Behind the Scenes of a Minuteman ICBM Launch with Three Test Warheads

Behind the Scenes of a Minuteman ICBM Launch with Three Test Warheads

Nov. 6, 2024 | By Chris Gordon

VANDENBERG SPACE FORCE BASE, Calif.—The U.S. launched a Minuteman III missile here at 11:01 p.m. Pacific Time on Nov. 5., in an important test of the weapon’s ability to strike its targets with multiple warheads.

The Minuteman III missiles that form a critical leg of the U.S. nuclear triad each carry one nuclear-armed reentry vehicle. But the missile that was tested carried three test warheads.

The ICBM test was controlled by an airborne command post in a test of the U.S. ability to launch its nuclear deterrent from a survivable platform.

“These tests are demonstrative of what Striker Airmen bring to the fight if called by the president,” Gen. Thomas A. Bussiere, the commander of Air Force Global Strike Command, said in a release. “An airborne launch validates the survivability of our ICBMs, which serve as the strategic backstop of our nation’s defense and defense of allies and partners.”

After the launch command was transmitted by a U.S. Navy E-6B Mercury, the Minuteman III blasted out of a silo at the launch facility on the north side of this base on the California coast. Airmen from the 625th Strategic Operations Squadron of Offutt Air Force Base, Neb., were aboard the E-6 along with Navy aircrew.

The three test reentry vehicles—one high-fidelity Joint Test Assembly, which carries non-nuclear explosives, and two telemetry Joint Test Assembly objects—struck the Reagan Test Site near the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands roughly 30 minutes later after launch, a flight of about 4,200 miles.

“They make up essentially a mock warhead,” Col. Dustin Harmon, the commander of the 377th Test and Evaluation Group, the nation’s operational ICBM test unit, said in an interview with Air & Space Forces Magazine. “There’s two different types. One is telemetered, so it’s got a radio transmitter in it, it’s got antennas, gyroscopes, accelerometers—all the things that can sense motion and movement. And we fly those or we can put one in there that’s called a high-fidelity. That is assembled much like an actual weapon would be, except we use surrogate materials, and so we want it to fly similarly to an actual weapon. … It has the explosives in it that a normal warhead would to drive a detonation, but there’s nothing to drive.”

The Nov. 5 launch was a noteworthy test in several respects.

“This one is actually a unique launch,” Harmon said. “We’re flying three warheads, which, up north, the fielded missiles only have one. But we want to verify the ability of the weapon system to fly three because it’s a requirement for the missile to be able to do that … and we’re launching it from the airborne platform.”

The missiles themselves that are flight tested are randomly selected from one of the nation’s three ICBM bases—Malmstrom Air Force Base, Mont.; F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyo.; and Minot Air Force Base, N.D. The ICBM launched in this test was brought from Minot Air Force Base.

“We report to U.S. Strategic Command and ultimately to the White House on the reliability of the fleet,” Harmon said. “Launching the missiles from here is data collection.”

Harmon’s test group will analyze the data from the flight and submit a report in about a year. The team at Vandenberg sifts through around 4,000 parameters and several gigabytes of data. Lt. Gen. Michael J. Lutton, the deputy commander of Air Force Global Strike Command, said the report will be a comprehensive account of all the missile’s systems.

“You’ll see assessments of all the different stages of the missile, the subsystems of the missiles, so you’re collecting data on all those items, and then you’re collecting data on the payload, the reentry vehicles,” Lutton said. “There’s mission partnership with the folks downrange and our national labs that are helping us with those assessments.”

There are 400 Minuteman III missiles currently in service across Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Wyoming.

“We use an operational missile from up north because we wanted to test the reliability and the accuracy of the weapon system,” Harmon said. 

Minuteman III test launches are regularly scheduled events that occur roughly three times per year. They are planned well in advance—the missile for the next test launch scheduled for February recently arrived here—though the Pentagon has delayed tests in the past to manage tensions with Russia over Ukraine and with China over Taiwan. 

The U.S. government formally notified Russia in advance of the launch in accordance with a 1988 bilateral agreement. More than 145 countries were also provided with advance notice of the launch under the Hague Code of Conduct (HCOC)—an international understanding on launch notifications.

The U.S. also provided advance notice to China, a DOD spokesperson told Air & Space Forces Magazine. China notified the U.S. of an ICBM launch over the Pacific Ocean in September. There is no formal agreement between Washington and Beijing that requires such notifications, but each side provided them to avoid miscalculations. 

“The United States provided this ad-hoc advance notification in the spirit of reciprocity in order to encourage the PRC to subscribe to the HCOC and negotiate a U.S.-PRC bilateral pre-launch notification arrangement,” the spokesperson said, referring to the People’s Republic of China by an acronym.

The Minuteman III launch, which was monitored with specialized sensors, is known as a Glory Trip and the Nov. 5 flight was GT-251. The last time the U.S. launched an ICBM with three reentry vehicles was in 2023. The U.S. also conducted an airborne launch that year.

The Minuteman III missile was the first U.S. ICBM deployed with multiple warheads. But two of the three warheads on the deployed Minuteman III missiles were later removed, turning them into single warhead missiles. That step was completed in June 2014 as the U.S. moved to meet arms control limits agreed with Russia and implement the Pentagon’s 2010 Nuclear Posture Review.

Concern that the U.S.’s strategic modernization program could suffer additional delays prompted a Congressionally-mandated commission last year to recommend that the Pentagon be prepared to upload additional warheads to its existing arsenal of Minuteman missiles to maintain existing force levels. 

Operational since 1970, the aging LGM-30 Minuteman III is set to be replaced by the LGM-35A Sentinel, which has faced major budget overruns. 

“For example, if Sentinel experiences a delay while a fraction of the Minuteman III force ages out, warheads from the agedout Minuteman III could be uploaded onto the remaining Minuteman III to keep the number of fielded, land-based warheads constant,” stated the 12-member panel, which was made up of former officials and experts chosen by Democratic and Republican Congressional leaders.

Nuclear force buildups by Russia and China could also lead the U.S. to consider uploading its deployed land and sea-based missiles. The U.S. currently has 400 operational Minuteman III missiles under the New Start Treaty with Russia, which expires in February 2026. The Minuteman III is designed to last into the 2030s.

“We’ve deferred modernization for, depending on when you count, almost three decades,” Lutton said. “I think we have a responsibility to the taxpayers to make sure that the resources that we are given deliver national security for the nation. That’s where we’re at. … Making sure every requirement is nailed down, and every requirement fits the needs of the mission going forward to deter any potential adversaries that are out there and defend the nation.”

New Space Force ‘Mission Deltas’ Handle Missile Warning, Domain Awareness

New Space Force ‘Mission Deltas’ Handle Missile Warning, Domain Awareness

Nov. 5, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

The Space Force has officially expanded its concept for combining operations, sustainment, cyber, and intelligence functions all under one roof, dropping the “provisional” tag from units that kicked off the idea last year and transitioning two more Deltas and missions to the structure. 

Originally the service called the new units Integrated Mission Deltas, but as part of the transition it has shortened that to Mission Deltas. 

In ceremonies at Colorado Springs, Colo., on Oct. 30 and 31, Space Delta 2 and Space Delta 4—responsible for space domain awareness and missile warning and tracking, respectively—became Mission Delta 2 and Mission Delta 4.

A few weeks earlier, the Position, Navigation and Timing (PNT) Provisional Delta that stood up in October 2023 became Mission Delta 31. Meanwhile Space Delta 3, responsible for electromagnetic warfare, became Mission Delta 3 after a year spent “prototyping” the new arrangement. 

Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman first unveiled the idea for integrated mission deltas in September 2023, saying it would deliver maintenance and software upgrades to important systems much faster than before by integrating program managers and engineers with operators under Space Operations Command. 

At the same time, officials insisted the arrangement would not touch acquisition, whose authorities reside under Space Systems Command. 

Leaders have also noted the arrangement better aligns cyber and intelligence units and personnel according to the mission area they support, giving them better insight into their needs and capabilities. 

In a statement, Col. Marc Brock, Space Operations Command lead for integrated Mission Delta modernization, said “this unity of command for readiness allows a single organization to generate, maintain, and enhance ready forces for an assigned mission area.” 

EW and PNT were chosen as the first two mission areas to test the arrangement, and by February 2024, the new units were already getting rave reviews and leaders were talking about expanding the arrangement to other missions. 

In April, Space Systems Command boss Lt. Gen. Philip A. Garrant confirmed that space domain awareness and missile tracking were in line to become the next two Mission Deltas. 

In July, Space Operations Command head Lt. Gen. David N. Miller Jr. said not all his command’s deltas would become Mission Deltas, but those that needed to would transition within the next 12 months. Space Delta 6 and Space Delta 7 handle cyber and intelligence, respectively, and are unlikely to transition. 

That leaves just two of SpOC’s eight deltas left: Space Delta 8, which is responsible for satellite communications, and Space Delta 9, which handles orbital warfare. 

Kirtland Installs New Sensors to Stop Wildfires Before They Spread

Kirtland Installs New Sensors to Stop Wildfires Before They Spread

Nov. 5, 2024 | By David Roza

As wildfires threaten Air Force bases across the country, Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M., is trying out a new system of sensors to detect wildfires and alert first responders before they grow too big to control. Air Force spokesperson Laurel Falls told Air & Space Forces Magazine that Kirtland is the only Air Force installation currently using the technology.

Other wildfire detection systems rely on cameras, satellites, and drones, the base explained in an Oct. 23 press release. But the N5 wildfire sensor “sniffs” the air for a range of fire signs such as particulate matter, temperature changes, and gases including carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, and sulfur oxides, according to the Department of Homeland Security, which worked with the Canadian government to deploy about 200 sensors across the U.S. and Canada this year.

Powered by batteries charged by solar panels, the N5 sensors sends their measurements to a data cloud every 18 seconds via a mix of cellular and radio communication. Artificial intelligence and machine learning uses that data to create a baseline for local conditions, then alerts first responders when it detects levels indicating a possible wildfire. The new sensors are about 1,000 times more sensitive than a home smoke alarm, DHS wrote, which means the AI helps avoid false alarms.

“The addition of rapid, geographically targeted alerts, warnings, and notifications could prove the difference between a localized fire response and a large-scale tragedy,” DHS explained.

wildfire sensor
A N5 Wildfire Sensor is mounted onto a pole on Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M., Oct. 23. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Ruben Garibay)

During testing in northern California in 2021, sensors produced by N5 and other companies detected prescribed burns up to five miles away. A previous wave of sensors deployed in the U.S. and Canada in 2023 detected “a flare-up from accumulated brush pile, an unauthorized bonfire near a utility pole in Colorado, and lightning tree strikes in California and Canada,” according to DHS.

At Kirtland, the 377th Air Base Wing installed 14 sensors covering more than 1,000 acres. That’s a small slice of the base’s 52,000 acres, but any early detection can help in central New Mexico, which in 2022 was scorched by the Calf Canyon/Hermit’s Peak Fire, the largest and most destructive wildfire in the state’s history and the largest wildfire of the year in the contiguous U.S. 

“We are at high risk for wildland fire, with our sagebrush being so close together, the fire can travel faster,” Mark Bean, 377th Air Base Wing Plans and Programs range operations officer, said in the Kirtland press release. “It’s important we have devices like these to give our responders that extra time to come and put out those fires before they become uncontrollable.”

Col. Michael Power, 377th Air Base Wing and Installation Commander at Kirtland AFB, speaks at the dedication opening of USDA Forest Service Cibola National Forest & National Grasslands Air Tanker Base on Kirtland Air Force Base N.M. (U.S. Air force photo by Allen Winston)

The new sensors come about six months after a newly upgraded air tanker base for wildfire fighting became operational at Kirtland. The Cibola National Forest and National Grasslands Air Tanker Base allows larger tankers carrying fire retardant to land and fill up at Kirtland, which helps boost firefighting capability across much of the western U.S.

“The combination of cutting-edge detection and a strategically placed ATB on Kirtland dramatically improves the speed and accuracy of wildfire responses, reducing the potential for devastating wildfires to spread,” Kirtland wrote in its Oct. 23 press release.

Kirtland is not the only Air Force base dealing with wildfires: a 2016 conflagration delayed a satellite launch and threatened launch pads at what is now Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif. Just in 2024, bases from California to New Jersey battled nearby blazes, which can threaten the local infrastructure that bases depend on.

“Even if wildfires do not directly affect areas on a base, they can affect critical infrastructure—such as electric power—on which [Air Force] missions rely,” the RAND Corporation wrote in a 2021 report.

The Air Force Wildland Fire Branch was formed in 2012 in response to rising wildfire threats to Air Force missions. The team installs fire breaks, manages grasses, timber, and other fire fuels, and performs prescribed burns, service spokesperson Laurel Falls explained.

At Kirtland, the base’s fire chief, Jaime Jimenez, said the new sensors can help Airmen and their neighbors in Albuquerque.

“Early detection means our firefighters and other supporting mission partners can come out here quicker to extinguish the fire,” he said.

B-52s Deploying to Europe on Top of Bombers Already in Middle East

B-52s Deploying to Europe on Top of Bombers Already in Middle East

Nov. 5, 2024 | By Chris Gordon and Greg Hadley

U.S. Air Force B-52s are headed to Europe for a Bomber Task Force rotation, Air & Space Forces Magazine confirmed Nov. 5. 

The deployment is separate from the six B-52s that deployed to the Middle East this weekend to deter Iran and its proxies. 

U.S. Air Forces in Europe announced the bomber task force on Nov. 1 but offered no details on the type and number of aircraft or where they would go, only noting that the bombers “will train and operate alongside NATO Allies and partners for several weeks demonstrating the U.S. commitment to global security and stability.” 

A U.S. defense official confirmed to Air & Space Forces Magazine that the task force—the first of fiscal 2025—will consist of B-52s. 

On Nov. 5, the Finnish Air Force posted images on social media of a B-52 from Barksdale Air Force Base, La., flying a training mission alongside its fighters. 

“The bomber entered Finnish airspace from the north and exited via the Gulf of Bothnia,” the Finnish Air Force stated. The Gulf of Bothnia separates Finland from Sweden. 

Public flight tracking data also shows B-52s taking off from Barksdale and flying to RAF Fairford, United Kingdom, where the Air Force has based bomber task forces in the past. 

The bombers’ arrival just a few days after B-52s landed in the Middle East gives the U.S. a heavy airpower presence near two major regional conflicts: Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s operations against Hezbollah, Hamas, and Iran. 

This marks the third consecutive bomber task force in Europe to feature B-52s. In May, Stratofortresses from Minot Air Force Base, N.D., deployed to Fairford and stayed there until June, and in July two Barksdale B-52s deployed to Romania for a week.

More recently, Minot B-52s flew to Poland and back over two days in September for a NATO training mission, an exercise that officials dubbed an “extension” of the Romania task force. 

Kendall: USAF Can’t Afford Next-Gen Fighter, Tanker, and Wingman Drones All at Once

Kendall: USAF Can’t Afford Next-Gen Fighter, Tanker, and Wingman Drones All at Once

Nov. 5, 2024 | By John A. Tirpak

The Next-Generation Air Dominance fighter; the Next-Generation Aerial refueling System tanker; a second increment of Collaborative Combat Aircraft drones: Air Force leaders have said in recent years they need them all to be prepared for a future fight with a great power like China.

But speaking at the Airlift/Tanker Association symposium on Nov. 1, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall admitted the Air Force will have to get “creative” with its future force structure because it cannot afford them all.

“Right now, given our commitments, our resources, and strategic priorities, it’s hard for me to see how we can afford any combination of those new designs,” Kendall said in Grapevine, Texas.

That could prove especially difficult given how the three programs play off one another.

“These three potential new-design platforms are all tied together, all in an Agile Combat Employment context,” Kendall said of NGAD, NGAS, and CCA. They are connected “both operationally and from an affordability perspective, and we are working through a sprint of about four months” to assess “the best combination of capabilities to pursue at various investment levels.”

Having enough resources to build the Air Force that’s needed is “what I worry about most,” Kendall added, noting that “we have to get somewhat creative to adapt our existing force to meet the threat.”

Kendall put a “pause” on the manned NGAD fighter earlier this year, and both he and Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin have said they are unsure if the requirements of the program as set years ago fit with the evolving threat and new unmanned technologies like CCA.

To review those requirements, the service assembled a blue-ribbon panel, including three former Air Force Chiefs of Staff, one former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and two leading civilian experts. They are reviewing the evidence now and will recommend a way forward in December.

Kendall said in September he wants the NGAD fighter to cost less than an F-35, which costs about $82 million for the Air Force variant. Having previously pegged the cost of NGAD at “multiple hundreds of millions” of dollars, however, he’s looking for a radical cut in price and capability. A planned contract award for a winner originally scheduled for fall 2024 has been postponed to 2025 at the earliest.

Over the past few decades, the Air Force has had to resort to “a lot of tricks to squeeze more capability out of the same set of resources,” Kendall said. The service has become extremely efficient “by tailoring how we do business to current demands, but it has come at the expense of our ability to deal with our pacing challenge” of China, he said, and the modernization bill has come due.

“There comes a point where you simply need more resources to accomplish more mission. This is particularly true now,” he said. He reiterated recent comments noting that Chinese president Xi Jinping has “told his military: be ready to seize Taiwan by 2027; just over two years from now, even if the U.S. intervenes. I believe that the [People’s Liberation Army] will tell Xi that they are ready.”

Not only are the Air Force’s three marquee programs not all affordable within expected budgets, but the Air Force has other must-pay bills, such as for modernization of two of the three legs of the nation’s nuclear deterrent, Kendall said. Those include the B-21 strategic bomber and Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile, the latter of which has seen a $40 billion cost overrun in the last year.   

Stealthy Tanker

Kendall said China has in recent years invested heavily in precision missiles that can disable air bases and shoot down key assets, such as surveillance, tanker and mobility aircraft, which could hobble U.S. forces operating in the Indo-Pacific theater.

“The increasing threat to our mobility platforms” demands a stealthy tanker—NGAS—that can go with the combat air forces into contested territory and provide the range and staying power they need to prevail, he said.

The need for modernization of mobility forces “will only grow in the years to come. We have made a good start over the last three years, but early-stage development is the lowest-cost part of the new product life cycle,” Kendall said.

In addition to NGAS, officials have spoken on a Next-Generation Air Lift platform, or NGAL, as a replacement for the C-5, C-17 and C-130. Kendall confirmed “we have conceived of a next-generation transport, but at least at this point…we have not moved forward to start that program,” suggesting it would not be affordable within the already-overfull portfolio.

Kendall also said the Space Force needs more money to “grow at the pace needed to be competitive. The entire joint force depends on the success of the Space Force for both its capabilities and its survival.”

Overall, “modernization bills for both Air Force legs of the nuclear triad are coming due in the next few years. We must have robust airbase defense, and we must attack our potential adversaries’ long-range kill chains,” Kendall said. “All of these are absolutely essential for the success of the Air Force and Space Force and the joint force, and all that requires substantial increased investments.”

Kendall: ‘I Would Be Comfortable’ If USAF Took Over Air Base Defense from Army

Kendall: ‘I Would Be Comfortable’ If USAF Took Over Air Base Defense from Army

Nov. 4, 2024 | By John A. Tirpak

The Pentagon should give the Air Force the air base defense mission and the resources to carry it out, Secretary Frank Kendall said Nov. 1 at the Airlift/Tanker Association Symposium in Grapevine, Texas.

“There is one thing we must move faster on: our progress against the full range of threats to our bases. This is a joint responsibility that we have been working on with our Army colleagues, and that we hope to accelerate,” Kendall said during a keynote address. “Frankly, I would be comfortable with the Department of the Air Force taking on the … defense of air bases as an organic mission, if the needed resources—human and financial, etc.—were made available.”

Under the 1948 Key West agreements that set the core roles and missions of the services, the Army is supposed to defend air bases. It’s a mission that’s gotten tougher in recent years as China has built a formidable number and variety of long-range precision-guided missiles likely intended to rain destruction on U.S. bases in the Indo-Pacific, Kendall said.

This threat has prompted the Air Force to pursue the concept of Agile Combat Employment, in which the service plans to deploy small teams of Airmen capable of moving quickly to remote or austere bases, to multiply the number of targets China must shoot at and reduce the chances of a knockout blow at any one base.

But the Army has not committed the resources necessary to match the ACE model. Its Patriot and Theater High Altitude Air Defense (THAAD) systems are effective, but batteries are relatively few in number and there aren’t enough missiles to go around for the number of bases ACE will require. The Air Force has complained with increasing urgency that the Army is not taking the mission seriously enough, even as the Army encroaches on the Air Force’s core mission of long-range strike by developing costly hypersonic missiles with limited potential effects. The Air Force believes its forward forces are ill-protected.

The challenge of countering a large-scale missile strike has been drawn into sharp relief by Iran’s recent missile volleys toward Israel, which were thwarted by an international defensive effort from land, sea, and air. Such a level of effort would likely not be sustainable in a large Indo-Pacific theater war.

The Air Force and Army both have experimented with lasers and directed energy weapons for air base defense, the idea being that many, low-cost defensive shots can impose the greatest cost of such combat on the attacker instead of the defender.

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin, in a virtual event with the American Enterprise Institute on Oct. 31, said the Air Force used to have permissive access to forward locations, but “that is no longer the case.”

“The challenge is doubled or tripled by not only having to go the tyranny of distance, but being able to survive and protect the equipment along the way, into in the beginning of the fight and during the fight,” he said.

“We are looking at things … [that] increase the survivability of the bases from which we operate. And then in the midst of a conflict, how we get the right equipment to the right place at the right time is not only a matter of protecting it with hardened shelters and maybe camouflage, concealment and deception, but it’s also connectivity, to have that situational awareness,” and be able to react quickly when China points “its next salvo of long-range missiles to attack.”

Photos: 10 Fighters Escort B-1 in Pacific Show of Force

Photos: 10 Fighters Escort B-1 in Pacific Show of Force

Nov. 4, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

A B-1 bomber from Ellsworth Air Force Base, S.D., joined 10 Allied fighters from the U.S., Japan, and South Korea on Nov. 3 in a show of force just days after North Korea tested an intercontinental ballistic missile. China, meanwhile, countered with its own wave of its warplanes near Taiwan the same day. 

It was the second time this year the U.S., Japan, and South Korealn air forces exercised together. The flight “continues strong trilateral cooperation, enabling immediate response to regional security challenges in a critical security environment,” U.S. Indo-Pacific Command said in a statement. 

Joining the B-1 were four Japanese F-2s, four South Korean F-15Ks, and two USAF F-16s from the 51st Fighter Wing at Osan Air Base, South Korea. 

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff noted in a release that the flight took the aircraft east of Jeju Island, between Japan and South Korea and a few hundred miles from China and Taiwan, and was in response to North Korea’s ICBM test on Oct. 31. 

Fighter aircraft from the U.S., Japan, and the Republic of Korea conduct a trilateral escort flight of a B-1 bomber a few hundred miles from Taiwan. U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Maria Umanzor Guzman

Public flight tracking data showed refueling aircraft supporting the flight flying off the coast of Tokyo on the eastern side of Japan. 

“Our three nations maintain an absolute commitment to the shared vision of a secure, rules-based, and open Indo-Pacific region,” INDOPACOM said in its release. 

North Korea’s ICBM test was its first in almost a year, according to the Associated Press. It also traveled further than any in the past, indicative of potential advancement in capability. The launch also followed close on the heels of revelations that North Korea has sent thousands of troops to Russia for potential deployment in its war against Ukraine. That move has ratcheted up tensions around the globe. 

Meanwhile, Taiwan reported Nov. 3 that China sent 35 military aircraft, including fighters and bombers, south of its island territory. China has steadily increased its military activity around Taiwan, sending waves of aircraft and ships and rehearing potential blockades and invasions. Beijing has said it is preparing its military to be ready for an invasion by 2027. 

U.S. forces are on alert around the globe, preparing for potential contingencies should adversaries seek to use the contentious U.S. election for their own purposes, the Washington Post reported. 

In addition to the bomber escort flight, the U.S. has also flexed its airpower in the Pacific in recent weeks through Keen Sword 25 across Japan. As part of the exercise, USAF F-22 fighters flew alongside U.S. Marine Corps F-35Bs and Japanese Air Self-Defense Force F-15Js at Nyutabaru Air Base and USAF F-16 fighters flew with Japanese F-2s at Tsuiki Air Base in southwest Japan. 

The exercise was capped off by an “elephant walk” on Nov. 1 of U.S. and Japanese aircraft at Misawa Air Base in the northern part of the country, featuring: 

  • Four USAF F-16 fighters 
  • Four JASDF F-35 fighters 
  • Three JASDF F-2 fighters 
  • One JASDF E-2D airborne early warning aircraft 
  • One JASDF RQ-4B drone 
  • One U.S. Navy C-12 cargo plane 
  • One U.S. Navy P-8 maritime patrol aircraft 
How the Air Force Reserve Is Trying To Fix Its Child Care Access Problem

How the Air Force Reserve Is Trying To Fix Its Child Care Access Problem

Nov. 4, 2024 | By David Roza

Every drill weekend, Air Force Reservists across the country face the same problem: where to find child care for their kids. Amid a nationwide provider shortage, finding child care for drill weekends is even more difficult than during weekdays.

“Sometimes I’ve seen reservists bring their kids to work, which is not ideal,” Chief Master Sgt. Israel Nuñez, the senior enlisted leader for Air Force Reserve Command, told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

The Air Force runs a Home Community Care (HCC) program where individuals provide child care for Reservists and Air National Guardsmen on weekends, but those providers are often few and far between.

“If we wanted to drop our son off [with an HCC provider], we would have had to wake up at about 3:30, 4:00 in the morning to be able to leave the house on time, drop him off, and then get to work,” said 1st Lt. Marjorie Schurr, whose husband is also an Air Force Reservist. “That just wasn’t feasible, and we wouldn’t have gotten home until 6:30 at night.”

Schurr isn’t alone: a 2023 survey found 33.9 percent of Air Force Reservists rely on a spouse or partner to provide child care during drill weekends, 27.6 percent rely on parents or relatives, and 10 percent use private child care centers. One respondent said private child care cost almost $500 for two 12-hour days.

“That is my entire drill pay, not including the price of gas,” the survey respondent said. “I’m essentially working for free to be away from my baby, which is not fair to either of us.”

The cost, distance, and uncertainty of having to find trustworthy providers every drill weekend—formally known as Unit Training Assembly (UTA) weekends—is becoming a retention issue in the Reserve, which in the past few years has struggled with recruitment, Nuñez said.

“We want them to stay in for the long term, but if they’re having to pay to serve, they’re going to question their decision in the future if they want to reenlist or not,” he said.

New pilot programs at Pittsburgh Air Reserve Station, Pa., and Dobbins Air Reserve Base, Ga., may serve as a template for providing low-cost, accessible, and reliable child care for the rest of the Air Force Reserves, and possibly for Reserve components across the military.

reserve child care
An Airman and their child attend the ARC Athena event at the Tech. Sgt. Vernon McGarity U.S. Army Reserve Center in Coraopolis, Pennsylvania, April 13, 2023. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. James Fritz)

Status Quo

Location is everything, and on the winding mountain roads surrounding Pittsburgh Air Reserve Station, a 15-mile drive can take 45 minutes or more round-trip. That made it difficult for Reservists there to use far-flung HCC providers on drill weekends, said Alex McConnell, military and family readiness program manager for the base’s 911th Airlift Wing.

HCC is successful in its own right: the program provided 97,501 hours of child care to 882 Air Force families for just $1 million in fiscal year 2023, according to a March press release. But Pittsburgh Reservists struggled with the long distances between locations, and they preferred having a central child care facility. Others feel the same way: nearly 500 of the 595 respondents to the 2023 survey recommended having a central facility open on drill weekends.

Another challenge with the HCC network is that HCC providers often have to split their attention between their own children and the service member’s. Nuñez and his wife, a fellow Reservist, experienced that during their years at Travis Air Force Base, Calif.

“It just wasn’t the individualized attention we thought that our six-month old really needed at that time,” he said. 

Even when Reservists find an HCC provider who clicks with them, that provider may not be able to open their doors every month during drill weekend, or they might move away, forcing Reservists to start over with someone new.

The vast majority of Reserve wings are located on Active-Duty bases, which have full-time day care providers called Child Development Centers (CDC), Nuñez explained. But those CDCs usually are not open on weekends, and finding people to staff CDCs is already an issue across the military. If the Reserve wing wants the CDC to stay open, they may have to pay employees overtime to work weekends.

“Even if you open it up on the weekend, our Reservists have to pay that cost, which oftentimes, just working two days, your whole paycheck may be going to that child care,” he said.

Solutions

At Pittsburgh, the 911th Airlift Wing found a civilian provider close to the base that could stay open on weekends. Building trust between the provider and the families involved was a key part of the process.

“It’s really about building relationships,” starting with introducing the parents and the providers, McConnell said. The purpose was “to feel comfortable with letting them take care of the most valuable thing in our lives: our children.”

McConnell did not want to name the center for security and privacy reasons, but it’s already proven a big success, with about 20 families signed up since it opened in July. Schurr’s is one of them.

“The center we’re working with has been absolutely phenomenal,” she said. “They’ve been so caring and so patient, and they make it a point to send me pictures of my son throughout the day to show how he’s doing. And it is such a relief for me to know that he’s less than five minutes away from me should something happen.”

Before it opened, Schurr and her husband were not sure they could both make their goals of serving more than 20 years each. A prior enlisted Airman, Schurr has 12 years of experience while her husband has 18.

“I was very concerned that one of us would have to retire at 20 and say that our military career was done, just for the well-being of our family,” she said. “Now that this option is available, I know that we can stay in the military much longer, and our son is still taken care of and our family is still taken care of.”

military child care
Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling Family Child Care provider, Amanda Wade, completes a puzzle with children in her home on March 31, 2023, at JBAB, Washington, D.C. (U.S. Air Force photo by Jason Treffry)

Dobbins Air Reserve Base, Ga., found similar success after a former HCC provider opened her own child care center that caters to Reservists. It’s about a 25-minute drive from the base, but the feedback has been great so far, said Angela Pedersen, military and family readiness director for Dobbins’ 94th Airlift Wing.

“People don’t want to feel like they’re imposing on their family all the time,” she said. “This was kind of a relief for them.”

The new center opened up child care slots for 22 more children, Pedersen said. If those slots get filled, she thinks it could help convince other providers to open on weekends too. McConnell, the family readiness manager at Pittsburgh, made a similar point.

“For [the provider] to take the risk of opening on a weekend, without a 100 percent guarantee that they’re going to meet the minimum number of kids that they need to make a profit, that really was a leap of faith for them,” he said. “It turned out to be in everyone’s favor, that trust paid off, and they’re well above the threshold they need to be at to keep the doors open on a weekend.”

Both McConnell and Pedersen said their centers could serve as templates for other Air Force Reserve units to follow, as long as families trust the providers to take care of their kids, and as long as providers trust the families to consistently bring their kids to the center. Pedersen also suggested appealing to the provider’s sense of patriotism.

“Everybody’s all about patriotism and thanking our service members, and this is a way they can do that,” she said. “They’re not doing it for free, they are going to get paid. It’s just that the service needs to be in place.”

There is no silver bullet to providing child care for Reservists on weekends, Nuñez said. Instead, families need multiple options so they can choose the one which works best for them. Reserve units might consider working with the local Chamber of Commerce, KinderCare, or other organizations to create new solutions.

In the meantime, Nuñez said Congress could help by earmarking money to set up Reservist child care contracts with local providers. It could be modeled after the Reserve Health Readiness Program, where local health care providers are contracted to provide mandatory vaccines for troops far from a military treatment facility, for example.

“The doctors will come to your reserve unit, they will give you your shots, and that’s already covered by the contracted unit,” Nuñez explained. “If Congress were to write that into law and actually earmark money towards it, I think we could potentially get to a similar solution for child care. What that does is it incentivizes companies to contract with the federal government.”

The idea is to incentivize private child care companies to do what they don’t normally do: stay open on weekends. Pedersen floated another idea: making it easier for trusted friends of service members to become paid, certified providers through the HCC program.

“If there was a way to do that where the friend says, ‘OK, I’m not trying to be a daycare provider, but I will take this course so that I can keep my best friend’s child on UTA weekends,’ that would be great,” she said.

Since Reservist child care access is a military-wide problem, and each branch is trying out its own solutions, the Department of Defense should form an interservice reserve component working group to figure it out together, Nuñez said.

“We don’t go to war without a Reserve component,” he said, “so let’s take care of our Reservists as well.”

B-52 Bombers Deploy to Middle East to Deter Iran, More F-15E Fighters to Come

B-52 Bombers Deploy to Middle East to Deter Iran, More F-15E Fighters to Come

Nov. 3, 2024 | By Chris Gordon

U.S. Air Force B-52 Stratofortress bombers have arrived in the Middle East to deter Iran and its proxies, the U.S. military announced Nov. 3. It is the first time that B-52s have deployed to a base in the region since 2019. 

The U.S. is deploying a total of six B-52s, an additional squadron of F-15E Strike Eagles, and more aerial refueling tankers to support those aircraft, U.S. officials told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

The fresh airpower is designed to compensate for the upcoming departure of the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group, U.S. officials said. It also comes as senior Iranian officials have threatened to attack Israel following Israel’s retaliatory airstrikes on Iranian air defenses and ballistic missile production sites Oct. 26.

“These movements demonstrate the flexible nature of U.S. global defense posture and U.S. capability to deploy worldwide on short notice to meet evolving national security threats,” Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Maj. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder said in a Nov. 1 statement.

The U.S. military did not say where the B-52s, which are from the 5th Bomb Wing at Minot Air Base, N.D., will be based in the region. But cargo aircraft originating in Minot have arrived at Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar, in recent days. Al Udeid is the largest U.S. base in the Middle East and has previously hosted B-52s.

The Lincoln battlegroup includes warships capable of shooting down ballistic missiles. U.S. cruisers and destroyers weapons helped defend Israel from Iranian ballistic missiles in April and October. Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III has also ordered more missile defense-capable destroyers to the region.

“These forces will begin to arrive in coming months,” Ryder said.

These moves come on the heels of other steps the Pentagon has taken to strengthen the U.S. military posture in the region. 

Last month, the U.S. deployed a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) ballistic missile defense system to Israel along with nearly 100 U.S. troops to operate it. Some 2,000-plus Marines are in the eastern Mediterranean as part of an Amphibious Ready Group Marine Expeditionary Unit (ARG/MEU) led by the USS Wasp amphibious assault ship.

A fresh squadron of F-16s, the 480th Fighter Squadron from Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany, deployed to the Middle East in late October. KC-46 Pegasus tankers deployed to CENTCOM in early October before Austin ordered more airpower to the region.

Austin made the decision on the B-52s and other assets “in keeping with our commitments to the protection of U.S. citizens and forces in the Middle East, the defense of Israel, and de-escalation through deterrence and diplomacy,” Ryder said. “Secretary Austin continues to make clear that should Iran, its partners, or its proxies use this moment to target American personnel or interests in the region, the United States will take every measure necessary to defend our people.“