Watch and Read: How to See Every Video and Transcript from AFA September 2023

Watch and Read: How to See Every Video and Transcript from AFA September 2023

More than 18,000 Airmen, Guardians, industry leaders, civilians, and more gathered in National Harbor, Md., from Sept. 11-13 for AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference. Over those three days, AFA captured every keynote speech and panel discussion, 50 events in all, covering everything from military families to electronic warfare to the new B-21 Raider bomber.

Find video and text transcripts of the keynote addresses by top Air Force and Space Force leaders here:

In addition, video and transcripts for every session are now posted on AFA’s official conference page.

All of Air & Space Forces Magazine’s comprehensive coverage of the conference is compiled here, and in the October 2023 edition, to be released Oct. 7 here.

New Acquisition Report: F-15EX Unit Cost Will Be $94 Million

New Acquisition Report: F-15EX Unit Cost Will Be $94 Million

Editor’s Note: The original version of this story reported the cost of EPAWSS is separate from the cost of the F-15EX, but it is not. EPAWSS unit costs are applicable only to older-model F-15Es receiving the suite as an upgrade. The F-15EX unit cost of $93.95 million includes EPAWSS.

The F-15EX Eagle II unit cost will be $93.95 million per plane in then-year dollars, assuming the Air Force sticks with its plan to buy 104 of the fighters and Congress concurs, the service said in its most recent annual Selected Acquisition Report.

It is the first SAR for the F-15EX, after it shifted from being a Middle-Tier Acquisition effort to a Major Defense Acquisition Program.

In a separate report, the Air Force reported a jump in unit costs for the F-15 Eagle Passive/Active Warning Survivability System, because the service sharply reduced the number of the electronic warfare suites it will buy to equip the F-15E Strike Eagle fleet.

The F-15EX program actually saw a unit cost decline of 5.24 percent from the 2020 baseline program, the result of the Air Force reversing course on some of the planned cuts to the fleet. Further tinkering with the final number of aircraft procured would likely affect the Acquisition Procurement Units Cost (APUC) of $93.95 million. The previous APUC, with the smaller buy, was $114.2 million.

The F-15EX report is based largely on calendar 2022 information, but it has been updated with data reflecting the fiscal year 2024 Air Force plan to increase the overall buy by 24 aircraft in fiscal 2025.

Boeing builds the F-15EX, which is based on the F-15QA built for Qatar. Changes from the F-15E include a very powerful processor, two additional weapon stations, and a fly-by-wire system. At the outset of the program, Boeing estimated a unit cost of about $80 million for the F-15EX.

The unit cost is significant in the ongoing debate over where to invest the Air Force’s limited dollars for air superiority. Other priorities include the F-35A, which in its last contract cost about $80 million per fighter; the still-in-development Next Generation Air Dominance fighter; the autonomous Collaborative Combat Aircraft program in development; and upgrades for the existing fourth- and fifth-generation fighter fleet.

After initially resisting the F-15EX when Pentagon leadership inserted it in the Air Force budget in 2018, the service has embraced the updated Eagle as a way to arrest the aging of the fighter fleet, with an average age approaching 30 years.

Given limits on F-35 production capacity, the immaturity of NGAD and CCA, and the urgent need to replace much of the structurally-fatigued F-15C/D fleet, the Air Force believes the F-15EX to be an expedient stopgap. The service sees the fighter as a “multirole” platform: a standoff shooter against high-end threats, a weapons truck, and in ground-attack roles after enemy defenses have been beaten down.

“Many F-15C/Ds are beyond their service life and have SERIOUS structure risks, wire chafing issues, and obsolete parts,” the service said in the acquisition report.  

“Readiness goals are unachievable due to continuous structural inspections, time-consuming repairs, and on-going modernization efforts,” the Air Force noted. “The average F-15C/D is 38 years old and 75 percent of the fleet have exceeded their 9,000-hour certified service life. The oldest F-15C was delivered in 1979. F-15EX logistics, maintenance, and training will heavily leverage existing F-15 infrastructure.”

F-15EX
Two F-15EX’s fly over during the Doolittle Raiders’ 80th anniversary ceremony, April 18, 2022, at Okaloosa Island, Fla. Air Force photo by Airman Andrew Ancona.

With F-15EX initially being a Middle Tier of Acquisition program, the Air Force was able to get the first two aircraft less than a year after a contract award. Now as a major acquisition program, it will “maintain the momentum to acquire F-15EX aircraft to quickly recapitalize the F-15C/D inventory,” the report stated, though the quantities quoted depend on Congress approving the Air Force’s request for a $145 million Above Threshold Reprogramming (ATR) request “to enable the procurement of two Lot 3 aircraft that cannot currently be funded due to a $77M FY 2021 rescission and $82M FY 2022 Congressional mark,” the service said.

The F-15EX’s survivability in a future fight will depend on the Eagle Passive/Active Warning Survivability System (EPAWSS), an electronic warfare and jamming suite which warranted its own report. The unit cost of EPAWSS has spiked due to the Air Force’s decision to equip a much smaller number of F-15E Strike Eagles with the system: 99, down from 217. The cost spike has resulted in a Nunn-McCurdy breach, which means the Secretary of Defense must certify the program as essential or it will be automatically canceled.  

The program unit acquisition cost for the EPAWSS is $17.355 million per system in then-year dollars, the Air Force said, while the average procurement unit cost is $13.3 million. The previous baseline unit costs were $13.3 million and $10.1 million, respectively.

Boeing’s Donn Yates, executive director for Boeing fighters and trainers business development, said in a Sept. 11 briefing for reporters at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference that F-15EX Nos. 3-8 were to be delivered between the end of the fourth quarter of fiscal 2023 and the first quarter of fiscal 2024. Nos. 3, 4, 5, and 6 will go to Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., to participate in testing, Yates said, while Nos. 7 and 8 will be the first “operationally configured” EXs, which will be assigned to the Oregon Air National Guard.

Negotiations on Lots 2, 3, and 4 were underway at the time of the briefing, Yates said, predicting “that will wrap up … relatively soon.” Boeing is eyeing production rates of up to 48 aircraft per year, and noted that Indonesia has signaled an intent to buy 24 of the jets, with other potential customers showing interest too.

The acquisition report stated that the F-15EX’s Initial Operational Capability is projected for June or July 2024, but that the program is running ahead of schedule in this respect. A full-rate production decision could be forthcoming as soon as next month, but the official schedule calls for June 2024, the Air Force reported.

Full operational capability (FOC) for F-15EX is planned in 2027, but this may also happen sooner than expected, the Air Force said. The report defined FOC as 44 aircraft with all necessary unique maintenance and test gear, spares, and maintainers and pilots trained.

The report added that the then-year, or actual cost of the F-15EX program, including development, program acquisition, and military construction, will be $12.47 billion.

Air Force Gives Raytheon $39 Million For Air Defense Software Prototype

Air Force Gives Raytheon $39 Million For Air Defense Software Prototype

The Air Force awarded $39 million to Raytheon, the defense business unit of RTX, on Oct. 3 to develop a prototype software system to command and control air base defenses against aerial threats like cruise missiles and drones. The prototype uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to analyze threat information from sensors such as radar, then recommend to operators the best defense option, which could be missiles or other weapons.

“We’ll bring our unique decision aids along with many partner components to allow for increased efficiency and effectiveness in a complex attack, while decreasing the manpower burden to operate the system,” Paul Ferraro, president of air power at Raytheon, said in a press release.

Though the U.S. Army has traditionally led air defense, the Air Force is becoming more involved as the branch seeks to defend small air bases dispersed across the Pacific from small drones and cruise missiles. The extensive use of such weapons in the Russian invasion of Ukraine has sparked increased focus on building layered air defenses that can defeat multiple kinds of threats.

“Air defense isn’t going to win the war for you,” Tom Karako, director of the missile defense project and senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said in a seminar on the Ukraine air war in November. “But the lack of it could lose it pretty quick.”

The $39 million award comes about a year after Raytheon and the Norwegian company Kongsberg Defense & Aerospace, in partnership with the Air Force Research Laboratory, tested command and control software on a National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System, a machine that can fire several kinds of missiles to hit targets at short, medium, or long range. 

During the test, U.S. Army radars fed targeting information to a Raytheon Battle Space Command and Control Center (BC3), a software that connects sensors and weapons systems, analyzes threats, and recommends defense options. The BC3 gave those options to operators at a Kongsberg Fire Distribution Center.

“The operator in the FDC used that information to close the kill chain by selecting and firing the most effective missile from the NASAMS multi-missile canister launcher,” Raytheon wrote in a press release at the time.

The system’s open architecture should allow it to pair with future sensors and weapons. Though the test last year involved AIM-9X and AMRAAM missiles, the Air Force is looking into electronic warfare and directed energy to counter large numbers of small drones with a lower per-shot cost than the AIM-9 or AMRAAM, which can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars each. In the Oct. 3 release, Raytheon said it would build on the lessons learned from the NASAMS experiment as the company refines its BC3 software.

F-16s Deploy to Poland to Bolster NATO’s Eastern Flank

F-16s Deploy to Poland to Bolster NATO’s Eastern Flank

As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine grinds on, the U.S. Air Force deployed four F-16 fighters to neighboring Poland on Oct. 3, keeping up the service’s continuous presence on NATO’s eastern flank.

The F-16s came from the 52nd Fighter Wing at Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany, and arrived at Powidz Air Base, Poland, to replace four F-15E Strike Eagles from the 48th Fighter Wing at RAF Lakenheath, U.K., according to a release from U.S. Air Forces in Europe.

The F-15Es executed NATO air policing missions at Lask Air Base, Poland, starting in Nov. 2022. F-22 Raptors from the 94th Fighter Squadron at Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Va., also rotated through Powidz Air Base starting in April.

“Operating from forward locations allows U.S. Air Force Airmen to live, train, and operate alongside European counterparts while enabling NATO’s collective defense capabilities,” the USAFE release noted. “This capability is critical for a timely and coordinated response, if and when called upon.”

Powidz, located in central Poland, is also near the Baltic Sea. The F-22s that deployed there this spring also conducted an Agile Combat Employment exercise in Estonia—the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania don’t have robust air forces of their own and rely on NATO allies to conduct air policing missions in the region to deter Russia.

On the same day the F-16s arrive in Poland, U.S. President Joe Biden participated in a conference call with allies and partners including Polish President Andrzej Duda of Poland and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in a conference call.

During the call, which also include leaders from Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, Romania, the U.K., and more, the leaders discussed “efforts to provide Ukraine with the ammunition and weapons systems it needs to defend its territory against Russian aggression, [and] to strengthen Ukraine’s air defenses to protect its critical infrastructure from Russia’s aerial assaults,” according to the White House statement.

SPACECOM Hosts Multinational Tabletop Exercise as Allied Cooperation in Space Ramps Up

SPACECOM Hosts Multinational Tabletop Exercise as Allied Cooperation in Space Ramps Up

The U.S. and its allies are working together on plans to protect their space assets, as the domain will likely be contested in the event of a conflict.

Last month, U.S. Space Command hosted a multinational tabletop exercise with some of America’s key allies. The U.S., United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, and France “explored areas of opportunity to support the safety and sustainability of space through increased mission assurance and resilience through a multinational force” during a four-day exercise held Sept. 18-22 at SPACECOM’s headquarters in Colorado Springs, Colo., according to a Sept. 29 news release.

SPACECOM did not say what scenarios the exercise envisioned. However, the combatant command did outline some goals of the tabletop exercise, including “increasing intelligence and information sharing, solidifying a standardized multinational command and control structure, and expanding mission sets.”

Allied participants praised the exercise. Canada’s participation represented the country’s “commitment to defend and protect our space capabilities, which includes working with allies and partners to ensure our continuous access to space,” Col. Frédéric Guénette, the senior representative from the Royal Canadian Air Force, said in a statement. The exercise “gave us the opportunity to work with other nations to explore how we can leverage our partnerships to better contribute to the safety and sustainability of the space domain.”

America’s military space leaders have been traveling the globe recently to build partnerships and help bring allies into the fold in an often highly classified domain, noting there needs to be increased information sharing in the future. In July, SPACECOM’s commander Army Gen. James Dickinson conducted a weeklong trip to Europe to strengthen space cooperation with America’s allies on the continent. In May, Space Force Lt. Gen. DeAnna Burt, the deputy chief of space operations for operations, cyber, and nuclear, visited NATO’s Space Center with similar goals. And last month, Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman engaged in high-level talks in Japan.

While the Space Force and Space Command are separate entities, both have been looking to bring America’s allies into space training exercises. Back in March, the USSF’s Space Training and Readiness Command (STARCOM) conducted its annual wargame, which brought in the allies that participated in SPACECOM’s recent tabletop exercise as well as Japan.

Some of America’s allies, including the U.K. and France, have set up their own Space Commands. France is also home to NATO’s Space Center of Excellence. During a visit to Washington D.C. last month, the head of the French Air and Space Force, Gen. Stéphane Mille, noted that there is now broad recognition that “there could be attacks” in space in the future.

“The threats are spreading into space,” Mille said in response to a question from Air & Space Forces Magazine. “So this is, of course, what we are thinking about. What we want to do is have different options in space.”

“We are working all together with U.S. SPACECOM to know how to defend all of that, to exchange information on what’s happening in space, because a lot of things are happening in space,” he added. “And we will continue to do [that] because we want to protect the use of space for all peoples.”

Watch, Read: CMSSF Towberman on ‘Your Space Force, Your Future’

Watch, Read: CMSSF Towberman on ‘Your Space Force, Your Future’

In his final keynote address before retiring as Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force, Roger A. Towberman reflected on the progress of the Space Force and the growth still ahead at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference on Sept. 12, 2023. Watch the video or read the transcript below.

CMSSF Roger A. Towberman

Thank you so much. Oh my goodness. I haven’t even said anything awesome yet. You guys got to sit down, please. Thank you. Thank you so much. It’s a big week, couple days. If I don’t screw up this keynote, I might make it to retirement. So I’m hoping. My fingers are crossed. Thank you AFA, thank you senior leaders that are here. Thanks for the kind words from each of you. General Brown, I truly appreciate it. It’s been my absolute honor. General Saltzman, every day I come to work and it’s just amazing to be your teammate and I just really appreciate you keeping me around for a couple weeks. And Secretary, just thanks so much. You’ve changed the way we do business and it’s been fantastic not just to see you operate in general, but the way that you’ve been inclusive of Jo and me. It really, truly matters and I appreciate it.

And Jo, I love you. A couple more days and then you’re not going to find me, but I’m going to love you until then. Thanks to the Gaylord for always putting on a fantastic event and thanks to the Guardians and Airmen that, for whatever strange reason, think maybe I’m going to say something meaningful enough that you would sit here and listen to me. I appreciate that we fill up the room. I appreciate that you come to events like this. I appreciate that you invest in yourselves. And finally, thanks to all of those deployed and all of those employed in place, all the work and stiffs that are letting the rest of us screw around this week. So thanks to all of them back home and in places where the action happens.

So everybody’s been showing videos, and I had this idea a few years ago because we’ve been doing something incredible, standing up a new service, and I’ve been asked to do a lot of the human capital stuff and this continues to be the conversations all the time. How are we recruiting? How are we retaining? How are we developing people? And so for the last couple years, I’ve had the public affairs guys sneak cameras out now and again, and we’ve been putting together documentary footage of our journey, and I’m proud to be able to show you a little bit of a teaser of the film we’ve been making. I’m very excited about it. I do have to warn you that if you’re in the video, just be happy that you’re in the video. Don’t take it personally. It’s the real world and real things happen, so I just want to show you this. This is the Space Force’s talent management journey documentary. Let’s see what we got.

Video

Baseball isn’t just numbers. It’s not science. If it was, then anybody could do what we’re doing, but they can’t because they don’t know what we know.

I’m asking you to be OK not spending money that I don’t have. We’re going to work within the constraints that we have and you’re going to get out and do the best job that you can recruiting new players.

You’re just talking, talking la, la, la, like this is business as usual. It’s not.

We’re trying to solve a problem here.

Not like this, you’re not. You’re not even looking at the problem.

We’re very aware of the problem.

OK, good. What’s the problem?

Look, Billy, we all understand what the problem is. You’re discounting what scouts have done for 150 years. Now, there are intangibles that only baseball people understand.

You don’t have a crystal ball. You can’t look at a kid and predict his future any more than I can. I’ve sat at those kitchen tables with you and listened to you tell those parents, “When I know, I know. And when it comes to your son, I know,” and you don’t.

What I see is an imperfect understanding of where runs come from. Using the stats the way we read them, we’ll find value players that nobody else can see. People are overlooked for a variety of biased reasons and perceived flaws. Age, appearance, personality. There is an epidemic failure within the game to understand what is really happening, and this leads people who run Major League Baseball teams to misjudge their players and mismanage their teams. Your goal shouldn’t be to buy players, your goal should be to buy wins.

This is a process. It’s a process. It’s a process. Listen man, I’ve been in this game a long time. I’m not in it for the record, I’ll tell you that. I’m not in it for a ring. Any other team wins the World Series, good for them. But if we win on our budget with this team, we’ll have changed the game and that’s what I want. I think the question we should be asking is do you believe in this thing or not?

CMSSF Roger A. Towberman

Do you believe in this thing or not? So obviously ‘Moneyball,’ which should be required reading for all Guardians by the way, maybe for everyone that works in the Department of Defense, except the chair scene. That’s actual security camera footage in the E-ring of my office. The rest of it we pulled from a movie, a movie about changing the game. And every day that we come to work in my office, we come to work to change the game, to change the world, and that’s how we look at it. That’s how we talk about it. And you’ve heard from everyone else how important this is, and let me say it in yet another way, that we need the stuff and we need the leaders.

If you think that’s the only thing that we need or the most important thing we need, then you’ve got a misunderstanding of where runs come from because the enlisted force of this nation is the greatest military advantage in history. And the object, the goal is not to buy those players, it’s to win. And that means that we see them not as a means to an end, but the end itself. It means that we see our advantage as the advantage it is, and we invest in a value proposition that matters to them. If we lose that focus, if we set out to buy end strength instead of win, then the winning is at risk, and it’s so important that we understand that and get that right.

This has been an amazing journey and it’s been filled with amazing people, so I thought if it was OK with you, we’ll just go over a few things that we’ve done and learned, and mostly a recap of the wonderful people that have helped us in our little Moneyball startup. And so when we started this whole thing, we knew we needed values. It seemed like a good place to start. That’s where everyone should start. And so we got a team together, people like Chief Christina Haley, Chief Shane Pilgrim, who both retired now and moved on to fantastic new lives. Colonel Retired Jason Lamb, Mr. Chang Suh, experts in what we needed to do.

We came up with the ideal, the new CSO gets in and he says, “Let’s amplify the Guardian spirit,” and we said, “Funny you should say that, sir, because we got another book. Let’s call it The Guardian Spirit,” Dr. Matt Job, that helped us so much with that. But maybe more importantly, because you send all messages at all times and we didn’t just sit in back rooms with these experts, and they’re experts, make no mistake, but they didn’t do it on their own. We had Guardians every step of the way telling us what they valued, telling us what they wanted to value, telling us what was important to them, giving us feedback on our process. 18 months, and they turned out OK. Our four Cs matter to me, I know they matter to all our Guardians. What makes them unique is not what they are.

A lot of organizations have values, all the services have values. What makes them unique is that we have an opportunity to weave those values into everything that we do because we started with them. Our annual awards, the Polaris Awards are given for living up to our core values, competing against the standard that is accessible to every Guardian. How close can you get to Guardian perfection and courage or character or connection or commitment? We’re so proud of the work that was done, and folks like Chief Joey Williams and Chief Jess Gray, Chief Jeff Grela, Master Sergeant Fulton on the S1P team that helped make all that happen. It’s hard work. I didn’t know that we couldn’t just recognize people, we had to write policies and we had to coordinate them. And for some reason, lawyers care who I think has courage, I don’t know why. I love them.

And we were able to celebrate our first Polaris Award winners last year with the Schriever chapter out in Los Angeles, the AFA, and truly, truly appreciate them being great hosts and we look forward in February to celebrate it on a more national stage. And we’re very excited about the future, and we hope soon that our Polaris Awards will have the same eminence and the same pizazz and celebration that we have here for 12 OAY. We also were able to weave our core values into our promotions, rewriting the board charge to focus on those core values to say, “Hey, whatever you are doing, you should be doing it through these four Cs. So hey, promotion board, let’s value them through that. Let’s look at those things. Let’s get rid of the tests. Let’s be honest.”

If we’re going to use our senior master sergeants and our chiefs broadly as leaders, then why would we promote them inside their stove pipes? And we tore those down. People like Rob Romer and Chief Suwanee Carvalho, helping us put that together, and it matters. Brand new. Where’s Ana? Did she put on chief yet? Is she here? Still senior, I think Ana Franklin, brand new to the S1P team. So happy to have her. But these are the people that have been working it. We also weaved our core values into the way we develop our folks, and if you visit Space Force basic training, it’s the most beautiful, undiluted Guardian experience that you could possibly have. It’s amazing to see what the team has done down there. Major Emory and Senior Chua, our BMT team, Chief Ming that retired from Delta 1, they’ve just made an experience that feels different. And to those new Guardians, that’s what matters. They want to feel different.

Chief Britton’s here. I don’t know if Senior Brooks is here, but we’ve got our enlisted PME Center of Excellence out at Vosser in Colorado, and they’re doing incredible things, practically perfect Guardian experience. BMT is hard to match. But what they’re doing there, to make that an experience that matters to Guardians in a variety of ways. To meet them here and change their lives, knowing that fundamentally, that’s part of all of our value propositions. All of that falling under the purview of our S1D team, which is incredible, led by Mr. Turner, who’s fantastic and is never anywhere without his chiefs. Chief Bobby Scott, Chief Jason Childers, who now we’ve moved up to work with Ms. Kelly, but soon we’ll have Amber Ambramowski will be there to replace. She’s got a big fan club. But they’re really making a difference.

Remember that we develop Guardians in an ecosystem and any part of that ecosystem that gets tweaked changes everything else, and that you can approach that ecosystem one thing at a time. You can’t talk about BMT only, you can’t talk about recruiting only. You can’t talk about promotions only because you’re always talking about all of it. And so they’ve got this cool Chiclet chart that they’re working like a heat map where if somebody wants to change BMT, the other parts of the ecosystem most closely correlating to that light up red. So you’d be like, “OK, let’s get that expert in. If this is going to change recruiting, let’s get a recruiting expert in before we tweak basic training. If this is going to change PME, let’s get a PME expert in.” So we’re trying to pay attention to this ecosystem.

Also, as you guys have seen, it’s so exciting because the wear test is happening. There’s so many more Space Force. Well, they’re all Space Force uniforms, whether you’re wearing in the Air Force chassis or the new Space Force uniform, but it’s so good to see the new uniforms around. And so we shaped the way that we looked. And one person in particular, Captain Chignola, has done so much. It’s hard to describe how hard this young man has worked in his own time because he wanted to, to help us design the uniforms, to help us design the patches. He was always there, always helping, and his fingerprints are all over how we look and what we’re proud of as emblems of our heritage, our heraldry. Ms. Cathy Lovelady has been there every step of the way as well. I don’t know if Ms. Lovelady’s here, but she’s been awesome.

So the wear testing is ongoing. I am promised, I am certain that we will have PT gear by the spring broadly available, and it’s awesome and everyone will be jealous because it looks really cool, and it’s comfortable and you’ll want to work out in it. And speaking of working out in it, we also with the help of AFRL, Dr. Christensen, my man Shep, Carl Sheppard there, we’ve got our HHA study ongoing. And what we’ve already learned is that it’s a little bit about fitness requirements. It’s a little bit about commitment to mastering myself, but it’s a lot about connection. Guardians can’t wait to go clown each other on social media over what’s happening on their apps. The friendly competition, it’s almost impossible to avoid when you connect people towards a single goal. They immediately team around it. And so we’re already seeing this and by that measure, the study is just incredibly successful already. Ms. Height has been a part of that and I mentioned Dr. Christensen.

Holistic and continuous. That’s how we live. That’s how we should measure how well we’re living, not episodic, asymmetric. It’s always happening, so let’s check on it all the time. It’s going great. Our values also drove our talent management, somewhat like the movie clips sometimes. It can be a little frustrating to want to do things differently, but our talent management boards are proving incredibly successful. I see a path where it’s possible to live in a world without non-vol assignments, to live in a world without programs like EFMP because you don’t need to do that because you’re going to consider every single person’s family situation every single time. So I don’t need a program that somebody has to qualify for. Chief Bass and I learned recently that apparently, if you have a dependent parent, they don’t qualify for EFMP consideration. So here you go, bring your parent into your home to take care of them because they’re sick but whatever they have doesn’t qualify, I guess they’re not a family member in the eyes of policy. I see a path to getting rid of all of those things. I can imagine it.

So we had a lot of people that have helped us with the talent management, and you can see them there somewhere. There they are. There’s Rod Reyes, R2, and Dan Streeter and Sergeant Hircock, Sergeant Lee, and Sergeant Barker, and Sergeant Chapman. Dr. Anderson there, who gave us incredible insight, especially when it came to picking apart Sergeant Bentivegna’s head before the boss hired him. But she really helped us understand how personalities affect how teams are built and what we would look for in good teammates and how once a team is put together, how they’ll mitigate weaknesses and capitalize on strengths. None of the things we’re doing will matter if we don’t communicate well. And I know General Saltzman talked earlier today about Sergeant Terry and the incredible work that they were doing with the Guardian One app.

I won’t rehash all of that, but in addition to that, Dr. Costa, the CTIO, is putting out a newsletter to the force. Ms. Kelly in the S1 is putting out a newsletter, Mr. Turner and S1D is putting out a newsletter. We’re doing everything we can to communicate and we’re doing everything that we can to remind people that the burden of transparency is knowledge. I think sometimes we forget that. We think we want to know things, but once you know things, you got to carry that around. And back to the movie clips, carrying stuff around can be heavy because sometimes it’s not going smoothly and it’s frustrating, but it’s a pretty universal truth all over the world, all throughout history, man was super happy and then they discovered knowledge and then they were miserable. This is just a normal kind of legend.

So we’re going to keep being transparent, but keep understanding that the more you know, then sometimes the more frustrated you might become. The boss puts out the C-notes, I’ve been trying to do podcasts. I know Chief Bentivegna is going to keep doing them. We’re doing everything we can to talk to you, everything we can to communicate and be open. Keep holding us accountable, keep making us keep those promises. Besides formal communication, there’s also informal communication. And because it’s September, which is Suicide Prevention and Awareness Month, there’s a young man, I won’t dox him, as the kids say. Well, there’s a young man on Reddit who’s been one of the key moderators, maybe the first moderator of both the Air Force subreddit and the Space Force subreddit. He’s a Space Force officer, he’s a great guy.

400,000 people visit those subreddits and in 2022, that community made up of Guardians and Airmen intervened 40 different times when suicidal ideations were posted. 40 times, lives have been saved because people in their spare time want to give other people a voice. And so SilentD, I know you’re out there somewhere, I appreciate you. So what’s next? We’ve got a lot of stuff. We talked about the ideal, we talked about the Guardian spirit. We’ve got a draft of a Guardian handbook in work from some folks at Delta 9 who got the ball rolling. I wrote their names down, I don’t know if any of them are here. Sergeant Todd Richardson, Sergeant Alyssa Ruiz, Sergeant Megan Otto, Sergeant Dillon Frick, and all under the leadership of Tech Sergeant Scott McMullen. I don’t know if any of those guys are here or otherwise, Amber, you got to stand up on their behalf.

Audience

McMullen is here.

CMSSF Roger A. Towberman

Where is he? Appreciate you. So the handbook will take the Guardian spirit and continue to amplify it specific to our enlisted force to say, “Hey, this is what these promises, which are beautiful.” I’m telling you that I don’t know that I’ve ever in 33 years seen a more perfect single page document than our Guardian commitment. And if all any of us ever did was make and keep the 12 promises as team leader and make and keep the 12 promises as team member, man, it’d be a pretty awesome team. But we are going to take that handbook and we’ll say, “Hey, this is what those 24 promises mean for specialists. This is what those 24 promises mean for NCOs, et cetera.”

We also had a team from Delta 2 and I don’t know, is Chief Burkhead here? I know she is. Is any of your team here, do you know? They’re not here, but I think we got a picture. So Sergeant Boyenga, Sergeant Countrymen and Sergeant Lamb Sanchez, they came up during our last space enlisted education development panel and they briefed their idea on a fully qualified promotion system, and it was awesome. A promotion system that puts promotions in the hands of the Guardian. A promotion system that ends competition against each other and encourages cooperation with each other, where in a world where I can get to the rank of sergeant on my own by meeting certain competency requirements, or maybe I can get there faster by teaming up with my teammates and we all get there quicker. So we’re excited about that possibility.

We have some work that’s being done on new evaluation forms, which I cannot wait to see roll out. I don’t think, they’re not coming in two days, are they? No. So I’ll still get my last EPR written on a form that chief passed throughout, you guys don’t even have it anymore. That’ll be my last EPR, but we’ll pull it out of the trash and we’ll use it. I’m sure it’ll be awesome AF. AF for Air Force. It’ll be awesome Air Force. But it’s coming. It’s coming. We’re looking at ways to meet your value proposition because you deserve for us to listen to you. You deserve for us to hear you. And all of these things have to happen, but if nothing else, I hope you see how many people have been working so hard to get the stuff that’s already been given, and how much the rank and file are a part of our process and will continue to be.

You know what? I had this, I don’t know where we came up with the idea, but I was in Connecticut a couple weeks ago on leave and somebody thought it might be a cool idea to jump in my Sprinter van with me and ride from Brooklyn back to DC and interview me the whole way. I don’t know what I was thinking, but we had fun and it was a good drive. But the conversations, man, it’s longer than you prep for an interview, right? It was tough. So it got kind of real. But one of the questions that I got asked, and I get asked this from time to time, you. They talk about me, my brand, my personality, my whatever, shtick and, “You’re going to be gone, and then what’s going to happen?”

And I told him and I tell you, and I hope I just showed you that the number of people in the Space Force and in the Department of the Air Force that care about the things I care about and are passionate about, the things I’m passionate about and are willing to do the hard work to make those things happen as me, that number after Friday will be exactly the same number as it is today, minus one. That’s pretty much still everybody. And the really cool news is that we got an anybody that we’re plussing up. That’s going to be awesome. So I would appreciate it if you all would help me give a big round of applause to the Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force number two, if he doesn’t screw up in two days, John Bentivegna. Hey, man. I’m not giving him a microphone though. I got two more days. D9, we’re so happy. We’re happy you’re here and I can’t wait. Can’t wait to see you Friday, brother. Thanks for everything. Thanks again, brother. Love you.

I promise, I’d do anything for any one of you. The other thing that gets asked a lot, “How do you want to be remembered? What are you proudest of? What’s the accomplishments?” There’s this checklist of questions you have to ask someone when they’re retiring. This is what I’d ask. If I’m to be remembered at all, I hope it’s through 1,000 different stories of 1,000 real relationships that I had with 1,000 real people, all of you and all the people that raised me and all our professional progeny for 1,000 generations. If any of us are worth remembering, we’re worth remembering in specific, real stories about how we specifically really changed each other’s lives. So thank all of you that helped change mine, and thanks for being part of my story. God bless the Air Force, God bless the Space Force. Semper Supra. I appreciate you.

Brown’s First Message to the Force as Chairman: ‘Accelerate Change’ Lives On

Brown’s First Message to the Force as Chairman: ‘Accelerate Change’ Lives On

Air Force Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. outlined his priorities for his term as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in a memo issued Oct. 2, highlighted by a familiar call for the U.S. military to continue to adapt.

In a Message to the Joint Force issued on his first business day after taking over from Army Gen. Mark A. Milley at midnight on Oct. 1, Brown reprised his signature motto from his time as Air Force Chief of Staff: “Accelerate Change or Lose.”

“Our nation needs us ready to fight today’s battles but also to prepare for tomorrow’s wars,” Brown wrote in his first official guidance as the 21st Chairman. “We must prepare by modernizing and aggressively leading with new concepts and approaches. Know that my conviction to ‘Accelerate Change’ has not wavered.”

Beyond the broad clarion call for change, Brown outlined three top goals as he begins his four-year term as the nation’s top military officer.

  • First, troops should hone their skills right now. “Deterrence depends on being your adversary’s worst nightmare in a fight,” said Brown, who wrapped up three years as the Air Force’s top officer upon becoming Chairman.
  • Second, the U.S. must continue emphasizing working together across the military and breaking down parochial service barriers. Troops should “focus on what is essential in Jointness—working seamlessly across domains,” Brown wrote.
  • Finally, the U.S. military should focus on partnering with other countries as it looks to meet the challenge posed by China while still dealing with a belligerent Russia waging war in Ukraine, as well as a myriad of other threats from North Korea, Iran, and militant groups such as ISIS.

“There is almost no challenge we will confront alone,” Brown wrote. “We must integrate our military power to deter and if called upon, fight and decisively prevail in war.”

Brown’s message echoes many of the same themes his predecessor Milley sought to leave as his legacy, including his goal to bring together modernization efforts. One notable change from Milley’s 2019 opening Message to the Joint Force: Milley did not address Guardians, as the Space Force was not created until later that year.

“As we step out together, you should know my broad expectation—that honing our warfighting skill has primacy in all we do,” Brown wrote.

Brown closed his message by highlighting the importance of service members, civilians, and their families who volunteer to serve their country.

“Through all, trust is the foundation of our profession,” Brown wrote. “Trust across the force, that we will do right by each other. The trust of our families, that we will care for them through trial and triumph. The trust of our nation and elected leaders, in our commitment to our oath and profession. As Chairman, I will strive every day to strengthen these bonds.”

New Details of Secret LRSO Missile: Nine Successful Flight Tests in 2022

New Details of Secret LRSO Missile: Nine Successful Flight Tests in 2022

The Air Force’s classified Long-Range Standoff (LRSO) missile has completed at least nine successful test flights, culminating in a major power-on, free-flight test of all major systems elements in October 2022, according to a recently released Pentagon report.

The program appears to be on track, though the Air Force is withholding the system’s planned Initial Operational Capability date.

According to the Pentagon’s Selected Acquisition Reports for 2022, released late last month, the Raytheon-built LRSO completed “the first full-system integrated test demonstrating design, manufacturing, and navigation maturing” in October 2022. Of the eight other tests conducted since February 2022, four powered up the missile’s engine, the Air Force said. All tests were conducted off two B-52s earmarked for LRSO testing.

The Air Force announced in March 2023 that LRSO passed its Critical Design Review, but the service has not discussed the progress of testing the missile until now. The data in the acquisition report reflects information as of December 2022, so it is likely more LRSO tests have taken place.

The LRSO will replace the AGM-86B Air-Launched Cruise Missile as part of the airborne leg of the U.S.’s nuclear triad. It will first equip the B-52 but will also later arm the new B-21 Raider stealth bomber. The program’s original plan was to build 1,020 missiles, plus 67 for testing, but current planned production figures were withheld. Service leaders have said in the last few years that a conventional variant is not planned, but they have not ruled out such a version for the future.

According to the Pentagon report, the nine successful flight tests in 2022 demonstrated:

  • LRSO’s ability to safely separate from the B-52
  • Deployment of the missile’s flight surfaces, engine operations, and flight control actuations
  • Capture controlled flight after employment from the B-52

The culmination came in October, when the program “demonstrated safe missile separation from the B-52, missile flight control deployment, engine start and extended range operation, warhead-arming flight discrimination events, collection of flight environment, and firedown sequence data for the warhead, and advanced navigation along a mission planned route using an operationally relevant Mission Data File,” the Air Force said. All test objectives were met.

The missile is meeting or exceeding all six of its key performance parameters and attributes, the Air Force said.

Early on in the program, the target date for Initial Operational Capability was set as May 2030, with November 2030 being the not-later-than date. However, the Air Force declined to publish the current estimate, deeming it is “Controlled Unclassified Information.” A designation of CUI means the information is not secret, but when combined with other open information in the report, could reveal sensitive programmatic details.

The Air Force also did not disclose the cost per unit of the LRSO, but said procurement is running about 6.7 percent below the baseline estimate.

While total procurement is estimated to be at about $900 million over the baseline estimate; research, development, test, and evaluation is running about $400 million below the baseline estimate of $6.7 billion. Military construction is coming in about $6 million below the baseline estimate of $134 million.

In places where costs have gone up, the Air Force said, it has been due to inflation and “overruns in discrete labor tasks. Some tasks required more support than originally planned while others are a result of inefficiencies necessary to hold schedule.”

Where schedule has slipped, it has been driven by “non-critical path material delays of castings and structures,” the Air Force said. It has applied workarounds by substituting hardware generated during the technical maturation and risk reduction (TMRR) phase.

The Air Force said LRSO is intended to have a service life of 30 years.

A modular, open-system architecture is being applied to the LRSO, which will allow other offerors to bid on upgrades and modifications in the future, “as well as the life-cycle process such as logistical support, sustainment, and technology insertion.”

Also in calendar 2022, LRSO “successfully completed nine of 10 subsystem Critical Design Reviews (sCDRs) demonstrating design maturity of the LRSO cruise missile subsystems. Additionally, the program completed 10 of 13 sCDRs demonstrating design maturity of associated LRSO Peculiar Support Equipment (PSE),” the Air Force said.

The LRSO program is funded across the future years defense program in accordance with independent cost estimates from the Pentagon’s Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation, the Air Force said.

“There are no significant software-related issues with this program at this time,” the service reported. Elsewhere in the report, the service added that “there are no known risks with this program at this time.”

A single problem mentioned in the SAR—which the Air Force said would be resolved by May 2023—involved a fit problem in the B-52’s weapons bay.

“Current calculations indicate that when four or more stores are loaded on the rotary launcher, the stores clash with the fuel tank,” the Air Force said. “Risk is fully mitigated and closure is pending receipt of final documentation.”

The Milestone C decision—approving LRSO for full-rate production—is set to come in late 2027.

How Pilot Training at Vance Got Back On Track After a Storm Battered Its T-6 Fleet

How Pilot Training at Vance Got Back On Track After a Storm Battered Its T-6 Fleet

Two months after a surprise thunderstorm grounded nearly all of its T-6 Texan II training aircraft, Vance Air Force Base, Okla., is ahead of schedule training undergraduate pilots, an achievement that required aircraft maintainers to work around the clock and instructor pilots (IPs) to come in on weekends.

“We thought it was going to take three months to recover, to get to where we were prior to the weather event,” Lt. Col. Michael Kissinger, commander of the 33rd Flying Training Squadron, told Air & Space Forces Magazine. 

“In reality, everyone came together, our maintainers and our IPs, and we got back to on-timeline within one month of the event,” he added. “We are presently about two to three days ahead of timeline two months removed from the event.”

The 33rd is one of two student pilot training squadrons at Vance that together operate 99 T-6s, the turboprop aircraft which Air Force student pilots learn to fly before moving on to specialized training for fighter/bomber, cargo/tanker, heavy propeller, or rotary wing aircraft.

A major thunderstorm was not forecasted over Vance for the night of July 21, but the base wound up being the spot where the storm cell collapsed, Kissinger said. 

t-6 texan ii
An L3 Communications crew chief leads a T-6 Texan II crew to a full stop at Vance Air Force Base, Oklahoma, Oct. 19, 2017. U.S. Air Force photo by David Poe

When not in use, T-6s are usually parked outside and tied down. During the storm, they were subjected to 90 mph winds, which blew protective straps off propellers and sent them spinning. That can be hazardous to the aircraft, because without oil pumping through the turned-off engines, the propellers can grind chips off components and send them into the rest of the system.

The wind can also damage control surfaces like ailerons and elevators. In some cases, aircraft collided with each other or with structures after the wind tore off their straps.

All those risks meant even the visibly undamaged planes had to be grounded for inspections. In all, 78 of the 99 T-6s were grounded, leaving the 71st Flying Training Wing with just 21 percent of its usual T-6 fleet and no let-up in pilot training requirements. The two T-6 squadrons usually have a combined 150 students in the flight stage of their training, broken down into smaller classes staggered at different stages of the process. The syllabus calls for each student to fly about 100 hours.

“No one immediately said ‘Oh, we’re not going to graduate anyone on time,’” Kissinger said. “The general feeling was ‘well, this is a problem, and we’re going to work through it.’”

The stakes were especially high because a slowdown in undergraduate pilot training has ripple effects in specialized pilot training and operational units.

“Any time we don’t graduate on time, the Air Force feels those effects,” Kissinger explained.

The contract maintenance teams worked “24/7 in the literal sense of that term” to inspect aircraft and return them to flight as soon as possible, Kissinger said. On the flying side, planners dropped all sorties that were not essential to student production, such as airshows and upgrade training for IPs. Since not as many IPs were flying sorties due to the reduced number of aircraft, they helped run extra simulator sessions alongside the civilian instructors who usually lead the simulators. The goal was to maximize student sorties on the few available aircraft while still giving students the training they needed to graduate.

“We were trying to schedule around 130, 140 sorties a day,” before the storm, Kissinger said. “If you lose a single day, it might take several weekends to make up for it.”

Indeed, the squadron had gone from two days ahead of schedule to four days behind the timeline, a rare event at Vance. But the team rose to the challenge, with IPs working weekends in addition to their 10- to 12-hour workdays. 

“You always expect military people to do their duty, but at the same time when you see people just knock it out of the park and do so while maintaining a healthy morale in the squadron, I absolutely couldn’t be prouder of the 33rd, or really team Vance at large,” Kissinger said.

While the IPs worked weekends, they also needed some luck—there was no margin left for a run of poor weather or another storm.

“We needed everyone to be 100 percent efficient with the sorties and time that we had,” he said. “But there’s no buffer, and I think that’s the stress that gets put on the force, because they’re working hard and there are some things outside their control.”

t-6 texan ii
Instructor Pilots from the 71st Flying Training Wing conduct formation flying training in the U.S. Air Force T-6 Texan II aircraft over Enid, Oklahoma, June 9, 2023. U.S. Air Force photos by Staff Sgt. Taylor Crul

Meanwhile, the maintainers brought back all but nine of the 78 aircraft damaged from the storm, with the final nine awaiting replacement parts, said Sherry Teague, the director of maintenance quality assurance at Vance.

“Our contract partners and support personnel put in the hours to get our damaged aircraft back to a safe flying condition,” she said. “They gathered a lot of the data that the engineers used to decide how to get our fleet back up and running as quickly as possible and keep our pilots safe.”

As more aircraft returned to flight, the fleet could sustain about 150 sorties a day, allowing for IP upgrades and airshows again.

The comeback is a bright spot in the wider Air Force pilot training enterprise, which in August had a 900-pilot backlog due in part to aging aircraft like the T-38 Talon, used to train future fighter and bomber pilots.

In fiscal 2022, the Air Force produced 1,276 pilots. In 2023, that number rose to around 1,350, still short of the goal of 1,470. Facing strong demand, the branch is aiming for 1,500 new pilots in fiscal 2024—and the thunderstorm at Vance seemingly won’t interfere with that goal after all.

“That collaboration: everyone having that shared vision of what it takes to get across the line, and then executing, that’s really the big takeaway,” Kissinger said.