‘We Need to Modernize’ IT at Air Force Depots, Vice Chief Says

‘We Need to Modernize’ IT at Air Force Depots, Vice Chief Says

May 1, 2024 | By Unshin Lee Harpley

Questioned by lawmakers on the state of the Air Force’s maintenance depots, Vice Chief of Staff Gen. James C. “Jim” Slife said April 30 that the service is investing in IT and data infrastructure to better sustain new software-intensive platforms—while acknowledging that there is still work to be done to bring the facilities up to modern standards.

“We have a roadmap for depot modernization,” Slife said at a House Armed Services Committee hearing. “We recognize that we need to modernize these. Part of this is the IT systems, making sure we have a heavy investment in the data underpinning that is required for all our sustainment work, but it’s also the basic hardware that goes into the depot.”

The service currently has three Air Logistics Centers:

  • Warner Robins ALC at Robins Air Force Base, Ga.
  • Ogden ALC at Hill Air Force Base, Utah
  • Oklahoma City ALC at Tinker Air Force Base, Okla.

“The Air Force has absolutely no intent of stepping back from any part of the three air depot construct that we currently have right now,” said Slife. “In terms of what the sustainment center is doing to modernize and make sure that our organic depots remain relevant, we’re investing heavily in data science and data application in all of our systems.”

Slife did not specify if the roadmap the Air Force is working from is the 20-year plan announced in 2019 or a more updated version. In late 2021, lawmakers challenged the service to craft a more immediate, detailed five-year plan.

Several months later in mid-2022, the Government Accountability Office released a report detailing challenges across Air Force and Navy depots that directly affect readiness by reducing aircraft availability for operations and training. Problems identified in the report included deteriorating equipment and facility conditions, insufficient supply support, and problems with diminishing manufacturing sources and parts obsolescence.

Amid these challenges, the Air Force also has to upgrade its entire sustainment enterprise to handle new aircraft like the F-35 that many have described as a “flying computer.”

“With respect to specifically Hill, in the Ogden ALC, that is front and center for most of our flight fighter platform,” Slife said. “And most of our fighter platforms, particularly the newer ones, as they come on, are very software intensive. One of the things that we really value about at Hill, is the heavy investment in software engineering that goes on there, and the government architectures that they’re able to support and turn capabilities onto our frontline fighters a whole lot faster than perhaps our adversaries would.”

The 309th Aircraft Maintenance Group at Ogden has more than 2,000 personnel handling damage repair, inspections, technical orders, and other maintenance for F-16s, F-22s, and F-35s—a critical mission for the Air Force’s broader pivot toward great power competition.

Ogden is not the only depot investing in new technology, though. Slife also cited increased use of data science at the Warner Robins ALC, saying it helped reduce down time for the hefty C-5 Galaxy transport aircraft.

“For us, one of our problem children was the C-5,” Slife said. “The Warner Robins ALC has decreased the C-5 cycle time going through depot, by over 300 days. Part of the way they were able to do that is very similar to what the Navy is doing, is packaging the work, making sure all the parts are ordered and packaged ahead of time, so that when an airplane comes into the depot, all the parts are there. There are no diminishing manufacturing source issues to worry about, and we’re able to get those airplanes in and out of the depot more quickly.”

Beyond the three main depots, Slife also noted that service maintains “a number of partnerships with commercial depot service providers” across the Indo-Pacific region. These regional facilities mitigate the logistical challenges of transporting aircraft to and from the continental U.S.—and could be increasingly important as the Air Force looks to up its presence in the region in the coming years.

“It gives us the capacity that we need, number one. Number two, for those forward based fighter platforms, it saves us from having to drag them all the way across the Pacific Ocean and back,” Slife said. “Plus, in times of conflict, it provides added companies available to us. So, while we rely most heavily on our organic depot capacity, we do have a global network that we rely on as well.”

Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. James Slife testifies during a House of Armed Services Committee hearing for fiscal year 2025 budget request for military readiness, Washington D.C., April 30, 2024. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Stuart Bright)
National Guard Boss Warns of Potential ‘Critical’ Fighter Shortage

National Guard Boss Warns of Potential ‘Critical’ Fighter Shortage

May 1, 2024 | By David Roza

The head of the National Guard warned that a shortage of fighter jets, pilots, and maintainers in the reserve components could leave the military short-handed in a possible conflict. 

“We’ve got a 60 fighter squadron requirement,” across the Air Force, Army Gen. Daniel R. Hokanson, the Chief of the National Guard Bureau, said April 30 at a House Appropriations defense subcommittee hearing. “We have 25 of those in the National Guard, and our ability to retain that capability when we’re already short fighter pilots and maintainers will be critically important in the next coming years as we start to modernize our fleet.”

The Air Force is retiring several of the Guard’s aging A-10 and F-15C/D squadrons in an effort to fund modernization, but lawmakers worry there are not enough new replacement aircraft to make up the difference.

“I’m very concerned about the lack of, frankly, assets within the reserve components, especially on the Air National Guard side, to be that complementary force to the Active duty right now,” Rep. Mike Garcia (R-Calif.) said. “I think we’ve gotten below or are approaching below critical mass on some of the platforms that are being allocated to y’all.”

Garcia emphasized the importance of “getting the right equipment at the right levels to the Guard, to the Reserve units,” so that “you’re not just seen as the ugly stepchild to the Active duty side.”

A U.S. Air Force pilot assigned to the 158th Fighter Wing, Vermont Air National Guard, performs pre-flight procedures in an F-35 Lightning II during William Tell 2023 at the Air Dominance Center located at the Savannah Air National Guard base in Savannah, Georgia, Sept. 12, 2023. U.S. Air National Guard photo by Master Sgt. Morgan R. Whitehouse

But achieving that balance has proven difficult. Last year, both chambers of Congress introduced bills that would have required a minimum of 25 fighter squadrons in the Air National Guard, developed a plan to modernize and recapitalize the entire Guard fighter fleet by the end of fiscal year 2034, and a plan to field Next-Generation Air Dominance fighters in the Guard. 

Neither bill passed into law, but a bipartisan group of lawmakers pushed the Air Force to transfer Active fighters into Guard and Reserve units until the defense industry can produce more new fighters. Not doing so, they argued, could result in losing experienced, expensively-trained pilots and maintainers if reserve component squadrons are shuttered.

“Fleet leveling temporarily balances fighters across Active duty, ANG, and AFRC squadrons to allow time for industry production capacity to catch up with demand,” members of Congress wrote in a December letter to Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall. “Most importantly, fleet leveling prevents the closure of fighter squadrons across the Total Force, thereby preserving critical capacity that would otherwise be forever lost.”

Hokanson advocated for the same strategy at the April 30 hearing.

“With significant fighter pilot and maintainer shortages in the Air Force, we believe through temporary cross-component aircraft transfers, we can retain the critical fighter capability in all 25 of our existing fighter squadrons until aircraft procurement efforts can replenish them,” he said.

In the meantime, the general is pushing for F-15EX and F-35s to help the Guard fleet keep pace with its Active counterparts. The National Guard’s fiscal year 2025 unfunded priorities list includes six F-15EXs and six F-35s that the Air Force cut from its own budget request. 

The 12 new jets will help “make sure that we can continue to field these units so that we don’t create what we call a bathtub where we don’t have enough capability at the most critical time as we face challenges from our competitors around the globe,” Hokanson said. “We’re working everything we can to get those airframes as fast as we can.”

The head of Air Force Reserve Command, Lt. Gen. John P. Healy, took a similar view, arguing that the Reserves need to have “proportionally modernized and concurrently fielded” platforms to serve as an effective back-up for the Active force.

“We absolutely want to see that continue … so that we’re able to have fifth-gen aircraft participating as a surge capacity in a fifth-gen fight in the future,” he said at the hearing.

MH-139 Suffers ‘Critical’ Cost Breach; Sentinel ‘Halfway’ Through Its Review

MH-139 Suffers ‘Critical’ Cost Breach; Sentinel ‘Halfway’ Through Its Review

April 30, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

While the Pentagon is halfway through its review of the Air Force’s new Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) program in the wake of “critical” cost and schedule overruns, the service has declared a similar issue for the helicopters meant to provide security and transport across those ICBM fields. 

The Air Force recently notified Congress of a “critical” Nunn-McCurdy breach on the MH-139 Grey Wolf program, a spokesperson confirmed to Air & Space Forces Magazine. The Nunn-McCurdy Act requires the Pentagon to inform lawmakers if a program incurs a cost or schedule overrun of more than 15 percent.  

Any breach over 15 percent is considered “significant,” while a breach of 30 percent is considered “critical.” Programs with a critical breach require certification from the Secretary of Defense to continue. 

Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.), chair of the House Appropriations defense subcommittee, first revealed the MH-139 breach during an April 30 hearing, noting the ongoing Sentinel breach as well. 

“We need to understand the implications of both of these breach reviews for fiscal year 2025 and beyond,” he said.  

While the Sentinel breach was related to ballooning costs and years of delays, the MH-139 breach was caused by the Air Force’s decision in its 2025 budget request to slash the projected fleet from 80 to 42 aircraft—which caused the price per aircraft to rise significantly. Overall procurement costs, however, dropped $1.1 billion. 

The cuts to the MH-139 came “due to fiscal pressures and considering remaining service life of the UH-1N Huey,” an Air Force spokesperson previously told Air & Space Forces Magazine. 

The Air Force had planned to have the MH-139 provide transport for senior leaders, executive airlift in the National Capital Region, and aircrew survival training in addition to its ICBM patrol duties. With the cuts, the service now says the Grey Wolf will only be used by nuclear security forces. 

A militarized version of the AW139 helicopter, the MH-139 can fly faster, higher, farther, and with more weight than the UH-1N, which Air Force budget documents say have “significant capability gaps in the areas of speed, range, endurance, payload capacity, and aircraft self-protection.”  

However, issues with Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) certification several years ago caused the Air Force to delay purchases, and the Pentagon’s Office of the Director of Operational Test & Evaluation (DOT&E) has warned in its annual report that the Grey Wolf might fall shore of “operational effectiveness requirements.” 

Now, the office of the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment must conduct a review of the program to certify that: 

  • The program is essential to national security. 
  • The root cause of the overrun is clearly understood. 
  • New cost estimates are validated by the Pentagon’s Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation shop as reasonable. 
  • There are no lower-cost alternatives to the program. 
  • The program is a higher priority than other programs that must be reduced or eliminated to pay for the overrun. 

Sentinel Review to Finish by July 

While the MH-139 Nunn-McCurdy process is just beginning, the Sentinel ICBM program has been in it since January and is now “halfway” done, Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment William LaPlante told lawmakers in a separate April 30 hearing. 

Under the law, LaPlante noted, his office has 120 days after the submission of the President’s budget to complete its review. 

“So that deadline for us, roughly is July 10 or so,” he said. 

While Air Force leaders have repeatedly said they believe Sentinel must continue to replace the aging Minuteman III missiles that have been in service since the 1970s, LaPlante said no outcomes are being ruled out of the review process, including the program being canceled or certified to continue with modifications. 

LaPlante declined to share any preliminary findings from the review, but he did note that, in his own opinion, the Sentinel program suffered from poor communication between the prime contractor Northrop Grumman and its subcontractors, a lack of competition for the contract, and massive costs associated with the ground element. On the last point, Air Force officials have also noted that because Minuteman was put into service so long ago, its basic infrastructure needs to be massively overhauled, and the Air Force and industry have no recent experience with a project of that size. 

LaPlante also noted issues with Sentinel’s integrated master schedule, or lack thereof. When he started in the summer of 2022, he visited Hill Air Force Base and determined the program lacked a reliable master schedule, nearly two years after the Air Force had awarded an Engineering and Manufacturing Development contract to Northrop. 

“By the time you’re six months after a Milestone B [decision], you should have an integrated master schedule,” LaPlante said.  

Kendall: Air Force Expects 100 CCAs Operating Within Five Years

Kendall: Air Force Expects 100 CCAs Operating Within Five Years

April 30, 2024 | By John A. Tirpak

Though the Air Force plans to buy as many as 2,000 Collaborative Combat Aircraft through the late 2030s, only about 100 will be built by 2029, Secretary Frank Kendall told lawmakers April 30. After an initial award last week, more CCA contracts will follow on a roughly two-year tempo, he said.

During a House Appropriations defense subcommittee hearing, Kendall was asked how many CCAs will be in service and how soon.

“We’ll have over 100 on order or delivered by the end of the [Future Years Defense Program]; that’s for Increment 1,” Kendall said. The FYDP covers the next five years, ending in fiscal 2029.

Kendall noted that he has provided a “planning figure” of 1,000 CCAs. “That’s just really to reflect the fact that we’re serious about this, it’s going to be a significant part of our force structure,” he said.

The Air Force announced Anduril and General Atomics as the finalists for the first increment of CCAs on April 24. The two companies beat out aircraft primes Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman for the award, but the service said those companies can compete for the second increment on their own dime. The Air Force has declined to disclose details of the Increment 1 contracts, including their dollar value.

Kendall has said up to 2,000 CCAs might be in the Air Force’s long-term plans. But he told lawmakers that the “ultimate number is going to depend upon all the costs, portability [of technology to and from other platforms] and a number of other factors.”

Regardless, Kendall called CCAs a “fairly transformative change to going away from the individual fighter pilots all out there at risk together, to giving our fighter pilots a wingman.

“It can be attrited to a degree—it’s intended to be survivable—but attritable,” he added, meaning the drones can be lost in acceptable numbers. “That will give us a wide range of tactics and techniques that we currently can’t utilize.”

Asked how many CCAs will be acquired for every crewed fighter, Kendall said two to five is a likely range, but that “we won’t do it for every single fighter, probably, at least not initially.”

Kendall’s desired cost of a CCA will top out at about $25 to $30 million, he said; a “fraction” of the price of a crewed fighter. That would be about a third of the cost of an F-35, which came in at about $80 million each under the most recently-negotiated lot.

Air Force officials have said a contract for Increment 2 is expected to be awarded in 2025 or 2026, but that platform has not yet been defined. Service officials said it started out as being an “exquisite,” high-end, stealthy platform, but the service went back to the drawing board after wargames showed that large numbers of low-end CCAs were more valuable in a Pacific conflict than small numbers of high-end versions.

“The way the program is structured, it has multiple increments; they’re about two years apart,” Kendall explained in the hearing. Increment 1 is meant to go “quickly to production,” he said.

“We expect to have those aircraft in production within a few years and have deliveries before the end of the five-year plan,” he said.

Those first aircraft will “allow us to learn a lot; they’ll give us an operational capability,” Kendall said. “There’ll be a second increment coming along a couple of years behind that one. And we are particularly looking for international cooperation with that second increment.”

Boeing developed its MQ-28 Ghost Bat—also called the Airpower Teaming System—with Australia, and the Air Force has shown interest in that modular, uncrewed aircraft. The U.K. and other international partners are also working on their own autonomous aircraft. Kendall said he and Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin have discussed cooperation with several allies.

Pentagon acquisition and sustainment chief William LaPlante has noted that producing the same platforms or munitions in multiple countries would enhance coalition surge capability and interoperability, and provide a powerful deterrent if such items were produced at scale.   

The “secret sauce” that will “enable us to be more rapidly integrating with our allies and partners” is the fact that the CCA will generate a “government-owned reference architecture that we control,” said Allvin at the hearing.

“And so, as we are seeing advancements in the technology, we can maybe set the pace for how we can integrate and work with our allies and partners.”

Pilot Ejects from F-16 Crash at Holloman Air Force Base

Pilot Ejects from F-16 Crash at Holloman Air Force Base

April 30, 2024 | By David Roza

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated with details on the pilot’s condition.

An Air Force pilot ejected from an F-16 fighter jet assigned to the 49th Wing at Holloman Air Force Base, N.M., when it crashed April 30, the base announced. The crash happened at about 11:50 a.m. local time, west of the base near White Sands National Park. 

The only person on board the jet, the pilot “was transported by ambulance for medical care,” the base said in a Facebook post. Later that evening, officials said in a release that the pilot was in good condition and had been released from a local hospital.

Certain areas of the park were closed to the public to allow for emergency response. The wing commander, Col. Justin Spears, thanked a long list of agencies including local and state police, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and a U.S. Army Air Flight Detachment for helping out.

“They were vital in the response efforts,” he said in a statement. “On days like today, we are incredibly proud to be part of this amazing community.”

“An investigation conducted by a board of qualified officers is underway to determine the cause of the incident,” the base wrote. “Additional details will be released as they become available.”

The mishap comes about three months after an F-16 crashed in South Korea on Jan. 31, the third such crash on the Korean peninsula in nine months. All of the pilots of the downed aircraft ejected safely. The last time an F-16 crashed in the continental U.S. was on March 23, 2022, when an Oklahoma Air National Guard F-16 came down in western Louisiana. The pilot ejected safely from that crash, too.

From 2010 to 2021—the latest year for which the Air Force Safety Center has published statistics—33 F-16s have been destroyed in mishaps, or 2.75 per year. 

Holloman is one destination where rated Air Force pilots learn how to fly the F-16 in a 37-week Basic Course, also known as the B-Course. Graduates of the B-Course go on to operational assignments across the service.

Austin Pushes Back on Lawmaker’s F-35 Criticism: Not a ‘Paperweight’

Austin Pushes Back on Lawmaker’s F-35 Criticism: Not a ‘Paperweight’

April 30, 2024 | By Chris Gordon

Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III rebuffed criticism from lawmakers on April 30 that the F-35 program has proved too costly and unreliable to serve as the viable backbone of America’s and allies’ future fighter fleet.

“I would not categorize the F-35 as a paperweight,” Austin said in response to questioning from Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) during a House Armed Services Committee hearing on the Department of Defense’s fiscal 2025 budget. “It is one of the best aircraft in the inventory.”

Concerns about the F-35 program have once more come to the fore recently following a Government Accountability Office report that said sustainment costs for F-35 would rise to over $1.5 trillion over the program’s life.

The F-35 Joint Program Office took issue with the title of that report—“F-35 Sustainment: Costs Continue to Rise While Planned Use and Availability Has Decreased”—because it said a main driver of that increase was a fleet that would be in service longer, rather than new unforeseen issues, noting that the Department of Defense now plans to fly the F-35 through 2088 instead of 2077. Indeed, the GAO report stated that a key “reason for the increase in cost estimates is the extension of the service life of the aircraft.” Overall, the JPO said the report accurately highlighted known “affordability and readiness challenges.”

Austin said he did not disagree with the findings of the GAO report.

Gaetz took particular issue with the F-35’s mission-capable rate, a point he previously raised with Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall and Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. David W. Allvin during an April 17 hearing. In response to Gaetz, Kendall said the “operational availability” rate for Air Force F-35s is 55 percent, which he acknowledged was “not a good number.” But Kendall and Allvin disputed that the program was “failing,” as Gaetz claimed. Asked on April 30 by Gaetz whether the F-35 was a “failure,” Austin also said it was not.

“It’s a complex airframe,” said Austin, who testified alongside Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. and DOD comptroller Michael McCord. “There are a number of reasons why a platform could be not operational at any one given time.”

A major criticism of the F-35 program is contractor Lockheed Martin’s control over the intellectual property related to aircraft, the contractor’s struggle with delivering aircraft on time, and the massive cost of the program. Kendall—the former chief Pentagon weapons buyer—has been a vocal critic of how the program was originally envisaged years ago, and Allvin also noted those concerns earlier this month.

“Lockheed Martin has more power than in some other weapons systems,” Allvin said.

The Department of Defense is currently waiting on the Technology Refresh 3 upgrade to the jet, which Lockheed Martin executives said recently has been pushed back until 2025. The DOD has not been accepting new F-35s until TR-3 is ready, though Lockheed Martin and F-35 Joint Program Office head Air Force Lt. Gen. Michael Schmidt have said the Pentagon may begin taking delivery of jets with a “truncated” version of TR-3 later this year. In his written testimony to the committee, Austin noted the fiscal 2025 budget contains over $61 billion to “assure U.S. air dominance,” including for the F-35.

“This includes continued funding for the modernization and sustainment of the F-35 and F-22 fleets while developing the next-generation fighters and autonomous collaborative combat aircraft critical to maintaining superiority in the skies,” Austin wrote.

During the hearing, Austin acknowledged that the program has had issues but indicated that he supported long-term plans for the F-35.

“I agree in the future we should take [and] we should have a different approach,” Austin said. “We continue to work to make sure that we get our aircraft operational.”

SDA Awards Contract for Eight New ‘FOO Fighter’ Fire Control Satellites

SDA Awards Contract for Eight New ‘FOO Fighter’ Fire Control Satellites

April 30, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

The Space Development Agency has awarded a $414 million contract for eight new “FOO Fighter” satellites to Millennium Space Systems. 

Not to be confused with the popular rock band or the World War II term for unidentified aerial phenomena, these satellites will provide advanced experimental fire control sensors for SDA’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture, with the first launches projected in the final quarter of 2026.

SDA has already launched some missile warning/missile tracking satellites as part of its “Tranche 0,” and it has awarded contracts for dozens more in Tranches 1 and 2.  

The FOO Fighter program—which stands for Fire-control On Orbit-support-to-the-war Fighter—will be “separate from, but complementary to, our missile warning/missile tracking and missile defense efforts already underway in the tranches,” SDA Director Derek M. Tournear said in a statement.

With fire control, the satellites will be able to help shooters track, target, and take down missile threats, a step beyond detecting and tracking those missiles’ launches and flight paths. 

Tranche 2, slated to start launching four to six months after FOO Fighter, will include six missile defense satellites with mix of wide- and medium-field-of-view infrared sensors to generate fire control tracks to help ground forces intercept missiles. Those satellites will cost $52 million each, an SDA official previously said—in line with the cost of the FOO Fighter satellites. 

FOO Fighter satellites will be designed to counter advanced missile threats, including hypersonic missiles. The Missile Defense Agency is also working on that problem with its Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensors program, and the two agencies are working together. 

“We’re looking to proliferate in future tranches, working with MDA so that we can get that fire control fidelity to support programs like Glide Phase Interceptor and other programs that could use that data to intercept threats,” an SDA official said in January. 

This marks Millennium Space Systems’ first time as a prime contractor with SDA, but it was selected as one of the builders for Space Systems Command’s own medium-Earth orbit constellation of missile warning/missile tracking satellites. It has earned other work for the Space Force through its Tactically Responsive Space program.

“Our deep knowledge and understanding of this mission enabled us to engineer the right solution at the right cost, taking advantage of our common sensing vehicle and core components,” CEO Jason Kim said in a release. “The mission engineering we’ve done is grounded in modeling and simulation exercises, allowing us to understand the payload and its applicability to mission execution.” 

SDA’s low-Earth orbit constellation, meanwhile, continues to grow. The agency has either launched or awarded contracts for more than 450 satellites, all slated to go into orbit in the next five years. 

TRANCHELAYER# OF SATELLITESCONTRACTORS
0Transport20York Space Systems, Lockheed Martin
Tracking8SpaceX, L3Harris
1Transport126York Space Systems, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman
Tracking35L3Harris, Northrop Gumman, Raytheon
Demonstration and Experimentation System12York Space Systems
2Transport (Beta)90Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Rocket Lab
Transport (Alpha)100York Space Systems, Northrop Grumman
Transport (Gamma)20 (approx.)TBA
Tracking54L3Harris, Lockheed Martin, Sierra Space
Demonstration and Experimentation System20 (approx.)TBA
OtherFOO Fighter8Millennium Space Systems
PHOTOS: Airmen, F-22s Scatter to Austere ‘Spokes’ for Pacific Exercise

PHOTOS: Airmen, F-22s Scatter to Austere ‘Spokes’ for Pacific Exercise

April 29, 2024 | By Unshin Lee Harpley

A recent seven-day exercise sent Air Force F-22s—along with other USAF aircraft—to austere, challenging environments across Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands.

Agile Reaper, taking place for the second time after its inaugural edition last year, featured 800 Airmen and 29 aircraft across five different locations from April 10-16, training on the Agile Combat Employment concept that leaders say will define the service in the years to come.

The 3rd Air Expeditionary Wing from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, conducted simulated combat situations and tested agility in deploying combat air power across the expansive Indo-Pacific region.

“The goal is to develop resilient warfighters who are confident in their ability to execute using mission-type orders, generate airlift sorties in a contested environment with limited resources and grow together as a diverse team while gaining familiarity with other career fields,” Lt. Col. Logan Sutton, 535th Airlift Squadron commander, said in a release.

The exercise used a hub-and-spoke model: Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, served as the central hub, while Saipan and Tinian of the Northern Mariana Islands, the Japanese island of Iwo To, and Andersen’s Northwest Field served as the spokes for the exercise.

Many of the spokes have limited resources and bare-bones facilities. While the Northwest Field is on Guam, it is separated from the rest of the base.

F-22s from Elmendorf-Richardson and Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, flew across the Pacific for the exercise. Elmendorf-Richardson also sent an HC-130 Combat King II for air refueling and a C-12 Huron for transport, a base spokesperson to Air & Space Forces Magazine. KC-46 and KC-135 tankers came from McConnell Air Force Base, Kan., and Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska, respectively.

Travis Air Force Base, Calif., dispatched its C-5 Galaxy, and Yokota Air Base, Japan, contributed a C-130 Hercules to transport service members and cargo back and forth between Guam.

“The Airmen landed in Saipan with limited resources and quickly worked to secure food, water, shelter and operational necessities,” Sutton said. “These competencies have been exercised routinely in specialized military units. However, doing so at scale with Mission Ready Airmen increases the flexibility and effectiveness of joint maneuver forces throughout the theater.”

Col. Kevin Jamieson, 3rd Wing and 3rd Air Expeditionary Wing commander of the Elmendorf-Richardson said this year’s training was to test “the limits of what a cohesive 3rd AEW is capable of in a combat-representative environment” based on the experience on Guam and Tinian last year. The training also served as the Air Force Force Generation (AFFORGEN) certification for the wing, a requirement for the service’s deploying forces.

Significant support operations were provided from Pearl Harbor-Hickam and Elmendorf-Richardson. While the main exercise concluded earlier this month, the rest of the forces continued to provide support until April 29, the spokesperson added.

Nearly Every Governor Opposes Guard Units Moving into the Space Force

Nearly Every Governor Opposes Guard Units Moving into the Space Force

April 29, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

Governors from nearly every U.S. state and territory signed a letter sent to Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III on April 29 asking him to withdraw an Air Force proposal to transfer Air National Guard units to the Space Force. 

While the letter does not endorse the creation of a separate Space National Guard, it does mark a clear pushback against Department of the Air Force plans to move all its space professionals into one service component. All told, the letter has 53 signatories—48 state governors, and five governors of territories. Only the leaders of Florida and Texas did not sign. 

The Air Force proposal, submitted to Congress this spring, would waive federal law requiring “no change in the branch, organization, or allotment of a [Guard] unit located entirely within a state may be made without the approval of its governor.” 

The proposal “disregards gubernatorial authorities regarding the National Guard and undermines over 100 years of precedent as well as national security and military readiness,” the governors’ letter states. 

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall has argued the move would not weaken governors’ control over their Guard units because the situation is a unique one-off, affecting a tiny portion of the Guard’s personnel. There are approximately 14 space units in seven states with 1,000 Air National Guardsmen. The Army and Air National Guard combined have more than 430,000 personnel with hundreds of units. 

“We’re talking about a few hundred people,” Kendall told reporters April 10. “The numbers for any state are less than, I think, 2 percent of their Guard people and there are only a handful of states are affected.” 

But the 53 governors—most of whom do not have any space units in their Guard—argued that the move would carry wider implications. 

“Legislation that sidesteps, eliminates, or otherwise reduces governors’ authority within their states and territories undermines long-standing partnerships, precedence, military readiness and operational efficacy,” they wrote. “This action also negatively affects the important relationships between governors and DOD at a time when we need to have full trust and confidence between the two to meet the growing threats posed by the era of strategic competition as well as natural disasters.” 

Of the two states that did not sign the letter, Florida has space Guard units, while Texas does not. 

The debate over the space-focused Guard units has been raging for years now.  

Proponents of a Space National Guard say the Air National Guard units who do space missions are “orphaned” under the current arrangement, that creating a separate Space Guard would mostly be an administrative move with few costs, and that Guard members want to remain available for state-level missions like humanitarian relief or natural disaster response. 

Kendall, other Department of the Air Force leaders, and the White House have argued a separate Guard would create unnecessary and costly bureaucracy and that space is inherently a federal mission, so Guards have no need for space units. Recent legislation allows the Space Force to have part-time personnel, and leaders say that unique setup will ease the transition for Guard members. 

A third option is to leave the Air National Guard units as they are, with minimal changes to better formalize their relationships with the Space Force. 

Congress directed the Air Force to study all three options and deliver a report with recommendations by March 1. Kendall said April 10 that the report will be delivered soon but the results were clear: folding Guard units into the Space Force is the preferred solution; creating a separate Space National Guard would be the worst option. 

“It doesn’t make any sense,” Kendall argued. “It’s going to cost to administer. There is not in my mind, any expectation that it will grow. And it’s going to be administratively difficult. So I don’t think that that’s a very attractive option for a number of reasons.” 

While the vast majority of governors disagree with Kendall, what Congress will do remains unclear. Seventeen senators have cosponsored a bill that would create a Space National Guard. Corresponding legislation in the House also garnered 17 cosponsors. 

However, at least one influential lawmaker is on Kendall’s side: Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), chair of the House Armed Services Committee. According to a report from Breaking Defense, Rogers said he was “fully supportive” of the Air Force proposal. 

The issue is likely to come up again in the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act—the Senate Armed Services Committee is scheduled to begin work on the annual policy bill in June.