South Korea’s F-4 Phantoms Fire AGM-142 Popeye Missiles One Last Time Before Retirement

April 23, 2024 | By Unshin Lee Harpley

South Korea conducted the final live-fire drill with its F-4 Phantoms amid the largest U.S.-ROK air exercise of the year.

The Republic of Korea Air Force’s F-4 Phantoms fired the precision-guided AGM-142 Popeye air-to-surface missiles on a range near the Yellow Sea on April 18, according to a service release.

These last training sessions marked the nation’s farewell to its remaining Phantoms before the fleet is phased-out on June 8, as well as a goodbye to its AGM-142 Popeyes, as the F-4 jets were the country’s sole aircraft capable of carrying the missiles.

ROK Air Force F-4 Phantom fighters equipped with AGM-142 missiles conducted their last live-fire exercise on April 18, 2024, near the Yellow Sea. Courtesy photo/ROK Air Force

The F-4 Phantom took its inaugural flight in 1958. The highly versatile jet concurrently served as the front-line tactical aircraft for the U.S. Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps from the Vietnam War to the Gulf War of the 1990s. Nearly four decades after its inception, the fleet was retired in 1996 from the U.S. Air Force—the last American branch to operate the jets.

Following the U.K. and Iran—which was a major buyer of U.S. weapons before the pro-American Shah was overthrown in 1979—South Korea became the third country to acquire the Phantoms in 1969. Among its variants, the F-4D was hailed as one of the world’s most powerful fighters at the time, far ahead of North Korean fighter jets. Until the introduction of the KF-16—the license-built South Korean version of the F-16—in 1994, the nation employed the Phantom as its primary fighter jet.

South Korea has operated approximately 220 Phantoms and their variants to date, including upgraded versions such as the F-4E and the reconnaissance aircraft RF-4C. Currently, there are only about 10 operational F-4s, all due to be retired in the coming months.

ROK Air Force F-4 Phantom fighters equipped with AGM-142 missiles conducted their last live-fire exercise on April 18 near the Yellow Sea. Courtesy photo/ROK Air Force

The AGM-142 “Popeye” missiles fired by the F-4 jets in simulated attacks last week were originally developed in the early 1980s by the defense technology firm Rafael. Later, they were redesignated as the AGM-142, known as “Have Nap” in the U.S. In 1987, the U.S. assessed the munition for equipping its B-52G/H bombers with a standoff precision strike capability, initiating procurement in 1989.

The U.S. initially imported the missiles from Israel but later began co-production of the AGM-142B-F commencing several derivatives of the Popeye, buying 294 AGM-142 missiles before their withdrawal from service in 2003.

Between 1997 and 1999, South Korea ordered over 216 of these air-to-surface missiles and their variants, including Popeye 1 and AGM-142C/D, from the U.S., with the country’s Air Force integrating the missiles in 2002. The missile is capable of striking targets over 60 miles away and can deliver a payload of 770 pounds. ROK Air Force explained that its range was crucial as it was the only missile capable of precisely targeting Pyongyang for years. The closest air base in South Korea from North Korea’s capital is Osan Air Base, located about 50 miles away.

The farewell ceremonies took place amid the largest annual U.S.-ROK Air Exercise of the year, KFT (Korea Flying Training) exercise, which aims to improve interoperability between the allies. This year’s edition saw more than 25 different types of aircraft totaling 100 from both nations.

U.S. fighters, tankers, reconnaissance and transport aircraft, including F-16s, F-35Bs, A-10s, E-3s, U-2s, MQ-9s, KC-135s, C-17s, C-130J and the Army’s MQ-1C drone, arrived from locations both on and off the Korean Peninsula for the exercise. The ROK contingent included F-35As, F-15Ks, F-16s, FA-50s, C-130s, CN-235s, and KC-330s.

“KFT is a critical training event due to the sheer size of the exercise, the amount of aircraft and people involved from across the joint and allied forces, and the complexity of the training,” Col. Charles G. Cameron, the 7th Air Force’s director of operations and plans said in a release. Cameron highlighted that the exercise provides “the most realistic opportunity” for the joint forces to rehearse tactics through challenging scenarios while bolstering defensive posture in the region.

The U.S. and South Korea are “ready to respond to any threat or adversary,” said Col. Matthew C. Gaetke, the commander of 8th Fighter Wing commander at Kunsan Air Base.

F-35 Tech Upgrade Slips to 2025; ‘Truncated’ Version in the Fall

April 23, 2024 | By John A. Tirpak

Deliveries of full-up Tech Refresh Three-equipped F-35s, previously expected in the middle of this year, now won’t come until 2025, Lockheed Martin officials reported on their April 23 first-quarter earnings call. In the meantime, they hope to deliver a so-called “truncated” version of the hardware/software package this fall.

Chief Executive Officer Jim Taiclet said there will be two releases of TR-3: a “combat training-capable” version that should be delivered in the third quarter of this and a “fully combat-capable” version in 2025. Lockheed has been storing newly-built F-35s with the TR-3 pending completion of testing and integration. Some 70 aircraft are in storage at an undisclosed location, awaiting a green light for delivery.

The Joint Program Office has said for several months that it has been discussing release of a “truncated” TR-3 package in order to get deliveries moving again and prevent further disruption to the units in a number of countries that have been waiting for their F-35s.

The delays are due to supply chain issues with TR-3 components as well as ongoing testing of the configuration, which comprises a processor and software package, along with other new gear that underwrites the F-35 Block 4 upgrade of the international fighter.

“We are wringing out all of the software through all of the new hardware and integrating it into all the aircraft,” which has “taken longer than our team predicted,” Taiclet said.

Meanwhile, the F-35 program office says the Block 4 program will be “reimagined,” with many of the planned capabilities now deferred to the 2030s.

As a result of the testing and supply delays, Taiclet said only 75 to 110 F-35s will be delivered in calendar 2024, versus a goal of 156. He noted that even a more modest schedule assumes “timely receipt” of components.

Taiclet said the F-35 program is highly concurrent, with “development, production, and sustainment” all happening simultaneously, which can lead to bottlenecks.

“We are bringing all relevant resources across our company and collaborating closely with our customers and suppliers to fully implement the TR-3 capabilities that everybody’s looking forward to getting,” he said.

System stability is improving from prior software versions into “the combat training capable configuration” and flight testing of this configuration is now underway, he said. Lockheed was “maturing the system with approximately 95 percent of TR-3 capabilities in this flight test program,” Taiclet added, with “continual software updates to support capability insertions over the Block 4 program and beyond.”

The truncated capability means Lockheed Martin “can get these jets in the hands of squadron, wing and regional commanders so that they can start training their pilots on them and training their maintenance organizations, and also get their base infrastructure, spare parts, tools, everything else.” The final software load for this release will be available “sometime in the next few months.” However, he insisted those jets “could be deployed into actual combat operations” if necessary.

The JPO said Release 1 is called 40P01 and will go out “when the code is stable, capable, and maintainable to deliver TR-3 configured aircraft for use in combat training,” but only with Release 2—40P02—will full combat capability be realized.

The F-35 partners and other “stakeholders” have approved TR-3 truncation acceptance criteria,” the JPO said.

When TR-3 is fully delivered, users will already be well-versed in “the operational patterns and procedures on how to actually fly the jet in combat,” Taiclet said.

He noted that, despite the TR-3 delays, the F-35 remains a good seller. The Czech Republic recently became the 18th country to buy the jet, and the U.S. agreed to sell additional jets to Singapore.

The Lockheed estimates jibe with that of F-35 Program Executive Officer Lt. Gen. Michael Schmidt, who told the House Armed Services Committee tactical air panel on April 16 that the whole Block 4 program must be “re-imagined” due to supply and testing delays and shifting requirements.

In a 25-page prepared testimony for the hearing, which closed shortly after it began, Schmidt said that a “Technical Baseline Review” of the F-35 “assessed that numerous Block 4 capabilities will not deliver until the 2030s due to technical complexity, software efficiency, human and financial resourcing, flight test capacity, lab quality and capacity, and a lack of defined requirements.”

The Government Accountability Office has urged on several occasions that Congress separate Block 4 from the overall F-35 program and make it a Major Acquisition Program in its own right; due to its cost and complexity, and the better to highlight troubles. Schmidt said the JPO plans to create that “subprogram” next year.

Schmidt acknowledged to the House panel that “TR-3 has taken far too long to deliver.”

He explained that the TR-3 hardware design is not yet fully mature, and this is a “significant complicating factor in software integration.” The result is “low manufacturing yields of parts necessary for aircraft production.” That in turn has led to “using software to overcome hardware design maturity challenges.” An independent review of the software architecture found “we have a solid software architecture, but until the underlying hardware is fully mature, the F-35 program will continue to struggle with software integration efficiency.”

Taiclet said there’s a silver lining to the situation and that the company is adapting to imposed program changes, so there will be incremental “step function increases in capability every few years.” He noted the DOD recently extended the expected service life of the aircraft

Lockheed chief financial officer Jay Malave said the two-stage TR-3 release “really keep our production on track here in 2024″ by decreasing the aircraft Lockheed has to keep in storage.

Malave also acknowledged that the extension of TR-3 into two releases could hurt profitability on Lots 15-17, given that the timing of deliveries affects progress payments and incentive fees.

Lockheed is pursuing “anti-fragility” efforts with the F-35 supplier base to ensure multiple vendors of parts and components, Taiclet said.

The COVID-19 pandemic underscored that “we need to have second and maybe third sources and geographic diversity … having single sources outside the U.S. is probably not the best idea,” even if more supplies drive up prices, he said.

For example, the supply of F-35 canopies is “one of the big degraders we have,” Taiclet said, suggesting that the company relies on only one supplier for that element.

In his prepared HASC testimony, Schmidt said the JPO has been working on reducing concurrency in the program, and that the “reimagined” Block 4 has “established Capability Decision Points (CDPs) to rigorously assess the technical maturity of hardware and software and the readiness for introduction into F-35 aircraft production lots.”

The re-imagined upgrade now includes 88 “must-have” capability improvements, he said, and these include “common capabilities for electronic warfare; communication, navigation and identification; sustainment,” new weapons for the partners as well as U.S. service-unique weapons, and “partner-unique capabilities.”

Block 4 will have to consist of “what industry can actually deliver,” Schmidt said.

Saltzman: New Space Force Readiness Model Will Be ‘Drastic Change’

April 23, 2024 | By Chris Gordon

Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman said reforms underway to the Space Force’s deployment and training model are the “most drastic change accompanying the establishment of the Space Force” in a note distributed to Guardians on April 19.

“It fundamentally alters how we prepare for operations,” Saltzman wrote in one of his “C-Note” updates.

Service leaders argue that the Space Force does not currently follow a model that properly prepares Guardians for a real-world fight. Saltzman has previously likened the USSF’s changes to turning a Merchant Marine into the U.S. Navy—that is, turning a peacetime force into one that is ready and equipped to go to war.

“Expecting Guardians to accomplish a combat mission they are not ready to perform betrays the trust the American people have placed in the Space Force,” Saltzman wrote. “That’s why building readiness is a central obligation of our service.”

Under the Department of the Air Force’s efforts to “re-optimize” for the so-called great power competition, the USAF and USSF are implementing new deployment models. For the Air Force, that means packaging forces in more holistic, deployable units that already train together under the AFFORGEN force generation model. The goal, ultimately, is to have Airmen who are more ready to fight on short notice.

The Space Force shares that goal but faces a different way of fighting since most Guardians are deployed in place with the same unit.

Saltzman has emphasized improving realistic training so that Guardians are prepared to fight. But personnel cannot do their day jobs and train at the same time—or at least they won’t be doing so in the future, Saltzman wrote. That is why the service needs the new Space Force Generation (SPAFORGEN) model, he said.

“It is based on the straightforward observation that day-to-day space operations do not prepare Guardians for the challenges they will face in a high-intensity combat environment,” Saltzman wrote. “Balancing operations with readiness requires a different approach than the ‘all-in, all-the-time’ construct we used before.”

SPAFORGEN, which was first previewed by Saltzman in a C-Note late last year, will follow three phases through which Guardians will rotate. First is the “Prepare Phase” for Guardians to learn their assigned roles. Second is the “Ready Phase,” during which Guardians will “participate in advanced training to equip them for high-intensity conflict,” Saltzman wrote. Finally is the “Commit Phase,” in which Guardians will be part of a combat squadron or combat detachment.

The Air Force is following a similar concept with AFFORGEN, which has four six-month cycles. That model has already been implemented, with the first Airmen deploying under it last fall.

Retired Air Force Col. Stuart Pettis, who worked on the Space Force headquarters staff and served as chief of training for Air Force Space Command, said SPAFORGEN is addressing a known but vexing issue.

“The challenge is providing white space for crews to do advanced training because they are fully employed doing to day-to-day operations,” Pettis said.

Now, the Space Force will have a more coherent approach to training, the service says.

“Under SPAFORGEN, both officers and enlisted in mission squadrons will continue to rotate in and out of operations while assigned to the unit, creating a more experienced, capable, and threat-focused crew force,” Saltzman wrote.

Guardians and an Airman manage the 25th Space Range Squadron’s “closed-loop” range environment during a test of the Remote Modular Terminal (RMT) in Colorado Springs, Colo., April 4, 2024. U.S. Air Force photo by Capt. Charles Rivezzo

Charles Galbreath, a retired Space Force colonel, said SPAFORGEN would be a helpful construct to help judge whether the Guardians are adequately prepared for their mission.

“Understanding the metrics to monitor readiness is critical and will likely continue to evolve as the Space Force refines its thinking,” said Galbreath, a senior fellow at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.

Indeed, Saltzman said SPAFORGEN will help the Space Force understand itself better—an argument Air Force leaders have also used for their force generation model.

“SPAFORGEN is another example where the Space Force is prioritizing combat effectiveness over organizational efficiency,” Saltzman wrote. “It allows headquarters staffs to accurately measure and resource readiness. Doing so creates the capacity to perform today’s mission while also preparing for tomorrow’s fight.”

While Saltzman has previously articulated the need to switch to the SPAFORGEN model, his recent C-Note takes the argument directly to Guardians whose lives will be affected by the changes.

“Big changes are never easy, and there is still a tremendous amount of work needed to fully implement SPAFORGEN across the service,” Saltzman wrote. “My hope is that, by sharing the principles here, leaders at every level can aggressively resource and normalize the SPAFORGEN model to maximize our combat effectiveness.”

Why a C-130 Crew Braved a 26 Hour Flight to Guam

April 23, 2024 | By David Roza

An Air Force C-130J Super Hercules crew braved a long flight around half the planet earlier this month as part of an experiment testing how quickly they could respond to a crisis in the Indo-Pacific.

Dubbed Hazard Leap, the test kicked off on April 18 when two full crews—three pilots and two loadmasters each—in a C-130J assigned to the 40th Airlift Squadron took off from Dyess Air Force Base, Texas, bound for Guam, a U.S. territory in the western Pacific that serves as a key military hub. The flight took 26 hours and 33 minutes, including a stop for gas in Hawaii along the way. The C-130J had a toilet on board, but the crew also took a quick bathroom break in Hawaii during the refueling stop, a Dyess Air Force Base spokesperson said.

The “remarkable” journey demonstrated the C-130J’s “ability to operate for extended periods without stopping,” Dyess wrote in a press release. The four-engine turboprop plane could fly even longer than usual thanks to external fuel tanks slung beneath its wings. The tanks added about 17,000 pounds of gas—roughly four extra hours of flying—according to Capt. Anna Santori, a pilot who flew the Hazard Leap mission.

The 40th Airlift Squadron is not the first to fly a C-130J with tanks, but, according to the release, it is the first in Air Mobility Command to use them in a maximum endurance operation (MEO), the term for very long flights meant to test the capabilities of the crew and the aircraft. Units across the Air Force have flown MEOs in recent years to prepare for a possible conflict with China over the vast Pacific Ocean, where Air Mobility Command will be hard-pressed to provide airlift, aerial refueling, and aeromedical evacuation to the rest of the military.

“There is too much water and too much distance [in the Pacific] for anyone else to do it relevantly, at pace, at speed, at scale,” AMC boss Gen. Mike Minihan said in 2022. “Everybody’s role is critical, but Air Mobility Command is the maneuver for the Joint Force. If we don’t have our act together, nobody wins.”

Past MEOs included a 36-hour KC-46 flight over the Pacific and a 72-hour KC-135 mission back and forth over the continental U.S. Part of the challenge is the physical and mental strain of flying an aircraft for a long period of time. Air Mobility Command is working on new solutions to help crews develop better awareness and diagnostics of their fatigue and alertness levels, much the same way the plane’s performance is measured by cockpit instruments.

“The status quo is we just ask the crew, ‘Hey, how’s everyone feeling?’” Maj. Nate Mocalis, who took part in the 72-hour KC-135 flight, said in January. “But as humans, we’re really poor judges of objectively assessing our actual fatigue and risk due to our levels of alertness.”

Another part of the challenge is connectivity: mobility aircraft have to be able to send information over vast distances in order to arrive at the right place and time as part of a complex battle plan, but today much of the mobility fleet relies on old-fashioned voice-to-voice communication, which takes a while and is vulnerable to misunderstandings. Minihan is pushing to adopt available technology that allows for secure beyond line of sight data exchange.

“I can just look at a tablet or a screen and I can see it,” Minihan told Air & Space Forces Magazine in February. “I can know which airfields have been bombed or damaged. Then I don’t have to just show up, look at the runway, and say that one’s not for me today. These things are all essential.”

Airmen at Little Rock Air Force Base made progress on the connectivity challenge during a separate MEO earlier this year. Maintainers with the 19th Airlift Wing installed a satellite communications terminal, called the SD/R4i Tactical Removable Airborne Satellite Communications solution, onto the hatch of a C-130J, then the crew successfully tested it during a 26-hour, 20-minute flight, according to the manufacturer, SD Government.

Am image of the SD/R4i Tactical Removeable Airborne Satellite Communications (TRASC) BLOS solution successfully tested by a C-130J crew from the 19th Airlift Wing during a 26-hour flight. (Photo via SD Government)

“Performed as part of Exercise Gnarly Explodeo, the maximum endurance mission recorded 100 percent reliability and availability from the TRASC system as it facilitated secure command and control data communications, defense applications, intelligence updates, electronic flight bags, video conferencing, voice over internet and WiFi calls,” the manufacturer, SD Government, wrote in a press release. Col. Denny Davies, commander of the 19th Airlift Wing, seemed to agree.

“This platform enables global command and control, providing our crew with unparalleled situational awareness,” Davies said in the release. “It makes the C-130 much more resilient and capable in the vastness of the Pacific, reinforcing the Air Force’s core tenant of distributed control.”

It was not clear if the 317th Airlift Wing also tried out new connectivity methods during Hazard Leap, but they have more challenges coming up, such as working with U.S. Marines in the Philippines during Balikatan, an annual exercise that started on April 22 this year. The mission sets there will likely include landing at blacked-out airfields, loading and off-loading High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), and forward area refueling, the Dyess spokesperson said. Hopefully those challenges will not look so difficult compared to 26 hours spent aboard a C-130 for Hazard Leap.

“The successful completion of Hazard Leap is a testament to our team’s dedication and the remarkable capabilities of the C-130J Super Hercules,” Maj. Alex Leach, mission commander and 40th Airlift Squadron assistant director of operations, said in the release. “This operation set a new standard for our squadron and this airframe; it serves as a stepping-stone for future missions.”

US Confirms First Attack on American Troops in Months as Drones Shot Down in Iraq

April 22, 2024 | By Chris Gordon

The U.S. thwarted a drone attack on American forces at Al Asad air base in western Iraq on April 22, marking the first time that American troops have been targeted since February, U.S. officials said.

“We can confirm it was an attack on Al Asad,” a defense official told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “There were no injuries or damage to infrastructure.”

Another defense official said that two one-way attack drones had been shot down.

The episode comes on the heels of an incident the day before in Syria in which a coalition fighter destroyed a rocket system that was firing in the vicinity of a U.S. base in Rumalyn, Syria. Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Maj. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder described the episode as an act of “self-defense” and a “failed rocket attack.”

The U.S. has not officially categorized the militia rocket firings in Syria as an attack because the projectiles did not land close to American forces and it is not clear where they were aimed.

“In this particular case, you had a truck with rockets on it that was shooting rockets all over the place, some type of malfunction,” Ryder said. He added the incident was still under investigation.

U.S. officials did not say which nation’s aircraft blew up the rocket system. American, British, and French fighters are known to fly missions over Syria as part of Operation Inherent Resolve, the campaign against the Islamic State.

“They clearly detected it, and so, took it out in self-defense,” Ryder told reporters.

U.S. forces had not been attacked since Feb. 4. Before that, there had been at least 170 attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq, Syria, and Jordan since mid-October, including a militia attack in late January in which three Soldiers were killed at Tower 22 in Jordan, just across the border from the U.S. Al Tanf base in eastern Syria.

The U.S. launched retaliatory airstrikes on Feb. 3. against 85 targets in Iraq and Syria affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Iranian-aligned militias. That was the Biden administration’s largest use of force against Iran-backed militia groups in Iraq and Syria. It succeeded in deterring further attacks against U.S. forces in those countries until this week.

There are some 2,500 U.S. troops in Iraq and 900 in Syria advising partner forces and conducting operations against the Islamic State. The U.S. and Iraqi governments are negotiating over the future of the U.S. presence in Iraq.

“I think that deterrence is always temporal,” CENTCOM boss Gen. Michael “Erik” Kurilla told the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 16. “So you can deter for a period of time and then it will wane.”

The episode follows a nail-biting moment earlier this month when Iran launched its first-ever direct attack on Israel, which involved about 330 drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles. Only four or five projectiles hit Israel and none did significant damage, U.S. officials say.

“We’ve seen these attacks, obviously, in the past,” State Department spokesman Matt Miller told reporters on April 22. “We have made quite clear to Iran, we’ve made quite clear to Iran’s proxy groups that we will defend our interests, we will defend our personnel, and that continues to be the case.”

President Says Poland ‘Ready’ to Join NATO Nuclear Sharing

April 22, 2024 | By John A. Tirpak

Poland may join the five NATO countries which could deploy U.S.-made tactical nuclear weapons on its fighters in a European armed conflict, Polish president Adrzej Duda said in a interview published April 22.

Duda, in an interview with the Warsaw publication Fakt, voiced concerns that Russia has been “militarizing” the enclave of Kaliningrad—its Switzerland-sized province on the Black Sea that borders Poland and Lithuania, but which is geographically cut off from Russia—and that this poses a direct threat to Poland. Russia claimed Kaliningrad from Germany as reparations following World War II.

If NATO decides to expand “nuclear sharing” with Poland to strengthen NATO deterrence in the region, Poland “is ready” to accept this role, Duda said.

Polish prime minister Donald Tusk, however, said the matter is a “massive idea” that has not been decided by the full government and requires further discussion on a national scale. The Associated Press quoted Tusk as saying Poland “must be absolutely positive we want” to have the nuclear role. There is no timetable for such a decision to be made.

The AP also quoted the Russian defense ministry as saying that deploying American nuclear weapons on Polish soil would be met with “all the necessary retaliatory steps to guarantee our safety.”

The “nuclear sharing” arrangement allows Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey to deploy American B61 tactical nuclear bomb weapons on their fighters under NATO control. Most of those countries also agree to store those weapons.

Duda noted that neighboring Belarus has been able to carry Russian tactical weapons on its fighters since 2022, and that Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko confirmed in December that the weapons had arrived and could be deployed at any time.

Belarus has hosted a number of wargames with Russia before and since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in early 2022; wargames that seemed aimed toward military action against Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. In response to Baltic NATO country concerns about a Russian move against them, the U.S. and other NATO partners began rotational deployments of ground forces and fighters to reinforce the region that continue today.

All of the nuclear sharing nations with the exception of Turkey have or have signed up to buy the F-35 stealth fighter. When Germany formally announced it was buying F-35s in late 2022, it specifically mentioned the need for a more modern fighter to carry out the nuclear mission. Turkey was drummed out of the F-35 program when it agreed to buy Russian surface-to-air S-400 air defense systems, which NATO partners said would imperil the F-35’s stealth secrets. Instead, the U.S. recently sold Turkey new F-16s.

Poland agreed to buy 32 F-35s in 2022 for $4.6 billion, but it already has advanced F-16s that could carry out the nuclear mission. Poland will accept its first F-35s within the next year, operating them initially at Luke Air Base, Ariz. for training of Polish pilots. The full complement will be delivered to Poland by 2030.

The F-35 was certified to carry and deploy the B61-12 tactical nuclear weapon last fall, but this was only acknowledged in March. The certification required 10 years of effort across 16 government agencies, a spokesperson for the F-35 Joint Program Office said.

The B61-12 has a yield of about 50 kilotons. While the U.S. will not say which of its F-35s are designated for the nuclear mission, squadrons at RAF Lakenheath, U.K. have previously been assigned that role, and nuclear-certified weapon storage facilities are already there.

ICBM Cancer Study Finds No High Levels of Hazardous Chemicals at Vandenberg

April 22, 2024 | By Chris Gordon

The Air Force found no significant evidence of harmful chemicals at Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif., as part of its ongoing Missile Community Cancer Study, the service said on April 22.

Samples collected in February found “no instances of contamination above regulatory action level.”

The sampling of Vandenberg focused on polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which are possible carcinogens. Three of the 116 PCB tests returned positive results—two at a Missile Alert Facility at the base and another at a Launch Facility. VOCs were detected in one sample.

However, the levels are low and “do not require mitigation efforts,” Air Force Global Strike Command said in a release.

The study, conducted by the U.S. Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine (USAFAM), was ordered by Gen. Thomas A. Bussiere in March 2023, in response to renewed concerns about the possibly hazardous conditions faced by missileers, who often sat on alert in underground bunkers in 24 to 48 hour shifts, as well as maintenance, security forces, and other Airmen who may also have been exposed to harmful chemicals at the missile sites.

The study originally focused on the three operational international continental ballistic missile bases Malmstrom Air Force Base, Mont.; F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyo.; and Minot Air Force Base, N.D. Together, those bases oversee 400 operational Minuteman III ICBM silos spread out over Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, Colorado, and Nebraska. But as a test and training base, Vandenberg includes many of the same types of facilities. In fact, Vandenberg is the only base that actually launches Minuteman III missiles when the Air Force test-fires the Cold War-era missiles several times a year to ensure they are in working order. The Air Force announced they were expanding testing to the base in late 2023.

Vandenberg Space Force Base—formerly Vandenberg Air Force Base—hosts Air Force Global Strike Command’s 377th Test and Evaluation Group, which supports missile tests, and Air Education and Training Command’s 532nd Training Squadron, which provides missile training to roughly 450 missile officers and maintainers annually.

USAFAM, the study lead, conducted the environmental sampling. The team also tested for radon, a radioactive gas, but the Air Force is still waiting for the results of those samples.

Locations included “two Launch Facilities, one Missile Procedures Trainer, one operational Missile Alert Facility (MAF)/Launch Control Center (LCC), one deactivated Peacekeeper MAF/LCC, and missile maintenance trainers within the missile maintenance training bay,” AFGSC said.

PCBs have been found at operational bases above allowed levels, and the Air Force is working to clean them up. The chemicals were commonly used in electronics before being banned in the late 1970s. The positive samples at Vandenberg were found on one of the missile alert facilities’ launch control panels and on an electrical component in a launch facility. Vandenberg has served as a missile test facility since the late 1950s and continues to host numerous launches a year.

Airman 1st Class Mikhail Ayala, 90th Operational Medical Readiness Squadron bioenvironmental engineering apprentice, takes samples at L-01 missile alert facility, or MAF, near Stoneham, Colorado, July 13, 2023. USAFSAM teams visited all of F.E. Warren Air Force Base’s MAFs as part of the ongoing Missile Community Cancer Study. U.S. Air Force photo by Joseph Coslett Jr.

The Vandenberg sampling was less comprehensive than the three operational bases. In a release, Air Force Global Strike Command said that the study team did not test the soil, water, or organophosphates, despite contaminated soil and water being long-held concerns of missileers and being tested at operational bases. Unlike operational bases, the Air Force said Vandenberg’s location along the California coast is not near agricultural land, and the base gets its drinking water from an off-base municipal water system.

A separate part of the Missile Community Cancer Study found preliminary evidence showing higher rates of prostate and breast cancer for the missile community cohort, according to Department of Defense health data, but the study has not found higher rates of non-Hodgkin Lymphoma, a blood cancer. In early 2023, concerns from a Space Force officer who had served at Malmstrom surfaced online and sparked renewed interest in cases of non-Hodgkin Lymphoma.

The Air Force dismissed concerns of cancer among Airmen who served in missile fields in 2001 and 2005 studies that were far more limited in scope than the one now underway. Officials cautioned that the health data the service has evaluated is limited to information gathered from internal electronic DOD medical records and that the dataset will expand. Further results with more data are expected to be released this summer.

Lt. Gen. Michael J. Lutton, the deputy commander of AFGSC, said in a release that the service leaders are committed to a “comprehensive, science-based, transparent MCCS serving our nuclear force and families.”

DOD Needs a Plan To Make Military Health System Genesis Work Better for Users, Watchdog Says

April 22, 2024 | By David Roza

A government watchdog urged the Department of Defense to set concrete goals for improving user satisfaction with military health system (MHS) Genesis, the widely-maligned program meant to modernize and streamline the military’s electronic health record (EHR) networks.

Without goals and a plan to achieve them, the Defense Department “will be limited in its ability to objectively measure progress, plan for improvements, and ensure that the system optimally meets the users’ needs,” wrote the Government Accountability Office in a report published April 18.

Indeed, while the 2023 user satisfaction survey shows improvement over past years, it paints a grim picture overall as users still prefer older DOD or private section systems.

Only 39 percent of MHS Genesis users agreed that the system enabled patient-centered care: a four percent improvement over 2022. That lags well behind the 56 percent of users who felt the same way about legacy EHR systems, and the 46 percent of respondents who use the private sector version of MHS Genesis.

Likewise, just 20 percent of MHS Genesis users agreed that the system was efficient, 21 percent said it had a fast response time, and 29 percent said it helped deliver high quality care. By comparison, legacy system users scored 36 percent, 31 percent, and 46 percent in the same categories, while private sector users scored 32 percent, 40 percent, and 50 percent.

The findings confirm a wide-held frustration with MHS Genesis, which has been plagued by glitches since it first rolled out in 2017. These include cybersecurity vulnerabilities, network latency, lengthy issue resolution processes, inadequate staff training, and delayed upgrades, the Congressional Research Service wrote in 2019. About 90 percent of survey respondents found inaccurate or incomplete patient health care information, which delayed access to health care, the Defense Department Inspector General wrote in 2022.

Some also say the system is too aggressive, flagging recruits with minor health conditions and preventing them from joining the service. It also slows down the medical review process: MHS Genesis connects to most civilian health information exchange networks to get a closer look at a recruit’s history, but that history is often incomplete, which draws out the timeline, the Defense Department Inspector General wrote in 2023.

“Prior to MHS Genesis onboarding, it was at least half, if not a third of the time to medically assess someone,” Brig. Gen. Christopher Amrhein, the head of the Air Force Recruiting Service, said in February. “If we can continue to work that piece, I think we can garner a great number of folks to join our Air and Space Forces.”

Lawmakers are worried too: at a hearing in December, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), chair of the Senate Armed Services subcommittee on personnel, said she was concerned MHS Genesis was delaying the recruiting process and raising issues over applicants with manageable or long-healed injuries. At the hearing, Maj. Gen. William Bowers, head of the Marine Corps Recruiting Command, said the Pentagon had “recently set up a task force to look at the challenges of implementation” that was due to finish in February. A Pentagon spokesperson did not immediately respond when asked for a status update on the task force.

Future Moves

With more than 171,000 users around the world, MHS Genesis is here to stay, which is why the Department of Defense needs goals for improving user experience and a plan to achieve them, GAO argued. Those goals and plans have not yet been established, because the department “focused its priorities on deploying the system to all sites and ensuring patient safety,” officials told the GAO.

The Defense Department partially concurred with GAO’s recommendation to establish MHS Genesis user satisfaction targets and work towards meeting them. After the deployment phase ended earlier this year, “we are transitioning to an optimization phase of the program to enhance the end user experience,” the department wrote.

But one area of MHS Genesis is still so bad that the GAO recommended the Pentagon find an alternative. The dental module, Dentrix, has had problems since it started in 2018, and it still can’t support a growing number of users, GAO found. The program office said the Dentrix vendor had “systemic inability to deliver fundamental capability on schedule and on budget,” but as of November, there were no dates, estimates, or plans for finding an alternative.

“Until the program office identifies an alternative approach to resolving the Dentrix issue, MHS Genesis will not provide critical functionality to dentists who are treating service members and other DOD beneficiaries,” GAO wrote.

The Defense Department partially concurred with GAO’s recommendation, saying it was currently conducting an analysis of alternatives to “explore new solutions.”

First AI Dogfights Focus on Safety, Building for CCA Applications

April 21, 2024 | By John A. Tirpak

The first live-fly dogfights between an artificial-intelligence-flown jet and human pilots took place last fall, the U.S. Air Force and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency revealed April 19. Ongoing testing of the capability will help inform the development of Collaborative Combat Aircraft, of which the USAF expects to field more than a thousand in the next decade.

The AI was loaded aboard the Air Force’s X-62 VISTA (Variable Stability In-flight Simulator Test Aircraft), a highly modified F-16 research aircraft, and flew multiple dogfight engagements against stock F-16s flown by human pilots, according to Lt. Col. Ryan Hefron, program manager for DARPA’s Air Combat Evolution (ACE) project, and Col. James Valpiani, commandant of the Air Force Test Pilot School, who spoke to reporters in a teleconference about the effort.

Hefron declined to divulge the outcome of the initial dogfights, citing classification.

The ACE program has been underway for four years, he said, and the AI was trained not by feeding it hundreds of pilot engagement reports but by allowing the program to teach itself dogfighting by running “billions” of simulations about how to maneuver the aircraft given a wide range of demands, conditions and mission rules of engagement. The AI algorithms started non-dogfight flight tests on VISTA in late 2022, accomplishing 21 such missions before the dogfight phase. During the run-up, the two-seat VISTA had two pilots on board, switching between various AI agents to evaluate their performance. But Hefron said they never had to take control away from the AI.

The AI was first verified in computer simulations. There, Hefron said, the AI consistently prevailed against human pilots. But the simulations didn’t include rules on how “not to break the airplane” by overloading its structural limits. That was added before the live-fly elements were begun.

In the exhaustive virtual engagements over several years, the AI was “rewarded”—a computing term for something akin to emphasis—when it did the right thing and corrected when it did the wrong thing. Valpiani said that only when simulations showed it was routinely safe did the action move to life-fly engagements.

The key to the effort so far has been operating safely, in order to give pilots confidence that the AI can be trusted to function as expected, Hefron said.

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall will soon fly in the VISTA to see firsthand how the experiments work.

In the dogfights, VISTA built up to full-on dogfighting by first flying defensively, then gradually being put more on the offense, often coming within 2,000 feet of a human opponent and flying at Mach 2. Flight test school students had a major hand in designing the tests, Valpiani said.

Valpiani and Hefron said a variety of dogfight situations were tested, including head-to-head engagements, and engagements where the dogfight started with one aircraft already in a disadvantaged position.

Gen. Mark D. Kelly, the recently-retired former head of Air Combat Command, had been cautious in recent years about human-machine teaming for air combat, insisting that before the Air Force plunges headlong into acquiring thousands of CCAs, fighter pilots who would collaborate with them must be completely satisfied that they can be trusted and are safe to fly with or the pilots would resist the technology.

Dogfighting is “inherently very dangerous,” Valpiani said, citing dozens of midair collisions in the F-16 and F/A-18 communities over the last few decades. It’s one of the “most difficult” aerial skills to master, he noted. That’s why the prime consideration in the “crawl-walk-run” effort has been on safety.

The autonomy builds on efforts such as the F-16’s Collision Avoidance System, he said, in which programs onboard the fighter will take control and steer clear of an impending air or ground crash if the pilot is not doing so. The system has saved a number of lives.

But air combat is much more complex than flying point-to-point or simply avoiding hazards, Valpiani noted, calling it the most stressing “challenge case” for an AI because it is such a dynamic activity, happening at high speed.

Lessons learned so far include how to quickly adapt the AI agent and load it into the aircraft, “plane-side” with laptops, or sometimes after takeoff. More such tests are contemplated and will pick up pace as the Air Force simultaneously launches the CCA development program with a contract to two or three companies later this year.