overhead expenses through taxes on programs in the procurement and the research, development, test, and evaluation accounts.” The report said the practice “the report notes. “This practice “distorts the budgets for the programs … and obscures the true overhead cost of the Space Force.”

The seek a report from the Secretary of the Air Force on how the Space Force defines overhead costs and a breakdown of its overhead “tax” on each program.

House Appropriators Want to Cut Back on Sentinel in 2025, Study Mobile Basing

June 12, 2024 | By John A. Tirpak

The House Appropriations Committee, frustrated with soaring costs and schedule slips on the new Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile, wants to slash the Air Force’s 2025 budget request for the program by $324 million. But lawmakers also want the service to leave program leaders in place longer and explore an old idea for the Sentinel: giving it some kind of mobility to complicate enemy targeting.

The committee, in its mark of the 2025 defense appropriations bill, would still direct some $3.4 billion for Sentinel in the coming fiscal year. And in accompanying report language, lawmakers noted their prior support for the program to the tune of more than $12.5 billion since 2020.

Ultimately, however, they want to cut the Air Force request by around 8.7 percent because of “insufficient justification and program uncertainty for execution needs in 2025,” which typically means it doesn’t think the Air Force will spend as much as it planned in that year.

Sentinel is currently undergoing a review, having substantially overrun its cost and schedule estimates. The Air Force estimates the Sentinel will cost 37 percent more than expected and is now running two years behind schedule.

Under the Nunn-McCurdy law, the Secretary of Defense must certify that there is no alternative to the Sentinel or he must cancel the program. Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III is expected to certify the Sentinel as essential and should continue in early July, after a mandated investigation and report of how the overrun occurred. However, the Air Force has said it is not suspending any activities of the program and is proceeding with it while the review takes place.

“While supportive of the capability, the committee was stunned to learn about the critical Program Acquisition Cost breach of at least 37 percent and an average Procurement Unit Cost breach of at least 19 percent that were determined following a review of the program in December 2023,” the House Appropriations Committee wrote in its report.

Even while noting the challenges inherent in such a massive program—requiring development and testing of a new missile, rehabilitation of more than 150 silos with new concrete, wiring, and a secure communications system to command and control it—lawmakers said they are “concerned that the issues driving the critical overruns were not identified sooner, the level of flawed technical assumptions, and the management continuity of the program.”

Not having long-term leadership managing Sentinel is “contributing to poor program performance, cost overruns, and schedule slips,” the lawmakers suggested. The committee directed the Government Accountability Office to study how the turnover in program managers has affected the its performance.

But the HAC also indicated it won’t simply rubber-stamp continued work of the Sentinel.

“The committee expects a full discussion on all statutorily required aspects of the Nunn-McCurdy review; specifically alternatives considered, including those recommended” in a 2023 report from the “Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States.”

Along those lines, lawmakers want another report from the Secretaries of Defense and the Air Force, along with the head of U.S. Strategic Command—within six months from passage of the defense bill—”on the most feasible recommendations highlighted in the Commission’s report related to interim capability to augment a potential capability gap caused by delays in Sentinel, to include the feasibility of fielding some portion of the future intercontinental ballistic missile force in a road-mobile configuration.”

The report is to include an assessment of “technical attributes, cost, timeline, workforce limitations, and treaty considerations.”

The Air Force extensively explored mobile options for the LGM-118 Peacekeeper missile (previously called the “M-X”), which was fielded in 1985 and removed from the inventory under the START treaty in 2005. Such options included moving the missiles around quickly and unpredictably from one silo to another; this shell game would force the Soviet Union to target all silos, not knowing which were occupied and which were empty. “Rail garrison” would have disguised the missiles as commercial freight on rail lines, able to stop, elevate and launch on short notice, depriving the Soviets of a certain target.

Another option involved towing missiles around on transporter-erector-launchers (TELs) and moving them routinely but unpredictably so that their location was not fixed, removing the certainty that precise incoming missiles would catch them all in a first strike. The Air Force took this approach to the point of prototyping competitive TELs from Boeing and Martin Marietta. Other alternatives included moving the missiles around in underground tunnels or dropping them out the back of a C-5 Galaxy transport.

Given the inability to find consensus with Congress on a mobile basing system, the Reagan administration ultimately opted to put the first 50 Peacekeepers in Minuteman silos, leaving the mobility issue unresolved. In 1991, the mobility concept was dropped.

Former Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh told Air Force Magazine in 2013 that a road-mobile option for Sentinel, then called the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD), had been determined to be unnecessary, given silo hardening and the need for an enemy to target hundreds of silos without any certainty of total success. Fixed-site ICBMS were the most responsive and lowest-cost element of the nuclear triad, Welsh said.

The Soviet Union—and now China—have put a substantial portion of their strategic nuclear missiles on mobile launchers as well as in silos.

In yet more homework for the Air Force, the HAC wants to mandate quarterly updates from the Secretary of the Air Force “on the land-based nuclear capability.”

How Air Force Pilot Training Can Take a Page from Predictive Maintenance

June 12, 2024 | By David Roza

The ABCs of air-to-air combat, Basic Fighter Maneuvers, are taught to Air Force fighter pilots early in their careers. But in 2018, F-15E pilot Matthew Ross nearly failed out of an instructor upgrade course because his BFM skills had gone to seed; he had just spent six months flying close air support over the Middle East, and before that he spent six months learning flight command for a multiship flight lead upgrade.

“I was supposed to be good enough to teach a student, and I really struggled at it,” he told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

In an era of shrinking aircraft fleets, nearly every fighter pilot must know how to fly a wide range of missions. But the Air Force’s software tools for tracking those skills are decades out-of-date and often rely on subjective assessments, which hinders combat readiness and wastes scarce resources, Ross said.

He’s not the only one calling for smarter use of data. In February, Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. James C. “Jim” Slife said the service was missing out on a “decisive advantage” in training, operations, maintenance, and logistics offered by the data produced by digital flight systems.

”There’s lessons learned built into that,” Slife said about the terabytes of data produced by F-35 flight systems. “There’s mistakes than can be learned from in there, there’s the bad radio call, there’s the signal we’ve never seen before.” That data could be used “to feed our algorithms, to power accurate AI models.”

The head of Air Education and Training Command made a similar call in May to use data to make the training system more efficient.

“We don’t have time to accept wasted time in training pipelines, [and] substandard developmental and training paths,” Lt. Gen. Brian S. Robinson said May 7 at the Air Force Modeling & Simulation Summit in San Antonio, Texas. The benefits will also spill over into operational wings when they train at home, he said.

air force pilot — U.S. Air Force Second Lt. Christopher Ahn, Pilot Training Next student, trains on a virtual reality flight simulator, at the Armed Forces Reserve Center in Austin, Texas, June 21, 2018. (U.S. Air Force photo by Sean M. Worrell)

Better tools exist which could track each pilot’s strengths and weaknesses more closely using objective data and help tailor their training accordingly, Ross said. It would also help squadron commanders better understand their unit’s readiness on a near real-time basis.

“The Air Force understands that there’s skill decay, and right now the way it deals with it is just a generalized statement of ‘you need a few months to get your skills back,’” said Ross, who has since left Active-Duty and joined the Air National Guard. “There’s no reason to act like that now, because we have such powerful techniques and models that can do it at a more individualized level.”

The Status Quo

While Air Force fighter squadrons use plenty of objective metrics to gauge the health of their aircraft, the list is not so long for aviator training. Generally, less experienced pilots must fly nine sorties and three simulator events per month and fill out a training accomplishment report for each, while more experienced pilots are required to fly fewer sorties. Commanders then review the reports once a month to determine if the squadron is trained or needs more practice in certain mission sets, but frequently the assessment boils down to whether each pilot hit their minimum number of sorties.

The problem with this approach, Ross argued in a commentary piece for War On the Rocks in January, is that the commander’s assessment is a best guess based on imprecise data compiled and assessed on just one day each month.

“The commander could decide to declare, on a per-pilot basis, who is mission-ready for each mission,” Ross wrote. “However, unless a commander has intimate knowledge of every skill of every pilot, then these determinations are—at best—a guess.”

In a different era, this approach may have been the best one, he said, but advanced analytics and artificial intelligence can help a commander gauge his or her pilots’ abilities in every mission task on-demand. The Air Force-MIT AI Accelerator already has an AI-infused scheduling program called NICE that would work with what Ross is proposing, he said.

“We could make this system very easy for commanders, scheduling officers, and the director of operations so they can schedule the appropriate people on the right days for the mission sets that they need to maintain their readiness,” he explained. “We can do this in near-real time, and day-to-day have an assessment of where the squadron is with objective data.”

Pilots from the 480th Fighter Squadron listen during a preflight brief at the operations desk during Exercise Anatolian Falcon 2012. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Benjamin Wilson)

The Solution

The Air Force is already using a similar system in predictive maintenance, where artificial intelligence analyzes a wealth of data to create maintenance alerts for each jet. Predictive training software could do the same thing by analyzing a pilot’s past performance, predicting how quickly their skills decay, then recommending how often the pilot needs to train in which skills.

“Squadrons will know exactly what skills have decayed for each pilot to the point that the pilot would be unable to reach the mission outcomes necessary for victory,” Ross wrote. “Capt. Stephens may not be ready for a defensive counter-air mission because his flight leadership skills have deteriorated, while Lt. Smith may not be ready for the same mission set because her defensive timeline knowledge has decayed.”

As an example of the power of analytics, Ross pointed to his own work with the 4th Training Squadron, which writes the syllabus for the Strike Eagle formal training unit. By looking closely at training data, he and his colleagues at Air Combat Command and the Air Force Research Laboratory proved a connection between FTU performance and a specific skill taught early in undergraduate pilot training.

“We were able to show that if a student performed poorly throughout the T-6 syllabus on inflight decision-making, that they would fail out of the FTU, which is extremely expensive for the Air Force and also now you’re missing a fighter pilot,” he said. “I wish we had more detailed performance data at the time to prove more specific causality.”

In the future, granular data and AI-driven analysis can show even more closely how early training and retention in certain skills impacts pilots throughout their careers. Not all pilot skills can be measured objectively; Ross emphasized that human assessment will still be vital in areas such as a pilot’s decision-making. Still, better software can help free up brain space so that human instructors can focus on the bigger picture.

“We don’t want the instructors worried about ‘did you do this small thing right or wrong?’” Ross said. “We want the instructors doing things only humans can do, which is ‘let’s talk about your decision-making during this part of the sortie.’”

Beyond Pilots

Better learning management systems could help other career fields beyond aviation. When a maintainer replaces a jet engine, such a system could track how effectively they did it and other data points that paint a picture of the maintainer’s abilities.

Adopting such systems in the short term would not be difficult, said Ross, whose company Eduworks is already working with Air Education and Training Command and Naval Air Systems Command.

“I don’t want to give more work to anyone who’s Active-Duty,” Ross said. “What that means is whatever they’re filling out right now, whatever inputs they have into the system, I don’t want to add any more. I just want to scrape the data and I want to export it into something that is useful for them.”

The benefits could prove decisive.

“Individuals determine the outcome of combat,” he wrote, “and individual readiness determines the likelihood of that outcome.”’

Air Force Launches Its Own Generative AI Chatbot. Experts See Promise and Challenges

June 12, 2024 | By Unshin Lee Harpley

Airmen and Guardians now have their own free generative artificial intelligence chatbot that can interact in a “human-like” manner, helping them with communications, task completion, and online coding like ChatGPT—but on a secure system.

The Air Force and Space Force launched the Non-classified Internet Protocol Generative Pre-training Transformer or NIPRGPT, earlier this week, encouraging personnel with a Common Access Card to try it out. The Department of the Air Force’s experimental “GenAI” software is meant to move beyond “a controlled relationship with data and information to a curiosity-based relationship.”

“NIPRGPT will provide a place where people can exercise that curiosity in a safe and appropriate manner, where they can understand what parts of their work can potentially be complemented,” Alexis Bonnell, chief information officer for the Air Force Research Laboratory(AFRL), told reporters at a media roundtable June 10.

Bonnell added that the tool was built by “customizing publicly available models” of GenAI, but the department has yet to commit to a specific model. NIPRGPT will allow the lab to test all the different models out there and compare.

The Pentagon’s interest in using AI to streamline work is not new. Last year, the Navy deployed an AI program called ‘Amelia’ to handle common tech-support questions. Soon after, the Department of Defense launched a generative AI task force to assess, integrate, and manage AI tools, including large language models. Department of the Air Force Chief Information Officer Venice Goodwine, told reporters that the NIPRGPT draws from lessons learned across departments and services. According to

But for the department to create its own, brand-new AI software offers both opportunities and reasons for caution, experts told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

Bill Whyman, senior adviser of the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said NIPRGPT, if executed well, signals a positive trajectory for the Air Force.

“The important thing is to start this journey and provide people with approved tools because I would be more concerned if service members were using public systems that weren’t trained on Defense Department data and didn’t have Defense Department security and guardrails built into the model,” Whyman told Air & Space Forces Magazine on June 12.

Such concerns led the Space Force to temporarily ban the use of GenAI chatbots last October.

Training and operating costs, however, could be an issue. Tapping into existing models likely saved time and money on the front end, Whyman suggested, so long as it is “architected appropriately and is trained with on private data.” However, even the commercial sector is beginning to learn about the mounting operating costs of generative AI, and Whyman said the department must establish a comprehensive long-term budget plan.

“The program requires, in some cases, millions of GPUs,” said Whyman. “On top of the chip cost, they have large electricity costs, both to power all these chips, and for cooling. So, the operating costs, both the infrastructure and the electricity is much higher than traditional software.”

In generative AI, the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) chip handles the complex calculations needed to train and run its models. Nicolas M. Chaillan, the department’s former chief software officer who developed his own GenAI platform called ‘Ask Sage,’ echoed Whyman’s concern.

“The GPUs could be used instead for advanced machine learning and other advanced mission or weapons that cannot be done on cloud,” Chaillan told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “The department will have to purchase more chips instead of hosting them on the cloud for much lower costs.”

Whyman noted that both military and private sectors are eyeing expense-cutting strategies as widespread free usage could hike up operational expenses swiftly. Major players in GenAI like Microsoft’s Copilot or OpenAI’s ChatGPT charge users monthly for their top-tier service.

For now, NIPRGPT is a work in progress for the department, focusing on leveraging technology for information, while enabling Airmen and Guardians to explore and build skills and familiarity as more powerful tools become available. The department is encouraging user feedback to shape policies and facilitate discussions with vendors as it aims to mature the platform.

“Technology is learned by doing,” said Chandra Donelson, the DAF’s acting chief data and artificial intelligence officer, in a release. “As our warfighters, who are closest to the problems, are learning the technology, we are leveraging their insight to inform future policy, acquisition and investment solutions.”

The department sees this experiment as a chance for real-world testing, honing in on key metrics like efficiency, resource use, and security. Understanding GenAI’s practical uses and hurdles to ensure future implementation is smooth is critical, Whyman argued.

“But that doesn’t mean you get a blank check, it should be done slowly, with pilots and multiple rounds of experimentation, with oversight boards in place,” added Whyman.

Osprey Won’t Return to Unrestricted Flight, Get New Clutch Until Mid-2025

June 12, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

The V-22 Osprey fleet will not return to full, unrestricted flight operations until mid-2025, a Pentagon official said, as part of a slow buildup following a deadly crash in November that killed eight Airmen and led to a three-month grounding.

Also around that time the V-22 Joint Program Office plans to start fielding a newly designed clutch for the Osprey, which is flown by the Air Force, Marine Corps, and Navy. Issues with the clutch have been cited in previous mishaps.

Defense Department officials shared the details during a charged hearing before the House Oversight Committee on June 12. Lawmakers sharply criticized the V-22 program and DOD’s lack of transparency regarding the aircraft’s safety data, while families of service members who died flying the Osprey sat in the front row, holding photos of their loved ones.

Scrutiny of the V-22 reached new heights after an Air Force CV-22 went down in November 2023 off the coast of Japan—the fourth deadly Osprey crash in just over two years. All three services grounded their fleets from December 2023 to March 2024 while the Joint Program Office opened a comprehensive review of the program and the House Oversight Committee launched its own investigation.

Air Force Special Operations Command said in February that a part failure, not pilot error, caused the November 2023 crash, though it has declined to identify the part. Vice Adm. Carl Chebi, head of Naval Air Systems Command, also did not identify the part in his testimony, but he did describe it as a “catastrophic materiel failure that we have never seen before in the V-22 program.”

That would rule out the possibility of a hard clutch engagement—a situation in which the clutch slips, causing a fail-safe system to transfer power from one engine to the other, then re-engages, generating enormous spikes in torque. The Air Force previously grounded its fleet of CV-22s after multiple instances of hard clutch engagement, and the issue was blamed for causing one of three deadly Marine Corps crashes since 2022.

Slow Return

When the Pentagon announced it was lifting the grounding order on all V-22s in March, NAVAIR said senior Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps leaders coordinated to craft “risk mitigation controls to assist with safely returning the V-22 to flight operations.”

It later emerged that one such restriction was limiting the Osprey from flying more than 30 minutes away from a suitable airfield to which it could divert if something went wrong.

By May, the Air Force had cleared only some of its CV-22s to resume flight, part of what officials said would be a phased, “deliberate” approach to include more thorough and frequent maintenance checks and new procedures for air crews to respond to emergency situations.

All those restrictions and new procedures won’t be going away anytime soon, Chebi told lawmakers.

“Today, we are methodically looking at materiel and non-materiel changes that we can make to allow for a full mission set without controls in place,” Chebi said. “I will not certify the V-22 to return to unrestricted flight operations until I’m satisfied that we have sufficiently addressed the issues that may affect the safety of the aircraft. Based on the data that I have today, I’m expecting that this will not occur before mid-2025.”

An AFSOC official told Air & Space Forces Magazine that the command is tracking the same timeline.

Chebi later added that he personally briefed Air Force and Navy air crews on the new safety controls and on what went wrong in the November 2023 crash so that they have trust in the aircraft.

“I’m confident that the controls that are put in place based on the data I have today allow for return to a flight in a restricted flight envelope only,” Chebi said.

Hard Clutch Engagements

The Air Force will eventually release an Accident Investigation Board report detailing what went wrong in the November 2023 crash. Chebi’s statement that a new kind of failure caused the crash indicates that a hard clutch engagement was not the issue, but they remain a concern for the V-22 fleet.

Former AFSOC commander and current Air Force Vice Chief Gen. James C. “Jim” Slife previously said such incidents result in a “kind of a Christmas tree of lights, caution lights, in the cockpit, and some pretty squirrely flight control inputs.”

Over the life of the program, there have been 19 instances of hard clutch engagement, Chebi said. There was a notable rise in such problems starting around 2022, which prompted AFSOC to stand down its fleet and led the Marine Corps and Navy to implement mitigation measures.

Eventually, the services imposed a flight-hour limit on the aircraft’s input quill assemblies. Chebi said the program office determined that the clutch would wear out over time and had a higher susceptibility to slipping after 800 flight hours.

“We have never been able to repeat the failure in test,” Chebi said, but after the flight-hour limit was instituted, the program office has not seen any instances of hard clutch engagement.

“I want to make this point clear though—that has not eliminated the risk,” he added. “We are currently in testing of a follow-on design for the clutch, not only to minimize exposure, but to eliminate this from occurring again.”

Like the return to full flight operations, that new clutch will take time, said Gary Kurtz, program executive officer for the V-22 JPO.

“That clutch testing is expected to start in the next couple of months,” Kurtz said. “And we anticipate that we will have a new design clutch fielding in the mid-2025 timeframe.”

Scrutiny

Since 1991, the Osprey has suffered 10 fatal crashes, killing 57 service members and giving the V-22 an accident-prone reputation. Proponents argue the reputation is unfounded, noting that its safety data is comparable to other aircraft.

Still, the recent rash of mishaps and crashes has put the program under the microscope, to the point that Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) urged DOD officials during the hearing to ground the Osprey until the new clutch is ready, rather than risk another fatal accident.

“If another Osprey goes down, we’re done,” said Lynch. “This program is done.”

Other lawmakers were more supportive of keeping the Osprey flying but expressed frustration with the Pentagon for not sharing more safety investigation data with the Oversight Committee. Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) also pressed officials to explain why the Air Force has a higher mishap rate in the V-22 than the Marines do.

The scrutiny is not likely to fade soon.

“I want to thank the families for being here today. You being here is very important,” said Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wisc.). “Because I don’t want to drop this thing today. There were a surprising number of questions that I felt [the witnesses] didn’t have answers to.”

It’s Not Replicator, CCA, or Weapon, Yet. What Is the Enterprise Test Vehicle?

June 11, 2024 | By John A. Tirpak

The Enterprise Test Vehicle program the Air Force and Defense Innovation Unit announced June 3 will explore high-rate-of-production technologies and platforms for testing other systems—but it is not a part of other similar Pentagon programs like Replicator or Collaborative Combat Aircraft, and it is not meant to produce prototypes for weapons, officials told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

However, a breakthrough success in lowering cost and speed of production could pave the way for a weapons program, a Pentagon official said.

“If they show us something remarkable … of course we would consider adapting it” as a weapon, the official said. “But that’s not the main idea here.”

The program is “not the Air Force’s ‘Replicator,’” added the official, referring to Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks’ signature initiative to select and mass produce drones and autonomous systems from across the services, the official said. The Air Force declined comment on whether the ETV is its submission for Replicator.

Zone 5 Technologies will fly this concept for the ETV project.

Other officials said it is not part of the CCA Program, either, although the data collected will inform that effort.

Four ETV competitors were announced June 3: Anduril Industries; Integrated Solutions for Systems, Inc.; Leidos Dynetics; and Zone 5 Technologies.

The goal of the ETV is to produce inexpensive, rapidly-producible air vehicles that can serve as test platforms for modular gear that could be used on weapons or platforms. Part of the program is to achieve high-speed production by avoiding the use of hard-to-get materials or components requiring long lead time. Using commercial, off-the-shelf (COTS) components is a priority.

“The Enterprise Test Vehicle (ETV) will serve as a research and development platform for the USAF to explore open system architecture and modularity concepts,” a spokesperson said.

Its primary purpose “is to demonstrate the test vehicle’s adaptability and manufacturing scaleability during design and proof of manufacturing,” she added. “The intent is to certify the ETV for use and have it as a rapid, affordable option for program offices to test out new capabilities at the subsystem level without having to [recertify] it for flight test. The ETV will be used to integrate … COTS subsystems to prove the integration and affordability of the system concept.”

The platform—or platforms—chosen after the competitive demonstration will be those best able to use modularity “to more easily integrate, demonstrate, and reduce risk for additional subsystems (e.g., affordable engines, ISR seekers, or communications suites) or other weapon system variants,” the spokesperson said.

The program will also use ETVs to explore “maturing different options for weapon employment, to include palletized employment, collaborating air launch, ground launch and others,” she added.

The Air Force has explored palletized employment using stacks of AGM-158 Joint Air-to-Surface Missiles dropped out of the back of cargo aircraft. Presumably, the ETV would be a less costly subject for such tests.

The Air Force spokesperson said the first ETV demonstration will be a low-cost cruise missile design called “Franklin” but did not say which contractor’s vehicle this referred to.

In a solicitation to industry for the ETV published last year, the DIU emphasized the program’s focus on developing rapid production capabilities for new munitions.

“The Department of Defense replenishment rates for unmanned aerial delivery vehicles are neither capable of meeting surge demand nor achieving affordable mass,” the solicitation stated. “The current design and manufacture of airborne medium-range precision delivery vehicles are complex, costly, and limited by historically slower production rates due to exquisite components and labor-intensive manufacturing processes. Narrow supply chains, proprietary data, and locked designs result in a lengthy timeline to transition new technology into usable capability and limit production and replenishment rates.”

The DIU said it wanted “solutions to develop, demonstrate, and fly a modular open architecture vehicle that will accelerate capability development and fielding across all weapons programs by enabling the integration, testing, and qualification of different subsystems, capabilities, and materials. The objective is to demonstrate an aerial platform that prioritizes affordability and distributed mass production.”

It specified vehicles having a range of 500 nautical miles with a minimum cruise speed of 100 knots, “capable of delivering a kinetic payload,” and ready for test seven months after contract award.

Although the DIU and Air Force announced the ETV contractors in early June, they also said demonstrations would begin this summer, suggesting the contracts were awarded around January.

The solicitation also specified demonstration of “an air-delivered variant (e.g., gravity dropped/launched from the back of a cargo aircraft).”

Finally, the DIU sought platforms “capable of bulk transportation and employment in large quantities.”

The DIU’s solicitation noted that “multiple variants may be developed following a successful initial flight test.” Designs that can be produced in different locations, potentially including foreign partners with minimal reliance on special tools and test equipment will be prioritized.

After 2 Years of Change, What’s Next for the Air Force Expeditionary Center

June 11, 2024 | By David Roza

Over the past two years, Maj. Gen. John Klein worked to put the ‘expeditionary’ back in the U.S. Air Force Expeditionary Center, which oversees much of Air Mobility Command’s ability to stand up ground support for air operations in new or austere environments.

The challenge, said Klein, who is rotating out of his post at the helm of USAFEC later this summer, has been that the Air Force was not expeditionary for much of the Global War on Terror, where aircraft circulated between well-established bases across the Middle East.

“The expeditionary skills, where you essentially open an air base with limited resources and connectivity, were not required, because it’s all there for you,” Klein told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “It’s time to hone those skills once again, so we are able to operate anywhere in the world.”

Honing those skills and bringing new tools to bear in the years to come will take work. Specifically, Klein sought to establish mechanisms for acquiring and standardizing new technology, especially communications devices for connecting expeditionary Airmen across vast distances in contested environments.

He also aimed to give the units under USAFEC, whose motto is “airpower, from the ground up,” a greater role at large-scale joint exercises and to adopt a new culture effort called Forging Warrior Hearts, which the general hopes will better prepare Airmen for the rigors of a possible conflict with China or Russia.

“The Airmen are ready, they will always deliver,” he said. “Where we need to shore things up is the institution that enables the Airmen.”

maj. gen. john klein — Maj. Gen. John Klein, U.S. Air Force Expeditionary Center commander, and Chief Master Sgt. Michael Wynne, interim U.S. Air Force Expeditionary Center command chief, discuss operations with members of the 621st Contingency Response Squadron during Exercise Storm Flag in Alexandria, Louisiana, May 6, 2024. (U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Anastasia Tompkins)

Connectivity

Officials across Air Mobility Command say the airlift and tanker fleet need better tools to build situational awareness.

“I can just look at a tablet or a screen and I can see it. … I can know which airfields have been bombed or damaged,” AMC boss Gen. Mike Minihan said in February. “Then I don’t have to just show up, look at the runway, and say ‘that one’s not for me today.’”

Klein’s expeditionary troops have the same need.

“We’ll be operating in contested environments where our connectivity is going to be challenged, both by the tyranny of distance and adversaries trying to disconnect us,” he said. “So having resilient communications and connectivity is something that we need to resource for ourselves.”

Klein said the center received $17 million last year from AMC to buy MPU-5 and other radios that can connect to Starlink satellites and Android Team Awareness Kits (ATAK): smartphones that let users share encrypted texts, locations, images, and other information rather than via error-prone voice-to-voice channels.

“It reduces the potential for miscommunication and interception, and it puts everybody on a level playing field with a common understanding of the battle space,” he said. “It’s not just our crews in the air, but also the support forces on the ground who all need to understand the same picture.”

Klein estimated that USAFEC units are about 50 percent equipped with the new radios, but there is a long way to go: the center has yet to connect to tactical data link networks, such as Link 16, that other parts of the Air Force, especially Air Combat Command, have enjoyed for decades.

“It’s baby steps: let’s bring ourselves up into the 21st century here with standard connectivity and then we’ve got to practice using it through some of our exercises,” he said. “Honestly, [Link 16] is old technology, so in an ideal world we need to be looking beyond that.”

U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Jermaine Brown, 621st Contingency Response Squadron NCO in charge of readiness, responds to a simulated threat during exercise Present Ploy, Oct. 19, 2021, at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, New Jersey. (U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Luther Mitchell)

Ideally, Klein said, USAFEC would have an annual tech refresh in its budget, but for now, the 621st Contingency Response Wing is in charge of developing a rolling five-year plan that prioritizes “how we re-invest in ourselves for equipment,” using the limited resources available, Klein explained.

Once adopted, that gear and the training to use it has to be standardized around the world, the general said. That’s the job of the Global Air Mobility Support System Weapons System Council, a forum where GAMSS units—the Airmen who run airfields and move cargo for transport, refueling, and aeromedical evacuation operations down range—can share best practices. The council was modeled off of those for other platforms such as the C-17 or C-130 transport planes.

“The more that we tackle, the more that we realize there is a whole lot more work to do,” Klein said. “Let’s put those processes and forums and mechanisms in place so that we continue working on these issues as they come along.”

Exercises

While USAFEC falls under Air Mobility Command, its ability to open and operate air bases can help any part of the joint force that needs to move in a hurry.

“If we have to get somewhere fast and begin operations right away … we are the foundation of that,” Klein said. “Our folks are absolutely brilliant at problem-solving, at filling gaps so that the mission can move forward. We’re very much a lubricant in the defense logistics system.”

Despite this, expeditionary Airmen are not widely known across the Air Force or the wider military, a trend Klein noticed at exercises such as Air Combat Command’s Agile Flag. But that seems to be changing.

“When we first started supporting their exercises, Air Combat Command and the units we were working with didn’t know what we could do,” he said. “Our teams identified problems and gaps that they could help with, so at the next iteration of Agile Flag, it was ‘hey, we want you guys to come because you have what we need.’”

Airmen assaigned to the 621st Contingency Response Wing load cargo onto a Lockheed C-130 Hercules aircraft assigned to the 103rd Airlift Wing at Bradley Air National Guard Base, Connecticut for AGILE FLAG 23-1 at Savannah Air National Guard Base, Georgia, Feb. 27, 2023. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Scott Warner)

Integrating GAMSS Airmen into large exercises such as Bamboo Eagle and Storm Flag was a key part of the USAFEC 2023 Strategy, a document laying out the center’s goals for 2030. The strategy, plus a campaign plan for how to execute it, provided a roadmap to prepare for conflict against China or Russia. Klein hopes additional strategies will come out every year to help achieve the center’s 2030 goals.

“This is the first time, to my knowledge, that the expeditionary center has taken this deliberate approach to moving the institution forward, rather than doing it ad hoc,” he said. “That campaign never ends. You keep driving forward, but you do it in a planned, synchronized way to stay on track as an organization.”

Culture

The strategy’s top priority is Forging Warrior Hearts, an effort to use culture to strengthen Airmen for challenges both at home and in a possible war with China. The initiative is deliberately open-ended, but it encourages expeditionary leaders to make developing unit culture a recurring part of their job.

In Klein’s view, the term culture encompasses any effort to build strong connections among Airmen and align them with the purpose of the unit. In January, he invited more than 100 squadron, group, and wing commanders and senior enlisted leaders from as far as Guam and Germany to a four-day culture conference to get them on board with the plan.

“We’re not going to directly tell you what you should do or what you should think about culture in your units,” Klein said at the time. “Really it’s a tool bag, and you can choose the tools that you need based on the situation you face to help you intentionally engineer the culture of your squadron.”

Airmen assigned to the 621st Contingency Response Wing and 305th Air Mobility Wing team up with members of the U.S. Coast Guard Atlantic Strike Team to load cargo onto a C-17 Globemaster III at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, N.J., Feb. 8, 2024 (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Sergio Avalos)

The results so far are promising: in an informal survey a month after the conference, 97 percent of the 44 respondents said they would recommend it for future leaders. Many attendees have since enhanced their unit’s physical training programs, developed better onboarding processes for new members and their families, and held feedback sessions for enlisted Airmen.

“One of the best comments I got was ‘sir, the best thing you did was you gave us permission from the two-star level to focus on culture,’” Klein said. “I’m glad it accomplished that, but to me it’s telling what we as an organization have forgotten, and we needed to remind ourselves.”

After Klein rotates out of USAFEC in mid-July, he’ll join the Air Staff as assistant deputy chief of staff for operations. But he won’t soon forget the importance of the center, which could prove decisive in a conflict in the Pacific where Air Mobility Command would likely have to fly much of the military’s troops and equipment across the ocean to get to the fight, relying on expeditionary Airmen.

“If we fail, if we’re not there, then it all crumbles,” Klein said.

Pay Raise for Junior Enlisted Faces White House Opposition, High Cost Estimates

June 11, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

President Joe Biden’s administration opposes a bipartisan provision in the House of Representatives to significantly boost pay for junior enlisted service members, arguing major changes should wait until the Pentagon completes its quadrennial review on compensation.

At the same time, Congress’ own budget analysts estimate the proposed pay raise—a central part of the House Armed Services Committee’s version of the National Defense Authorization Act—would cost more than $24 billion over the next five years.

The White House statement and the Congressional Budget Office analysis both came out June 11, just days before the full House is set to vote on the 2025 NDAA.

It remains unclear, however, if either will be enough to derail the proposal, which would boost basic pay for troops ranked E-1 through E-4 by 15 percent, in addition to the 4.5 percent annual raise proposed in the President’s budget request.

In its statement of administration policy, the White House noted more than 30 areas where it disagrees with the proposed NDAA but indicated broad overall support. And at a House Rules Committee hearing on the bill, lawmakers showed strong support for the pay raise, even with the estimated costs.

“The junior enlisted need this lift,” said Rep. Austin Scott (R-Ga.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee. “And the committee, that vote may have been unanimous … from the 58 members of the committee who have looked at this issue and who studied the DOD budget inside and out, and that number is accounted for in our appropriation numbers.”

“Many of our junior enlisted are struggling to afford housing; as housing costs have gone up, their pay has not kept pace,” said Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee. “This is a bold step to try and make sure that we support them, which incidentally will also help with recruitment and retention.”

But while many House lawmakers support the pay raise, it will also need to make it through the Senate. The Senate Armed Services Committee is set to take up its version of the NDAA this week, and once both bills clear the full chambers, they must be reconciled in conference, meaning the pay increase may remain up in the air for months to come.

The proposal originated from the HASC’s Quality of Life panel, led by Air Force veterans Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) and Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-Penn.), who argued in their final report issued in April that the boost was needed to keep pace with increasing wages for civilian low-income jobs.

The costs, however, could prove troublesome given the budget caps imposed by the Fiscal Responsibility Act through fiscal 2025 and a broader push to modernize equipment across the entire Pentagon.

The White House claims the budget increase would cost roughly $3.3 billion in 2025 and more than $21.9 billion from 2025-2029. The CBO, a nonpartisan budget analysis group, estimates the cost at $24.4 billion from 2025-2029.

The White House estimate would exceed the Air Force’s entire aircraft procurement budget for 2025. The CBO estimate would exceed the Air Force’s procurement budget for the new B-21 bomber from 2025-29.

That’s to say nothing of programs like the new Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile, which is $35 billion over budget. Air Force officials have said they are considering all options to meet the funding gap, though the program must still be certified by the Secretary of Defense to continue.

Beyond cost, the White House made the argument in its statement that now is not the time for a major change to the military’s pay tables while the Pentagon is still conducting its Quadrennial Review of Military Compensation (QRMC).

That review began in January 2023, with a final report scheduled for January 2025. In addition to pay, the review is looking at the ways the Pentagon calculates its benchmarks for pay, as well as allowances for housing, food, and more.

House lawmakers took aim at some of those issues in the NDAA as well, including provisions that would expand eligibility for the Basic Needs Allowance and fully fund the Basic Allowance for Housing instead of the current “cost-sharing” arrangement that forces service members to pay for 5 percent.

The CBO said it was too difficult to determine the costs of the proposed BAH change but estimated expanding eligibility for BNA would cost $260 million in 2025 and $1.4 billion over the 2025-2029 period. The White House has a much higher estimate of $14.8 billion for the basic needs allowance change and opposes the move.