Air Force, Space Force Leaders Warn of ‘Unsatisfying’ 2025 Budget

March 9, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

Ahead of the Pentagon’s fiscal 2025 budget rollout March 11, Department of the Air Force leaders warned of a “unsatisfying,” “difficult,” and “resource-constrained” request that had to be adjusted due to spending caps—with particular concern for the still-growing Space Force.

Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall, senior acquisition executive Andrew P. Hunter, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin, and Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. Michael A. Guetlein all spoke at the annual McAleese defense programs conference on March 7, and while none laid out specific numbers ahead of the budget request rollout, each acknowledged that the Air Force and Space Force did not get all they wanted or needed.

“We were limited by the Fiscal Responsibility Act,” Kendall said, referring to legislation passed last summer that capped discretionary spending across the board for fiscal 2025 and 2026. “There was not an opportunity, as we went through building our budget for 2025, for us to really do large tradeoffs and aspire for additional money. We had a zero-sum game. And so it was constrained. It was not to the level that we had anticipated might be possible for us to budget to the year before.”

Both Kendall and Hunter noted that the spending caps’ impact had to be mostly absorbed by readiness and modernization accounts, forcing leaders to make difficult decisions about what programs to prioritize and whether to lean more heavily toward future capabilities or current operations.

But those choices were particularly rough for the newer of the department’s two services.

“There’s virtually no opportunity to make that tradeoff in the Space Force,” Kendall said. “The Space Force is about 65 percent R&D. There just really wasn’t anything you could trade off to protect the R&D.”

Guetlein also referenced the Space Force’s reliance on research money when discussing the ongoing struggle in Congress to pass a fiscal 2024 budget—the service requested a 15 percent budget increase for 2024 but still hasn’t seen those additional funds.

The 2025 budget seems highly unlikely to feature a similar increase. Acting Air Force undersecretary Kristyn E. Jones warned as much last month, and Guetlein noted in his remarks that “space is huge, and the Space Force is resource constrained.”

“We must ensure we are properly resourcing the Space Force for competitive endurance to ensure we can guarantee space superiority well into the future,” he later added. “Today’s Space Force is a bargain. But tomorrow’s Space Force requires a ruthless prioritization of resources to ensure we can continue to enjoy the freedom of action and space that we’ve all come to depend on.”

Guetlein’s urgency to resource the Space Force was echoed by Kendall, who warned that the young service finds itself in a precarious position after its first few years of growth.

“I am more worried about the Space Force right now than I am about the Air Force,” he said. “The Air Force has a large installed base, it’s got a lot of existing capital investment. It’s got a lot that it can capitalize on. I know that [Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance] Saltzman talks about this a lot … we’re a nation that had a merchant marine and woke up one day and realized it needed a Navy. That’s the situation the Space Force is in.

“And so we’ve got to transform our space capabilities from peacetime capabilities for a benign space environment to warfighting capabilities. We’ve got to do that both for the services that the Space Force provides to the joint force, and we’ve also got to protect the joint force from the other side’s space assets which are proliferating. We’ve got a big problem there, and of the two services right now, the one I’m more worried about within the Department of Air Force is the Space Force.”

Yet the Air Force is not in the clear either. Allvin noted in his address that the budget submission “will likely be unsatisfying to all, including us.” While the service’s priorities for modernization haven’t changed, he added, their plan to achieve them has been stymied in some ways.

“Our wonderful plan that we’re getting ready to resource, there are cost increases, macroeconomic factors, there are world actors that aren’t behaving and aren’t letting us proceed a pace with the plan that we had to modernize our Air Force and move forward into the future,” he said.

Kendall: F-35 Delivery Hold Is ‘Hurting’ the Air Force

March 8, 2024 | By John A. Tirpak

The continuing hold on F-35 deliveries, pending completion of the Tech Refresh 3 upgrade testing, is having an operational and financial impact on the Air Force, Secretary Frank Kendall told reporters March 7.

“It’s hurting already,” Kendall said during a briefing after the McAleese defense conference in Washington, D.C.

“We really need the TR-3 hardware and the Block 4 set of upgrades … to stay competitive,” Kendall said. “And we’re going to need them in quantity, so getting on with that is really important to us.”

The delay in acceptance “affects cost,” he added.

The government stopped accepting new F-35s from Lockheed Martin last fall, since new aircraft were being manufactured with the TR-3 hardware and software but the upgrade is still in testing. Both the Joint Program Office and Lockheed have officially forecast that testing will be completed—and the flow of new jets can resume—by mid-2024, although Lockheed CEO Jim Taiclet told reporters in January that “late summer may be a more likely scenario” for TR-3 acceptance.

“Where we expected to replace airplanes, we now are not. So, we’ve got to carry the existing aircraft, generally speaking, for longer than we had planned,” Kendall said. That results in additional, unplanned costs for maintenance, spare parts, training, and more, although he noted that “I don’t know that I’m seeing a lot of financial impact of the delay yet.”

However, “the operational capability impact is significant,” he said. Of the 70 or so aircraft that are completed but not delivered, sources said more than 30 are F-35A models destined for U.S. Air Force units. They will replace aircraft in units that now fly the A-10 and the F-16, and the delay has disrupted training and assignments for both pilots and ground crews that will transition from those aircraft to the F-35.

The F-35 delivery hold affects not only the U.S. services but international users as well, and the program partners have discussed accepting jets with less than the full TR-3 capability—a so-called “truncated” configuration—in order to get deliveries moving again.

The F-35 Joint Program Office said in January that this plan “to accept aircraft ahead of full validation” of TR-3 capabilities is “focused on delivering capable aircraft to the warfighters,” but offered no timetable regarding when this might happen.

Asked if the Air Force would accept jets with less than the full TR-3 capability, Kendall said, “We had some debates about that.”

However, Kendall had to recuse himself from those discussions because of his previous business relationship with Northrop Grumman, the maker of the AN/APG-85 radar that will equip the Block 4 version of the F-35.

“I deferred to Gen. [Charles Q. Brown, Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff] on that and he made the call. It’s a judgment call,” Kendall said. “In general, I want to hold industry responsible for delivering what they promised. And so my bias, if there is one, is to not accept products” that are not as promised, he said.

“But there’s an operational argument to be made,” he added, given that the preferred outcome is “a better capability” than the services now have. The TR-3 is a step up from the TR-2 versions which were the last to be delivered.

Lockheed executive vice president for aeronautics Greg Ulmer, told Air & Space Forces Magazine in February that testing of TR-3 at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., and Patuxent River Naval Air Station, Md., is showing “improved performance with the TR-3,” with improved software stability and “significant” new weapons capability.

He said production TR-3 software had at that time been flying at the company’s Fort Worth, Texas, plant and racked up “20 production flights.” Although he could not say with certainty when TR-3 testing will be complete, he said his belief was that it would happen in summer 2024.

As to a release with less than the full TR-3 capability, he said Lockheed is working with the JPO “to define what the deliverable key release will be, but I’m not going to get into specifics. … That’s for the JPO to decide and we’ll align to that requirement.”

As Bass Bids Farewell, New CMSAF Flosi Urges Airmen To ‘Make Every Day Count’

March 8, 2024 | By David Roza

On his first day as the new top enlisted Airman, Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force David Flosi urged his colleagues not to waste a moment as the Air Force makes sweeping changes to prepare for a possible conflict with China or Russia.

“I’m committed to ensuring our Air Force is prepared to meet these challenges head-on,” Flosi said at a change of responsibility ceremony at Joint Base Andrews, Md., on March 8. “Every day matters, and we must make every day count.”

The ceremony marked the retirement for Flosi’s predecessor, former CMSAF JoAnne Bass, who made history as the first woman to serve as highest senior enlisted member of a U.S. military branch, and the first person of Asian-American descent to become Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force. The ceremony took place exactly 31 years after Bass first joined the Air Force in 1993.

“I said this several years ago at the change of responsibility ceremony, and it still holds true today: without a doubt, Chief Master Sergeant Jo Bass was the right chief,” said Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., who hired Bass as CMSAF in 2020 when he was Air Force Chief of Staff.

“She blended vast experience, expertise, empathy, an impeccable moral character, and a resolute will to succeed,” said the general, who was the first Black service chief in U.S. military history.

“Jo, I’m so glad I hired you,” he added later. “You’ve been an inspiration to me. We were able to break barriers together. You’ve been an inspiration to our Air Force, you’ve been an inspiration to our nation.”

cmsaf bass — Chief Master Sgt. of the Air Force JoAnne S. Bass receives a brief from the 334th Training Squadron at the Levitow Training Support Facility on Keesler Air Force Base, Mississippi, Dec. 19, 2023 (U.S. Air Force photos by Senior Airman Trenten Walters)

Bass’ accomplishments as CMSAF include creating the service’s first ever Enlisted Force Development Action Plan, reforming the dress and appearance standards to encourage more diversity in the Air Force, rolling out a Spectrum of Resilience to navigate mental and physical health resources, and helping establish Fortify the Force, a volunteer group for improving quality of life in the Air Force and Space Force.

Beyond those efforts, Bass helped revamp professional military education for enlisted Airmen and published three guides meant to help Airmen of all ranks understand the Air Force and the wider joint force. The updated “Brown Book” is about the enlisted force structure and how Airmen can prepare for an Air Force career. The updated “Blue Book” is about the service’s institutional values, complete with updates on combating sexual harassment, assault, discrimination, and bullying. The new “Purple Book” explains how airpower works in a joint warfighting strategy.

“While we’ve been focused in orienting to our most sophisticated peer and near peer adversaries, we’ve also spent a lot of time focusing on elevating the strategic IQ of our force, by ensuring that every Airman understands what is at stake today and in the future,” Bass said at the ceremony.

CMSAF 19 also advocated for child care as “a readiness issue” and pushed lawmakers to modernize the military’s systems for setting pay and compensation and basic allowance for housing. In her farewell speech, Bass left behind three points for Airmen: be your best: move the ball forward, and take care of one another.

“Every single day we ought to be asking ourselves, ‘Am I my best? Am I moving the ball and am I making a difference? And am I taking care of my fellow wingmen, my friends, my brothers, my sisters, my neighbors?” she said. “I tried to do this every day as your Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force. And I ask you to look in the mirror and ask yourself the very same thing.”

Now it’s Flosi’s turn to take up the CMSAF mantle at a time when his new boss, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin, wants to rapidly change how the Air Force deploys troops, develops new systems, trains Airmen, and achieves air superiority.

“We’re going to have to break some china if we’re going to break some China,” Allvin said. “Implementation is not going to be an easy thing … I need that teammate who’s going to walk into my office, if I’m heading the wrong direction and maybe a little bit too stubborn in my path and say, ‘I’m hearing some things, we might have a better idea.’”

Flosi is that teammate, the general said.

“He is principled, without being inflexible. This is exactly what we need,” Allvin said. “All of those attributes are there. And so while all the candidates were so compelling, it was a pretty easy pick for me, quite frankly.”

Indeed, Flosi told Air & Space Forces Magazine that one of his most valued traits as a leader is the ability to “seek first to understand.” Bass agreed with Allvin.

“Chief Flosi is absolutely the right leader we need as we continue to transform and re-optimize our force,” she said. “Dave, your experiences within the Air Force enterprise and Air Force Materiel Command is invaluable as we reorient to this new threat. You are a thought leader who discerns and leads with heart.”

It helps that Flosi and Bass share a favorite football team: the Kansas City Chiefs.

“He knows what a winning team is,” she said, “so that’s a good thing.”

How David Flosi Went From a Broke College Student to the New CMSAF

March 8, 2024 | By David Roza

When he was 22 years old, David Flosi was engaged, studying finance, working full time to pay for college, and running out of money. Something had to be done.

“I had a friend who enlisted right out of high school and was coming to the end of his contract, and we went on like a two-hour drive and talked,” he told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “I saw the Air Force as a means to an end: get the GI Bill, finish my degree debt-free, and support a new family.

“That’s why I enlisted,” he added. “It’s not why I stayed.”

Indeed, when Flosi [pronounced ‘flossy’] became the 20th Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force at a ceremony at Joint Base Andrews, Md., on March 8, it was in part thanks to the mentors sitting in the audience who helped him grow into a career Airman with a Legion of Merit, the Bronze Star, and 28 years of service to his country.

“I was completely blessed,” he said about the mentors who shaped his path.

With his background studying finance, Flosi thought he would join that career field when he enlisted in 1996, but he wound up in an open mechanical slot and became a nuclear weapons specialist after discussing the options with his then-fiancée, Katy.

“[Explosive ordnance disposal] was what I wanted to do initially and that scared her. Nuclear weapons did not,” he laughed. “So that rose up on the list.”

It was not always easy at first, partly because Flosi did not fully buy into living the Air Force core values 24 hours a day.

“Like most chiefs, I did not walk this completely clean path,” he said. “There were a few moments where maybe I wasn’t as disciplined as I should have been, so I had to grow up a little bit.”

Being held accountable for those moments helped Flosi internalize what it means to be an Airman, but he had a habit of asking questions, as his boss’ boss liked to remind him.

“I asked ‘why’ so much that he started making me pull out my [leave and earnings statement], and he’d look at it and say ‘That’s what I thought Airman Flosi, you ain’t getting no thinking pay,’” he said. “So I grew up in that era. But my immediate supervisor was very patient. He was like ‘All right, come here knucklehead,’ and he would walk me through the why, which I really needed. He figured me out and what I needed to be successful.”

david flosi — Chief Master Sgt. David Flosi, Air Force Sustainment Center commander chief master sergeant, visits with Airmen from the Airman Leadership School at Hill Air Force Base, Utah, Sept. 22, 2020. **U.S. Air Force photo by Cynthia Griggs**

That kind of support helped turn the Air Force from a job into a profession for Flosi. But he had a lot more to learn, especially as a brand-new staff sergeant leading other Airmen for the first time.

“Boy, do I feel bad for that first Senior Airman, because I just smothered this poor guy with all of my new leadership skills,” he recalled. “I learned a lot from that: I learned that leadership isn’t taking the book and dumping it on them. I needed to connect with this person, meet them where they’re at, and hopefully bring them to the right.”

Flosi had another big break when a senior NCO told him about the Air Force Institute of Technology, which offers graduate degree programs for enlisted and commissioned service members and government civilians. Flosi earned a Master’s degree in logistics and supply chain management, a move which he said changed the course of his career.

“I cannot believe I got the opportunity to go to graduate school and get paid to do it,” he said. “That would have never happened if I didn’t have these good leaders in place who actually were trying to take care of me.”

Flosi paid it forward by serving with distinction on deployments in support of Operations Southern Watch, Iraqi Freedom, Inherent Resolve, and Freedom’s Sentinel. He received the Bronze Star for his work during a tour in Afghanistan, and from 2017 to 2019, he was the command chief master sergeant of “DATA MASKED,” according to his resume, which drew interest on the unofficial Air Force subreddit.

“You can tell them that it was very cool,” he said when asked about the assignment.

Flosi’s latest post was as Command Chief Master Sergeant of Air Force Materiel Command at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. Over the course of his years as command chief of various units, Flosi picked up a few lessons about executing commander’s intent.

“Commanders have statutory authority. Chiefs don’t,” he said. “This is about relationships for us. And so our ability to get things done on behalf of the command, or to implement the guidance and commander’s intent, no matter where you’re at in the organization, is completely dependent on our ability to build relationships with people.”

Flosi’s new boss, Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin, wants to make a long list of sweeping changes fast in order to prepare the service for a possible conflict with China or Russia. Flosi was involved in the conversations leading to those changes and agrees that speed will be a key factor in the effort.

“We are out of time,” he said. “The department, both the Air and Space Force, are not optimized for great power competition. And we must get there.”

Flosi flagged readiness as an area he particularly looks forward to helping change. Allvin said at the AFA Warfare Symposium that the service has metrics for each squadron’s ability to execute mission essential tasks, but there is no overarching assessment showing how well the service can, for example, re-operate, which means “the fight to get outta town and a fight to get into theater and a fight to get airborne,” Allvin said.

“Only when you have assessments can you really find out the details and put resources against them,” he added.

Quality of life, including pay and compensation, health care, and child care is an underlying part of warfighting readiness, Flosi said.

“It’s a foundational item,” he explained. “Our quality-of-life issues impact all of the other things that we’re trying to do.”

While his predecessor, former Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force JoAnne Bass, was active on Facebook, Flosi is still working out his social media policy, acknowledging that the vast majority of service members use some form of the technology.

“We’re not going to ignore that,” he said. “We might do it a bit differently.”

One thing that will carry over from CMSAF #19 is a love for the Kansas City Chiefs football team. Though he was born in Florida, Flosi grew up in Kansas City and picked up a knack for barbecue.

“I tell people sometimes I have a smoking problem,” he said. “I’ll smoke vegetables, deviled eggs. It doesn’t have to just be pork.”

That skill set could prove a handy outlet over the next four years, which may be the most challenging of Flosi’s career. Part of a CMSAF’s job is to serve as the personal adviser to the Chief of Staff and the Secretary of the Air Force on the welfare, readiness, and morale of more than 600,000 Airmen across the force.

“I feel the enormity of the responsibility of the job: it’s important to not take for granted the opportunity that’s being presented,” he said. “Therefore I genuinely want to execute to the commander’s intent.”

He has a few guidelines to light the way. Flosi keeps a paper on leadership that he wrote for an assignment at the Senior NCO Academy back in 2011. Listed there are the values he holds dear, including integrity, accountability, direct feedback, transparency, fairness, and “seek first to understand.”

“I am constantly reminded that things are not always as they seem,” he wrote about that last value. “Sharpening this leadership trait sets the framework for trusting relationships focused on personal and professional success.”

Pentagon Clears V-22 to Start Flying Again After Three-Month Grounding

March 8, 2024 | By Greg Hadley and Chris Gordon

Naval Air Systems Command lifted the grounding order on its V-22 Osprey fleet on March 8, and Air Force Special Operations Command announced it would take a phased approach to get its CV-22 variant of the tiltrotor aircraft flying again after a three-month pause in operations.

AFSOC grounded its Ospreys Dec. 6 following a deadly November crash off the coast of Japan in which eight Airmen died. Naval Air Systems Command then grounded all of the Pentagon’s V-22s, rendering the military’s entire fleet of 400-plus tilt-rotor aircraft unusable.

In a statement, NAVAIR said senior Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps leaders coordinated to craft “risk mitigation controls to assist with safely returning the V-22 to flight operations.”

In its own statement, AFSOC outlined a three-step approach to getting its CV-22s back in the air and its crews fully qualified and comfortable flying again:

Phase 1: “Ground and simulator training integrating planned flight controls, safety briefings, a review of maintenance records and refining by-squadron training plans to implement the new safety protocols.”

Phase 2: A “multi-month program” for aircrews and maintainers to regain proficiency and mission currency, with maintainers in particular getting training on the new safety protocols implemented by NAVAIR. “Each squadron will progress through this phase at different speeds based a variety of factors including maintenance requirements for aircraft, experience level of personnel in the squadron and weather impact to flight schedules,” the AFSOC statement read.

Phase 3: A return to full operations, including exercises and deployments.

Neither NAVAIR nor AFSOC specified in their statements the findings of the investigation into the November crash, the deadliest Air Force flying mishap since 2018, but said they are taking new safety protocols.

“Some of the mitigation and controls put in place are focused on maintenance actions including increased inspections—on a more frequent basis than previously—as well as new procedures when responding to standard and emergency situations that arise in flight,” an AFSOC spokesperson told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Maj. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder told reporters on March 8 that Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III believes the Osprey is safe to fly.

“The Secretary is confident in the steps that have been taken to return it to flight,” Ryder said. “Safety is the most important thing. He recently had the opportunity to receive an update from the service secretaries and chiefs on the steps that are being taken and, again, is confident in their decision.”

The dynamic V-22 has long been a controversial aircraft, with safety concerns driven by its unique ability to hover like a helicopter and fly like a propeller airplane. The November crash was the first fatal Air Force V-22 accident since 2010, but it followed three Marine Corpse crashes since the start of 2022 and raised from 12 to 20 the number of military members killed in recent accidents.

The Air Force last grounded its CV-22 fleet in 2022, after two incidents of “hard clutch engagement,” a situation in which the clutch slips, causing a fail-safe system to transfer power from one engine to the other, at which point the clutch would re-engage, generating enormous spikes in torque. Hard clutch engagement was blamed for causing one of the deadly Marine Corps crashes.

In February 2023, the V-22 Joint Program Office imposed flight-hour limits on “input quill assemblies,” a V-22 component believed to be responsible for the hard-clutch engagement problem.

What caused the crash, however, remains unclear. AFSOC said its initial findings suggest a material failure, rather than pilot error, and the command confirmed it had identified which part failed in the deadly crash, but had not yet concluded why the failure occurred. NAVAIR and AFSOC officials told Air & Space Forces Magazine on March 8 had did not have new information to announce on the cause of the crash.

There are three ongoing Air Force reviews regarding the CV-22, AFSOC commander Lt. Gen. Tony Bauernfeind said last month at the AFA Warfare Symposium:

A Safety Investigation Board is investigating the crash and should provide findings to prevent future mishaps

An Accident Investigation Board will determine the causes of the crash and be released publicly

And a broader review intended to answer the question, “Is the CV-22 force appropriately organized, trained, and equipped for safe, effective, and efficient special operations?” Bauernfeind said.

In addition to the Air Force reviews, the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability and the Government Accountability Office are conducting their own investigations into the V-22 fleet and its safety.

Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), chair of the House Oversight Committee, released a statement criticizing the decision to lift the grounding order.

“DOD is lifting the Osprey grounding order despite not providing the Oversight Committee and the American people answers about the safety of this aircraft,” Comer said. “The House Oversight Committee has yet to receive adequate information requested from DoD as part of our ongoing investigation launched months ago into the safety and performance of the Osprey aircraft. Serious concerns remain such as accountability measures put in place to prevent crashes, a general lack of transparency, how maintenance and operational upkeep is prioritized, and how DOD assesses risks. “

Since 1991, the Osprey has suffered 10 fatal crashes, killing 57 service members. That performance has garnered a reputation for accidents that proponents argue is unfounded, noting that V-22 safety data is comparable to other aircraft.

While the aircraft does offer unique capabilities, Pentagon officials seem increasingly focused on developing newer platforms to replace the Osprey.

“There’s been upgrades to this technology that was basically developed in the 1980s,” Bauernfeind said. “And as we move forward, what are the future capabilities that will eventually provide the next generation of capability?”

Bell Helicopter, which developed the Osprey, is developing a next-generation tilt-rotor aircraft, the V-280, for the Army’s Future Vertical Lift (FVL) program. That uses a simplified system to transition from vertical to horizontal flight, moving only the propellers, and not both engines as it transitions.

CENTCOM Boss Presses Lawmakers for Counter-Drone Funds That ‘Will Save Lives’

March 7, 2024 | By Unshin Lee Harpley

Army Gen. Michael E. Kurilla, head of U.S. Central Command, urged lawmakers to approve more than half a billion dollars in funding to combat unmanned aerial systems in the Middle East after months of attacks by Iran-backed militia groups.

The $95 billion national security supplemental package that passed the Senate in February contained $531 million for counter-UAS efforts in CENTCOM, and Kurilla told the Senate Armed Service Committee on March 7 that those funds will allow him to procure “technology I need to get forward into the theater that will save lives.”

Much of the focus surrounding the supplemental has been on the aid designated for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. But Kurilla told committee chair Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) that the package is “absolutely critical” for his command as well—it designates $2.4 billion specifically for CENTCOM “and to replace combat expenditures for weapons in the Red Sea,” according to a Senate Appropriations Committee summary.

The Houthi rebel group, backed by Iran, has been conducting a monthslong campaign against commercial shipping and naval vessels in the region using drones, cruise missiles, and anti-ship ballistic missiles. On March 6, CENTCOM reported that three sailors on a merchant vessel died in a Houthi missile strike in the Gulf of Aden.

Other Iran-backed militia groups launched more than 150 attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq, Syria, and Jordan, from October through January, culminating in the deaths of three U.S. soldiers and injuries to more than 40 other service members in a drone attack near the Syrian border on Jan. 28, marking the first time American troops were killed by enemy fire since the conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza began in October.

The $531 million for CENTCOM “is for counter-unmanned aerial system defense, the various systems that are shooting down a lot of these systems, it’s for our command and control systems,” Kurilla said. “It’s for a lot of the modernization efforts that we need.”

Kurilla also said an integrated air and missile defense system to counter the increased attacks on U.S. service members is “one of the top things” the CENTCOM is working on.

“Through our regional partners, one of the first things that we’re trying to do is come up with a common air picture,” Kurilla said. “You have to be able to see the threat before you can defeat it, where there’s many elements that we are doing in terms of radar sharing agreements with a lot of our regional partners.”

Troops in CENTCOM are also experimenting with affordable new technology to improve operational security, Kurilla said.

“There is the technology, there are things out there, we have to continue to experiment,” Kurilla said. “We’re experimenting right now with a system that actually can go after both UAVs and land attack cruise missiles because it can go 300 knots, but if you go out there and you decide not to engage, you can bring it back and have it land. What we have to get better at, is the cost curve on that, to get those systems to be less expensive, less expensive.”

The CENTCOM boss cautioned against the proliferation of small, nimble, and inexpensive Iranian drones.

“That is one of the top threats because it is it is inexpensive, it’s a precision-guided weapon,” Kurilla noted. “Iran produces some that can go over 2,000 kilometers with those weapon systems. The bigger concern is if you start talking about swarm. So we need to continue to invest in things like high-powered microwave to be able to counter a drone swarm that is coming at you.”

Kurilla acknowledged the effectiveness of systems like the Coyote air defense weapon, but stressed that “nothing is 100 percent” and argued the need for a layered defense strategy.

The ongoing attacks by the Houthi group on shipping routes through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait demonstrate the difficulty in effectively countering them. Despite strikes and counterstrikes from the U.S. military, the Iranian-backed group has shot down two USAF MQ-9 Reapers, each costing $30 million, within three months since November.

CENTCOM needs broader government support in denying Tehran the ability to resupply the Houthis, Kurilla said.

“Anti-ship ballistic missiles, anti-ship cruise missiles, and the myriad of other systems that they are using all provided by Iran, but to degrade that capability means nothing if Iran is able to resupply them,” Kurilla said. “So we have an effort to deny Iran the ability to resupply them, and that’s where we need more of an international, and a whole-of-government approach to be able to stop Iran from resupplying the Houthis.”

Allvin: CCA Will Redefine How USAF Counts Its Fighters

March 7, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

The Air Force’s ambitious plans to start producing and fielding autonomous, unmanned Collaborative Combat Aircraft are prompting big picture questions about the fighter fleet, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin said March 7.

The number of each aircraft type is less important than how effective CCA prove to be as force multipliers, Allvin told defense leaders at the McAleese Defense Conference in Washington.

“In general, I would say if we do not embrace that a key part of future warfighting is going to be mastering human-machine teaming, human-machine integration—if we don’t get that right—I think we have an uphill fight,” Allvin said. “So what that means for the fighter force structure—it starts to blur the lines. What’s a fighter?”

The Air Force will have to ” … We have to “rethink our definition” of what a fighter is and does, he explained, and instead focus on “how we’re able to bring effects to bear against the adversary.”

Indeed, this evolution is similar to what has happened with long-range strike and tactical and strategic airpower, Allvin said, building on other recent remarks about drones and manned-unmanned teaming as driving a “reinvention” of airpower.

Gen. David W. Allvin, Chief of Staff of the Air Force, sees the future of air power evolving, and increasingly leveraging unmanned systems. **Photo by Jud McCrehin/Staff**

What Allvin outlined marks a fundamental shift in how Air Force leaders see their future fighter force. At the McAleese conference in 2021, then-Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. laid out his vision for a “4+1” fighter mix of F-35s, F-16, F-15E/F-15EX, with the Next-Generation Air Dominance fighter replacing the F-22, and the A-10 remaining as a plus-one until it no longer proved relevant. Two years later, after Congress had finally relented on allowing USAF to divest A-10s, Brown said the plan had shifted to just “4.”

How the Air Force counts fighters is important because Congress made it law that the Air Force maintains at least 1,800 fighters in its inventory, with at least 1,145 combat ready. For now, there is a temporary exception allowing that number to fall to 1,112. Exactly how CCA will fit into that equation is still an open question.

“I think the floor and the terms that we’ve become comfortable with … keeps a strong stakeholder class really attached to the numbers of aircraft, and sometimes they’re associated with the numbers of crews, the numbers of maintenance, the numbers of jobs,” Allvin said. “But we really need to look at the future and think more about what it takes to mass the right effects at the right time.”

“Once we embrace that, I think that question [of fighter force mix] becomes less relevant,” Allvin added. “There will be harder questions to ask, but that particular question of a fighter floor will be less relevant.”

As the Air Force builds combat capacity with CCA, it must ponder tough questions about CCA including:

Whether they are organized in distinct units or integrated into manned aircraft squadrons

Whether they will be co-located with manned aircraft or rendezvous with them only after they’re airborne

Whether they can operate with existing aerial refueling

Whether fighter pilots will learn to trust their autonomous robotic teammates

How manned-unmanned teaming will actual work in practice

Congress is eager for answers. The 2024 National Defense Authorization Act passed late last year requires the service to deliver a 12-year fighter force structure plan to Congress by April 1.

One big question on those numbers are the 32 older-model F-22 fighters. Allvin suggested that the Air Force has not yet given up on its push to retire the Block 20 Raptors, even after Congress forbade any reductions in the fleet.

Allvin said not all F-22s are equal. “There’s a block of F-22s which really lags the rest of the F-22 force, that we would not put up in a fight with the adversary necessarily, because it doesn’t have all the capabilities we need,” he said. “But the F-22 plays a pivotal role, so we’re looking to be able to take those that are most combat capable, keep them in the fight, and then leverage some of the resources for those [lesser models] that are going to be cost-prohibitive and time-prohibitive to upgrade” and use those resources elsewhere.

Maryland Guard to Trade A-10s for Cyber, and Hope for Future Flying Mission

March 7, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

Warfield Air National Guard Base in Maryland will transition from A-10s to a cyber mission, the Air Force announced March 7, leaving Maryland as the only state “that doesn’t fly,” officials said.

The 175th Wing of the Maryland Air National Guard will become a cyberspace wing, pending an environmental impact analysis expected to be completed by the fall of 2025, following in the footsteps of the Ohio Air National Guard’s 179th Airlift Wing, which was redubbed the 179th Cyberspace Wing last September.

The 175th has had a Cyberspace Operations Group at Warfield since 2016, but giving up its jets is a major change: The 175th has flown A-10 “Warthogs” since 1979. The Air Force is gradually divesting its entire A-10 fleet, and the Maryland A-10s will start their phase out later this year.

Warfield will not be “precluded from being considered for other potential missions in the future,” the Air Force said. The number of personnel assigned to the 175th is not expected to change.

Maryland National Guard officials first shared plans with local media in January. “The Air Force, in 2025, will divest the aircraft, take them away from us and turn [the 175th] into a cyber wing,” Brig. Gen. Drew Dougherty, assistant adjutant general of the Maryland National Guard, told WBAL at the time. “We would be the only state in the nation that doesn’t fly.”

“We are not trying to fight the fact that the A-10 is an aging piece of equipment and there may be other options out there. We want to look at options to keep a fighter or flying mission in Maryland,” Maj. Gen. Janeen Birckhead, adjutant general of Maryland, added.

In a statement after the Air Force’s announcement, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) praised the expansion of the Maryland ANG’s cyber mission but bemoaned the loss of a flying mission.

“In partnership with our congressional delegation, we are advocating vigorously to maintain Maryland’s flying mission, both in the interest of national security and the hundreds of jobs and families that will be affected by this transition,” Moore said. “We are disappointed to learn of the Air Force’s decision to hurriedly retire the A-10 mission across the nation, including the mission at [Warfield], without a plan to retain experienced pilots and maintainers or to replace older systems with advanced aircraft. We are committed to working with our federal partners at the White House and the Pentagon to acquire another flying mission in Maryland this year.”

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall told Congress in May 2023 that his approach in retiring the A-10 is to try and replace it with a flying mission when possible.

“If we can’t do that, there are a number of other missions that are very important to the Department,” he said. “We talked about electronic warfare here; cyber is another one; ISR; intelligence; all of those things matter. So, in every case where we’re taking aircraft out, we’re trying to make sure that a viable long-term mission replaces that mission.”

In its release, the department noted that the new cyber wing “will create a natural synergy” with Fort Meade, Md., which is located around 35 miles away and hosts the headquarters for U.S. Cyber Command, the National Security Agency, and the Air Force’s 70th Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Wing.

Acquisition Boss: Spending Caps Forced USAF to Trim 2025 Budget Request

March 7, 2024 | By John A. Tirpak

Spending caps set under the Fiscal Responsibility Act shaved around two percent from the topline of the Air Force’s planned fiscal 2025 budget, and that reduction will have an outsized impact given constraints on what accounts can bear the cuts, Air Force acquisition executive Andrew Hunter said March 7.

Speaking to reporters at the annual McAleese defense conference in Washington, D.C., Hunter said the Air Force’s budget will take a cut “on the order of a couple of percent” from its previously anticipated topline due to the FRA. The law, passed last summer, came into force when the services had already largely figured out their budget submissions for fiscal 2025, he noted.

Although two percent “sounds small … there’s only a handful of places” from which the funding can be reduced, Hunter said. Personnel accounts are largely protected, so “your readiness accounts and modernization accounts” were hit disproportionately. Those accounts were the “easiest to get to” given the short time available to adapt to the FRA, he said.

Hunter was unable to offer more details, because the budget will not be unveiled until March 11. He did, however, offer a rundown on some of the Air Force’s highest-profile programs and discussed the issue of lowball bids from industry and fixed-price contracts.

Collaborative Combat Aircraft

The Air Force recently selected five companies to complete on the first increment of the Collaborative Combat Aircraft program, which will produce autonomous drones to team with manned platforms. Those companies, Hunter said, all had to do substantive work on autonomous vehicles to be picked. He noted that General Atomics had done work on the OBSS (Off-Board Sensing Station) platform which brought “maturity” to its CCA efforts, and Anduril acquired Blue Force Technologies, which had the pre-existing Fury program.

The others—Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman—“had things they developed under IRAD,” or independent research and development, he added. “Quite honestly, if they didn’t have that … they weren’t really in a position to compete for Increment 1,” Hunter said.

Aerial Tankers

The Air Force wants to get the Next-Generation Air-Refueling System (NGAS) “in the quickest, most reasonable timeframe,” Hunter said, because in a Pacific campaign, tankers deployed near and inside contested areas will be crucial. That’s “not something we typically do today.”

In the meantime, the service is working on a KC-135 Re-Capitalization program, previously called the “bridge tanker.” Boeing and Airbus have both responded to requests for information for the program, which will keep tankers in production while the NGAS is in development, Hunter said.

That program will begin production “in five-ish years” and USAF is starting now because it needs a “pretty mature” solution at that point to avoid a break in manufacturing, he said. “And we have been talking to industry about how do we cut down on that period.”

Both companies provided responses, and now the Air Force is working with them to “clarify what those offerings look like and to evaluate them against our need dates and our requirements,” Hunter said.

The scope of requirements for the KC-135 Re-Capitalization program has been reduced, Hunter said, and a milestone is coming soon.

“We’re looking this summer to make a final decision, based on the information we received from industry, on our acquisition strategy,” he said.

E-7A Wedgetail

After Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall revealed last month that the service and Boeing are having a “hard time” reaching a price agreement on the first two rapid prototype/demonstration examples of the E-7 Wedgetail, Hunter offered more details.

Boeing’s proposal for the E-7, which will succeed the E-3 Sentry as the service’s airborne battle management platform, was “well in excess of what we budgeted and unaffordable.”

Negotiations thus far have “significantly narrowed the gap. We’re not there yet, but we’ve made a lot of progress,” Hunter said. He added that he sees the E-7 as “a capability that makes sense and that we need to field in the near term. So we are working very, very hard with Boeing to get to get to an affordable price” and move on into production.

Lowball Bids

The Air Force wants a healthy industrial base, Hunter said, and it is discouraging companies from offering lowball bids on programs, which have gotten some—notably Boeing, which is more than $7 billion in the red on the KC-46—in serious financial trouble.

“We sometimes say, ‘Hey, you’re not in the competitive range, right? Your price is amazing, but we don’t believe it,’” Hunter said. “So you can exclude people from the competitive range because … they just can’t actually do what they say they’re going to do.”

But sometimes the Air Force’s hands are tied when the service knows a company “can probably do it, but you’re going to lose a ton of money at the price you bid,” Hunter said.

Such concerns aren’t part of the evaluation process, Hunter said. Instead, the Air Force has addressed by the problem by becoming “very cautious about when we make cost the primary criteria,” he said. “I would say [in] most of our big competitions these days, price is not the preeminent factor in our evaluation.”

Divestiture of Older Aircraft

Hunter said there will have to be significant adjustment of the fiscal 2025 budget if Congress doesn’t approve the fiscal 2024 budget as it stands, particularly as it affects the divestiture of older aircraft. The Air Force needs the personnel associated with those aircraft for new programs, particularly the F-35, he said. Retaining older aircraft requires operation and maintenance funds, personnel, and “safety of flight” modifications the Air Force hadn’t planned for, he said, and it disrupts and delays introducing new systems.