Steve Parker, the interim President and CEO at Boeing Defense, Space & Security, sends his congratulations to the Guardians being honored by the U.S. Space Force’s Polaris Awards at the 2025 AFA Warfare Symposium.
Defense Industry: Want Surge Capacity? Pay For It.
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
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.
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?
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.”
F-16s, KC-135s Brave Greenland Chill for NORAD Exercise
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
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.”
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.
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!
Chauncy McIntosh, Lockheed Martin’s vice president and general manager of the F-35 Lightning II program, shares a special message with the winners of the U.S. Space Force’s 2024 Polaris Award winners, who are being honored at the 2025 AFA Warfare Symposium.
Most Troops with Families to Serve 3-Year Tours in South Korea
Many U.S. troops stationed in South Korea with their families—including at Osan Air Base—will begin serving 36-month tours, up from 24 months, starting with service members arriving in October.
Unaccompanied service members will still serve 12-month tours, and more isolated bases like Kunsan Air Base will not be affected.
“The reasons for this change are to improve operational continuity, enhance mission readiness and provide greater stability for service members and their families,” a U.S. Forces Korea spokesperson told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “Longer assignments reduce turnover, allowing for more experienced personnel to remain in critical roles, leading to increased effectiveness in USFK mission.”
The Department of Defense is rolling out the new policy in phases, beginning with the start of fiscal 2026 on Oct. 1, 2025, with full implementation expected by October 2027. Service members already stationed in the country will not be impacted. The change will apply only to command-sponsored, accompanied troops.
“It enhances mission effectiveness by providing greater stability, improving unit cohesion, and strengthening relationships between service members, their families, and the local community,” the spokesperson added. “By fostering a more stable and supportive environment, the extended tour length contributes to overall readiness and operational success.”
Troops who prefer a two-year tour with their families may be able to have their services request waivers for a shorter stay in Korea, according to a memo released earlier this month.
Tour length for troops is typically determined based on guidelines that consider factors such as the assignment location’s quality of life, including weather, family support, isolation, and the country’s economic and security conditions.
A 36-month deployment for accompanied personnel is common for locations where living conditions are comparable to U.S. standards; bases in the United Kingdom, Italy, Australia, and Japan all have such tours.
More than 28,500 troops are deployed in South Korea, with a significant portion at Camp Humphreys. The base, which supports nearly 40,000 service members and their families, civilian employees, and contractors, hosts U.S. Forces Korea headquarters and a few Air Force units.
The biggest U.S. Air Force base in the country is Osan Air Base, located 40 miles south of Seoul. Osan has around 3,700 Airmen assigned to the 51st Fighter Wing, along with nearly 2,000 personnel in various tenant units. The base offers command sponsorship, with about 2,000 family members living with stationed Airmen.
Osan, the closest American air base to North Korea, is even busier than normal right now due to a yearlong test of an expanded F-16 fighter presence. Last year, the 36th Fighter Squadron received nine F-16s and around 150 Airmen, including pilots, engineers, and support staff, from Kunsan Air Base, boosting its fleet to create a so-called “Super Squadron.”
Officials are evaluating the impact on sortie generation, maintenance, and manpower to assess enhanced combat effectiveness. It is unclear if the shift could be made permanent.
Kunsan is more isolated than Osan, located more than 120 miles south of Seoul in a rural area. The base does not offer command sponsorship positions, meaning the longer tours will not affect Airmen there. It hosts the 8th Fighter Wing and about 2,800 military and civilian personnel, the typical assignment at Kunsan is a one-year unaccompanied tour, with most Airmen living in barracks.
USSF Paused AI Adoption in ’23; Now It’s Looking to Automate Ops
Less than 18 months after telling Guardians to quit using ChatGPT and other emerging artificial intelligence tools while the service examined the risks and opportunities they posed, a Space Force leader said Feb. 26 the service has “done so much” to explore and expand AI adoption.
Seth Whitworth, acting deputy to the Deputy Chief of Space Operations for Cyber and Data described the progress during Booz Allen’s Space + AI Summit in Arlington, Va., as industry speakers touted AI’s potential benefits for domain awareness and command and control.
The Space Force ordered its AI pause in September 2023, alarmed that Guardians were using unproven generative AI tools without rigorous testing and proof that the tools were safe and reliable.
“There was a whole lot of unknowns, and we were championing ourselves as the innovation service,” Whitworth said. “There was fear that data would leak or we didn’t know those pieces, and so we said, ‘Take a strategic pause.’ We have done so much since that first memo went out.”
By June 2024, the Air Force Research Laboratory released its own generative AI chatbot, NIPRGPT, built for Airmen and Guardians to experiment with. Whitworth said his team hosted a “generative AI challenge” to identify more potential uses.
“We learned a whole lot along the way,” Whitworth said. “We were able to work with the Department of the Air Force and Department of Defense to re-establish some of those guidelines and ensure that we were moving forward in a secure way that didn’t hamper innovation.”
Guardians gravitated to the tool, seeing AI chatbots and assistants as helpful for everyday, non-operational tasks, like writing performance reviews and other reports, Whitworth said. Such back office functions have long been seen as ripe for automation, freeing operators to focus on sophisticated higher-level tasks.
But the volumes of data generated by sensors in space is such that automation is hard to ignore. Satellites generate imagery, signals intelligence, orbital data, and more, and with thousands of satellites and tens of thousands of bits of debris circling the Earth at 17,000 miles per hour, the need to collect, collate, and analyze data continues to grow exponentially, experts say.
“In the age of proliferation, especially with Guardians, one satellite to many [personnel] just doesn’t work,” said Nate Hamet, CEO of Quindar, a satellite operations company. “As we proliferate, how many people can we actually assign to dozens, hundreds of satellites, or where satellites are actually sending us information about what’s wrong and moving more of the anomaly prediction on board, at the edge, onto the spacecraft.”
Whitworth envisions a single operator aided by AI controlling multiple satellites. “I think back to Lt. Whitworth, who operated a satellite, and it was me to one satellite, and my partner next to me to one satellite. We operated that satellite individually. And that made sense at the time, because DOD had the largest constellation on orbit, and we were doing just fine. That very quickly exponentially changed as more commercial providers started launching more equipment, and the DOD itself pivoted to more resilient and proliferated architectures. No longer can I have one Guardian flying one satellite. There’s going to just be too many satellites, not enough Guardians.”
Indeed, the Space Force has already started automated satellite operations through its Space Rapid Capabilities Office, which is acquiring software for its Rapid and Resilient Command and Control system, and experimenting with it on test satellites in orbit, officials said in December 2024.
Whitworth cautioned that discussions and analysis are still ongoing about which satellite operations can be automated and what level of trust can be placed in the technology.
Building trust must happen gradually, said Dave Prakash, Booz Allen director of AI governance; if the Space Force can’t trust the technology, the whole process will break down, he added.
“It’s not about moving fast and just hoping nothing goes wrong,” Parkash said. “It’s not about being paralyzed … so that Guardians are now burdened with ‘not only do I have to use AI, but I have to do the manual process and double check it.’ [If that’s the case], I’m not actually making any labor savings. It’s actually this third option, where AI is a seat belt, not a speed bump, to accelerate delivering of AI for mission critical applications.”
Despite these hurdles, the challenges posed by growing complexity and data volumes make AI an attractive solution for mastering information from space, said Booz Allen executive Pat Biltgen.
“I think there’s a possibility that this domain could be enhanced by AI,” Biltgen said. “I think there’s promises that if you combine generative AI technologies that are grounded in physics, they can help solve this one Guardian, one satellite problem.”