USAF’s Software Startup, Kessel Run, Pivots ‘Back to the Future,’ as Some Cry Foul

USAF’s Software Startup, Kessel Run, Pivots ‘Back to the Future,’ as Some Cry Foul

March 1, 2025 | By Shaun Waterman

The Air Force’s Kessel Run software factory, which brought speed and rapid change through modern agile development practices and “DevSecOps” to USAF programs, is changing the way it does business.

Gone will be the small teams of Active-Duty Airmen and Air Force civilian coders working side-by-side with contract engineers paid by the hour. Instead, government engineers will manage software development work by vendors—more like conventional development.

Col. Richard Lopez, the materiel leader of Kessel Run, told Air & Space Forces Magazine that Kessel Run will now be “government-led, vendor-managed.”

Kessel Run has iconic status. Founded by warriors and technologists frustrated with the glacial pace of military software acquisition, it was intended to bring the speed and iterative approach of Silicon Valley startups to Air Force software development. Lauded as a rare success story, this detachment of the Air Force Life Cycle Management Command at Hanscom Air Force Base, Mass., became a blueprint for other rapid development “software factories” throughout the Air Force and Space Force, many of which used similar naming conventions drawing from Star Wars and the attitude that comes with it—the plucky band of rebels. 

The name comes from a brief quote in the original Star Wars movie in which Harrison Ford, as Han Solo, brags that his Millennium Falcon spacecraft is “the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs.” Kessel Run is a smuggler’s corridor, another reference to working around the rules.

In the military software world, Kessel Run was all aobut a single digital-age challenge: How to adapt a procurement system crafted for hardware things made of steel and concrete to buy something living and continuously changing, like software.  

Lopez said his changes will preserve the “real secret sauce” of Kessel Run, which was about introducing modern software development practices like DevSecOps and agile, to the U.S. military. DevSecOps puts development, security, and operational deployment into a single team, rather than closed cells; agile is a software development philosophy that breaks coding objectives down into manageable chunks, and then rolls out interative changes in sprints, which can be as short as hours but typically one-to-four weeks in length.  

“It’s still DevSecOps. It’s still agile,” Lopez said. “So the hand-in-hand work with the vendors isn’t changing. It’s just the individuals that are coding are now going to be the vendors, rather than mixed government-vendor teams.”

Lopez won a two-year extension on his appointment as materiel leader, through 2026, in order to be sure he can see the transformation through to a successful conclusion. 

But critics say Lopez’s plan is really an effort to pull an organization that grew out of a failure of the Air Force’s traditional software acquisition process, back to a more conventional government model. 

“It’s back to the future,” said one senior software engineer, a service veteran who has worked at Kessel Run since 2019. What Lopez is describing, the engineer said, “is the way that software development was done forever within the DOD, which generally has gotten us monstrosities and software that really isn’t fit for purpose.” 

The engineer spoke without attribution because of their concern about potential repercussions for publicly criticizing leadership. At least one other former Kessel Run employee Air & Space Forces Magazine contacted shared those concerns.

Kessel Run
A two-person team assigned to improve Air Operations Center software perform ‘paired programming’ at Project Kessel Run’s Boston Offices on Jan. 10, 2019. Air Force photo by Todd Maki.

Needed Changes?

Lopez disputes the idea that the changes he is introducing represent a return to so-called “traditional” software acquisition. “It’s not throwing a requirement over the fence and then waiting years and having something come back that wasn’t what you expected,” he said. “This is every single day, working hand-in-hand, integrated in many respects, with the vendor.”

As part of the changes, Lopez added, Kessel Run will move to a single vendor model, where each product portfolio is run by a single vendor paid to deliver a capability or an application, rather than operating in multi-vendor hybrid teams paid by the hour.

Lopez said industry wants the shift to single-vendor teams and that doing so will improve accountability and performance. “There’s a greater sense of, I don’t want to say ownership, because we own the code. It’s ours. But now [the vendors] deliver an end-to-end solution, which is something that industry has been asking us to do, and I think it’s a great opportunity now to work better with industry,” he said. 

Bryon Kroger, one of the founders of the software factory back in 2017 and now CEO of Rise8, a military software developer, said some kind of change at Kessel Run was needed. Kroger left Kessel Run in 2019, and said that by 2022, when Lopez was appointed to lead Kessel Run, the software factory was “failing” and “not doing its mission.”

He attributed that failure in part to decisions he and others made in the early days of the organization. 

“There were good reasons why we did everything we did, but also not all of it was right,” Kroger said. “In fact, some of the things that people think made Kessel Run unique and special, if I could go back and do them over again, I’d do them differently.” 

But it wasn’t just leadership decisions, he said. “It’s the Air Force that failed Kessel Run and the movement towards better software development.” 

Kessel Run Culture

From its beginnings, there were no uniforms at Kessel Run, said Ken Kato, one of the founding hires at Kessel Run who went on to create and lead the Navy’s software factory, Black Pearl.

The ban on uniforms was in part for security, Kato said, noting Kessel Run started in a shared, unsecured office space in downtown Boston. But it also helped to erase differences and break down hierarchies. 

“It removes the gap between military personnel and civilians. It removes the gap of rank versus ideas,” he said. 

Kato summed up that early Kessel Run culture as “strong opinions, loosely held.” That encouraged everyone, regardless of status, to advocate passionately for their opinion but also be ready to change their mind if new information emerged.  

“Each team member, as persons, as developers, as individuals, can come up with ideas independently, and present them, the same way you would in any tech startup: Here’s an idea. What do you think?” he said, without having to worry about being seen as disrespectful to a senior officer.

But the culture also emphasized something lawmakers, Air Force leaders, and acquisition reformers all value, said Kato: speed. 

“Typically it takes defense organizations as long as three years” to procure and deploy software, he said. Kessel Run was able to do it in three months. 

Changing course 

Kroger said Lopez is trying to do the right thing, but may have misdiagnosed the problem. “I think his view is, it’s failing because the permanent [staffers] and the culture are all wrong, and they just need to get back to doing what they’re supposed to do, which is award contracts, and let the contractors build the software. … The empire struck back.”

Part of the issue was that some senior officers objected to the Kessel Run culture, Kroger said. They saw “‘ideas over rank’ as a license for insubordination,” he said. 

Pairing Air Force developers with more experienced contractors as mentors in mixed teams grew out of a vision to build an organic software development capability for the Air Force: “a squadron of coders,” Kroger said. But the concept quickly ran up against practical issues.

“How long does it take to create a 10-year programmer? Well, it takes 10 years,” Kroger said. “You can accelerate that timeline with the pairing and apprenticeship model we were using, but it’s still years.” Kessel Run was getting Air Force coders assigned on temporary duty, normally for just six months, said Kroger: “We were turning over 50 percent of our staff every six months. So obviously that has problems.”  

Even when the Air Force assigned personnel on permanent duty for three-year postings, “they would go somewhere else and not do software ever again,” Kroger said. “There was no career path for these people.” 

Turnover was also been a problem at the leadership level, he said, where the materiel commander and his or her top staff rotate in and out on two-​year assignments. “What software company in the world today turns over their entire C suite every two years? Literally the entire C suite. And that’s what’s happening at Kessel Run.”   

Over time, he said the lack of a career path for Air Force and government civilian personnel combined with budgetary pressures pushing down compensation for contractors,​ combined to reduce the effectiveness of the hybrid model. “People are right to criticize some aspects of it and change them,” he said. 

Kroger agrees that a “vendor-executed” strategy like the one Lopez is proposing is the right way forward. “It takes time” to build an organic software development capability, he said. “We don’t have time.” For critical capabilities, the Air Force has to buy in highly skilled engineers.  

But such a strategy requires government acquisition managers to be highly skilled in software development, so they can write contracts that take advantage of agile software development practices. Conventional government procurement starts with a list of requirements, but that can lead to software that is outdated as soon as or even before it’s compiled.   

“You can’t put a contract in front of a contractor as a list of requirements and call it agile because they complete the requirements in sprints,” Kroger said. 

The Secret Sauce 

Retired Col. Brian Beachkofski, who led Kessel Run from 2020-2022, says the key to understanding the impact Kessel Run achieved comes down to two letters: PM. 

In software development, PM means product manager, the person responsible for ensuring developers  on the team deliver the capabilities that users need. In government acquisition parlance, PM means program manager, which is an oversight role. “They are just looking at product execution. Is spending this quarter in line with the plan? Are we making progress like we thought?” said Beachkofski, now chief technology officer of Rithmm, a sports data company. 

Part of Kessel run’s secret sauce, he explained, was that they had government product managers “responsible for making sure that our user has the capabilities that they need from the software. So who they’re responsible to is actually the user, as opposed to it being more of a check on cost, schedule, performance, on contract execution,” as with a program manager. 

The hybrid team model with government product managers, Beachkofski said, meant that government employees and contractors were sitting “on the same side of the table,” alleviating potential tension in the relationship.   

“In a traditional acquisition office, you would have the contractor, who’s delivering on the requirements and going to hand over a software package at the end of the contract. By having a time and materials contract [where the vendors are paid by the hour] where the government and the contractors work together. There was more of, ‘We’re on the same side of the table to solve the user requirement,’” he said. 

Beachkofski acknowledged that, by the time he left in 2022, Kessel Run was “drifting” away from its adherence to DevSecOps, mainly because the training budget was cut.  

“I had to make changes I wished I didn’t have to because of the financial situation, but I’m proud of our ability to support the user and deliver when it counted most,” he said.  

He pointed to the organization’s success in rapidly scaling Slapshot, a mission planning app, to ensure the safe evacuation of  more than 123,000 people from Afghanistan, amid the chaos of the Taliban takeover.  

Ultimately, Kroger said, part of the role of Kessel Run ought to be to create more “educated buyers” of software development services in the Air Force.  

A six-month rotation on a hybrid team might not make an Airman a seasoned software engineer, but if they move into acquisition and become a program manager later, that exposure to coding should make them better contract writers, he said. 

“I would still like to have some military folks come in and pair [with contract developer mentors]  … with the goal of, once they’re done with their six months building an app, they move into the program office, and now they’re much more informed buyers,” he said. “They can provide a better counterbalance to the contractors in engineering, architecture and design, and I think the results are better contracts and better outcomes from those contracts.”  

The anonymous Kessel Run engineer, however, says that’s easier said than done.

“There are very few people that even know what the [contract] language should look like,” the engineer said. “How do you translate what Kessel Run does in agile software development into a contract using standard government language? They haven’t even figured that out.”  

Navy Secretary Nominee Touts Service’s NGAD, with Improved Range and Capacity

Navy Secretary Nominee Touts Service’s NGAD, with Improved Range and Capacity

Feb. 28, 2025 | By John A. Tirpak

The Navy’s secretive sixth-generation fighter—which will likely share attributes with the Air Force’s own Next-Generation Air Dominance fighter—will have substantially greater range and payload than its predecessors, President Donald Trump’s nominee to be Secretary of the Navy said—indicating enthusiasm for the program amid uncertainty about both services’ path forward for advanced fighters.

The Navy and Air Force are also working together to evaluate their plans for joint air battle management in a new review, John Phelan wrote in prepared testimony for his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

While Phelan did not go in-depth on Naval aviation during the hearing, he did address it when asked in his his advanced policy questions shared with the committee. Specifically, he said the F/A-XX—the Navy’s designation for its Next-Generation Air Dominance fighter—will offer “significant advancements in operational reach and capacity within contested environments.” The aircraft is “intended to enable Carrier Strike Groups to outpace adversaries while maintaining naval air dominance,” he wrote.

The Navy is also “collaborating closely” with the Air Force and Marine Corps on advanced aircraft “to ensure interoperability through shared enabling technologies like autonomy, mission systems, and communication architectures,” Phelan added.

Air Force and Navy officials have said before they are coordinating their sixth-gen efforts, with the two fighters likely to share technologies such as propulsion, sensors and communication systems. They will not, however, be variants of the same airframe like the F-35.

Phelan’s comments come amid uncertainty about both service’s NGAD efforts. The Air Force put its version on hold amid concerns about the requirements and cost, and previous Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall deferred a final decision on the program’s future to the incoming secretary and the Trump administration.

The Navy, meanwhile, withdrew about $1 billion from its NGAD effort in its 2025 budget request and said it would delay the program, without providing much detail. Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti later said the service was still committed to pressing forward with the program, but she has since been dismissed by Trump.

Stephen Feinberg, the nominee for deputy secretary of defense, said at his confirmation hearing this week that a decision about the way forward for NGAD would probably be made by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth or President Trump. Trump advisor Elon Musk has publicly dismissed crewed aircraft as obsolete, saying the mission should be taken over by autonomous air vehicles.

CCA

Phelan also noted the existing partnership between the Air Force and Navy on Collaborative Combat Aircraft; autonomous drones that will fly alongside crewed fighters, carrying more munitions for them and potentially serving as sensor, reconnaissance, and relay platforms.

“This collaborative approach, encompassing both manned and unmanned platforms, including Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) will maximize operational effectiveness and flexibility across the services,” Phelan wrote.

“In my view,” he continued, “aligning technology development and operational requirements will ensure the services are poised to full leverage next-generation unmanned systems, ultimately enhancing capabilities and long-range mission effectiveness.”

Battle Management

Elsewhere in his written testimony, Phelan said that “in conjunction with the Air Force, Joint Staff, and the Combatant Commanders,” the Navy is undertaking a study “to define the requirements for joint air battle management in a high-end fight.” This study, directed by the Office of the Secretary of Defense’s Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation shop, “will inform me, if confirmed, and the rest of the Navy leadership, as to any potential investments needed in airborne command and control capabilities.”

The Navy’s platform for airborne battle management for nearly 40 years has been the Northrop Grumman E-2 Hawkeye, a turboprop-powered, carrier-launched and recovered, airborne warning and control aircraft with a large dorsal radome.

Numerous think tanks and Pentagon leaders have noted that China has developed very long-range air-to-air missiles apparently intended to take out single-point-of-failure assets like the Hawkeye; its Air Force counterpart, the E-3 AWACS; and aerial tankers. The Air Force is planning to replace the E-3 with the Boeing E-7 Wedgetail, but the E-2’s eventual replacement has not been publicly mapped out.

The Air Force has described its planned purchase of 26 E-7s as a bridge capability until it can migrate the air and ground moving target indication mission to satellites.

Defense Industry: Want Surge Capacity? Pay For It.

Defense Industry: Want Surge Capacity? Pay For It.

Feb. 28, 2025 | By John A. Tirpak

If the Pentagon wants the U.S. defense industrial base to be able to surge production of munitions and more, those details should be included in requirements and contracts and paid for, industry leaders told lawmakers this week.

They also urged the Defense Department to take some “thoughtful risk” in contracting in order to get equipment to the field faster and pressed Congress to avoid continuing resolutions and other funding delays that hurt new and small businesses.

Surge capacity is important but “we also don’t ask for it in our contracting,” National Defense Industrial Association president and CEO David L. Norquist told the Housed Armed Services Committee in a Feb. 26 hearing about the defense industrial base.

“Typically, if you have two bidders, and one builds excess capacity, they will bid a higher price and lose,” he pointed out. Surge has to be “part of the requirement,” he said.

In the years since the Cold War, Pentagon contracting has focused almost exclusively on efficiency rather than capacity, Norquist and other witnesses said.

“So if you want somebody to have a capacity to surge, then they need to have it priced into the contract or treated as an allowable cost,” Norquist said. If surge capacity is penalized “because it has a higher price than the one without, you’re going to get what you asked for in the contract. So you have to say, ‘I value surge capacity,’” Norquist said.

He added that the Pentagon needs to lose its efficiency-at-all-costs mindset in order to have surge capability.

“All of these [defense production] facilities are drawing from long supply chains,” he said. “You … want to move away from ‘just in time’ inventory. You want to pay people to be able to store large parts.”

This has the advantage of accelerating the production line because there are enough parts to accommodate lengthened work shifts, he said. And if there is a conflict, there is a back inventory to keep production lines moving while supply chains adjust.

“So from a national security point of view, asking for a move away from ‘just in time’ inventory is a national strategic interest of the U.S. government,” Norquist said.

He cautioned, though, that this approach should be focused.

“You want to be careful when you do that,” he said. “You only want to do that in the things you’re trying to allow, because it is an extra cost for the system. … You can’t have everything. You need to figure out which are the systems, which are the items that, when the war starts, or before the war starts, you will need to surge,” and create contract rules tailored for those items.

Eric Fanning, head of the Aerospace Industries Association, said the Pentagon should accept more risk if it wants to accelerate production, either in peacetime or wartime.

“I think we’re at a time where we need to add some thoughtful risk back into the system in order to get speed, and there are ways to do that,” he said. “It requires careful oversight to make sure that the risk was well placed. But I think that’s a larger cultural issue of taking risk to move faster. And I don’t think that’s what we reward in the system.”

He said Congress provides plenty of authorities to go faster in contracting, But these contract vehicles aren’t widely used by the government workforce, “because we don’t incentivize the federal workforce to use that. We incentivize them to find the problems, not necessarily get us past the problems.’

Different training could incentivize more thoughtful risk-taking, Fanning said.

Fanning also urged Congress to avoid continuing resolutions, as the delays in new starts and especially in funding new entrants or small businesses discourages companies from doing business with the Pentagon.

“Certainly we’ve lived with CRs for many years, although we’re much further into the fiscal year now than we typically are with a CR, and it’s happening at a time when I think the supply chain, at least for our companies and our supply chain members, [is] stretched thin and as fragile as we’ve seen in a very long time,” he said.

Many of the supply chain issues are related to inflation, Fanning added, and he warned that in aerospace, the effects are still ongoing.

“There’s a lag for inflation in the industrial base,” he said, “And I would argue that the Pentagon still hasn’t seen the full impacts of inflation.” Companies in the supply chain are “really stretched [with] cash flow problems. … And when there’s a CR and payments are cut off or are delayed, it creates that extra stress and burden for the companies inside the supply chain that may have already lined up their workforce, their materials, their parts, and are under obligation to those contracts, but aren’t seeing work start on something new or continue on something they’re working on,” he said.

Norquist concurred, adding, “I just want people to understand, if you’re a small business in these supply chains, it becomes very unappealing to stay in this world and work and for the Defense Department. And you decide instead just to go to the commercial work area. So this is something that we’re creating with these CRs, and we’ve got to stop it.”

Witnesses repeated their pleas from a similar hearing last year that the Pentagon and Congress clarify “the demand signal,” so that contractors can make informed decisions about how much material and labor to lay in ahead of a contract, so that there is a common understanding of whether surge capacity is wanted and will be compensated. If that demand is not clear, companies have little incentive to hold on to workforce on the hope that the work will eventually return.  

The Pentagon, Fanning said, is often the “single customer” for some businesses, “so when that customer’s demand signal ebbs and flows and the workforce goes away, they go away, and it’s very hard to get them back” for a surge.

Trump Admin Loosens Rules for US Military Airstrikes

Trump Admin Loosens Rules for US Military Airstrikes

Feb. 28, 2025 | By Chris Gordon

The Trump administration has granted U.S. military commanders more leeway to conduct airstrikes against suspected militant threats, a shift from the Biden administration policy that required greater sign-off from the White House and Pentagon, U.S. officials told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

The move gives U.S. military commanders greater flexibility to carry out airstrikes without getting case-by-case approval from Washington. Under former President Joe Biden, some high profile airstrikes required approval from senior White House and Pentagon officials.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth confirmed the new policy, which was first reported by CBS News, in a post on social media Feb. 28.

It is unclear how soon the policy came into effect after Trump took office, and how many military actions have been conducted under the new policy. The White House and Pentagon did not respond to requests for comment.

A U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle launches flares over the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility, Feb. 18, 2025. U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. William Rio Rosado

U.S. Central Command directed several airstrikes in Syria in the past month against Hurras al-Din (HaD) group, an al-Qaida affiliate. It has regularly struck what it described as high-level militants even as it carried out its mission against the Islamic State group to prevent it from making a comeback. At least four CENTCOM strikes against Hurras al-Din have been conducted since Trump took office.

“Congratulations to CENTCOM Commander Gen. Michael Kurilla, and the U.S. warfighters who dealt Justice to another Jihadi threatening America and our allies and partners,” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social after a Feb. 15 airstrike against a member of Hurras al-Din.

On Feb. 23, CENTCOM conducted what appeared to be a drone strike on yet another leader of Hurras al-Din and released video of the engagement on March 1, which Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin promoted on social media. The airstrike appears to have been conducted by a drone firing an AGM-114 R9X Hellfire, which has blades that deploy before impact rather than an explosive charge. The video released by CENTCOM shows a munition slice through a moving vehicle and no explosive blast. The so-called “Ninja Bomb” or “Flying Ginsu” is designed to prevent civilian casualties and evidence points to its use in some other recent airstrikes in Syria.

“The airstrike is part of CENTCOM’s ongoing commitment, along with partners in the region, to disrupt and degrade efforts by terrorists to plan, organize, and conduct attacks against civilians and military personnel from the U.S., our allies, and our partners throughout the region and beyond,” the command said in a news release.

“As we have said in the past, we will continue to pursue relentlessly these terrorists in order to defend our homeland, and U.S., allied, and partner personnel in the region,” Kurilla added in a statement.

U.S. Africa Command has also struck ISIS with increasing frequency. The first military action undertaken during the second Trump administration was a round of airstrikes against ISIS-Somalia on Feb. 1 in the Golis mountains of Somalia. Trump and the Pentagon said that those airstrikes were conducted in the president’s direction.

Hegseth visited U.S. Africa Command headquarters and met with AFRICOM commander Marine Corps Gen. Michael E. Langley in Germany on Feb. 11 on his first overseas trip as Pentagon chief.

AFRICOM also conducted a Feb. 16 airstrike against multiple leaders of ISIS-Somalia, and the U.S. military has carried out multiple “collective self-defense” airstrikes against the terrorist group al-Shabaab in collaboration with Somalia’s government since Trump has been in office.

JSE Will Revolutionize F-35 Training at Nellis in 2025. Where Is the Technology Headed Next?

JSE Will Revolutionize F-35 Training at Nellis in 2025. Where Is the Technology Headed Next?

Feb. 28, 2025 | By Patrick Reardon

F-35 pilots at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada will begin training in the U.S. Air Force’s most hyper-realistic battlespace simulator ever this year—when the Joint Simulation Environment reaches initial operational capability at the Joint Integrated Test and Training Center Nellis (JITTC-N). But Nellis and the F-35 are just phase one of the Air Force’s revolutionary training technology, which will dramatically change the way warfighters prepare for combat. 

Experts from HII’s Mission Technologies division—a key contractor in the software development, integration and support of the JSE—say that the DOD appears to be “all in” on JSE, with $2.5 billion allocated toward its stand-up at Nellis and expansion to other installations in Fiscal Year 2025.

Looking ahead, JSE facilities like the one at the Joint Integrated Test and Training Center Nellis will be established at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, among other locations. But it’s not only U.S. Air Force bases waiting in line: The technology is designed to be utilized at F-35 bases between the Air Force, Navy, and international allies.

“[JSE] sets the benchmark. This is a totally new approach,” said Mike Aldinger, vice president of business development in Mission Technologies’ Global Security group, which includes live, virtual, constructive training capabilities. “It’s revolutionizing how they train. I think it’s going to take some years to get to a steady state as we start to bring in the other participants, including other services. As an example, the Space Force in the past year has become more ingrained in the Air Force-Navy focused effort to work together [on JSE]. They’re aligned and focused on the strategic objective.”

Aldinger says U.S. Air Forces in Europe and coalition partners like Australia and the United Kingdom are high on the priority list for receiving JSE access and training solutions. He mentions the Royal Australian Air Force’s interest in particular.

John Bell, Mission Technologies’ chief technology officer, says that 10 years from now, HII wants the JSE to let warfighters train not only “like they fight” but also “where they fight.”

“That may be a Sailor on board a ship,” he said. “That may be an Airman who is home stationed near a series of virtual simulators or maybe forward deployed at an air base. We’d like all of them to be able to join in a distributed network of systems in which the JSE is taking part.”

JSE facilities consist of both hardware (glass cockpits and domed simulators with 4K projectors) and software that mimics actual aircraft software, which together form a near-exact virtual battlespace for tactical pilots to train in. Aldinger calls it a “fighter in a box.”

When JITTC-N goes live with JSE this year, the F-35 will be the initial fighter platform. But Bell says the physical cockpit will be made up of modular components, allowing for other platforms like the F-22, E-7, and even Collaborative Combat Aircraft to have their own fighter in a box within several years. 

“The whole concept of unmanned wingmen and autonomy is huge, and that’ll be a new component within JSE,” Bell said. “This is a really exciting opportunity for us to see the same simulation system used throughout the lifecycle of a new weapon system like the CCA. We’ll be able to use the same simulation to do design and requirements testing, and then to validate the system after it’s delivered like we did for the F-35 test and evaluation.”

But Bell stresses that while the physical components of the JSE are an impressive simulation of real aircraft, it’s the environment that really sets the technology apart from existing training systems. JSE’s high-fidelity environment—which in its first iteration will allow up to eight warfighters to simultaneously train in the same virtual battlespace under the same conditions—is laser-focused on team and joint training.

“Repeated takeoff and landing, learning the muscle memory for pushing buttons, and controlling the aircraft—that is usually training that’s done for an individual pilot in an individual cockpit simulator with many reps and sets,” Bell said. “What JSE is really for is that graduate-level exercise: ‘OK, now we know how to fly the aircraft. How do we work as a team? How do we use the advanced tactics that we’re learning about in the classroom, where we have to share information between the aircraft and have a greater shared understanding of the operational environment? How do we learn how to work together in that very complex environment?’ That’s what JSE is really all about.” 

Learn more about HII’s impact and collaboration with the Air Force and Navy as they develop the next generation of joint training.

F-16s, KC-135s Brave Greenland Chill for NORAD Exercise

F-16s, KC-135s Brave Greenland Chill for NORAD Exercise

Feb. 27, 2025 | By Greg Hadley

Airmen from across North American Aerospace Defense Command deployed with fighters, tankers, and more to Pituffik Space Base in Greenland in recent weeks for a bitterly cold exercise. 

From Jan. 28 to Feb. 11, more than 125 personnel participated in Operation Noble Defender, braving subfreezing temperatures that got as low as -29 degrees Fahrenheit with a wind chill of -56 degrees, according to a release. 

NORAD noted in its release that the exercise brought together personnel and aircraft from all three of its regions: Alaska, Canada, and the continental U.S. Participating aircraft included F-16s, KC-135s, and E-3s from the U.S. Air Force, as well as CF-18s, C-150s and CH-149s from the Royal Canadian Air Force. 

“Over the last three weeks, our integrated American and Canadian NORAD teams have demonstrated the ability to operate at the highest level in one of the most austere environments in the world,” said Lt. Col. Matthew Shemo, commander of the 41st Air Expeditionary Group. “I am immensely proud of them and their dedication to this mission and appreciate the close cooperation from the Kingdom of Denmark as we train for the defense of Canada and the United States across all domains.” 

According to released images, the F-16s came from the 18th Fighter Interceptor Squadron out of Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska, and the KC-135s from the 50th Air Refueling Squadron at MacDill Air Force Base, Fla.

The point of the exercise is to demonstrate and work on NORAD’s “ability to defend the approaches of North America from current and future threats, maintain mission readiness in diverse and challenging environments, and to preserve capacity for follow-on operations,” the command release stated. 

NORAD previously announced the F-16s had deployed to Greenland the same day as U.S. Air Force F-35s and Royal Canadian Air Force CF-18s conducted combat air patrols in response to Russian military aircraft operating in the Arctic. F-35s also deployed to Greenland for the 2023 edition of Noble Defender.

The exercise comes as experts and U.S. military officials have warned that Russia remains interested in the so-called GIUK gap—the region including Greenland, Iceland, and the United Kingdom. NORAD boss Gen. Gregory M. Guillot said in March 2024 that Russian bombers flew through the region for the first time in years. President Donald Trump has also emphasized the strategic importance of Greenland, saying he would like to acquire the self-governing territory from Denmark.

Air Force Names OA-1K Skyraider II as New Aircraft Prepares to Come Online

Air Force Names OA-1K Skyraider II as New Aircraft Prepares to Come Online

Feb. 27, 2025 | By David Roza

About a month away from its arrival, the Air Force named an upcoming light attack and observation aircraft after an iconic Cold War-era close air support platform.

The OA-1K—from the Armed Overwatch program—will be called the Skyraider II, Air Force Special Operations Command officials said. The modified cropduster will provide airborne eyes, ears, and precision fires to support ground troops in permissive airspace, just as its namesake, the A-1 Skyraider, did in the Korean and Vietnam Wars. 

AFSOC officials announced the new name at the Special Air Warfare Symposium at Fort Walton Beach, Fla., on Feb. 27.

“I am excited about the Skyraider II,” AFSOC commander Lt. Gen. Michael Conley said in a press release. “I think we have a capability that’s only ours, and we are going to have the ability to shape that into something that the rest of the nation might not even know they need right now.”

Produced by Air Tractor and modified by L3Harris, the Skyraider II is meant to be modular, capable of swapping out different sensors, communications equipment, and combat payloads, so that troops in austere locations can get the support they need at a fraction of the price and logistical footprint of more sophisticated platforms.

“AFSOC has enduring global missions,” the command’s director of strategic plans, programs, and requirements, Brig. Gen. Craig Prather, said in the press release. “While we don’t expect the Skyraider II to go mix it up with fifth- and sixth-generation fighters, it will provide value to our supported forces globally.”  

skyraider ii
An OA-1K Skyraider II pilot conducts a walkaround on the flightline at Hurlburt Field, Florida, Jan. 28, 2025. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Natalie Fiorilli)

The first production aircraft was supposed to be delivered in October 2023, but delays pushed it back and now the first operational aircraft is expected to arrive at Hurlburt Field in Florida the week of March 31, an AFSOC official told Air & Space Forces Magazine, though an experimental version of the aircraft made a brief appearance there in January.

Pilots have been familiarizing themselves with a pair of standard issue Air Tractor AT-802Us at Will Rogers Air National Guard Base, Okla., but those aircraft lack the modifications L3Harris is installing on the operational planes.

The Skyraider II comes at a time when special operations leaders across the military say they are stretched thin countering terrorism in the Middle East and maintaining partnerships in Europe and the Pacific to deter rivals such as Russia and China.

“Since 2019, demand for your Air Commandos has surged, in some cases even exceeding the peak levels seen during the Global War on Terror,” Conley told the House Armed Services’ Intelligence and Special Operations subcommittee at a Feb. 26 hearing. 

“We commit almost 100 percent of our forces in each deployment cycle,” he added later in the hearing. “There’s no excess left. In order to do other things, it means trade-offs for what we’re currently tasked to do.” 

But in the face of rising demand for special operations aviation, the budget has remained flat, Conley said. Nor can the aircraft depot and procurement system keep up with rapid changes in technology.

“My concern is that by the time we get a fleet of 50 aircraft of any flavor updated to where they need to be, the technology’s already irrelevant,” he said. “So it’s this constant loop of trying to catch up with the enemy threat. We largely overcome that by training our way out of it to the extent we can through developing of new tactics and procedures, but that’s only a small piece of what we really need as far as advanced modifications.”

Despite the high demand, U.S. Special Operations Command scaled back its planned buy of OA-1K aircraft from 75 copies down to 62 last March, a 17 percent drop “due to resource constraints,” the command said at the time.

About three months earlier, the Government Accountability Office published a report skeptical about the 75-fleet buy, but a SOCOM official said at the time that the report did not cause the command to trim its desired fleet size.

A U.S. Air Force Douglas A-1H Skyraider of the 1st Special Operations Squadron in flight during a rescue mission, circa in 1972. (U.S. Air Force photo)

The Skyraider II has big shoes to fill: its namesake played a critical role guarding downed pilots during search and rescue missions in Vietnam. 

“Whereas jet aircraft often had to leave the battle area for refueling, the A-1s provided nearly continuous suppressing fire until helicopters extracted downed Airmen,” wrote the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force about the Skyraider. One A-1 pilot, Maj. Bernard Fisher, received the Medal of Honor for landing under fire to pick up a downed pilot in 1966. 

Another pilot, Col. William Jones III, received the same award after shepherding a flaming Skyraider back to base so he could relay the location of a downed aviator and an enemy gun position. Jones suffered severe burns from the fiery cockpit, but the downed pilot was rescued later that day.

Lockheed Martin: Congratulations to the Polaris Award Winners!

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