Saltzman Announces Fourth Space Force Field Command: Space Futures Command

Feb. 12, 2024 | By Unshin Lee Harpley

AURORA, Colo.—While the Air Force is undergoing sweeping changes as part of its re-optimization for Great Power Competition, the Space Force’s to-do list is shorter—but still with some major changes driven by the need to adjust to a changing domain, Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman said at the AFA Warfare Symposium.

“That shift to an operational phase where we have to now build and then maintain space superiority in order to continue to provide the services that the force has come to count on is what the real transformation is,” Saltzman said during the conference’s opening session Feb. 12.

Saltzman compared the transformation to that of converting a Merchant Marine to a Navy—preparing the Space Force to operate in a contested domain.

Space Futures Command

Perhaps the biggest change is the planned establishment of Space Futures Command, meant to answer long-term questions such as “Are we developing capabilities for the long term to continue to have advantages and maintain those advantages for years to come in the future? Are we evaluating the future operating environment? Are we evaluating the missions that we’re going to be asked to take on? Do we know how we’re going to accomplish that?” Saltzman said.

This new field command—similar to Army Futures Command—will include three centers aimed at answering those questions.

The Concepts and Technology Center will focus on evaluating the future operating environment, assessing adversary technologies, and devising operational concepts. A new Wargaming Center “helps us evaluate technologies … helps us experiment with new technologies,” Saltzman said.

Finally, the Space Warfighting Analysis Center, currently a direct reporting unit, will leverage advanced analytics and modeling to inform decision-making and shape the future force design, Saltzman said.

Through the new command, the Space Force aims to stay ahead of emerging threats and maintain its competitive edge in the space domain. The Space Futures Command will be the service’s fourth field command, following on Space Operations Command (SpOC), Space Systems Command (SSC), and Space Training and Readiness Command (STARCOM).

Preparing Guardians

Big changes are also coming for how the Space Force will prepare its personnel. Reflecting on current processes, Saltzman suggested they are not fully adequate to meet the evolving demands of space warfare, characterized by high operational tempo and technological complexity.

For that, the Space Force will redesign its Officer Training Course so that all Space Force operators will have a better understanding of every other career field. On top of that, the service will implement new career paths.

“But that’s not going to stop there,” Saltzman added. “We have to recognize that all of our operators and all of the Guardians are going to need similar kinds of training and experience different from what they’ve had in the past.”

With that, the service plans to expand educational and developmental opportunities for all Guardians in the future, including the enlisted personnel and its civilian work force.

Bolstering Readiness

Saltzman also laid out a plan for ensuring the Space Force’s preparedness for the challenges of great power competition. Drawing from his experience as a squadron commander, Saltzman detailed the elements of readiness: “It’s the people, it’s the training, it’s the equipment, and it’s the sustainment.”

How the Space Force assesses that readiness needs a fundamental overhaul, Saltzman said, noting that “we have to rewrite the standards for readiness centered around a contested domain.”

Saltzman also stressed the need for advanced training and tactics to counter adversaries effectively.

“We have to redesign our architectures, redesign the systems to do our missions so they’re resilient against an adversary,” Saltzman said, highlighting the need for swiftly enhancing the service’s capabilities but pointing out the importance of the sustainability of those capabilities in the long term. For that, the service plans to create a series of exercises with an increase in scope, tempo, and complexity to fit within a broader Department-level framework. The assessment results from these trainings will shape force design and development.

Power Projection

As a service, the Space Force primarily deploys in place, making its force generation model unique. To that end, Saltzman said the service would establish “combat squadrons” meant to fit in with the department’s “units of action” concept for presentation to combatant commanders.

While combat squadrons will focus on day-to-day functions required by combatant commanders, mission squadrons will retain some ability to focus on high-end, advanced readiness activities. He added that these tasks will be rotated through the Space Force generation models, so that “the people on the ops floor are both ready if we have to fight tonight against the adversary, but also can respond to those day-to-day tasks.”

“What we’re really doing is building combat-ready forces,” Saltzman added. “If we can’t build combat-credible units, we have no chance of deterring a very capable and determined adversary.”

Combat Wings: Air Force Chief Lays Out New Model for Packaging Forces

Feb. 12, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

AURORA, Colo.—The Air Force will seek to move away from today’s piecemeal approach to deployments in favor of deploying units that have grown up training together as “units of action,” as part of the department’s ambitious re-optimization for Great Power Competition, Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin said Feb. 12 at the AFA Warfare Symposium.

“Our current paradigm in how we deploy forces often is that we will take one of the mission elements—a fighter squadron or a bomber squadron or a tanker squadron, or what have you, and we’ll take the rest of the forces and sort of crowdsource it from amongst our Air Force, and they will meet in theater,” Allvin said. “That does not work against the pacing challenge. We need to ensure that our combat wings are coherent units of action that have everything they need to be able to execute their wartime tasks.”

Allvin defined three types of wings:

Deployable combat wings, “where they need to pick up, deploy, employ, generate, and sustain power in theater;”

In-place combat wings, which generate combat power and fight from their home stations, for which “we need to ensure that where they reside, where they project power from, they have all that they need;”

Combat generation wings, which “we may not expect to deploy as a wing, but [which] provide combat power that can plug into those combat wings,” Allvin said.

“These wings will prioritize readying whole units that can be combat effective on Day One of a conflict,” an Air Force presentation document stated. “They will train together and, as applicable, deploy and fight together—enhancing their ability to provide direct support to Combatant Commanders.”

Common in all cases is a basic three-tiered structure, including a mission layer, a combat support layer, and a command and control layer.

“The command-and-control layer is the commander and the staff and the ability to plan and execute the wartime tasks,” he said. “The mission layer is the mission generation we’re familiar with—the ops and the maintenance generating that combat power—and then there’s a sustaining layer that ensures that where they are engaged in combat, whether it be in place or deployed, they can sustain with the ability to have the force protection, to do the logistics, to do the intel, all of those things that will enable that to happen.”

Combat wings builds on the “Air Task Force” idea rolled out in September 2023 as a concept for more effectively packaging forces. But as leaders studied the concept, their thinking evolved. The result is more modular, more common across the force, and more intuitive in structure.

“What if the combatant commander wants different combinations of airpower to come and support a particular crisis or conflict?” Allvin asked rhetorically. “So let’s say, for example, we’re going to deploy an F-15E wing, that deployable combat wing needs to be ready to take those forces and deploy forward with all the C2 and all the sustainment. But what if we also would like an F-35 squadron as well? Well, that F-35 squadron should be able to plug into that unit and go. What if we want to use tankers to be able to generate sorties or C-130s to be able to have theater airlift in there? Those mission layers at the squadron layer should be able to plug into this deployable combat wing.”

Combining different kinds of aircraft and missions into a standing operating wing proved too costly when the Air Force tried it in the in the 1990s. Called “composite wings,” these units combined fighters, bombers, and tankers.

Operating a base like that is inefficient. But assembling a wing with those capabilities can be achieved if units are built to be plug-and-play compatible.

“That modularity provides forward flexibility with coherency at home,” Allvin said.

An F-15 Eagle from the Massachusetts Air National Guard takes off down the runway passing the C-130 Hercules from the 165th Airlift Wing, Savannah Air National Guard, at the Air Dominance Center, during Sentry Savannah 2021, hosted by the Georgia Air National Guard, Savannah, Ga., April 14, 2021. U.S. Air National Guard photo by Tech Sgt. Nicole Manzanares

Allvin did not specify a timeline for the creation of the new combat wings. Air Force leaders had planned to test the Air Task Force concept with three units starting in summer 2024, but that effort was suspended, leaving questions about what the forward plan will be.

A key difference between the two is the question of combat service support: “running a main operating base, providing for airfield security, air traffic control, lodging, sustenance, all those types of things at a main operating base,” then-deputy chief of staff for operations, now Vice Chief of Staff Gen. James C. “Jim” Slife said.

Allvin said the relationship between combat wings and base commanders—those responsible for combat service support—will not be permanently joined. Rather, the bases need to be able to keep operating when the wings deploy and when they come under attack, or simply face a natural disaster, whether a flood, a power outage, or a winter storm.

“In this future flight, we cannot expect that there will be a benign environment in the installations that are here after the deploying wing is gone,” Allvin said. “We have to be able to not only fight forward, but understand what it takes to continue to defend and operate the base at home.”

New Commands, Ranks, and More: Big Changes for Air Force & Space Force

Feb. 12, 2024 | By Tobias Naegele and Chris Gordon

This story was updated on Feb. 13, 2023, to clarify the status of Air Task Forces.

AURORA, Colo.—Air Force and Space Force leaders rolled out sweeping changes to the services’ organization, manning, readiness, and weapons development Feb. 12 at the AFA Warfare Symposium here. The changes aim to ratchet up readiness and gain a warfighting edge in the face of intensifying great power competition with China.

Secretary Frank Kendall, acting undersecretary Kristyn Jones, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin, and Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman detailed 24 action items and an aggressive schedule for implementation in a joint presentation to open the conference.

“All of these are intended to make us more competitive and to do so with a sense of urgency,” Kendall said in a speech unveiling the changes.

Citing the prospect of conflict—either through a military move by China on Taiwan or miscalculation that could escalate—Kendall said it is well past time to make changes. “We are out of time,” he repeated several times during his remarks.

The Air Force will reorient its major commands to focus on combat readiness, peeling off their requirements and weapons development functions and consolidating those into a new Integrated Capabilities Command. Headed by a three-star general and reporting directly to the Chief and Secretary of the Air Force, it becomes a new power center for current and future programs.

The idea is to have leaders be able to define requirements and build programs without having to manage a competing focus on today and tomorrow.

“We need to both be ready today with the force that we have. We need to approach that with a sense of urgency,” Allvin said. “But we also need to update—re-optimize, dare I say—the processes, the policies, the authorities, and in some cases, the structure to be competitive for the long term. We need to do both of these at the same time. And that’s the goal of these decisions.”

The Space Force will create a new Space Force Futures Command with a similar objective. It will be the Space Force’s fourth Field Command, the service’s equivalent to the Air Force’s Major Commands.

“Over the first four years in the Space Force, we focused on some of the systems … we didn’t really have the mechanisms to evaluate all the other components that have to be in place,” Saltzman said, citing everything from identifying the number of facilities needed to handle classified information to forming the USSF’s operational concepts. “That is what a futures organization can provide for you.”

Planned changes span the services and technologies. Cyber and electronic warfare will be elevated—what is today’s 16th Air Force, the information warfare arm of Air Combat Command, will be elevated to Air Forces Cyber, reporting directly to the Chief and Secretary with responsibility for operational cyber, information, and electronic warfare. It will continue to be led by a three-star general as it is today, but its rise to direct-reporting status suggests added stature and visibility.

Focus on Readiness

Operational Air Force wings will be restructured as “units of action,” with each designated as a Deployable Combat Wing, an In-Place Combat Wing, or a Combat Generation Wing.

Each wing type will be designed and structured for its purpose. Kendall and Allvin want to clarify the blurred lines between operational units and base support, and will designate Base Commands to support combat wings and keep bases operating during conflicts or crises. “We’re going to make sure that our deployable wings have everything they need to go fight successfully as a unit,” Kendall said.

In parallel, the Space Force will set up new Space Force Combat Squadrons as its units of action, supporting U.S. Space Command on a rotational basis. Additional Space Force component commands will be established, building on those already created and aligned to U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, U.S. European Command, and U.S. Central Command. Additional Space Component Commands could include U.S. Cyber Command, U.S. Transportation Command, U.S. Northern Command, and U.S. Southern Command.

The reorientation of Air Combat Command, Air Mobility Command, and Air Force Global Strike Command to focus almost exclusively on combat readiness aligns with plans to further refine the Air Force Force Generation Model, which will evolve to support each type of combat wing.

“What has happened over time is that we basically took a lot of what could be headquarters or could be specialized command functions and farmed them out to various Major Commands,” Kendall explained in an interview. “The list of additional duties got pretty long. … And these aren’t core jobs for these commands. What we want fundamentally is to have the major force providers—Air Combat Command, Air Mobility Command, and Air Force Global Strike Command—with responsibilities across the Air Force—focused on readiness for the forces that they have.”

To do that, he and the Chiefs are digging into the Cold War playbook and re-introducing large-scale combat exercises and no-notice operational readiness assessments and inspections. These hallmarks of the days of Strategic Air Command, Tactical Air Command, and Military Airlift Command all but disappeared over the past three decades, as the Air Force focused on supporting continuous operations in the Middle East.

“We’re talking about preparing units of action, which are fundamentally a new construct,” Kendall added of the changes across the Department. “We’re going to make sure that our deployable wings have everything they need to go fight successfully as a unit. And once we have that and they have a chance to train, then it’s reasonable to commit and start evaluating their ability to do that.”

The Space Force will implement new readiness standards for operating in contested environments and when under attack, and will introduce its own exercise program nested within the Department-level exercise framework.

The Space Force has heretofore operated as if space was a benign environment, and its leaders are rapidly confronting a future in which the service needs new training—everything from ranges and simulators to large joint force exercises.

“Unfortunately, over the last decade or so what we’ve seen, is now we have to recognize that space is a fundamentally different domain,” Saltzman said. “It is a contested domain. Now if we’re going to be successful in meeting our military objectives, we have to fight for, contest the space domain, and achieve some level of space superiority if we’re going to continue to provide the services that the military needs, that the joint force needs.”

Saltzman likened the shift to transforming the Merchant Marine into the warfighting U.S. Navy.

But “you can’t just tell” the Merchant Marine they need to suddenly be able to fight a war, Saltzman said. “They don’t have the right training; they don’t have the right operational concepts to do the task that they’ve been given.”

The same is true for the Space Force, he said.

“I feel like that’s what we have to embrace,” Saltzman said. “We have to understand that we have to transform this service if it’s going to provide the kinds of capabilities, to include space superiority, that the joint force needs to meet its objectives. That’s the transformational charge that’s at hand.”

Kendall is determined not to let staffs slow-roll these changes. “We’ve got to do this with a sense of urgency,” he said. “The threat is not a future threat, it is a current threat. And it’s getting worse over time. And we’ve got to start orienting ourselves on that and behaving as if we have a deep appreciation for that.”

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall speaks during the opening session of AFA Warfare Symposium in Aurora, Colo., on Feb. 12. Screenshot

People

Air Education and Training Command will be reborn as Airman Development Command, with a mission to better prepare Airmen for the range of duties they can expect in the more expeditionary future, where Agile Combat Development is no longer just an emerging concept, but the standard operating procedure.

More than just a renamed command, Kendall said the change will also encompass increased responsibility and oversight of programs like NCO academies, “wherever they might be to ensure that we’re getting the type of training across the force that we need.”

The concept of “Multi-Capable Airmen” will be formalized as “Mission-Ready Airmen,” with new skills taught at every level in the training pipeline, beginning in Basic Training and continuing at Wings and at each level of advanced training.

“We’re going to be more deliberate about what training people get so that they are fully prepared to do the jobs we’re going to need them to do,” Kendall said in an interview.

The Air Force will stand up several Air Task Forces this summer, which will go through a full Force Generation cycle, but the wider vision is that wings will be the future unit of action in the Air Force. How fast can these new structures stand up and spread across the force? “My answer to timeline questions is as quickly as we can,” Kendall said. “We need these units now—we don’t need them six years from now or two years from now. We need them now.”

The Air Force will create a new Warrant Officer track for highly skilled IT and cyber talent, enabling those Airmen to not only be paid competitively, but to choose a career path that enables them to focus exclusively on their specialties, bypassing the typical officer leadership track.

“We need mass, people,” Allvin told the audience. “We need to be able to have technical talent of a very specific variety, now and into the future. … We anticipate that will drive that talent in and help us to keep that talent. There’s something specific about this career field, why it’s attractive and it’s a nice match for a Warrant Officer Program.”

Additional focus on technical tracks for officers and noncommissioned officers is in the works. Warrant officers are approved for IT and Cyber “initially,” Kendall said. The Air Force must start somewhere, Allvin explained in his remarks.

“The first thing is, we have to try in this particular career field before we even consider rolling it out across the Air Force to other career fields,” Allvin said.

No plans are in place for the Space Force to adopt Warrant Officers at least for now.

Weapons Development

The most far-reaching of the changes, however, may be in how Kendall is reorganizing the work of creating and developing new warfighting capabilities. These changes go well beyond the centralization of requirements and integrated development in the new Integrated Capabilities Command and represent the culmination not only of his 30 months as Secretary but nearly 50 years of defining operational requirements and developing weapons in the Pentagon.

A new Integrated Capabilities Office will oversee all capability development for the department, centralizing resource decisions that had previously been determined by individual Major Commands in the Air Force and Field Commands in the Space Forces. Two other new offices will be established within the Secretariat to further centralize oversight: an Office of Competitive Activities will oversee and coordinate sensitive programs, and a new Program Assessment and Evaluation Office will apply a common strategic and analytical approach to program performance and associated resourcing decisions.

“We want our fighters and operators to be ready to go to war,” Kendall said in an interview. “That’s what they should be focused on being ready to go to war now. We want other people thinking about the future.”

Removing oversight of fighter requirements from ACC, for example, or mobility requirements from AMC doesn’t mean disconnecting them entirely from the process, however.

“The current force will certainly have a strong voice,” he promised. “There’s going to be a lot of interaction. “I saw a quote the other day about ‘extreme teaming.’ You know, ‘One Team, One Fight’ has been my mantra since I got here. We’re trying to break down stovepipes as opposed to create new ones. So collaborative processes, involvement of stakeholders—the people who are going to be operating the Future Force have a huge stake in what that future force is. They are not going to be isolated from this. They’re going to be very involved.”

Operators will move into the requirements game, he suggested, and in the future, some experienced operators could move into that game full-time at the senior levels. But the key is that the people focused on the future and those focused on the present will not have to split their attention between the two.

Air Force Materiel Command will be reorganized and structured as well, with new and reoriented centers and offices to better oversee critical technical areas:

Information Dominance Center: A new three-star command that will focus on Command, Control, Communications, and Battle Management (C3BM), as well as Cyber, Electronic Warfare, and the enterprise-wide information systems and infrastructure that support those and other Air Force and Space Force capabilities.

Air Force Nuclear Systems Center: Another new three-star command, it will expand the existing Nuclear Weapons Center to better support nuclear forces and the command will include a new two-star Program Executive Officer for ICBMs to oversee the overhaul of the ICBM enterprise.

Air Dominance Systems Center: The Life Cycle Management Center will be redesignated and directed to focus on synchronized aircraft and weapons development and support.

Integration Development Office: This organization within AFMC will be responsible for technology assessment and technical expertise to assess the feasibility of new operational concepts and technology insertion.

“We’re going to align the science and technology pipeline,” Kendall said.

Getting Buy-In

The 24 changes outlined Feb. 12 are the culmination of five months of intense effort, during which department leaders took in ideas and inputs from across the services. Among the many proposals, some of the more dramatic ones—such as combining multiple MAJCOMS into a single Forces Command, much like the Army and Navy—were discarded and refined.

“We worked really hard to make sure everybody’s voice was heard,” Kendall said in an interview. “And we did make adjustments because of things we heard from people. I think there was a widespread perception that change was needed, and what this process has done is identify what exactly we need to do differently. … This has been a mechanism to surface a lot of things that have kind of been on the table, but not necessarily addressed.”

Now comes the hard part—implementing the ideas and making them real.

“We’ve made the major decisions about direction and we’re going to be working next on all the details of that,” Kendall said ahead of the rollout. “There are still a lot of details to be worked out. It’s going to be a heavy lift. But I think we’re ready to do it. … We’re taking an approach which is designed to overcome bureaucratic resistance. We’re going to put responsible leaders in charge of each of these things. We’ve already figured out generally who they’re going to be. And we’re going to give them the mission of making these things happen.”

None of those changes will need much funding in the near term, Kendall said. Most will be cost-neutral or can be accomplished through the usual process of reprogramming funding from other lines. That’s important, because these changes come too late for the still-not-completed fiscal 2024 budget, as well as the already programmed—but not yet requested—fiscal 2025 budget request. That is expected to be released next month. That means that funding for significant changes, like new construction, or large-scale moves, won’t come until the fiscal 2026 budget cycle, which is just beginning to be bent into shape now.

But the Department of the Air Force’s re-optimization efforts have buy-in across the DOD, from Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, Deputy Secretary Kathleen Hicks, and other service secretaries, Kendall said.

“If you’re going to make some major changes in your organization, even if you have all the authorities you need to do them, it’s a good idea to tell your boss before you do,” Kendall said. “I went to both the deputy secretary and the secretary and basically briefed them, and also briefed my counterparts in the other military departments. There was not a single question asked about the appropriateness of anything we were doing. It was essentially a thumbs up, you’re on the right path, go get it done. And that’s where we’re going to go. We’re going to move out on this stuff.”

Big Changes In Store as Air Force, Space Force Arrive at AFA Warfare Symposium

Feb. 11, 2024 | By Tobias Naegele

AURORA, Colo.—Air Force and Space Force leaders gathering here on Feb. 12 will lift the veil on dozens of changes designed to enhance operational readiness and accelerate the development of future weapons in the years to come. The highly anticipated changes will be announced at the AFA Warfare Symposium.

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall III will lay out his plans in an unprecedented opening keynote panel address featuring himself, undersecretary Kristyn E. Jones, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin, and Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman. Together, they will break down both the rationale and the specific changes they intend to implement in the coming months.

Kendall set the stage for the changes in September at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference in Washington D.C., announcing multiple “lines of effort” intended to identify barriers to readiness and impediments to getting new capabilities into the hands of warfighters. He worried openly that the Air Force and Space Force weren’t as ready as they could be to take on a peer rival in an era of Great Power Competition.

In an interview in the current issue of Air & Space Forces Magazine, Kendall emphasized that his experience as an Army officer and Pentagon civilian during the Cold War informed his view that today’s force was not fully prepared for the challenges of conflict with a peer competitor, like the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s or China, today.

“Over the 30-odd years since the Cold War ended, we have drifted away from preparing and assessing the readiness of the force or structuring the force—or managing the force—so that it is truly ready for a short-notice great power conflict,” he said. “And as you dig into that, and you start to investigate—how are we really structured and postured today?—You discover more ways in which we are really not optimized for great power competition.”

In daily meetings that only picked up speed and intensity as the months flew past, Kendall, Jones, Allvin, Saltzman, and their staffs sorted through hundreds of proposals. The results of those deliberations will come into focus over their 90-minute opening keynote session beginning at 3:50 p.m. Mountain Time on Feb. 12. Those not able to attend in person will be able to view the livestream by registering for the conference virtually. Registration is free to military members and federal employees.

Changes to be unveiled will address people, readiness, power projection, and weapons development. Already, there has been extensive speculation about the return of warrant officers and potential reorganization plans.

In January, Kendall focused on the idea that there are two crucial aspects of the force: readiness for war today and preparedness for requirements tomorrow.

“We want the units that are responsible for readiness to be responsible for readiness, and to be focused on that, and to be ready to go fight on a short notice,” Kendall said last month. “But we also need … organizations that are focused on sustaining competitive advantage over time, from both the operational perspective and from the technical perspective of acquiring those capabilities and maturing technologies.”

In both cases, Kendall said, existing institutional approaches and structures got in the way of delivering what’s needed.

Kendall promised a broad range of changes. “It’s about more than organizational structure,” he said. “It’s also about how we train people. … What kind of skill sets we want to have, what that mix of skill sets is. We’re looking at how we fight …. how we assess and evaluate readiness and how we create readiness.”

Air Force four-stars got their cut on the plans in recent weeks, and headquarters staff and outlying commands began to get briefed late last week. Anticipation has been rising across the services, with some posting memes on Reddit and Facebook about waiting for the answers to what all the fuss is about.

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Kendall came into office on a mission to “deliver meaningful operational capability to the warfighter.” His seven Operational Imperatives were intended to focus the department on more rapidly developing the key capabilities needed to compete with China. But he said that over time he became increasingly concerned that it wasn’t just future capabilities that were lacking, but rather the posture of the entire force. That’s why he pressed for a sprint last fall and why he intends to use this year to not just talk about planned changes, but to implement them.

“We’re not in a period where we have the luxury of being complacent or taking our time,” he said last month. “If we went at the normal Pentagon pace for these things, we’d be staffing things for two years. We don’t have two years.”

China set the clock years ago, Kendall noted, when Xi Jinping has told his military be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. “The threat is changing, and it will keep changing,” Kendall said. “China is a thinking, well-resourced adversary. They’re now thinking about the things we’ve said we’re going to do and how they’re going to defeat them. That’s why we have to re-optimize. We’re in a race. And we can’t just hope we win.”

Re-optimizing is not the easy path, but he necessary path, Kendall said. “We have to actually do things to make sure we stay ahead,” he said. “Change is hard, losing is unacceptable, right? We don’t have a choice about this if we want to win.”

Air Force Thunderbirds’ F-16s Ready to Roar Over the Super Bowl

Feb. 9, 2024 | By Unshin Lee Harpley

The F-16s of the U.S. Air Force’s Thunderbirds will make their first Super Bowl appearance since 2019 on Feb. 11, roaring over Allegiant Stadium in Paradise, Nev., just before kickoff.

The iconic red, white, and blue Fighting Falcons will blaze through the sky at 400 miles per hour, right as the live performance of the National Anthem comes to a close. The stadium, located near Las Vegas, is firmly within the Thunderbirds’ home territory, as they are stationed at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev., only about 15 miles away.

In preparation for their big game night demonstration, the Thunderbirds have been flying twice a day, six times a week, to ensure a flawless performance, one pilot told local TV station KLAS.

“It’s a delicate balance of timing, speed, and vocal performance,” Michelle Curran, a former Thunderbird pilot who conducted the 2019 Super Bowl flyover, wrore on her Linkedin page . “If the jets are too fast or slow, we’ll miss our mark. If Gladys (Knight) speeds up or extends a note, we’ll miss our mark.”

The Thunderbirds squadron comprises eight pilots, four support officers, three civilians, and over 130 enlisted personnel across 25 career fields. Curran highlighted the significance of teamwork, made possible through those who work tirelessly on the ground, including maintenance professionals and coordinating staff.

“This dance of timing and precision, unseen by most, is a testament to the teamwork among pilots and performers of various disciplines coming together to create an incredible moment,” wrote Curran. “It’s about building trust, fostering collaboration, and creating an environment where everyone is empowered to reach their highest potential.”

To qualify as a Thunderbirds pilot, one must have served more than three but no more than 12 years, with at least 1,000 hours of flight time.

The Thunderbirds, the USAF’s Air Demonstration Squadron, perform precision aerial maneuvers at events around the world. While their primary focus is on demonstrations, the Thunderbirds are also part of the combat force. This means that if necessary, the team’s personnel and aircraft can be swiftly integrated into a fighter unit at Nellis. Their modified F-16s can be made combat-ready in under 72 hours.

The anticipated flyover at Super Bowl LVIII will be the team’s first demonstration of 2024. They typically have around 75 events per year, but none are likely to surpass the exposure of Super Bowl Sunday—it has been projected that more than 115 million people could watch this year’s game on CBS.

Air Force to Start Fielding MH-139 at Malmstrom, Maxwell in March

Feb. 9, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

While the Pentagon’s chief weapons tester continues to have concerns about the MH-139 helicopter, the Air Force is on the verge of finishing developmental testing of the aircraft and fielding it at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Mont.; and Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala.

The Grey Wolf will complete developmental testing this month and arrive for fielding at Malmstom in early March and Maxwell in mid-March, an Air Force Life Cycle Management Center spokesman told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

Earlier, Detachment 3 of the 58th Operations Group stood up Jan. 31 at Maxwell to serve as the MH-139’s formal training unit. Eight months prior, the 550th Helicopter Squadron was activated at Malmstrom.

Maintainers have already started preparing for the aircraft with 30-day visits to Picayune, Miss., where civilian mechanics showed the Airmen how they maintain AW139s—the civilian version of the Grey Wolf.

Meanwhile, the first MH-139 production aircraft has finished assembly and is undergoing flight testing, a Boeing spokeswoman said.

For the first six months after the helicopters arrive at Malmstrom and Maxwell, units will focus on “mission-qualifying their aircrew, refining operational techniques and procedures, and incorporating the MH-139 fully into day-to-day wing operations,” the AFLCMC spokesman said.

After that, the aircraft will begin initial operational test and evaluation, a key step to reaching the full-rate production decision. IOT&E is scheduled to take place in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2024, the spokesman said. Most of that testing will take place at Malmstrom, he added.

The Air Force and Boeing reached a deal for low-rate initial production in March 2023, which will cover the first 13 production aircraft. In the long term, the Air Force hopes to buy up to 84 helicopters, which will be used by security forces patrolling the sprawling ICBM fields and at Joint Base Andrews, Md., for executive airlift.

However, the MH-139 has hit several setbacks in its development. Problems obtaining FAA certifications and the accompanying Military Flight Releases forced a yearlong delay in testing, and the 2022 report from the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation warned that the helicopter was at risk of not meeting “operational effectiveness requirements.”

Specifically, the report cited problems with the automatic flight control system, sensor display, and intercom system, along with its cabin layout and “restrictions on takeoffs in crosswinds or near obstacles.”

The 2023 edition of the report similarly warned that the program “faces several ongoing risks to … meeting operational effectiveness, suitability, and survivability requirements.”

While some progress has been made, the report authors noted that the MH-139 still requires some FAA certifications to start initial operational testing, which are not projected to be approved until the fourth quarter of fiscal 2024.

On top of that, the Air Force wants to add an additional radio to the aircraft, “but problems with internal communications persist,” the report stated. The service also is adding an environmental conditioning system, but that system’s effects on the helicopter’s power and weight requirements is not fully known.

Similarly, “expansion of the MH-139A operating envelope relative to the commercial AW139 baseline may stress powertrain components and increase maintenance requirements,” the report noted.

MH-139 mission planning is also currently being done on vendor-provided software that is not yet authorized to go on government hardware, meaning operating stations now require a standalone computer.

One problem the report noted—a restriction on austere landings while the program investigated engine ingestion of dust and debris—is seemingly resolved.

“The MH-139A successfully completed testing in a variety of unprepared surfaces, and there are currently no operational restrictions for austere landings,” the AFLCMC spokesman said.

New PACAF Boss: Actions Now Will Have ‘Long-Lasting Impacts’ in the Indo-Pacific

Feb. 9, 2024 | By Unshin Lee Harpley

Gen. Kevin B. Schneider took command of the Pacific Air Forces (PACAF), succeeding Gen. Kenneth S. Wilsbach in a Feb. 9 ceremony at Joint Base Pearl Harbor–Hickam, Hawaii.

Schneider, who comes to the job after a stint as director of staff, emphasized the strength and capability that comes from global partnerships during his first address—a key asset as the U.S. looks to combat China’s growing influence and power in the region.

“Those who seek to challenge us can never match it, they can only envy it,” Schneider said. “Our ability to work together has evolved from basic coordination to high-end interoperability in complex scenarios.”

Schneider has deep operational experience in the Indo-Pacific; he previously served as commander of U.S. Forces-Japan and the Fifth Air Force, as well as chief of staff for both PACAF and U.S. Indo-Pacific Command. Even going back to the 1990s, he served as an F-16 instructor pilot at Misawa Air Base, Japan, and Osan Air Base, South Korea.

Reflecting on his decades of service in the region, he pointed to significant changes in the security situation.

“It has become more challenging, it has become more severe, and it now carries a far higher potential for volatility,” Schneider said, expressing concerns about those seeking to undermine the rules-based international order in the Indo-Pacific theater. “They do it through economic coercion, political bullying, and military aggression. And the costs and impacts of those malign actions can be significant for those around the region. It comes with loss of sovereignty, comes with loss of transparency and government loss of economic freedoms and encroachment on human rights.”

Late last year, Chinese President Xi Jinping reportedly told President Joe Biden that Beijing intends to reunify Taiwan with mainland China, with only the timing remaining undecided. Meanwhile, a CSIS report in January counted the number of North Korea’s provocations as having tripled in the last three years.

“In the last year and a half or so, the world has become a very dangerous place,” said Wilsbach, who will go on to become the head of Air Combat Command.

“You can start with North Korea, and of course Russia is a Pacific nation as well. There’s issues in the Arctic, there’s even forces in Antarctica,” Wilsbach said. “And then of course, we have China, and China’s been very clear about their intent, their writings and their rhetoric are such that they want to control Taiwan. They’d love to do it peacefully, but they’ll do it by force, if they have to. And if you’ve watched what they’ve been doing with their military, they’ve been preparing to do it by force.”

Experts have expressed growing concern about the likelihood of China engaging in actual hostilities.

“Our job is to to convince them that that’s not a good idea. It’s called deterrence,” Wilsbach said.

Taiwan’s airpower got a recent boost when the USAF announced it had completed the $4.5 billion “Peace Phoenix Rising” program, upgrading 139 of Taiwan’s F-16 fighter jets to the advanced F-16V configuration. Next on the agenda will be 66 new F-16s delivered within the next two to three years.

Stressing his commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific, Schneider underscored the significance of ensuring stability in the region.

“It’s not just for PACAF, not just the United States Air Force,” Schneider said. “It is a time of consequence for this region, and the world. And the actions we take now to ensure stability and deter aggression in the face of multiple growing challenges will have far-reaching, and long-lasting impacts.”

Davis-Monthan Begins Sending A-10s to the Boneyard

Feb. 9, 2024 | By David Roza

Nearly 48 years after the A-10 Thunderbolt II first arrived at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz., the base started its long transition to a new mission set by retiring its first attack jet.

Built in 1982, tail number 82-648 taxied out of the 354th Fighter Squadron and into the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group, also known as The Boneyard, for final maintenance procedures Feb. 6. The jet is the first of 78 A-10s at Davis-Monthan that will be retired over the next three to five years.

“The A-10 has been the symbol of Davis-Monthan Air Force Base for many years, and it will continue to be a symbol for the Airmen of DM, a symbol of their commitment, excellence, and service,” Col. Scott Mills, an A-10 pilot and commander of 355th Wing, said in a press release.

Since entering service in the 1970s, the A-10, also known as the Warthog, earned a reputation for busting tanks in Operation Desert Storm, saving friendly troops with precise close air support throughout the Global War on Terror, and bringing pilots home thanks to its rugged construction.

“The plane, coupled with our high-level training standards, are the reasons so many of our joint and coalition forces returned home to fight another day—because they had A-10s overhead covering their six, or employing weapons to save their lives when nobody else could,” Col. Razvan Radoescu, 355th Operations Group commander, said in the release.

An A-10C Thunderbolt II, aircraft taxis towards the 309 Aircraft Maintenance and Regeneration Group at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz., Feb. 6, 2024. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Nicholas Ross)

But as the aircraft ages and the Air Force seeks jets that it believes can survive in contested airspace, the branch aims to retire its entire Warthog fleet by 2029.

As the A-10s depart, the Warthog squadrons at Davis-Monthan will shut down, starting with the 354th Fighter Squadron this summer and fall. Most of the pilots and maintainers who flew and worked on them will disperse to other fighter squadrons across the service, an Air Force spokesperson said. Many of them may end up with F-35 Lightning II squadrons.

“Perhaps the biggest draw of future maintainers will be in the F-35 community,” Col. Clarence McRae, 355th Maintenance Group commander, said in the release. “Airplanes are still going to break, and we are still going to fix them.”

At Davis-Monthan specifically, the A-10 mission is set to be replaced in part by the 492nd Power Projection Wing, a new kind of unit that encompasses all of Air Force Special Operation Command’s missions: strike, mobility, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, and air/ground coordination.

The wing will be a mix of units gathered from across the country, including:

One MC-130J Commando II squadron from Cannon Air Force Base, N.M.

One OA-1K Armed Overwatch squadron from Hurlburt Field, Fla.,

The 21st Special Tactics Squadron from Pope Army Airfield, N.C.

The 22nd Special Tactics Squadron from Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash.

The 492nd Theater Air Operations Squadron will activate at Duke Field, Fla., and transfer

Davis-Monthan will also gain five HH-60W helicopters from the 34th Weapons Squadron and 88th Test and Evaluation Squadron, which will relocate from Nellis Air Force Base, Nev. The moves will occur slowly over five years and pending an environmental impact analysis.

Pentagon Acquisition Boss: B-21 Was Designed for Budget Survivability Too

Feb. 9, 2024 | By John A. Tirpak

The B-21 Raider was structured for a low production rate to make it less vulnerable to budget cuts, Pentagon acquisition and sustainment chief William LaPlante said Feb. 8, in comments suggesting the bomber may never be produced at high rates.

LaPlante, speaking at a virtual RAND event, said the B-21 program “was designed to be resilient to Washington turbulence.” LaPlante was the Air Force acquisition executive who oversaw the plan for the Long-Range Strike Bomber, the contract for which was awarded to Northrop Grumman in 2015. The LRS-B was later named the B-21.

The B-21 program was mapped out in the wake of upheaval in the F-35 fighter program, which suffered a Nunn-McCurdy breach due to rocketing development costs and difficulty producing the fighter at planned rates, LaPlante said.

“A lot of the painful lessons of the F-35 were applied to the B-21,” he said. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, who also spoke at the RAND event, has described the F-35 as the product of “acquisition malpractice.”

One of the problems with the F-35, LaPlante said, was that “we had this gigantic production. And if you don’t hit the ramp,” or achieve the necessary rate of production, “the price won’t come down, and the learning won’t happen. So you had to hit that ramp,” When the F-35 didn’t reach the expected maturity on time, annual buy quantities were sharply reduced.

This was happening during the time of the Budget Control Act, which imposed a sequester on the Pentagon, LaPlante noted. The sequester compelled the services to make heavy cuts.

“What do you think was attacked by the budgeteers? Unfortunately, the [F-35] ramp. So every year the ramp is doing this,” LaPlante said, gesturing down with his hand.

“And of course, our fear was, you reach a point where it would go into a death spiral,” if F-35 maker Lockheed Martin couldn’t produce enough airplanes to get the unit price down. Generally, if production quantities are high, cost per unit comes down, because development and overhead costs are spread over a larger number of units. But if quantities are reduced, overhead costs are spread over fewer units, and unit costs go up.

“That never happened, thankfully, but we were worried,” LaPlante said.

With that experience fresh in mind, the B-21 was structured so “there’s no big ramp. It’s like this,” LaPlante said, gesturing with his flat hand angled only slightly upwards.

The message to budgeteers about the B-21, he said, was “stay away, don’t touch me. Because we want to make it resilient.”

The first five production lots of the B-21 amount to only 21 airplanes. By contrast, the B-2 bomber factory was built to produce 132 aircraft fairly rapidly, but Congress drastically reduced and then terminated the program after only 21 had been built, raising that aircraft’s unit cost to nearly $2 billion each.

LaPlante said he was not being critical of budget analysts who had to find the congressionally-demanded cuts during the sequester, but noted that “Washington turbulence,” usually translates to delays, restructures and hence higher program costs.

“So you can learn and you can design these programs to try to be survivable, given all the climates that we’re talking about, but you have to really think hard,” LaPlante said.

LaPlante didn’t elaborate further about the secretive B-21, observing that “there’s limits about what we can say publicly about it for very good reason.” But his remarks indicate that the program is structured to produce aircraft at a very low rate, even after initial learning lots.

The B-21 is slated to replace the B-1 and the B-2 by around 2032, as Global Strike Command has said it can’t afford to field four kinds of bombers at once. Combined, the B-1 and B-2 fleets now number 64 aircraft, assuming the B-1 that crashed in early January is not repaired or replaced. To fully replace those aircraft by 2032 would require an average annual production of eight B-21s per year.

However, some Air Force officials have said privately they would like to get the B-21s built faster, both out of operational need and because the Next Generation Air Dominance fighter and Collaborative Combat Aircraft will be in high-rate production in the early 2030s, competing with the B-21 for production money.

The Air Force initially pegged the B-21 planned inventory as “80-100 aircraft,” and in recent years as “a minimum of 100 aircraft.” Various think tanks, as well as former heads of Global Strike Command, have said that the service needs upwards of 150 B-21s, and perhaps as many as 225 of the bombers, to maintain the operational tempo needed in a potential future conflict with a peer adversary like China.

LaPlante approved the award of the B-21 low-rate initial production contract late last fall, after the first test aircraft made its first flight in November. The company had to achieve first flight—as well as other, undisclosed production milestones—in order to receive the LRIP contract, the amount of which was also not revealed.

“This past fall, based on the results of ground and flight tests and the team’s mature plans for manufacturing, I gave the go-ahead to begin producing B-21s at a low rate,” LaPlante said in a January statement to Air & Space Forces Magazine.

He also said that “one of the key attributes of this program has been designing for production from the start—and at scale—to provide a credible deterrent to adversaries. If you don’t produce and field to warfighters at scale, the capability doesn’t really matter.”

It isn’t clear whether eight aircraft per year, or slightly more, constitutes “at scale.” The Air Force has never revealed the expected peak production rate for the B-21, but service officials have noted that increasing the rate would require investing in more tooling and a bigger workforce. Northrop has cited workforce as one of the limiting factors in getting the first B-21 into flight test. It took the company nearly a year after the late 2022 public rollout of the bomber to achieve first flight.