US Air Force News

[James1978]

Escape system problem causes T-7 deliveries to slip to end of 2025
By Stephen Losey
April 20, 2023

WASHINGTON — Problems with the T-7A Red Hawk, including a potentially dangerous escape system and ejection seat, have caused the U.S. Air Force to push back a production decision and deliveries of the service’s next jet trainer aircraft.

The Air Force said in an email to Defense News that it now expects to make a decision on producing the T-7A in February 2025, and for the aircraft’s manufacturer Boeing to start delivering them in December that year. The schedule shift means the aircraft will now arrive at least two years later than the service originally intended.

It is the latest slide in the T-7′s schedule, after a December acknowledgement that problems with the aircraft’s design and testing caused the plane’s production to slip into 2024.

The delay was first reported by Air and Space Forces Magazine.

A Boeing spokesperson confirmed the re-baselining of the T-7′s schedule in an email to Defense News. “Our goal remains to get this new critical training capability in the hands of pilots,” the company said.

The Air Force plans to buy 351 T-7s to replace the T-38 Talon jet trainer, which the Air Force has flown since the early 1960s and is rapidly showing its age. The Air Force in 2018 awarded Boeing a $9.2 billion contract to build the new trainer.

Boeing touted the T-7′s digital design process and advanced manufacturing techniques as a potential model for designing and building aircraft faster and with fewer risks and defects. But problems, including concerns over the aircraft’s ejection seats and other emergency egress systems, have slowed progress.

The T-7 was designed to accommodate pilots with a wider range of body types and heights, as well as both male and female pilots. For years, Air Force aircraft and their cockpits were designed with fitting only men in mind, and women frequently found it difficult to receive clearance to fly.

But tests showed the T-7′s emergency escape system could be dangerous for some pilots. The Air Force said last December that 2021 tests found some ejecting pilots could be at a high risk of concussions, unsafe acceleration when parachutes open, or losing their visor at high speeds.

The escape system, as well as glitches with the T-7′s flight control software, led to the schedule slip announced last year. Boeing said in December that a fix to the flight control software problems was expected to head into testing in early 2023.

The Air Force said this month that it and Boeing began to re-baseline the T-7′s schedule in June 2022 to take into account delays caused by problems, including testing and hardware qualification challenges, aerodynamic instabilities such as a now-resolved “wing rock” problem, critical parts shortages caused in part by the pandemic, the escape system problems, and Boeing’s “inability to rapidly correct deficiencies.”

Wing rock refers to a problem in which the T-7′s wings could have dangerously rocked back and forth along the roll axis.

The risk assessment led the T-7 program office to recommend the Milestone C decision change to February 2025, which means the service now expects the first production aircraft to be delivered in December 2025.

Because a decision on production isn’t expected to occur until 2025, the Air Force said it opted to strike procurement funding for the program’s low-rate initial production in the fiscal 2024 budget request. The service originally expected to spend $322 million on procurement of the T-7 next year, according to documents accompanying the FY23 budget request.

The Air Force said it and Boeing are now confident the T-7′s escape system will be safe and effective, after making improvements to the system and testing. Minor adjustments to the seat have increased safety and reduced the risk to pilots, the Air Force said. The service said it and Boeing will also keep studying the ejection seat’s performance through the rest of this year to find other ways to improve the technology.

The Air Force said Boeing’s first two production-relevant T-7s are undergoing test flights at Boeing’s facility in St. Louis, Missouri.

Boeing is finishing construction of five engineering and manufacturing development T-7s, the Air Force said.

Boeing said those aircraft are expected to start their flight tests this summer in St. Louis. The Air Force said the first three are then scheduled to move to Edwards Air Force Base in California, where they will undergo flight testing in September.

[James1978]

New Pilot Training Delayed by Aging Trainers, Vice Chief Says
April 20, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

Problems with aging Air Force trainer aircraft are slowing down pilot production, making a persistent problem worse, according to written and spoken testimony by Vice Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin before the House Armed Services readiness subcommittee.

Allvin’s written statement detailed the that in fiscal 2022 the Air Force:

* Suffered a net loss of about 250 pilots
* Ended 1,900 pilots short of its goal of 21,000
* Produced 1,276 pilots, 105 fewer than 2021 and 224 short of its 1,500 goal

Making matters worse is the state of the Air Force’s trainer fleet. Its decades-old T-6 and T-38 trainers are in such a state that it now takes up to two years just to get a future pilot from commissioning to the start of pilot training, Allvin said.

Asked by Rep. Jennifer Kiggans (R-Va.) how long it takes to train an Airmen to be a pilot, Allvin said the timeline should be around 18 months for mobility pilots and two years or more for fighter or bomber pilots. But getting newly commissioned officers into the pilot pipeline is taking up to two years longer because there aren’t enough training aircraft available.

“From the time they are commissioned—because of the challenges we’re having with T-6 and T-38—we have a little bit of a backup. It can be as many as four years,” Allvin said. “So almost an 18 month- to 24 month-wait just to get into pilot training.”

The Air Force is seeking $12.6 million for T-38 safety and sustainment and $11.3 million in T-6 modifications in its fiscal 2024 budget request in an effort to address the problems, Allvin wrote.

The new T-7A Red Hawk is supposed to replace the T-38, but won’t go into production until 2025, having encountered delays, according to the Air Force’s latest timeline. That raises the pressure to keep the T-38 going.

Pressure is also rising on the persistent pilot shortage. Asked by Rep. Carlos A. Giménez (R-Fla.) about the problem, Allvin stressed that the Air Force continues to have enough pilots to fill all its cockpits, but it suffers in staff jobs where pilot experience would be beneficial.

“In order to have a healthy pilot professional force, you need first and foremost the combat cockpits filled,” Allvin said. “Then you need the trainer cockpits filled. Then you need the test cockpits filled. And after you fill out the cockpits, then our next priority is the leadership—you want the leadership positions filled. And then after you have all those filled, then you go to the staff positions. That is where we are currently absorbing our shortage: in the staffs.”

Only about 70 percent of staff positions typically filled by experienced pilots are manned today, Allvin said. “If this sustains over time, then we will have a sort of misshapen force, where you won’t be able to have professionally developed enough of the rated membership to provide that expertise and leadership at the higher level,” Allvin said. “But for right now, we have not had any of our combat training or test cockpits go empty.”

As things stand now, pilots’ professional development is affected by the shortages, Allvin wrote.

The Air Force has struggled to retain more pilots using retention bonuses and, more recently, by making it easier for pilots to transfer from the Active force to the Guard or Reserve.

The service has also made changes to the pilot candidate scoring mechanism, reducing emphasis on prior flying experience, by encouraging more diverse applicants, and by developing Undergraduate Pilot Training 2.5, a new curriculum and process for training pilots that makes greater use of simulators and personalized training to help candidates better prepare for actual flying.

[James1978]

Air Force Picks New Guard Locations for F-35, F-15EX Fighters
April 18, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

The Air Force announced locations for two new F-15EX squadrons and a new F-35 unit on April 18, all within the Air National Guard.

The preferred location for the new F-35A squadron is Barnes Air National Guard Base, Mass., while the F-15EXs are slated for Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base New Orleans, La., and Fresno Air National Guard Base, Calif.

All three bases currently operate older F-15C/D model fighters which the Air Force wants to retire in the coming years.

At Barnes, the 104th Fighter Wing would gain 18 new F-35s. At NAS Joint Reserve Base New Orleans and Fresno, the 159th Fighter Wing and the 144th Fighter Wing would each get 18 F-15EXs.

The selection of all three bases is contingent on an environmental impact analysis, which will be completed by the spring of 2024 before a final selection, the Air Force said. The service did not say when the new aircraft might arrive.

Air National Guard officials have said they want to assign F-35s or F-15EXs to every ANG unit that currently flies the F-15. In 2020, the Air Force announced that Jacksonville Air National Guard Base, Fla., will get the fifth-generation F-35, while Kingsley Field and Portland Air National Guard Base, both in Oregon, will get the fourth-gen F-15EX, a heavily-upgraded version of the F-15E.

The ANG already has one location with the F-35, the 158th Fighter Wing at Burlington Air National Guard Base, Vt. Guard units at Truax Field, Wisc., and Dannelly Field, Ala., are slated to start receiving the F-35 later this year, which will replace their F-16s.

Those locations and units are in addition to the F-35’s Active-Duty units and locations, including:

* Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska
* Hill Air Force Base, Utah
* Luke Air Force Base, Ariz.
* Nellis Air Force Base, Nev.
* RAF Lakenheath, U.K.
* Tyndall Air Force Base, Fla. (planned)

Air Force Reserve is also slated to get F-35s at Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth, Texas.

The F-15EX, meanwhile, is still undergoing testing at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla. The Air Force has yet to announce any Active-Duty locations for the fighter.

[clancyphile]

https://www.airandspaceforces.com/air-f ... 10s-afsoc/

The Air Force plans to put a new Special Operations power projection wing at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz., replacing A-10s that have been there for years, service and Congressional officials told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

The base is also slated to receive new EC-37 Compass Call electronic warfare aircraft and HH-60W Jolly Green II helicopters as upgrades for its other missions. EC-130Hs and HH-60Gs are currently based at Davis-Monthan.

Details of the Air Force’s plans for the base over the next five years were shared with members of Arizona’s Congressional delegation in a briefing several weeks ago. After years of fighting over the future of the base’s A-10 “Warthogs,” there now appears to be consensus that the Air Force can retire the aircraft, a Congressional source said.

As recently as two years ago, Congress shot down Air Force plans to retire 42 A-10s. But this year Congress is letting the Air Force cut 21 of the beloved close air support jets from the Indiana Air National Guard, and as Congress starts work on the 2024 National Defense Authorization bill, Sens. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.), along with Reps. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) and Juan Ciscomani (R-Ariz.), released a joint letter saying they were “encouraged by the Air Force’s intention to bring new, durable flying missions” to Davis-Monthan.

Air Force spokeswoman Sarah Fiocco told Air & Space Forces Magazine that details of that mission are still in the works. The emphasis on “durability,” though, is revealing. Two years ago, the Air Force plan to replace Davis-Monthan’s A-10s centered on transferring weapons schools and test squadrons for the A-10 and HH-60G from Nellis Air Force Base, Nev. Neither of those aircraft are in the Air Force’s long-term plans.

Air Force budget documents indicate plans to establish a new 492nd Power Projection Wing at Davis-Monthan, and Fiocco confirmed that the wing will be under Air Force Special Operations Command.

But just what a power projection wing is remains unclear. No other such wings exist today. Fiocco said it will be a “special operations unit based in the U.S. that can be sent anywhere.”

AFSOC’s 492nd Special Operations Wing is now based at Hurlburt Field, Fla., where it is responsible for training and education programs. Fiocco couldn’t say whether the 492nd Power Projection Wing would replace the Hurlburt wing.

In their letter, members of Arizona’s Congressional delegation wrote that the Air Force indicated “there will be nearly the same number of airmen and civilians employed at the base” in five years’ time. Fiocco confirmed the Air Force expects the base population to return to roughly 9,600 personnel once the new wing is in place.

But while the lawmakers offered support for the Air Force’s plans, they also asked Secretary Frank Kendall to expand to brief more local officials and organizations—something Kendall did during an April 17 visit, according to images posted by the Air Force and Kelly’s office.

The lawmakers also noted in their letter that the timeline laid out by the Air Force is “ambitious” and asked to be kept informed on progress.

Work on the transition has already begun—a Site Activation Task Force has convened, Kelly’s office confirmed to Air & Space Forces Magazine. The Air Force is seeking $5 million in the fiscal 2024 budget for an Environmental Impact study and an Area Development Plan for the 492nd Power Projection Wing.

Meanwhile, Air Force leaders seem increasingly confident that they will be able to retire the A-10 completely in the coming years. Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. has said the service is removing the A-10 from its “4+1” fighter plan and hopes to have every Warthog divested by 2029.

Fifteen years from now, we'll have realized far too late that as was the case with the C-130 and the B-52, really the only proper replacement for the A-10 was another A-10.

[Poohbah]

https://www.airandspaceforces.com/air-f ... 10s-afsoc/

The Air Force plans to put a new Special Operations power projection wing at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz., replacing A-10s that have been there for years, service and Congressional officials told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

The base is also slated to receive new EC-37 Compass Call electronic warfare aircraft and HH-60W Jolly Green II helicopters as upgrades for its other missions. EC-130Hs and HH-60Gs are currently based at Davis-Monthan.

Details of the Air Force’s plans for the base over the next five years were shared with members of Arizona’s Congressional delegation in a briefing several weeks ago. After years of fighting over the future of the base’s A-10 “Warthogs,” there now appears to be consensus that the Air Force can retire the aircraft, a Congressional source said.

As recently as two years ago, Congress shot down Air Force plans to retire 42 A-10s. But this year Congress is letting the Air Force cut 21 of the beloved close air support jets from the Indiana Air National Guard, and as Congress starts work on the 2024 National Defense Authorization bill, Sens. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.), along with Reps. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) and Juan Ciscomani (R-Ariz.), released a joint letter saying they were “encouraged by the Air Force’s intention to bring new, durable flying missions” to Davis-Monthan.

Air Force spokeswoman Sarah Fiocco told Air & Space Forces Magazine that details of that mission are still in the works. The emphasis on “durability,” though, is revealing. Two years ago, the Air Force plan to replace Davis-Monthan’s A-10s centered on transferring weapons schools and test squadrons for the A-10 and HH-60G from Nellis Air Force Base, Nev. Neither of those aircraft are in the Air Force’s long-term plans.

Air Force budget documents indicate plans to establish a new 492nd Power Projection Wing at Davis-Monthan, and Fiocco confirmed that the wing will be under Air Force Special Operations Command.

But just what a power projection wing is remains unclear. No other such wings exist today. Fiocco said it will be a “special operations unit based in the U.S. that can be sent anywhere.”

AFSOC’s 492nd Special Operations Wing is now based at Hurlburt Field, Fla., where it is responsible for training and education programs. Fiocco couldn’t say whether the 492nd Power Projection Wing would replace the Hurlburt wing.

In their letter, members of Arizona’s Congressional delegation wrote that the Air Force indicated “there will be nearly the same number of airmen and civilians employed at the base” in five years’ time. Fiocco confirmed the Air Force expects the base population to return to roughly 9,600 personnel once the new wing is in place.

But while the lawmakers offered support for the Air Force’s plans, they also asked Secretary Frank Kendall to expand to brief more local officials and organizations—something Kendall did during an April 17 visit, according to images posted by the Air Force and Kelly’s office.

The lawmakers also noted in their letter that the timeline laid out by the Air Force is “ambitious” and asked to be kept informed on progress.

Work on the transition has already begun—a Site Activation Task Force has convened, Kelly’s office confirmed to Air & Space Forces Magazine. The Air Force is seeking $5 million in the fiscal 2024 budget for an Environmental Impact study and an Area Development Plan for the 492nd Power Projection Wing.

Meanwhile, Air Force leaders seem increasingly confident that they will be able to retire the A-10 completely in the coming years. Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. has said the service is removing the A-10 from its “4+1” fighter plan and hopes to have every Warthog divested by 2029.

Fifteen years from now, we'll have realized far too late that as was the case with the C-130 and the B-52, really the only proper replacement for the A-10 was another A-10.

The thing's only usable for wog-bashing, and the only wog-bashing I see getting engaged in by the US over the next 30 years is within the US...

[James1978]

After tragedy, US Air Force probes English training for foreign pilots
By Rachel S. Cohen
April 13, 2023

JOINT BASE SAN ANTONIO-LACKLAND, Texas — Two years after a Japanese air force pilot and his American instructor died in a military jet crash in Alabama, officials are mulling whether a U.S.-run program that teaches English to foreign aviators is partly to blame.

The incident has prompted U.S. Air Force leaders to take a closer look at the quality of the instruction they provide, and consider how to better accommodate foreign students. It has opened fresh discussion of how much time and money the program needs to succeed.

It has also highlighted a breakdown in communication between the Air Force-led Defense Language Institute’s English Language Center here, the organizations that oversee it, pilot training units across the service, and the nations that send their students to Texas.

“The Japanese are nervous because of what happened,” said Terry Harsh, an instructor at the center, in a recent interview here. “They come through here, asking, ‘I don’t want the same thing to happen to me — why did he die? Why did a professional American instructor pilot die with him?’ These are language issues, and they’re very concerning.”

The fatal T-38C Talon training sortie on Feb. 19, 2021, killed 24-year-old 1st Lt. Scot Ames, an instructor pilot at Mississippi’s Columbus Air Force Base, and his 25-year-old Japanese trainee, Capt. Renshi Uesaki.

An official accident investigation concluded that Ames and Uesaki made errors in judgment that caused the crash. Investigators noted that Uesaki struggled with the language barrier despite completing six months of English training in 2019.

That “directly impacted his ability to receive and process instruction as well as listen and talk on the radios,” the report said. “This challenge was exacerbated while flying instrument sorties, which required more frequent communications” with air traffic control.

Uesaki passed his English comprehension test upon arriving at Lackland but needed more time to improve in conversation. He finished the course as an “‘average’ to ‘slightly above average’” student, according to the accident report.

But he continued having difficulty speaking and understanding technical aviation vocabulary, which affected his ability to comprehend instructions and make radio calls while flying. Those communication challenges often overwhelmed Uesaki and caused him to lose focus in the cockpit, the report said.

“The cause of the mishap was [Ames’s] loss of situational awareness on final approach and failure to take timely and necessary actions as a dangerous situation developed,” the Air Force wrote in its accident report. “[Uesaki] substantially contributed to the mishap after becoming task-saturated in the traffic pattern and placing and leaving the throttles in idle.”

Foreign pilot deaths in U.S.-led military training are infrequent, but they do occur. At least four foreign airmen have died in the U.S. in the past decade: Uesaki; two Iraqi pilots, Brig. Gen. Rasid Mohammed Sadiq and Capt. Noor Faleh Rassan Al-Khazali; and a Taiwanese airman, Maj. Kao Ting-cheng.

All but Uesaki were flying F-16 Fighting Falcon jets over Arizona when they crashed in separate incidents in 2015, 2016 and 2017.

Foreign deaths account for around 6% of the 80 people who have died in U.S. Air Force-affiliated aircraft mishaps since 2013, according to the Air Force Safety Center.

But losing an American instructor pilot brought scrutiny of the program to a new level, Harsh said. The crash sparked meetings across the U.S. Air Force’s training enterprise and with Japanese military officials to discuss what went wrong — and how to stop it from happening again.

“The Air Force command structure went into a different gear,” said Harsh, a former scout helicopter pilot who has taught at the center for over a decade. “They were like, ‘What do you teach? What’s going on at DLI?’”

Teaching the world to fly
The English Language Center has been the first step on the path to a military air career for thousands of people around the world.

Its college-level aviation program is one piece of the center’s broader security cooperation mission that reaches around 6,000 students from more than 100 countries each year. The school offers a general English curriculum and remedial classes ahead of more difficult courses that prepare troops for military jobs.

Each country picks the airmen it wants to send to the U.S., where they receive a more in-depth education in English — the official language of the skies — than they may otherwise get at home.

To join, people must pass a series of proficiency tests that judge their speaking and listening abilities. They have to score at least a two — meaning they could shop for groceries or rent a car — on a scale where three is fluent, Harsh said.

The nine-week aviation course prepares airmen to hold conversations with pilots in flight, crew members in the back of an aircraft, and air traffic control towers. Anyone from air traffic controllers to flight nurses can attend the course, which offers fixed-wing and rotary-wing specialties.

Around 350 foreigners from about 50 countries go through the aviation program each year, Harsh said. NATO airmen don’t often attend because they tend to be more fluent in English than people from other parts of the world.

Students are drilled on NATO’s “alpha-zulu” phonetic alphabet and the niche vocabulary, acronyms and scenarios that crackle across U.S. military radios — no accents allowed.

“These little differences have led to accidents in the past, and we really want to emphasize the importance of being clear on the radio,” Harsh said.

They take lessons on subjects like crew management and leadership, with occasional time in simulators, while learning from American airmen and their foreign classmates.

The center also tries to work through the cultural differences that can lead to safety issues, like deference to older or higher-ranking airmen. Teachers urge the international students to get comfortable asking questions.

“It’s not really a rank thing when you get in the cockpit,” Harsh said. “If you don’t ask, the instructor pilot is going to assume you know.”

If something seems amiss, he added, “Don’t assume that the IP is not making a mistake.”

“You have the right — it’s your life — to challenge that instructor pilot respectfully,” he said.

The goal is to get students up to speed so they can enter the next phase of training, like undergraduate pilot school, without a significant language barrier.

But Harsh said there’s a big difference between how fluent they need to be to finish the program and how fluent they should be to fly safely. He estimates that airmen need at least another six months of class time to be comfortably proficient, for which the United States or the partner countries would need to foot the bill.

“We’ve tried to emphasize to the military departments, this does not succeed without you,” he said. “You’ve determined the language prerequisites. DLI wildly succeeds in meeting that mark. But that’s not what the students need.”

Nearly everyone who arrives at the center passes, Harsh said. But when they reach their next stop, like undergraduate pilot training, that completion rate falls to around 78%.

“That training gap is a safety issue,” he said. “[The solution is] time and money. And nobody wants to pay that.”

Changes needed
The Defense Language Institute is updating the aviation English program, a process that will take another few years to come to fruition.

One of the biggest changes the English Language Center could make is forging closer ties between military experts, the follow-on training units and the curriculum team, Harsh said.

The curriculum is largely written by civilians without expertise in real-world military aviation, he said. That creates an artificial standard that makes students feel prepared until they reach their training unit.

He argues the solution is to embed military experts in the curriculum department who can act as a liaison between the training unit and the English program. That way, the expert could keep the English program apprised of what instructor pilots need and vice versa.

Harsh wishes the school had a better system in place to collect feedback from its students, like interviews, but acknowledges that it would add time and effort for already busy staffers and stressed students.

Once a year, center staff visits the follow-on training units that take its students to see how well the foreigners do within the first month. That still doesn’t paint the full picture, Harsh said.

He wants more qualitative and quantitative data on how students are faring: Why did someone need to log extra hours in the cockpit? What have their instructors said in post-flight reports?

“That is gold to us. I’ve never seen it,” Harsh said. “Without that feedback loop, we’re shooting arrows in the dark.”

And he wants the instructors that receive the students down the line to be more aware of who they’re getting.

Airmen need to establish “safe words” before they fly, he said. If an international student gets overwhelmed in the air, they can use the safe word to let their instructor know they need to pause to discuss what they’re doing.

Those simple steps can protect the instructor pilots, too.

“Be somewhat accommodating,” he said. “This is incredibly difficult. Imagine going to Japan or Korea or an Arab community to try to learn how to fly.”

Now the Air Force is trying to make clearer how proficient a student will be when they leave the language program, and what should be expected of students who finish it.

In February, Air Force international affairs staffers, flight instructors, and members of the Defense Language Institute, Air Education and Training Command and 19th Air Force — a subunit that manages pilot training — met to review the English language course’s curriculum and how it is delivered, said Air Force spokesperson Marilyn Holliday.

The English Language Center has worked on a rubric for instructor pilots to gauge how well their international students communicate, she said. Instructor pilots are helping the center make videos to familiarize international students with pre- and post-flight briefings, and pilot training bases have also provided the center with scripts so that students can rehearse conversations about take-off, flight patterns and landing.

“The visit … served as a forum to identify and bridge training and academic gaps between English language curriculum and instruction as it applies to international students,” Holliday said. “The working group will reconvene in mid-April to re-engage and assess progress on all tasks.”

The Japanese Self-Defense Forces did not respond to a request for comment on their discussions with American air training officials.

Business as normal
Business has continued as usual after the 2021 crash, said Col. Joe Schaefer, commandant of the English Language Center.

The U.S. Air Force still graduates around 50 foreign pilots each year; Schaefer said the program has maintained its relationship with Japan, a key ally in the Pacific. It retains a Japanese liaison officer who looks out for the country’s students while in the U.S.

On the first anniversary of Uesaki’s death, Schaefer said the Japanese liaison delivered a letter to Lt. Gen. Brad Webb, then the head of Air Education and Training Command.

It was a note from the pilot’s mother: Thank you for caring.

[James1978]

Historic 'MiG Killer' makes final flight to Air Force museum
by Joshua Richardson
April 25th 2023

DAYTON, Ohio (WKEF) -- An historic fighter jet made its final flight Tuesday at the National Museum of the US Air Force.

Lt. Col. Matthew "Beast" Tanis flew the F-15C from Barnes Air National Guard Base in Massachusetts to Dayton and after several fly-bys to burn off fuel, he spoke a little about what that particular plane means to him.

The F-15C, with Tail Number 86156, is the only F-15 with double MiG kill, which was recorded in 1999 over Yugoslavia. Tanis spoke with reverence of the feat performed by Col. Jeff "Claw" Hwang when he shot down two enemy MiG 29s.

Tanis said it was an honor to be able to fly the historic fighter jet to what he described as a "hall of fame" for the Air Force.

When asked if flying this jet to the museum is bittersweet, he said it was, absolutely.

"This is like one of those sad things with your favorite car, you're basically driving it to the garage to never fly it again," Tanis said.

As far as flying the F-15 in general, Tanis said it is rewarding but challenging.

"There's not a lot of limits to it, not a lot of things you can't do and that makes it really, really fun," Tanis said. "The F-15C is kind of the last jet created not fly-by-wire, so it's belt cranks and pullies, so you're connected to the stick. It's obviously hydraulically actuated to move it but you feel it, and all the jets since don't have that."

Meghan Anderson, curator in the museum's Research Division said this F-15C will likely replace a F-15A that is currently on display.

She said there's no timeline for when the this "MiG Killer" will be on display. It first needs cleaned and prepared for display.

[James1978]

The A-10 was a fine aircraft that served us well.

But. The youngest one is nearly 40 years old, and it's not the B-52. Sure, the B-52 is older, but it's still useful as a stand-off platform.

The A-10 is dead meat in a peer conflict, and the kind of stuff we were using it for in Afghanistan can be done cheaper by other platforms. Sensors and PGM tech have gotten to the point that "low and slow" isn't the best way to provide CAS.

In an ideal world, maybe a purpose built replacement would be nice, and the discussion of what that would look like would surely be an interesting one.

[Pdf27]

The A-10 is dead meat in a peer conflict, and the kind of stuff we were using it for in Afghanistan can be done cheaper by other platforms. Sensors and PGM tech have gotten to the point that "low and slow" isn't the best way to provide CAS.

In an ideal world, maybe a purpose built replacement would be nice, and the discussion of what that would look like would surely be an interesting one.

We **have** a bunch of purpose-built replacements, which are currently doing very well in Ukraine. Firepower needs work (currently limited to dropping anti-tank grenades), but they're cheap, persistent, deployable and provide superb situational awareness to the troops they're supporting. If you need more firepower, the aircraft are out there in service - literally the only thing they don't do that the A-10 does is satisfy the "MOAR DAKKA" impulse in the public and the egos of a bunch of pilots.

[James1978]

Boeing is taking a beating on the KC-46 . . .

Boeing Losses on KC-46 Tanker Top $7B
With more than 70 percent of the planned fleet already ordered, the plane remains a financial burden.

By Marcus Weisgerber
April 26, 2023

Boeing’s losses from building what was supposed to be a “low risk” aerial refueling tanker for the U.S. Air Force now top $7 billion, the company disclosed Wednesday.

The Arlington, Virginia-based company said it lost another $245 million building the KC-46 in the first three months of 2023. The losses were due to a “supplier quality issue resulting in factory disruption and rework,” the company said in a statement.

The quality problem is with the plane’s fuel tanks, which were improperly painted by a subcontractor, The Air Current first reported last month.

“The good news is we understand it and we're progressing through that rework,” Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun said on the company’s quarterly earnings call. “On the operational side, the tanker is continuing to perform its mission well.”

The U.S. Air Force has been increasingly using the 69 KC-46 tankers in its fleet for refueling missions around the world. The service has already ordered 128 tankers—more than 70 percent of the 179 it intends to buy. Japan and Israel have also purchased the KC-46.

And despite the program’s troubled history, the Air Force could buy an additional 75 more to replace Eisenhower-era KC-135 tankers. Calhoun on Wednesday called the potential extra tankers “a great opportunity for us.”

The KC-46 is a heavily modified version of the commercial Boeing 767 airliner. The company still builds freighter versions of the 767 for cargo airlines, and those commercial 767s are also affected by the fuel tank problems.

Technical and quality control problems have bedeviled Boeing’s KC-46 since 2011, when the Air Force chose the company over rival Airbus to begin replacing its Cold War fleet of tankers. At the time, the company claimed the “tankers will be built using a low-risk approach to manufacturing by a trained and experienced U.S. work force at existing Boeing facilities.”

Twelve years later, the plane still remains a drag on the company’s bottom line, even though it’s been praised by the Air Force in recent years.

“We have to get the tanker [to be] more predictable,” Boeing CFO Brian West said at a Bank of America investors conference last month.

Boeing’s tanker losses top $7 billion
By Stephen Losey
April 27, 2023

WASHINGTON — Boeing reported a $245 million charge on the KC-46A Pegasus tanker in the first quarter of 2023, due to a supplier’s quality issues.

The penalty means the KC-46 has now racked up more than $7 billion in charges, and follow a $1.2 billion hit the company took on the Air Force tanker in the third quarter of 2022.

The KC-46′s charge brought Boeing Defense, Space and Security into the red for the quarter, with the unit reporting a loss of $212 million, the company said Wednesday. Boeing said ongoing labor and supply chain disruptions also hindered the company’s results.

However, the outlook for Boeing’s defense unit showed signs of improvement from the first quarter of 2022, when it reported a $929 million loss. Boeing defense also brought in $6.5 billion in revenues in this year’s first quarter, a more than $1 billion increase over 2022′s first quarter.

Boeing also trimmed its overall losses in the quarter by about $1 billion from the same period in 2022, while overall revenues grew to nearly $18 billion in the first three months of this year.

Boeing said the charge was largely driven by a previously disclosed quality issue due to a supplier, but did not offer further details in a call with analysts. The aviation news website the Air Current reported in March a subcontractor had not followed proper painting and priming procedures on the center fuel tanks of some KC-46s and 767s, on which the KC-46 is based, which has held up deliveries. That quality issue could risk contamination of the aircrafts’ fuel systems, Air Current reported.

Brian West, Boeing’s chief financial officer, confirmed the quality issue with the 767 center fuel tanks later that month at a Bank of America conference.

David Calhoun, Boeing’s chief executive, said on Wednesday’s call work is progressing on fixing that problem. But the company warned investors more losses on the KC-46 could come during the remainder of the year.

Calhoun said the company is seeing bright spots in its defense business, with the Air Force possibly buying additional, modified KC-46s as an interim step until it can bring on a next-generation tanker. He also pointed to the up to $1.2 billion contract the Air Force awarded Boeing in February to start building the E-7A battle management aircraft, to replace the aging E-3 Sentry airborne warning and control system, or AWACS, aircraft.

Awards in the first quarter for 15 more KC-46s and 184 Apache helicopters for the Army also reflected strong demand, Calhoun said.

[Rocket J Squrriel]

Boeing is taking a beating on the KC-46 . . .

Deservedly so.

I'm finally meeting my cousin (2nd or 4th) in a couple of months who was an exec at Boeing from the late 70's up to the 2017. I think he was in on a lot of projects including the 757 through 787. I intend to ask a few questions like when McDonnell Douglas came on board did things change?

[James1978]

I'm finally meeting my cousin (2nd or 4th) in a couple of months who was an exec at Boeing from the late 70's up to the 2017. I think he was in on a lot of projects including the 757 through 787. I intend to ask a few questions like when McDonnell Douglas came on board did things change?

If you have Netflix (US), there is a good documentary made in 2022 you should check out - Downfall: The Case Against Boeing. Runs about 90 minutes. The main focus is on the 737 MAX crashes, but they spend a lot of time looking at how McDonnell Douglas culture wrecked what was once a great engineering company.

[jemhouston]

What I'm trying to figure out is, both companies-built world class aircraft. Now I don't think they could design a pooper scooper. What happened and why haven't they fixed it yet? I'm not sure if they've even started.

[James1978]

Boeing . . . again.

Key milestone for new Boeing trainer aircraft delayed to 2027
By Stephen Losey
April 28, 2023

WASHINGTON — Boeing’s T-7A jet trainer aircraft is not expected to reach initial operational capability until spring 2027, three years later than originally planned, the Air Force said.

The Air Force’s next jet trainer has struggled with problems such as a potentially dangerous escape system and ejection seat. Earlier in April, the Air Force acknowledged those troubles, and the time needed to fix them, caused it to delay a milestone C production decision to February 2025. Boeing is now expected to deliver the T-7 in December 2025.

In a follow-up email, Air Force acquisition chief Andrew Hunter said the delay in the milestone C decision means the T-7 isn’t slated to reach initial operating capability until 2027.

Hunter said the Air Force and Boeing are continuing the T-7′s testing process, and completed an on-the-ground sled test in February. The aircraft is on track for its first taxi test in the next few weeks, he said. During taxi tests, an aircraft proceeds down a runway, in some cases at high speed, but does not take off. Such tests are usually carried out before flight tests.

“These tests posture the T-7 program to resolve issues with the escape system and move forward to deliver the training capability the Air Force requires,” Hunter said.

The service is looking for ways to speed processes to recover some of the lost time from the recent delays, Hunter said.

The new IOC date will be three years after the T-7′s original goal to achieve IOC in 2024, and a year behind the most recent revised date of 2026.

The Air Force plans to replace its fleet of 504 aging T-37 Talon trainers with 351 T-7 Red Hawks.

The T-7 was designed to better accommodate both male and female pilots, and pilots with a wider range of body types and heights.

But tests conducted in 2021 found that for some pilots, the plane’s escape system could be dangerous. Some ejecting pilots could be at a high risk of concussions, unsafe acceleration when parachutes open, or losing their visor at high speeds, the Air Force said in December 2022.

The Air Force said improvements to the escape system and testing will make it safe and effective.

The first two production-relevant T-7s are undergoing test flights at Boeing’s St. Louis, Missouri, facility, where the company is finishing construction of five engineering and manufacturing development Red Hawks. Boeing said those five planes will start flight tests this summer in St. Louis.

And the Air Force said the first three of those will then move to Edwards Air Force Base in California, where further flight testing will begin in September.

[James1978]

Air Force’s Next-Gen ICBM Program Could Face Delays, Kendall Says
By Audrey Decker
April 28, 2023

Keeping the next-generation intercontinental ballistic missile program on schedule will be “a challenge,” the U.S. Air Force said Thursday, raising new questions about the replacement for the Pentagon’s decades-old Minuteman III.

The first of the Northrop Grumman-built nuclear missiles, known as the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent, are slated to be ready by 2029.

“As far as I know, we are still holding to the schedule for [initial operating capability]. But my sense of this is that I think it's going to be a challenge to make that,” Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said Thursday during a House Armed Services hearing.

The Air Force is trying to address “all the possible ways that program could get in trouble,” Kendall said, since the U.S. hasn’t built ICBMs for a “very long time.”

“It's a very complicated, very large program, both of which add a lot of risk to the program,” he said. Kendall is recused from managing the Sentinel and B-21 programs because he previously consulted for Northrop, but is “monitoring” GBSD progress.

The program and its schedule are of “utmost importance” to Congress, said Rep. John Garamendi, D-Cali., and the committee will “watch it closely,” particularly since there was no competition for the contract—only Northrop bid on the program.

Northrop has achieved two program milestones for GBSD in 2023, including “its first full-scale static test fire of the stage 1 solid rocket motor and the successful completion of a series of wind tunnel tests which tested the system in both subsonic and hypersonic environments. The comprehensive test campaign validated our digital modeling and simulations and improved design maturity of the missile,” the company’s CEO, Kathy Warden, said Thursday during an earnings call.

ICBMs have become a controversial leg of the nuclear triad because the missiles are highly targetable. The amount of time the President has to decide whether to use them is small compared to bombers and submarines—both of which can get closer to the target. Additionally, the program has been criticized for its cost, which is expected to run over a quarter trillion dollars.

Designing ICBMs is also proving more difficult now that the warheads are expected to be networked and feature “some level of connectivity to the rest of the warfighting system,” said Werner J.A. Dahm, former chair of the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board.

However, in recent years, some defense officials—including former head of U.S. Strategic Command Adm. Charles Richardson—have been vocal about the importance of ICBMs in the U.S. arsenal.

It’s almost impossible for Sentinel not to be delayed or go over budget, said Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists. Beyond GBSD, the entire nuclear enterprise is facing delays, he said.

“The problem is that planners have packed an all-of-the-above modernization for essentially the entire nuclear enterprise into more or less the same timeframe, while defense officials have been belittling warnings about cost and overloaded schedules, and scared Congress with warnings about ‘no margin left’ for the existing weapon systems,” Kristensen said.

[James1978]

What Happens to the Air Force’s Oldest F-22s if Congress OKs Their Retirement?
April 28, 2023 | By John A. Tirpak

If Congress agrees with the Air Force’s request to retire 32 Block 20 F-22s as part of its fiscal 2024 budget, the aircraft will be used as trainers a while longer, then stored for an undetermined period at the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base’s Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group (AMARG) “Boneyard” in Arizona, Air Combat Command told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

Eventually, they’ll be scrapped by Air Force personnel and contractors experienced in stealth materials disposal.

“Specific plans for disposition are being developed,” an ACC spokesperson said.

“However, if Congress approves the divestment there are several possibilities for the retired aircraft, including long-term storage at the AMARG,” the spokesperson said. “Until that final divestment decision is made, Air Combat Command is bringing the aircraft to Joint Base Langley-Eustis [Va.] where they will continue executing the F-22 formal training mission.”

The service expects some of the aircraft will make their way to museums or possibly as “gate guards” mounted for display, but those decisions have yet to be made. The Air Force did not say whether it could use some of the aircraft as maintenance trainers, although it has used some wrecked aircraft for this purpose in the past.

The Air Force is storing its stealthy F-117 attack fighters in the hangars from which they originally operated at Tonopah Test Range, Nev., but ACC said the F-22s will not require storage in a climate-controlled facility and will be stored at AMARG “using preservation processes very similar to legacy aircraft.”

Those processes usually involve removing any explosive devices, such as ejection seat motors; running a preservative oil through fluid lines; closing off openings so animals and birds don’t nest in the aircraft; and covering the cockpit, intakes and exhaust with a spray-on latex preservative to diminish the effects of sun and heat.

The AMARG has previously explored the construction of climate-controlled facilities to store fifth-generation aircraft, both to preserve their stealth materials and add extra protection—Davis-Monthan, despite its fences and active fence line security, has experienced intrusions and theft of items from its sprawling open-air storage facilities.

If the F-22s are scrapped, it would be the first time a significant number of stealth aircraft have gone through that process. The issue is sensitive as the Air Force has endured lawsuits from contractors and service personnel who were sickened when they were involved in or close to the burning of toxic stealth materials at USAF’s classified Groom Lake facilities and other locations.

The process for the F-22s will also set a precedent for the B-2 bomber when that aircraft retires circa 2030, and the rest of the F-22 fleet, also retiring around that year.

The Air Force proposed retiring the training F-22s in its fiscal year 2024 budget request because they no longer accurately represent the frontline Block 35, which is the combat-coded and -configured version of the fighter. Rather, they are for training purposes only, and service officials have said they are so dissimilar from the frontline version that they produce “negative training,” meaning students have to unlearn bad habits acquired in the unimproved aircraft.

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said it would cost upwards of $50 million per airplane to upgrade the Block 20s to Block 35 configuration, and much more to operate them and keep them common to the rest of the fleet before the F-22 retires. The Air Force has said that it will apply all of the savings reaped from retiring the aircraft to developing the F-22’s successor, the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) family of systems.

The divestitures are meant to “focus on the future fight” and NGAD, the Air Combat Command spokesperson said.

The spokesperson said ACC hasn’t decided yet what kind of storage category will be applied to the F-22s. The AMARG has traditionally broken up the aircraft it stores into roughly four categories:

* Type 1000: The aircraft will be stored but not cannibalized for parts, on the chance that they may someday be recalled to service. However, they are not periodically powered up to run their systems.
* Type 2000: Yhe aircraft are sources for parts cannibalization, but not destroyed in the process, and potentially restorable to duty.
* Type 3000: Aircraft in “temporary” storage, fully expected to return to flying status and run at least every 30 days. These aircraft may not even leave the runway apron. “Flyable storage,” a related category, calls for longer-term storage, with representative aircraft powered up and flown periodically, mostly to keep a small cadre of pilots proficient in their operation. The F-117 is in “flyable storage,” but some have been recalled to duty to act as stealthy adversaries in USAF wargames and test scenarios.
* Type 4000: Harvested for all usable parts, then scrapped for their valuable materials, such as titanium.

ACC said the F-22 program office requested funds in its Weapon System Sustainment accounts under “Centralized Asset Management” to “induct the F-22s into long-term storage at AMARG.” These funding requests are not included in USAF’s budget justification books, and ACC could not say how much funding has been requested for this purpose.

Plans are in place, the command said, to “train and equip AMARG personnel to successfully preserve and store” the retired F-22s.

“Demilitarization” of the aircraft—removing hazardous materials, explosives, gases, etc.—“and disposal will be a joint effort between AMARG and authorized fifth-generation contractor disposal facilities with experience in handling aircraft hazardous materials,” the ACC spokesperson said.

Congress ordered the Air Force to keep the F-117 fleet in “flyable storage” in case they are ever needed in wartime. Other aircraft that have been placed in Type 2000 storage have been returned to service as target drones as many as 20 years after being retired.

[James1978]

Air Force prepares to retire U-2 spy planes in 2026
By Rachel S. Cohen
May 2, 2023

The Air Force is forging ahead with its plan to retire the storied U-2 Dragon Lady spy aircraft in fiscal 2026, as part of a yearslong effort to reshape how the service surveils American adversaries from above.

Air Force leaders have considered retiring the U-2 fleet for nearly two decades, asking Congress in some years to ditch the Cold War-era workhorse or, in others, to retire the RQ-4 Global Hawk drones that were meant to replace it. Now both are on the chopping block.

If Congress approves the divestment and lets the Air Force retire its remaining RQ-4s one year later, the service would finish out the decade without the high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft that peer across borders and track enemy movements.

Sen. Ted Budd, R-N.C., noted the service’s plan for the U-2 on Tuesday in a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the Department of the Air Force’s fiscal 2024 budget request. The pending retirement was briefly mentioned in military budget documents released earlier this spring.

The service’s previous spending requests have foreshadowed the end of the U-2 fleet in the mid-2020s, including in its asks for fiscal 2021 and 2022. Last year’s request did not specify when the airframe would retire but zeroed out modernization funds after 2025.

The newest slate of budget documents acknowledges that the Air Force plans to keep the U-2 fleet viable through the end of September 2025, before shifting that money to higher priorities.

The Air Force said it expects Congress to remove legislative language that has blocked the jet’s retirement in the past, allowing the service to “move forward with U-2 divestment in FY 2026.”

The annual defense policy acts approved by Congress have sought to ensure that the Air Force has a suitable replacement for the U-2 and RQ-4 before yanking the assets that commanders around the world rely on for intelligence.

But once it cuts those fleets, the Air Force would instead turn to space-based sensors to collect a similar set of high-altitude images, its budget request said.

The Air Force’s 27 U-2s are housed at Beale Air Force Base, California, and rotate through military installations around the world. The aircraft are famous for the 105-foot wingspan that allows them to glide at the edge of space, the pilots clad in astronaut-like pressurized suits, the bulbous nose radars and the chase cars that follow the wobbly planes down the runway to ensure they land safely.

Known for capturing the images that proved the Soviet Union was building nuclear missile sites in Cuba in 1962, sparking the Cuban Missile Crisis, the U-2 gained new fame for tracking a Chinese surveillance balloon’s journey across the United States earlier this year.

Until recently, the jets relied on wet-film cameras with enormous film canisters that had to be shipped to Beale and developed by the 9th Reconnaissance Wing there. That practice ended last summer in a pivot to the digital era.

Dragon Ladies have lately taken on a new role as testbeds for a host of more advanced reconnaissance and communication technologies, and have helped vet new artificial intelligence tools in the Air Force’s quest for more capable drones.

The U-2 is also being used as a surrogate platform in the Air Force’s Advanced Battle Management System program, which looks to dramatically improve data-sharing capabilities among military assets.

It’s unclear how the Air Force would repurpose U-2 pilots and others in that enterprise if the airframes are allowed to retire.

[Poohbah]

Why they still flying the U-2?

Because it still hasn't found what it's looking for...

[James1978]

Based on this, I'm cautiously optimistic that the USAF E-7 won't be a totally bespoke version that is years behind schedule.

US airmen to visit Australia in June for E-7 Wedgetail training
By Rachel S. Cohen
May 2, 2023

Around five dozen American airmen will head to Australia this summer to learn how to fly and repair the E-7 Wedgetail command-and-control jet, as the U.S. Air Force looks to accelerate the acquisition program by any means necessary.

Their visit — four years before the Air Force expects to receive its first E-7 — aims to speed up the service’s transition away from its nearly 50-year-old E-3 Sentry aerial target tracking jets.

Chief of Staff Gen. CQ Brown Jr. noted the upcoming trip at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Tuesday, in which Department of the Air Force leadership defended their budget priorities for the coming fiscal year.

“We’re going to be able to send … in June, close to 50 to 60 of our airmen to actually start training on the E-7s, so when we do get our aircraft, we’ll have trained operators and maintainers to help accelerate bringing the E-7 into our inventory,” Brown said.

The modern airframes would improve the Air Force’s ability to tell who is traveling in nearby airspace, where they are going and how quickly — information that’s crucial for keeping tabs on foreign forces or for directing friendly aircraft in an air campaign.

In February, the service awarded Boeing a $1.2 billion contract to begin work on two prototype jets that are slated for delivery in 2027. It plans to buy a total of 26 E-7s by 2032.

Australia, Turkey, South Korea and the United Kingdom already own, or are in the process of building, their own E-7s as well.

Readying the first two prototypes is expected to require $2.7 billion and four years in total: two years to build the commercial Boeing 737 airframes, plus another two years to outfit and test them with military-grade radars and communications equipment.

That timeline is still too slow for Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, who said the service hasn’t found any feasible ways to accelerate the program’s early stages. The service is trying to make it possible for Boeing to deliver more aircraft faster once full production gets underway in 2025.

Pressed by Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., on what became of an extra $200 million that Congress provided last December to speed up the acquisition, Brown said it helped pay for initial development and to get a head start on building up it`s inventory of E-7 parts.

But Kendall couldn’t say for certain whether receiving more money than requested has saved the program any time. He argued the initial jets will take four years regardless of how much money Congress throws at them.

“I did a personal review of the steps that are necessary to get it into the first phase of testing, and we couldn’t find a way to redo that,” he said.

More money would help speed later batches of aircraft, Kendall told lawmakers, but the service felt it couldn’t afford to ask for that funding in the fiscal 2024 budget. The Air Force requested $681 million to develop the jet in the coming year, plus another $633 million to speed its delivery as part of a separate wish list to Congress.

“That program has been moving as fast as we’re able to move it,” Kendall said.

While the E-7 is one of several programs that are designed to rapidly deliver prototypes, the service still faces funding shortfalls that may keep those from moving forward, according to the budget documents.

But demand for the aircraft is mounting as the E-3s grow more expensive and difficult to maintain. The Air Force is in the process of retiring its 31-jet Sentry fleet, which could number just 16 by the end of fiscal 2024.

The sooner the U.S. version of the Wedgetail can arrive to replace them, the better, Air Force officials argue.

“I just wanted more than twins,” Air Combat Command boss Gen. Mark Kelly said in February, referring to the first two E-7s. “I want as many of those kids as I can.”

[James1978]

Kendall: Ratio of Fighters to Bombers May Shift Toward Bombers in the Future
May 2, 2023 | By John A. Tirpak

The Air Force may shift its fighter-to-bomber ratio more toward bombers and longer-range platforms in the future—but not soon, because the B-21 production line is only set up for “modest” production rates, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall told the Senate Armed Services Committee on May 2.

“I’m not sure that the future Air Force will look all that much like the one we have today,” Kendall said in response to a question from Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), who noted that the Air Force’s fighter-to-bomber ratio now hovers around 15-1.

“One of the things that may change is a shift in the balance … between shorter-range tactical air capabilities and longer-range strike capabilities that bombers provide,” Kendall acknowledged.

The Air Force is developing its Agile Combat Employment model, in which it plans to disperse fighters in small groups to a wide variety of operating locations. Bombers, on the other hand, would have the range to prosecute targets without the need for bases close to enemy territory, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III said at the December 2022 roll-out of the new B-21 Raider.

At some point in the future, Kendall predicted, the Air Force will begin discussions on adjusting the ratio of fighters to bombers. At the moment, however, the service doesn’t “have many options to make those changes right now,” and in the meantime, “we’re preserving the bomber fleet pretty much as much as we can,” he said.

Much of those preservation efforts are focused on the B-52, which Kendall described as “so robustly-designed that we can keep it pretty much forever.” The Stratofortress is slated to get new engines, radar and other capabilities in the coming years so it can be used “as a bus” for all manner of weaponry.

The B-1, meanwhile, still has “a lot of capacity,” Kendall said, but the B-2 fleet is “harder to maintain.”

“The B-21 is our option, in the near term, to bring in new capability, and we’re just starting to get it into production,” Kendall said. “The current [planned purchase] is 100. I don’t know what it will end up being. It may be larger than that. I would not be surprised by that.”

However, the B-21 is being built on a production line developed for the development program and which “just will continue to be used for production at a relatively modest rate,” Kendall pointed out. The service has said there are currently about five or six B-21s in some stage of production.

The Air Force has not revealed how rapidly it plans to build and field B-21s, but previous bomber roadmaps—now several years old—have hinted the first 100 B-21s would be bought by about 2023, suggesting a maximum annual rate of 10-12 per year.

“I think if we’re ever going to significantly increase the production, we’d have to go re-look at how we are tooled for manufacturing,” Kendall said, calling that “not a near-term decision.”

However, he agreed with Ernst that building more B-21s than now planned would reduce their unit cost.

“Cost and quantities are always connected, and you do reduce costs by increasing their production rate, definitely,” he said.

Northrop Grumman is building the B-21 at its Palmdale, Calif., facilities, in many of the same spaces that once housed B-2 production. Northrop’s contract covers the first five aircraft—planned for use as test articles, but later convertible to operational assets—on a cost-plus basis, but the first lot of production aircraft will be on a fixed-price basis, with a not-to-exceed unit price of $550 million per copy in base year 2010 dollars, or about $766 million in fiscal 2023 dollars. The Air Force has said the unit cost will come in lower than that.

Kendall briefly pursued the idea of long-range uncrewed aircraft to accompany the B-21 deep into enemy airspace but tabled that notion as unworkable in the near term.

Air Force leaders have said the central, crewed element of the Next-Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) family of systems will likely come in two variants: a shorter-range model adapted for the European theater, and a longer-range version adapted for the long distances of the Pacific theater.