Sentinel: The Non-Negotiable Defense Investment

June 14, 2024 | By Col. Jennifer Reeves, USAF (Ret.)

In a world where nuclear weapons continue to proliferate, it’s easy to forget sometimes that our own nuclear readiness is a foundational element of our national security. Indeed, it is every bit as vital to national security today as it was during the Cold War.

The reason is that nuclear security depends on deterrence. And readiness is what deters adversaries. As retired Air Force Gen. Kevin Chilton recently explained, we must “cause an adversary decisionmaker to refrain from certain acts, under certain circumstances, out of fear that if they take those actions, they will fail to achieve their objectives and/or suffer unacceptable consequences.”

For deterrence to work, our nuclear forces must be credible. That is why Airmen and Guardians last week launched not one, but two unarmed Minuteman III (MMIII) intercontinental ballistic missiles from Vandenberg Space Force Base. These periodic demonstrations put our nuclear preparedness on display.

Yet it’s essential to recognize that those Minuteman III missiles are decades old, well beyond their engineered lifespans. Today, the Air Force desperately needs to update those missiles and the silos they launch from with modern technology. This is what the Sentinel program is all about. In a world where threats are on the rise, this program is vitally important.

Deterrence has given us relative stability among nuclear-capable states for decades, successfully preserving the world from nuclear conflict since the beginning of the Cold War. A strong deterrent posture is the best way to keep it that way. Peace through strength works. Tensions between the nuclear powers have waxed and waned over the past 80 years, but the fact that the nuclear genie has remained in its bottle proves strategic deterrence has worked.

Today, our deterrent force is under threat because of the advancing age of the nuclear triad, comprised of land-based missiles, our ballistic missile submarine force, and our strategic bombing capability. Russia and China are currently expanding both their nuclear capabilities and capacity, seeking to gain a competitive advantage over the U.S. triad. Worryingly, they have paired this modernization with increasingly aggressive behavior outside their borders—China with territorial incursions in the Pacific, and Russia through its invasion of Ukraine. Nuclear saber rattling has been a key tool employed by both nations.

Holding this aggression in check and providing U.S. leaders with viable options should circumstances demand it requires a modern U.S. nuclear triad, and that starts with the ground-based leg: the intercontinental ballistic missile enterprise.

ICBMs are on alert and have been, 24/7, since 1959. The Minuteman III ICBM enterprise, engineered for a 10-year life span and fielded in the 1970s, is still in place. They are sitting in launch silos built in the 1950s and 1960s. The last Minuteman IIIs were produced and fielded in 1975. Numerous life extensions have kept these missiles viable, but they will not last forever. Readiness in the future demands that they are replaced as soon as possible. A 50-year life for a system originally designed for 10 marks a tremendous return on investment, but failing to replace it will make that success moot.

guidehouse icbm — Missileers with the 320th Missile Squadron prepare for a Simulated Electronic Launch-Minuteman test inside a launch control center at a missile alert facility in the 90th Missile Wing missile complex, Aug. 21, 2018. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Breanna Carter

As a former MMIII wing commander, I know that the threat we face and seek to deter is both credible and potent. I also know that the force we are operating is rapidly reaching the end of its viability. Our nation’s top leaders demand capable, competent options. American citizens deserve a modern, sustainable strategic deterrent capability.

The United States has not executed a full ICBM recapitalization effort in decades. A full reset, which is what we need today, is not simple or inexpensive. Indeed, once this effort got underway, it became clear that the original infrastructure is in need of even more rework than originally forecast, driving up the cost and triggering a Nunn-McCurdy breach, which means the price has increased more than 20 percent.

The Department of Defense underestimated the scale of the challenge. For example, the silos and launch control centers, where the operators sit to control the missiles, are connected by a discrete network of copper cabling. Program officials recently discovered that the entire network must be replaced. It has been slowly degrading since the 1950s. We are also running out of replacement cabling, making routine maintenance difficult. And it’s not a small network: Some 8,000 miles of new cabling is needed to be produced and laid underground.

With 450 missile silos, 45 alert facilities with launch control centers, and hundreds of missiles, this is among the most challenging efforts our nation has ever undertaken. It’s also a non-negotiable undertaking.

Our nuclear missile force has helped secure our nation for more than 65 years. The daily headlines tell us we still live in a dangerous world. Russia invading Ukraine, China pressing its neighbors in the Pacific, Iran pursuing nuclear arms, North Korea threatening us and our neighbors. Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment William LaPlante was right on the mark when he recently explained: “The modernization of our triad is the top priority of the Defense Department.”

Deterrence and a strong defense do not come at discount prices. The cost of being unprepared, however, is always far greater.

Retired U.S. Air Force Col. Jennifer Reeves is a senior fellow at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.

Allvin Hedges on the Future of Next-Generation Air Dominance Fighter

June 13, 2024 | By John A. Tirpak

The Air Force’s Next-Generation Air Dominance fighter faces an uncertain future in the fiscal 2026 budget, Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin suggested June 13 during an AFA Warfighters in Action event.

Allvin also said the Air Force doesn’t plan on keeping individual Collaborative Combat Aircraft in service very long, preferring to rapidly shift to future iterations of the autonomous drones.

In response to a question from Air & Space Forces Magazine, Allvin said moving ahead with NGAD is merely one of many “choices” USAF will have to make in the coming years as it balances a host of modernization priorities with limited budgets. He did not describe NGAD as a must-have, as the service has done previously.

While Congress is still debating fiscal 2025 defense funding, the Pentagon has already started work on the 2026 budget. The Air Force in particular must consider how to fund soaring costs on the new Sentinel ICBM, further work on the B-21 bomber, F-35 procurement, and more, all while dealing with congressional budget caps, inflation, and other drags on resources.

Considering all that, Allvin was asked if NGAD is still affordable or whether the program will have to be re-cast every couple of years to keep up with the threat.

“We’re going to have to make those choices, make those decisions across the landscape,” he said. “That’s going to probably play out in the next couple years or by this ’26 [program objective memorandum] cycle. So those are things in work.”

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said a year ago that the service would award the NGAD contract in 2024, with a single company chosen to develop the jet. After Northrop Grumman said it would not bid on the program, the competition is likely between Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

NGAD may be vulnerable because while the Air Force has contractors set to develop or build its other top priorities—the B-21, Collaborative Combat Aircraft, the F-35, the KC-46, etc.—there is no contractor or constituency for the new and highly expensive fighter.

With budgets getting tightened across the board, services have had to make tough choices. The Navy already decided in its fiscal 2025 budget request to indefinitely defer its version of NGAD, which it calls the F/A-XX.

The Air Force’s NGAD has been projected to replace the F-22 circa 2030, with the capability to achieve air superiority against worsening foreign air threats and enemy air defense systems. Kendall has said the manned fighter element of NGAD could cost “hundreds of millions” of dollars per airframe, and that the Air Force would likely buy about 200 of them.

NGAD is usually described as a “family of systems,” including the crewed aircraft; autonomous, uncrewed escorts; and other disaggregated capabilities. Collaborative Combat Aircraft is considered part of that family of systems, and is in fact funded in the same program element as NGAD.

CCA

While Allvin was noncommittal about the future of NGAD, he laid out a more fulsome vision for Collaborative Combat Aircraft and made clear that the autonomous drones would not serve for long periods and require sustainment similar to crewed aircraft.

Instead, he hinted CCAs will have a service life of about a decade or less.

“I don’t want a set of Collaborative Combat Aircraft that’s going to last for 25-30 years,” Allvin said. “Because what comes with that? Well, if it’s going to last 25-30 years, it’s got to do everything but make the toast in the morning.”

That in turn would make each aircraft more expensive and reduce the number that can be bought with the available funds, creating a “spiral” of reduced airframes and rising costs, Allvin warned.

“‘Built to last’ is a tremendous 20th-century bumper sticker, and the assumption then was, whatever you had was relevant as long as it lasts,” he said. “I’m not sure that’s true anymore.”

After 10 years of service, a CCA “won’t be as relevant,” he said, but “it might be adaptable, and that’s why we’re building in the modularity, that adaptability.”

The Air Force is making “big bets on … human-machine teaming. I think that’s a safe bet,” Allvin added. He said artificial intelligence and autonomy will most likely help rather than replace human operators, and gave as an example that machines will be able to sense if an F-35 pilot controlling six CCAs is over-stressed or too tired to remain effective.

New platforms will also have to be multi-capable and adaptable as missions evolve, he said. Developing a platform that can only perform one mission means “we’re failing,” he said.

More broadly, Air & Space Forces Magazine asked Allvin if resource constraints will compel the Air Force to change the way it fights—shifting to a standoff force, for example. Allvin said these are issues he thinks about “every night” and “we do have to ask those fundamental questions.”

“What does an effective Air Force look like in the future? And how much of that is dependent on external resources?” he asked. “Some of that we can control. The resources [part] is very tough. We can advocate for more resources.”

Allvin said it’s incumbent on him to ensure “we aren’t perpetuating a structure, perpetuating a set of processes” that will keep the service in an outdated structure of acquiring new capabilities. It must be endlessly flexible enough to abandon programs if they are quickly overtaken by events.

“We cannot pursue a lot of eggs in one basket, and then find that the threat has advanced,” he said.

It would be self-defeating if “we don’t have a way to jump, that we can’t pivot” to other capabilities, he said. “And those are the things we need to watch out for as we go forward. And I think there will be areas of risk.”

The Air Force’s budget deliberations are seeking to balance “the risk today versus the risk of tomorrow, modernization versus the readiness of today. Those are all things we are trying to balance and yes, ’26, it’s very, very thin across the board.”

At the end of the day, he added, all he can control is getting the service “on the path and make a legitimate case that the Air Force is optimizing…for what’s right for the environment today and into the future.”

The New ACC: Allvin Re-Imagines Air Combat Command

June 13, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

Air Combat Command is “transitioning into a different type of command,” focused on readiness across the entire Air Force, and surrendering oversight of key Numbered Air Forces, Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin said, adding new details to a planned major shift in how the Air Force is structured.

In surrendering the Numbered Air Forces, ACC will no longer oversee organizations that present forces to joint force Component Commands, the organizations that fight the nation’s wars, as well as its role in developing requirements for fighter aircraft and related weapons. The NAFs will become stand-alone commands and the requirements functions will migrate to the new Integrated Capabilities Command, which is still being organized.

The Air Force is traditionally made up of major commands, with ACC accounting for most, but not all, of its combat airpower. Those commands included both institutional commands, such as Air Education and Training Command, that provide services to the institution, while others are component commands, such as Pacific Air Forces, that present forces to the Pentagon’s joint Combatant Commands. Meanwhile, other component commands were included inside major commands, such as 16th Air Force, which presents forces to U.S. Cyber Command, which has been housed in ACC.

“So we’re sort of disjointed,” Allvin said June 13 at an AFA Warfighters in Action event, comparing the differences in how the Air Force presents forces to combatant commands to “wooden shoes.”

In February, when Allvin and other leaders revealed plans to re-optimize the Department of the Air Force for great power competition, Allvin disclosed plans to make AFCYBER a “standalone” service component command. Now that concept is being extended to include other Numbered Air Forces, among them:

Air Forces Northern (1st Air Force)

Air Forces Space (9th Air Force)

Air Forces Southern (12th Air Force)

Air Forces Cyber (16th Air Force)

They join Air Forces Central as component commands providing forces to combatant commands. Allvin said the change is relatively straight forward.

“We’ve done several tabletop exercises and [operational planning teams] to get together on it,” he said. “We really need to understand: What is it that a service component needs to be effective in being able to present and have a dialogue with the combatant commander? I don’t want to overstate or oversimplify this, but that part is actually the easier part. You probably still need the C2 elements, so the Air Operations Center and elements of the command staff and the ability to be able to present those forces.”

But redesignating these commands should make USAF structure easier to understand and decipher for both the combatant commands and rank-and-file Airmen—and that could engender greater appreciation for the airpower Airmen generate.

“The idea that we have a consistent way that we present forces and [a consistent] command structure to the combatant command, more directly interfacing with those combatant commanders, I think not only gives a better joint experience to our leaders, but it also has a consistent tie across our Air Force in how we relate to the combatant commands,” Allvin said.

Re-Imagining ACC

For ACC, the largest of the four-star major commands, the changes realign both its mission and focus.

“This is not an indictment on how ACC has been handling those Numbered Air Forces that are also service components,” Allvin said. “They’ve been doing a fantastic job. But we need to understand what we’re asking ACC to do: ACC is transitioning into a different type of command.”

After giving up the NAFs and the its role in developing requirements for fighter aircraft and related weapons, ACC will pivot to oversight for readiness across the service, Allvin said.

“Air Combat Command’s role is really outsized in how we see it for accounting for the readiness of the entire Air Force,” Allvin said. It will work “across the other institutional commands to generate the readiness, the exercises, have the inspections to ensure that we’re mission-ready, not just task-ready. So this is actually carving out a little room for ACC to have that expanded readiness role.”

Allvin sees that role as crucial to plans to develop “deployable combat wings” that train and deploy as an entire unit, and to designate other units as combat-generation wings, which will provide combat capabilities to other deploying commands. By splitting the deployable organizations away from responsibility for base operations, the wings will be more self-sufficient and ready to go fight elsewhere without having to worry about what happens to the bases they leave behind.

Allvin said a host of new O-6 command jobs will be created, driving a need for new Numbered Air Forces to manage them.

“The [new] Numbered Air Forces will serve more as institutional Numbered Air Forces, helping Air Combat Command oversee those wings within [ACC] that have both the deployable combat wing element and the base command,” he said.

Allvin said ACC commander Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach is working with the Air Staff to clarify remaining changes and that additional information will be shared as it is completed.

Brown: Goal Is to Get Ukraine Its First F-16s This Summer

June 13, 2024 | By Unshin Lee Harpley

Ukraine is poised to get its first F-16 fighters in the next few months, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. confirmed June 13, in a move that would bolster Kyiv’s air capabilities against Russia.

“We’re working diligently to make sure that the Ukrainians have what they need, and the goal is to get them those F-16s this summer,” Brown said at a press conference following a Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting in Belgium.

Brown’s remarks come just a few days after Dutch Defense Minister Kajsa Ollongren reportedly said the Netherlands would deliver some of its F-16s to Ukraine this summer.

“From this summer, I expect that the first F-16s will actually be delivered to Ukraine, and from there on, in a constant flow, by increasing the number and strengthening the Ukrainian Air Force,” Ollogren said in an interview with an Ukrainian media on June 12. “Denmark will be the first country to provide airframes and we will follow after Denmark.”

The exact number of F-16s that will arrive in Ukraine this summer remains unclear, but the timeline marks a major update after assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs Celeste Wallander told reporters in January that the Pentagon expects the Ukrainian Air Force to achieve “initial operating capability” on F-16s by the end of 2024.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. at a Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting in Belgium. Screenshot

In addition to the Netherlands and Denmark, Belgium and Norway have also pledged to send F-16 fighters to Ukraine. Belgium signed a security pact with Ukraine in May to transfer 30 of the fighters by 2028. While the precise arrival date of Belgium’s F-16s is not clarified in the agreement, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that the Belgian jets are slated to touch down by the end of this year.

The timeline on Belgium’s transfers, however, may depend on how fast it can get its hands on F-35As to fortify its own military capabilities. The country’s first F-35A only recently took to the skies for its inaugural flight.

Norway, the Netherlands, and Denmark are also all in varying stages of buying the F-35 and may deliver up to 22, 24, and 19 F-16s, respectively, according to media reports. That could mean Ukraine would ultimately have a fleet of 95 jets, but the four European nations’ delivery schedule is also contingent upon the completion of pilot and maintainer training programs.

“It’s not just the pilots you have to have,” said Brown. “But maintenance is also a key part of that, and training the maintainers.”

While the U.S. just wrapped up training for its first batch of Ukrainian F-16 pilots last month, those aviators are set to undergo additional training overseas. The Air National Guard’s 162nd Wing in Tucson, Ariz. is training a total of 12 Ukrainian pilots by the end of fiscal 2024. Additional pilot training by the European coalition is taking place in Denmark and Romania.

However, details regarding maintainer training have been scarce, although U.S. officials previously said that maintainer capability would be established before the end of this year.

According to a report from POLITICO last week, Kyiv is seeking further assistance in training more F-16 pilots. U.S. lawmakers also raised concerns last month regarding the number of Ukrainian pilots currently slated for training. In a letter to Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, Rep. Michael Turner and other others said graduating a dozen Ukrainian pilots is “simply insufficient,” and that there remains a “critical need for a substantial number of trained pilots.”

Meanwhile, President Joe Biden and Zelenskyy signed a 10-year bilateral security agreement at the G7 summit in Italy on June 13. Ukraine has bolstered its security by signing a total of 15 such agreements with other countries including the U.K., France and Germany, since the onset of Russia’s invasion in early 2022.

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.